Page 1 of The Unseen

St. Francisville, Louisiana

“L OOK, J OEY! W HAT IS THAT THING? ” T EN-YEAR-OLD C ALEB pointed to a bony protrusion sticking out of a wooden box in the sandy soil. The lid had come partway off, giving them a glimpse inside.

“Wow! That’s creepy.” Joey knelt near the box they had unearthed as they were building a fort in a pile of fallen logs. “Looks like part of a skeleton. Some dead guy’s hand.” He grabbed a short stick and started digging the soil away from around the box.

“If there’s a dead guy in there, we gotta call the cops,” Caleb said, far less adventurous than his friend.

Joey kept digging. “You can call ’em, soon as I see what it is.” He dug around the box, moving the lid enough to expose more bones, until the skeletal hand was completely revealed. It was clearly connected to the bones of an arm.

“Maybe it’s a grave,” Caleb said, watching Joey try to pry off the still half-buried lid. “We’re gonna be in trouble if we’re digging up somebody’s grave.”

Standing beneath a tall, moss-draped oak, Joey glanced around, but saw only thick green foliage and wild grapevines along the bayou. “This is no cemetery,” he said. “Come on, Caleb. Don’t just stand there, get down here and help me.”

Slightly taller than his friend, dark-haired instead of blond, Caleb stood frozen beside the hole Joey was digging. “I think we should call the cops,” Caleb said.

Joey just kept digging. Sand began collapsing back into the hole, enough that he had to start using the shovel to clear it away, but little by little, the box was unearthed. Joey lifted off the lid, exposing the skeletal remains inside the box.

When he spotted the skull, Joey dropped the shovel and went back down on his knees to investigate.

Caleb pulled out his cell phone. “I’m callin’ ’em, Joey. We gotta tell ’em we found a dead person.”

Joey paused to look at the bones he’d uncovered. “I think there’s a whole body in there,” he said, his gaze fixed on the pile of bones.

Caleb ignored him as the 911 police dispatcher answered. “What’s your emergency?”

“We found a body out near the bayou. It musta been here a long time ’cause it’s a skeleton. We figured you’d want to know.”

“Who’s calling?”

Caleb gave the woman his name and Joey’s. He told them they had been playing near a pile of dead logs off Creek Road, near Bayou Sara.

“A patrol car is on the way. Stay there until they arrive. I’ll remain on the phone with you until they get there.”

“Okay,” Caleb said. His parents weren’t going to like it when they found out he and Joey had been playing so far from the house. They thought everything he did was dangerous. They were always worried he was going to get hurt.

He looked back into the box to find the empty eyes of the skull staring up at him.

Caleb felt a chill. Maybe this time his parents were right.