The Shrouded Path
I gathered the raised lapels of my old sheepskin coat about my neck, warding off the chill November air. The night was crisp, and my breath condensed into thick white clouds as I made my way along the forest path toward home. I had stayed late at Emily's, going over the plans for our wedding which was to take place in the spring. She was a delight to be around, always happy and in a positive manner, with an easy smile that lit up a room. She had been the object of my secret crush since I was a young child, and it was only last winter that I had summoned enough courage to tell her how I felt. I had always assumed she wouldn't have feelings for me, as I came from a humble home, but to my surprise and delight she had reciprocated my feelings, and we have not spent a single day apart since then.
It was only with a heavy heart that I left her mother's home, to walk the four miles back my own parents' house via a shortcut through the forest. It had grown in quite a bit over the past fifteen years, since I had begun to play amongst its pines and firs and birches. Indeed, this whole area now covered with dense trees and shrubbery had once been fully clear, the site of a small village built by the first inhabitants of this area over three hundred years ago. Here and there, one could find ruins – old foundations of wooden houses long since collapsed and disintegrated, rusty iron tools or nails or scraps of metal whose purpose was lost to the past. By far the biggest of the ruins was the old graveyard with its sandstone markers and granite-blocked mausoleums, home to at least forty departed souls of those first days in this New World. As a child I would often go there to play with my friends, running amongst the headstones and climbing to the top of any of the three mausoleums, for no particular reason other than it was there. We never went inside the stone tombs though, for all three of them were locked, still retaining their original cast iron bolt locks and heavy chains, and so we scared each other and ourselves by making up stories of the hideously deformed creatures and ghosts who must be lurking inside, waiting for the first unlucky person to break the lock and pull open the door, whereupon he would immediately be seized by the ghost and meet a horrible and untimely death. It was around this point that we usually jumped off the top of the mausoleums and ran home to our suppers.
As I proceeded further along the path a heavy ground fog began to form, as it often did during the night at this time of the year here in the humid forest, when the warmth of the sun wasn't around to burn off the moisture. I had taken this course literally hundreds of times in my life, and so was quite sure of the way and was not in the slightest concerned about becoming lost due to the reduction of visibility. The night seemed to become silent now, with even the frogs in the many nearby bogs not making their usual nocturnal racket. I was actually glad of the onset of the fog, as it lent a peculiar quality to the area, as if I were walking down a long path from nowhere, to nowhere, and with nothing but my immediate surroundings in between. It lent me a certain comfort in knowing that I was all alone out here, heading toward home and my warm bed, to sleep and dream of Emily.
I was approaching the general area of the old graveyard now, and for a moment I thought I heard something, a faint tinkling noise, but when I stopped to listen I heard nothing but my own muted breathing and the utter silence of the fog-shrouded path. I continued along for a few minutes, and then heard it again – distinctively this time, as the sound metal makes upon metal – followed by a remnant of what could have been someone talking. Moving more slowly now and keeping an ear turned to the direction from which I thought I heard the sound, I proceeded until I stood on the section of path adjacent to the old graveyard, which was situated a few dozen yards into the trees to my left. It was definitely the source of the noise, for I could now plainly make out the sound of tapping, as if a hammer on a metal nail, and muted voices speaking.
I couldn't see anyone as the fog was quite thick in this area, and could discern no light as from a lantern or candle, and so mulled my options. I really wanted to go home and into bed, but being of a curious sort and never being able to pass up a mystery, I moreso wanted to find out who was in the graveyard and what they were up to. This area had no criminal element to speak of – the worst crime committed in the village's collective memory was from almost thirty years ago, when Al Houghton had stolen a candy bar from the general store when he was nine and ended up being forced to parade around the schoolyard in his underwear, at the behest of the store owner's thirteen year old son and amidst the collective laughter of the rest of us. Therefore I was not concerned as far as my own safety was concerned. I was however no fool, and realized that if someone was skulking around an old abandoned graveyard in the depths of night then they must be up to something. I decided to investigate and turned off the path, making my way slowly and quietly toward the graveyard, taking care to not step on twigs which may snap and give away my presence.
The noises seemed to be coming from one of the mausoleums – that of the Sampson family - and it was toward it that I progressed, now being able to discern the contours of its stone walls and arched ceiling. I crouched behind a nearby headstone and peered around it, straining my eyes to pull movement and shape from out of the misty darkness. I could see the faint outlines of what appeared to be two people, standing around the entrance to the mausoleum. They were hunched over, or leaning over, and there was a distinctive metal-on-metal sound again, and then one of them strained and gasped, followed by a loud clink and the rattle of chains falling to the ground. They had broken the lock! I was beyond explanation as to why anyone would want to enter the tomb, let alone why one would want to break into it under cover of night. The Sampsons, according to the old town registry still preserved in the rectory, and which had been the subject of study during one particularly boring semester at school, had been by all accounts a normal family, churchgoing and hard working, who had six children in all before Betty Sampson had died of consumption in 1706. Nothing special happened thereafter, besides the children all eventually moving away to other areas of the world and raising families of their own, only to eventually return to the place of their birth for their final laying down to rest.
At any rate, the chain holding the heavy door in place had been cut, and there now came forth such a screech of rusty metal against rusty metal as the old door was pulled open that I half expected the dead to arise from their graves to see what all the commotion was about. The door was opened wide enough for a man to pass through, and then became stuck. One of the voices uttered a loud curse with a thick accent, and the other made a shushing sound, admonishing his companion to be quiet and whispered something which I could not make out. One of them lit a small gas lantern, and I watched as first one, then the other slipped through the semi-opened door and into the tomb.
