by P. W. Child
“Okay, I’ll bite . . . but what about the golden chain?” Nina asked suddenly, drawing a deadline right through the enthusiasm of the men.
“Hey, come now, one thing at a time,” Purdue chuckled in amusement. “Let us go find the train tracks first and see what comes up down there.”
“I agree,” Sam said. “And the sooner we get to the bottom of it, excuse the pun, the sooner we’ll know what to do about that bloody generator.”
“Not to discourage or worry you, Sam, but that container will not hold that machine much longer, by my calculations and my knowledge of scientific storage utilities its days will soon be numbered,” Purdue warned.
“And God only knows what level of destruction it will unleash,” Nina worried. “We have to make haste, gentlemen.” She put out her cigarette and her two companions followed suit, gathering up their luggage, and heading for their new, old car.
From the top of the mighty Fürstenstein Castle, as the German tongue spoke it, the three stood looking down over the lavish green gardens, impeccably kept. As he had done before, Purdue used his pen-shaped spyglass to survey the underlying geography through the device’s x-ray setting. It detected several possible entry points to the hollow caverns beneath the medieval structure with its richly Bohemian heritage. It was almost dusk when Purdue marked the coordinates of the entry point he selected to be easiest accessible.
“Let’s go. We have to get diving gear,” he declared.
“Excuse me, what?” Nina asked, but Sam just placed his hand on the small of her back and pushed her ahead of him as they descended the steps into the closest hall.
“The best point of entry into the tunnels below is through the water table, as always. And here we have ample fountains and ponds around the perimeter that can take us safely into one of the subterranean pools,” Purdue clarified.
“Great! More underground tunnels I have to crawl around in,” Nina scoffed.
“Not to worry, Nina,” Purdue smiled cunningly, “only the first part is crawl-worthy. The rest is quite vast in height and width, fit for a locomotive.”
“If I drown I’m haunting you both . . . and I won’t be the velvety, hand-type spook either. I will go poltergeist on you!” she threatened in a childlike manner that Purdue and Sam found highly entertaining.
“On a serious note, we will need masks to wear when we are sub-level,” Sam noted.
“Why?” Nina asked.
“You don’t know what kind of bacterial agents there will be down there. There are rats and bats for sure. Who knows what shit we’ll be breathing in,” he explained.
“During the war thousands of laborers lost their lives from outbreaks of typhus, so I suppose pants get tucked into boots tonight,” Nina advised them.
~~~~~
Just before 10pm, a good time to infiltrate old dig sites according to the Book of Purdue, the three of them submerged themselves into a deep well, unused for water these days. It stood outside the perimeter of the castle and its ponds, but it fed from the same underground river, which was reputed to flow straight along the passageways of the excavations.
“This is grotesque, Sam,” Nina mumbled, as Sam lowered her by harness and rope down the narrow, mossy pipe of rock and fern.
“Just think of the gold, Nina. Just think of Odin’s tomb and the discovery of wisdom,” he smiled.
“I have enough wisdom, and I don’t need gold that gets me killed,” she answered as she descended into the black eye of the well.
A few minutes later they had come through the murky water of the subterranean pools and emerged in a small cavern that reached no higher than an outstretched arm above their heads. Nina felt nauseous with terror within the confined space.
“How do I always get myself into places like this?” she asked no one in particular. She crawled after Purdue with Sam behind her. With only Purdue’s flashlight and flares for light, their time was as limited as their illumination. The first green flare cracked and hissed as Purdue stood up in the dark. Nina tried not to think of the green light she had to use in the Himalayan hell hole when she last crawled through worm hollows.
“My God, it is magnificent!” Purdue exclaimed. He moved the flare around in a 360-degree circle to ascertain their environment. They were standing in one of the Nazi-planned complexes of Project Riese, Complex Książ. In awe of the history and magnitude of the chamber, Sam and Nina swirled slowly to survey every feature of the incomplete railroad system.
“Aye, it sure is,” Sam agreed with Purdue. “It still smells of steel and sulphur.”
