Columbarium

by David E. Kruegger

“For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” Matthew 6:21

Cold air seeped from behind the panel. That made Travis curious. As a distractible christian child, he always tried to imagine the things that a church might hide. A lot of doors remained closed to nosey kids. This was true everywhere, but in church, the doors proved much more intriguing. After he was confirmed and once it became clear he was destined for seminary, he had been able to peek behind many of those doors.

Almost to a one, they hid nothing of interest. Some hid boilers. Some were dank storage rooms. One of the most mysterious, the sacristy, stunk like old wine and the stale, edible styrofoam of the body of Christ. 

But that was his home church, the one he remembered from boyhood. This was a new, contemporary church, not the old church house of his grandparents or the mid-century frankenchurch he grew up in. They built a church like this in one go. That was why he had been so surprised to find the loose panel in the first place. Things broke down in old buildings all the time, but Christ the King of Taylor’s Grove, Minnesota, should not have been breaking down.

Travis could blame a loose panel in the plush church basement on shoddy workmanship. The cold air, though, that was something else. He put his hand to the crack to make sure it wasn’t a fluke. The air breathed out from behind the panel, came in steady waves and wrapped around his splayed fingers, peppered his arms with gooseflesh. A slight must rode the air, but that was all.

As he was about to pull out his phone and use the flashlight to peer further in, footsteps came down the carpeted stairs leading to this room. He made sure the panel was back on the wall and flush. He heard Siri’s voice behind him.

“Travis?” she said. “You’ve found the youth room, sorry we didn’t have a chance for a full tour earlier. Did you want one or do you feel like your exploration is good enough?”

Did her voice have an annoyed edge to it? Travis couldn’t tell. He met Siri for the first time in person yesterday. The two of them had been emailing for months, of course, ever since Christ the King was assigned as his internship spot. It was his one year break from seminary to gain practical, on-the-ground knowledge of how to run a church. Over email she was curt, to the point. He liked this about her. In person, she always seemed annoyed, or like whoever was talking to her was bothering her, keeping her from some other duty.

“I’ve had a little time to wander yesterday and today, and I feel like I have the swing of things,” he answered.

“Well, if you have time to wander, maybe we should get you working!” she said. “Have you found the youth storage closet? There’s some confirmation curriculum in there that needs reorganizing.”

“Sure,” he answered. “Is the youth storage closet the one right out this door?” He pointed past her. The stairs came down to a little “T”. The youth room stood to the right, where they chatted among the beanbags and posters. Where he hoped she would not spot the panel. Turn left, and meet with a door. It was locked, which sparked Travis’s curiosity for a moment, until he realized it probably held what most of these doors did: nothing of interest.

“You would think we’d keep confirmation stuff near the youth room, but alas, no. I’ll show you,” she said, and beckoned him away from his find. 

He glanced behind him as soon as she moved out of the room, and counted. Fourth from the wall. He made a note of it.

***

Travis had long since learned one vital aspect of church work: people had no sense of how long a task should take. A fast worker like him could use an assignment like this to buy a lot of time to goof off. The piles of books had been laid out. He was still sorting them when the urge to google became too strong. The phone slid out of his pocket and into his hand.

He thought up a lie. If he she caught him, he would say he was trying to find the books on 1517 Media, to order more if they needed. To be safe, he actually navigated to their page and typed “confirmation” on the search bar. Then, he began his real research.

He looked up records for the property, hoping to find what stood here before. Nothing, was the consensus. Nothing had been demolished or wiped out to make way for Christ the King. No geological survey turned up anything about a cavern, either. A historical society blurb only told him Taylor’s Grove had been settled by a guy named Wilson Taylor, a veteran of the Mexican-American War, and it had been worked by Swedish immigrants. Big shock there. Rinse and repeat for about eighty percent of the towns in Minnesota, sometimes changing “Swedish” to “Norwegian.”

The trick to stretching the work was to find a convenient time to take a break from your phone and do some of the task. If Pastor Siri found a reason to walk past the open door to the youth storage closet, she would mark his progress.

He began to organize the piles into like groups to be made into sets afterward. It took him about ten minutes to get halfway through, and he earned another break. This time, he sought less official sources.

A post on r/Minnesota titled “Any ghost stories in your town?” came up, implying that in the comments, someone mentioned Taylor’s Grove. He clicked in and started scrolling. People discussed a woman on the side of the road or apparitions that appeared in tunnels under bridges. 

These were not unique to Minnesota. One poster mentioned the gravemarkers at St. Thomas. One counted twelve walking one way on the path and thirteen when they came back. No one knew where the new stone had come from or agree on which one had appeared. 

Right when he was about to give up, he found it. He was worried he’d taken too long of a break, and would need to sort the piles soon. Siri minded her business elsewhere, clacking away on her old computer.

