Brownstone

by Dean Kutzler

  He was halfway around the room when he spotted an open doorway in the corner of the stone wall, leading down another passage. “Geez,” he whispered rolling his eyes, “no more stairs, please.”

  He finished checking the room before abandoning the strange items and ventured through the new doorway. No stairs. This passageway was made of the same hand-carved stones as all the rest but a relief had been cut out halfway up and into the wall like modern day wainscoting, creating a ledge on either side of the passageway. In the upper half of the wall, clamshell indentations were intricately chiseled into the rock and sanded smooth. Small red clay pots rested inside each them. Elegantly hand-painted trees adorned the faces of each earth-colored pot resembling the same general shape, but each had its own significant design, like the crystal formations of individual snowflakes.

  Grasping both the knife and flashlight in one hand, Jack reached his other hand out towards one of the pots. Then he remembered the umpteen adventure movies he’d seen where someone unknowingly sets off a death trap by lifting up something innocent, like a clay pot. His hand hovered in front of the pot for a few seconds, and then in the quiet of his contemplation, he thought he heard a hissing sound. His lips pinched into a straight line and his eyes rolled towards the end of the passage. He wasn’t Indiana Jones, so he pulled his hand back, reclaimed the knife and continued down the passageway.

  The farther he walked the distant sound of hissing grew louder. He pinched his nose and held it shut between his fingers, the cold blade resting cool against the tip of his nose, as he gently breathed into his pressed nostrils with his mouth closed. The forced pressure in his sinuses caused his ears to pop, resetting the sound in his ear canals so he could hear more clearly. With his hand cupped against the back of his ear, he held his breath and listened carefully. He wasn’t imagining the sound, but it was more of a trickling, like a brook. Fear along with excitement he hasn’t felt since a kid ran through his body, causing goosebumps to ripple across his skin. He wasn’t going to let fear rule his thoughts, as he sternly trotted down the corridor.

  As he neared the end of the passageway, the source of the sound became clear, but only raised more questions. Squatting at the base of another doorway, he took a closer look at the source of the sound. A square hole, a few feet in diameter, had been crudely carved out of a base stone in the wall and the carving continued down into the floor.

  Next to the hole sat a large hewn stone that closely resembled a chair, that if sat in would extend the occupant’s legs down into the hole, like a basin. The hole and seat were not as strange as what was inside the hole. He placed his knife on the seat of the stone chair and rested his hand on its leg portion for support. Falling forward on his knees, he leaned into the hole. Tilting his head like a curious cockatoo and looking up behind the wall, he shined the flashlight upward.

  The interior channel scaled the wall beyond the beam’s reach. Crystal clear drops emerged from a foamy rush, shimmering and dropping onto his face from the steady stream of water that ran down the wall and into the floor. Pulling his head back out of the hole, he inched around the opening on his knees until his side was against the wall. He flashed the light down into the leg portion of the hole and saw that the clear water was pooled into the stone basin by a short dam. Leaning his face almost flush with the floor and angling the flashlight for a better look, his goatee dipped into the pool of water and ran with the current that flowed down into the basin as it continued over the dam and down its path to an unknown source below the floor.

  He grabbed the knife from the stone seat and brushed the dust from his pants with the back of the blade. As he examined the mysterious seat, the best he could come up with was that it was an ancient day footbath. As to what purpose it served, he was clueless. Closer observation of the stone seat proved it was well worn from use by the darkened spots on the stone armrests, where bare skin had touched it repeatedly, leaving oily impressions.

  The real mystery lay in the architecture of the running water. How was it possible? Where did the water source originate and where did it end? If he wasn’t standing there, staring at the rippled reflection of his face in the swirling eddy at his feet, he wouldn’t have thought such an engineering feat was possible of people dating back to this ancient time. The mechanics alone of channeling the water down through hand carved stone was stupefying, but within the simplicity of the structure sat yet an even bigger feat of amazement. Judging the age of this place and guessing at the nil frequency of current visitors, how did this water-seat remain unclogged? How could the engineering be so precise that it hadn’t clogged and submerged the whole place under water?

