Hades' Coin

My parents refused to go to my grandfather’s funeral.

I couldn’t believe the news. I was strangling my phone against my ear when Mom first said it. It left my mind a blank. I needed a moment just to process it.

“Why not?” I asked.

“You should know why. We haven’t spoken to that bastard since right after you were born.”

It was embarrassing to admit, but there was some truth to that. As far as I could remember, they never had any birthdays or holidays with him. Any time I saw him, it was always because my aunt Lillian drove me to the estate.

“Grand” was an understatement for his property. It was an isolated plot of land, miles away from any sign of civilization.

As soon as we’d turn onto his street, the smooth pavement turned to gravel. Aunt Lilian was a cautious driver and thought that if we didn’t move slowly enough, there’d be a flat tire. And if that happened? We’d be stuck until our AAA came.

Every time we crept down the street, I could hear the crunch of each shard of gravel. The tiny pieces of broken glass strewn about the road were just a rumor. But that was until my cousins and I took our walks together.

We were too scared to walk to the forests that surrounded the estate, so the gravel street was our only choice. It was a routine for us every time we met at Grandpa’s. It was peaceful at first. The only sounds were our voices and the few birds around us.

But one day, we stopped when our cousin Ronnie wasn’t keeping up with us. We knew he had a short enough attention span to be diagnosed with ADHD. And the fact that he was hyper-observant didn’t make a good combination.

It meant noticing he hadn’t kept up with us, to watch something crawling in the acres of lonesome grassland. Or worse, whatever dwelled in the trees at the edge of the forests.

The last time we took a walk down the gravel street was the easiest time we found him. Once we looked back, there he was, yards away from us. His pudgy body was bent over toward the gravel.

It took a few minutes to walk to him, but Ronnie acted as if he hadn’t noticed us.

I asked, “What is it?”

He adjusted his glasses and replied, “Look.”

All of us gave a closer look, and we saw a tiny, transparent, sharp sliver of glass. After that, we saw another. And another, until we noticed a tiny trail of it down the road itself.

From there, we moved onto the tall grass, and noticed an old Yuengling bottle top, covered in bits of mud. We went back to the gravel—it made avoiding any glass shards a lot easier.

As kids, we all saw this as a trail of sharpened fangs jutting from the earth, feeling for any fresh prey. We didn’t realize it was blatant neglect, just a reason to stay indoors.

It made me shiver to be in the car when Aunt Lillian drove us. With each crunch from the gravel, I pictured one of the shards stuck in one of the tires. Any second, we’d be stuck on the middle of the highway.

I couldn’t open my mouth until she stopped at my house. It had to have been the strangest thing in the world for a little girl to ask, “Can we look at the tires? Please?”

Aunt Lillian and Uncle Sean gave each other a bewildered look. Then Uncle Sean turned to me and asked, “The tires? How come?”

“The glass.”

“What do you mean ‘the glass’?”

I told them about the broken glass we found on the gravel and the tall grass. That was all it took for them to get out of the car and look for themselves. I must’ve given them a heart attack, but the car was fine.

“Jesus Christ,” Uncle Sean muttered under his breath. “Now his drinking’s a safety hazard.” Then he said to Aunt Lillian, “You think with all his money, your father would hire a maid, or at least someone to handle that yard of his.”

Lillian had to admit, “I know he has a drinking problem. But it’s only this bad because Mother passed away.” She told me, “I’m sorry, Honey. I’ll walk you up to your parents.”

But when I got out of the car, Uncle Sean said, “They divorced. She divorced ''him. ''I’m surprised he even noticed.”

She walked me up to the front door and gave a warm hello to them. I was staring at the ground, my uncle’s words echoing in my head.

As a child, I didn’t have a concept of drinking or divorce. But I didn’t ask my parents. There wouldn’t have been a good reaction. Even though one of us could’ve been hurt, I didn’t feel like it was my business to ask what those words meant, or why Grandma left him. But I think deep down, I feared family drama.

