The Beginning...
Chapter One
The trinket box had sat in its dusty place for many years, untouched and unloved. Its once vibrant colours and shining trim now dulled with age and neglect. Lay around it, amongst the dust, were painful memories of the life it had once seen. Old photo frames stood, their subjects indistinguishable through layers of time. To the naïve eye, the box seemed harmless enough, to those unknowing people who had happened to cast their eyes on it over the years the box had barely distracted them. How wrong they were. It was strange to think that this box contained a secret that could alter lives for ever.
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Harry Templar sat in his
Retirement from the police force had been a mistake he realised now, ‘real work’ he called it. They had talked him into it at the time, an injured man. “It’s either private work or a desk job” the Captain had told him. Harry had loved working the streets for clues; he had once had the record for crime resolution in the entire department. PI work had sounded attractive but he discovered to his cost that the bulk of the work involved tailing spouses to discover their dirty secrets.
The stream of smoke paused while he took another long drag on his pipe. He heard footsteps on the stairs, and glanced over to the clock – 9.15. ‘Odd’, Harry thought.
The figure that entered the room made Harry move his feet off the desk and sit up straight. He sat, his pipe almost falling from his lips as he scanned the new visitor.
‘Mr. Templar, may I come in?’ The woman was tall, and slender. A brunette, her hair tousled its way down over her strong shoulders, a stray curl swishing across her pale cheek. Provocatively dressed, Harry had rarely seen such beauty and knew this wasn’t a personal visit.
Harry thought he had seen this face before, perhaps in the paper, perhaps he’d seen her on a tail he wasn’t sure. Still waiting for an invitation into the room, she paused. ‘Yep, uh, I mean, sure’. The woman walked seductively over to Harry’s desk, placed near the centre of the room and sat down on the old chair, worn down over the years with the anxiety of many a worried spouse. She looked around, and wondered if she were in the right place. Filing cabinets stood to her left, rusty and full of case notes they could barely be shut and some drawers lay open untidily. Glancing over to the right, she saw a few old photos – one of a young man in a police uniform who had a slight resemblance to Harry, without the receding hair line and wrinkled brow. Across the rest of the pictures, she saw Harry again and again with various figures she thought she might have recognised years ago, but couldn’t put a name to the faces.
To her front, a large oak desk stood between her and the PI she had just met. The detective was aging but maintained a strong, broad physique. His grey hair gave him a distinguished look, but his eyes gave away a lifetime of seeing scenes more disturbing than any she had ever seen.
‘I’ve been looking for the right man for some time now, and the word is that it could be you’ alleged the seductress intriguingly.
‘I see, there are a lot of people I’ve helped and a lot I’ve hurt, hope you didn’t get your information from any of the wrong crowd’ replied Harry, his attention now tightly focussed on the woman before him.
The woman leant forward and reached into her purse. Harry had been here several times before and his hand closed around the pistol fastened under his side of the desk. His grip relaxed when she pulled an envelope from the bag and placed on the desk before him.
‘Inside you will find instructions and your retainer.’
‘Hang on a minute lady, I haven’t…’ Harry began but was caught short by a dismissive wave of her hand.
‘You will be interested in this case Mr. Templar, I assure you.’ She rose from her chair and walked from the room.
Chapter Two
The plane was like any other. Harry had taken a look at the contents of the envelope and immediately taken his hat and coat from its stand, almost forgetting to lock his office door behind him. The cash retainer was plenty to buy his ticket to
He couldn’t resist familiarising himself with this case as he flew 35,000 feet above the
‘Mr. Templar, you should be more careful. Would you care for some reading material?’ The flight attendant looked at him intently, and Harry saw something he did not expect in her eyes.
‘Uh, alright’ he said.
She returned to him shortly with a book entitled ‘Ancient relics and their forbidden curses’.
‘A little light reading, eh?’ Harry joked, but was becoming more and more curious about today’s developments.
The corner of page 75 was turned down, and he read every word. It explained the legend of the casket of Kasteldon, a large chest, ornately carved and decorated by an Arabian prince. The legend held that the owner of the chest would be invincible, and hold the key to eternal life. The last known resting place of the chest was a town near
‘So, that’s why I’m headed to
Chapter Three
Not a great distance from Harry’s place of arrival, a dark hall was filling with cloaked figures. Each one alike, wearing a long hooded crimson cape completely enshrouding them, hiding his identity. This was not like their normal meetings, there was a hive of mutters and murmuring between the caped brethren.
A shaft of daylight cut through the dusty darkness from a solitary window above, illuminating a large golden throne on an altar at the head of the hall, ornately decorated with orbs and crosses. Another figure, this time in a white cloak identical to those of the others entered the room from a small side door. The room fell silent instantly.
He climbed up to the altar, stood in front of the large throne and paused. The brethren awaited word from their master, sure that a breakthrough might have been made at last.
‘My children,’ the Grand Master spoke eventually.
‘Master, we honour you with our blood’ the group chanted in ritual fashion.
Eager to know the latest developments, the cloaked figures leaned forward expectantly, to catch every word.
‘Children, we have waited for this moment for a millennium’. The group immediately began to chatter excitedly but stopped the moment he spoke again.
‘Our secret has been well kept, but there are those among us who seek to destroy us’.
The small side door opened once again, but this time a small, weak man was thrust forth by two cloaked men in black. The room fell silent once more, aghast that one of their own’s identity had been revealed to all.
‘This man is no brother of ours,’ the Grand Master continued. ‘He has told of our hunt for eternity, and for this he must pay’. The man was ushered to the altar and bodily thrown on top of it.
The Grand Master reached inside his cloak and revealed a small glass bottle, dirty with the age its contents belied. The tincture this bottle contained was feared by all who had heard of it, and every man in the room felt a shiver down his spine when it came into view. As a single drop fell towards the small man’s forehead, the silence was deafening. A moment later, the room was filled with the screams of a dying man’s agony. He thrashed about, his body throwing off intense spasms, his mind being turned rotten with the destructive force of a thousand locusts. A total of thirty seconds passed before there was silence again.
Hardly believing that their Grand Master could have used the weapon of their ancestors so easily, they awaited some reassurance that this punishment had not been in vain.
‘Children, the world already knows too much of Kasteldon. An investigator plans to seize the chest and take it from this land. If he finds it, we will be waiting to take it from him, and the secret will be ours.’
The room filled with cheers, the brethren jubilant of their master’s words. The dead man lay limp, forgotten.
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