Unspeakable Secrets of the Aro Valley

by Danyl McLauchlan

  ‘I don’t trust her.’

  Pearl was inside, washing the tea dishes and humming to herself. Steve looked back over his shoulder and glared at her.

  The sun came out from behind a cloud. Danyl took the last scone off the plate. He snorted. ‘Why not? She told us everything! Jack Clements and Anna are the Jack and Anna from the letter on the back of the photo. Parsons rebuilt the temple and stole the box, and we stole it off him and he stole it back. All the pieces fit.’

  ‘You are so naïve.’ Steve chuckled. ‘You really believe a word of anything she said? No, she’s hiding something.’ He leaned forward and whispered, ‘I say we make her talk.’

  Danyl pretended to consider this. ‘We don’t have time,’ he said. ‘I have to go meet Stasia.’

  ‘I’ll stay and—’

  ‘No.’

  ‘As a psychologist I am skilled in—’

  ‘Absolutely not.’ Danyl stood. ‘I need to urinate. You be nice to Pearl. She respects you, the poor, sad creature.’

  He tapped on the door and entered the kitchen. Pearl stood at the sink, rinsing cups in a pyramid of soap foam. She directed him to the bathroom, her eyes narrowing as Danyl walked by, twinkling again as they returned to Steve.

  The bathroom was at the end of a long, dim hall. Danyl made his way down it past a row of framed pictures hung at eye level: these were class photos showing Pearl with changing groups of schoolchildren. She was a teacher, Danyl realised, now retired. She grew younger as he moved through the house but the children stayed the same age.

  The life of a teacher: that wouldn’t be too bad. Danyl considered it as he peed contemplatively into the old-fashioned pull-chain toilet. He had resigned himself to a career as a writer: living in poverty until he found fame and vast wealth, but the prolonged poverty phase was losing its romance. His first book was unpublishable—and now gone forever, thanks to Verity’s carelessness—and he had failed to write a second. Maybe a real job like teaching wouldn’t be so harsh. Long paid holidays and a comfortable retirement at the end of it all.

  He washed his hands and walked back down the hallway, nurturing a fantasy in which he became a beloved gymnastics teacher at an expensive private girls’ school, then stopped when he noticed another photograph hanging over a closed door halfway down the hall.

  He peered at it through the gloom. There were no children in this picture. It was a staff photo, and a slightly younger Pearl smiled out from between her teaching colleagues. What caught Danyl’s eye was the figure on the opposite side of the group: a man in a dark suit with his face scratched out.

  Danyl reached up, took the photo off its hook and turned it over. There was a list of names on the back, corresponding to the location of each figure. In the section where the man’s white, erased face once was, were the words, ‘Sutcliffe Parsons. Science.’

  So. Danyl tapped the photo and hung it back on the wall. Pearl didn’t tell them everything, after all. She had known Parsons professionally. Was that how he found out about the temple? Pearl mentioned it one day in the staffroom? Or was there more? Had Pearl misled them? Was Steve’s paranoia well-founded?

  The idea that Steve was right about something was profoundly disquieting to Danyl. His fingers strayed to the handle of the door beneath the photograph. He nudged it ajar.

  It opened onto a large, dark room. No furniture. Nothing on the walls. As Danyl’s eyes adjusted to the gloom he made out hundreds of unlit candles arranged in a spiral pattern, converging on an object draped in black velvet sitting on the floor in the centre of the room.

  15

  The priest’s soul

  Danyl glanced down the hall. Pearl was still fussing about in the kitchen. He stepped into the room and picked his way between the candles, heading for the mysterious knee-high velvet-draped object. He was halfway there when a soft clucking sound stopped him. The velvet moved a fraction as if ruffled by the breeze, but there was no wind.

  There was something alive beneath the covering.

  Danyl took a deep breath. He stepped forward, took the edge of the velvet and lifted it, allowing the beam of vague light from the doorway to fall upon the object beneath it.

  A cage. Two pairs of tiny eyes stared out at Danyl from behind the thin steel bars. He knelt down and peered back at them.

