Autumnal Tales, page 34
“Well, as my father had planned, the package was found by the local police and my grandfather quickly suffered through the humiliation of a court trial for fraud; and though he was finally acquitted, what little confidence the company still had in him was lost. In a series of blinding, behind the scenes moves, my father became the major stockholder in the company even as he soothingly advised my grandfather to retire from public life and relinquish his share of the company into his son’s hands. It didn’t take much to convince him, and so, my father became the owner of over ninety per cent of the shares of French Pharmaceuticals.
“With my intimate knowledge of the company my father, now chairman of the board, sent me to open the New York office; the first step in our plans to expand across the country. It was then, as you’ll recall, that I sent for you, my oldest, most trustworthy friend, to help with the groundwork. The company grew prodigiously under our efforts and we were almost ready to attempt Europe when tragedy struck. My grandfather had been brutally murdered. Regardless of the injustices I served him, I still loved the old man and his senseless death stirred me deeply. But not so deeply as the shocking surprise that awaited me at home when I met my father.
“Now at this point Andrew, I warn you that I am going to divulge certain information the nature of which will not only shock you, but will make plain my earlier demand that you promise not to reveal anything I tell you tonight. Maybe you’d better have a good swallow from your glass...that’s a good fellow.
“Well, as I was saying, my father met me as soon as I entered the house and ushered me directly into his study, this very room in fact. And with little hesitation told me that he, in fact, had killed my grandfather. Yes, my reaction was much like your own, but he didn’t give me time to ruminate over the horrendous act; instead, he explained that he had was left with no choice, he had to kill the old man. It seems grandfather hadn’t been idle in retirement, but in fact, had spent his time running down suspicions that he hadn’t simply been framed, but that there’d been a conspiracy against him. It seemed father hadn’t hid his thieving steps as well as he might; grandfather leapt from clue to clue with the agility that had helped him to create French Pharmaceuticals in the first place and soon confronted his son with incontrovertible proof of his perfidy and threatening to take it to the authorities.
“Desperate and with no time to think, my father struck; a decanter of liquor, ready at hand, was flung at my grandfather’s skull. The heavy glass proving to be harder than his head, the old man was killed instantly. It was only then that my father realized the enormity of his action. Acting with more than a bit of sang froid, he removed the body from the house and tucked it into the trunk of his car. He then took an ax from the tool shed and drove out to the Scituate woods and there, incredibly, hacked the body to pieces and buried them across a wide area of the forest. Afterwards, he simply reported my grandfather missing.
“Needless to say, I was stunned. Reporting the whole affair to the police crossed my mind, but I dismissed it. I couldn’t bring myself to be the instrument of my father’s destruction. For, heaven help me, I was still thinking of the damned company.
“Do you see the quandary I was in? I could do nothing; nothing except fly back to New York where, as you no doubt noticed, I buried myself under a full load of work. That’s where things remained for some weeks until the second tragedy occurred; the death of my father. I hardly had the time to grieve however, as he was to be interred almost immediately by Salem city officials. Apparently there was some danger in my father’s being allowed a wake, and at the officials’ request, I agreed to have him buried as soon as they wished. Seeing as how useless it was to rush home, I decided to remain in New York and continue to participate in our delicate negotiations with the State Department and the Eastern European nations. This troubled bliss lasted precisely two days until a note arrived from my family physician in Salem, Dr. Schubert, requesting I come home immediately, that it was terribly important.
“Thus began the final chapter of this sad story which has resulted in your complete ownership of French Pharmaceuticals and my own self-imposed exile.
“I arrived in Salem the next afternoon; and though I didn’t expect to see him right away, Dr. Schubert met me here. I could tell he was very agitated and so didn’t waste any time in retreating with him to the study. There, the doctor told me the reason for his summons.
“As you know, my father’s body was discovered by the housekeeper, an employee of a cleaning service hired to take care of the house a few times a week. That person, who has never been identified by name, reported her discovery to the police. After the body was properly examined by the country coroner, it was advised that my father should be buried as quickly as possible. Naturally, the rush of events prevented Dr. Schubert from examining the body himself, and so with a proper self-righteousness, the Doctor set about asking questions as its condition and the cause of my father’s death. Well, as he told me that night, he ran into very many closed mouthed officials until he found one police officer who was willing to talk.
“He began with the discovery of my grandfather/s body in the Scituate woods. You can imagine my anxiety as I secretly wondered whether my part in that dark deed had been discovered. Well, the doctor was told that the body had been hacked to pieces and the fragments scattered and buried over an acre of woodland. The weapon with which the horror had been committed was found buried nearby. The police had been called to the area after a dog dug up one of the bones. Forensic science being what it is today, the police lost no time in identifying the body and the fingerprints on the ax. But what was not reported in the local papers was that it had been the police themselves, not someone from the cleaning service, who found my father’s body in his own bed the day following the grisly discovery in the Scituate woods. From that point, the informer knew little as he and everyone else on the case had been dismissed or reassigned and my father’s body was secretly interred in the family crypt. No news save his death was released to the papers. Even the certificate of death blamed his demise on a colic or some such; like something out of the nineteenth century when sometimes the true cause of death was suppressed to prevent a panic. Anyway, it was then that Dr. Schubert determined to open the crypt and discover the real purpose for all the subterfuge. But to do that, he needed my permission and preferably my presence.
