This past week I released my third novel, Dust. It tells the tale of a single day in the life of a small, fictional town in Illinois. It’s a place that seems peaceful. It’s a town struggling to stay alive. It’s a place that seems to have a hopeful future. Then comes the morning the bones of children are discovered in a field outside of town. Soon, a terrible secret is discovered. The discovery of one leads to more and, before the day has ended, the town of Dust will burn.

Here is a preview of my new novel. To read the rest, please visit: www.bryanalaspa.com.

Prologue: Skeletal Flowers
The blaring heat of the day was still a few hours away and the sun was just peeking over the tops of the trees. Danny Wiggins sat in the cab of his bulldozer smoking a cigarette. He glanced briefly at his watch, noting the time and how much longer he had before he could start his machine. He enjoyed this time of day, the time just before everything really came to life and the others got there and started working. The site was far enough away from the general population that this kind of early morning work wasn’t a bother to anyone.
Danny watched the sun change the colors of the sky and watched birds fly from tree to tree. He savored the cool breeze blowing in from the north that ruffled his hair and raised goose-bumps across his bare arms. He finally flicked away the cigarette, carefully tossing it into the earth and not into the relatively dry areas that surrounded the construction site. With that out of the way, he started the bulldozer, the sounds of the morning quickly drowned out with a simple movement of his hand. Black smoke belched from the exhaust.
Danny’s job was to continue digging into the earth a slice at a time, using the blade of the bulldozer to smooth out the hills that made up the land they were building upon. He was pushing the dirt and earth onto a large mound at the east end of the construction site. This dirt would be redistributed and used as needed while the houses were built.
Danny dropped the blade of the bulldozer and began moving forward. The machine vibrated beneath his hands, which gripped the controls in a loose, easy and experienced manner. His body shook as the machine trundled forward, pushing the earth, digging another layer off and pushing it towards the mound of black and brown earth at the end of the patch of ground. He could see the clods of earth churning in front of his dozer. The mound loomed large in front of him and he found himself suddenly inclined backwards as the treads tried to push the machine up and over the hill. He lifted the blade and pushed forward, riding up the side of the hill, pushing the earth onto the pile.
Danny was now on his back, looking up into the sky. He reversed, dropping backwards, the blade of the bulldozer raised. Since there was no one else here, he did not look back. He let the machine lower his gaze from the sky to the top of the earth mound, until the mound of earth consumed his view. The brown older dirt of the previously dug earth was now covered with new, black, moist earth that he had just added to the pile.
Something white within that mound of blackness grabbed Danny’s attention.
“What the hell?” He muttered to himself, cutting the engine.
When you had been driving earth-moving and earth-digging machines for as long as he had, you grew accustomed to unearthing strange things. However, something that white brought up bad feelings immediately. He recalled all too vividly doing a job that turned out to be over an old cemetery and the way bone looked mixed in with all of the fresh earth.
Danny’s licked his dry lips, the sudden silence marred only by the unwelcome soft ticking of the engine of his bulldozer. He looked around, confirming what he already knew; he was still all by himself. At this point he wished he had a worksite full of construction workers. Slowly, he got down off of the bulldozer.
Danny walked towards the mound of dirt, his feet sinking slightly in the moist earth beneath him. He reached the mound and began to climb a bit, slipping and falling to his knees at least a half a dozen times before he finally was able to reach the white object buried in the mound. He slipped his gloved hands around the object and pulled. It came loose and so did Danny’s footing and he found himself tumbling ass-over-heels down the mound, cursing the entire time. He came to rest inches from the metal blade of his bulldozer.
Danny sat up, letting loose a stream of curses. He had managed to hurt just about every part of himself in that tumble. His hands were empty and he looked around for the object he had pulled free. Sitting to his right was a white, dirt-covered skull. The empty sockets gazed at him as if amused by his clumsiness. The bottom jaw was gone, and to Danny’s eyes the skull looked rather small. It was obviously the skull of a child.
“Damn,” Danny whispered. He knew that this probably meant some kind of cemetery that everyone had long ago forgotten about. Even worse, this was a part of the world where Indians once lived, and the thought they had uncovered some Indian burial ground crossed his mind. If that were the case, all hell would break loose as every archeologist in the area would want to come down here and start digging.
Danny stood up and walked to the back of the bulldozer. When he reached the back he stopped, his mouth fell open and he shivered. He was looking at the track of freshly churned earth behind the bulldozer. He could see white poking out of the ground all along the line of black. He saw all white, but nothing made of wood, or anything that would indicate coffins had been used.
Danny walked slowly down the trail, stopping to peer at another skull that was grinning up at him. It too looked rather small. So did the next one. The one after that was also small.
What the hell kind of cemetery is just for kids? He thought.
The kind of cemetery that no one’s ever supposed to find, was his answer.
Danny’s mouth was very dry now and then, coincidentally, he felt his bladder get very full. This was not good, whatever it was. Danny turned and began walking across the construction site towards his car. It seemed a very long way. As he crossed, he turned to look at the patch of dirt with the patches of white like some kind of skeletal flowers poking out of the dirt. Something about that site again, made Danny Wiggins start to run.