In Tongues of the Dead Read online

  In TONGUES of the DEAD

  In TONGUES of the DEAD

  BRAD KELLN

  Copyright © Brad Kelln, 2008

  Published by ECW Press

  2120 Queen Street East, Suite 200

  Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4E 1E2

  416.694.3348 / [email protected]

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any process — electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise — without the prior written permission of the copyright owners and ECW Press.

  LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

  Kelln, Brad

  In tongues of the dead / Brad Kelln.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-55022-830-4

  1. Title.

  PS8571.E586416 2008 C813’.6 C2008-902387-0

  Cover and Text Design: Tania Craan

  Cover Image: iStock

  Part Title and Endpaper Images: Voynich manuscript, courtesy of

  the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

  Image of Cross: © Gary Woodard

  Typesetting: Mary Bowness

  Production: Rachel Brooks

  Printing: Thomson-Shore

  This book is set in Goudy and printed on paper that contains

  30% post consumer recycled content.

  The publication of In Tongues of the Dead has been generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts which last year invested $20.1 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada, by the Ontario Arts Council, by the Government of Ontario through Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit, by the omdc Book Fund, an initiative of the Ontario Media Development Corporation, and by the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).

  PRINTED AND BOUND IN THE UNITED STATES

  for Ben & Jake

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Books are not written without tremendous support and encouragement. This one is no exception and I am sure I will never be able to thank everyone. I must first thank my wife, Glenna, and my sons, Ben and Jake, for their support — directly when they give encouragement — and indirectly when they leave me alone to write.

  I also want to thank all those who contributed to the creative process either by listening to ideas and giving their own, reading advance copies, or answering technical questions. This includes but isn’t restricted to Barry Banks, Ken Bowes, Tony Bremner, Trevor Briggs, Linda DeBaie, Anne Godley, Lindsay Hernden, Kelly Rowlett, and of course, Glenna Kelln.

  Jack David and ECW Press deserve a big helping of gratitude for taking a chance on this book. Edna Barker is a wonderful editor and a joy to work with.

  Finally, I need always thank my number one fans — my parents Robert and Janette.

  NOTE TO READER

  Although the book you are about to read is a work of fiction, many of the mysteries discussed are real. The Voynich manuscript exists, and all references to its contents and history are accurate. In addition, all references to the Bible and the biblical mystery of the Nephilim are true.

  … to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another the ability to speak in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and He gives them to each one, just as He determines.

  — I Corinthians 12:8–11

  PART I

  I

  THIRTEEN YEARS AGO

  Benicio Valori took a deep breath and looked at the small crowd gathered in the auditorium at Columbia’s Department of Psychology. He recognized twenty or so graduate students and faculty members, and also noticed quite a few strangers. As he spoke, he searched for his girlfriend, Jenna Dodgson. She was easy to find: her raven hair reflected the auditorium’s lights, a smile on her face. God, how he loved those dimples. She was in the back row next to Benicio’s best friend, Jake Tunnel, another psychology student. Jake and Jenna had listened to Benicio practice his speech many times. Yet here they were, showing their support. He could do this. He cleared his throat and began to explain his dissertation. His voice carried a vague hint of his native Italian.

  Benicio knew his words would hit the room like a bomb — especially with the Jewish and Christian people in the audience. “Nowhere has mythology influenced the practices of organized groups as much as in religious domains,” he said slowly. “Ancient lore and mythology were often the basis on which social policy was secured. As an example, in the Old Testament, in Genesis, the Bible describes a time when angels came to the Earth and had children with women. The resulting offspring were known as the Nephilim.”

  Benicio heard expressions of disbelief. Then a bearded man said, “I’ve been a Lutheran all my life. I taught Sunday school for fifteen years. I’ve never heard such a ridiculous thing.”

  “It’s true,” Benicio insisted. “Genesis six, verse four: ‘The Nephilim were in the earth in those days, and also after that, when the sons of God came unto the daughters of men, and they bore children to them.’”

  “Ridiculous,” the bearded man repeated.

  Benicio nodded. “I agree with you. The story is a metaphor — the Bible is full of them. These stories weren’t meant to be taken literally. They were meant to be discussed, debated, and explored. Unfortunately, organized religions have often taken myths and allegories to be literal truths. For example, some religions still desperately cling to the notion the Earth was constructed in six days — literally.”

  He paused, waiting for more comments or questions. There were none, so he continued. “I should give you some background to the story. The angels were a special order known as the Grigori, which means the silent ones. God sent them to Earth to watch over the earliest of Earth’s people. But the Grigori broke two major rules. One, they started teaching secrets from the kingdom of heaven. They taught man about herbology, astrology, sorcery, and divination. God never meant for man to know these secrets. The Grigori had angered Him. And then they began to lust after women. They eventually gave in to their desire, and the half-angel, half-human offspring, the Nephilim, were born.