  Shaking his head at the mystery, he stepped around the seat and stood before the doorway. Shining the flashlight into this new room, the first thing that struck his attention was the floor. It was constructed from the same hand-carved stones as everything else thus far, but the its impeccable cleanliness was unnerving. It looked like it had been freshly carved and sanded over to a smooth finish, ready for its first set of foot prints. Not a single chisel mark could be found.

  He shifted the knife and flashlight in one hand and bent down with his free hand and ran it across the floor. Standing up, he shined the light across his palm. There wasn’t a speck of dirt or dust on it—another mystery. How was it possible? Dirt, dust and grime coated the walls, floors and steps everywhere, except here in this room.

  Then he noticed something odd. “What the—“, he croaked, raising the beam slowly over the floor, apprehension flowing down into his thoughts like molten lava. The path of light opened up onto the floor and continued to widen into a faded V-shape over the spotless stone as he tilted the flashlight. In the center of the room stood an immense tree—in both height and width. Rising up from the stone as if it were soil, it branched out across the room. As he shifted the flashlight upward, he could see the tree continued up into the ceiling, at least half a mile in height.

  The tree trunk and branches seamlessly melded into the stone walls and ceiling, like an omnipotent force that never learned the limits of physics. The tree hadn’t broken into the stone from the force of growth, the stone surrounded the tree as if it opened up to let it in and closed tightly back around it. How could a tree grow from stone? While the feat seemed impossible, the tree looked as if it had seen sunnier days.

  Withered leaves hung motionless on limp branches, gray and distressed, deprived of the chance of photosynthesis from natural sunlight. Stretching the flashlight’s stark beam across the web of foliage, he could see the veins in the melancholy leaves pulsing and tugging at the light’s false sustenance, willing him to amp the power of the futile source. With a slight crackling sound, the flashlight flickered once before it dimmed to a strenuous dull hue of pale yellow. Panic quickened his pulse until he shook the light back to life with a snap of his wrist. The thought of being stuck down there with no light caused sweat to pepper his brow.

  Curiosity edged him closer. The tree was huge and looked older than anything he’d ever seen. Chipped and cracked, deep lines etched the tree’s bark like faded gray paint, clinging helplessly to a derelict mansion. He shined the light back and forth, examining the branches and swore he saw the leaves swaying with his arm. Before he lowered the light, something high up in one of the branches caught his eye.

  He carefully stepped over a root that had crested the stone and positioned himself under the branch. He swung the flashlight up and squinted into the distance. A tiny, shriveled golden peach was hanging from the branch. Golden. Like 24 karat. It was puckered like a prune, but its golden brilliance twinkled in the beam of light. It was too high for him to reach and he’d be damned before he climbed the tree for fear of breaking a limb. He’d never make the crawl out for help.

  The whole picture was beyond strange. How does a living tree wind up in this strange place, miles below the brownstone and the bustling city above?

  Whatever his uncle’s involvement had been in all of this, one thing was clear: It
was all just too strange. A realization was dawning inside his head. The possibility of some magical biblical book from the hands of God didn’t seem so farfetched anymore, as he stood marveling at the impossibility of this tree before him. There must have been some kind of scientific explanation. Father Alazar had said the book was rumored to be a true account of the beginning, supernatural in nature. Pointing the light back up the massive expanse of the tree and over to the sparkling golden prune of a peach he said, “Supernatural is definitely a possibility.”

  He clutched the flashlight and knife in one hand and reach towards the tree. He placed his hand flat against the aged, wrinkled bark. Quickly he snatched it back, not from pain, but from shock at its unexpected texture. The tree should have felt rough and cracked under his palm, yet it was as smooth as fine silk. His thumb began to tingle and he flipped his hand over.

