The Last Castle in Brooklyn: Out of the Darkness Comes Light

By Lady Simone

In this exciting, incredulous debut novel by Lady Simone, Mariah is a young single mother searching to find herself, love, and enlightenment. She meets the eccentric old Reverend Blake, the preacher of an old abandoned haunted-looking castle church in Brooklyn. Mariah finds herself drawn to the reverend like a moth to a flame when suddenly her l

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stratton Press
• Release date: Nov 22, 2019
• ISBN: 9781643458243

Book preview

Haunted Castle? Spring 2002

The first time I saw the castle, it cried out to me. It said, Help me! Walls can talk. It occupied most of the block, a beautiful dusty tall old red brick building. Though still strong and erect, the building was dilapidated and in need of some serious repairs and maintenance. The building looked like it was standing only by the grace of God. The front doors were boarded up with very ugly wooden planks of unpainted wood. The windows were glass bricks. There was an old, almost undecipherable sign on the building that said PE——T Church. Someone had secured the premises from break-in as best as they could. It was a good thing, too, because in this neighborhood, they will steal your plants from your veranda if they are not chained down.

In the early forties, this community had consisted of Jews and Russians, not many black folks. Presently, there is a predominantly Latino community followed by blacks. Cypress Hills is on the border of East New York, Brooklyn. East New York has had a reputation for being one of the most underdeveloped neighborhoods in Brooklyn. It’s the type of place where certain folks don’t like venturing into. Surprising since the area had consisted of only white folks way back in the 1940s. The crime rate in East New York has always been high. Down Pitkin Avenue, you could buy cheap stereos, clothes, cheap jewelry, but you can also get mugged while shopping. Cypress Hills is a little better, a little more residential and family oriented.

Vehicles get stolen all the time in East New York. The schools were terrible, forget about it! The dropout rate was extremely high and so was teenage pregnancy. The youth had little guidance; they repeated a vicious cycle of dropping out of school early and starting a family too early. They didn’t seem to know that they were going wrong until they ended up in jail or had baby after baby looking for the right guy to help them, or when they were down at the welfare office being insulted by the social workers down there, like Didn’t you ever hear about birth control?

So many children in this area need a good school to go to, and here was this semi-abandoned, boarded up building just standing there, falling apart slowly but very surely, I thought to myself. There were so many high school dropouts in this area and many children and families that needed help. To see a building that could be so resourceful to the needs of the community, be such an unproductive waste and eyesore to the community, really hurt me. As a mother, I was upset about the quality of education afforded to children in low income areas. These children are people, human beings; they deserved the same type of education as the children in suburbia. So I set out to find the owner of the building and let him know that I would help him restore it for the children of the community.

I am a determined young woman. I set my mind to something, and I don’t give up until it’s done. But I had no idea of the mess that I was about to get knee-deep into. If someone had told me, I would have run really fast.

All I knew was that I was paying $600 a month for my two children to go to private school so they wouldn’t end up like the rest of the kids in this neighborhood. I was also fixing my credit so I could buy a house and move. This was what had brought me to drive down Wyona Avenue that day that we first saw the castle. My kids and I were on our way to see this house that was for sale by a local community development group. I had learned that they required the new owner to aid in community development in some way. There was nothing that I wanted more than to make a better life for the children in this community. My heart went out to them. My own kids saw me sacrifice a lot, like a new car; the money that I was shelling out each month on their education could have bought me a Lexus or something. At least while I was at work, I knew my children were learning about God and receiving a proper education. So I didn’t care that I drove a beat-up old car. I wanted a better opportunity for my children and wished the same for their friends who didn’t always have a concerned parent or adult in their life.

So I wrote a letter to the owner of the building. Someone said that he sometimes came around and walked his dog real early in the morning. The church next door said that he lived all alone up in that boarded-up old castle. I didn’t know which story to believe, so I put the letter in the mailbox that we discovered in the garage door.

To the minister/owner of the Grand Church on the corner of Grant and Wyona Avenues

Dear sir,

I hope that you’re doing well. You don’t know me, but I hope to be a cherished member of your church soon.

I am a mother of two children and we live in this community. We would like to work with you to restore your beautiful church to its original splendor. We have the time and energy to dedicate to this cause. We are requesting a meeting with you to talk about ideas and a plan.

We are sure that you will reply to us and let us know how you feel about this mission. We are praying that you will be favorable and open to restoring the church and helping the children of the area. Would you call me to arrange a meeting? Thank you, in Jesus’s name, for with Him all things are possible.