The entry was illuminating:

"u/BangoSkankLives

Grew up in Taylor’s Grove and had a history teacher that really wanted us to be interested in town history. It was mostly boring, but the guy who founded the town, William Taylor, was some big-shot in the Mexican-American War. Supposedly he took some treasure from the war and invested some of it, and when that paid off he moved to Minnesota to start a new settlement. Don’t know when this was. Before the Civil War I guess.

I don’t know if this is true or if he was just trying to keep us interested, but he captured some Aztec idol. After that, he got really involved in collecting weird artifacts and he wanted to be buried with all of them. The tomb was unmarked, so no one would rob it, but because of that, his spirit wanders. I always thought it was bullshit, but it’s funny to think of a bunch of rare stuff being buried in Minnesota."

The other comments shed little light. One doubted the Aztec idol story, since a veteran of the Mexican-American War is unlikely to have come upon such an idol in the course of his campaign, unless a Mexican general had one with him for reasons unknown. Others speculated that records of the other things he bought would be archived somewhere, and if they were expected to be in Minnesota, someone would have come looking.

Travis thought it was an interesting story, even if the guy got the founder’s name wrong. As he sorted the last pile of books and got ready to gather them in sets, he thought about another comment.

“Taylor was buried in the columbarium at St. John’s Congregational Church. I call bull.”

Taylor’s Grove was a small town. Travis had just moved here, but he was almost certain there wasn’t a St. John’s Congregational Church anywhere in it. Noting this for more research later, he began the process of creating sets of books.

***

“I’ll be gone next week for continuing ed,” Siri said. “I know you only got here last week, but I’m hoping you won’t burn the place down while I’m gone.”

“I won’t,” he said. “What’s the continuing ed stuff?”

“Some preaching seminar at Wartburg. New means of storytelling or something like that. I just need the hours and I’ve been seeing droopier eyelids than ever before when I preach.”

“I could give it a try,” Travis suggested.

“I’m sure you could, but let’s let you get your feet under you a little longer. It can be a tough crowd.”

Siri went over assignments, little things for Travis to take care of while she was gone. Since the program year hadn’t started yet, he had plenty of prep work to do, all low lift.

He thought about the panel, the fourth from the wall, and thought about when it would be best to try it. He considered when he would be alone. No Siri, no janitor, no parishioners dropping by.

What he'd dug up in the meantime ran through his head on a loop. St. John’s Congregational had in fact been the final resting place of Wilson Taylor. It moved to Green Rapids when a tornado destroyed the building in 1910. From what Travis read, the columbarium, built of stone and containing sealed human remains, had been buried, left to sit undisturbed. St. John’s had rested in a little prairie where Christ the King would be built almost a century later.

No record of the columbarium’s discovery came up, but at the same time, the panel proved someone had uncovered it. Now it was his to discover what hid within. If Taylor had been interred with anything valuable, it would still be there. If he found something interesting, he could go to the Historical Society with it. If he found something worth a little money, he may even make a few bucks. If he found something particularly valuable? Maybe God was calling him elsewhere. Maybe seminary was just a road to line his pockets. Who was he to question the wisdom of the Almighty?

“Does all of this make sense to you?” Siri asked.

“Yeah, I think I can handle it, you just focus on your preaching seminar,” he said.

“Oh, I will,” she said.

He left the meeting, and the church, and he went to Target. At Target he got a lantern, a headlamp, and a few other odds and ends to make exploration easier. The cashier was a pimple-faced girl who looked to be seventeen, if that. The red shirt made her look pink, like she wore an eternal blush.

“Going camping?” she asked.

“Something like that,” he answered. She popped a bubble in her gum and said nothing. It was like she’d forgotten she’d asked him anything to begin with.

***

The panel pulled open a crack. It took a little doing, his fingers hurt from the effort of digging the gap wide enough. It popped out so easily before, almost by accident, but when he put it back, he must have set it in firmer. It came away from the wall with a delicate sucking sound, and cool air breathed once again on his fingers.

The air that escaped was earthy, with a tiny, sickly sweet underlayer that just edged in underneath. He hadn’t caught it before. Travis shook his head. His mind filled with thoughts of rare coins and fancy baubles from around the world. 

These he would repatriate to their home countries, he thought, though he was sure to get some kind of reward. That would be the right thing to do. Even with that, if he sold a few things he would never have to work again, if the rumors were even half right. Hell, if the rumors were a quarter right.

He pulled the panel away from the wall, all the way away, setting it against the wall next to the tunnel, and flicked on the headlamp. It was little more than a strap that clipped around his head and held on to a tiny, flat flashlight, but it would shine where he was looking. The lantern in his hand would be his primary light source. Both shined ahead, and were swallowed by the darkness.

He expected the columbarium to be right here. He assumed the builders of this church found and covered the entrance behind the wall panel. Now, he stared down a tunnel dug from the earth. That air, which carried a distinct current of rot, poured out of the hole. It rolled in waves like great breaths, and threatened to envelope him. 

