Young Whit and the Shroud of Secrecy

by Phil Lollar

  Μαργαριτάρι της μεγάλης τιμής

  It was Greek. It translated as, “pearl of great price.”

  Μεγάλη διάρκεια ζωής

  “Long life.”

  And finally the last portion I could read.

  Τα ενδύματα του Ιησού

  I knew at that moment that I held a treasure the value of which could not be counted.

  I gently laid the cloth down in the casket, returned the lid, and . . .

  That was as far as his father had gotten in the translation. Johnny replaced the pages in the book and stacked everything back in the order he had found it, contemplating what he had read.

  Okay, he thought, so the cloth in the story healed people, and I have a cloth that also seems to heal . . . and the cloth in the story was one church saints found hundreds and hundreds of years ago. But what does that mean? Obviously, Dad thinks the two cloths are connected—or maybe even the same cloth. But how can that be? And if it is the same, then how did it end up in Grandpa Jackson’s possession, and why did he want me to have it?

  There had to be more than this. He looked around the room, swiveling the chair toward the credenza. He stopped suddenly.

  The key to the credenza sat atop it in a little tray.

  Johnny’s mind raced back to several weeks prior, when his father had given him the Whittaker Family Bible to do research for a school project. The Bible was stuffed with family history—letters and even journal entries swelled it to half-again its original size. The Bible was now up in Johnny’s room. But prior to handing it over, his father had always kept it locked in the credenza. And when he took it out to give to Johnny, he removed two pages from it, placed them back in the drawer, and locked it up again.

  Were those pages part of this? But how could they be, since Harold had locked them away before Johnny had given Emmy the words from the journal to give to Harold? His father was being so cagey and secretive about everything else, perhaps he had been doing research on the journal and the cloth for much longer than he let on.

  There was only one way to find out. Johnny knew he shouldn’t do it, but since he was already there and committed, he snatched the key, unlocked the drawer, and pulled it open.

  The papers from the Whittaker Family Bible were right on top. He took them out and read through them as fast as he could. They contained a journal entry from Harold:

  January 15, 1928 - Had a terrific row today with Jackson and Janneth. On the way home from U. of E., I met the Kinglassie town doctor. He told me not to worry, Johnny was perfectly fine, and everything was okay at the house—though he didn’t appreciate being dragged away from his afternoon ‘libation’ for a prank. I raced home and I found everything with Johnny as the doctor had described. He was sitting on his mother’s lap, happily munching a biscuit. The two adults, however, had a peculiar look about them, and I noticed both they and Johnny had changed clothes since the morning. I insisted they tell me what was going on, but neither of them would say anything—wretched Scottish stubbornness. I searched the cottage but found none of their clothing from that morning. I confronted J & J about it. They still said nothing, though Janneth started crying. I demanded to know what had happened to my son. But all Jackson would say was, “As you can see, the boy is fine.” It was the latest in a string of such slights and disrespect, and I’m afraid I didn’t handle it very well. I toyed with the idea of going to the constable, but instead, I gave them an ultimatum: Either they tell me what had happened or I would leave. Neither of them said a word. So I packed a bag, returned to the university, and told my department head that I accepted the research sabbatical he had offered me last week. I leave for Europe tomorrow, and the Holy Land after that. I hope things will be much improved when I return. If I return.

  At that moment, Johnny startled from a creak in the hallway floorboards.

  Someone was coming.

  He shoved the papers back into the credenza drawer, closed and locked it, and had just put the key back on the little tray when the door opened. Heart racing, he swiveled around in the chair to see—

  “Charlie!” Johnny whispered urgently. “What are you doing up? You should be in bed!”

  “So should you! Dad’s gonna tan your hide if he finds out you’ve been in here,” Charlie responded. “Why are you in here?”

  “I was just . . . I couldn’t sleep, and . . . I . . . Never you mind. Get to bed.”

  “I’m telling,” she said, leaving the room.

  Johnny lurched forward, turned off the lamp, rushed out, and grabbed hold of Charlie’s arm before she could reach the stairs.

