A KEEPER OF RELICS
A Thriller Novel by
Jeff Provine
Chapter 1
Jack Gideon had just settled into a mind-numbing evening of television when a man engulfed in flames burst through his third story window.
Until that moment, his apartment had been quiet other than the artificial voices of the TV and the occasional thud from the floor above. The rest of his day had been just as quiet as he sat waiting for the phone to ring with job offers. He had tried to do something productive with his time, but nothing seemed important enough to hold his interest. The small living room was covered with half-read books propped with broken spines, the couch held the leftovers from his dinner of potato chips and cheese, and dirty laundry was beginning to pile up in the corners.
He had graduated in May, and four months later nothing had happened. His degree in History with specialization in the Classics was proving even more useless than his parents had warned him. Four years ago, everything had seemed so perfect in his mind’s eye. He would graduate, pick up a job at a museum doing research, then travel the world on someone else’s dollar.
All he could say of his current career was that he barely kept the bills paid delivering pizzas part time. At least, he did, until his car was totaled the week before.
It was not as though he did not try. He had sent applications and resumes to just about every museum in the country, and several in Canada out of desperation. No one seemed to be wanting to hire, or hire him, at least. This wasn’t supposed to happen. All his life, he’d lived the American dream: grew up in the suburbs of Harrisburg with home-cooked meals and bike-riding, pulled almost straight A’s in school, and went on to college with scholarships. Now, suddenly, it seemed as if his luck had run dry.
The past week had been one of boredom and futility. Life had stalled. He was beginning to think he might never claw his way out of his rut, and the thought made him shudder. Instead of thinking, he just wanted to drown his sorrows in TV for a few hours.
It seemed like every door of opportunity he had seen was quickly slammed in his face. The old adage said that God never closed a door without opening a window. Jack’s window exploded inward with a roar of flames.
The air was suddenly filled the deafening explosion accented by the sharp sounds of shattering glass. Bright light and stabbing heat flooded the apartment. Someone was shouting, but Jack could not be sure whether it was the man or himself from the shock.
Jack bowled over the arm of his couch. He panted for air, breathing in sickening fumes and coughing until he thought his lungs would end up next to his heart on the floor. His heart raced to the point he thought it would leap completely out of his chest.
Jack’s bodily functions soon came back under control, and he took a long, deep breath. The air was hazy and tart, but the roaring of fire had quieted. Swallowing, Jack turned his head to peek over the edge of the armrest behind him.
A man in brown monk’s robes was lying on the floor, no longer engulfed in flames with just a few small fires in the folds of his enormous robe. He was breathing, but did not seem to be able to move. Broken glass covered the floor surrounding him. There were huge black patches were orange carpet used to be. A few sparks glimmered around the carpet like stars through the orangey haze city lights make at night. Jack’s cleaning deposit was gone forever.
“Fire,” Jack told himself, gasping. He jumped up from his hiding place behind the couch and jerked in several directions, looking for some solution.
The smoke alarm had not gone off since Jack had pulled the batteries the week before to use in the remote. His apartment had come with a fire extinguisher, but he did not know where to begin looking. Odds were that he had buried it so deeply in some closet when he moved in that the entire building would be burned down before he found it.
Not knowing what else to do, Jack attacked the tiny infernos with his slippers. He stomped out the fires in the carpet, then took his slippers in his hands to move on the monk, patting out tiny flames more carefully. His robes were was a strange material, coarse like burlap, but it seemed to flow like silk. Fortunately for the monk, it did not seem to burn very well, and Jack finished firefighting before it had little more than a few blackened holes.
When the flames were gone, Jack stood back, scorched slippers in hand, and wondered what to do with the monk. He was fifty or so, and his dark gray hair and beard were ashen at the edges where it had been burned. His face was patched red, scalded by the heat from the flames. The rest of him had been covered by the robes. Jack sat back, wondering whether to call an ambulance or the police. Staring down at the unconscious monk, Jack decided he should see if the monk had any further injuries. Taking a breath to calm his nerves, he knelt and reached for the monk’s collar.
The monk’s eyes suddenly burst open. They were gray and piercing like steel. Jack let out a yelp and fell backwards.
