Holding a burgundy glass of oaked chardonnay in one hand and a melba cracker with triple cream brie cheese in the other, I gazed into those cornflower blue eyes.

Black-as-pitch mascara rimmed those lovely blue marbles, perfectly complementing her Nordic locks that barely rimmed her delicate shoulder blades.

I doubted any man could turn away from her beauty. Those eyes struck me the first time I’d seen her – a mere six days before.

Now, I looked into the face of the woman that I fancied I’d marry one day. I couldn’t have known then that I peered into the eyes of a killer.

The next time I gazed into those glorious sapphire orbs, all I’d see was death.

My business partner Detective Tyler and I had been investigating the disappearance of four people, all somehow connected to fraternal twins Abbot and Bailey Callaway – a brother and sister duo born into the prestigious and old-monied Callaway family, who had been on the top richest list for decades.

Like the Callaways, my family haled from old wealth, well-to-do stock. My mother and father never worked a proper job. Rather, they globe-hopped with me - a tiny tot in tow - and we lived in some of the toniest addresses. Even so, our wealth paled against that of Callaway riches.

On that fateful day, the Callaways invited us to their grand estate.

“You’re getting low,” Bailey said, pointing to my wine glass.

I removed the glass from my lips and brought it down to waist level so she could fill it again.

So dainty was Bailey that she held the bottle with both hands, perfectly manicured in a white frost that only accented her nails but never overwhelmed them. So cultivated, so refined, Bailey dripped with elegance without even trying.

I glanced at Tyler, a former police detective turned paranormal private investigator, holding a piece of cheese in her hand in a clear breach of etiquette.

“I don’t get it, Abbot,” Tyler said. “What you just said doesn’t make any sense.”

“What Tyler means is,” I said. “A slight miscommunication may have occurred. Not your fault at all.”

“I mean is, it makes no sense,” Tyler said, glaring at me now with her hands on her hips.

I could only shake my head and sip my wine, tasting its buttery creaminess. Tyler didn’t know the refinements of polite society, so she could never fit in with the Callaways as I could.

“Let’s not fight about it when we are all having such a glorious time,” Bailey said, looking at me with those knock-out indigo peepers. “Maybe we should just agree to disagree

“Four people are missing, probably dead,” Tyler said. “We aren’t going to agree to disagree. You either give a crap about them, or you don’t. But that makes me wonder, why did you invite us here to begin with?”

“Do you know who my family is?” Abbot said as he cascaded around the living room, addressing us all. “The Callaways go back more than 200 years in this country, founded by Jack Callaway, a merchant who made his fortune in dry goods. Over the years, the Callaways have been at the forefront of industry, whether shipping, banking, or railroads. Our foundation is known worldwide as we are patrons of hundreds of charities. So, you see, we are more than just our money.”

When he ended his speech, he stood directly before Tyler, who looked entirely unimpressed.

“Some people say the only reason you got money is old man Callaway made a deal with the devil,” Tyler said.

And that sentence fell like a dead body hitting a hardwood floor. After almost choking on my brie cracker, I glided over to the ruckus carrying my wine glass to smooth over Tyler’s vulgarity.

“What a funny thing to say!” I said, trying to fake laugh, raising my glass overhead. “Tyler loves to shock and awe. That’s all.”

“Sounds like you’ve been talking to Dr. Mendini,” Abbot said.

I glanced over at Tyler, who shot me a look right back. Dr. Mendini was our client, who’d hired us to clandestinely investigate the twins for evil doings related to the missing four people.

Up until that moment, we didn’t know the twins knew him too. I could almost hear the wheels turning in Tyler’s head against the most refined and cultured twins, who, no doubt in my estimation at the time, had nothing to do with the disappearances.

“Dr. Mendini, who?” I said before taking another sip of my most buttery chardonnay. Unlike Tyler, I knew how to use my superior social skills to deflect without offending.

Abbot and Tyler appeared locked in a staring match as neither one liked the other and hadn’t since first sight of each other.

“Actually, I have an idea,” Abbot said to Bailey. “Why don’t we take them to the Callaway mausoleum?”

