Unlocking the Kingdom

by Jeff Dixon

  “How weird is this?” Kate leaned in over his shoulder and watched through the rain.

  Kate and Punky had trudged their way into the cemetery. After pausing in the gazebo, they noticed a flashlight beam moving near the rear of the cemetery. Carefully and quietly moving from under cover, they had passed an old well, crouched behind a few grave markers, used a tree for a sight block, and gotten as close as they possibly could without being detected. As they first started tracking the beam of light, it was moving from a row of trees toward a clump of tombstones. They had both noticed the unusual tree-shaped object rising out of the ground—the very object they now watched Grayson Hawkes digging at.

  Soaked completely through, they hid behind an oversized tombstone and watched with curious disbelief.

  “What is he digging with?” Kate spoke quietly.

  “His hands,” Punky whispered.

  “So he didn’t come here planning to dig.”

  Kate Young had always been smart and had an ability to cut through the clutter to get at the heart of a situation. That was a trait that had made her a powerful interviewer. At times it overwhelmed the people she was interviewing, but in other moments it had created some memorable and moving moments that were captured forever on film. Time would be the judge as to what kind of moment they were capturing right now.

  “Apparently not,” Punky agreed. “And he’s looking for something that must be very valuable. Or why not wait until it isn’t raining or come back when it’s daylight to find it?”

  “Whatever he is looking for, it must be important.” Kate repositioned herself, as her foot sunk in the mud. “Because the chief creative architect of the Walt Disney Company is on his knees, digging in a graveyard, in the middle of the night.”

  “It will be a surprising documentary, won’t it?” Punky smiled, as he continued to capture the images.

  “Look!” Kate pointed excitedly. “He found something.”

  The camera lens zoomed in, as Hawk pushed back some additional dirt and pulled out a buried package. It was about a foot long, wrapped in some type of cloth, and secured with a rope wrapped multiple times around it. Hawk slumped forward for a moment, then carefully and respectfully began replacing the dirt. A few minutes later, he was patting down the ground, on his hands and knees, to make it look like nothing had been displaced.

  “Now he’s refilling the hole,” Punky commented as he watched the close-up he now had in frame.

  “Did you hear that?” Kate whispered.

  Punky jumped a little. “Hear what?”

  “I just heard what sounded like a branch break.” Kate was urgently looking around, trying to stay hidden while searching for the source of the noise.

  “How can you hear anything over the rain?”

  “I’m telling you, I heard something besides the rain.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  * * *

  HAWK HAD REVERENTLY AND METICULOUSLY tried to put all the dirt and grass back in place. He had felt uncomfortable digging in the graveyard. He understood how people were buried in Florida and knew that digging at the base of the gravestone was no worse than digging in your own backyard. Yet it was a graveyard, and something about digging there just didn’t sit right. He had been almost ready to give up when he touched the cloth wrapping. Quickly he had traced the shape and dug it out. He had no idea what he had found. It was a foot-long cylindrical package, wrapped in burlap and bound excessively with a rustic, thin rope tied off at one end. Finishing his impromptu landscaping project, he’d immediately turned his thoughts to getting out of the cemetery. He would open the package in the car.

  Straightening his back and rising to his feet, he securely gripped the discovery in his left hand. Absently shaking his other hand, he attempted to shake some of the dirt and mud off from his excavation. Aunt Jessie’s special delivery had been found. It was time to get out and go home.

  Hawk felt the air rush out of his body, as he was struck from his right side. Something had come flying out of the darkness and hit him. As he crashed to the ground, his brain tried to process the alarms sounding inside his body. There was somebody on top of him. He had been blindsided from his right. Someone had hit him in the ribs and driven him to the ground.

  Hawk felt his grip tighten on the secret package. He rolled to his stomach beneath his attacker. Struggling for leverage, Hawk got one knee supported on the ground beneath him, which allowed him to drive an elbow backward. The chief creative architect felt his elbow connect with something solid, and the person behind him moved off.

