Shadows Disinterred: Day 14

Word Count: 84,028

Summary of Events:
Dallas woke up with sore shoulders and legs whose pain he couldn't explain.  He continued scything — which was taking a long time due to the scythe's dullness — and ended up overhearing a heated argument between Shirley and Deby that seemed to connect the spade his cousin had given him to the Pedins. He also began to suspect he was being drugged. Later, he was scything around the barn and noticed something curious through its windows, after being startled by Deby and talking about why the concrete floor had been removed from the barn Deby took the scythe to sharpen it and Dallas leapt at the chance to look inside the barn.

Excerpt of the Day:
"Deby took a swing. She looked at the blade with curiosity. Dallas leaned against the fence and watched as she took several more swings, but seemed to be getting less grass than Dallas had been.
"Maybe that is the left-handed scythe," Dallas said wryly.
Deby flashed a glare at him and raised the blade up closer to her face. Dallas watched as she ran a finger down its length and came away bloodless. "This thing is dull as a steel rod!" she exclaimed.
She stalked off along the barn with the scythe in hand. Dallas remained leaning against the fence and watched her go away. As soon as she'd rounded the corner Dallas hurried the other way around behind the barn and found fenceposts attached to the barn's wall with boards angling toward a gate opening. It was a remnant from when the barn had been used for the cattle, although their pasture was long gone.
Dallas climbed over the fence and went to the door. Locked. Doggone it. Dallas looked up at the hayloft door. Could he get up there where the door gaped open? Maybe, but the question then had to be asked: how was he going to get out undiscovered?
Climbing back onto the fence, Dallas reached up his foot and put it on top of the lower doors. He got his hand into the hayloft. Hanging on tightly, Dallas lifted himself up onto the door entirely.
Desperately Dallas felt for a floorboard edge and found a knothole. Latching onto it, Dallas carefully climbed up the metal and into the loft. It was swept clean and empty. There was absolutely nothing in it. It looked like it'd make a pretty good bar with a huge dance floor.
Dallas shook his head, where had that idea come from? Carefully and quietly he hurried across the floor and down the steep loft stairs off to the front side by where the milk shed would be.
The last step was long — not surprising being as the concrete floor had been taken out — Dallas turned and looked at the barn floor. The rectangles were easier to make out without filthy windows in the way.
Crouching down, Dallas went over to the nearest one. There was no marker, but the dirt was soft in the centre, being packed down hard everywhere else. How had they gotten the rectangles so straight? How had they even dug into this hard pack? This had been under concrete and at least twenty thousand-pound cows' weight for years, this couldn't be easy to dig.
Regardless, they'd dug into it. Dallas took up a fistful of dirt from inside the rectangle and let it fall out of his hand. It was soft, pliable, and somewhere as few as twelve inches below it was a body, Dallas was convinced. He needed time to find proof, though."