“You just love patronizing Clara, don’t you? Pity not all people allow you to treat them like shit. Must be hard to find such a loyal door mat,” Nina said loudly for Clara to hear.
“Don’t attempt to drive a wedge between us, Nina. You’ll just embarrass yourself all the more when you know why she is loyal to me,” Christa smiled. “You were not supposed to be drained before that fucking nicotine in your blood stream fell considerably, but I guess dirty blood is better than none at all.”
“Wow! You’re a vampire too?”
Nina felt her feisty nature possess her, just like in the old days when she’d had to take shit from the misogynistic Prof. Matlock at the University every day as fellow in Edinburgh. “No wonder you’re such a raging bitch.”
Clara and Christa laughed together as Clara pulled a concealed lever that separated the wall opposite that of the tomb where Nina stood. A hidden compartment opened with a deep rumble, the size of a doorway in the rocky wall.
“You don’t really believe in vampires, do you, Dr. Gould?” Christa giggled. “Still, you’re not very far off in your assumptions.”
“Ready!” Clara called from inside the wall. Christa raised the silver barrel. Its Cyclops eye stared Nina straight in the face and she could almost feel the power of the slug splitting her head open. But Christa had far more nefarious ideas. “Move!” she told Nina, cocking the hammer back. With the gun she ushered Nina toward the obscure entrance Clara had opened.
“So, are you going to wall me up as well? What is your problem with historians?” Nina asked sternly, maintaining her condescending sarcasm and hiding that fact that she was terrified.
“Not yet. You see, Dr. Cotswald did not have what you have,” Christa said, pushing Nina violently into the doorway.
“If he did, he would have been a girl. Genius!” Nina kept mocking. She imagined all the things Sam Cleave would have spat at his captors. That way she was assured that she would piss Christa off. After all, that was one supremely effective trait of Sam’s.
“Don’t make me gag you, Dr. Gould,” Christa threatened, grinding her perfect teeth. It had always astonished her how cocky her female captives behaved as opposed to the, dare it be said, stronger males.
They walked down a small offshoot with a concrete floor that quickly flowed out into an average-sized room, tiled from wall to wall. Even the floor was decked out with white tiling, which was what scared Nina the most.
Killing floor, she thought. No way they’d tile everything if it didn’t get messy in here. My God, I’m a lamb wandering right into the abattoir. Much as she hated it, it was time for Nina to start playing nice.
“Alright, then tell me and I won’t talk back. Why did you invite me to teach here? Had it been your husband, I wouldn’t have given it another thought. But you were the one who got his authorization to send me the offer, Christa. How come?” Nina asked as nicely as she could manage when all she wanted to do was get into a brawl with the self-righteous cow.
Clara wiped the blood smear from Nina’s face with a cool cloth.
“Ta,” Nina mumbled derisively.
“We need your blood, Dr. Gould,” Christa said. Her scowl fell hard on Clara. “Clara, strap her down, for fuck’s sake! Are you waiting for her to tip you or something?”
“Why do you let her talk to you like that?” Nina asked, frowning. “Just because she pays your salary, you have to relinquish your self-esteem? Why would you do that for a colleague?”
The two women exchanged glances as Clara strapped Nina to what looked like a dentist’s chair, while Christa held the gun uncomfortably close to the historian’s face.
“I wouldn’t do this for a colleague, Dr. Gould,” Clara explained. “I would do it…for a mother.”
Nina laughed. “No, seriously. Why would you…?”
She noticed the resemblance between the two women, although one was about a decade the other’s senior by the looks of it. Neither of them seemed amused either, which was pretty much their psychology, but there was a disturbing element of honesty in Clara’s words and Christa’s lack of reaction.
“No. Seriously,” Nina forced with a breaking voice, unsure of the unnatural circumstances she was entangled in. Not intending to be cocky this time by sounding like a vain diva, Nina inadvertently uttered, “Jesus, Christa! You look amazing. You have to tell me your secret.”
Without deeming the compliment worthy of a response, Christa ignored Nina. The historian held her tongue now, imagining the painful way in which she was doomed to die.
