Scrivenings of the King-Beyond-The-Wall

Stolen Artifacts #15

When the realtor said that I would be buying the house as-is, they weren’t kidding. Everything in the house was exactly like the previous owner had left it, from the furnishings to the kitchen utensils to the artwork hanging on the walls. It felt like I was moving into the home of someone who was still living here, even though the owners were long gone and the house had been on the market for over a year. Murder houses tended to be like that.

I was planning on renovating it into a bed and breakfast for true crime junkies. A friend of mine had a lot of success opening a similar type of thing out in California, and as someone recently disillusioned with a life in corporate law who had just jumped all over a very generous severance package the minute the firm started talking about pandemic-related cutbacks, I thought it would be a good idea to invest some of that money in something that could eventually deliver a return on investment and maybe save me from having to find gainful employment in the legal field ever again.

The story behind my new murder-house-slash-bed-and-breakfast was that an eccentric family patriarch had tired of his kids squabbling for their inheritance, so he hid it away somewhere and told them they’d only get access to it once they learned the true meaning of family. He died shortly after that and, rumor had it, his kids all killed one another over the clues to the potential location of his fortune. All three kids: Paul, Cindy, and Thomas, all died in the house. No one had really been able to explain to me how there was no last man (or woman) standing in this story, but most locals - including my realtor - chalked it up to the third eventually succumbing to some kind of wounds of their own after dispatching their siblings. I figured I’d have to work on the details of the story and spice them up a little with some unfounded conjecture and red herrings if I wanted customers to come spend time at the property. Even better if I could get them to stay for an extended time searching for the probably nonexistent clues themselves!

One day, as I was putting the finishing touches on the deep cleaning I had been doing on the house, I was dusting the shelves and knick knacks and artwork frames when I felt something unusual along the top of the frame to the family portrait hanging in the study. The top of the frame was smooth wood on the left and right, but along the center, there were some grooves of some kind. I pulled the painting off the wall and quickly finished dusting the top of the frame. There, etched into the wood, was a set of numbers.

“44... 80230... 83724... 6927... and -68... 78487... 24717... 8143... is this an account number?” I asked myself.

“Coordinates, more likely,” said a voice from behind me.

I nearly jumped out of my skin at the sound of another person’s voice; I thought I was alone in the house and everything was locked up. I turned to see a middle aged man pointing a gun at me.

“Dad always did have a flair for the dramatic. Almost like we’re supposed to find his buried treasure or something.”

“You’re...” I started.

“Thomas,” the man nodded his head slightly. “And I’ve been waiting a long time to see if someone else was going to be able to figure out what Paul and Cindy and I never could. We practically took this place down to the studs. Even checked behind that very painting a dozen times. Never occurred to us to actually inspect the top of it.”

“Everyone thinks you’re dead.”

“Then I guess no one’s going to suspect me of your death,” he said, almost nonchalant. “But, hey, it’ll be yet another selling feature of this whole murder house b-and-b thing you’ve got going on here. I sure hope you updated your will so someone will inherit the place when you’re gone.”


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(686 words)


Prompt: Your character is redecorating and takes down a painting. They notice something strange engraved on the back of the frame.