by P. W. Child
I have to find out who McLaughlin is, first of all. And then find out where in Oban Nina is at the moment. She will not be pleased to hear that Sam is back in her life, but we have to protect her at all costs, even if the little harpy shrieks and claws, Paddy decided. But he could not leave until the meeting had adjourned. What if there was more information?
While the committee discussed other things, such as the circumstances of Kees Maas’ death, his funeral arrangements, and media coverage, Paddy sat slouched in his hiding place. His heart pounded wildly and his adrenaline surged at the new developments. Here he was thinking he was collecting intel on a crooked financier involved with a global organization of ill repute, when actually there was so much more to the Black Sun and the council’s objective. What was Final Solution 2? What kept them alive?
“Now, brothers, we have to return to our own nests and start planning the last phases of the plan. The gods are becoming restless, and I certainly do not want to be at the receiving end of their wrath. Let’s allow the rest of the world to suffer that fate when Longinus is activated,” the deep voice concluded.
Longinus is still out there? Paddy thought. I knew it had been stolen by Purdue, and that Purdue’s sister, Agatha, had stolen it from him in turn . . . or did she? Maybe they were in on it, creating a diversion to fool their pursuers?’
It was all too perplexing, and Paddy came into this intelligence assignment thinking he had covered all the bases, that he knew everything about this operation. Was he sent in to find all this? Or does MI6 really not carry any knowledge of this, of the extent of the Black Sun’s plans for world domination?
And Sam and Nina thought they were rid of this bunch, finally. My God, I don’t even want to tell Sam all this stuff. Maybe he shouldn’t know? Paddy’s inner dialogue ranted. No, you underestimate him. He is an investigative journalist of the highest caliber, Patrick. He will find out, just like he found out you lied to him about the council on this mission. And if he finds out you kept from him that Nina’s life was in danger, you will never dink together again. Don’t be stupid.
Paddy nodded as if he was talking to someone else. His mind was made up. The problem he had to deal with now was to make all this information available to his Secret Intelligence Service supervisors. After all, they were the ones who sent him out to get intel on Jaap Roodt. But if they had no knowledge of the true agenda behind Roodt’s affiliations, it would take more time to push them into action, legally. They would have to investigate the whole of the Black Sun and its members, of which there were incalculable numbers of agents and locations.
By that time they would have already assassinated Nina, converted Purdue to his new position, and had him complete Final Solution 2. The Longinus would be activated before any government organization could figure out what the hell it was and the world would, by the lore that was actively progressing into reality, be destroyed. Whatever the Black Sun had planned for the world after that would be inevitable, because all its opponents would be exterminated.
With this in consideration, Agent Patrick Smith elected to only impart the basics to his employers and keep the awful underbelly of the atrocious war to himself and his friends, Sam Cleave and Nina Gould.
They were the only people he could trust with such ludicrous information. More than that, they were the only people who would know what to do to avert the impending New World Order under the fabled old gods that the SS and its occult practices attempted to resurrect. Even if these things did not exist, the destruction of the world as they knew it was reason enough to put a stop to their madness.
Chapter 16
The house was warming, thanks to the delightful fire in the hearth. The three history buffs gathered around in front of it, sipping wine, and enjoying the music Gretchen played from her iPod, a bouquet of varied tunes from Enigma to Vera Lynn.
“Do you like music, Dr. Philips?” Nina asked. At the moment she asked, she meant only to make conversation, but as soon as her words were out she realized that it was quite an interesting thing to ask a man like Richard Philips.
“Call me Richard, please,” he smiled timidly, playing with his glass. “I have always found music a singularly bewitching entity, a thing with a mind of its own, and equally decisive of its impact on the listener.”
Gretchen rolled her eyes behind the pale man as he spoke and Nina had to try not to laugh at her smitten friend’s childish admiration. She could not deny that Richard had a very eloquent manner in conversation, his phrasing and choice of words almost poetic whenever he described something. He was not unattractive at all, apart from his weak body language, and the severely introverted lack of opinion he exhibited on most subjects, but his occasional verbalization was worth the imbalance.
Nina stared into the fire. Just how does one respond to that? Thankfully Gretchen came back into the banter and asked Richard about his presence.
“So, tell me, Richard, why did you have to see the house so desperately?”
He looked at her with a distinct glare of surprise, his dark eyes glimmering with a touch of insanity.
“You do not know?” he asked.
Nina shifted on her ass, turning her undivided attention toward him, “Know what?”
Richard looked at her with the same resolute amazement. Gretchen sat down next to him.
“My dear Nina, this house has historical value, I fear to admit, in the more ghastly vein of science,” he said nonchalantly.
Again with the overdone words, Dick, Nina thought with utter frustration. Just fucking tell us what is so weird about my house.
“Ghastly vein of science?” Gretchen asked. She was hooked like a little girl about to listen to a ghost story.
“Yes, Gretchen,” his husky softness came in words. Hardly an emotion showed on his face and its pasty hue showed no signs of the hype that could have gone with such a statement.
“Um, I hate to be so persistent,” Nina pressed, “but do tell us what you mean, Richard.”
