by P. J. Day
She pointed toward her foot. “Not really.”
“The news said a priest and a custodian were murdered, so I raced over here. I tried calling you. I was worried about you,” he said. He glanced at her lower leg. “Are you bleeding?”
“Yes,” she cried. “You’re not going to believe what the hell happened. You gotta get me out of here. Some...some creature attacked me.”
“What?” he said, his eyebrows popping up over his frames.
“I’ll explain everything as soon as you help me over this fence,” Cindy said. She took off her small backpack containing the rondure and the dowel off her back. “Here, take my bag. The Apocryphon and the artifacts are in there. I need to climb out of here and I need all the flexibility I can get.”
Paolo grabbed the small bag from Cindy’s cold hands, through a gap in the fence, and placed it on the floor. He then examined the fence from top to bottom. “I think I can climb the barrier and give you a boost.”
“Are you sure?”
“I think so,” he said. “I’m kinda overweight, but I think I can do it.”
Cindy looked to the right and there was a patch of fence that was covered by the other side of the boat-shaped building. “Climb over there, where the police can’t see you.”
Paolo nodded and jogged his doughy frame to where Cindy pointed.
Cindy skittered toward Paolo, using the fence for balance.
The professor struggled, as he tried to elevate his 200-pound physique by pulling himself up and by the strength of his underdeveloped arms. He quickly became self-aware of his futile attempt. He looked behind him and asked a young man wearing a do-rag for help. “Hey, you!” he whispered loudly.
A young man in the crowd noticed Paolo struggling and approached. The professor noticed a teardrop tattooed under the young man’s left eye as he got closer.
“What you up to?” the young man sneered.
“Can you help me get my friend over this fence? She’s hurt.”
The young man gave Paolo a devilish grin. “Sucka, why should I help you?”
“Listen, there’s some crazy shit that went down in that church,” Paolo pleaded. “Let me ask you, are you a religious man?”
The young man darted his eyes. “Why you ask?”
“There’s a tattoo of a cross on your forearm.”
“Yeah, I’ve found Jesus. Had to.”
“Listen, there is some crazy stuff going on right now, Biblical in nature. My friend here has found something in that church that could possibly aid your salvation,” said Paolo, half-heartedly believing in his own words. It was a panicked appeal of sorts.
“You crazy, man.”
“Seriously,” Paolo said, his intense eyes drilling the young man. “I’m not joking.”
Cindy nodded her head. “I was attacked by a demon. Please help me.”
The young man flashed a skeptical mug. “Listen, I’m gonna help ‘cause I hate those sons of bitches over there, but if your friend here killed the priest, that is some low shit, and I’m gonna make sure both of you get treated accordingly.”
“Thank you. Please understand. I would never hurt anyone,” Cindy said.
“Honestly, you don’t look like you could,” the young man said, as he scaled the fence like a graceful catamount. He firmed his feet as soon as he touched ground and peered into Cindy’s eyes. “But still, you’re never too sure.”
“Thank you,” Cindy said. “I appreciate your help.”
The young man stood in front of the fence and interlocked his fingers, readying to give Cindy a boost over the fence.
Cindy grimaced as she picked up her good leg, putting pressure on her wounded foot, and placed it in the young man’s palms. “Ouch, dammit, that hurts.”
“I got you, Cindy,” said Paolo on the other side of the fence, arms out, readying for Cindy’s fall.
Cindy flattened her belly on the dull tips of the fence. “I swear, I’m gonna stab myself,” she said, as she managed to contort herself over the top like a drunken gymnast. Paolo grabbed her thighs as she held on to the tips of the wrought-iron fence with both hands.
As Paolo lowered her to the ground, a deep voice resonated a few yards away. “Hey!”
The group’s suspicious movements caught the eye of one of the officers. The young man on the other side of the fence saw the officer’s reaction and bolted toward the darkness from which Cindy came. Paolo picked up Cindy, who quickly picked up her backpack containing the artifacts, and placed her on his shoulder and fled toward his car. The officer pulled his collar and radioed help, but since he was by himself, he elected to profile and chase after the hapless Samaritan, giving Paolo and Cindy enough time to get lost in the crowd, climb into the Accord, and flee the scene.
