The Quest of the Empty Tomb

by Elyse Salpeter

  He’d been walking into town with one of the monks one morning. As they passed the monastery, he heard a little yip and found himself watching a baby fedelia bound down the temple steps in sheer coltish puppy abandon. With a leap, it jumped into his arms. In seconds the coarse licks from the creature’s leathery tongue had covered him in drool.

  A young girl in pigtails ran out of the monastery and hurtled down the steps towards them. “Ishu! Come back here.” She glanced at the boy and held out her hands. “Can I have her back, please?”

  Without a thought, he’d handed the baby fedelia over to the girl, but the exchange between them proved difficult. The little thing had burrowed herself deep into his robe and he’d had to fish her out.

  After much giggling and chortling between the two of them, he handed the pup to the girl, who bowed in thanks and disappeared back inside the temple.

  He remembered staring longingly in the direction she’d gone, long after she’d disappeared from view. He had no idea why, but something about her pulled at him, deep in his heart. Eventually, the monk had tapped his shoulder and they made their way to the town proper where the villagers always offered them breakfast. That was the last time he remembered seeing her.

  When Desmond awakened from these dreams, he’d immediately try to recreate them on canvas while his memories remained fresh. There were many mornings Kelsey had peeked into his studio and he’d already been painting for hours. The Gisbornes had always encouraged Desmond to draw as therapy during his teenage years. Though he forsook it once he went away to college, he took it up again recently with an abandon and passion he hadn’t felt in years.

  Kelsey had been amazed at his raw talent and encouraged him to continue, but when he started creating images even she found unsettling, he started to keep those particular paintings apart from the others.

  Impulsively, Desmond got out of bed and opened the closet. A bunch of bed sheets rested over a set of canvases. He lifted the sheets and pulled out one of his more disturbing paintings. He set it on the easel he kept in the corner of the bedroom and then stepped back to examine it. He hadn’t shown this one to Kelsey yet.

  The depiction was, indeed, disconcerting.

  The portrait showed a naked woman reclining in a small pool of water. Next to the pool lay the hillside, and a large pipe pushed through the dirt and sprayed water onto her and into the pool. Another pipe was situated next to the pool, and while he couldn’t see any distinguishing features, he knew it drained water out of the pool.

  Surrounding the basin was a garden filled with unusual flora and strange looking animals. Many of the animals he’d recognized from Xanadu, while others he thought he conjured on his own. He had used different colors for this painting than in others he’d created. For some reason blue, green, and brown dominated most of the canvas. Sometimes he’d added a little yellow or red, more seemingly as an accent color than anything else. He only used the white sparingly, and he couldn’t say why. Still, what he’d created seemed so fantastical and confusing, he simply excused it as the fluff of dreams. In his dreams, everything morphed into mythological proportions that didn’t make any sense on paper, but seemed to make sense as he stared at them. He’d painted the budding head of a rose on the stalk of an iris. An acorn on the stem of a dandelion, the head so heavy the plant tipped over until the acorn rested on the ground. It didn’t make any sense to him. He had no idea how he’d come up with the plant’s intricate, yet impossible features. Other plants appeared more ordinary, but their meanings unclear. An evergreen laurel tree and a multitude of rosemary and thyme sprigs surrounded the woman. Why in the world had he dreamed this?

  It was a nighttime scene, and white and yellow stars dotted the heavens. Desmond turned his attention to the woman lounging in the pool. Something about her gave him the chills. She both intrigued and scared him at the same time. Though blond, unearthly beautiful, and naked, she did not attract him in the least. He’d taken great care with the swell of her breasts, the angles of her collarbone, and the slant of her waist as it sank into the water. But she frightened him. Maybe it was the angry expression in her blue eyes, her glare so furious that she looked as if she wished to kill someone. He’d drawn her staring out of the painting, as if she directed her gaze precisely upon him. And while he felt sure he’d never seen this woman before, he dreamed of her in vivid detail. In the dream she’d spoken to him, too.

