Pitch Green

by The Brothers Washburn

  “Whatever Senior was doing with the mansion, he somehow lost control. The process he put in motion apparently didn’t need him anymore. Though Senior was killed, the mansion kept doing whatever it was built to do without him. That mansion is an abomination. It’s not natural—it should be destroyed.

  “Everyone calls it the Searles Mansion, but Alberto Sr. built it and brought a curse upon it and his whole family. Others have suffered, too, but none have suffered like his own family. All of his male heirs have now been killed.”

  Camm shifted in her seat to look at Cal. “Remember? Alberto Sr. was killed and mutilated in the mansion in 1941.” Cal nodded slowly, but still looked quizzical.

  “Yes,” Miss Cathleen agreed. “In fact, both Alberto Sr. and Jr. were killed that night, along with others. Alberto Sr. built the mansion and somehow created the monster that is still there, but what no one knew at the time was that a pretty, young maid had innocently captured Junior’s heart. Despite Senior’s violent disapproval, the maid and Junior had been secretly married.”

  Miss Cathleen leaned over to kiss Sarah on top of her wispy white head. “She was pregnant at the time of the killings.”

  “Why wasn’t something done then, back in 1941?” Camm asked.

  “An investigation was started, but no one really understood what had happened. Then, the government got involved, closing the mansion, and all investigations stopped after Pearl Harbor. It had become clear that Trona would play an integral part in the war effort, and plant production was ramped up to full capacity.”

  “Right, the government was hiding something.” Cal nodded.

  “I think . . . I don’t know, for sure. I only know the investigation was stopped prematurely. The mansion was locked up and everyone conveniently forgot about the massacre of 1941. But after I married Sarah’s son, he took over as a plant manager and began an investigation into the incident. He couldn’t let it rest, not with all the deaths and disappearances.

  “At first he found nothing. Later, he told me there was a secret room in the mansion. He said it was connected with the killings and other mysterious things going on around town. He also told me that nothing could be done during the day to fix the problem, that he had to go there at night. He went there one night, and I never saw him again. All that was left the next morning was a black box he had inherited from his father.”

  Miss Cathleen sagged and looked away momentarily, then her back stiffened. She smiled again softly at Sarah, lightly caressing her hand. “We’ve both suffered deeply.”

  Giving Miss Cathleen time to recover, Camm nodded at Cal. “Sarah mentioned the black box when I was here with Agent Allen.”

  “Please tell them,” Miss Cathleen gently instructed Sarah.

  Sarah sighed and wiped her eyes. “The night Al died—oh, I miss him. He was a good man, not like his father. His father was a mean, mean, greedy man. I didn’t like him at all.”

  “Sarah,” Miss Cathleen encouraged gently. “It is important now for you to tell them about the black box.”

  “Oh, yes, the black box. I don’t like the black box. It came from the mansion. The night Al died, I found him, you know, just before he died.” Sarah started to cry, her eyes stark in the remembering. With effort, she regained control. “John, he was the butler, he ran through the house. It was after midnight. I heard that big old clock gonging, but he, John, ran through the house telling everyone to get out. He said not to waste time getting dressed. Everyone must get out of the house, get out immediately. I didn’t know why, but I was running to leave when I tripped. I tripped on Al. Al was hurt—oh, he was hurt so badly. He was bleeding and all chewed up.”

  Miss Cathleen looked away, and Sarah started weeping again.

  Camm felt sorry for her, but was anxious to hear about the box. “I am sorry, Sarah, about Al. It must have been awful.” Camm forced herself to wait, hoping she wouldn’t have to prod.

  Sarah wiped her eyes. “Al handed me a black box. He had it under his arm. He was lying on the ground, but it was tucked under his arm. He only had one arm.” Sarah shuddered, staring into space as if witnessing the scene on the wall in front of her. “Al gave me the black box and said, ‘Kill it. Kill it with this.’ Then he died, before I could tell him I loved him.”

  Sarah rested her head on her arm on the table and sobbed.

