Brownstone

by Dean Kutzler

  “Our dearly departed requested that his sole nephew be the family member bestowed with the honor of placing him in his final resting place and be the successive keeper of the vault key.” Father Joseph gestured the key towards Jack again, ignoring Franklin’s shaking head.

  “Vault key? Oh, I don’t know—I don’t think—“ Jack tried before he was cut off.

  “That’s okay, sole nephew. Go ahead, this is what your good ole uncle wanted. I would expect nothing less.” He turned to his wife. “Honor, Irma?” he said, raising his eyebrows with a nod of his head and that look. “Honor? I’m done here. I’ll be waiting at the gate. In the alley, like a bum!” he shouted, storming off and tipping over the plastic green lawn chair. As much as Jack loved besting his father, this seemed way inappropriate. It was a little too in-your-face disrespectful, in his father’s defense. The closest living relative should have the honors. And Jack supposed it was the case, depending on how you defined ‘closest’.

  “Franklin!” Jack’s mom called to her husband as she tripped over the lawn chair and stumbled into Caroline, accidentally dropping her clutch. She caught her balance on Caroline’s lap, snatched up the bulky clutch and chased after her husband and his painful pride.

  Jack was left sitting there alone with Caroline in his green lawn chair. The groundskeeper started climbing down the ladder into the hole with his uncle’s urn. Father Joseph stiffly held the brass vault key out in front of him. It glinted like a camera flash despite the overcast. It was shaped like a sharp little pendulum. Attached to the blade was a brass ring big enough for your hand to fit into like a turning handle. It looked more like an ancient weapon than a key and it dangled in the wind from a tarnished brass tag. The patina was so dark that the name Elliot, inscribed in old cursive handwriting, was barely discernible.

  “I—I just don’t feel this is right.” Jack said, surprised at how young his voice sounded.

  “Sometimes, son, God’s plan may be hard to see,” he said looking up to the sky for effect. “But in the end, the path is always clear and righteous.” Father Joseph stepped aside, key still dangling tightly in one hand as if the wind might take it away, as he motioned with his other hand down towards the vault.

  What choice did Jack have? He’d loved his uncle and the gesture. As disrespectful as it was to his father, it was his uncle’s wish and he chose Jack for this final act. Jack felt his heart move. If there had been any doubt that his uncle had loved him like a son, that doubt would have faded away like a Key West sunset. Jack looked at the odd key, then to Father Joseph. Dark clouds started to culminate and form a mass overhead, causing the Father’s features to darken in the shadow, making his appearance older and sinister. He took hold of the brass tag and noticed again how tarnished it was in comparison to the key. Maybe they had polished it to make sure that it still worked after all these years.

  The groundskeeper was already down into the hole. He gently placed the urn on the brick floor and helped both Jack and Father Joseph down the ladder. The small room in front of the vault entrance was barely big enough for the three of them to fit. The earthy smell reminded Jack of his youth and playing in the dirt.

  The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out.

  Ancient dust clung to the brick walls and mingled with fresh dirt from the dig that had spilled down from the fieldstone cap removal and sat in tidy piles in the corners. The door to the vault was constructed from two large slabs of Tuckahoe marble with the seam in the middle, like sliding French doors. A shape had been chiseled into the center where the seam met. While the doors were closed, each half together formed the shape of a piece of rope laid out in a circle. The tasseled ends of the rope overlapped at the bottom of the circular shape where they intertwined and extended out equally in length, on either side. In the center of the engraved rope emblem was a rectangular cutout large enough for a hand fit inside that contained a slit where the key would fit.

  Jack wondered about the strange shape on the doors. Maybe it was an old family crest or cemetery logo from the past, he wasn’t sure but the image looked familiar. The key and slit were both of the same size and shape. Jack hadn’t the slightest idea how the old locking mechanism worked or if it even still did, but he assumed that the key was to fit inside the slit and turn.

  With both Father Joseph and the groundskeeper snugly at his back, Jack tightened his hold on the pendulum-shaped key and slid it into the slit in the marble door.

