Final Effects

The contents of this envelope represent what I believe to be George Henricksen’s only remaining possessions: one small black leather-bound notebook containing journal entries of an unknown origin (while I assume the notes belong to George, he signed the hotel ledger with an X, so I cannot be certain), one solid gold coin, a monkey carved in ivory, and a key to a safe deposit box.

This envelope, and its contents, were given to me by George in 1985 while we were both in residence at the Lunt Hotel in Cedar City, Utah. George requested I hold the package until such time that I was certain he was dead. Upon confirmation of his demise, I was asked to send this envelope to the address written on the inside cover of the enclosed book. I agreed to both conditions.

On the fifth day of March, I found his remains in a gully near the crossroads of a place called Acoma. It is not a town or a village. It is a place where one road meets another and a sign reads, Acoma. He had been dead for a long time. His skeleton was covered by his bomber jacket, his name patch, and wallet with identification verified his remains. His flesh, what had not been eaten by the indigenous carnivores and scavengers, had dried in the desert along with years of decay. He lay face down along the banks of a dry creek bed. There were also the remains of three arrows and shafts that appeared to have hit him from behind as he was running away. I am not a forensic scientist, I cannot be certain as to how he came to die, but I am confident three arrows in the back had something to do with his demise. I buried his remains in the desert.

Since so many years have passed, I cannot be certain that the intended party is receiving this information. I have no way of knowing if this package means anything to you or any member of your household, but this is the address I was given and agreed to send these items. However, I am certain that whoever is receiving this parcel must be curious as to its contents and its mysterious origin. I will do my best to explain.

As I mentioned, I met George Henricksen at the Lunt Hotel in Cedar City, Utah. The hotel is no longer there, but the building remains much as it was with offices having replaced the lodging facilities. The day was Thanksgiving, 1984. The Iron County Sherrif brought George in and paid his rent through November and December. It was late in the evening and the town had rolled up for the night except for the China Garden Restaurant on the opposite side of Main Street.

While the Sherriff checked George into the hotel, George and I sat in the lobby and smoked cigarettes. He was dressed in a leather bomber jacket, blue jeans that were brown with dirt and caked with mud, his black hair was streaked with gray, and he smelled far worse than he looked. It was obvious that he had not come in on the bus and he had not bathed in months.

“Did you do something wrong?” I asked. I thought that George was being brought to the hotel because the jail was full.

“I was wandering,” he said.

“Wandering? Where?”

“In the desert.”

“Found him out near Modena,” said the Sherriff. “He kept mumbling something about God and spirits and screaming that he needed to get out of there.”

I asked George, “Is that true?”

“I heard voices and saw things.”

“What kind of things?”

“Flashes of yellow light. Spirits floating in the desert.”

The clerk was concerned. “You’re bringing us crazy people, Sherriff?”

“He’s not crazy. He’s scared. A hot bath, good meal, he’ll be alright. He’s a vet.”

“Korea?” I asked.

“Airforce,” George nodded displaying his jacket.

The clerk held out a room key and signaled George to come to the desk. He snuffed out his cigarette and stood next to the Sherriff.

Diana Parcells, a charitable woman, swung open the entrance door to the hotel and spun inside with a large parcel of clothing wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine. She gave the package to the Sherriff as the glass door closed behind her. “Here’s some clean clothes, Sherriff.” She looked over George and evaluated his size. “He isn’t a thirty-six waste. More like a thirty or thirty-two.”

“Thirty-six will work fine, ma-am. I got a belt, and I don’t mind my trousers being a little large at first. They’ll shrink. Much appreciated,” said George.

The Sherriff escorted George to his room at the farthest end of the second-floor hallway. All the rooms were upstairs. There were six rooms with private baths and the remaining rooms shared public showers and toilets. On any given night, the hotel was filled with transients, bus passengers taking a night off, or college students arriving too late to check-in at the dorms. George was the first resident to have caught my interest as a person. I wanted to know how he came to be in the desert, near Modena, a town of fewer than twenty residences on the Utah-Nevada border. An old train stop between Las Vegas and Salt Lake City.

I almost didn’t recognize him when he walked into the lobby an hour later, shaven face, hair combed, white undershirt, and blue button-down shirt tucked into his clean crisp oversized jeans. His boots were still muddy, but he had wiped down his bomber jacket and appeared almost normal. I asked if I could join him for dinner and he welcomed the company. We took a booth at the back of the empty Chinese restaurant. The waitress was the owner’s daughter, American oriental, petite, adorable with her fake accent, and in a hurry to be anywhere else. We both ordered and she was gone.