  He shivered with the memory.

  “My name is Ustha. Would you like to know who you really are, Desmond? Would you like all your memories to return?”

  And then an image of himself as a young boy appeared. He stood outside in a forest, holding a bow and arrow and aiming it at a target on a tree many feet away. Next to him was another child, who appeared to be the mirror image of himself. The child spoke.

  “You need to concentrate or I’m going to win again.”

  “I am concentrating. You cheated before.”

  The other child had laughed and seemed about to challenge him, when his dream abruptly halted. The damn cat had jumped on his face and woken him up.

  Desmond peered a bit more at his creation and then returned it to his closet. On impulse, he hopped over to his night table and opened the middle drawer this time. Rummaging through some papers, he reached towards the back and pulled out some hand drawings he’d sketched on paper napkins. Little sketches of curly script covered them. The writing was oddly beautiful and filled with swirls and curves. He swallowed hard, because while he thought he had just been doodling all these months, they really weren’t just random strokes. He pulled another paper out and unfolded it, examining a copy of a photo he’d printed from the web. He stared at his doodles and compared them against the lettered writing on the photocopy.

  Kelsey had once joked that his paintings had reminded her of some of the images from the infamous Voynich Manuscript. Found in 1912 by Wilfrid Michael Voynich at an Italian Jesuit College, the Voynich Manuscript was a hand-drawn book of 246 pages of strange drawings and 170,000 indecipherable characters. Radiocarbon analysis dated the creation of the book back to the first half of the fifteenth century, and to this day, no one could tell anyone anything about it. No one could explain the strange drawings in the book nor decode any of the text. It continued to be a complete and utter mystery.

  Except to Desmond. The drawings looked eerily similar to his paintings, and the lettering mimicked his doodles. He didn’t know how or why, but he knew that what plagued him held some connection to this mysterious manuscript. He’d learned about the manuscript in college, and had been intrigued like the rest of the world about its origin. He’d never paid it much mind, though, until he returned from Tibet and started painting. At first he believed maybe his subconscious had simply copied what he’d seen in the manuscript, but he quickly dismissed that thought. His paintings showed much more detail and his doodles simply came to him. But, as he stared at the Voynich Manuscript pages he’d studied on the internet, he became more and more confused. Because the elements of those pages had started to become even more familiar to him, and he didn’t know why. The pools of water, the pipes. Those strange plants. All of it seemed somehow… normal.

  Desmond hid the drawings away and thought about the dream that had just awakened him. This one had been particularly bad. He’d had dreams of Kelsey a few times, but they’d usually been quite enjoyable. In fact, in his dreams the two of them together usually involved doing things that were likely illegal in most states. He smiled thinking about that, and for a brief moment, his tension eased. He closed his eyes and imagined her in his arms. So soft, so vulnerable. For a brief, blissful moment, he thought he could smell a hint of her cologne and he sighed.

  This dream had been different from the others. An adult Kelsey sat on the grass in her garden glen with her fedelia, but someone else sat with her. A man, so large at times he seemed to fill the sky, but Kelsey didn’t take much notice of him. But Desmond did and the being scared him. A malevolence filled the air around Kels
ey, so thick he felt he could see the way it rippled before him.

  The being had turned his stare on him and widened his eyes, seemingly startled that Desmond could see him. Suddenly, the nighttime sky filled his vision with constellations so bright, they shone like beacons.

  A number filled Desmond’s mind. One so ominous it woke him out of his deep sleep. In fact, just thinking about it now gave him a sense of foreboding that something terrible would happen to Kelsey.

  The number was thirty-three.

  Chapter 19

  THE PHONE CALL

  Kelsey’s leg vibrated and woke her from a fitful sleep. The flat was dark and she reached into her pocket where she kept her phone. She eased off the mattress, careful not to wake Jay, and moved out into the hallway to take the call. Soft yellow lights illuminated the screen and she could see it was Desmond calling.

  “Hey, honey.” She tried to stifle a yawn, but couldn’t.