The monk gasped a long breath and seemed to speak in a foreign language.
Jack scooted away from the monk on his hands and feet. Once back to the safety of the edge of the couch, he asked with a tremble, “Um, are you all right?”
The monk mumbled something with flame-chapped lips.
“I’m sorry,” Jack said. “What?”
“Wah-ter,” the monk said more loudly, coughing black soot out of his mouth.
“Okay,” was all Jack could say. He jumped to his feet and dashed across the tiny apartment to the kitchen. Grabbing a random plastic cup bearing a restaurant’s cartoon mascot and “Fifty Cent Refills for Life”, he thrust it under the faucet and wrenched the knob. Water gushed out of the pipe, spattering in every direction and soaking the front of Jack’s faux-vintage Star Wars t-shirt. When the cup was full, he hurried back to the monk’s side, leaving the water running.
The monk was sitting upright now, grunting softly with every breath. Jack fell to his knees beside him and held the cup out in shaking hands. The monk’s calm grip took the cup and held it in front of him.
“Thank you,” the monk said in a rasping whisper. He closed his eyes and seemed to hold his breath.
Jack blinked. “Um, maybe I should help you with that?”
Instead of answering, the monk began to mumble in Latin. Jack had studied the dead language as his foreign language in college, but he could only write it with a dictionary or belt out a few pre-memorized sentences. The monk seemed to be speaking it fluently, as if he were having a conversation with someone. Jack strained his ears, but all he caught were the words “domine” and “mederi vulnum.”
When the monk finished mumbling, he opened his eyes and looked upward. Closing them again, he drank deeply from the cup. As he drank, his reddened skin seemed to shine a healthy pale and the black scorch marks on his hands began to clear. Even his grayed hair seemed to darken, as if life had suddenly filled him again. Jack felt his jaw drop.
The monk finished the cup and held it out to Jack. Nodding his freshly healed face, the monk said again, “Thank you.”
All Jack could reply was a dumfounded, “Whoa.”
The monk made a warm smile. Then, with a blink, he looked back at the window, and the smile disappeared. He turned back to Jack. “I must go.”
Jack sputtered. “Go? What? Why? Who are you? What’s going on?”
“The longer I am here, the more danger I place upon us,” the monk told him. “I have stayed too long already.”
“I better call 911,” Jack said, standing and reaching for his cell phone.
“No!” the monk said with a harsh breath. His face turned stony and fierce. “They are listening.”
“‘They’?” Jack asked. He let his hand slide away from his phone. Part of him wanted to call for help, but the rest felt he old man might attack him. “What’s this all about?”
The monk shook his head. “There is too much to explain now.”
He stood and pulled at his robes. The blackened holes the flames had made were no longer ashen and seemed smaller. If Jack had not known better, he would have guessed they had sewed themselves.
The monk took a step toward the door, then stopped. Mumbling, he said to himself, “No, he’d be watching the door. I should use the window.”
The monk turned back to the gaping hole where a window once was. Jack blinked at him. The apartment was on the third floor, and leaping out the window at this height would be suicide. He jumped up and grabbed the monk by the shoulder.
“Wait!” Jack said, half-gasping. “We’re two stories up!” Jack paused and twisted his face curiously. “Frankly, I’m not even sure how you got in here.”
The monk gazed at him with steel eyes. “You have great concern for others.”
Jack sputtered, not certain what to make of the compliment. He shook his head to clear his thoughts and told the monk, “Listen, if you don’t give me a satisfactory explanation right now, I’m going to have to assume you’re a crazy man and call the cops.”
The monk let out a long sigh, glanced at the door, and then looked at Jack. “Very well, I will explain. Whether it is satisfactory is up to your own heart, but I shall tell you the Truth: I am a warrior in the battle of Good and Evil.”
Jack decided that “crazy man” was an understatement.
“I am a keeper of relics,” the monk continued. “There are many artifacts that hold great power in the hands of the faithful. The Enemy will do anything to take these artifacts from us. I have seen many good and innocent men attacked and murdered, left as carrion in the wake of evil.”