The twins stared at each other for a moment too long with matching purse-lipped smiles that made me question my love for Bailey for a moment. But thankfully, that moment passed.

“Why don’t we?” Bailey said finally, taking my arm to escort me out of the room. “That way, the two of you will understand about our family.”

As I peered into Bailey’s sapphire orbs, I attempted to place my wine glass onto the grand piano next to the assortment of fine cheeses and crackers.

But I let go of the glass stem too soon, causing it to plummet onto the hard marble flood. It smashed into pieces, creating millions of tiny daggers ready to slice any barefoot that traipsed upon them.

We took a short but brisk walk to the Callaway family mausoleum, about the size of a little cottage.

“Jesus, why is it so big?” Tyler said. “It’s like a small temple.”

“The first six family patriarchs, including Jack Callaway, are kept here in their own individualized above-ground granite crypts, all topped with matching, sliding slabs,” Abbot said. “You’ll see.”

Bailey unlocked the two doors to the mausoleum, and the twins pushed them open without going inside.

“Please,” Baily said, directing me to the inner sanctum.

I stepped into what looked like a small shrine. Shafts of daylight streamed through a domed skylight illuminating the six granite above-ground tombs. On the far wall, I noted a gated alcove for worship.

“After you,” I heard Abbot say to Tyler.

“After you,” Tyler said.

“I insist,” Abbot said. 

“I resist,” Tyler said. 

“Ladies first,” Abbot said.

“I’m not so much a lady as I am a woman, so why don’t you go in first,” Tyler said.

Just as I was about to whirl around to lighten the terse mood, I heard Tyler yell out. “Hey, get your hands off of me!”

Tyler slammed against the granite floor while Bailey and Abbot slammed the doors behind them.

“Hey!” I yelled, running to the door. “Bailey!” I pounded on the door with both fists so hard that I cut myself in the door’s ornate gold trim.

“Don’t bother,” Tyler said, getting to her feet. “She’s not coming. That blonde bitch and her bastard brother just got over us.”

“Bailey!” I cried through the door. “Please! Bailey! Let me out!”

I simply couldn’t understand what had just transpired. The woman I loved, whom I trusted above all others, whom I’d adored for six whole days, had just locked me into a family mausoleum with six corpses encased in cold granite tombs.

“I should’ve known better,” Tyler said, getting to her feet. “I knew that ass-backward story that snooty Abbot told no sense. I’m getting foolish in my old age.”

I slumped down against the door, still in shock, but the realization of my betrayal began to set in.

Maybe it was a joke. Maybe she’d come back. Maybe she’d save me. All these thoughts swirled in my head, but the reality of my situation busted through my denial.

“Look, kid, you’re not the first guy to be mesmerized by the hooha,” Tyler said. 

“I thought she fancied me,” I said. “How could you do this to me? My dainty darling. Why does everyone else find love but me?”

“Does your phone work?” she said, holding up her phone up. “Mine’s not working.”

Still sitting on the cold floor, I handed my phone to Tyler.

“Bastards, they had it all figured out,” Tyler said. “They are jamming our reception in some way. It’s a death trap. This is where the others were murdered.”

“Murdered?” I said. “Oh no, not my Bailey? She’s too delicate to hurt anyone.”

“Kid, it’s time you stop thinking with your pride and joy,” Tyler said. “We got to get out of here and quick. Those terrible twins got plans for us.”

“Now I know how a caged bird feels,” I said. “Seeing through the bars, just inches from emancipation but never able to spread your wing to the sky - an eternal prison from which there’s no escape.”

“Hush your face. We’ve got to move,” Tyler said. “This place is old. Maybe 100 years old, at least. Weakness in the walls or foundation – we’ve got to find them.”

“No doubt the Callaways used the best nonporous granite from the most notable quarries around the world,” I said. “High quality foundation with a single layer of high-grade concrete, resting on crushed gravel and a wire mesh to improve draining. I’m sure the base course is a single slab of thick granite extending beyond the walls. I bet the granite joints are even less than a quarter an inch. We’re doomed!”

“Buck up, kid. We’ve been in worse jams before.” Tyler said, pulling me to my feet. “They have four victims. Let’s not make it six.”

