《Stories from the Lost County》


 I - The Moon does indeed burn

    I still remember our last conversation. It happened at the old farmhouse of your grandparents, in the attic. You had thrown yourself onto the bed and were telling me how much you wanted to get buried here. To this place. A place where the sun travels the sky a bit differently, time moves differently and the Moon has become unrecognizable. You said the night here were the best, the Moon did not burn like the Sun did.


    I moved my hand above your skin, never touching it. I felt the warmth of your skin dissipate the cold November gusts which flowed in through the waterlogged wallboards. You didn¡¯t need anything else, just an attic of an old farmhouse, a bed, a light and an old military radio. The radio was more of a heat source than actual receiver. I still remember how you loved to press your freezing toes against the scorching metal enclosure.


    You were telling me about your last find. One sleepless night you had captured it, around twelve o¡¯clock when a sudden blast of wind rushing through the room made you sneeze. And almost at the moment the clouds freed yet another Blue Moon from their grasp, you discovered it. At first you were scared, trying to understand what it was. Because it was more than just a signal. It was a clear message.


    Slowly, with your hand still trembling you turned the large dial, faint clicks following one another until the circles of numbers inside the dial finally indicated a number which would have unnerved every modern sci-fi fan. 99.99 megacycles. The fine-tuning the antenna array. Your fingers slowly turning the next dial, click after click, each one a jolt through your body. As if you were afraid you¡¯d lose the signal despite having already recorded hours of it. I counted thirteen clicks, whether it was a coincidence or not, I could not tell.


    You adjusted your skirt, pulled your long dark brown hair to the side, to not have an opportunity to sit on them. Just one final click and the old Estonia brand speakers burned everything we wanted or even could hear deep into our cells and memory.


    ¡°That¡¯s the reason, I remained because I thought I would go there early-early-early-early...¡±


    The last word repeating forever in the air until the waves of noise drowned it. And then it repeated.


    Warm voice of a man no more than twenty five years in age, heard through the phone line. We could not understand whether it was Estonian or not. We assumed it was.


    *


    It was raining the night it happened. We heard the raindrops pound on  asbestos fiberboard on the mossy roof. We saw the lone rays from lightning strikes reach through the slits in the walls and leave momentary traces on the floors. Traces which stayed in our minds for far longer than they had on the floor.


    You held on to me, tight. It wasn¡¯t about being scared of fearing the thunder. You wanted to be warmed by something other than a group of four 50 watt vacuum tubes. You wanted to feel the bodily heat of another person. At that moment this other person happened to be me. Lone drops from the slanted ceiling fell on your face and onto the bed. You closed your eyes every time a drop hit you in the face.


    Then suddenly, you twisted yourself out of my arms. I did not keep you, although I could have. In reality you belonged to nobody, you were too independent for that. With but a few steps you were back in front of the radio equipment. You started warming up the tubes again, and played back of this mysterious clip of sound. Then, with silent cat-like steps you approached the window, only followed by my gaze. You leaned on the window. Looked outside, at the flashing lightning. You listened to the rolling thunder, that fit so well with the voice clip on the background.


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    And then we were in darkness. Lightning had hit something on the ground and now the yellow incandescent bulb which had cast this corner of the room in dim light was dead. The indicator lights on the radio¡¯s front panel had also died. But we could still hear the sound clip. I soon realized that it no longer emanated from the speakers but instead from somewhere else, somewhere outside.


    As if expecting us, the bouts of rain receded into heavy mists. Streaks of lightning now occurred only between the clouds up high. The thunder had also retreated into the natural noise floor. But you knew what was happening. The situation was new and unique for both of us, but still you knew, because it was you that dragged me towards the patch of forest nearby. Fog was hanging around the trees.


    ¡°Forbidden forest.¡± Your grandpa had said. Under penalty of getting whipped he had banned us from going there. But he never said, why.


    But both of us knew that now was the time. In this dark night soaked with rain. When lightning and rain had backed off for just a moment to let us into the Forbidden Forest. That scrap of utterance revolving in our minds, calling us into the forest.


    This vaporous fog we could not see through was not alien to us, it signified the unknown. Like that impassable wall of fog keeping us from that mysterious Forest Lake. With waters so dead and yet so alive. That Forest Lake was the end of space, beyond that there was nothing.


    Or that cluster of trees on the other side. Where an old house remained which we had found following your nose. Smell of the dead, you had said. The smell of a person not imprisoned into a grave. Or that mysterious rock formation in the forest to which seemingly two roads lead. Seemingly, because one of them ended with a bottomless pit from which only sharp petrified tree trunks rose. So close to one another that if one were to fall in, there¡¯d be no chance of survival.


    But this fog was different. Running into the fog after you I looked up and noticed that the gray clouds had once again released the sky. A black sky in which only one thing shone. The Blue Moon. At that moment I noticed I was no longer running. Damp air reached my nose. I felt sharp cool streams of air all around me. But that scrap of a sentence was still in my ears. I continued running. The wall of fog ended as suddenly as it had appeared. I stood near the Forest Lake. Maybe a few dozen meters from it. I took cover behind the nettles. The last few clouds floated away from the blue moon and I saw it in its full glory.


    The interior of a sauna had suddenly appeared into the waters. The high wooden seats, two wooden buckets and two maidens beating each other with bundles of birch branches. All they had in there and themselves as well was made of bluish moonlight. The water in the Forest Lake was also blue and silver in color. One of the maidens descended to the lake to get some water. Small waves were created in the silvery blue water when she pushed her bucket into the water and let it fill up.


    I then saw you walk, saw you approaching these maidens. Why did I not stop you? Why did I decide to remain in the bushes? I was afraid. I was afraid of the unknown. You went up to them. I saw their smiles, made of moonlight as they regarded you. You undressed, let your cardigan fall down, your skirt as well, followed by everything else until you finally stood bare before them. I knew of your beauty, many did, but not like this.


    You were beaten with birch as well. Every spot the bundle landed on seemed to transform. Finally I saw it was true, you changed into one of them, your body was now like theirs were, glimmering as if made of moonlight. You took your seat and poured shining water from a bucket made of moonlight onto an invisible sauna stove. Mist made of light rose, even I could feel the heat of scalding vapors on my face, despite how far I was. The cold dampness was wiped away. Then, all I saw started to give off vapor. It started to sublimate. You, the two maidens and everything else. Blue light slowly drifting towards the Moon. But before all the light had fully dissipated, the clouds covered the sky again and it all disappeared.


    *


    I have no idea how I got back to your house. But one thing was clear. You were lost to me. At least physically. It had happened before. That a young woman goes into the forest during the Blue Moon and never returns. I couldn¡¯t tell whence I knew of this, but I did. You were wrong. The moon did burn. The Moon had burnt this message into the air. Doomed to repeat forever on that very frequency. A phone call by some young man who had made it once long ago, hoping to get his beloved back. But now there was no longer any girl or young man. The was only a memory growing more and more dull and a scrap of sentence forever burnt into the aether.


    ¡°That¡¯s the reason, I remained because I thought I would get there early-early-early-early...¡±

 II - Signals in a summer night

    Do you know what a perfect summer night looks like? She did. She had spend months dreaming of this, and now finally it was at hand. This unearthly night. August, towards the end of it. Damp, right after a thunder storm.


    She fell onto a hard mattress on a rusty iron bed. Some of her hair ended up in bed, some under her back. But she did not care. She focused on the ceiling before her eyes, on the black beams supporting the fiber cement roofing. Everything supporting the roof was visible, there was even a small hole through which she could see black night sky.


    There was a burning cigarette between the fingers on her right hand, while the left was limply on the bed, almost lifeless. A thought occurred, that if her left had suddenly become lifeless and paralyzed, at this time this would have been almost a pleasure to her. She curled the fingers on her left hand just to be sure. At the same time her right hand was sliding down her chest, counting the ribs from her breast to the stomach. It was irrelevant though, and the number was soon forgotten.


    She took another drag from the cigarette, looking at the tip of it getting brighter. At this moment, it was the only source of light in the room, besides an old military radio with its various faint indicator lights. Although the end of the burning cigarette got a lot brighter, it was still not enough to reflect off her fingernails. Her right hand continued its journey, sliding over the firm stomach, across the navel and ending up between the hip bones which were now keeping the fabric of her dress taut. But this was also irrelevant to her.


    A gust of cool wind from somewhere outside blew by. She could imagine it starting off from the rusty scaffolding of the old high tension masts, the bottom anchors of which were long since covered in thick moss. Where the high cables dripping with rain were holding thousands of volts of power within. Hanging so high and yet so low. Those masts looked their best in the evenings of a late summer, regardless of any rain or wind.


    This little gust which had blown in through the rotting planks in the wall was now disturbing the trail smoke rising from the cigarette in her hand. Ruining the dream-like perfection of the untouched trail. But also reminding her that she was still awake.


    She was not cold, as there was a stove by the wall at the back of the room, still giving off some heat. And in the other wall there was a window, with the panes almost falling out of the wooden frame. A window which she could no longer open. There was a long scar on her left arm, from the last time she had opened said window, and the glass pane did indeed fall out, broke and gave her a long and deep cut. Almost looking like a failed suicide attempt.


    Out of the window, there was a view upon a garden, at least there had been a few hours ago, when it wasn''t completely dark yet. A small garden full of junipers, slowly dying off, a pond, some old garden furniture made of wood and lots of flower beds. In the corner of the yard, there were big birches. And right beyond the flower beds there was a tall line of various overgrown plants. Years ago there had been a chain-link fence, but surely by now it was nothing but crumbling rust. This fence had been the only thing separating their garden from the neighbor''s yard. And by now that thing had become so over-grown that it was almost a full forest.


    Tall birches which had looked so familiar and pretty in her early childhood. Taking up so little of the plot, but reaching sky high. How they weathered every storm, always bending but never yielding or breaking. Neighbor''s rowan tree, a line of apple trees and his house. And a little towards the right there were the fields and a line of high tension masts running diagonally across them.


    She threw her burnt cigarette into a nearby bucket. There was some water in it and many more cigarette butts. Different brands, but they all looked the same, with white paper covering the tobacco and pastel orange covering the filter.


    She put her feet on the cold wooden floor and stood up. The floor was lacquered, but decades before her birth. With a few silent steps, she reach the old radio and switched it on. A heavy black plunger button to do it, requiring some force. The indicator lights changed immediately and the cloth-backed dials lit up with incandescent glow. The yellowing fabric for the background of the dials looked almost dirty. A red hand moved across the scale which itself was not on the fabric, but rather painted on the inside of the glass covering the dial. There were four different dials to pinpoint the signal.


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    She took the blanket off her bed and laid it down right before the radio. While doing this, she pushed aside old beer and wine bottles, collected there since the beginning of times. Probably since Soviet times when one had to stay in line and pay up just to see foreign alcohol in a bottle. She laid down on the blanket and removed her dress.


    The dress had never really accentuated her bodily features. There was a limit. But she did have a some good features. Mainly being tall. She did not like wearing clothes, especially in summer night when she was the only living person within a 10 kilometer radius. Everybody else was away, even the neighbor with the overgrown yard. And to lay on a blanket with no clothing felt good. How at first the cold blanket felt so cool and then, later, warm from her own bodyheat. She loved the feeling. Usually she curled up on the blanket, focusing all her attention to the warmth, as far away from the cold on her back as possible.


    She reached out her hand, switching on the speakers and slowly turning up the sound. Due to some weird reason, her radio was always tuned to 666 kilocycles, despite the device having not a single digital part in it, everything was analog, there was no logic, only knobs to turn and switches to toggle. As if something else was always coming by when she was not paying attention and tuned the dial back to this frequency. It could not have been the radio itself. The thought that somebody other than her was here to touch the radio made her judder.


    Noise started emanating from the speakers, a stable low-pitched beeping of which nothing could be discerned. It was definitely a signal, but not something the device could have made understandable to human ears. With the following frequencies it was the same, sometimes a hiss, sometimes a hum, sometimes other sounds, sometimes crackling like a fire burning.


    All the noises that she could not discern as human language or even anything pleasurable, always led her to two thoughts. One being that some of it was just scrambled, or a video signal or something else technical. And the other was that she had stumbled onto something military. Perhaps an encrypted Russian military transmission sent from some forgotten base at Kamchatka, where people were suffering and trying to warm up with kerosene and vodka, alternatively.


    But that was only an errant thought as she went through the spectrum, from low teen kilocycles to hundreds per second. Lots of Russian radio stations, with more or less noise. The truth was that the air was full of all sorts of waves. And after listening to the noise long enough, it was no longer possible to discern whether a faint voice heard was real or imaginary. She had hours of recordings of such sounds concerning which she had never managed to reach a conclusion. And whenever she stumbled upon even a faintly clear signal, whether a radio station or something else, she always stopped to listen to it for a duration.


    And in her mind another idea popped up. That the sounds she was hearing were not actually being transmitted right now, rather they had been transmitted in the past and now the air, the aether or something else similar was playing them back. That the signal had been recorded into the air itself. Or they had been incidentally beamed into space and were only just now returning. Or perhaps these were not messages from the past and to the past, but messages from the future, being beamed back into past due to some strange mechanism. Something that most people cannot hear and those who can lack the means to understand the message.


    Music stations playing either classical or contemporary music through the noise. She always imagined them as originating from some faraway corner in Russia. Music stations where the operator has left and put the whole system on auto-pilot, to broadcast music from the only good band in his village so far away as Estonia. Or talk radio, which evoked an image in her mind of a cold radio studio in a dilapidated building. The only warmth cause by the radio equipment, a 40 watt incandescent bulb and the cooling water for the small transmitter. And the people in studio, talking in the middle of the night about some obscure topics few could relate to. As if hoping that anybody in this dark and lonely night was listening them, without commercials or paid advertisements and on top of that, with a bad transmission quality as well.


    Even more interesting were the Italian and French stations which were as if from the Dead Mountaineer''s Hotel in the Alps. Where the diesel generator in the hotel was fulfilling the sole aim of keeping the local transmitter running. A hotel full of people and every night an interesting interview was held on a random topic. And the people in the hotel do nothing else, besides enjoying the nature and life. A place which has no connection the modern world, other than the transmitter.


    She continued scanning. Stumbling upon languages she could not even identify, never mind understanding them. And on top of that they faded in and out of the noise. Japanese or Korean possibly, It was certainly being translated, but she could not discern whether into another exotic language or not. And finally Finnish stations, bringing to her mind a small building in Lapland, not far from Ivalo, broadcasting the latest news on horseraces she had never even heard of existing. Radio stations for total fanatics. The exotics of Western affluence. However, every more or less clear signal was worth recording, either for experimental electronic music or some dark drum and bass.


    She left the Finnish station behind. It was at least something she could understand. She pulled some of her hair from under her body that had finally started to distract her. Spending her nights, scanning the spectrum like this always made her want to do something similar. To buy an old pre-war water-cooled transmitter and broadcast as a pirate radio station, transmitting music, musings or anything else. Because satisfaction was not only about listening to the airwaves, it was also about giving back to it, with no desire for a return.


    A tired feeling finally assaulted her and won. She found a new signal but her eyes were too drowsy to see the gauge indicating the broadcast frequency. However the signal itself was quite interesting. A male voice, weaving in and out of the noise floor. And it seemed to be Estonian.


    ¡°That¡¯s the reason, I remained because I thought I would go there early-early-early-early...¡±


    She switched on the reel-to-reel recorder and fell asleep.

 III - The Moon does indeed burn II

    It is late in evening. I am kneeling beside your rusty iron bed, basking in the cold electric light of a 40 watt incandescent bulb. Screwed into an old wall lamp with a Soviet era quality mark embossed into the back of it. I am kneeling on the floor which still carry faint signs of having once been lacquered. My black jeans and a damaged pock-marked floor. Once a long time ago, all this had seemed so big. We even played war one or twice, throwing wooden blocks. But after that, you no longer wanted to play.


    I am still stroking the green dress covering you from neck to ankles. Also your arms. You always liked such dresses which had both long sleeves and a long skirt. I see your long hair, which has now turned gray. I see your pale skin. Was it as pale back when you ran into the woods on the night of the Blue Moon not a year ago? I cannot say.


    Your chest slowly rising and falling, following the slow and steady breaths. Pulse at a steady 50 beats per minute. I do not know whether you are sleeping or just unconscious, but I know you are somewhere peaceful, be it at or beyond the red line.


    It doesn''t really matter whether it is possible to return from the other side or not. You are strong, you always have been. I get up and give your face a final glance. You have not aged a day since. But should you have? You never wanted to get old and die, only to be young and beautiful. I step by the window and try to look outside. Instead I find myself focused on the casting defect within the glass panes. Cheap glass which some traveling salesman had been selling, obviously stolen by the hundreds from some unnamed military installation hidden within the forest.


    The inner frame of the window was still retaining a triangular shard, the edge of which was covered in your dried blood. This was before we nailed the windows shut, as the nails held the windows far better than rotten wood. I look outside. The yard, the garden furniture now home to some climbing plants, and overgrown pond and a small American made SUV right under the window. It''s a pity that the window is facing this way, away from the sunset, from the lonely dirt road disappearing into the fog dyed pink by the setting Sun. Black fields freshly plowed were responsible for the fog. The sound of a lonely tractor doing the last plow for the night, popping out of the dense fog for a moment, only to disappear once more.


    And of course, the neighbor''s garden. The neighbor has long since disappeared, already before you did. Only his past actions here still remain. An overgrown, almost forest-like yard, two tall birches standing side by side. I can still remember the sun passing their top limbs when it rose in early mornings. A long and drawn-out Nordic rise, which begun far and slow, behind the neighbor''s red brick toolshed. It then rose above the mossy fiber cement roof of the shed and touched the ventilation stack of the wooden outhouse right next to it. Turning from the pale white shine in the early morning to an almost burning red glow in the evening.


    I turn and see again your seemingly lifeless body. The stove is warm, although the fire has already gone out. I sigh, again, and sit by your desk. I switch on all the various boxes and devices and watch the electronics wake up and warm up. The indicator lamps become fully lit as well. Once these lights had been little incandescent bulbs, but at some point you decided to disassemble everything, and solder on LEDs to replace the bulbs that needed replacing far too often, at least for you. I also switch on the speakers.


    The sound the old reel to reel recorder was producing was the same it had been on the night you disappeared. ¡°That¡¯s the reason, I remained because I thought I would go there early-early-early-early...¡± The last word repeating on the air forever until it was claimed by the noise floor. This sound had started again, on a certain night.


    *


    A line of small bulbs lit up behind a fabric backdrop. A dull light that warmed a red plastic indicator peg, currently aligned with blue scale painted on glass, indicating roughly around 666 kilocycles. But there was nobody to see it. Right afterwards, there was a click. The speakers switched on as if some invisible force interacted with the heavy toggle switch and moments later the oscilloscope followed suit. The screen of the oscilloscope revealing the patterns in the voice as it spoke.


    I awoke to that damned sound that wanted to haunt me until the end of times. I was on the cold floor, next to your bed, in your grandparents'' old house. I never wanted to lay down, never wanted to heat up the stove. Without you, I just wanted to spend my summer here, sleeping in this house. A house that was left to you. After you had found your grandmother dead in the corner bed downstairs.


    I got up and looked around. The screen on the oscilloscope was the first thing that caught my eye. I crawled to the desk and unplugged all the radio and signals equipment. But this terrifying voice, this one sentence forever repeating, part of a person''s being, his nature, his soul. It was still repeating in my ears. Your fine-tuned equipment had found it on the air, picked it out amongst the thousands of other messages. It had recorded it, filtered it out and was now torturing me with it.


    It took me some time to really wake up before I fell back into a dream of continuing my sleep. To forget the voice and once again wake to escape this damnable dream. It took me too long to understand that I was not sleeping, that I could not sleep. And that the equipment was not plugged in, even the oscilloscope, which was still functioning. And that the sound of the sentence being repeated was not emanating from the speakers but rather from somewhere else, somewhere outside. I took a look towards the small hole in the roof through which water was dripping. My first thought was that it was only light rain, but the wet floor, the peculiar smell of ozone and the clear skies told me something else. This also revealed how the various devices had perhaps started functioning. A thunderous rain storm had directly passed over.


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    I walked past the stove and descended the stone staircase which was more than century old. The steps had worn smooth with age. This was your home. Your nest. Your cave, as you referred to it. An old farm house with blackened interior walls, where it was always dark inside. Because you had nailed all the doors and windows shut, save but one window beside the door, which now had shutters on the inside. Like this, the whole bottom floor of the house was as if a separate world, distinct from everything outside and everything above. And it truly was a cave, as you only needed the upper floor. The downstairs was something you never even wanted to temporarily be in.


    I opened the shutters and climbed outside into twilight dusk. Or was it dawn? In summer it was nigh impossible to tell. I felt the rain drop from the roof onto my head and neck. The clear rainwater was also running down the tinted side glass of the green Jeep ZJ.


    Then I realized it. I had left the keys for it inside, onto your desk on the second floor. Who knows where they had ended up now. Just like your radio which was always set to 666 kilocycles when switched on, as if somebody had moved the dials unnoticed, nothing in the house really stayed in its original location. I lifted my head towards the sky, just to see the rain clouds dyed pink by the setting sun. And the towers of steel scaffolding carrying the high tensions lines which seemed invisible from this distance. A row of steel towers disappearing behind black forests on both sides of the horizon.


    In truth, the SUV was yours as well. To buy it, we had to sell the old caterpillar tractor. And then we had barely enough money to buy this old piece of junk which was now used to get into town or go to the woods. First came the car, and only then the insurance and all that crap. I walked across the wet grass. Due to the rain and the twilight, the grass looked dull and gray. Likewise the fence looked ominous and black, it had become water-logged from the rain storm. The gray lichen growing on the fence was almost unnoticeable.


    I headed towards the front gate passing the old well. Few months before his passing, your grandfather had found and brought home a large decorative metal circle made of welded together sections. He had set it down around the well. It was told that this was the reason for his passing, him dragging this home, that he had gone to that place at all. He had sternly forbidden us to go to the forest, but he himself went. Apparently the rocket fuels still left there were more poisonous than he had thought.


    The Forbidden Forest. While on his deathbed, your grandpa had still insisted that we never went there. But we never cared. A lonely yet wide forest road, muddy tracks worn in and grass growing on the center section between them. This road led far, to the large concrete fields, where tall grass was growing between large slabs of reinforced concrete. The road itself was muddy only on the surface, hidden a few feet down were large slabs of limestone brought here from the Northern shores of the country.


    Having walked down this road a few hundred meters, having soaked my shoes and pants in the mud, I turned to a smaller forest road on the left, littered with small rocks, forming a makeshift cobblestone patchwork. The surface of this road was also about half a meter below the surface of the main road. This was still meant to be traveled by vehicles. I quickened my pace.


    Somewhere from here, one could reach a small forest track which led to a series of large concrete domes. The domes could be pushed off deep silos. The wheels and the rails they ran on, although very rusty, were still in place. There was also another road, leading to an old foundation and walls made of large granite field stones. There was also a lot of broken stone and metal which almost looked like part of a large cross. We could only guess whether it had been a church or not. In any case, it had been a fun place to play at.


    I headed down a smaller track on the side. No stone paving of any kind here, just tall grass and hard-packed ground. Tall nettles and hemlocks or various sorts lined the road, looking like a forest that felt impassable even when just thinking about it. I continued onward, towards the Blue Moon. Soon, I saw the small Forest Lake. This was our own name to this place. Going by it''s size, it was nothing but a large natural pond, maybe about a thousand square meters in size, but considering everything, it was something much more than just a body of water.


    I stopped. The Moon was lighting up the whole area of the lake and some of the surroundings. From the moonlight 4 maidens descended and became corporeal, the four of them were also carrying a fifth maiden with them. The surface of the lake changed. It was no longer part of natural lake as it became part of the moonlight. And again I could see the sauna stove, the benches and some wooden buckets.


    Four maidens with curly hair made of moonlight were repeatedly visiting the lake for water made of moonlight, their hair hovered around their heads as if they were underwater. Despite the lake shining like the Moon, it seemed they had trouble gathering the water, as they were visiting the pond very often and rushed up the staircase made of moonlight when returning. And then they washed, not just themselves but also the fifth, unconscious maiden. Every spot they touched while washing her lost its shine. As if the moonlight was slowly receding from her body, turning it earthly and material.


    After they had thoroughly washed the unconscious maiden, they lifted her up and carried her down the stairs of moonlight. At that moment I noticed, that the hair of the firth maiden was still made of moonlight. The unconscious maiden was gently placed into the moonlit waters of the forest pond.


    Just as they had managed to place her floating in the lake, the four maidens of moonlight went out. A massive cloud blocked to moon and erased everything. The maidens, the stairs, the sauna. The only thing that remained, was a girl, gently floating in the water, her face just barely above the surface. She was slowly floating towards a darkened spot in the forest lake. I knew that spot. You were afraid to swim to that spot. You had also never let me to swim to that spot. Seeing me swim to that spot once, it was the only time I ever saw you scared.


    My clothes were still on, as I rushed into the water.


    I reached you and brought you ashore. You were alive, breathing slowly and calmly. You felt so light in my hands. And then I noticed it. Your hair was no longer dark brown. It was now grayish white. Stilled colored by the moonlight that was never washed away. That same night I brought you home.


    Still I remember the good times, sitting on the hood of the green Jeep ZJ, our feet resting on the front bumper, holding each others hands and looking at a sunset. A faint sound of tractor under the burning sky, which acted as a backdrop to the row of high tensions masts. We were sure that this view, this moment always repeating, would outlast out lives. I want these moments back, and probably you do as well, even though you are still so far.


    I am still kneeling beside your bed. Still watching your long sleep. I wish you would awaken and come back to me. Please, wake up...

 IV - the Nameless Town

    Two black rooks were flying under a gray sky. They were headed far away from here, towards the fields of concrete. Or was it the direction they had come from? You could never know of the youth. They seemed so lonely, flying not far from each other, it even seemed as if their flight paths were circling each other. Seemingly they flew higher than the line of high tension masts heading towards the concrete fields, but still lower than the radio mast anchored into the sky behind the fields and the forests. The crows finally started descending, towards the rain-soaked fields and the old rowan.


    They both landed into the fork on the trunk, which was uncharacteristically high on the tree.


    The birds did not notice the rowan attempting to crane itself away from them, to entice the tall fir on the other side of the muddy gravel road. But the fir was still proudly staring at the sky, completely ignoring the rowan. But the rooks just sat on the tree and looked around, once in a while shaking the rain water from their plumages. The rain had ended a while ago, but the leaves on trees were still dripping. Soon the rooks were back in the air, leaving behind the desperate rowan and heading towards the proud fir, which offered far more protection from the noise that now moved below them.


    The noise that had scared the young rooks consisted of the engine sound of a long stroke V8 and the mud sloshing back and forth in the potholes, as the green boxy Jeep rolled along the road. It had come from the old farmhouse on the corner. Just about the only yard which had not yet become overgrown with rose bushes. It lay on the corner, because the gravel road made a sharp turn there, heading towards a massive rusting gate. This gate had been unlocked and wide open for over ten years now, still probably longing for the times past when it had been closed, and also had had a sentry for company.


    But the young man driving the vehicle cared nothing for the rooks nor the gate. He had his own duty and he was going to fulfill it without fail, be it out of love or out of some other sentiment to remain a secret. Often, he looked at the rear view mirror without a real need, grumbling that he had left his face unshaven. But also, he was hoping that at one point suddenly a pair of green eyes along with gray and white hair would appear in the mirror. To his sadness, nothing like this was bound to happen. He pressed down on the accelerator.


    I


    An unknown amount of minutes later, the car reached a nameless half-derelict border town, which, despite being small and insignificant, had quite a special administrative status. Although that was about the extent that locals could or would speak about this special status. There were only stories, that some years ago there had been an official who said that this town had a special status, and then he was gone again, as if he had never been here. Almost like all other officials who had come from the North for a visit.


    Here too, the rain had ended not too long ago. But as the young man parked his car by a grassy patch in front of the only store within this town, it seemed as if not too soon, the rain would continue. Perfectly normal for a summer in this area. He shut the car door and headed towards the store. There was no point in locking the car, there was no chance that there''d be anybody interested in stealing it.


    Just about the only person who could have wanted to steal it was old Viki, who once long ago had a habit of bothering school children for vodka money. Of course, the little that the children had, was all used for ice cream, especially in summer. Yeah, Viki would have definitely wanted to steal it, but as Viki had no legs, he was out of luck. In the olden days, he had had a habit of drinking while driving a harvester, these days he was just into drinking.


    When the young man entered the store, he encountered some air that made him cough. This made the two people already in the store pay some attention to him. One of them was known as Village Hag no 6. And the other was Virve. Soviet doctrine encouraged women to take up traditionally male jobs, including driving farm equipment, and Virve had been a natural at it. When young, she was already bigger, taller and stronger than other girls her age. And this made her perfectly suited for being the only female driver in the local kolkhoz. Handling everything from tractors to trailer trucks. Of course these days, she was content with keeping her small store of produce and essentials.


    After noticing that it was indeed him, they returned to exchanging news. The young man was simply not used to this kind of air. It felt like the store had not been aired out in months. It was full of moisture, smells of sweat, cookies and coffee mixed with industrial cleaning supplies. It was all topped off with an old drinks fridge in the corner. Rusty, banged up and incredibly dirty, but still in working order, somehow. The logos and the paint had long since chipped off, but the glass was intact, as were the rubber seals. The other thing was an old Soviet era radio. Not one of those old valved wonders, but rather something from the 1980s, with plastic case and semiconductor electronics.


    The radio was crackling with the sounds of out of tune music and singing by a long since dead and then immortalized village musician, trying to croon a popular love song from the before-times.


    "..and did you know? Yesterday, again some men from the North visited Silver and asked about all sorts of things... and it would seem soon he''s outta luck too, the militia will come from the city and take the boy to jail."


    "If it happens, it happens. But I know Silk, he won''t care about some suits from the North. He''ll send them packing either way. And if they won''t listen to words, a steel pipe about the head will argue otherwise. It has happened before. And when he has sent them packing enough times, I guess they will send somebody else. Hopefully they will also take over the business of selling us the red gasoline."


    The young man set some items on the counter next to the cash register. Two loaves of bread, a bottle of vodka, a carton of orange juice and two sticks of rock hard smoked pork sausage.


    "There is no milk?" He asked.


    "Dumpling Eduard hasn''t been here yet." Virve replied with a stiff tone.


    "He''s having it hard as well." The Village Hag said. "Every time he''s in town he complains that every day it is harder and harder to get up. I guess old age has finally crawled into his bones as well."


    "That old shit''s fine." Virve played it off. "It is his diet. I''m telling you. All those dumplings and not enough vodka. If we could tie him down and pour a bottle of vodka into him, we would bring him right back to life."


    "Is there any jam? Or cabbage?" the young man continued.


    "There could be jam." Virve ponderously said.


    She turned around and looked at the empty shelves, except for one lone jar next to the transistor radio, labeled as strawberry jam.


    "But I need to put something on my bread too. And there is no cabbage, Market Hag has not been yet."


    "Market Hag is ill." Village Hag said. "She called me earlier, told me her nose is runny and head is hot and asked me if I would not have the kindness to come and light the fire in her stove."


    "And did you?"


    "Do I look stupid to you? I ain''t gonna walk to the ol'' Market in this rain to make fire for her! Told her to go to hell!"


    While listening to this, the young man laid some crumpled up bills on the counter.


    "Hey, you." Village Hag No 6 turned to him. "You look like a good person, maybe the Market Hag will even give you free cabbages if you light her stove and put a kettle on."


    "I could use some cabbage." The young man said to himself.


    "How''s the Corner-Girl?" The Village Hag asked.


    "Already better." The young man lied.


    "Yeah, It''s no joke, going for swim in the forest lake."


    He left the two people, who had now found something new to talk about, something much closer to him.


    "But those two are weird, First, they buy this green car that sounds the same as a 6 ton ZIL truck. And now, the things that are happening there¡­"


    "Leave it. They might be young, but they know what they''re doing. When I was young..." Virve stopped talking mid sentence, noticing her own reflection on the glass top of the counter. This reminded her, that she had not been born as a tractor operator, she too was young once. She too had had dreams and even a lover¡­


    "Let me tell you, if my old man were still alive, he''d show em!" The Village Hag cursed. "Albert left first and them Maiu followed soon after. They were the right kind of people! But this young boy form the North, he really¡­"


    Of course, that what was supposed to be done with him, the young man could not hear. And by now, he was no longer that young, or that "from the North." He had to step out of the store so that Village Hag No 5 with her lilac coat could step into the store along with her trolley.


    The young man walked back to his green car. It appeared that during his time in the store, a quick downpour has washed over the car, as the warm hood was again wet. The old Weather Man in the sky seemed to be generous today. Whether or not it meant that it was going to rain for 2 weeks straight right above the farm house, he could not tell. Nobody could tell what the Weather Man was thinking.


    When he got closer, he noticed that some of the village kids were wandering around the car, trying to see inside. It was understandable, after all. If the usual toy up until now had been an old 2106 with no lights that they managed to put together and miraculously got started, then seeing a proper V8 engine with automatic transmission was truly a sight. He walked around the car and opened the rear hatch, threw in the stuff he had bought and under the burning eyes trying to memorize each detail visible, he shut the hatch. He then got into the car and started the engine.


    You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.


    Moments later the green off-roader started moving and left the old Russian car with no glass, no lights and no hood behind. Visiting the Market Hag seemed like a good idea. But he was not planning to head over right away. Before that, he was planning to visit an old friend name Ivo, who was probably still spending his time on the old school building.


    The school building was not in use. Up until recently it had been, but in spring, some officials from the North had come. Those especially annoying suits who drove long and sleek black cars from the old days with tons of flawless chrome. They had come to visit the local mayor, who had also happened to be, up until the last storm, the owner of the newest car in town. He was told that they were going to close the school down and the children would have to go to school elsewhere, either out of the county to the North or to the South.


    Some years ago the young man himself had finished the school, along with Ivo. However by that time Ivo had already been officially expelled, but still he was spending his 5th year in the 7th grade. Until he was told that he is too old. And not to come back. As a twist of irony, Ivo was now 27 and had been a teacher for the past few years.


    II


    The young man closed the car door and for a moment, stared at the tinted side glass. Just for a moment, he thought he saw something waving, like some hair. Long, straight, gray... he turned around. Something white was indeed waving in the wind. But it was not hair. Next to the school there was an old storage yard and within that storage yard was a pile of fiber cement roof tiles covered in white plastic. This plastic had ripped and was now being torn and flipped about by the wind.


    He stepped over the empty dark beer bottles and old books strewn about, finally reaching the main hallway of the abandoned school building. The doors were left open, some of the windows were broken. But the roof and the walls were sturdy, there was no sign of rain on the inside, only an old alphabet book laying on a weathered wooden door sill had a dew rain drops on it. The alphabet books was the same edition he too had once learned to read from. But the book was here for another purpose too, to keep the front door from being shut by the wind.


    Ivo''s place of living was not far from the front door. He had to be somewhere around, within these walls and the floor insulated with asbestos. He resorted to following the empty beer bottles, as it was the only true way of finding Ivo. Sometimes he would reminisce and go for a walkabout around the building, leaving behind new beer bottles and breaking older ones, trying to remember how the now empty and windowless classrooms had once been.


    "Bother, hi, Let me introduce you to Wilhelmina."


    A man sitting in a dirty green armchair in front of and old TV pointed at an empty armchair beside himself.


    "Hi, Wilhelmina." The young man said. There was no point in arguing with Ivo when he was not himself, The whole town was aware of it.


    "How''s your life going then?"


    "Same old, same old." Ivo replied. "Those faggots from the North haven''t reopened the school yet. They keep saying it is dangerous. Let me tell you, the only thing ever dangerous around here was teacher Algae who never labeled his chemical solutions properly. It was always one thing with him.


    "Oh, I wonder what''s in this little bottle? Student Martinson, please come here and open it up. Oh no, I don''t think the contents will explode in your face. Let''s be honest, it is barely noticeable that half your face is now in bandages and you''re missing an ear. Come on now. You know the old saying right? That when a student does not come to chemistry, chemistry will come into the student." Fucking Algae!"


    Ivo spat.


    He had done his best to imitate the sickly sweet tone of professor Algae, but it ended with a fit of cough, bringing to mind something big, yellow-green, sticky and not at all pleasant. Ivo''s talent in imitating voices, which as known all around the school, had finally left him. Pity, since it was hated by all teachers, especially Virve who had taught shop back then.


    "Anything new here?" the young man asked.


    "Not much." Ivo replied. "As you know, we haven''t had telephone connection to the external world since the last storm. And I am pretty sure the people from North are not too keen on repairing it. Why would they care about us anyway? And of course the thing still makes everybody laugh, that Pete is no longer the owner of the coolest car in the town. He was adamant about not moving it, complaining that it would thus get unneeded wear. But in the end the shitbox was towed to the town wrecking yard for 200 cash. And that in turn went to Carl to dispose of the fallen tree."


    "Why town wreckers, not here?"


    "Pete is not stupid. If he left this thing here, then before the month is up, the parts of his ride would end up within several Oh-Ones, that the local youths drive around. Those things are nothing but communal coffins anyway. Militia or the cops never show up here either. I doubt they care. Remember, our last constable also died of boredom. Yeah, yeah, I know, he put a bullet into his head, but he did it out of boredom."


    Ivo shut up for a moment.


    "Also, people say that, these days, there have been a lot of sightings of Them."


    "Them?" The young man asked. "You mean them, right?" He pointed his finger towards the ceiling with a crack in it.


    "Yeah, they are saying that the Market Hag is not ill because of a cold and a runny nose and whatnot, but instead because one of them came for a visit. But you know how they "come for a visit," right? First they make the room blindingly white, then you can''t move a muscle and then the next moment there is some two meter tall thing with no eyes or face but with a silvery glowing skin standing in your bedroom. Showing some unhealthy interest in your TV or radio.¡±


    "Are you sure?" the young man asked. "It is hard to believe. Usually they don''t come in the heart of summer."


    "You have no idea what goes on around here, you''re living in your own world. But, god damn it! I know why they''re here."


    "Why then?"


    The only sounds that accompanied their conversations were the wind beating the door against the book and a metal pipe on the other side. The metal pipe was just about the only thing keeping the wind from completely detaching the door from the frame. And of course the unending rain once again beating down on everything. This time it felt especially hard. For a time they both listened to the rain, trying to discern any discarnate voices within the rainfall. But there was nothing, only rain beating down on the flora.


    "They like waves." Ivo continued. "Electric waves, radio waves. The air is full of them. Not long ago, a pair of lights spent a couple of hours hanging above the radio mast. At the Substation. Other times they hover above high tension lines. Always where there''s lots of current."


    "Would they have any business above the concrete fields?" the young man asked. His thoughts were however still with the girl lying in bed on the upper floor of the farm house.


    "Maybe, Eduard is still going on about how these craft originate from the concrete fields, that these are toys of the Ruskies. Old Aida, who kicked the bucket years ago always talked how the lights flying in the sky and the sky people were here long before the Ruskies. That her granny had already been aware of them."


    Ivo stopped for a moment.


    "Hey, tell me, how are things with the girl, what was her name again? Rhey?"


    "Rheya." The young man said.


    "Yes. Rheya. How are things with her?"


    "Unchanged, still in bed."


    "Oh well. Anyway, if you have to go, I''m not gonna keep a hold of you."


    "But I don''t have to go."


    "You think so?" Ivo asked. He scratched his long black and dirty beard and then pointed outside the window. "This is just a small pause. There''s gonna be a lot of rain today. And the Old Weatherman has nothing to do with it."


    III


    Before returning to the farm, the young man decided to take a little detour to the Substation. To be fair, nobody had ever stepped into the Substation, it was something higher, something more important than the North or the Nameless Town. Substation was just about the only reason this place could be called a town. Substation was the town. A massive pastel gray building with tall windows so dirty that they had long since become opaque to everything but faint light. And right next to the Substation, there stood the mast. Radio tower which some very intelligent people had erected a long time ago. And still it stood, in the cold winds and rain.


    People in the town liked the Substation for one very specific reason. Next to the Station there was the tower and next to the tower there was a massive pool full of cooling water for the transmitters. The transmitters were powerful enough to make the whole pool give off warm steam, even in the coldest winters. The pool was not too deep, only a few meters, but it was ten meters wide and nearly 25 meters in length. Substation itself had received its name back when it still housed the old analog telephone exchange. A place where a dry old man with a fading voice switched the cables between sockets. But this was a long time ago.


    Anybody could tell that for this little town, the Substation was too big. And going by the stories, it had always been locked up. Nobody ever went in, nobody ever came out. These same stories told that Substation was full of endless dusty halls in permanent twilight. That the part seen above ground was just a small portion of the whole facility. There were massive support pillars adorned with forged arches and other ornaments, not some raw 20th century framework, but earlier from 19th century, when even industrial had to look beautiful.


    Others said that although in the past, there had been all the equipment, these days it was nothing but a graveyard, all the equipment and unknown tech had long since stopped working, all that was left was some metal mechanisms, chains and gears, electric motors and several floors of scaffolding. Despite the different theories regarding the long lost purpose of the Substation, there was one thing that the people agreed on. That somewhere in the halls of this facility, there was this elusive something that had kept the radio mast powered on for decades now, had kept the pool steaming hot year after year and peoples'' lives unchanged. That is why the town carried such a significance to the slick officials from the North.


