The Fountain of Youth (Order of the Black Sun Book 15)

by P. W. Child

  Above her the wild weather exhibited its fury, lending an air of macabre apprehension to the whole affair. “Like being in a goddamned horror flick,” Nina muttered, praying that the storm over this part of Hampshire would not knock out the power and leave her in the company of the dead thing under the floor of the main building in the pitch darkness.

  Upon reaching the foot of the tear in the masonry the small historian held her breath. In the stuffy ark, reeking of old mud and decay, the figure sat. It had been a full-grown man, from what she could tell by the moldy clothing it was wearing, and it was sitting with its face buried between its knees. Its arms, however, were tied behind its back. The most horrific part of it was that a plate of food had been placed next to a bottle of water – out of reach.

  “Christ! How cruel!” Nina exclaimed. Upon closer investigation she noticed that the back of his skull was crushed inside of the skin. It denoted suicide, from the evidence of bone fragments embedded in the wall behind him where his head would have rested. Nina could take no more. Violently she vomited from the grisly and malevolent way in which the man had met his end. “This is sick!” she moaned in between spewing fits. “So fucking sick!”

  “You have no idea how sick we can get, Dr. Gould,” Dr. Christa Smith said from the staircase. Nina started so that she lost her footing and fell against the ghastly paper-skinned skeleton. She let out a gritty scream, but her true worry was coming down the steps to corral her in. Behind Christa, Clara followed, saying, “I told you she would be snooping, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, you did, love. Now shut up and let me think,” Christa said.

  As Clara descended the stairs she pulled down a leather strap, which covered the entrance by trap door.

  “And I thought the place had no door,” Nina muttered to herself as Christa approached her from the bottom landing. “You could have just denied this, you know,” Nina told her, staying in the tight tomb of the ill-fated man to keep distance between her and Christa. Nina saw the gun in Christa’s hand and knew that she couldn’t escape a bullet with so little space to move in. She knew she was cornered.

  “Why would we bother to deny it? They could identify him by dental records and by the timeline of when his wife reported him missing,” Christa replied.

  “As if she doesn’t still hound us to this day,” Clara rolled her eyes, getting a deadly look from her friend for it.

  “Why don’t you shut your mouth and close the trap door, Clara? Make yourself useful!”

  “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.”

  Chapter 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.

&
nbsp; “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 the 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.