I remembered the conversation ending with Mother telling me, “If you don’t want to see your grandfather, you don’t have to.”

Her words made it sound like I had the choice, but the look in her eyes said otherwise. They were telling me that I wasn’t supposed to visit the estate. It was the one way for the cousins to see each other back then.

We were a big family, and unless the meet-up was at Grandpa’s, most of the aunts and uncles were too busy to keep in touch. And even then, they never said much to each other. There was always an air of reluctance about them. It was like they secretly disliked each other, but good manners stopped them from being honest about it.

I didn’t think I needed to tell Aunt Lilian and Uncle Sean about this, but all the cousins had a reason to stay outside. It was a relief for us. The broken glass littered around the yard was a hazard, but we still preferred that over being trapped indoors.

Avoiding the glass was easier than what waited in the house. After all, the yard had enough space to roam until Grandpap’s home looked like a beetle you could hold between your thumb and forefinger. So the glass couldn’t have been scattered throughout the entire estate. When we explored the outer parts of the property, there weren’t any more broken bottles that we saw.

Even when we played games and hid in the grass from each other, there wasn’t a bottle top in sight. That was something to be thankful for. After the encounter on the gravel road, it gave us more reason to stay outside.

But as the autumns waned, winters crept in. A blanket of snow would cover the estate, temperatures dropping to less than ten Fahrenheit. No matter how much we bundled up, we couldn’t stand the biting sting of the cold for long.

And when the freezing winds were too intense for us to handle, the sight of the trees made us run back inside as fast as we could. The way they looked, especially with the sheet of snow, gave cousins Ronnie and Marissa bad dreams.

Marissa was the youngest cousin, and the most imaginative. She was the one who had big dreams of being a world-famous painter one day. So it wasn’t surprising that her nightmares about the trees were the most vivid.

Even when we were trying to comfort her, we had the close the curtains so she couldn’t see out the window. Steven, the oldest of us, looked like his face turned white as the snow outside. The wind always howled during the winter nights, and it was louder when I peered out the window.

The dense forests around the property were bare all year ‘round. No matter how much it rained and shined, nothing ever grew on the branches. The bark was stained a deep grey, like a granite headstone. It was as if a horrible parasite drank every last drop of life from the trees. It felt like crocodile skin, with more wrinkles than an old man who chain smoked since childhood. The fact that they were still standing boggled our minds.

But from the way they were misshapen, their branches looked like they were reaching for the house. They each had a pair of separated trunks that joined together. They were legs fusing to create a pelvis.

In the winters, the snow was a thick, chalk-white skin over the trees. They looked humanoid, with enormous, stalk-like heads. Each of the trees would have anywhere from two to six stiff arms, always reaching toward the windows.

During the night, the sight of them was the worst. If one of us had our blinds open, the moon shone enough to show their outlines. It must have been some illusion, but the moonlight reflected off the trees to make their legs look like they were inching out of the ground.

But if we could ignore the trees and the cold, we wouldn’t have to endure the thin clouds of cigar smoke that riddled the whole estate. We wouldn’t have to think about the undercooked dinners. And we didn’t have to worry about Cousin Marissa sneezing to death from the layers of grime and dust.

None of that could’ve been enough for my parents to cut him off though. Even in a home filthy like my grandpap’s, my parents wouldn’t disown someone over a problem like that. It was a forty-room house, but a few maids could’ve solved the issue.

When I finally asked my parents about it, I should’ve seen the real answer coming. It was about the money.

“Because that old bastard wouldn’t spend a nickel on anyone but himself,” my mother told me. “Before we had you, your dad and I weren’t doing so great. We had just enough to make rent every month and didn’t have a whole lot to eat. We had to watch every dollar we spent. We tried asking him for help—and plenty of times at that. We were pretty much begging him after your dad got laid off. But you know what he said?”

“No,” I replied. “What?”

“He said, ‘I had to work for everything I had. You and your siblings are alike. You only call me when you want a hand-out.’ And then he hung up on us.”