    It was also clear that whatever it was that had been hidden in the Substation, the sky people also wanted a part of it.


    He left the car near the door to the Station. He then headed towards the pool where legless Victor was having a swim. His wheelchair along with his clothes were left by the pool. Viki was a frequent guest at the pool, because although being a cripple and an alcoholic, there were times when even he had clearer moments and wanted to wash the dirt off. Especially as this was a prerequisite to get some food stuffs from the Market Hag. For the vodka he had to get his own money. And once he received his monthly pension, the drinking started. Sometimes he was joined with every drunkard within town. And most of the townspeople were fond of alcohol to some extent.


    Even the young man himself had enjoyed the cooling pool. Before all this happened to Rheya. In winter nights, when the air was 30 below and the pool water was at least 40 above. When one could not spend too long out of the pool for fear of freezing. So it was common to leave one''s car engine running and pop into the pool for a quick soak. Some even decided to walk to the pool in heavy coats, do their swimming and then walk back home, donning the heavy coat one again.


    "Hey Viki!" The young man called out. "Do you know anything about the lights?"


    Victor swam closer and shouted to reply. "What the fuck would I know about them? They keep hovering here, interfering with people''s lives. Just yesterday, when I cam fro a swim, one was sitting still above the mast. Well, it did not concern me, so I went for a swim regardless. Silver has been saying that he often sees them on the roads. Apparently they want something. This probably means that soon, the heavenly slick suits will appear."


    "Heavenly slick suits?" The young man asked. "Who are they?"


    "You know, just like the slick suits from North, just way weirder. They drive their long black limos in the dark of night, they stop by your house, enter through the locked doors, they say there are no lights, that we are just insane, and to top it all off, they threaten our lives. And then they leave some weird contact card which I have tons of in my wheelchair bag. They want to leave us an impression that they are the boys from the North, but I think those bastards are the sky people or the slick suits of the real Center Station. I can''t even say which is worse. They should both just stay where they are, when they''re not here. Would be better for everybody. Now, either get away, or come into the water, it is cold outside the water."


    IV


    The Jeep was driving fast on a wide yet rarely-used gravel road. This road was part of the road going towards the concrete fields, cutting through an ancient sprawling forest. There were but few reasons for the road to be so wide. Firstly to allow wide military vehicles simultaneously traveling both ways. And secondly, to allow for an emergency landing strip for aircraft. Now, years after the concrete fields had fallen into disuse, this road was still fine, despite crumbling from the edges and patches of grass growing on it.


    The young man mashed the pedal and forced the vehicle to move faster. There had been something unnerving. Something that was still circling around in his mind. Whether it was Ivo, or Viki or Market Hag who flinched at every small noise. It was not clear to him, what it was. It wasn''t even that important. But still he felt that something was looking at him, trying to follow him. To find out where he was going.


    A moment later hew saw how far ahead of him in the road, a glowing orb the width of the whole road descended and hovered above the ground. Moments later he had driven inside it. And as he could not see anything, he desperately slammed the brakes on. But nothing happened. He felt the car accelerate and then the engine died.


    The next moment he was turning the wheel of the car to drive into the yard of the farm house. The engine was on, the car seemed to be fine. He sat in the car, dazed. It was dark outside. The engine was still running. He turned it off, but that was of no help. The silence was deafening. Time was not uniform. What had just happened?


    He had started driving back towards the farmhouse in dusk when he could still see outside. Then, a few kilometers from the farmhouse, he had driven into a glowing orb of milky white fog. And then suddenly he had turned into the driveway at home, and it was dark outside. Only then did he think about looking at the clock on the car''s dashboard. It was nearing midnight. He had started back slightly before 4 in the afternoon. Somehow, 8 hours had gone missing.


    He open the car door and stepped outside. He then used one of the boarded-up windows to get into the building. On the lower floor, trinkets and other small items had most certainly changed places again. It was always happening as if some unseen force was teleporting them around when nobody was looking. But that was not all.


    A strange feeling had assaulted him as soon as he had entered the house. But now he had confirmation. As soon as his head rose above the surface of the second floor, he froze. He now understood it. He was alone. The bed was empty. The bedding was cold. She was long since gone. When she had left and what she had taken along, the house could not answer.


    With heaviness in his legs, he fell sitting on the bed. His body was stiff and heavy, he was tired. His loved one had disappeared into the unknown and he had lost 8 hours of time which he could not remember. Life could not be any better, he thought.

 V - A Meeting on the Border

    Was it possible to feel worse that I was feeling at this moment? Sitting here, in a cold house, my back against the chimney. It had gained more warmth from my body heat than from the fire in the stove downstairs. Was was the point of the spirit of the wine, or the plant fairies if those could not alter my current mood in any way? How long can a person stay awake anyway? 2 days? Three? Longer? When does the sense of time start disappearing to where everything else goes? I cannot tell that.


    You are still gone. An unknowable amount of time later from the moment I had finally managed to gather enough courage to leave our secret realm to get some food. And you had taken the chance to leave the homely and familiar walls towards an unknown direction. I am still looking for you and I am sure you know that. I have been looking for you ever since that day. Constantly, without rest or sleep. And I found you. Or perhaps you found me. I do not know which would be correct. It is funny really. I found you, and yet you are gone. Or perhaps it was not you that I found. Maybe it was another lonely signal, condemned to forever wander the air waves and reminds you only for god knows why.


    Do you want to know how I found you? Alright, I will tell you. Do you remember the time you were still here? In the old home of your grandparents? A placed which they had built together and which also became their final resting place. How you had sat just a few meters away from where I am sitting right now, between all those radios and antennae, in your long green dress. How you had spent sleepless nights flying between different wavelengths, from civilian channels to military stations. Jumping between numbers stations and long distance transmitters, trying to find an immortal signal, something that would remind you a piece of a human soul.


    I know you found it one night. The signal. A snippet of a phone call which was forever burnt into the air waves for unknown reasons. A signal which no longer had a source or a transmitter. A signal ever-changing, jumping from one channel to the next, from one frequency to another. But always circling a corner only reserved for radio amateurs and military personnel.


    I started from the same place. Sleepless nights, darkness and thunderstorms. Trying to find a familiar signal. I did not which one it was. Was it the signal you had found or something entirely different? But I knew that there had to be something. Night by night I moved across the frequency field, trying to find the smallest discrepancy, listening how different lives rose from the noise floor and then then once again fell into it, as I moved onward on the spectrum.


    I cannot tell how many nights or days passed, but finally, I found it. A foreign signal which could not be part of the usual airwaves. It was not a phone call. It was laughter. Your laughter, as I had always remembered it. A gentle womanly laughter. Barely reaching out from the general hallucinatory stream of noise. Initially, I thought your laughter to also be a hallucinations. I am still not sure, in fact. And the hiss and noise of the airwaves still fills my rears.


    I managed to record it for several minutes. As it disappeared and then again surfaced and then disappeared once again. This magical unearthly laughter. Eventually I managed to fall asleep listening to this laughter. In the morning I woke up before the radio, listening again to the same noise i recorded, but in the morning sun it was more akin to a rain falling on a roof than a laughter. To my sadness, there was no laughter anywhere, and yet it had been so clear. Forever burnt into my mind as well as the airwaves.


    Still did I not lose hope. Just like you when you had found a suspicious signal. You recorded it, you scrutinized it, every foot, every second of the tape. Endlessly rewinding it backwards and forwards, trying to find new signs in either your senses or on the oscilloscope that your theory had merit.


    Some shard of info, which would differentiate the noise from a like, an emotion or a figment of the mind. I too continued on the same path the next night, again and again listening to the recording, meter by meter, faster and slower, in every direction.


    Finally, moving the tape at a snail''s pace, a wonderful world opened up before me. The world I had been trying to access. Not a real world though, just a fabric onto which a door had been painted. I found another sign. At a slow pace, it still sounded like noise, but a noise recorded at normal speed. And out of that rose a laughter. Your laughter, which I had heard last night. And also something else, a faint guitar music.


    Despite me recording the signal and listening to it for hours, I could not learn anything more. What did it mean? How could it lead to you? It could have remained just another source of noise between the waves on the aether, which nobody could have found. But something had led me to it. Was it some inner feeling, some external force or you, my love, I cannot answer that.


    But I do know that the same chance or force which had helped me thus far, was still helping me. It told me to go downstairs and look around in the darkness for the car keys. Yes, since the day your grandmother had died and was buried.


    As of that moment nobody was ever alone in here. One could always hear how somebody was walking around on the empty lower floor. The staircase creaking, how even with all windows and doors closed, there was still a small wind to find the napes of people''s necks. Something you had christened as Breath of Granma. And of course the reason that one could never find things from where they were initially placed. Was it because the house foundations were built of the same stones which had been a part of an old chapel destroyed in the War of Independence? Was it because both grandfather and grandmother had both died in that corner bed downstairs? Or because both of them were buried on a small patch in the back yard, which has long since overgrown with nettles and thistles? Nobody could tell. If the house did not want anything found, then nothing would be found.


    And like that I went to the neighbor. Who happened to be at home on that weird and lonely day. This happened to be one of the few days on which he came from the North to look over and do some maintenance on his parents'' old homestead. I wanted to borrow his car or some other means of transport. I wanted to go to the village at get me another bottle of vodka. I was completely lost. I had given up and was hoping that alcohol would help me repress both my feelings and my longing, and would also allow me some sober thought.


    The neighbor was not in a good mood. Before I could ask anything about a car, he started telling me about the latest village news, which seemed so much more important to him, than to me. Repeating again and again that the youth was doomed.


    When I asked him to elaborate, he looked surprised and explained that the youth of the town had a curious pastime. They go to the Forbidden Forest and enjoy themselves with some music, alcohol and leaf right on the Border. And how in recent months, at least three young people have wandered to the other side of the Border on the base and stepped on an old land mine, plenty of which were scattered around on the outer perimeter. And those of them that lived will have to get around in wheelchairs for the rest of their lives.


    This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.


    I came back home. The car was no longer relevant. I knew what I had to do. I had to go to the Forbidden Forest. At night. I had to find the place that the youth had been at. Because somewhere near that you had been as well, or at least somebody, whose laughter was left on the airwaves. And at that moment, when I climbed back into the house, and was reminded of the car, I found the keys to it on a coffee table in front of the couch.


    *


    The day turned slowly into night. Slower than it usually happened these days. I waited, I sat outside with the clock, I looked at the seconds ticking by. I looked at the sun sinking closer and closer to the horizon. How it turned the sky and the clouds yellow at first, then orange and finally the sky turned red and the clouds a dull pink. This was just before the sun disappeared completely behind the horizon, turning everything blue and gray. Slowly, darkness also started to creep closer. And in mid-summer, this happened slightly faster than towards the spring.


    I left the house as soon as the artificial light looked bright outside. I took the car and headed into the forest via a small dirt road on the curve, opposite the farm house. An old road, which the Soviet military engineers had reinforced with concrete slabs brought in from the North. And later smoothed everything over with dirt to make it look as inconspicuous as possible. The stories told that they were trying to build a road around the Border, around the perimeter of the nuclear base, or whatever the hell that base was. To keep away the local country folk who came a little too close to the Zone. Of course, nobody had really used this road for years, not even the soldiers, and thus the reinforced section of the road only led to the first checkpoint. But that was enough for me.


    By the time I stopped the car next to a half-destroyed building of gray brick, the forest had turned ominous and pitch black, as was proper for summers here. There was a footpath here, which was almost impossible to find in the dark. I started to walk down it, trying to keep the border to my left. My gut feeling said that I would not have to go far. Unexpectedly, the broken branches and trampled grass led the way, and even when there was none of those, I could still sort of see a line of pillars made of poor quality concrete, denoting the Border. I slowly started to realize that I knew this place. Back when we were young, we had come to play here. Back when there was still barbed wire running between the pillars. Soldiers rarely came here, even they did not want to guard a forest full of landmines.


    As soon as I left the car behind the twist in the path and the trees, I could again hear your ringing laughter all around the forest. Perhaps it wasn''t even a laughter, just wind and a trick played by my own hopeful heart. Assisted by a ghostly glow ahead and some faint guitar sounds. This was the place, I knew it. Here was the place that your laughter and this unearthly power had brought me. The only question was, why. Why this place? What was here to see? What was I to find here? So many questions were rushing around in my mind.


    This place was definitely familiar to me. To us. Somebody had built a shed here. A small low thing, like a play shed for children or a hiding place for forest brothers. The roof of the shed was no more than half a meter off the ground while the floor was at least half a meter below the surrounding ground level. Half the wall was of earthen stones, and the other half of old logs. On top of that a spindle roof, made of long planks. And it was very well hidden. The soldiers never found it, the parents of the children never found it, Honesty, I was surprised that I had managed to find it myself in the dark after all these years. I again knew what I had to do.


    I opened the door slightly and crawled into the hiding hole. I crawled onward slowly, remembering all those times that the village children had come here to play, to read books, to have secret meetings. Just as the grownups did in their secret bunkers and hiding holes.


    I stopped crawling as soon as my hands hit something that was not dirt. It was a book. Lots of books, left here from a decade ago at the very least. They were intact, seemingly in good condition, if I considered only what I felt in my hands. Possibly even in readable condition, slightly damp, but definitely not waterlogged. I sat against the interior wall and just waited. It took some time for my eyes to adjust to the darkness, to the faint light in the forest within this little hole. I could see the books, I could read the titles on the covers.


    There was even this one book, in English, which Marten had taken behind his parents'' back to win a wager with you. Back then it was just about old books, especially Western ones. No matter what they were about. And now seeing all this, reading the titled about personality disorders, it reminded me of your indifference, your fearlessness concerning the world.


    And again I heard this sound seared into the airwaves, into the aether. Set free either by the forest around me or my own unsound mind. Faint guitar music accompanied by a laughter of a young woman. I wasn''t even sure anymore if it was you. This sound kept echoing both in the forest as well as in this shed. And the laughter was definitely here. Giving rise to the same kind of feeling as we had felt in the old farm house. That we were being watched. That we weren''t alone.


    Suddenly, accompanied by an echoing laughter, a small stone rose from the ground, floated towards me and fell on my legs. I just kept looking in front of myself, the dark emptiness. And surely, it seemed as if there was a nondescript figure. Something that sort of was there, but at the same time, it was not possible to be absolutely positive, as if the faintest of lights would dispel the figure.


    Slightly to the right of the figure, there seemed to be another one like that, a dark spot. And next to that, another one. They all seemed to be there, but also it could have a trick of my eyes or my mind. If only the small stone had never moved.


    "Are you here?" I asked, directing my focus to the first figure.


    "Or here?" I looked at the second one.


    "Or here?" the third one.


    A faint breeze, played around with some dry soil and sawdust next to me. Lifted it up in a spiral and then blew it past me. And then a feeling came over me. A feeling that somebody was sitting on my right.


    "Don''t look with your eyes. Look with your soul." A voice whispered.


    A voice which both my mind and my longing recognized as belonging to you. You were here! I had found you!


    Happily, I grabbed the place next to me, and before my hands stopped, I noticed that there was nothing beside me. Yet I felt something. I felt you, your little hand, soft and cold. I could not see it in the dark. But I felt it, you were there. But I could not see you. You were here, but you were not here.


    "Where are you?"


    I asked. Listening to my voice reflecting off the walls.


    "Here." Your voice replied.


    "Here where? I cannot see."


    "Here in the shed, right next to you." Your voice said and followed up with a carefree laughter.


    "You are not here." I said. "I can feel you, but I cannot see you."


    "Where am I then?" You started to ponder.


    "Why did you leave our home?"


    "They called me. The moon called me."


    "No. When I brought you home?"


    "You did? I cannot remember. I don¡¯t even know how I am talking to you right now. I don''t know it is your hand squeezing mine right now. I cannot remember anything."


    "Where are you?" I asked again.


    "I don''t know." I could hear your voice tearing up. "It is dark here. So dark. Granny and Granpa are here too."


    "Grandmother and grandfather are dead." I said.


    "No, but they are here, with me. Am I dead too?"


    "I don''t know. But I would like to know. I would like to find you."


    "But I am here. With you. Yet I am not..."


    I pressed my hand into a fist. Your soft cold hand was gone. And I had a feeling as if I had awoken from a dream that had not yet run its course. Like I have often tried to turn a page in a book, only to groggily find myself scratching at a pillow.


    It is also a mystery, how I managed to return to the farmhouse. The whole way back, to the car and to the house, I was deep in thought. Thinking about you. Thinking about everything in the shed. Was it all real? Was it really you there, making contact by means unfamiliar to either of us? Or did I fall asleep there, as had happened when I was looking for the radio stations? I don''t know. And you do not either. I will keep looking for you, I will try and find a way to save you.


    I hope this letter reaches you. Be it from the Forest Lake, the shed or perhaps you will catch it as a wisp of smoke off the air. I want you to know that I am still here. I love you so very much. And I will not give up.

 VI - A Car from the North

    Once again, the young man stepped though a doorway of the only local store still in order. The glass door was almost opaque from all the dirt and sediment on the glass. A small bell started frantically ringing as soon as the door closed, probably trying to make up for its small size and attempting to desperately grab anyone''s attention. But there was nobody to do it for. The radio on the shelf was playing old local music at a distortion-inducing volume. And it seemed as if the music was always the same. It wasn''t just a looping playlist, it was as if all the times he had been to this store were a single event spiraling through space-time.


    He looked about the interior of the store. Nothing had changed since his last visit here. The counters were still dirty and dusty, and under the glass there was a small museum of Soviet era and pre-war candy wrappers, as if to commemorate a past life of this location. Of course, the life that the old goods on dusty counters and shelves were calling to, had not gone anywhere, it was still here, in this place. It was just inaccessible, somehow parallel to everything and hidden out of plain sight. It¡¯s own little pocket of existence, where it managed just fine being detached from the rest of the world.


    His gaze fell on the drinks refrigerator in the corner. Rusty metal sides and the few red patches on it, which were probably the last specks of original color. The glass door of the refrigerator was also dirty, but the light inside it was still functional, revealing stacks and stacks of clear plastic containers with unknown contents. The newspaper stand under the window was empty, also covered in dust.


    And only now did the young man notice the air itself in the store. Dust was everywhere. It was on everything. It was even hovering in stale air all around him. It was only visible because it diffused the external sunlight emitted by a row of narrow windows situated right under the ceiling on the opposite wall.


    In the end, the young man managed to find something new as well. Virve had finally received some new jam, as there were many jars on the shelves behind the counter with the old mechanical cash register.


    The bell attached to the front door started ringing once more. The young man turned around only to see that... nobody was there. The door was shut, the bell was dead still. But he had heard it ringing. He was certain that he had. He¡­


    "And what would you like?"


    The young man flinched from the words spoken behind him. He turned around to see Village Hag no 2 behind the counter. This old lady often helped Virve with her store. She was an interesting person. She was old, but it was impossible to know how old. It was also not evident on her face. She had already been an old village hag when both the young man and the girl had been little. And now, close to 20 years later, she was still around and did not look much older.


    "I would like a jar of.."


    He looked at the empty shelves behind the counter. Empty shelves. The jars that had just been there were gone. As if they had never been there.


    "Is there no jam?" he asked.


    "You can see there''s none, can''t you?" She pointed to the shelves. "Virve has not gotten any new shipments in the mean time. If you really want some jam, you''re gonna have to go to the Market Hag. She probably has. And because everybody''s already going to her, we get none here."


    "And Virve is where?" he asked.


    "No idea. She said that the slick suits from the city wanted to talk to her. I only saw her getting into that ZIL of those guys and being driven away. Have no idea where she would be now."


    "ZIL of the suits from the North?" the young man asked.


    "Yeah, definitely a ZIL, as it was the boxier-looking. You think I cannot tell the difference between a ZIL and a GAZ?"


    He had noticed it as well. Recently, the town was full of all sorts of weird and foreign cars. Most of them were much bigger than the Zhigulis, Moskviches, Sapaks and Volgas the folks here were used to. But the only big cars the local knew from Soviet era were GAZes and ZILs, reserved for high ranking politicians and of course ranking members of the KGB. So when something else entirely turned up, perhaps with fins even, the local folk could only think and speak about those in language already familiar to them.


    "Who?" a voice asked.


    "Speak of the devil.." the Village Hag sighed. "I watched your store, this young man here was asking all sorts of questions about you."


    "About what then?" Virve asked.


    "For example, where you were. I explained that you went for a ride with the slick suits from the North."


    "I went nowhere with them." Virve replied. "But the slick boys from the North are indeed on the prowl around the town. They''re driving those huge cars, sometimes boxy, sometimes less so. You know, the likes of which you only see on May 9 parade pictures from the Red Square. They''re asking question from the locals to which we have no business knowing the answers to. Asking about lights in the sky, the Substation, Train Depot. I''s a wonder they are not asking about the forests."


    "I don''t know." The Village Hag no 2 mused. "Some people have really lost their marbles after speaking to them. Market Hag won''t leave her home and Ivo, that child drunkard, went to the Substation last week to shoot at the lights hovering above the radio tower. He hasn''t shown his face around here since last week''s incident, when some guys went and took the rifle away from him. They also gave him a taste of his own butt stock, so maybe that''s why. The last thing he reportedly said was that the sky people took his Wilhelm or somebody. Probably another alcohol-induced imaginary friend."


    Both women fell silent after this. And due to some inexplicable reason, the radio on the high shelf had also fallen silent.


    "So what do you want?" Village Hag No2 asked once more.


    "Nothing." The young man said. "Goodbye."


    He turned around and started towards the door, still hearing the Village Hag talk.


    "...I just can''t understand the youth these days¡­ and this guy with his ZIL¡­"


    This was all the young man could hear as the door closed behind him, and he was back on the front porch of the store, which was covered in slippery mud. But he already knew to take care, not only to not slip and end up in the mud, but also to not break a leg if he managed to step on a rotting floor board.


    And the final word of the old woman had reminded him another curiosity of the old people here as well. They had only seen big V8 engines in cargo trucks, so any off roader or SUV with a massive engine was also identified as a ZIL or a GAZ, just by the sound of the engine.


    As he walked around the nose of the green Jeep, he once again gazed at the store building. Wooden siding of faded red boards. In this age and with this weather it was more akin to grayish purple than red. Outside there were more dirty windows than he had noticed on the inside. There was a broken illuminated sign above the doorway. But it was so damaged that the original name of the store was no longer legible.


    The young man opened the door to get into the Jeep, but then stopped. A vehicle was coming. He did not hear the engine, but he did hear the tires running through the pot holes in the broken streets, displacing water and flinging mud. He turned his head to look at something he was sure he had never seen before. A wide low-slung vehicle, abundant with chrome detailing. The black paint job was immaculate, as if not a drop of water and not a speck of dirt adhered to it, not even in this weather. All windows on the vehicle were tinted nigh opaque black.


    He finally got into the car and then looked at the long vehicle slide past him, as if floating above the ground. It had two side doors and it ended with a long trunk and huge fins at the back, with two little horizontal lights on each fin.


    He started his engine and then drove after the ominous looking soundless black limo. However at the next corner, two lights on one of the fins started blinking and in the end, the vehicle turned onto a narrow side street behind the store.


    This allowed the young man to drive faster and finally reach the circular main road that enclosed the whole village, or the town, as the locals referred to it, in an almost perfect circle. This road was also old, but not as broken as the streets in the village. Perhaps it was something with the formulation, with kept this road intact, being mostly macadam, with crushed granite added to the mix. As for the direction, he had to go visit another old friend. He glanced into the rear view mirror and for a moment, his gaze remained on an analog compass in the corner of the mirror which was permanently pointing towards South.


    *


    Dark green off roader with golden wheels was slowly puttering along a grass-covered dirt road. In this kind of rainy weather with barely any wind, one just did not want to drive faster. It was rainy, it was cool, it was silent and almost lazy. And he too wanted to enjoy that. Despite that, the side of the vehicle were covered in specks of mud. That same mud covered both the grass as well as the woods at the sides of the dirt road, as passing vehicles had thrown it up from the road.


    Once he had gotten by a log which had fallen on the road, the path got significantly harder. Apparently, nobody had driven here in years and now, the vehicle was bending and breaking all kinds of young trees which had sprung up in the past decade or so. The biggest of which were close to 2 inches in trunk diameter, but the vehicle still plowed through them effortlessly. Although the noises he heard from under the vehicle made him worry about tearing off something essential.


    Beads of rainwater rolled down the side glass. On the fields it had started to rain again, hard. For weeks the Old Weatherman had teased people with cloudy skies. But now, the trap doors in the skies were open and everything would become soaked. But here in the woods it was relatively dry. Sure, there was mist and moisture in the air and on everything he could touch, from ground to tree trunks to berries and fungi. One could also hear the rain outside of tree cover. But under it, no rain. The forest was like a house. A home.


    The vehicle continued on the road, which had now turned back into a dirt road. He was not coming into the forest, but rather, what was on the other side of it. This was not the Forbidden Forest which separated the local fields and a Southern cottage district from the secret military bases. This was elsewhere, this was safer. And he was almost where he wanted to be.


    Just like during his last visits, the first thing visible from behind the turns in the road was a neatly stacked pile of broken down military vehicles. Trucks of all kinds, smaller off-roaders, even a few eight-wheeled APCs with flat dry-rotted tires. But this was just a small taste. Moments later the car ran over several sets of hidden train tracks, and he ended up in a middle of what could be called either a hidden train yard, or a dumping ground for unsalvageable contaminated equipment. There were train tracks with train cars on and off the tracks, some overturned, there were wrecks of vehicles, there were huge concrete arches on top of which was soil, grass and even trees, hiding them perfectly from surveillance satellites.


    There were also a few very notable wrecks of gigantic vehicles which had once been used as missile carriers and transporter-erectors. Like the MAZ-543. There was even a crane variant of it. The most notable item of all this junk however was a wheeled ICBM carrier with was similar to the 543, but much bigger and longer. It acted like a massive wall at the side of the property and seemed to have a total of 8 wheels on each side. The missile tube on top of it was gone however, replaced by a series of container-like super structures.


    The young man stopped his vehicle in the middle of a clearing near an elevated concrete platform in the middle. All these vehicles around him dwarfed the car he was driving. Not only in size but also in purpose. His was a vehicle for soccer moms to take children to school. These all around him however were weapons of war. Machines built to carry around the end of the world on their backs. And when the command came, to release this end.


    He stepped out of the car and only then he noticed how cold it had gotten. Or perhaps the heater in the car had been turned way to high. The driver''s seat of the vehicle was like a comfy lounge chair to fall asleep in. While getting outside was like being roused from a deep sleep on said chair. For a moment his gaze focused on the hood of the car, as he noticed the faint wisps of steam rising from it, as the rainwater was evaporating. He walked towards the large truck opposite the 543s. This one was also destined to never move from this place. The tires were completely flat and the black rubber tires had faded to light gray, with cracks in the sidewall. Even the wheels were rusty. So much in fact that they were no longer round.


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    He knelt down and ran his hand over the dry grass under the body of the vehicle. It seemed as if the ground under the frame of the truck was dry, dusty dry. He got up and sighed. Something in this place made him tired, tired of seemingly nothing. Or maybe it was due to what had been going on in these several past weeks. Or perhaps, winter was slowly creeping up on him? However with winter it was never certain, when it would come. Even if it would come, but nevertheless it was still creeping closer, ever so slightly each day. Forever.


    He headed towards a large olive drab tent, which was seemingly erected around a short stovepipe. In front of the tent was a military style two axle trailer, which had once been a radio command center. This days it was just a tin can for keep all the toys to tinker with.


    "Nobody expects that opposite the Forbidden Forest there is an abandoned military train depot hidden in the forest, acting as a terminal for the old supply railway. Nobody comes here. Nobody wants to come here. Everybody''s afraid of the Forbidden Forest, as if all forests were forbidden."


    This was how the person living here had once explained it.


    He stepped into the tent, pushing away several tent flaps, including heat reflecting materials which kept the cold out and heat in. Inside the tent, it was quite spacious and warm. The floors were lined with tanned boar furs, the tent walls were mostly obscured by tall rows of firewood which were both stored here, as well as dried. In the middle of the tent stood a large cast iron stove, with the stovepipe reaching outside through a separate flap, insulated with a plenty of mineral wool tied around the pipe.


    There was also a wire with several dark red incandescent bulbs tied around the mineral wool section, bathing everything within the tent in eerie red glow, only accented by the heat the stove was giving off.


    The stove was actually big enough to completely obscure the workspace on the outside of it. A neat little corner where a few sturdy old schooldesks and lots of radio equipment was set up. And in front of all that tech, there was a person sitting there, wearing headphones.


    "Welcome." The man in headphones had noticed him.


    "Hi." The young man replied.


    "Rheya is still laid down in bed?"


    The young man only nodded, without saying anything.


    "It has been a couple of interesting weeks for me." The man by the radio said. "The airwaves seem so empty, but yet they are not silent, there is an overwhelming amount of interference, all from different sources, almost as if competing with each other. There is something going on, but I have no idea, what."


    "What do you mean?"


    "Well, you know that the last storm we had wiped out all our long distance phone connections, right? But it has been several months, and nobody has bothered to do anything about it. They either can''t repair the lines, or don''t want to repair them. Or perhaps they don''t even know the lines are down."


    "How could that be? There have to be at least a few people who have tried making calls to places outside the village."


    "I''ve heard of some, but usually nobody does. Nobody really needs to contact the outside world, and that is strange in itself. It has also been several years since we had any wireless phone service. Nobody cares about that either. There hasn''t even been any good or strong radio stations to cut through all this noise, either from within or without. So in short, the airwaves should be dry as a bone, but instead, it is like a stormy sea.


    ¡°This noise, it floats around, it leaves behind other signals, patterns and footprints. It remains in one¡¯s mind, burnt onto the screens by electron guns, even seared into the aether, into the airwaves themselves. The signal in its infinite complexity, from one perspective looking like one thing, and after being filtered looking like something completely different. Something new and exciting, as if it had acquired a new mysterious vibe simply by passing though the aether, turning into magic itself. Turning into something much more than was at first intended and transmitted. As if it has gained some sentience as soon as it was released, as if it has gained something similar to a soul, becoming a being of its own, present in the world."


    "What?" The young man asked in confusion.


    "I said the airwaves should be dry as a bone, but they are not."


    "You also said something else. About signals and the airwaves and filtering, that''s why I am asking."


    "No, I did not."


    The young man in an undershirt said. He turned his head slightly, still looking at the radio dials, and the young man could see that the other person had weeks or months of unkempt beard on his face.


    "I may have been sitting here awake for over 70 hours now, and my eyes may glow from all the coffee flowing in my veins, but I am still aware of what I do and do not say."


    "Then perhaps I imagined it."


    "Correct." The bearded man said.


    "Did you check out the signal that Rheya recorded?"


    "I did."


    The bearded young man moved his chair slightly, and started manipulating the dials and buttons on his radio equipment, forming a spell of a pattern only he himself could understand.


    "It is one of those more interesting signals, which I have never even heard decoded. Only as it is repeating on the airwaves. Or to make it so you could understand, as undecoded noise. But this waveform I have certainly heard before. But you see, there is one interesting aspect. It is not an analog signal. It is digital. A highly encrypted digital signal being masked as analog, with the encrypted form taking on the form of this snippet of conversation."


    "I have no idea, what you just said, but it would seem wasteful, for a digital signal?"


    "Yes, extremely so. Therefore, there must be some other hidden considerations for it. Never mind that this signal is also part of the interference pattern, beamed across all frequencies at different power levels, modulation forms as well as time signatures. Only returning to its audible form after a certain period. I have been picking it up as long as I''ve been into monitoring the airwaves, but only recently has it become this intense."


    "What does all this mean?"


    "Have no idea. Yet."


    "You said ''one of the more interesting signals.'' Are there more than one?"


    "Wow, so you are actually listening." The bearded unkempt man said. "Yes, there are more than one."


    He once a gain turned some knobs and soon, the loudspeakers were producing a barely intelligible fast-paced ringside commenting of an ongoing boxing match. In Finnish.


    "Just a radio." The young man said.


    "Just a radio, huh?" the unkempt man asked, smelling his armpit for a second. "After months of listening to it and recording it, I am still not sure, what it is, but most certainly it is not a regular radio show. The talking never stops. It never repeats either. It is like a weird numbers station. Also it does not have a fixed frequency. I have also not managed to narrow it down to a program, or a station, or even a source. The only thing I do know is that it is not from Finland, or anywhere far away. It is local, very near here. One might think it is from Center Station, or anywhere else this near. I am also almost certain, it is another digital signal masking as analog transmission.


    ¡°Curiously, so is almost all of the music that the locals listen to on the radio. And it too never repeats, despite the locals who call to the radio station keep requesting the same songs. Well, the songs are played, the radio DJ says the names of the artists and titles, but it never fixed, the songs always change."


    "And the stuff from outside?"


    There is nothing from outside. Nothing gets in. As if there is no longer any ¡®outside¡¯. Only strong local signals and barely audible weaker ones. The stronger ones get constant interference by some weird patterns, while the weaker ones are left untouched, but barely there, as if they are apparitions in one''s mind, rather than on the actual airwaves."


    "You haven''t seen Them, have you?" The younger man asked.


    "Them? Oh, them Them. No, I have not, but they say in the village that some have been seen hanging above my forest, much like they hang above the Substation. Sometimes even above the Train Depot. Have no idea, honestly, why they would even go there. I can understand them being attracted to sources of radio waves and that would make Substation a logical target. I have been trying to transmit messages outside using the mobile radars that the old missile defense forces used, that may have attracted them here."


    "You''re not afraid?"


    "What''s to fear? They come here, we''ll have a man to man talk, and they leave. Or take me with them. Both are acceptable outcomes."


    "Ivo said something similar a few weeks back."


    "Ivo? Yeah, I am not surprised, not surprised the least. He has his own bone to pick with them."


    "What do you mean?"


    "Precisely under which rock have you been living?"


    "In the Nurga farm, Why?"


    "Ivo has been going around for days now, telling everybody who would listen how They kidnapped his precious Wilhelmina. He also swears hellish revenge at them. He got his ass drunk one night, got an old rifle and went to Substation at night. Started shooting at the ufos. Finally some local men came, took the gun away from him and let him have a taste of the buttstock of said rifle. Nobody has seen him since."


    "Virve and the Village Hag already told me."


    "Then you must know other news as well?" the bearded man finally found something of more interest than his equipment.


    "Not much. Virve and the Hag said that those guys in black had visited Ivo as well as the Market Hag after she had seen Them."


    "Interesting. I myself heard that Ivo was still yelling into the nights the particulars of his story, how some gray six-eyed figures with no discernible neck had come and twisted his head off, leaving him helpless and immobile to see men in black suits take away his Wilhelmina. Later those six-eyed things twisted his head back on again and left, leaving not a mark on him. Market Hag however was taking out the trash and discovered herself, also taking out the trash."


    "I was thinking of going to the Train Depot next."


    "You should, if you dare." The bearded man said. "You might find something interesting. It is yet another place people have started to talk about, but nobody dares to say anything overtly. The Substation is locked. But the Train Depot should have nothing strange besides huge pile of steel which nobody has yet stolen and sold for scrap. Maybe you can come across something interesting. Or you could also try leaving the town and visiting some neighboring villages to see if weird stuff is going on there too. At the very least you could find out when the telephone lines will be fixed.


    ¡°Frankly, I don''t really care, I like this peace and quiet. And since nobody else is inquiring about the lines, the others may like this slow life as well.¡±


    "You know your car is rusting, right?"


    "Haven''t noticed. Haven''t moved it for a few months now. I guess it also has somebody living in there, if the noises are anything to go by. I may have to move it soon though, maybe visit Silver and see if we can fix it up some."


    They both stopped talking. The bearded unkempt man in his undershirt again focused on his radio equipment.


    "I''ll be going now, taking a look at that Train Depot."


    "Should you find anything interesting, come back and tell me about it."


    The young man turned around and left the tent, immediately feeling the bite of the cold. The cold drizzle, the dampness, the gray sky and the wind. And the rain as well. It had finally caught up with him and was now again starting to pour down. He got to his car, got in, turn on the engine and then turned heat to maximum. Minutes later he was back driving on the old trail. First came the branches scratching the sides of his car, then came that big log and finally potholed road.


    Soon, he reached the main road of crushed granite and asphalt forming the macadam, or tarmac. He turned onto the main road, heading to what the compass was telling him was South. However, even before he had reached the next blind curve, a car appeared. That exact car with sweeping curves, glistening chrome and huge fins at the tail of the vehicle. It rode low to the ground, barely making any noise, not even tire noise.


    And when they passed each other on the road, he could not see anything through the tinted car glass. All the windows were tinted, not just the side glass but also front and rear windshields. And it wasn''t just tinted, it also barely reflected anything. He was not sure, it could have been the weather, but it was as if the inside surfaces of all the windows on the car were covered not in window tinting, but simply black paper.


    Also, there was a small orange light blinking under the front windscreen in the corner. Despite the seemingly opaque tinting, he could clearly see as the incandescent bulb was blinking on and off.


    He then stopped for a moment, something else was weird as well. The road surface was dry. As if the rain had never reached here. But yet it had been raining when he reached the forest, even when he got back onto the road. The sky was not sunny, it was still covered with dark and heavy rain clouds. He looked into the rear view mirrors to see that behind him the road was also dry. He could also see the black finned vehicle slowly disappearing into the distance.


    He could not contemplate the situation for long, as at that moment another vehicle passed him by at quite a high speed. He watched as it disappeared behind the curve with some significant body roll, paying no attention to having fallen into the opposite lane. It was the same car he had. That same boxy green Jeep with a rumbling V8, even the license plates were¡­


    He mashed the pedal and gunned the engine. After that curve there was a long and wide straight, perhaps and old emergency air field doubling as a roadway. And these jeeps were never that good beyond some 120kph, so he should be able to catch up in no time.


    At least he should have been. Because as he passed that curve, there was nothing, just a long stretch of smooth blacktop, at least 7 lanes wide. As that stretch was about 2.5 kilometers long, he still kept accelerating to about 180kph before backing down again. There was still nothing, he could see the road pass the fields at a slightly lower elevation, and even that stretch was empty. No cars on the main road, or on the dirt roads leading to fields and farm houses. It was impossible for the other vehicle to have disappeared, and yet it had.


    He let his speed drop to about 85 kph, as he started to look for a place where he could turn around. As he finally settled on a dirt road to do that, he noticed his fuel light coming on. That was a problem. It was too little to get to the Train Depot and back. It was also too little to go and find a fuel station near the village. His on option was to continue on this road towards Valgatabalve or Valgepal? as it was locally known, and hope that he would either reach it, or find a gas station on the road that had unleaded fuels.


    He got his speed back up to about 85 and after some 12 kilometers finally found an old gas station. He pulled up to the 40 cubic meter tank next to the pumps. This station only had two grades of gasoline available, leaded A76 and unleaded E95. He got out of the car and tried to fuel it, only then noticing that the pump was locked.


    "There is no fuel for you!" A gruff voice could be heard.


    This voice made the young man flinch. He could have sworn he was alone. Sure, there was a small half-length container unit not far from the tanks supposedly housing the store, but it had no windows and he could not see any cameras either.


    But now the door was open and on stood and old man in his 70s. Curiously, his eyes were carefully bandaged up, so there was little chance that he could see, but the way he came down the stairs and walked toward the young man, made him seem as if having perfectly usable sight.


    "Stop! There is no fuel for you!" the man repeated again.


    "Do you have any fuel?" he asked.


    "Yes. But this is not a public gas station."


    "I only need a little. No more than 10 liters to get back to town."


    The blind old man sighed.


    "Fine. I will open the pump for ten liters."


    "How much do you want for the fuel?"


    "Nothing." The old man replied. "Your money is no good here anyway."


    The young man put the nozzle back in the filler hole, and soon he could hear the electric pump on the massive vat turn on. It did not take long for the 10 liters to reach the tank, while the sweet smell of gasoline reached his nose. Then suddenly, the pump shut down and locked up again.


    He pulled the nozzle from the tank and an eerie feeling came over him once more. A dreamlike feeling. An unreal feeling.


    He turned around to put the nozzle back onto the receptacle on the pump, but there was no pump. There was no 40 cubic meter tank he had seen when driving up, there was no off-white steel container for the store. There was only a large area of concrete slabs with bolts anchored into the material, signifying where the massive tank, the pumps and the container had once stood.


    But he was still holding a nozzle. With a length of ripped dry-rotted hose attached to it. A faint smell of stale gasoline was still on the nozzle. Or perhaps lighter fluid?


    He dropped the old nozzle and walked around the car. The engine started right up, there was no fuel light and he had an eighth of a tank left.


    He sat in the car, going over the events in his mind, the whole series of events which had led him here. But he could not find the discontinuity, sure there were strange events, but there was no sense of missing time. Although he could not get a particular detail out of his mind. That black car from the 1950s, with huge fins, running silently on whitewall tires. With all windows blacked out and a blinking orange incandescent light.


    He shook his head, to get rid of the image and put the car in drive, taking his foot off the brake.


    Then his put his foot back on the brake. Something was wrong. Again. He knew how he had got here, he knew he stood beside the road in what used to be a gas station long ago. But he was not here anymore. The "here" now, and the "here", when he had turned into the gas station were not the same.


    He had no idea where he was. Ha had planned to turn left, back onto the main road which would eventually lead to Valgepal?, where he could find another gas station. But now, the road, the nature around him looked all different. And he had no idea which way to go. No idea at all.

