One of the recurring memories I have of my childhood was the annual pilgrimage to Grand Marais, Minnesota, located on the North Shore of Lake Superior.

It was the place where my father grew up, along with three brothers and a sister, and where his parents had been born, lived, and eventually died.

The other memory, that his parents never came to visit us, we always had to go to them.  That, and the fact my mother hated them, that animosity borne out of an event at their wedding that no one ever spoke about.

Not until a long, long time later, after my father had passed away.

We stopped going when I turned eighteen, though I don’t think that was the reason.  Mt grandparents hadn’t died or gone anywhere, it was just the week before our pilgrimage was to begin, my father announced there would be no more visits.

You could see the relief on our mother’s face, much less ours because they were, to put it mildly, quirky.  Steven, the youngest brother put it more succinctly, weird and creepy.

Perhaps it had been the house, a large sprawling two-story mansion that had been added to over the years, and reputed to have thirteen bedrooms.  Thirteen.

They had a butler, a housekeeper, a chauffeur, and several housemaids.  Odd, because I got the impression my grandfather didn’t work, and yet they were, reputedly, very wealthy.  Equally odd, then, that wealth didn’t extend to my father.

Which, in the final analysis, was probably the reason why we stopped going.  He had been cut out of the will.

…

Of course, none of this would have reached my consciousness if I had not received an email from one of the sones of my fathers, brother, and uncle who had never visited us, I’d seen probably three times in my life, and who had lived with his parents in the mansion.

I’d not seen, or heard of any children of any of the other brothers, or sisters, so this was a first, and aroused my curiosity.  I had thought that our part of the family had been exorcised from all their collective memories.

Apparently not.

And, that curiosity would soon go into overdrive because with the email came an invitation to come and stay, and meet the other members of the family. 

I had a sister, Molly, and called her once I got the email, and she said she had one too.

Was she going?  Hell yes.  It, for her, was going to be the unearthing of all the secrets.

What secrets, I asked, knowing full well there had been a few, but she had simply said I’d have to wait and see.

…

The drive brought back a lot of memories, and unconsciously I found myself listening to the same songs we did when Dad droves us.

Molly had come to my place, and we drove there together.  In itself, it was a good reason for us to reunite after so long being apart.  It was even more profound considering we did not live all that far apart, it was just life and family that got in the way.

She, like myself, found herself reliving the annual pilgrimages, her memories being hazier than mine, but that was because she was a lot younger.

She had been the one to leave home first, finding our restrictive parents unbearable.  My departure took longer because my mother had implored me to stay, and not leave her with ‘that unbearable man’.

That final few miles from the outskirts of town, past the waterline, then inland was hushed with anticipation.  I last remembered the house, although forbidding, as impeccably maintained, with gardens, I was sure, that featured in ‘Architectural Digest’.

This vision as we approached was so different than the last, in the last vestiges of the evening, a dark forbidding place still, only a lot more sinister.  The gardens had been abandoned long ago, and everything was overgrown.

The fountain out front, the centerpiece of the gardens, was buried and gone.

The house had also fallen into disrepair, and I was surprised the local authorities hadn’t condemned it.

I parked the car in the driveway, and we sat there, staring at it.

“That motel back down the road is looking good,” Molly said.

The invitation also included staying in one of the thirteen rooms.

“Depends on how many ghosts there are.”

“The motel or here?”

I shrugged.  “I guess we’d better get to the front door before it’s dark, just in case.”

Closer to the stairs leading up to a veranda, I could see the different shades of timber when rotten planks had been replaced.  We made it to the front door, Molly hanging on to me just in case.

I pulled a ring dangling from a chain and heard a gong go off inside the house.  A minute passed, two, then the door creaked open, and an old man in a dinner suit was standing there.  “Mr. Garry, and Miss Molly, I presume.

He stood to one side before we answered, and we went in.

The inside was utterly different from the outside, having been renovated recently, much brighter than I remembered from the endless wood paneling.  The old man ushered us into a large lounge room, on one side a huge log fire was burning, and around the walls, where there wasn’t a bookshelf full of books were family paintings.

“It’s like a mausoleum,” Molly said.

I recognized a lot of those faces in the paintings, including one of our father and mother together, probably not long after they were married.  The men of that family all looked the same, except when it came to me, I looked more like my mother.

