by Cailyn Lloyd
Nate reconsidered the room from all angles. The entry from above was too narrow. The left corner of the sitting room was an imposing wall of plaster spread over the bricks beneath. A door there seemed unlikely. On the opposite side, the paneled wall of the Hall by the fireplace made perfect sense. There had to be a hidden door behind the paneling. Nate searched every inch of the wall for a catch or release but found nothing.
The solution was simple. Carefully remove the paneling and he would be in.
Armed with a small arched pry bar, Nate worked the grooves and joints in the paneling, teasing exposed edges, easing pieces free. It was a delicate and tedious operation. The wall was built with dozens of jointed pieces of wood like a parquet floor, held in place with glue and dowels, but not a single nail. It took almost thirty minutes to open a two-by-two section of the paneling, a section that contained two dozen pieces of wood, each an inch thick and hand hewn. To his dismay, he faced a solid brick wall.
Rather ironic, he mused. Perhaps he was wrong. Maybe it wasn’t a hiding place. Maybe it was a bricked-up chimney or some other abandoned space of no importance. He’d come too far to stop. Had to look inside even if it was empty.
Nate then noticed a faint bass tone resonating through the house. What the hell was that sound? A chill passed through him as he remembered the sensation, the panic attack he’d experienced upstairs. He shook it off, needed to solve this mystery first. He grabbed a chisel from his toolbox and attacked the mortar between the bricks—tedious and gritty work. By the time Nate loosened and removed the first brick, ten minutes had ticked away on the grandfather clock.
Jesus, this will take forever!
At this rate, it would be midnight before he finished. That wouldn’t do. He grabbed a wide flat chisel and smacked on each exposed joint, working top to bottom, creating a web of hairline cracks. Another ten minutes disappeared. Sweating, his face pasted with grit and brick particles, Nate stopped to catch his breath and looked around. Fine dust was suspended in the air, settling on every object in the room. Mortar chips littered the floor, sent flying by the chisel. It would take an hour just to clean up the mess. A vision of an empty room beyond the bricks haunted him. Perhaps the only coins in there were already in his pocket. Still, he had to know.
It was time for brute force. He grabbed the ten-pound hammer and swung it in an arc, striking the center of the bricks. The impact shook the wall; a framed print fell to the floor.
“Jesus Christ!”
Somewhere, a door slammed shut. The low bass tone grew more insistent. The floor shuddered and a nail popped out of the floor, landing at his feet. He scarcely noticed. Angry now, he wasn’t going to be denied. He swung at the bricks again and again. The center bowed inward as the cracked mortar joints grated against each other. Brick chips flew everywhere as the air filled with dust. Three looping swings sent the center group of bricks tumbling into the hidden room, and another couple of whacks knocked the remainder loose, leaving a jagged opening. Nate let the sledgehammer slide to the ground and leaned on the handle, panting and wheezing in gasps. Another door slammed upstairs.
What was with the doors?
He looked inside but could see nothing. It was too dark. Afraid his work had been for nothing, he reached for the flashlight—
The front door slammed. Footsteps on the hardwood floor.
Damn it!
Someone was home.
Eighteen
Lucas walked into the Hall, stopped and gaped with stunned disbelief.
The room was in shambles. Nate stood, covered in dust near a jagged hole in the wall, a cheesy grin on his face.
“Jesus Christ, Nate. What the hell are you doing?”
“Shut up and listen.” Nate quickly outlined his discovery: the hidden room, the gold coins in the basement, his conclusion that more lay inside.
Lucas was skeptical. “So, what’d you find?”
“I don’t know yet. I was about to look when you came in.”
Lucas reached for the light.
“Not so fast, dude. I found it, I’m looking first.”
Nate flicked the light on, leaned over, and stuck his head into the hole. The light flashed about, then Lucas heard him mumble in a defeated tone. Nate backed out and tossed the light to Lucas, a sour expression on his face.
