Only the crown of the skull was poking above the soil. It wasn't there the day before, but heavy rains had revealed it. In a week the leaves of fall would have covered it again and the secrets of seven years ago would have remained in their grave. But today a small child was collecting stones with her father and she had a thing for white. Each night she laid these stones on the shelf by her bed for the fairies and went to sleep smiling at her latest offering. When she spied the shiny dome she squealed. It was so smooth and perfect, yet quite unlike her usual quartz. She begged her daddy to dig it up and watched enraptured while he tried. His fingernails couldn't prise it free so he took a stick and started to remove the earth from round it. Then spying the tell tale jagged lines of two fused plates he froze.
The skeleton looked fresh. In some places there was a pink sheen where flesh had been newly and inexpertly removed. There were tool marks gauged into recently living bone and a round hole in the skull. At the rear the head was cleaved open with a sharp knife and it was now hollow. The femurs had been sliced and the marrow removed. The detectives pallor became even more ghostly and he made a hasty cross over his chest.
In the twilight of Halloween night we think it's a trick. Perhaps a projector like on Scooby Doo. But as the skeleton walks there is a sound of bone hitting asphalt. As a dark cloud shifts a shaft of moonlight hits the figure reflecting only a yellowed white. It's a skeleton, just as tall as the one Mr Green has in the Biology room but this one moves as smoothly as a well conditioned athlete. It's head swivels as if surveying the scene with it's coal black sockets and hearing with just the ghost of it's ears. I shift my weight to my back foot and the loose gravel crunches beneath my boot. The skinless arm points in my direction and even though my eyes are now closed I hear the gnashing of teeth and the quickening of it;s stride. When I look again it's not one skeleton but many closing in on my location in a coordinated formation.
The skeletons danced on plasma screen closer and further away again. Talia giggled, "Scary skeletons, spooky skeletons." Already she was in her halloween costume and had eaten too much sweet pumpkin pie. She twirled at a giddy pace, almost missing the curled brown leaf that tumbled to the tile and crunched under her socked foot. She stopped. The only leaves to be seen were the ones on the television set, tumbling in crazy motion around the old bones. She shrugged and continued to dance, "Spooky skeletons! Scary skeletons." Another leaf fell.
Talia stared at the screen. The skeletons were doing some kind of jive as the autumn leaves tumbled around them, a last hurrah for October. She was about to turn away when she saw several leaves fall from the screen to her feet. She opened her mouth to scream but nothing came out. She knew she should run but her feet wouldn't move. The skeletons stopped dancing and walked to the screen, poking yellowing finger joints into the heated room. Soon a long arm dangled from the screen and the skull was emerging, no longer pixelated but real...