by Chelsea Luna
Unfortunately, the scene grew worse. The smooth utilitarian cement walls and stairs gradually changed to an old brown stone. A dewy, moldy smell lingered in the air as we descended into the crypt.
Single light bulbs, encased in black wire cages, lit the underbelly of the church. I was grateful for the light - neither of us had brought a flashlight - but the brightness illuminated the eeriness of our surroundings.
The further we descended, the more dungeon-like the setting became. The porous stone was wet and slippery. The air was thick and dense.
Two years ago, I went to Paris, France as part of a freshman spring break trip sponsored by Hawthorne Prep. During our visit, our class toured the famous Paris Catacombs.
The Catacombs are a series of caverns and tunnels that run for miles underneath the city. The remains of over six million people are buried, without coffins, inside the underground tunnels.
Paris buried its dead in the Catacombs because of a population explosion and a lack of space to place the remains during the eighteenth century. The winding maze-like caverns are lined with human skulls and other skeletal remains.
Skulls weren’t protruding from the walls at the moment, but the fear was the same. The acknowledgment of what surrounded me was the same. Death.
James took the lead, maybe because he’d been down in the crypt before or maybe he was trying to be brave. Either way, I was grateful. We finally reached the bottom of the stairs and walked into a large rectangular room.
The ceiling was low and James had to duck to avoid scraping his head. The walls, floor and ceiling were all constructed of damp muddy-brown stone. The caged light bulbs illuminated the crypt along with pillared candles near the walls.
The room was empty, bar the light bulbs and candles, and two hallways tapered off on opposite sides of the walls. We veered right. If I ever felt claustrophobic before this point, boy was I wrong.
The hallway was tight and narrow. James was still ducking from the low ceiling and there was six inches of space on both sides of our shoulders. The floor sloped downward, reinforcing the fact that we were way beneath the streets of Boston.
Rooms with family names etched in stone archways opened off the hallway, but we didn’t stop. We walked further down the corridor. I imagined this was what the entrance to Hades looked like. Dark. Moldy. Claustrophobic. Ancient. And descending further and further into the Earth.
Okay, maybe I was being a little over dramatic. But this was definitely not my favorite place. Finally, James stopped at an opening on our right. Inscribed above the archway was the name “Van Curen.”
The room was larger than I expected. The ceiling was cathedral-like and James was able to stand fully erect. The crypt was full of sarcophaguses. Coffins lined every wall but one. The empty wall was filled with dozens of squared nameplates. Those coffins were placed inside of the stone. In the center of the family crypt was a square marble table filled with candles and dried flowers.
“These are my relatives,” James said, with a raised eyebrow. He was gauging my reaction. “Well, the Van Curen side at least.”
Could they have picked a scarier place to be buried? I was immediately thankful my grandmother was buried outdoors under a flowering tree. This was depressing. And then another thought sprang to mind. “Are all of these people…?”
“Witch hunters?”
I nodded.
“I believe so. They’re Van Curens from America. We have a family crypt in London, too. But I’m guessing everyone in here was a witch hunter. The skill passed from father to son for generation after generation, for hundreds of years, only to abruptly stop at me.” James grinned.
“Ah, the rebel of the family.”
James pointed to William’s sarcophagus. “Cheery place to have to visit your father, huh?”
He led me towards a marble sarcophagus in the back of the room. The beautiful piece of white stone was extensively carved with dozens of roses and angels. The name “Jonah Abraham Van Curen” was delicately etched on the side.
I’d been so caught up in the idea of finding the journal in Jonah’s coffin that I hadn’t really thought about what I’d be doing. A dead body was in there. A not-so-old body. How long had Jonah been dead? A few weeks before James enrolled at Hawthorne Prep?
Images of what a three-month-old deceased body would look like slithered through my brain. I stole a glance at James. His normally olive skin was a light shade of green.
I put my hand on his shoulder. “Will you help me push the top open? Whatever you do, keep your eyes shut. Okay?”