“At that point, I was quite perplexed. I already knew what my father had done, indeed, my part in the whole affair was more than peripheral, but this new wrinkle of the secret burial left me dumb. Of course I acquiesced to the disinterment, and together we left the house for the family vault that lay in the empty land behind the house.
“Although it was illegal to bury on private lots within the city, our family neatly eluded the law by having yet plenty of room in our vault and by promising to have the house revert to city property as an historic structure if our family should ever choose to give it up. The vault was mostly beneath the surface of the ground with only its entrance poking above. I unlocked it, and we entered without ceremony. With the lights turned on from the house, it was easy to locate the graves of my grandfather and father. I must admit I had a certain hesitation in the imminent exposure of the freshly buried corpses, but sensing my doubt, Dr. Schubert reminded me of its necessity and he himself moved to open my grandfather’s tomb.
“It was fairly easy for the Doctor alone to open the crypt, and after a momentary pause to rally my sensibilities, we looked into it at the same time. The remains were hardly recognizable as human, having been buried for some weeks and thus suffering from the
usual effects of vermin and putrefaction. It was the skeletal framework that gave the pieces their recognizability and so we were able to see that the coroner had reassembled grandfather as best he could save for the peculiar exception of the hands.
“There were none.
“Apparently, the police, in searching the Scituate woods, couldn’t locate them.
“I saw then that Dr. Schubert seemed restive, and asked him what was the matter, to which he replied that the informer had said something about missing hands, but that he had assumed he was referring to my father in some way. Now he was more confused than ever. In more haste than he had uncovered it, Dr. Schubert resealed my grandfather’s tomb and we then moved to that of my father.
“This time it was I who had to open it, the Doctor still being a trifle unsettled. Not waiting for him, I looked into the crypt, already steeled from my previous experience. But no prior experience could have prepared me for the sight that met my eyes then. My father lay in state; he looked quite relaxed in body except for his face. There, its muscles had contracted and cemented into a mask of terror and pain. His eyes bulged impossibly from his skull and his blackened tongue lolled dead and hellishly long from the corner of his mouth, almost trailing to the thin silk pillow beneath his head. But the most terrible sight of all was the gnarled, vermin-eaten hand that clung to his throat. Its fingers buried deep in the flesh of my father’s gorge, seemingly anchored onto the spine itself. All this I saw in an instant before I recoiled in horror; but it was enough, the scene will remain in my mind forever.
“Then it was Dr. Schubert’s turn. He approached cautiously, having seen my own reaction, and peeked in. I thought I detected a desire to leap back, but he resisted the compulsion and continued to study the hand around my father’s throat. Finally, he turned to me and said almost matter-of-factly that the hand undoubtedly belonged to my grandfather. He motioned me to look again at the member clinging there and asked if I saw the ring on the index finger. I did look again, and noticed the ring on a rotten, peeling finger. Half hidden beneath the decaying flesh, I had missed it the first time. It was my grandfather’s ring all right. I had seen it often enough. Later, Dr. Schubert suggested that the police could never logically account for the hand’s being found at my father’s throat, and were probably afraid to even try; and so, instead, opted to hush the case up. It wouldn’t do to scare away all the tourist money the city was making. After all, Salem enjoyed a sinister reputation that now, three hundred years after the witch hysteria, seemed more fantasy than fact. The last thing the town fathers wanted was an instance of real horror to spoil everything.”
There was silence in the room then as the last log on the grate was consumed. Its sudden, final crackle brought Ricket back to the present as he realized his friend had concluded his narrative. He was about to make some inane comment when Hector spoke, apparently taking his silence for disbelief.
“You don’t believe me. Well that’s understandable, I didn’t believe it myself until a few nights later. Then, I had no choice.” Before Ricket could say a word, he continued.
“Why don’t we go out to the crypt now? One look at my father and you’ll know everything I’ve told you is the truth.”
So saying, he rose and headed for the door, pausing in the kitchen only long enough to grab a bundle of keys from a hook on the wall and flick a light-switch that bathed the rear of the property in light. Still clad only in his smoking jacket and scarf, Hector led the way to the burial vault that lay uncomfortably close to the house and camouflaged in deep snow. Somehow, the combination of the nighttime and the still falling snow was more unsettling then than it had been before. Yellow light spilled from the house and undulated across the fallen snow, draping itself over the half concealed crypt. Suddenly, Hector was at the gate embedded in the entranceway and was pushing it open. Light poured from the opening as Ricket stepped down a low set of stairs into the quiet interior. Inside, Hector stood by an open coffin and gestured.
“I’d determined before you came to tell you everything, and so prepared this final proof. Take a look.” Seeing Ricket’s hesitation, he encouraged, “Relax, there’s nothing to fear. You’ll see nothing more than what I described earlier, unless of course, you’ve got an active imagination!”