 VII - Second Letter for Fire

    The sound of a cross-plane V8. Approximately 650 rpm. Long-stroke V8 engines were slow, yet powerful. This was something you had always been aware of. Why am I here? Where are you? Where did I lose you? I had you. You were with me. How could I have let you go? Hoe did I let you go? I don''t know. And you are too far away to answer me.


    I went in town today. I left our sweet home by the Forbidden Forest to do that. Recently there has been a lot of talk of the slick suits from the North, driving around their black chrome-covered limos. Do you perhaps know of them? Because I have no idea what they''re doing here. Virve''s store is like always, though. Empty, I know you are smiling at the moment. You can hear me, can''t you? I know, you can hear me.


    Do you remember the day when I had to physically hold you back? That strange summer day, when we were still children. You, in your black dress that your granny had sewn? When Virve''s drunkard of a husband finally went off? You may have been the only person nearby who did not flinch at the sound of gunfire. You had wanted to go in, you had wanted to see, what remains of a person who decides to voluntarily shuffle off this mortal coil. I did not want you to see it. But maybe I should have let you go. But I did not know back then. I was young and stupid.


    Yes, I know. I am not much smarter these days. I have never been. Even now, when I am trying to find you. When I am trying to understand where you disappeared to. I have spent many a night by now by the Border. In that little house when we once played. Hide and seek comes to mind the most. On several nights I have heard the quiet guitar playing, which seems to be as close and yet as far as your voice. I have not heard it since, but I can still hear it in my mind as if I had just now been talking to you.


    Can you even imagine where I am right now? Of course you can. This old concrete slab by the road, neither of use could find a proper use for. I am here, sitting in a warm car, trying to understand how I lost the right path. Why I cannot understand what is going on. Why I am feeling that every time I turn around I will see you again. Why am I seeing things that cannot be possible, that cannot be real? I love you. I have to say it, despite you asking me once, at the very beginning, to never say it.


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    And only now do I understand why you would ever ask something like that. When there is nothing to love, then there is nothing to lose. I should have understood it sooner. I visited your uncle. Forgive me, but he was the only one I could turn to. The only one who could tell me.


    It is all so strange here, so alien, sitting in this car, right by the forest. It is so cold here. There is no you. There is none of that peculiar warmth in here that you grandma''s old house possesses. That the forest has, even the Forbidden Forest. And now that I am away from you and can no longer feel it, I have no idea what to do to find you.


    I know you are here, with me, but still, I cannot sense you. There is only this alien and endlessly mysterious world you always talked about. The world you always wanted to escape from, to the attic of the old house. You wanted to see that world, look into it from the outside, but never participate. And now I can no longer find you in this world. I cannot save you from this world. I hope the world has not done to you what it has done to so many others. I hope I don''t ever have to find my own voice from those airwaves you found. Burnt into the natural noise floor of the world. And however much I wish to hear your voice, I do not want to find it out there from the endless aether.


    Do you remember that black Volga? The stories around the village how on All Souls'' Night, five youngsters had been in a black Volga when it ran off the road killing everybody? Remember those uncountable nights when we drove from one village to the next, trying to find that mysterious wreckage? Trying to understand why the world had decided to do so. I remember. These cold snowy November nights.


    When it became too cold to be on that attic, under the roof. When we had to move downstairs and shut the hatch, sleep along with granny¡¯s spirit walking around and in the morning we would find things moved around, many of them in places they had not been left in the evening. How I wish you were here. You would like this time of the year. When the world is especially strong in expressing its peculiarities. So strong that one starts to doubt everything they hear or see. One starts to doubt whether they are awake or dreaming. I saw you today. I am sure it was you, who else would drive this car as aggressively as you?


    Maybe that was the part of you that I still do not understand. You weren''t afraid. You were never afraid. Anything. Ever. And now it would seem that fear has been looking for you for far longer. And it has found you.


    But I? I am still sitting in one place, looking at a twitchy hand on the dial, wishing it to be still. Wishing you were here, telling me what I should do. Wishing you could help me find you. I cannot do that. And event though I know I cannot, I will not stop looking. I have to continue. Whether you would do the same for me, is not important, it never was. I have to find you. I have to. I have to. I hope the Train Depot is something that helps me along.


    Tonight I will be back at the Forest Lake and later at the playhouse. I hope we meet once more...

 XIII - When the Nameless Town Still Had a Name

    So children, you want your grandpa to tell you a scary story, eh? Well, okay then. This is one of the last stories from by story book, I have not yet told you. From a time when the Nameless Town still had a name.


    I was a young boy back then, only ten years old. The Nameless Town was then called¡­ you know, I cannot even remember what it was called. But it was a center to a local parish now known Lost parish. The town was only a small township surrounded by 5 small villages.


    I lived with my brothers and sisters in my fathers farm in West Village. Named such because it was located west of the Nameless Town. The village consisted of six or seven farms, ours was among them. My dad and grandpa had built the farm together. The land grandpa had received from the state as reward for ¡°exemplary bravery in battle¡± in the War for Independence. Under my dad¡¯s, the little farmstead became a large and rich farm with several cows, pigs and other animals in but a few years. We even had rabbits.


    I can still remember the sight of that high roof across several versts of golden fields. Especially in midsummer high sun. I remember the green front yard and a room with blue walls, with an Estonian map on the wall. This was the room me and my three brothers slept in. I even remember the village church and the graveyard, which today nobody speaks of, because nobody believes that the West Village even existed.


    There was five of us, me and my friends. I was Riho, from the West Village. My friend Agu was from the big South Village which lied near the Russian Border. Hanna was a small girl with blue eyes and copper hair, from the East Village. Lennart was form North Village and Roobert, who was a couple of years older than the rest of us, was originally from North-East Village, but a few years before, lightning had struck his farm and as he had been the only survivor, he was now living in the orphanage in the town.


    I think we became friends the summer before school. I wanted ice cream but I did not have enough to buy it. Some of the other children had the same problem, while the store clerk had the problem of not having enough small change to give us back. Back then, a cent could buy a lot. However, some of the older village children wanted to take the money from us until Roobert stepped in. So we cut him in as well.


    From that moment on were were nigh inseparable inside and outside the school, exploring the villages and the Nameless Town. But often one could find us on the border of East Village and South Village, sitting and playing on a milk stand. Also waiting to see the milk truck making its morning round.


    In those times, cars in the countryside were a rare sight and a milk truck was an interesting thing to see, looking like a peculiar horseless carriage. Sometimes we even imagined a horse before it so it would not look so unusual.


    On that particular day, of which I wanted to tell you, our little group was sitting on the milk stand waiting for a milk truck. The steel milk vat was already on the stand and we just played around it. Our milk stand stood on the grass path between the grazing lands and to us children is was quite a tall structure to sit on, offering a good view of everything around us.


    In the landscape around us there was a weird place we had always tried to understand. And the grown-ups either evading answers or not answering at all only fueled our curiosity. Far away from the milk stand, a little off the grass carriage path, there was large dark arbor, which stood ominously in its place like an ant hill in the middle of a cabbage patch. To us it seemed curious yet weird. If the rest was a level grazing land, then why was this patch of trees left here? Usually these patches developed from piles of rock gathered from the fields. But there were no rocks here.


    Of course Agu had several interesting things to say about this which kept us awake all night and had also brought him trouble when children saw nightmares due to his stories. Or refused to leave building at all because of his stories about strange creatures roaming the fields in broad daylight. Creatures who were only visible in direct sunlight and only from one side.


    Agu with his long and straight dark hair, who was maybe a few months younger than me, was a talented storyteller. Nobody could tell more stories about things happening in and behind our world than him. Also I do not remember him ever repeating a story or changing the details, as if he was telling small stories of a larger world.


    *


    ¡°My grandpa told me once that the place over there was once a church...¡± Agu spoke.


    ¡°Agu, please don¡¯t speak of that!¡± Hanna shrieked.


    ¡°Okay, Hanna does not hear anything now.¡± Roobert placed his hands on the girl¡¯s ears. ¡°Now tell us.¡±


    ¡°There was a church.¡± Agu continued. ¡°The church had a sacristan who always made trouble with children. So, one day, some of the braver boys sneaked around and added some henbane to the clergyman¡¯s soup. Well, he lost his mind, ripped apart both the Bible and the book of hymns, climbed to the steeple and sawed off the cross and set the church on fire. He then danced in the flames naked and spoke in languages nobody could understand...¡±


    ¡°And then what happened...¡± I asked, having adjusted my suspenders.


    ¡°And then...¡± Agu looked around, Hanna removed Roobert¡¯s hands from her ears. ¡°...stories say that the sacristan read devilish verses which brought a star down from the sky and dropped it on his church!¡±


    ¡°That is not a scary story!¡± Hanna said with displeasure. ¡°A stupid story is what it is! My dad said, that it is somebody¡¯s old farmstead and there¡¯s an old well many children have fallen into and died. That¡¯s why we cannot go there!¡±


    ¡°Did you see it?¡±


    Agu jumped, touching Lennart¡¯s shoulder, forcing him as well to scan the grassland between the milk stand and the dark trees.


    ¡°Tell me you saw it!¡±


    ¡°Saw what?¡±


    ¡°That creature! You know, the one that is visible only from one side. Who gets mad and goes berserk if it notices anybody seeing it!¡±


    ¡°No I did not. What does it look like anyway?¡± Lennart asked, turning back to eyeing the tall grass. As did all of us.


    ¡°Like an old willow tree with the top cut off but the trunk full of new sprouts. But it moves, changes it¡¯s shape and it has lots eyes of different sizes, all of which want to see everything and thus in each eye the pupil is constantly changing in size. It can move quickly but quietly. This milk stand is the only safe place, but in this grass, nobody can help you.¡±


    ¡°What does it do, when it catches you?¡± Hanna asked, rolling a birch switch between her fingers.


    ¡°First it regards you with its big eyes. Touches and pokes at you with its many worm-like tentacles which also have eyes on top of them.¡±


    I looked how Hanna held the switch near Lennart¡¯s neck.


    ¡°It pushes the tentacles into your belly button, eyes, ears, nose and mouth. And then it¡¯s body opens from a place you would not even guess, between the two biggest eyes. It then bites into your stomach with its thousands of teeth and sucks you empty like an egg. It is not interested in flesh, bone or marrow, only your guts and all that soft stuff.¡±


    ¡°What...¡± Roobert started, looking around nervously. ¡°What is that thing called?¡±


    ¡°Tole.¡± Agu said with a cryptic tone. ¡°It is called a tole.¡±


    ¡°A Tole?¡± Hanna asked. ¡°That is the stupidest name I have ever heard!¡±


    Her gaze fell back on the switch in her hand, which she used to tickle Lennart¡¯s bare back peeking out between his shirt and pants.


    ¡°Help! A tole!¡± The boy jumped up and off the stand and then rushed to the stairs. ¡°A tole at the milk stand!¡±


    His gaze then fell on the girl and the branch in her hand. ¡°Very funny.¡±


    ¡°Agu, I know I have asked this several times, but how do you know of all these things like toles and lion ants and all these other creatures who live in both darkness and light yet whom we rarely meet?¡± I asked.


    ¡°I just know.¡± The boy smiled. ¡°And some of it is written in books as well. My uncle came for a visit from America and he had a book with him which had pictures of all these terrible things. So they certainly exist.¡±


    ¡°The milk truck is coming.¡± Hanna said.


    This stopped our discussion, as we all leaned on the handrail of the milk stand and watched how first came the cloud of dust and then the noise started growing closer. Finally a black car with big bowls for headlights emerged from the dust.


    ¡°How is it possible that something is visible from one side anyway?¡± Roobert asked. ¡°And that there is no danger that I run into something like that or that it gets run over by a tractor?¡±


    ¡°Because most of the time it is in a sideworld.¡±


    ¡°In a sideworld?¡± Lennart asked. ¡°What does this mean?¡±


    ¡°What lies beyond the grave is a type of sideworld. There is no heaven or hell, just one singular beyond the grave. The place where the toles and the rest come from, is another sideworld. And there are many others. Ghosts come from their own sideworld, just like goblins. They are in our world only at the moment and for the duration that they are visible. In other times we cannot see them and they cannot damage us.¡±


    ¡°And they are only visible in sunlight?¡± I asked.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know. Maybe the professors working in town in that big building also have some secret knowledge.¡±


    Milk truck with a green wooden bed rolled beside the milk stand. A man with long mustache stuck his head out of the side window.


    ¡°Well, children? Again guarding the milk keg, eh? I could almost tell time considering how regularly you¡¯re here. Every Saturday morning!¡±


    A man in a white uniform of thin fabric emerged from the truck. He lowered the wooden side of the bed, revealing several other milk kegs, tied up with ropes so they would not tumble over when traveling on bumpy and rutted roads.


    ¡°Hey milk man, are you from around here?¡± asked Roobert, the strongest and most confident among us.


    ¡°I am from North-East Village, as you Roobert. I knew your father. He was a hard worker.¡±


    ¡°Then you know what that tree cluster over there is?¡±


    ¡°That one¡­ over there?¡±


    The man with a mustache and a strong tan raised his hand to shade his eyes from the sun and looked towards the trees.


    ¡°Oh, I know that. That used to be...¡± he suddenly stopped. ¡°I mean there fell a...¡± he stopped again, looking at me and my friends. ¡°Children, you¡¯ve been told to never ever go there, right?¡±


    ¡°Yes.¡± Hanna said. ¡°But why?¡±


    ¡°What do you mean ¡®why¡¯?¡± The milk man asked. ¡°Even grownups are not allowed¡­ I mean they cannot go there! Just don¡¯t go there! Don¡¯t even think about it!¡±


    He raised the side of the bed up again and locked it.


    ¡°And get off this milk stand anyway! Away!¡±


    The milk man started to drive of us off. First lifting Hanna off the stand and then pushed us all off of it.


    ¡°Go away! Go find yourself some other milk stand to sit on! You don¡¯t need to be here!¡±


    ¡°Why?¡±


    ¡°Do you want your parents to find out that you¡¯re here discussing those ruins. Do you know what they would do!?¡±


    ¡°Ruins?¡± Agu asked.


    ¡°Off! If you don¡¯t want that then off you go!¡±


    ¡°Agu, come on!¡± Roobert yelled, as he started off on a road going right past the tree cluster.


    ¡°Maybe it¡¯s a nest of toles there!¡± Lennart asked. ¡°Because those toles are only here and not elsewhere. Agu, how would a tole make smaller toles anyway?¡±


    ¡°Toles do not make smaller toles. All toles are born fully adult.¡± Agu said. ¡°One tole is born from another when a tole finds a warm, wet and dark place, and then inside of it two smaller toles start to grow. When they are so big that they cannot fit anymore, then they eat themselves out the mother and the mother dies.¡±


    ¡°Gross-gross!¡± Hanna shrieked. ¡°why did you have to tell us that!?¡±


    Agu only smiled and pushed his hair off his eyes.


    ¡°But let us go and see what actually is there.¡± The fair-haired Roobert suggested. ¡°I don¡¯t believe that Agu¡¯s toles are there but something has to be there if the milk man or anybody else doesn¡¯t want us anywhere near there or even talk about it.¡±


    ¡°Are you sure it is a good idea?¡± I asked. ¡°There might actually be a well where people fall in and die.¡±


    ¡°Did the milkman not say that these are ruins, that something fell in there?¡± Agu asked. ¡°Even if it is just a well, we can still break the mystery and don¡¯t have to wonder any more. The milk man has also left. Nobody will ever know.¡±


    ¡°And if we should meet tole over there?¡± Lennart asked in a cowardly voice.


    ¡°There are no toles.¡± Hanna said. ¡°Agu made them up.¡±


    ¡°But if...¡± Lennart was still doubtful.


    ¡°By the time you see a tole, believing Agu, it will be too late.¡± I said with a grin. ¡°That¡¯s why should a tole catch you, the only thing you can do while it is eating your guts, is to scream and let us know that you¡¯ve been caught!¡±


    ¡°There are five of us.¡± Roobert said. ¡°There is but a small chance that the tole will eat only you. Are you coming or not?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m coming.¡± Lennart finally said.


    ¡°Me too.¡± Hanna added


    ¡°Riho?¡± Roobert asked.


    ¡°Yeah, let¡¯s go.¡± I said. ¡°Let¡¯s break the mystery.¡±


    ¡°And most important of all,¡± Agu started in a cryptic half-whisper, pulling us all to sit down in the tall grass. ¡°Whatever happens, whatever we find or see, we will not speak of this to anybody. We will also not discuss it among ourselves anywhere else than here in this tall grass or in that cluster.¡±


    ¡°It could become our secret place.¡± Hanna said in an apprehensive ardor. ¡°Both now and in the future.¡±


    ¡°A real secret place the others are afraid of.¡± Roobert said in a reverent voice which caused shivers of cold in all of us.


    ¡°A real secret place which has its own shadow of death.¡± Agu said, and again we felt frightened excitement.


    ¡°Let¡¯s go.¡± Roobert said.


    We had this hallowed feeling when we walked those few dozens of steps through the tall grass towards the trees. To get under the giant firs, pines and oaks, which towered over the rest of the forest around it. Where golden yellow grass was replaced by a narrow patch of green grass and then springy blackened forest turf, grown through with roots of various size and dried tree needles.


    The dark grove itself was located on a shallow hill. And although one could see cloudless blue summer sky above us, under the grouping of trees it was almost as dark as the night, requiring our eyes to get adjusted to it. Totally unlike a late morning of a Saturday. After our eyes got adjusted to it, it started to seem, that the cluster of tall black trees was much larger that it had seemed from the distance. Several times the area, in fact. And while from the distance one could see only thick trunks and tall crowns, here we could also see lower trees, bushes and shrubs. Peculiarly all of them were dark green, almost black in color, and it was not just the lack of natural light playing tricks.


    Also, we could hear no sounds other than what me made, our steps, us breaking the branches as we passed. There were also no smells other than the faint aroma of dank decay. In addition, there was an unpleasantly humid chill in the air, which turned our breaths visible. As if the old folks in the village and the folk tales had it right, and there was only death here. More death than on graveyards, a place were nobody wanted to step to, and not because of something dangerous here but because of something eerie. The dark and the quiet.


    ¡°Carefully.¡± Agu said. ¡°Carefully onward.¡±


    We stepped along a track free of plants which seemed to be an old footpath.


    ¡°Is it me,¡± Roobert asked. ¡°Or is that a small section of a wall over there?¡±


    He stepped off the trail and towards a stone wall with heavy moss cover. It looked as it was made of granite stones that two or three grownups could lift together and bound by mortar. What made it curious was that it had a bendy shape, as if reaching for something. Or as a stone statue frozen in agony, about to fall and shatter at any moment. Looking at it¡¯s shape, it could have been a top of an old buried archway.


    ¡°If that over there is a wall, then I found a staircase.¡± I called out a bit further. ¡°And there¡¯s also a well here.¡±


    ¡°There¡¯s a pond here!¡± Hanna sounded out.


    ¡°Come here!¡± Agu yelled out.


    ¡°What did you find!?¡± Roobert asked.


    ¡°Just come here!¡±


    Carefully, we left the various things we had found and headed back to the main trail snaking about these various features. Continuing onward on the track, we finally saw Agu standing on the precipice of something. That something was a carrion black circular hole about 10 meters wide. It had a thick collar of decorated moss-covered black stone around it, with perfectly seamless joints. It resembled a circular stone tower built into the ground. The thickness of the wall seemed to be far more than our height. We could see no bottom, only a pitch black darkness from which we could almost imagine rising all the horrors of which Agu had told us about.


    ¡°What¡¯s that?¡± Hanna asked.


    ¡°A hole.¡± Agu said. ¡°This has to be the reason nobody wants children here, as they might fall into this bottomless pit.¡±


    ¡°You think it is bottomless?¡± Roobert asked.


    He found a small rock on the ground and threw it into the pit. A tense quiet fell all around us as we held our breaths and waited for the rock to hit something, be it stone or water. But there was nothing, no sound that the rock reached anywhere.


    ¡°It is not bottomless.¡± I said. ¡°You see? Stairs.¡±


    And indeed there was a spiral staircase on the inner surface of the circular pit. If and where it ended, I could not see. What I could see was inner surface of the hole was covered in strange stone carvings. Letters, signs and even larger drawings and reliefs in a strange language. Some of it had chips of stone gouged out of it, other parts were covered in dry black lichens. The latter did not allow me to see the exact surface of the structure but I had a feeling that it was far older than I could ever imagine or any of us had see on the few outing we had had to Reval, to Yuryev or to the fortifications of ancient Estonians.


    I continued slowly. I started to go towards the staircase, wanting to see more of the wall. Maybe this wall had a story to tell like a picture book. A story which could trump anything and everything Agu had ever told us or could tell us.


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    ¡°Riho, wait.¡± Hanna stopped me. ¡°Are you sure you want to do it?¡±


    ¡°We found a pit, and there is a staircase on the surface of it.¡± I said. ¡°We could at least take a look how deep it is and what lies at the bottom of it. Or if nothing else then to see how far down the staircase goes. Who else is coming?¡±


    ¡°Well, I am not coming.¡± Hanna said.


    ¡°Me neither.¡± Lennart agreed. ¡°There might be toles down there!¡±


    ¡°That was Agu¡¯s joke!¡± Hanna said in an upset tone. ¡°Do you really believe that any toles actually exist?!¡±


    ¡°There might be.¡±


    ¡°Us neither.¡± Agu and Roobert said. ¡°We can watch as you go.¡±


    ¡°Fine then.¡±


    I took the first step onto the stone stairs. Then a second. Then a third. Every step took me lower into the bottomless black pit, of which I could see no more than ten steps ahead of me. Worn steps overgrown with roots and branches jutting out of the inner surface of the wall like sticks of wood. Although my friends were still near me, every step I took moved me further way from them, farther than just a step away. Every step took me deeper into one of those sideworlds of which Agu had told me.


    I stopped, looking down into the darkness, around which a spiral coiled. Then up, at my friends, still standing on the edge of the hole. Every step narrowed my field of view on that homely world, the world of daylight.


    When I had descended to a depth of about double my height. I suddenly got scared and I stopped, resting my hand against the wall. At that very moment I felt pain in my hand, as if something had pricked me. I pull my hand away and as I did that, I lost my balance for a moment but could still avoid falling. There were several small puncture wounds on my palm and a few drops of blood as well.


    I looked at the wall, trying to see the thing that had pricked me, but all I could see were dark roots jutting on and in between the drawings. And then. The roots¡­ moved. My heart stopped. My blood froze. My mind petrified. I suddenly remembered all the stories Agu had ever told me. Toles in dark grass. Old Gods flying around in the dark of the night, looking like a cluster of snakes tied together by their tails. With circular sucker mouths with dozens of tiny teeth. Creatures which would much rather spend their time meditating somewhere between Mars and Jupiter, or gilding between faraway unknown nebula of deep space.


    The branches moved again, more this time. Tying themselves in between the stones in the wall. Moments later the roots under my feet started moving as well. The surface of the roots sprung up in thorns and a dry broken root section right beside me twitched and then split apart, revealing what I thought was¡­ an eye.


    I lost my footing and fell with my back first into the darkness. I could only hear the screams of my friends.


    ¡°Oh my god! Riho!¡± I head Hanna scream.¡±Riho!? Riho!!¡±


    Others joined her, calling out my name again and again. The only thing I could think of was that their voice could reach outside the dark patch we were in and later they would all be punished for coming in here.


    I have no idea how long I had fallen or how deep. Or whether I was still falling or not. But there was a moment where I discovered that their voices were no longer growing more distant and the tunnel opening to the world I had been living in and from which I had discovered this realm of the dead was no longer receding from me.


    I was lying on my back on a soft surface. Like a soft long-stemmed moss. Which I still could not see in this darkness. It had softened my fall. Without it I would have perished for sure, especially seeing the height I had fallen from. My travel through the air had been three or maybe four times the distance I had covered while descending the stairs.


    So mystifying and strange was this experience that I did not even try to get up. I did not try to respond to the panicked cries of my friends, calling out my name. I could only see the circular tunnel into the light before me, with the spiral staircase and the carved walls. My eyes were slowly becoming adjusted to the darkness though. I could see the black carved walls of the hole. I could see the stairs. The stairs were half-buried in the mosses so it would seem the hole was filled in with dirt and had originally been even deeper. The coiling staircase as well, I could now see that in some places it had a step or two or three missing. Difficult, but nothing insurmountable.


    However the way out fascinated me far less than the wall of the pit, to which my current position had provided a completely new perspective. Light from the external world revealed outlines for all the signs and images on the walls, no matter how broken or moss-covered they were. In some places the walls were full of strange vertical rows of signs, looking like a language nobody could possibly read due to the intricacies of the symbols.


    The drawings which broke apart the rows of signs and symbols were even more interesting. Large images of cephalopods and jellyfish with many tentacles of various sizes and designs. Some of the more narrow tentacles had thicker offshoots. Carvings of strange plants which looked like bushes full of tentacles as described by Agu. Fish with tentacles and large scales which looked like flat stones. Ball-shaped many-eyed fish with spikes. Something I could not classify neither as an animal or plant. A small ball of long spikes. And a larger image of something which had the tail of a fish, but instead of an upper part of a man, there were tons of muscular tentacles.


    ¡°Hey, Riho!¡± Roobert sounded out. ¡°Are you alive!?¡±


    ¡°Yes, I am!¡± I yelled back.


    ¡°Virgin Mary be thanked!¡± I heard Agu upstairs.


    ¡°I found something!¡± I said. ¡°Come on down!¡±


    At that moment, with a slight startle I found something else. Near the moss surface on my right side, I could feel a slight wind in that otherwise deathly stillness. A low dry rush of wind coming from somewhere and carrying the smell of dry stone. Slowly I got on my knees and crawled towards the draft finding something that assured my suspicions that the staircase had to descent further. I found a vault of a doorway, a capstone with a sign cut into it looking like that Russian bug-shaped letter. The capstone was in the wall and I could also see a few stones on either side of it, arching downwards.


    Under this half-buried arch there was a low yet wide tunnel, where the draft emanated from. The opening had no more height than my fist, but the width matching my whole forearm.


    ¡°What did you find then?¡± Roobert asked when the others had reached the bottom of the pit.


    ¡°I found a lot of images.¡± I said. ¡°If you care to look up.¡±


    ¡°Wow, that is quite a find!¡± Roobert said in an acknowledging tone.


    ¡°And there is also a buried doorway.¡±


    ¡°Doorway?¡± Agu asked.


    He fell on his knees to examine it closer.


    ¡°Sure enough, there is a capstone here, there is a mark on it, and the draft is strong enough to put out a candle.¡±


    He pushed his fingers into the dirt and started clawing away.


    ¡°What are you doing?¡± Lennart asked.


    ¡°The ground is soft.¡± Agu replied. ¡°I think we could return with shovels and lanterns and uncover it. It would not take long.


    ¡°You want to get into the cave under the ruins?¡± Roobert asked.


    ¡°We came to this group of trees which everybody seem to be afraid of.¡± Agu said. ¡°We might as well explore it in depth.¡±


    ¡°You know some many so horrible stories.¡± Hanna said. ¡°Are these not enough?¡±


    ¡°These are never enough. That¡¯s why I know so many. Maybe I can find some new stories here. Wouldn¡¯t that be nice?¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s the plan then?¡± I asked. ¡°We return tomorrow, on Sunday?¡±


    ¡°Yes.¡± Agu said decisively. ¡°After the church and going to the town. With shovels and lanterns. Is anybody opposed to this?¡± He looked around.


    ¡°I came here once, I can return.¡± Lennart said.


    ¡°Can we go home now?¡± Hanna asked. ¡°This hole scares me more than the rest of the place.¡±


    *


    The next day after church and a walk in town with family, we were ready to dig and explore the tunnels.


    Back then, the Nameless Town was different. You could meet happy people in there, once a week there were even masses of people, as walking about the town after church was a pastime for the country folk. Organ grinders cranking their boxes, hurdy-gurdy players were cranking their instruments, berries and other sweets were sold on street corners, the people on the market revealed their best stuff and the bar proprietors opened their Sunday vodkas.


    Not even thunder and rain could not decrease the mass of people on the center square. The villagers kept on grilling and smoking meat and the sales of fair type goods actually increased while people waited for the rains to cease.


    In one such sudden downpour, five children with lanterns and shovels were walking on a grass track between the fields. Wondering at the strong winds trying to bend the mid-summer grass towards the ground and twist the rain curtain above into knots, as the black collection of trees as background revealed the waves of rain in the sky.


    I stopped, being the first to reach the fork in the road, leading straight to the arbor. It was wonderful to feel the warm summer rain soaking us, falling on top our heads and on our faces. I looked down to see the rain washing sand and grit from the little stones on the car path.


    ¡°Could we not go back and do this on some sunny day?¡± Hanna asked.


    ¡°So we would have to return the tools to the farm of Agu¡¯s uncle without putting them to use?¡± Lennart asked, displeased, ¡°in this rain?¡±


    ¡°We agreed to do this today.¡± Agu said. ¡°Whatever happens. The rain is not a valid reason.¡±


    ¡°Hanna, if this is not agreeable to you, you can go home.¡± I said.


    ¡°Are you going digging even if I am not there?¡± Hanna asked.


    ¡°Yes.¡± Roobert said.


    ¡°Then I¡¯m coming as well.¡± Hanna said in a confident tone.


    ¡°There is one thing of which I have to tell you, before we get to the hole.¡± I said, as we were trudging through the wet grass towards the grove.


    ¡°Of what then?¡± Agu asked.


    ¡°Of what happened in the hole.¡± I said.


    ¡°You fell...¡± Hanna started.


    ¡°Yes, I fell. But I fell because there were roots on the stairs and on the stone wall. And these roots moved as if tails of some snakes.¡±


    ¡°They moved?¡± Lennart stopped walking. ¡°How?¡±


    Wet sat in the tall grass. The fact that it was raining, that the wind was forcing the grass on the ground and made us cold and was generally unpleasant, made everything around us and what I had to tell them, only more hallowed. To feel each other¡¯s body heat in this cold circle right next to the ominous forbidden arbor made everything more hallowed.


    ¡°I tripped and supported my hand against the wall. I think there was a section with thorns, as it cut me.¡±


    I showed them my palm and two little black dots on it.


    ¡°First the branches started to move and revealed the thorns within them. Then the roots on the stairs started to move and slighter, erecting the long thorns on their surfaces. I could no longer stand on them and fell.¡±


    ¡°Are you sure?¡± Agu asked. ¡°Because when we descended, there was no such thing. Perfectly ordinary black roots.¡± He fell silent for a moment. ¡°You said that you were cut? You know what it means, don¡¯t you?¡±


    ¡°What¡­?¡± Lennart asked.


    ¡°These roots, whatever it is living down there, tasted your blood. And obviously it liked it.¡±


    ¡°And what does that mean?¡± Lennart asked. ¡°That we should not go there?¡±


    ¡°No, it does not mean that.¡± Agu said, getting up. ¡°But we have to be careful. Let¡¯s go.¡±


    With reserved care we stepped into the twilight under the towering firs and oaks, which now, in the dark clouds of the thunder rain felt even more evil and ominous with it¡¯s lack of light.


    Every time the thunder rolled, it felt like it was coming not from the sky but rather from under our feet. It felt like at any moment the ground could open up with thunderous rumble and swallow us into the carrion blackness. What made it even more strange was that despite us standing in the grove under an open sky, no rain fell here. There weren¡¯t even any grayish blue rain clouds, instead there was only clear blue sky, which gave off no daylight. Eventide was all around us but from between the trees we could see the rain beating down and the dusk of an afternoon rainstorm.


    The lanterns Hanna and Robert had lit up were of no help. The flames behind the glass were potent but little light managed to reach beyond the glass. It did not light up neither the ground or the forest. It did not even reach a person¡¯s face when they raised their face right next to it. In this fashion, the flame felt almost devilish. Offering little heat and no light, only solace being that it was aflame. Something to look at and to keep one¡¯s thoughts on while darkness and the creatures within crept ever closer.


    One after another, we descended along the stairs on the interior surface of the pit. It was strange that since stepping into the arbor, none of us had said a word. Even lighting the lanterns had happened without any exchange, as if there was a silent line of communication between all of us, which had no need to reach our consciousness.


    Our descent into the darkness via the circular staircase went successfully when the last one of us managed to touch the final step half-buried int the ground. It was still dark. Still our eyes only perceived the mere outlines of anything visible. And still, the lanterns were of no use. The ground down here was also still as dry as it had been yesterday. A clear sign that although the hole was open to the sky, no drop of today¡¯s rain had fallen here.


    Going by his hands, Roobert found the capstone of the doorway near the ground and started to dig near it. The earth was soft and soon both Roobert and Agu were working in a knee deep wide ditch which was getting ever deeper. The other thing everybody noticed but nobody said anything about, was concerning the light of the lanterns. These were suddenly giving off light, but they only illuminated the ditch where the digging was done and the earth that had been removed. It was still not lighting up the walls of the pit, us or the stairs or that fluffy moss on the bottom ground we stood upon.


    When the ditch had become eve deeper, so that it reached the belt of us boys, Agu suddenly hit something solid. Some time later when all five of us were working, we discovered that it was not the bottom of the pit, only a large field stone. It looked as if somebody had tried to seal up the tunnel with large field stones and earth, so that nobody would ever know that there was anything down in this pit.


    Soon we were working in a single file crouched under the flat ceiling of the tunnel, which seemed to be made of a single solid piece. Having widened the ditch we were in, we found more walls, so that we had ourselves a trapezoid opening to work in. It took us some more time to dig when finally Hanna¡¯s shovel was the first to break through. As if to convince us of the fact, a strong gust of foul dank air hit us all, making us cough.


    Despite that we continued to work, and soon we walked down the hill of dirt into the tunnel with our lanterns in front of us to try and discern the darkness. It was useless though, the only thing our eyes could see was that the cave was much higher than we had thought at first. There maybe even four times our height, and it was not trapezoid but hexagonal.


    Lennart took a few steps forward, keeping the lantern ahead of him, trying to see anything in the darkness. It was of no use because instead of seeing anything he slipped and fell onto the floor of the tunnel, with the lantern staying upright but a few steps away from him.


    A moment later one could hear a blood-curdling scream coming from his direction. It was even more frightening that we could not see what had scared him, only how he had moved towards us in crab walk, having knocked his lantern over with his foot, so that it rolled towards the wall and fell into some shallow gutter. We could tell it was shallow since we could see still see the glow of the lantern by the wall.


    ¡°What is it?¡± Roobert asked.


    ¡°What did you see?¡± I asked.


    ¡°A-a-a¡­! A skull!¡± he finally screamed, pointing into the darkness. ¡°I saw a human skull!¡±


    ¡°A skull you say?¡± Roobert asked with interest.


    With a slow pace he walk into the darkness, keeping the lantern near the ground where it seemed to cast the most light. Having taken some time to reach the glow by the wall, he finally stopped.


    ¡°There are skulls here!¡± He shouted. ¡°Lots of skull and other ones. Ribs, hipbones, vertebrae and shinbones. Even some old lanterns.¡±


    ¡°What kind of place is this anyway?¡± Hanna asked, shivering.


    ¡°This...¡± Agu stated with a shallow reverence. ¡°...is a place where a long time ago, people who had turned away from Christianity worshiped very ancient and alien false gods and carried out human sacrifices to them. The sacrifices were left into this tunnel, where they believed the old gods congregated and carried out their affairs. These gods had to be gods of fertility and harvest who, in exchange for human sacrifice, ensured bountiful crops and all sort of riches gathered a long time ago in honor of the false gods by people long since gone.¡±


    ¡°Hey, there is another passage here!¡± Roobert shouted from even further away, having continued while Agu was talking.¡±


    Lennart got up again, and despite her objections, grabbed Hanna¡¯s lantern and went after Roobert. Hanna sighed and crawled towards the glow by the wall to fish out Lennart¡¯s lantern.


    Agu also followed Roobert and Lennart while I stayed somewhere in between, keeping my eye on Hanna who was still trying to reach Lennart¡¯s lantern and had her hand quite deep inside the hole.


    ¡°Do you need help?¡± I asked.


    ¡°No.¡± The girl replied. ¡°It is within the reach of my fingers. I will get it at once.¡±


    ¡°Do you mind if I go and see what they¡¯re doing up there?¡±


    ¡°No, go ahead. I will follow as soon as I get my hand on that lantern. A dammit!¡±


    I left Hanna behind and headed towards the others, standing at the edge of a forking passage. I bowed for a moment grabbing a small piece of rib to bring along.


    ¡°What did you find?¡±


    ¡°This passage here is even darker than the one you¡¯re in!¡± Roobert shouted. ¡°I think I will explore that one.¡±


    ¡°Wait!¡± I shouted, quickening my steps. ¡°It may not be a tunnel!¡±


    ¡°What?¡± Roobert asked.


    ¡°It may not be a passage.¡± I repeated as I reached them.


    I showed them the piece of bone and threw it into the darkness. A long and tense silence followed, as we could not hear the bone hitting the floor. Maybe a faint splash of the bone hitting water very far below.


    ¡°What the hell¡­?¡± Roobeet asked, raising the lantern and trying to see into the darkness.


    ¡°It¡¯s a trap, not a passage.¡± Agu said.


    ¡°Hey, there¡¯s something in this tunnel I can see!¡± Lennart shouted from a different direction. ¡°A faint purplish glow!¡±


    ¡°A purplish glow?¡± Agu shouted back. ¡°What is it?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know! I will get to it in a minute!¡±


    I looked around. Roobert was no longer with us. I bumped Agu¡¯s shoulder to get his attention.


    ¡°Hey, where did Roobert go?¡±


    ¡°Hey, I don¡¯t know.¡± Agu said, starting to look around.


    ¡°Hey Lennart! Did Roobert come towards you?¡±


    ¡°Roobert? No!¡± Lennart shouted back in the distance.


    I turned around and crouched down, sliding my hand along the floor as far as I could. I then moved forward to where my hand was. I slid my hand forward again, hearing how Agu was calling for Hanna. The I found the thing I could not see and the lantern would not illuminate. A black edge. And looking over it I could see nothing, only darkness.


    ¡°No Roobert did not come here!¡± Hanna shouted back. ¡°And I think My hand is stuck in this hole here!¡±


    I got up and walked back towards the opening of the tunnel and Hanna.


    ¡°I¡¯ll be right there!¡± I shouted to encourage her.


    ¡°Hey, Lennart!¡± Agu shouted into the darkness. ¡°Did you find anything?¡±


    ¡°Nothing!¡± A voice replied, being not as distant as before. ¡°The glow disappeardd and I am now walking back! Where did Roobert go to?¡±


    ¡°Don¡¯t know!¡±


    ¡°Is your hand still in there?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Yes.¡± Hanna replied. ¡°I got the lantern but now my hand is stuck in here and I cannot get it out.¡±


    ¡°Leave the lantern then, we can figure out later who will be punished the least for losing the lantern.¡±


    ¡°Okay then.¡± The girl pulled her hand slightly and then screamed.


    ¡°Ow! Something grabbed my hand!¡±


    ¡°Some thing?¡± I asked, looking how Hanna was trying to extract her hand form the opening.


    ¡°Yes! It has sharp teeth and it is dragging my hand deeper!¡±


    She was then pulled with the whole body against the floor of the tunnel.


    ¡°What¡¯s going on?¡± Lennart shouted from the distance. ¡°Did you find Roobert?¡±


    ¡°No.¡± Agu said. ¡°I think the purple glow you saw is back, and it is coming towards us.¡±


    Both I and Hanna could see a purple moving glow rising further down in the passage, as if the sources of light were constantly moving around, sometimes coming closer, sometimes going further. Suddenly Hanna screamed and started to cry.


    ¡°What is it?¡± I asked.


    ¡°This something is squeezing tighter and I think it has...¡± she stopped taking and started screaming as if being tied to a wheel.


    A dark splurge of some black viscous fluid emerged from the hole and Hanna was thrown to the side, still crying. Moments later her screams drowned out everything else in my hearing. I stepped closer to see what was going on. The light of the lantern found a pool of blood first and then Hanna¡¯s dress soaked in blood. And then a gaping black wound right near her shoulder.


    At first I could not tell where the wound was exactly. But then I got it. The wound and the blood were where her shoulder had been.


    ¡°Hey, Riho! What happened?!¡±


    ¡°Some¡­ thing¡­ bit Hanna¡¯s arm clean off!¡±


    ¡°Wait¡­ what!?¡± I could hear a voice from the darkness, the glow in the passage started receding.


    Agu¡¯s lantern started to jump around but then stopped.


    ¡°Agu?¡± I heard Lennart¡¯s voice on the verge of crying.


    ¡°Yeah? What is is it?¡± Agu sounded out.


    ¡°Agu!¡± Lennart now shouted in a deathly frightened tone. ¡°I can see it! It is looking! It is regarding me!¡±


    ¡°What!?¡± The boy shouted back.


    ¡°A tole!¡± Lennart shouted out.


    A second later the purple glow turned into a bright flame and in the tunnel I saw both Agu running fowards as as well as Lennart who was further back, standing before the origin of the purple flame with Hanna¡¯s lantern. The source of the purple light was globular semi-transparent slimy mass which took up the full width and height of the tunnel. On top of the surface of the thing, various glowing purple spots moved around constantly, dividing and uniting, with their sizes and shapes in constant flux.


    A moment after that, if fell on top of Lennart as if it was a bag of gut half-filled with water. The two ends of the bag wrapping around him then enlarged and met merging into one and swallowing him whole, lantern and all. Then the ball turned opaque, being filled with a red color which spread uniformly around within its body. The strong glow then disappeared leaving behind only faint flashes swimming in the darkness.


