Buried Guilt
Partridge in a Pear Tree — A Dark Tidings Story
Twelve Days of Christmas—Dark Tidings was a Substack special holiday event. Each day, we counted down to Christmas Eve with a dark tale featuring one of the gifts from the classic carol. A guide to all the stories can be found here. My story is a late addition, as the original tale woven by Sam Rake is no longer available. Do yourself a favor and read all the other stories, they are excellent.
The ground at Ferrick Orchard was hard from the December frost. Shovels and picks and brushes, all stiff from the touch of winter’s cold fingers. A large marquee loomed in the dusk. The footprint of the tent was a solid twenty-by-twenty space of damp packed earth, with three square-feet of dig site in the center, and a barren pear tree casting shadows in the far corner. The brown glass lips of four beers clinked together overtop a hissing gas lantern. The walled tent smelled of dirt and breath and yeast.
“To the greatest discovery of our careers.” Two of the four bottles were sipped, one lowered unsampled, and the last was upended. “Ah. Now. I know Christmas isn’t for a few days yet, but I’m sick of looking at these in my hotel room,” three small parcels were passed out, “I’m sure this isn’t where you thought you’d be for the holidays, but I appreciate you being here, all of you. Nobody likes a winter dig.”
The three gifts were opened, loud in the sullen night.
“Oh wow, Clint, you shouldn’t have…”
“Yeah, these look expensive.”
Both Natalie and Amit held up gold pocket watches. They swung like something caught, reflections darting around the dirt. Weston stared at his box, the watch still silk-swaddled inside. Clint knocked the cap off a new bottle.
“They were, but I wanted us to remember this dig, our first back as a team. Even had them engraved — go on, pop it open.”
A faint click and Natalie and Amit stared at their open pocket watches. Weston held his watch out.
“What the hell is this? Is this supposed to be funny, Clint?”
Natalie trapped the timepiece back inside its velvet bed, hiding the box between her hands and her eyes behind their lids. Amit frowned at his watch.
“Funny? No,” Clint stood, the world swam. He swayed as he drained his bottle, “Not funny at all. This is his parents’ orchard, and they called us — called me. Guess they thought we were friends.”
Weston stood, tossed his watch at Clint’s chest.
“We were friends, Clint. Nobody could’ve known what would happen down there. It was supposed to be safe.”
Clint stared down at the watch, his jovial attitude lost in the dirt with it. Weston left with the sound of zipping tent flap. Natalie stood, patted Clint’s shoulder, walked to the zipper door and waited. Amit stood slowly, still gazing at the gold engraving.
“Did you think we forgot? It was hard for us all.”
“No. Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Get some rest, Clint.”
Amit walked to Natalie and they both left the tent, zipping it closed behind. Clint stood by the rasping lantern, alone. The air held the smell of propane and tilled earth. He gazed down at the pocket watch. It sat half buried like his guilt, shiny like his shame. He bent, brushed the grit off the glass face and read the inscription.
To the past,
may we never forget,
E.F.
The morning was quiet. Weston arrived back at the dig site before the sun did, coffee in hand. He stepped from his car with a frosted crunch, wispy heat curling off his cup. Natalie was already there, worrying in circles outside the tent flap.
“What is it? What’s wrong, Nat?”
She released her thumbnail from her teeth.
“It’s Clint. I don’t think he went home last night.”
Weston scoffed, rolled his eyes, picturing Clint passed out. He unzipped the flap, stepping in backward to zip the door closed behind him. He turned and froze. Amit was already inside, arms crossed, standing next to a mound of dirt. The dig site had grown to encompass the entire tent floor. The outline of a half-buried bone stretched from corner to corner, the end of it tucked into the exposed roots of the pear tree. It was long and narrow. Clint was scraping a chisel against the dirt. Weston spoke with big eyes.
“What the hell…”
“He won’t respond. I don’t know whether to stop him or let him work.”
“What is that?”
“It looks to be an ulna, though from what, I cannot say.”
“It’s huge…” Weston stepped into the active dig site. “Clint. Clint, what is this?” He looked down as he approached, walking around the long thin bone. It flared up at him, accusatory, alien. Its excavated length was stabilized with glue and partially covered with plaster. Weston laid a hand on Clint’s shoulder, pulling him around.
“Jesus, Clint, your eyes. Have you slept at all?”
“Couldn’t,” Clint turned away, chisel returning to hard rock, “had to finish.”
“What is this? How?”
“It’s an arm bone, ulna, I think. Won’t know for sure until the rest is out. There’s something here under the roots too.”
“It looks avian. Thin. Archaeopteryx, maybe,” Weston’s eyes traced the length of bone. “This thing is 12 or 13 feet, Clint. The largest specimen of archaeopteryx isn’t even as big as this bone. This could be a huge find.”
Clint said nothing. The space heaters hummed, the gas lamps whispered behind bright hands. Weston looked back at Amit, who shrugged. The two of them stepped out of the zipper door into the crisp morning air. Natalie’s breath puffed in front of her.
“Well? What’d he say? Is he okay?”
Weston looked at Amit, then at Natalie.
“I don’t know, but the man is efficient, I’ll give him that.”
From inside the tent, Clint called to them.
“Come on guys, daylights burning, this thing isn’t going to dig itself out! And bring more buckets!”
They all three stepped back into the wet heat of the tent.
They chiseled away the hours, the mood close and stuffy. Weston was digging, Amit was charting, and Natalie was sifting. Clint hadn’t moved from his place by the pear tree. When they stopped for lunch, Weston was the first to speak.
“I don’t think this is an archaeopteryx, it’s too big. Way too big.”
Clint sipped his water.
“It’s something, definitely avian. The bone is hollow.”
“There’s nothing avian this size, it would have a wingspan near 30 feet. That’s up there with quetzalcoatlus.”
