Order of the Black Sun Box Set 2, page 45
part #4 of Order of the Black Sun Series
“Stand still,” he whispered without moving. It did not make her feel at all safer. When Sam focused on something, it was never a false alarm.
He saw it move slowly from left to right, drawing ever nearer to where they were standing. Behind them the empty circle, the heart of Hoia Baciu, hummed like an air conditioner on a quiet summer night. With it came a mild tremor, a slight pulsation of varying strengths in its current. The force pulled them, inviting them to step away from the perilous woods to meet another kind of hazard.
“What are you looking at?” Nina said out loud.
“Nina!” he snapped with a frown. She wanted an answer and she would defy him for it.
“Tell me!”
“Look!” he said impatiently, and pointed ahead of them, slightly to the left where the two flashlights pierced the darkness. Nina leaned forward and saw the two lights bobbing between the trees.
“Maybe its Petra and Mihail,” she gasped, slapping him lightly on the arm to spur him on.
“Wait. What is it not them? What if it is a bunch of poachers or something? They’ll kill us just for being here. This is Romania, Nina. These lads are superstitious and tough,” he reminded her.
“Poachers,” she repeated. “Poaching what? Dead wood? There can’t be any game in this forest. Nothing lives here. It is quiet and barren all over,” she argued.
“Still, I don’t trust anyone or anything I cannot see,” he insisted.
“Well, in that case, we are in the epicenter of distrust, pal,” she said with an attitude, folding her arms. Her trademark fierceness served her well, because her fighting fire kept her warm and strong when the cold pressed her. In fact, Nina momentarily forgot that she was scared, but only until she saw the lights change color.
“Umm…” she grasped Sam’s arm again.
“I saw that,” he whispered rapidly, panting from his own apprehension. Sam hunkered down, pulling Nina with him so they could hide their presence behind the ample rocks and brush between them and the leave-strewn path where the lights hovered closer.
The two lights progressed with shaky motion, just as they would if they were held by people walking on uneven terrain.
“I don’t know what I’d rather have,” Sam said softly against her ear, “Bad guys with criminal tendencies or wraiths from another dimension.”
Nina gave him a sharp look and he knew he said something wrong again.
“What did I say?” he asked innocently.
“Wraiths. Don’t say shit like that until I am in a hotel room in a big city with a six pack and a fag,” she sneered. Sam could not help but smile.
“Yeah, I’d kill for a smoke now too,” he smiled and ran his hand over her head playfully. Nina shook her head and chuckled. Why was it that the two of them were mostly alone when they had to focus on other things? Why could he not touch her when they are not in life threatening danger, but in a secluded monastery where they had time for each other?
By now the lights had almost reached them, yet the curling mist obscured everything else. Her fingers tightened around his arm as they drew nearer, now a sharp orange color. It was only when they came within a stone’s throw that it became clear what was going on. Sam held his hand instinctively over Nina’s mouth, because he knew she would whimper in fear at the sight of the balls of fire that burned with a kind of restraint that defied science. The tongues of fire did not lash upward as they were supposed to, but remained contained in a spherical motion that gyrated around whatever core held them fixed. Nina’s eyes stretched as the blazing orbs passed above them without a noise. The fiery lights were mute, as if Sam and Nina observed them from the other side of a window.
Nina shivered uncontrollably under Sam’s hand, but he dared not speak a word now.
Slowly the orbs descended towards the terrified observers, leaving them with no option but to keep dead still in their trapped state. Sam could feel the vibration of Nina’s scream against his palm as the balls of swirling fire illuminated their horrified faces. Closing her eyes, Nina wondered how it would feel at the moment of contact. Would it hurt much? Would it be cold and quick or would it singe her hair from her scalp? She wished she had told Sam how she felt once and for all – just come out and said it. One solace was dying in the grip of her best friend. That, she could use to deal with whatever came next.