  “Wait!” He put his hand over her mouth and whispered softly in her ear. “Shhh. Come here.” He cocked his head, pointing to the kitchen, and they both tiptoed down the hall to it. He removed his hand. “You want some milk?”

  “Okay,” she said warily.

  He retrieved the milk from the icebox and poured her a glass. She drank.

  “Please, Charlie, don’t tell Dad. Or Mom.”

  “I’m gonna. You’ll be in big trouble,” she stated imperiously, then took another drink.

  Johnny shook his head. “Well, okay. I guess we’ll both be in big trouble then . . .”

  Charlie stopped drinking and lowered the glass. “Whadaya mean ‘both’? Why would I be in trouble?”

  Johnny gestured around them. “You’re here, aren’t you? Wandering around the house in the middle of the night, drinking milk. You know Mom doesn’t like you to do that.”

  She looked panicked and set down the glass. “But you gave it to me!”

  He shook his head. “You think that’ll matter?”

  Charlie’s face puckered up, and she looked ready to cry.

  Johnny patted her on the shoulder soothingly. “It’s okay,” he said. “We can work something out.”

  Charlie swallowed. “Like what?”

  Johnny pretended to think. “Mmmm, how about this: If you don’t tell Dad about me, I won’t tell Mom about you.”

  He could see the wheels turning in her mind. He needed to sweeten the pot. “And if you don’t tell . . . I’ll do your chores for a week.”

  Charlie’s eyes narrowed. “Two weeks.”

  Johnny frowned and nodded. “Fine. Two weeks.”

  “And you have to play dolls with me or anything I want.”

  She was a clever little rascal. He shook his head. “Guess I’ll have to tell Mom . . .”

  “Okay, okay!” she said quickly. “No dolls.”

  “Good. Now let’s get to bed. And remember: not a word.”

  “Not a word,” she repeated with a smile.

  They crept up the stairs and into her room. She crawled into bed and whispered, “Nite,” as if nothing had happened. Then she pulled up the covers, turned over, and quickly fell asleep.

  Back in his room, Johnny’s mind reeled with what he had learned.

  His mother and grandfather had apparently covered up something.

  That “something” had apparently happened to him.

  And his father had abandoned them both because of it.

  There would be no sleep tonight.

  Chapter Fourteen

  There would be little sleep for the next few nights, in fact.

  Though the days passed without incident, at night, Johnny’s mind would not let go of what he had learned. Even when he did drift off, he would return to his strange, unnerving, falling dream, but now the dream ended with his father turning away and walking off into the mist.

  Johnny’s sleep was also disrupted by the fact that Saturday was coming, and he, Emmy, Paul, and Steve were supposed to go back to Granville House that night to investigate the coffin.

  He hated coffins.

  At breakfast Saturday morning, Fiona greeted Johnny at the table with a cheery, “Good morning, Sleepyhead.”

  Johnny managed a weak smile. If she only knew. Then she said the best thing she could have said.

  “I’m going r
iding today,” she announced, turning over the bacon frying in a pan. “Care to join me?”

  Johnny’s heart leapt. Riding was one of the things he enjoyed the most. Fiona taught him when they were in Scotland, commenting on how he seemed born to it.

  “That’d be great!” he answered. The distraction of a ride would be just the thing to relax him and break him out of this melancholia needling at his spirits. In fact, at that moment he wouldn’t have minded riding as far away from his troubles as the horse would take him.

  His father walked into the room, sullen. “Has anyone been in my study?” he asked.

  Johnny’s heart fell. He was finding it difficult to look at his father without scowling. Now he tried to look as disinterested as possible, though he was certain his father knew instantly that he was guilty.

  “John?” Harold asked.

  Johnny’s bottom lip poked out as if he were mulling the question over. “Not me,” he said.

  Fiona dished up the breakfast as Charlie entered the room. “No one would be poking around in that gloomy old study of yours,” Fiona said. “What it needs is a thorough cleaning.”