Ten feet, he thought. Go in for about ten feet, and see if you can see anything. If you can’t, you’ll forget the whole thing.

He stepped off the carpet, and into a tunnel of soft earth. The top of the tunnel cleared his head by a few inches, and it was wide enough for him to swing his arms freely. The tunnel, except for the pulsing, slightly rotten air and the darkness, was almost comfortable. He walked in it normally, and by the time he realized he was far beyond the initial ten feet he promised himself, he was no longer watching where he stepped. The light poured in front of him, not down at his feet. The glow of the lantern sunk into the darkness, and showed him no wall or end to the tunnel. He pushed on.

He knew, in his mind, this tunnel should not be possible. A long tunnel dug this close to the surface without any visible buttressing should have collapsed a long time ago. It was his heart that pulled him forward, into the darkness, until the light from the youth room no longer reached him. The light of his lantern picked up something in front of him, a pale gray square in the distance. He picked up his step, and wasn’t disappointed. The gray square resolved itself into a doorway made of stone. Granite, he thought, from the pattern. 

Travis pushed his head through the threshold. The rot grew stronger here, the waves more distinct. The first names on the columbarium wall resolved in front of him. “Stillson, Kenneth (1811-1873) Rebecca (1815-1886)” in well-cut letters. .

He stepped in. The columbarium’s ceiling rose ten feet from the granite floor. Except for the dirt he tracked in with him, it was immaculate. Not so much as an insect scuttled across it. The first part of the columbarium was a "T" junction. His lantern showed him that both directions went on for about twenty feet, before taking a ninety degree turn. More names marked alcoves where remains were interred along the inner wall, but none on the outer wall. The outer wall was blank, except for the occasional psalm, or prayer for the dead, or small mosaic. 

He went left, and when he turned the corner, he saw the columbarium was made up of a number of squares arranged in a line. Twenty feet down this side of the structure, he saw a path that would connect him to the right side. As he walked down, more carvings on the outer edge decorated, and was surprised to find an alcove. 

Lifting his lantern, he watched as the light settled on a carving of a young man in a civil war uniform on the back wall. The carving was looking over a plain stone coffin. “Sarcophagus,” Travis whispered in the darkness. The whisper was swallowed in the stone of the chamber. He trotted up the path, and a second sarcophagus, this one warded by a woman in a hoop skirt, rested in an alcove. These sat in the middle of each square’s path, opposite the square, set into the outer wall. Each square had two accompanying alcoves, holding someone of some apparent importance. So, he would check these for goodies too. He was coming to terms with what this was, but a little grave robbing now and then never hurt anyone. They already had their eternal reward.

The columbarium went on for five squares before taking another turn. His breathing picked up, his heart pounding in his chest, as he took this turn. He saw what he expected: set along this back wall of the tomb, another alcove. He ran to it. He was dwarfed by another carving on the wall. This one, as well as the sarcophagus it protected, was marble rather than granite. 

The carving showed an old man. He wore a uniform of some kind, not civil war, but earlier. His hand held something, and in the lantern light it looked like a little head, with great eyes and snarling teeth. The sarcophagus was undecorated beyond the luxurious material, save for a plaque set in the center  made of brass, not gold. No dates marred the plaque, only “Wilson Taylor, Founder.” 

Travis placed a finger under the lid of the coffin. It was set over on the top and hung over the edge, allowing a group of people to easily lift the lid and set it aside. He pulled, and found that the lid lifted easily. Too light to be marble, if he could pick it by himself.

An overwhelming sense of wrongness crept into his chest when he realized this, and it dawned on him for the first time since arriving at the alcove that the air, which still came in breath-like waves, shifted too. Now it came from behind him. It washed over his neck, cold and slightly rotten, and not over his face.

“Go on,” a voice creaked. He couldn’t see the source. “Lift it. You may, you know.”

Despite the cold, a film of sweat appeared on his forehead. Travis had a strong feeling, deep inside where his child heart dwelled, if he turned around to face the speaker, he would die. He knew it as sure as when he was about five years old, terrified to turn over and peer into the darkness of his closet.

“You’ve come this far, open it,” the voice said.

Travis kept his finger on the bottom of the lid but set it down. Breath came shallow from the center of his chest. He began to turn his head, but stopped when the thing bellowed, “Lift it now, or I’ll have your guts. I can’t see you with the thing around your neck but I know where you are!”

At the bottom of his vision, Travis saw the small pewter cross dangling. The bottom of the cross almost touched the lid. It rendered him invisible to the thing behind him, and if he got out of the way fast enough, it might lose track of him altogether. 

“Who are you?” he asked.