“My heart is shattered into a million pieces, just like a fine vase that’s smashed onto a hard, unforgiving floor,” I said. “No glue in the world could put it back together.”

“What are we dealing with?” Tyler said. “Do you sense anything? A ghost? A spirit? Anything?”

“Oh, Bailey, how could you do this to me?” I cried.

“I’ll take that as a no,” Tyler said.

Tyler pushed on one of the granite tops of the above-ground tombs, belonging to the family patriarch, Jack Callaway, who started the line nearly 200 years ago.

“Help me,” she said. “Come over here right now. Stop balling. That girl is not worth a cup of baby diarrhea on a hot August day with no air conditioning.”

“Opening a family tomb is defiling the dead,” I said.

“The Callaways aren’t my favorite people right now,” Tyler said. “Help me open this. It’s one big granite slab on top. It’s too heavy for me to move myself. Now you get over here.”

When we pushed together, the granite slab moved about a foot off center. I peered inside to see the clearly desiccated but still somewhat juicy body of Jack Callaway, dressed in 19th-century garb.

“Huh,” she said. “At least we aren’t dealing with vampires.”

“Would you put a skylight in a vampire den?” I said, pointing above to the circular orb skylight that let us know daylight was leaving us as soon as the sun went down.

“Let’s do a perimeter,” she said. “I’ll walk on this side of the circle, you on the other, and we’ll meet at that far wall near the shrine area.”

Tyler pushed me in the direction she wanted me to go, and I started walking, more like stumbling around the individual crypts.

“How could she do this to me?” I said.

“Listen, kid,” Tyler said. “Most men are fools for the lady bits. Love makes you do crazy things. Look at me. I’m a two-time loser. Divorced twice. The point is you got to bounce back. Stop feeling sorry for yourself.”

“But she was so perfect for me,” I said. “We were going to get married one day.”

“Oh, stop with the dramatics,” Tyler said. “You knew her for one week.”

“Six days,” I said.

“You didn’t even go out on one date,” Tyler said.

“Minor detail,” I said.

Just after I said that my feet went out from under me.

BAM! I splatted on the granite floor. I tried to get up, but a slippery substance caused me to fall back again. As I laid on the floor, I felt the slimy material on my right hand

“Blood,” Tyler said, standing over me. 

I stared at the red gunk on my palm before rubbing it off on my pinstripe trousers as they were ruined anyway with the blood slick I’d fallen into. 

“Look!” Tyler said, pointing to a wallet about three feet away. She grabbed it off the floor and rifled through it. 

“Dr. Mendini!” she said. “They got him! Now we got four disappeared, probably dead, and one confirmed murder.” 

I crab-walked backward to rest against one of the crypts. As I rested against the cold granite, I felt a stringy, wet substance attached to a bone-hard, jagged object just beneath my palm. 

I grabbed it, pulling it up off the floor, not realizing the carnage in my hand. 

I held the monstrosity up to my line of sight - bloody hair hanging from the remnants of a formerly intact skill. I stared at it for a few seconds, not fully contemplating what I held before flinging it away like my hand was on fire.

Tyler picked it up and studied the skull’s insides, revealing the wavy pattern for a once-intact cerebellum. 

“Skull. Dr. Mendini’s no doubt,” Tyler said before putting it back on the floor. “And very sloppy clean up. The toxic twosome don’t think they are going to get caught. Ever. But why? How are they so cocky? This is arrogant, even for stone-cold killers. At least they clean up better than this.”

Tyler yanked me up off the floor again. 

“Come on, let’s look at that shrine in the back,” Tyler said. “Maybe we can get some answers.” 

As I rose, I smeared a swatch of blood over my white cotton dress shirt that was clearly ruined now. 

I stumbled to a small circular alcove with walls inscribed with varying languages – some I knew, most I didn’t. 

I started to read it, but I couldn’t take my mind off of Bailey.

“What’s it say?” Tyler said. “Quit shilly-shallying.”

“Oh Bailey,” I said. “Why did you do this to me? And Dr. Mendini. She killed him. They both did. But why?” 