Lucas knew what he’d find. Nothing. Not a damn thing. Nate was famous for his wild goose chases. In childhood, he was forever looking for buried treasure; then it was money stashed in the old houses he remodeled. He was persistent given he’d never found so much as a dollar. Lucas leaned in and peered into the dark, flashing the beam about. The space was about two by three, the air damp with a faint unpleasant odor. The walls and ceiling were solid brick.
A dusty pile of rumpled fabric lay in the corner, a dark sack or robe perhaps, mostly covered by the bricks knocked loose from the wall. The room was otherwise empty. No treasure, no gold coins.
Still intrigued, Lucas pulled himself farther into the room.
“What are you doing?”
Lucas ignored him, curious about the fabric.
“Careful man.”
What was it doing here? Perhaps the coins were under it? Dragging his feet into the room, he crouched atop the loose brick and reached to push the fabric aside.
It crumbled to dust and loose tatters. Lucas recoiled slightly, startled. How long had it been here? What was this room? He sifted carefully through the edge of the dust, his fingers brushing across something cold and metallic. He pushed the debris aside and frowned.
It was an old book, leather covered and bound, trimmed with brass edging.
“Hey, take this!” He handed the book to Nate and reached into the dust again.
The floor settled with a slight grating sound. He continued probing through the dust feeling other chunks of debris buried there, almost like—
The floor collapsed into the cellar.
He grabbed for the ledge of brick where Nate broke through the wall with one hand; twisted and swung his other hand up to grab the ledge as most of the floor and loose brick tumbled into the basement. His grip held, and he yelled, “Nate, grab my arm! Hurry!”
Nate, already reaching toward him, grabbed his other arm and helped him through the hole in the wall.
“What happened?” Nate said, wide-eyed.
“The floor gave way, genius,” Lucas said angrily. “Might’ve had something to do with you hammering on it from underneath.”
“I told you to be careful.”
Lucas threw him a withering look. “Give me the book, dickhead.”
Nate obliged. Big brother ruled over little brother as always. Lucas examined the dusty leather cover, then opened it. It was filled with faded handwriting. The writing was foreign, maybe Latin, though it could’ve been Russian for all he knew. Lucas had never seen anything like it.
Nate said, “Yeah, well, we’d better clean this mess up.”
“We? This is your big adventure, Pee Wee; you clean it up.”
Lucas sat paging through the book while Nate pieced the paneling back together, covering the hole so the wall appeared normal. They would finish the repairs later.
“So what’s in the book?”
“I have no idea. It’s Latin or something,” Lucas said. “Let’s keep this to ourselves for now.”
“What? Why?”
“Because Laura will want to take it over.”
“Kind of like you’re doing?”
“That’s different.” Lucas shrugged, then glared at Nate. “When did you plan on telling me about the coins?”
“Ah, soon.”
“Liar.”
“Whatever. Come on, help me clean up.”
They dusted and vacuumed and were close to finishing when Laura, Ashley, and Leah strolled through the archway.
Laura tossed her bags onto a chair. “What are you guys doing?”
“Ah, fixing an electrical problem. We’re just finishing up,” Nate said.
* * *
Later that night, after Laura and Ashley had gone to bed, Nate and Lucas sat in the Hall. The room was lit by two small table lamps and a fire, a warm glow radiating from the burning oak and maple logs. There were occasional pops and sparks from the fire, the sparks kept safely within the hearth by a heavy screen suspended from an iron bar. They’d discussed installing glass doors on the fireplace but opted to go with a classic open hearth.
The Hall had been decorated and arranged in three sitting areas. At the far end, chairs and recliners faced a sixty-inch flat screen hidden behind folding paneling. The center room consisted of two sofas and a love seat set around a large Persian rug facing west out the tall center windows of the Hall, accented with various end tables, a coffee table, and several of Laura’s Tiffany-style lamps. At the north end, where they sat, a semi-circle of comfy chairs faced the fireplace.