“I am the one who will kill you if you don’t lift that lid, now. You want to run. I would advise against it,” the voice said. It rasped as it spoke, like speaking in the air of the tomb was a challenge. As the words came, the rotten cold air shifted. The air came from this thing breathing.

“What are you?” Travis asked.

“You know what I am,” the voice said. Travis glanced at the carving on the wall. The eyes. The fangs.

He did know. He summoned the strength all at once and he lifted the lid in one go. “No way out but through,” he muttered.

“Enough talk, move the lid,” it said.

He propped the marble up with his hands, and he tilted it to the right. He set it down gently, but was ready for a crash since he couldn’t support the other end. To his surprise, and a little to his horror, the other end hit the floor with a soft thump, as if it was being let down by a partner.

He looked down in the stone coffin. Wilson Taylor was wrapped in a shroud. A plaster mask of his face in repose laid over his rotted skull. The shroud was intact, as whole as it was the day it was wrapped around the man, except for one tear in the chest area.The stench of rot weakened here, not coming from the coffin, but from the thing that breathed behind him. Around the corpse were laid coins, old but still shining, all of different shapes and sizes. Those with a square hole he guessed were asian, but the others came from all over. Other trinkets sat there as well. Necklaces and goblets, a golden hilt of a curved sword. Travis realized the shrouded corpse was laid on a bed of treasure. 

“You’ll never carry it all, or much of it, without this,” the voice said. A sack landed at Travis’s feet with a soft sound. He kept his eyes on the treasure as he bent to grab the sack off the floor. “Still not a glance for me? We’re on the same side, friend. Why, I moved earth, if not heaven, to lead you here.” 

“Why?” Travis asked.

“I’ll answer if you look at me,” it said.

Travis looked at the carving again, at the round, savage eyes and the fanged maw of the head in Taylor’s hand. The idol wasn't among the grave goods. He knew this was because it was behind him. He was sure of it now. 

With hands trembling, still clutching the bag, he turned his head and set his eyes on the thing.

“Am I still invisible to you?” he asked.

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean anything. Anyone can tell when eyes are on them, whether they see the eyes or not. I commend you on your courage,” it said.

The eyes were the green color of jade, and twice as beautiful. The fangs in the mouth came to sharp ivory points, and the thing wore a cloak of feathers. Sinewy arms ended in a bird’s talons. The feet were covered in boots made of deerskin. The feathers rippled as the breaths of foul air carried over them, cold and stinking of the grave.

“Why did you lead me here?” Travis asked.

“Because you deserve it, young Travis, I only want it to go to a good home.”

“What will I do with it? I can’t sell this stuff, it would be illegal,” he said.

“That idea didn’t bother you when you first came down here, besides, I’m sure you can find people to take it off your hands. You would be a very rich man. Live above the petty problems of your parishioners. You don’t have to end up bitter like Siri. You went into the seminary because it offered a stable paycheck,  didn’t you?” When the creature spoke, it showed a forked tongue that slid over the sharp, protruding teeth. The jade eyes stayed locked on Travis. 

“And what do you want for it?” Travis asked. 

“I want it to be out in the world, I want it to be free. All I ask is that I go with it,” he answered.

“In that form? Like on the carving?” Travis pointed at the wall, where Taylor held the head-shaped idol. The thing couldn’t see him, so it said, but he wasn’t about to take its word.

“Exactly right, Travis, exactly right.” The thing twisted its mouth. A moment passed before Travis realized it smiled at him.

When he turned back around to look at the pile of treasure, the thing, the demon, he was sure of that now, stayed where it was. He dipped a hand into the treasure, touching it for the first time. The pads of his fingers slid over smooth coins, caressed pearls in a necklace, and danced around the pointed rim of a brooch. When he turned up to the carving, it had changed from when he bent over the coffin. The moment his hands touched the treasure within, the eyes of the carving glowed with a pale green light. 

He was still looking at those eyes when he felt the presence behind him. By then it was too late. It didn’t even hurt.

***

The panel slid back into the wall, and a close lean forward convinced him that it was flush with the wall around it. No cool air pushed out around the edges, though he supposed it wouldn’t anymore. Before, it came in those waves, constant and even. Now it would be the cool but stagnant air of the underground.

Satisfied that no one would find his little trove before he could come back and claim the rest, Travis reached down and lifted the sack. Metal objects clinked against one another as their weight shifted. He hoped nothing would be damaged or scuffed up, but there was more than enough to make up for any loss in price due to slight damage. Maybe it would only need a little polish. 

The church was still empty as he made the climb up the stairs into the lobby. He rubbed his chest, he tried not to itch at the new sensation. Sunlight poured in through the wall-sized windows. He pulled out his car keys and stepped out into the sunlight to put the sack in his trunk. Tomorrow he would bring it back empty, ready to load up with more treasure.

He turned back to give the church one more look from the parking lot, his eyes glinting like jade in the afternoon sun.