“And rat shit,” Nina chimed in.
“Let’s start walking. These tunnels were never completed, so they could not take us too far before we found something,” Purdue, ever the explorer, smiled and started without the other two.
“Hey, wait. I’m still trying to get out of my wetsuit,” Nina moaned.
“Come Nina!” Purdue’s voice echoed from the green light ahead that gradually moved farther away and draped her in the thick darkness from behind.
She caught up with them in time to escape the blackness. Above them the rock was arched with wire reinforcements and wooden beams to keep it from collapsing. Concrete and stone made up the sides of the tunnel, painted white in most places, which comprised steel sheets and shafts. There were no tracks laid, only rocky floor under their boots. Far off, the silence yielded to the occasional dripping of seepage through the jagged arches overhead.
“Spooky,” Sam told Nina in jest to see her reaction.
“I’m claustrophobic, Sam, not superstitious,” she responded.
“Even so,” Purdue noted in amusement, “you can almost feel the presence of those who worked here. I mean, so many people suffered greatly down here under tyranny, disease, malnutrition, and general torment. How many must have died right here under our feet?”
“Thank you, Dave,” Nina sighed, slightly unsettled.
“I’m not a man who entertains the notion of an afterlife or ghosts,” Purdue carried on at his own pace ahead of Sam and Nina. “But I have to say, one has to give it some pause when one is in the company of such a dark space of history. I can distinctly feel others . . . they are all around us, wondering what we are doing in their tomb.”
Suddenly the darkness grew robust, and it grew and grew around them until the entire tunnel was engulfed in black. Nina yelped, grabbing for Sam.
“Whoa,” Sam uttered in the darkness.
“Not to worry,” Purdue consoled, “my flare just burned out. Hang on . . .”
Another crack and hiss brought orange light to Nina’s relief. She let go of Sam’s arm as she noticed something glimmering in a side tunnel filled with rubble and sand.
“Look!” she exclaimed. “There is something in there.”
“I hope so, because there is just nothing ahead of us but endless cavern and darkness,” Purdue sighed.
Sam took one of Purdue’s flashlights from his belt and walked toward the smaller tunnel to the left. It was obscured by debris and abandoned building implements stacked to the side of the wall face. Had Nina not seen it at first light from the shadows it would have been invisible to their line of sight. Sam skipped over the dangerous steel protrusions, sheets, and wire of copper and tools. Under it all a mound of sandstone blasted out was heaped and Sam arduously climbed to the top that was just lower than the roof of the smaller tunnel, enabling him to peek inside.
“I swear, if a rat jumps out at me now . . .” he muttered as he pointed the flashlight beam into the pitch-dark channel.
“What do you see?” Purdue asked, joining Nina at a safe distance.
Hidden under soot, coal, and sand of seventy years, Sam could discern something solid. It was big, almost filling the entire height of the tunnel. As he moved the flashlight something shiny gleamed on the far side of the blocked-off entrance.
Sam slowly turned to face his comrades, reveling in their curiosity. Then he started to smile.
Chapter 28
&nbs
p; From the entry pool something emerged. The water splashed wildly, brimming over the edges of the rock pool as something massive crawled from it. Seeing in the dark was not a problem for the creature. In fact, low light was the best light for eyes so sensitive to light that shades or goggles were usually the order of the day. This far back, the noise of the surfacing made very little difference, since the quarry he stalked was too far down the tunnel to note anything amiss.
Sam and Purdue made quick work of pulling away the debris to make the chasm accessible for them to investigate. Nina stood nearby with another green flare, lighting their way for them.
“Guys, we are down to six flares. Just saying,” she reminded them.
“Don’t fret, dearest, we will not be long. We know basically what we are looking for,” Purdue called back to her. Save for Sam and Purdue’s panting and groaning from their labor, Nina pitched her ears. There was another sound that was previously absent, but she could not quite separate it from the other noise. Since they were pressed for time she did not merit it important enough to halt the progress of her companions to excavate whatever was hidden there.
