Birthright

moved, people shifted, and he saw Santa.
    He was big. It seemed to Douglas, on the first ripple of fear, that Santa wasn’t so big in the cartoons or in the pictures in the storybooks.
    He was sitting on his throne in front of his workshop. There were lots of elves and reindeer and snowmen. Everything was moving—heads and arms. Big, big smiles.
    Santa’s beard was very long. You could hardly see hisface. And when he let out a big, booming ho ho ho, the sound of it squeezed Douglas’s bladder like mean fingers.
    Lights flashed, a baby wailed, elves grinned.
    He was a big boy now, a big boy now. He wasn’t afraid of Santa Claus.
    Mama tugged his hand, told him to go ahead. Go sit on Santa’s lap. She was smiling, too.
    He took a step forward, then another, on legs that began to shake. And Santa hoisted him up.
    Merry Christmas! Have you been a good boy?
    Terror struck Douglas’s heart like a hatchet. The elves were closing in, Rudolph’s red nose blinked. The snowman turned his wide, round head and leered.
    The big man in the red suit held him tight and stared at him with tiny, tiny eyes.
    Screaming, struggling, Douglas tumbled out of Santa’s lap, hit the platform hard. And wet his pants.
    People moved in, voices streamed above him so all he could do was curl up and wail.
    Then Mama was there, pulling him close, telling him it was all right. Fussing over him because he’d hit his nose and made it bleed.
    She kissed him, stroked him and didn’t scold him for wetting his pants. His breath was still coming in hard little gasps as he burrowed into her.
    She gave him a big hug, lifted him up so he could press his face to her shoulder.
    Still murmuring to him, she turned.
    And began to scream. And began to run.
    Clinging to her, Douglas looked down. And saw Jessica’s stroller was empty.

PART I
    The Overburden
    Go where we will on the surface of things, men have been there before us.
    HENRY DAVID THOREAU
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One
    T he Antietam Creek Project came to a rude halt when the blade of Billy Younger’s backhoe unearthed the first skull.
    It was an unpleasant surprise for Billy himself, who’d been squatting in the cage of his machine, sweating and cursing in the vicious July heat. His wife was staunchly opposed to the proposed subdivision and had given him her usual high-pitched lecture that morning while he’d tried to eat his fried eggs and link sausage.
    For himself, Billy didn’t give a rat’s ass one way or the other about the subdivision. But a job was a job, and Dolan was paying a good wage. Almost good enough to make up for Missy’s constant bitching.
    Damn nagging had put him off his breakfast, and a man needed a good breakfast when he was going to be working his tail off the rest of the day.
    And what he had managed to slurp up before Missy nagged away his appetite was sitting uneasily in his gut, stewed, he thought bitterly, in the goddamn wet heat.
    He rammed the controls, had the satisfaction of knowing his machine would never bitch his ears off for trying todo the job. Nothing suited Billy better, even in the god-awful sweaty clutch of July, than plowing that big-ass blade into the ground, feeling it take a good bite.
    But scooping up a dirty, empty-eyed skull along with the rich bottomland soil, having it leer at him in that white blast of midsummer sunlight was enough to have 233- pound Billy scream like a girl and leap down from the machine as nimbly as a dancer.
    His co-workers would razz him about it unmercifully until he was forced to bloody his best friend’s nose in order to regain his manhood.
    But on that July afternoon, he’d run over the site with the same speed and determination, and damn near the agility, he’d possessed on the football field during his high school heyday.
    When he’d regained his breath and coherency, he reported to his foreman, and his foreman reported to Ronald Dolan.
    By the time the county sheriff arrived, several other bones had been exhumed by curious laborers. The medical examiner was sent for, and a local news team arrived to interview Billy, Dolan and whoever else could help fill up the airtime on the evening report.
    Word spread. There was talk of murder, mass graves, serial killers. Eager fingers squeezed juice out of the grapevine so that when the examination was complete, and the bones were deemed very old, a number of people weren’t sure if they were pleased or disappointed.
    But for Dolan, who’d already fought through petitions, protests and