At last, Ricket peered into the bier, and witnessed the horror he had seen only in his imagination. He drew back and gasped. It was true! The eyes, the skin...the hand!
“But, how is it possible?” he heard himself ask.
“Who knows? There are plenty of things in the world that science can’t explain.”
“Then you believe there’s something...supernatural about the whole thing? That you’re not just the victim of some crazy prank?”
“No prankster could arrange anything as elaborate as this. No, my grandfather managed to exact justice despite the loss of his life. However it was done, when the hand found my father, it killed him slowly, agonizingly, over the course of a single evening. I, on the contrary, having earned my grandfather’s love only to betray his confidence, am apparently deserving of a more excruciating torture. It has been almost a year now. But still, I feel that my time is close; when I, in my turn, will suffer the same fate as my father.”
There was silence again as the two men ruminated upon the bizarre and almost unbelievable circumstances that had led them to that moment and that place. Ricket could well understand the depression that seemed to rule his friend’s life and that prevented him from wanting to live a normal one. But why couldn’t he leave Salem; flee the doom that seemed to await him? Then it struck him, “Hector, the other hand, do you know what became of it?”
“Haven’t you guessed?” replied his friend with a hint of madness in his voice.
And as Ricket watched, Hector unwound the silken scarf from around his neck, revealing a hand, severed at the wrist, whose decaying fingers twitched for a better grip around the throat of its victim.
“It’s already struck.”
The Well of Abraham
“Okay Habib, hold it.”
A soft click in the darkness and the earthen walls of the shaft were coated in a sickly yellow light. The light seemed brighter than it actually was in that black night that had existed not a second before. And yet, it did not defeat the blackness. Impenetrable gloom hung poised above the weak rays of the electric lantern and inky pools of it floated beneath. The small sphere of light that hung perilously between attained more the properties of some ethereal bathyscaph rather than a sweeping bulldozer in its effectiveness. In the center of that island, clinging to a knotted rope whose ends alike disappeared above and below the circle of light, clung the form of a man. Spider-like, his feet resting on a bundle of knots suspended just above the unknown, Kaiser Gunther clung to the rough hemp of Turkish rope. His left hand, returning from the lantern’s switch, reached out and ran lightly over the nearby walls of the shaft. Though mostly hardened into petrification over thousands of years, portions yet crumbled away menacingly, falling to the floor of the chamber somewhere below. Moisture, he was sure of it now. A thousand feet below the dusty Iranian high country. He never would have suspected. Then remembering Habib, he said, “All right let ‘er out some more.” Immediately, he felt the rope jerk and give, and once again he was on his way down, the blackness retreating from his feet and reforming over his head.
It had been a long in coming, but now he felt his time was at hand. Oh, how he remembered those long years studying modern and ancient maps, painstakingly learning Sanskrit, Arabic, Aramaic, and a dozen sub-dialects in order to find evidence of something he was sure already existed: a pre-Hebraic city in the heart of the fertile crescent which, if found, would prove the existence of Hebraic culture long before the almost legendary trek of Abraham to the promised land. He had been sure of such a quasi-civilization having existed in the Iranian alluvial plain since graduate school, where the famous Dr. Stephen Stubbs had publicly presented his latest findings from the Middle East. From Boston University, it was an easy step for a student of his academic standing in anthropology, archeology, and ancient languages to find employment at the Peabody Institute in Salem, Massachusetts, the museum where Dr. Stubbs now chaired many important committees; but it proved much more difficult to convince the academicians there of his then esoteric theory. But he had patience, and ten long years later, with recently discovered ruins in Iran situated just where he always predicted they would be, he was immediately acquitted and ordered to the Middle East to further research his work.
His own expedition had arrived in Iran not fifteen months before, replacing the previous team from England, and he at once began excavations in entirely new beds based on his own years-long research. Once again he was proven correct as he reported back to the Institute. Because his new dig had been started on the lowest portions
He fingered the prune-like surface of the fruit examining its fissures and textures. Finally, in a motion that conveyed the sense of a dare, he bit it.
of the rise that made up the outer boundaries of the Euphrates delta, an area that covered more than 260,000 square miles, it was not long before he opened up the lowest levels of the city. His triumph was complete. Or so he led his colleagues to believe. For what he had always kept to himself for fear of losing what credibility he had with the academic community, was information gleaned from certain archaic and sometimes even arcane sources. Not actually information, but more like phrases here and there relating to this pre-Hebraic city, with one phrase repeated more often than not, “The Well of Abraham.” What exactly it was except for the obvious, Gunther could not fathom, but he was certain something of importance was connected with it.
It was with this last fact in mind that Gunther, one day, was called to the site by an over-excited Habib, who then led him into the bowels of the buried city and into the uttermost level where the soft soils and shales gave way to the hard rock of the earth’s crust. To his amazement, he felt not the resistant surface of stone beneath his feet, but the resilient feel of age old silt. But Habib’s excitement could not allow him to stop and examine the strange find; instead, both men and their small party of workers plodded on ahead, following the almost endless string of illumination wire to its end, where a lone bulb shone wanly over what could only be a trap-door.
