56

Again I was struck by the absence of birdsong, and what we'd come to think of as 'normal' background noise, frogs, crickets, bugs. All were missing from the noise, and you'd think we were in church, although I think mausoleum would be like this. Dead and dusty grey. The grass was green, as were the pine, but the color was brittle in appearance, like paint that had been weathered too long. I was more than a little spooked by it all, and I think the others were nervous also.
“So, we're here, now all we have to do is get back, and this service of yours is done Fern” said Kevin, looking over at Cobb, who himself was picking up a handful of dirt and letting it sift through his other hand. It looked like normal dirt, but had that brittle texture to it as well. It bothered me to see that stuff disturbed for some reason. I shook of the feeling as best I could and looked around. We were at the base of a low hill that rose going inland.
Cobb was sifting more energetically now through the dusty earth, as if he was searching for something, and as we approached to get him to start back with us, he pulled a lump of metal from the earth. He looked at it for a moment and then looked to the three of us. “Are any of you psychometric, or able to build a spell of psychometry? I am unable to do such things with fae magic.
“If we can, do we have tro stay here to do it?” Kent asked him in a very quiet, and direct tone to his voice. I agreed with him. I didn't want to stay on this ground any more than I had to, there was something very inimical to us, and it was raising the hairs on my neck. “Let's take it with us” I said to the others, “we can do the psychomecrap when we get back to the car. This place is beginning to creep me out big-time.” Kent was already stepping back towards the bridge, when Cobb said suddenly,”wait.”
“Wait?” argued Kevin. “Why wait, I agree with Fern, this place is got a bad vibe to it, I don't like it, it's creeping Fern out, to quote her, and you want to wait? What the hell for?” “Because” said Cobb with a weird, intense tremor to his voice. “Psychometry is done best where an object is collected from. Those impressions or echoes are strongest and easiest to read at the location where you find an object. We go back, and we lose the detail that might be important.”
Kent had stopped by the road that linked to the bridge. “What are you waiting for, we were here, now we go back. Get a move on you youngsters.” He sounded impatient, and I was getting that way too. Cobb was suddenly wanting to do a past life spell on a piece of metal? I got that manipulated feeling again. Cobb had played, or was playing us right now, and I had had enough. I stalked over to him and said, very politely “May I see what you have there?” He looked at me curiously for a moment,then handed the lump to me, and I turned and threw it as far as I could into the thickest dead bunch of brittle looking brush I could see.
Cobb looked at me, his jaw muscles twitching as he kept from yelling. He turned and took a deep breath, then a second one. He then said to no one in particular. “I suppose it si good that there is one less piece here, there are so many in the ground here they would be a hazard if more were exposed like that piece.” With that, I looked hard around the area, expecting to see little things here and there that were poking through the soil, that we missed when we looked the area over earlier. Nothing of the sort could be seen. Cobb kneeled down and dug about a finger's length into the dry soil and pulled up a lump of something, which looked crisped and charred.
Kent and Kevin walked over to Cobb to take a quick look. “What do you think this is gentlemen?” Cobb asked them as I fumed a short distance away. I was about ready to head back on my own and to blazes with them here. This place was just plain creepy, and Cobb pulling those pieces out of the ground didn't do anything to settle my nerves down. “Looks like a piece of safety glass, here, see this, you can see the layer of plastic between the two glass layers.” I walked over to the three of them and slapped the thing out of Cobb's hands. “Can. We. Go. Now?” I said through gritted teeth.