“Much better than it used to be.”

“I don’t remember much.”

To one side there was a large staircase that you could go up one side and down the other, and as children, we used to run up and down, and generally be annoying.  Sliding down the banister was strictly forbidden, until after everyone went to bed.

I was half expecting to see the old man come from the depths of the house, but instead, a man that I could easily mistake as my father came through from the rear, where, I remembered, there was a room before the kitchens.

“Garry, I presume.  And Molly.  My God, it’s been too long.”

A shake of the hand for me, and a hug for Molly. 

“David, or Jerry?”

“David.  You remember.  We used to run amok in this place.”  He grinned.

He was the wild one, and all I did was follow.  There were about seven of us, in the end, before we stopped coming.

“The others will be here tomorrow, and they’re dying to meet you.  My dad was the last man standing, and he left the place to me, not that it was much by that time.  I’ve spent years doing it up, but there’s a long way to go before it returns to its former glory.  By the way, there are no ghosts in the bedrooms, and they are modernized with their own bathroom.  I saw you out in the car before, looking horrified.  Just a word to the wise, that motel does have ghosts.  The jury is out on whether grandfather still roams the hallways, but I guess that’s something you’ll find out tonight.  He was a horrid man by all accounts.  Sorry, my wife says I babble when I’m nervous.”

“He does.”  A woman, a few years older than Molly came out from the back.”

“Angelina?”

“You remember me.”  She smiled.

I remembered her, had for a long time because back then, she was the first girl I thought I was madly in love with.  The fact she was a cousin didn’t seem to matter.  She just ignored me anyway.

And her beauty had not diminished over the years.  “How could anyone forget you?”

“Yes, I had that effect on boys, didn’t I?  It’s good to see you again.”

We both scored a hug, and yes, being close to her again did increase my heart rate just a little.

“Come,” David said, “sit and we’ll have a drink.  Have you eaten?”

“Not for a while.”

“Then we were about to have a bite, I’m sure there’s plenty for everyone.  Sit, and we’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“No wife, husband?”

“Yes on both accounts, but we would never bring them here.  This family is difficult enough for us let alone outsiders.  The rest of the group, well, you’ll see, are just plain quirky relatives.  If you ever saw the Addams Family, TV series or movies, well, they’d fit right in here.  But you’ll see.  More on that soon.”

He and Angelina disappeared outback and silence fell over the room.

“Why do I get the feeling we might be murdered in our beds tonight?”

It was beginning to look like that was a possibility.

…

When David returned with the old man, Angelina, and what looked to be a maid with food and drinks, we sat down again, turning our fears of being murdered into a severe frightening of ghosts.

The old man was enough to think ghosts were alive in the house.  It couldn’t possibly be the butler from the last time I saw him because he would have to be about 120 years old.

When all of us were settled, David began.

“There is another reason why I asked both of you here, along with all the others, by the way, there are around ten of us.  Your father never told you the truth, or perhaps anything, of the situation when he stopped coming to visit his parents, did he?”

“He just said it was a difference of opinion, that his father would never see reason, didn’t like my mother or her family and gave up trying to be civil.”

“It was worse than that, he told him that if he didn’t give up your mother, he would cut him off from the family fortune, which eventually he did.  It’s probably why you found life a little tougher for a few years.”

That was one way of putting it, we were taken out of our private schools and had just about all our leisure activities curtailed, and the worst, no more holidays.  Mother even had to get a job, which disappointed her family, but they were not as rich as my father’s family was, so couldn’t help us financially.

“It was difficult.”

“Well, the good news is, your grandmother, our grandmother, was not as quirky or pedantic as her husband and never forgot the service your father did for her when he could.  In that regard, she has left a bequest to both you and your sister, Molly.  It’s been a long, hard battle to get it through the system, but it’s finally sorted.”

“I liked grandmother more than grandfather,” Molly said.

“Most of us did.  He was a rebel himself, going against his family, a very interesting bunch themselves.  Our quirkiness probably came from them, the last of the relatively unknown banking and railroad tycoons more famous in the 19^th century than today where we are relatively forgotten.  It is of course a blessing in disguise.  But you ask, what is that quirkiness worth?”

“Not much I would imagine, after all this time.  Our father taught us the value of money, so it’ll be nice to have some extra.”