“Kid, now you quit it,” Tyler said. “That she-devil locked you in a granite prison with six corpses. Enough with the cry-baby Olympics.” 

“I just want to untangle this web of confusion,” I said.  “If I could just understand it, maybe I could move on. Even if she didn’t like me the way I liked her, I thought at least she liked me enough not to put me in here – whatever here is – to kill me. And Dr. Mendini. How could she do that to him? Why? I just want to know why?” 

My voice cracked as it echoed off the ceiling as I stood staring into the shrine and then silence hung in the air until Tyler spoke. 

“Look, Chance, I’ve seen it all as a police officer,” Tyler said. “Murder, mutilation, sexual assaults, torture – whatever, I’ve seen it. And people like you – good people - always say the same thing – why? As if knowing the answer to that question would make it all OK, but never does. It’s just your mind tricking you into believing that there’s a way to get past the pain and guess what – there’s not.” 

When I glanced over at Tyler our eyes met, and hint of a smile washed over her face.

Usually in times like these, Tyler tells me to hit the refresh button on my personality, but her attempt to console me pulled me out of my usual malaise. 

I refocused my attention toward the wall etched with varying letters and pictographs

“This is a language I’ve never seen before, a kind of Aramaic,” I said. “I think it’s Mesoamerican over here. Here’s Latin.” 

“Spare me the linguistics lesson, kid,” Tyler said. “Can you read it?” 

“It’s like the stone,” I said. “All these inscriptions say the same thing but in different languages.” 

“We don’t have time for a history tour,” Tyler said. “What’s it say?” 

“Well, if I translate this directly and correctly, it says something like, ‘All I ask is for you to bring me seven souls every generation. Give each one to me, so I can feast on their brains when I return from the underworld. If you do this for me, I will bless you with riches beyond your imagining.’”

“That deplorable duo – it’s their turn for a sacrifice in their generation,” Tyler said. “Looks like they got five. Now they only need two more – me and you. But where is this thing that’s supposed to dash out our brains and eat them.”

We heard the sound of grinding stone against stone, moving near our feet. Instead of smooth granite, I saw what looked like some sort of capstone that seemed to screw into the floor like a sewer cover. 

We both stared at it as we couldn’t be sure we’d heard anything. Then, we saw the stone twist again, making that horrible grinding sounds. 

Tyler and I bolted to the other side of the mausoleum to the doors that locked us in

“Stand back!” Tyler said. 

She fired her gun into the lock, but the bullets just pinged off the metal and chipped the stone. We again heard the horrid grinding of the capstone in the back of the mausoleum, indicating it was moving the stone further to open it. 

“I didn’t think that would work, but we’re out of options. This gun is no match against such a netherworld being either,” Tyler said. “Our only choice is to escape from this trap. Can we get out through the skylight?”

“I don’t see how,” I said. “It’s over 20 feet high. How would we get up there, and then how would we get through the glass? Even so, not enough time.”

“I’m spitballing here, but what about the walls?” Tyler said. 

“The Callaways never do anything halfway,” I said. “They built this mausoleum to last for 1,000 years. I see no cracks in the wall or foundation. We’d need a jackhammer and five men to get out through brute force.”

“So busting out is not an option,” Tyler said. “So, we have to think. What is an option?” 

“I can hear the snare drums of our final dance,” I said. “We’re stuck in the grim reaper's playground.”

“Kid, we’re not done yet! Stop the pity party!” Tyler said. “We can’t get out, but what can we do? Now think! Options. We need options. Let’s talk it through.”  

“None. That’s how many options we have,” I said. “We can’t go up. We can’t go down. We can’t go outside. We can’t go inside.”

“That’s it!” Tyler said. “Kid, you’re a genius!” 

Tyler ripped me up from the floor, almost dislocating my shoulder and dragged me to the above-ground, standing granite crypt of old man Callaway, whose grave we’d opened previously. 

“We can go up. We can’t go down. We can’t go left. We can’t go right. We can’t go outside, but we can go inside – inside the crypt! Now get in!”

 “You know how I feel about dead bodies,” I said. 

“You want your brain eaten out by what I do not know?” Tyler said. 