    ¡°Come, let¡¯s go!¡±


    I helped Hanna up and as fast as we could, I ran up the dirt mound that filled the opening of the tunnel. The dusk visible from there was pure and safe daylight compared to the pitch black darkness and the monster glowing within, sure to save us from it.


    I helped Hanna out first, then followed and grabbed Agu¡¯s hand to pull him out after me.


    ¡°Pull me out!¡± Agu shouted. ¡°It is right behind me!¡±


    As I grabbed his hands, his mouth suddenly sprayed a huge amount of blood in my face, hands and clothes. I pulled, feeling relived that it was not as hard as I had thought it would be. As I got up, however, I saw that something was amiss. Agu was dead. Only his top half had emerged from the opening, everything from the waist down, his butt and legs were gone, ripped off. And something in the tunnel was putting tension on the pale intestines, pulling the upper part of him slowly back into the darkness.


    Again, I helped Hanna up. Due to the blood loss she could no longer tell where we were or what was real and what was not. We ran up the spiral staircase as fast as we could and then straightest way out of the black arbor and towards the closest farm a few versts away.


    *


    At that same night in that same farm where I had ran to, a meeting took place in the shed between the old men of the five villages and the Nameless Town. A car was called for and Hanna was taken to the hospital, after which all men went into the shed in a single file and closed the door. For a moment I could listen in what they were talking about before the mother of the house found me and with the help of the daughters captured me and pulled me back into the house.


    ¡°The girl he escaped that place with, she is dead.¡± An unfamiliar man said. ¡°You all know what this means. We have to burn her body before the night is over. Those hexagonal passages...¡±


    ¡°Didn¡¯t our fathers say that our strength may not be enough?¡± And old man now spoke. ¡°It did not help that we simply closed the place and forbade anybody from going there! It is still calling people to it. Especially children. There are no options left, we have to call the minister and let the army get to it.¡±


    ¡°The army?¡± Somebody asked. ¡°What are you thinking about?¡±


    ¡°I am thinking about the same thing I thought about fifty years ago when both czars named Alexander told me to go pound sand and take my books with me. I thinking that we should use that explosive sawdust of Alfred Nobel to collapse the walls of that Devil¡¯s Well and raze the grove so in the future, nobody would know where it was nor know to even look for it. My institute has enough power, so that if our army will not take care of it, then the Russians, Germans, Finns, Swedes or even Latvians will.¡±


    ¡°And the boy..?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know...¡±


    This was the last thing I heard as the farm wife grabbed my collar and started to drag me away. However, before I reached the house, I fainted.


    *


    I woke up in my own home. In a bed. In a room where two of my sisters usually slept. The first thing I noticed in this room bright with mid-summer sun was that the hand that been pricked by the thorn on the wall of the pit was now in bandages and also shorted than the other hand.


    ¡°Hey!¡± I shouted. ¡°What happened? What happened to my hand?¡±


    It seems somebody heard my screams, because soon my sister Agnes opened the door for a bit and peeked for second before stepping in.


    ¡°What happened?¡± I asked. ¡°Why is my hand like that?¡± I asked, raising the bandaged stump. ¡°Where¡­ is my hand!?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry, Riho. You had blood poisoning and...¡±


    She started to cry and ran out of the room.


    Some time passed until my father stepped into the room. He had his boots and a heavy black felt coat on. In his hand he held a double-barrel shotgun. He closed the door quietly and then broke the gun open, loading it with two shells. He then set it in the corner by the door.


    ¡°Son.¡± He said with an apprehensive yet cold voice. ¡°How are you feeling?¡±


    He grabbed a chair and sat down.


    ¡°Father, what happened to my hand?¡± I asked.


    ¡°You got blood poisoning. The doctors had to cut it off. I¡¯m sorry.¡±


    ¡°How a blood poisoning? In that grove I only leaned on the...¡±


    ¡°Son!¡± He stopped me in a cold tone. ¡°We have to have a talk of what happened to you and your friends.¡±


    ¡°I understand.¡± I sighed. ¡°I know we should not have done that. But we went to the grove and we found...¡±


    ¡°Riho!¡± father stopped me again. ¡°We have to talk about what happened. Do you understand?¡±


    ¡°No. No I don¡¯t.¡± I said.


    ¡°Riho.¡± He started in a grave tone. ¡°It happened that you and your friends¡­ after the church you went to play by the milk stand and fell asleep in midday sun. The farmer came to mow the lawn with his tractor, he could not see you and drove over you. Agu, Lennart and Roobert died right away, you helped Hanna get to a nearby farm and she later died in the hospital. You had only minor injuries but you had blood poisoning. You had three weeks of high fevers and due to gangrene you lost your hand.¡±


    ¡°Dad!¡± I said. ¡°It wasn¡¯t like that! We went to the grove, down the pit and dug the tunnel open..¡±


    ¡°Riho!¡± Dad raised his voice. ¡°He have already investigated the events, determined the culprit and tomorrow the guilty party will be punished. Now, if you insist on this lie you want to tell me then in the end it would look like you would be the true culprit. You went down the pit first, did you not?¡±


    ¡°Yes dad, but...¡±


    ¡°No buts, Riho.¡±


    He sighed again, then grabbed the shotgun from the corner and sat down again, with the gun across his legs.


    ¡°Only this once will I tell you something and we will never speak of this again. Repeating it or asking about it before the next time I or somebody else talk to you concerning it will very likely get you killed.¡±


    ¡°Okay.¡± I swallowed and steeled my will.


    ¡°Once a long time ago, when the land was still young, an ancient evil walked the lands. It was evil, because it was death itself. It poisoned the land, it poisoned the air, it poisoned time and space, even trees and animals. It twisted them all and imbued them with grotesque alien spirits both in body and mind. The place you went to has been a scourge on our land for a long time. It wants to be revealed, to be known by people. It entices them. It may even possess their minds with terrible and wondrous knowledge. There is an agreement in place that we do our best to ignore it. We keep away from it. Anybody who does not follow the agreement, should they survive their encounter, has to be destroyed.¡±


    ¡°So what about me?¡± I asked, shivering, still looking at the gun.


    ¡°You were lucky.¡± Father said. ¡°We saw the state of your hand. By cutting it off, the infection of the flesh would be stopped. If you had not been infected you would not be here right now. However, your trial is not yet over. We stopped the poison in your body, but it is possible your mind too is affected. From now own you will be watched very closely. If a suspicion should arise that your mind has be poisoned, I nor any of the other village adults will not hesitate to to do what needs to be done.¡±


    ¡°What about the place?¡± I asked.


    ¡°You needn¡¯t worry about that. A decision has been made. By this time next week it will be as if never even existed.¡±


    ¡°So who is the true culprit?¡± I asked. ¡°It is not Kalev, is it whose field this was?¡±


    ¡°No. It is Peeter, the milk truck driver.¡± Father said. ¡°We could overlook the fact that he did not detain you all and bring you away by force. But what we cannot overlook is the fact that he did not notify us of you asking questions about it. Whether it was because he did not consider the possibility of you going there or because his mind had already been affected, there is not much difference between the two. So he will have to make atonements.¡±


    ¡°How?¡± I asked.


    ¡°You need not worry about that.¡± Father said. ¡°You¡¯ll see. The only thing you need to worry about is that should you discuss this matter in any way after I leave this room, you will have to do similar penance.¡±


    After saying those words, he got up and left, taking the gun with him.


    *


    A few days later I was told that Peeter who had driven the milk truck had been found near the milk stand we used to play at, dead. His remains were cremated and spread into the Devil¡¯s Bog.


    I did not go to school that year. I was not let off the farm either. The next year I was sent to a boarding school in St. Petersburg where I stayed for 7 years.


    When I finally returned in 1938, I could no longer find any sign of the grove, nor the hillock it had been on top of. It was all uniform grassland full golden hay ready to be cut.


    In the end, I did not heed to my father¡¯s warning. After the war and after my father and all the old men had died, I started to look into the matter. By that time, nobody could tell me more about the events that summer. The were all adamant about the lie of us being run over by a tractor. By that time, despite the words my father had said when I was recovering, nobody ever came to tell me more of that ancient evil still buried there.


    I also learned that the old man I had seen in the shed who proposed dynamiting the pit had been a high-ranking elder of the Institute. My father had also been a member, albeit a lower one. This high-ranking elder had indeed met with both Alexander the Second and the Third, which meant that at that time he had already been well over 80 years in age, and probably very experienced in these matters.


    Despite it all happening nearly 80 years ago, I can still remember it, as if it was only yesterday. Of the events that day only two pieces of evidence remain that day. An old photo my father had, with him, the old man and the rest of the village elders standing before the shed of the farm I took Hanna to. And a memorial standing near the officer¡¯s village in remembrance of the lie told about that day. Although I am pretty sure now that the memorial was moved after the war when the old officer¡¯s village was first built.

 VIII - One Line, Four Ends

    The door. Key. Ignition. Cold. I should have seen it. The signs, they were everywhere. But I did not see it. I did not want to see it. I could not see it. I could not accept neither them nor what they meant. And now I¡¯m here, looking at the illuminated dashboard of the car, the cold and lifeless lights, the rev counter vibrating around the half-thousand mark. I had come here looking for You, but I found something completely different. Something I never wanted to find. Something I never wanted to admit to. I still can¡¯t. I won¡¯t. My world is still not ready to accept it for fact. This is not my world, something has happened, but I don¡¯t know what. I don¡¯t know when. But something is very wrong. I should have never come here. There are things in the world one is better off not knowing, not experiencing, not feeling. Now, at last do I understand what people mean by that.


    Hail, dropping on the roof of the car. It was no coincidence that it was now hailing is this dark and cold night with no stars and no Moon. It was done by Them, who had done to the world and this place what they had. Hail, every knock on the glass and metal felt like the crooked knuckles of the forgotten thousand-armed Old Gods. Of those Old Gods I had heard years ago, spoken of in the dusty old tomes stacked on top of the wardrobe out of reach of children. Books written by bearded gentlemen who now existed only as nameless faces on old photographs.


    They were here, those Them. Whether they had any connection to the Sky people, I could not tell. But I can feel that They¡¯re here. In my carelessness, I have now let them in. And now they are with me, in here. Always. Lurking in my dreams.


    *


    I had come looking for you, in here. When the Sun was still far above the masses of clouds. And a could armada with no end in any direction was slowly sailing across the skies above the road leading to the train yard. Threatening to release their ordnance and soak all below from everything natural which was craving for it to all buildings forsaken by both mortal souls as well as gods. Although the gates ahead were wide open, he left the car well outside them.


    Gates, which looked like they could never close again. So comfortable did they look sitting in the grass, slightly bent. The part not obscured by grass was covered with the powdered rust and some white material. It was either some old enamel or altogether something mysterious and alive. The gates were somehow newer than the fence, as the rusty chain-link fence had been attached to the same kind of concrete posts as the ones in the forest designating an area not to step into. An area full of ever-vigilant mines guarding an old missile site which now existed for a way more mysterious purpose. But the history of the Trainyard was similarly hidden from both him and the locals. It had always been here, nobody knew any different, nobody ever admitted to any different. The only thing certain was that a human hand had built this here and a human spirit had contaminated it to such a degree that nature could no longer claim it back.


    The ants, little red critters on their trails right before the gate. But there was a weird issue with this trail. On the side of the Trainyard, right at the gate, it ended as if cut with a knife. As if there was an unseen wall, a border which the little creatures could not or dared not to cross. A border I should have noticed and an example I should have followed. But I did not, or did not want to. I don¡¯t know whether it was crazy fearlessness or naivety to think that our worlds were somehow different, that what affected the ants was safe for me. That I was somehow more powerful than them, that I stood higher than them. I was wrong, it was rather the opposite which was true.


    *


    I stepped across the line, to the other side. And now I have circled back here. And here I am further away and more removed from the beginning than I possibly could have been before. I am even more removed from this afternoon when I first arrived. The trail is now gone. A road the time has wiped away from behind me and into some secret pocket of the world. Steps I should have never taken. Decisions I should have never taken.


    The cabin heating has been turned to the maximum, the heated seats as well, but it is still cold. The hail is still threatening me on the other side of the glass. But it only threatens, only tries to scare me, tries to remind me of my rightful place. The shadow of the world I came from, the world which is now irretrievably gone. I¡¯m still cold, violently it intrudes, through the glass, the seals, through the smallest cracks. Irrespective of the heating and the temperature, it still tries to wrap me in its cold cocoon. To force me to stand straight and with my back straight, to face the situation I jumped into, blinded by love. Not letting me to escape, not even deep into myself.


    I cannot leave. I don¡¯t want to. There is still something here that I have not seen, something I have to see before I leave. To turn on the radio? It won¡¯t help me. The air is full of sounds and noises, there are no stations, only noise and somebody¡¯s voice crying out from between the layers of noise. Was it your voice? No it was not yours. I can no longer even remember your voice, but I know it. It was that same voice which on that moonless night escaped from the airwaves into the world. Calling you away, to there, where ever ¡®there¡¯ was. Yes, away, to someplace else, because one cannot get elsewhere from here. This place here is everything, there is no other world. Everything else is lost. Or perhaps, am I lost?


    *


    I stepped across the line and immediately felt that this was not the world I had been in a step ago. This was a different place. The trail of ants, the car and the road were all left behind, on the other side of a peculiar unexisting, imperceptible security glass in the form of the posts and the fence. And now the Trainyard was gradually losing its previous unremarkableness. Two-story pale building of brick, with everything which could be sold for scrap already torn from it. An expansive roof and a train platform below it, a blackened shell of a passenger train car and a stack of construction wood right next to it.


    And of course the deafening silence all around. As if there was nothing alive around me. No plants, no animals, even the sky was empty of both birds and bugs. As if they too had known that there was nothing good in here. That the evil concentrated here had reached into the heights barely below the clouds and had also scared the creatures of that realm into staying far away from this place.


    You. I saw you. Standing there on the door of the train car.


    ¡°Rheya!¡±


    I called your name. And only then I realized my error. Regret, depression, sadness. It was not you. You were not here. Nobody was here. I fell on my knees, doubting if even I was here.


    It was only a piece of plastic, soundlessly flailing in a wind I could neither hear or feel. White plastic covering I had recognized for your hair. My foolishness. A wish to see something that could not be real. But perhaps, it was you? But this car. This burnt train car sitting on the rails before the platform. Its black metal skin, now stretched over once bare steel. I approached it slowly. There was something threatening about it. Within it. Behind the broken and soot-covered windows. Perhaps a world that was even more mysterious and strange than the lifelessness here.


    There was nothing in the train car. No living thing, not even anything that could have once been living. Not even you. Only my head, my stupid brain and spirit creating these hallucinations for me, a longing which made me hear and see broken pieces of a world lost and wiped away a long time ago. I stepped out of the train car and gazed at the chain-link fence bordering the perimeter. Rust-covered rails, silently speaking of expansive timelessness. For years now, nobody had come through here, this empty train car had sat at least the same amount of time at this platform. The low warehouse beyond the unoccupied pair of rails was empty. No wooden boxes, not ever trash, as if everything was carefully packed away and taken along, with a certain intent to never return.


    Under the clouded skies, everything between the old Stationhouse and the gray fencing slowly opened itself to me. A dead area, a territory straight out of dreamland. Tall grass. Uniform, with no errant plants amongst it. No greens, no leaves, just pale golden plants, dried to death. A giant cemetary of nature, expanding before and after the gray fencing. And the rails reaching said fencing, for which, curiously, there was no gate to traverse. As if the fence had been placed long since everything alive had left the Trainyard.


    This field also took part in conjuring this lifelessness. Not only the external lifelessness. As the skies too were empty, not a soul, no birds and no bugs. Especially those two should have been in there, furiously looking for a prudent shelter before the coming storm. And this deafening silence, sharply cutting through hearing and even consciousness. Even my own steps on the rail ties were silent. No souls, no sounds, no wind, not even slightly an uncomfortable temperature to sense. Just like dreamscape. A hellish dreamscape. Unbearable.


    I stopped, looking at a rock before me. I knelt down to pick it up, to use it to shatter the silence with noise. To shatter the static world, to shatter this void I could not sense. To get rid of this pressure weighing down on me. This pressure which forced me into the position I was in when first arriving in this world, which was now forcing me to exit it the same way, alone and as a total alien to this world.


    The rock flew, hit the galvanized gray fence 3 meters tall and made it vibrate, made it sound out. Forced it to release a sound so unnatural in this utter silence. It then fell to the ground, rending an abominable sound out that as well. And then it remained there on the ground, silent and unmovable. As was everything else as far as I could see. The sound changed nothing, I had been mistaken, the world was still squatting on my shoulders, on my mind and my senses, suffocating me by trying to make me become like it was.


    This was not a desert, deserts still had life, deserts had a soul, a feeling of openness. This place had no soul, only invisible shadows, only suffocated senses, even the openness was missing, everything around me was in a state of compression, forced under its own weight to become soulless and unnatural. Probably by the same people who once desecrated the Trainyard.


    I stood before the galvanized chain-link which separated this limitlessness, this hell from the one over there. This was a place of endings, it should have been the end.


    *


    I should have stopped right there. I should have come back and left. But I didn¡¯t. Something in me refused to do that. Something, the existence of which in this colder and ever more alien of a world, I now regret. Something human. Something I dare call human while I am now shaking here. A human curiosity. I wanted to learn what was on the other side, I have always wanted to.


    You know this already, don¡¯t you? Since our youth and the day you arrived to my little town in the North. A short and cold summer we spent together, once long ago. That place also had a fence, a low wall of brick bordering the world of our childhood. Which was so mysterious in its extents and the way it bordered everything. Back then we did not realize that it was not separating the world from us, but us from the world. I wanted to learn so bad what lied beyond that low brick wall. And when I finally learned it, the magic was gone, the mystery was gone, the unknowable was gone. Only the first steps beyond that wall were special, and after that the magical world disappeared. I only discovered it again with You, here, in the South. And now this world, having shed its skin of adventure, was trying to rob me of myself, if it hadn¡¯t already done so.


    This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.


    Everything here, this place itself, was pure evil, I understand it now. It is inhuman, unnatural, perverted. This is why bugs, animals and life in general are all avoiding it. It has grown alien on its most basic cognizable level. Once it was human, natural, pure, when it was still used for its intended purpose. But now, it is only semblant, it has changed. It is a former part of the world, which the world has cut out of itself and removed in the most categorical sense, not willing to have anything to do with it, a total abjection. The true monstrous and unnatural evil.


    *


    I should have stopped there and gone home, to wait for Your voice under the roof boards and by the cold fireplace of rough stone. Your voice, somebody¡¯s voice. Your return, the care of your grandma long since passed, who was still rearranging items on the bottom floor of the house as she saw fit. But I did not do it.


    Thus I still stood below the unending masses of clouds. Still they had not released their ordnance, keeping it within as if to ridicule both land and nature. As if waiting for something, expecting an event they could help with, something they could make even more complicated. Something to give them permission to relieve themselves of their burden. The dead grass around me had now grown even more gray, almost the same color as the clouds or that galvanized chain-link fencing. Only the texture was different. As if the whole world had lost its color and turned grayscale. Even the guard tower behind me which carried a basket for spotlights at the top. Something I dared not to climb, only to look at the rusting and creaking steel lattice. It would seem the people looking to steal any remaining scrap did not dare either.


    But the fence before me was of no problem. And thus I started to climb it, slowly but surely. I threw my leg over the top and descended on the other side. A strange feeling came over me when I finally touched the ground. Unexplainable. An unreality of the world, a dreamlike quality of the world. Something I could not put my finger on, as if my mind was tricking me. But only for a moment. I was now free to look at everything which lied beyond the fence, as I had seen it be. The Trainyard. This wasn¡¯t right. I had climbed over the fence and now I should have been outside the perimeter of the Trainyard. But I was not. This side of the fence also had a steel observation tower made of rust and creaks, anchored to the ground with massive steel cables. This place also had the rear gates of the Trainyard, dead gray grass and rust-covered train tracks. And all of it was in the correct handedness too, as if I had simply turned around.


    So I hadn¡¯t climbed the fence, had I? It was only my imagination, wasn¡¯t it? I had stared at the fence and thus fallen into daydreaming. It was disturbing to find my consciousness betraying me. My own mind. How could I ever expect to find You like this? I climbed the fence once more. Everything which had happened had to be a flight of fancy, there was nothing wrong with the world. However, once I had reached the ground and turned around, I was still looking at the yard I had just now climbed out of. Impossible. This could not have been so. I had clearly climbed over the fence.


    *


    I still cannot believe that even this did not convince me to stop. My own mind, my own spirit, my own body. Either one of them was betraying me, or they all were working with this monstrous unnatural evil. I don¡¯t know. This Cold, discarnate souls frozen to death, these thousands of fingers and toes it carries as some ghastly jewelry around its scaly neck. These thousands of souls it has in its pouch. And now, gently but surely it was trying to pick me off and put in its satchel.


    What happened to this place? What made this place disconnect from the world? What was it that cleaved between this place and the known world a wound as wide as the Universe itself? What has happened to me? Am I still myself? Am I still here or there? When I went There, when I stepped There, where everything in my life receded on instinct, did I leave for good? Left Here for good? Is Here an impossibility? Have I always been There? But once I was from Here, I was born in the North, after all. But still¡­


    Even after tiring myself out repeatedly climbing the fence, this strange feeling resisting cognition I had, why did I not bring it along and leave? Why? I know, that human curiosity again. Human! Human?! Do you get it? You there, outside, on the other side of the car window? A man is not an animal, what is human is not animal! A human is stupid. It is so stupid that it thinks! So stupid that is has something besides instincts. That he has an option to follow them or not. That he chooses, that he can choose at all, to go against his instincts and die for his curiosity. Yes, a man is no animal. Animals are wise, animals cannot lose their minds. Not like humans. That¡¯s why animals are wise.


    *


    I walked back, right through the Trainyard. Having made up my mind to try and ground my sanity. Nothing looked different. It didn¡¯t matter which side of the fence I was, if I had even changed sides at all. I walked out. Across the trail of ants, to my car. I entered it and turned it on. My plan was simple: I wanted to distinguish the two sides of the fence with something I could not be mistaken about. With something which was from somewhere else than this place damned by both the world and God. I drove the car to the platform and then onto the tracks between the train car and the fence, nearing the section where the train tracks ended.


    And in a completely bizarre way, it looked as if on the other side of the fence, there was also a green SUV moving towards the fence. Identical to mine, but its lights did not come on when I flashed mine. Two options: either I had thoroughly lost my mind with looking for You, or this was a bad joke by some unknown actor. Perhaps that same person who had passed me on the road here with the exact same vehicle. I was almost certain of it.


    I stopped the car by the fence, the nose of the vehicle a meter away from it. I switched off the engine. The vehicle on the other side of the fence had its engine already stopped. The fence could not have been a mirror. I was on this side, but not on that side. Yet the car and the rest of the world were on the other side as well. Even the license plate on the car was the same as mine. Which also convinced me that somebody was playing a distasteful but well-executed joke.


    This time I was not going to climb the fence, there was a pair of red pliers on the car floor. I used these to cut a hole in the chain-link fence big enough to crouch through. I even bent the cut section against the intact fence on my side and used an errant piece of wire to fix it. I crouched to the other side.


    The car was identical to mine indeed. Same license plate, same color, same badging, same VIN, but none of this convinced me, they all seemed to be small details easily altered. I opened the driver door and then finally vertigo and a feeling of a waking sleep hit me as I gazed in the front passenger footwell. This could not have been caused by anything external, the only source was me.


    My hand was still holding the red pliers I had used to cut the fence, but now the pliers fell into the driver¡¯s footwell. There in the passenger footwell I did not see red pliers, but in the dust and dirt on the rubber mat, I saw a clear outline where the pliers had once been. Had I once again ended up on the original side? This was impossible. I got up to look at the fence. A small section of it was cut and bent towards this side, fastened to the rest. This meant that there was something very wrong with my mind. I was still on this side of the fence. Why could I not traverse it? What stopped me, why could I not get to the other side?


    This started to annoy me to such an extent, that as a final course of action I decided to use the roll of rope which I had in the car. I tied one end to the car and climbed through the hole in the fence. And after I had done that and dropped the roll, I could be certain, I was on the other side of the fence. Finally. But still, despite the rope, and the rails traveling from one side of the fence to the other, there were still green old Jeeps on both sides of the fence, and from this side as well, the cut section was bent inside. Impossible.


    In addition, the silver rope was running diagonally. From one door to the other, with the roll sitting on the ground. Going through the hole again, I found a similar situation on the other side. The rope from the car to the fence ran straight, in parallel with the train track. Yet on the other side of the fence it looked diagonal. As if there were two lines and two rolls of rope. One on each side of the fence. But only one line to connect them. One line, four ends.


    I opened the driver side door and started the engine. As I closed the door, it seemed to me that the engine on the other car beyond the fence was now also working. I went through the hole once more. I walked around vehicle once more to find nobody. And once again a hysterical panicky laughter started to come over me. One fence, one me, but two of everything else. Two entire worlds, impossible. This could not be so. One line, four ends. One line, four ends. Monstrous incomprehensible evil.


    *


    One line, four ends¡­ do you get it? It is not possible and yet it is. It is. It was. I am once again here, in the car, by the fence, near the open gates to the Trainyard. But I cannot know if I am on the right side of the fence. Am I? I don¡¯t know. I can only hope that I¡¯m on the same side You are. That is the only thing that matters. One line, four ends. I am starting to understand how strange it is of me to talk to You about it. An emptiness. To those in the shadows of night. Even after tens of times around with me using the same key to turn one car off to start other, still I cannot understand¡­


    What did I do? I should not have met That. It should not have gone this way, I was only hoping to find signs of You. I was hoping to find any idea where You disappeared to, why You disappeared. I was hoping to understand what was going on with You, with me, with the Nameless Town. And now I know nothing at all. I only know You. I don¡¯t even know of myself, of the world even less so. I want this nightmare to end! I want peace, I want to look, I want to find, I don¡¯t want to get it, I don¡¯t want to understand. I want nothing but you¡­


    *


    But this is not the reason why I am now here freezing and trying to understand what is going on with my mind. Who is the one playing these cruel games with me and whether a white room at Luiga is a memory or something way more frightening.


    One line, four ends¡­ haw-haw, that¡¯s not even the beginning yet! My laughter echoes in the empty car. And without me even noticing, the laughter turns into sobbing and babbling. As if I myself was not doing it, as if I was sitting here and watching myself from the side, sitting in the driver¡¯s seat, my head against the steering wheel. One line, four ends¡­ somehow I was becoming to accept that things were so. That when I was sitting in the hole in the fence, on either side of me there was an SUV and a roll of rope. That the four ends of the rope came to a single piece of line. That the fence flap was turned on the inside on both sides. I could barely think it thinkable to myself that this really was so, but now, when I returned in the early darkness of the night¡­


    This twisted weird evil which comes out of its hiding place in the dark of night and rainless lightning and extends its huge mist-like wings all over the lands... I saw him, he came to me, came for me. Because of what I had learned here. Even this little, the village folk kept away from, kept to their activities and tried to ignore the weird. I did not do it, I did not submit to this, and now I was to be punished for this.


    *


    I was sitting by the fence, alone, having taken the car further away once again. In the dark, in the fading dusk of the late night. Hearing the thunder get closer and closer. Listening to it only for the reason that it was the only sound I could hear here at all.


    But now it was no longer the only sound. There was wind, I could not only hear but feel it, the wet cool wind on my face. It forced me to turn my eyes away and look a the world beyond the fence, and it seemed as if nature was slowly returning to this world. I saw the dried grass submitting to the winds rushing across the fields, letting themselves be stroked softly and bending themselves in response and honor. I saw black spots in the sky releasing sounds which could only belong to common hooded crows. And to top it all, I saw the Trainyard on the other side of the slowly coming to life. I saw the lights slowly coming up, as if somebody was slowly turning up the current.


    At the beginning I thought it was an illusion, but with every passing moment, I saw it was not so. In the other Trainyard the lights came on, there were no sounds but I could see something going on. In the other one, but not the one in here. Not the one on my side. This one remained dark. Lifeless. While the other one was lit, bathing in the powerful discharge of arc lights, this one was only lit by occasional lightning bolt between the clouds above. Accompanied by heavy thundering rolls across the skies. It was happening over there, away from me, on the other side of the fence, and it kept on happening over there. No matter how many times I crouched through the hole in the fence, how many times turned around. I always found myself on the side that was dark and lifeless.


    Rain was now falling, lightning descended to hit the ground, deafening rumble echoing between the clouds. Wet and cool rain watering the grass, quenching the earth and everything both dead and alive, both on this and on the other side of the fence dividing the world. And then I saw it. Him. At first I thought it a mirage, created by the Trainyard in full lights. But this was lit by the lightning. But then it was lit again.


    It was not you. It was me. Me. Standing in the rain, on the other side of the fence. Breathing in an unnatural fashion, ignoring the rain, clothes soaked from it. This could not be, this could not be me. I was Here, and yet me was there. But was the me there also me? Was the fence a fence or a mirror? It could not be a mirror because the Trainyard on the other side of fence¡­ was dark once more. Or was is dark still? Had it ever been lit up at all? Or had I been always standing here, looking at my reflection illuminated by lightning?


    I stepped closer to the fence and pressed my fingers through the eyelets in the chain-link. Meaning it was not a mirror, yet the Train yard on either side was dark, lifeless. On either side there was rain in the darkness. I turned my head away and froze. The fence was gone. And the next lightning bolt striking the ground not too far also lit up the figure of me standing before me staring at me. There was I, and right before me was another me, the one that had been on the other side of the fence. And instead of the fence, my fingers were grabbing his arm¡­


    *


    Do you get it? I am here, in the car, but I cannot be certain if I am really here. Am I on the right side of the fence, is anybody? Was there a right side at all? I had received my punishment. I had received my lesson on the topic of not submitting to the order of things. What comes now, I don¡¯t know. But something is clear. You are lost to me. The world is lost. This night changed everything. I am lost. I lost myself the same moment I stepped in here. I cannot return from here and if I continue onward I only reach here.

 IX - Visiting an Old Friend

    A dark hall, only lit by 5 candles and a cigarette, filling the room with a faint devilish glow. But this faint glow could not illuminate neither the floor nor the walls. Even less the Gothic vaults acting as a ceiling or a capstone at the top of the vault carrying an unmistakable figure of a German swastika. The only window into the hall was covered up, but still one could hear the heavy thunder rolling behind it, as if it was emanating from the walls of the building. An air raid from the times of the World War forever recorded into the stone, only being released when the clouds were electrically charged like right now. The physics section in the library had a whole section dedicated to this phenomenon.


    The man at the table flinched when the floor clock rang out, signifying the top of the hour with a rusty sound. He raised his gaze to see 4 wheels behind the dial turning to display a digital number in center. Magical mechanical piece of art, disturbing in its refusal to be understood. A floor clock needing to be wound up once every three months. Handiwork of the people from the lost physics department. A mechanism divorced from all influences that the world or other mysterious devices with forgotten purposes created in said faculty could impose. Measuring perfectly¡­ the time. These devices had all been revealed during the excavations, enclosed into concrete sarcophagi sealed with wax, which looked like coffins at first. There were many mysterious mechanisms revealed but these wall clocks were some of the few with any actual purpose.


    In the dark, this hall, the Green Hall, as it was once known, seemed to be a lot bigger than it really was. This was the room entrusted for him to use as his office. Maybe it was only a shadow of the times passed which stretched this room out. The shadow which was also revealing worlds enshrined in the times now lost and which had hidden undescribable secrets, endless halls of knowledge now walled off deliberately or by accident. The world demanding the return and throwing back into chaos everything that human had taken from it and set in an unnatural form, an order.


    The heavy soul of time was everywhere. As if time was the thing which had worn the limestone floors smooth and weighed down the pillars into arches. Time had given the furniture, whiskey and tobacco the same hue. Time had faded the photos and paintings and eaten away the decorations on the facade until they were unrecognizable. Turning the former figures of greatness into mere shadows only visible in the corner of one¡¯s eye. Still continuing their journeys unaware of any witnesses... Or were their journeys instead continuing them..?


    The man gazed at the expanding ink blot on the paper. Under measured lines of words in thin elegant strokes. He gazed at the fountain pen itself. Black, made of strange stone, decorated with gold, silver and other precious metals. In the endcap there was a small ampule of mercury, while on the other end there was a small disc embossed with an alchemical symbol for both Mercury the planet, as well as mercury, the metal.


    The long carpet on the floor, under a heavy wooden table and the chair, extending to the door. It also extended to the bookshelves on every wall. Shelves full of book from the floor to the edges of the vaults. The books which were so simple-mindedly trying to create a feeling of home. But without success. There was something about these walls, about this building, even the air about it. Something neither a warm floor nor live fire could destroy, something which scared all living things from the room as well as the building, everything except for man. Spiders did not put up their nets, flies did not eat your food, animals in cages would rather die trying to escape through the bars than stay in the building.


    And in humans this was expressed in a strange wish¡­ to die. To not feel or sense anything and to not move anywhere from the safety of the corner where three planes of stone met. A wish to not bear a soul or a spirit. Hell, in its purest form.


    A heavy creaking which sounded like the strokes of the floor clock. The door was slowly opening, the reliefs cut into the door were accentuated by the movement. Reliefs of Judgment Day and the truth-seekers and researchers into the world left behind suffering in their own hell and abjection.


    Completely countering the pressuring and disturbing atmosphere, a familiar young lady appeared from behind the door.


    ¡°Hi, professor!¡±


    ¡°Please.¡± The man at the table sighed and dropped the fountain pen. ¡°I haven¡¯t been a professor for a long time now.¡± He grabbed for the cigarettes and whiskey. ¡°And the only two things I am now a professor of are whiskey and cigars.¡±


    ¡°But isn¡¯t that all that professors and doctors of philosophies actually do?¡± The young woman asked. ¡°You are still here, I see.¡±


    ¡°I am writing a report. To the officials. They are asking me about history, fully aware that I know nothing of it.¡±


    The young woman stepped into the hall and tried the light switch.


    ¡°It doesn¡¯t work.¡± The man said. ¡°No electrical thing works properly in this hall.¡±


    ¡°What did the official gentlemen want this time? Something specific?¡±


    ¡°They always want something specific and it always seems to me that everything is clear for them even before they put the questions to me. Of what they want to know¡­ they always seem to know more. This time it is about the fires in December of 1896, when the library in the Red Hall was destroyed. The first one on the 24<sup>th</sup> and the second on the 28<sup>th</sup>.¡±


    ¡°You mean when the Red Hall turned into the Black Hall?¡± The girl asked.


    ¡°Yes, that. But they are not asking about who did it or why, but about the wider plan, the astronomy of the time, the stars, what else was going here at the time, what was going on in the rest of the world. They want a short report, as if a snapshot or an excerpt of book. The actual chronicle of the Institute could be of no less interest to them.¡±


    ¡°Is it really relevant what they want, if in return they are willing to provide us with everything necessary for a good life?¡± The girl asked with a smile. ¡°It is our job.¡±


    ¡°True, it is our job.¡± The man agreed. ¡°But for what purpose?¡±


    He sighed.


    ¡°Young lady you have been here for a long time now.¡± He said.


    ¡°Three winters come this year.¡± She replied. ¡°I will finish my dissertation and then I¡¯ll be leaving, maybe in a few months.¡±


    ¡°And in these snowless winters you have not felt that something is going on in here? That something is wrong? Out of order?¡±


    ¡°No, I have not felt like that.¡± The woman eyed the man with a pocked face at the table. ¡°The Institute has clear rules for relationships with the external world. Nobody can fix the phone lines and radio is jammed by both the Substation as well as Radio Observatory which interferes with every signal in the air. The Institute seems to be just fine with it, as it seems to me.¡±


    ¡°There is no Institute here.¡± The man sighed. ¡°At least not in the way as before. There is only a building full of endless hallways which end in sudden crude brick walls. Lots of locked doors, photos and paintings of people long since dead. From times and eras long since forgotten and only named afterwards. Offices and libraries full of books nobody will remember and nobody will ever read. High vaulted halls with thick dusty tomes. Unknown authors, of whom only their name has survived, provided that the language and the symbols used for it are legible at all. And of course people who have been old for an untold number of years, keeping all this up, taking care of it and carrying it forward. Perhaps not even knowing for what purpose, being the guardians of unknown truths.¡±


    ¡°This is a very negative view.¡± The woman smiled. ¡°Artistic but negative. Anyway, I came to say good morning. And that in a few hours the next supply truck will arrive and the board has asked you to move your war wagon out of the courtyard before it arrives.¡±


    ¡°Yes, thanks for telling me.¡± The man sighed.


    He looked at door closing. The young woman had to muster quite a strength to close it, as if the hinges had also been bent under the strains of time, taking the doors with them.


    Dark loneliness descended the hall once more. And a few moments later the visit from the young lady had become a dreamlike memory, the origin of which one could only doubt. Which could have originated from his own fantasy or perhaps even the memory of the building. His gaze fell back on the fountain pen. It was their fountain pen, their envelope, their paper even. Their ink. Officials who had asked him to do this work were annoyingly bureaucratic, giving him all the equipment to write with and write on and later taking it all back. Never complaining about ink blots or grammar mistakes as if it wasn¡¯t important, as if nobody really read any of the reports.


    Still pondering various ideas, the man folded the paper and put it in the envelope, then sealed it with ink, using the seal of the Green Hall. This was an old seal of the Green Department ¨C the Faculty of crypto-zoology. For a moment his gaze moved to the fireplace by the wall. A crude thing of red brick, with a chimney on top, built in place of an old entrance to the department. According to the old descriptions, it resided mostly underground, consisting of vaulted catacombs. Halls full of literature, but mostly samples in mineral oil, ethanol or formaldehyde.


    From trivialities like petrified dinosaur droppings to unicorn horns, tentacles of a kraken, and taxidermied birds with a wingspans of several fathoms to a cornucopia of strange creatures conjured up from the nightmares of mad writers and artists which could not possible have been created by God or evolved from anything categorized by Darwin or Linnaeus.


    Once more he revealed the tip of the pen, produced a new page and wrote a couple of lines of text on it. He then gathered up the pen, the sealed envelope and the note and having placed them in his vest pocket, grabbed his coat and stetson hat. He made sure he had a box of matches on him and then emptied the glass of whiskey, before placing the cigar back on his lips and leaving the room.


    The door to the Green Hall was locked with a big hand-forged key, the most curious aspect of it was a swastika on the teeth. He could not but give a smile. This is how it always happened. Pureblooded Germans had come and taken over everything that others had left behind, branding it with their own symbols. And the Russians weren¡¯t any better. This was about the clearest and easiest lesson one could learn from the history of the Institute. The signs of Himmler and Ahnenerbe were on the details only because it was one of the later segments of the cultural strata, one of the more shining ones, but also one of the thinner ones.


    He lowered the key. Vaulted ceilings of stone. At its lowest point still taller than two grown men on top of one another, at the higher point maybe even taller than 4 of them. Dark wooden wall panels and electric lights on the lowest points of the vaults. A couple of low wattage incandescent bulbs every 4-5 meters. Enough to keep the hallways in a perpetual warm twilight not too dissimilar from the lighting in the Green Hall.


    Nobody was ever alone in here. Regardless of if and how a person would explain different sensations and voices, pockets of cold, winds and smells inside the building. The images on the walls exchanging their position without notice. Sometimes the paintings even glowed in the night, with enough brightness to illuminate the entire hallway. Ball lightning which jumped from one bulb to another, exploding them with a loud clap and then disappearing through a wooden door without a single trace.


    Even now, the smoke trail from the cigar was rising straight up and then, a few feet above his head it started to gather and dissipate, as if hitting an invisible barrier. If smoke from an open fire could be absorbed into a stone wall and soot from a candle be deposited onto a ceiling, why couldn¡¯t a human soul soak into a building like his blood would into wooden or even stone floors? In the end, he left far more of his soul in here than he ever would his blood, even if he died here. It all remained.


    Main door of dark wood lied ahead. The steps on the grand staircase reflecting dull light. A building which should have been something like a university, but never managed to function like one. Much rather being more like an archive or a library than an educational institution. Calling it scientific was also a hard press. It was a trophy room. A trophy room of a very large collective.


    He walked down the steps of the staircase. On either side of the stairs there was a massive pillar on which ha vertical bar of black granite stood, listing the name of this institution: Balto-German Esoteric Institute of the University of Yuryev.


    His gaze stopped on a mirror by the wall. The wardrobe on the left was almost derelict, only dust lingered. In this fashion it looked as ghostly as an abandoned children¡¯s playground with no children playing. Where only rusted helmets, old gas masks and broken dolls remained.


    He focused on his own reflection. Slicked back almost black hair, strong brow line dark eyes and a wide yet high nose. Slightly fallen cheeks revealing his true age. The end of the cigar on his reflection grew brighter and he turned away from the mirror, heading towards the front door. He could already see the Official through the window squares, leaning on his car. Black suit and tie, white shirt, spotlessly clean as if new black shoes and a bowler.


    ¡°Professor Kotkas.¡± The man raised his hat, but did not smile. ¡°Do you have the report?¡±


    ¡°Yes, mister...¡± he started but then looked at the vehicle the man was leaning on. Deep piano black paint, similarly blackest of black leather interior, looking similar in material to the shoes this man wore, and that similar faintly neon glow to it.


