Welsh Road (The Depravity Chronicles) (11 page)

Simon thought he
detected a hint of exasperation on Anish’s face. “Does it make you nervous that
we’re the key to helping you stop the Demon Master?”

Anish managed a
tenuous smile. “There is a great deal of anxiety in this room at the moment.
Rightfully so, for our mission is dangerous. Life threatening. We are also
working against the clock, so it would be in Nicholas’ best interest if we
begin right away.” 

“Way to avoid
the question,” Simon mumbled.

“Well, what are
we waiting for?” Jena asked.

Anish reached
into his pocket and pulled out a quarter. He laid it flat in the palm of his
hand.

“It’s all about
focus,” Anish whispered. All of a sudden the coin began to levitate and then
floated toward the ceiling.

“How am I doing
that right now?” Jena asked, dumbfounded by her abilities.

Simon and Trevor
both stared at the quarter, awestruck.

“You’re not
doing it,” Anish said. “I am.”

“Wicked,” Trevor
said. Simon echoed this sentiment with a
Wicked
of his own.

“When you are
locked in, the ability to concentrate just might save your life,” Anish
explained. Everyone watched as the coin began to spin like a top.

“When your focus
falters, then you just might lose it,” Anish added. Without warning, the
quarter fell to the floor.

“Can I do that?”
Trevor asked excitedly.

“Stand in line,”
Jena quipped. Simon watched as Jena glared at the coin. Slowly but surely, it
began to spin. After a few seconds Jena made it hover over Trevor’s head.

Anish moved from
the rocking chair and sat down beside Jena. “I need you to keep your focus as I
speak with you.”

“Okay,” Jena
responded softly. She squinted her eyes slightly, attempting to split her focus
between Anish’s voice and the floating coin. Suddenly Anish clapped his hands
together, startling everyone in the room.

“Dude!” Trevor
cried as the quarter landed on his forehead, still spinning.

Jena quickly
regained her focus and gestured toward the coin. It soared upward and crashed
into a lighting fixture on the ceiling. Glass exploded above Trevor’s head. He
quickly jumped up from the recliner and sat down beside Simon.

“Nice recovery,”
Simon applauded.

Jena leaned back
and laid her head against Anish’s shoulder. Simon was pleasantly surprised by
Jena’s comfort level with a man she had just met the previous night. He was
reminded by what he had said to Trevor not long ago.
Near death experiences
and fighting demons has a way of bringing people together.

Anish shifted so
he was facing Jena. “It’s time for you to take control of your gifts,” he
encouraged.

“But it’s
so
tiring,”
Jena complained.

“It doesn’t have
to be,” Anish promised. “In fact, you’re about to discover how invigorating it
can be.”

In that moment
Simon came to two significant conclusions. First, he was going to learn
everything he could about honing his own psychic skills. Second, and most
importantly, Jena needed to become a permanent member of their team of
paranormal investigators.

* * * * * *

3

Anna was
relieved to have Father Matthew onboard. She trusted his knowledge of the
occult, and hoped that he would be able to shed some light on the evidence they
had discovered.

Matthew was
visibly shaken when Anna showed him the crime scene.

“Sweet Jesus,”
he mumbled. “This brings back memories.”

“Tell me about
it,” Anna agreed. “There are two others just like this a few miles down the
road.”

“I saw the
emergency vehicles,” Matthew said. “In fact, I almost stopped because I thought
you were there. So what’s the deal? Any ideas about the killer’s motives?”

“We don’t have
much,” Anna said sadly while handing him a pair of latex gloves. “But we are
hoping that this might give us some answers.”

“Wow,” Matthew
said as he studied the papyrus. “This is
old
.”

“How can you
tell?” Anna asked, thinking about the infinite types of paper available online.
Paper can be made to look like just about anything.

Matthew held the
ancient evidence against the light of the sun. “See this?” he asked as he
flipped the paper over.

Anna squinted,
trying to get a good look at whatever he was showing her. Slowly she began
detecting faint collections of strange letters. “What are these markings?”

“These aren’t
markings,” Matthew explained. “These are words. Papyrus was often reused, as is
possibly the case here.”

“Possibly?” Anna
asked.

Matthew nodded.
“The other possibility is that these texts may be connected. A semi-hidden code
of sorts.”

“In what
language?” Anna asked, astonished. “This isn’t a language that I’ve ever seen.”

Matthew laughed.
“You’ve probably seen some form of this language. What we have here is an
ancient form of Hebrew, dating back to biblical times.”

“You mean the
time of Christ?” Anna asked.

“No,” Matthew said
as he chuckled again. “This is
biblical
Hebrew. Like, from the Old
Testament era. Jesus himself would have read from scrolls like these. Papyrus
was a productive and inexpensive way to write down information.”

“Information?”
Anna asked.

“Yeah, anything
from religious prayers and stories to government documents.”

“Wow.”

Matthew glowered
at the text. Anna couldn’t tell if he even understood what he was reading.

He turned his
attention back to Anna. “If I were a guessing man, I would say that this evidence
is approximately three thousand years old.”

“But you’re not
a guessing man,” Anna said with a wink. She honestly wasn’t sure if he was
kidding.

“Never,” Matthew
said, smirking. He turned the papyrus around again to reveal the newer, more
relevant text. “This, however, is where I stop being a guessing man.”

“What do you
mean?”

“I’d bet all of
my money – ahem, which isn’t saying much – that this papyrus really is that
old. But I can’t be 100% sure.” He pointed at the larger, visible Hebrew. “I’d
bet my life, however – which is saying a lot – that I can tell you exactly what
this is.”

