The Initiation

by Ridley Pearson

  Unseen by my brother, the school chaplain approached him. An unusually short, balding man, as thin as paper, Chaplain Roger Browning had the reputation as a troglodyte (cave-dweller) who read in the evenings by candlelight and whose sermons were eerily knowledgeable of events in the Bricks of which even the masters and mistresses remained unaware.

  Straining my ears, I made out most of their conversation.

  “James.”

  “Chaplain Browning.”

  “I wanted once again to express my deepest condolences.”

  “Thank you for what you said at Father’s memorial service. I didn’t know you were here at Baskerville back when my father was.”

  “Oh, yes. I was something of a troublemaker back then. Your father was a rebel, for certain, but nowhere near the thorn that I was.”

  “Hard to believe.”

  “I simply wanted to say . . .”

  A lumbering trailer truck passed by on the road beyond the stone wall, obscuring my ability to hear.

  “ . . . What one sees and what one observes are often different.”

  “What am I seeing that I’m not observing?” James asked.

  “Therein lies the difference between something staying the same, or progressing. If looking to progress, and I believe you are, never take the fast road, as it rarely produces satisfactory results. Fast roads will get us there quickly, but we often miss the most satisfying scenery.”

  “What are you saying, exactly?” James was cross. “The fast road to what, exactly? You think losing my father is easy? Seriously?”

  “Heavens no. I’m saying hello, son, and passing along my condolences.”

  “What is the scenery thing, anyway? This scenery I’m missing?”

  “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” Chaplain Browning said. “In this case, the details as well.”

  “Well, that certainly clarifies things.” My brother’s dangerous temper was surfacing. The chaplain took a step back from James. “What can you tell me about this sundial?”

  “What is it you want to know?” Browning continued to keep his distance.

  “When was it built?”

  “My goodness, I’m not certain anyone can answer that. Like the chapel, your great-grandfather had it brought over from Europe. It was installed here to his specifications. Exactly as he wanted it.”

  “It’s marble.”

  “Italian marble. Yes.”

  “And the thing on top?” James asked.

  He was referring to an X and P mounted at the peak of the sundial.

  “It’s the Chi-Rho symbol. The first two letters of the Greek Khristos, or ‘Christ.’ To many in ancient times, it represented the constellations Orion and Pleiades. To the Vatican as well. Did you know that seen from satellite, the layout of the Seven Hills of Rome and the Vatican’s Piazza are a perfect representation of Orion and Pleiades?”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning it was carefully planned and constructed to mirror the sky. The Key of Solomon unlocks the mystery behind the constellations of the gods.”

  “A key?” James repeated almost breathlessly.

  “Yes.”

  “Let me guess: Orion and Pleiades.”

  “Correct. It’s all wrapped up in magic and secrecy. The Vatican in those times was filled with ritual and closely guarded secrets.”

  “Like The Da Vinci Code!” James said.

  “Yes. That symbol is original to the sundial. Likely a kind of street sign, a marker that the traveler was either protected by a secret society or had arrived to his meeting place.”

  “And the marker was near the chapel, originally?”

  “Oh, yes! Your grandfather had it placed exactly where it had been in relation to the chapel. In relation to the compass as well.”

  “What kind of secret society?”

  Chaplain Browning smiled and folded his hands in front of himself. He wasn’t going to answer.

  James took a step closer.

  I tried to remember the contents of the pages I’d seen while in Crudgeon’s office. I’d skipped over what had looked like architectural drawings. I now wondered if I’d been too hasty.

  My brother looked ready to punch the man in the face.

  “James!” I called out, waving and walking toward the men.

  “Oh, great. Just perfect,” James said upon seeing me.

  Chaplain Browning spun an about-face and headed for the chapel.

  I had to think of something to explain my sudden appearance. “You going to breakfast?” I asked.

  “I am,” my brother answered.

  “That’s the chaplain, right?”

  “Duh.”

  “What’d he want?”

  “To tell me how sorry he is about Father. He says they were school chums, which I don’t believe for a minute. The guy is the complete opposite of Father.”

  “You mean, he’s alive?” I said, not knowing why I said it. Right now everything was about Father’s death. Families ended. Lives ended. Everything ended. Most of them, like Mother and Father, long before they should. “Was that all? You looked kind of angry.”

  “I thanked him for the memorial service. I wasn’t angry.”

  “I see.”

  There we were, brother and sister, best friends for life, lying to each other, and at a time we needed each other more than ever. I nearly told him about the key hidden in Father’s office, how I’d missed my chance at it, how I felt it more important than any hunt for stupid clues or even the search for our family Bible. How I wouldn’t rest until I found a way back to Boston, and into that room.

  As it turned out, I shouldn’t have been so ambitious.

  CHAPTER 33

  REUNION

  CURIOSITY’S A BLESSING AND A CURSE. FATHER had always complimented me and James on how much of it we displayed, how “critical it is to clear thinking,” words that I missed now but finally understood. Why, I wondered, did such valuable lessons have to come too late?