  “What’s in the box?” Cal looked at Miss Cathleen.

  “We don’t know. No one knows anymore.” She laughed grimly. “I don’t know if there is anything in it. We can’t get it to open. Sarah saved the box for years. When my husband became suspicious about the mansion, she gave him the box and told him what his father had said, but he was never able to open the box. He didn’t want to force it open; he was afraid it would ruin its ability—if it has one—to kill that thing in the mansion.

  “Finally, one night, he went into the mansion with the black box, saying it was time to find out once and for all what was going on. I never saw him again. The next morning, all they found was the black box, still unopened, on the floor in front of the old grandfather clock.”

  They sat in silence, then Cal asked, “And . . . what else?”

  Miss Cathleen gave him a cold stare. “That’s all I know. I don’t want to know anything more. You young people went into the mansion. Now, my son is dead. He was the last of the Samuel family male heirs. No one believes what is going on in there, except you two. You have taken it upon yourselves to arouse the monster. Now, it’s up to you two to kill it.”

  With that, she got up from the table and strode into the other room. She came right back and laid a black wooden box, about the size of a cigar box, on the table in front of Cal.

  She stepped back, pressed her hand to her forehead and took a deep breath. “Now, take the box and go. Please, leave Sarah and me alone, and do not ever come back to this house again.”

  Camm and Cal sat at a large wooden table in the library with the box set before them. The library was closed, but Miss Cathleen had agreed to let them investigate the box there, rather than at home in front of their families.

  “When you go, just be sure the door is locked and shut tightly behind you,” she had sternly instructed before leaving.

  The black box was nine by six inches in dimension, and four inches thick; it was made of a dark, almost black, wood with a very fine grain. The wood was hard and heavy. When shaken, the box did not rattle. There was no way of telling if it was a box with something inside or just a solid block of wood. If it was a box, it was sealed tight with no discernible seams.

  Four of the six sides were covered with intricate carvings similar to the baroque motifs in the mansion. Though most were of strange animals and birds, Camm thought the many apparent strange symbols found on the box could also be significant; she and Cal just couldn’t decipher them. Among these designs, she also noticed several of the backward S designs—the ones with the teardrop at the upper terminus—along with other designs she remembered from the mansion.

  After looking it over carefully, Camm commented, “I think this is like a Japanese puzzle box.”

  “A what?” Cal looked at Camm in wonder.

  “You know, a Japanese puzzle box, a box that can only be opened after certain manipulations, like pushing in parts, or pulling out parts, or even twisting parts.”

  “You mean kinda like a combination lock?”

  “Yeah, you have to figure out what things to do and how to do them in the right order, or you could cause the variable part of the box’s configuration to completely lock up for good.”

  “Why would old Alberto Sr. create a monster, and then put a secret weapon against it in a Japanese puzzle box?”

  “Well, maybe, just to be safe, he made a way to kill it, but because the monster served some special purpose, he didn’t want the weapon that would kill it to be easily accessible.”

  Cal was irritated. “Why do the whole thing anyway. I mean, why make a monster, then make a way to kill it, then hide the way to kill it? Wha
t was he up to?”

  “I don’t know,” Camm said, exasperated. “If he were here, we could ask him, for all the good that would do. From everything I’ve heard, I think that he was completely crazy—obviously a genius—but a totally insane genius, who got himself killed along with his descendants, as well as a lot of innocent people to boot.”

  “If he were here, he’d get my boot!”

  “Right, Cal. That would really help. I’m sure.”

  Camm picked up the box. “Now, come on, help me figure out this box. Why have a box if it cannot be opened? Why have all the carvings if they don’t tell you how to open it? The key to the puzzle must be encoded in these carvings. Maybe he didn’t want it to be easy, but there must be a way to figure it out. You and me, Cal, Team One. We can figure this out.”