I was silent. I had no idea what to say to that.

Mother broke the silence and said, “And that’s when your grandfather and I stopped talking. But lucky for us, your dad and I dug ourselves out of that hole. I know I shouldn’t say things like this, but he wasn’t there much. Sure, we grew up with a big house and everything, but that wasn’t the same thing as having a mom or a dad. The estate was pretty big and had all sorts of lavish things, but behind it all? It was an empty place. If It wasn’t for your aunts and uncles, we wouldn’t have had much of anything. We were really all we had back then.”

I was twenty-four when those two had their last chance to make amends. What she said lingered in my head the whole time. At any point, all it would’ve taken was for one of them to say, “I’m sorry.” But they were too busy building a wall of pride to keep themselves apart.

On the last opportunity to make peace, when he was on a hospital bed for leukemia, Ronnie, Marissa and I were the first to meet at the hospital. It was strange to see them grown up as an appraiser and an actress. Part of my mind would always picture them as kids, no matter how old we got.

After the three of us, a few of our aunts and uncles showed up with us. But not all the siblings came around. The entire time, I waited for them, looking at my wristwatch, talking with the other cousins, and watching over our grandpap.

At first, I didn’t know what to expect when I first heard the word “leukemia.” But on the hospital bed, he didn’t look much different than when he was slowly limping around the house.

His skin was pale as the snow that covered the walking forest on his estate. Lavender bags of fatigue hung under his yellowed eyes. They sagged like the skin on his arms and legs. There were still thin tufts of white and grey hair along the sides of his head. It was impossible to tell how long he really had left.

It always shook me to the core that someone who’d been there for as long as I could remember wouldn’t be around in the future. And it shook me just as much that my parents meant it when they said they’d never see him again. I didn’t think they did, but neither came to the last hospital visit, nor the funeral.

At first, I thought maybe my parents had their reasons. But that was when Grandma showed up. Despite their differences, she still came when she heard the news anyway. My grandpap’s voice was too weak to enunciate much, but it was the first time I saw him smile in years.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen them both this happy to see each other. Grandma’s eyes welled up, and regret filled her voice. She squeezed his hand, and didn’t let go, even after he flatlined.

The funeral was the first time I’d seen all these old pictures of him as a young man. Some were in black and white. Others were sepia. The black and white ones were formal pictures, with him suited up and his hair combed back to perfection. They had a strange, airbrushed quality to them. It was a kind of je ne sais quoi, but pictures like this had a hypnotizing feel to them.

The sepia pictures were the more interesting of the bunch though. They were the first time I’d ever been shown how he made his fortune. It was a collection of him at archaeological digs. A few were around the outskirts of Egypt, Greece, and several other places around the world. It turned out my interest in ancient civilizations didn’t come from nowhere.

The major difference though, was he managed to travel everywhere in his twenties and sell most of what he dug up. Aunt Lillian knew the museums those objects were in. They were out of the country, but I told her I’d go, provided the money was there.

The idea of an inheritance never occurred to me until the siblings first mentioned it to the rest of the cousins and me. It wasn’t long after the funeral when we were called in to meet the attorney about how the estate divided between us.

The siblings inherited the deed for the house. There was no question about it. What the cousins got—that’s what paralyzed us in confusion.

“’To my grandchildren,’” said the attorney, reading a hard copy of the will. “’I bestow my revolver, and…’” He adjusted his glasses as if he couldn’t read quite right. He hesitated, realizing it wasn’t a mistake, and said, “’Hades’ Coin.’”

He placed the gun on the table, as well as a small, black box. The name “Hades’ Coin” sounded familiar. It was a name that struck me, but I couldn’t remember where.

Ronnie and Marissa decided not to take either. I wasn’t a gun person myself but didn’t see the harm in taking the revolver home. Only when I checked it did I realize it was loaded. I couldn’t figure out why my grandfather would want us to have his gun—and loaded, but it was too late to get an answer for that.