Sam closed his eyes as the flames touched his skin, yet he could feel no sensation from them. There was no heat, no cold, no odor or sound. His fear subsided, like a splash of water in a lake. Opening his eyes, Sam beheld the most unbelievable thing his skeptical eyes had ever seen in all his life. The fire spilled over his face and blinded him, so that he had to use his hand as a visor over his eyes. He looked at Nina beside him and she was doing the same, shielding her face against the sharp light.
“What the fuck?” she gasped out. Her voice trembled with shock and disbelief. “What the fuck just happened, Sam?” Now she was bordering on hysterical and he pulled her against him to calm her. Three twisting shadows blocked out the sun above them, allowing Nina and Sam to open their eyes properly.
28
A Night of Fire
“What on earth are you doing on the ground, my friends?” Stefan asked. Their guide was amused. He reached out to pull them up, but the journalist and the historian sat confounded in the shade cast by their companions.
“You know you can go blind looking into the sun like that,” Mihail warned as he extinguished his crooked blunt in the soil of the path. He looked absolutely exhausted. Dark circles stained his eyes and his hands were shaking. Behind him stood Professor Kulich, looking grave and upset, but she helped Nina to her feet and kept her upright while she dusted off her clothing.
“Are you alright, Nina?” she asked under her breath, not because of some secrecy, but because she was just too tired to perk up.
“Petra,” Nina sighed, “you will never believe what Sam and I experienced. The stories are true about this place.”
“Well, you must tell me all about your experience, but first we have to get back to Cluj before dark,” she told Nina. Sam turned and looked at the professor with a perplexed frown.
“What do you mean, before it gets dark?” he asked.
“You don’t want us to be caught here during the night, my friend,” Stefan chipped in while he focused on cleaning his nails with his pocket knife.
“No, I know that! It’s just that I thought it was…” Sam’s scowl grew deeper, darker as his words grew tardy - and he looked at Nina, whose face was just as twisted in astonishment, “…I thought…” he forced, but nothing more came out.
“…it was tomorrow,” Nina added in the same trance-like realization.
The sun had begun to dip behind the branches of the eerie tree tops and dusk was fast approaching. Abruptly, the wind picked up and they all heard the voices of a few locals passing through the canopy over the wide path where Sam and Nina found the circle last night – or tonight? Two men and three women walked and spoke loud Romanian as they returned on their way back to the parking area.
“They said devil’s eyes are out tonight,” Stefan told the foreigners in his company.
“Oh, then, let’s get out of here before he sees us,” Nina suggested sarcastically.
“Again.”
Sam spoke very softly out of turn, but they all heard him.
“Again?” Petra asked.
“The devil’s eyes,” Sam slurred slightly, “I think we saw them last night.”
“Tonight,” Mihail remarked indifferently as if the topsy-turvy physics were run of the mill around here. “You were here tonight.”
Petra frowned, becoming increasingly intolerant of everyone speaking in some kind of clandestine code. She felt like the only one who did not get anything she had come for, while they all had some sort of ordeal or revelation.
“What are you all talking about?” she barked. “I want to know right now. My assistant is missing. My two friends from Scotland disappear into thin air for ten minutes and they think it is tomorrow. I know nothing more than the name of the woman who killed a thief who stole from my family and still, I have no idea where to start looking for the deck. Now, for fuck’s sake, someone tell me something or I fire all of you right now!”
The others stood mute for a moment, passing glances like schoolchildren before an oral presentation, none of them wanting to go first for fear of displeasing the teacher.
“Sam and I, when we disappeared,” Nina finally started, “walked into another…god, I don’t even know how to put it…I’ll just come out and say it, Petra. We walked into the mid of night. Here. Right here, but not right then.”
“You walked into midnight,” Petra repeated. Stunned, she turned to Mihail and Stefan, her mouth agape in disbelief. “A time lapse? No, a time jump and then a lapse back to now?” she asked. “How is that even possible?”
“This is Hoia Baciu, Professor,” Mihail attested with a raised voice that reeked with an ‘I told you so’ of note. “It is the Bermuda Triangle of Romania.”