  The box had a nine-by-six-inch side that was smooth and undecorated. The opposite side with the same dimensions had a border going around it with doves carved in different attitudes and poses. Framed within the border of doves, large, bold letters were carved in the wood:

  LK XXIII XXXVIII

  Cal leaned in closer. “Those look like roman numerals to me. Maybe that is the combination. What numbers are those?”

  Camm was better at classical studies, so she deciphered them. “Let’s see. L is fifty and K is one thousand. With the L to the left, it means fifty subtracted from one thousand, so the first number would be nine hundred and fifty. The second number is easy, two X’s and three I’s is twenty-three, and the last number is thirty-eight. So, it is 950, 23, and 38.”

  “That’s doing nothing for me,” Cal said, shaking his head. “But look at the side carvings; only three of the narrow sides have carvings. I’m guessing this nine-by-four-inch side without carvings is the back, where hinges would be; so, this opposite side must be the front. The nine-by-six-inch side without carvings should be the bottom, which means the opposite side with the doves and roman numerals must be the top of the box.”

  Camm tipped her head, impressed. “Sounds good to me.” She rotated the box in her hands. Different symbols were carved to fit within the three narrow sides of the box. The carvings on the front side were roman numerals like the ones on top, but these were different:

  II VI I IV III VIII V VII IX

  “These are also roman numerals, single integers, but not in order. They are the numbers 2, 6, 1, 4, 3, 8, 5, 7, and 9.”

  “So,” Cal summed up, “we have numbers one through nine on the front, but all jumbled up. Maybe the order of the numbers means something.”

  He took the box from Camm, squinting closely at the carved numbers along the front. “Each number is in its own little square block. See, each one was carved separately and then inserted.” He examined each square, trying to push each one in with no luck. Plus, he could not get a hold on any to pull or twist them either. With a shrug, he turned the box to examine the two sides.

  Camm pushed in close at his elbow to peer at the right side of the box. “Look! These symbols appear to be Greek letters. I’ve been getting information from different sororities for college. They all have Greek names with symbols like these.”

  Camm neatly wrote out the Greek letters on some scratch paper:

  “What does it spell?” Cal asked, assuming Camm would know.

  “It’s Greek to me,” Camm said in jest, but she was feeling pressured and more than a little frustrated.

  “Look,” Cal pointed out brightly, “there are nine Greek characters on the side and nine roman numerals on the front. Are the Greek characters letters or numbers?”

  Camm brightened, too. “The Greeks, like the Romans, used letters to represent their numbers. The first nine letters of the Greek alphabet were the numbers one through nine.”

  “Are these the first nine letters of the Greek alphabet?”

  “Do I look Greek to you?” Camm jumped up and began to search around the room. “We need a copy of the Greek alphabet. We are in a library. There should be one here somewhere.”

  Cal slid over to the library computer. “Wait, I’ll find it here quicker.” He did a search for “Greek numbers,” and quickly came up with the first nine numbers in Greek. They were the same characters carved into the side of the box, but again, not in order. He called out, “We’ve got numbers!”

  Camm hurried back to help Cal decipher the characters. They came up with 2, 5, 6, 7, 9, 1, 4, 3, and 8.

  “So, we have numbers one through nine in roman numerals and in Greek numerals. What is on the third side?”

  There were also nine small panels on the third side with a symbol carved into each panel, but neither Camm nor Cal recognized the symbols:

  “I have no idea what language that is,” Camm said, “but there are nine symbols, so I’m guessing they are also numerals one through nine. Since the other sides had the numbers jumbled up, we can assume these are not in order either. But we must determine the language before we can figure out the numbers.”

  Cal looked closer. “Well, this is a Japanese puzzle box, right? Are these Japanese numerals?”

  “I don’t think so, but let’s check.” They did a search for Japanese numbers. The carvings didn’t match. They tried Chinese numbers, thinking they might be a logical alternative to Japanese, but still no match. Korean and Vietnamese were no better. They then tried Farsi and Hindi, because Camm had read that they were fundamentally part of some of the most widely spoken languages in the world, but again, no match.

  Cal groaned. “Come on! There are hundreds of languages.”