I was more fascinated with the coin. Just from the look of it, there was no doubt it had a lot of years on it. After digging around online and in the local library, I finally remembered what exactly that object was.

The coin was an imperfect circle, with a depiction of the Greek god Hades, and writing in Greek characters. It was an object believed to bring extreme wealth to the owner. It made sense, because what a lot of people didn’t know was, Hades wasn’t just the god of death. He was also the god of wealth. Since money was metal, metal came from under the ground, and he was the king of the underworld, it only added up that Hades was the wealthiest of the gods.

I wasn’t exactly multilingual though, so the writing needed translation. At first, translating the characters into letters was a mistake. It only came out as nonsense. But as it turned out, the alphabet was also used as a numbers system, so I translated it the other way.

The second time around, the string of characters came out as “14-6-18.” Other coins like this didn’t have a date engraved in them like this, so it must’ve been one of a kind. The value of it had to have been astronomical.

But at the same time, I didn’t want to trade it for anything. Something about the coin made me feel as if I had to keep it. Going forward, it stayed on my person, no matter the circumstances. Going out with the object securely fastened on a necklace was essential as wearing clothes.

A few days into the new habit, I thought about the money leftover in the estate. None of the cousins had an answer about it. Neither did the siblings. The only choice I had was calling the attorney.

Once he picked up and I asked about the money, he gave me my answer. There was several million left in his bank account, and there were clear instructions for it in his will.

My grandfather had every cent he had in the bank withdrawn and buried with his casket after the funeral.

I was frozen in shock. I couldn’t believe it. That greedy son of a bitch held on to every penny, even after he croaked! What in the blue Hell were you going to do with millions of dollars when you were dead!?

That was when I remembered what my mother said. She was hiding a lot of resentment. It wasn’t in her words, but I heard it loud and clear in her tone. And I started to think there was a damn good reason for it.

Similar feelings crept into my skull and festered for weeks. I still couldn’t wrap my head around his money being buried with his rotting body. Why wouldn’t you pass it on to someone else? Over enough time, I gently let true feelings of hatred marinate and bubble inside.

It’s what gave me an idea. I’d visit the grave, but late enough to when the cemetery was completely empty.

I brought a flashlight, an empty backpack, and a spade shovel for the ride. Traffic was comfortably absent, but that was to be expected after three in the morning.

Coming to a slow stop, I got out of the car, and walked under the arches of the cemetery entrance. It took a little time, but I found his gravestone. There wasn’t even a second thought as I struck the cold, hard ground with the shovel.

I didn’t even think of the revolver back at home. All I thought of was doing with the money what that old bastard should’ve had the decency to do himself. It had to have been at least a half hour before I struck something solid.

Once the sound of wood hit my shovel, I cleared the rest of the dirt, and found a door. I didn’t remember the casket being made of flat wood. But the coffin could’ve been a high-quality wood that started decomposing by now.

But the door had a lock on it. It was a custom-made combination lock. Was it installed after the funeral service? Even when we saw the casket lowered, I never saw any kind of lock. It had to have been installed after the service.

It was a complete waste of time. What was I doing out in the middle of the night, trying to dig up a family grave? He must have thought of everything. It was all just to spite us.

But I remembered something. I looked at the coin that stayed around my neck and gazed at the three numbers. There was no way it’d work, but it was better than nothing.

I spun the dial. My hand moistened with cold sweat. With each revolution, I looked around. There wasn’t a watchman in sight. After the first three spins to the right, my heart rose to my throat. Two spins to the left. I heard my own heartbeat, pounding in my ears. One more rotation to the right. I had the dial on the last number perfectly.

I had to psyche myself up. It was time to try the lock. My fingers were trembling. A single, hard yank, and—

It popped open.

And I realized, he wanted one of us to come down here. He wanted one of the cousins to dig up his grave. But why? It wouldn’t matter once the door was opened.

I expected to find a body smothered in money. But when I lifted the door open, I couldn’t believe it. My heart stopped in my chest. It took a moment to grasp what I was seeing.