    ¡°Mister.¡± the Official stopped him. ¡°You know we don¡¯t use names, don¡¯t you? And the writing implement, please?¡±


    ¡°I thought I could keep it.¡± The professor said, giving a faint smile, he took the cigar out of his mouth. ¡°I mean, as long as I am in a working relationship with you.¡±


    ¡°Unfortunately this is impossible.¡± The serious visage of the man did not change. ¡°I am under strict orders to retrieve everything that was released to you. When we have a new assignment for you, then new equipment shall be released.¡±


    ¡°In that case¡­ can you deliver a note to the head doctor at Luiga?¡±


    ¡°Yes, this is possible.¡± The Official said.


    ¡°Very good.¡±


    He handed the man the pen, an envelope and a folded note.


    The car that the Official was using, not only had almost brand new paint, it also had brand new chrome with almost mirror quality. Even the accents and lettering on the rear fins. Even the hub caps on snow white whitewalls.


    ¡°Fifty eight was a good year.¡± He said, still admiring the car.


    ¡°This time this machine was produced for us.¡± The man said. ¡°When we return, it too shall return...¡±


    The man stopped talking suddenly as if he had said something he hadn¡¯t wanted to. He tried to smile, but could not, as if his whole face was paralyzed.


    ¡°Until we meet again.¡±


    The man raised his hat and then got into the car, which then drove off without making a single sound.


    For a few moments, the professor looked at the car leaving and how it managed to float over the pot holes in the road without the slightest disturbance. He then went to get his own car out of the one remaining courtyard of the Institute.


    *


    Professor Kotkas or doctor Jaan Kotkas, he wasn¡¯t particular about how he was addressed. Now he himself was leaning on a dark green four door car. This one with its truck-like sound, size and looks disturbed the locals as the Northern Official¡¯s finned limos. And why should it not have? The brand was the same, but the era was slightly different. And now he was also looking as if he was waiting for somebody, having parked it in front of the main entrance of the Institute. He looked at the sky, a uniformly gray morning cloud cover. No way had this been the source of the thunder he had heard inside.


    He was now drinking coffee, looking at the destroyed embellishments on the facade of the building. There weren¡¯t many buildings where sickle and hammer stood side by side with SS runes. However the reason was not that the met here as equals. Here, the content was far more important than form. And thus some of the signs and marks from the upper area were missed when removing others. The stone eagle sitting on the side wall of the observatory on the main building was reportedly removed pretty quickly.


    It was an early morning hour and yet the street were full of people. Even more so than usually, when the town looked abandoned. Silent people shuffling around, eyes empty, gathering towards their holy place, the post office, to receive their monthly state pensions. This happened every 30 days and every time there was something disturbing and alien about this sight. As if a large number of patients had escaped from Luiga. Wandering the streets, looking for the first shining connection to make, an idea or object, which could be a reason for cracking open the nearest skull. Never mind that standing on this street, everybody seemed to walking around the corner, onto the street which passed the hospital and headed straight towards the ruins of the old Gothic church and the disused cemetery. Through which the Russians built a railway, because it was ¡°necessary.¡± Of course nobody had ever seen any trains using these rails.


    And thus it was that the yellow grass was now taller than most tombstones. So that in strong winds one could only see bent and askew iron and broken stone crosses. Abandoned and cursed land where nobody wanted to go even in daylight, never mind darkness. In darkness there was also the danger of stumbling and being badly hurt or outright skewered by some old yet sharp a piece of funeral plot decoration. There were times when people could hear screams for help coming from this old forgotten cemetery¡­ and only come morning would the ghastly sight reveal what transpired in the night.


    His gaze had stopped on the faded hood of the car, but now he was being roused from his thoughts by a familiar noise. An old Soviet three-axled military supply truck. As it was built to traverse terrain with no roads whatsoever, the potholed main street repaired with crushed rock and cold asphalt was not much of a challenge to it.


    The truck stopped by his car and two young men in military uniforms jumped down form the cabin.


    ¡°Professor Jaan Kotkas?¡± one of the men asked.


    Neither his nor his comrade¡¯s uniform had a name tag.


    ¡°A message from Luiga.¡±


    The man produced a folded paper form his front pocket and handed it to the professor, climbing back into the truck afterwards.


    The professor continued to sip his coffee. This building and the peculiar properties it possessed had not yet managed to cool his drink down. He unfolded the paper and locked at the familiar handwriting and an affirmative response. He finished his coffee and placed the mug n the corner of the step on the entrance stairs. If nobody else collected the cup in the mean time, then he would do it himself when he returned.


    So, to Luiga. Hospital for Experimental Psychiatry named after Juhan Luiga, as it was officially titled. Before that though, there was one other place he had to visit. He walked around the car, got in and started the engine. He needed fuel. And for that he needed to turn to a local guy nicknamed Village Dude. As he had almost the monopoly of supplying the locals with gasoline, potatoes, grain and animal products, he had exclusive use of the nickname. In a stroke of fortune his ancestral family lands had remained untouched and uncontaminated from the activities of various surrounding Soviet Era ¡°proms¡±. Therefore he was the largest local employer and all the food products the locals did not consume, he traded for fuel. Damned if anybody knew why the Northern Officials needed that grain, as they should have had far better ways of sourcing it. Still, it was suspect. What was also suspect, was the disappearance of the Village Dude¡¯s family. Nobody had seen them for a long time. Not in town, not around the man and his household. The man himself also said little about the issue. Maybe they had already left for some larger settlement, but suspicious still.


    Stolen story; please report.


    *


    Some time later he was back on the road. With a full tank, full canisters and two bottles of fire water which Peeter the Village Dude distilled himself. As per his own words, ¡°every batch was as pure as can be, and checked with a chromatography afterwards.¡± The rusty color was reportedly from the vats he used for maturing the product. However the professor could not get a straight answer whether these were wooden or metal vats. However the taste was not too bad.


    This lonely and unearthly road which lead to the hospital. Relatively easy corners and good road surface quality, with the road in between fields with no trees anywhere nearby. Only a row of towers for high tension lines heading towards the horizon. A place where the landscape played a trick on human organs and what looked like a long shallow descent was in reality a sharp climb. How such a phantasm was even possible in this area looking like a steppe, was a mystery to him. Perhaps the good doctor could cast better light on it.


    The turns became sharper until the road finally ended with a massive wrought iron gate and a tall fence area. In addition to the steel rods, there was also small-gauge chain-link added and the top of the fence had coils of razor wire on top of it. This would have been quite a secure facility if the massive gate were not wide open. And from the slight sag on both halves of the gate and the bottoms of the gate having sunken into the road surface, it seemed that the gate had been wide open for decades now. Behind the fence there was a large overgrown park in the middle of it was a long alley leading to a pale gray complex of buildings and a large tarmac courtyard.


    Dark green, almost off-black old car rolled into an empty courtyard in front of a pale five-story building reminiscent of barracks. The tarmac in the yard was patchy and broken with grass and shrubbery growing in the cracks. There was nothing noteworthy about the building. This wasn¡¯t some 19<sup>th</sup> century facility, not even a Stalinist one, it looked like something erected in the 1980s out of pre-fabricated concrete panels. Or maybe there was one thing ¨C all windows on the top floor were crudely bricked off. All other windows were barred, even the smallest ones used of ventilation, through which maybe only small children could escape.


    The tarmac that was still intact, was as dull as the old car on it. A bit further away, by the rusty windowless doors, there were several old ambulances. Smaller and bigger ones, some with a more rounded and older design, and some of them newer, relatively speaking, for example one particular one was a minivan made by Riga Automobile Factory. Wheels rusty, tires flat. There was no way of telling whether any of them were in use. Whether anybody had moved them at all during these past decades or not. Whether these was there any motive components like engines and such left underneath the bodies or were there merely museum pieces deliberately creating an abandoned look for the place.


    His sight was then attracted by on old bell tower at the distance. The belfry was still intact, but the spire was half-collapsed. He then realized the old Stalinist main building was behind the newer and simpler-looking buildings and there was another cracked tarmac road leading to it. He could already see the tall parade doors of the hospital, and a nurse in a standing at the door, herself being less than half the height of the door. As he got closer and finally parked the car he saw that the door between the massive pillars really was over 3 meters tall.


    The nurse was also something to behold. She was of average height, wearing white open stiletto shoes. Her figure and looks were more than perfect almost dreamlike, with the right amount of curves, along with a surprisingly narrow waist. Her uniform as well, was more of a parody of a nurse¡¯s uniform rather than actual uniform of a hospital. It accentuated her body in all the right places and barely covered her upper thighs. Her face was likewise impossibly beautiful with large olive-colored eyes, sharp nose and chin and high cheek bones Her long loose hair was black. There were however small shaved areas on her temples on either side of the head. She also had a peculiar smile on her lips.


    ¡°Hello.¡± The man raised his Stetson. ¡°I¡¯m the professor, I sent the note via courier. Is the doctor ready to receive me?¡±


    The woman said nothing, just gave a slight nod and gestured the professor to follow her. The walked along the main hallway of the hospital. The building was deathly quiet. The interior reminded him the most of the Institute in the town, as if the decorations in both buildings were chosen by the same people. However here, the floors were mostly of stone, large rectangular concrete tiles. On the walls there was dark wooden paneling to about a meter of height, with high vaulted ceilings in simple roman arches.


    After the hallway they continued through a gallery 2 floors high with tall windows ending in archways. Through the windows he saw a small park in desperate need of a gardener. Or perhaps even complete overhaul. Maybe once in the past had it been very beautiful and a fitting addition to the hospital with its restrained design, but by now it was something feral, a place where one could find animals even, or... possibly some other fauna even more appropriate for a mental asylum.


    A long open gallery, full of chairs, furniture and dried leafy tropical plants, but otherwise neat and clean. But to him there was something repulsive about it. Maybe it was the daylight through the high dirty windows being smeared across the walls and floors, this careless clinical aura. Or perhaps a large wooden crucifix which seemed to have fallen off a wall and was now leaning against it at an angle. Strangely it was half-burnt.


    The woman stopped in front if a tall but narrow pair of white wooden doors. She pushed them open and revealed a much less of a grand office than the professor had expected. Sure, the ceilings were high and there was parquet flooring but it had but one window and most of the furniture was Soviet era chipboard, with the corners on the table slightly worn. Behind the table the was a man with graying slicked back hair in a lab coat. High forehead accentuated by a receding hairline, especially on the sides, cold pale blue eyes, close by and sunken in. No eyebrows and a narrow slit of a mouth above a pointy jaw.


    ¡°Doctor Sare?¡± the professor asked.


    ¡°Oh?¡± the doctor raised his gaze from the table.


    ¡°Oh-oh.¡±


    He put the glasses back on.


    ¡°It is you?¡± he asked in a suspecting tone.


    ¡°Jaan Kotkas, yes.¡± the Professor said.


    ¡°Yes.¡±


    The doctor turned around on his chair for a second and started reaching for a file cabinet. He then turned back and finally recognition appeared on his face.


    ¡°Hello, old friend! Damn it, I did not even recognize you at first. I¡®m getting old!¡±


    ¡°Happens to the best of us.¡± the Professor replied.


    ¡°Please take a seat. You want something? Tea, coffee, rotgut?¡±


    ¡°No thanks.¡± The Professor said. ¡°Wait, rotgut?¡±


    ¡°Well, yes.¡± He glanced at the nurse. ¡°Doctor Toomik, you may go.¡± The woman left the office without further interaction.


    ¡°So rotgut, yes. I myself for years now¡­,¡± he revealed a tea glass and a bottle of vodka, then filled the former to the brim, so that the surface tension was holding the very last bit on top of the glass. ¡°I myself for years now cannot get a the workday properly started until I have had my regulatory tea glass. This is of course a prophylactic measure. Helps me deal with the inevitable day to day crap.¡±


    ¡°Crap?¡± The professor asked. ¡°Something more than a daily routine?¡±


    ¡°The crap is the daily routine.¡± The doctor smiled. ¡°Too many patients, too few employees. In addition, sometimes, some of the few remaining patients manage to get out of their rooms and go for walks. Some merely walk, others get violent. Some hit their head against the wall until they break their skull open, or cause organic damage to their brain. Usually, we get them back to their cells relatively quickly, but we still have not apprehended the culprit who leaves door open of forgets to latch them properly. Simply, a lot of headache.¡±


    ¡°These Officials,¡± he continued. ¡°Have given us the necessary equipment all required information to do our jobs, but they simply cannot understand our need for a few good strong young men to do the work of the orderlies.¡± The doctor gave a deep sigh. ¡°It was even worse at the beginning, naturally. There was only me and ms Toomik. We had to hunt for the patients with a rifle all over the building.¡± He twisted the cap back on. ¡°You sure, you don¡¯t want any?¡±


    ¡°Okay then, pour some.¡± The Professor smiled. ¡°Makes one aim straighter and driving more fun.¡±


    ¡°Why worry about driving? There¡¯s no police anyway.¡± He leaned across the table. ¡°Truthfully, I should not drink, but...¡± he then straightened back up. ¡°but nobody has complained yet. Speaking of driving, how¡¯s your boat?¡±


    ¡°Drives, moves.¡± The Professor laughed. ¡°How about yours?¡±


    ¡°To be honest, I sold mine when I came here. I have no need for it, there¡¯s just so much work. And If I want to go anywhere, I can take the ambulance or requisition a car from the Officials. I live on the premises here, in the old house of the head doctor, with ms Toomik. It has been updated slightly as well. The Crazy Woods are a scary thought though, but we have our weapons.¡±


    ¡°The Crazy Woods?¡± the Professor asked. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, I haven¡¯t bothered familiarizing myself with the local points of interest, despite staying here for so long.¡±


    ¡°Oh, yes, it is your first time here after all!¡± The doctor said, getting up. ¡°I apologize for not offering this at once!¡±


    He walked to the map on the wall and started point out various features.


    ¡°This is the territory of Luiga. About 40 hectares in total. The building itself.¡± He pointed at the H-shaped complex. ¡°This is the defensive perimeter that people would not get out. Three meter high brick walls. This part here,¡± he pointed at a small circle behind the rear bell tower, ¡°is the graveyard. There¡¯s about a hundred unmarked graves there for deceased patients whose body nobody has come to reclaim.¡±


    ¡°At the time of construction, the hospital itself was the cutting edge of psychiatry. The first line is for rare afflictions, lower floors hours the most tame patients, it only gets more violent when moving up the stairs. That¡¯s why the fifth floor is called the Red Floor. The rear-most line of the building was originally for the criminally insane, that¡¯s why the name Alpha-block. Women in the left, men in the right.¡± He turned, still in thought. ¡°I think that is all. Oh, one more thing. This hospital was of a level so high that each section had its own helipad, plus two on the main building. And the Crazy forest is this patch of forest here.¡± He pointed at the upper left corner of the map.


    ¡°And what¡¯s the story behind that?¡±


    ¡°As I mentioned before, at there was only me and Toomik. When the Union collapsed, this hospital of natural significance lost all semblance of order. Some patients revolted and killed the personnel, others remained locked in their cells and died of starvation. Others escaped into the wider world, but a lot decided to take up living in the Crazy Woods. By now, we have recovered most that survived, but by our estimates, there may be 5 to 10 people still at loose in the Woods. And I am in no mood to actively go looking for them. It is much easier and safer to¡­ hunt them, when they are out in the open. Tranquilizers, we only use tranquilizers, unfortunately. You still carry your cannons around?¡±


    ¡°Cannons.¡± The Professor grinned, nodded when the Doctor wanted to top off his glass. ¡°Yes, I have one on my and the other in the car. Same caliber.¡±


    ¡°May I have a closer look?¡± the Doctor suddenly seemed interested.


    ¡°Why not?¡± The Professor produced a massive revolver from under his waistcoat, opened the cylinder and removed five rounds.


    The doctor took the silver gun with wooden handles into his hand, examining it from every angle. He opened the cylinder.


    ¡°And the ammo for it..?¡±


    He handed the gun back and took a single round,


    ¡°Wow, it more than a centimeter in diameter and nearly seven long. Pretty heavy also.¡±


    ¡°The bullet on top of the round is 32 grams of lead. Will travel a couple of kilometers out of a repeating rifle.¡±


    ¡°And the repeating rifle is in your car?¡± The doctor gazed at the round between his fingers. ¡°A nice piece of artillery you have there.¡±


    He watched as the round went back into the revolver and the gun back under the waistcoat.


    ¡°Hows the work in the Institute?¡±


    ¡°I think we lost the most interesting items when all the witch doctors¡¯ remains were delivered to your establishment.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, those Northern Officials seem to have a very profound interest in this. I can¡¯t even fathom why.¡± The doctor grew quiet for a few moments. ¡°I apologize for asking you now, but what is the exact subject you achieved your doctorate in?¡±


    ¡°Modern Satanic Philosophies.¡±


    ¡°Oh yeah, right. And one can specialize into this subject so much that a doctorate can be attained?¡±


    ¡°Are you doubting that what I study and research is a true science?¡± The professor asked.


    ¡°Well. I have great respect for how you earn your keep, but it is not exactly a classic science. And pulmonary science seems like a very wide field, while yours looks quite narrow. And utterly uninteresting.¡±


    ¡°Pulmonary science? In a psychiatric hospital?¡± The professor asked.


    ¡°The board for medical ethics severely overestimates its competence.¡± The doctor sighed. ¡°They were of an opinion that I drink too much and no longer allowed me to practice in a mundane hospital.¡±


    ¡°My condolences.¡± The professor said with indifference.


    ¡°No need.¡± The doctor smiled. ¡°Here I have a much better a position than I would there. Although it is not exactly my field, I have complete freedom to arrange things as I see fit. For example, me and Toomik have with singular success resurrected several medical techniques previously discontinued due to being perceived as barbaric. Lobotomies, insulin shock therapy, electro-convulsive therapy. Dunking is freezing water¡­ Even some techniques considered abject torture with no medical benefits have shown great success on our patients.¡±


    ¡°Experimenting on patients like the Germans when they were looking for racially pure Aryans?¡±


    ¡°No of course not!¡± The professor said. ¡°Doctor Toomik works in that field. And those are not experiments, at least not the kind of exploring terra incognito that the Germans did. Wir haben Regeln und Ordnung. The treatment procedures have been created in concord with the Northern Officials, to work with equipment they supplied, based on the data they collated. So there would be no doubt that these procedures are beneficial.¡±


    ¡°You don¡¯t believe me, do you?¡± The doctor smiled again, although his smile looked more like an evil grin. ¡°Come on, lets go and have ourselves a little tour. I will show you some of our patients and what we have achieved with them.¡±


    ¡°Why not.¡± The professor said, getting up. ¡°And yes, I still have some deep doubts concerning your claims.¡±


    ¡°Let all of them be toppled. Can you wait for a moment, I will bring ms. Toomik along.¡±


    *


    ¡°The introduction I am planning is actually quite short.¡± The doctor explained when the three of them were walking towards the central section of the building. ¡°With timed precision something always happens here. I cannot understand, whether it is about the ingenuity of the patients or a rogue employee working in opposition to us, but we have too many people who end up getting loose.¡±


    ¡°I think my one gun and 15 rounds may not be enough. I am also starting to doubt the sign on your office door.¡±


    ¡°I may be a head, but if there is nobody to head up...¡± the doctor grinned. ¡°...Then none of the newer or older gods can help you. Don¡¯t worry about it. Me, Toomik and the orderlies can handle ourselves. And speaking of your cannon, we have much better things to play with, should the need arise. The only ordnance we have are tranquilizers, but a fully automatic smoothbore with a 20 round drum.¡±


    ¡°Nice.¡± The professor said.


    ¡°Oh yeah.¡± the doctor raised his arm around the shoulders of the woman. ¡°We had to fight for it, but we got it.


    ¡°It is possible we have a lone saboteur and sooner or later they will be revealed. Probably sooner. Also, I am only showing you our White wing where some of the locals have ended up in. I know you like everything ghastly, but I would not like to traumatize a long-time friend with the details on various complicated pathologies of the mind. Sometimes it is quite magical how colorfully and creatively a boring diagnosis may actualize.¡±


    ¡°Do you have something more dreadful?¡± the professor asked with interest. ¡°Something pertaining to my interests?¡±


    ¡°I have plenty of stories.¡± The doctor grinned.


    He opened a door to a long narrow hallway with no doors or windows, only dirty skylights in the ceiling.


    ¡°Years ago, when the hospital was closed down, nobody really cared what happened to the patients. As I said before, many escaped to the forest, some died on the mine fields, some were shot by rich tourists who thought them to be peculiar cryptids.¡±


    ¡°But then there were some weird ones, who bricked up almost every window and doorway in that rearmost Black Wing. This crested a maze of horrors, where insane people acted like¡­ I cannot say like animals, because animals could never do anything so disturbing to one another¡­ A total of seven floors of hell, especially for anybody sane.¡±


    ¡°On the most bottom floor, the second sublevel of the basement, we discovered a mouth of a tunnel, which seemed to descend to passages even deeper underground. And I could swear, that at the mouth of that tunnel I heard faint singing, chanting. As if some strange congregation was in worship¡­ I cannot even imagine what. We sealed the tunnel up the first chance we got.


    The doctor fell silent for a moment.


    ¡°It is possible we sealed in many of the patients alive, but I had no people to go exploring. And I had to think of my colleagues first. Here we are, the white wing.¡±


    ¡°If I may ask, what¡¯s over there?¡± the professor pointed at a dark hallway the opposite way. ¡°That¡¯s the Black Wing you mentioned?¡±


    ¡°Yes, there it is.¡± The doctor nodded. ¡°After what happened, I no longer wanted to keep any patients there. It would have probably been as traumatizing for them to live there as it would have been for me to discover it. Most of the patients I found on my first expedition are still in the hospital as patients. But the Northern Officials had a wonderful idea for the building. And now these are used to raise pigs. They are experimenting with raising human organs in pigs.¡±


    ¡°So it¡¯s possible?¡± The professor asked. ¡°Last time I head, there were scientists working on it far away in America and Switzerland.¡±


    ¡°Quite possible.¡± The doctor agreed. ¡°our little republic has some of the most cutting-edge technical applications which are experimented with in my hospital, among other places. This also solves the need for pork both for our hospital as well as for the towns nearby. All the pork available there comes from here.¡±


    ¡°So you¡¯re keeping the livers for yourself, sell off the rest of the organs and whats left over you throw on the grill?¡± the professor joked. ¡°I may lose my taste for pork like this.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re going about it like I did at the beginning, aren¡¯t you? That we feed medical waste to people? That somewhere there is a hospital of horrors where every kind of an unpleasant joke about medicine is a daily routine? Where the canteen indeed does offer fresh cancer daily?¡± The doctor asked with a smile. ¡°I can personally assure you that this is the cleanest and most sanitary slaughter house within a couple of hundred miles. The product here, be they human organs or meat product for food, has to pass the strictest available screening. I trust in it so much that I have discovered a whole new variety of culinary delights. Which miss Toomik can prepare most aptly.¡±


    ¡°So. The white wing.¡±


    The doctor opened the door into another narrow hallway. In the right side wall, there was a door every five or six meters, some of them kept banging as if something heavy was repeatedly being thrown against the doors. Here, the Professor finally saw another employee, a strongly built male orderly whose bodily proportions made well over 2 meters tall. Indeed, he had to bend slightly to not hit his head on the ceiling.


    On the wall opposite the doors, there were benches, and on one of them, there was a girl or a young woman wearing all black. With a skirt just short enough and boots just tall enough to only reveal her knees. Next to her was a plastic bag.


    ¡°And this here is where our dear doctor Toomik works.¡± The doctor said, pointing at the first door in the room.


    ¡°A Lobotomicum?¡± the professor asked.


    ¡°It is not as bad as it looks. It is more of a disturbing private joke between us two and the orderlies. On the other side of the Lobotomicum is the Anatomicum. This perfectly unites both specialties of the dear doctor.¡± Doctor Sare smiled, as if wishing to insinuate something. ¡°Of course in neither area can one discern that the other is merely a door away. We do have some civilities left in us. Let¡¯s move on.¡±


    He walked to the next door, opening a small sliding cover in front of a small view port with no glass. He then took a look inside.


    ¡°For a time, this was our local super star. Have a look.¡±


    As soon as the doctor neared the view port, a strong smell of human excrement assailed him. It looked like the patient was using his nose and face to paint strange shapes onto the walls, using his own feces as the medium.


    ¡°There is a sad story accompanying him.¡± The doctor said, closing the cover on the view port. ¡°He was violent, so violent that orderlies often left him in the strait jacket for up to a day at a time. One time an orderly tightened the sleeves, ropes and the belts so intensely that to save his life, doctor Toomik had to perform an emergency amputations of the upper limbs. He has been painting these figures since.¡±


    The continued to the next door.


    ¡°This unfortunate soul...¡± He took a look into the chamber. ¡°...we picked up on the road to the Trainyard. He had no idea who he was or where he was. He could only repeat that he was not himself and that one line had four ends. Don¡¯t ask me what it means. There are some days like today when I have no idea why we¡¯re keeping him here.¡±


    The doctor let the professor take a look at a perfectly normal -looking young man standing in the middle of the chamber as if expecting a visit.


    ¡°But there are other days when I wish we could move him up in our treatment scheduling.¡±


    Professor¡¯s gaze stopped once again on the young woman on the bench. Loose dark brown hair, reaching down to her elbows, soft cheek bones and brown eyes. In her hands there was an old photography camera, which she proceeded to use to snap an image of the professor, the doctors.


    ¡°This one here¡­¡± The doctor continued without paying the woman any attention. ¡°...is a local school teacher. He is one of our brightest examples of success. Before doctor Toomik started with her procedures, this man was disturbed and violent. He kept complaining that the ¡®sky people¡¯ came and took away his¡­ we think it was an imaginary girlfriend. But now I am almost certain that soon we can release this man and present him to my colleagues in psychiatry as a triumph in redeveloping the old approaches.¡±


    ¡°Almost?¡± the professor asked. ¡°So he is not completely cured?¡±


    ¡°I would not dare to say he is cured. Sometimes he still seems to suffer from his delusions, repeating unconnected sentence fragments, which he cannot explain nor even recollect uttering.¡±


    As the professor took a look into the chamber the patient sitting on his bed in straight jacket did indeed speak.


    ¡°That¡¯s why I remained, Because of that I looked, I went there early...¡±


    The man¡¯s mouth remained open as he stopped talking and then locked eyes with the professor, sending judders down his spine.


    ¡°...to stop him, you know? But I was late.¡± The young man continued.


    ¡°As you can see.¡± The doctor sighed. ¡°This is the clearest part he is repeating. Sometimes he says that he is not here, but somewhere else. That his brain is in a glass jar and all of reality is an electro-chemical illusion. Non-invasive procedures have not produced a desired result so our only chance seems to be to trust his health to doctor Toomik again.¡±


    The doctor smiled and glanced at his colleague who was spinning her preferred tool between her fingers, a silver rod with a handle on one end and a sharp point at the other.


    ¡°In any case.¡± He opened the next view port. ¡°This is our current star patient. Teet Metsla, also known as the Cigar Cutter. OR as the locals know him, the Cutter of Devil¡¯s Bog.¡±


    ¡°It is interesting that I have never heard of him.¡± The professor said.


    ¡°He is a well-kept secret, let¡¯s be honest.¡± The doctor said. ¡°This emaciated man, who¡­ are these butterflies he¡¯s painting?¡±


    The professor also took a look inside the chamber. A man who seemed to be only skin and bones was standing in front of a canvas and holding a brush.


    ¡°Yes, these are butterflies above a bog, he¡¯s painting.¡±


    ¡°Yes, butterflies above the Devil¡¯s Bog. He has done this for years now. We have saved all his paintings, of course. For scientific purposes, I assure you, there is no particular variation nor artistic value to them. Other than him having learned to express himself artistically.¡±


    ¡°But this as skeleton-like man chopped up 37 youngsters. He let them exsanguinate. He tried his best to avoid anybody younger than 18, usually he sacrificed women on their period on moonlit nights. This is an interesting person with a particularly burdened mind. He tallied his victims by the burn scars on their faces. Every victim got one more burn that the previous one, as the first order of business.¡±


    He pointed at the bench. ¡°This young lady is his relative. She comes to see him every day, brings him food, and I mean proper food. I haven¡¯t quite made out how the two are related, but it may not important after all.¡±


    ¡°No, it is not.¡± The young woman said, as she got up. ¡°It really is not.¡±


    ¡°Doctor!¡± A male orderly suddenly approached, running. His white shirt and hands were bloody up to his shoulders. ¡°We have a...¡± he looked at the people in the hallway ¡°...a problem.¡±


    ¡°God damn it! I knew the tea glass of vodka was a good decision! Toomik, please go and look, what¡¯s this about. I will escort out guests out of the building.¡±


    The inhumanly gorgeous woman with a mysterious aura about her, gave a nod and then left with the orderly, the stiletto heels echoing on stone floors.


    ¡°Toomik can handle herself just fine when needed.¡± The Doctor explained, as if to calm the Professor. ¡°I have no reason to doubt her abilities. Your lives are in no danger. But you know, the safety of any visitor is of utmost importance. And I want to make sure of it.¡±


    ¡°An orderly up to his shoulders in blood again makes me doubt your reassurances.¡± The Professor noted.


    ¡°You worry too much.¡± The Doctor replied. ¡°Maybe you should entrust yourself and your paranoia in my care? I can swear that from the moment me and Toomik took over this place, we have not let a single person escape the confines of these buildings. In the name of public safety, if a drastic action has been necessary, then we have taken it.¡±


    He stopped at the front door. ¡°Let me know when you find more time for a visit. Maybe I can find a nice quiet evening and we can enjoy a nice little soire¨¦ and of course the unearthly culinary skills of doctor Toomik.¡±


    ¡°That would be nice.¡± The professor said.


    ¡°Very good.¡± the Doctor said. ¡°But you must excuse me now. Until we meet again.¡±


    He closed the doors and locked them. The Professor could hear how there were some more doors on the inside to be closed and locked.


    ¡°I would have never guessed that the doctor has any genuine friends.¡± the young woman said, now looking at the man as if sizing him up.


    ¡°And you are?¡± the professor asked.


    ¡°Mariann.¡± The woman replied. ¡°I think this is sufficient for now.¡±

 X - a Few Words on Local Legends

    ¡±Okay then, tell us about this memory of the land...¡±


    ¡°We are a manifestation of this place. This place exists, but we do not. Despite everything connected to the world and the sameness of substances, we might still be a mirage, a hallucination experienced by this location. Why else there is nobody here, but us? Not even birds fly...¡±


    ¡°There are ants though...¡±


    ¡°Are there though¡­?¡±


    *


    ¡°So you want to hear of the Esoteric Institute¡­?¡± The young woman gave a sigh and kept staring at the sky. ¡°Technically speaking, the full name is Balto-German Esoteric Institute of the Yuryev University. One could say the history of the Institute began when a group of local Balto-German landowning nobles who were interested in esoteric knowledge and alternative interpretations of the Bible, started to meet and discuss the topics in the old von Schwann manor. Reportedly there they created some of the first true rituals they had, by combining their collective knowledge. And the first rituals were really about looking for a direction.


    ¡°According to the legends, at the time of that same ritual, the evening sky had suddenly, yet imperceptibly become dark, not permitting light from any heavenly body, no stars, not even moon. So that the people outside at the time could not see even 2 steps in front of them. According to the stories, a bolt of lightning suddenly crossed the sky and hit a hilltop tree in the forest.


    ¡°The next day when the villagers gathered to take a look, it was discovered that the mound the tree had been on, was actually a pile of rubble from some ancient stone building. A building which, according to the features suggested by the more intact pieces, was either immensely older or immensely newer than the country folk who were living here or had lived here since a thousand years. Because they had no skill, time nor sense of style to try and cut granite field stones into megaliths with six sides and then build walls with them. Or hexagonal hallways much taller and wider than a human being.¡±


    ¡°Six-sided hallways?¡± a girl asked. ¡°For what purpose?¡±


    Mariann looked at the girl. Her shirt was red, too red for her sensibilities. And it was the only thing he could pay attention to before turning her face towards the sun.


    ¡°The purpose could be clearer if one were to consider that the hallways were not built by humans. This is the conclusion the men themselves reached when they descended into the structure for the first time and found a massive six-sided room, along with a low altar stone about a few fathoms across. In the end it was supposed it was a sacrificial room. And the whole structure had been some peculiar abandoned temple.¡±


    ¡°During one prayer which was held there afterwards, a land-owning lord, whose name is still hidden in the fog of history, slipped on the floor covered in sacrificial blood and fell, hitting his head on the altar stone. He died on the spot and his blood mixed with the rest, becoming part of the rites. This had opened up another hallway which was illuminated by strange stones on the walls, emitting pure natural daylight. What else transpired in there, I cannot say, but only 3 men returned out of 8, covered in blood from head to toe, von Schwann among them, and gave an order to seal the temple.¡±


    ¡°During the next 25 years, these three men spared no time or effort to collect money in secret and in public and direct it towards building the Institute, right on top of the remains of the temple.


    By the end of the century, the main building, the observatory and the medical faculty were complete. Of course, at the time the medical faculty also filled in for the faculties of biology and zoology. In 1795, the year of completion on the main work, the head and the chief ideologist of the Institute, von Schwann, at the time over 80 years of age, had a grand portrait painted of himself, which still exists in the Institute.


    Reportedly he presented the artist with a list of 36 features to be present in the artwork. He also demanded that the artist knew them by heart and burned the list. It is not known, what the requirements were, except for one. Near the left upper edge, a blue planet with a deep blue spot and a pale ring was supposed to be painted. Von Schwann had called this heavenly body Trans-Uranus.¡±


    ¡°Trans-Uranus? You mean Neptune?¡± a young man asked.


    ¡°It means...¡± Mariann pushed herself away from the vehicle she was leaning on. ¡°...Trans-Uranus. Uranus was discovered in 1781 by Herschel and Neptune by Le Verrier in 1846. Von Schwann had already mentioned earlier that Uranus was the ¡®wrong planet¡¯, as it was discovered in his lifetime.


    ¡°What do you mean by ¡®wrong¡¯?¡± a girl asked.


    This girl did not have a striking red shirt. What luck. Mariann smiled to herself, she had not seen her before, perhaps it was her first time to come and listen to the stories she was telling.


    ¡°This, I think, is up to each of you personally to interpret. I¡¯m just telling you about the history as I have heard it and read it. And having tried to put together stories of different people.


    ¡°On that same year, after the portrait was ready, the final consecration of the portrait and the building took place. This carried on in the deepest catacomb of the institute, which had the ceiling of the old temple as its floor. Huge six-cornered tiles put together with such a precision that not even a strand of hair could fit between them.¡±


    ¡°Again, it is unknown what transpired, but when the servant went to wake the honored man, she only found an untouched bedroom. The man was gone and extensive searching over the following days and weeks yielded no results. Also, all the clothing was still present which mostly excluded the option that the man was taking an impromptu trip. The two other old lords were also submitted to interrogations. According to their account, they returned from the catacombs together and only parted in the main hallway. In the end, no suspicion that the two men were involved in their colleague¡¯s disappearance were ever found nor proven.


    ¡°The village and the library are full of books with stories about three drops of blood on his pillow, black cats and ravens roaming around in the building and finding their way into the henceforth locked von Schwann private quarters on multiple occasions.


    ¡°Of course, I have my doubts regarding all of this.¡±


    ¡°What doubt?¡± a tall slender young man asked, as he leaned against the body of the car, heated by direct sunlight. ¡°That his mates killed him after all?¡±


    ¡°No, not that.¡± The young woman in black gazed at the young man, as if looking through him. ¡°Those two other nobles also went missing within a year of von Schwann. One disappeared on a very public fox-hunting trip with many honorable nobles participating. It is said he disappeared within few minutes while riding a horse. The other disappeared from a moving mail carriage mid-trip.


    ¡°The peculiar aspect is, that the sleeping clothes of the von Schwann, those very same that he had worn when participating in the secret rite with the other two, were later found on the floor made of six-sided tiles, in the lowest section of the catacombs. Same happened with the other two, they disappeared without a trace, yet left behind all their clothes. As if having called into Heaven by God.¡±


    ¡°Judgment Day.¡± Somebody said.


    ¡°Yes, or rather Judgment Day for those three.¡± The girl in black paused for a moment. ¡°The are also other interesting aspects. Between the disappearance of each of the two other companions there was a period of 51 days. Sounds familiar, doesn¡¯t it? And the right planet was supposed to be discovered 25 years after his death. Also BS, right?¡± She smiled. ¡°But. 20 years after von Schwann¡¯s disappearance, in 1815, an error was found on the monument erected in his commemoration, nobody had noticed the error apparently for decades. On the monument, the year of his death was marked as 1821, six years into the future at that point.¡±


    ¡°And that would match the man¡¯s own prediction.¡± The young man noted. ¡°Never mind that at the time he would have been nearing 110 years in age.¡±


    ¡°Wait!¡± The girl in red shirt exclaimed. ¡°does this mean that somebody made an error? Or somebody had some secret instructions? Or did he really live to be that old?¡±


    ¡°Does it really matter?¡± Mariann asked. ¡°With that story?¡± She paused once more. ¡°The Institute continued with its activities, the basement hall with the alien floor was walled off. The Institute began collecting all manner of esoteric and mystic literature. Books of the Dead from different cultures around the world, magical texts. Every book mentioned by famous horror writers.¡±


    ¡°So a Necronomicon is a real book?¡±


    ¡°Not with that particular name, but yes. You think that the books horror writers speak of are pieces literary and artistic fiction? It is forgotten history, just like the Institute. History and religions burnt away on orders from the Ruler. Which people have later refused to try to raise back into acceptable discourse, knowing what kind of trouble that would bring. What kind of wounds of history would be torn open and the kind of devilish dedicated secret societies would be resurrected.¡±


    Mariann turned, looking at a row of high tension masts running across the fields in the distance.


    ¡°Humankind has always tried to think beyond their vision. Plato said it out loud first, but the desire is much older than that. However, what lies beyond the thought? In reality, the same thing that lies sleeping under the walls of the Institute. Legends, nothingness, the unknowable, alien. There lies the thing we are unable to name, that which we are unable to think, unable to see as anything of importance.¡± She fell silent again for a period.


    ¡°New faculties were established by the Institute, new libraries. Catacombs under the buildings became almost a required element of design. Libraries were named after colors. The Lords Manor of the von Schwann family went fully to the Institute and became the Faculty of Ancient Magic.


    ¡°At the end of the century, a young woman with phenomenal abilities and knowledge became the leader of the Institute. She vehemently believed and claimed that she was a descendant of the lost Heinrich von Schwann. She is the one who burnt down the Red Hall in the winter of 1896. She first lit it up on the 24<sup>th</sup>, but it was extinguished. Then, 4 days later, the second fire took place.¡±


    ¡°Why did she set it on fire?¡± A girl asked. ¡°An accident?¡±


    ¡°I would say madness.¡± The young man replied.


    ¡°A ritual.¡± Mariann said. ¡°It was part of a ritual. The Red Hall was a central library for black magic. The strongest sacrifice in black magic is not innocent blood or children¡¯s blood or intercourse on the altar with an animal, consecrated person, corpse, homosexual or an intersexual person. The strongest offering is the knowledge itself and the life and soul of the participant. That is because no mage would want to give up or lose any of those things, because then they also lose all chances for self-interest. If the driving force behind the ritual is something other than enjoyment from the result of the ritual, be it profit to oneself or harm to somebody else, it is much more difficult and burdensome to keep oneself focused on the rite¡­ it will look almost like meditations.


    ¡°There are also other curious aspects.¡± Mariann continued. ¡°Up until her very hour of death, the woman claimed that she did not immolate herself, but self-combusted, and that was what was pre-ordained to happen. That she used her burning flesh to ignite the library. The fire burned away most of the books on the shelves, but left the wooden shelves themselves untouched. Likewise untouched were the fireplace full of crumpled papers and even the oil paintings on the walls. The only volumes unaffected by the fire were later discovered to have been bound in human skin.¡±


    ¡°The second fire occurred 4 days later. This time everything that could burn, did burn, however this time as well, the fire was limited to the Red Hall. At the same time the young priestess herself also burnt to death right in her hospital bed. This happened under the eyes of both witnesses and medical personnel who later said that even when writhing and screaming in pain she still managed to cry out that this was a sign that her sacrifice had been noted and accepted.¡±


    ¡°And what did she want to achieve with this?¡± the young man asked. ¡°What did she achieve?¡±


    ¡°She achieved that the Institute and it¡¯s research would be recognized and taken seriously. The institute became almost a university, where people engaged in looking for solutions and academic research into various fields decades ahead of their time and thus forbidden by mainstream science. Even the Substation was built, to research propagation on radio waves in the atmosphere, it was directly subjugated to the physics faculty.¡±


    Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    ¡°It was also clear that something in the air of the building had changed. Something people could not put their finger to. The hallways grew darker, the minds of the people heavier. The Red Hall became the Black Hall and the Black Hall became a forbidden place of worship, eventually walled off entirely.¡±


    ¡°By the beginning of World War I, the Institute had become an important place of research into history. Nobody was stopped by the name, nor by the fact that most research was done via alternative theories. By the thirties, the German Ahnenerbe had their own department here. The Institute was reportedly one of the most important secret targets to capture in the German Ostkrieg. During the three years of German occupation, a lot of changes and expansions were made to the Institute.¡±


    ¡°The Black Hall, which had been closed off for nearly 40 years was again opened up and it became one of the most important room for rituals. This was discovered when most of the mystics invited here all over the world fell into coma, when first entering the room. The von Schwann prayer room was also excavated along with the six-sided chamber below it. Reportedly they also pressed deeper into the ruins and the hexagonal corridors with those strange light-emitting stones.¡±


    ¡°What ensued is again unknown. But two human skeletons were recovered. The Institute employees were not allowed nearby, even Estonian Legion and Waffen SS soldiers were barred from entry, instead the place was taken over by the Schwartze Sonne special division of Ahnenerbe. In the end though, all research was ceased, mostly due to the mounting human losses. Both the basement chamber and the hallways behind it were again walled shut.¡±


    ¡°In 1944 a lone precision bomb run occurred, causing the destruction of the medical department, the observatory and part of the main building. To everybody¡¯s surprise no person was killed or even injured, and the main building remained mostly intact. But the Zoology department which lied underground in its entirety, was completely destroyed and buried. The other subterranean subjects were subjected to the same fate. After the war, deportations and mass executions, the Russians finally rediscovered why they had in their hands and started to rebuild. But it was already too late.¡±


    ¡°And the secret underground chamber?¡± somebody asked.