  “What the hell?”, he croaked. The swirly fingerprint lines on his thumb were outlined with a glistening gold shine that grew in candescence, then burst into tiny white dots before his eyes, only to repeat the process over and over again like the new LED billboards polluting highways with endless ads. Outside of a slight tingling feeling, the reaction didn’t hurt or feel like much else. He watched as the mesmerizing pulsation from the glittering gold transformed into white bursts as the outline of light grew stronger and drew tighter into a slight line at the tip of his thumb. Then he remembered cutting it earlier when he’d tested the Chef’s knife’s sharpness.

  The process repeated for several seconds, with each pulse growing brighter into the tiny sliver of the cut, until it flashed a brilliant white a final time before it ceased. Stunned at the sight, Jack drew his thumb in close to his face. Twisting it back and forth, the tiny cut was completely gone without a trace. Even the scar from a deep cut he’d gotten as a deli-boy at sixteen had vanished.

  What had he found?

  He reached out and touched the tree again. This time it felt as if it should; rough old bark. Nothing special, just a tree. Did he imagine it? Did it really just happen? He got a twisted idea. Unclenching the knife from the flashlight, he let the blade drop into his other hand. In one quick instance, no thought involved like yanking off a Band-Aid, he ripped the blade over his knuckles.

  “Ouch! Mother fff —,“ he hollered, shaking his hand. Drops of blood splattered onto the pristine floor before he placed his hand back on the trunk of the tree. The velvety feel of a soft, silken surface cushioned his palm and caressed it like a kiss. He held it there longer than last time, just to see if anything different would happen. Just the smoothness beneath his palm remained until he lifted it from the tree. The instant his flesh parted from the tree’s soft surface, the glowing process began. Under a minute’s time, his hand was completely healed. The realization of what he was standing before sent a cold chill down his back. He wondered at how far the healing process went, flexing his hand, as he noticed the ache from the intruder’s kick was gone.

  Whatever his uncle had been involved in, this was truly something. Jack wondered if he’d known what he was sitting on top of all this time. The answer seemed like a clear yes. The question of his involvement wasn’t so clear, yet next to the astonishing find of this tree, it paled in comparison. The real question was why did he keep it a secret? His motives couldn’t have been for money. Guilt tempered his thoughts at the sum his uncle had left him. Maybe someone had gotten to him before he could reveal this secret to the whole world, or maybe he hadn’t found it. Or… He’d known the organization was on to him and he couldn’t risk the exposure. Hopefully the documents Moe retrieved from his uncle’s computer would shed some light on the subject.

  He’d started out with almost no leads and now there were too many to follow. The journalist inside him was churning to get to the bottom of the story and the boy inside him wanted justice for his uncle. The further he dug into the murder, the more curious the story and questions became. What was this place? Who built it? What was this tree? Curious, was beyond the word. What started out as a search for his uncle’s murderer had turned into something he never suspected. All his life, he’d been a non-believer, never given any true reason to believe in a higher power. Theories of alien origins made more sense. Until now. Now he wasn’t so sure of anything. The mysteries of the world and its life had always tugged at his curiosity, but this was something more. Something tangible that couldn’t be explained. This discovery would shock the world and its beliefs.

  That was just it—maybe his uncle hadn’t known how to reveal it to the world. There were plenty of unexplained miracles all around the world, but none as miraculous as a magical healing tree. The confusion alone that it would cause was maddening to think about. Sickly people from all over the world would converge upon the tree. It would be mass hysteria. There was so much unknown about the tree. Why was it kept hidden in a dark temple?

  Another thought occurred. How could he reveal it to the world without the government or some secret agency taking it out of his hands and dissecting it so they could turn it into a capital investment? There were so many questions. He feared he’d never find the right answers to any of them. The bigger question was: What does he do about this tree? How long could or should he keep it hidden? So much good could be done with this discovery. An image of his uncle in that hospital bed, plugged into those machines, flashed across his mind.