James straightened his shoulders. “No, I can-”
“No,” I said. “I’ll place your hands where they need to be on the stone, but you keep your eyes closed. I’ll take a quick look inside. Okay? Don’t open your eyes. Promise me.”
A sheen of sweat glistened his forehead.
I squeezed his shoulders. “Promise me, James.”
He swallowed. “I promise.”
I placed his hands on his grandfather’s sarcophagus. The thick ledge connected the top and bottom pieces of the coffin.
“Close’em.”
James shut his eyes.
The marble was cool to the touch. “On three. Ready? One. Two. Three.”
Pushing the top of that stone coffin was like, well, pushing stone. My feet slid against the floor unable to gain any traction. I risked a peek at James. His eyes were tightly shut and his entire face was red from exertion. The stone lid groaned under our efforts, but only moved a few inches.
“Keep your eyes closed,” I said. “Only a little bit more. Can you push more? Or do you want to take a break?”
“More.” James blew out a large breath of air. Veins in his neck and forehead bulged.
We pushed again, harder this time, groaning under the effort. The lid slid over with a dull scraping sound, exposing an open space about two feet wide. The opening was large enough that I could feel around inside.
“It’s open.” I pulled James away from the coffin. “Thank you.”
“No problem.” James looked over my shoulder.
“Don’t,” I said softly, rising on my toes to block his view. “Trust me. You don’t want that image in your mind.”
If I could erase the image of Grandma Claudia dead on the floor, I would in a heartbeat. Regardless of how James felt about his grandfather, I didn’t want him to see Jonah like that.
“I’ll be a few minutes. And then we can get out of here.” I walked over to the open sarcophagus. I pulled my scarf over my nose and looked inside the coffin.
I felt sick to my stomach.
Not because the smell was unbearable or because of the hideous sight of Jonah’s decaying skin or because I was about to officially become a grave robber. Nope. It was the sight of Jonah’s burial clothes. That terrible velvet robe of the Gamma Omicron Delta fraternity. The same one William and Victor were wearing that night in the cemetery. Jonah chose to spend eternity in his witch hunter gear.
“You okay?” James asked from the other side of the room.
“I wasn’t excepting that outfit.”
“Outfit? Oh. He was wearing the robe, wasn’t he? I’d forgotten about that. At the funeral, my dad told me it was his minister’s special robe. Wow. I didn’t put two and two together when they put me in that horrible thing during the initiation ceremony. They fed me a ton of lies, didn’t they?”
I took a step closer. The red glare of a jewel hanging from Jonah’s thick gold necklace caught my attention. “Here’s that ruby ring you were talking about.”
James grunted. “Let him keep it. I don’t want anything from him. Or any of them for that matter.”
I avoided Jonah’s face. Instead, I kept my eyes on all the possible places that someone - probably the attorney - could have stashed the journal. No hiding spots jumped out at me. I’d have to feel around inside.
My stomach churned. I watched my hand rise from my side and slowly hover over the opening of the sarcophagus. I brushed a
gainst fabric - the lining of the casket - and inched my fingers down the slope to the bottom of the coffin. My breathing accelerated. The scarf covered my nose and mouth. Warm air was suffocating me, but I didn’t remove the scarf. The smell of decay was already permeating through the material.
I felt a different texture. The robe. My hand slid underneath the robe - on top of the crushed velvet - and down towards the bottom of the sarcophagus. The opening wasn’t big and I had to bend over the body to reach further inside the coffin.
My fingers touched an array of disgusting things. I was about to pull my hand back, the smell had completely penetrated my scarf, when the tip of my middle finger grazed something plastic.
A garbage bag.
I squeezed my eyes tight and pressed the upper half of my body closer to Jonah. The tips of my fingers were just touching the smooth plastic. I bent closer. Jonah’s robe rubbed against my cheek.
I stopped breathing. The smell was too much. I gave it one last lurch. My hand slid around the plastic and I yanked it. I stumbled backwards with the bag in hand.