  A chicken with all-white feathers emerged from the darkness. It tipped its head to one side, looked at Danyl and clucked interrogatively.

  Danyl blinked. Another chicken stepped forward and stood beside the first. This one had all-black feathers and a funny pink thing dangling from its head, which, Danyl suspected, marked it out as a rooster. He let the velvet cover fall back over the cage, covering the chickens, and the soft inquisitive clucking resumed.

  He looked around the room again, now noticing the Egyptian hieroglyphics covering the walls—clumsy reproductions of the carvings in the temple—and a small collection of objects on the floor before the fireplace in the far wall.

  He moved closer to investigate. There was a stone bowl and laid out in a careful pattern around it, like silverware set for Sunday dinner, was a black ceremonial dagger and a medium-sized blue dildo.

  Danyl looked inside the bowl. A black film stained the base: it gave off a sweet, metallic scent. He picked up the dagger, careful not to accidentally touch the dildo. The base of the blade was sticky and dark.

  One of the chickens called out to Danyl: a low, plaintive cry.

  OK. Time to go. He edged around the gently cooing velvet-draped cage, over the curved arcs of unlit candles and back through the door, which he nudged shut behind him. He made his way down the hall to the kitchen, where Pearl stood with her back to him, drying. He cleared his throat. She turned around and smiled. ‘Do you think the doctor needs more jam?’

  Danyl ignored the question. ‘Tell me more about Sutcliffe Parsons.’

  ‘There’s nothing else to tell.’

  ‘He just appeared here one day?’

  ‘That’s right.’ She stared at him, defiant. Danyl returned her gaze. Then a shadow darkened the French doors. Steve.

  He gave Danyl a quizzical look. Danyl nodded assent, and Steve moved across the room towards Pearl, who smiled guilelessly.

  ‘We just have one more question for you, Pearl,’ Steve purred. ‘Then we’ll leave you in peace.’

  ‘Ask away. It’s nice to have some company.’ While she spoke she reached into the sink and took out a long, thin object glistening with soap suds.

  Danyl saw it and cried, ‘Steve! Grab her! She’s got a dagger!’

  Pearl tensed; her eyes flashed. Steve bared his teeth, threw himself across the distance between them and grabbed her wrist. She squealed as he twisted her arm and the object dropped to the floor.

  It was a cake slice.

  Steve did not notice. He pressed his face against Pearl’s and hissed, ‘No more of your games, girl. Talk.’ He pressed her tiny frame against the kitchen bench.

  ‘Doctor! What’s wrong?’

  ‘You’re wrong,’ Steve sneered. ‘You and your story. Tell us what you’ve been hiding. Tell us about the treasure!’

  ‘Treasure?’ Pearl’s face turned purple; her breath came in ragged gulps. ‘I don’t know anything about a treasure.’

  ‘You know everything. Well, something, probably.’

  ‘No,’ she gasped. ‘You’re mistaken.’

  ‘Mistaken like a fox.’ Steve pressed his face close to hers. ‘Your father told you about a treasure hidden in the valley. Sutcliffe Parsons found out about it and now he’s seeking it.’

  ‘I swear!’ She was bordering on hysteria now.

  Danyl felt uncomfortable. He said, ‘Let her go, Steve. Maybe she really doesn’t know anything.’

  ‘She knows. Oh, she knows. Think, Pearl. Think carefully. Did your father ever talk about anything concealed or lost? Some archaeological
artefact, perhaps?’

  ‘No! Nothing like that.’

  ‘He never mentioned anything that might be priceless, tens of thousands of years old, hidden somewhere in Te Aro? You’re sure?’

  ‘Quite sure.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’ Pearl and Steve were breathing heavily. Their faces were centimetres apart, almost touching. She said, ‘I’m sorry, but there’s no treasure. The Order of Thrice-Wise Hermes is about mystery, yes, but those mysteries are spiritual. Spiritual and—’ She licked her lips and met Steve’s gaze. ‘Erotic.’

  ‘Erotic?’

  ‘Yes. The secret of the Order is in the mystical union between the cup and the rod.’

  ‘Rod?’