Nina’s mind raced with thoughts and regrets as her cranium was strapped back onto the headrest of the chair. Exsanguination? Fuckin’ hell! That’s a slow and ugly way to go! Her fear of dying becoming clearer as her chances of escape waned. Nina reconsidered her illness. I never thought I’d want to live through this cancer shit until now.
“I don’t want to die,” Nina said softly, just for good measure, but she knew there would be no clemency from these women. Mute and focused, Christa placed the gun on one of the desks and pulled up her sleeves. “Clara, remove her pants.”
20
Heri was the last one to step out of the car when they reached the cursed place where, in 1969, his uncles had shared their last night together before one was taken from this earth by the cruel greed of occult-obsessed SS officers. Sam and Johild walked together a few feet behind old Gunnar to allow him some privacy during such an emotional moment. They walked slowly and Heri caught up with them.
“Sam, you’re not going to tell anyone about this, right? I’m just making sure, because I don’t want my cousin here to tell me she told me so after you betray my trust,” he asked Sam sincerely.
“On my mother’s life, Heri,” was all Sam replied and that was all he had. Fortunately, Heri accepted that out of hand.
“So you’re really going to keep all this to yourself?” Johild asked skeptically.
“Aye, but I will show my two friends I told you about,” Sam reminded her.
She looked at Heri. “I don’t like it.”
“Look, Sam, if this gets out, those bastards who murdered my uncle right in front of his brother will return. And who knows which of us will end up being their victims this time, you know? I can’t let that happen, as you must understand,” Heri told the journalist.
“I understand. Would you feel better about it if I left the cameras in your car?” Sam asked.
The two cousins exchanged glances, considering the offer. Heri moved closer to Sam and gently put his hand on the camera, pressing it downward. “As a matter of fact, that’s probably the only way you will leave these islands, my friend.”
“Really?” Sam gasped. “You would kill me for this secret?”
“Or keep you here forever,” Johild said, only realizing how affectionately promising it sounded after Sam raised an eyebrow and nodded in acceptance.
“Put it away, Sam. You can know the secret, but you can’t have evidence,” Heri said, making sure the Scotsman heard his ultimatum. “Look at him over there. Look at him.”
Sam looked at Gunnar’s large frame, wilting and slow in his sorrow where he stood. He was waiting for the young ones, but he didn’t turn to see how close they were. He just wanted to stand up there in the icy gusts of Grímsfjall, alone with the spirit of his brother who was thrown from these very cliffs. Gunnar was quiet, but his heart had much to say. When the others joined him he sniffed and said, “There, about fifty meters off, is where we found the Empty Hourglass.”
“Is that the name you gave it?” Johild asked her father. He nodded and even smiled a little.
“That’s what it looked like to us when we stood up on the edge of the cliff and looked down toward it. Little did I know at the time that it didn’t resemble an hourglass, yet served a similar purpose. The fact that it was empty was like a poem, you know, a poem about a magical timekeeper without sand. Where time did not pass, no matter on what side of it you were,” he mused with a smile. “The glorious glow of th
e narrow part was really the portal between the time we have and the time we lose, just as it’s a passage for the sand to fall through to measure time,” he philosophized.
Gunnar took a deep breath, as if he wished to breathe in his brother’s ever-present essence. “They left the next afternoon, not having found anything. Those Nazi pigs! When the commando men and the police came up here they played the same game of deceit, saying they were just tourists, journalists who wanted to see the historical sites. By that time my brother was only missing and all I had was my word, see?”
“Aye, they’d have no reason to detain them and the sons of bitches knew it. You didn’t come back with the police?” Sam asked.
“No. I was advised to keep away until they had proof that these people were involved, but of course, the rock they had killed Jon with was lying at the bottom of the currents long before the sun even came up that day,” Gunnar said as Sam shook his head in disbelief. Gunnar looked him up and down. “Where is your camera, Scotsman?”
Heri stood up proudly. “I forbade him to bring it up here. Whatever you want to show us tonight, you can show us, but there will be no proof of its existence.”
