Dorothy Mcintosh - The Witch of Babylon

Just remembering the good times we’d had putting our place together over the years brought the hurt ramping back. And when memories of Samuel swamped me, as they did often, it took a long time to regain my balance. Since returning from the hospital I’d not found the courage to venture into Samuel’s suite. His belongings lurked there defiantly, daring me to open the door and sort through them. Most were pieces gathered over decades of travel to the Aegean and Near East. Among them, a rare Jaf tribal rug with brocaded selvedges, the threads of vermilion and cobalt as brilliant as the day they were first woven. A bride belt of hammer-beaten silver from the Ottoman period in Anatolia. His books. A copy of Seven Pillars of Wisdom, signed by T.E. Lawrence, first editions of Durrell’s The Alexandria Quartet, a set of four. I’d been a willing accomplice to the raid on Hal’s inheritance, but I would never part with anything of mine.

Thinking about my inheritance took me back to my seventh birthday, a blustery November day when Samuel and I traveled to a favorite haunt, a town on Lake Ontario where a close family friend lived. Beyond the forty-year gulf between our ages, how different the two of us were even then. Me, impetuous and demanding; Samuel, reserved and measured. I sometimes believed he’d think about it before he put his foot down to take a step. I would grow to be taller than he, with a sturdy build and the dark hair and eyes of our shared Mediterranean heritage. He had light gray eyes and the pale complexion more characteristic of northern Europeans.

There’d been almost no one around that day, just a solitary jogger and a couple with their Labradors. The dogs chased sticks thrown into the lake, oblivious to the freezing water. Samuel held my hand and I leaned in toward him as we trudged out onto the gritty sand. “You know, John,” he said, “there are wonders all around us, but most people never take the time to see them. They’re too caught up with their day-to-day concerns.”

The parks people had already set up a rust-colored fence of wooden slats to stop the winter winds from blowing snow onto the boardwalk. A ribbon of fallen leaves ran along its perimeter. The water was steely gray. Spray shot into the air as waves collided with the rocks. No tang of salt hung in the air, nor was there any kelp thrown up at the water’s edge; otherwise, you’d swear you were at the ocean.

I thought about what he’d just said and remembered a summer afternoon on the shore filling two jars with bits of colored glass worn smooth and round by the waves.

“Like the jewels I found last summer?” I asked him. It amazed me that such beautiful objects lay on the ground just waiting to be picked up. The most plentiful green ones were my emeralds, the blues my sapphires. Occasionally I’d find an amber or a rare ruby.

“Yes, like that,” Samuel said. “Let’s look near the rocks. Who knows? Maybe we’ll find something.”

It didn’t take long to spot the bottle wedged between two boulders. Samuel had to help me pull it out. It was a corked glass bottle, a pale aqua colour. Inside I could see a piece of ivory paper rolled up. The cork was loose and I soon fished out the paper.

Samuel spread it out on the flat surface of a boulder. “Well, John,” he announced, “I believe you’ve found a treasure map.”

Had I been older, I’d have spotted the ruse immediately. As a youngster, I could barely contain my glee while we carefully paced off the directions on the map. One hundred steps to the blue spruce tree, forty to the drinking fountain, on to the bandstand, and back to the boathouse.

We ended up at a flower bed behind a cedar hedge, where, remarkably, one pale pink rose still lingered.

“The treasure lies under the sign of the rose, that’s what’s written here,” Samuel said.

Falling on my hands and knees, I attacked the loose mound of earth beneath the rose plant with a stick. Samuel knelt on the ground beside me, his ancient Harris Tweed jacket flapping in the gusty breeze, dirt rimming his fingernails.

He played his part convincingly.

Using a tissue, we carefully brushed away the remaining soil and lifted out a small coffer, rounded at one end and squared off at the other. It was typical of Samuel not to fill it with kid stuff but rather with objects of real worth. I opened a little net bag containing seven gold coins. I took them out, scrutinizing the unusual images and feeling the weight of them in my hands. There was also a copper disc, green with age, an image of a bird embossed on one side; a stone cylinder seal; and a golden key. Later I tried the key in every lock in our home, but I never discovered what it opened. The chest also offered up a little enamel box, inside it a caramel-colored cameo of a lady’s profile. On the back I saw an inscription in letters I didn’t understand.

“Keep these in a safe place,” Samuel said. “They will matter to you someday.”

My cellphone chirped, pulling me back to the present. I checked my watch. Nearly twelve-thirty.

I answered, hoping to hear the blond woman’s voice, but Hal came on the line, his words badly slurred. I could make out my name and nothing else. After that, a stretch of fifty seconds or so of wheezing and slow, troubled breaths.

His voice cleared up. “John, are you there? Come back to the house. I need you.” The sound of his phone falling onto a hard surface sent a shock wave through my ear. The line went dead.

I could not remember a time, as adults, when Hal had sought my help for anything personal. That he’d asked for it now was a clear sign of trouble. I grabbed my keys, flew down the back stairs to save time, and got in my car. After driving like a madman, zigzagging through the streets and ignoring every speed limit, I parked in front of the church near Hal’s townhouse. The street was uncharacteristically deserted and gloomy, the large homes looming out of the darkness like giant mausoleums empty of their dead.

I got out, punched the code for the front door lock, and ran through the echoing corridor and down the stairs, through the kitchen to the back garden. A dog howled next door; otherwise, it was dead quiet.

Security monitors detected my movements and lights flashed on, sending arcs of brightness across the garden, throwing the borders into deep shadow. I saw Hal sprawled on the concrete floor of the pavilion, one arm thrown awkwardly over his forehead. His eyes were wide open and staring; his face, the picture of Edvard Munch’s frozen scream.

I bent down and touched the skin at the base of his neck, searching for the tiny throbbing pulse in the soft hollow of his throat. I tried to force his mouth shut, thinking, in a panic, that if I could restore his face to normalcy he would revive. I tried pressing down on his eyelids, but in a frightening way they sprang open again when I lifted my fingers.

Reaching for his hand, already growing cold, I closed my warm one over his.

Lord, Hal. All your bravado about not getting pure heroin. You can make only one mistake with that.

As my eyes became accustomed to the gloom, I could see a nasty, bloody cut on his left hand, probably caused by his fall. I felt for my BlackBerry to call an ambulance and noticed that Hal’s cell had tumbled underneath his chair. I picked it up. The top had broken, its rim a jagged outcropping of black plastic.

Hal’s syringe still lay on the table next to his empty drink glass. Except for a few grains, the clear plastic bag holding the heroin was empty. The dog resumed barking, this time in a series of high-pitched, frenzied yelps, as though it had sighted quarry and was closing in for the kill.

I heard the scrape of footsteps on the flagstone and straightened up. The blond woman I’d met earlier stood staring at me, a quirky half-smile on her face. Her hair shimmered in the lamplight like pale watered silk.