Page 54 of The Christmas Spirits on Tradd Street
Glad we were all on the same page, I stepped backward, eager to leave. As soon as my foot hit the grass a bolt of lightning shattered the sky and the smoke-colored clouds above us opened up, dumping sheets of icy water over us and the graves, rain pelting us as drops ricocheted off the mausoleum’s bricks.
I felt myself pushed from behind by Jayne. “Go on,” she said, following me inside, then beckoning to the two men. “We’ll be safe for a little while. What just happened took lots of energy, and it will take a bit for whatever that was to recharge.”
She was right, but that didn’t stop the shimmer of resentment I felt. Not because I really, really wanted to be hightailing it out of there and already in our car driving home and she was ready to get back to work. I felt resentment because she’d said it first and hadn’t hesitated to do the one thing none of us wanted to. What made it worse was that of the fourof us, Jayne had the least at stake in this game. She was only there to help me. Somehow, that realization did nothing to soften the unwarranted bitterness burrowing into me like a wood-boring beetle planning a long stay in a dining room floor.
The temperature was a good ten or more degrees colder inside, owing—I hoped—to the brick walls. I shivered as we all flipped on our phone flashlights, water dripping from my hair onto my screen.
“Come here,” Jack said, pulling me close. He was soaked, too, but gave off steady body heat that I wished I could find a way to market to others like me who remained chilled to the bone for most of the calendar year. It could be another source of income.
“Wow.”
I enjoyed the rumble of his chest against my ear when he spoke, so that the word didn’t register with me until Anthony said, “You’re not kidding. I’m sure it means something, but I haven’t got a clue.”
I pulled away from Jack so I could see what he was talking about. Avoiding looking at the individual crypts, I studied the bricks on the lower half of the three walls beneath the alcoves. A stripe two bricks wide ran the width of each wall, with each brick inside the stripe carved with a swirly pattern that didn’t appear to repeat.
“It does look like hieroglyphics,” I said, squatting in front of one of the crypts. I ran my hand over one of the bricks, feeling the lines beneath my fingers. “But it’s not.”
“How do you know that?” Anthony asked.
“When I was in eighth grade I saw a movie about Cleopatra and decided to teach myself hieroglyphics. I’m not an expert or anything, but I know enough to know this isn’t it.”
No one said anything, so I turned around to find them all staring at me—including Jack, who was trying very hard not to smile. “Hey, I was a lonely kid. We didn’t have Facebook to waste our time so we had to find other ways to entertain ourselves.”
“Naturally,” Jack said, giving in with a broad smile. “I just can’t believe I didn’t know that about you.”
I sniffed as I turned back to stare at the bricks. “There’s probably a lot you still don’t know about me.”
“Then I can’t wait to find out.”
Anthony cleared his throat. “I’d suggest you two get a room, but the bedrooms in the house are pretty dusty.”
I slanted a look at Jack, then aimed my flashlight at the bricks in front of me.
“Where did Marc do his digging?” Jayne asked Anthony.
Anthony moved the beam of his light toward the crypt on the center wall with the broken corner on its lid. “According to the plaque, this is Eliza. For whatever reason, probably just a guess since she’s in the middle, Marc began digging here after his scanning with a metal detector turned up nothing.”
“Why did he stop?” I asked, shivering as I readELIZABETH GROSVENORon the plaque, her short life memorialized by the dates beneath her name.
“The same crypt cover that had slid off and almost landed on my foot before did the same thing to Marc—it barely missed him. That’s why he tried later to have it demolished, but the preservation people stopped him.” Anthony frowned. “The last time I was here, it was because Marc wanted help in opening the coffin. He figured once the lid was replaced, he’d never have a chance.”
“Did you find anything?”
He gave me an odd look. “Not what we expected. When we returned, the lid was back on the crypt. The only thing that made me believe what Marc told me about it falling again was that the corner had been broken off and the broken piece was still on the ground.” He pointed at a tile in the narrow border around the dirt floor in front of the crypt. “You can see where it hit—this tile is pretty much pulverized.” An strange smile crept across his face. “You have no idea how refreshing it is not to have to try to explain the unexplainable.”
We were all silent as we examined the odd markings, the sound of our fingers brushing brick melding with the splat of rain on the ground outside and the occasional sound of phone cameras clicking. I sat backon my heels for a moment, trying to pinpoint a stray thought. I tilted my head one way and then the next, and then again.
“If you want, I can hold you by your feet so you can see them upside down,” Jack said.
I frowned at him, then looked back at the stripe of bricks. “It looks like one of those slide puzzles, doesn’t it? You know—those square puzzles with the plastic squares inside with one missing space where you slide them around to make a picture?”
Jack nodded, a slow smile beginning to form. “Yeah—I used to get them in birthday party gift bags when I was a kid.”
“I remember those,” Anthony said. “And you’re right. It’s like every brick is in the wrong place, judging by how all of the lines on the edges don’t match up with any of the adjacent bricks.” He scratched his head. “I wonder if these were left over from something else, so it didn’t matter what order they were placed in.”
“Or they were put like that on purpose.” Jack leaned closer, rubbing his fingers on the rough line of mortar between two bricks. “Considering this was built way before cameras, the only way to figure out the pattern—assuming it’s intentional—would be to take out all the bricks and put them together.”
“Have you heard back from Steve Dungan—your architect friend? Maybe he can shed some light on this,” I asked.