The professor’s eyeballs jutted from their sockets as he sped through the residential streets. He constantly monitored his rearview mirrors for any sign of police. There were none as he made a quick right onto De Longpre Avenue, another small street parallel to Sunset. He made another quick right onto Highland before turning onto Sunset again. He glanced over at Cindy. “Do you see any cruisers behind us?”
Cindy darted her head in every possible direction. “No, I don’t.”
“Good,” said the professor. “We need to take you to a hospital.”
“No, I’m fine. It’s no longer bleeding. We don’t have time.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, as they stopped at a traffic light.
“We’ve stumbled onto something big. The thing that attacked me...it...it was horrible.”
“What did it look like?” asked Paolo, with slight terror in his voice.
“It was winged...cloaked...its claws were as big as my torso. It hissed and shrieked like something out of a horror movie. There was this decrepit winged man inside the chamber. It...it was like a dream,” Cindy said. “A nightmare.” Her face sagged with disbelief, her eyes darted as if she suffered a form of P.T.S.D. “We need to get to Shia Labeouf’s house.”
“The actor?”
Cindy nodded.
“I don’t understand how Shia Labeouf is involved in all this?”
“Listen, I don’t understand either. It just is what it is. But he’s a Kronotos.”
“What’s a Kronotos?”
“Someone who is chosen to hold the Blessed Sacrament.”
Paolo kept scanning the intersections he crossed with keen eyes. “I’d gladly drive you to his house, but I don’t know where he lives.”
“Head toward Beverly Hills. We’ll get one of those maps from the map stands.”
“Why would Shia Labeouf’s house be listed on those cheesy maps? Tourists want to see the homes of Harrison Ford, Wil Smith, Tom Cruise, and Schwarzenegger. Not the guy from Holes.”
Cindy glanced toward the back seat of the Accord. “Do you have a clean rag I can use as a tourniquet? This one is dirty as hell.”
Paolo opened the center console and pulled out a pristine white scarf. “Here, this was a gift from my ex-wife. I haven’t found a use for it.”
“Thanks,” Cindy said, as she tightly wrapped the scarf around her foot. “Damn, I just realized this is a nice scarf.”
Paolo drove up Sunset Boulevard, past the Whiskey A Go-Go, the Key Club, the Comedy Store and reached the familiar greened residential walls of the Southern California’s most famous enclave, Beverly Hills. They pulled up to an old wooden sign, with “maps to the stars” painted on it in kindergarten script on the sidewalk. An older gentleman with an L.A. Dodgers cap, wearing a grimy flannel shirt began taking the sign down.
Cindy rolled down her window. “Excuse me?”
She startled the man. It was late at night and no one stopped to ask for directions anymore. He probably thought it was a drive-by robbery.
“I’m done. I’m out of maps. Come tomorrow,” said the man, rapidly.
“Sir, do you happen to know where Shia Labeouf’s home is?”
“Who?” asked the man, slightly annoyed at the midnight
interrogation.
“He was in the Indiana Jones movie, the young kid,” Paolo said.
“The little Asian kid? I don’t think he could afford to live here.”
“No,” said Cindy, rolling her eyes. “The last movie, with the swinging monkeys and the Crystal Skull.”
“Didn’t see it,” said the man, as he walked down the sidewalk with the sign under his armpits.
Paolo trailed him with his car. “He was the guy in Transformers, opposite Megan Fox.”
“Ohhh, that guy,” said the man. “I’ve seen him speed down these parts in a yellow Lam. A Murciélago, actually. He turned down this street right up here more than a couple times.”
“Are you sure that was him?” asked Cindy.
“I’m here seven days a week. I recognize a lot of faces driving down Sunset. I know it’s him. He’s sporting a beard of late, and he lives down that street.”
As Cindy kept the man engaged in conversation, Paolo noticed a pair of bright halogen lights approaching at a high speed in his rearview mirror.
“Hey, we gotta get going,” he said, elbowing Cindy. “I don’t think B.H.P.D. likes cars parked on Sunset at midnight.”