  My curiosity was currently keeping me awake. Father used to walk to clear his mind, so in honor of him I decided to try it myself. I threw on some clothes and left the Bricks, headed for the sundial. Any middle student required a pass to leave the Bricks past 10 p.m., a pass I did not have. For this reason I crept around outside like a spy, moving shadow to shadow. I’m not the touchy-feely type; I don’t go in for the hippie-dippie “everything’s connected” theory of life. I fight off inexplicable coincidences as just that. But stuff happens. It just does. I think about a friend and five minutes later the phone rings—it’s her. That kind of stuff.

  So, when I witnessed a school maintenance cart being driven poorly, headlights off, bombing across the JV field, I paid special attention to its driver. I did this mainly because I’d witnessed James using just such a cart a week earlier. If not James, then who? Information could be a precious bargaining tool; I was learning things at Baskerville Academy.

  To my surprise, it wasn’t a maintenance person. It looked an awful lot like Sherlock Holmes.

  Natalie’s bicycle was one of those road-racing varieties with a million gears, a place for a water bottle, and a gel seat. She’d offered me riding permission and had given me the lock’s combination.

  As I pedaled furiously around the end of the Bricks, aimed toward the state road, I caught sight of a gray blur that I took to be the golf cart. Two minutes later, I confirmed my sighting. We were both off-campus racing toward an intersection with another state roadway. To the right, the direction Sherlock steered the cart, was Putnam, Connecticut, a nineteenth-century mill town in the midst of a modest revival. It was now home to two Indian restaurants, a good pizza parlor, a supermarket, and some craft shops run by people who dressed and acted like former hippies. I happened to know none of these was of interest to Sherlock Holmes. He was, without question, heading to the bus stop for the last ride to Boston of the night, the 10:42.

  When I boarded the bus just before the door closed, Sherlock’s eyes practically popped out
of his head. I sat down next to him as if we’d planned this all along.

  “How did you expect to get in without me?” I asked.

  Wordlessly, he dug into his pocket and opened his hand, revealing my brother’s key to our Beacon Hill home. “You’re sweating,” he said.

  “Are you going to tell me what we’re doing here?” I asked, shivering from a chill at the darkened back door to our house.

  “Shh.” Sherlock had been treating me like a dog deals with a twig caught in its tail. Snapping at me, not much else.

  “What is it you hope to—”

  “I think we might have been followed.”

  “Nonsense! You think someone’s watching the bus station?”

  “Once we were on foot. Once we hit cobblestone. I heard someone.”

  “Cobblestones.” I led him to the back of the house.

  “I can’t see anything.”

  I took James’s key from him and let us in. “The trouble with boys,” I told him, “is they have to do everything themselves. Girls are always a last option.”

  He grunted and closed the door behind us carefully and quietly.

  “Don’t worry, no one’s here,” I said. “Not at night. Not anymore.” London and Bath raced to greet us, nearly knocking me over. As I petted them and frolicked with them, I felt my throat tighten. Lois and Ralph were taking good care of them, but they were obviously lonely. I shouldn’t have come back here so soon. “What are we doing here, anyway? Why did you get on the bus?”

  “The Bible.”

  “What? Are you crazy? The Bible’s hidden at school somewhere.”

  “No, it’s not. It’s here.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “The guys who broke in? The guys he told me about? Maybe they were hazing James as your father told you. Maybe, as James now thinks, they were after your father, but I don’t think so.”

  “I don’t need to hear this. And here I thought you were coming here to check out the photos I emailed you.”

  “In a way you’re right. I am investigating your father’s accident.”

  “That’s better.”

  “He was found wearing weekend clothes—blue jeans, a nice shirt, and formal shoes. In two of the photos you sent, there are framed pictures of you, James, and your father in the background. In both, he’s wearing nearly the same clothes, jeans and a casual shirt.”

  “I know the photos. They’re in the foyer.”

  “But leather Top-Siders, not dress shoes.”

  “Meaning?”

  “He was put into dress shoes to explain his slipping off the ladder. Furthermore, your father was left-handed.”

  “But how do you know—”

  “The stepladder was positioned in a way to favor a right-handed person climbing to wind the wall clock. Your father didn’t position the ladder, someone else did.”

  I couldn’t feel my heart beating. “And he hated heights.”

  “Exactly! We don’t know why your father might have had the Bible, or if he even knew the Bible was in the house, but it’s apparently worth killing for, and that’s troubling.”

  “Whatever it contains, there’s now a copy,” I said, recalling the computer lab.

  He missed that I had tears on my cheeks, or he just didn’t care.

  “We must find it,” Sherlock said, “and we must take into consideration the headmaster’s warning not to touch it. We can surmise it may be booby-trapped in some manner he deemed significant and therefore worthy of a warning. Do you hear me, Moria?”

  “Barely.”

  “Where would your father hide such a thing?”

  “He didn’t. You’re not right about this.”

  “I’m right about everything. Is that still news to you?”

  “You’re repugnant.”

  “You needn’t be pugnacious. I’m not going to spar with you.”

  I reached for the wall switch. Sherlock caught my hand. “Neighbors. A torch?”

  “We’ll burn the house down?”

  “Flashlight! You call it a flashlight!”

  “Oh.”

