by K. T. Tomb
Valery was seated in the first row of pews, almost close enough to reach out and touch the coffin, but she refused to stand, to see the man that she had loved, not as secretly as she would have hoped. Her eyes were dry, but she looked almost as disheveled as Mrs. Grindlay had when she had handed them the leather pouch of coins. Her heart was torn and crushed, and her friends were lost on what to do to ease her pain. There was nothing. Robert was dead and she had never felt more alone. Robert’s parents had given her the coin that Robert had slipped into his pocket before leaving that night. The night that he had died, the night that Piers had left him alone and let him die.
What about me? she thought.
She had been furious with him, even if for just a moment, when he had wanted to take his part of the coins and sell them. And now, as she fumbled with the coin in her purse, all she could feel was sadness and regret. Pain that this was one of the last things he had ever touched. She was never giving it back. It was hers, her connection, her last connection to Robert, and she had no intention of ever letting it go.
She pushed the wire rims up on her nose; Robert’s casket only feet away. It wasn’t fair. Why Robert? It could have been any of the others, it should have been Piers. She wanted to walk up to the wooden box, the lush velvet wrapped around the inside, giving Robert his final, eternal comfort. She wanted to shake him awake, pull him to her and show the world that he could not be dead. Not Robert. Not her Robert. But she sat, still and only allowed her thoughts and feelings to surge through her without making a sound or moving. It wasn’t fair. Sheila put a hand on her shoulder, but Valery did nothing to acknowledge the girl’s presence. To hell with Sheila, to hell with Gerald and Julie, and especially, to hell with Piers.
The coin dug into her skin, but Valery squeezed it harder. It was one of the thirty, of that she was more convinced than ever. She felt the power that it possessed coursing through her, giving her strength and helping her see things more clearly. If she willed it enough, if she prayed hard and long enough, perhaps the coin would give her the power to bring Robert back to her.
She could feel Sheila and Gerald behind her, feel the concern in their eyes penetrating the back of her head. She didn’t care. They didn’t know; could never know what she felt. The coin with its softened edges seemed hot in her hand, almost burning with the memory of Robert’s last moments. She wanted to savor them, to taste them, to feel that moment as if she were Robert himself. Finally, she felt the tears streaming down her cheeks, but she made no move to wipe them away. Let them see, let them all see how broken she was. But she wasn’t broken, she was determined. She was sure that Judas’ coins would give her all the answers she needed; would give her the power she needed and desired.
The same thoughts and feelings, yet unspoken, were still coursing through the deeper parts of Valery’s being a few days later when the group of friends attended the
funeral.
Gerald stood next to her as they lowered Robert’s body into its final resting place. It was so disturbing to know that the man he had known would never be again. That all which remained, was an empty shell, and given enough time, his body would decay and rot, and even that shell would no longer exist. What was the purpose of it all? What was the purpose of burying the body when the soul had already escaped? When the only outcome was that it would deteriorate and become a part of the earth around him? Why bother with the coffin as if it were to preserve the body? He thought the whole thing perverse but still watched in wonder and sadness.
He mumbled his own silent prayer, but Valery said nothing. Her body was stone, her face expressionless. None of them were taking it well, but Valery, she was taking it the worst of them all. There was no sign of the sweet, quiet girl that he’d known for so many years. The woman that stood as a statue was cold and cruel. He’d tried to comfort her, but there was nothing to comfort; she too was only a shell. Her emotions were locked within and he could read nothing on her face. As the crowd dispersed, she made no movement to leave Robert’s side. Gerald waited patiently as she only watched the grave, watched the hole where their friend laid, six feet down into the earth. She finally turned and began to slowly walk away. Gerald tried speaking to her one more time, to tear down the invisible barrier that she had erected between her and the world; between her and reality. It was as if she was no longer living on the same plane, but knew something or was experiencing something that the rest of them did not.
“Val?” He gently grabbed her arm, holding her back and forcing her to face him. “Hey, I know this is hard, but you’ve got to talk to us. We are all going to get together tomorrow and I think you should be there. Maybe we can talk about these coins a little more, in memory of both Professor Grindlay and Robert. What do you say?”
Valery’s eyes narrowed, cutting deeply into Gerald, but she said nothing, only jerked her arm from his grasp and rushed away from him. He pursued her, fearing that she might do something stupid in her disheveled state of mind, but was unable to reach her. Sheila caught up with him just as Valery hopped into her car and tore from the parking lot.
“What was that about?”
Gerald sighed. “I asked her to join us tomorrow night. I thought it might be a good thing for us all to talk about something other than all of this death that seems to be surrounding us; if we finished our project in honor of Grindlay, and even for Robert, that it might give us a bit of closure. Especially Val.”
He shook his head sadly. “She wouldn’t even answer me. And when she looked at me before pulling away, it was full of hatred. She was full of hatred. Like I was the one who put that knife into Bobby. Like I was the one that had taken his life.”
Sheila looped an arm through Gerald’s as they walked to their own vehicles.
“She’ll come around. She just mourns differently than the rest of us maybe. And right now, she doesn’t know what to think. None of us do, though. Do we?”