“That takes a lot of pressure off my heart, I must say. Sam, thank you for that,” the old man said.
Heri and Johild looked at Sam with reprimanding looks of victory. They had defeated the will of the snooping Scotsman, welcome as he was, for challenging the discretion of the matter.
“You’re welcome, Gunnar.” Sam smiled and gave the two cousins a mocking look. “I told you that you could trust me.”
“Come, I’ll show you the place where the two circular ruins meet. But you know, I haven’t been here in many, many years. I have no idea if the glowing pool is still here.”
“So it’s a pool?” Johild asked.
“Yes, the mine shaft the British erected here apparently filled up with underground water from the mountain, forming a subterranean pool. The shaft previously connected the two structures.”
“And the colors on Sam’s picture?” Heri asked.
“Those were present in the water when I returned a week after my brother was killed. My brother’s best friend’s father was what would today be called the local police chief. When he went out to question the SS officers, he told them that I’d fallen from the cliff while running away in the night and that my body was found in the bay. Smart man. He knew they’d kill me if they knew I was still alive.” He smiled.
“And they bought it,” Sam said, smiling. “Lucky for you.”
“Imagine how strange it was for me to run into that same woman in 1985 when she returned with a new pack of dogs? She was older then, but not nearly looking her age. I think she recognized me from back then, but said nothing,” Gunnar recalled. “But that time she said she was a dance teacher from England named…um, let me think, she called herself uh, Cotswald. Yes! Now I remember. She was Mrs. Cotswald. Maybe she got sick of the Himmler hound beating her up and married a Brit.”
“Well, seeing what she was involved in, I would wish that hound had rather beaten her to death, actually,” Johild grunted. “She could have helped you and Uncle Jon, Papa.”
“But she did,” Sam interjected. “She warned them, didn’t she? And why wouldn’t she acknowledge recognizing your father when she saw him again, if she were so evil?”
“You’re protecting a Nazi bitch whose pals killed my family, Sam,” she retorted. “Don’t protect someone’s reputation against my ill wishes until you think about who she really was.”
Heri could feel the tension mount between the journalist and his cousin again. Gunnar agreed with Sam to an extent, but he wasn’t about to inflame his daughter’s wrath again, not here where his brother’s memory was sacred.
“So, Uncle, do you think that glowing pool will still be here?” Heri asked out of curiosity and for the sake of peace between Johild and Sam.
Gunnar shrugged positively. “I don’t know, but Sam took that picture less than a week ago.”
“Remember, that was just a light anomaly above the spot. It wasn’t a pool – just a bunch of rocks when I investigated,” Sam explained about the night he took the picture above the Empty Hourglass.
“It’s almost dark,” Heri reported, his clear gray eyes surveying the skies and the dying light. “We’ll know soon enough.”
While they sat vigil at the virtually invisible ruin, waiting for the lights to appear, Sam took advantage of the time to find out a bit more about the anomaly he’d snapped with his Canon a few nights before.
“Heri, I saw your books on science and physics at home. You must have some theory on what this is?” Sam asked.
“Astrophysics is my thing, yes,” Heri attested. “But this might be celestial, or at least atmospheric in nature. What would baffle me, though, was if these lights were under the water. So first we have to see if that shaft is still filled with water. If those lights ascend from it, I’ll be thoroughly perplexed.”
Gunnar laughed. It was a dissociative chuckle that sounded like the mocking of someone who knew when others did not. But he hadn’t intended it that way. He was just letting out the juvenile excitement of a boy about to show his friends something awe-inspiring.
“Why can’t you young people just enjoy it for what it is?” he asked with a smile. “Why do you have to analyze and study everything to debunk the magic of the beauty we live in?”
Johild smiled, hooking her arm into her father’s. “I agree with you, Papa.”
“There’s no such thing as magic, Uncle Gunnar. We don’t take things at face value in the name of God anymore,” Heri explained passionately. “The world has evolved into thinking individuals who study and examine things within the scientific spectrum to prove that all things deemed miracles are justified by science. No more do we allow emotion and miracles to steer us and influence our decisions.”