  Hawk spun to his right to await the next onslaught. As soon as he started to move to his feet, he was hit again, this time from the front, and driven backward. Hawk instinctively wrapped his arms around the attacker and pulled back, using the momentum of the attack to buy him a few precious moments. His back hit the ground, and the air rushed out of him for the second time in a matter of seconds. He felt his left hand open and the package slip from his grasp on the ground.

  Tightening his right hand into a fist, Hawk continued to keep his arms wrapped around his attacker. He aimed the fist at the side of his assailant’s head. The punch landed with more effect than Hawk had thought it would, and the attacker rolled off him.

  Hawk was now trying to force air back into his lungs as he turned to his side. His mind was barking out dueling instructions to his body. First, reclaim the special delivery from Aunt Jessie before his assailant could grab it. Second, incapacitate his attacker and find out who it was and why they were here.

  The attacker’s ski mask had been knocked askew. He was busy straightening it, giving Hawk a chance to scour the ground for the cylinder.

  Much to Hawk’s disappointment, the attacker was lying on top of it. In that instant, the enemy finished straightening his mask, and a grin slowly formed in the mouth hole of the mask. Reaching underneath him, he grabbed the package and, with a quick glance at Hawk, sprang to his feet and sprinted across the graveyard. He was heading for the side of the cemetery where the fence was torn down.

  Scrambling to get his legs under him, Hawk was on his feet and running after the man. Lightning flashed, illuminating the entire cemetery once again. Mud flew as Hawk gave pursuit, thunder bounced through the black clouds. In the next flash of lightning, he could see he was gaining on the assailant. Through the darkness, Hawk saw the attacker was heading toward the opening in the fence near all the discarded trash. Hoping he was correct, he veered to his left and tried to take a shorter route.

  Lightning danced across the sky and picked up intensity, as the thunder shook every tree in the graveyard. The lightning again gave Hawk a strobe-lit glance across the gravestones, and he saw another figure running alongside his attacker. The second man leaped toward the masked man, knocking him to his knees.

  Hawk changed direction again to cut off his assailant. As he ran, he watched the masked man rise to his feet and swing wildly at the second man. The second man absorbed the blow and staggered backward. Hawk blinked, trying to see through the rain, waiting for the next flash of lightning. In the next blast of brilliance from the stormy sky, Hawk no longer saw the second man; he had vaporized into air as quickly as he had materialized. Only the masked man could be seen, still heading for the side of the cemetery. However, Hawk had the angle and was going to catch him.

  The last few strides gobbled up the distance between them, and Hawk went airborne to tackle the fleeing man. Hitting him in the small of the back, he felt the man buckle and begin to fall. Hawk drove him to the ground and, in one motion, snatched the package from his hand. The assailant kicked wildly, and he deflected each kick, looking for a way to get closer to launch a second attack.

  “Help!” A female voice called through the rain.

  Hawk turned in the direction of the cry for help. That momentary distraction allowed the attacker to scamper to his feet and continue toward the edge of the cemetery. Hawk had the package, so his instinct to give chase was placed on hold to answer the cry for
help. Getting to his feet and moving toward the cry, Hawk heard the engine of a car fire to life in the distance. Turning back, he saw the interior lights of a car glow as the attacker jumped into a waiting vehicle sitting in the dark, on the dirt road beside the cemetery. A tidal wave of dirt flew out from behind the back tires, as the car sped away toward the main road, leaving a cloud of dust that was being picked apart by the projectile drops of rain falling from the sky.

  Pushing on, he saw a woman standing in the graveyard. As Hawk drew closer, he recognized her: Kate Young. Drenched by the rain, standing in the cemetery, barefoot and still wearing what she had on when he had met her at church, she looked more than out of place in the stormy weather. She turned and was looking down at something. At what, Hawk could not yet tell.

  “Kate?” Hawk called out as he approached.

  “Hawk, we need your help.” She waved him over.

