The Book of 21

by Todd Ohl

  “Harry, what’s going on?”

  “Well, right now, we are waiting.”

  “What?”

  “We found John’s cell phone in the back of a truck. We’re not sure how it wound up there. He could have ditched it there, but who knows; it could have gotten there any number of ways. Right now, it looks like it led us on a wild goose chase into south Philly.”

  “That sucks,” she growled.

  “Well, it looks like there were a few calls within the last twenty-four hours from a woman named Amy Ritter. I have George Pew tracking her number to see if he can locate her. Hopefully, she will give us a few answers.”

  “Do you think she is with him?”

  “I don’t know what to think at this point. If George can get me a fix on her number, we’ll drop in on her.”

  There was a short pause, during which Harry listened to the Nissan’s engine drone across the cell phone. After a few seconds, he asked, “How far away are you right now?”

  “Um, I should be coming up on the Lansdale exit soon. I would guess about thirty minutes to an hour or so. It all depends on where you need me to go.”

  “OK, give me a ring when you reach Manayunk and we’ll sync up,” he replied. After glancing at his watch, he hung up the phone.

  Fanelli came striding up to Harry holding a flimsy tray with three coffees. He handed one to Harry, and one to Moore.

  “Drink up, gentlemen,” Fanelli commanded.

  Harry opened the Styrofoam cup and drew deep. The coffee tasted like dishwater. He fought back a spit-take.

  “Mmm, good coffee,” purred Fanelli, as he savored the sip.

  “Yeah,” seconded Moore, “very nice. That little shop on the corner made this?”

  “Yeah, buck a cup.”

  Moore nodded and said, “Good deal.”

  Philadelphia had many great things, but good taste in coffee was not one of them. Harry knew many people in the town that just liked weak coffee. He sighed and took another sip of the stuff.

  Harry’s phone rang again. The caller ID showed the name Harry wanted to see—George Pew.

  Harry flipped open the phone and barked, “Tell me you have her.”

  “It’s a cell, and she’s at a church in Springfield. Actually, she just showed up on the grid in the last minute.”

  Harry thought for a second, there were actually two Springfield neighborhoods in Philadelphia. “Are you talking about the Springfield out past Drexel Hill?” he asked.

  “Bingo,” quipped George. “Saddle up the posse, because she just made a call. It looks like the other number is on the move and headed toward her. So, I would imagine that they are going to meet up.”

  “Let’s go,” Harry chimed, summoning to the two cops. “Ritter’s in Springfield—in a church along Baltimore Ave. It looks like she just called in some friends, so something may be up.”

  Moore jogged off to his car, while Fanelli and Harry slipped into theirs.

  Inside the car, Harry put the phone back to his ear, and said, “George, hold on.”

  He put George on hold and dialed Kim. When she answered, he said, “Kim, you are going to want to take the Blue Route.”

  Chapter 39:

  The Door That No Man Openeth

  “We’re at the Church of St. Francis in Springfield,” Amy said into the phone. She glared at John, cracked a mocking smile, and continued the discussion with the person on the other end of the line. “Yes, this is it. It’s here.” She paused to listen to the tiny voice on the phone and then concluded the call with the words, “OK, see you in a bit.”

  He tried to identify the muted voice seeping through the cell phone but could not focus; his mind was too busy fighting back his anger at the current situation. His mind bounced between Shalby’s incompetence, Amy’s betrayal, and his own stupidity. The fact that he was in this situation was his own fault; he had the chance to give the case back to Shalby and declined it out of spite. Eventually, every thought he had was consumed by a single word that finally fell from his lips and echoed off the marble walls of the church—“Fuck.”

  “Oh, shut up,” Amy snarled.

  John eyed the faces of both Amy and Father Lamb. Apparently, he was the only person in the church that was surprised by the current turn of events. Father Lamb stood with a calm air about him, silently waiting for the next demand to come his way. Amy turned toward the priest to provide the needed direction.

