The Mausoleum

There is more to be seen in the heavens and the earth than can ever be seen; more to understand of life than can ever be understood. But what if that knowledge of life beyond what we know was never meant to be discovered?

My name is John Davis. I will not bore you with the details of how I acquired these garbs and chains. The police have their own story they wish to present, and they need some sort of scapegoat to enact their own sense of justice.

I will tell you of the truth I uncovered in that accursed mausoleum. A truth which, if I'm correct, might make you question your own existence, just as it has brought mine into question.

My family, if I can still consider them as such, lived comfortably with their accumulated wealth. The estate I called home lay a few miles away from this city, neatly tucked away beneath the Ponderosa pines. It was quite the spectacle to behold: three stories tall, ten bedrooms, five bathrooms, and two kitchens.

My parents were unconventional in their approach to raising me; they believed the world was full of materialistic distractions which separate us from our connection to Mother Nature. This stood in stark contrast to their shared expertise in all things technological.

Nevertheless, they "liberated" me of any material possessions. Televisions, smartphones, and consoles were but few of the plethora of banned items in our home. Truth be told, I did not know wireless internet existed until the apprehension.

They still took great pains in educating me enough to understand the natural world around me. I spent many sleepless nights in our study, reading all the old books pertaining to botany and biology. My parents, strangely enough, forbade me from reading anything that did not pertain to naturalism.

To further enhance the isolation from the modern world, they forbade me from interacting with other children of my age. My friends consisted of the flora and fauna surrounding our estate. But of these adventures I will not speak of.

Since I could not have any other human friends, I became friends with people who were no longer living.

You see, these lands were once home to many settlers who wished to strike big in the gold mines around San Francisco. Many, unfortunately, did not live to tell the tale, and many cemeteries scatter this area, created by the Forty-Niners. One such cemetery lay at the top of the mountain shading our home.

Many a night I would sneak out of my bedroom and crawl up the mountain, unseen by all but the moon and stars above. I spoke, at length, to the tombstones whose carved names eroded with time.

Once you interact with the dead long enough, they begin to tell you of their tales. Such beauty can be found in the silence of the cemetery, and if you listen long enough, you can hear their whispers in the blades of grass dancing in the wind.

At the center of the cemetery stood a massive mausoleum.

In stark contrast to the crude, weathered tombstones encircling it, the structure appeared to be crafted with the intention of housing someone of significance.

The edifice was crafted with care, perhaps by some miners who were enamored with Greek architecture. The rusted metal door serving as its entrance was surrounded by pristine marble walls, whose glisten is to be marveled at during sunsets.

On most nights, the aged door would remain shut, but sometimes, when the blue moon is high in the sky, it would remain ajar. It is during these nights when the spirit from the tomb would emerge from the crack and tell me the tales of the Forty-Niners that lay around us.

The ethereal figure had the semblance of a scrawny old man, with a brimmed hat and a scraggly beard. These facial features seemed oddly familiar.

The spirit bore no name it could remember. Whenever I would ask him if he could give me a tour of his tomb, he would shrug his thin shoulders and smile. This smile bore a semblance of sardonicism, hinting at knowledge beyond my understanding.

I became obsessed with trying to uncover more about the realm of existence that my spiritual friend encompassed. After I gained the trust of my eccentric parents over the years, I began to expand my knowledge beyond the limitations of naturalism. For many nights, I scourged the plethora of books in our study, reading through the texts they forbade me to read.

I began to embrace theosophy and its teachings, particularly that the life we know is merely an illusion of an existence which is Absolute. This knowledge could only be obtained by carefully analyzing ancient texts to uncover the hidden truth of our place in the universe.

In many of the ancient texts my parents collected, I discovered forbidden arts of preserving the human soul long after the departure of its original organic host. But of the other Absolutes I will not speak of.

My parents picked up on the fact that I no longer spoke like someone my age should speak. At first, they celebrated my independence, heralding the vernacular as naturally cultivated by Mother Nature herself. But when I spoke, with enthusiasm, of the tales my deceased friend told me under the moonlight, they exchanged disturbed glances.

One night, as we drank hot chocolate by the fire, something inside me beckoned me to recount a night tale the spirit would always tell me. I abruptly stood upright, and with mug in hand I recited verbatim:

"Once there was a man with a body made o' gold,

His smile was timeless, and he ne'er grew old,

This be the tale me father foretold,

Of the poor man with a body made o' gold.

"Friends were aplenty, and enemies too:

One stole his hat, another his shoe!

The poor man wept, his tears pure azure:

His enemies, and friends, stole these too!

"One night, the man o' gold wept no more.

The townsmen found 'em on a Plutonian shore.

His eyes obsidian as they ne'er were before:

The poor man o' gold wept no more.

"His body then crumbled into fragments of gold,

its wealth was timeless, and ne'er grew old,

This be the tale me father foretold,

Of how the poor man's sufferin' struck us gold!"