  Who knew what kind of power it had? After a moment’s reflection, he understood what his uncle would have faced. Who could he even contact? Who could he trust that wouldn’t destroy the discovery and turn it into a pharmaceutical goldmine? There’s big money in healthcare and it was just unethical. Maybe this tree was a way of solving the healthcare issue by taking it out of the government’s hands. What a wonderful world it would be, to grow a healing tree in the backyard of every household. Then the ramifications of over-population on the planet flashed across his mind and he shook his head. Too many issues to focus on right now.

  Unfortunately, he wasn’t the only one who possibly knew about this tree. Someone had come through here before he did, but what were they after? Did they steal a sample from the tree? Jack reached up and gently tugged a wilted leaf from the nearest branch. Before he even lowered his arm to get a closer look, the leaf disintegrated into a fine dust in his hand. The dust fell between his fingers and in the pale beam of the flashlight, grew even smaller and disappeared before reaching the floor.

  A sample seemed out of the question and glancing at his thumb, the possibility that the same set of circumstances that befell him had happened to the intruder were highly unlikely. But the fact still remained that the tree may have at least been seen and that meant that even if they found what they were looking for, they just may come back for a second look.

  The tree hadn’t been the only object in the room, only the most fascinating. Once his initial shock wore off, he took a step back and searched the rest of the immaculate room. On the wall opposite from the tree, which seemed to be the focal point of the room, hung an amazing relief raised from terra cotta.

  The enormous picture filled the better part of the wall from floor to ceiling and was centered across two thirds of its width. The background of the relief was darker than obsidian and far more sinister in nature. Etched from the blackness stood the body of a beautiful naked woman with unnerving hollow black eyes. The demeanor on her face from the subtle curve of her jaw line to the tilt of her chin suggested her stance was rooted in angry judgment.

  Her skin was the color of clay and in the dull luster of the flashlight it was difficult to tell if her red complexion was painted on, just the natural pigment of the clay, or something else entirely. Regardless of the medium, the hedonistic hue accentuated the sensual curves of her hips and voluptuous breasts against the sea of darkness and ferreted attention from the stunning relief. Every time he turned his head, he thought he could see the blackness in the relief ripple, like a dark eddy, pulling him closer.

  In contrast to her luring torso, her feet were carved
into the ugly talons of a large bird, similar to the claws of the two giant owls flanking her on either side in the relief. Beneath her grotesque talons, she stood atop two lions. They were lying down in a perched position, back to back as if they were one, staring at him with fierce eyes that dared him to approach. The owls stood taller than the lions, hinting at prominence, and rose up in height just under the naked woman's hips. Their eyes were fierce, yet different from the lions. Their eyes spoke of hunting prey in the cloak of night and reflected less brazen ferocity than the lions, less protective in nature and more instinctual in survival. Just as unlikely as her taloned feet, she had a pair of unfolded wings that matched the multicolored feathers of the flanking owls, which caressed her back and hung below her upraised arms. The black, white and red pattern of the wings that mirrored the owl’s feathers brought menacing life to her wings and balanced the relief.

  Although the woman in the relief was naked, she was crowned with a hat assembled from bullhorns. A set of four pair—eight horns in total—rested on top of her head. Each pair was stacked inwardly closer like the inclination of steps, until it formed a crude triangular shape. The points of each horn were drawn to the front of her forehead, creating a gapped seam between the tips and down the center of the crown. The thicker parts that had been attached to the animal curved around towards the back of her head. A pale golden disc, like a capstone, stuck out from the top of her crown, resembling the moon, creating the scene of a pyramid at night. A hint of long black hair, bunched beneath the horny crown behind her head, peeked out from between the gaps under her arms and nestled tightly against the inside of her wings.

  Like a lustful, luscious dessert plated on a plain white charger so as not to detract from the dessert’s visual beauty, she was adorned with simple jewelry—golden bracelets and a striped golden necklace. Upside down gourds hung from her ears like limp bicycle horns that needed tightening on their handlebars. The overall tone of the artwork was menacing, to say the least. Etched into every facet of the finely worked clay was a hint of dark, sexual desire. Desire that no one should dream, lest pursue for fear of losing control.