by Dean Kutzler
“So you saw the fire at the church?” Jack asked, catching the sudden change in his demeanor.
“Yes, I’m not sure what happened.” His face suddenly changed to a look of deep remorse. “I left in such a rush I fear I may have left the prayer candles lit, but I do not think this was the cause of the fire. I had to make sure you were okay. I feared the Bene Elohim had learned about Father Angeli’s work and wanted to destroy it. You were so close to the church, I was afraid that you may have been caught by them.”
“But in all of this,” Jack began in frustration, “I don’t understand where I fit in. Why would they want to capture me?”
“I’m afraid that they may have discovered that your uncle had the book and that you inherited his estate.”
It didn’t add up, Jack thought. Fine, he could have been telling the truth. His excuse answered why he hadn’t been there to meet Jack, as wishy-washy as it was, but what took him so long to get from the church to the brownstone? He’d been down in the temple for over two hours and that didn’t include his unscheduled nap. He gently touched the back of his lumpy head. He might have gotten stuck in traffic, but Jack didn’t think so. There was more to this man than just a misguided priest.
“I wanted to go through everything with you, Jack, and now it is all lost to the fire. Thank God” he said, motioning the sign of the cross, “the church was saved, but the office took the brunt of the fire. The organ, oh—the beautiful organ. It fell right through the ceiling on top of the office. Everything was lost. It is a very tragic thing.”
How convenient, but not everything was lost.
Suddenly, Jack remembered the book he’d stolen from the church. The book that was hopefully still sitting downstairs. On his mad escape from the blazing church, he’d thought the book he’d found in Father Angeli’s office was the relic. He wondered if Father Alazar had seen it on his way up the stairs. Then he remembered that it was still wrapped up in the tarp. Unless he peeked inside or recognized the tarp, the man’s face didn’t show any knowledge of either.
Sorry Father… If you don’t want to give me answers, I’ll find out on my own.
The book he’d found in the temple below the brownstone had to be the relic Father Alazar told him about, which he no longer had, he thought, rubbing the back of his head again. The key fit right into it, but before he had a chance to see what happened or learned its secrets, he’d been knocked over the head. Not only was it in the hands of the Bene Elohim, they also had the key.
Damn him and his impatience. If only he’d waited, they at least wouldn’t have gotten the key.
Somehow the Bene Elohim knew right where to find the book. They murdered his family, for what reason he had still to understand, and now they’d gotten the book—a book that supposedly contained information that would turn the world’s beliefs upside down on its head, shaking the very foundation of history and religion. Not to mention the supernatural providence that the book was proclaimed to have, potentially making it the world’s most dangerous weapon. He feared what it could be, especially now that it was in the wrong hands. Before his discovery of the tree, Supernatural was just another TV show to him. He had to get the book back.
“You said you had found the book, Jack?” Father Alazar asked, worry pinching at his brows.
“Aah, yes,” he grabbed his goatee. “I—ah, found it in one of my uncle’s closets.” He lied. There was no way he was telling him about the hidden temple. “I—ah, can’t believe I’ve been sitting on it all this time.“ He decided in that moment that he wasn’t going to trust him any further—at all. He didn’t know what his true intentions were and he couldn’t see a reason why the Bene Elohim would kill his family if they were only after the book. Why kill the people suspected of having it? Priest or no priest, he wasn’t telling him about the temple and especially not about the tree. There was a reason they were hidden down there, he just didn’t know why. Yet. He needed to get rid of Father Alazar so he could unwrap that book, for starters, and have a look at what both priests didn’t want him to see.
“You know what, Father?” he asked, feeling his forehead and squeezing his eyes shut. “I think you were right about my head. I think I may have a concussion.”
“Let me call a cab. I told you, you should have that looked at.”
“Thanks, but that won’t be necessary, Father. I’m sure it’s just a mild case. I can take myself. You know how waiting in the emergency room is. It’s brutal. Plus, I’m just going to come back and take it easy for the rest of the afternoon.”
“But, but it is not safe, Jack.” He rustled uneasily on the bed. “The Bene Elohim are out there. We do not know their intentions. It cannot be safe.”