  “You,” she snapped, “open the door.”

  Even with everything that happened to this point, Father Lamb opted to play dumb one last time.

  “I am not sure what you mean, my child, but whatever is hurting you, perhaps we can discuss—”

  “Shut up, asshole.” Amy took a deep breath and pointed the gun at John while she barked at Father Lamb. “I have seen several friends die because of this fucking idiot over here, and I am in no fucking mood for your shit.”

  Amy’s stare cut into Father Lamb. The priest fell silent, looked down at the floor, and blinked. Amy stared at him for a moment, then walked over to the tile with the red cross, pointed her gun at its center, and squeezed off a round.

  John flinched at the muzzle blast and realized a few things. First, Amy was quite comfortable with firing a gun; she handled the weapon fluidly, and her face remained calm as the shot rang into the church. Second, she showed that she was actually very decisive; her reaction to Lamb’s stalling was swift. Adding these two things up meant that any move he made against her needed to be quick and deadly; there would be no forgiveness—no second chances.

  Looking at the tile, John saw that a crack had formed across its center. There seemed to be a small hole in the cross. The black void beyond the hole told him that there was nothing beneath that tile.

  Amy flapped the gun in John’s direction, to indicate she was talking to him, and growled, “Let’s go, gimpy. Grab that iron candlestick next to you and get over here before I squeeze one into the priest’s skull.”

  John realized she meant a six-foot tall candelabrum just to his right. There was a second of hesitation, during which John debated whether he wanted to comply with her command or tell her to go fuck herself. He opted for the former, deciding that he needed to remain calm and wait for the opportunity that would let him end this whole game. He limped over to the candelabrum and hoisted the heavy iron device, causing several unlit candles to drop to the floor.

  After getting past the visceral reaction to her words, he recognized her “gimpy” remark was well played. It angered him enough to stop thinking, while it reminded him that he was not fast enough to run out the front door without catching at least one bullet. He wondered whether she planned its use or just lucked into it.

  Either way, the barb also told him to start working his way closer; he was too far away from her for a quick strike, especially with her holding the gun. He had to close that distance. Moving too quickly would get him shot. Not moving at all would let her remain in control, which would eventually get him shot as well. Transitioning the distance had to be done slowly and carefully; one mistake meant that she would end all of his effort with the squeeze of a trigger.

  He raised the iron candelabrum and smashed its heavy circular base onto the fractured tile with an echoing boom. The tile cracked in a few more directions, and all the remaining candles fell from their holders. One more blow left a visible chasm between two halves of the tile and exposed the darkness below.

  “Very nice, Johnny,” she said with a smile. “Now use it just like a giant crowbar to pry this thing up for me.”

  “There’s a crowbar in the truck, you know.”

  “Fuck off and start prying,” she snapped.

  John turned the candelabrum over and jammed one of the three fat branches, which had held candles a few seconds ago, into the tiny schism. He found it simple to lift one side of the marble slab a few inches, but the awkwardness of the iron implement kept him from going any further. Instead of acting like a counter-balance to lift the slab, the
heavy iron base torqued the candelabrum laterally. Holding the device in place while he bent over to lift the slab was too difficult.

  The situation made him think about whether there was an easier way to open the hole. In his notes, Hallman wrote something about the second symbol that John could not bring to mind. He thought it best not to draw out the papers and start rifling through them. It would remind her of them and effectively give her all the information he had. That would make him irrelevant. He decided to see where this went.

  He looked at Amy, and sighed, “I need another set of hands.”

  Amy kept the gun trained on him with one hand, while she reached out and grabbed the iron pole of the candelabrum with the other. She then said, “Let’s go, lift it up.”

  John bent down and grabbed the half of the slab that Amy kept elevated with the candelabrum. Though the marble tile was less than half an inch thick, it was heavier than he expected. He slowly swung the slab as if it were sitting on a hinge. After the slab was finally at a vertical state, he let it fall to the floor with a deafening crack and then repeated the task with the other side.

