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03/19/2004: "David Parker's Journal: 14"

I pushed the mausoleum door shut and stood there, too stunned to move.

I had expected the interior to be like other crypts I have visited: A mostly bare, chill room with perhaps a bench for mourners, an urn or two either empty or filled with dead flowers, the family coffins hidden in walled recesses fronted by engraved plaques telling the names of those whose bones rested within, along with the dates of birth and death, the alpha and omega of mortal existence.

The eccentric faux Egyptian exterior should have prepared me to expect something outlandish inside William Benton’s tomb, but even if it had stopped to think I never would have guessed the setting would be so bizarre.

Except for a small landing of perhaps three by four feet, the floor fell precipitously away to a reveal a subterranean rotunda roughly twenty-five feet deep and equally wide. The above-ground part of the mausoleum was the proverbial tip of the iceberg, a small visible sign giving no hint of the far greater mass lurking below. The walls and floor were built from blocks of the same unpolished white marble used for the exterior. The stairway down was stone and built to follow the curving wall in a counterclockwise direction, ultimately reaching the tomb’s lower level directly beneath the entry.

Suspended from the ceiling from three golden chains was a crystal prism as wide across as a basketball. The crystal possessed, either through the blessings of nature or ingenious engineering, the power to gather the dim light coming through the stained-glass windows on the three walls, magnifying it until the illumination was many times brighter than the original sources. The prism directed the light downward, refracting primary colors that came together about six feet from the bottom, focusing a clear, bright circle of light on the single coffin centered below on a bier ornately carved from gleaming black marble that appeared to rise up organically out of the earth.

William Benton’s silver coffin was carved with Masonic and Egyptian symbols and complex geometric decorations. I realized after a moment that part of what I had taken for rococo filigree box was in fact an elaborate mechanism for locking the casket shut. In the center of the coffin was inlaid what seemed to be a ceramic oval decorated with the interlocking “WB” initials of Benton’s name.

The unreality of the scene rooted me where I stood inside the door. It was as if I had found myself in the midst of dream at the precise moment when the innocuous and meaningless fantasy turns suddenly ominous and morphs into nightmare.

My natural inclination was to go back out the door, get in the Audi and drive away fast. But I had already come too far for that. The solution to problem Tatiana had set before me was, it seemed, at hand. And even if it wasn’t, the mystery had its hooks set in my soul too deep for me to pull away now.

The sound of shoe leather scraping against stone echoed through the manmade cave as I began my descent. I wondered how Benton had built the strange tomb. Had he had the lower level excavated, then built the more-typical crypt over the top as an entry chamber? Or had he built the top structure first, and then ordered his workers to dig deep into the earth once the work would be hidden from curious eyes?

I found myself wishing I had known Benton, who must have been as eccentric as he was brilliant. The Roaring ’20s industrialist reminded me of da Vinci, with the strange mingling of art, engineering and the esoteric in his life. But then Leonardo was a vampire, while Benton had been an ordinary mortal…

I stood looking down at the coffin. The mechanism locking it tight looked ingenious. You couldn’t get in with a pry bar and hammer. I doubted anything short of cutting the metal casket open with a blowtorch could reveal its secrets.

Musing on the problem, I lightly ran my fingers across the surface, as if to confirm the evidence of my eyes and be certain that I was not back in my house, in a feverish sleep after drinking my fill of blood.

A soft click sounded somewhere within coffin beneath my fingertips. A scarab beetle cast into the metal surface filled from within with a ruby-colored glow – the same weird phenomenon I'd seen in the bronze door above that had signaled me to enter the mausoleum. I touched it without thinking, feeling the warmth of whatever strange energy throbbed within the metal. There was another click, this time louder, as an invisible mechanism drew the scarab downward. A prolonged series of metallic snaps and clicks followed as I backed slowly away.

The coffin was unlocking itself.

There was a rush of air as the lid began to open, equalizing the pressure after being sealed for three-quarters of a century. I half expected to see a skeletal arm pushing the lid up, but the device seemed to be operating of its own mechanical accord. The dry smell of roses turned to dust rose filled the air.

It took a concerted act of will to make myself move forward and peer down into the coffin. I have seen many grim sights, but I was far from sanguine about the prospect of viewing William Benton’s corpse – or what remained of it – after eighty years of rotting in an air-tight crypt.

The coffin was empty.

“What the hell is happening?” I said out loud, the words echoing back to me, sounding frightened and far away. Was I losing my mind – or was I merely the victim of others who had already gone insane?

There was an ivory-colored envelope propped against the satin pillow within the casket where, it seemed, no one had been buried in 1925. The enclosure was shut with red sealing wax stamped with the familiar “WB” that must have also graced Benton’s signet ring.

I picked up the envelope. The paper felt dry and brittle with age. I turned it over to read the writing on its face. The return address said in elegant blue ink cursive, “W. Benton, 1925.”

The letter had been placed in the casket and locked away in the tomb years a decade before my father was born.

In the center of the envelop, in slightly larger lettering, was the simple address: “To David Parker, Esq.”