“Father, they have the book and the key.” He shook his head. “What else could they possibly want from me?” he asked, taking in the desperation on Father Alazar’s face. He was definitely more interested in Jack than he was of the fact of the Bene Elohim having a book that could destroy the world in more ways than one. There was definitely something else he was hiding. But what?
“I—I just… I just think you need to be careful is all,” he said, beyond a pensive tone. “Are you sure you don’t want me to take you?” He asked in a last attempt.
“No. Thank you, Father.” Absolutely not. “After I get back from the hospital and I’ve had some time to rest,” he clutched his stomach, feigning queasiness, “we’ll get together and talk more about what happened.” Jack got up from the bed, crossed the room, and walked out into the hallway as a hint for Father Alazar to follow.
As they descended the stairs, Jack nonchalantly peeked over the banister to make sure the bundled package was still there, and sure enough, it was. Safe and sound. “Thank you, Father, for checking up on me. I really appreciate it.” He opened the busted front door and reached a hand out to Father Alazar. As they shook hands and he passed by, Jack could swear a hint of kerosene trailed the man.
Father Alazar stood on the stairs to the front door with a pensive look on his face. “If you need anything, anything at all, Jack, do not hesitate to call me and please be careful. I know they have the book, but—you should just be careful. There is no telling what they might do.”
When Jack didn’t respond, he nodded and said, “Okay. Call me, Jack. We have to discuss what we are going to do. Go to the hospital. Get checked out. I will talk to you soon.” He turned down the stairs and began to walk up the street.
Jack watched the priest walk down the street with an uneasy stride until he reached the subway entrance and headed down the stairs without once turning back for a look. It hadn’t been traffic that’d held him up in reaching the brownstone. Jack slowly closed the busted door and called the locksmith.
With Father Alazar gone and the locksmith on the way, Jack hoisted the bundled book with determined arms. He laid it down on the dining room table and carefully unraveled it from the tarp. “Thanks, Oklahoma, for your cover.” He said bundling the emptied tarp and stuffing it between a dining room chair and the table.
Now that he wasn’t trying to escape a fire or be caught breaking and entering, he had time to examine the mystery book more closely. What he thought had been ancient wood for a cover looked more like very aged rawhide of an animal. Gross. At one point, the animal binding had been intact, but from repeated use, it had torn through. Which is why, he guessed, the ropes had been tied together; to act like the binding of the sheets of paper through their punched or cut-out holes.
Twisting the book to get a better look at the torn binding, he was able to see the Hebrew letters that had been etched into the worn leather. Luckily, the tear hadn’t obscured the word: יוּחֲסִין.
He pulled out his iPhone and tapped on the translator app. He changed the appropriate setting to translate from Hebrew to English. Technology was wonderful, but there was one problem. The app didn’t allow typing in Hebrew letters. The lettering in the app was in English and he didn’t have a clue what the scratches on the binding represented. He w
as only guessing Hebrew in the first place, basing his knowledge on the familiar writing on the box of kosher jelly rings he so favored.
Then he had an idea. He tapped the app store open and searched for translate by picture. Only two apps came up. One was $4.99 and the other $1.99. Before he purchased one, he read through the descriptions. He started with the more expensive one, scrolling through the long list of translatable languages. The list had everything from Chinese, both Mandarin and Cantonese dialects, to Vietnamese. No Hebrew. Tapping back to the cheaper option, he read through the description but found no list of languages. He purchased it. What the hell? He certainly could afford it.
Once the app was done downloading, he opened it and fumbled with the controls until he found the PICTURE button. The app worked from picture recognition. All you had to do was snap a pic of what needed to be translated and the app did the rest. Carefully, he lined the text scrawled on the ancient leather within the bracket on his iPhone’s screen. With the snap of a pic, a few seconds later, the translation appeared: Lineage.
Lineage? He stared at the golden ring and rod shape that was fashioned to the book’s cover and thought back to the identical shape on the crypt door to the family vault within which his uncle had been laid to rest. The symbol on the book was an exact match. Was his family somehow related to the Bene Elohim?