  “Per ineffabile nomen Dei, aperire sepulcrum,” Father Joseph said as he motioned the sign of the cross before he was cut short by a loud shot that rang out from above.

  “What was that?” Jack said dropping the key, startled by the sound. It clanked against the marble and landed by his feet on the brick.

  “I’m not quite sure,” said Father Joseph, eyeing the key heavily.

  The groundskeeper started the train back up the ladder to investigate as a woman screamed out in horror. “That’s my mother!” Jack yelled as he pushed Father Joseph against the brick wall and tussled behind the groundskeeper on the ladder.

  Jack’s foot barely hit the top rung before he sprinted past the groundskeeper and through the cemetery. In the alleyway there was a small crowd of people; Caroline DuBois and a few people from the street. He couldn’t see who was laying on the ground. As he ran up to see what happened, Caroline turned from the crowd and caught him in both hands.

  “She—she said he came out of nowhere—wearing a mask!” She struggled between sobs. “I—I don’t know how he coulda got in. I locked the gate.” She fumbled in her pockets, searching for the key. “I know I locked the gate! I’m sure I did—why would someone do this? I—I just don’t kn—”

  The groundskeeper reached the scene and Jack handed her off and she collapsed in his arms, a frightened mess. Jack’s mother was kneeling beside her black hat, slumped over her husband. He was missing a shoe.

  Jack knelt beside his mother, placing a hand on her shoulder. “Mom—mom,” he said gently tugging her shoulder. “What happened? Are you hurt? What’s going on? Is he—” He realized he was battering her with questions. He took a deep breath and tried to calm down. She jerked back facing him, tears running down her face. Blood was smudged on her chin and her dress was slick and shiny.

  “Why?” she said, clenching the missing shoe to her chest. It must have fallen off from the shock of the impact. “Why would someone want to shoot him?” She cried.

  His father lay in the alley, like a bum, just a few feet from the gaping entrance gate. Blood stained his Armani. His lapel pulsed up and down twice before it ceased and a dark shape like a Rorschach test ebbed from beneath his Armani suit.

  He’d been shot directly in the chest. Jack slid his hand from his mother’s shoulder, down around her waist and pulled her close. She fell into him, sobbing uncontrollably into the nape of his neck as he checked for his father’s pulse.

  A man wearing a clergy uniform underneath a raincoat and black fedora hat stepped out of a cab on the street. He saw the scene behind the open gate and rushed over. Tears filled Jack’s eyes as he let go of his father’s wrist. Shaking his head, he looked up and noticed the priest for the first time.

  “Oh Mother Mary, forgive me for being late.” The clergyman said, removing his hat and kneeling beside Jack’s father. He motioned the sign of the cross and began a quiet prayer.

  “Who are you?” Jack asked in confusion, cutting the prayer short. Didn’t he just leave Father Joseph down by the vault?

  “I’m Father Joseph Allen. I’m here for Terry Elliot’s burial proceedings. What happened here? I’m sorry I’m late, but someone cut the tires on my car, so I hailed a cab and then the driver couldn’t find the cemetery. And then this—” he said apologetically with a gentle shrug.

  A crack of thunder bellowed overhead accenting the new priest’s words, followed by the beginning raindrops of a storm. Jack desperately looked amongst the people gathered around his father. Caroline DuBois the cemetery trustee, the groundskeep
er, the new Father Joseph and a few onlookers from the street. The other Father Joseph who performed the burial sermon was nowhere in sight.

  Who would want to kill his father? And why? This had to be tied into his uncle’s murder.

  The rain started to garner strength, soaking Jack’s shirt through. He rose from the ground, carefully guiding his mother over to the new priest who then resumed his prayer.

  Hopefully he was a real priest. Jack didn’t know what was going on, but he was going to find out.

  “Take care of her—I’ll be right back.” Jack said in a panic as he ran back down the alley yelling over his shoulder. “Call the police!”

  A few minutes had passed since his fathers murder, he couldn’t have gotten far. Looking between the alley and the cemetery, Jack only saw one way in or out: The entrance gate. The phony Father should still be in here somewhere.

