The House within the Cemetery

The ugly brick structure with its fake columns and heavily tinted windows sat at the exact center of Union Cemetery amidst the tombs and statues of gargoyles and demons. The visual effect put you in mind of a movie set for “Buffy” or “Abbott and Costello meet the Undead”. The place was owned by a corporate front for a Rabbi Walken, who had been locked out of his Synagogue in Brooklyn. There were rumors that an exorcism of the synagogue by a joint task force of rabbis and Episcopal priests had been needed to drive the demons from that desecrated holy place.

Rabbi Walken had simply moved to the suburbs and bought the abandoned cemetery complete with run down mansion at a foreclosure sale. Every weekend, a number of expensive autos, mostly from Brooklyn, but some from as far as Washington D.C. and Connecticut rolled down the long driveway to the Mansion. Whatever took place inside was known only to the congregation. Rabbi Walken and his cult did not lack cash or the political “juice” to ward off any official busybodies or reporters.

The anonymous 911 call came in at 2:05 on Friday morning and was rejected because the caller did not know the street address. A second call, on the police non emergency number came from the college dorm at 1:06 Friday afternoon and was taken down. Three college seniors, quite drunk, had noticed that the barred gates to the old cemetery on Pond drive were open and had run in to vandalize some tombstones. They had not returned. When a patrol car drove by the cemetery, the gates were locked. A car was parked legally nearby, so the incident was briefly shelved.

Three days later, at the urging of the campus rent-a-cops, the police took an official missing persons report. The car was impounded and a request for a search warrant for the cemetery grounds made to the local judge. The warrant was denied since there was not legally sufficient evidence that the students were within the cemetery. (The caller never came forward so the phone calls to 911 and the police were uncorroborated.)

That spring a coed was found beaten to death with a tire iron on Pond drive within a half mile of the cemetery. Prints on the iron proved to be those of a married professor of Latin studies at the college. He denied all knowledge of the murder and was never indicted for the crime. A year later, divorced and ostracized by the college, he ran a hose from the exhaust into his car and committed suicide.

On May 7 th an attempt was made by a private detective hired by the college to penetrate the grounds of the cemetery. Solomon Murphy, a former member of the Nassau County Police “rubber gun squad,” now a licensed P.I. and general all around loser, rented an extension ladder, used it to scale the wall and dropped down the other side.

Sol first took a quick walk along the driveway and around the house. He decided that no one was moving about the grounds or awake in the house. He returned to the front of the cemetery. He intended to check for any sign of the missing students. Where can you hide three bodies in a cemetery? The answer is: Practically anywhere.

Sol wandered around in ever larger half circles from the front gates. He was looking for anything suspicious, pry bar marks on a tomb, fresh turned earth by an old headstone or even some beer cans. From behind and to his left he heard the screech of iron on concrete as a heavy door was forced open. Switching off his flashlight and grasping his old fashioned police “Billy club” he moved quietly around the tombs. The entrance to one tomb stood partially open. Sol felt a chill of fear and a foreboding that he had reached the end of his downward spiral. This was the moment he had been moving towards all his unhappy life.

Still, he did not chicken out. Cautiously he peered into the tomb and examined the entrance. There were footprints in the dust of the crypt, indistinct but definitely made by persons walking out. With a last look around, he slipped into the tomb and turned up the beam of his flashlight. Caskets had been ripped open. Bodies had been tossed around the tomb. Sol took a bunch of pictures.

At the rear of the tomb he took pictures of a concrete stair leading down into the earth. Near the stairs were two pairs of blue jeans such as young men might wear, a smashed beer bottle, and an unopened can of pink spray paint. The insides of both pairs of jeans were smeared with blood. Sol took picture after picture.

He heard the grinding of rusty hinges as the metal door in front of the crypt closed. Then Sol Murphy did the bravest thing he had ever done in his life. He turned around and shot 3 last pictures with his flash camera before he was ripped apart….

The call came in to the police non emergency number just before noon on May 8 th . “This is Jean Brooks. I am the secretary for the “Walken Research Corp,” owners of Union Cemetery. We believe one of the tombs in the cemetery was broken into last night. Could you please send a car to investigate?”

When the patrol car arrived, the cops were met by Rabbi Walken and the maintenance man who had reported the break in. The police examined the entrance to the crypt and found marks indicating that it had been forced open from the outside with a crow bar; marks that had not been there when Sol examined the tomb the evening before.

Inside the crypt, amidst the smashed coffins, they found the body of Solomon Murphy, now in three separate pieces. A pry bar wiped clean of prints was found beside the body. The homicide bureau sent detectives and the crime scene investigation van to the cemetery.

An autopsy later confirmed the suspicions of the responding officers. Sol Murphy had not died from accidental causes. Foul play was suspected. Sol's camera was sent to the crime lab to have the pictures developed. A statement was issued to the press lamenting the death of a former police officer and promising an early arrest of the person or persons responsible.

Crime Scene Investigation found no useful evidence within the tomb. Maintenance people and police had trampled through the dust of the crypt and the blue jeans and spray paint Sol Murphy had photographed had disappeared. A discarded doughnut box had been flung down the stairs at the back of the tomb. The only finger prints on the box belonged to the police.

Months later, a final report was written before the case was filed away and forgotten. The theory presented in the report was that Sol Murphy had surprised vandals trashing the tomb and been killed by those persons as yet unknown. The report made no mention of what the police found when they descended the long staircase in the back of the crypt, accompanied by cadaver sniffing dogs. The photos taken by Solomon Murphy prior to his death have never been released.

The End.