“Now, Purdue,” Sam started in his loathsome mocking tone, “tell me, if we should happen upon the rest of that leviathan chain—”
“Yes? Sam?” Purdue said through his gritted teeth, catching his breath.
“Tell me how you propose to carry that out of here, my very industrious friend,” Sam completed his taunting.
“I don’t know yet. We’ll find a wheelbarrow or something and wheel it out, hoist it through the water . . . whatever. We have ample implements down here to rig something up to get it done, don’t you think?” Purdue puffed, a few words at a time.
“Whatever you do, just make it quick. I have a feeling we are not alone,” Nina warned, looking around with the flare in her hand pointing where she was looking.
“Hey!” the men shouted. “You’re taking the light away!”
“Sorry,” she winced. Her eyes studied the dark track from which they had come, but she saw nothing to prove that she really heard something.
Finally, they had cleared enough away for her to join them.
“Look here, the tiny side tunnel actually has tracks, unlike the mainline,” Sam remarked, walking among the steel rails.
“Not only a track, my friend,” Purdue said as he took the flare from Nina and walked deeper into the tunnel, “but that track also actually carries . . . a train!”
Sam and Nina gasped in awe. Although the steam locomotive and its three cars were covered in dirt, making it hard to tell it apart from the wall of the cavern, its shape and weight were unmistakable. In the darkness, with only the slight illumination of Purdue’s flare and a flashlight that Nina held, the static iron horse seemed quite ominous. A huge, black piece of machinery it was, like a giant, coal stove that had not cooked a meal in centuries—rather creepy.
What made the train look even more odd and surreal was the fact that it had no wheels. Either they had constructed the thing in full, bar the wheels, or the entire wheel base had sunk into the ground it stood on. Giving it the appearance of a boat made it look quite disturbing and out of place.
Purdue, Sam, and Nina planned to silently pillage the undiscovered treasure trove, if the legends were accurate and Josef Palevski did not have a sick sense of humor. Each in their own train car, they inspected every corner and cupboard, under every bunk, and even inside the floor, using the tools they picked out of the debris in the tunnel.
“Anything?” Purdue asked.
“No.”
“Nope, nothing,” Nina could be heard inside the last car.
“Shit,” Sam said. “He was fucking playing us, man.”
“I hope you’re wrong, Sam. I certainly don’t want to go back to Finland to find Jari’s hidden house again,” Purdue exhaled hopelessly.
Nina walked past Sam and Purdue’s cars. Hers was stripped bare, with nothing to show for it, so she thought she would at least make good of taking pictures, since the site was a rare find she wished to take credit for with Sam and Purdue. Her phone battery was almost dead, so she set it rapidly so that she could prove she was here. Angle by angle, she shot the dead, black machine for her records, making for a collection of very macabre-looking photos. At least she would have something to show for all her trouble.
In the cab of the black engine, Nina placed her flashlight pointing upward against the cab roof, so that it would light up the whole compartment. Around the firebox there was what would strike a layperson, such as herself, as a mess of wires, copper and black. Between those she scrutinized the intricate workings of the bolts, meters, and what looked to her like steering wheels or valves near the top of the cowl unit.
As in the lighthouse, a careless etching stood out to her.
“What the hell is this?” she said softly to herself, wiping the face of what she reckoned was a pressure gauge. Nina gasped. In the transparent mock glass, several names were etched, forming two vertical columns. She took her pocket knife and worked away at the edge of the plastic until she could carefully wedge it loose. With a gentle grasp she pulled it free and held it on her palm to read it against the blinding white light.
A sudden break in her flashlight beam startled Nina so that she called out, “Hey! Sam, stop stalking me and come look here!” It had been a moving shadow of something solid that passed in front of the light for a second, but it was not Sam.
“What?” Sam asked, hanging by one arm from the door of his chosen train car.
Nina’s blood froze. “Where’s Purdue?”