  “Try thousands.” Camm was equally discouraged.

  Cal groaned again, then suddenly sat up smiling. “I have a better idea. Is there a scanner around here someplace?”

  The scanner was on the librarian’s desk. Cal made etchings of the unknown characters, and scanned them into the computer. Once he had the symbols on the computer screen, he copied the first symbol into the search field, and did an image search.

  “Here it is,” he said proudly. The first symbol, “ג,” was the third letter in the Hebrew alphabet and the symbol for number three.

  Camm whooped, socked him in the shoulder, and jumped in to help. Pulling up the first nine letters in Hebrew, they found the order of the carved integers:

  3 5 7 9 1 2 4 6 8

  Having always been comfortable with charts and graphs, Camm grabbed a piece of paper and made a table with the symbols from the three languages and the corresponding numbers:

  Cal looked at the chart Camm had made and scratched his head. “So, what do we do with this?”

  Camm scratched her head, too. “I don’t know.”

  “I’m hungry. I think maybe we need some brain food.”

  “You’re always hungry. For as much brain food as you eat, you should be the smartest person in the world.”

  “Maybe I am.”

  “Then don’t quit now. We’ve made real progress so far. We’ve got a lot of clues. Now, we need to tie them together. Maybe, the key is in the numbers on top with the doves.”

  They looked at those numbers again: 950, 23, 38. Still nothing. Cal’s stomach grumbled. He sighed, but didn’t say anything. Leaning back to stretch, he said, “Roman, Greek, and Hebrew. Sounds kind of biblical, don’t you think?”

  Camm sat forward. “Maybe the key is in the Bible, somehow.”

  “Maybe it’s on page 950, in lines 23 and 38,” Cal mused.

  “I don’t think so. There are many different versions of the Bible. Page 950 would be different in each one. We’d have no way of knowing which version of the Bible old Alberto Sr. was using.”

  “Did you see a Bible in the mansion?”

  Camm shook her head, no. “But the numbers 23 and 38 could be chapter and verse.” Looking at the box again, her face lit up.

  “Maybe LK isn’t a Roman number. We just assumed it was. Maybe LK stands for Luke, the third book in the New Testament. Remember the Sunday School poem with the books of the Bible? It began with, ‘Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, bless the bed that I
lay on . . .’ Wait, I think I saw a Bible around here somewhere.”

  “Never mind that,” Cal said. “I’ll pull one up online. I’m glad one of us stayed awake in Sunday School, and I’m glad it was you.” He worked the computer before asking, “Which English translation of the Bible do we want?”

  “How many are there?”

  “A bunch.”

  Camm thought for a moment. “Back in 1941, which English translation would be most commonly used?”

  “Okay,” Cal answered, “let’s see if the Internet knows.” Entering a site that answered questions, he typed, “most common translation of English language bible in 1941.”

  He scanned the answers. “Well,” he hesitated, “the most frequent answer is KJV. What does that stand for?”

  “King James Version, I know I saw one around here somewhere.”

  Cal started typing again. “Way ahead of you. Here it is, Luke 23:38. This chapter is all about the crucifixion and death of Jesus Christ. A gruesome death seems appropriate for what we’re doing. Verse 38 says, ‘And a superscription also was written over him in letters of Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew, THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS.’”

  Cal squinted at the ceiling. “Well, we have Greek and Hebrew, but not Latin. We have roman numerals instead.”

  Camm reached over and smacked him on his forehead with the palm of her hand. “Roman numerals are Latin, you dummy.”

  “I just need some brain food,” Cal muttered under his breath.

  Camm ignored him. “It can’t be a coincidence that we also have numbers carved on the sides in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. Maybe, whatever it is we do, we do in that order: Greek first, then Latin, then Hebrew. Did you push any Greek symbols?”

  Rather than answer, Cal picked up the box and pushed each Greek symbol one by one. When he pushed on the “ϛ” the panel slid in a quarter inch. “Look!” he exclaimed, “Something happened!”