“You have to promise not to tell anyone what we talk about,” he said.

I nodded, “Okay.”

“I mean it. A complete secret. And you can never go there.”

“Go where?”

“Promise.”

“I promise.”

“There’s a cave in the desert and inside are riches beyond your imagination.”

“I can imagine a lot.”

“I found it by accident. I’m not even sure I can find it again, so I know you would never be able to find it. But it’s cursed. By what I don’t know, but I was told to leave and never come back.”

I promised I wouldn’t go. But in the back of my mind, I was lying to him and myself. I had to know where this place was and how I could find it.

“I hopped a train in Vegas heading North. I’ve been riding trains since the end of the war. Not a big deal. But it’s dangerous. They’ll kill me if they catch me. When the train started to slow down, I thought it best to jump. I heard the engine enter a tunnel, so I waited until I was clear. On the other side, I jumped. But I landed poorly. Messed up my ankle and knew I couldn’t run. Can’t hop a train if you can’t run.”

“Makes sense.”

“I made a field dressing and wrapped it best I could. Found a stick to use as a crutch and headed west, away from the tracks, to find a place to make camp and heal. I found some ruins but no shelter. After a few days, I was almost out of water. I needed a point of reference, so I climbs to the top of a hill and noticed what looked like a spring near the base of some white cliffs.”

George leaned over the table, “Everywhere I looked it all looked the same, except for one hilltop with a dead tree. I had to go and check it out. Pinion pines and junipers for miles in every direction and one old dead tree standing there like a flagpole on top of the cliff. Took me two days, but I found water and a backway to the top of that ridge. And when I got there, I put my weight on my crutch to sit down and the crutch disappeared into the ground. I’d found a hole. An entrance to the cave. I moved the woven grass lid to one side and looked into a deep hole.”

He sat back and sighed, “It looked to be about five or six feet to the bottom, and I could feel a draft coming up out of the hole. The entrance was barely wide enough for me to squeeze into and I was able to reach the floor without falling. I found these in the cave.”

George reached into his pocket and removed the two artifacts that are in the envelope. The gold coin is a ten-dollar Mormon gold piece. “There are three bags of these coins in the cave and a story written on pelts about a robbery and a chase,” he said.

“I believe this monkey is ivory. It looks like it may have been a piece of jewelry, don’t you think?” he asked.

“Why would an ivory monkey be in a cave in the Escalante Desert?” I thought. “It does look like it may have been a charm.”

“That’s what I thought as well. The cave is shaped like a horseshoe. In the chamber furthest from the entrance, I found is a second entrance, also covered, but it is impossible to reach. It’s on the vertical face of the cliff and the ground is not stable. But the view from the back entrance looks over a large valley. The chamber contains thousands of weapons, swords, shields, spears, and there are twenty-eight marble plates each shaped with three equal sides and each contains a unique symbol.”

“Triangles with symbols?”

“The inner walls looked human-made, and the draft was coming through the walls as if the whole mountain were hollow. There was one more thing, a chest of metal and a large rusted lock that I could not open and the box was too heavy to move. I am certain that all these things must be extremely valuable, but I was told to tell no-one. I fear that telling you may endanger you as well as I. So, you can say nothing of this to no-one.”

“Why did you leave?” I asked.

“The voices told me that I had to go. The soldiers came in the nights and they were dressed in the armor and carried bows and swords. I could not see their faces but their eyes glowed and they brought a violent storm with rain in sheets and thunder so loud and violent that dirt fell from the ceiling. I feared the whole cave would collapse. I left the treasure behind and crawled out as fast as I could, slipping in the mud and back into the cave and drowning in the skeletons of a thousand dead men. I thought it was a dream, but it was all real. The voices kept shouting, get out! Get Out! GET OUT!”

George was shaking. He couldn’t hold his hands steady, his eyes wide with horror. He stared past me. A long silence followed before we made our bargain and he left these items for me the next day with a note that simply read, I must go back and close the hatch.

I can confirm that George Henricksen is dead and that despite my best efforts I have not found his secret cave. Perhaps the clues I have provided and the twenty thousand dollars inside the safe deposit box will provide you the means and the motivation by which to find the lost treasure of George’s cave.