Walter Mosley - Parishioner

In contrast, Sedra’s bedroom took up at least half of the second floor. It was carpeted with real animal hide, probably deer, and contained a bed that was at least a hundred inches in width covered by a fire-engine red silk down comforter. The drapes went from ceiling to floor and were velvet, the color of gold, if gold could rot.

The wall-wide closet was stuffed with hanging dresses and coats, pantsuits and scarves from over the decades. Perpendicular to the closet stood a highly wrought, curved chest of drawers covered by an ivory veneer. Xavier pulled out each of the eighteen drawers, dumped whatever was in them on the hide floor, and checked all the sides for possible secrets. Two-thirds of the way through his thorough search he found a red fabric-bound journal taped to the back of a drawer that had been filled with staples, a stapler, dried-out rubber bands, and large rolls of black electrical wiring tape.

The journal was the size of a mass-market paperback book, at least a hundred and fifty pages. The paper was of a higher quality-acid free and heavy. Two-thirds of these pages were covered with minuscule writing. Most of the scribbling did not comprise normal lettering but character symbols like punctuation, dollar signs, and mathematical indicators. These symbols appeared without spaces. Sometimes a character would be half-size on the upper portion of where a full-size representation might be. Nearly the entire book was filled with this meaningless jabber, about forty lines to a side. No breaks, spaces, or paragraphs appeared anywhere. Now and again there was a change in the tone of the ink, but it was always blue. If Sedra and her niece hadn’t tried to murder him he might have thought that this was the meaningless, obsessive scribbling of a madwoman.

He pocketed the journal and continued his way through the drawers.

“Hey, Ecks,” Win said.

He was standing in the doorway. Xavier hadn’t even realized that the young man had wandered off.

“What?”

“You got to come see somethin’, man.”

In a pantry off the kitchen was a door. This door opened upon a down stairway.

“A basement,” Xavier said in a matter-of-fact tone.

“How long you been in LA, Ecks?”

“A few years.”

“Not long enough to learn that nobody has a basement or cellar out here.”

“Oh, yeah?”

The huge green metal door at the foot of the stairs seemed to be built for some kind of giant. To call the locks that held it shut padlocks would be like calling Fort Knox a safe. They were huge, ugly things made from metal, specially designed to be unbreakable.

“What the fuck you think they got in there, man?” Winter asked.

“The answers to all my questions. Probably something neither one of us wants to know.”

“I’ont think you got to worry about it, brother. ’Cause unless you got some kinda key to them locks we not gettin’ on the other side’a that mothahfuckah there.” There was more than a little relief in the driver’s tone.

The basement light was weak but good enough for Xavier to see.

“You need to go, Winter?”

“No. Why you ask me that?”

“Because I intend to break down this door and get on the other side. I sure do.”

“How? You friends with Batman or sumpin’?”

“Neighborhood I come from Batman stayed away.”

Xavier hefted his miniature tire iron and rubbed it thoroughly with a rag from the floor while studying the door closely.

“This ain’t no glass door, Ecks.”

“But you see, Win. The door got hinges.”

“Shit, man. Them things look like they frets on a battleship.”

“Sure do,” Xavier said with a nod. “But the outer edge is anchored in concrete, not steel. All I got to do is pull the outside of the hinges out the wall.”

“What about the locks?”

“They’re anchored in concrete too.”

It took a little under three hours, but Xavier, with some help from Winter Johnson, wrenched the hinges from their moorings and levered the five-hundred-pound door from its frame. It hit the floor with a mighty crash, but no toes were broken and the sound was swallowed by the earth.

The smells of fresh soil, with a hint of rotting flesh, wafted from the shadowy underground chamber.

The interior was dark, and Xavier hesitated to use his little flashlight.

“What’s that smell?” the professional chauffeur asked.

“Death.”

“What?”

“Listen, man,” Xavier said. “I let you come this far-to get your feet wet. I know you’re scared. You’d be a fool not to be. But maybe right now you should listen to that shiver in your heart. ’Cause you know, Win, this shit here is about to get bad.”

Winter’s eyes were light brown and small like their owner. He squinted at Xavier and his shoulders quivered.

“In for a penny,” the driver said, “in for a pound.”

This phrase was like the flip of a switch in the ex-gangster’s nervous system. The violence, as always, was most evident as a sensation in Xavier’s forearms. His jaw clenched, clamping down on the evil smile that wanted out. He turned abruptly, entering the tomblike vault, guided by the little plastic flash.

The chamber was largish, fifteen feet deep and twenty wide.

Toward the far end of the unfinished space, lying on a short mound of moist soil, was Sedra Landcombe. There was a pale blue slip over her withered flesh and a bloody gash on the left side of her head. The force of the blow had caused the eyeball on that side to come out of its socket, falling down the side of her face and hanging next to her left ear.

“Oh, shit!” Winter cried.

Xavier knelt close to the body, looking for anything that might tell her story. But she was dead and bereft of any signature, jewelry, or sigil. Probably murdered in another room, Xavier mused, most likely the master bedroom. Xavier thought that Dodo had hit her aunt with the bludgeon, maybe more than once, dragged her down to the family tomb, and then gone back upstairs to wash up any blood.

“Oh, fuck, no,” Winter whined.

He was standing at the door holding a small dark and lightweight stone in his hand.

“No,” he moaned.

“What is it?”

“A baby’s skull, man. A baby’s little head.”

Winter dropped the stone and fell to his knees.

Xavier went to the area of the tomb that his friend had come from and saw various bones both jumbled and arranged. Most remnants belonged to children and babies, but there were at least three adult skulls in the mix. Xavier poked at the bones with his tire iron but he didn’t touch them, not even with gloves on.

The bruise on his side, from the car accident, suddenly flared. This was the only indication he had of some kind of feeling of vulnerability. His minister had sent him into slaughter and he, in turn, had brought along an innocent friend.

“What we gonna do, Ecks?”

“We get our ass outta here, Win.”

At the top of the stairs, still in the pantry that contained the door leading to the basement, Xavier had a premonition. There was something wrong-a feeling on the air.

“Ecks-” Winter began.

Rule put up a hand and moved in front of his friend. With a further gesture of the same hand he imparted that the driver should stay where he was.

The pain in his side disappeared as Xavier Rule, aka Egbert Noland, moved quietly through the kitchen and into the living room.

The two men wore dark clothes. One was white and the other, an ecru-colored man, probably hailed from below the southern border; either he did or his ancestors had.

Xavier surprised them. They were carrying large duffel bags and weren’t expecting to come across anyone. But these men were professionals and so they dropped their bags and reached for things inside their clothes.