Symbols

Chapter 1

Bleached planks reached for the sky like the desperate grab of a drowning man reaching for one last gasp of air. The ends of the ship's exposed wooden beams were sharpened to razor points by the windblown sand. Alan stared at it, his lips parted slightly in amazement at the find.

He took giant steps down the steep angle of the dune, taking care to slide with the shifting sand and not get caught up and tumble. Sand in his eyes, nose, and mouth was the last thing he needed. He'd already been gone long enough Isabelle, his wife, was sure to let him have it.

Alan stepped around the up thrust and canted bow of the ship to get a look at the side the sun hadn't shown on in countless years. He'd watched the wind whipping around in a mini-cyclone, sucking the sand up in a yellow haze from the top of the hill his kids were playing on. He'd wanted to know why the wind would do that, one of the many quests for knowledge that gave his life meaning.

Now that he was here, he had no explanation for it other than the way the living sand in the dunes around the unearthed ship had formed. Not that the wind mattered anymore, now he had something far more exciting to compel him.

In the shadows between the steep wall of the dune and the side of the ship Alan made out a darker spot. He stepped closer, holding his breath and daring to hope. A few more steps and he was sure of it, the hull had a hole in it. Not a big hole, but big enough he was sure he could get in. Then again, for a ship any hole in the hull was bad news.

Al stopped and looked around. He was a mile or more from Lake Michigan. Silver Lake was closer, to the east half a mile or less. How would a boat get this far inland? It wasn't a huge boat, but it was very old. A couple hundred years, at least. Nobody made wooden boats like this anymore unless it was a prop for a movie.

That far back the area had been covered in pine trees. The lumber had been logged to help rebuild Chicago after the great fire in the 1800s, then a natural fire had cleared the rest of the area and let the sand consume what remained. Was this ship older than that, or newer?

He turned around and studied the ground. There were no footprints other than his own. Even those, further away, were being slowly erased by the swirling eddies of wind. He turned back to the ship and stared into the black hole and the mysteries awaiting inside.

I should get somebody, he whispered. He stepped forward and dug into his pocket to retrieve his cell phone. This had to be an important find. He'd been hoping to find a piece of fulgurite – crystallized sand left behind from a lightning strike, but this was something else entirely.

There might be all sorts of things inside. Gold and silver coins, trading tools and weapons from the days of Michigan's pioneers, even objects important to history, like preserved documents or maybe even the skeletal remains of the sailors that once sailed this small ship. He grinned at the thought and turned on his phone's flashlight. Why should somebody else get the first chance to see what he'd discovered?

Through the hull he found a single room. Sand was piled on the floor near the hole. But the angle of the ship tilted everything towards the hole on the ships right, or starboard, side. The angle wasn't extreme, but it was enough to keep sand from rushing in and filling the small cabin.

He reached up and tested the edges of the broken wood. The edges were jagged and sharp, but not so sharp he couldn't wrap his hands around them. He tucked his phone between this teeth and hoisted himself up, scrambling to get a foot in place to help. The last time he'd tried a pull up was nearly twenty years ago in high school.

Breathing hard from the exertion, Alan pulled himself through the hole and stepped down onto the cabin's floor. The wood creaked and bowed, telling him the bottom of the ship hadn't been filled with sand and that he'd better be careful where he walked.

His light played over the cabin, resting on a small table and a bunk. There was a chest at the foot of the bed and the remains of a broken oil lamp on the floor. The lamp looked old enough to be worth something, except he didn't fancy the thought of carrying it across the dunes. Still, that was proof enough to him that nobody else had been here first.

He kept turning, shining his flashlight in a circle around him. On the far side he saw a door that opened out. The door was open too, even if only a few inches. He grinned and took a step forward when his light dropped enough to stop him in his tracks. On the floor lay a body, gaunt and withered with age. He gasped as he stared at the near-mummified remains. Whoever it had been was trapped, their hands pushing at the door and trying to budge it away from where it had pinned them. Pinned, or crushed. There wasn't enough room between the edge of the door and the doorjamb for a man, woman, or child to fit through.

Alan took a careful step forward, testing the creaking planks before setting his full weight on them. He knelt down and studied the wisps of coiled hair on the corpse's head. The years had bleached any color it had once had and left it white and fragile. The corpse's nose and eyes were gone, decayed or eaten by bacteria ages past. The skin was stretched and withered, peeling apart in places as it hardened. Being trapped under sand for countless years had preserved the body, but even in preservation time had not done it any favors.

The rags on the body looked like they'd once been a robe or a dress. Maybe for sleeping. Perhaps the ship had run aground at night. That's why they'd built the lighthouse, after all. This part of the beach stuck out several miles into Lake Michigan, wider than any other part of the state.

He looked up and around, trying to make sense of it. The ship had run aground and she rushed out of bed, anxious to escape her cabin and see what had happened. Then it shifted, falling over. The door caught her and pinned her, squashing her and breaking her hips or back. She struggled, but was trapped and overcome.

Alan nodded, certain he'd figured it out. Just as he was sure the body was a woman. Even emaciated there was a slightness to the body that made him feel it had been a female. A female on a ship back then meant something. She was probably somebody important.

He lifted his phone and brought up his camera app. He centered her in the frame and took a picture. He studied the picture, making sure it was a good one, and zoomed in on something he hadn't noticed before. He looked up, realizing the body was in front of him so he didn't have to zoom in on a picture.

He had to shuffle to his right before he reached down and turned over the object lying on the deck beside her. It was a symbol of some sort. A circle with a short bump on either side so it looked like a horizontal line ran through it. A darkened metal chain connected it to her neck. Alan took another picture of it and frowned. Should he take it? She didn't need it anymore. But that meant defacing the scene of the find. This had to be important, historically if not for any other reason. Times were tough, but what could he do with a pendant that looked like Saturn on a stick? Pawn it for fifty bucks? A hundred, maybe?

Alan sighed and rose to his feet. He'd make a lousy treasure hunter.

He turned his light on the door and reached out to it. It didn’t budge, just as he'd predicted. Even if it hadn't crushed the poor woman by now the hinges had surely rusted. He gave it another shove, just to be sure, and turned around to look at the cabin again.

Well, this is it, he mumbled. Not nearly as amazing as he'd hoped when he first saw it, but still, this was the kind of thing he'd never expected to happen to him. Sure, he'd dreamt of all sorts of these kinds of things, but every boy had his fantasies. Like most of them, reality fell far short of the dream. At least this one hadn't cost him the public ridicule trying to date the head cheerleader in high school had.

Alan's eyes fell on the chest at the foot of the bed. His eyebrow raised as he considered it. He nodded. Even if he wasn't going to take anything, he could at least satisfy his curiosity. Probably moldy undergarments, but at least he'd know.

He made his way to the chest and knelt down beside it. He tested the lid but it didn't budge. Rusty hinges again, most likely. He used both hands and tugged. The lid budged and then caught. He pulled harder, straining his back. The