“Murdered?” Jack blurted. He let go of the monk’s shoulder and turned back to his phone. “I’m definitely calling the cops now.”
The monk seized Jack’s shoulder. “You do not understand. That will only give my position to them. I avoided them by coming here, but they will soon follow. If I am gone and you know nothing, then they will leave you in peace.”
“Peace is always good,” Jack admitted.
The monk seemed to wince. “No. Theirs is not an everlasting peace of joy as our Father’s. Theirs is a peace of slavery.”
Jack’s mouth moved, but he could not come up with any words to use.
“Still, that peace is better than the destruction that might come upon you,” the monk said. His grip loosened on Jack’s shoulder. “I must go now.”
“Yeah, but jumping out of the window is stupid,” Jack told him.
“In human eyes, of course,” the monk replied. “On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.”
Jack blinked. He had heard that before, a long time ago.
The monk turned and hurried across the room in long strides. He poked his head out into the darkness of the night, as if he were looking for danger. Mumbling in Latin again, he moved back and made to jump.
“Wait,” Jack heard himself call.
The monk turned from the window. His face was a mixture of hard concern and soft curiosity.
“If there’s something I can do to help…,” Jack began.
The monk’s eyes flashed.
Jack had meant that he would be willing to make a call or hail a taxi for the robed man. Jack decided he had opened his big mouth too wide.
The monk’s warm smile reappeared. “Are you truly willing to accept the duty of God?”
Jack shifted his eyes uncomfortably. “I guess.”
The monk eyed him. “I doubt you, but I feel that there is good in you.”
“Um, thanks?”
“I am a keeper of relics,” the monk said again. He reached into one of his wide sleeves. “Evil pursues me to take these relics, so I have hidden them. There is but one map. If you were to hold it, Evil would pursue me without knowing where the map is hidden.”
The monk pulled a piece of rolled parchment from his sleeve. He stepped toward Jack with is hands extended. “Will you guard the map?”
Jack rolled his eyes. “All right, sure.”
The monk opened his grip on the parchment and held it out to Jack. “Promise that you will guard it with your very life.”
“Life?” Jack questioned, feeling a lump grow in this throat.
“Life is nothing more than the blink of an eye,” the monk told him. “It will all pass away whether you do good or not. Would you rather die defending what is right or for your own greed?”
“I’d rather not get myself killed over some old knucklebones!” Jack protested, tossing up his hands.
“Promise!” the monk shouted.
“Okay, okay,” Jack said. He took a breath and said wholeheartedly, “I will guard the map with my life.”
A strange sensation came over Jack. He was a cynic, taught by the modern world to distrust and mock everything in it. It had been a long time since he had said anything wholeheartedly.
The monk nodded his head once. “You have buried your good deep with the things of the world. May you learn to leave these things.” He placed the parchment in Jack’s hands and turned to the window again.
Jack felt the paper crinkle in his fingers. The parchment looked ancient, but the wax seal was fresh and did not have any chips lost to age. He began to wonder and hope that this whole thing were some kind of lucid dream. Next he would find himself back in high school, late for a test, and it would be a relief.
“Peace be with you,” the monk said, interrupting Jack’s thoughts. He raised two of his fingers and drew a cross in the air.
“Yeah, you, too,” Jack replied.
The monk turned toward the window again, paused to mumble, and then leaped out into the night. Jack stood still for a few seconds in awe and then hurried to the windowsill. The cool night air flowed inside, making the flame-bitten curtains tap against the glass shards. It was black outside, as if the streetlights had all been shut off. He could not see any monk at all.
“Of course I dreamed it,” Jack told himself, forcing a laugh. He turned away from the window.
He looked over his ruined living room. The window was smashed, there were burns on the carpet, and the cup lay where he had dropped it after the monk had somehow healed himself. It was not a dream, no matter how hard he pretended it was.
The rolled parchment crinkled in his hand as if it were speaking to him.
“Well, this is just great,” Jack said in a low voice to the paper.
He sighed at the mess and wondered whether to clean up some of the glass or just watch television until it drowned out all reality around him. Just as he was deciding upon the latter, there was a knock at his door.