  Charlie looked at Johnny. “I know who’s been in your study,” she said.

  Johnny glared at her and nodded his head slightly toward Fiona.

  “Who?” Harold asked.

  Charlie smiled. “It was McDuff. I saw him go in last night.”

  “Well, I don’t suppose he knows the rules,” Fiona said. “At least not yet.” She sat, and Harold said grace.

  Johnny didn’t hear a word of it. He looked up as his father prayed and saw Charlie grinning at him.

  He wanted to throttle her. Instead he quickly ate his breakfast, then did his chores, and hers.

  Two hours later, Johnny sat astride a bay mare in full gallop, Fiona two lengths behind. He suspected she held back so he could win, but that didn’t stop him from enjoying the race.

  After a good workout, they dismounted by a small stream, giving their horses, Toby and Earl, a rest and a cool drink of water.

  “You’re quiet today, John Avery,” Fiona said as she stroked Earl’s mane. “Everything all right?”

  Johnny leaned against an elm tree shading the stream. “There’s nothing wrong with being quiet, is there?”

  “Nae. Only sometimes silence is more deafening than a scream. And more isolating than a brick wall.”

  “Everything’s fine,” he said, which he knew was a lie. Right now so much of his life felt like a lie, or at least a deception. He couldn’t talk about the coffin, because he and the other kids would get in trouble for trespassing and being careless. He couldn’t talk about the hobo who came into their house, because his parents thought he was being prejudiced. He couldn’t talk about the journal, because his father told him not to. He couldn’t talk about what he’d learned about Harold. And he had lied about not being in his father’s study. Lies are piling up like firewood, he thought.

  “Come, lad,” Fiona said, “you yourself said you’ve been all tied up in knots lately. Don’t try to avoid what the good Lord may be bringing your way.”

  Johnny’s brow furrowed. “’Bringing my way’? What do you mean?”

  Fiona rubbed Earl’s chin. “Sometimes God needs to . . . get us out of our own way. We tangle our lives up so badly that God has to do something to get us untangled.”

  “Such as?”

  “Oh, could be any number of things. Hard times, good times, wise advice, puzzling circumstances. Think of those people in the Bible that Jesus healed. The only reason they experienced His healing was because they were sick in the first place.”

  “So, you mean that God makes us sick . . . so He can heal us?”

  “Nae, I wouldn’t say that, lad. But God can use anything for the good. The important thing to do—is pay attention.”

  Earl whinnied. “I believe Earl here is eager for another race. Last one home’s a rotten egg!” she said, climbing into the saddle.

  Johnny mounted his horse, and they had a spirited race back to the stable. As they rode, Fiona’s words echoed in his mind: God can use anything for the good.

  He decided to find out if those words were true.

  Tonight. At Granville House.

  He would take the healing cloth. And try it on Steve.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Johnny scampered over to the porch roof’s edge, grabbed the trellis, and began climbing down. When his head cleared the porch roof, he glimpsed someone standing in the dark, looking at him. He let out a muffled yelp of surprise and literally jumped off the trellis, flying catlike away from the porch, landing on his feet on the ground below.

  It was Emmy. “What are you doing?” she whispered loudly.

  Johnny’s heart was pounding so hard he thought it might burst out of his chest. “What am I doing?” he answered. “Are you trying to scare me to death?”

  She shook her head. “You’re so jumpy! Who did you think would be standing here?”

  “No one. It’s midnight! Didn’t I tell you I’d come get you at your place?”

  “No. You’ve barely said a word to me since you nearly bit my head off the morning after Halloween,” she scolded. “I wasn’t even sure you’d come tonight, after that.”

  They started walking toward Granville House.

  “I’m sorry about that,” Johnny said. “I shouldn’t have taken things out on you.”

  Emmy shrugged. “That’s all right. I figured something happened.” She paused, then added, “Did something happen?”

  Yes, he thought. “No,” he said.

  “Does that mean something did but you don’t wanna talk about it?”

  He sighed. “Maybe.”

