The Touch That Unearthed Me

Chapter 3

By Wednesday, the campus had finally admitted that summer was dead.

Leaves caught in the courtyard drains in soggy piles, the air had a chill that tasted faintly like metal, and every second person walked around with the hunched shoulders of someone who had just remembered they signed up for more credits than was reasonable. Under normal circumstances, this would have been comforting. I liked the rhythm of term time when it settled in. Coffee, lectures, work at the museum, rinse, repeat.

This week did not want to settle into anything.

Tuesday tried to pretend it was ordinary. I went to classes, I worked on an outline for my material culture essay, I spent two hours at the museum scanning accession forms while Lou gossiped about faculty infighting. On paper, it was boring. Inside my own head it felt like someone had turned up a quiet background noise and refused to turn it back down.

Every time I passed a noticeboard and saw his name on the staff list, my stomach dipped. Every time someone mentioned the chapel renovations, my skin remembered the way his voice had curled around the word 'vessel'. It was like having a song stuck in my head, except the song had a very sharp jaw and good posture.

By Wednesday morning I had accepted one thing. I was not going to simply forget Dr Gray existed.

The Advanced Methods review session met in a smaller seminar room at ten. I told myself I would arrive right on time, no earlier. I arrived ten minutes early.

He was already there.

The room was long and narrow, with tall windows and a very earnest whiteboard that had seen too much. Dr Gray stood near one of the windows with a sheet of paper in one hand. Morning light turned the edges of his hair almost blue and picked out a few strands that had escaped his usual attempt at order. His sleeves were rolled back from his wrists. It should have been a harmless detail. It was not.

He did not look surprised to see me. He did not even look up at first. He simply said, in that deliberately calm voice, “Good morning, Ms Hawthorne.”

“Morning,” I answered, and did a quick mental check of my own voice. It sounded almost normal.

“You are early,” he said.

“So are you.”

He folded the paper and set it on the table. His mouth almost formed a smile, except it did not quite commit. “Touché.”

“No Talia today,” I added, for something to say.

His gaze flicked to the door. “Still at war with the alarm clock, I imagine.”

I snorted before I could stop myself. “You know about that.”

“She announced it in the first lecture,” he said. “Apparently eight o'clock is an assault on her human rights.”

That sounded like her. The tension in my shoulders eased by a fraction.

Other students began to drift in, trailing whispers and the soft thud of backpacks. The room filled with the smell of damp coats and cheap coffee. Dr Gray leaned against the desk with his arms folded, the picture of composed attention, and just like that, I was another student among many again.

The session settled into a rhythm. He went over field recording standards and sampling strategies, asked questions, pushed people to answer their own uncertainties. I took notes because that was what I knew how to do, but my attention kept sliding. The room felt smaller than it should, like the ceiling had tilted downward by a few degrees.

At one point, he walked past the row of desks to correct a diagram on the board. As he passed my chair, I felt it again. Not heat. Not cold. Just a slight change in pressure, like the air became heavier for a second. He did not even look at me. It did not matter. My body noticed anyway.

You are being ridiculous, I told myself, and underlined a heading with more force than it deserved.

The review ended with a reminder about the lab component starting next week. Chairs scraped, people gathered their things in a rush. I moved slower, stuffing my notebook into my bag, telling myself I was not lingering.

“Ms Hawthorne.”

Of course.

I turned. He stood a few paces away, the other students already filing out. Without the buffer of their chatter, his presence pressed more tightly into the space.

“Yes, Professor?”

“You handled the stratigraphy exercise very well on Monday,” he said. “And today. Your questions were precise.”

“I just like knowing where things are buried,” I said. It came out more defensive than I intended.

“That is the job,” he replied. His attention dropped briefly to my hand. “How is the finger?”

I looked down at the small crescent line where the cut had been. “Functional. No longer a health and safety hazard.”

“That is a relief,” he said. His tone was dry, but there was an odd kind of sincerity under it. “Clumsy hands cause problems. Your hands do not strike me as clumsy.”

Heat rose in my face. “Thank you,” I managed. “I think.”

His gaze met mine. For a moment there was a sense of something unspoken, something that neither of us was prepared to fumble into. Then someone called his name from the doorway and whatever that was folded itself away.

“Friday,” he said. “Four o clock. Do not be late.”

“I will not,” I said, and for once my voice did not betray me.

On my way out, I nearly collided with Talia in the corridor.

“Hey,” she said, grabbing my arm before my notebook could make a second attempt at flight. “How was the review? Did he slaughter you all or was he merciful?”

“Somewhere in the middle,” I said. “Why were you not there, exactly?”

“I woke up, saw my life flash before my eyes, and decided unconsciousness was the better option,” she said. “Also my phone died in the night. May it rest in peace.”

“You should at least pretend to care about soil layers,” I told her.

“I care about you caring about soil layers,” she said, which would have been sweet if she had not immediately added, “Also, I saw you coming out. Your face was red. Did he say something scandalous? Please tell me this man swears.”