“Still slowly being disappointed,” Purdue cried from the other car’s window, holding up some papers and files. “This is all I’m getting. Any luck there with you?”
Making a distinct decision that the tunnel was merely haunted by both her unsound mind as well as proper spectral apparitions, Nina dismissed the notion that there really was someone in there with them. If only to spare her nerves, she summoned the men to come and see the etching on the plastic cover of the gauge.
“Look at this list,” she told Sam and Purdue. “Note the method and the basic hand on this?”
“Yes, the same as the lighthouse artist. You think Josef left this here?” Purdue asked.
“Great, more clues to follow while Paddy’s sitting on a time bomb,” Sam sighed. “I thought this was where we would get what we came for.”
“Me too, but there is more to his legacy than just the chain. I think he wanted Jari to find the ‘Tomb of Odin,’” Nina argued. “The copper inlays on the cross refers to Odin’s grave, and I think that is what he wanted Jari to find—Agartha.”
“Say what?” Sam frowned.
“Agartha is according to legend, the realm under the earth where the Vril Society’s master race lives. It is a magical Shangri-La of higher power, godhood, super human ability, and all that, remember? I think the chain has something to do with opening the portal, or the cave, to gain entry to ‘Odin’s Tomb,’ to use the metaphor,” Nina lectured them.
“This list, as far as memory serves, is various places where the Nazis sent the POWs to build railroads, but three of these do not fit in,” she reported excitedly.
They read the list:
Włodarz Rzeczka
Uppsala Osówka
Sokolec Jugowice
Kyrka Soboń
Jedlinka Gamla
“Here, ‘Uppsala,’ ‘Kyrka,’ and ‘Gamla’ are anomalies. They were not complexes of Project Riese,” she noted.
“You sure are intelligent, little Olga,” a deep growl emanated from the darkness. Nina screamed and grabbed Purdue’s hand. From just outside the cab, the colossal man stepped into the faint white light, planting his hands on both Sam and Purdue’s arms.
“Thomas?” she shrieked at the sight of the monstrous German she thought had perished with his brothers in the lighthouse.
“Or is it Dr. Nina Gould? I was going to just follow you to lead me to the generator, but now that you
three are literally threatening to expose us by opening up Agartha prematurely, I can’t let any of you see the light of day again,” he bellowed.
Sam nudged at Purdue beyond the attention of the giant. With his eyes, he led Purdue’s gaze toward the firebox of the cab, on which the Valknut symbol was scratched. Purdue nodded surreptitiously and felt Sam pulling another flare from Purdue’s rucksack, ever so carefully that Thomas did not notice.
“Hey, Thomas, just before you dispatch us, can I ask one thing?” Sam asked.
“I’m not the generous type,” Thomas replied. “Why? What could you possibly need from me?”
“I need you to carry something out for us,” Sam said.
Nina turned to look at him as if he was insane. Her eyes stretched wide and she shook her head to discourage him from doing something stupid.
“What?” Thomas thundered, livid for Sam’s audacity.
Sam pulled out the flare and cracked it right in Thomas’ face, blinding him instantly. Screaming in fury, the cruel German fell to the ground, holding his eyes with his palms.
“I bet that must be one hell of a migraine, Sam,” Purdue smiled.
“What are you doing? Are you out of your fucking mind?” Nina screeched, but Sam held the flare on the cowering giant.
“Nina, calm down. He is probably completely blind. In hospital you muttered a lot of things about your experience in the tunnels,” Purdue clarified with his hands on her shoulders. “You told us that these boys cannot see in bright light, that they would go blind if they were struck with a sharp beam.”
“He is immobilized,” Sam affirmed. “Probably for good.”
“Now, let us see what the firebox is hiding from us, shall we?” Purdue suggested, and took Nina’s hand to accompany him. Sam stood sentinel over Thomas’ furious staggering.
Purdue opened the firebox. Nina lit the interior with her flashlight.
“No fucking way!” she gasped, unable to process what she saw before her. “Sam! Sam, we found the rest of the chain!”