Jules Quatrenoix’s extraordinary adventures - Book 1

CHAPTER 4 Letters from beyond the grave

CHAPTER 4 Letters from beyond the graveInside the box were several carefully folded sheets of paper that had turned yellow with age. Jules took them out and unfolded them with infinite delicacy, fearing that they might tear after so many years. There were two sheaves of papers and a loose sheet. He spread the papers in front of him. The sheaves were hand-written letters from two different people. A map was drawn on the loose sheet.

Jules started reading the letter. The handwriting was like a schoolchild’s, quite industrious but shaky. He checked the signature on the last sheet. It was signed Barnabé de Crochemarre!

June 8th, 1802

If you read this letter, it will mean that I have failed. I should have listened to my father and done what he had told me to do. But the temptation was too great! I only wanted to be popular at school and not to be ignored or laughed at anymore. How I regret it now!

They’ll come and get me. SHE told them where I was. We should never have set that monster free.

She promised all of us that we would be rich and become prominent and respected citizens. But in order to prove our loyalty to her, she wanted a gift, a sacrifice every year. At first we didn’t really grasp her meaning but then she made it all too clear. She wanted one of us! Our souls to be precise!

I can still see her evil smile when she uttered those words. A pure and innocent soul preferably. She stared at me and said ‘Don’t you agree, Barnabé?’ The others turned towards me and she told them that they would have everything they wished for if they gave me in sacrifice. They couldn’t do that to me! They were my friends now. I immediately saw in their eyes that I was wrong, so I ran away! Oh my God, I don’t want to die!

A drop of water had beaded on the paper and obliterated the beginning of the sentence. Jules imagined Barnabé crying while writing this sentence.

I only wanted to be popular, to have friends. I never thought it would go that far. I never intended any of this! I have awakened a terrible thing. Please forgive me! I don’t have much time left. She knows where I am, and the scorpion is here, watching me while I’m writing this letter.

Jules looked up toward the glass. It was still inside, staring at him. Could it be that…? No! It must be a coincidence! he thought, to put his mind at ease.

She must be prevented at all costs from causing harm. I am but the first, there will be others. She said so, every year we would have to give her a pure and innocent soul if we were to keep holding the prominent positions that would be ours. Theirs eventually!

She must be sent back to her world but I don’t know how it is to be done. I set her free when I read the formula in Avestan on the rhyton. Father had translated it before he died. It is an ancient artefact father had brought back from Egypt, a silver horn-shaped drinking vessel with a bottom in the shape of an antelope’s head. It’s in the cave. I have drawn a map giving directions to the cave. Father had also brought back another artefact, a brass dish. I think there is a link. Mother uses it as a fruit dish in the dining room.

In the box, I have also put the last letter father wrote to me before he sank into madness and died, like Ernest. I shouldn’t have read father’s translations, he had kept them well hidden, though. I should have known he had a good reason and it was only for my own good.

I’m so scared. She has to be destroyed. It has to stop. They’re coming! I can hear them in the park. I must hide the box. Have mercy on me!

One more dried drop.

Jules had trouble grasping it all. He had a lump in his throat and tears in his eyes. He had just read the last moments of Barnabé, the boy who was then found drowned in the pool.

Was that really possible? The exhilaration of discovery was giving way to a vague feeling of anxiety. If what Barnabé said was true, horrible events were happening in Howlingdeadman. He decided to read the second letter for more information.

November 15th, 1801

My dearest son,

I take the opportunity of my last few lucid moments to write you this letter. Consider it my last will and testament. It is of the utmost importance that you do exactly as I tell you.

I should never have brought back this relic. I realize it now even though it is unfortunately too late. I should have listened to that Egyptian who had warned me against it.

You must absolutely get rid of the artefact and ensure that no one ever finds it. It is cursed! I can assure you that I am perfectly sane as I am writing this.

Ernest did not die of the plague, as everyone thought. He cut himself with the rhyton when he uncovered it among the mummies of sacred animals we found in the Egyptian tomb, near Bubastis.

You must also do away with the dish we found in the same place on that fateful day.

We should have known there was something wrong. The relics didn’t belong there. They were far older than the tomb where they had been left, as if someone wanted to hide them there.

The wound on Ernest’s arm became infected in spite of all our care. One morning he started howling with terror as if he were seeing something awful and with his dying breath he asked me not to let her take his soul. He was terrified!

