Shoals, Indiana – That Evening
The box sat on the kitchen table, silent now. Whatever hum we’d felt in
the clearing had faded, but the weight of it hadn’t. It was heavier than its
size should allow. As if history had mass.
The inscription on the lid—Bound. Not Broken.—was carved in sharp,
deliberate lines, but the script was ancient. It wasn’t Latin. Not Greek. Not
anything we recognized. Kate had photographed it, enhanced it on her laptop,
and still came up with nothing.
So we turned to the one person in Martin County who might understand it.
The Back Room of the Shoals Historical Society – An Hour Later
Reverend Thomas Bright was not your typical preacher. Semi-retired, in
his late 70s, with a gray ponytail, wire-rim glasses, and a degree in
comparative linguistics from Purdue. He spent more time cataloging old church
records and Native American artifacts than giving sermons. Everyone in town
called him “Preacher Tom,” even though he hadn’t preached a Sunday service in
five years.
He took one look at the photo and went quiet.
Then he asked to see the box.
I placed it gently on the table in front of him.
His hand hovered above it, fingers trembling slightly. He didn’t touch
it.
“You found this in a field on Dover Hill Road?” he asked.
We nodded.
He exhaled slowly, then sat down and reached for a small magnifier from a
drawer. After several minutes of silent study, he spoke.
“This isn’t a language used by any European settlers,” he said. “It’s pre-Columbian.
But not Native American either—at least not any that I know of. It bears
resemblance to early Iberian script... maybe even proto-Celtic.”
“That can’t be,” Kate said. “How would that end up in Indiana?”
Preacher Tom didn’t smile.
“I once saw a stone like this in a private archive down in Missouri. It
had the same triangular symbols. Same inscription. It was connected to a mound
site—long destroyed now. The academics dismissed it as a hoax. But the
pattern’s the same.”
“So what does it say?” I asked.
He leaned in.
“Loosely translated,” he said, “it means: ‘What was bound here holds what should not rise.’”
A long silence followed.
Kate looked at me. “That sounds less like treasure… and more like
containment.”
Preacher Tom nodded. “There are stories, you know. Long before the French
or the Shawnee or even the Mississippian cultures, people lived here—people who
left no name. Only signs. Some say they built to honor. Others say they built
to hold things down.”
He glanced at the box again.
“You ever think maybe they didn’t bury gold? Maybe they buried something
to protect us?”
I looked at Kate.
We both knew.
This wasn’t just about gold anymore.
It never was.
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