Rebirth
Who: James, NPC Arnette What: Excavating When: Present, Night Where: Moapa Valley
The Muddy River was an apt name for the brown floodwaters that occasionally overtook I-15, the only highway through the Moapa Valley between Las Vegas and Mesquite in the northeast corner of Clark County. The internet was burgeoning with amateur videos of stranded motorists, caught off guard as the swift, rough waters blurred the line between road and landscape until it was all the same: beige rapids, water lapping at tires, hoods, and windows as people prayed for the sudden summer storms to blow eastward and the waters to subside. If nothing else, they wanted to be witnessed.
An unincorporated town called Moapa, first settled in 1865, squatted by the mouth of the river. Like most places in Nevada, its population ebbed and flowed. When residents passed on, the townsfolk buried the dead in the hard earth, using excavators to dig deep through dirt and rock. In modern days, the graves were placed on high ground, but the valley’s older burial sites were closer to the river, more shallow and susceptible to sediment erosion.
Every once in a while, one surfaced.
James stood over a large depression in the earth. It was unmarked, not giving him any clues as to whether there was a wooden casket down there or a pit of snakes. His palm and fingers squeezed the handle of a shovel, the spade of which had carved a divot in the ground. The area was illuminated by the headlights of his Chevy. “And you had a dream about this?” He squinted at the silhouette of a slender woman in a long, pale dress, oversized jacket, and boots. His mother was an oddity, both fragile and capable of scraping by in horrific circumstances; she reminded him of a lily-of-the-valley and was just as invasive if allowed to take root.
Arnette nodded, looking from her son’s face to the washout. “Yes. Right here.” The clairvoyant pointed to the broad area of subsidence. She took a camping lantern from the truck cab and set it out to help him see into the recesses.
James took a big step down into the slumped dirt. He fished inside his shirt for a brass pendulum that hung from a chain and pulled it over his head. When he knelt, he steadied his elbow and let the pendulum swing from his thumb and forefinger, quietly asking questions, watching for the telltale up-and-down swing to direct him where, or if, to start digging.
As she wandered back and forth, Arnette gave him a mild smile. “You didn’t used to ask so many questions.”
He dropped his head, irritated at the distraction. “Yeah. Well. Me and your dreams have a history,” he said, giving her a pointed look. James gathered the dowsing tool into his palm and lowered it again. If he was going to spend an hour shoveling dirt in the middle of nowhere, it wouldn’t hurt to ask the collective consciousness for a hand in locating the right spot. Once he had it, James pocketed the necklace. He took up the shovel and began turning the earth with a slow, methodical swing to save his back.
“If this turns out to be nothing, you can use it for a ritual,” she argued. “I know what you’ve been working on and—”
“It won’t be nothing,” James interrupted. Arnette was never completely off-base, only slightly askew at times. “Besides. I’d have to do a lot more than… reanimation out here.” Dirt piled on the ground. “There’ll be nothing holding the skeleton together. I’d have to grow him some tendons and I’m…” The bucket of the shovel dinged a rock. He wedged underneath it. “...Fresh out of blood sacrifices.”
“Your father would kill me if he knew you were out here digging up bones,” Arnette joked lightly. She passed a hand through the haze in front of a headlight. Dust particles, fine and gold, swirled around her fingers.
“You asking me not to tell him?” James asked. A lump of dirt, withered roots, and rock landed on the pile. The shovel broke the surface again, a metallic slice and scrape in the grit.
“Well,” she said, leaning against the grill of the truck. “You know how he gets about anything…” Arnette floundered for a description of the shadowy parts of her life, and her son’s, that Sam couldn’t understand, or chose not to. James had come to a peaceable understanding with him in the last year, but when it came to her bond with her son, Arnette found herself in shakier territory with Sam.
“Are you worried he’ll yell at you or stop sleeping over?” he asked, passing the shovel into his non-dominant hand.
“Jay!”
He smiled. The pitch of her voice was as much as a confession. There were enough hints along the way to make it an easy leap: his mother’s relocation up from Louisiana to help ‘look after things’ when Sam got out of the hospital, his father’s use of scented aftershave, a vase of picked wildflowers on the windowsill of the 480 sq. ft. apartment she rented beside a Crown Liquor. There was a speck of dirt in his eyelashes. He used the inside of his shirt to wipe his eyes, then kept working. “I don’t understand it and I don’t need to,” he said with a shake of his head. “Just confirming.” If the idea of his parents having sex was appalling, then the idea of a reunion after thirty-four years was worse.
While Arnette folded her arms and studied the night sky, he continued for a while in silence until his shovel hit a piece of pine wood and splintered it. James shot a look at his mother, who was suddenly lurking at the precipice of the hole. He found the edge of the coffin and worked his way around it, clearing the debris. “Hand me the broom and the crowbar,” he said.
Arnette got them from the truck bed and passed them down to him.
James dusted off the top of the pine box and shone a light on it. There was a crude coffin plate on it. It took some buffing with a handkerchief but he was eventually able to make out a name: Rhys Howell. "Rhys." He stuffed the cloth in the hip pocket of his jeans.
“It’s Welsh,” she offered.
He picked up the crowbar, got a better grip on it, and began to pry the coffin nails loose. The box, warped by floodwaters, groaned and splintered. Somewhere along the way, James had started to sweat; he was acutely aware of the dust forming a tan layer on his skin and clinging to his damp shirt. When the lid was ready to be lifted, James said, “Cover your mouth and nose,” because there was no telling what awaited them inside a shallow grave a psychic was seeing in her dreams. James found a place to brace his feet, put the handkerchief over the lower half of his face, and opened the lid. A few chunks of dirt and rock fell inside, but nothing came out. After a moment, he lowered the cloth.
It was hard to guess how many decades had passed since Rhys Howell’s body was interred. Early on, the arid conditions might have caused some mummification of his skin, but it was long gone now. All that remained in the box were his teeth and cracked bones, some of which were missing altogether, having turned to dust that washed away when the site flooded. It was an ordinary ending.
He reached down and gently turned the partial skull. Nothing stood out about it. James looked up at his mother, whose dress shifted around her calves. “Why are we out here, Mom?”
Arnette shook her head. “I- I don’t know,” she said, as flummoxed as he’d seen her.
There had to be something. James grabbed the battery-operated lantern and scoured the length of the coffin. “Wait.” There was an object at the foot, one he hadn’t seen at first because it was under a pile of sediment. He shook it loose and held it up to the light. It was a piece of metal, heavy and thick, with the slightest sloping shape. The rough edges indicated that it had been broken off a larger object.
At the sight of it, Arnette took a few unsteady steps toward the truck. She felt along the edge of the bumper and sat down. When she had a waking vision, it was often this way: a swirling sensation, a rush of cold pinpricks to her face, and then she’d puke up the last thing she ate. When the sickness subsided, she’d receive what was intended for her, whether in pictures or in words. This time as she came back from the grips of it, James was next to her holding back her hair, his voice muted and then clearing. He offered a clean cloth for her face. Arnette took it. She wiped her mouth and chin, then gave voice to the phrase that was stuck in her head. “What is Pair Dadeni?” The seer took a thermos when James produced it. She swished cold water in her mouth and spat out the taste of stomach acid.
James sat back on his haunches and watched his mother with a strange sensation curling in his gut. "Pair Dadeni?"
Arnette nodded. She set the thermos between her feet.
“It’s a magical artifact from Welsh mythology," he said, testing the weight of the object in his hand, as if verifying its existence. James's thumb ran over the broken edge. "It's the Cauldron of Rebirth.”