  Closing in on her position, he noticed she was standing next to a gaping hole in the ground. He realized it was a freshly dug grave that you couldn’t see until you got right up on it. Arriving at the graveside, he followed her finger as she pointed down into the hole. There, stretched out in the bottom of the hole, was Punky Zane. Hawk stopped at the side of the grave and looked down.

  Kate grabbed his arm. “We need to get him out.” She pulled back her wet hair from her face.

  “Mr. Zane?” Hawk placed his hands on his knees and looked into the hole. “Are you hurt?”

  “Not bad, I don’t think.” Punky shifted to his feet and looked up into the rain, toward the two above him. “I messed my arm up, but other than that, I’m fine . . . I think.”

  “What are you doing here?” Hawk looked at Kate, knowing they had followed him but hoping for a less complicated answer than the one he suspected.

  “We followed you, of course.” Kate wrinkled her forehead. “We saw you get attacked, and we were trying to stop whoever it was.” Then she stepped back and gestured down at her outfit. “Punky was doing most of the trying to stop him. I couldn’t really keep up. It looked like Punky hit him, but then just disappeared. When I caught up, I found him here.”

  Hawk had heard of people who asked reporters to bury a story. Facing Kate in the driving rain, he wondered if he could convince her to leave what she had just seen here in the graveyard. Instantly, he knew it would not be that easy.

  “I didn’t see the hole in the dark.” Punky waved to get their attention. “If you could give me a hand please, I need some help getting out of here.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  * * *

  THE RAIN SUBSIDED, AS THE MUSTANG cut through the rolling fog that had come in behind the storm. The headlights threw a blast of brilliance against the cloud that enveloped them. After pulling Punky Zane from the empty grave, the three had emerged from the cemetery, much to the relief of Allie Crossman. Although she had not seen anything that had transpired, she had been startled by a car appearing from a side road that nearly struck her vehicle as she waited. Upon seeing Hawk, Kate, and Punky exit the graveyard, she was shocked at how dirty they looked. Covered in mud, soaked from the storm, and with Punky supporting his arm with his other wrist, the three looked as though they were walking out of a battlefield.

  As they arrived at the car, they concluded that Punky was not hurt too badly. Hawk suggested he have the arm x-rayed, but the director balked at that idea. After a few moments of silent awkwardness, the four prepared to leave Paisley. Kate suggested she should ride back to the resort with Hawk. Hawk tried to suggest she should go back with her Total Access crew. He reminded her they were officially scheduled to begin shooting video tomorrow. She countered by reminding him that according to her watch, it was now after midnight, which technically meant the tomorrow he had been referring to was already upon them.

  Her satisfied smile convinced him she was not going to settle for any other arrangement. He relented—Allie would drive Punky back to the Contemporary Resort, where Hawk was taking Kate as well.

  Now Hawk intensely studied the road in front of them. Visibility was limited but not impossible, and he felt himself growing more uneasy now that they were in the car together. He became aware that Kate was paying no attention to the road but looking directly at him from the passenger seat. “It’s rude to stare,” Hawk said matter-of-factly.

  “Oh, thanks for pointing that out.” She continued to look at him.

  Hawk shifted in his seat and looked at her longer than he had intended. He noticed again how disheveled she was after her excursion through the graveyard. He also noticed that she was a beautiful mess, but a mess nevertheless.

  “Eyes on the road, mister.” She pointed her manicured index finger toward the windshield. “We already look like we’ve been in a wreck. Let’s not get in one now so we don’t merely look the part.”

  Hawk knew once they had broken the silence, the questions would start coming. He wasn’t prepared to answer them. Especially since she had been there at the cemetery. He had hoped to control the interview, and although Juliette had warned him of what to expect, he had hoped he could limit the access Kate and her production crew would have to him. Now they were in a car with a fair distance to travel, and he couldn’t escape her interrogation. He would have questions if it were him. He braced for what was getting ready to rocket across the seat toward him.

