by P. W. Child
His bedroom was not to be altered, Frau Heller told him. She would have it decorated according to the things she taught him and nothing else. No childish nonsense or celebrities. Radu thought the German was a little off her rocker. Why would she be so concerned what he made of his room? But she insisted that his bedroom be decorated only with what she put there, so, with a shrug Radu agreed.
Soon, however, Radu discovered just how pedantic Greta Heller was about his surroundings, especially after their first day. It was a sunny Saturday, but instead of letting him go for a swim in the indoor heated pool as he wished to, Frau Heller sat him down in the seclusion of her office and study.
Her massive mahogany desk by the window was covered by a lacy white cloth, resembling some sort of Catholic altar he had seen in Cluj before. Nothing was on it and two beautiful wooden chairs were placed on the left and the right of it. The tall window ushered through the morning light that illuminated the edges of the drawn drapes like a halo.
“Come. Sit on that side. I’ll sit here,” she invited, but her tone was undeniably rigid. He knew he had no choice.
“Can I go swimming after this?” Radu asked, his hands fidgeting.
“If you complete the lesson. Maybe. But you have to concentrate on your work first,” she said plainly as she seated him. She walked around to the other side of the table and sat down with a shoe box full of teaching aids.
In their first tutoring session she started with cue cards. No words were written on them, which was a major relief for the boy. Each card had a picture on it, depicting one or the other scenario or item.
“Now, are you ready?” she smiled. He nodded while leaning forward curiously to see over the edge of the shoe box. Greta wanted to make it exciting for the child, so that he would pour more passion into it. Nothing would come of all her teaching if he stayed this indifferent to it as he was. One by one, slowly she laid out four cards.
“Now we will see how smart you are,” she said, deliberately using reverse psychology to challenge him effectively. It worked.
“I am smart. I’ll show you,” he defended eagerly. “What do you want me to do?”
Greta was thrilled at his response.
“On each card there is a picture, correct? I want you to rearrange them so that they make a story. Can you do that?” she asked gently, keeping her demeanor positive and supportive.
Radu leaned on his elbows and scrutinized the colorfully sketched options. In front of him the cards depicted a boy, a car, a tree and a ball. It was dead silent in the study where Greta had disconnected her landline from the wall to give them uninterrupted privacy. She watched the Roma boy zealously, his black eyes darting from one card to another, his bottom lip caught between his teeth and his fingers twitching slightly as he contemplated his move.
There was no rush. Excited as she was to see what he came up with, she gave him time on the first try. By the fourth or fifth round she was certain that he would be more familiar with the game and would react faster.
Suddenly he started arranging the cards. He placed the car first, next the tree, then the boy and finally the ball. When he was done he cast his eyes up to her in anticipation. Greta looked at the order in which he had arranged them and asked, “Why did you decide on this sequence, Radu?”
“Is it right? Did I get it right or is it wrong?” he asked.
“There is no right or wrong, silly,” she played, hoping the lack of specific answers would encourage him. “Look at your cards. Now, tell me the story you made from it.”
“Well, the car drove up to the tree, like the park where I used to play, and the boy climbed out of the car and played with his ball.”
“Well done!” she cheered, clasping her hands together favorably, although she was hoping for better, darker, stories. “Rearrange them to make another story – a different one.”
Radu frowned at the request, but then put his mind to task. A shorter time passed before he replaced their positions. The boy, the ball, the car and the tree came in sequence.
“Tell me the story,” she said in the same tone she ordered him with. “Make it interesting.”
“The boy kicked the ball into the street. The car swerved to miss it and smashed into the tree,” he said hesitantly. It was all he could think of at the time and hoped that she would not be angry because of the accident. But she was very impressed. Greta jumped up and applauded.
“That is a very interesting story!” she laughed. Radu beamed at her, proud of himself at her reaction. It was wonderful to be able to entertain Frau Heller like this! For the first time in his life he felt intelligent and important, that such a high class lady would be so impressed by something he created. Radu liked this game. He could not wait to play more.
Chapter 18 – Confessions and Revelations
“Hey, who said you could smoke here?” Sam snapped in a whisper, startling Nina into a surge of cuss words. Her reaction amused him no end. He had followed her as she snuck out to the third floor hall balcony for a quick smoke before bed. Behind her silhouette, slightly lit by the exterior lights of the building, the sky reached from horizon to horizon in a visibly curved, star strewn dome. By the face of the sky it seemed that the stars of a hundred galaxies chose this night to gather over the Brdy Forest.
“Geez, look at that,” Sam remarked when the breathtaking panorama caught his eye.
“I know, right? How amazing is this view? Imagine living here permanently,” Nina marveled as Sam took the halfway smoked cigarette from her to take a drag.
“Aye. I don’t think these owners fully appreciate what they have here. They are so used to it,” he answered. Sam looked at Nina while she gazed up at the midnight sky, her head tilted dangerously far back. A thin knitted blanket graced her shoulders and hung down to her knees to guard against the cold. In front of her chest she held the two edges together with her hand while the woodland breathed its night wind over the magnificent old structure and occasionally compelled the blanket’s fringe to lift in corrugated cadence.
