A Bag of Old Bones

The old man coughed before raising his hand to call his son over to his deathbed. “It won’t be long now, Des. I have one last request.” He coughed again, reaching out with his frail hand for a glass of water to wet his lips. Desmond dutifully offered his father the straw. The old man had wasted away over the past few weeks. His skin was taut against his bones. His voice was low and hoarse when he spoke. “Promise me one thing, son. Promise me that no matter what happens, you won’t open that old safe up in the attic.”

“I promise, dad. I won’t touch the old safe.” Out of respect, and a modicum of fear of the old man’s wrath, Desmond agreed. He had done his best to keep the old man comfortable, to spend time with him, and to see to it that he didn’t make any changes to his will. None of his siblings paid the old man any attention. They were too busy with their own lives. Desmond had nothing better to do. He had recently lost the only job that he had when the local steel mill shut down. And all of the old man’s nurses found him insufferable, leaving Desmond the task of caretaker. He watched as the old man fell asleep and left soon after.

Desmond hadn’t really thought much about the safe until his father brought it up. When he was a child, he found it in the attic and had spent hours trying to open it. But he had only been playing at cracking the safe. “Maybe it’s time that I take a serious crack at it,” he muttered to himself as he walked down the hallway to his bedroom. He grabbed a flashlight and went up to the attic to examine the old safe. It took him a few minutes to locate the pull chain for the single light bulb in the end of the attic that held the safe. It was a strange safe, tall and thin, and rusty brown in color. The door had two combination dials equally spaced vertically and a rod connecting the two levers that disengaged the latches. He pulled out his phone and took a picture of the two dials and the white-paint lettering on the door of the safe.

Desmond went back downstairs to the home office that he had set up and searched for information on the safe. After reading that the company was out of business and had been for nearly one hundred years, he searched for information on safe-cracking. He slipped back into his father’s bedroom and borrowed the stethoscope that hung near the old man’s bed. After several hours of turning the dials and getting nowhere, Desmond pounded on the safe in frustration. Beneath the removable dial was a keyhole. He popped off the other dial to discover another keyhole. He spent the next morning searching through the old man’s old office looking for anything that might be an old safe key. The closest that he came was finding a safe deposit box key to a local bank.

Desmond gathered together his signed power of attorney papers and the safe deposit box key and went downtown to the bank to see if the old man had put the lockbox keys there. Inside the safe deposit box, he found a copy of the old man’s will and a set of strange keys wrapped inside a parchment. Written on the parchment were a set of runes. He took the will, the parchment, and the keys and left the rest of the documents inside the box.

After a stop at the pharmacy, Desmond returned home in time to administer his father’s medication and bring the old man a cup of broth. As usual, Desmond read the newspaper to the old man while he sipped at the broth. He was quite happy that his father had managed to still hang on for another day. Desmond was in no hurry for the old man to die. The thought of being alone in the old mansion sent a shiver down his spine.

As Desmond read the recent obituaries, his father let out a small spit take. “Ha! So, the old shyster has kicked the bucket, has he?” The old man was referring to his lawyer who died suddenly in a car accident. “Good thing I changed the will when I did,” he said with a wink before going back to sipping his broth.

Desmond snapped the paper before continuing the list of names of the deceased. Desmond wasn’t sure if his father was serious about changing the will or if he was joking just to get a rise out of Des. After finishing the list of the deceased, Desmond turned his attention to the stock market pages. “Looks like your utility stocks have gone up again. The phone company stock recorded a split to keep the price down to where people can afford to invest. And your shares in the bank are currently paying dividends.”

“Good, good. That’d be more money for you to spend when I finally kick off.”

“I’m in no hurry for you to kick off. And I could spend your money now on things, but I’d rather not.”

“That’s because you’re a good son,” the old man grinned. “Now fetch me my specks. I’d like to take one more look at you, in case it’s my last.” Desmond handed the old man his glasses and sat on the edge of the bed while the old man looked him over. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Des. You’ve been such a blessing.” Desmond sat with his father until the old man fell asleep, then headed back to his office to attempt to decipher the parchment found with the keys in the safe deposit box. The internet wasn’t cooperating. There was no translator that allowed him to plug in the runes and come back with English words. He had to decode the runes one at a time.

When Desmond had finished, he tried to read the transliteration, but the document amounted to a lot of gibberish about “bodyes” and “lockes”. There were references to “cairns” and “hillocks” as well. Desmond shoved the parchment and the rough translation into a desk drawer and turned his attention to the keys. He thought it odd that there were four keys for two locks. The four brass keys were different in shape and size except for the ornate casting at the bow. The round shaft of each key had several square protrusions extending from it at various angles and heights. A standard skeleton key would not open the locks that these keys fit into.

Desmond pocketed the keys and grabbed his flashlight on the way to the attic. After trying each key into a lock until it turned, he pulled down on the connecting bar and then pulled out to open the door. It didn’t move. He felt around the front of the cabinet looking for hidden locks, then moved to the lock side of the door. Finding nothing there, he examined the hinge side and found two key slots. He fit the keys into the slots and turned them, then went back to the cabinet front, lowered the bar, and pulled again. This time the door came open.

A few minutes later the old man died, setting off a remote alarm at a monitoring station that summoned an ambulance to the house. The police also responded to the call and performed a search of the house looking for the old man’s heir. After a thorough search of the basement and first floor, the police slowly worked their way up to the attic. The police officer stared at the open safe and radioed for help. “We’ve got another dead body up here.” He poked at the gauze wrapping the skeletal remains. “No rush. It’s just a bag of old bones. Though for the life of me, I can’t imagine why anyone would lock it in a safe.” Then he made the mistake of turning his back on it. By the time the other officers arrived, the revenant had pulled the officer into the safe with it where he met the same fate that Desmond had earlier.