  She nodded. “Okay, message received.”

  She looked a little offended, so he said, “But thanks for asking.”

  Emmy smiled at him. Then she looked away and asked, “Are you still nervous about seeing the coffin again?”

  He wasn’t ashamed to admit it. “I guess. You?”

  “Actually, I’m kind of excited. What do you think we’ll find in it?”

  “I don’t wanna think about it,” he replied. “I just wanna do it and get it over with.” He took off running, and she followed.

  The whole way there, Johnny kept pondering how he would use the cloth on Steve and get Steve to agree to it. He really wanted to do it in private, and without getting Steve’s hopes up. He decided he’d have to wing it and figure it out on the spur of the moment. “God can use anything for good,” Fiona had said. The cloth had worked on McDuff—or so it seemed. He supposed that could have been his imagination playing tricks on him. He would find out tonight, one way or the other.

  Johnny saw Paul standing in front of the gates to the house—alone.

  “Where’s Steve?” Johnny asked.

  “Mom took him to the hospital in Durham,” Paul replied.

  “What? What happened? Is he okay?” Emmy exclaimed. “He wasn’t hurt when he fell through the floor, was he?”

  Paul shook his head. “I don’t think so. He just gets sick like this. He has to go to the hospital a lot.” He sighed sadly. “One of these times he’s not going to come home.”

  Emmy hugged him. “I’m so sorry, Paul,” she said.

  Johnny stood back. He remembered the smell of death when his mother and grandfather died. He could make out the same odor tonight.

  “I’m not going in there,” Paul said, pointing to Granville House. “I just came to tell you. I’d better get back before my dad finds out. He never sleeps when Seve gets stick.” He looked down. “When Steve gets sick.” Paul walked away, shoulders sagging as though they carried the weight of the world.

  Johnny and Emmy exchanged glances. “What do you want to do?” he asked.

  “Cry,” Emmy said. “But we’re here. We should check it out.”

  As they walked up to the gate, Johnny saw another symbol, this one freshly carved into the gatepost. It looked like a hat with an arrow pointing off the brim.
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  “What do you suppose that means?” Emmy whispered.

  “Something about a pointy-brimmed hat, I guess,” Johnny answered.

  They walked through the gate and up to the front door. It was cracked open, so they slowly pushed it wide enough to sneak in. They walked across the weathered floorboards into the adjacent room where they had all fallen in, stopping at the precipice of the hole.

  Johnny wished he had never seen this coffin. He knew his fear of it was irrational. His Grandpa Jackson used to say that you only fear what you don’t know. In this case, Johnny decided he would rather not know anyway. Still, in order to save face, he couldn’t turn back now. He steeled himself against his fear and gingerly climbed down into the crawl space, helping Emmy in after him.

  He turned on his flashlight, got on his hands and knees, gritted his teeth, and crawled over to the coffin. Emmy followed behind.

  Through the yellow light, Johnny could see the coffin was quite old. The wood had warped over time, and winding trails chewed by termites along the length of the boards gave it the look of an antique road map through hilly terrain.

  On the lid were drawn what seemed to be patterns similar to those that might be found on a quilt. He looked them over carefully, committing the shapes to memory. Emmy crouched beside the coffin, looking as though she were about to be sick.

  “Are you okay?” Johnny asked, hoping she didn’t ask him the same question.

  “You’ll know when we open the lid. If a body’s inside, I can’t promise anything.”

  They were poised to lift the lid when they heard voices at the front door.

  “Did you leave this open?” the first voice asked. It was a man’s voice.

  “Yeah, prob’ly,” the second voice answered—also a man’s. “Sorry about that, Boss.”

  Johnny quickly turned off his flashlight and motioned for Emmy to crawl back under the floor and away from the opening. They scurried backward, feeling their way through the darkness.

  The men headed straight for them. Within seconds their footsteps were immediately above Johnny and Emmy, moving toward the hole. They stopped, turned a flashlight on, and shone it into the opening. The first man spoke again. Johnny instantly recognized the voice this time.