Chapter Four
“Judas returned to his associates at the camp intoxicated with thoughts of grandeur and glory such as he had not had for many a day. He had enlisted with Jesus hoping some day to become a great man in the new kingdom. He, at last, realized that there was to be no new kingdom such as he had anticipated. But he rejoiced in being so sagacious as to trade off his disappointment in failing to achieve glory in an anticipated new kingdom for the immediate realization of honor and reward in the old order, which he now believed would survive, and which he was certain would destroy Jesus and all that he stood for. In its last motive of conscious intention, Judas’s betrayal of Jesus was the cowardly act of a selfish deserter whose only thought was his own safety and glorification, no matter what might be the results of his conduct upon his Master and upon his former associates.” —The Urantia Book 177:4.9
The café was crowded, but that was almost always the case on a college campus in the late afternoon.
They were huddled over a small table, the hard plastic seats digging into their rears. Valery hadn’t shown up, but no one had really expected that she would. She had answered no calls, no texts, and there wasn’t so much as a whisper of movement behind her dorm door when someone knocked.
She was without a roommate, so the only way to force a response out of her was to alert campus authorities. But what were they going to say? That she’s in mourning and doesn’t want to talk to them? Make her come out of the room? No, they decided to let her run through her cycle however she needed, and if holing up for a few days, or even a week, was going to help, then so be it. She would have to come out eventually. Until then, they had the notes, which she had left forgotten on the table at Julie’s house, along with the coin she had taken for her studies shoved inside the pages. The research that she had done was fascinating, especially when compared with Gerald’s findings.
Gerald compared the notes and then went over them again. His tests had determined that the coins were over two thousand years old, just as Valery had thought, and her notes indicated that they did, indeed, come from Israel, tho
ugh Gerald had had little doubt on that front. The bust that adorned the face of the coins was that of Melqart, Herakles, Baal or Beelzebu, depending on who you were at that time, wearing the laurel. On the back of the coin and circling the eagle, had been translated to read ‘Of Tyre the Holy city and city of refuge.’
“Guys?” Gerald looked up from the notes as Sheila, Julie, and Piers patiently waited. “Well, there is nothing definitive here, but these coins were definitely in circulation around the time and place of Jesus’ crucifixion. These,” he motioned to the bag that was sealed tightly in the middle of the table, all of the coins, save the one that Valery held without their knowledge, were bound in the leather bag, “are Tyrian Shekels, which was the currency used at the time. Or rather, they were used as temple tax in late B.C. and early A.D. There are no documents, or none that Val could find or wrote about in her notes, which indicates exactly what currency was used to pay Judas for his betrayal, only that these are certainly a possibility.”
He paused for a moment to gauge their reactions. No one said a word, waiting for him to finish.
“The last known location of the coins is when Judas tossed the coins back at the priests he had sold out Jesus to. There have been theories and stories, but nothing concrete about where they went after that.”
The group was silent for a moment, taking in the information, most of their doubts had been washed away in light of the evidence. Piers was the first to break the silence. He still didn’t look well; Robert’s death hung heavily on him, but he was coming slowly around.
“We can sit here and speculate one way or another, but what’s the reality? We have thirty coins, which are quite possibly the thirty coins. What are the chances of us finding exactly thirty of these coins? I don’t know how they got here, halfway across the world, but I imagine they were never truly lost. Not until they were locked in that tomb, anyhow. They are icons, symbols of the time of Jesus Christ. Not just of the time, but of Jesus himself. Who was going to just bury them and let them be forgotten?”
“I have something to add to all of this,” Julie said suddenly as she slapped a small, red notebook onto the table, rattling the coin pouch. “I did a bit of my own research given what has happened the last couple of days.”
Piers looked at his fiancée incredulously and asked, “When did you do this?”
Julie shrugged.
“You’ve been pretty upset, Babe. I had to do something to keep myself busy. And besides, you know how I like this kind of stuff.”
“What stuff?” asked Sheila, as Julie began flipping through the lined pages scribbled with notes.
“This stuff,” she glanced at him as she spoke. “Piers was pretty freaked out about Bobby’s death. He said it didn’t feel right, that something was off.”
She shook her head, her brown curls dancing around her thin face
“Anyway, the only thing I could think of was these damned coins. And damned they are,” she stated and gave the bag a sideways glance as she plowed through her research. “Based on the theory that these were once the coins that paid for Jesus’ betrayal, I decided to do a bit of my own research. Okay, so we all know about Judas, we know about the coins and how they were thrown back at the priests. But what’s the story with the coins themselves? Why these coins? And what happened to Judas?”
“The coins were lost,” Sheila interjected. “Gerald just pointed that out. And Judas hung himself when he realized the consequences of his actions and that it had cost Jesus his life.” She looked about the group. “We all knew that already.”
Her tone was more than teasing. It was more like scoffing. Gerald came to Julie’s rescue.
“I think she means what happened to him before he hung himself. What happened to his mental state?” He glanced at Julie for confirmation and she nodded. “But what have the coins got to do with it; other than being the symbol of the betrayal that they are already known to be?”
Julie smiled slyly.