I put my telephone numbers so he could call. I didn’t think that he had a phone though. My son, Hakim, felt that he lived in there. I didn’t think that anyone would live in there by themselves. It was scary looking and apparently abandoned. I was not being naive; I simply wanted to make a difference in the quality of life of the children in East New York, Brooklyn.

I waited days and days and heard nothing back from him. I started cruising early in the morning before I went to work to see if he was outside walking the dog. Nothing. Not a word out of him. It was weird, but I felt as if this building was part of my future. Indescribably, it was like God had placed a burning passion within me to help. The building spoke to me; it spoke to my soul.

Just months before, I had prayed to God to change my life and to come into my life in a big way. I wanted to see Him, to feel Him, to be touched in a special way. I was raising two children by myself. It was hard, especially when you were not going to settle for less. I wanted a better life for my children. I wanted to be a better mother, provide a better home, than the attic apartment that we were forced to live in because of high rent in New York city. It was a cute and cozy apartment, but the neighborhood was bad. Sirens were a norm. Someone was always getting shot, apartments set on fire, and the like. Just lots of crime.

Then one morning, as I drove by the castle before going to work, I saw an old man with a Texan hat getting into a cab right in front of the building. He was dark brown in complexion, had on huge glasses that seemed to swallow his small face up. He had a wooden cane with him. To me, he seemed at least eighty years old.

So I stopped the cab. What else was I supposed to do? I walked up to the window and asked, Are you the owner of this building?

He looked startled, said yes, he was the owner.

Well did you get my letter? I asked him.

He said, I might have. I don’t know. At this point, he looked less startled and more intrigued. I thought that he was lying.

Here’s my card, please call me. I handed him my business card, and I walked back over to my car.

I figured that he didn’t have a phone. So I drove over there every so often.

One beautiful and sunny day, dressed in a pretty lavender colored pantsuit, with gold extremely comfortable loafers, I looked and felt heavenly. As I drove by the building, I saw a hat peeking out from one of the windows. That was the owner. I waved and signaled for him to come downstairs. He moved. I waited for a small eternity downstairs. Finally, I saw the garage door open. I entered the building. I felt compelled to make the sign of the cross upon entering. I don’t know why; I just did.

This is as far as you gon’ git, he said in a definitely Texan accent. Now, who sent you and what do you want, he said defensively all the while eyeing me with interest.

The reason I’m here is because you have been praying for something, something I can help you with. I don’t know why I said that, it just came to me spiritually. This man needed help.

He looked at me kind of strange then. He walked away and told me to follow him. It was dark and gloomy in this garage. I was a little scared but continued on bravely, confident in the knowledge that we could fix up this place and have a beautiful academy for the children of East New York, where there was prayer and we catered to the special needs of disadvantaged children. Big dreams, but I felt that someone had to do it.

There were planks on the floor, and it seemed that there was water underneath the planks. There was junk everywhere. To the left, to the right, in front, and behind me. I saw a van that looked to be from the sixties or the seventies, and behind that, I saw a long, long black car that looked like it was the first car ever built by Chrysler.

We went through an old creaky door and up three stairs to what appeared to be the main floor of the building. There was a door straight ahead, above which hung a bronze cross with a bronze Jesus Christ nailed to the cross. To our right were two flights of stairs. When we got to the top, slowly, because the old man walked with a cane, I saw high ceilings, a lot of cobwebs, and about a dozen or so old oil paintings hung haphazardly on the walls. Two that caught my eye were gold carvings mounted on black frames of a Hindu god and goddess with many hands. There were pictures of Christ everywhere. Mother Mary holding an infant Jesus, the Last Supper, Christ in the garden of Gethsemane, the Lord’s Prayer, a beautiful oil portrait of an Asian landscape with a lake, and many more. He stopped to open a door that said Can Do Museum, which had a wood carving of a black man’s face and afro on it.

I was totally amazed at what I saw beyond that door. I prayed out loud. I said, Thank you, Lord, for your presence in this room.

I felt the presence of a force far greater than me.

The Museum

There was treasure everywhere. Riches. Seventeenth-century art, oil, prints, lithographs, sculptures, and an entire collection of vintage bisque dolls. It was a very large room, and it was jam-packed with collectibles, black memorabilia from slavery days, swords, and American Indian artifacts. One thing that caught my eye was a slavery whip. It looked nasty.

He said, My name is William, and your name is?

I told him my name and he mispronounced it. He called me Maria instead of Mariah. I thought that he had a speech impediment, so I let it go. Just keep talking, he said.