“Did you get it?” James asked.
“I don’t know. I found something.” I lifted the black heavy-duty garbage bag.
James was in front of me. “What is it?”
I placed the bundle on the ground and used both hands to pull out the smooth mole-skin book. It was heavy. There had to be over a thousand pages.
I couldn’t contain my grin. “It’s your grandfather’s journal.”
“His journal?”
“Yes! We found it!”
James cocked his head to the side. The smile melted from his lips. His jaw muscles tensed. His eyes fell to the journal and then back at me. The tension rolled off his body in waves.
And before I could mutter a word or make a run for it, James launched himself at me.
CHAPTER 16
The impact of James’ body slamming against my own knocked us onto the dirty stone floor. He landed on top of me. All of my breath squished out of my lungs. James clamped his hand over my mouth to stifle my screams. I wiggled and shoved, trying to throw him off of me.
I pushed as hard as I could against his chest, but I had better luck moving the stone sarcophagus. His head was turned away, so I couldn’t swipe at his face or eyes. I couldn’t think of anything else to do, so I pinched his arms and chest.
“Ouch, ow, Alex! Shhhh,” James said in my ear. “Stop that!”
He adjusted his weight, bearing most of it on his elbows. He collected both of my wrists and pulled them above my head in an iron clasp. He kept his other hand over my mouth.
“Shhh. Quit struggling,” James whispered.
Surprisingly, he looked as terrified as I felt. He twisted his neck towards the entrance and then bent his mouth to my ear. “Someone’s coming. We have to move.”
Oh.
My body relaxed and I immediately stopped struggling.
Someone was coming.
James tentatively released his hand from my mouth. He reached over my body and grabbed the journal and empty garbage bag from the floor beside us. I’d dropped it when he tackled me. He handed the heavy book to me.
“Over there.” James pointed to a stone sarcophagus five feet away.
I crawled on my hands and knees. James was on my heels. I rounded the corner of the coffin and pressed myself flat against the stone. James slid beside me.
I only had half a second to feel guilty about my incorrect assumption that James was attacking me. Two distinct footsteps echoed loudly off the stone floor and I realized the predicament we were in. The Van Curen burial crypt was the last room off the tunnel. Whoever was coming this far down the hallway was either a Van Curen or a Van Curen sympathizer. Either way, we were screwed.
I hugged Jonah’s journal against my chest. I’d finally found it and there was no way anyone was taking it away from me. James peered around the corner of the coffin. Footsteps entered the room.
My heart screeched to a halt when I heard the voice.
“They had to have come into the church. Why else would they be in Boston? Parked across the street?” Victor said in an irritable tone.
“I told you. I lost him. I saw him park and that was it. There are too many people outside.” A female voice.
I couldn’t place the voice, but it sounded familiar. I crawled next to James and peered over his shoulder. From our vantage point, only legs and feet were visible. Dark gray suit pants over shiny black shoes and sheer pantyhose with blue pumps.
The same blue pumps I picked out for a Christmas present a few years ago. Victor never did his own shopping.
Diane. Victor’s long-time secretary.
“Why is James with her? I don’t understand,” Victor said. “I thought you said they hadn’t had any contact with each other. So what are they doing together in Boston?”
“I don’t know. You told me to call if he did anything out of the ordinary or if he met up with that witch again.” Diane’s voice steeled maliciously when she said the word “witch.”
Was Diane a member of Gamma? She’d been Victor’s secretary for as long as I could remember. Maybe she’d kept his secret for all of these years, too. Was everyone in on the lies?
What was even more remarkable than the fact that Diane was here at the Gamma church with Victor, was that James was being followed. Not me. Why?
“They obviously aren’t here. This is such a waste of time.”
“Look over there,” Diane said. “It’s open.”
Footsteps clanked across the stone floor. Jonah’s coffin. Shoot. We didn’t shut the sarcophagus lid.