There wasn’t a body, or stacks of money. It was a staircase coated in mold and a foul stench I couldn’t identify. But I went down the creaky stairs with my shovel and flashlight anyway. The darkness of the hallway I was walking into felt like it was closing in on me. And as I reached the first fork in my path, there was a loud slam behind me.

I turned and didn’t see the little moonlight down the staircase anymore. I was closed in.

The corridor itself had to have been twelve feet tall and six feet wide. And the flashlight was enough to see what was straight ahead.

At the fork, I went left. There was no way to tell how stable the corridors were. I walked slowly, thinking it’d prevent the place from caving in.

Somewhere, there was a thump-thump-thump echoing all throughout. It was a distance away, so I still had time.

I continued further down the hallway, following the turns. They came sooner each time, leading to a dead end.

Going back and taking the right turn, it led to another fork. This time, it split into three different paths.

Another ''thump-thump. ''But it was much louder—just ahead of me. I needed a better sense of where the Hell I was going. Shining my flashlight down the left and middle paths, I didn’t see much. The middle looked like a dead end, though it was hard to tell for sure.

The real mistake was shining it down the right-hand path. I didn’t see what was at the end, but it wasn’t just emptiness. A shadow was against the wall. I couldn’t make out most of the shape. But it looked tall enough to barely fit in the corridor. It had a bulky figure and looked humanoid in its outline.

But I didn’t have long. The instant I shined my flashlight down its territory, I saw it turn and move. Louder, booming thumps galloped toward me.

I didn’t have any time to think. I sprinted down the left corridor and felt stronger and stronger vibrations in the floor. There was no way to outrun whatever was behind me.

I felt it inches behind me. Fatigue was settling in fast. My body was about to give out. It felt like my head was about to rupture from the boiling panic.

Clenching the shovel, I turned around and swung with all my strength.

I only caught a glimpse of what was behind me before striking it in the face. Its whole body dropped to the floor. The massive thud was enough to make the whole place tremble. After the body fell, there was a clang of metal.

It didn’t make any noise after that. I had to assume it was dead. Hitting it with the flashlight made me gasp. But the thing in front of me didn’t look like it was breathing.

No doubt—it was close to being tall as the corridor itself, with enormous muscles, covered in bulging veins. Its figure wasn’t human.

It resembled a gorilla more than a person. The arms were long enough to meet its feet while standing upright. Its body was perfectly bald, the complexion whiter than the moon itself.

The eyes were the size of baseballs, with no space between them. Its brow hung down over them like a Neanderthal, just below the gash from the shovel. There wasn’t really a nose—only a pair of long slits above its mouth.

But the jaw was what I stared at the most. It had three rows of small teeth, like those of a shark. A pair of canines sat in the front, jutting up enough to reach its cheekbones. Whatever this thing was, it was meant to tear through flesh and bone like a sheet of newspaper.

Right next to it was the head of the shovel. But that was fine. Even if the shovel was cheap and badly made, it did its job.

I stepped away and went further down the corridor. It snaked through a few turns, enough to make me think this was the wrong way—that running straight into the beast was the only path.

But at the end of it was a door. There wasn’t a lock on the outside, or anything to keep me out. There wasn’t even a knob. A little push, and I was in.

I found myself staring directly into another room. It had stacks or hundred-dollar bills, all surrounding the casket from the funeral.

And that’s when I realized, whatever that thing was, it’s why we were given the revolver in the first place. A stupid mistake, but it wasn’t worth worrying about now. Filling the backpack with what money would fit, I heard a sound. The hallways weren’t quiet for long.

There were more thuds from the monster as it got up and started walking again. But it wasn’t coming closer. It was moving further away.

I had to move slowly again. The less I provoked the thing, the better. But I was ready to bash it across the skull again, even if it gave me just a minute to run.

It didn’t come for me again like I expected. I found myself nearing the exit alone. But as I approached the staircase, the doorway back to the surface was wide open again.