“Oh boy,” Tommy said aloud to nobody when he woke up Easter morning. He loved Easter and considered it his second favorite holiday. The third best day of the year if he added in his birthday. Of course, Halloween was up there too.

He sprang out of bed and headed downstairs in his pajamas. He hurried into the kitchen where his mom was already preparing breakfast and his dad was sitting at the table in the nook drinking coffee.

Dad set down his cup. “You are up early, what’s the hurry?”

“It’s Easter.”

“Oh yeah, I guess it is.”

“Can I look for my Easter basket?”

His mother turned toward Tommy and said, “Caleb isn’t up yet.”

Tommy heard footsteps running down the upstairs hallway and then thumping down the stairs. “He’s up now. I’m going to start looking.”

“Okay but remember, the Easter bunny never hides your baskets in our bedroom.”

Tommy was already checking in the kitchen cupboards, in corners, and just about anywhere his oversized basket could be concealed. Caleb quickly joined in on the hunt.

Eventually Tommy found his loaded basket in the bathtub behind the shower curtain. He quickly hauled it to the living room and dumped all the candy and trinkets onto the carpet. Caleb soon joined Tommy with his own basket which he had found hidden in the clothes dryer.

In a well-timed move, before the boys could dig into their chocolate bunnies, their mom yelled, “Breakfast is ready.”

The family quickly devoured the pancakes and bacon and then Tommy asked, “Can we look for the Easter eggs now?”

His dad looked out the window. “Well, I don’t know. I don’t see any signs of the Easter bunny or any colored eggs out there and we don’t have a lot of time before we need to get ready for church.”

“There’s got to be some, and we can find them fast. And I’m still hungry – for an Easter egg,” Caleb argued.

They all headed out the backdoor, and the boys quickly scored big on finding colorful Easter eggs. “Hey, there’s the bunny,” Tommy said while pointing toward a wild rabbit that must have been spooked out of its hiding place by the boys. Tommy and his brother chased the rabbit down the slope behind the house. It ran a little way down a recently washed-out gulley, then disappeared into some brush.

Tommy hurried down the gully but stopped when he saw a smooth, off-white, convex shape poking out of the dirt. “Hey mom, dad, I found a gigantic egg. Maybe it’s a dinosaur egg.”

Caleb hurried to his side and they both grabbed sticks and started poking at the dirt surrounding the object. Soon they had it broken loose from the hard ground. Tommy picked it up, turned it over, and then both boys screamed when they saw two dirt-filled eye sockets staring back.

Their father quickly approached and said, “Let me take a look at that.” He picked it up from where Tommy had dropped it and turned it over several times in his hands. “This is quite a find. It looks human.”

***

Police, university, and government vehicles lined the street out front by midafternoon of the next day. The whole back hillside was cordoned off with crime tape and a large tent had been set up over the area where Tommy and Caleb found the skull. Also, people that looked like they were from the university were digging some holes just outside of the property line.

A police officer came to the front door late in the day and said, “You’ll have to keep your family out of the taped off areas out back. I also wanted to give you a heads up that the science people think it’s a Native American skull and they are finding other bones and artifacts. They’re saying there might be an old burial ground up here on this hill overlooking the valley. They are going to petition to have your house condemned.”

Their father screamed.