The Head in the Dirt
The woods were dead quiet in the fading autumn light of 1976. Alan Slater stood behind a massive oak tree, relieving himself out of sight from his girlfriend, Sandy, who was waiting a few dozen feet away on the walking path. Sandy was anxious, exhausted, and running on a razor-thin temper after a sleepless night.
Alan was just finishing up when an unfamiliar, gravelly male voice echoed through the dense trees, instantly startling him. He looked around wildly, but the thick brush was completely empty. For a second, he wondered if his mind was playing tricks on him, or if Sandy was playing a bizarre prank.
“Don’t get any of that on me,” the voice called out again, low and raspy.
This time, Alan knew he wasn’t imagining it. The sound was coming directly from the ground below. Alan looked down to his right, kicking away a layer of dead brush, and froze in absolute shock. A human head was jutting straight out of the soil, grass, and leaves. A dirty, weathered male face was staring directly up at him.
“Who the hell are you?” Alan stammered, backing away. “And what are you doing buried up to your chin in the dirt?”
“My name is Justice Sparks,” the head replied calmly, blinking away a rogue beetle as if being buried alive in a state park was a perfectly mundane, everyday occurrence. “And who exactly are you?”
Alan rubbed his eyes, completely dumbfounded by the deadpan delivery. “My name is Alan. I’ll ask you again—why are you buried in the ground?”
Justice’s eyes rolled upward as much as his position allowed. “Before I answer that, may I ask what year it is?”
“It’s 2018,” Alan replied, utterly dumbfounded.
Justice let out a heavy sigh. “I’d shake my head, but obviously, I can’t in my current position. Would you like to know how long I’ve been sitting here in these woods?”
The name suddenly clicked in Alan’s memory, hitting him like a physical blow. “Wait a second. Did you say your name was Justice Sparks? I know who you are. They wrote a true-crime book about you years ago and even tried to turn it into a Hollywood movie.”
“Was it a good movie?” Justice asked, a flash of theatrical excitement crossing his dirty face. “I really hope they got a handsome leading man to play me.”
Alan shook his head. “You vanished without a trace back in the 1970s. Nobody ever found a body. The police thought you committed suicide or ran away.”
