As Sarah lay beneath the floorboards in a house inhabited by a madman, she was wondering if her mother hadn’t been right after all. Maybe there was such a monster, such a spirit. And maybe he had known they had been mocking him, had been too complacent. And maybe this had made him angry. And maybe it was he who had come for her, and he came in darkness to see her now because he had no face beneath the mask he had shown to capture her.
Sarah lay still, her eyes open wide.
The paper, which was entitled ‘The Krüniger Plot and Mittel-Baxter Society’, detailed an archaeological investigation that had recently taken place in an area of Germany with which the man was unfamiliar. He had found it in his atlas, and established it was too distant from any of his contacts for them to be able to provide any on-the-spot observations, and so he was restricted to the information in the paper.
A graveyard had been discovered not far from the remains of a Neolithic settlement. Carbon dating of the skeletons, together with corollary evidence from personal items found within some of the graves, had allowed the site to be dated to the latter part of the eighth millennium B.C. Ten thousand years ago. The man sat for a while, savouring the thought, summoning up an image of this cross-section of time. Before any now-recognizable language had been spoken, long before even the Pyramids had been built – unless one believed the claims of the New Age archaeologists with their selective evidence-gathering and flimsy projections – these people had lived and died and been laid in the earth, had made love and eaten and shat their waste on the ground. The man sipped a little of his coffee, being careful to replace the cup on the side table so that it was only just balanced. Then he read on.
There were twenty-five sets of remains. Women of up to young middle age, children, a few men in their late teens or early twenties, and one man of more advanced years. Thorough appendices detailed the condition of each of the skeletons, and outlined the techniques that had been used both to age them and establish the dietary and environmental conditions within which they had lived. The authors of the paper remarked how the skeletons had been laid in a grid, an organized system of burial observed in no other sites in that part of Europe at the time. They provided diagrams demonstrating how the orientation of the grid was in accordance with what was understood of the period’s interest in the summer and winter solstices, thankfully avoiding a digression into primitive astronomy. They instead produced a series of arguments to show that this arrangement provided further evidence for a proposition to which they had been committed for some years: that this particular area of Germany had been host to a hybridized form of social organization that they termed Mittel-Baxter Society (for such were the authors’ names), a sporadic and localized culture of very minor academic interest and negligible long-term significance.
The man read the paper carefully to the end, and then worked steadily through the appendices. After reading the reports on the skeletons of the other deceased, nodding occasionally at what he regarded as perfectly well-argued conclusions, he came to the section regarding the older man who had been found at the site. The position of his skeleton – at the exact centre of a five-by-five grid – suggested that he had been the first to be buried in this plot, and the authors argued compellingly that this implied that the man had been a person of importance within the nearby village. It was also deduced that he had been born in a different part of the country, as bilateral pitting in the interior of his eye sockets – a condition known as cribra orbitalia – suggested that his diet had been deficient in iron for much of his life. The amount of iron in vegetation is determined by the geological qualities of the soil in which it grows, and its absorption affected by the amount of lead present: people from different areas will therefore show marked variations in the condition. Cross sections taken from the man’s teeth, and subsequent analysis of the levels of lead and strontium isotopes, had enabled them to link him to an area over two hundred and fifty miles away. In an aside it was observed that a lesion on his skull bore witness to a blow to the head that had not proved fatal – as the damage it had caused to the bone tissue was long-healed prior to the man’s eventual demise. They speculated that this might have been a result of a battle or struggle for power, and that this proved he had lived a long and vibrant life. A man who, the authors provokingly speculated, might even have been personally responsible for bringing Mittel-Baxter culture into a previously uncivilized and backwoods area, and whose local significance had been enshrined in the manner of his burial.
The man read this section for a second time, and then closed the paper on his lap. He was very pleased. This was the best yet, much better and far, far older than even the seven ancient burials discovered together high on the Nazca plain at Cahuachi, each with fossilized excrement in their mouths. He felt pity for Mittel and Baxter, though he supposed it unlikely that the full stupidity of their conclusions would ever be brought to light. Perhaps the paper might even help maintain their tenure at the godforsaken midwestern university for which they toiled. He could, he supposed, get in touch with them and put them in the picture. He doubted that he would be believed, however, even though the truth of the matter was there for those who had eyes to see. Archaeologists were worse than most when it came to judging evidence on the basis of their pre-existing suppositions. It didn’t matter whether they were flair players like Hancock and Baigent, or journeymen like Klaus Mittel and George Baxter: they all saw what they wanted to see. The traditionalists could only ever see ceremonial walkways, the New Agers their alien landing strips – however absurd each idea was in individual circumstances. Some of the time each was correct, but they’d never know when – because in their minds they were right all the time. Only if you were prepared to examine the evidence dispassionately could you reliably divine the truth.
The skull lesion most certainly denoted a head injury, though one that had been far more significant than Mittel and Baxter realized – a childhood injury profound enough to wake a portion of the brain that in most men remained regrettably dormant. The evidence of cribra orbitalia was likewise not merely of import with regard to geographical positioning. It was indeed often related to iron deficiency, and sometimes anaemia of a congenital or haemolytic type, but it could also have a far more interesting genesis. Excessive exposure to lead could cause the condition. This, the man knew, wasn’t ‘poisoning’ at all, but a gift that could combine with other factors and lead to alterations on a genetic level, changes that woke suppressed parts of the human genome and allowed them to become manifest.
It was not Mittel and Baxter’s misinterpretation of the forensic evidence that was most at fault, however, but their inability to judge the true nature of the site. The man in the centre of the cemetery grid had not died first. Of course not. He had died last. In his own time, and by his own hand.
At the centre of his creation.
The realtor leaned forward on his elbows, opened his little mouth, and spoke.
‘And what kind of bracket would you be looking to purchase into? Please be frank. I appreciate that these are early days in our relationship, Mr, uh, Lautner, the dawn of our search for a potential home – but I’m going to come right out and say it’ll promote our settling into a mutually beneficial mode if I know exactly how much you’re hoping to realize into real estate at this time.’
He sat back in his chair and squinted knowingly at me, evidently pleased to have laid his cards on the table. There was to be no pulling the wool over this guy’s eyes, I gathered wearily. If I only had eight dollars and change to spend, or was maybe hoping to barter with shiny stones, he intended to know right away. He was middle-aged and skinny with red hair, and his name – scarcely credibly – appeared to be Chip Farling. I’d already talked to several very similar people, and my tolerance was getting lower and lower.
‘I’d like to cap it around six,’ I said, briskly. ‘For the time being. Something special, I may go higher.’
He beamed. ‘That would be cash in full?’
‘Yes it would.’ I smiled back.
Chip’s head bobbed, and his neat little hands moved a couple of pieces of paper around on his desk. ‘Good,’ he