  Beneath the tile, something that looked like a dirty chimney led downward into the darkness. The faint smell of ash touched John’s nostrils and caused them to flare. Finally, he noticed metal rungs along one side of the shaft.

  “Go on, see what’s down there,” she barked.

  He looked up at her, and protested, “Those are three-hundred-year-old metal rungs that have been kept in a dark shaft. If they are not rusted through, they probably aren’t too secure in that stone wall.” He looked around the church and grumbled, “We need some rope.”

  Not far from them, a low railing separated the pews from the altar. Behind the railing were a few cabinets, candles, incense burners, and two open doors leading back into the rest of the church. More pertinent to his current need, however, was a red rope that ran through a series of small brass poles with loops at their tops.

  Father Lamb caught his gaze, and said, “The rope is used to guide the communion line.”

  “Directing the sheep to their slaughter, Father Lamb?” Amy laughed.

  “Enough, Amy,” John sighed. “Anyway, I doubt that’s the good Father’s real name.”

  John made his way around the railing and untied the rope. The rope was thick enough, and seemed strong enough, to support him. He slipped it out of the other eyelets and moved to the railing in front of the pews. There, he tied the rope around the railing and tugged a bit to make sure that it was secure.

  “I guess there is no chance I could borrow my gun from you, just in case the demon we saw on the relief just happens to be down there,” he quipped.

  Amy’s face crinkled, and she replied, “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  “Thought so,” he said. “Just out of curiosity, is that the revolver I left in the woods last night?”

  “Thanks for leaving me at the diner long enough to make a call and get a special delivery.” She smiled, and continued, “Sophia thought it was a nice touch to use your weapon, and easier to explain if I had to shoot you.”

  John breathed deeply and exhaled slowly.

  Amy looked over at Father Lamb, and snapped, “Answer fast, Father, and realize that if he doesn’t come back, you get shot; is there any other way out of the Mithraeum down there?”

  Father Lamb shook his head, then answered, “You know there isn’t.”

  “Lower him down, then, Father.”

  “No, thanks,” John interjected, shaking his head. “If it’s the good Father’s job to protect this portal, I don’t need him to accidentally drop me into whatever hell is waiting down there.”

  John looked into the shaft. It was too narrow for him to repel. Even if it was larger, his shoes would not give him the traction he needed, and his ankle would not take the stress. He pulled the rope taught and used the old rusty rungs as a foothold while the rope bore much of his weight.

  “This may take a bit,” he said.

  Amy cocked her head, glared at him, and said, “Move your ass, lest some others show up and I don’t need you anymore.”

  John gave her a mock smile and lowered himself into the darkness. Surprisingly, the iron rungs seemed rather sturdy. After about twenty to thirty feet, he hit bottom, and said, “I’m down.”

  “What do you see?” Amy shouted down the shaft.

  “Nothing. It’s pitch black down here.” John realized he had the small LED flashlight on his keychain and started to dig for it.

  “Head’s up, Einstein,” she said.

  John looked upward to see Amy holding a candle and box of matches in her left hand.

  She shook the candle and matchbox for emphasis, and said, “The good thing about being in a church is that there are plenty of candles. I hope you can catch, John.”

  Her fingers opened just enough that only the box of matches dropped. Amy watched for John to complete the catch, and then let the candle follow. John snatched it out of the air and began to open the matchbox.

  She smiled and continued her condescending bent with the words, “Not bad, John.”

  “Thanks,” he grunted with a roll of his eyes.

  John decided to keep the flashlight his little secret and struck a match to reveal a hallway extending off into the darkness. After lighting the candle, he realized the hallway was even longer than he first believed. Instead of perfectly uniform block, as he would have expected from the expert stonemasons that completed the church above, he found large slate slabs of disparate sizes stacked together to create the walls. Even larger pieces spanned the distance across the top of the two walls to create the ceiling. While the construction technique did not necessarily inspire confidence, John knew that the hallway had not collapsed in a past few hundred years, and there was no reason to believe it would do so in the next few minutes.