“No,” Gunnar replied indifferently, “your generation is so engrossed by your scientific theories, to claim knowledge previously privy only to gods, that you neglect to understand that miracles and magic are but the manifestation of wondrous scientific principles. We all know that our world is governed by science, Heri, but to be so rigid in proving magical things a farce is in direct contradiction of living – truly living and enjoying the strangeness, instead of trying to debunk everything that is still wonderful in nature.”
Heri sank his head. Of course he disagreed, even just for the use of the words ‘miracle’ and ‘magic.’ But he partly fathomed what his uncle meant. He was perceptive enough to see that Gunnar knew the reality of the anomaly, but chose to see its existence as magical. The forty-three-year-old nephew of old Gunnar elected to accept his uncle’s need to dream and to believe that such things, such as color phenomena under water, were possible.
“Look!” Johild exclaimed. “Is this just psychosomatic of me that I just want to see what my dad is talking about?”
They all got to their feet. Gunnar and Heri looked around them to make sure that there were no other witnesses around them.
“Clear,” Heri said.
“As if anybody could come for a walk on a hilltop in this bloody cold!” Sam shivered.
“Scotland is colder, isn’t it?” Johild asked mockingly.
Sam leered at her over the collar he’d pulled up to cover his mouth and nose. “Usually, but with the wind chill of your heart, Jo, these islands can grow colder than the Arctic.”
“Oh darling, I only make it cold to give you an excuse for the obvious lack of endowment you no doubt sport under those layers of clothing,” she hit back.
“Whoa!” Sam gasped, stunned. “That was a really good one!”
Heri followed his uncle, who had started toward the higher slope of the mountainside. In passing he sighed at Sam and Johild. “Get a room already, you two. I can smell the sex from a mile away.”
21
“Where is it?” Johild asked when she and the other two had caught up with Gunnar. “I saw it a few moments ago. Pap
a, it looks like the Aurora Borealis, but very small, right?”
He nodded. “That’s actually the best way to describe it.”
Heri scrutinized the area his cousin had pointed out, but saw nothing. “Are you sure, Jo? I see nothing but flattened stones and long grass.”
Sam stood with him, also trying to find what Johild had claimed to observe. Baffled, the four of them stood staring at the site, moving their eyes to widen their peripheral vision, but saw nothing.
“Gunnar, I’m freezing my fucking ass off,” Sam said. “Can’t we leave a camera here to capture the lights and just stream it to my laptop while we wait in the car?”
“Pussy,” Johild mocked, sending her cousin into a fit of laughter. “Just stick it out, Sam. If it’s what I thought I saw, it’ll be worth the suffering.”
“I’ll tell you what. I’ll stretch out in the car and you and your toughness can come and summon me when the lights appear, okay?” Sam teased. Heri tapped him on the shoulder and pointed out into the dusky gray of the night, his eyes fixed on something. “What?” Sam asked, but he soon knew what his friend was staring at.
Above the area where the two virtually invisible circles of stone met, a faint play of light shimmered no more than a meter above the grass and weeds that curled under the cold wind.
“Holy shit,” Sam gasped softly with widened eyes that were tearing up in the chill of the early night.
Gunnar turned to smile at Sam and Heri, beaming proudly that his word was confirmed. He crossed his arms over his chest and winked. “I told you so.”
“Wow,” Johild uttered in awe, heading straight for the strange pink, green, and blue haze moving lazily within the confines of some invisible field. “The wind is strong up here. Auroras usually appear stronger with less atmospheric movement, don’t they?”
“I suppose,” Sam replied. “But I’m no expert on the Northern Lights.”
“This can’t be the Aurora phenomenon, people,” Heri said impatiently, frustrated with their ineptitude at telling basic scientific principles apart. “Those colors in the sky are caused by solar wind in the magnetosphere,” he started to explain, sounding a bit patronizing. Gunnar’s eyes were stuck on the beauty of the anomaly, while Sam and Jo seemed indifferent to the origin of the phenomenon. It drove him crazy that they weren’t concerned with the reason for the appearance of the lights, merely that it was awesome.
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