“This house has a reputation for . . . ” he smiled coyly, and almost looked embarrassed, “well . . . strange phenomena.”
Silence among the three of them lasted too long for Nina to bear.
“Richard, please,” she cried out, gesturing with her half-full glass, “keep talking.”
Gretchen laughed, “You have to excuse her. She is very inquisitive,” and she looked at Nina with a reprimand before adding, “and impatient.”
Richard chuckled for a moment and then returned his face to its usual statuesque blankness.
“This house, even when my grandfather lived here, had a reputation among the locals as being . . . this might sound absurd . . . a portal to other dimensions,” he said quickly and took to the refuge of his wine.
“That is not absurd at all,” Gretchen noted. “Other dimensions exist and quantum mechanics allow us to explore the possibility of traveling among them.”
Nina could feel the emergence of the car conversation she had with Gretchen happening all over again. Sure, what she knew about mathematics and physics was meager, but her logic taught her that the things Gretchen believed to be possible were just a tad too farfetched for her logical deduction. But she listened anyway, for the sake of chiming in now and then, and this way she would not have to attend one of Richard’s lectures.
Speculation, her inner bitch sighed with every theory Gretchen tried to impress Richard with.
“But the place was known for it, because . . . ?” Nina asked suddenly. “Were there any witnesses?”
Gretchen sighed at Nina’s cynicism, but Richard turned his attention to the skeptical historian and continued to tell her about the lore of the house.
“All witnesses obviously disappeared. Either the theory was true and they were pulled through portals, therefore vanishing into thin air, or they were murdered and their bodies used by the Nazis for medical research,” Richard said.
Nina refused to entertain the ideology, not because she thought it was impossible, but because s
he knew it to be true; and it terrified her to the bone. Not long ago she played witness to the fearsome factors of physics and dimensions when she spent a horrifying night in Hoia Baciu’s haunted forest. There was no denying what she and Sam experienced there, how they were ripped from day to night, from one place to somewhere else, in a blink. Now she lived in a house reputed to have the same qualities as the Romanian forest’s deadly circle? Denial was her best friend right now.
“It was said by the locals that strange lights would illuminate the windows of the attic,” Richard relayed calmly.
His words prompted the two women to lock eyes with a solid amount of panic.
“What?” Richard asked. “Did you see the attic?”
For the first time, he looked alive. His expression bent into excitement and his cheeks colored slightly with a flush of pink. He put his glass down.
“Please, ladies, do tell me that my grandfather was not decidedly mad.”
Nina and Gretchen were stunned into silence. They just looked at each other for a time and then both turned their eyes to Richard.
“Come, let me show you what we found in the attic,” Nina said with a strong tone. If she was fortunate, this academic could fill her in on the weird Nazi books about monsters and gods.
After the three of them made their way up to the attic, filled still with the sickening odor of old masonry, rotten water, and mummified remains, Richard looked stunned. He moved carefully, making sure to absorb every morsel of information with every step he took.
Nina led him to the broken wall where the books were still scattered, and she told him of how they had discovered the hidden compact library with the grotesque book still lying a few feet away.
Richard seemed fascinated by the spider book with the ungodly binding, but he too could not get himself to pick it up.
“This book, like that other one you showed me, attests to the existence—at least, belief in the existence—of inter-dimensional creatures of unfathomed power and size. These were the same deities mentioned in my grandfather’s writings, notes he took from his own father’s ramblings when he was on his deathbed. My grandfather, Heinrich Schaub, joined the SS because of this very theory, did you know?” Richard dribbled on and on, while the two women stood confounded.
“So it’s a family thing?” Nina asked. “Not the Nazi thing; the physics-god-monsters from other dimensions thing.”
“I suppose so,” Richard scoffed with a taste of embarrassment. “You have to concede it is a fascinating concept, as nightmarish as it is.” Gretchen nodded in agreement, scrutinizing Richard’s hands as he explained. “It has connotations to the legend of the Library of Forbidden Books.” Nina gasped at the familiarity of the phrase.
As before, a waft of reeking putrefaction floated up through the house and Nina commented to her guests.
“Excuse the smell. I have not been able to find a pond or old swimming pool around here that could be responsible for the foul stench, but I’ll get that sorted out this week,” Nina apologized, but Richard looked at her with careless abandon.
“That’s the well, Nina.”
Gretchen exhaled an involuntary groan at the sound of it, and Nina could feel her skin crawling.
“The well,” she repeated. “Like, the well, you know, the well that naturally appears on the grounds here . . . ”
Richard could hear Nina’s sarcasm escalating, so he clarified the statement, which did nothing to make the idea less creepy.
“Yes, Nina. There is a large well under the house. It has always been here, even when my grandfather moved in. It is all written in his journal, and some of it he mentioned to my father when he was a young boy. You didn’t know?” Richard asked in his usual collected assumption that drove the fiery Nina mad.
“Umm, no, Richard. I did not know there was a well under my house,” she accentuated in frustration, looking at Gretchen with astonished disbelief.