As the professor placed his foot slightly on the gas pedal, a sleek and shiny yellow blur streaked past their semi-parked car. “I think that’s a Lam,” said Paolo.
“A yellow Lam,” Cindy blurted.
The man outside the car interjected loudly, “There he goes.”
Paolo hammered the pedal with his foot and the semi-bald tires on his Accord screeched as if they were the sickly pangs of alley cats. The yellow Lam made a sharp right turn onto the first residential street up ahead. Paolo sped into the turn foolishly, trailing closely behind the svelte sports car, almost tilting his Accord onto two wheels, careening Cindy onto his shoulder
The yellow Lam made a quick left turn.
Paolo followed suit, this time Cindy fell toward the passenger door, her head bumping against the grab handle, as her bony waist impinged against the door’s armrest. “Dammit, Paolo,” Cindy cried out. The mansions blurred in their peripheral vision like an LSD-influenced slide carousel. The Lamborghini stopped in front of a Tuscan-styled mansion, with a terraced bush plot.
“Can you see if it’s him?” asked Cindy, as they parked the Accord three houses down. Paolo smartly turned off his headlights.
“I see what you see,” said Paolo.
“As soon as he drives past the gate, pull up slowly so we can see if he gets out of the car.”
The Lamborghini disappeared halfway through the enclosure, before Paolo began his slow creep. The Accord stopped in front of the home next door. Cindy limped out of the vehicle, climbed the short wall next door and lurked over the fence that separated both homes, and then threw herself up and onto the wall. Cindy glanced over her shoulder at Paolo, and gave him an enthusiastic thumbs-up. Fortunately, Shia Labeouf didn’t park his Lam inside his garage. Instead, he parked it on his circular, cobbled driveway.
Cindy climbed down from the fence and reentered the Accord.
“It’s him,” she said, in a soft voice. “How do we get in, though?”
“I don’t know how I feel about that,” said Paolo. “How sure are you that the Blessed Sacrament is in his home?”
“The thing with the wings that was down there in the tomb told me. We need to do this.”
“But that’s breaking and entering.”
“I’m telling you someone or something is being held against her will in that house. I’ve deduced from the Apocryphon that this woman...” Cindy said, as she pulled out the book from her backpack and flipped through it, showing Paolo the picture of the veiled woman. “...this woman right here, is in there.”
“Cindy, I believe that this book is genuine, you know that. But to suggest that the woman in this book is in Shia Labeouf’s house is a humongous leap,” said Paolo, who licked his lips, a nervous habit.
“I know it sounds crazy. But after what happened to me down there, anything is possible. We’ve been right, so far. She’s in there.”
Paolo nodded his head and remained quiet. He struggled with the irrationality of everything that had unfolded so far.
Cindy pulled out the two leather scapulars she kept in her back pocket. “Here, you got a browser on your phone? I got these from a couple of corpses in the tunnel.”
“You what?” Paolo exclaimed. “Yes...yes we can do research on my phone,” Paolo said, reaching for his phone. “My goodness, we’re grave robbers!”
“Look up the Horsley Brothers, or specifically, David and William Horsley.”
“Okay,” Paolo muttered, as he scrolled the phone. “Here’s the Wiki on David Horsley.”
Cindy pulled Paolo’s wrist closer to her eyes, so she could read his bright screen.
“This is nuts,” Paolo said, as he lowered his glasses from his nose. “It says that David Horsley opened up the first film studio in Hollywood. There’s Hollywood history under that church, so why would the Horsley brothers be buried there?”
Cindy opened the Apocryphon and turned to the page she noted while in the subterranean tunnel under the church. “Look, Paolo,” she said, enthusiastically pointing at the text. “In return for their cooperation, they were granted tombs next to the Blessed Sacrament. Cooperation in something so bloody large, so epic, so earth-shattering, that it’s worth entering Mr. Labeouf’s house for.”
Paolo paused as he took off his glasses and wiped the sweat from his brow.
