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 she 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.