“I myself have only heard of it, of course, but naturally my grandfather spoke about it a few times. I wonder, would you mind awfully if we go and see it?” he asked politely, leaving Nina no reason to refuse.
“Of course we can, but I will put this on the table right now, that the idea of a giant water hole under my house does not sit well with my fragile courage,” she said, and evoked a tiny snigger from both her accomplices.
“Get your flashlight,” Gretchen told Nina, as she gave hers to Richard. “We’re going Lara Croft tomb raiding, guys!”
“I’m glad you find it so exciting!” Nina marveled at her friend’s enthusiasm. “But I’m sure it’s not a tomb, and do we even know where it is?”
“From the tales, it is right under your bedroom, Nina, where the attic’s west wall ends,” Richard informed her.
“And now it gets even more creepy,” Nina announced to the amusement of the other two.
“Don’t worry, doll. We will protect you against those foul North Sea guppies!” Gretchen jested with a mocking tone of courage in her best cartoon voice.
Nina was not amused by her two companions, but she had to concede, the evening was filled with fun and intellectual banter and that made their presence quite welcome.
“Indeed. We should take our fishing poles down there. Imagine what a wealth the tide brings in every day,” Richard smiled. It was a full smile meant to cheer Nina, but all it instilled was a terror filled image of man-eating mermaids and plagues of slugs.
“Hope you two can swim,” Nina mumbled behind them, her teasing threat ineffective.
Down in the pantry of her kitchen, they located the trap door to the dark basement space that was still just composed of rock. It had never been renovated to accommodate living or storage space, so there was nothing but an uneven moist rock surface as floor and some old rope and rusted cabinets gathering spider webs down there.
With the flashlight casting its faint beam, the three moved forward deeper into the vast darkness, choking on the rotten wetness that assaulted their sense of smell.
“Oh, God, I’m going to puke,” Nina complained, but Gretchen and Richard did not respond, too curious to stop now.
“Be careful,” Gretchen said, “we can’t see when this rock floor falls into the well. Or does the well have stone fencing?”
“I don’t know,” Richard replied, from the cold, stinking blackness ahead of them, “I’ve never been here before. All I know is what I heard from my grandfather.”
“It’s probably not that big, because I don’t see any sign of a well yet,” Nina said, scanning the faint visibility in the beam of her flashlight. “No protruding wall anywhere.”
“There won’t be one,” Richard replied plainly. “That is why they call it the ‘mouth.’”
“Oh, Christ! Just what I needed to hear. Thank you, Richard,” Nina moaned. Gretchen looked back at her with a rather unsettled face.
“That does sound bloody scary to me too, doll.”
Chapter 17
The sound of lapping water became evident as they progressed, Gretchen and Nina now holding hands.
“We must be close,” Richard announced with a restrained zeal owing to his reserved nature. By his measure he was hollering like a teenage girl at a rock concert.
Nina and Gretchen crept up behind him, cowering for whatever was ahead, spurred on only by their unbridled, morbid curiosity. His tall frame was way too thin to protect them against anything substantial, but at least he’d be between them and whatever lived in the mouth.
Down here the hissing of the ocean’s rushing waters was louder than up in the house where it was almost inaudible. Nina worried about the tide coming in and swallowing up her house’s foundations, but then again, the house was still standing after decades, so she assumed it was not an obstacle she needed be concerned about now.
The ambient sounds of the basement changed suddenly. Instead of the trickle of water and the rush of deep-moving currents, the dripping made way for a monstrous sucking sound. Gradually the hideous depth of the inhaling roar grew
louder. Like a slurping giant, the large perimeter of the mouth uttered a watery sigh that ricocheted against the underside of the house.
“I found it, ladies,” Richard said matter-of-factly and turned to see the two women virtually kneeling in embrace. Clearly they were terrified of the gaping well and its inhuman gulping.
“Come now,” he consoled, “it is just a body of water caught under the rock formation the house is built on. Think of it as a rock pool.”
Nina and Gretchen rose to their feet, reluctant to face the scary pond of foaming water.
“What if the water rises?” Nina asked.
“It won’t. What you hear is the influx and receding of the current. The surface never rises or falls; like a water table it stays constant with fluctuations underneath,” he explained, keeping his tone as unyielding as the subject of his elucidation.
“You know, I never thought a boring tone of voice would be so damn comforting,” Nina whispered to her friend, who had to giggle.
“Agreed!” Gretchen whispered back as their uncertain steps brought them closer to the mouth.
When Nina and Gretchen peered over the edge of the jagged gray stone to the well below, an icy grip of terror grasped them. The water was black, so frigid that it’s frozen temperature emanated from the dark hole. Knowing that the sound came from the exchange of water by means of the current did not make it any better to stare at the onyx glint of the mouth.
“Ladies, I cannot thank you enough for allowing me to finally behold what had always just been a legend in my family!” Richard raved, sounding more lively in one sentence than he had all night. “This is such a privilege, Dr. Gould!”
“You’re welcome, Richard,” Nina smiled, content that she could be the benefactor of a lifelong dream. Gretchen grinned, patting her on the shoulder while Richard shone his flashlight beam into the water, inspecting it in silence.