  “Kelsey, I’m sorry I woke you.”

  Something in his voice alarmed her and her shoulders tensed. “What’s the matter? Are you okay?”

  “Yes, I’m fine. Where are you?”

  “Desmond, you know where I am. I’m in Egypt.”

  “Where exactly in Egypt, Kelsey?”

  She didn’t answer and he sighed. “Look. I just want to know that you’re okay.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Okay… I’m sorry. I’ll let you go.”

  Something isn’t right. “What’s going on? You’re acting… odd.”

  “I think I might finally be losing my mind.”

  “Desmond, will you please talk to me already and tell me what’s up with you?”

  He sighed. “I really do want to talk to you about everything, Kelsey, but right now is not the time to get into all of it. I just had a bad dream last night and a weird premonition all day. I’ve been fighting the urge to call you, but I finally gave in. Now that I hear your voice, I know I just overreacted, as usual. Really, I’m okay.” He tried to change the subject. “So how are things going over there? And how is our boy, Jibade? Did he make it there in one piece?” The jealous edge crept back into his tone.

  “He’s fine. He’s sleeping.”

  “So you’re there alone… with just him?”

  She sighed. He just can’t let it go. “No, I’m with Armand and a few of his associates, too. There’s a lot going on.” Her stomach rumbled and she put her hands to it, realizing she was now officially four days late. I just can’t be pregnant. She suddenly wanted to tell Desmond everything, but she didn’t even know how to start. And like he said, now really wasn’t the time.

  “You must be exhausted. I’ll let you go,” Desmond said.

  She still tried to keep him on the phone. “You want to talk about your dream?”

  “I actually do.” He paused. “You know I’ve been having a lot of very strange dreams since we returned from Tibet, right? I’ve been trying to hide them from you, but I don’t think I’ve been doing a very good job.” He stayed quiet for a moment.

  “Spill it, Des. Come on, it can’t be worse than me taking you to a mystical Buddhist bardos and getting you shot at in Tibet by a minion of the Buddhist devil.”

  He didn’t laugh at her joke. “But that’s just it, Kelsey. My dreams are about the bardos. I’m in Xanadu and I live with a set of monks who live on the outskirts of town. And then the dream switches and suddenly you’re there as a little girl, with your pigtails bouncing around your head, and I get this horrible premonition. All I know is I need to protect you. It’s like a burning need in my gut to make sure you’re okay.” He stalled for a moment, unsure. “Um, I think maybe it’s been filtering into our daily lives.”

  Just a little bit. “It’s okay. I know you care. Your mind is just recalling what you saw when we all took you to Xanadu six months ago. The monks said the experience would change your brain functioning patterns.”

  He didn’t sound convinced. “It’s more than that.” He paused again. “Look, when you get back, we need to talk. There are things I haven’t told you about myself that I need to.”

  “Of course, Desmond.” There are things I need to talk to you about, too. Like how if we decide to have a future together, I might not want to ever have children with you so they won't be pawns for vengeful gods. Or, that I might already be bearing your child. Two conversations she simply couldn’t bear bringing up on the phone right now.

  He breathed what sounded like a sigh of relief. “Good. Just do me a favor in the meantime and humor me about something, okay?”

  She smiled. “Sure, what do you want me to do? Smack Jay around a little bit for you? Get you a trinket from Egypt?”

  “Um, no.” His voice was serious. Too serious. “I want you to watch out for the number thirty-three.”

  Her stomach dropped and Kelsey was extremely glad 5,700 miles separated her from him so he couldn’t see her flinch. She tried to sound casual. “The number thirty-three? Why?”

  “I wish I knew. All I know is that I keep dreaming of that number and for some reason it’s dangerous to you.”

  Thirty-three? Kelsey was about to respond when the phone went dead and the lights blinked out, plunging her into total darkness.

  Chapter 20

  ARI

  Desmond stared at the phone. He’d heard Kelsey’s startled reaction and then the line went dead. He tried to call her back, but it went straight to voicemail. He sat there in indecision, steeled himself, and made a phone call.