“So what does it
say?” Anna asked, anxious.

Matthew’s
already tentative smile quickly turned to a scowl as he read the evidence. When
he finished, he dropped his hands to his side somewhat aggressively. The paper
crumpled softly.

“Uh, that would
be evidence,” Anna said, more concerned about Matthew’s facial expression than
the condition of the papyrus.

“Right, sorry,”
Matthew said. He cleared his throat and held the paper out in front of him. “On
the surface, it is simply a biblical passage from the Hebrew Bible, found in
the book of Numbers.”

“And underneath
the surface?” Anna asked.

“A qorbanot.”

“A what?” Anna
asked, already irritated that the web of insanity was getting thicker by the
hour. Her mind flashed to several violent moments from the previous year’s
battles. She thought of Sam and his old – but new to her – questions about the
portal. Just as she pushed that memory to the backburner, Sam greeted them from
a few feet away.

“Father!” Sam
called.

The two men
embraced warmly.

“Did you find
anything?” Anna asked, wondering if Sam had also seen the shadow moving among
the treetops.

“Nothing at
all,” Sam answered. He smiled at Matthew.

“How are you?”
Matthew asked. “Dumb question, I guess.”

Anna put her
hand on Sam’s shoulder. “The good Father was just about to explain what a, uh,
what was it again?”

“A qorbanot,”
Matthew repeated.

“Is that what
this is?” Sam asked, pointing to the papyrus.

“Yes and no,”
Matthew responded uneasily. “The legible words are simply the biblical text
from Numbers. It’s the meaning hidden in the code that we need to decipher.”

“What code?” Sam
asked.

“Later,” Anna
said as she waved the question away.

“Before we get
to work on translation, I have a random question,” Matthew said. “Did you find
any herbs or plants on the altars?”

“That
was
a random question,” Anna said.

“As a matter of
fact, yes,” Sam said. He took out his camera pen and stuck one end of it into
his cell phone. Once the pictures were transferred, he showed Matthew a few
pictures of the altar.

“Hyssop,”
Matthew observed. “Just as I suspected. And did you discover a burnt corpse
nearby that resembled a cow?”

“Holy shit,” Sam
exclaimed. “How did you know?”

“What does all
this mean?” Anna asked.

Matthew paused,
somewhat lost in thought. Then he switched gears, falling comfortably into
teaching mode. “The qorbanot was a central component of the Jewish ritual of
sacrifice.”

“I didn’t know
that Jews offered sacrifices,” Sam mused.

“I know they
used to,” Anna interjected. “But they don’t do sacrifices anymore, right?” Anna
asked.

“The Jews
haven’t engaged in the qorbanot since the end of the first century. Sacrifices
were made at the Temple, and once Rome destroyed it, many Jewish practices were
lost. Entire sects of Judaism, in fact, were wiped out.”

“So why a Jewish
ritual?” Anna asked. “Why a sacrifice?”

“Ah, the million
dollar question,” Matthew said.

“I’ve about had
my fill of unanswered questions,” Anna groaned.

“Here’s the
interesting part,” Matthew said. “The literal translation of qorbanot is
not
sacrifice. The root comes from Qof-Reish-Beit, meaning
to draw near
.”

“But sacrifices
did in fact draw people closer to God,” Anna figured.

“Exactly,”
Matthew said. “So we have a few options here. One, this ritual represents a
sacrifice. Two, it represents an offering. Three, it is the killer’s attempt to
either draw closer to some entity, or…”

“To draw some
entity closer to him,” Anna finished.

 “Shit,” Sam said.
“What’s the difference between a sacrifice and an offering?”

“They can and
often are parts of the same process,” Matthew explained. “A sacrifice is almost
always some form of offering. The lines separating them can be blurry.”

“That makes
sense, I guess,” Sam nodded. “What do you think these murders represent?”

Anna held up her
hands, calling for a timeout. “This would be a much more productive
conversation if we actually knew what this qorbanot said.”

“Well, there are
a few things we know without having to read the hidden text,” Matthew said. “We
know the biblical passage being used. It is the 19
^th
chapter of
Numbers, which lays out the rules for a very specific ritual. It is called the
Parah
Adumah
. Translated, it means
The Red Heifer
.”

“Why is that significant?”
Sam asked.

“The Red Heifer
sacrifice is a purification ritual for people who have become unclean through a
particular offense.”

“What offense is
that?” Anna asked, again not sure if she wanted to know.

“The defilement
that is caused by having physical contact with the dead,” Matthew said.

“Lovely,” Anna
said. “This just gets better and better.”

“So my friends,
“Matthew began. “This text is the blueprint of a modern day Red Heifer ritual.”

“Naturally,”
Anna murmured.

“It is a bit
disconcerting that whoever did this used an ancient purification ritual,”
Matthew said. “The presence of a burnt sacrifice is one thing. But to have two
dead bodies in positions of prayer is quite another. This subverts the intended
spiritual cleanliness and glorifies death and being eternally unclean.”

“Mom…Mom…Mom…Louis….Louis…Louis…”
The small group
was startled by the sudden loud ringtone of Anna’s cellphone. She fished it
from her jacket pocket.

Sam began
laughing. “I didn’t take you for a
Family Guy
fan.”

“It’s Trevor,”
Anna chortled. “He programmed it himself on my phone.”

“Trevor, where
are you?” Anna asked.

“Anna, are you
busy?” Anish asked.

Anna was taken
off guard by Anish’s voice. “I am busy, Anish,” she replied. “But something
tells me that you’re busy, too.”

“There have been
several developments that require our attention,” Anish stated.

“You can say
that again,” Anna agreed.