Key of Mystery

Published by Evernight Teen ® at Smashwords

www.evernightteen.com

Copyright© 2016 K.H. Mezek

ISBN: 978-1-77233-702-0

Cover Artist: Jay Aheer

Editor: Melissa Hosack

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

DEDICATION

For Katya, Harrison, Max, Gypsy and Bella.

For Susan Shields, Barbara & Lawrence Forsey, Richard & Lucille Reid, Janis Wilson Hughes, Lux Eterna.

For the teenage artists and freethinkers who congregated at my house over the years and all the incarcerated youth who shared their life stories with me at the writing table.

KEY OF MYSTERY

Night Angels Chronicles, 1

K.H. Mezek

Copyright © 2016

You must come with me, loving me, to death; or else hate me, and still come with me.

—Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Carmilla

According to a 1934 Los Angeles Times article, there is a Hopi legend about a Lizard City built beneath Los Angeles 5,000 years ago by an advanced civilization hoping to escape a rain of fire. More than 280 tunnels exist and somewhere within the maze lies a chamber holding a tablet with the Secrets to the Origins of Life. Anyone possessing this tablet will have the power of God. In 1933, mining expert Warren G. Schufelt presented enough evidence to the LA Council that they funded his excavation to find the tablet and other treasures. Schufelt had almost tunneled down to his destination when he inexplicably disappeared.

But the search for the tablet did not end there…

Chapter One

Friday the 13th. My eighteenth birthday. The day it started or the day it ended, depending how you look at it.

My eighteenth birthday and all I could think about was death.

Unexpected, swift, ruthless. There it was, breathing down my neck and whispering that I would be next. Death and destruction.

And love.

Be careful who you love. It just might kill you.

Everybody dies—it’s the great equalizer, as they say. No matter if you fight to the end or give in peacefully, no matter if you die alone or you make the front page news, no matter if you’re thrown into an unmarked grave or a pyramid is built in your honor, you’re still plain old dead. And as much as you’d like to hope otherwise, the world moves right along without you, be you Hitler, or Cleopatra, or the local plumber.

But this death…This death that was quickly pushed under the rug and hidden away and made to appear insignificant turned out to be anything but. This death was so cataclysmic that it not only destroyed my life and the lives of my mother and my brother, but like a terrible plague, it infected the lives of everyone in the town where I grew up, and threatened to do the same to the entire world.

You know what they say: it never rains in LA, but when it does, it pours. Well, it was pouring that day.

The day of my birthday.

The day of my dad’s funeral.

I was holding tightly to a big black umbrella, sturdy enough for a London downpour, imagining myself flying off with the wind just like Mary Poppins, while valiantly shielding my mom and younger brother as best I could, all three of us huddled closer to each other than we ever got under normal circumstances and still getting wet around the edges. A minister was speaking, but I couldn't have told you what he was saying. He probably couldn’t have either. He was giving some generic speech, the one he gave for all the families he didn’t know, clearly in a rush to get it over with and why wouldn’t he be, it was miserable out there and his nose was red and runny as if he had bad cold.

All I could do was to stare at the coffin, unable to believe that this was real. I should have been blowing out the candles on my birthday cake while my family and best friends looked on, not teetering on the edge of a gaping hole that was soon to be covered like all the thousands of other plots that rose and fell across the hilly cemetery like the Devil’s patchwork quilt.

Tomorrow, a tombstone would mark my dad’s last resting place with these inadequate words chiseled on it:

In Memory of Theodore Patterson, dearly beloved by his wife Celia and children Sera and Salem. May God reunite us in Heaven.

The lid of the coffin was closed, the body sealed inside. A framed picture of my dad, Theo, was propped on an easel by the coffin, his dark green eyes sparkling with laughter, his mouth in a wide, happy grin. Rain ran down the picture in little rivulets, and I watched as his face turned into a soppy mess. It made me think of what was in the coffin, soon to be eaten away by worms until there was nothing left but a grinning skeleton. And that led me to the worst thought of all. What was in there? What did his broken body look like? I'd been too afraid to ask why the lid was closed. I could guess and that was bad enough.