Again, he noticed the pages from the side of the book. Not only were sections made from differing types of materials, the pages were of differing ages. Whoever had kept this book, had been doing so for a very, very long time.
He hefted the monstrosity onto its front cover and opened it to the very last, oldest page. The pages in this section were very brittle from age and looked like some kind of leaves that had been gummed together with a clear resin, and treated with some chemical that gave off an odd odor. He didn’t know if the odor was chemical in nature or from old age. As he suspected, it was written in Hebrew. Very tiny Hebrew lettering. But as he looked closely at the words, there seemed to be a pattern to them, like log entries. Two words, always followed by a red splotchy dot. There were columns and columns of entries, all separated by splotchy dots, spread out evenly in order to make good use of space.
He flipped to a newer portion of the book. An earthy, musky smell blew beneath his nose as he thumbed through more of the same kind of entries written on newer pages, however the text in this section was different. Maybe Latin? He wrestled the book over on its back cover and leafed through the top third of pages. The entries on these pages were written in English. Names—first and last—followed by the same splotchy red dots.
He’d hopped over a wrought iron fence, broken into a church, and risked his life in a blazing fire for a book that was filled with hundreds of thousands of names and red dots?
He didn’t quite understand what it meant but it gave him an uneasy feeling. Someone had been keeping track of people, for an incredibly long time. But why? For what reason? It must have been important. What reason could they have for tracking people for such a long time and who was doing the tracking? He scanned the English pages looking for familiar names, trying to make sense of it. Melendez, Woolf, Carter, Smith, Wilkerson, Donavan, Fredrickson, O’Neil, Roberts—wait, Fredrickson? His eyes darted to the left. Elaine. Elaine Fredrickson. Where had he heard that name?
Fredrickson, Fredrickson… Then it hit him. He rubbed the back of his neck. Elaine Fredrickson, the old woman that slapped him in the hospital then died shortly thereafter. How could he forget? Her handprint was still embedded in his skin. The splotchy dot next to her name was black, almost worn through the page. Could it be a coincidence?
He continued scanning through the list of names and dots until another one stuck out: Henri Jameson. Yes, the creepy cocked-neck old guy in the wheelchair that got in his face in the elevator ride at the hospital. Two people. Same hospital. It couldn’t be a coincidence. The splotch next to his name was like Ms. Fredrickson’s, black and partially eaten through the page. What was going on here? What were these marks?
He flipped through the book to the earliest English-written pages and something caught his eye. His jaw dropped at a circled entry in the Lineage book. He could hardly believe what he was seeing. Jack Elliot. There was no splotch next to his name, just a jagged hole, clear through the paper. “What the—?“ His field of vision narrowed and blurred around the hole like an F-Stop vignette.
Why was his name in this book? What did it all mean? His uneasy feeling turned into pure fright and quivered shivers down the back of his neck, like an icy chill in January. What did the dots mean and why was there a hole next to his name?
He flipped back to both Ms. Fredrickson’s and Mr. Jameson’s entries and looked at their dots. They weren’t red like the rest—he checked the whole book—and their dots looked as if they were partially eaten through the page, but not completely. Why was his clear through the page? Was it from age? That didn’t make sense. His entry was newer than the rest.
He flipped through some more earlier pages at the top and found both Franklin and Terrance Elliot. The dot next to his uncle’s name was partially eaten through, but not his fathers. He closed the book and pushed it to the center of the table. This was freaking him the hell out. He needed more answers.
He started to stand from the table then looked at the book. He sat back down, wrapped it back up in the tarp to keep it hidden, and dropped it next to the basement door. It was less conspicuous that way. Should someone sneak in again, it would just look like some trash that needed to be discarded.
Now it was time to check the email that Moe had sent with the zipped files from his uncle’s computer. Hopefully, it would clear up the rest of this mystery. So much had happened that he hadn’t gotten a chance to sniff out a computer and have a look. Thinking back to his college days spent in the New York Public library, things were different than they were today. During his day, they relied only on the Dewy Decimal system, microfiche and tedious book work. Computers were unheard of then, but not today. Kindergartners and seniors alike, surfed the Internet in libraries all over the world, and that’s exactly where he was headed. The New York Public Library.