  “Verses in the Bible tell us that God viewed this union between angel and woman as an abomination. He looked upon the offspring as mistakes, monsters, and He banished the Grigori from ever returning to heaven. He turned His back on the Nephilim, cursed them, and abandoned them. They became soulless husks, left to slowly die out. God eliminated the fallen angels by banishing them, their offspring by letting them die, and all trace of the Grigori’s teachings by making men mortal. The secrets of the kingdom of heaven were hidden once more.”

  Benicio smiled, then continued, “The Bible is full of fantastic stories. Myths that were never meant to be taken literally. But churches have used these myths to justify some of their cruelest decisions. In the Middle Ages the Catholic church decided leprosy was a sign of a person’s direct descent from the Nephilim. It was the church’s way to justify its complete disdain for lepers. After all, God had cursed the Nephilim. Even the word nephilim has sometimes been translated as the dead ones.

  “As a result, anyone suspected of having leprosy in the Middle Ages was routinely subjected to the Mass of Separation — a religious ceremony in which the leper was cast away from society. The belief that Nephilim were dead to begin with led some religious authorities to insist that the leper stand in an open grave as the Mass of Separation was performed. Once the leper was pronounced dead, the church frequently took all his worldly possessions. A fairly self-serving practice.” Benicio paused and caught Jenna’s eye. She smiled. He was going to marry her one of these days.

  “We know now that leprosy is an infectious disease — not an indicati
on that someone is descended from Nephilim. The Nephilim and the myth that angels once had children with women were just stories. The church used the myth to promote its own agenda — to account for leprosy and obtain people’s money. The psychological effect of taking mythology literally is enormous. Indeed, our world is full of myths we have taken as reality, and such interpretation shapes our understanding of self in ways we could not have imagined.”

  As Benicio provided specific details of his research on mythology and self-perception, Cardinal Sebastián Herrero y Espinosa sat near the back of the room, feeling unnatural in his civilian clothes. He decided he’d heard enough, and slipped out the side door. He would contact the young scholar soon. There was no way around it: Benicio Valori would join the Holy Church.

  II

  PRESENT DAY

  Father Ronald McCallum drew in a deep breath as he entered the library on Thursday morning. His library — that’s how he’d thought of it for the twenty-two years he’d been in New Haven.

  He filled his lungs with the musky smell of paper — a curious combination of dust and age. The odor had been a constant companion here at the Beinecke, which housed Yale’s rare book collection.

  The Beinecke Library, built by architect Gordon Bunshaft in 1963, was a magnificent edifice constructed to hold more than 160,000 rare books and manuscripts on six levels. A unique feature of the library was a massive glass enclosure that ran through the center of the building. Each floor of the facility wrapped around this central shaft, and thus natural light filled each level. The first floor housed many rare collections that rotated through climate-controlled display showrooms open to the public. The other five floors housed collections of literature, theology, history, and the natural sciences.

  Father McCallum knew he could spend every day examining the priceless manuscripts — some of the finest books ever crafted — and still not have scratched the surface of each text. He was honored that the Holy Church had posted him here.

  “Hey, Mr. McCallum!”

  Father McCallum looked over and smiled warmly at the young security guard. No one knew to call him Father — he never wore his priest’s habit. There were always new faces at the security posts, and he couldn’t remember all the names — though he shouldn’t be surprised; after all, he was almost sixty. His memory for names was starting to wane. These days he opted for a polite nod.

  He kept moving, on a direct path to his private office, a path he followed every morning. Even after so many years, he still felt like a spy when he walked into the library. No one knew he was on a mission directed by the Vatican, under orders straight from the sacred office of the Holy See.

  He gazed at the twenty-foot-high shelves lining the main holding area but kept walking rapidly toward the back corner, keeping his loving glances at the books to a minimum lest he get distracted and spend the entire day perusing one single shelf. He turned a corner and approached a door.

  Father McCallum punched a combination into the door’s handle and stepped into a stairwell, then made his way down to the labyrinth of small offices in the basement. He rated an office because of his title: Curator of Ancient Books and Manuscripts. But he’d had to wait fifteen years to get it because there were more curators than offices. Only the senior curators were given a place to hang their jackets.

  He opened his office door slowly, careful not to let it bang against his bookcase. He slid into the tiny room, guiding his ample belly past the pile of paper on the edge of the desk. Once inside, he pushed the door shut and hung his coat on the hook on the back. Father McCallum couldn’t turn without brushing against the bookcase or the desk. He leaned over the desk — it was too much trouble to get to the chair — and looked at the phone. The message light was not blinking. Nobody loves me, he thought, smiling. He frowned when he saw the two-way radio surrounded by triple-A batteries. In the three years he’d had the radio he’d worn it only once. It had started beeping and he couldn’t figure out how to answer it. It had been sitting on his desk ever since. He left the office, careful to lock the door behind him, and began his real work.