“I have been meaning to ask you how your treatment is going,” Sam said matter-of-factly, not bothering to notice that he had now annexed Nina’s smoke. “Are you still having episodes or have they disappeared?”
Nina sighed. She did not want Sam to know that she had been suffering from the strange time-loss dips and that she could hardly tell reality from dreams sometimes. Still, he was always her trusted confidant and she could share anything with him without fearing judgment.
“It is nearing the end, which is a relief,” she chose to say.
“My god, Nina, are you going to make it till Christmas? Because I have already bought your present and I’d hate to have to return it,” he jested, teasing her choice of words. Nina reached a hand from under the blanket and dealt him a hefty tap in the gut, which had him groaning.
“Careful, I am still tender from that street orgy in Germany!” he moaned playfully. Nina’s smile waned into a wince of guilt at the mention of her tardiness that almost sealed Sam’s doom.
“Oi, it was not your fault,” he soothed with a hand on her back that sent a pleasant shock through her body on contact. “Now, tell me how you are doing with the arsenic problem.”
“There is nothing better to report than last time, old boy,” she shrugged. “I will live, but there is some damage done that will probably pose a problem for the rest of my life.”
“What manner of damage is that?” he asked, standing closer.
Sam’s close proximity brought with it the alluring odor of his skin and Nina breathed him in deeply without letting him see.
“Look, I can deal with it. It is just…” she wanted to tell him, but she hesitated. Nina wanted to share her weird recounting spells with him, because for some reason she reckoned he would understand.
“Tell me.”
That was all she needed to hear from him. Nina turned to face Sam, her hair slithering from side to side in the wind, bringing moments of shadow to her eyes. He smelled so
good she almost felt faint this close to him. First scouting the double glass doors for others who might be within earshot of her insanity, Nina studied Sam’s eyes.
“I think I can tell the future?” she uttered unwillingly, sounding extremely uncertain of her words.
“You’re asking me?” Sam replied with a perplexed frown.
“No. No,” she sighed and looked down for a second to gather her thoughts and prepare for another attempt. “What I mean is…I have, on a few occasions before, known what was going to happen.”
“Like precognition?” he asked sincerely.
“No. Yes. It is not so much seeing what is going to happen,” she stuttered, “but rather living it. And knowing what is coming because I have already lived it in vivid recollection – living it…twice.”
Nina’s whisper was quivering with doubt, a testament to the argument between her logic and her experience.
“Like…like…déjà vu?” Sam asked with a tinge of intrigue in his voice. His hand found her arm under the blanket and Nina could feel his fingers lock gently around it. With a mild tug he brought her closer to make sure she was alright. The petite brunette rocked dangerously on her weak legs as a dizzy spell gripped her, as had been befalling her several times a week since she had last seen her doctor.
“Nina, are you with me?” Sam urged loudly now, on the verge of summoning help, but she recovered in his arms and he wondered if Nina did not stage the moment to be close to him. The thought excited him no end in his endless aching for her to admit her feelings for him. If only that were the truth, he would be ecstatic, but Nine Gould was not the type to allow her tender side to show.
“I’m alright. I’m okay, Sam,” her voice came and faded as her eyelids fluttered. He could see that she was not faking it by her frighteningly pale complexion. “Jesus, what happened? Did I fall?”
“No, you just buckled a tad, you freak,” Sam replied in humor, but inside him a fear rose that Nina was not healing as well as she led on. It was quite typical of her to keep a tough exterior to hide her true suffering, after all.
“Apparently the damage I sustained through playing host to this deadly concoction, is mostly psychological they say. I fear it might be neurological, Sam. What if my brain short circuits? What if I get a stroke and I am left helpless and crazy all at the same time?” she ranted, her voice riding the gust in a rising and falling volume that echoed through the desolate woods below the elevated castle.
“For one thing, you need to calm down, otherwise just that will happen!” he insisted, still holding her close to him. His hair was in disarray and his eyes reflected the concern he harbored. “Listen to me. You will be fine. The very fact that you are still alive speaks volumes about your resilience. Besides, it has been months of recuperation and treatment, and you are getting better every time I see you. Don’t be daft! You’ll whip this shite in no time, darling,” Sam assured her. He was blissfully unaware of how he addressed her, but she took note the moment he said it.
“What?” she asked, wanting him to repeat it.
Sam realized at once what he said and launched a rapid correction.
“What? I was being endearing,” he said forcefully, but he could feel his ‘fool rush’ warm his body, the adrenaline rush one gets when saying or doing something embarrassing.
“Endearing?” Nina pestered him with a witty pout. “Whatever you say…”
She found her footing and when he released her she playfully added, “…darling.”
Sam scoffed and looked away to apparently take in the view again.
“Jokes aside, Sam, I am just afraid there is a time bomb in my brain. I have lapses in experiences, not time. It sounds crazy, but I get a constant feeling that I have lived a scenario before, so much so, that I could even foretell Petra’s name before I officially met her!” she continued.