Jack left the brownstone and hailed a cab. By the time he’d shut the cab door, he hadn’t noticed Father Alazar pulling out from a side street a block down in an old red Nissan Sentra, tailing the taxi from the moment it pulled away from the curb.
“Where to buddy?” The Pakistani cabbie asked, tapping the blue-tooth ear piece on the side of his face. He certainly wasn’t Harold Poytner, ‘A Cabbie Affair’. Jack remembered his business card a little too late. He’d call him on the way back.
“New York Public Library, please.”
“Chu got it, buddy.” Jack didn’t know if the man was talking to him or the person on the other end of the never-ending phone call, and he supposed it really didn’t matter. It gave him time to sit back and reflect on the recent events as he sat back and relaxed.
Jack had known from the start that he shouldn’t trust Father Alazar. What was he hiding? Could it have something to do with the Lineage book he had found behind Father Angeli’s cabinets? But what? Maybe Father Alazar hadn’t known about the book. After all, it was hidden behind the cabinets. Who had Father Angeli been hiding it from? Why did Father Alazar lie about the files in his office? Jack had gone through every inch of those metal behemoths and not a thing was out of the ordinary. No info about any Bene Elohim.
He didn’t want to go there, wanted to push the thought far from his mind, but it was too hard to not consider that Father Alazar may have started the fire at the church. Why go to such extremes? If he knew about the book, why not just take it somewhere and burn it in private? Why risk burning down the whole church? Was that the intention? Was Father Alazar trying to kill him? Why? Had he watched him break into the church? Had he known he was inside? He couldn’t have known that Jack would scale the fence and break in, so why call him to the church in the first place?
Maybe he had told the truth. Maybe
his plan was for Jack to witness the church burning down so that he could tell the authorities that Father Alazar was inside while it burned down? It was a farfetched and risky plan because forensics could always turn up evidence of a body, or lack thereof. Something was missing.
“Here ya are buddy! Right between da Leos!” The cabby said, as he pulled in front of the New York Public Library between the lion statues that sat guard.
“Aren’t they named Patience and Fortitude?” Jack recalled an article he’d read from his father’s paper.
“Yeah, I think some mayor back in the 30s renamed ‘em. They’ll always be Leos to me though. Leo da Lion has a betta ring to it,” he said with a wink, taking the cab fare. “You need da change, buddy?”
“No, keep it. Thanks for the ride.”
Jack stepped out of the cab and took in the familiar scenery from left to right. Good old Patience and Fortitude, or the Leos as the cab driver had called them, stood their ever-vigilant guard of the library since its creation back in 1911. Like many buildings in the city, it held the grandiose facade of Greek Revival style with its corrugated marble columns, framed by mammoth Greek urns at either side of the stairs and inlaid with architecturally solid arced entrances in triplicate.
The arc has long been known as the strongest supporting structure; a fact long known to the Grecian culture. The stress of weight was equally distributed along the arc as opposed to being hinged in one spot, utilizing the entire structure for support, like dominos braced at either end.
The building was a beautiful piece of emblematic art in and of itself as well as being surrounded by artfully decorative pieces, also swathed in suggestive style. Two flagpoles with intricately sculpted bronze bases, designed by Thomas Hastings, stood proudly with their flags at the appropriate masts. The bases of the flagpoles were a whirlwind of symbolism, from human figures dressed to depict discovery, civilization, conquest, and adventure, each staring out from their corners. On the top of each sculpture was a band that encircled them, crafted into zodiac signs and other emblems for different races, peppered by ranch cattle skulls and symbolic owls. All of which made up the intricate bronze piece. At the bottom of the bases, supporting the entire sculpture, sat four angry little bronze turtles that peeked out from each corner, representing the slow but steady crawl of time. Many people visit the library, day in and day out, and never notice those frustrated little fellows carrying the weight of time.