“Some extra.”  He smiled.  “It’s about 125 million dollars, each.  Enough I would say that you can now afford some quirks of your own.”

---

© Charles Heath 2022

…

The editor looked up from his seat at me, frowning.

“Who are you again?”

He was a busy man, he kept telling us all, and didn’t have time to remember everyone on staff, particularly the reporters whom, to him, seem to come and go as they please.

“Jenkins, sir.  New last week.”

“And you’re here because?”

“You said to come and see you about an assignment, sir.”

“An assignment?”

“Yes, sir.  An assignment, sir.”

He’d come past my desk and stopped, asking that same question, “Who are you again?” Before pretending to recognize the name and tell me to come to his office in an hour for an assignment.

“Jenkins, you say.  Not related to Elmer Jenkins by any chance.”

“He was my father, sit.”

“Damned fine reporter.  Assignment you say.”  He shuffled through the pile of folders on his desk, then plucked one seeming at random, and handed it to me.

“Odd goings-on at St Peter’s cathedral.  Go and see what it’s all about, will you?”

“Yes, sir.  Thank you, sir.”

…

Perhaps the better story here was how come the church seemed to get the best real estate in every city, and the bigger the church, the better the spot.

St Peters was where I would have expected the city center to be, on a few acres of perfectly manicured gardens surrounding an exquisite cathedral built in the mid-1500s.

I was not a Catholic, so I had not ventured inside, not realizing that it had always been open during the day, church services or not.

There was also a parish office, a school of sorts, and a priory for visiting priests, as well as those who worked around the cathedral, so it was not unusual to see one or more priests wandering about.

But the most interesting thing about this cathedral was the fact it had an exact replica if the statue of St Mary Magdalene by the Italian sculptor Donatello, considered to be an earlier attempt before creating the real one now housed in the Museo dell ‘opera del Duomo in Florence.

It was not an advertised tourist attraction, but it could be seen by special appointment only with very restrictive visiting hours because of its rarity and delicate condition.

But the report I’d been given was that a cleaner, working in the room where it was housed had seen something very odd involving the statue.  It had what she had described as tears coming from the statue’s eyes.

Of course, the editorial staff had rung the church to ascertain whether the reports they have received were true, and were immediately and emphatically denied, thus putting it into the category of “thou protest too much”, indicating, meaning there had to be something going on.

A second report, which was interesting in itself, had said there was an increased flurry of activity in the church, with several notable arrivals, particularly of the bishop, and a Cardinal from the Vatican, who was by coincidence in the country.

To the inquisitive reporter, that was embers in the grate about to create a much bigger fire.

…

“You heard?”  Jaimie was another of the ‘going to be famous one-day’ group, I was also a member of.

I arrived breathlessly at the entrance to the cathedral grounds, to find several other reporters already there, conversing.

They were my former classmates at university, working as junior reporters for various media outlets.

“The editor tossed me a sparse file with very little to go on.”

“They’re not taking it seriously, are they?”  Joey, never the one to take his profession seriously, was here just to meet and greet.

The three of us were juniors.  There was not any of the ‘serious’ reporting staff there, perhaps waiting to see what we came up with.

“No.  I mean, a cleaning lady and a statue with tears.  My guess, sap leaking out of the wood, though waiting four or five hundred years to do so is a bit farfetched.”

“Then it’s true that it might be a replica of the real thing.”  Joey seemed surprised, and it was him, never studying up on background before turning up.

“I’ve seen the real one in Florence,” Jaimie said.

“You’ve been everywhere, done everything, and seen everything.  Why am I not surprised?”

Joey never liked her because of her family’s wealth and privilege which granted her access to much more than either Joey or I ever had.  Including traveling the world twice.

“Can’t help drawing the parents I got, but that’s beside the point.  You should have done some research.”

Joey held up his cell phone.  “All the research I need is right here.  Where and when I need it?”

“Why are you waiting here?” I asked.  I would have expected them to be chasing up the relevant parish office person, if not the bishop himself.

“The doors are closed, which is highly unusual for a church during the day, and the sigh refers everyone to the parish office, who are telling everyone, and reporters, in particular, there will be a statement soon.  We have a line of sight to the office and one of the staff will call us.  Why wait over there when this area is so much more peaceful “

“So, you’re just going to quit?” I asked.

“What else can we do?” Jaimie was not the adventurous sort.

