Nothing but silence and the distant sound of a lawn mower. What if he’d gone? What if he couldn’t find him? What then?
The heat rose from the concrete, rippling the air. Normally Gavin relished moments like this, the smell of hot tar, wet concrete, and newly welded girders filling him with exhilaration at being the conqueror, the emperor of steel. Today he was just panicked.
A hot breeze blew a dried palm leaf across the bare ground. The movement caught his eye and suddenly he saw a footprint set distinctly into the concrete. He recognized the three clawed toes immediately. Above that print another one, then another, a whole string of them winding their way toward the back of the lot.
It is a definitive moment in a man’s life when his conscious will is jettisoned for something more primal, more instinctive, when the prehistoric brain hijacks civilized thought. Such a moment can change a man’s life, although at the time it may feel as arbitrary as a missed phone call or an accidentally deleted e-mail. Caught in one of these moments Gavin slipped off a shoe and sock and pressed his bare foot down hard beside one of the footprints. The imprint he left was identical. At last something real; evidence.
Carefully he took a photo, squinting into the viewfinder, one shoe off, one shoe on. Image captured forever, he slipped his shoe back on and followed the track of footprints. It arced in a semicircle, as if the creature had paused midflight then decided to change direction, as if being chased. The trail ended at the pile of rubbish at the back of the lot. Gavin stared at the mountain of trash in front of him, his protective layers shearing away one by one until it felt like the back of his head had been peeled off and he could sense every trembling leaf, the shiver of every blade of grass, the humming vibration of communication wires buried in pipes six feet under his feet. The tramp was very close. Gavin could swear he heard breathing, heard him whispering Flitter, flitter so softly it was barely a tickle against his eardrums.
He examined the pile—broken beer bottles, plastic concrete bags, wattle branches with dying blossoms, the rusty wheel of an ancient bicycle, and something else…something staring up at him through the spokes. What was it? A lump of moss? A decayed tree stump? As he stared harder the object’s features swam free-form to compose themselves into an image too shocking for his mind immediately to assimilate. But as he blinked again, Gavin could see exactly what it was: the head of the tramp coated in a strange lichen, the eyes two blackened lumps of jelly hooded by wings of green moss, the mouth open in screaming accusation, vegetation fringing the withered meat of the lips.
It was a face Gavin had seen before—on the stone statue in Saturday’s garden, the Green Man from Bamberg Cathedral. The two heads were identical, except this rendition of the demented knave of Nature had once been alive.
Gavin pulled the bicycle away to reveal the rest of the tramp’s body, still huddled within its ancient parka. The cloth fell open with the movement, exposing blackened skin that had begun to split, showing the desiccated muscle beneath. There were two distinct marks on the old man’s chest, one above his heart. Gavin knew it immediately: the same imprint of a leaf that had appeared on his palm. Gavin lifted his camera. A moment later his knees gave way to a terrible trembling.
“Saturday! Saturday!”
Saturday Honeywell was crouched in a deep ditch, carefully brushing down a layer of fossils. Part of Boral Mining Corporation, the limestone quarry was massive and located some ten miles out of Brisbane. Saturday had been called in when one of the stonecutters unearthed a vast cross section of stratification: layer upon layer of fossils.
Oblivious to everything around her Saturday was immersed in the world she was bringing back to life with the fine hairs of her brush, each stroke pushing the dust aside to reveal another feathery leaf etched into the lime, tendrils still arching out toward a sun that had shone over 200,000 years before. She prized the stone from the wall of the ditch, squatted back on her haunches, and flipped the magnifying glass that was strapped to her forehead over her eye. She peered down at the lapidification.
Gavin leaped off the back of the jeep that had given him a lift out to the ditch. He stood silhouetted for a moment against the wheel of one of the tractors, his head barely reaching its hub.
“Saturday!” he bellowed again.
“The hippie chick?” one of the workmen asked. Gavin nodded. The workman grinned a gold-toothed gappy smirk and pointed in the direction of an open cut marked with flags.
Ignoring his leer Gavin began to stride, then broke into a full pelt toward the ditch. He reached the edge and peered down.
The sun divided the space into a checkerboard of dazzling white and blue shadow. At first he didn’t see her; she was kneeling in the shade of the cut side that plummeted down about sixty feet.
“Saturday!”
She looked up, hand shading her eyes, then pointed to a ladder leading down the side of the quarry. In his polyester suit now creased with grime, Gavin climbed down as fast as he could. It was instantly cooler in the shade.
“Fuck, you look terrible!” Saturday shoved a flask of cold water at him, unable not to feel sorry for the man. Gavin drank thirstily, then looked at her, eyes glittering dangerously.
“I found something I want you to look at. Real evidence!”
“Listen, Gav, I read about your wife. Looks like she stands to get the lot, that can’t be easy—”
“Saturday, I found him! I found the tramp!”
Saturday assessed the man in front of her. A nasty rash crept up from the neck of his shirt and extended as far as his earlobes. He didn’t appear to have any eyebrows and at the ends of his trousers his naked feet, covered in mud and greenish mold, were bruised and bleeding.
“You’ve been missing for over a week. Your mate from the City Council rang me looking for you; reckon he was frightened I’d chopped you up and fed you to my worm farm. Where have you been?”
“I’ve found something and I need your help. Now.”
He stared at her, the desire to touch her battling with his fear. If she’d lost faith in him he knew he was doomed.
“Hey, you’ve caught me between the Mesozoic and the Paleozoic, my most favorite place in the world….”
“Please.”
He grabbed her dust-covered glove. Sighing, she bent down and picked up her tool bag.
“Evidence? What kind of evidence?” Saturday muttered as she pushed open her front door.