  Ari’s secretary answered. “I need to speak to Ari, Clarice. It’s Desmond.”

  The elderly secretary was too professional to be anything other than unfailingly polite, but he knew she knew how her employer felt about him. “I’m sorry, Detective, but Mr. Goldman is in a meeting.” Her answer sounded rehearsed.

  “Please interrupt him. I have to talk to him right now. It’s important.”

  “I’ll see what I can do, Mr. Gisborne. Please hold.”

  A full minute went by before Clarice came back on the phone. “I’m sorry, Mr. Gisborne, but Mr. Goldman says he can’t be disturbed.”

  Yeah, can’t be disturbed, my ass. Desmond clenched his fists and counted to five. “Clarice, tell him this has to do with Kelsey. I think she’s in trouble. Let’s see if that disturbs him enough to get out of his meeting. If not, tell him I’m coming down to the office and making a huge scene in the lobby.”

  Mere seconds elapsed before Ari got on the phone. No pleasantries were exchanged. “What do you want?”

  “You need to look up something for me.”

  “I don’t do your bidding.”

  “It’s for your sister. She’s in Egypt and I think something more is going on than what she’s telling me.”

  “I know exactly where she is and what she’s doing. And as for her not telling you something, maybe you’d should finally take the hint that she doesn’t want you knowing anything.”

  Desmond did his best to control himself. He knew Ari hated him. Too goddamn bad. “I think she’s in trouble. Maybe you know what’s going on or maybe you don’t, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit here and not trust my gut. I was just speaking to her and heard her gasp before the line went dead. Now, are you going to help me or am I going to get on a plane and go over there right now?”

  Ari clicked his tongue. “Hold on.” Desmond could hear him dialing and then cursing. He got back on the phone.

  “What, you didn’t believe me, genius?” Desmond said.

  Desmond could feel Ari’s glare through the phone lines.

  “What do you need me to do?”

  “I need you to look up the significance of the number thirty-three.”

  Ari paused. “Thirty-three? That’s a pretty vague number. Why not six or fifty or a hundred?”

  “Just do it. I need the significance it holds in everything from religion and math and science to… I don’t know to what. To anything, I guess.”

  “So what, now I’m your pissboy?”


  At this Desmond finally smiled. “No, you’re hers. I just come with the territory.”

  Chapter 21

  THE DINER

  They met at the diner, sitting in the same booth where Desmond had first met Ari six months before. This time, however, Ari wasn’t contracting Desmond to do a job with his sister. A job Desmond knew he now regretted hiring him for.

  Instead of a Goth wannabee actress, this time their waitress was middle-aged, with prematurely wrinkled skin from too much tanning and way too much tobacco. Her gravelly voice repeated their drink order, and with a phlegmy cough she disappeared into the kitchen.

  Ari turned his glare on Desmond. “Are you so blind that you can’t fathom Kelsey didn’t invite you to Egypt because she doesn’t want you there? It’s not like things have been great between you two. She told me all about it, you know.”

  Desmond didn’t respond because he knew the statement had truth to it, and it worried him greatly. That Kelsey had shared their relationship problems with her brother frustrated him because he realized it meant their situation had grown worse than he’d thought.

  He knew he loved Kelsey, but things had clearly changed once they returned from Tibet. Their experiences had put a new parameter on their relationship and set things on a different path for both of them.

  The biggest physical changes were the dreams they’d both started having. He’d awakened many nights to Kelsey thrashing in her sleep. It had gotten so bad she’d thought perhaps the monks had lied to her and were still influencing her dreams. To make sure, she’d gone to Tibet to discuss it with them. She had done this only two months into their relationship, so at the time Desmond hadn’t thought it a big deal that she’d gone by herself. He had returned to work as a newly minted detective and received a high profile smuggling case, and now he also had his paintings to keep him occupied. Looking back objectively, he could now definitely see a pattern developing. Ari’s pompous prose broke through his musings.