    ¡°Has become a legend at this point.¡± the young woman in black replied. ¡°The Russians looked for it but never managed to discover it. It was not directly accessible, but through the Physics department, though secret trap doors and tunnels. Most of it was destroyed during the bomb run. The only things surviving the Physics department were the infinitely complicated wall and floor clocks. It is probably still somewhere below, waiting until it is re-excavated.¡±


    ¡°And the Von Schwann manor?¡±


    ¡°The manor still survives.¡± Mariann said. ¡°Some villager lives there along with his family. They moved there some time in the seventies. In 1939 when the German nobles finally left when being recalled by Hitler, the building was left empty. The Soviet soldiers did some marauding but in the end, after some strange deaths, it was left abandoned. Possibly, there is still something evil in the air.


    ¡°The family of the villager has not been seen out in the open for a long time. And nobody is allowed in the house, not even nearby. On the other hand, his fields are alive and the cattle healthy. Possibly they only place around here the Russians did not manage to contaminate.¡±


    ¡°Contaminate?¡±


    ¡°Yeah.¡± the girl sighed. ¡°A thing occurred, again in the 1970s. People tried to grow potatoes near the forest. Also here, where we are now, on the territory of the old airfield. But the ground was poisoned. The plants, the grass under the power lines, everything living is dead, I cannot even hazard a guess how it has survived. There are no insects here, no mice, no animals want to come here.


    ¡°In any case, most of the potato plants died. Both here and by the forest. And those that did not die, grew into the most wonderful and beautiful plants people had ever seen, spreading their sweet smell far and wide.


    ¡°When harvest arrived the wild hogs came to dig them up and eat them. Those that did, died there and then, before even managing to leave the rows of potato plants. The only thing discovered in the ground were little black bulbs, which although fragrant and sweet, were poisonous to such a level that the carcasses of the hogs were avoided both maggots and other carrion species animal, plant and fungi. A couple of village children who picked the black bulbs and tried tasting them also died on the spot, the poison acted within minutes.


    ¡°Of course the real trouble arrived, when it was discovered that the same effect was occurring in private gardens. One plot in the dacha district was effected so severely that suddenly all grass died off and something way more poisonous replaced it. The owner thought nothing of it and mowed the grass with his electric push mower as usual, but when he touched the cut grass with his bare hands, he too fell ill and died, much like the hogs and the children.


    ¡°Finally the specialists from the nearby Agroprom took samples and notified the people that it would be better to not consume any plant or animal products grown here, as the rocket fuels and chemical weapons¡¯ runoff has seeped into the ground, entered natural processes and was accumulating into the plants.


    ¡°Army corps dispatched to burn away everything contaminated¡­ well, they did not fare well. Most also died within minutes as the rudimentary gas masks could not stop the contaminants. The objective was achieved only when special division in white encounter suits and their own oxygen supply was brought in to take care of it. The marked down the danger areas with red aerosol paint and returned for several years to take samples of the areas.¡±


    ¡°Nothing special really,¡± Mariann smiled. ¡°Just the darkest scenario coming to pass for once.¡±


    *


    ¡°As the older people tell it, somewhere in the South there is a lost town.¡± The young woman said. ¡°Which exists, but where one cannot go to. Where no road goes. Somewhere there there are also domes in the forest, where aircraft built by the Russians in cooperation with the sky people have landed.¡±


    ¡°The missile bases.¡± A young man said. ¡°with underground silos.¡±


    ¡°Originally, yes.¡± The girl in black said. ¡°But man is powerful. When there are enough people believing that something exists, then very strange things may occur. Like god. Like the black Volga. Even this vehicle here might be some kind of godly presence, a collective invention, matter born by the power of thought. When enough people believe in flying apparati, they will no doubt make an appearance.¡±


    ¡°Like Greem Bell?¡± somebody asked.


    ¡°Just like Greem Bell.¡± Mariann said. ¡°If to use the magic of words, then this base here will become something entirely different than it is now. The world will no longer be the world. This base here will no longer be this base. And the Four-Eyed Ones will start appearing during broad daylight.¡±


    ¡°Have you ever happened to be near this place during nighttime?¡± She asked. ¡°It is all illuminated in bright light with no source. Creatures in silver encounter suits mess around with liquid nitrogen. Soldiers in dark uniforms guard the perimeter with automatic weapons. This has been the nighttime horror story of a few curious spectators and many of the people who have decided to gather berries and mushrooms in the night using a flashlight, but end up in Luiga with a story no medical professional considers as sane. From behind the trees, one could see a huge cloud of smoke and the rays of light penetrating it. Almost magical.¡±


    ¡°And these stories were going around already back in the thirties. Even earlier, far before anybody had mentioned any flying saucers, which seem to be a fad brought along by popular movies, much like the crop circles. Of course back then they said that these night time events were but employees and scientists of the Balto-German Esoteric institute of the University of Yuryev. Sometimes they are blamed for those events even these days. It seems to me that what is told of their actions and equipment also follows all the fads.¡±


    ¡°Was it not also located in that nameless Southern Town?¡± the girl in the red shirt asked.


    ¡°Yep.¡± Mariann replied, stretching her arms on the hot roof of the car. ¡°...a mental asylum and the institute in the same town. Actually the holy trinity - the Institute, mental asylum and the church were what made a town out a village. At least on the map.¡±


    ¡°Wait! There is one thing I do not get.¡± The girl in a red shirt continued. ¡°You say that nobody can get to that town, nobody can find the town, yet it exists and you know sufficiently about it to tell us. Which is it then? Inaccessible and unfindable or is it a tall tale you are telling us?¡±


    ¡°Both.¡± Mariann smiled. ¡°One cannot be sure whether it is a tall tale, as one cannot be sure it is not. The place a person starts to go towards is never the place they arrive at. This is true not only in the philosophical sense.¡±


    ¡°The Southern Town one can get to. It is located on the map, just enter the name into the GPS and get going. You can leave the same way, no problems. But the Nameless Town I speak of, there one cannot come and go as easily. In a certain sense, that world lies above or below ours. One cannot go there, but one can find themselves there. It is a dreamworld, so to say. Sometimes one can get there, sometimes one can get out. Sometimes it is in phase with the rest of the world, sometimes it is not. It is a hard thing to prove, however. In a certain sense, to get there, you would already have to be there.¡±


    ¡°Are those youths in their Volga governed by the same principles?¡± another girl asked.


    ¡°Provided it has any truth in it at all.¡± The other one commented.


    ¡°With the youths in the Volga, there is an altogether strange thing to it.¡± Mariann said. ¡°the story tells us how they reached the Southern Town and one of them was left behind before they arrived. At the same time, there is also another story how a group of teens ran their Volga off the road into a ditch and they all died. You can believe that either is true. Or that both are true simultaneously. Maybe this makes it easier to understand the duality of it all.¡±


    *


    ¡°Cigarette cutter? Who¡¯s that? Never heard of him.¡±


    ¡°The Cigarette Cutter aka Teet Metsla.¡± Mariann lit up cigarette. ¡°An EMT who went crazy. He thought that he could teach the young people better than the character of Dr Tobacco as played by a drunkard actor on stage. He was born some time in 1962 or 63. He did not get into the medical school so he became an EMT. His time of killing was during 92 and 93, when he abducted and vivisected 37 young people. It was purposefully kept from public eye. At first he tried to do twice as much as Dahmer but then I guess he started to like it. Maybe the taste of humans flesh pickled in vinegar also played a part.


    ¡°Metsla had a simple idea. At first he just killed the patients in the trauma department of the hospital. Later however he purchased an old disused ambulance and started to abduct teens. Calculating the numbers if his victims was fairly easy. Each one had one more cigarette burn on their face than the previous one.


    ¡°Reportedly he was motivated by an idea of a play his old classmate had had. Teet tied up his victims and dragged them here. Do you see those three birch trees with darkened trunks?¡± She pointed at a cluster of birch trees standing before a background of coniferous plants. ¡°That is where Teet¡¯s Kitchen of Hell lies, where he cut the flesh from young girls and later fed it back to them after searing it on a stone pad. Not far from there stood a padlocked refrigerator where his culinary delights were stored. It may still be around.¡±


    ¡°Did they ever get him?¡± A girl asked.


    ¡°Of course they did.¡± Mariann said. ¡°Usually psychopaths cannot sense fear or that their action may incur unfavorable consequences.¡±


    ¡°And what is he doing now?¡± a young man asked.


    ¡°Reportedly he is painting butterflies in a fairytale land in a mental asylum named after Juhan Luiga. Butterflies over the Devil¡¯s Bog.¡±


    ¡°Isn¡¯t the true Devil¡¯s Bog located a few kilometers away from here?¡± a young man with gray eyes asked. Marianne had not bothered to remember his name.


    ¡°The modern understanding of the Devil¡¯s Bog, yes. But the old Devil¡¯s Bog was right here, in this place, before it was filled it with all the construction material. Why else would this area be about 2 to 3 meters above the surrounding swamp forests?¡±


    ¡°And you think it was abandoned because of the location?¡±


    ¡°Why else?¡± Said the girl in black. ¡°All kinds of non-existing generals and officials the young soldiers reportedly conjured up. The dead who returned. Three meter tall four-eyed ghosts and a lot of weird lights in the sky. Never mind the few young soldiers pulled inside out. And all this before Teet was even out of his diapers.¡±


    ¡°Somebody said that there had been a leak of first stage rocket fuel and that¡¯s why...¡± The young man explained.


    ¡°The base here was built in the fifties. By 1961 it was in use, by 1969 it was a fenced off storage are where no soldier dared to come alone and without a light source. Go figure.


    ¡°The leak of the first stage rocket fuel was also a stupid accident the young soldiers had caused. Reportedly they were chasing American infiltrators. Alone and in a closed perimeter. After this happened the nuclear missiles were quietly removed.


    ¡°The Devil¡¯s Bog can be considered a fictional being or the Moving Lake. The old Devil¡¯s Bog was here. The bog itself was here. Fairy lights and ghosts of Russian soldiers. Older locals do not dare to come here even in daylight, for them it is almost like an Exclusion Zone, full of unseen dangers. For them, the Devil¡¯s Bog is still here. Activities Teet engaged in and his little birch cluster being named Kitchen from Hell probably reinforced the understanding.¡±


    ¡°The Soviet armed forced had an idea to build a missile base here. They did, and then things started to happen. The Devil¡¯s Bog however decided to leave this place, both spiritually and physically. The young people come here to party and break things and nothing mystical has happened thus far. At the same time, on the other side of the Kitchen from Hell lies the area young people these days consider the Devil¡¯s Bog while older people call it Hell¡¯s Ballroom. An area bordered by the forest on the horizon which ever since 1963 has grown more and more boggy as years go by. And these days almost looks like the old Devil¡¯s Bog.


    ¡°There is one other story told of, of course. That the place where no people of our generation dare to step into, the new Devil¡¯s Bog, was once, before becoming a bog, before being the Hell¡¯s Ballroom and long before the military bases were built, a fertile farmland. Where the Metsla farm lied.¡±


    ¡°Farm of the Cigarette Cutter?¡± somebody asked.


    ¡°The farm of his grandparents. The old people can tell a tale that on a fall solstice in 1963, soldiers patrolling the perimeter fence of the base suddenly heard a baby¡¯s cry. They followed the cries to a distance far greater than the cried could possibly have reached, but in the end they found an abandoned baby boy sitting in the smoldering ruins of an old farm house.¡±


    ¡°Teet?¡±


    ¡°The old folk keeps thinking so. The fact is that the place is special, more special than the forest in America where the youngsters were hit across the head with a shovel by a forest ranger.¡±


    ¡°You mean the Blair witch movie?¡±


    ¡°Yes, that one.¡± Mariann said. ¡°Here, not only the stories are special. How else could an incurable cold-blooded killer for fun, as soon has he gets far enough from the Kitchen from Hell, turn into a grownup with the mind of a young child, who draws butterflies, the Sun and flowers in Devil¡¯s Bog while trying to escape in panic from anybody who carries the smell of the Devil¡¯s Bog. It is uncanny how he can tell who and when has visited the bog, and is especially sensitive to people who have visited the place within 8 days of visiting him.¡±


    ¡°Does this carry any relevance?¡±


    A retired police detective who had been involved with the case, explained to me that the final victim of Teet¡¯s was actually the penultimate. There was a girl who managed to escape while being forced to eat herself and disappeared into the night time forest. After waiting for a few days, Teet took his next victim, but the girl had made it back to the civilization. Six days later he found the girl in the hospital. He abducted her and took her to his Kitchen and had killed her just before the police along with the Defense League arrived. All they could was to look at the girls when final drops of blood left her.¡±


    ¡°And the Crazy Woods?¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s further away. Behind Luiga. Honestly, if you look at the map, its is like a progressive line of places one would want to go less and less as one travels further North-West.¡±


    She crouched down on the patch of gravel and stated to draw on the ground with her finger.


    ¡°If we were to fly from South in the North-North-Westerly direction, first there is the Back Forest. Reportedly nobody wants to go there because the forest is filled with fighting vehicles contaminated with extremely high levels of radiation. People speak of a line of human skeletons which demarcates an area of instantly deadly levels of radiation.¡±


    ¡°Moving onward, there is is the base for land forces, and an old R12 missile base. The surrounding area is mined, which is the reason the area is called the Forbidden Forest. They say that the forest is full of bomb craters and there¡¯s even a forgotten church. Right beside the motorized battalion base there is the new R12 base with 4 silos. Underneath all that, there should be the old Devil¡¯s Bog. Further up North West there are the new Devil¡¯s Bog and then the Death Fields with the poisoned sweet-smelling crops. Up that, another forest, and then the von Schwann lands, the manor house and the old park. Beyond those lie the Crazy Woods. They say that some of the patients who escaped from Luiga still live there. In fact, they have made contributions to the population in the hospital.¡±


    ¡°People got so frightened that they develop crippling post-traumatic stress disorder?¡±


    ¡°If only it were so¡­ do you know what happens if lobotomy is used as a method of attack?¡± The girl in black grinned. ¡°Beyond Luiga and the Crazy Woods, the Agroprom lies. From then on, things get progressively worse.¡±


    -¡±And in the east?¡±


    ¡°I have no idea.¡± Mariann smiled, looking over the small circle of people who had come along with her. ¡°My knowledge is not limitless. North-East, East and South East lie the Unknown Lands. No road goes there, there is only the railroad cutting across it, and a desecrated cemetery on the corner of it. Nobody wants to go there. The most people are willing to do, is to look at it with binoculars.¡±


    *


    ¡±How do you even know all this?¡±


    The girl in black took a seat on the rear deck of the black car, with her feet on the plastic bumper.


    ¡°That is a very good question. I heard most of it from my grandfather who lived nearby¡­ until some local guy came to visit him with a shotgun. But those stories may not be the truth. It may just be something encoded in my mind. A defensive mechanism to not awaken from a dream of not existing. The truth may be that we ourselves are meta-beings, a gathering of imaginary particles. And of course the fact that Teet Metsla is my father.¡±

 XI - Agent Toomass Version

    ¡°...no, I am not Igor Volke, but his assit¡­ his assistant, -tant. But his assistant will forward the call to me if mr. Volke has no time or interest...¡±


    A slender man in white underwear was standing before a tall mirror in a spartan hotel room and moving his mouth, observing the movement of his lips and muscles, his facial expression. He smiled to his reflection, then rubbed his itchy beard, unshaven for a week. Then his forehead. He winked at his reflection. Big green eyes, long nose.


    ¡°Hello¡­, no it passed very well. Arriving here was an adventure of its own. Very had to find the place. No, I am not Igor Volke, and no, I am not here as his representative. Me and Igor, we have an understanding. Me and his assistant have an understanding that if Igor has no time or interest, then I come¡­ No, I have never not gone. I have heard the most inebriated drunkards and fools and even gotten drunk with them.¡±


    The man smiled to his reflection once more and then stepped away from the mirror. ¡°I just do not give up.¡± He said to himself.


    He stepped away from the mirror and looked at the bed with the shirt and suit set ready. He walk across the wooden floor covered with animal furs and stood before a writing desk half under the lone window of the room. The leather satchel was already sitting on it, along with a stainless steel American-made pistol of WW1 era design, a couple of magazines and a small box with equipment to clean, adjust and repair the weapon. Beside those were a note pad, a mechanical pencil and a Stetson hat. There was but one thing he had left behind in his office hundreds of miles away, a razor. And the darkness outside the window also claimed that it was too late try and find a villager who still had blood instead of vodka in his veins and a steady hand alongside it.


    He had just about finished dressing, hidden the gun and the magazines under his suit jacket and ready to go and explore the town when he heard a knock on the door. Behind the door there was a Village Hag of indeterminate age, whose looks he would likely forget as soon as she departed.


    ¡°I mean, investigator-sir, mister Volke, would you come at one. There is something going on outside which should not be of any surprise to a scientific man of your caliber!¡±


    ¡°I am sorry ma''am, but I am not...¡±


    ¡°Come now!¡± the old woman started to putter along the hallway while talking to herself, she then stopped at the corner. ¡°Are you coming already?¡±


    The man sighed, grabbed is notepad and Stetson, then his coat and having locked the door to his room, followed the old lady to the foyer of the hotel. His gaze focused on the taxidermied hunting animals used for decorations. He then shook himself loose from it and followed the old lady out. To the left, following a cracked paved sidewalk, away from the three story hotel built out of massive logs, walking by one of the only two notable stone buildings in this town. According to the sign on the wall along with a large photo of times passed, this one was supposedly the town hall. At least that¡¯s what he managed to discern. It was dark. There were poles for street lighting, but there were no lights. The only source of light were the lit windows along the buildings on the street, giving off a warm glow of incandescent electric light.


    The woman dragged her until the nearest intersection, where he could see an old phone booth. This was also the only phone booth he had seen in the town thus far. The kind one could see everywhere in big Russian cities during the Soviet era. However this booth did not seem to be connected to anything. There were old posts for phone lines, but there was no wire going to the booth. The only thing notable was a ball of wire perched on top of the booth. This could have only been the creation of chance, as he could discern no practical use for it.


    ¡°Come-come now!¡± The Village Hag had reach far ahead of him. ¡°What are you looking at the Institute for!? We must hasten!¡±


    The man started to walk again, seeing now how almost all the people of the village were standing in two rows surrounding something, as if looking at the ground. Children were running back and forth along the line, as if looking for something. They were running despite their parents forbidding them and the old folks grumbling and trying to stop them, but their movements being too slow and stiff to achieve anything. There was more light here though, probably because the villages were passing around lit torches.


    ¡°What are you looking at?¡± the man asked the people, himself now as well eyeing the broken pavement.


    He noticed it then. Water flowing diagonally across the street as a shallow river maybe 2 and a half meters wide. Water flowing as if it had some sort of intelligence, avoiding the potholes, climbing low walls and sneaking in between fence slats.


    ¡°Ah, comrade Volke, very good of you to join us!¡±


    Toomas was joined by an older man of above average height, wide gray beard and a massive beer belly. A dirty shirt barely managed to reach around it with but few buttons which could be fastened. He reached out his hand.


    ¡°We called you out for a wholly different matter, but this one here...¡± he extended his arms, ¡°...is also pretty interesting, is it not?¡±


    ¡°Yes, hello.¡±


    He shook the bearded man¡¯s hand. And then noticed that he still may have had this night¡¯s pea soup in his beard, as well as this night¡¯s alcohol on his breath. As well as his nose and face red from the drink.


    ¡°I mean, I must say, I am not Igor Volke.¡±


    ¡°Oh?¡± the big man asked, getting annoyed, the villagers as well started talking among themselves. ¡°But who the hell are you then? We sent for Igor Volke!¡±


    ¡°I am the one who comes if Volke has no time or cannot understand what¡¯s going on.¡±


    ¡°Oh!¡± despite the large man¡¯s face changing in understanding, he also still looked in this torch light as if he was still processing things. ¡°So you are like Volke¡¯s boss, an expert Volke consults when something truly strange is going on?¡±


    ¡°I can say that I have seen my share of weird in this world.¡± The young man smiled.


    ¡°Very good!¡± The man said with a glad note. ¡°Well good, then there¡¯s no problem! I was afraid that Volke would think our concerns a joke and would send us some lowly shitbag. But how should we call you then?¡±


    ¡°Toomas would be nice...¡± the young man said.


    ¡°Mr. Toomas?¡± the man asked. ¡°Very good! What do you think of this here?¡± He pointed at the ground, spreading his arms as far apart as he could. ¡°Have you ever seen something like this in your work?¡±


    ¡°Not like this.¡± Toomas said, taking off his Stetson.


    ¡°Yeah.¡± the big man said, dragging the syllables. ¡°It started a few hours ago. It flows relatively straight, between buildings and plots of land. Even under the town water tower, avoiding its metal support structure. Bypassing potholes. Up the low walls and along the corners of higher walls. The most important aspect is that it flows uphill.¡±


    ¡°Uphill?¡± Toomas asked.


    ¡°Yes. It is flowing along an East-West axis, towards East. The towns slopes in the Westernly direction.¡± The big man scratched his bald head. ¡°What do you think, huh? Where do you think it might flow?¡±


    ¡°I think we should look at the map to figure that out.¡± Toomas said. ¡°Much better question is where it is flowing from.¡±


    ¡°From where?¡± the fat man asked thoughtfully. ¡°But that¡¯s a wonderful question! Come with me!¡±


    He addressed somebody from the crowd.


    ¡°Hey, Maali, go and bring those... town and district maps! Bring them behind the town house to the Chaika. And please switch on the street lights above that location!¡±


    ¡°Why do you have it turned off anyway?¡± Toomas asked.


    ¡°Our town has been taken over by some Officials from the North!¡± He said with a rumbling displeased voice. ¡°Did they not tell you? They have surrounded the area and set up their mobile base and barracks on the experimental fields of Agroprom. They are also engaging in some scientific experiments with the radio tower and this eats up all the electricity. They come and regularly measure the temperature in the cooling pool while complaining that people use too much power. And nobody tells me anything!¡±


    ¡°But diesel generators?¡± Toomas questioned.


    ¡°¡°Energy is energy!¡± is what they say, but damned if anybody knows what they mean by it. In any case there is no hope that they would allow any kind of diesel generators here. Even when an incandescent bulb breaks, they want the remains returned. I have no idea who the hell allowed them here and for how much longer are they planning to stay.¡±


    They walked back along the street, to an inner courtyard next to a building ravaged by fires and storms.


    ¡°You¡¯re looking at the old Alexeyev place, huh?¡± the big man asked. Toomas was starting to think he may have been the mayor of the town.


    ¡°That building had a bomb dropped on it in the Great Patriotic War and later it collapsed altogether. Stone house and nobody has had neither time, tools nor materials to get it rebuilt. People used to live here quite recently, only 15 years ago. And then one night under some light snow, the roof fell in.¡±


    In the courtyard, there stood a dusty GAZ-13 Chaika factory limo of indeterminate color. Above it, the lone streetlight was on, on the hood of the car, the maps had been rolled and folded open. The Village Hag who had been sent to bring him, was already standing there.


    ¡°That river flows along this trail here.¡±


    The fat man took the belt off his pants and laid it on the map of the town.


    ¡°See? Directly in the East-West axis. Avoiding the buildings. A total mystery.¡±


    ¡°There¡¯s a circular road around the town?¡± Toomas asked. ¡°And this here is the Western tower of the Institute?¡±


    ¡°Yes, but what¡¯s that got to do with anything?¡± The mayor asked in a loud voice.


    ¡°Just that it is interesting that the tower of some random building is at the center of circular road which surrounds the town, that¡¯s it.¡±


    Toomas looked at the map and the belt on it. ¡°How do you know the water is coming from outside of town?¡±


    ¡°The village kids, they ran up and down the moving water until the edge of the circle road in either direction.¡± The large man said.


    ¡°And outside the circle road? What lies beyond the circle road? On either side? Do you have a map about the surrounding areas as well?¡±


    ¡°Of course we do.¡±


    The large man rolled up the map and lifted it onto the roof of the car, revealing the maps below it.


    ¡°The military maps have all been destroyed and the Northern boys have collected everything else, so the only ones that remain are what I have drawn myself.¡± The large man explained with some pride in his voice.


    ¡°To the east lie the Unknown Lands. We call it that because there¡¯s several forgotten cemeteries out there. It looks like a rich pasture but it is full of open graves, destroyed gravestones and rusty iron crosses. How far it extends, we do not know, but several kids have died due to being impaled on iron crosses. The few that did not die of injuries, died of blood poisoning. And the only doctor our town has is a blind dead drunk psychiatrist in his haunted castle. To the North from here are the Irradiated Woods, nobody goes there, as there is still something radioactive hidden in there. To the West are the Deathly Fields where everything that grows is so poisonous, it¡¯s deadly. Beyond that lies the Forbidden Forest. It is Forbidden because deeper in the woods it becomes a minefield and then an old abandoned nuclear missile base.¡±


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    ¡°And this?¡± Toomas pointed to the marked area near the Forbidden Forest. ¡°What¡¯s this?¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s¡­ nothing really¡­ a children¡¯s tale I once marked on the map in error.¡±


    ¡°I would like to hear that tale.¡± Toomas said. ¡°No matter how unbelievable or irrelevant, it may well be important.¡±


    ¡°So you really are that¡­ espert in your field after all. And bigger than Volke.¡±


    The nameless mayor kept looking at Toomas, fidgeting with the corner of the map, it seemed that when nervous he had trouble properly pronouncing the x- sound.


    ¡°Very well then. The young people always go where they are told not to go to. Our town is nothing special in this regard. That¡¯s also how the Forbidden Forest has gotten its name. At first it was forbidden because once long ago there was a leak of rocket fuel in the nearby base when they were in the process of pumping the fuels from above ground tanks into underground ones. All contaminated earth was simply thrown under the forest. Later it was discovered that the military had mined the surrounding perimeter.¡±


    ¡°Come summertime, the young adults had a habit of escaping their parents¡¯ bans, commands and everything else by going into the forest. They had a bonfire spot near the border of the base, where they would drink and party, at least until the sentries came to scare people off with assault rifle fire. These youngsters, some of them adults by now, told me back then that this narrow patch of Forbidden Forest between the fields and the base contains some of the most strange locations. Later I have heard their kids and the kids now tell similar fairy tales.¡±


    ¡°Strangest locations?¡± Toomas asked.


    ¡°Well, they claim there are...¡± The mayor raised his hand, as if to count out on his fingers. ¡°...at least one abandoned church, a half-sunken shed, bomb craters, a collapsed cave mouth, and the most famous of them, which you already noted, the Forest Lake.¡±


    ¡°Forest Lake, so a body of water?¡±


    ¡°Well, more like a pond, rather than a body of water. According to the stories maybe 20 meters wide, not much more. Forest Lake is a name the children gave it, so it would sound mysterious¡­ Wait! You¡¯re not thinking¡­!¡±


    ¡°Put the belt on it.¡± Toomas said.


    ¡°You son of a bitch! Exactly on the line! But how would the water be coming from the Forest Lake?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know. But we should look into that before the night is over.¡± Toomas replied.


    ¡°You don¡¯t mean...¡± the mayor was baffled for a moment. ¡°Go into the Forbidden Forest¡­? You want to go into the Forbidden Forest on a moonlit night? Are you insane? Nobody who values their life dares to go into the forest, even during the day, let alone at night!¡±


    ¡°We have to go there.¡± Toomas insisted. ¡°If we want to make sense of things. By morning it is already too late.¡±


    ¡°Really? Into the Foridden Forest? At night?¡± The mayor repeated, looking at the map. ¡°Then we need a couple of brave men to go with us. And we have to ask Sille if she can show us on the map or draw where the minefields are. When she was younger she went to the forest with the boys. Some of the young people still go, we might ask them as well. Sille however went too far one time and stepped on a mine. She lost both of her legs. It¡¯s a miracle she is still alive.¡±


    ¡°Oh, that dangerous?¡± Toomas asked.


    ¡°The word ¡®dangerous¡¯ cannot adequately describe what goes on in there.¡± The mayor said. ¡°But I believe we can avoid going that far. Especially if somebody more intelligent comes along.¡±


    ¡°Why can¡¯t we just follow the water?¡± Toomas asked. ¡°Is there something impassable in between?¡±


    ¡°The Death Field is. Esperts from the North in official clothing visit it periodically to salt it. When growing potatoes did not work out, then poisonous weeds started to grow there, even their smell, with long enough exposure¡­ very bad. Walking from the side of the road to the middle of the field is enough to make a health man cough blood. Walking those few kilometers to the forest through the tall grass with torches in the middle of the night would be death, plain and simple. And then we would have to walk a similar distance in the forest, to get there. And nobody has any idea what lies in between. Forest creatures, patients escaped from Luiga, something ever worse? I don¡¯t even want to know. It would be much easier to start up the Willy¡¯s and travel here, the dacha district near the base. There¡¯s a well-traveled footpath, taking one straight to all the notable places in the forest. Starting with the Forest Lake.¡±


    The man rolled up his maps and set them aside on the top of the car, where the old lady then grabbed them and then departed towards the stone building.


    ¡°You go and find those couple of braver men.¡± Toomas said. ¡°I think it is better if I walk the path the water has taken myself, with my own boots and eyes. From here up until the circle road in the west. If it is suitable for you, let us meet on the road.¡±


    ¡°So you are not coming to the bar?¡± the mayor asked. ¡°I recommend you to come a long and take a beer or a few to sure up your bravery. It will be of use, I assure you. Your presence might also convince more the village men to come along.¡±


    ¡°How many do we need?¡± Toomas asked. ¡°Is there really something to be afraid of?¡±


    ¡°We need more than we have. If you really knew, you would not ask. But as you wish, I will meet you where the road and the flowing water meet.¡±


    *


    There was a thick fog on the circle road. Fog so thick that he could not even see the sides of the road when walking in the center of it. Same with seeing along the road, he could see no more than 5, maybe ten meters ahead. The only place where the flows of fog slightly retreated was around this strange river. No, he could only hope that this was the sole path the water had taken, that he had not made any mistakes. And, of course that the mayor and his party did not accidentally run him over.


    According to the maps the mayor had laid out, the water was flowing exactly perpendicular to the town, at it¡¯s widest point. Maybe just slightly to the side, so that the path would be straightest and with the least amount of corners. Or was it the Institute, this water (which was completely unlike water) tried to avoid? He had used a stick of chalk to draw a map of the town onto the intersection. It was crude, but it was enough to make some conclusions.


    Soon Toomas heard a characteristic rumbling of an engine he had not heard for many years. A moment later, three pairs of light emerged from the fog, attached to the nose of a yellow UAZ once used by the Soviet militsiya. There were no police beacons on the roof any more but there were still faded blue lines on the sides of the vehicle.


    ¡°Whoa! Finally found you!¡± the mayor exclaimed, having rolled down his window. ¡°This nightly fog is¡­ I don¡¯t have words strong enough to curse it. I think you can fit beside me.¡±


    Toomas walked around the vehicle and got into the front passenger seat.


    ¡°I managed to find a few brave men.¡± The mayor waved towards the rear seat as best he could in the small cabin of the vehicle. ¡°Village drunkard and a village fighter.¡±


    ¡°So they¡¯re both drunkards and fighters?¡± Toomas asked. ¡°Hi, guys.¡±


    ¡°Oh! As if you have already met!¡± the mayor exclaimed.


    ¡°I hope you can use a gun. It may not be of much use, but makes one feel safer.¡±


    ¡°I can, and I already have one.¡± Toomas said, revealing the butt of the gun from under his suit jacket.


    ¡°Very good! How was your walk? Did you find anything?¡±


    ¡°One might say so. On this road, that trail of water is the only place where the fog lets up. Have no idea, why. It almost looks like the flow of water is dragging along the flow of the fog and making it disappear somewhere at the water tower. During my entire my walk there, the fog was all around me, with no more visibility than maybe 5 meters. Except for the trail of water. Also, according to the map, the water is not traveling exactly straight. For some strange reason, it is avoiding the Institute, it bends around it and travels between it and the old hospital building. Even more, it tries to¡­ the Substation, is it? On the other side of the town?¡±


    The mayor nodded.


    ¡°Yes, it is avoiding the Substation and the cooling pond. Especially the building by the tower. This makes me think that maybe that liquid is somehow magnetic. Because there is no way it is water.¡±


    ¡°What is it then if not water?¡± One of the guys from the back seat asked.


    ¡°On one hand, there is something oily about it. On the other, it is too thick to be regular water. It is way thicker than bog water, which it should be.¡±


    ¡°Maybe it is about the field it flows through?¡± The other guy said. ¡°Maybe that ground makes it thick. Who knows, what these rocket fuels are made of and what comes of them when they degrade in the nature for a few decades.¡±


    ¡°It is actually pretty clear what they are made of and what should happen when the get into nature.¡± Toomas replied. ¡°But what¡¯s happening here, is very different.¡±


    ¡°Different how?¡± The same guy asked. It seemed he was the fighter, because the other guy had fallen asleep.


    ¡°And we¡¯re here!¡± The mayor said.


    He parked the car on the side of the road. The lights illuminated a wide paved road into the distance. As the engine was turned off, so were the lights.


    The people existed the car. Toomas remained at the nose of the car, trying his best to attempt to discern things in the dark, ahead of his eyes getting used to the darkness. It took him about the same time to get used to the darkness and easily see the road, the forest and the realm of shadows in the distance, as it did for the mayor and the others to find the flashlights and torches.


    ¡°Does this road here reach the missile base?¡± Toomas asked.


    ¡°It reaches several bases.¡± The mayor replied, extending a powerful flashlight towards him.


    ¡°I will take the torch myself. Living fire scares forest creatures better than the electric flashlight, even one as powerful as this is. But yes, to several bases. In addition to the missile base, there is also one subterranean base, but nobody knows what it¡¯s used for. The Russian military left, at least the general opinion is that they did, but something is still going on in there. People who have gone to explore it have failed to return. For a time it was a pretty good source of used cars and parts. Up until the day those who usually brought out the cars did not return. Now, nobody wants to go there. This path to the forest is the final limit.¡±


    ¡°The Moon is out.¡± One of the men said, looking over his shoulder towards the base.


    As he said it, the clouds uncovered the Moon, which seemed to hang directly above the forest and the Underground Base.


    ¡°This is not good.¡± He continued. ¡°We should not have come today.¡±


    He then blew into the lit torch, hoping to ignite the alcohol in his breath but it did not work.


    ¡°What¡¯s so bad about a moonlit night?¡± Toomas asked. ¡°In most mythologies it is a good thing.¡±


    ¡°Not here. All bad things come to pass when the Moon is out. This is especially true about the Blue Moon.¡±


    ¡°It is very good that now is not Blue Moon.¡± The drunkard said. ¡°I would be dead already.¡±


    ¡°Stop complaining!¡± the fighter replied. ¡°In my youth I was in this forest in all kinds of weather. And I am still alive.¡±


    ¡°And that¡¯s why I brought them along.¡± The mayor explained. ¡°The only ones of everybody present who dared to admit in front of their old fathers, that they have had experience with visiting the Forbidden Forest. If you are ready, let¡¯s go.¡±


    The group started along the narrow hard-packed path into the forest. As soon as they reached the line of trees, the path became wide enough for two cars to drive on it side by side. There were no tree trunks or even young plants on the path, which gave an impression that this really was an old vehicle path and somewhere underneath this grass and dirt there was a hard paved road which no tree could push their roots into.


    ¡°Is it possible that a roadway once went to the Forest Lake?¡± Toomas asked.


    ¡°It is possible. However not to the Forest Lake but to the churches and the chapels. And if their existence should prove true then it is possible that there are old farmhouses, a cemetery and a lot more. What¡¯s more suspect is that all of this is forgotten and overgrown with a forest. Makes me think that they have been here abandoned for at least a century.¡±


    ¡°Interesting...¡± Toomas said to himself. ¡°When¡¯s the last time you saw snow here?¡±


    ¡°Snow? Honestly, I cannot even remember.¡± The mayor said. ¡°I think during my lifetime there has never been snow here. The most we have seen is frozen over grass in the morning which tends to melt quite quickly.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s unusual.¡±


    ¡°Not here. But you can ask the old folks in the town, later.¡±


    The narrow beam of the powerful flashlight lit up the forest floor as brightly as the midday Sun. Behind that, the darkness was illuminated by the orange glow of the torches. They did not reach far, but the light they provided allowed one to discern some of the features in the dark. A few dozen steps forward and the flashlight started to blink off.


    ¡°This is not possible! I just charged it up! It should last for another three hours!¡± the mayor said in a bewildered tone.


    ¡°Wait.¡± Toomas took a few steps back, and the flashlight lit up again. ¡°I think there¡¯s some mysterious field here.¡±


    He looked up to see the Moon above the treetops.


    ¡°Just switch it off. We can continue in torch light.¡± The mayor sighed. ¡°As I mentioned, unusual is fairly usual around here.¡±


    Toomas shut off the flashlight and then looked about him. He was alone in the forest. He could no longer see neither torches nor people around him. As if both had been shadows created by the bright beam of the flashlight. An unusual intersection of light beams. He rushed to switch the flashlight back on and as the beam ignited so did he sense the people and the torches around him.


    ¡°OK, what the fuck just happened!?¡± The mayor asked. ¡°You shut off the light and disappeared!¡±


    ¡°Let¡¯s go back!¡± the town drunk demanded. ¡°Right now!¡±


    ¡°I will not let myself be dissuaded by some electromagnetic anomaly.¡± Toomas said. ¡°We will proceed. Even if I should lose sight of you in some natural or unnatural fashion, let us meet up by the Forest Lake.¡±


    ¡°Suits me.¡± The fighter said.


    ¡°As you wish.¡± The mayor also agreed.


    The group started to proceed and as soon as Toomas took another step, the flashlight in his hand turned off, leaving him alone in the forest. He stopped. There was not a soul around him, as if his trek from the car had happened only in his mind. Not a single leaf moved, not a single track on the ground did his hand find. Like there had never been people with him. He raised his gaze around the pine trunks surrounding him and reaching towards the sky. The moon was still hanging above them. He sighed and continued onward. The trail in the damp forest continued towards the bushes ahead. The sounds of nature ahead of him seemed to indicate that this body of water in the forest was right before him.


    He did not continue along the path which circled around the pond. It was easier and more direct to go through the bushes and shrubbery in front of him. He stepped off the track and towards the sounds of water ahead. But there were other noises, as if somebody or something else was in the bushes with him. Perhaps a large forest creature of some sort. He crouched down and sneaked closer under the bushes. It was no animal. It was people. The strangest people he had ever laid his eyes on.


    Naked men and women who shined in moonlight as if their bodies were covered in quicksilver were working on the side of the lake. Curves on bodies of young women and the muscles on the men, all movement and dynamics were exemplified by the moonlight. The people were collecting water made of similar silvery light of the Moon and carried it to the side, towards a ditch of some kind, where they poured the water out. The water level inside the pond had decreased by quite a margin already. This decrease was also revealing something in the middle of the lake, something that was not illuminated by the Moon and was thus very hard to see.


    He spent several minutes watching the whole process, until a nighttime cloud started to float in front of the Moon again. But then, he noticed that it was not moonlight that made their bodies silvery and illuminated, it was something else, something inherent to them. The cloud covered the Moon in its entirety and the flashlight on the ground ignited, cutting a bright beam into the darkness, straight through the grass and the bushes as if they weren¡¯t there at all. The people in the lake were startled by this light and faded into silvery smoke, which was indistinguishable from the darkness but few seconds later.


    A moment later he heard the yells of the mayor and the others around the lake. They were calling out to him, and now that the flashlight was working again, they rushed towards him along with their torches.


    ¡°What happened?¡± the mayor asked, being the first to reach him. ¡°A cloud covered the moon and the light ignited. I think there¡¯s a connection between the two.¡±


    ¡°You did not see it?¡± Toomas asked. ¡°What was transpiring on the lake?¡±


    ¡°I did not see anything. I did not even make it to the lake, I was looking for you around it. Exactly what did you see?¡±


    ¡°¡°Maidens bathing in the moonlight.¡±¡± Toomas said. ¡°A folk story by Kreutzwald. This would be the most precise explanation to what I saw. I saw¡­,¡± he looked at the mayor for a few moments. ¡°...people, made of moonlight, carrying water out of the lake. That¡¯s why this flow of water is leaving the lake, human spirits made of air and moonlight are removing it.¡±


    ¡°Removing it to where?¡±


    ¡°The moonlight and the electric light are somehow connected to the lake, that I understand. Where are the others?¡±


    ¡°Here!¡± a voice sounded out. Signified by a glow of the torch not far.