After this recital, my parents forbade me from exiting our house at night. My parents rightfully suspected I dabbled too much into theosophy, and as such burnt all the books that did not pertain to their practices in a massive bonfire.

These actions were in vain; I learned all I needed to know to transcend beyond their limited perception of our plane of existence. Nor did they suspect I took careful notes of the teachings I wished to practice, unobstructed, by their pervasive glances.

I do not remember much about what I said to them as they burnt my prized possessions, but that night, after sending me to sleep, I successfully exited my house through my bedroom window. I wrapped multiple knotted blankets to the bedframe, just as I did on my first excursions to the mountain.

The moon was not blue this night; instead, it was crimson red. This was no ordinary lunar eclipse, for the moon's rays emitted a bloodlike aura.

Curiously, the spirit did not appear from the mausoleum door to welcome me. Nor did any of the voices of the deceased greet me as I passed their final resting places. This time, however, the steel door of the unmarked tomb was wide open, revealing a dark staircase.

Curiosity did get the best of me, and with nothing but a flashlight, I ventured forth into the unexplored tomb. The marble staircase was dark, steep, slippery, and exceedingly damp, with multiple sharp turns as I descended downward into the earth. Mold encrusted the rusted railings, and an unrecognizable odor grew in strength the more I descended.

After what felt like hours, I reached the bottom of the staircase. When I cleared the landing, my flashlight revealed a massive marble shrine, with many of the theosophic symbols placed at the foot. A foul sulfuric odor enveloped the entirety of the shrine.

My flashlight illuminated something that froze my inspection of the room. Standing alone at the top of the stairs of the shrine, lay an opened sarcophagus.

I precariously approached the casket whilst covering my nose, trying my best to not let the stench of pungent preservatives overtake my senses. A pair of initials were hastily scrawled on the interior of the tomb. When I looked down at the figure within its final resting place, my blood ran cold. After looming over the corpse for what seemed like an eternity, I suddenly reeled back, and bolted up the tomb's slippery staircase, away from that accursed mountain. I ran as fast as I could, down the edge of the mountain, down to the back entrance of our house.

It was then I understood the significance of the acrid scent emanating from the sarcophagus. The faint moonlight reached through the charred Ponderosa trees like the threads of a spider's web, scarcely illuminating the ghastly scene ahead of me. The estate I once called home was no more. In its place stood crumbling walls, blackened windowpanes, and shattered glass.

A local fire department stopped the flames shortly after I returned from my maddened descent from the mountain. When one of the firefighters saw me inspecting the ruins, he questioned me of my whereabouts prior to the fire.

Out of breath, I replied:

"My name is John Davis, and I was just up the mountain over here, trying to visit some of my friends at the cemetery. There's this giant mausoleum up there that I always enjoy visiting when the moon is high above in the sky, and tonight, of all nights, it was-"

"I'm sorry to interrupt, Mr. Davis. You did say a cemetery?"

"Oh-why, yes of course. The cemetery with the rows of crude tombstones encircling the massive mausoleum?"

He stared at me with a sense of bewilderment in his eyes. After glancing up at the mountain, he turned to me and said:

"Sir, I regret to inform you this, but there is no cemetery on top of that mountain."

"What?"

"That mountain's been barren for years, son. Nothing's up there but a bunch of weeds and the occasional tree. No ranger who's ever visited that mountain has ever mentioned to any of us about any cemeteries around here. But, now that you're here, we'd like for you to help us identify a few things."

Here he motioned for me to follow close behind. My body tensed up as we approached what remained of the of the living room.

When we approached the area, the clouds dissipated, and the full moon radiated brightly, revealing the sprawled charred bodies of my parents. Near their decaying corpses was a large, rusted kitchen knife. When the firefighter turned back to face me, he gasped and shrunk back.

It was only when I reached my hand out to ask what was the matter that the realization took place. My hands and shirt... were drenched in blood.

____________________________________________________

Well, I told you this story would be difficult to believe. None of the firefighters believed me when I say it was the spirit up on the mountain who compelled me to do this act after they insulted his story about the man made of gold. The prosecutors claim that in my delirium at the sight of all my books burning, I snapped and murdered my own parents.

But how am I to trust that you would believe the validity of my claims? Besides, when the police did inspect the top of that mountain, their response reflected that of the firefighter. No cemetery, nor mausoleum, was ever found.

There is one question, however, that keeps me up at night in this cell. It is a thought I try my best to repress, but every time I try, that ghastly discovery in the shrine haunts my memories.

Resting eternally in the opened sarcophagus, was a jaded, decaying corpse. Its facial features were all too familiar, almost as if I was staring at my own reflection. The inscription on the inside of the casket was initialed "J.D."

Is... is it possible to see one's own death before it occurs?