Sam looked at her with a puzzled expression.
“And you have been getting it since we almost lost you at the Valhalla site?” Sam asked, referring to their previous excursion where Nina almost succumbed to the poison the Nazis had administered to her.
“No, only lately,” Nina answered quickly, but then she realized something pivotal and stood frozen for a moment as the fact dawned on her, “…lately. Since I was to meet Petra Kulich!”
Her eyes grew wider as the explanation evaded her, yet allowed her the first point in her insight. “Sam, it started with Professor Kulich’s visit! What the hell would she have to do with my psychological condition?”
Sam thought about it for but a second. He pondered on the chain of events that brought him and Nina together on this project and what it entailed. There was the German Captain and his killer mercenaries, the young boy with the tarot card, adopted by a suspected crooked philanthropist. Then there was Kulich and her pal Igor at a site where the Black Sun had hidden stolen treasures, the very same subject of the assignment he was on in Germany where his colleagues were executed for searching for the same loot. Another factor was the alleged thief who stole from this very hoard a deck of cards said to be evil. Sam gasped. And all that came back round to the one tarot card Radu was obsessed with, the pursuit of which they are now traveling to Romania for. Full circle.
“Oh my god!” he exclaimed, his hand slipping through his hair as he found some sense in it.
“What?” Nina impelled.
“Too long a story to explain, but Nina, you are far from crazy! Christ, I can’t believe this is actually remotely plausible!” he cried out, and started pacing like a madman.
“Sam Cleave!” Nina shouted. “Don’t make me kick you in the pipes to snap you out of it!”
When Nina voiced her warnings of physical violence it was hardly ever empty threats, so Sam stopped and stared at her, hand still lodged in his hair.
“Tell me why I am not crazy. I like that part in particular,” she coaxed calmly.
“Your déjà vu is still a mystery to me, but by my own observations none of this is mere coincidence. I am not sure how to wrap my mind around it, because by god, it is way out of my range of accepted phenomena,” he rambled. He grasped Nina by her upper arms and looked her straight in the eye. “But believe me when I say that all of this, everything that had happened to us thus far since you were hired by Professor Kulich, is connected.”
“Connected how?” she frowned.
“All the people you and I have collectively encountered so far are somehow connected!” he whispered loudly. “They all know each other through third parties. All of this…it is as if…I don’t know…”
Nina was intrigued by the explanation, but thoroughly bewildered by Sam’s convoluted presentation. He was clearly onto something. Usually composed and of ready wit, Sam was now like a genius on the verge of an epiphany. His ability to unravel superficial mysteries was almost infallible, therefore she took his ramblings seriously.
“It is as if what, Sam?” she urged impatiently.
“As if…this is crazy…it was all planned; all laid out in order by some superior intelligence, made to come to pass. But I have to admit that I don’t know the reason,” he conceded, half laughing at his ludicrous notion. Then he looked at Nina, who stood with her eyes fixed on the ground, mulling his suggestion over.
“Superior intelligence?” she said softly. “Like God?”
“No, something sinister, something malevolent we cannot explain – a very dangerous pet leashed by a deadly master.”
Chapter 19 – Hungarian Flight
Less than two days later the party were on their way to the Transylvanian region of Romania to find the lost loot stolen by Petr Costita. He was said to have lived in the village of Baciu, one of seven communes located around the Hoia Baciu forest. It was a long shot, Petra knew, but she was willing to take the chance, to exhaust all options to find what her brother wanted her to destroy. She did not care what it took and she figured being in the actual vicinity of the thief’s hometown would be indispensable to her cause.
Only if she could
speak to the people there could she obtain the information she needed to dig deeper into his whereabouts and hopefully convince him that the stolen treasures of Prague Castle should be returned to its rightful home. If he refused, Petra Kulich was all too willing to pursue more aggressive methods to regain her country’s Nazi-ravaged heritage, of which the trunk’s contents was apparently most important to thwarting any attempts by the Order of the Black Sun to attain world domination, even today.
Professor Petra Kulich’s office had arranged the appropriate paperwork for her and her companions on the trip to the most haunted forest in the world. They would take a train from Prague to Bratislava, where they would stay until taking the next flight to Cluj-Napoca via Budapest in Hungary. Once in Cluj, her office had arranged for a local guide to meet them there and drive them to their accommodation in Baciu. From then on, the five of them – Petra, Nina, Igor, Sam and the guide – would be on their own to investigate. They would search for the feared Black Tarot, a part of the lost treasures the Nazis had stolen from Prague.
Although they flew First Class, the night flight from Budapest was primarily nerve wrecking.
Petra had been reading until her fatigue got the best of her. She removed her glasses and pinched the bridge of her nose with her thumb and index finger, massaging lightly. She looked around the cabin. Nina was listening to music on her earphones, her head tilted back and her feet up.
Sam was sleeping, his dark and attractive features suspended in a state of rest that she had previously only fantasized about seeing. He was clutching his backpack like a typical distrustful journalist, used to having to keep his belongings close in case of the sudden order to be ready for whatever troublesome incident he had to cover.