The Book of Lies

into nothingness? Wouldn’t that make this so much easier?”

I stare straight ahead. “That isn’t how life is, Lloyd.”

Up the block, a police car wails, fighting through the dinnertime traffic along the beach. As it gets closer, my father is bathed in the siren’s glowing blue lights, which smooth away his wrinkles and flatter his sun-beaten skin. For those few seconds, as it passes, my father is young again. Just like on the night he pushed my mom.

“I forgive you, Lloyd.” I take a long, deep breath. “I just don’t want to see you.”

Still gripping the base of the window, my father simply stands there. There are some prisons with no bars.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t dig your way out.

“I’ll always be your father, Cal.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“How ’bout this Friday, then?” he asks. “We can go to dinner.”

The police car is long gone. But I still hear it in the distance.

“Maybe.”

Pumping the gas, I pull out toward the traffic. For the first few steps, my father holds on to the window, trying to limp along with the van. He doesn’t get far.

“You like Indian food? We can grab Indian,” he calls out, excited.

“I hate Indian,” I call back, leaving him behind.

I peer out the window. He looks older again. Too old to run. But even in the darkness, even as he stops, I see his zigzag smile.

It matches my own.

As we zip up the block, I check the rearview to get a final look, but all I see is Alberto, his nose pressed to his RC Cola can with the plastic wrap on top.

“Let me ask you, Alberto—you really think it helps, talking to your dad’s ashes like that?”

Alberto looks up, confused. “Ashes? What you talkin’ about?”

“In the can. Those aren’t your dad’s ashes?”

“Cal, I may be a drunk, but I ain’t wacky.”

“But that night—you said—”

“Damn, boy—we was in a crowded van full of junkies and baseheads. I go tellin’ ’em where I keep my piggy, and it’ll be gone by lockdown.”

His piggy? “Hold on. That’s your bank?”

Flashing a gray-toothed smile, Alberto shakes the RC Cola can, and I hear bits of change cling- cling against the insulation of crumpled dollar bills. “You keep it in yo’ socks, they steal it,” Alberto says, beaming. “It’s like your story, Cal—that coffin you was chasin’: Once people think there’s a body inside . . . ain’t no better hiding spot in the whole damn world.”

He’s right about that. But in our case, with the coffin, there was a body in—

My heart lurches, leaping up to my throat.

Double crap.

I need an airline ticket.

80

Orchard Lake, Michigan

Judge Felix Wojtowicz wasn’t a fool. Electrified from the moment he saw it, he knew the power of history. And ritual. And even the ceremonial value of a blood rite.

He knew—thanks to his own family’s diaries—that the blood sacrament was what delayed his brethren at the Cave of Treasures all those years ago. So with Ellis’s body at his feet, already wrapped in plastic, he knew he wouldn’t make the same mistakes here.

Most of all, the Judge knew the stories from times past.

He knew that dating back to 3500 BC, Mesopotamian women used to wear cylinder seals—carved stone cylinders no bigger than the cork of a wine bottle, but with a hole through them, like pieces of ziti—around their necks to ward off nightmares and evil spirits.

He knew that early archaeologists mistakenly thought the seals were jewelry. But the true secret of the seals was what was carved on them. Indeed, when the seals were rolled in blood—like a roller stamp—they’d reveal pictures and stories.

And he knew that the best of these pictures even had their own narratives.

Like a book.

For decades, the archaeological community had overlooked so much. In 1899, The New York Times reported on the British Museum’s unearthed cylinder seals that dated to 4000 BC in Babylonia. So many of them, when rolled in wet clay, revealed what the Times called “biblical incidents,” including vivid carvings of the “Genesis stories of the creation, of the fall of man, the flood, and others.”

Archaeologists at the time didn’t know what to make of it.

But the Thules did.

Just as they understood that long before Babylonian times, man hid ancient secrets by carving them onto everyday objects—like the horns of goats or rams. Or sheep. Abel was a herder of sheep.

“I’m confused,” the sixty-year-old named Kenneth asked, carrying a wide cookie sheet of wet modeling clay to the glass bar. “All the carvings on the weapon—they’re faded and cracked away. Look at it, it’s practically smooth. There’s gonna be nothing to see.”

The Judge laughed to himself.

Again, he wasn’t a fool. He knew—even anticipated (especially with a beast like Ellis)—that would be the case.

If this really was the weapon that murdered Abel—if the ivory-and-gray animal horn was indeed the true Mark of Cain—a Book of Truth—carved with God’s greatest secrets and passed to Adam, to Abel, and eventually as a sign to Cain—surely the carvings would have faded over time.

But the Coptic monks who first unearthed it in the late sixteenth century? They weren’t stupid, either.

Which was why they kept a backup copy.

The Judge stuffed his hands into a pair of white cotton gloves, then held the animal horn in one hand and picked up a brand-new X-Acto knife in the other. Just touching it, gripping it—Lord, to finally have it after all these centuries—this wasn’t just a find. It was a reawakening for the whole movement. Thule revived!

Like a surgeon, he edged the knife underneath the lip of the tanned flap of leather that covered the wide end of the horn.

“You knew all this time, didn’t you?” Kenneth asked as his partner looked on behind him. “You knew the monks hid something inside.”

“I couldn’t possibly know,” the Judge admitted. “But I had faith.”

With a sharp slice of the knife, the leather gave way, opening with a silent burp and delivering a rancid stench that wafted from the innards of the horn and smelled like vinegar and foul eggs. It stung the Judge’s nose and made his eyes water. But he didn’t look away.

Without a word, Judge Felix Wojtowicz peered inside. His eyes narrowed, searching—then grew wide again.

“What? What’s it say?” Kenneth asked.

The Judge didn’t answer.

Panicking, he turned the horn over and shook it to double-check. Nothing but a cloud of fine dust rained out.

“I-It can’t be,” he stammered. “Someone . . . they . . . someone already took it.”