  To his surprise, Kate remained silent. She sat in the passenger seat, slightly turned toward him, continuing to stare. The gaze made him feel incredibly uncomfortable, and occasionally he would cut his eyes in her direction. Since her reprimand earlier to keep his eyes on the road, he had done just that. The silence was deafening, and he found himself weighing whether it was better to ride in awkward silence or have her peppering him with questions he did not want to answer. If she was as good as Juliette had said at being an investigative journalist, then what she was doing right now might actually be a part of a well-thought-out strategy to get him to talk. He never should have agreed to the documentary.

  She raised her chin slightly. “I bet right about now, you’re wishing you had turned down our request to do a special about you . . . aren’t you?” she asked, as though she already knew the answer.

  “Trying to read my mind?” he parried, a bit stunned that she had nailed the very thought he had been wrestling with.

  “I would be having second thoughts if I were you.”

  “OK, so I’m having second thoughts.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “What do you mean?” Hawk let the words linger before he continued. “What am I going to do?”

  “Yes, what are you going to do?” She smiled and pointed back to the windshield to get him to look at the road. “Are you going to have us thrown out and cancel? You can do that, you know.”

  “I might.” Hawk pondered what she said. The thought had crossed his mind. That solution might be the best.

  “Of course . . .” She leaned in a little closer and spoke softly. “Then I would have this footage of Grayson Hawkes digging up a grave in an old cemetery . . . that I would have to create my own commentary for and draw my own conclusions about. . . . I just don’t see how that plays out very well for you.”

  “Hmmm . . .” Hawk felt his pulse coursing in his throat. She was right. The possibility of sending them away disappeared into the fog shrouding the car.

  “What’s in the package you found?”

  “Don’t know, haven’t opened it yet.”

  “Let’s open it now.”

  “Nope.”

  “So . . . what were you doing in that cemetery?”

  “Paying my respects, of course.” He shrugged. “What else do people do when they visit cemeteries?”

  “Your respects?” She laughed. “Most people don’t pay their respects in a blinding rainstorm, in the middle of the night, by digging up a grave.”

  “I didn’t dig up a grave.” He measured what he was about to say next. “I was digging around a tombstone.”

  “OK,
fair enough . . . you were digging around a tombstone.” She shook her head. “Whose tombstone and why?”

  They were back on Interstate 4, the main thoroughfare through Orlando, Florida. Eventually, as they exited the city, they would find the multiple exits that would lead them back to Walt Disney World. He didn’t answer her question. He simply drove. The fog began to melt away and the night became clearer, as he pushed through the downtown area. Kate Young continued to stare at him. He knew she was waiting for an answer, but he wasn’t sure what answer to give her. Minutes passed, and still they were silent. Finally, she broke that silence once again.

  “Did you not hear my question?”

  “Yes, I heard you.” He paused, rolling his shoulders backward to chase away the tension. “Is this off the record?”

  “Off the record?” She burst into sincere, rich laughter. “You’re kidding, right?” She studied his face as though calculating whether he was making a joke, then gave him a minute nod. “I find the chief creative architect of the Walt Disney Company braving a storm, driving an hour to visit a cemetery in the middle of the night. He digs around a tombstone, finds a package, gets attacked, I capture it all on film . . . and you want to know if the conversation is off the record? Seriously?”

  “I am serious.” Hawk jerked his head toward her with his jaw set. “Off the record.”

  “Hawk, all I have to do is show the footage we grabbed of you tonight, and you will spend the next three months trying to clean up and spin it.”

  She exhaled loudly. “I’ll just explain how we got the footage, what happened when you were attacked, and you will have to deal with the firestorm that follows. You can’t explain what we saw by just saying ‘no comment.’ You really don’t understand how to deal with the press, do you?”

  The exit to Walt Disney World was in front of them. Hitting the blinker arm with more force than he had intended drew her attention away from his face to the steering wheel. Her eyes grew huge as he cut it sharply and twisted the car onto the exit ramp without decelerating. He maintained his speed and handled the curve masterfully, as he had learned at the Richard Petty Driving Experience on the Walt Disney World Speedway. It was one his favorite things to do.