  Jack’s eyes darted over the cemetery grounds. There was nothing but landscaping and the large shady peach tree by the northeast corner wall. He started to head for the tree when he stopped and looked down into the hole to the vault. It was dark now from the storm clouds but he could still see his uncle’s urn in the hole, but the vault key was missing.

  Jack’s mind was racing. Who was this phony priest? Better yet, where was he? Someone had first killed his dying uncle—which made no sense except possibly to keep him quiet—and now his father, in broad daylight. What’s the connection?

  Just what was going on here?

  Two of his family members were dead. He didn’t have time to mourn or have any feelings. Right now, they’d only get in the way. He packaged them up and headed for the vault.

  If the phony priest was going to escape, judging by his age, Jack doubted he was capable of scaling either the walls or the tree. The gate would be covered any second now once the cops arrived, so down the hole he went.

  Jack climbed down the ladder facing forward so there would be no surprises. Standing at the bottom, another boom of thunder cracked out overhead. Jack looked up and the sky had darkened even further, like an omen foretold. The rain was coming down in steady sheets as he squeezed it out of his goatee and examined the doorway. It was open just more than a crack and darkness beckoned him beyond.

  The scene brought him back to childhood. His old bedroom had a nest of built-in stacked closets. The closet on the bottom had a bent hinge from repeatedly being slammed shut, overstuffed with clothes. His way of cleaning his room. After that it would never fully close, always open a crack. Staring at the crack, he would lay awake in bed at night, frightened from reading The Call of Cthulhu by H.P. Lovecraft. His Batman nightlight made the shadows longer and the darkness more pronounced, which outlined the crack ever-so-more. Nightmares of long slithery things seeping out and wrapping themselves around his neck plagued him for many nights. No monsters ever came out of that closet back then; he had to remind himself now. He should have searched for a weapon before coming down. Too late.

  He pulled out his iPhone, turned on the flashlight app, silently thanking Steve Jobs and held it toward the marble doors. They rested on an old roller mechanism and slid back and forth much easier than he’d thought, like an ancient Egyptian trap in an Indiana Jones movie. He hoped the trap was already sprung as he slid the doors fully open. A sound echoed throughout the room like a stone lid being pushed off a crypt. The vault exhaled a strange earthy smell like dirt, but more stagnant in nature, like the smell of old death mingling with freshly dug life.

  The air inside was cooler from the marble interior as he crept into the dark vault, slowly sweeping his phone back and forth. It bathed the room in eerie luminescence. The room was about ten feet wide and at least thirty feet deep. Candle sconces adorned the walls, but Jack had no matches or lighter. Each side of the vault was constructed of two stacked rows of marble plaques etched with names as doors that led into his ancestor's coffins. The doors had been tampered with, some left ajar and some completely open. A muffled sound like the rustling of clothes snapped Jack’s attention to the back of the vault. A rumpled shape of disparate shades of darkness lay barely visible on the floor. It was near the back wall where he could barely make out an outline of an old iron door, set into the marble.

  “Hey—phony priest!” Jack bellowed into the darkness. “Come outta there! There’s nowhere to go!”

  The shape moved and shifted like it was morphing into something larger. It answered him with a groaning sound like a desperate feral animal in pain.

  “The cops will be here any second! I suggest you get out here now and tell me what’s going on!” Jack held his phone over his head but he was still too far away to see clearly.

  The shape shifted again and a tiny flash sparked in the back of the vault. “What was that?” Jack yelled, for fear of a weapon. An instant later, he heard the priest yelp out in pain, followed by a loud clank that rattled his nerves. A moment later a faint coppery smell, weaved together with the dead-earthy scent, crept past his nose and filled him with dread.

  “What are you doing back there? Come out of the dark now or I’m coming back there!” Jack’s fear of the dark gripped him in place, his pulse quickened. He didn’t know what was going on and that trumped any fear of the dark. He wasn’t waiting any longer. Two out of three family members had been murdered in less than a few days and this phony priest had to know something about it. With his phone’s light guiding him through the darkness and his dead ancestors literally at his sides, he moved toward the shape. The smell grew heavier and the groaning louder.

