Robert Browne - The Paradise Prophecy

Grant nodded and pointed his flashlight beam toward the back of the room. There was a wooden door there, and he motioned for them to follow. They moved with him and he pulled the door open to reveal another set of steps leading to a subbasement, Callahan again reminded of the auction house.

These steps, however, were old and rickety and creaked so loudly as they descended them that she was sure they were going to wake someone up.

When they got to the bottom they found a smaller, narrower room, no caskets in the center. Instead the walls were lined with cubbyholes holding cheap wooden boxes, most of them falling apart, arm and leg and foot bones protruding through the cracks.

There was one that didn’t belong here, however. An actual casket stuffed into a dark corner, weathered by age, but clearly out of place.

LaLaurie glanced at Grant and Callahan, then moved to it and pressed his palm against the lid. He closed his eyes, but didn’t keep them closed long.

“This is it,” he said. “John Milton.”

“You’re sure?” Grant asked.

“No doubt whatsoever.”

“So what are we waiting for?” Callahan said. She stuck her flashlight under her arm and reached for the lid, pushing it open, not at all surprised when they found yet another skull and a set of bones, these mostly intact. The clothing that had covered them was long gone.

It suddenly occurred to her that this is how we wind up.

All of us.

Some leave behind a legacy, as Milton had, a piece of themselves that will be remembered for centuries to come. But most of us die in obscurity. A pile of bones that lay forgotten in some grave, our lives no more important to the world at large than the quarter-inch column of ink that announces our departure from it.

One day we’re here, then we’re gone. And unless you get lucky, a couple hundred years later nobody knows who the hell you were.

She shone her flashlight inside. Some of the coffin lining was still intact, but no sign of any pages in sight.

“Check under the bones,” LaLaurie said.

Callahan looked at him. “You first.”

He frowned at her, then reached inside, shoving his hands beneath the body and patting the tattered lining there. She could tell by his expression that he wasn’t having any luck.

Then she noticed something-on the right side of the casket where the lining was torn. She shone her light directly on it for a better look, and saw a tiny seam in the wood.

Another hidden door?

Reaching over, she tore the lining away to reveal a narrow oblong panel. Digging her nails into the seam, she pried the lid back and found a hollowed-out space behind it, a burlap bag stuffed inside.

She looked up at LaLaurie, saw the excitement on his face and gestured to the bag. “Be my guest.”

With shaky hands, he took it out, untied a leather string at the top, then reached inside and pulled out a familiar-looking Saint Christopher medal. Custodes Sacri. He handed it to Callahan, then reached inside again and this time pulled out a roll of time-worn pages, bound by another leather string.

“Careful,” Grant said. “Remember the curse.”

Batty nodded. “You two might want to close your eyes.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll take my chances.”

Grant didn’t hesitate, but Callahan shook her head. “I’m good for now.”

Shutting the casket lid, LaLaurie took the Milton manuscript out of the book bag and laid it atop the casket, opening it to the last chapter. Then, as Callahan trained her flashlight beam on it, he untied the string around the roll of pages.

“You’d better close them now,” he said.

Callahan nodded, and keeping the flashlight steady, she closed her eyes and listened as he flattened the pages out next to the manuscript. She knew he was checking to see if they lined up.

But then he went still. “This doesn’t make any sense.”

“What? What’s wrong?”

“The pages…”

“ What? What about them?”

LaLaurie paused. Then he said, “They’re completely blank.”

I don’t fucking believe this,” Callahan said.

Both she and Grant had their eyes open now and were staring at the pages in shock. And they were definitely blank.

Grant said, “This is what I’ve been guarding for fifteen years?”

Callahan turned to him. “No, you were guarding somebody else’s casket, remember? And it looks like someone slipped in here and switched out the pages.”

Grant looked resentful. “They’d have to get past me and a double-locked metal door to do it. And I can assure you, Agent Callahan, this didn’t happen on my watch.”

“So you’re here twenty-four/seven?”

“Well, no, of course not, but-”

“They weren’t switched out,” Batty said. He had carefully lined up the pages next to the manuscript and the edges matched. He had no doubt in his mind that these were genuine.

“So what are you suggesting?” Grant said. “That this is some sort of cruel hoax? That our first guardian made the whole story up?”

Batty didn’t respond. He was thinking back to his vision, to what the poet had told him.

I had several sheets of paper in front of me, my finger etching itself into them as if controlled by another being.

His finger , not a pen. Etching itself into the pages.

Then a thought occurred to Batty. “What have you been told about these?” he asked Grant.

“Certainly not that they’re blank.”

“You’ve spoken to the angel Michael, I assume?”

“He doesn’t ring me up every day, but I wouldn’t be here if he hadn’t recruited me.”

“And he said nothing about this?”

“It’s my understanding he can’t read the pages himself. None of the angels can. They need humans to translate. In fact, I’d say they seem to need us for quite a few things.”

Batty nodded, his mind still clicking away. “Both Ozan and Gabriela were trying to decode Milton’s verse in Book Eleven. Except they had the wrong Book Eleven. Were you told at any time that the pages were encrypted?”

“Yes,” Grant said. “But I’m not sure why . It’s just a story that’s been handed down through the generations of guardians.”

“Then maybe that’s what we have here. Encrypted pages.”

“What are you thinking?” Callahan asked. “Invisible ink?”

Batty shook his head. “Invisible ink wasn’t invented until the nineteenth century, by a guy named Henry Wellcome.”

“Is there a bottom to that well of information you draw from?”

“I hope not,” Batty said. Then he reached for the book bag and brought out the copy of Steganographia . “You remember what I said this book was really about?”

“Of course. Steganography, cryptology.”

“That’s what the experts discovered when they broke the code and I’m sure that’s what Ozan was using it for. But the thing that frightened Trithemius’s friends and convinced them he was an occultist is that on its surface it’s a treatise on how to pass secret messages through spiritual entities.”

“Right. But that was just a cover story. Trithemius said so himself.”

“But what if he was lying to protect his reputation? What if he really was an occultist, and these really are recipes for communicating through spirits?”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” she said. “Slow down a little.”

“In my vision, Milton told me he was visited by another being in the middle of the night. That it forced him to etch these pages with his finger. He was blind, so he couldn’t know that the pages were blank. But they were clearly a message from a spirit.” He picked up the copy of Steganographia . “So what if we were to use one of Trithemius’s incantations to decode that message?”