  ‘Steve.’ Danyl’s voice rang out loud in the confined room. Steve started and looked over his shoulder at Danyl who said, ‘We should go. There’s nothing more for us here.’

  Steve nodded, and without looking at Pearl he released her from his embrace, stepped back and adjusted the cuffs of his shirt. ‘My colleague is.’ He cleared his throat. ‘My colleague is right. Thank you for your . . .’ He fluttered his hand.

  ‘Assistance,’ ended Danyl, shuffling towards the exit. ‘Goodbye.’ Pearl remained where she was, bent back over the kitchen bench, her face turned away from them. She did not reply.

  They reached the French doors. The sun was low in the sky, the outside air felt sweet and cool. Steve stopped on the threshold and turned. ‘Oh, Pearl, if you do remember anything about a treasure or anything, just drop me an email.’

  Pearl did not change position. She said in a low voice, ‘There is one thing.’

  Steve and Danyl exchanged glances. Danyl said, ‘A treasure?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘It’s something my father said once,’ said Pearl, still facing away from them.

  ‘What? What?’

  ‘It might be nothing.’ They had to strain to hear her. ‘When I was ten he took me to a party at my friend’s house. It was on Norway Street. The party was outside, in the back garden, and after a while I noticed my father was missing from the crowd so I went inside the house to look for him. He was in one of the bedrooms, kneeling down with his ear against the wall, tapping it with his fist, as though he was looking for something hidden. He looked scared when he saw me, and he shouted and sent me away. But later, walking home, I asked him what he’d been doing. He’d had a few drinks—he hardly ever drank—so he answered me. He said he was looking for a priest’s soul.’

  ‘A priest’s soul?’

  ‘He said a foreigner had brought a priest’s soul to the valley. I always thought it was a drunken joke, like a lawyer’s heart or a politician’s conscience. But then I thought about the High Hierophant—the man at the well, who my father spied on all those years ago. Was that the foreigner he spoke of? And many years later, just before he died, I overheard him talking to Sutcliffe Parsons and his young girl, and they were speaking of the priest’s soul. Was it a joke? A treasure? Or something else? I just don’t know. A priest’s soul. What do you suppose it means?’

  Steve scratched his forehead, deep in thought. He said, ‘A blue dildo?’

  ‘A bright blue dildo, right next to a bowl of blood and a blood-encrusted dagger.’

  ‘Blue. Interesting.’

  ‘How is the colour of the dildo interesting?’

  ‘The colour blue has occult significance,’ Steve explained. ‘Many primitive cultures think the colour of the sky is blue.’

  ‘But the sky is blue.’

  ‘So you have been conditioned to believe.’ Steve produced a stolen scone from his pocket and consumed it. ‘Things are becoming more obvious,’ he said.

  They walked down the steps and along the old path leading back to the clearing and the well. ‘Let us be reasonable,’ Steve said, ‘and assume that Bludkraft unearthed the ancient wisdom of mighty Imhotep, carried it back to Vienna and then fled Europe and bought it to Te Aro, formed the Order of Thrice-Wise Hermes to guard it, and that it abides here still, hidden in one of the old homes of the valley. Pearl’s father knew about it—he sought it out—but he kept his daughter ignorant of its true nature. Later she learned of the existence of the Order and from a few fragments of knowledge she fashioned a syncretic faith in which she may or may not slaughter domestic fowl while pleasuring herself. We’re not sure of the details there.’

  He scratched his nose. ‘Anyway. Sutcliffe Parsons discovered the temple and learned about the history of the Order. From his occult studies he identified the High Hierophant as Wolfgang Bludkraft. He knew that Bludkraft fled Europe with a mysterious treasure, and he realised that the cryptic “priest’s soul” spoken of by Pearl’s father was the object that almost cost Bludkraft his life in Vienna. He robbed Pearl’s house, stealing all the information about the Order, to help him search for the priest’s soul. But before he could find it he was arrested and sent to prison.’

  ‘And now he’s free,’ Danyl finished. ‘He must have been released a year ago, and immediately returned to the valley and resumed his search, gutting rooms in different houses around the valley to try and find the priest’s soul.’ He paused. ‘Whatever it is.’

