The Mystery Club in... "Digging Up the Past"

This story isn't complete. It's really a short scene to get the idea out of my mind for now before expanding on it later on down the line. Please enjoy.

---------

The box was filled with memories. My first prize ribbon for the Jr. Skate Contest. The fluff newspaper article on us opening the Mystery Club Agency Enterprises Incorporated. The first wood plank that broke when we were building the treehouse. Elle’s watercolors of the area around the treehouse. The voodoo dolls Abby made with that ‘witch’. A bunch of notes from our various cases. Pictures of Abby’s trip to the hospital after she fell out of the treehouse.

Okay; more than half of it had to do with the treehouse, but the treehouse was important and we couldn’t fit that in the time capsule.

That was when it really hit me, actually. When Abby was sealing the thing shut, I realized we weren’t gonna be able to see these memories again until we were adults. Or, unless Abby somehow convinced her parents to move back.

Abby and Elle weren’t phased by it as much as I was; I didn’t let that show, though.

“So where should we bury the dang thing?” Abby asked.

I grabbed the thing out of her hands. “I’m thinking the abandoned house on the hill. Nothing says mystery like a place that’s haunted.”

Elle eeped and cried, “No, no, no! You said that when we were trying to set up an HQ and that’s the same reason we didn’t put it there.” With swiftness only she could manage, she took the box from me and held it away. “How about that nice flower grove we found in the woods? It’ll be a nice place to come back to in a few years.”

I tried to take it back, but Elle’s been surprisingly strong. “The haunted house!” I shouted, straining for it.

“With the flowers!”

We both fought for the box until Abby had enough and put her own hands on it. “Alright, girls. I’d rather not have one of my last memories of us together be you two fighting. I’ll find somewhere to put this while you two kiss and make up.”

I rolled my eyes.

Abby took the box and walked away. I swear she was heading toward the forest, but I could never figure out exactly where she went. Either way, that was the end of that.

Until now.

Six years later and the three of us are back together. Out past midnight, our clothes covered in dirt as we shovel our way down into the earth of the flower grove.

On the one hand, this-- I glance to my companions-- supposed reunion is happening years before I ever thought it would. We’re high school juniors now, not full-fledged adults. On the other is the circumstances of it all and how much we’ve changed.

“Hurry up, Moxie!” Elle shouts at me.

“I am hurrying up!” I argue back. “I just don’t want to get my clothes dirty.”

“How are you worrying about pants right now?”

“I like these pants.”

Elle sighs and turns to the blonde. “Abigail, you’re sure this is the place. Right?”

The third member of our trio nods. “I don’t remember it too well, but it’s not too much deeper. Another foot at most.”

“Another foot at most,” I repeat, mockingly. “Elle, how do we know this isn’t some wild goose chase?”

“Don’t call me that,” Elle says.

“Call you what?”

“Elle! It’s Pastelle.”

“It’s a nickname!”

“We’re not friends. You don’t get to use nicknames.”

The only one of us still digging shouts, “Would you two shut it and get back to work?”

I groan, but do as she says. I’m not happy about any aspect of this, especially since nobody answered my question.

But then, we strike paydirt. Or, rather, I hit wood and my heart stops. I glance toward Elle, whose eyes are wide despite the fact she believed it was here. Maybe some sane part of her was still holding out.

The two quickly get to uncovering the box while I seize up in anxious terror.

The box is much larger than our time capsule. It’s wooden and has strange curled lines painted all over it in red and black like disgusting, dripping vines.

We all sit in silence, hesitating to do what we obviously need to do. Even she looks nervous.

Of course, it’s Elle who breaks through the tension.

“Hold your breaths,” she says, grabbing the side of the box and beginning to pull up.

I’ll spare you the details of how exactly Abby looked. I will tell you that I vomited and the only thing that kept me from running away was my legs giving out before I could. Elle just put her hands to her mouth and squeaked out, “Oh my god.” 

The third among us just stared down into the box, at Abigail Tops’s corpse.

“Do you believe me now?” The girl asks. “I woke up in this body today. I don’t know how or why. That’s why I need you guys’s help.”

The relief and terror and anger and urge to cry inside me boils over and I shout, “How does this prove anything?”

“Think about it. Pastelle, you understand, right?”

Elle gulps down bile and nods. “Because only two people could know where a corpse that stayed hidden for six years is. The murderer…”

“Which, if I was, I’d have no reason to show this to you.”

“Or the victim.”