  His secret mission at the library was simple: watch the Voynich manuscript. The 500-year-old book had been discovered in 1912, and since then no one had been able to translate a single word of its more than 230 pages. Experts had analyzed the language and revealed that it had a structure, proving the book was written in an unknown language or at least concealed in a code so elaborate even the most sophisticated computers could not decipher it. The Vatican had long believed it was a book of singular religious importance, and kept an agent close at all times. The exact nature of the Vatican’s concern was never revealed to Father McCallum, nor did he ask. He understood his role, and that was all a servant of the Lord needed. But he was curious, so he’d paid attention to the book’s history. He knew it had been given to Yale in 1969 by H.P. Kraus, an antiquarian book dealer from New York, and that mainly it just sat in the library in a sealed display case. Occasionally cryptologists and historians delicately examined it, but they rarely handled the manuscript itself: they used the microfilm and Internet versions that had been made of each and every page of the Voynich, which were available to anyone. Father McCallum often wondered about the logic of guarding the manuscript when the contents were public. He’d gathered his courage on one occasion and asked the Cardinal Prefect about it. “A day will come when eyes will look directly upon the manuscript — and read,” the cardinal had said. Father McCallum accepted that. It wasn’t his place to question his role.

  He headed upstairs to the main floor to check on the Voynich room. This was always his first stop after he dropped off his coat. He needed to make sure the book was undisturbed, and he always checked the tour schedules and visitor times to see who was coming. After that, he usually toured the library to see what jobs were on the agenda. Some days he restocked collections or compiled research lists for academic staff from Yale and other universities. Occasionally a professor gave him a subject to research. Father McCallum loved combing through indexes to find the most relevant texts. He felt like a detective, searching through ancient volumes for clues to questions about “historical influences on Darwin’s theory of evolution” or references to “a fossil bat, Icaronycteris, from the Eocene period.” Some of the subjects seemed like scientific mumbo jumbo, but as soon as he started reading, he would become interested.

  He approached the separate alcove that housed the older collections and noticed a group of children. There were often class trips at the library, designed to give children a sense of history and to create a curiosity about books. Father McCallum supported the school visits wholeheartedly. He knew the younger kids thought he looked like Santa Claus, so he took advantage: he espoused the rewards of a career in academia or the library sciences. He wished he could add a recommendation for a life devoted to the Holy Father but couldn’t risk blowing his secular cover.

  This particular group of kids was leaving the room where the Voynich was kept. He would check the manuscript, then catch up with the children. He pushed open the door, listening for the slight hiss of pressured air — the room was sealed to preserve the manuscript — then saw a young boy in front of the glass case. Obviously a straggler from the class. He watched the boy for a moment, then approached.

  The boy was staring into the glass case that protected the Voynich manuscript with an intensity that struck Father McCallum. He thought: This isn’t a boy, but a small mannequin.

  He stepped toward the boy, then crouched, knowing that a towering man could be intimidating. The boy seemed not to notice him. The priest wasn’t good at judging a child’s age, even after the countless school groups he’d talked to, but guessed the child was probably six or seven. He could see the boy’s lips moving ever so slightly as he studied the manuscript.

  “That book is over five hundred years old,” he said softly, not wanting to startle the child. He smiled warmly.

  The boy didn’t react. His lips continued to move, and Father McCall
um thought he could hear the boy murmuring, as though he were reading. He strained to hear but couldn’t make out the boy’s words.

  “It is a very important and very mysterious book. We still don’t know how to read it,” Father McCallum continued.

  The boy didn’t acknowledge him.

  Father McCallum gave the boy another moment and then asked, “What do you see when you look at those pages?”

  Slowly, the boy said, “It is the language of the forsaken. The tongue of the dead.”

  Father McCallum’s heart leapt into his throat. “What do you mean? Who are the forsaken?”

  “Half man, half angel,” the boy said, still without looking at Father McCallum. “God’s secrets.”

  “What secrets? How do you know this?”

  The boy finally turned to the priest, his face completely vacant. “I can read it.”

  “What can you read?” Father McCallum asked, trying to quell his panic and disbelief.

  The boy turned back to the book, ignoring the priest’s question.

  “Read it to me,” he whispered. His voice shook. “What do you see?”

  The boy remained silent. Father McCallum waited a few moments, then felt the air stir. He turned his head and saw a very young woman standing behind him. He hadn’t noticed the hiss of the door opening.

  “I hope he’s not bothering you,” the young woman said, smiling.

  Father McCallum braced his hands on his knees and pushed himself to his feet. He felt unsteady. “No, not at all. Not at all.”

  “Little Matthew is sometimes in a world to himself. He wasn’t doing anything bad, was he?”

  “Of course not. We were just having a chat about this rare book here.” He waved at the Voynich.

  The young woman laughed. “Must have been a fairly one-sided chat,” she said. “I’m Matthew’s aide. He’s autistic and hasn’t ever spoken.” She turned to the child. “Come on, Matthew.” She reached for him, but the boy walked past without looking at her.