Lucas paged through the book but could make no sense of it. There were numbers that might’ve been dates; the writing was otherwise indecipherable.
“You figure any of that out?” Nate said.
“Nope. What about the coins?”
“Nothing yet.” Nate was busy on his iPad researching gold coins.
“So how many did you find?”
“Three. They’re all the same and they’re mine.”
“You can have them.” Lucas rolled his eyes. “Jesus! How old are you?”
Lucas reached for his laptop and flipped it open. He pulled the occasional legible word from the book and searched for it in Google. Some words brought Not Found or a generic Did you mean...?
Some words came back as Old English, and he thought, No shit, it’s all old. He didn’t really understand what Old English meant so he clicked into Wikipedia which said:
The language of the Anglo-Saxons (up to about 1150), a highly inflected language with a largely Germanic vocabulary, very different from modern English.
He couldn’t translate the book himself, that was clear. Wasn’t sure it was worth it, though it raised many questions. How had something this old come into the house? Family heirloom? He searched further and discovered that any text written in Old English was probably rare and valuable. This went beyond a family history. Hidden as it was, perhaps it had been stolen.
“They’re Angels,” Nate said.
“What?”
“The coins. I snapped a pic and did an image search. They’re called Angels or Angelots, English coins from the fifteenth century.” He paused and tapped his screen. “It says, the obverse usually carried a depiction of St. Michael slaying a dragon, a representation of the devil. On the reverse a ship was depicted. It was a popular coin and came to be used as a touch piece, worn around the neck to ward off scrofula, whatever that is.”
“This is bizarre.” Lucas said. “This book is hundreds of years old. Those coins are hundreds of years old. Doesn’t that seem odd to you?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. Must be family heirlooms. Does it matter?”
“I don’t know, but you should handle those more carefully…”
Nate shook them like dice and poured them into his shirt pocket.
At moments like this, he wanted to smack his brother. At all costs, Nate had to live contrary to how he lived. No matter what he said, his brother invariably did the opposite. And it did matter. Nate was focused on the coins, but these old items were an intriguing puzzle. Had Mom and Dad known about them? It deepened the mystery about his parents.
He had only a vague memory of his father and was still angry with his mother for hiding the house from him. Why had she kept so many secrets? Why had she deceived him? Though irrational, he saw her secrets as lies, a betrayal by someone he had loved and respected deeply. Now he could find no resolution for these feelings—he couldn’t confront her and demand an explanation. She could have explained the books and coins, had they known. Now she was dead, and the answer was likely lost forever. He then felt guilty for his irritable train of thought. He missed her immensely and felt odd having become the family elder with her passing.
This introspection brought him to the root of his angst—his father. The man was a mythical character in his life, an invisible but ever-present and guiding figure.
Your father would have done this, or your father said this, were words that prefaced the nuggets of wisdom that formed the backdrop of his childhood. Now he wondered how long the house had been in the family. Laura had been researching; he was curious about her efforts. These things—the book and the coins—were pieces of a puzzle. A puzzle he needed to solve. He wasn’t sharing this with Laura, not just yet. He needed to figure this out himself. Perhaps he would learn something about his mother and father in the process.
“So, what’d you pick up on your hardware run today?” Nate asked, a sardonic edge to his voice.
“Why?”
“Because you don’t always come back with hardware.”
“So? I’ve had more important things to do.” Lucas lit one of Nate’s little Cohibas, blowing the smoke into the fireplace. Since when had Nate become the righteous one?
“Like what? Getting wasted every afternoon at the White Birch?” Nate’s eyes widened in patent disapproval. “And when did you start smoking?”
“What’s it to you? I have a little time off com—”
Somewhere, a door slammed and the iron bar and screen covering the fireplace crashed to the hearth with a resounding bang.
Nate and Lucas both jumped.
Lucas said, “What the fuck?”
“Jesus! That was crazy!”