“We think the area is charged with electro-magnetic forces, Petra. Maybe it’s a part of the earth’s strange grid where physics clash with logic,” Nina speculated.
“It is like a worm hole in space, I think,” Sam joined in, still sounding frighteningly drained. Nina nodded, “Somehow, this place is a portal or a convergence of magnetic fields that causes a collapse or a tear in our dimension, allowing people to wander right into another time-space continuum! Jesus, this is amazing, people! Do you know what we could explore here on a scientific level?”
Nina was suddenly more in admiration of the forest than the terror she cowered from in a different time. Sam leaned against a tree to support his lethargic body.
“Don’t.” Mihail had his arms folded. He lurched toward the foreign camera man and thought to give some sound advice from his very recent experience. “Don’t lean against the tree, my friend. Bad sheet happens when you do that.”
‘Bad sheet?’ Sam wondered as he endeavored to stand up again. He recalled Mihail’s arm vanishing when he leaned on the trunk. ‘Oh! Bad shit. Of course!’
“And the devil’s eyes,” Sam reminded Nina. “We saw floating orbs of fire, I shit you not,” he told the others. “I think they are the devil’s eyes those locals were talking about, Mihail.”
Mihail nodded in agreement after he took a moment to mull it over in his head.
“Alright,” Petra said. “How do you explain those, then?”
Nina shrugged. Sam shook his head. Stefan and Mihail had no scientific knowledge whatsoever. They just looked absent minded.
“All I know is that they are expected to be seen here tonight, and we saw them,” Nina explained, “so Sam and I must have stepped into the future, right?”
“I still don’t know where to find the cards, apart from a German woman called Greta,” Petra Kulich whined. “Great. A German called Greta. That narrows it down,” she scoffed with immense frustration.
Petra decided to take Stefan up on his offer of them all spending the night with his family just on the outside boundary of Mera, one of the villages in Baciu.
She reported Igor missing at what served as the local police station, where none of the untidy officers looked particularly surprised. She was appalled at their uncaring and casual way of obtaining information from her, as if they had done it a million times before. One by one the desk sergeant - this would be his proper title, had he not been a greasy and unhygienic man in a loose shirt with his uniform pants – mumbled questions to her, while Stefan translated.
In the vehicle, Sam and Nina sat waiting. Both were positively worn out and they sat slumped against each other, listening to the radio Stefan left on for them, even though they did not understand a word and the music sucked more than the bad reception. Other than the crackle of the AM frequency, it was dead quiet. The two of them did not need to converse. Both of them were still in shock from the strange and terrifying ordeal they had suffered, each knowing what the other was feeling.
Suddenly Nina said, “Do you reckon we stepped into another time loop because of the weird forest being some worm hole or do you…” she sighed and shoved Sam to see if he was awake. He looked at her in anticipation, so she continued. “Could it have been that deck, perhaps?”
“What do you mean?” he asked. He shifted so that he could face her properly.
“If that deck of cards can really rearrange events by throwing the world into a déjà vu, into a time lapse, time loop, whatever,” she said, “don’t you think maybe that was what happened with us? Could it be that someone, the same someone who has been causing our reliving before we came here, was doing it again? Maybe they were using the cards and that was why we ended up….god, I can’t believe what I am saying here…in the future before coming back through the hole into the short time we were gone here on this side.”
Sam looked at her. He said nothing, his face remained unchanged, and for a long pause he just stared at her.
“For fuck’s sake, Sam!” she shouted suddenly, shoving him again just to see him move from his static state. He smiled.
“Sorry, I was caught in time for a second.”
Nina was not amused. Her dark eyes glimmered with passionate annoyance and he welcomed her familiar look of threat.
“Look, it sounds ludicrous at best, but if such a thing was at all possible, then how the hell would what they did influence just us; just you and I, lassie? How would that person isolate us, and why? I really think that is a stretch, Nina,” he answered.
