Nina took heed of his words and agreed within herself, but she was being paid to be here and it would be expected of her to not let silly things like the threat of death perturb her.
“This is so beautiful. Why is it always that such breathtaking places are always so perilous?” Petra asked no-one in particular.
“It’s just hype, Professor. I think it does wonders for Romania’s meager tourism appeal,” Igor answered. “And in truth the so-called haunted forest is just a psychosomatic mechanism to provoke wonder and fear to a patch of dry land where nothing grew solely because the soil is contaminated by something the Red Army probably dumped here during the war.”
Nina imagined that could have happened, but they would not only have contaminated one pointless circle clearing in a forest. However, his words did comfort her. She chose to believe it was all hype from the start and that Professor Kulich was chasing shadows.
‘What good Gypsy would not exploit a desperate, obscenely wealthy Czech woman looking for something of unequalled power right in their backyard?’ Nina thought.
Sam stopped every few steps to record the ethereal allure of the ancient forest on camera. “Look at the trees! I could shoot an entire book just on the strange behavior of the plant life in this place,” Sam said, as he stood still to capture yet another striking scene.
“I thought the place would be far spookier than this,” Igor remarked as he looked around.
“That’s the thing about places like this, mister,” Mihail replied, “is that they don’t have to look spooky for what is really in here with us. Here it is not what you see that scares you…but what you do not see.”
“See, now, you are not helping, Mihail,” Nina snapped plainly, visibly nervous. Igor snickered off to one end while Sam snapped another frame.
The trees were remarkably full overhead, even though they possessed no substantial size of trunks. In fact, their trunks were very thin and bare, only branching out near the higher parts of its total length. From just above the forest floor, barely above their roots, the thin trunks would bend completely into a bowed formation and recover a few inches higher to continue growing upwards normally. That would be an interesting anomaly if it were just one tree’s shape, but all the trees in the entire area exhibited the same unnatural growth, as if a low magnetic band pulled their trunks aside at the bottom.
“Kind of looks like the handle of a brolly, ‘eh?” Nina remarked in wonderment as she joined Sam, looking at the strange occurrence from his point of view.
“Aye. Tim Burton trees,” Sam smiled at her.
“Do you think the stories are true? I mean, looking at the weird trees and that clearing where nothing grows…” her words waned as if she did not want to mention it out loud.
“There are so many peculiar irregularities in the world that I don’t think it is the work of some magical force. It is just biology gone creative, methinks. As a matter of fact, I find it very interesting. I love it when things rebel against their nature,” Sam relished the subject in an explanation gone ode that had Nina smiling and shaking her head.
“At least the sun is shining. I doubt you would be so lyrical at night, Sam,” she told him and skipped to catch up to Petra and Igor.
“Listen,” Petra told the others, “there is no sound whatsoever. It is just dead air.”
“Please don’t say ‘dead’,” Sam’s voice came vaguely from behind them as he trotted zealously to join the group. “I feel like there are a million eyes on me. It feels like the trees are watching us.”
“Sam. Stop it,” Nina reprimanded him for jesting, but when she looked at him, he was dead serious. He seemed very anxious suddenly, turning from side to side to see if anything was approaching. Nina walked back to him and hooked her arm in his, as much for her as for him.
The woods were serene, or maybe apprehensive.
All the while Mihail was clutching at his rosary and stayed to the back of the party as if he wished to use them as a buffer between him and what was coming. From nowhere, and for no reason that could be explained by climatology, a thick fog rolled in from ahead. It crawled right up the road they were walking on, the road leading to the circular clearing. They couldn't see any fog anywhere else. It swallowed up the forest floor in its white oblivion and rose higher in size at it came nearer.
Petra kept walking, Igor followed her, but Sam and Nina stopped in their tracks. Mihail almost walked right into them.
“Don’t worry. It is just for tourism,” he exclaimed sarcastically. The three of them watched the professor and her assistant disappear into the mist.
“Professor Kulich! Don’t walk in there!” Nina cried through the still air.
“Yes, do not go any further or you will get lost!” Mihail warned. He told Sam and Nina in a lower tone, “You know she has not paid me yet. She cannot disappear now.”
From the white cloudy nothingness they heard the professor say, “Come along, guys! We have to get to the circle!”
“Fuck this,” Mihail said and stepped backward.
“No, no! You can’t bail out on us now,” Sam bellowed as they turned around to talk to the superstitious mechanic.
As Sam and Nina watched, Mihail reached out to one of the tree trunks to lean against it, and before their eyes his hand, wrist and forearm disappeared into thin air.
“Oh my god!” Nina screamed, her hand over her mouth and her eyes bulging. She held tightly onto Sam who stood befuddled and shocked with his mouth wide agape.
“What is it?” Petra shouted, irritated by the delay, but she too stopped in her tracks at the sight of Mihail’s limb disappearing into another dimension. He did not notice what was happening to his arm, because touching the tree jolted him into a violent vision into the past.
His entire body was locked in tremors and he clenched his jaw hard from the fury of the vision. A shrill grunt emanated from his throat, his eyes rolled back in agony and terror.
“What do you see, Mihail? Tell me!” Petra shouted. She was cautious about her vicinity, but she stepped gradually closer to him to hear him talk.
“I see them!” he grunted, bulging veins protruding in his throat. “I see Petr Costita! I see him running from dogs. Human dogs and real ones. It is night and the moon is lighting up this road, but it does not matter because they know where he is,” he screamed.
Sam could feel his flesh crawl with the similarities between Petr and his own pursuits. Suddenly he remembered the night when the captain and his dogs chased him down.
“There is a woman leading them. Dark hair, German. She has a stick in her hand…no wait…a rifle? No, it is a harpoon?” Mihail frowned. From his nose a red ribbon of blood emerged, running over his mouth and spraying as he spoke through it.
“He has the cards, the evil cards in his hands. They are close behind him, but they cannot see him because he is standing on the other side…” he reported, shaking insanely.
“What other side?” Petra asked loudly so that he could hear her.
“The other side of the portal. He is right there, but they are blind to him. Petr is sitting down! Why is he sitting down? Shut those fucking dogs up! They are hurting my ears!” he screamed at whatever he was seeing. Then he panted so deeply in continuous succession that they thought he would pass out, but he continued.
“He is laying out the cards, terrible cards that make him throw up, but he keeps putting them down while the dogs are looking for him! I see the Nazis searching, calling to each other, letting the dogs loose. They call the woman Greta. That’s…that’s her name. Greta! She sees Petr’s leg when she walks to the side, sticking out from the portal,” Mihail huffed through the bubbling blood on his mouth. He cried out in pain, screaming into the air. But his cries did not echo, instead it sounded as if his shrieks duplicated into a few layers and then were bluntly consumed by the lifeless atmosphere.