At first, the movement was subtle. Something wiggled in the dark earth, something small and black, its body also reflecting the moonlight. Then she saw another and another. They writhed and squirmed in the black night, their bodies climbing over each other, their movements becoming more frenzied the longer Diana stared. Bugs. Squirming, black beetles.
And then the earth itself started to churn. The ground buckled and bubbled, shifting as though something larger were just below the surface trying to break free. Diana watched, unable to look away. Something thin and pale broke through the dark ground. It wriggled like one of the bugs, and soon two or three more just like it surfaced. It took a moment for Diana to recognize the squirming, clawing objects. They were human fingers, a handful of them, struggling to break free of the earth that imprisoned them.
Diana knew then. It was Rachel.
She dropped to her knees and plunged her hands into the earth, digging and churning the ground with her hands and fingers, trying to free her sister.
"Rachel," she said. "I'm coming."
But the faster and harder Diana dug, the deeper her hands sank into the dirt. The bugs crawled over her hands and up her arms. Diana reached out and tried to grab hold of the fingers in the dirt, but when she tried to get a grip, they slipped away like wet soap.
So she dug more, furiously displacing the earth with her hands, moving great fistfuls like a dog looking for a lost and precious object. Sweat rolled down her forehead and into her eyes. She felt its wetness creep down her back beneath her shirt. She dug and dug and then...
...her hand bumped against something hard and solid, something thin. She closed her hand around it and pulled. There was resistance, like the object was anchored into the dirt, or perhaps held there by some force she couldn't see. But Diana kept tugging and pulling, using all of her strength, and eventually the object came free, sending Diana backward with the force of her exertion.
She held the object up in the moonlight. It was a human arm bone, gray and dirty and weathered by years in the ground. She knew it belonged to Rachel.
"No!"
She threw the bone aside and dug again. She dug even faster, the dirt flying off to the side in great spouts.
"I'm coming, Rachel. I won't let you go. I'm coming."
And she dug and dug until...
...arms grabbed her from behind. Strong arms.
Diana struggled against them, thrashing and pulling.
"No," she said. "No!"
"Diana..."
"No."
She freed herself from the hold and fell back to the ground. She started digging again.
Except she wasn't digging in the same dark earth.
She wasn't in the clearing anymore. The grass was green and lush. There were lights ahead, bright lights.
She tried to orient herself.
"Diana," the voice said again. She knew the voice, knew it well, and the realization slowly dawned. She wasn't in the clearing. She had never been in the clearing.
She stopped digging and tearing at the grass. She turned and looked behind her.
"Oh, shit," she said. "Dan."
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Diana protested while Dan helped her into the house.
"I'm fine," she said. "I'll just go..."
"You're not fine," he said.
She knew he was right. She could barely stay on her feet as he guided her through the living room, the TV playing something masculine, something from the History Channel about World War II, and then down the hallway on the right to the bathroom. He brought her in there and let her sit on the edge of the tub. Diana looked at her hands. She was covered with dirt up to her elbows, and several of her fingernails were broken or cracked. The bright fluorescents burned her eyes, but not as much as the shame she felt at being caught outside her ex-lover's house, digging in the yard and muttering like a lunatic.
"Clean yourself up," Dan said. It was more of an order. He still wore his uniform, which meant he couldn't have been home for long.
"Just let me collect my thoughts for a minute," Diana said. "Then I'll go."
"What were you doing out there? What's going on?"
Diana couldn't find the words. There weren't any. How did she explain this to anyone, let alone Dan?
"I came to talk to you about the Foley case," she said.
Dan started to say something, but before the words came out, Janine appeared in the bathroom doorway. Her eyes were wide with disbelief as she stared at Diana, like she had just found a giant insect crawling through her kitchen.
"What is she doing here?"
Dan looked confused, then nervous. His lips twitched, and he looked from Janine to Diana and then back to Janine. Diana thought she might have to step in and answer for him, but he finally found his tongue.
"It's about work," he said.
"Work? She's filthy."
"Janine just..." Dan looked at Diana again. "Can we just talk in the hall for a minute while she gets cleaned up?"
"What?"