“He asked about my finger,” I said.

She put her hand to her chest. “God, the intimacy. The tension.”

I laughed.

The gloom that had been hanging on the edges of my mood thinned. Talia had that effect. It was difficult to sink quietly into obsessive thoughts when your friend was narrating your life like a soap opera.

We walked together to the campus café. It was one of those student places that tried to be three things at once. Coffee shop, study space, and crisis center. The line was already half out the door.

While we shuffled forward, Talia leaned in. “So. Level with me. On a scale from one to doomed, how into this professor are you?”

“I am into his grasp of field methodology,” I said primly.

She stared at me.

“And his slides are very well-designed,” I added.

“What about his face, Lydia?”

“His face exists,” I said. This was not helping.

“You are the worst liar I have ever met.”

The barista called our order. We took our coffees to a small table by the window. Outside, students hurried through the drizzle under hoods and umbrellas that had given up being fully effective. Inside, the room glowed with warm light and the buzz of people trying too hard to understand their reading.

“You know the rumors about him, right?” Talia asked, stirring sugar into her drink that absolutely did not need more sugar.

“Here we go,” I said, sipping carefully. It was too hot and tasted vaguely like someone had burned the beans on purpose.

“They say he used to do field work somewhere in the Middle East. Big project. Big funding. Then something went wrong, and he stopped doing field excavations entirely. Returned here and buried himself in teaching and the lab. No one knows what happened.”

“That is probably just grand drama,” I said. “Or a political dispute.”

“You are no fun,” she said. “What if it was a curse?”

“You take one folklore seminar and suddenly everything is curses,” I said.

She grinned over the rim of her cup. “I know you would like it to be a curse.”

I rolled my eyes and stared out at the wet courtyard. “I would like it to be a rationally explainable event that left no permanent trauma.”

“You really know how to kill a vibe.”

“Occupational hazard.”

We finished our drinks. Talia had another class. I had a museum shift.

“Text me later,” she said as we parted. “And by text me, I mean send me a detailed report on every look and word exchanged. This is for my personal education.”

“I am not writing fan fiction about my own life,” I said.

“You say that now,” she replied, backing toward the lecture building.

The museum felt almost cozy after the gray of the quad. The glass doors slid shut behind me and the warmth washed up. The front gallery smelled like polish and old stone. Familiar.

I signed in, pulled on the gray coat that designated me as staff, and checked the rota. Cataloging chapel subfloor fragments again. My glamorous life.

The accessions room is not much to look at, but I loved it. Concrete floor, a work table that had seen several generations of students, shelves of boxes neatly labeled. It made sense. Out in the world, everything blurred at the edges. In here, things had names and numbers and bags.

I set up the supplies. Archival bags, tags, the usual. The new box from Facilities waited on the table with a strip of tape still clinging to its lid. I cut the tape and opened it.

The smell rose at once. Damp earth, old stone, the suggestion of iron. It was stronger than last time. Or maybe I was paying more attention.

It is just soil, I told myself. Soil and my overactive imagination.

The fragments were irregular pieces of tile and stone, packed in layers of brown paper. Many of them still had traces of mortar. One had an imprint that looked like wood grain. I logged each one, noted any interesting features in my tidy museum hand, dropped them into their individual bags.

It was quiet work. Just my breathing, the scratch of pen on tag, and the soft crackle of paper.

Halfway through the box, I picked up a small piece of stone and paused. For the space of a heartbeat I could have sworn it... responded.

Not movement. I did not feel it shift. It was more like the sensation you get when your fingers are near a low speaker and can feel the vibration under the sound. A faint hum, there and gone.

I held the fragment nearer the light. It looked like ordinary stone. Maybe a little darker at one edge, as if something had once been applied there. Resin, perhaps.

“You are tired,” I whispered to myself. “That is all.”

I bagged it, labeled it, placed it neatly in the tray.

Lou stuck her head round the door a little while later. “Lyd, can you come cover the desk for a bit? The school group is leaving, and Mr Whitaker is back. If I have to hear his speech about jar neck profiles again, I may lose my will to live.”

“I am on it,” I said.

The front desk duty was simple. Answer basic questions, sell tickets to visitors who did not realize admission was already free, stop small children from climbing directly into the Roman display. After half an hour, the school group had toddled out, Mr Whitaker had given the amphora a stern lecture about preservation, and the museum had quieted down to a gentle hum.

I liked it that way. A few visitors wandering through, the soft echo of footsteps on stone, the murmur of audio guides. It felt like the artifacts were being visited, not stared at.

Between visitors, I read through my notes for Medieval Material Culture. Ritual concealment, protective objects, things placed under floors to ward off misfortune. The page might as well have been titled Everything That Makes Lydia Think About SB-17.

My gaze kept drifting toward the staff only corridor. The door to the artifacts lab was at the end of that corridor. Normally, I did not give it much thought. There were plenty of rooms I had no clearance for. That was just life.

Today it felt different. Not ominous. Just important in a way I could not articulate.