Lucas inspected the iron supports which had somehow rotated ninety degrees, allowing the bar to slip free. Nate using a sledgehammer on the wall earlier seemed like reasonable cause and effect.
Ashley appeared wide-eyed at the archway. “What was that?”
“A door slammed and the fireplace screen fell,” Nate said.
“What? Why?”
“The door? Wind probably.” Nate pointed to the screen. “This? No idea.”
“Let’s go to bed. I’ll fix it in the morning.” Lucas broke the logs apart and sprayed water onto the embers. On impulse, he tried to twist one of the supports to the right, but it wouldn’t budge, even when he brought two hands to bear.
He shook his head.
How had they turned at all?
Nineteen
Lucas awoke as first light touched the antique bedroom windows, turning them soft glowing red. He made coffee, quick-fried two eggs, grabbed his gear, and strolled out to the dock. He loaded tackle and bait into the seventeen-foot Alumacraft and cruised to a spot on the far shore where he’d had some luck, then dropped a line into the water.
He enjoyed the quiet solitude on the lake. There was no wind, the sky clear—a beautiful fall day.
Lucas could only think about the book, and the more he pondered it, the more he felt compelled to solve the mystery. What was the language? Who had left it behind? Something about the room bothered him, but he couldn’t put a finger on it. Curiosity finally trumped his desire to fish. He steered to shore, determined to research the book instead of wasting time at the White Birch.
At the house, Laura, Ashley, and Leah were sitting in the kitchen, eating breakfast. He exchanged the usual pleasantries and walked upstairs to their bedroom with his laptop and phone. He ran several searches until he zeroed in on the Languages Department at Milwaukee University. He grabbed a name from their website, Professor Clyde Gregory, whose specialty was English. He dialed the number expecting a switchboard or an assistant, but instead heard, “Hello, Professor Gregory speaking.”
Lucas hesitated, unsure how to frame his question.
“Hello…?”
Lucas then said hello and briefly described the book. He mentioned a few of the words he’d translated, uncertain whether he was pronouncing them correctly.
“It sounds like an older form of English, but it’s difficult to say without seeing the book and the text,” Gregory said. “You say it’s handwritten?”
“Yes, al
l of it.”
“Where do you live? Can you bring it to the university sometime?”
“Um, sure. How about today?” He had nothing better to do.
“That would be good, actually—if you can be here in two or three hours.”
“Sure.” Lucas jotted down the address and office number.
He yelled, “Hon, I’m going out for a couple of hours,” grabbed the book, and bounded out the door.
* * *
Lucas parked in a No Parking zone because he felt lucky. Besides, the streets around the campus were jammed with parked cars. He walked to the languages building, a bland edifice of brick from the ‘60s, and followed the directory to the second floor and the office of Professor Clyde Gregory. An assistant checked his progress and then showed him into the office. An older man sat behind a large desk, wearing a dark sport coat over a turtleneck. He had a bushy white moustache, rather wild swept-back hair, and round horn-rimmed glasses with the air of a mad scientist about him. The walls of his office were laden with framed black-and-white sports prints, mostly related to baseball and basketball. An aroma of pipe tobacco lingered.
“Mr. MacKenzie?”
“Yes, Lucas MacKenzie.”
They shook hands. Gregory waved to a chair.
“Have a seat. Tell me about this book of yours.”
Lucas sat and placed the book carefully on the desk. He briefly explained the discovery of the hidden space in the house, the book, and the three English coins called Angels.
“Angels? I’ve never heard of them—though I’m not a coin enthusiast.” Gregory reached for the book. “May I?”
“Yes, please do.”
Gregory sat back and carefully opened the book, handling it with great deference, and gently turned the first few pages. He nodded, frowned, pursed his lips, shook his head—it was almost entertaining. Finally, he said, “Germanic, Saxon, somewhere in there.”
“What?”
“Anglo-Saxon...” It was almost a question.
Lucas nodded in agreement, feeling only confusion.
“Anglo-Saxon, Old English. I think this is Old English.”