It was impossible to comprehend that my dad was no longer a living, breathing person. He no longer existed. He would never laugh. He would never tell me any more stories about my Irish grandpa or my Mexican grandma. He would never whistle in the morning as he put on his jacket and then sigh and say, Heigh ho, heigh ho, it's off to work I go, as if he were one of the Seven Dwarfs. It sounded stupid at the time, but now I would give anything to hear those silly words.

I had to bite my lip in order not to cry. I was determined not to cry, not in front of all those people who obviously didn't want to be there doing their duty, every face wearing the same sad mask while thinking they just wanted to get the hell out of the rain.

The funeral had been planned in such a hurry. Mom had become a stranger over the past couple of weeks, distant, as if she were holding herself together with greater effort than usual. Anything to survive this ordeal. There hadn’t been a viewing of the body and there wasn’t going to be a gathering afterwards. No dinner for grieving friends or family. I'm no expert on funerals, but I think that’s what usually happens. But not with my dad. Just a short ceremony in the graveyard chapel and then this good-bye at the grave, as if my mom was trying to move on as quickly as possible so she could pretend it had never happened at all—which would be just like her.

At least she could have picked a different day. Every year from now on, forever and ever, my birthday would be ruined. And what was I supposed to do? Complain about it? I could just imagine the guilt trip she would lay on me, the shocked expression, the accusing words: Your father is dead and all you can think about is your birthday? Really, Sera? How much more heart-broken do you want me to be? She was a master of twisting everything to her advantage. Nothing was ever her fault, she was always the victim. I don’t think she behaved like that on purpose. She never did anything on purpose, which made talking to her about it as impossible as trying to escape quicksand—the more you struggled the deeper you sank. All I could do, all I could ever do, was bite my tongue and try to detach myself.

It all felt so surreal, anyway, as if I was looking down from far away at a bunch of actors performing a terrifying plot that they were trying to pull me into against my will. Tearing my eyes away from the coffin, I looked past the small group of huddled mourners. The grass was such a brilliant green, too green to be real, the trees shivering in the rain as if they were in pain and everywhere white tombstones poking up like fingers clawing from the ground. Down the hillside, the tombstones melted into a low-lying mist, where the world ended in nothingness. I wanted to walk down the hill and into that nothingness and be dissolved by it. Then the loneliness and uncertainty would disappear.

As I stared into the mist, a small girl seemed to float out of it, slowly materializing until I could see all of her from a distance of perhaps a hundred yards or so. She looked to be ten or twelve years old, and she was wearing a summer dress of a pale rose color, her thin white arms hanging by her sides, her hair, which looked like it would be a mass of blonde curls under other circumstances, wet and heavy and matted to her head and shoulders. She stood still and silent, oblivious to the rain and cold, a clingy neediness emanating from her with such intensity that it seemed to grasp at me, and I closed my eyes and gave a little shake of my head as if to make it go away. When I opened my eyes again, she was gone, swallowed by the mist as if she had never been there in the first place. Had she been real or was I now hallucinating? Was she a spirit haunting the cemetery? Okay, now I was getting loopy. But then what had she been doing standing all alone at the bottom of the hill in that inappropriate dress? Crying for someone she’d lost, just like me.

With growing desperation, I fought against my own tears threatening to run down my cheeks. Somehow, I had to keep it together. A wave of despair was drowning me and if I didn’t stop it, it would never let me go. I dug my fingernails savagely into my palm, trying to distract myself from that other all-consuming pain. Looking down at my hand, I saw I had drawn blood, a tiny pool of shiny red forming and mixing with the rain. And still, the pain inside my heart was more than the pain of my physical wound.

Please, dear God, let me wake up. I prayed.

But I didn’t wake up. And that was the first time I thought, really thought to myself, God doesn’t give a shit. I felt a stab of guilt, but it didn’t last long. The fact is, nothing changed with my prayer and the coffin was lowered into the ground. I wanted to scream for them to stop. I wanted to rush at the men in their stupid black suits and slice them into little pieces so they could not continue their insane actions. But I remained motionless, just like we all do when horrific actions take place and we are powerless to change them.

