All that second day we worked at the burial ground. I had abandoned my plan of collecting as many of the subsidiary rolls as possible, and instead aimed at locating the grave of Pauquatoag immediately. Varnum and I hammered our iron sounding bars into the flinty soil innumerable times, locating the individual graves by the softness of their contents as contrasted to the density of the surrounding soil. As we probed I noticed that Varnum’s hand trembled as he guided the bar. He swallowed often, and although the day was cool his face and neck were covered with a web of perspiration. The man had a look of doom about him.
It was late afternoon when our probes found an area of soft soil which, because of its size, could only be the grave of an important member of the tribe. As we dug through the layers of decaying pine needles and sterile earth, my conviction grew that this was indeed the grave of Pauquatoag. We removed cache after cache of wampumpeag, the cowrie shell money which paid the spirit’s passage to the next world. Our trowels and shovels uncovered fire-blackened cooking utensils, fine weapons, and the remains of what had been rich ceremonial vestments three hundred years before. But the richest treasure would be the records which chronicled the life of the shaman, his feats, his genealogy, and his death.
With each succeeding foot that we penetrated into the grave Varnum’s tension grew, and was transmitted in part to me. He did not speak, but I could read his anxiety in his jerky motions as he wielded the shovel and in the serious cast of his features. Although I had opened many graves in my researches, I resonated with his emotion. A strange unreasoning pall of fear settled over the burial ground.
We struck the level of ashes in which would be buried the pictographs. The body, or bones, would be just below this. Gently, with a small whisk broom and an old lobster pick, I separated the fragile rolls from their protective crust of ash and handed them to Varnum as he knelt on the lip of the grave. He dropped one and apologized for his clumsiness, saying that he was not himself. And I, kneeling in the mold above the resting place of the greatest of the northeastern tribal sorcerers, was not completely composed myself.
When the rolls were cleaned and packed in their padded boxes I walked to where Varnum was sitting like a dumb man.
“Shall we have a look?”
He nodded and rose with an air of resignation. We re-entered the excavation and with trowels cut into the hardened ash, which the Massaquoits believed would preserve the skeleton for eternity, for any injury to the remains would affect the spirit in the next world. We scraped and sifted through at least a half-yard of the grey ash. Then Varnum’s trowel rang against a granite ledge.
“Oh God,” he whispered to himself, “the bottom.”
I continued digging in my corner of the excavation, trying to uncover some part of the remains. But not a fragment of bone was at the bottom.
“Nothing,” I said quietly. We stared at each other. The layer of ash had been unbroken, the funereal gifts in perfect arrangement, the grave undisturbed for three centuries—and yet, no remains.
Beads of perspiration broke out on Varnum’s brow. The forest at dusk, which had been tranquil, became ominous because of our discovery.
“But bodies just can’t vanish, can they?” asked Varnum, almost pleading.
“There is always a trace,” I said. “Sometimes, if the soil is abnormally acid and water continually leaches down, the bones, the clothing, even metal objects will disintegrate. But the hair always remains. Yards of it, in the case of a woman, since it continues growing for a time after death.”
“There’s no water seepage here,” Varnum said. “The grave bottom’s on a granite shelf, and there’s no hair at all. Almost as though there never were a body.”
“Ridiculous—these Indians did not make mock graves. This one is genuine, but, inexplicably, something has happened to the remains. I’ve never encountered such a thing before.”
We rose in the ashen light. “We’ve done all we can here,” I said. “During the next two days I’ll clean the rolls further and pack them in preservative for the trip back. Then we’ll fill the grave and leave Pauquatoag for the paleontologists. We must get back to Dunstable and notify the authorities about that stampede last night.”
Varnum helped me to strap the record containers securely to the back of the pack horse. We rode back to the tents, arriving a few minutes before universal darkness settled over the wood. Against the possibility of another stampede we decided to stand watches through the remainder of the nights we would be on the camping ground.
During the next two days I was continually busy preparing the records for transport back to Dunstable and, eventually, the British Museum. Every particle of ash which might abrade the delicately figured surface of each roll had to be teased away. A coating of paraffin was applied to protect the dry birchbark from the atmosphere. This would suffice until a more durable preservative could be used.
Despite my preoccupation with the rolls, I could not overlook a progressive deterioration in Varnum’s morale. On the evening of our discovery at the grave he had suffered nightmares all through his sleep. Sitting on watch, I could hear him moaning and speaking unintelligibly to some unknown adversary. When he came on watch he was obviously unrested and bore a harried expression about his eyes which only first light would dispel.
On the second evening his discomfort was worse. I decided to wake him, since the sounds which issued from his throat were scarcely human.
“It’s—it’s the same as last night,” he gasped, blinking in the light from my lantern. “I can see myself asleep in the tent, and you sitting on watch—but there’s something else there beyond the clearing, something which is slowly moving in towards the tents. And you can’t see it, but it’s there, coming for—for me!”
The man was almost hysterical. In view of his condition I decided to stand his watch for him, and so administered a sedative from the medical kit which I hoped would at least quiet the terrible sounds and cries he had been making. When he fell back to sleep I took a turn around the fringe of the clearing, then returned to my seat by the fire.
For a time, wrapped in my blanket, I contemplated to try at deciphering the records of Pauquatoag, but the light from the embers was feeble. In retrospect I doubt that I could have long concentrated on the pictographs, given the situation. My mind was occupied with thoughts of the unnatural fear which hung over Dunstable and this forest—the unspoken fear of the townsmen at the mere mention of penetrating north of the lumbering camps; the bizarre sight of animal bodies circling aimlessly in the eddies of the millpond; the insane, chattering flight of the animal horde through the forest and into the Penaubsket. And now, our failure to find a trace of the shaman in his virgin, untouched grave.
With an effort of will I forced my mind away from these thoughts since there in the ruddy glow of the dying fire I found myself becoming mortally afraid. I was a grown man, only a few years away from the slaughter of Belleau Wood. I had been afraid there yet had never betrayed the emotion since I was among my fellows. With the romanticism of a nobler age we thought we were all marked for death, and so resigned ourselves. But there in that black forest where each breath brought the taste of mold, there was no flashing cannonade or shrapnel warbling into trenches or bullets thudding through the olive drill of uniforms—only the steady dripping of the leaves, the smell of unknown centuries of decay and dissolution, and the unbearable silence. Although I trust no human group above the size of a British Infantry platoon, that night I longed for the babble of a crowd.