I did. I told him about my vision for a school here. I told him how I felt the children were being mistreated, especially in the hoods. I told him about Bishop Anstey High School, the beautiful all-girls high school that I had attended in Trinidad. They were strict, but they made sure that you graduated with honors. They taught manners, religion, music, and how to be a lady, as well as math, sciences, English, and other academic subjects. Once a week, we had chapel where the principal prayed and thanked God for the week. I told him it would help the children here immensely if we could allow prayer back in the school curriculum. To think that so many of our children started their day without prayer was a horrendous concept to me. That meant that the enemy, Satan, had free rule in their lives for large periods of time. It really meant that their young lives were in jeopardy. Nobody seemed to care that our children were being stolen from us right under our very noses. As I talked, we walked around the museum, which was rectangular in shape and quite large, so we had a long way to go to make it to the other side.

What I saw next made me shut up. We came to what was the largest altar to God I have ever seen. The stage was elevated about three feet off the floor; on it stood a huge five feet high wooden cross from which was hung a large white sheet with a huge red heart painted on it. A homemade flag. There were at least seven huge Bibles open in front of the heart on a table in front of the cross. On the floor of the stage, there were numerous pieces of African art and some American folk art carvings covering the entire floor. It was obvious that this man was not only blessed but was a collector of collectors. We stopped in front of the altar, and he asked me what I did for a living.

I’m in sales, I said, but I am also a writer. I haven’t actually published anything yet, but I write poetry and I am going to write a book soon.

I don’t ever bring people up here, so consider yourself blessed. Don’t tell anyone what you saw up here.

After all, this is East New York. He finished touring me. The interior was badly in need of repairs, but it was still standing up. We walked downstairs and went through the door with the bronze cross and Jesus hanging above. The ceiling in here was falling down and had already fallen over the main entrance way to the church. We were now in the main building, whereas before we had been on the floor above the garage. This was where the church stood for worship, the sanctuary. It looked like a hazard. There was a pulpit, and on it were some antique chairs: the ones with the real tall regal backs, then rows of pews. I wondered what had happened to his congregation. Where did they all go?

Then he started telling me about what happened to people who tried to steal or break in. He seemed to be saying that the people who had come up against him were all dead now. That could be by nature since he looked at least eighty. Maybe he was a sorcerer. He sure looked the part, with the long white beard. What if he was a wizard? I thought to myself. He told me he was a preacher and that he would preach the gospel till the day he died, whether or not he had an audience. I said oh, okay.

Every Sunday morning, he comes down all those stairs and goes into the office to the side of the pulpit to preach. There was only Cynthia there. Cynthia had been with the church since it got started. She had aged relatively well. Much better than the reverend had. She was the one who fed him. She was the only one who remained of his congregation.

1970

Reverend William Blake was a handsome black man of slim build. He stood five feet eight but always appeared taller because of his Texan hat. That day he wore a three-piece baby-blue suit with a psychedelic colored tie. He was always impeccably dressed. He wore brown leather cowboy boots with a matching brown Western felt hat.

He was preaching that day in Connecticut. This was the last Sunday he would address his congregation. He had accepted an offer made by the Reverend Calvin Nash of Brooklyn First Baptist Church. He wanted to leave because his soon-to-be divorced wife knew exactly where he was and was after his money. They had had six children together—five boys and one girl, who was the apple of her father’s eyes. Chad was the oldest boy and was thirteen years old when his parents split up. Moses was twelve, John was eleven, George was ten, Elijah was nine, and Martha was eight years old. Since she was the only girl, she was spoiled by her father immensely. He always brought her the best presents when he came back from conferences. The kids were a pretty solemn bunch; Martha was usually up to a lot of mischief though. She was always well protected by her big brothers. Even though her hair was usually a mess, they thought that she was very pretty. Her hair was short and nappy, and her mother had a hard time combing it each day for school. She wore dresses, not pants, and looked out of place in pictures with her brothers. One little girl at the end of the picture in a dress bigger than her and short above her knees, with short braids sticking up in the air like little antennas. The eldest boy was good, intelligent, and kind. He looked out for the others.

The boys were afraid of their father who cut them no slack. He was a strict man; they usually got away with stuff with their mother because she was pretty weepy most of the time. The reverend was as strict with them as his own father was strict with him. He got beaten very often with a stick, sometimes with his father’s thick leather belt. His father had been a handsome man; his mother was a short, funny looking, unattractive woman whose parents had been slaves. His father’s father had also been a preacher.

By the time William was twenty years old, he was known as Big Willie, despite his height. His father had powerful friends who inspired Willie with the conviction that he could do great things even though he was colored. One of his father’s friends owned a hospital, which was no easy feat for a black man in the forties.