She gave it some thought. Sam was right. Scientifically, or even by the reaches of remotely possible physics it remained absurd. No matter how she rolled it, whatever cosmic components the world had not yet unlocked, could still not explain how a deck of cards could accelerate or lapse time. It made her head hurt, this odd superstition founded in the closets of antiquity and esoteric calculations.
“Aye, suppose you’re right,” she sighed. “Why are we so damn tired?”
“We moved forward in time by a few hours. In essence we have lived an extra few hours in this day’s quota. Christ, what am I saying?” he frowned, still caught between what he knew happened for real and what his logic rebuked as fallacious at the same time. He could not believe his own words, his own thoughts, but there was no other perception.
“I know. And I thought I was nuts when all this lapse shit started happening to me. I thought it was the toxins in my body wreaking havoc with my senses…and my sanity. Some of the side effects could very well have been all this warped perceptive shit, you know?” she mumbled as she rummaged through the junk on the minivan’s floor and door pockets.
“What are you looking for?” he asked.
Nina stopped delving and busied herself with something in the shelter of her chest. Sam heard a flicking sound and then, when she turned to him, he cried out in elation. Between Nina’s lips she had a joint pinched.
“One of Mihail’s?” he asked, and she nodded as she pulled a deep tuft of smoke and satisfaction into her throat.
“Bless you, Mihail the Eye!” Sam shouted out in his best evangelist rendition. Nina smiled and passed the skewed joint to him. “So, how are you feeling? I mean, with the arsenic treatment bullying you and such while you are still tough and hard headed enough to go out and put yourself at risk,” Sam asked Nina.
It reminded her that she had not felt any weakness or burning like she normally did. As a matter of fact, she had totally forgotten about her scarred arm and the deadly compound that sat stubborn in her flesh.
“Wait a minute!” she exclaimed. She sat up and hitched up her sleeve, where the makeshift bandage still secured the herbs Mihail’s wife had applied for her. Under the ribbing of her long sleeve the handkerchief peeked and with careful excitement Nina pulled it back until the awful circular scar appeared. But it was less inflamed when she wiped off the last of the crushed herbs and the maroon scarring had turned to a healthy pink inside the bruising that surrounded the rough stitching lacerations. Nina’s mouth fell open as she slowly lifted her eyes to Sam. His big dark eyes narrowed with warmth as his lips curled into a smile.
“No way,” she gasped. “That chick is a genius! I have to know what this stuff is!”
“What chick?” he asked.
“Mihail’s wife. She put this on…with spit,” she pulled up her nose and Sam chuckled at how cute Nina looked when she was grossed out. “This is awesome, Sam. Do you realize that with this stuff I’d never have to be subjected to the clinic’s torture chamber and Dr. Death again!” Nina yelled like a schoolgirl and lunged forward to wrap her arms around Sam. She did not care what he thought, what he made of it, because he would probably be right anyway. Having no pain and seeing her arm healing after thinking it was going to have to be amputated, Nina was truly elated.
Sam held her tightly as she shrieked with glee. But he did not let her go once the initial thrill had passed; and she did not mind. Their laughter died down and the only sound left over the static of the radio was their breathing. Sam wanted so desperately to kiss her. He felt Nina’s elegant fingers sink gently deeper onto his skin as she lifted her chin to find his lips. Sam’s heart jumped violently as Nina breath graced the skin under his stubble and warmed his mouth. Without thinking, as if by instinct, Sam’s lips parted to receive Nina’s. His hand cradled her jaw as their lips locked for a moment before the driver’s side door of the car clacked open and jolted them from their sweet delirium.
Petra climbed in on the passenger side as the vehicle roared into life, while Stefan looked at Sam and Nina in the rear view mirror.
“You two need a bed!” he remarked.
“What?” Nina frowned, while Sam simultaneously exclaimed, “Excuse me?”
Clearly they were still in a different state of mind.
“You are completely…pooped!” Stefan said. “You both need to get to bed and sleep off the bad things of the forest, eh?”