  John moved slowly into the hallway and saw that narrow gaps exhibited themselves at random locations between the irregularly sized slabs. He reached out and gave a push on the wall; it refused to budge. Realizing that the construction was sturdier than it seemed, he fought back the feeling that someone could be watching him through the tiny cracks, and edged forward.

  The corridor was too narrow to hold the candle out to his side. Holding the candle in front of him blinded him to what was beyond the flame, as streetlights hid the stars at night. Holding the candle behind him, however, caused his body to cast a shadow down the hall and negate the candle’s effects. After struggling with the problem for a few seconds, he wondered how the human race survived through several centuries with only candlelight to illuminate the darkness. He decided that he could probably use his small flashlight without giving too much away to Amy at this point. He doused the flickering candle and dug into his pocket for his key ring.

  Upon locating the small flashlight, he pinched the sides between his thumb and forefinger to activate it. The fresh beam of crisp light washed forward into the full length of the hall. At the far end of the hall, a horned, cloven-hooved beast stared at him. He did a quick jump back at the sight of the demon ahead of him, before realizing the thing was yet another statue.

  “Jesus Christ,” he muttered.

  He decided it would be best to take a second to look around and ran the beam over the rough stones of the corridor. In the strong light of the LED, he noticed a strange shadow on the floor about ten feet away from him. After a few seconds, he realized that the source of the shadow was a wire. The wire was very thin, suspended about a foot off the floor, and coated in a type of black mossy substance.

  His mind returned to the lid of the sarcophagus and the three barely perceptible ridges his fingers detected on the last glyph. He froze, and started looking for the two other wires. After a few seconds, he saw a second tripwire about five feet ahead of him. He realized that if the pattern held, the third wire could be fifteen feet away, or right at his feet. He slowly shined the flashlight down, and found the last wire hovering a foot above his left toe. Apparently, the a
rchitects expected any unwanted guests would have only dim candle or lantern light, and would therefore be unable to see the trap.

  John did not know what exactly the wires did, but now he could guess why the apparently haphazard construction of the hall existed; the tiny cracks between the stones could allow the builders to spring all kinds of foul traps. The wires could trigger poison darts to shoot from between the stones, or they could collapse the whole tunnel. After debating what the trap could be, and whether it withstood the test of sitting in the damp earth for three hundred years, he thought it best to let both questions remain a mystery. He carefully stepped over the wires and proceeded forward, toward the statue of Baphomet.

  At this distance, the sculpture in front of him was very lifelike. He noted that it was at least as realistic as the statues upstairs but, unlike the figures in the church above, this sculpture was unpainted. Even without the paint, John had the impression that the thing could stand up and walk toward him at any moment. As he approached the leering sculpture, he noticed the tunnel ahead of him opened up into a large room at its end, and the statue actually sat on the other side of that room.

  After what seemed like an eon of painfully limping along in the darkness, John reached the end of the tunnel. There he found an octagonal chamber that was twenty feet across, with each of the walls decorated in an intricate marble bas-relief. The ceiling arched up from the eight walls into a dome.

  Columns framed each bas-relief wall, and ascended upward into the domed ceiling. Each column was adorned with carvings of angels and demons intertwined in battle. The two forces were clawing at each other, and both sides were committing atrocious acts. The fierceness and desperation of the mêlée was captured in the marble with the utmost beauty and delicacy, making the ugliness of the fight even more repugnant.

  Across from him, Baphomet sat silently.

  John’s heart gave a slight start upon noticing the faces between each of the columns. There, ugly bas-relief forms were held in captivity by carvings of sturdy cell doors, complete with carved locks and hinges. Gates adorned six walls of the chamber, three to his left and three to his right. Each of these doors retained a large main character that John took to be one of the more important gods of the mythos.