  ‘What is the priest’s soul?’ Steve looked amused. ‘Why, that’s obvious.’

  ‘I thought it might be,’ said Danyl. They reached the fork in the road, where tracks led off to the clearing with the mirror and bathtub. Something connected in Danyl’s mind: some unlikely combination of colour and light inspired him, and he realised there was something important, some connection he’d missed, something to do with the Order of Thrice-Wise Hermes. He tried to tune out Steve, tried to concentrate, but the thought slipped away again. He cursed his feeble brain and continued along the path.

  ‘Consider Imhotep,’ Steve said. ‘He was the high priest of Ra. Now, you’ll recall from the Book of Coming Forth by Day, which the ignorant refer to as the Egyptian Book of the Dead, that ancient civilisations left advice and instructions for the souls of the dead in their tombs because they believed that the paradise awaiting them in the afterlife could only be reached after a long and difficult journey in which the deceased overcame many challenges and defeated many foes. Which makes sense when you think about it. Why should the next world function in a substantively different way to this one?

  ‘Anyway, the Priest is Imhotep and his “Soul”,’ he said the word in scare quotes, ‘is obviously the recorded wisdom of his life which, as we’ve previously established, represents tens of thousands of years of advanced, prehistoric research into human psychology. Simple.’

  Danyl said, ‘Do you really believe that ancient Egyptian scrolls filled with god-like wisdom are hidden beneath some floorboards somewhere in the Aro Valley?’

  ‘They might be scrolls. I suppose they could be stone tablets, or— Oh, I get it. You’re being sceptical. What’s your theory then? What is this “Priest’s Soul”?’

  ‘I don’t have a theory.’

  ‘You must have some idea.’

  ‘If we find it,’ Danyl replied, ‘if it exists, I think we’ll find something mundane. A forged artefact. A box of sand. That’s just the way the world works.’ He looked up. ‘Is that rain?’

  It was. They reached the old well just as a sun-shower passed overhead, and they hurried across the clearing through curtains of rain and multicoloured webs of diffracted sunlight. Once they reached the shelter of the trees Danyl cursed.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘My trousers. They’re at home, drying on the clothesline. They’ll be soaked.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So I’m seeing Stasia this evening and they’re my only pair of pants. I can’t show up in my dressing gown, half-naked.’

  Steve agreed. ‘That might send the wrong signal.’

  ‘So what should I do?’


  ‘Don’t go. You have more important commitments.’

  ‘Like what?’

  Steve looked offended. ‘Like the search for the Priest’s Soul,’ he said. ‘We have to find it before Sutcliffe Parsons. We need to think. Plan. Research. Act. And we need to start now. Tonight! Parsons already has a headstart on us. It’s imperative!’

  ‘I’m not cancelling on Stasia. We’ll have to start tomorrow night.’

  ‘No. I’m busy tomorrow night.’ Steve closed his eyes and consulted his internal schedule-planner. ‘What about Friday?’

  ‘I think today is Friday.’

  ‘Tomorrow morning then? Before we start work?’

  ‘I don’t have a job.’ Danyl paused. ‘Neither do you.’

  ‘Perfect. I’ll come by your place.’

  They followed the path to the top of Epuni Street, emerging into the open as the rain stopped and the sun sank behind the hills, casting Te Aro in shadow. Danyl admired the sunset and asked, ‘Why the Order of Hermes?

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, if Imhotep was an Egyptian god, and the Order carried out their rituals in an Egyptian temple, why did they name themselves after the Greek deity of language?’

  Steve frowned at the sunset. ‘It’s all about perspective.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Well, the sun is setting, and this close to the summer solstice it sets at about seven o’clock.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So you’re late for your dinner with Stasia.’

  Danyl looked at Steve in shock, and then glanced down at his tattered and mud-splattered dressing gown. Steve clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Now you see, it’s all about how you look at things. You’re late for your date and you have no trousers. Suddenly a plurality of gods doesn’t seem so important any more, does it.’