At closing, we turned off the gallery lights in stages. The statues receded into shadow. The mosaics lost their color. Lou locked the main doors and waved goodnight, earrings swinging as she vanished into the rain.

I lingered a moment at the staff corridor, my key card pressed between my fingers. I could not go into the artifacts lab. That was not my jurisdiction. And even if I could, I had no business being there without permission.

Still, I stepped closer, just until I stood a few paces away from the door.

The small rectangular window was dark. No light from inside. No sound. For all I knew, the room beyond was empty. Yet the hairs on my arms lifted in a way that had nothing to do with temperature.

“Friday,” I reminded myself. “You will see it Friday. It is fine.”

I turned and left.

Home was a welcome mess of normality.

My apartment smelled like the cheap tomato sauce I had left in the fridge and whatever detergent the building washing machine preferred that week. I shrugged off my bag, kicked my shoes into the corner, and put the kettle on. It rattled cheerfully, completely indifferent to cursed vessels and enigmatic professors.

While it boiled, I opened my laptop at the small table by the window. My budget spreadsheet blinked up at me like a slightly disappointed parent. I added the hours from today’s shift, adjusted a line here and there, and decided that I could indeed afford to buy a coat before the weather tried to murder me.

It felt good to look at numbers and know that they obeyed certain rules.

After tea, I answered an email from my mother.

Subject: First Week Check-In ❤️

Hi Lydia,

How is week one treating you?

Are you eating properly?

Please remember there is no shame in changing programs if you ever feel that archaeology isn’t stable enough for your future. I support you no matter what you choose.

Love you.

Mum

I replied;

Subject: Re: First Week Check-In ❤️

Hi Mum,

Week one is busy but good.

I promise I’m eating real food that contains actual vegetables.

And yes — I still love what I’m studying. Archaeology is exactly where I want to be. I’m fine, really.

Love you too.

Lydia

None of that was a lie.

I showered, letting the hot water beat the museum dust off my shoulders, and put on my favorite soft shirt with a tear at the hem that I kept meaning to mend. Then I built myself a nest on the couch. Blanket, cushions, a bowl of crisps I absolutely did not need, and my notebook.

I opened the notebook to a clean page and wrote at the top, Friday, lab session.

For a moment my pen hovered. There were so many things I could write. Objectives for observation. Questions to ask about the seal, about the chapel, about previous handling. All the proper academic things a proper student would prepare for.

What came out instead was, do not stare at him like an i***t.

I stared at that sentence until my cheeks grew warm.

“All right,” I muttered. “New page.”

On the next one I tried again.

Things I want to know about SB-17:

composition of the seal

original placement in chapel

associated artifacts

reason for concealment

That was better. Sensible. Focused on the work, not on the man who guarded the work like it was dangerous.

Still, in the corner of the page, almost without permission, my hand wrote, and why does the room feel different when he enters it?.

I capped my pen and shut the notebook.

The apartment sighed around me, a collection of familiar noises. The fridge motor ticking on with a small complaint, the quiet tap of a neighbor’s footsteps overhead, the distant rush of a bus turning the corner three streets away. After the echoing corridors and heavy doors of the museum, it was comforting.

I got up to make another cup of tea, then changed my mind halfway to the kettle and settled on the window ledge instead. Outside, the streetlamp cast a warm puddle of light on the pavement. A cat I did not know slunk along the edge of the building, tail high. Somewhere, a laugh floated up, carried by the damp evening air.

I pulled the blanket around my shoulders and leaned my head back against the wall.

I liked my life, I realized. It was not glamorous. It was not easy. Money was always close, never generous, and my study schedule owed more to stubbornness than to talent. But I had work that made sense to me, a subject I cared about, a small space that was mine, and one friend who could always make me laugh when I needed it.

And now there was this new element. A professor whose presence unsettled me in a way that felt both uncomfortable and intensely alive. A relic from under a chapel floor that had waited for centuries to be found.

I could pretend I did not care. That would be safer. I could tell myself that Friday was just another appointment in a crowded week.

That would be a lie the size of the chapel itself.

I let out a slow breath and admitted the truth, at least to myself and the quiet room.

“I am excited,” I said softly. “And I am terrified. And I think that is all right.”

The words did not echo. They did not stir any lurking ghost. They simply settled over me like another layer of blanket.

My eyes felt heavy. I padded over to the bed, slid under the covers, and turned off the lamp. In the dark, the outline of my bookshelf and chair were gentle shapes rather than looming ones. I curled on my side and tucked my hands under my cheek.

For a moment, with my eyes closed, I thought I caught the faintest hint of stone after rain. Not cold, not threatening. Just a memory of the museum clinging to my clothes.

It did not frighten me.

I drew in a slow breath, let it out, and imagined myself standing in the lab on Friday, steady, focused, ready.

Somewhere between that thought and the next, sleep found me. Warm, deep, uncomplicated.

I didn’t know what tomorrow would bring. But for the first time that week, I didn’t dread finding out.