My heart started to beat faster as I considered following them in to see what they were up to. Rising from behind the headstone I made my way cautiously to the mausoleum, slipping easily through the stuck door thanks to my slim built. The mausoleum had been built with a short corridor about ten yards long running from the door, and I saw that at the end it branched off to each side, presumably toward two circular rooms, one at each end of the branch, whose roofs had been the battleground for childhood snowball fights in winter between two warring groups situated one atop each of the circular chambers. It was from the left chamber that the light of the intruders' lantern shone, and I walked on cat's feet toward the intersection of the hallways, and peered around the corner.
The lantern lay on the floor between two men dressed in long dark coats. One of them wore a green woolen hat, and was jamming a metal prybar into a casket seated into an alcove in the wall. The other man was standing watching him, holding a hammer with his right hand and resting the other at shoulder height on the stone wall before him, and I saw that he wore a pistol tucked into his pants. "C'mon, hurry it up," he said. "He didn't give us all night."
"Shut yer 'ole," said the man with the prybar with a heavy Cockney accent. "You a-wan ta do this?" His companion fell silent and let Cockney Man do his work. A crack sounded as wood splintered, black painted pieces falling to the stone floor. Cockney Man chuckled. "Gimme a hand 'ere." The two of them grabbed onto the lid and pushed it up, revealing the contents to the air.
"Hoo," gasped Hammer Man, waving a hand in front of his nose. "How long's she been in there for anyway?"
"Who cares, you never smelt tha' before? We just take wha' we came 'ere for an get the 'ell out."
"Fine. She's your ancestor, you find it." Cockney Man uttered a curse at his companion and plunged both hands into the open casket as if it were a pot of dough, sending dust and the odd bone flying out and landing on the floor, rattling against the dry stone. After a minute or so of this disgustingly obscene act of disrespect for the dead, he uttered a cry of triumph and pulled out a hand covered in gray dust, and holding a small metal box.
"Is that it?" breathed Hammer Man.
"Well of course it's it, ye daft fagle. Ye think I'd'a be this 'appy for an empty tin box?"
"Open it up, make sure it's there."
Cockney Man held the box close up to his face and gingerly pried open the lid with his fingers. The lid off, he reached inside and carefully pulled out a piece of folded paper. He flung the metal box to the floor where it fell with a loud echoing metallic clang, and dropped to the floor where he slowly unfolded and spread out the paper.
"Hoo! This is it al'right!" he exclaimed.
"Does it show the location?" Hammer Man kneeled and turned his head to get a front-side view of the paper, which was apparently a map of some sort.
Cockney Man plunked a finger onto a particular spot on the paper. "Right 'ere, me bucko. Right where I'd always said it'd'a be. Wait'll that slimy dog catches a glimpse o' this," he started to chuckle to himself.
"We should go, he's not going to wait all night, he only gave us an hour to get back. He doesn't believe you as it is."
"Let 'im wait!" Cockney Man said, throwing up his hands in triumph and sitting back on his boot heels. "This'll make all o' us rich men, an if he sets sail without us, you and me we're all the more richer because of it."
"If it hasn't been dug up already," Hammer Man said. "It's been over two hundred years."
"Stop bein' so damned negative. If it aint there we'll jus sell it to some ol' chap in Port Royal for a good sum. Either way an we're better off than we are now."
Hammer Man nodded and they both turned silent, staring down at the map. My eyes were wide and my heart racing as I reviewed in my mind what had just happened here. These two men were pirates! They had come here to get an old map which had apparently been buried with the ancestor of one of them, showing the location to something valuable, and somewhere nearby their ship was waiting. It suddenly dawned on me that there could very well be other pirates around here, and I turned to leave the mausoleum. In my haste to exit, my foot scraped against the dust covered floor, and the noise of it cut through the silence of the tomb as loud as a drum. For a split second I froze, and heard Hammer Man cry out "Who's there?" I took off running down the short hall toward the door, with the two intruders coming after me. I slipped through the door and leaned against it, putting my entire weight on it in a frantically desperate effort to get it shut before they caught up to me.
A sharp squeal rang in my ears as the heavy rusted hinges suddenly gave way and the iron door slammed shut with a loud clang. The lock had been broken by Cockney Man's prybar, smashed into pieces which lay scattered around my feet, and so I grabbed the chain lying on the ground and pulled it through the guide rings, no sooner doing so than feeling the two intruders run against the door from the inside, trying to push it open, hearing their yells and curses mostly muted by the thick metal door. I ran the chain through the rings again to ensure a good seal, and took a step back, out of breath from the quick adrenaline rush which showed no signs of abating. I knew the door to be secure – there was no way they could break through it with the chain doubled through like that, even with their hammer and prybar. I tried to calm myself down and mulled what to do next, forcing myself to think logically. I could rush to the authorities. They would surely arrest the two men for vandalism and possibly theft, but what would come of the map?
A thought seeped into my mind - from where I don't know - and to this day I have pangs of guilt and even a faint sensation of fear when I think about that moment in which I decided what to do. Hammer Man had said their ship wouldn't wait long for them. That probably meant nobody else was ashore besides the two now locked in the tomb, and nobody else would be coming ashore. They could last a week, perhaps two, without food or water, locked inside. It would take them longer than that to hammer-and-chisel their way through the thick rock wall of the mausoleum. I would play it safe and wait a month before venturing in and taking the map. It would ensure a good future for Emily and me, once I was able to retrieve that which the map revealed.
I turned my back on the muffled screams and walked down the fog-shrouded path toward home.