They all looked at the excavation, seeing vast ancient wings unfolding and flapping, iridescent feathers moving primordial air. Natalie pushed her words into the warmth and dirt.
“You should be the one to name it, Clint. Whatever it is.”
Clint didn’t answer, and no one else spoke. With the work halted, the tent filled with a buzzing quiet, the air fuzzed with the smell of heating coils and copper. Space heaters hummed low and alone until Clint spoke.
“Ethan showed it to me. Last night,” he looked to Weston, eyes wet, “You asked how. Ethan showed me.”
Silence.
The heaters kept wheezing hot breath into the tent, softly exhaling.
Weston sighed, wiped his forehead. “You were drinking, Clint, and exhausted.”
Silence.
Natalie eased words into the air. “Ethan would’ve named it something stupid, like Ethan-opteryx.”
Amit sniffed, continued his sketch, smiled and spoke without looking up. “Pear-adactyl.”
Natalie and Weston laughed. Clint smiled and spoke in a sing-song voice. “On the first day of Christmas, Ethan Ferrick showed to me — a fossil in a pear tree.”
The laughter quieted and sat, crouching between them into the night.
It was dark and late when they quit. Moth shadows fluttered across the tent, soft dusty wings tapping for entry into the gas lamps. Amit stretched, speaking through a yawn. “Time for me to go to bed. The bones will be here in the morning.”
Once outside the tent, Clint stared at the canvas glowing blue in twilight, shivered, then left. He fell asleep fast, down into a strange dream where Ethan stood in the tent, moths fluttering around his glowing face, obscuring him, but his hands, gray and lifeless, point down at the roots of the pear tree. When Clint looks down, he is suspended in a black place. Nothingness. Below, an immense wing stretches open, oil spill feathers shivering, reptilian claws curled at the end, ancient bones groaning with use. The blackness shifts around him, showing itself to be the body beyond the wing.
Clint sees Ethan run from it.
The black body falls on him, crushing dark suffocating dust and collapsing inward, squeezing until Clint watches Ethan as the blackness caves in and he hears the echoing cries for help become muffled by the black wing as it folds tight against the vast unknowable body and the guilt swallows him.
Clint woke with cold fingers. He was on his knees in the dark. His eyes adjusted, he saw hands, grey-blue and coated with soil.
His hands.
He lowered them, searching the darkness, finding exposed arterial roots.
The pear tree.
His hands trembled. The faint edge of a gold pocket watch peaked through the dirt and roots. He reached and felt not cold metal but rough bone. It glowed white in the colorless dark. Clint began to dig, clawing at the ground with nails and bared teeth. Down there, buried deep, he could hear Ethan’s muffled cries for help, the pleas for rescue, all dampened to a hungry wind in his ears. He dug through the pain the guilt the fear until he held the thing in his hands and the cries ceased and he understood.
Weston awoke to pounding on his door. Clint was there, dirt-covered and crazed. “Clint? What happened, what’s wrong?”
“Its big way bigger than we thought bigger than anything on record, I don’t even know what it is, we’re talking a wingspan of, of hundreds of feet across,”
“Whoa, whoa, slow down, Clint. What’s big? what’s going on?”
“The fossil, listen. The fossil, it’s not an ulna, it’s a phalange! It’s a finger, a digit, Weston, just the tip of the wing. Not an arm. Just – come on, I need to show you, you’ve got to see it, then you’ll know. You’ll understand then, when you see it. I found the claw, the nail.”
“Are you drunk again?”
Clint pulled Weston from the hotel room and drove him to Ferrick Orchard, herding him into the marquee. Weston grabbed a gas lamp. It hissed to life, revealing a scene of tilled earth.
They both stared.
The ground was covered in words, a confession clawed into the dirt. Weston looked at his feet and read variations of the words, “I KILLED ETHAN”.
He raised the lantern to look at Clint’s dirty hands, but Clint held them up. “I didn’t do this! I can explain, I can explain my hands, listen, I was digging for the bone under the pear tree, I had a dream something was there, and something was – a bone, a claw, a huge claw! Whatever this belonged to was bigger than any known species, and it flew. Do you see?”
Clint scrambled, turning over buckets and tools in search of the fossil. Weston held the whispering gas lamp, watching Clint rummage and toss and tear his way across the tent.
“I don’t understand, it was right here, I put it right here.”
“Clint.”
“I didn’t take it back to the hotel, I left it, I left it right there, I don’t understand!”
“Clint. Did you do it?” Weston swung the lantern toward the words carved in soil, “did you collapse the tunnel?”
“What? What are you–”
“Did you fucking kill him, Clint!”
The tent swung between lazy shadows as the lantern steadied in Weston’s hand. The world hushed. “Look me in the eye and tell me you didn’t. Look at me.”
“It— it was an accident, I didn’t–”
He shoved Clint hard in the chest. Clint staggered back in the wild swinging light. He tripped and landed heavy on his back. Weston fumed, “Get up!” he kicked Clint’s foot, “get up, you bastard!” but Clint didn’t move.
Weston stood over him, gripped his collar in one hand and pulled.
Clint was limp.
He let go in disgust. Clint’s head lolled to the side, exposing a thick claw bone lodged deep in the back of his head. The blood pooled thick in the dirt, filling the words there with red. Weston stared, full moon eyes. He smelled iron and earth. He backed away. He wiped the handle to the lantern, threw it down next to Clint’s body, backed out of the tent, eyes still shocked wide, walked back to the hotel in a daze, laid down in his bed, and finally blinked. In the dark of his room and behind his eyelids, he saw Clint’s tiny body speared on the reptilian talon of some ancient bird’s wing.
terrific Keith!!! thank you for making our weird song complete again.
Updated the OP as well.