    ¡°And the other? Where¡¯s the drunkard?¡± the mayor asked.


    At that very moment on the other side of the lake an incredibly bright candle lit up between the trees, illuminating everything around it like a ball lightning or a small sun. Only the trees cut shadows into the brightness. A few moments passed while they stood entranced by the light. And then hellish screams started to emanate, sounds of somebody being burned alive. They could also see a pair of hands swinging wildly in and out of that firestorm of a candle.


    They started immediately towards the light, bus despite being already nearby, they were too late. By the time they arrived, the flames were gone and there was only a carbonized smoking mass on the ground emitting the smell of burnt flesh. The mass was vaguely of human shape. Not far on the ground was his torch, still lit.


    Tomorrow.¡± The mayor said with a heavy startle in his voice. ¡°We¡¯re gonna need... everybody.¡±

 XII - Third Letter for the Fire

    Hello, my dear son. A long time has passed since the last time I tried to write a letter to You. And as I have known my whole life, I am not much for writing letters. Truth be told, I have no idea if any of my letters ever reach You, I have no idea if the Northern boys who have gathered their trucks and built their barracks at the edge of the town forward these letters or not. I don¡¯t even know whether You read them at all or throw them straight into fire. That¡¯s why it might be better to send you this letter using the way of my father. By using fire, like the secret elders of the Institute did before the Great War, by smoking the letter in the fire with secret herbs and unutterable words.


    It has been twenty years since You last visited me. Twenty years since Your mother went to alone in the Devil¡¯s Fen to gather berries and never returned. You never forgave me for letting her go, for not going with her. For not thinking anything of the stories the villagers told of drunk soldiers. I would like to hope that you have forgiven me and only important day-to-day business is stopping You from visiting me.


    *


    My reason for writing You a letter is that last night something strange happened to me. I saw Your mother. Contrary to what You might believe reading this letter, I was not drunk nor have I taken leave of my faculties in my old age. Just like You have not managed to forgive me for losing your mother, I have not managed to forgive myself either. And so for years now when the sky gets pink, I head to the bog to walk, and pick berries when possible. In the same place me and your mother had ourselves gone for berries and mushrooms since we were children. When the Devil¡¯s Fen lied in its old place far away and the place we were going to was known as Heavenmire.


    In that same place, between those familiar mounds and raised sods, on the edge of the fen. Where You never wanted to go to and where You refused to return after your first and last visit¡­ We never understood why. I picked berries much like in times passed, when your mother joked that going to pick berries with me is a waste of time, because most of the berries ended going into my mouth rather than into the basket. It is weird, how I am still doing it now, just to hear¡­ or imagine¡­ her laughter ringing out¡­


    By the time the sun and the evening glow had fallen below the horizon, my little cone made of tree bark was also full. And it was time for me to head back home. The air cooled and heavy mists of the day¡¯s heat started to rise from the bog. But then, in that mist and fog I saw something else. It seemed as if the mist was raising from between low walls of stone. Also, the area no longer looked like a bottomless pond but rather a place I could actually walk in without my feet getting wet.


    I know for sure that it had no connection to the Boys from the North and the mysterious games they played. At that time, they were nowhere nearby. In damp weather and during pouring rain, they were usually at the Substation, trying to capture lightning strikes at the top of the radio mast and every time they managed to do it, the whole town lost electricity for half an hour.


    But the sky was clear. I could even see stars. As if the stars were illuminating the fog with their faint glow in a pitch black of night. Having looked at the fog a few minutes, it started to seem to me that it was flowing unevenly. In a certain section it was very thick and on the other hand, at the edge of the bog, where I stood, I could see a trail leading to the remains of the stone walls hidden in the lower ebbs of the mists. It seemed so strange, that a plan formed in my mind to go and check it out, whether my eyes were playing tricks on me or was there really a manor house sunken into the bogs of Heavenmire as the legends told.


    I proceeded with some caution, finding solid yet soft ground instead of waterlogged turf. I could even see a stone footpath torn up, with the corners of large tiles jutting out from the ground in odd angles. A few dozen steps further and the low blackened walls of stone and moss still looked like a mirage and made of mist rather than any material more solid. But as I came closer and closer, I became certain that it was stone. Cool and damp to my touch. The corners worn round by moving water. The mist had let up from my immediate surrounding, but elsewhere it was still impenetrable. Thus I could not see if only this little island was unique or but a part of a larger structure still hidden. So maybe remains of a chapel, rather than a manor. The highest part of the wall which looked like a section of a small and simple arched window, seemed to support that idea.


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    I started towards it, still unable to see the ground in front of me. Feeling stones and rock under my feet which had one been part of a wall. But also thin roots of bog pines and junipers crawling between those fallen pieces and looking for a way for life. For that patch I was looking for, where the mists rising from the mosses were strongest.


    I touched that piece of low wall, which finally convinced me that it was real, not an interplay of shadows and starlight. I turned around and I saw¡­ her. Made of that same mist and starlight but somehow more definite and with more recognizable features. She glided soundless through the fog, forcing it to retreat, but I could not see her touching the ground. She glided towards me and placed her hands on my cheeks as she always used to greet us.


    Gentle and cool, yet a faint touch, but I knew it was her. It was her face, made of mist, looking like she did long ago as a young maiden. Her head and eyes were covered with a hood, which seemed to drape down her shoulder and become one with the rest of the figure.


    ¡°You have become so old...¡± I head her voice in the distance, whispering as if all around me.


    For a moment I was certain I had totally lost my wits because the figure in front of me did not speak, only stood there with a distraught appearance, having now lowered her hands.


    ¡°You have become so old¡­ ...but I?¡±


    ¡°Krista...¡± I finally dared to ask, now sensing how old and tired my voice was compared to hers.


    ¡°Jaak?¡± the voice around me asked. ¡°You should not be here¡­ What are you still doing here? You should have been gone a long time ago...¡±


    ¡°What happened to you, dear?¡± I asked.


    I tried to touch her hand but all I managed to do was to break that misty form of hers into small vortices.


    ¡°I should not have come here¡­ I cannot see you any more. Never. It is not good. I do not want to see you come here ever again...¡±


    Rain started falling all around me. Moments later I saw them hit her form, every drop was like a small explosion, tearing her apart.


    ¡°I have to go. I have to go before...¡±


    Suddenly I heard a deafening lightning strike, more powerful than anything in the skies. This could be only one thing, the bolt had hit the tower.


    This very same flash made the fog figure definite, drawing out the face of Your mother, her face as if she was alive and corporeal. This seemed to frighten her and before I could grab her, she dissipated into mist and steam which in turn became invisible. The only thing left of her, was a piece of fabric from when I grabbed her, a piece that looked like it had been in the bog for years and in final stages of decomposition. And wrapped inside that fabric was her gold necklace with her astrological sign.


    I don¡¯t know what happened next. I only remember waking on a bed of moss next to a bog lake. When the sun was already high in the clear sky, shining brightly over the whole swamp. The cone had tumbled over and the berries were in a neat pile right in front of my face. There was no sign of an island in the middle of a lake, even less of any stone trail or low walls.


    However I did notice something catching the sunlight and reflecting it at the edge of the bog. It was a stone tablet, perhaps even an old gravestone, partly covered in plants and moss. And at the bottom of it, tied on a section of root jutting out from the ground, were the gold chain and the piece of old cloth. Just as I had found in my hand during the night.


    *


    The gold chain and the cloth are still here, by her photo. I don¡¯t know what she was talking of. What did she mean by her words. But I know I won¡¯t be returning to the mire. I don¡¯t want to. I cannot. Your mother is dead, my son. Maybe I am only now understanding it¡­ I do not expect your forgiveness to my thoughtlessness. I only hope that this letter makes it to you, that you will take it into consideration and come to visit me before it is my time to dissipate into the fog.


    Warmest regards


    Your loving father.

 XIV - Silver Halide Doesnt Lie

    Suddenly, silence fell. Tree canopy stopped rustling, the birds stopped making sounds, even black flies and other flying insects disappeared into the dark. As if all of nature had frozen with an ominous expectation at the very moment when the round orange fusion-powered furnace descended behind the horizon. As if sunshine was the only element still giving life to the world. The only sustenance that had any effect to the creatures in this world. Everything else was hollow theater, it¡¯s purpose long since lost. Bread had become stone and milk had turned into water, only the sun was of any solace. For now.


    Now there was only some pink left in the sky. But it was certain that the next few minutes that too would fade and the natural light of the fall nights would be overpowered by candles in windows and the giant spotlights illuminating the cooling pool of the Substation. Just about the only other place beside the Institute where one could still see electric light.


    The girl in black adjusted the strap running over her shoulder and pulled her hair out from under it. She then slowly lifted the camera case at the end of the leather strap. She had come to the Eastern gate of the town to look at the sunset, to even try and take photos of it. There was never enough images of the sunset and of the things happening around that time. There was always something new to notice, both on location when taking photos and afterwards when going over the photos with a magnifying glass.


    Today however was special in this regard. Not every day could one see the waters flowing uphill across the town. Self-appointed creek, coming from the depths of the forest and flowing somewhere a man would never want to lay his foot. This was only a singular item of the many peculiar things, as she was now walking back towards the center of the town. Tonight, people did not spend their time under the radio tower by the Substation coolant pool, as they usually did, as they had done since childhood.


    Today, the people had gathered on the streets, looking at this strange flow of water with a younger unfamiliar man. The girl in black kept her eyes on that young man. He was certainly no local, at the same time he was also not one of the Officials from the North the town seemed to be filled with these days. The only reason she did not raise her camera to snap a picture of him was knowing that the rolls of film needed to be saved for something far more important. However she also promised herself that should she meet the man again tonight, she would surely take a picture.


    She walked across the empty street at the corner of the Institute, looking at the rusting phone booth and the ball of wires on top of it. She raised her camera, still in its case, but then lowered it again. She already had an image of that. Several images of the booth, the fall of wire as well as of the mostly dead part of town behind it.


    She felt wind. Probably from the East, from the Unknowable Lands. The gust was so strong that it messed with her hair, and even moved her skirt and long-sleeved shirt. It was somewhat peculiar to feel the wind at all. Only this single gust on this abandoned street. As if something was trying to speak to her in a language unintelligible to her, wishing to talk of the faraway lands and places more mysterious much nearer to her. Wishing to speak but then resentfully stopping, as it found only deaf ears and closed minds.


    She stopped. There was large hand-drawn sign on the display window of the store with the words ice cream. The village store had not had ice cream since¡­ She could not even remember since when. Perhaps since she was a little girl and it had been one of her first visits to this town. Back then it had been such a happy and colorful place.


    Slowly, she stepped onto the stairs and opened the door to the store filled with warm stale air. She did not look back, only hearing the door close. Under the dusty window, right by the large sign, there was a small table and two chairs, almost invisible in the low light of the night. On one of the chairs there sat a village hag who was staring into space before her and once in a while sipped coffee from a white mug.


    At least she assumed it was coffee, going by the color. All stalls and the shelves behind them were empty, except for one where an old radio stood. Based on the layers dust on it, it had been years since it was last moved or even touched. However the chest freezer in the corned seemed to be in perfect working order as it started up with a metallic growl.


    ¡°...and I remembered what I told that fucking...¡± a tall woman emerged from the back room. She stopped at the stalls, noticing now that she and the village hag were not the only people in the store.


    The girl in black looked over the lady with a strong build in front of her. She was wearing a blue cardigan and tan dirty overalls on top of that. On top of which a was a brown waistcoat. Some of her curled red hair were covered by a blue flat cap.


    ¡°Virve, what are you...¡± an old voice come from behind the girl.


    It seemed that the village hag behind her had awoken from her thoughts and now also noticed the new person in the store.


    ¡°What would you like?¡± Virve asked, scratching her stomach in an unfeminine fashion. ¡°We don¡¯t have any¡­ you came because of the sign didn¡¯t you?¡±


    ¡°The sign says you have ice cream.¡± The girl said.


    She revealed the camera from it¡¯s leather cover and adjusted the aperture and exposure for the twilight.


    ¡°Yes, there is ice cream.¡±


    She noticed the girl¡¯s actions.


    ¡°Are you taking a photo of me?¡±


    ¡°Yes, I am.¡± The girl replied. ¡°It is always interesting to photograph interesting people.¡±


    ¡°Well, snap your picture then.¡± She said in a displeased tone. ¡°Dumpling Eduard spent the past two days drinking and then woke up on top of the trash heap behind the Substation with a splitting headache. And he saw that the Slicked Boys from the North spent the whole day to cart something from the Institute to the Substation.¡±


    ¡°What was it, Virve?¡± The village hag asked, now invested in the story.


    ¡°What was it, what was it,¡± Virve repeated, now finding a pack of cigarettes. ¡°It was liquid nitrogen. The idiot grabbed two canisters when nobody was looking, burnt the skin off his palms but was still as giddy as a child on his first beer when he brought the ice cream in the morning.¡±


    ¡°What kind of ice cream is it anyway?¡± the girl in black asked.


    ¡°Chocolate-cinnamon. Eduard, that old fuck, probably due to the withdrawal, could not tell the difference between an ancient cocoa powder and cinnamon powder older than the Patriotic War and added both into the mix. He also took away all my milk. Started making waffle cones in the middle of the night! The town has only old people left here, most of whom cannot put together a full set of teeth between them. Who¡¯s gonna eat all this?!¡±


    ¡°Well, Eduard is still young anyways.¡± The village hag said, limping to the display stalls with her coffee mug. ¡°Can you fill it up and¡­ add a single scoop of ice cream as well?¡± The hag gave an unreserved toothless smile.


    ¡°Hey girl, you want one as well, don¡¯t you?¡± Virve asked.


    ¡°Yes.¡± She responded.


    ¡°Yeah¡­ Dumpling Eduard is still young.¡± The village hag continued. ¡°he¡¯s only 70 this year. Just a little boy.¡±


    ¡°Seventy years old is just a boy?¡± Virve asked in surprise as she scooped the ice cream into a cone.


    ¡°This costs 10 kroons.¡± She handed the ice cream to the girl.


    The girl in black revealed a crumpled note of unusual size from her pocket and set it on the display stall.


    ¡°What¡¯s that?¡± Virve asked. ¡°This neither a ruble nor a kroon.¡±


    ¡°Oh, I remember this!¡± The village hag in a purple coat said, inching herself closer. ¡°This good money! A ten mark note payable issued by the State Finance Department. I haven¡¯t seen one in 50 years! This is worth way more than just one ice cream!¡±


    ¡°Okay then.¡± Virve said in a hesitant tone and accepted the note. ¡°I can understand people paying with pre-war bank notes and both gold and silver rubles, but a war time official note payable is something I¡¯m seeing the first time.¡±


    The girl in black tasted the brown ball on top of the cone and stepped out onto the street even darker than the interior of the store. The group who had been examining the flowing water until recently were now heading South on a side-street like a school of fish, while a fat bearded man everybody called the Mayor kept talking about some map.


    ¡°Good evening, Mariann.¡± A man said, leaning against a dark green car which seemed inordinately long and wide compared to a Russian willys vehicle in front of it.


    ¡°Good evening, Jaan.¡± The girl gave a smile and headed towards him. ¡°Are you ready?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m ready.¡± The man said, scratching a graying beard on his face. ¡°But I am still not clear what for. Where did you get the ice cream?¡±


    ¡°Virve¡¯s selling it.¡± The girl said.


    ¡°Then she¡¯ll be selling it for a long time.¡± The man said. ¡°I guess with help from Boys from the North they finally managed to restart production of liquid nitrogen and dry ice in the Institute basement.¡±


    ¡°That explains a couple of things.¡± Mariann said, finishing off her ice cream.


    ¡°Where are we going then?¡± The man asked. He walked around the car and opened the driver side door.


    ¡°The circular road surrounding the town.¡± The girl said when sliding onto the soft leather seat. ¡°I have quite a few things to show you.¡± There was a faint smile on the girl¡¯s face.


    The man started the car and after an uncomfortable multi-point turn on a potholed street, they headed towards the Western gate.


    ¡°Right from the Western gate, towards the Northern section of the road.¡± The girl said.


    She took the camera case off her shoulder and set it on the seat next to her.


    ¡°Nice camera, haven¡¯t seen one like that in a long time.¡± the man said.


    ¡°A Russian Zenit-E.¡±


    ¡°I thought all the young people had abandoned old film cameras for the digital stuff?¡±


    ¡°There¡¯s nothing to do with digital cameras around here.¡± The girl said. ¡°Electronics do not work in this place as they should. But this...¡± She contently patted the leather case.


    ¡°I have learned one very important think while taking photos of everything: electronics may be wrong, a human eye may be wrong. But silver halide never lies.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s that supposed to mean?¡± Jaan asked.


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    The girl did not respond to that, only gave a mysterious smile. ¡°Maybe someday.¡±


    She glance out of the window, looking at nature passing by. The flawless black tarmac under the car¡¯ wheels letting them know that they had finally made it to the Northern section of the circular road. A section where no local dared to stay for any extended period of time. People spoke of monstrous animals, Officials from the North appearing out of thin air along with their cars, of deafening silence and even ghosts and the sky people.


    ¡°Stop the car.¡± She said. ¡°This is the place.¡±


    The car stopped on the side of the road, its lights illuminating the ebbs of mist on the road. She opened the door and raised half of her body out of the car. She took a deep breath of cool and fresh night air.


    ¡°Please turn off the engine and kill the lights.¡± She said.


    She grabbed her camera and leaving the car door wide open, headed towards the mists.


    Jaan followed her request and then swiftly followed her, after closing the side door. Despite his best efforts, he still saw her figure disappear between the mists. The last thing he had seen was her relieving the camera of its cover and adjusting the settings.


    At the same time he could hear a low rumbling growing louder and closer, as if a car was approaching at high speed. The noise grew louder and louder until it became deafening, however the source nor the direction of the noise was still not revealed. It felt like the noise was coming from all directions around them at once. From the gray mists, the dark forest, and barely visible disused farmlands. But he was certain of one thing though, it was large displacement 8 cylinder overhead valve engine with a carbed intake and fairly aggressive cam profile.


    ¡°Mariann! Get off the road!¡± He shouted.


    Before he could reach the girl walking between the flows of mist, the noise suddenly had a direction. He turned around and saw two pairs of bright yet somehow hollow beams of light. A moment later, before he could even react, the pair traveled right by him, on either side of him. He turned around to see a semi-transparent vehicle dodge Mariann with the tires squealing and then disappear into the opaque wall of mist. The next moment they could hear a loud crashing sound and the notes of metal being crushed, torn and bent.


    Jaan started running towards the supposed accident site, having forgotten his own car nearby on the side of the road. Soon, the fog in front of him relented and he saw Mariann running in the same direction. A few dozen more seconds later, which felt like eternity, they both stood on the edge of a roadside ditch, trying to spot the wreckage of a vehicle or injured occupants either in the ditch or between the trees.


    ¡°Where did the car disappear to?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°Only that can disappear which existed in the first place.¡± Mariann said.


    She continued walking and then fell to one knee on the side of the tarmac. She slid her free hand on the roadside, the along the grass on the ground.


    ¡°This where it happened.¡±


    ¡°What happened?¡± He looked at her retreating a few steps.


    ¡°This is where they went off the road, the marks dug by the wheels are still present in the side of the ditch. Probably there¡¯s even more signs deeper in there.¡±


    ¡°What¡­ what did we see right now?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°What do you think?¡± The girl in black asked with that same faint smile. ¡°You were supposed to be educated in the matter of mysteries. Look.¡±


    She directed his attention back to the side of the ditch. The ebbs and flows of the mist moving over the ditch seemed to get tangled into something like loose lines of a spiderweb. Soon, these flows of fog molded into an outline of a wreckage of the car which had run off the road a long time a go. Only the tail lights hanging by wires allowed them to discern that it had once been a GAZ-24. Whether there were any bodies or body parts in and around the wreckage or not, they could not tell.


    But the fog also molded into outlines of a GAZ-51 wrecker truck, which pulled the Volga out and dragged it into the fog.


    ¡°A ghostly... wrecker?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°A ghostly wrecker.¡± The girl agreed. ¡°There have been stranger things.¡±


    ¡°But what happened to those young people?¡± Jaan asked. ¡°What were they trying to avoid?¡±


    ¡°Me.¡± The girl said. ¡°You saw for your self what happened. They saw a ghost on the road. And to be fair, you too saw a ghost on the road.¡±


    ¡°A ghost? At the same place you stood?¡± the man asked. ¡°As if they were trying to avoid you.¡±


    ¡°As if...¡± the girl said to herself, she put the camera back into a leather case. ¡°We can go now. This was only one of the things I wanted to show you.¡±


    ¡°You have seen this before?¡±


    ¡°I have.¡± Mariann said. ¡°But I have never managed to find the location in daylight. During the day, everything looks different. As if the whole world was different in the light. As if the light doesn¡¯t really have an illuminating quality, but instead it blinds us and obscures the secrets.¡±


    ¡°You have an interesting way to see the world.¡±


    ¡°Maybe.¡± The girl said, she looked back at Jaan¡¯s two-door sitting on the side of the road. ¡°There has been a long time since I had anybody to share it with.¡±


    They sat back into the car. Jaan started the engine and turned on the lights. A second later, something in the mists seemed to change. A loud engine noise started to emanate, noise that far exceeded the sound produced by the car they were in. He rolled down the window.


    ¡°Is this another ghostly car¡­?¡± he asked, trying to see more with his high-beams.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know.¡± Mariann said. ¡°But today was a special day. Virve had ice cream...¡±


    The noise continued to increase until a four-door sedan emerged from the mists. Blacked out windows, impeccable paint. And body shape that perfectly conveyed the past fascination with aircraft and space technology. In the rear of the vehicle there were two fins with chrome tips which rose almost to the roof line and featured two flame-red tail lights on either side. There was a total of tree such vehicles emerging from the fog, followed by a lone semi-truck loaded with a naval 40 foot container in a dull rust color. This in turn was followed by three other black cars with tall fins.


    ¡°That is definitely not heading towards the Institute.¡± Jaan said in a discerning voice.


    ¡°Did you see what was written on the side of the container?¡± Mariann asked.


    ¡°No I didn¡¯t. What was it?¡±


    ¡°Yadernoprom.¡± The girl said. ¡°Nuclear industry complex. In addition to the old Agroprom, they also have a nuclear materials production complex.¡±


    ¡°Nuclear industry production complex?¡± The man asked in an interested tone. ¡°I never thought it would actually exist.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re aware of the history of the town and the Institute, correct?¡±


    ¡°I know stories.¡± the man said.


    The car started moving again and rolled into the fog.


    ¡°These stories are the history.¡± Mariann said. ¡°The only part of history still available to us. Something they can never rake out of us. The Nameless Town is not a single settlement. Once a long time ago, it was respected across an empire. Back when the town was surrounded by five villages. According to their locations, they were named South village, West village, North-West village, North village and East village.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m aware of that.¡±


    ¡°Are you also aware that the South village has by now become the Cottage district? Nobody really knows what goes on in there, and it seems nobody really cares. That North-West village has become the Crazy Woods? That in the general area of the North village there is now something that is only referred to as Center Station? And instead of the East village, on maps there is only a remark NKRA Pluton?¡±


    ¡°How do you know all this?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°I have sources.¡± The girl said. ¡°Old books and maps nobody really remembers and therefore nobody really believes.¡± She looked out of the window. ¡°You can stop here.¡±


    More ghosts?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°Nope,¡± the girl said with a smile. ¡°something much more earthly.¡±


    ¡°Wait.¡± He said in a hesitant tone, looking how Mariann opened the door. ¡°Are you sure about this? This is the Forest of Death, is it not?¡±


    ¡°Forest of Death, Irradiated Forest, it has many names.¡± The girl said. ¡°There are also many stories told about it. But the name does not change what it is. Or what is has recently turned into. Come.¡± She kept her eyes on the man. ¡°I promise, we won¡¯t be entering the forest, we won¡¯t even go to the nearest tree.¡±


    ¡°Okay.¡± Jaan relented.


    He got out of the car and shut the door.


    ¡°After all, all the stories are just tall tales that drunk village men tell each other in the bar over and over again.¡±


    ¡°There really is not much difference between drunken tales and factual reality.¡± Mariann said. ¡°Come, it¡¯s a little ways from here.¡±


    The girl in black walked across a perfectly flat black tarmac full of crushed granite towards the edge of the road and then effortlessly jumped on the other side of the ditch. She continued onward towards the black decaying branches and stumps, where gray lichen seemed to be the only living thing, covering almost everything.


    Black nighttime forest was frightening in its silence. If one were to stand still, they could only hear their own breathing and the lone rhythm of their heart. Not a single incident sound. No insects, no birds. No animals of any kind, not even stray pets or wildlife. As if the craziest stories ever told of these woods were all true at this very moment. That a forest could look like a forest, but the ground was still full of irradiated waste, and remains of dead animals and birds marked the areas where radiation had once been acutely deadly.


    In addition, the stories that somewhere in the center of the forest where refuse piles reached the canopy, the surrounding trees were all dead and only some unholy force of nature was keeping them upright. How a man could only knock against the trunks there and all the trees would fall like hair from a person with ARS. Of course, there were also stories that if a person would by some miracle not die before reaching the refuse fields then it was certain that he would before getting back.


    ¡°This way, just a little bit.¡± She said, now standing in front of the forest, maybe a few meters from the first trees.


    Wind blowing straight from the forest rustled her loose hair, while blackened trees with leafless crowns were so still that one could swear they were painted into the sky. There was also no sound. Perfect silence was still all around them. However the Moon was out.


    Jaan stopped beside the girl, looking at a long and narrow buffer strip.


    ¡°Did I not say it was worth seeing?¡± Mariann asked.


    ¡°It really is.¡± Jaan agreed.


    It was not a regular buffer strip before them. It looked as if some exceedingly powerful forced has rushed through here, broken every tree at the forest floor level in a ten meter wide path and cleared it all away so that there was not even any uneven stumps visible. Along this wide corridor a warm wind blew. Jaan could now also feel it.


    On the other end of that long path devoid of any trees or other plants, there stood a massive windowless concrete building made of different sections and now illuminated by moonlight. He could see two tall smoke stacks topped with red warning lights. There was also a third one, even taller topped with white warning markers.


    ¡°And that is¡­?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°That¡¯s the Center Station.¡± Mariann said. ¡°A place were no known road goes to. In North-West everything ends with Luiga and the bordering barrier of the Officials from the North. In North-East everything ends with the Train Yard. Between them lies this very same forest.¡±


    ¡°A world I can never learn to know.¡± Jaan sighed.


    ¡°I never said that. But it would seem somebody is doing all they can that you would never know it, never notice it.¡± She smiled for a moment. ¡°What do you think you¡¯ll see if you turn around? What is this buffer strip and the Central Station on the same line with?¡±


    ¡°No!¡± Jaan said in a baffled tone. ¡°It can¡¯t be!¡±


    ¡°Take a look.¡± The girl said.


    He turned around and then out of the starlit night sky across the old airfield and overgrown pastures he could immediately pick out the spire of the western tower of the Balto-German Esoteric Institute.


    ¡°The Central Station has something to do with the Institute?¡± He asked.


    ¡°Everything has something to do with the Institute.¡± The girl said, looking at the sky, at the Moon. ¡°The Nameless Town is nothing more than the Institute.¡±


    ¡°And the Moon is almost hanging above the Institute.¡± Jaan said.


    ¡°The Moon?¡± The girl asked. ¡°How can it bee in the South if its...¡± She turned around and looked at the man.


    Half his body was being bathed in an unbelievably bright yet pale ray of light, resembling moonlight.


    ¡°Look!¡± She pointed at the Center Station.


    The third structure, which had been outlined by pale lights had started to glow. The top of it was especially bright glowing like a gas discharge lamp which at the same time did not blind them and also cast no light anywhere else.


    ¡°And the thing you¡¯re seeing in the South is not the Moon.¡± Mariann said.


    ¡°What is it then?¡±


    The man turned his eyes back towards the Moon and was startled to see that the ¡°Moon¡± was now twice as big, while its surface forms and mares were all easy to see. But then something changed. Suddenly the big Moon started to turn more and more oval. Until an edge appeared with two rows of lights along side it.


    ¡°This is the sky people.¡± Mariann said. ¡°Come quickly! We have to go into the forest!¡± She continued in a whisper.


    ¡°Wait, you promised that we wouldn¡¯t...¡±


    ¡°This is a special case,¡± she continued to whisper, all the while trying to drag him towards the trees. ¡°You do not want to stay on their path and wake in a week or two in the middle of the main street or at Luiga under the watchful care of your long-time friend and his silent assistant.¡±


    At the same time that Jaan finally decided to trust the girl and escaped to the trees with her, a five meter wide circle of light shot out from the disc and moved around on the ground looking for something. Quickly, it found the car.


    ¡°Get down!¡± She whispered. ¡°Stay down. Usually I don¡¯t find myself in a confrontation, usually I go as soon as I see them coming.¡±


    They observed how along with a circle of light, the car was also probed by two beams on blue laser light. These two beams started to trace the paths they had followed when they had emerged from the car and had been looking for the buffer strip.


    ¡°What do they want?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°Have no idea.¡± Mariann replied. ¡°Maybe that their secrets would remain concealed.¡±


    They watched the beam on light and the laser beams making rounds on the buffer strip and then headed towards their hiding place. For a few moments the laser beams stayed no more than half a meter from the first line of trees and then they disappeared. Both the circle and the blue beams. The Airship turned back into a suspiciously oval Moon in the sky and then silently departed, rushing to become a tiny speck of light in the sky.


    ¡°It¡¯s gone.¡± She said as she got up.


    She walked out of the tree cover and having jumped over the ditch, stopped on the empty road. ¡°I think we can return.¡±


    ¡°You stop your research when an airship notices you?¡±


    ¡°Usually,¡± she smiled. ¡°This time also, it is a sign. I think it is better to leave before the Northern Boys find us here.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, I guess the cars have already been dispatched.¡± He sighed.


    The got back into the car and he started heading back along a lone highway.


    ¡°This is only the first part.¡± She said. ¡°There is much I have to show you and tell you. Both about the world as well as about the town. We should continue tomorrow at sunup.¡±


    ¡°Why are you doing this anyway?¡± He asked. ¡°Why do you want to show and tell me all of this?¡±


    ¡°Because you are trustworthy. Why did you agree to come with me tonight? Why are you agreeing to continue tomorrow morning? There must certainly be other reasons that just to get under my skirt.¡±


    ¡°Are you sure?¡± He asked with a slight smile.


    ¡°Silver halide does not lie.¡±


    ¡°Where can I take you?¡± He asked.


    ¡°You can drop me off in the town. I can find my own way there.¡±


    ¡°Very well then.¡± He said, already turning onto the street which took them right by the only hotel in town, the only bar and the town hall.


    ¡°Would you care for an evening drink?¡± Mariann asked.


    ¡°Gotta do some folklore research.¡± Jaan replied.


    ¡°I sincerely hope you are willing to share your findings tomorrow.¡± She replied.


    He stopped the car on the left side of the street and opened his door. Mariann also opened hers and exited. She had barely managed to shut the long door when a familiar Russian willys rushed dangerously close past her, and parked diagonally in front of them. Out the driver side door emerged the man the called the Mayor in a severely agitated state, his hands and voice were shaking. He did not even pay attention to them, instead bee-lining straight towards the bar.


    From the other door emerged a young man in a duster and a dark cowboy hat. He was far more steadier that the Mayor who had disappeared into the basement bar. This same man had earlier observed the water flowing along with the rest of the townsfolk.


    She grabbed her camera and let the leather case fall from the lens. It was time to fulfill the promise.

 XV - Do You Believe in Winter?

    The girl in black stepped down the rough wooden stairs. The thick planks had long since turned dark gray from soaking in the mud for all this time. She stepped onto the pavement and listened the store door close behind her.


    Mariann took a deep breath. Cool morning air. Very cool. Only a few hours ago, the earth had been frozen and the grass white frosted. But then the pale sun had risen in the East from behind the Unknowable Lands and turned the gray sky barely blue once again. And in six hours, in midday, one could expect a nice weather of late summer, which had become natural to this place.


    She headed down the street towards West. During early morning hours like these, the Nameless Town looked even more lonely and mysterious than usually. Without direct sunlight and warmth, the air was full of some strange force, some strange portent which froze the dew on the ground and drove people off the streets behind the doors and windows and thick drawn curtains, as close as possible to sources of fire.


    Cold Air as an ancient and forgotten force of nature, only remembered in the fevered writings of a children¡¯s author of some cold mountainous and Nordic land. Mysterious winter god who had thus far existed only in books unread and unwritten, almanacs bound in human skin. But now, due to some sloppy rite, he was loose way before his time. Tired and angry, pouring his rage on anybody who looked like that lone mage who had conjured him.


    And thus it was haunting this town, which had plenty of memories and ghosts walking around in broad daylight and nobody thought it weird. And thus he froze the ground, covered the potholes with ice. And if his anger was especially great, he could even freeze living things to death at a moment¡¯s notice and caused strange spots all around the city where the temperature drops focused. In some rare places the drop was so steep that air itself froze into a white ball, causing freeze burns and fell on the ground to break apart and sublimate. True sign that something which should have remained between the walls of the ritual chamber, was loose and had dissolved in the freedom of the world. Flowing around in it according to its own desire or by laws yet unknown to human intelligence.


    Only a figure of her imagination. As long as only she believed in it. But when others started to believe it as well, especially in a place like the Nameless Town¡­ things could become pretty interesting pretty fast.


    She stopped and looked up. She was standing by Jaan¡¯s dark green two-door, looking at him doing something behind the raised trunk lid.


    ¡°You ready to go?¡± she asked.


    ¡°I am.¡± He replied. He pulled a revolver and opened the drum.


    ¡°You won¡¯t be needing it.¡± Mariann said. ¡°Never around here.¡±


    ¡°Possible. I feel more secure when I have it with me.¡±


    ¡°Possible.¡± She repeated with a faint smile. ¡°Until you shoot it at me, thinking me a sky person or a ghost or a deformed forest beast or a feral hospital patient.¡±


    ¡°Do you plan to go to the Crazy Woods behind Luiga?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°Nope. Even if I did, I would not bring weapons along. They always do more harm than good. Your doctor friend is a prime example how much damage one can do with weapons and how far into the forest one can drive a person, both actually and spiritually.¡±


    ¡°You don¡¯t trust psychiatry?¡±


    ¡°Psychiatry is one thing. What he¡¯s doing is a whole other matter.¡± She sighed. ¡°Virve is out of ice cream.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, there was a small dust-up in the bar last night.¡± Jaan said. ¡°Four men went into the forest but only three came out. One reportedly spontaneously combusted. And suddenly the bar was full of men in impeccable black suits and fedoras. They literally appeared out of nowhere. We didn¡¯t even hear the cars pull up. And they started to interrogate the people regarding what happened in the forest. Finally they emptied the bar and closed it for the night. Probably to keep people from soaking up more liquid bravery and then heading back into the forest with pitchforks. Well, all of them went straight to Virve¡¯s place to continue drinking, talking and of course, for the ice cream.¡±


    ¡°Virve has liquor?¡± Mariann asked. ¡°I thought only the Village Dude was making that?¡±


    ¡°To be honest, everybody¡¯s making their own. But the Village Dude and Virve are the only ones whose stuff is drinkable. Others just pour it into their cars in an arbitrary mix with gas. Just to have less contact with the Boys from the North. And honestly, it may be my fault you could not get ice cream this morning.¡±


    ¡°How¡¯s that?¡± she asked.


    Seeing the man beckon her, she stepped closer and took into the trunk to see see several blocks of dry ice on a bare steel trunk floor, surrounding cardboard boxes full of ice cream.


    ¡°When did you buy that?¡±


    ¡°Three o¡¯clock last night. Eduard promised to have a new batch ready by ten this morning, He said he would come to the Institute for the nitrogen at nine. I said that he could also use dry ice for the ice cream but he did not agree. He was adamant that nitrogen left a better taste than dry ice.¡±


    ¡°A matter of taste really.¡± She said, closing the trunk lid. ¡°It is time for us to go.¡±


    ¡°Why this early in the morning?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°The sun is not yet to it¡¯s usual height in the sky, the air is cool and thus the nature can not tell as many lies.¡± She said opening the passenger side door.


    ¡°You don¡¯t have a camera this time?¡±


    ¡°Nope. What I want to show you is a relatively old thing, There¡¯s nothing left to photograph.¡±


    ¡°Nothing left to photograph?¡± he asked. ¡°Okay then.¡±


    He started the engine.


    ¡°So tell me about this Volga which ran off the road.¡±


    The girl smiled before saying anything else. ¡°Did you learn anything new in the low light of the bar?¡±


    ¡°The village men went all quiet when I mentioned it. Nobody had anything to say. At the same time nobody wanted to deny it either. One of the more friendly Officials from the North pulled me aside ad explained it.¡±


    ¡°A friendly Man in Black?¡± Mariann asked incredulously. ¡°What story?¡±


    ¡°He said that the youngsters in the North near the capital had stolen a car and went on a joyride aiming to drive through the neighboring country. But they got lost somewhere and ended up near the town. As everybody knows, there is only one way out of here. They drove around the town once and then on the Northern section of the road, either a badger or a boar or something like that ran in front of them. They tried to dodge it and ended up in the divot.


    ¡°As this was not a local problem a lone aging constable and some village guys with pitchforks could do something about, their special service took over the case cleaned away the car and the bodies.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s something new.¡± Mariann said. ¡°Believable bullshit.¡±


    ¡°What do you think happened to them then?¡± he asked.


    ¡°You were there.¡± Mariann smiled. ¡°you saw for yourself.¡±


    ¡°The only thing I saw was them seeing something on the road and trying to dodge it. Honestly, I don¡¯t even know what I saw!¡±


    ¡°You saw what happened.¡± She said. ¡°he villagers don¡¯t want to tell you what happened because their stories are all relatively similar. The devil sent its fire-breathing mount into the world who took a shape which let itself be understood only by the select few. He let the mount pick four lost souls and then joined them to take their souls to hell.¡±


    ¡°Sounds a lot like a story from some book in the Institute.¡±


    ¡°Well, it probably is.¡± She said. ¡°my vision is somewhat... different. Those five souls were on their way to the Lake of Forgetfulness, to meet people whom the world had forgotten. However nobody explained to them that one cannot return to the Lake of Forgetfulness. And one cannot also stay there. The only way is to move forward.¡±


    ¡°Then I have an obvious question.¡± Jaan said, pushing his frameless glasses higher on his nose. ¡°Forward where? What lies beyond the Lake of Forgetfulness?¡±


    ¡°The Unknowable Land.¡± She said with a pensive glance. ¡°On the other side of the Lake of Forgetfulness is The Unknowable Land and the Nameless Town.¡± She looked out of the window. ¡°The Substation. Stop the car please.¡±


    Before Jaan had even managed to stop the car, she opened the door and stepped out. Without waiting for him, she walked to the cooling pool built next to the radio tower reaching into the sky. She stopped at the very edge, looking at the water vapor above the hot surface of the pool. She could feel the hot vapor hit her in the face, and warm everything around her. Everything here, but not 200 meters high where the top of the tower was. The bottom itself standing on three legs and anchored on a massive slab of concrete.


    Mariann started walking towards it, across the cracked asphalt pavement which was the very last bit of a long gone street and section of the circle road and touched one of the frosted over metal legs of the mast. She looked back at the pool, feeling a warm draft hit her. The frost under her fingers melted and turned to water flowing out from under her palm and down the support beam.


    ¡°What is it?¡± Jaan asked.


    He then raised his head to look at the top of the lone tower, which seemed to sway in the wind. He too felt as if the tower was fastened to the sky, and not to the ground, it looked that stretched out.


    ¡°Do you believe in winter?¡± She asked.


    ¡°In what sense?¡± He asked back.


    ¡°That winter still exists.¡±


    She pushed herself away from the mast and walked back to the pool, kneeling at the very edge.


    ¡°Yeah, this is not warm enough to have a good soak in.¡± She said quietly.


    ¡°That winter still exists?¡± Jaan asked again, not understanding the question.


    ¡°That winter still exists.¡± She repeated again. ¡°That it could even return. That early morning white dew and frozen small puddles are but a foreplay to something greater and not all there could ever be. Only a pathetic shadow of eras passed which now only exist in books nobody remembers, in memories nobody talks about. Do you believe that leaves could turn from green to yellow? That they can dry and fall of the trees leaving behind black branches? Do you believe that snow is something real and not just a peculiar phantasm and shared madness of our own making?¡±


    She stopped for a moment.


    ¡°Maybe this place here, the Substation, a mast similar to the one as once was at T¨¹ri. A pool full of boiling coolant water¡­ maybe all of them have somehow affected the world around us so that nature has gotten stuck, has petrified in place. Or it is returning like a pendulum between the end of spring and the beginning of autumn.¡±


    ¡°Like an unending summer.¡± Jaan said.