“If they aren’t in here, then why is this open?” Diane’s pumps clicked across the stone floor.
James quietly pulled himself behind our sarcophagus. Hopefully, we were completely out of sight. If not, then it was about to get messy, because there was no way in hell I was handing over Jonah’s journal. Especially to Victor.
“I don’t know why it’s open. I don’t care why it’s open,” Victor said. “I don’t have time for this. I have to get back to Hazel Cove. I have more important things to worry about.”
“But what about James? And why aren’t you concerned that your father’s coffin is open?”
“I have bigger fish to fry at the moment. The kid is weird. Maybe he got sentimental and wanted to see his grandpa again.”
“That’s gross.”
“Listen, all I need is for James to stay away from her. That’s it. It’s all way too dangerous right now. He may hate me, but he’s the only one I have left. And I’m not losing another family member because of Alexandria Longfellow.”
I flinched at Victor’s tone.
Not long ago, I’d called him my father. We lived under the same roof for seventeen years. Now I was the enemy.
“But what if it was James and Alex who opened the coffin? What do you think they were looking for?” Diane asked. “Was Jonah buried with anything special?”
“No, of course not. The old prune liquefied all of his assets and donated every penny to the fraternity before he died. Nothing’s in there but a shriveled up old man. James and Alex didn’t come here.”
“Then why are they together?”
“I don’t know! Maybe the idiot has the hots for her again. Maybe he’s showing her around Boston for the day.”
“But why is the coffin open?”
“I don’t know for the seven hundredth time! Maybe a grave robber. Maybe the crypt keeper. Maybe Jonah was trying to crawl out. Who knows? Who cares! You called me to tell me that James was with Alex in Boston. So I came. But we don’t know where in Boston. We’re guessing they came here because we’re paranoid. This area is tourist central. They’re probably walking around. Think about it Diane.”
“I am thinking about it! It doesn’t make sense!”
“Why on Earth would James bring Alex here? To the fraternity’s church? There’s no way in hell Alex would come here. It’s preposterous.”
“I guess.”
“I have more important things to deal with. Can’t you handle the one simple task I gave you? Watch James. That’s it. I have to worry about not getting myself killed. Now, let’s go.”
* * *
“I can’t believe he’s following me,” James said, once we were in the safety of his truck. We waited in the crypt for hours before we felt it was safe enough to sneak out.
I tucked Jonah’s journal into my coat. The book was so massive that I couldn’t pull up the zipper. “Are you okay to drive? Or do you want me to?”
“No, I’m fine. Just a little disturbed.”
“Maybe it’s Victor’s whacked-out way of trying to protect you. He thinks I’m an abomination, remember?”
James pulled out of the parking lot and onto the road, checking his rearview mirror a few more times than necessary. “It’s disturbing knowing you’re being followed.”
Welcome to the club.
I’d felt like someone was following me for weeks. On the other hand, I was sure it wasn’t Victor. I couldn’t explain how I knew it wasn’t Victor, but I was certain.
James puffed his cheeks with air and blew out noisily. “Victor didn’t have a clue about Jonah’s journal.”
“It probably hasn’t crossed his mind since that night in the cemetery. Hopefully, we can keep it that way.”
“Victor looked distracted, don’t you think? I wonder what kind of mess he’s gotten himself into.”
“There’s no telling,” I said. I was thankful my stepfather was out of my life, but worried about Victor’s interest in James. What lengths would Victor take to convince James to re-join the family?
“You actually found it.” James nodded at the bulk in my coat.
“We did. Thank you. I never could’ve done it without you.”
“No problem. But tell me something.”
“What?”
“And it has to be the truth,” James said.
“Okay.”
“Down in the crypt, you thought I was attacking you when I pushed you to the floor, didn’t you?”
I clasped my hands together. “Maybe.”
“Come on. Admit it. I could see the look on your face. I guess I’m lucky you didn’t zap me or something. Although my arms and chest are probably covered with dozens of tiny bruises.”