“Necrophobia – I’m afflicted. It’ll trip off my hyperesthesia,” I said. “Rotting flesh irritates my stomach mucosa. Salty vapors burn my sinuses.” 

“Well then, I guess you’re going to have to ask yourself if your necrophobia is worse than your getting-your-brain-eaten-out phobia,” Tyler said. “Besides, he’s all dust and brittle bone by now.”

Just then, I heard that horrid sound of the grinding stone in the alcove, moving just slightly again, signally the creature’s imminent rise into this world. 

Tyler grabbed around my knees and lifted me off the ground. I poured headfirst into the crypt opening, splatting onto the torso of the corpse and cracking the bones still encased in a morning suit, now putrid with fetid fatty tissue that never completely broke down. I settled on that grave wax as Tyler climbed inside. 

Laying on our backs, we used our legs to push up on the heavy slab, moving it over slightly so only a tiny sliver of light fell across my eyes. We left an opening just enough to breathe. 

Then, we waited to see if Tyler’s plan would save us. It was a long shot, for sure, but choices are easy when you have none. 

Without the echoes of our voices pinging off the walls, the stillness of the crypt enveloped the mausoleum. 

The grinding of rock against rock continued until I heard the capstone popping open and then just the sound of something slithering out from the underworld into this one. I stared straight into the light, seeing only the dimming blue sky through the skylight above me. 

I heard the pounding sound against the granite floor as it lumbered across, looking for its sacrifice. It stopped right above our crypt where we laid. 

A sliver of light slipped through the opening that we’d kept for air, allowing me to see only a glimpse of the beast. 

Standing eight feet tall, it had a face flattened like a disk with blackened eyes and what looked like a tiny hand sprouting from each temple. 

Its head appeared suspended on a stalk attached to a slithering body that I couldn’t fully see, but I heard the slime sliding across the granite floor as it took labored step after step. 

Quite suddenly, it snapped its neck in my direction, allowing me to gaze into the blackness of its eyes. I smashed my eyelids together, so I wouldn’t have to see it anymore. I felt certain it’d seen me through the tiny crack. I waited for it to rip the crypt’s granite top off, exposing Tyler and me to its wrath. 

As I laid there, waiting for my fate, I heard pounding step after step that grew fainter while it walked around the mausoleum, looking for that which it had been promised.

After a long stretch of silence, it screamed in a way I could only describe as unhuman and that sound reverberated across the entire structure that felt like it shook the building to its core. 

I heard more labored steps against the barren granite and then another and another as the echoes grew fainter until – nothing. 

I opened my eyes again to see the fading sky through the mausoleum’s skylight as dusk descended. 

We waited for hours in that crypt, not making a sound.

I pointed up toward the granite slab to Tyler, indicating that I thought it was safe to emerge. She shook her head from side to side. She had a plan, but what I did not know, so I settled back down again into the putrid grave wax. 

Soon, I heard Bailey’s voice wafting through the air. I sat up, but Tyler pushed me back down and placed her hand over my mouth. 

We heard the clanging of the locks that had imprisoned us with this beast. Then it sounded like Abbot and Bailey entered the crypt together as we listened to Bailey’s high heels clicking against the stone floor. 

Tyler slid over to check her gun as I knew she was ready to roll on both of them in a matter of seconds now that the door was opened. 

But then I heard a woman scream, filling the entire mausoleum, echoing across its barren walls, before choking sounds and the snapping of bones like the cracking of walnuts. I held my hands over my ears, so I wouldn’t have to hear it. 

After the horrid sounds subsided, I listened as the creature stomped back to the alcove and slithered down its hole, followed by the grinding sound of stone as the capstone twisted back into place, covering the hole to its underworld. The beast had received its sacrifice. Apparently, it didn’t matter who. 

We slid the granite top off the crypt and jumped out. 

Abbot laid decapitated with his head completely missing. I turned to my left to find Bailey’s body. 

Her head laid five feet away. The back of her skull had been removed along with most of her brain, but her face remained. 

I knelt, gazing at her face just inches away from mine. 

As I stared into those big, beautiful blue orbs, a single teardrop fell from her eyes.