House of Holes

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Shandee’s sister gave her all her makeup because she was going off to Guatemala. That night Shandee spent about two hours trying on lipstick. Then, the next morning, she went to a quarry with her Geology 101 class. The quarry was called the “Rock of Ages.” It was vast and they dug granite there, mostly for tombstones. The tour guide was kind of cute although his hair wasn’t good — he was maybe twenty-seven. Pretty drastically cute, though, she thought. They were standing on the brink of a space that looked like something from another planet, and he said, “There’s enough granite here to last us four thousand five hundred years.” My gracious goodness, thought Shandee, that’s a lot of tombstones. She turned away from the edge, and that’s when she saw a hand poking out from behind a rock.

While the others listened to the tour guide, she went over to the hand. The hand was attached to its forearm, and there was a clean torn cloth wrapped around the end that would have been attached to the rest of his arm. There was no blood on the cloth. Shandee picked it up and felt it. It was warm; the fingers moved a little. The hand pointed urgently at her bag, so she stuffed it inside and went back to the group and listened to the rest of the tour.

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