The Paleontologist
by Luke Dumas
(Constable, 2023)
Once the crowning jewel of southeast Pennsylvania, the Hawthorne Museum of Natural History had been left to decay in the mire of its flagging prestige like a once mighty Edmontosaurus caught in a peat bog.
Set in sprawling lawns scabbed with necrotic patches of brown, the three-story building was a moldering embarrassment to Neo-Romanesque architecture.
Page 2.
“You hear something in the dark, don’t go looking for it.”
Page 7.
Something in the glass caught his eye and his smile dropped. Something behind him was moving. He could see its reflection in the case - a hovering mouthful of daggerlike teeth. He spun around and -
Nothing.
Page 13.
Until a few months prior, he had never expected to find himself back in his hometown, or any part of Pennsylvania. He had understood that, like the site of a nuclear tragedy, the place was uninhabitable for him now. A zone of exclusion, tainted by the horror he left behind.
Page 15.
Herbivorous dinosaur fossils were ten times more common than carnivore fossils, and yet it was a rare museum that didn’t keep any meat eaters on hand, if only to placate their thrill-seeking visitors.
Page 24.
He halted his search when there came a sound form the depths of the basement. Simon felt it more than heard it, a low burr like a deep rumbling breath. It reminded him of a crocodile’s bellow, thought by some to be the closest relative of what many dinosaurs had sounded like.
Page 45.
His collision appeared to have disturbed the wall of shelves, caused it to swing forward on one side like a door.
Page 46.
Simon stood on his toes, leaned over the box, and stopped at the sight of the yellow dome peeking out from under the batting. A bone, he knew instantly, that didn’t belong to any prehistoric creature.
His mouth filled with saliva. He repressed the surge of vomit spiking up his throat; the skull was not just human, but a child’s.
Page 51.
Without her the ground beneath him felt charred and lifeless, like the site of a catastrophic collision.
Page 54.
The real work of the paleontologist is not digging fossils out of the g round, but unearthing the secrets that lay buried within them.
Page 76.
Death, I find, always leaves traces.
Page 76.
Six weeks had passed since Simon joined the Hawthorne, and hardly anything was as he had expected. Far from the shining edifice of his childhood memories, the museum was a crumbling ruin on every level.
Page 77.
In death there is much that is lost but never too little to be found.
Page 93.
Such is the nature of paleontology that every discovery breeds only more questions.
Page 95.
Though it had to be more than two thousand sure feet, it felt smaller due to the abundance of possessions crammed in everywhere, the eclectic accumulation of a lifetime of travel and limitless means.
Page 109.
The dreary dayroom was glutted with patients, form hollow-eyed twentysomethings to elders in wheelchairs, all dressed in the same palette of faded blue and dingy white. Old men played chess. A girl, barely eighteen, carved violent circles into her sketch pad with a pen. Most of the others sat silently in front of the TV, reactionless to it, their expressions devoid of thought. They reminded Simon of fossils, the surviving imprints of the people they used to be, their organic material depleted and replaced over time by something inert, brittle, liable to break if not carefully handled.
Page 125.
Her clavicle protruded below her neck like a root pushing out of the ground.
Page 125.
Could it be that she’d seen something that night no one else had? Was it possible that “terrible lizards” that still plagued her grief-addled mind were actually the spirits of pre-historic animals she simply lacked the vocabulary to name?
Page 140.
For a person who didn’t consider himself spiritual in the least, Simon was surprised to find he understood exactly.
Page 144.
“Something terrible happened here that day. A breach of the metaphysical order. A thousand spirits released into the atmosphere, trapped by a black cloud of dust bearing down on them. They couldn’t break free. The only way out was down through the scar in the earth. Their suffering poisoned the soil, and laid a curse on every spirit whose bones reside in the hollow, in the museum.”
Page 167.
“Every animal’s longing is its own.”
Page 167.
Always Simon was running toward the next achievement, the next degree, the nest promotion, as if by reaching the next chapter of his life he could somehow close the book on the nightmarish prologue.
But his relationship with Kai had given him hope. In Kai he had seen the ultimate happily ever after. Marriage, suburbia, domesticity. An extended family so different from his own - literally, so foreign - he could lose himself, and his past, inside it forever.
Page 185.
Looking back, he wondered if it was Kai he had been in love with, or rather how normal their life together had made him feel.
Page 185.
“The rich can’t be generous, only guilt ridden.”
Page 186.
Theo longed for his lost sibling. That longing had followed him into the afterlife, imprisoning him within the boundaries of the hollow.
Like Simon’s, Theo’s sibling had been taken from him, and he would not rest until they were reunited.
Page 199.
For this reason she had called him back. To right not a two-decade-old wrong, but a prehistoric one. To help reunite Theo with his sibling.
Page 200.
What is a man but another beast driven by its basest impulses? Its hunger. Its thirst. Its animal desire.
Page 211.
It is a matter of consensus among the metaphysical community that anyplace containing the bones of the dead is bound to be haunted to some degree.
Page 226.
As a paleontologist, Simon tended to think of predation in scientific terms - as the functioning of the food chain in a given ecosystem, as a tug-of-war between opposing adaptations.
Page 267.
Simon did not just want Mueller to be guilty. Simon needed him to be guilty, so that he didn’t have to be. He needed Mueller to be convicted, to absolve himself of the crimes for which he himself had never been tried.
Page 278.
To lose a child she had grown inside her, given life to, nurtured - however imperfectly - for six years, that was pain only a mother could understand. Pain on a level his male psyche was not hardwired to comprehend.
Page 284.
Without investigating Morgan’s abduction, they could not know which institutional records were most worthy of destruction - even less, where to find them n the frenzied disorder of the Cave. Instead, they protected their secrets with locks, authorization forms, and up-down approvals none of which came in much use when the police came beating down their doors.
Page 333.
Nothing could escape the evolutionary imperative. Everything must adapt or perish.
Page 349.