by E. R. Mason
The Empty Door
E.R. Mason
Copyright 1993
All Rights Reserved
This is a work of fiction. The primary characters, incidents, and dialogues are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons living or dead is coincidental.
ISBN: 978-0-6154315-5-0
Chapter 1
Beauford Smith cursed as he wrestled with the limp, bloodied body, greedily searching for its guarded treasure. He patted down the old woman’s clothing and tipped her up on her side to look underneath. Even in death, she was still clutching the box tightly.
Despite his employer’s attempts to deceive him, Beauford had found out about the box. It had been hidden under the base of a small pyramid beneath the Nile River until drought had caused a narrowing of the river’s path. The stone hieroglyphics covering it had been quickly whisked away from public view by representatives of the Egyptian government, never to be seen again. Legend had it that the box once belonged to a renegade king who had visited the Earth on pillars of fire centuries ago. The Egyptians had nicknamed it Ellila; that which opens doors within, in the period predating the Tower of Babel.
Beauford wrenched the box from the cold, dead hand. He raced out the back door, and down the lonely, wet alley, his footsteps echoing in the night. At the end of the dirty brick corridor, his car waited, the trunk ajar. He threw the bloodied iron into it, jumped into the driver’s seat, and sped away. What irony, he thought, all those hours spent learning the shopkeeper’s routine only to have some gray-haired, bearded old man show up at exactly the wrong moment and almost ruin everything. Had he not looked up after whacking the old lady, he might not have noticed the guy step out from behind the antique swing mirror. How the damned tire iron had missed the old bastard’s head was a mystery. It had to have been by less than an inch. The son-of-a-bitch had gotten too good a look and had run away as though he hadn’t been harmed at all.
Pulling into his carport, Beauford cursed himself for letting an eye witness escape. He scanned his sleepy neighborhood then paced nervously across the lawn. With a last look around, he slipped through the front door. It was unlikely anyone had seen him go out at this hour. He went directly to his garage-workshop, switched on an overhead lamp, and placed the box on the orderly wooden workbench in the middle of the room. Immediately he began twisting and pulling, but the stubborn box would not open. He reached for a small chisel and hammer hanging nearby and placed the point of the chisel in the small suggestion of a seam near the top of the uncooperative box.
Slowly, he raised the hammer. The first strike would be gentle —-a test to see how much force might be needed. He took careful aim but stopped abruptly. The seam on the box had suddenly opened slightly, and a faint glow was now escaping from inside. Hammer and chisel discarded, he again began working at the container with his bare hands. This time the cover hissed and slowly opened.
Wide-eyed he stared down. Bright amber light from within blinded his view. He gazed into the light, trying to focus through it, and thought of the gruesome murder he had just committed. He was a thief and a murderer and had been one throughout this life and the life before that, and the life before that.
A low, gurgling scream began to escape Beauford’s open mouth. His body stiffened, and the box slipped from his grasp and fell back to the workbench. Abruptly he turned and ran howling from the shop, charging through the rickety back door like an animal fearing a predator. Gurgling and shrieking, he crossed the backyard and hurriedly climbed up and over the barbed wire-topped security fence surrounding the power transformer station that bordered his property. Once inside the high-voltage perimeter, he climbed furiously among the large stacks of active transformers and wires like a mischievous chimp, until his body finally completed a 13,200-volt path and momentarily lit up the late night skyline. In the explosions of power that followed, the station’s array of transformers erupted like giant Roman candles, showering a hail of sparks down onto the weathered, shingled roof of the Smith residence. In seconds, the night was alive with the glow of fire.
Chapter 2