Cindy continued, “They opened the first movie studio at the behest of some long-running conspiracy. They were rewarded with a ceremonial burial.” Cindy paused for a few seconds. Her imagination ran wild with possibilities. “The film industry is involved in something friggin’ grand here. We gotta go in, or if you don’t to go in, then I’ll go by myself. You can wait here or leave.”
“I have a great job with the university. If I get caught, not only am I going to prison, but I’m tarnishing the name of the university, which has done a lot for me,” Paolo said.
“We are on the verge of discovering something that not only will define your career, but define history. We don’t have to tell anyone how we found out. We don’t have to tell anyone we ventured into someone’s home to discover such a secret.”
Paolo sighed. He grabbed Cindy’s hand and said, “I’m putting my career on the line here.”
Cindy nodded. “I know. You don’t have to do this. I’m just telling you what’s at stake.”
“Once we’re inside, what do we do, where do we go?”
“There’s a side entrance through the garage. It’s open. Murat revealed that the Blessed Sacrament is somewhere underground. I don’t think she would be held through an underground entrance in his back yard or front yard, that’d be pretty stupid, right?”
“I...I guess.”
Cindy’s face perked up. She reached underneath the seat and grabbed the rondure and dowel. “I think these will lead us to her.”
“Those artifacts?”
“Yes, they led me to her tomb. They’re probably drawn to her, remember?”
“Remember what? What are you talking about?”
“Step out of the car, let me show you something.”
Paolo climbed out of the Accord and met Cindy who crow-hopped onto the sidewalk. She placed the rondure on the floor and said, “If the sphere rolls east, we’re screwed, if it heads toward Mr. Labeouf’s home, then we got something.”
Paolo stood next to Cindy, his arms crossed, observing her with a skeptical eye.
With gusto, she pointed the dowel at the rondure and as predicted by Cindy’s hunch, it rolled toward the mansion.
“Interesting,” said Paolo. “How does it do that? What’s the mechanism?”
“Fate,” Cindy said, picking up the artifacts. “Fate and destiny, that’s all I can say. Raffi wanted me to have these items for a reason.”
Paolo peered over the side wall and then looked at Cindy who was standing next to
him. “Can you do this? Can you climb over this wall?”
“The wall isn’t as tall as the fence back at the church, but the fall on the other side is much higher. But if I can walk the fence up further the drop is lessened.”
Cindy was right. The initial drop on the other side of Shia’s wall was much higher than the fence at the Crossroads of the World; however, if one catwalked on top of the fence, toward the back, only a three-foot drop awaited.
“I’ll go first. Keep your eyes open,” said Paolo. “Are you sure you can stand and walk on the wall?”
“Yes. Hurry, go, before someone sees us.”
Paolo scaled the wall and stood on top of it. He traversed the top of the wall as if it were a pathetic high-wire act, one clumsy step at a time, as the top of the wall was only a foot wide. He dropped down. The bottom of his shirt lifted and his bare belly scraped against the rough edge of the masonry. “Holy hell!”
“What happened?” Cindy whispered loudly.
“I scraped my stomach,” whined Paolo. “I seriously need to lose this weight.”
“Okay, here I come,” said Cindy, as she climbed the wall and dragged her bottom—as if the fence were a pommel horse—toward Paolo.
The professor caught Cindy.
They ducked and stuck to the shadows. Paolo held Cindy up by his shoulder, as they neared the garage.
Before entering the door to the garage, Cindy placed the rondure on the ground and pointed the dowel. The metal sphere rolled through the open door and into the lightless garage. Cindy exhaled and said, “You ready?”
They entered the garage. The faint glow from the white paint of Shia’s Porsche guided them through the darkness. Paolo grabbed Cindy’s wrist, as he heard a voice yelling from inside the house.
“So, what do you do for a living, Nick from near Massapequa?” hollered the voice.
“Is that Shia?” asked Cindy.
“He’s busy talking to a Nick. It doesn’t sound like he’s behind the door,” said Paolo, hushed.
The sphere bumped against the door that led to the house. Cindy slightly opened the door and peered through it. Shia’s kitchen light was on, but no one appeared to be in her sight.
