Sandpit

A child’s sandpit brings forward thoughts of happiness and joy, and the occasional tear when someone flicks sand into another’s face. Children using their hands and plastic tools to dig, searching for treasures that had become lost and buried. There was always jewellery and toys to be found. The childcare always covered their sandpit at the end of the day to keep rain from drenching it and also to deter animals from leaving their droppings in it.

The sandpit was a big rectangle, three meters wide and five metres long; it was originally two feet deep but from the years of use; the sand had dwindled closer to just under one and a half feet. It had stacked wooden logs surrounding it to keep the sand in place. The young children would always try to dig their way to the bottom; those who made it would be greeted by the thick black tarp that separated the sand from the dirt and rocks underneath. They were always so proud of themselves when they got there, cheering and calling the teachers and their friends over to see the black bottom.

The other thing that was always found in the sand were bugs, some children would scream and run away and others would just squish the bugs with their plastic spades and buckets; then there were the other ones that would try to chop the bugs in half with the plastic tools. There was a sun sail over the top keeping the direct sun off the children while they played. There were other activities for them to do, but the sandpit was always the most popular. The top side had a couple digging machines fixed in place as well as a dump truck between them.

Indoor activities happened in the morning, lunch following at midday and then the children were let outside to play. Hats and sunscreen were worn by all. Their laugher and chatter filled the yard as they played. The three teachers stood in the middle of the yard, watching the children and talking softly to each other about their personal life from the weekend. It had been a hot one, restless nights, tossing and turning, trying to get comfortable enough to sleep.

As usual Tommy was in the middle of the sandpit, digging as fast as he could, trying to reach the bottom before the sand filled back in and before they had to go back inside. He had convinced two of his friends to help him this time. Jasper and Oliver had grabbed several foam squares, using them as a barricade to stop the sand from sliding back down into the hole they were creating. A group of girls nearby were looking at them, pulling faces and pinching their noses.

“Tommy farted!” Sarah screeched in her high pitched voice. The group of girls moved away quickly, holding their hands over their noses, the boys laughed, more of them joining the team of diggers. Tommy was bright red and stared at Sarah angrily, poking out his tongue at her. She responded by crossing her arms and blowing a raspberry back at him, her friends copied her.

“It wasn’t me!” He yelled looking towards the teachers. “It was him.” He pointed down into the hole in the sand. That’s when the smell wafted across to the teachers, who had been watching the exchange with amusement. They knew it definitely wasn’t a fart smell, but the smell of death. The teachers scrambled into the sandpit towards the group of boys that had now stopped digging and were now staring down into the hole. “Look at all those bugs!” Tommy exclaimed loudly as the teachers reached them. The black tarp had been pulled back, the edges cut too neatly to have been done by the plastic tools the children played with.

The teachers stared in horror as the scene unfolded. At the bottom of the hole was a boy looking to be in his mid-teens. The lower half of his body was still covered by the tarp and sand, but the top half of him was visible. The sand filled his eyes and mouth. Bugs crawled all over him, into his mouth and then they started crawling out of his ears. That was what kicked the teachers into moving. They quickly ushered the children back inside.

Jane and Emily stayed with the children, trying to distract them with arts and crafts; Monica stayed in the school yard and rang the police. They had the curtains drawn so the children couldn’t watch what was happening outside. Some parents lingered a little too long outside the fence, trying to catch a glimpse of what was happening. Others dragged their children out by the arm kicking and screaming. With the police being present they didn’t want to stick around.

The three boys that had dug up the teenager were sitting with their parents, with several police talking to them. The teachers had to stay with the other five children who had not been picked up yet. Their turn with the police would come once the children were all gone. The three boys didn’t recognise the teen, but, of course, they had been more focused on the bugs and worms crawling all over him, along with the smell that emanated from him, proof that Tommy had indeed not farted.

The police theorized that since the teen was completely buried as well as placed under the tarp that someone had purposely put him there and that it definitely was no accident. The body was in the early stages of decomposition and the medical examiner put his death no earlier than the previous Thursday but with a lack of blood in and around the body he had not been killed there. There were no cameras facing out into the school yard, instead they only looked down on the front entrance to the building.

Finally the last child was picked up and the police then approached the teachers to begin their questioning. None of them recognised the teen and didn’t know how he had gotten into the school yard, but found out later that the chicken wire fence had been cut close to the building near some tall hedges which hid the evidence. The police informed them that the teen had probably been buried on the Friday or Saturday night.

The preschool was surrounded by houses, and a large sports oval behind them, on the side where the fence had been cut away for access to the yard. The car park to the oval was generally closed and locked at dusk and opened at dawn for those who wished to use it during the day. This meant that if there was a vehicle transporting the dead teen it would have only been able to pull up to the gate and then someone would have had to carry him from there to the school fence.

The teachers watched as the police walked across to the houses surrounding the school, asking the owners if they had seen anything strange at all over the weekend or had CCTV footage that they could take to study. Most of the residents were already standing outside in their yard on their porches having seen the police cars pull up at the preschool. The police had blocked off the roads on the two sides of the school yard and blocked off access to the sport oval.

The tarp that was usually used to cover the sandpit was laying open on the ground next to it as the police sifted through the sand, trying to find anything of use to their investigation, no matter how small. They took their time extracting the body, hoping that they may find some evidence that the children had not disturbed when they uncovered the teen. The young boy didn’t have any identification on him. The weight of the sand had partially compressed his chest.

Finally the body was lifted onto a stretcher. The teachers were sent home after the police finished their line of questioning. They had to send a notice to all parents that the school would be closed for the rest of the week while the scene was inspected by the investigators.