Neither was I, but this story could be something more, and getting the scoop might improve my standing with the editor.

“Do a little investigating of our own.”

“We might miss the statement.”

“You know what it will say, you could probably write it yourself.  Nothing to see here, move along.  I’m going to see if there’s a back door.”

“Churches don’t have back doors, Colin.”  Joey would not be coming, his preferred modus operandi was to do as little as possible.

“Then I’ll soon find out.”  I looked at Jaimie.  “Coming?”

She shook her head.  She liked to play by the rules, but it is getting a good story, there were no rules.

“Then no doubt I’ll see you later.”

…

I walked slowly towards the main entrance, but my intention was to do a circuit of the cathedral and see how many entrances there were, and if I  could gain entrance by one of them, acting like a routine might so as not to arouse suspicion.

After a few minutes, I realized just how large the cathedral was, having only been inside once; to attend the wedding ceremony for one of my uncles and then it had seemed small when compared to Westminster Abbey.

In the end, I found an unexpected obstruction, a fence between the walkway from the church, most likely the cloisters, to where the clergy lived, and the gardens alongside the cathedral.

There was a gate. I walked across the grass, and by the time I reached it, it swung open, and Jaimie popped her head out. 

“Come on, before anyone sees you?”

“How did you get in there?”

“Simple.  Did you try the front door?”

“I assumed it would be locked.”

“It wasn’t.  Then I guessed you’d been right here, after watching you leave “

She closed the gate. “Quick, before someone comes.”

She walked quickly back to, and into the church through what might literally be the back door, but more likely how the priests came and went.

Once inside, she led the way through the back room where a variety of vestments were hanging, out into the church, across the front of the altar to the other side where there was an archway, and steps leading down to a lower level, presumably where the statue was located.

“And you know this is the way to the statue because…”  The moment I asked, I knew the answer.  It was a dumb question.

“My parents had a viewing and brought us, kids, along.  At the time I thought it was a funny-looking wood statue.”  She spoke quietly because the acoustics for sound at this end of the cathedral was amazing.

You could probably hear a pin drop on the other side.

Then, she added, “It’s down in the basement.  They build a special room with all the environmental procedures built-in.  Been here for a long time.”

I followed her down to the bottom of the stairs, considerably more steps than the usual floor to floor level in a modern building, and the moment we came through the arch, the temperature dropped ten or more degrees, and I shuddered.

I had a strange feeling of unease, that something bad had happened here.

The light was very poor, perhaps because of the environment, but across the room I could see a glass-fronted space with a statue in the middle on a base, with lights shining upwards, giving it a strange hue.  To one side there seemed to be someone kneeling, as if in prayer.

Jaimie started walking towards the statue, slowly, as if she had been mesmerized by it.

I followed, but headed towards the kneeling figure, stopping just short.

Jaimie had stopped in front of the statue, staring at it.

The next second the kneeling figure jumped up and grabbed Jaimie and dragged her away, telling me, “get away from here, back to the stairs, and don’t look at the statue under any circumstances.”

By the time we reached the archway, he had sufficiently shaken Jaimie back to life, although she sounded confused, and dazed.

“What just happened?”

“You looked at the statue.  How did you get down here, past the guards?”

“There are no guards upstairs,” I said.  “Though we did come around the back way.”

“You two get out of here now, and I’ll overlook this transgression.  Do not mention anything you’ve just seen or heard, or God will, quite literally, smite you down.”

“Through the statue?”  I thought it a bit far-fetched.

“The cleaner prayed for a miracle.  She got one.  That statue now has some sort of power.  Now, you never heard that, and you cannot use it in a story or it will create panic.  I can tell you are reporters.  Just stick to the official handout.”

“What about the cleaner, she’s already told a lot of people.”

“She’s dead.  Her story has already been refuted.  Go, now.  I’m relying on your common sense.”

…

Outside back in the sunshine, we stopped before going back to Joey, who was still standing by the gate.

“What just happened?” Jaimie asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean why are we standing here.  I don’t remember coming here.”

“We were in the church?”

“No.  Who are you, by the way.  I haven’t seen you before.”

I looked at the alternating blank, inquisitive face trying to see if she was playing a joke on me.

“Do you know your name?”

“Of course, I do.  Mary.  Mary Magdalene.”

---

© Charles Heath 2022