Then, with a final thud that made me jump, the coffin hit the bottom of the grave and it was over. My mom didn't throw any dirt on the lid, or a rose, like you see in movies. She didn't cry out or collapse into anyone’s arms or do anything except stare in that vacant way that had me worried it would all come out later. The small crowd of mourners said their meaningless and extremely awkward goodbyes and everyone hurried away, grateful to get out of the rain at last.

Driving home in the limousine, it was impossible for me to believe that just three weeks earlier I’d been planning a happier limousine ride to celebrate my birthday. Sitting on my bed with my two best friends, Kayla Thompson and Jen Suhn, we’d come up with the idea of renting a limo and shopping on Melrose. When I think about it now, before my dad’s death, my life had consisted of endless empty conversations and demands for things that I just had to have and thought I would die without. Once upon a time, that had been what made life meaningful; before the nightmare beneath the fancy wrapping popped out and forced me to look it in the face.

Anyway, we went into the kitchen to tell my mom about our limo plan and naturally, she said yes, adding, With your dad’s permission. Then, she got all gushy and teary-eyed, Eighteen and still my baby. Let's measure you. Maybe you’ve made six feet.

Mom… Of course the warning tone of my voice was lost on her.

A little more about my trial of a mother, Celia. First off, she didn’t exactly descend from royalty, although the way she acted, you’d think she did. She was the daughter of an iron factory worker and her mother died in childbirth. Not so unusual in the world she came from, which was a village in the Central European country of Hungary. From what little I know about it, my dad met her on one of his many travels abroad. The story goes that she was waitressing in the only restaurant in the village, and he fell in love the minute he set eyes on her. That part always reminded me of a fairytale. My dad literally swept her off her feet, saving her from danger and obscurity in the evil and oppressive communist block and bringing her back to America.

That's where the fairytale turned sour, and honestly what one doesn’t? Somewhere along the line, she became an unbalanced and insecure lump of misery. Why, I don’t know, since everyone bends over backwards to give her attention twenty-four seven.

Naturally, she takes it all out on me.

Asinine remarks in front of her friends … my friends … anyone, about my skin and weight and how I need to be careful what I eat, is an everyday thing. And then there’s my height. I'm 5 feet 11 inches and totally fine with it, but my mom has that irrational 6’ goal. All her biting remarks said with an expression of wide-eyed innocence in her baby-blues.

You can be a model. How many times have I heard that? I can’t be a model. I do not have that kind of look, I don’t want that kind of look. I don’t want to be a model! I could scream it, and she would just look hurt and blank. It’s enough to drive me insane. Except that one insane woman in the family is enough.

Okay, maybe I should back-off a bit and say that, even considering the problems with my mom, my family wasn’t any worse than anyone else’s. In fact, in a lot of ways it was better than ninety-nine percent of the families of the world. Before my birthday, life had been as perfect as an imperfect life could possibly be. After all, I had a somewhat normal family, with a mom and dad who loved me (because as much as I talk shit about my mom, we love one another, we’re family, we’re stuck with one another and, well, love is a complicated thing). I also had a seventeen year old brother, Salem, who was only slightly annoying (he has since turned into a real problem, but, once again, we’re family and I still love him). And, I lived in Oak Haven, one of the wealthiest suburbs in Los Angeles, just over the Santa Monica Mountains from Malibu. People all over the world dreamed of living in Oak Haven. There were a couple of reality shows set in our town and lots of celebrities lived there (blah, blah). I had great friends and, yes, I was even considered popular at Oak Haven High.

That was all three weeks before.

I never knew so much could change in three weeks.

All because of a phone call.

On the fateful day my friends and I had been planning the limo ride, I was rolling my eyes, due to the height remark, intent on reminding my mom about the convertible Mustang my dad had been promising me for years, when the call came. Mom answered and I watched her face completely drain of color. From one second to the next, it turned white, no exaggeration. I thought she was going to faint, but she didn’t. She swayed slightly but stayed on her feet, listening to whatever was being inflicted on her from the other end of the line. In that moment, it’s like I actually felt the world shift on its axis and everything fell out of whack. It’s never gone right since. After a few moments, Mom dropped the phone, and it landed on the counter and bounced off onto the ground. Her knees buckled, and I grabbed her before she went down. She kind of shook me off and I asked what was wrong, but she didn’t hear me. I picked the phone up and put it back.