His own father preached in a little white church building that looked like the church/school building in Little House on the Prairie. There were only black members; his mother taught Sunday school like all first ladies did in those days. His mother was smart and instilled in him the value of saving one’s money. As one of the pastor’s sons, religion was instilled in him. It was expected that he and his brothers were all going to be preachers like their dad.

Though Willie had three sisters and two older brothers, he was the smartest one of them all. He never needed help with his homework. He knew all the answers. He got in trouble often for being a smart aleck and was punished often by his father. He and his little sister Clarice were pretty close. So close that his hand accidentally found its way up her skirt one time, as they were playing mommy and daddy. Clarice didn’t like it, but she played along. She knew her brother well, and if she had stopped him, he would stop being her friend, so she let him feel her up. She was ten, he was twelve at the time. Unfortunately for his behind, his father came home just then and found them playing the game they played. His father beat him mercilessly like a snake. He couldn’t sit for two weeks after that beating.

Therefore, as a father in his twenties, Willie was very stern. Those boys of his towed the line or they got beat unmercifully. Chad, William’s oldest son, was the one who looked like his dad the most. He remembered the day that his mother had asked his father for a divorce. They were driving to this very important conference where his father had to preach that day. In those days, his father drove a 1966 Chrysler New Yorker. An argument broke out between his parents in the car. They all got very silent. He remembered his mother saying, They say that that hussy’s child looks just like you. Why don’t you stop being a hypocrite and just admit that you fathered the child.

His father was angry that she had brought this up in the car with the kids listening and him having to preach in an hour. He needed peace and quiet to collect his thoughts for his sermon. Look, woman, if you don’t like living with me, why don’t you just leave? If yuh going to believe everything they say about me, you might as well get out of my car right now because they always gonna be talking about me! I’m a preacher!

The kids were in the backseat, paying attention to every single word. Chad felt sorry for Dad; he knew he had to preach. The girl listened intently, hating her dad for making her mom feel worthless. The other boys tuned their parents out and pretended that this was not happening.

I’m sick of it, sick and tired of you coming home whenever you feel like and not paying no attention to me. The only time we really spend together is when you want your husbandly rights. You come home and that’s all you want. I can’t take it no more. I want a divorce!

There was a stunned silence. He couldn’t believe she had just said what she said. She wanted to split up his family? His boys, his only daughter? She was out of her cotton-picking mind. He could barely concentrate on his sermon now, but he had to go on. He wouldn’t let her come between God and him. He would preach no matter what came. So he kept on driving, in silence, until they reached the temple. That day, he preached like his whole mind, body, and soul were on fire. He was like dynamite in the pulpit.

There had been many signs of domestic discord that William had not paid much attention to; he was always traveling and preaching and keeping busy running for office and being a big Texan man about town.

They had moved from a small town in Texas just two years ago. His wife did not like it at all in Connecticut. She did not know anyone there, and they treated her like she was just the baby- making machine of the Reverend William Blake. The women flirted with her husband shamelessly, right in her face.

Their marriage had started off well enough. They had been high school sweethearts and started college together. She was twenty years old, and he was twenty-three when they got married. The first year produced a baby and every year after that for the next six years. They didn’t make love anymore; he took what was his. She gradually started to hate him. She lay there as he kept going; she felt like a machine. It didn’t always used to be like this. She wanted out of the marriage.

His sister, Clarice, lived in Connecticut with her husband and three kids. They were not unsympathetic to her. Clarice knew how overbearing and controlling her brother could be. He wanted what he wanted and always got what he wanted. I’ll talk to him for you. I’ll suggest that you two go to marriage counseling, Clarice said to Deidre, trying to ease some of her sister-in-law’s pain.

Yeah, sure, that would work. Girl, you know as well as I do that your brother doesn’t listen to a soul. He’s told me time and time again that the best counselor in the world is God. He is not going to have anyone getting in his business like that.

Well, hang in there. Things will get better, after the campaign is over, said Clarice.

The church that he was pastoring in Connecticut had an older congregation mostly. William had always liked hanging out with older folks. Back in Texas, he had joined his daddy’s lodge at eighteen. By twenty-one, he was in charge of youth services. He had felt called to be a minister.

His dad had been proud of him. None of his other brothers had felt this calling as yet. His dad had taken him around to other churches often; they hung out together. William fit right in. He was like a sponge, soaking up the lifestyles of his father’s minister and lodge buddies. They all knew him, liked him, and never hesitated to give him a reference or to introduce him to whomever he wanted to be introduced to. In those days, the clergy were important folks, like doctors. Through a good referral by one of his daddy’s friends, he had been invited to lead the