  Negotiating the downstairs by a flashlight’s beam was creepy. Shadows moved as we moved. It was like the walls and floor were alive.

  “The Bible isn’t the most important thing,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “You need to get me into his office.”

  “Because?”

  “I’ll show you if I’m allowed.”

  “You’re not making sense, Moria.”

  “You see, not everything makes sense.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong! You haven’t given me all of the facts.”

  “Get me into his study and I’ll give you more facts.”

  “Show me.”

  Father’s study door was locked, just as I’d found it on the night I’d wandered from bed. I explained that I didn’t even know the door had a lock, but that Lois probably had an extra key. That hardly mattered since she wasn’t here.

  “I thought about the window,” I said, “but I’m sure it’s locked. The hinges are on the inside. I saw a horror movie once where the killer took off the hinges and the door fell open. Terrifying.”

  “Fascinating,” he said, irritated with me.

  “If we break it, they’ll know.”

  “The men who were here,” Sherlock stated.

  “Yes. It had to be one of them who locked it. Lois wouldn’t have.”

  “Unless your father had left her instructions.”

  “Which is impossible since he left me instructions to go in there.”

  “Did he?”

  “Don’t rush me. Get me inside, genius.”

  Watching Sherlock work was like watching an art teacher sketch, or hearing a band leader play the trumpet. I began to find myself inside his complicated head as I tracked his eye movement, saw his thumb rubbing his index finger absentmindedly. I’d never had a boy intrigue me as this one did.

  “His pants?” Sherlock said.

  “What are you asking?”

  “The pants he was wearing when . . . you know . . .”

  “OK, then, why are you asking?” said I.

  “His keys, of course. We don’t have Lois, but there would have been at least two keys. Quite possibly a third put away for safekeeping in the event one or the other was lost.” He paused. “His bedroom?”

  I was immediately angry with him. Not because he was asking personal questions about my father but because I wondered: Why hadn’t I thought of that? This was the maddening part of spending time with this particular boy: I couldn’t help but feel inferior.

  “There was a bag,” I said. “His keys, wallet . . . the police.”

  “You know this because?”

  “I may have intercepted a letter meant for James.”

  “May have? Did you copy it?”

  “Oops.”

  “Do not tell me you did not think to copy it.”

  I didn’t say a thing. I was glad it was basically dark so I didn’t have to feel the weight of his scorn.

  “Amateurs,” he muttered. “Where is this bag?”

  “The photos were taken at the police station.”

  “There are photos . . . plural?” He sounded exasperated. He placed his hand to his chin. “His belongings would have been turned over to someone.”

  “Lowry, our family attorney.”

  “Quite possible.”

  “If he didn’t keep them, and he might have, then he’d have given them to Lois to do something with,” I said. “You’re right! His bedroom!”

  Together, we followed the steady stream of yellowish light emanating from my hand. Upstairs. Past James’s room. I opened the door, but couldn’t go in, my shoulders already shaking.

  “I’ve got it,” said Sherlock tenderly, easing the flashlight from my white-knuckle grip.

  I heard a plastic bag being messed with. The jingle of keys. I nearly squealed with joy. Had Sherlock told me that “most solutions are easy; w
e just like to make them hard,” or had I dreamed it?

  Minutes later, we’d sorted through the keys and Father’s study door came open. “I need to do this by myself,” I informed Sherlock for a second time. “I made a promise.” To his credit, he didn’t question my decision.

  “That’s fine,” he said. “Just hurry, please.”

  I’d forgotten about his hearing someone following us.

  I stepped inside.

  CHAPTER 34

  UNLOCKING A SECRET

  FATHER’S OFFICE SMELLED SHUTTERED, THE AIR still and stale, my favorite scent of wood oil and leather slightly faint, as if Father had taken the goodness with him. Provoked by Sherlock’s urgency, I directed the beam of light to the back of the fireplace and, switching hands, aimed the flashlight as I dug into the fluffy, dry ash.

  Contact with the key sent electricity through my arm, into my chest, warming my heart. Father was the last to have touched this key, I thought. We had a tangible connection.

  I hurried to his desk chair, catching my foot on a rug and nearly face planting. Sherlock called in to me. I answered I was fine.

  I was not fine: my heart was jumping around in my chest.

  The key in my hand was all too familiar.

  A gorgeous thing. A work of art, really. The tree leaves and limbs were tiny, threadlike wire. They were flat, not three-dimensional; they tickled my palm. A single gold wire wrapped around the tree trunk, adding a spark of color and making it even more exotic. It felt surprisingly heavy for such a small thing. Something more elusive emanated from it: power. It was as if the key had been struck by lightning and a good deal of the charge still remained. It connected to the man who’d challenged James near the soccer field, to Father, to the invisible-ink clue. I sensed it truly was the key to all of this.

  It fit into a single drawer, that which Father had pointed out: the top-most drawer to the right. I turned the key. The lock mechanism was fluid and smooth. I slid open the drawer and aimed the light.

  Inside was his passport. I took it out. It bulged with added visas and weather-warped pages.

  “Lock . . .” I mumbled. “Lock, come in here, please.”