  As Jack got closer to the shape, he noticed that the vault seemed intact. He wasn’t sure how an excavation and expansion of a vault such as this went, but from what he could see the vault was old, untouched by modern means. He was almost upon the dark shape when he kicked the source of the loud clank.

  The vault key.

  Keeping an eye on the rumpled shape, he knelt with his phone and shined it over the key. It was covered in blood. What had he done? Jack stepped over the bloody key and made it to the back of the vault in a few long strides. His eyes widened in terror as his phone showed him the answer.

  The impostor was laying in a pool of quickly spreading blood. Both his wrists lay splayed, lengthwise for efficiency, at either side. The veins horrifically gouged out like a butcher’s first day on the job. It must have taken great strength and determination to sever the second wrist, bearing the pain of the first. Blood was seeping out in unforgiving pints.

  “What have you done?” Jack gasped, shining his phone around the room to make sure they were alone. He noticed the iron door at the back of the vault again and pulled on the rusted circular handle to make sure no skeletons were hiding.

  Locked.

  “I’ve done what was necessary,” he wheezed in pain, growing faint. He spoke perfect English, yet his accent was clearly Italian.

  “I don’t understand. Why fake being a priest and then end your life like this? What were you doing?”

  “I am a priest my son, I’m Father Angeli. The Sons of God must never find you.” The priest’s eyes rolled back into his head, then closed completely.

  “What?” Jack shook the man. “What’s the purpose of this charade? Who killed my father and uncle? Why? Why kill yourself like this?” Jack grimaced at the gore of the man’s ruined wrists. The priest couldn’t have much time, if any, judging by the blood spreading out beneath him. Jack needed answers and fast. He shook him harder and the priest moaned, eyes half open.

  “The Sons of God have many pawns, even in the justice system. They aren’t to be trusted. Understand that. None of them. My life is a small price to pay for the cause. I could not be caught, they would torture it from me. They can never know. The key is best lost in the wrong hands.” His breath became labored and a look of understanding spread over his face. “My—my time is over, please help me. Too much is at—” His eyes rolled back in his head and forward again. Jack could see the color draining from his face even in the dim light of his phone.

&nb
sp; “What key? What cause? What are you talking about?” Jack asked, fearing his questions would go unanswered, but the priest’s head lolled a little and he continued.

  “I have found the Key of Innocence. There—” He looked past Jack at one of the open coffin drawers. He tried to motion with his hand but it was too painful with the little strength he had left. “I—I cannot fail in my mission. Don’t let my life be in vain. Please—please bring it to Stephen Alazar. He—he will know what—” With his last breath his life exhaled.

  The priest lay dead on the floor, leaving Jack with more unanswered questions and no resolutions. Who was Stephen Alazar? What cause was more important than his life? He said the authorities couldn’t be trusted. Did he mean the police? The church? Trusted with what? The Key of Innocence? What the hell was that? Was he being literal? Jack searched the dead priest and found no key, only his wallet. He opened it and checked the ID.

  All the way from Rome?

  Jack stood and faced the coffin door at which the dead priest had motioned. Grace Elliot. His third great grandmother had been laid to rest here, many lifetimes ago. He let go of his goatee, he’d absentmindedly grabbed it, and pulled the coffin door fully open. The scent of rich mahogany hit him in the face followed by something else. He was surprised the smell could last this long, but it wasn’t air freshener. It was real wood.

  The coffin sat on a cement slab over crude rollers like the vault door. His stomach churned at what he was about to do next. He grabbed the slab handle ready to pull the coffin out, when he noticed a small tarnished emblem that resembled the symbol etched into the vault door. He wouldn’t have noticed it, thinking it was just mirroring a family crest or something, but not only was it too insignificant to represent an insignia of such importance, it was sitting crooked into the wood.

  The emblem rattled as his fingers felt all around it. It was loose. He held his phone closer and saw fresh nicks in the wood where someone had tried to pry it out of the coffin.