Renaissance Expedition Found Beneath Schley Street Basement!

It was supposed to be a regular day for the crew of Gasso Truck 56, Chief Elmer Fedders remembers: install a Propane tank at the Mitchell Ranch, dig a trench for a new gas pipe at Willy Lohman’s, and spend the rest of the day in maintenance: check the pipes at the Banker’s house: flush them and leave; fix a sweating seam at Dr. Brace’s house, then take care of a blocked vent at 1234 Schley: Mrs. Osohappee’s. That normal, routine day ended when a member of his crew discovered the skeletons.

“We were adjusting the fan for summer cool, which is different from winter cold, when one on my crew slips on a flagstone, then gets half of him into a hole we never knew was there. We pulled him up, then shined the flashlight around. We called the Sheriff. Shot the whole day to hell.”

What the gas crew discovered and Fondis University Archaeological expert Dr. Ann Thropologee has confirmed is one hundred five skeletons below the residence at 1234 Schley, all over 500 years old, some still wearing armor breastplates of Spanish design, and believed to be from the Coronado Expedition of 1535: all in the pantomime of having a drink or playing at backgammon: their arms and hands poised in rigor mortis above the boards and tabletops.

“Whatever happened here, it happened suddenly,” Dr. Thropologee observes. “The victims didn’t know what happened to them.”

Mrs. Osohappee, the widow of the late Elmer Osohappee, longtime custodian of Fondis University, was unaware of the fuss surrounding her basement until she arose from her afternoon nap to find officers in her kitchen, helping themselves to coffee from her two-cup coffee maker.

“Of course!” she exclaimed, assenting to the intrusion, “Just don’t get rid of the scent!”

The “scent,” researchers and others have found, is a combination of the gases methane and carbon monoxide, crystallized in the earth and released through the sand around Fondis, with a fair amount of plant matter between: “It’s a pleasant smell; if you don’t mind deadly,” Dr. Paul Obscuris, Professor of Chemistry, observes. “Very deadly if allowed in a closed room.”

So why all the skeletons in a single room? Imagine a winter night and a door closed to the cold. The levels of gas could have built and asphyxiated the inhabitants. That’s the explanation of the Fondis University Archaeology Department: “They would have loved their last moments!”

A series of bungalows built between the 1920’s and 1930’s, Twelfth and Schley is not the most propitious neighborhood for archaeology, unlike the Cairns at the Big Muddy River or the Council Houses on the shores of Lake Fondis, but it is otherwise significant in that “something happened here during the European Ranaissance,” Dr. Thropologee says, “and it bears investigation.”

The historical record says that Coronado and his brother Esteban, the lone survivors of the mission, returned to Mexico City three years after setting out and shortly thereafter joined a monastery where a strict vow of silence was kept.

“Coronado was a rather wet rag,” Dr. Thropologee observes. “Why he wasn’t with his men in the bar is because he wanted to work his compass and plan for the glory of Spain. Esteban was probably the same way. They probably went to see to the men the next day. Imagine them opening the door in the cave where the bar was and realizing that everyone was dead. They probably closed it and decided they wouldn’t tell anyone.”

The bones will be interred in a ceremony at St. Vitus soon. The former tavern will be closed, after archaelogical experts have been satisfied that there are no more finds. Mrs. Osohappee will live in her house without Sheriff’s deputies. However, Crew Chief Elmer Fedders, who lingered, at Deputies’ request, to give a statement, will continue to occupy Mrs. Osohappee’s basement, enjoying the scent of the gas, and will give a statement to anyone who will listen.