“That’s what I’m getting at. I think the coins play a much bigger role than what we’ve been led to believe. From what I’ve found, I’ve come to the conclusion that the coins have been cursed.”
She leaned back in her chair to let her words sink in. She knew they would need more; that her claim would be absurd to them without it, but for the moment, she wanted to see their faces.
“Cursed? Really? I mean, what happened to Bobby is crazy, and I am sure that there is more, but cursed?” Julie had expected the others to protest, but not Piers.
His lack of belief hurt. He knew how she felt about those things, how strongly she believed that there was arcane knowledge hidden from their everyday world. He had always been accepting, but now that she may have evidence of a true application of otherworldly magic, he denounced her in front of their friends.
He saw the hurt and placed a hand on her thigh. “I’m sorry, but what you’re saying is crazy. Cursed? By whom? And why?”
She brushed his hand away and looked at her notes again.
“You don’t have to believe it, but I do. Okay?” She pushed the notebook across the table to Sheila and Gerald. “Look, I was able to trace the coins roughly throughout the years. It’s not precise, but there is a pattern here that makes me believe that these are truly the coins.”
Sheila flipped through the sheets, skimming the penciled scribbles. “How many victims have there been?” she mumbled softly.
“Countless. Like I said, the records aren’t complete, but if you’ll notice, not all of those who possessed the coins died. And somehow, the coins have always remained together, as if the energy draws them together.”
Sheila nodded knowingly but both Gerald and Piers listened in confusion.
“So why did Judas accept the bargain?”
She waited for an answer, but none came.
“Greed. Thirty shekels didn’t amount to much in those days; in fact, it was the price of a slave, so I don’t think it was greed for money, but it was greed nonetheless. Greed for power; for recognition, perhaps? If you look at my notes…”
Sheila was still skimming through them.
“You’ll see that there are numerous documented cases of similar circumstances. So, is it so hard to believe that God would have cursed those coins? That because of Judas’ actions, even if they were foreseen, he would condemn any man who held greed in his heart, greed such as what was in Judas’ heart, to death? Is that so hard to believe?”
Piers leaned back on the stool, his hands stretched out behind his head. “I see what you’re trying to say, but random deaths do not indicate a curse.”
“Actually,” Sheila jumped to Julie’s rescue. “Based on these notes, it makes a lot of sense. I mean, it’s still a crazy idea, but it’s not so far-fetched.”
She handed the notebook over to Gerald, who thumbed through the pages with thick, clumsy fingers.
“Do you see it?”
He puffed out a wisp of air as he closed the notes.
“Far-fetched, but reasonable to have come to the conclusion; still, we’re talking about curses here.” He paused, giving out an involuntary, unbelieving grunt. “Curses. We are talking about an object having magical properties, to some extent. To bring death to the greedy, right? That’s what we’re talking about here?”
“I know it sounds a bit insane. But look at what happened with Professor Grindlay. And then what happened with Robert. Grindlay we already know was a freak accident, but,” she glanced at Piers, “Robert’s may have been the same. If the guy who stabbed him was just as confused as Piers remembers him, maybe he didn’t have control over the situation. Maybe there was a higher power at work there. Maybe it was divine intervention.”
Piers spoke up, only barely masking his sudden anger at her explanation of Robert’s death.
“You want me to believe that my best friend died because of a curse? What the hell did he do to deserve that! Why in the hell would God single out Robert?”
He slammed a fist onto the table. Julie tried to
grab his hand to calm him, but he pulled away.
“I’m not saying he deserved it, but what I’m saying is that I believe it’s the curse. The curse took him.” She huffed in frustration. “Look, you remember how he was acting that night, don’t you? You remember how he was always acting. He was selfish. He was greedy. I miss him too, and it doesn’t matter why he died because it doesn’t change the fact that he did. But if there is a curse here, then don’t you think we should pay it a little bit of attention?”
Piers wanted nothing more to do with the conversation. He shoved away from the table and stormed out of the café, grabbing the attention of half of the coffee sippers. Her elbows on the table and her head in her hands, Julie sighed.
“Don’t let him get to you,” Sheila said, as she reached a thick freckled arm across and wrapped her fingers around Julie’s hand, prying it from her head. “He’s just upset, is all. He’ll get over it, but he needs a bit of time. I just don’t think he’s ready to hear all of this just yet.”
Julie nodded as Sheila pushed away from the table.
“I need to get going too, but let me leave you two with what I found out.”
“What’s that?” Gerald inquired.
Sheila gave him a sly smile.
“I went to speak with a numismatist.”
Julie looked up, her eyes wide.
Sheila continued. “I was just curious is all. Don’t go giving me that look.”
She slipped one single sheet from the envelope and unfolded the paper before her friends.
“Millions, you guys. Look at all those zero’s. And we have thirty of them. Sold to the right buyer, and we could all be set for life. Just think of it.”
She gave a small, drunk giggle as she pushed a bright red curl from her eyes.
“Didn’t you hear any of what I said?” It took all Julie had to keep her voice below a shrill scream. “Did you read my notes even? Greed! Sheila, greed is the trigger!”