My point in telling you that loathsome story, my dear son, is to make you understand how important it is to destroy those artefacts. I am unable to do it, she has taken hold of me too. I should never have tried to translate what was written on that cursed rhyton.

The voices keep reverberating in my head. They want me to set her free, to do awful things! I don’t want to! They promise me the moon if I do it. But I know it is not true!

I have never believed in the devil, or anything else for that matter, I am a scientist! But that thing is not human and her sole purpose is destruction. She has to be exterminated but I don’t know how. So do away with her and burn all my research papers. Above all, don’t try to read them or she will own you too.

I am so sorry to put such a heavy burden on you, my dearest child. Please forgive me! I do hope I have been a good father to you, nevertheless.

I love you, my darling son, and please say nothing to your mother, it would only upset her! You know how delicate she is.

Gédéon de Crochemarre

The last sheet attached to Gédéon’s letter was blank. Only ‘G. de C.’ was written in the upper right-hand corner. Did he mean to continue writing but could not find the strength to do so? His handwriting was unsure and even shaky toward the end. A sudden fit of madness may have overtaken him.

Jules was stunned. Either the de Crochemarre family were a bunch of lunatics, which would be more reassuring after all, or they were telling the truth. He felt dizzy and extremely tired. He looked at the alarm-clock, it was very late, or rather very early … after four in the morning. He got up and glanced at the glass. The scorpion was still there and wasn’t moving. He collapsed on the bed.

Before he sank into a deep sleep, he thought to himself it was now too late to back out, he had opened his own Pandora’s Box and he had to know, whatever the cost!

Tomorrow he would study the map and he would use the letter to find clues that could give him answers to this incredible story! He also definitely had to find the translations mentioned by Barnabé. If they were not to be found in the box, they would surely be in the study, with Gédéon’s research papers, as it seemed Barnabé had destroyed nothing.

The following day he was woken by daylight slipping through the heavy velvet curtains. Recalling his wild night he jumped out of bed. Everything was as he had left it on his desk. Everything except the scorpion! It was gone although the glass and the book had not been moved!

He leapt up onto his bed and shook the sheets. Then he looked under the bed and inspected every corner of his room, to no avail! Still uneasy and treading carefully he put the papers back into the box and decided to hide it in a safe place, at the bottom of his wardrobe where he knew no one would look. He got dressed and went down to the kitchen.

He bolted down his breakfast and went back to his room to take a closer look at the letters and try and find clues. But first he looked around his room for the umpteenth time to make sure the scorpion had really gone. It was nowhere to be found, it was as if it had vanished into thin air!

According to Barnabé, as well as a secret cave, there must have been strange deaths or disappearances in Howlingdeadman over the past hundred years. Those horrific deeds would have been perpetrated by influential members of Howlingdeadman, but only after 1802. He also had to find the dish and the rhyton. The dish could still be somewhere in the house. The cook said that the house had been left untouched after Barnabé’s mother died. If the rhyton was indeed used during those ceremonies, it had to be in the cave. A methodical approach was required!

‘I must think logically’, he thought to himself.

He took a notebook out of his desk drawer, wrote down all the information he had and tore out the page, which he slipped into his pocket.

But first he had to find that cave! He took the map and went into the park. According to Barnabé’s directions the entrance must be at the north end of the estate. He remembered the small gate giving access to the forest. Then he should follow the stream that ran along the bottom of the wall surrounding the park.

Barnabé had drawn clues leading to the cave – animal-shaped rocks, gnarled trees … Two intertwined trees with a stone imbedded in their trunks indicated the entrance.

Jules thought that with these directions, he would find his way very easily. Unfortunately for him, the map was over a hundred years old and both the vegetation and erosion had changed the landscape. Jules spent the entire morning looking for the cave entrance, retracing his steps, examining trees and rocks from all angles, to no avail!

He came back home for lunch, feeling discouraged. He meant to go back in the afternoon but the weather turned against him. It rained ceaselessly until nightfall and his mother required his help, which kept him busy till dinner time.

In the days that followed, his many attempts to find the cave all proved unsuccessful. Disappointed, but refusing to admit defeat, he then made up his mind to inquire about the mysterious disappearances that were bound to have taken place over the past hundred years.

He hoped to have more luck there.