Then she started whispering in a dazed voice, It can’t be, no, no, no. She said this over and over, and I didn’t know what to say. I thought she must be crazy (which she already was so it was doubly worrying that she was acting even crazier than usual). I led her to a chair and she sat down, but as if her body was a shell, responding to my direction and she wasn’t there anymore. I shook her and yelled. Then she kind of woke up a bit and it all came out that my dad had been killed in a cave-in accident far beneath the Los Angeles Central Library.

It was bad after that. She started screaming, and I had to give her whiskey. She got drunk, and I had to deal with it. No comfort for me, all for her. I never got much more out of her. She shut down, and I was afraid that if I confronted her again, she’d lose it. That’s how it always was with her.

So Salem and I shut down, too. We hid in our rooms. We didn’t go anywhere. We were in shock, I think, and traumatized by our mom’s attitude, even more than usual.

There was an inquest one week before the funeral, and Mom went to it. Accidental Death was what she told us they said. When we dared to ask for more details, she manically shook her head and cried and said she couldn’t remember, as if we were torturing her for information. Salem got so mad I thought he might hit her.

You fucking addict, he yelled. I bet Dad jumped just to get away from you!

Salem can say some pretty horrible things, but I’d never heard him say anything so cruel. I thought Mom would flip, but she turned rigid, blinked at him a few times as if he was a stranger, and then walked out the back door and sat down on the ground, ignoring the deck chairs, and stared at the pool. Well, I had no idea what she was actually seeing, if anything, since she was strung out on pills, more than usual. It was a miracle she’d driven to the hearing, retained some memory of it, and driven back home without killing herself or someone else in the process.

I searched the internet for anything on my dad, and Salem did the same. We compared notes, but all we came up with was one small article hidden on page three of the Los Angeles Times, confirming what Mom had said: Geophysicist Theodore Patterson plunged to his death in an unfortunate accident while working on the new underground transportation system.

I’d never paid much attention to Dad’s job. Who did, unless it was one like Kayla’s movie director dad, where you get to meet celebrities? Okay, mine was a geophysicist, and I knew what that was, but I still couldn’t have told you exactly what he did. Except that he was employed by the city as a consultant for the new underground transportation system. I got the impression that his job was important as it obviously paid enough for us to live in one of the most desirable neighborhoods in Oak Haven. If he’d seemed more and more distracted lately, I hadn’t noticed. Anyway, that’s how he’d always been—more into rocks and gadgets and weird theories than into the practicalities of daily life. Despite his distracted demeanor, he’d always projected an aura of strength and security, which made us feel safe—something I’d never appreciated or even really noticed until it wasn’t there anymore. He was often gone, working late, but when he was around, he gave us his full attention, and I know he loved me and Salem. 

On the day my dad never came home, he did all the normal things he usually did before he left. Kissed my forehead and told me to be good and to listen in school, and I rolled my eyes and said, yeah, yeah. It annoyed me how he would say and do the same things every day. But now I missed it. I’d give anything to hear him say those stupid things again, feel him hug and kiss me.

There came the tears again. I blinked hard, fixing my eyes out the limo window at the heavy freeway traffic. Nobody spoke. Even my brother, who usually had some negative observations to make about any situation, was hunched silently on the other side of the limo. He glanced back at me and then turned away. Hurt and anger blazed in his blue eyes, and his short dyed-blond hair that had begun the day spiky and trendy (or so he thought) was now wet with raindrops and plastered to his head. I’d hardly recognized him that morning, standing stern and grown-up, his tall frame, taller than me already, looking awkward in the somber suit and tie.

I hadn’t even complained when my mom insisted I wear a conservative black skirt and jacket and put my hair in a ponytail. I felt exposed with it tied back and had barely been able to look at myself in the mirror. Even on a good day, I wasn’t crazy about my skinny body and serious face, with the freckles on my too long nose. Mom was always telling me I had good bone structure, thanks to her, and delicate skin, a curse of that no good Irish grandpa. That morning, it was as if a stranger stared back at me from the mirror.