    ¡°Just like one.¡± She agreed. ¡°Something repeating, but not unending. The eternity of it is only seeming. Seeming to those who are able to notice the repetition or think in repetitions. What is eternal is free. What is periodic is not.¡±


    Both turned their heads, hearing a low rumble approaching. This was generated by a black and wide low-slung car decorated heavily in chrome. It rolled on whitewall tires not missing a single pothole on the old pavement. In the nose of the car there were two big chrome grilles which looked like air intakes of an old turbine engine. Chromed bumpers, chromed window frames, in addition a thick chrome line running on the side of it. The most noticeable things however were bright red tail light sitting above the bodywork in a silver circular pods with rings, reminding of radio microphones from times lost.


    The vehicle parked on the side of the road, right next to Jaan¡¯s Cadillac. It was evident that despite the marked difference in age and philosophy of styling, the vehicle had much the same size and proportions.


    ¡°This is not a Russian car.¡± Jaan said. ¡°Officials from the North?¡±


    ¡°No, it is not.¡± Mariann said. ¡°The brand is not the correct one. The Officials from the North like cars from the same era, when cars were inspired by aircraft designs, but of a different brand. The same one you have, actually, a Cadillac. Exclusively. This here is a mid-century Imperial. I should have brought my camera.¡±


    ¡°You didn¡¯t hope to meet anybody new today?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°Excuse me!¡± a man sounded out after emerging from the car. ¡°Where I can find lodging in this town?¡±


    ¡°Drive on, then turn left on the next intersection and then to the right. The hotel is on your right.¡± Jaan explained.


    ¡°Thanks!¡± The stranger raised his hat and got back into the car.


    ¡°Those young people in their Volga.¡± Mariann said, walking back toward the car.


    She then stopped and stood with her side towards the man. ¡°They did not drive off the road due to excessive speed. They weren¡¯t looking for a way into the Nameless Town. They were looking for a way out. They could not find it.¡±


    ¡°Mariann.¡± Jaan asked. ¡°What was it really that jumped on the road in front of them?¡±


    She did not reply, but he could see she wanted to. She just gave a mysterious smile and continued towards the lone car standing next to the Substation.


    ¡°Maybe I am wrong.¡± She said when he got back in the car and started the engine. ¡°Maybe all the opinions I have are mistaken. Everything I see, feel and think, even what I cannot feel, maybe it is all mistaken. That everything I have done, discovered and thought until now, may disappear into nothingness within a few seconds after the alarm clock cuts harshly into my reality. Maybe it is all a dream.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s what you¡¯re afraid of?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°Yes. I am afraid that when I fall asleep I will awaken somewhere else. That when I awaken from a dream I awaken somewhere else.¡±


    ¡°A negative hell.¡± He said. ¡°To continue developing your idea.¡±


    ¡°If only it was my idea.¡± She gave a sigh.


    ¡°Where next?¡± Jaan asked. ¡°What was it that you wanted to show me?¡±


    ¡°Towards the North.¡± She replied. ¡°It¡¯s on the side of the road, I will tell you when we get to the right place.¡±


    ¡°But you¡¯re not telling me what it is.¡± He said, with a slight smile.


    ¡°If I started to explain this to you right now, then after we have gone there, I would have to explain it to you again. And right now I am thinking that with two explanation I can bring out six separate theories to you, if not more. Which of course will confuse you even more.¡±


    Beyond the turn, a faint beam of light appeared, followed by a three-axle Ural off-road truck, in turn followed by three black semi-trucks with no license plates, trying to drive in each other¡¯s wind. Every truck had two weight bearing axles and on each trailer there were two 20-foot naval containers with familiar ¡°Yadernoprom¡± writing.


    ¡°Where are they going this way either?¡± She asked, in thought. ¡°I¡¯m sorry.¡± She pulled the steering wheel and turned the car sideways blocking the road.


    She stepped out of the vehicle to see how the convoy passed the Substation and the radio tower without a decrease in speed and then disappeared beyond the next turn.


    ¡°Do not¡­ Ever¡­ Do that¡­ Again.¡± Jaan said slowly. ¡°It is a much better question where they¡¯re coming from.¡±


    The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.


    ¡°Fine, next time we¡¯ll take my car.¡± She said. ¡°Where they¡¯re coming from is simple: from the Train Yard. But they cannot get to the Underground Base without going through the city. Nobody wants to drive on the Northern section of the circular road because it goes by the Radiating Woods. However, nobody drives the Southern road because it goes through a cemetery several hundred years old and is filled with holes and depressions which may not be a problem for an off-road truck but will for others.¡±


    ¡°Let me guess, modular reactors again?¡± He asked.


    ¡°Yes, something important is going on.¡±


    ¡°Wait, in the Underground Base?¡±


    ¡°Yes. Located next to the Missile Base, slightly to the south, West of the Dacha Suburb. But that is a story for another time. Considering those trucks, probably a story for the third or fifth time.¡±


    ¡°Okay then.¡± He said. ¡°Are you seeing what you¡¯re looking for?¡±


    ¡°Right here. See that concrete fence? Right there.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s so interesting and special in a concrete fence?¡± These look like the fallen over wall section near the North-Eastern gate.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯ll see.¡± She said, opening the car door.


    The both jumped over the watery ditch and towards the pile of broken stone buried in a tall grass. This pile had once been a fence made of upright concrete sections, although it was now impossible for Jaan to tell what the purpose had been.


    ¡°This is not a fence.¡± Mariann said, having walked to the few section still standing.


    ¡°I did not say anything.¡± He replied.


    ¡°You did not have to. I could see your thoughts on your face.¡±


    ¡°Okay. If these are not the remains of some sort of a fence, then what are they?¡±


    ¡°Come here, you¡¯ll see from here.¡±


    With carefully placed steps he advanced on the side of the divot. His feet were obscured by the tall grass which was also a perfect hiding place for sharp pieces of concrete, cracks between the pieces and all sorts of broken pieces of steel girdles. Most of these had rusted to near invisibility by attaining the same tone as the rest of the rain-soaked nature. This made his walk at least as dangerous as going to explore the Unknowable Lands South of the town. Sure, there were no open graves but plenty of chances for stumbling, slipping and either breaking something or being impaled on something.


    ¡°What should I be seeing here?¡± He asked.


    ¡°This.¡±


    Mariann used her fingers to break some concrete from a still standing section of the wall. Pieces that Jaan had until this very moment thought to be concrete. After rubbing the material and the wall fro some moments, she revealed rubber-covered steel girdle under that soft plaster.


    ¡°Steel reinforcement. ¡°He said, ¡°Rubber covered. Unusual but nothing special.¡±


    She continued to break more of the soft material resembling concrete to reveal a large section of intertwined rubber-covered mesh, with a square pitch. She then peeled a section of the rubber off one of the bars revealing a copper-colored woven wire.


    ¡°Does this look like steel to you?¡± She asked. ¡°I would say this is copper. And what would you say about the square pitch of the mesh? Looks like about 20 centimeters in diagonal right?¡±


    ¡°So it looks like steel reinforcement, but is really rubber-covered copper wire?¡± He asked. ¡°Why on earth..?¡±


    ¡°Because this is not a reinforced wall section, it only looks like it is. These have been here for a long time and nobody has ever been interested why they are here. That¡¯s why everybody keeps thinking that this was literally a closed town with a fence surrounding it. And the only things resembling a fence are the piles of stone and few tilted panels.¡±


    ¡°While in reality¡­?¡± He asked.


    ¡°While in reality, there panels have always been tilted like this, since they were installed. Also, this tilted fence once surrounded the whole town. Just that elsewhere it has either fallen into crushed stone due to forces of nature or the needs of the war. Or they were torn down when they got into the way of fields needing plowing. Some of it may be under the buildings, forests and the ground.¡±


    ¡°Yes, but what is it?¡± Jaan asked. ¡°Why should anybody erect a fence that barely stands?¡±


    ¡°Because it is not a fence.¡±


    She kicked a concrete block on the ground which also had the ends of the wire sticking out of it. This too was standing at an angle, installed into the ground like that.


    ¡°What does it remind you of when imagine it encircling the town?¡±


    ¡°According to the angle, I would think it to be a parabolic¡­ it¡¯s an antenna?!¡±


    ¡°Yes.¡± Mariann smiled. ¡°I would also think that. A gigantic parabolic antenna built under the town and the ground, just like radio telescopes.¡±


    ¡°But this theory cannot have any ground.¡± He replied. ¡°The town has been in its place nearly three hundred years. And they only managed to build the first gigantic radio telescopes in the middle of this century. Never mind that if it was as big as the town then it should have a diameter of...¡±


    ¡°More than 2 kilometers.¡± She said. ¡°I am aware of it.¡±


    ¡°Also, this would be just a reflector, it would also need an antenna to focus on. It should be in the middle of the town and looking at the angle of these walls, sit relatively low. All parabolic shapes are reflectors so-...¡± He suddenly stopped talking.


    ¡°I assume you have an idea?¡± She asked.


    ¡°The Western tower of the Institute.¡± He said. Looking back at the spires on the Institute towers. ¡°On the third floor of that is the Black hall. Above that, one the fourth floor, there is a former Disused room, right now it is used for storage.¡±


    ¡°the Disused room?¡±


    ¡°Yes, it has a somewhat concave ceiling. From the edges of the room it is almost full four meters in height, but in the center, only maybe one and a half. The size, shape and the height of it should be pretty close to the parabola here.¡±


    ¡°It should?¡±


    ¡°It would also be madness.¡± He took of his glasses to rub his eyes.


    ¡°Three hundred years! The institute and the town are almost that old. It is insanity to think somebody built it for radio astronomy. Never mind the frequency spectrum. This grid has a diagonal pitch of no more than around 20 centimeters. This means no more that 1.5 gigahertz of frequency. This is clearly radio astronomy before there was any notion of the radio spectrum existing.¡±


    ¡°Frequency pitch of around 20 centimeters.¡± Mariann said. ¡°You know what this would mean right?¡± She sat on the pile of stone. ¡°The hydrogen line, or the 21 centimeter line, equal to 1420MHz and change. Perfect for deep space communications between star systems and even galaxies as it is not obscured by clouds of space dust.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re forgetting that space is really big and the speed of light is really slow, compared to the size of the universe?¡±


    ¡°Not that big.¡± Mariann said. ¡°And not that slow, just that human life is really fleeting. And what if there was a party out there who has been beaming out the same message for say a few thousand years. Because their race is almost eternal to ours. It all looks like a perfect fit. We have a gigantic microwave parabola, we have focal point, if we were to believe your story. And we have 20 megawatt modular reactors.¡±


    ¡°How do you know they are modular reactors?¡± Jaana asked. ¡°They could also be RTGs.¡±


    ¡°To collect enough radioactive material for a thermal output to justify the use of 7 twenty foot containers? I don¡¯t think so. RTG¡¯s are more of a cold place thing, like deep space, or the Arctic.¡±


    You are pretty sure about the words on the containers.¡± He said.


    ¡°I have my own sources which allow me to be certain about these. But it doesn¡¯t matter. Can you show me these two chambers at the Institute?¡±


    ¡°Today? He sighed. ¡°I have no idea, honestly. I would probably have to hunt down the keys for both rooms all across the Institute.¡±


    ¡°Not a problem for me.¡± Mariann gave a smile. ¡°Allows me to get to your unfairly acquired ice cream.¡±


    ¡°Unfairly?¡± He asked, as they started walking back towards the car. ¡°You could have bought more yesterday yourself.¡±


    ¡°I would have if I knew that I could have bought by the box.¡±


    ¡°Would you have had enough banknotes denominated in marks?¡±


    ¡°Maybe not, but I have plenty of Reindorff kroons.¡±


    ¡°Maybe in the North, Reindorff kroons are a big thing, but not here. Here life takes it¡¯s own path, as you well know.¡±


    ¡°Better than you.¡± She smiled.


    The next moment her face grew serious. ¡°This parabola could not have been built by anybody in at least the past 300 years.¡±


    ¡°Yes.¡± Jaan agreed.


    ¡°But maybe it was not built in the past at all? Maybe¡­ it was built in the future?¡± She asked, leaning on the car.


    ¡°In the future? You mean will be built in the future?¡± He had opened the front door of the car and was now staring at the girl on the other side of the roof between them.


    ¡°¡¯Was built¡¯ sounds better. There are two ways to understand this. Either, somehow, time is flowing backwards with regards to this structure...¡±


    ¡°Or?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°Or¡­ I don¡¯t know.¡± There was this peculiar smile on her face again. ¡°I cannot explain it in any understandable language, but there is another option of it being built in the future so that in the past it has always existed and at the moment there is an important¡­ focal point. Where there exist the dish, the Institute and the technology to start it up.¡±


    ¡°Your inner world is strange.¡± He said. ¡°And when I say it about somebody, it really means something.¡±


    ¡°The strangeness is only seeming.¡± She replied and then finally got into the car.


    He turned the engine on and then the car around, heading back onto the road, which soon turned into a street of the Nameless Town. Where the roadside bush ended and the town began, one could only tell by a line on actual concrete wall sections ending in a derelict boarded up brick building which could have been a checkpoint some time in the past.


    At that same place where the circular road around the town forked into two. Old and tired potholed section of the circular road going right between the Substation and the radio tower. To mark that the tower really belonged to the Substation, there was a rusty chain-link fence surrounding the whole place, and for extra measure, the pavement was also dug out on two sections right near the fence.


    He turned onto the rough pavement of the main street of the town. The original name of the street had disappeared into the history along with the name of the town as well as the names of many locals. Or any and all past dates and years of the this place, even the limits of eras were muddled. Nothing was clear, it was all cloudy, it was all as if within a dream.


    ¡°You have grown quiet.¡± Jaan said. ¡°Out of theories?¡±


    ¡°For now.¡± She said. ¡°If I had brought my camera along, I would have plenty of additional theories. However despite not having theories, there is plenty of the mystical. So much in fact that this it is hard to put into words. Too much to explain it and then to re-explain it so that everybody else beside me would also understand.¡±


    ¡°I would be rather surprised if I understood your explanations in one go.¡± Jaan smiled.


    ¡°Well, we will soon see how much of you can understand my more wilder theories.¡±


    Her gaze was directed out of the car window, to see the gigantic Neo-Romanesque main building of the Balto-German Esoteric Institute and its massive towers emerge from between the other buildings. He parked his car on the other side of the street, under a faded and rust-covered traffic sign the meaning of which nobody could recall.


    She exited the car and shut the door.


    ¡°A haunted castle. Much more of a haunted castle than the hospital, Luiga or the old school building. Even more than the abandoned house I am now standing before.¡± She said.


    ¡°The house you¡¯re standing before is not quite abandoned. One of the Village Hags is still living in it.¡±


    ¡°Well, then not too abandoned.¡± She said. ¡°As long as there is still one person who remembers and uses the building and takes care of it.¡±


    ¡°Remembers what?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°The glory days.¡± She sighed and walked around the car. ¡°There were some more interesting halls you wanted to show me?¡±


    The ascended the staircase of massive blocks of stone towards the tall main door of the Institute, standing ominously before them. He opened the door for her and the both stepped into the dark foyer of the building. Although there were uncovered windows letting in light, somehow this light did not offer any illumination. The door closed behind them with a loud noise capable of breaking down even the strongest of wills. A noise which reverberated back from inside the building and drilled itself into one¡¯s innards.


    She advanced with a heavy step. Dark wood everywhere. On the floor and the ceiling, even the walls were covered in it. Even the main staircase, creeping higher along the walls of the foyer which itself was several floors high, was made of dark heavy wood. The main staircase encircled a massive chandelier made up of hundreds or even thousands of small lights, covering several floor¡¯s in height. The bulbs seemed to be barely lit, the glowing incandescent wire was clearly visible with no issues or discomfort and the light it cast was no brighter than a small fire.


    The thought behind it was actually very clear. In America in a fire depot, there was a 7 watt bulb burning day and night for over a hundred years. It was very likely that the dim bulbs on this chandelier also lasted at least half that time.


    ¡°I¡¯m gonna go and...¡± Jaan started. ¡°...find somebody who has the set of keys.¡±


    ¡°Is there a danger that you won¡¯t find them?¡± the girl in black asked.


    ¡°No there isn¡¯t. The main door was open so somebody must be in the building. And since there aren¡¯t too many people still working here then¡­ it will take a couple of minutes.¡±


    She looked how the man departed with long steps, a long a corridor with high vaulted ceilings. At the end of the hallway there seemed to be a derelict wardrobe. In the section visible from where she was standing, she could not see any clothing there. Also there still lingered the feeling that the Institute was located as if in a different world compared to that which lied beyond those heave doors. The windows outside were only images and lit panels. The did not convey the reality outside but whatever they were designed to convey. To create a secure feeling for people, a familiar sense of the world, which would not remind them every moment that they were away from their home.


    Suddenly, the deafening silence was broken by a phone ringing out. It froze her in place for a moment, made her look around, stop her breathing to understand whether this sound which she had not heard for years now was real or was the building already playing around with her mind and sense of reality barely two minutes after she had entered it. It had been a clear ring. Clean and demanding in its metallic tone, not allowing anybody to ignore it or mistaken it for something else.


    A deafening stillness fell into the barely lit building once again. She took another deep breath. Maybe only a trick of the mind. But then she heard it again. And no longer could she think it a trick of the mind. It was no longer the ring of a single phone. Somewhere nearby there was another one. And going by the echoes, there were many other phones throughout the building, all of them ringing at the same time. The ringing closest to her seemed to emanate from this foyer, right under the stairs in the corner.


    She started towards it, now seeing that there was a small working space with a desk tucked right under the stairs. Right before it on the floor there were heavy marks of foot travel and dragging items, showing that there had once been several desks here. Smaller marks indicating desks and a reception bar while bigger ones indicated chairs being dragged on the floor day in and day out. She stood before the lone desk under the stairs and then she saw a black bakelite phone sitting on the ground.


    The phoned ringed one more as she lifted it onto the desk. Handling the telephone, she saw that there was no wire coming out of it. It was not connected to anything and yet it rang once more in her hands. She placed it on the desk and lifted the receiver.


    ¡°Yes?¡± She asked, expecting an answer but only hearing crackles.


    ¡°Hello.¡± Through the crackles she could hear a barely audible voice of a young man. ¡°Are you aware that in the third basement auditorium a lecture held by Likhachev is starting? On the connections between religion and illness of the mind?¡±


    ¡°Is there any education still going on in the Institute?¡± she asked with suspicion.


    ¡°Partly. Likhachev is a guest lecturer. Can you make it?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll try.¡± She replied.


    At the very moment she had said that, the phone went quiet. It started acting like a regular old telephone not connected anywhere. She dropped the receiver and turned to look at Jaan, still looking at her with a smile, handling a large ring of keys.


    ¡°Were you also asked to come and listen to the guest lecture by Likhachev?¡± He asked.


    ¡°This phone is not connected to anything.¡± She said, lifting the phone once again and looking it over from every angle.


    ¡°No. It is not.¡± Jaan said. ¡°Being called to the lecture of Likhachev is an old thing that sometimes repeats. Sometimes there are also other calls being received by disconnected phones. Some of them even sound like real calls made from outside the town. This at least give an impression that it is some weird technical glitch.¡±


    Phone signal traversing through free air, waking up phones connected to unconnected wires?¡± Mariann contemplated. ¡°How old is that call to the lecture?¡±


    ¡°At least forty years of not more.¡± He said as they headed towards the staircase. ¡°I studies and worked here a couple of years when I was young. By then it was already at least a couple of decades old. At that time, there were still students who liked to experiment with them. Trying to wrap the phones in tin foil and put them in metal boxes to isolate them from the electric fields. Sometimes they were also included in the initiations for the new students. Imagine being locked up in the room with 50 unconnected phones which then proceed to ring at the same time.¡±


    ¡°Do you know who is that boy who asks people to come to the third basement lecture hall?¡± the girl in black asked.


    ¡°In a way.¡± He gave a sigh. ¡°At the beginning of the century, either on the first or the second decade, there was an accident in one of the basement lecture halls. A stone fell from the wall of the chimney and hit a student right on his head. It is said that he¡¯s the one who keeps calling. Likhachev himself stayed in the Institute for more than just one guest lecture though. His photo is somewhere on these walls.¡±


    Mariann lifted her gaze onto the portraits on the walls. Some were black and white photos, most were paintings.


    ¡°Stories also say that should you not promise to go to the guest lecture, you may not step into the third basement hall before the next phone call and giving an affirmative answer. Otherwise the young man will himself throw a brick at your head. Whether it is true or not, I cannot tell.¡±


    ¡°Is the Institute¡¯s own phone system in working order?¡± She asked, as they ascended a floor.


    ¡°It is, but much in a similar way as that ghostly call. All the phones ring at once. Reportedly there is an old telephone exchange in the Substation. But the Substation is under the control of the Boys from the North and thus far not even us have been given the permission to enter it. And nobody want to bother building their own. Even for just the Institute. Everybody keeps getting by without it. This is the floor.¡±


    They stepped on the worn dark parquet on the floor. He stopped for a moment, to raise his hand and scratch the back of his head.


    ¡°Right, to the left.¡± He said to himself.


    ¡°Where is that third basement hall located anyway?¡± She asked.


    ¡°Under the Northern tower. Under the Western tower is the first basement hall, which is truly¡­ giant. Sometimes it seems it reaches under the streets and other buildings in the town. The second hall is under the Eastern tower. This is the smallest one of them, as the hallways to the faculties and biology and physics were also located there. The third lecture hall is located under the Northern tower. Before the medical faculty was created, the third lecture hall was the main hall for psychiatry lectures where several example procedures took place. The fourth basement hall was located under the Southern tower. There are also stories that in the basement there is another three story library, which acts as a redundancy for the one above ground, plus many unknown and lost tomes.¡±


    ¡°At the same time nobody knows exactly where it is located or where the key is?¡± Mariann asked.


    ¡°Nobody cares.¡± Jaan said. ¡°That¡¯s the main problem.¡±


    Jaan unlocked the low door in the corner of the hallway and then crouched down to step in. She followed him. At first, nothing could be seen but then he clicked the lights on in the circular room. Not all of them lit up but there was still enough of them to look around in this low storage room filled to the brim with furniture. The main attraction was the ceiling of the room, concave like an upside down dome. From the edges it indeed seemed to be nearly 4 meters high. While in the middle it was less than one and a half. The diameter, probably about nine or ten meters. It looked like it was made of stone, black stone polished incredibly smooth, almost mirror-like finish. This was apparent as soon as she touched it and wiped the dust off of it. Her fingers could not find a single joint in the material anywhere she reached to touch. As if it was manufactured in one piece and lifted in place in one piece.


    ¡°It is local dolomite.¡± He said as he reached back to Mariann after circling the room. ¡°And as you can probably see and feel, it is a single piece.¡±


    ¡°I should be thinking it to be impossible.¡± She said. ¡°Of if not impossible then certainly unheard of in the past 300 years, especially in this corner of the world.¡±


    Her gaze fell from the dome to the floor. ¡°What lies underneath? The Red Hall?¡±


    ¡°The Red Hall is on the second floor so, in a way, I could say that yes, the forbidden Red Hall lies underneath it. But actually immediately below it lies the Hall of Taevaskoda, once known as the Black hall, but renamed to not be mixed up with the post-fire Red Hall. It is named for the fact that the walls of it have been laid in with the red sandstone from Taevaskoja.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s the department?¡± Mariann asked.


    ¡°Astronomy and cosmology.¡± He said, smiling, feeling the connection, even if he refused to consciously admit to it.


    ¡°Then there is some other place for us to go to.¡± Mariann said, she waited as Jaan locked the door again.


    ¡°I know what you¡¯re thinking.¡± Jaan said as they walked back to the stairs. ¡°But it is not possible. A Parabolic antenna under the whole town, a megalithic stone reflector or a radome with impeccable surface finish and a hall dealing in astronomy located just above and below two of the most mysterious halls in the history of the Institute. But it all combined cannot mean what it does.¡±


    ¡°You have said it before.¡± She said. ¡°But it does not make the question arising from it all disappear.¡±


    ¡°What question?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°What lies on the first floor of the Western tower? What lies on the fifth floor of the Western tower and on top of it? And most importantly, is the First basement hall something more than what we currently know of it?¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re thinking that all these things are somehow connected?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°There exists a kind of relation. The Western tower is unequivocally the center of both the Institute as well as the whole town. That why we might assume that it hides more than what is apparent on the outside.¡±


    With a steady walk, they approached a door in the corner of the hallway, looking so familiar and yet so strange. The floor and walls were similarly laid in with dark wood, carrying a gloomy threatening air, just like on the floor above. Perhaps even slightly more, signifying that it was closer to the Red Hall on the second floor. The history of which radiated throughout the whole building and influenced the composition and looks of the materials within, even the transmittance of light and electromagnetic waves through space.


    Jaan tried several old keys on the ring until he found one that fit the lock and opened the door.


    Totally contrary to what they expected to see, a dark room full of of dusty, forgotten and obsolete astronomy equipment, instead it was an empty circular space, lit in bright lights. And of course the walls were laid in with large slabs of red sandstone. Instead of book shelves there were large curtains the color of red wine. Which could be drawn to cover almost all the walls. In the bright electric lights, the curtains looked almost luminescent, contrasting with the rough stone surfaces. What little windows there were, were covered in opaque black fabric, not letting in a speck of natural light.


    In the middle of the room, there was a small hexagonal pillar about a meter in height. Hewn from a single piece of white stone. In the middle of it was a circular depression for a small sphere. It looked like an altar which had not yet received its sacrifice or a relic blessed with holy power.


    ¡°This is unexpected.¡± Jaan said. ¡°Something is obviously going on that I am not aware of.¡±


    Stop!¡± a strong-willed female voice sounded out from behind them. ¡°Who are you and what are you looking for in here?¡±


    Jaan and Mariann turned around, to see a frail young woman standing before them in a dress decorated with sections of white lace. She was staring at them over her glasses with a venomous gaze in her olive-colored eyes. Jaan knew this woman. This was the assistant who had been working on her thesis for the past three years and until now had had a friendly disposition towards him. They had greeted each other, brought coffee, made small talk.


    ¡°We were doing some research on the history of the Institute.¡± Jaan said.


    ¡°Professor Kotkas. Your obligations before the Institute are explicitly fixed.¡± She said in a strict voice. ¡°These do not include offering tours to third parties to rooms with central importance to the Institute. Where did you even get the keys?¡±


    ¡°From the housekeeper.¡± He said. ¡°What¡¯s happened to you, Saara? I thought that you will leave as soon as you finish your dissertation?¡±


    ¡°I knew one set of keys was still somewhere around.¡± She sighed in a tired voice. ¡°There is always one set of keys around somewhere even if all the sets have been accounted for. Yes. I had the intention of leaving but the board and the officials from the North made me an offer I could not refuse. And now I am the new head of the Institute. Everything going around here is my responsibility and things will change. Give me the keys, please.¡±


    She stepped closer, revealing now that her hair had been tied into an old-fashioned bun. She grabbed the keyring from his hands and then removed six or seven keys before handing the set back to him.


    ¡°What¡¯s going on in here?¡± He asked. ¡°That¡¯s something you can tell us, can¡¯t you?¡±


    ¡°The Officials from the North and the Institute have agreed that the Hall of Taevaskoja will be the new home for a very valuable and important artifact, which strengthens the position of the Institute and it¡¯s ability to carry out its research. The Devil Spark.¡±


    ¡°The Devil Spark?¡± He asked, not understanding the meaning of the words.


    ¡°The Devil Spark.¡± She repeated. ¡°Please leave at once, the motorcade has already reached the building.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s Devil Spark?¡± Jaan asked as he left after Mariann.


    ¡°Are you familiar with the thing called the Demon Core?¡± the girl in black asked.


    ¡°Yes, I am.¡± He replied. ¡°A subcritical mass of plutonium, two criticality accidents and then melted down.¡±


    ¡°Yes.¡± She smiled. ¡°That¡¯s Devil Spark. Originating from Yadernoprom, a subcritical mass barely the size of a woman¡¯s fist. Only requiring a neutron reflector to go critical.¡±


    ¡°Why would the Institute need the core of a nuclear weapon?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°That¡¯s a good question.¡± Mariann said. ¡°A very good question.¡±

 XVI - a Meeting in a Desecrated Church

    I am here, but where are you?


    The night is dark here. I don¡¯ t know how I got here, I don¡¯t even know where I am. The only thing reminding me that I am still alive is You. Me knowing that I have to find you, will to You. I don¡¯t have to know who or what I am. Knowing that I¡¯m looking for you is enough.


    I cannot remember when was the last time I saw the Sun, the blue sky or gray clouds. Everything but the black sky full of alien stars is but a memory lost a long time ago, reminding itself as nightmares every time I sleep. I don¡¯t remember how I got here. I cannot be certain that ¡°here¡± is actually here, that I am here. That this world is something else than a wraith in my mind.


    What do people look like? How does water taste? I can no longer remember. Time holds no meaning here, there is only eternal darkness. Awaking and falling asleep between worlds, from one world into another, all of them essentially identical. If I only could, I would name one of these worlds a dream and would thus bring order under the black starry sky, but I cannot. Every time I try to bring order to the place, everything is lost once more, the next time I wake up.


    I don¡¯t know if I am alone here. Sometimes I hear the echoes of footsteps on the other side of my beingness, the other side of the limit of my universe. Steps which awaken either memories or phantasms of a frail two-legged creature who is like I was once, but yet is not. Often moans of pain and wails of torture accompany these steps and then later I hear these steps again and the worn out crying that comes with, as if all power had been sapped from them.


    Sometimes however I hear the Universe itself vibrating as would the strings on a guitar. I cannot be sure if these sounds originate from some place other than myself. Can these be anything else at all but evil visions conjured up from within me? Could they at all have ¡°their own connection¡± to that distant and eternal sky full of stars?


    I don¡¯t know. I no longer know nothing. The worlds are indistinguishable, reality, dream and phantasm are indistinguishable. And I have stopped trying to understand. It is not real. I am not real. Nothing is real. It is all a single nothingness dancing with itself to not go mad and lose itself. It is nothingness that is afraid to perish when it loses its cycle of awakenings. Afraid to lose itself through it, to forget that it exists.


    Please forgive me! I have lost You. I no longer know how to escape from here. How to reach You. I no longer know how to help You. The only thing left to me are these phantasms I see again and again. To awaken from one phantasm or a bout of nostalgia into another. To awaken into darkness devoid of even stars.


    I don¡¯t want to wake again. I want to stay here, at the end of the phantasm. Remembering, but no longer living.


    *


    It always begins the same, with me in my cell under the barred window, which is letting in faint starlight. My hands and legs are tied up and my body lies on a soft leathery floor under the window. I don¡¯t know how I got there, I don¡¯t know where I am, what I do know is that there is no escape. That this is my fate, to wait for the end in some cell, forgotten. For the end that never comes. That the only thing I can do is to watch the starry sky turn into a blackened darkness and then blackened darkness back into the starry sky.


    I hear voices in my universe. Voices and sounds of which I cannot tell whether they come from within me or the space around me, sounds with which I cannot relate in any way. Sometimes it feels like they don¡¯t originate from one or the other but from some third place after all, from outside space. These voices speak about me. The say that my time is coming. They want to help me, free me of my torture. Sometimes they are accompanied by faint guitar sounds which often predict the return of the voices.


    I know I must escape, escape as far as possible from these voices. But there is no release. However much I escape in my wishes and phantasms, still I find myself bathing in the light of distant stars, still here, still waiting. Being afraid of voices coming closer and closer, speaking of me more and more, but never reaching me. They laugh about me, mock my torture. And the feeling within me of needing to escape, to get away grows stronger. Even death would be the sweetest companion to me. But I cannot. I am but a rock in the middle of a field, under the unbearably hot Sun. Nothing more.


    And then¡­ something changes. The starlight changes. It is no longer just a glow coming from the window, stroking my face and also the soft and pale floor. It is something more. It is the Moon. The Moon is my only solace. Pale Moon raising into the sky reminding me that I am still at home. That I am again, or still, in the world where I was born in, that I still have some relation to the world outside the place I have been cast into.


    The brightest and warmest moments of my current life all happen in the light of the Moon. The Moon always reminds me of You. You were lost in the moonlight and I see and feel that same pale Moon in the sky, which uses it¡¯s devilish light to obscure all those alien and evil stars around it which usually torture me. Which are trying to convince me that I am completely alone, that besides me and the face there is nothing else but them and the empty endless space which keeps us apart. They are standing there, far away from me, disinterested but they keep observing my torture as a source of bland entertainment they force themselves to watch. Not that they would like it, but only because it is unpleasant to me.


    And then something changes again. The Pale Moon suddenly turns blue. The moonlight itself turns blue and I can feel it, I can feels its weight, its pressure. I feel how cool it is, stroking my face. I see it shine through everything that lies between me and it. How the walls of my cell turn as ephemeral as starlight. The shine of the Blue Moon cleaves apart my universe and show me that it is not a Universe, that outside of it lies another world. Much bigger and wider than everything I have thus far experienced or even imagined.


    I feel myself change as well. I feel that I have a body, a head and face, arms and legs. I feel tied up. That I¡¯m lying on a soft floor. And then suddenly, I feel like the bonds around my hands and feel loosen. I feel how I just pull my hands apart, pull my hands through the bonds. As if the bonds, or myself had suddenly turned into a ghostly moonlight. I stand up to see the bonds which now lie on the floor, unbroken.


    I slowly get up and stretch myself in the moonlight. I admire my skin and clothes which shine like You did on that fateful misty night. The wall before me no longer looks like a wall, more like a curtain of rain, painted by the light of the moon, being no significant barrier to me. I am just stepping through it into the bright circle of light on the other side. I take a breath of the cool and vaporous night air and jubilate in my escape. That the Blue Moon helped me, that it doesn¡¯t just spirit people away to¡­ that I can still retrieve you.


    And then darkness falls. The blue moon disappears, the moonlight goes out, as if somebody had turned the switch. Only a faint glow remains behind the clouds and the Suns of far and forgotten star systems reappear, still grinning at me. Darkness falls all around me and brings along the feeling that I have not escaped. That I may be further from my cell but but it changes nothing. That I am still doomed, in a cold and dark, soaking and foggy night. In an alien world in which home is but a warm memory. Oblivion, amid a cold black town of the dead.


    All of a sudden, yellow electric light ignites. All the windows of the gigantic castle behind become illuminate, reminding me how big it is. Reminding me how small and insignificant I am. And then I hear the barking of hellhounds and ringing of alarm bells.


    I start running. Towards wall of fog in the distance hanging above the grassy field. I don¡¯t care what lies ahead, be it a graveyard, open graves, scary dark forest or something so evil and scary that it needs no nature to keep people away, only its own unexplainably frightening mystery. Which at the same time is natural and yet monstrous. To which everything normal is but a hollow spectacle.


    I don¡¯t know what¡¯s going in. I run through the fog, not knowing where I am running in. Not knowing whether or not there is a void under my next step, cutting me down and dooming me. I don¡¯t care. Doom of every kind is netter than ending up back in there.


    I stop for a moment, sensing that the barks of the dogs have grown distant. Likewise the castle awash with light on top of the hill from which I escaped has grown distant. Not yet far enough, it is still appearing far away in the distance, slowly creeping closer.


    I continue running. Across the wasteland until I a reach an empty roadway hidden in the fog. It makes me feel safe. Knowing that I am back home. In a world that at least looks like the world I once knew. In which I once was and walked as if it was mine. And then I see it. Far away, precisely that far that I can see the railroad tracks crossing the road, lying at the border of the wall of fog. I walk closer to them and look at the broken pavement between the rails.


    Everything around me is so bright, even though the sky above me is black, full of faint stars. It feels like all the light radiating from the milky mists around me is as pale as the moonlight. Maybe paler. As if the Moon had found some other route to illuminate me and the world. It had even asked the night fog to render assistance.


    I walked along the rails, only to discover it was only a pair of rails. Two seven meter pieces of rebar in the correct shape for use by trains. It came from nowhere, it went to nowhere. There wasn¡¯t even a railway dam visible anywhere. Only emptiness. Only barely visible gray field of grass. Only this wall of fog emitting soft light. The ebbs and flows of which looked to be in a constant play of twists and vortices while the greater mass stood still.


    Suddenly, I feel something freeze in me. Some kind of feeling of direction appears, which forces me to continue onward. Not along a safe edge of the roadway where the only dangers are the fog and mysterious ghostly vehicles speeding in the night which take people along with them and then after disappearing behind the turn, evaporate into the night. No, instead I head across the field by the side of the road. A field that always stays mowed, where grass is always low, despite nobody having herded animals or cut hay there for over 30 years.


    I look back and see the fog close after me. Becoming again a uniform wall. Returning to try pass through it seems like both an insurmountable decision as well as bottomless stupidity. I know the fog would not let me pass, even if I tried, it would throw something before my feet to trip on. Just to remind me the lesson that grandparents teach their young as the first thing in life: you cannot go against nature.


    But I don¡¯t have to return. I feel like something is pulling me along if it it has tied a line to me. I feel that if I follow the pull, then in the end I will find You. A feeling that the path I have taken is the correct one to reach you despite all the dangers. A feeling that I cannot be wrong if I only trust myself.


    Slowly, low junipers begin to emerge from the mists. First there were lone bent and twisted trees like headstones in a huge yet barren cemetery, of which the fog was allowing me to see only a small section. I am not afraid. That is the weirdest thing.


    It is the middle of the night, I am at a place no villager would dare to step in the dark for the fear of creatures both real and imagined. Ghosts and the undead, those men in black from the North, whose cars seems to float above the ground. Spirits, monsters, sky people in silvery encounter suits. The forest people living in the Crazy Woods. Or all those people who have gotten lost in the Devil¡¯s Mire without ever returning. From lost vikings and crusaders to Russians militarymen who sneaked to the Mire to relieve themselves.


    I¡¯m not afraid of anybody. Not even this weird fog or moonlight flowing around me, showing me the way and at the same time following me. I am not afraid despite having already taken more than ten steps into the Heavenmire. In the middle of the night. In the middle of the fog. In the middle of a cool recognition that it might be a Thursday. That all the elements for the Witches¡¯ Night and the Black Moon are coinciding. I know there is a time when all forces magical, unknown to the human kind and indiscernible in time and space are at their maximum. When it is prime time for all those beings who the mediums divide up into ten kinds of star people. Each of whom have have filled the lands with their bases regular people cannot even find because all the qualities of that matter lie outside of what can be perceived with the five senses known to us.


    And still I am not afraid. I look at the mists flowing away and uncovering something from underneath. Smoldering remains of a farmstead right next to a large bog pool. I head towards it, feeling the sting of wet smoke in my nostrils. Only the corners still stand, the bog has claimed everything else back, some of it has been destroyed, but some has been preserved for all eternity. The bog has chosen to preserve these to commemorate the injustice that transpired here. To remember and remind everyone who happen to come here that that it is all their fault. Fault of those who said to themselves that it does not concern them.


    Here is the border people have demarcated. Border between what is known to them and what is not, yet what they want to meet, what they want to learn of. A border between human world and secret knowledge. And it is also a border of human will. Between the areas of what they want and how much they are willing to sacrifice for what they want. This is the border where the fog is no longer my friend. Where the fog no longer cares. Where the fog no longer gives me way but forces me to continue. This is the last place of living, dying and resting for the Metsla family.


    Under these same ruts and plants of Labrador tea, between stunted and twisted junipers. Here was the border both in time and space. Here ends Heavenmire and begins the new Devil¡¯s Bog. Here, the fall of man begins due to him thinking that to interpret is to understand. That knowledge is only information, that magic only lies in rituals, and life opposed death. Her the fall of man begins with thinking that knowledge gives power but demands nothing in return.


    I leave behind the remains of the Metsla farm and try to go on, but fall on my knees in damp ruts. It feels like something has grabbed my head and is now twisting it hard towards the ground. Forcing in ever novel knowledge of things I possess no faculty to understand. Which I can describe only as I am doing it right now. Pain I can feel but the source of which I do not know, pain arising from¡­ knowing. From knowledge being incompatible with the organics. I can feel the tears on my face and enormous emptiness in my chest produced by this knowledge.


    I have to continue. I have to get up, I have to¡­ I have to! Find! You! Yet the knowledge is telling me that I cannot find You. Knowledge is telling me that I cannot get to you. It is saying that you are lost forever. That You were lost even before I lost you. Just that it was not allowed for me to understand why or how. Or when.


    I wipe my tears and rise again. I do not trust knowledge. Knowledge creates emptiness, knowledge always lies. Because I cannot, the human kind cannot understand knowledge the correct way. All our tools are useless. Two and a half thousand years of philosophy and mathematics are but drops in the ocean we live in. Just a dull spark in the magical fire which burned on this planet millions of years before us or the dinosaurs, and the glow of which still surrounds us, even if we cannot see it. Ancient magicks next to which our technological achievements are just a rotting crutch we use to prop ourselves away from the ground, towards the heights but also towards the bottomless black pit.


    The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    I do not trust knowledge. I have faith. I believe I can find you again. I don¡¯t know from where. I don¡¯t know how. I only know I have to move forwards. I know I have a lot to learn, I know there are many things I am not able to understand but which nevertheless needs to be poured into my brain and consciousness in order to find you again. Knowledge may lie to me, but I don¡¯t care. Knowledge may try to convince me that I am mistaken, but I do not care about that either. I want to find you again. And I will.


    Knowing. This place. Devil¡¯s Bog, the Forbidden Forest on the background¡­ they can do all they want, torture me with knowing and understanding for as long as they want. They can force me to carry a lantern to the market and preach the hidden history of the entire world. I care little about that. I am not letting my mind or my nails go of neither you nor of this world before I have found You. Not until I have seen You one last time alive and free. Not until I have laid my fingers on your skin once again.


    I am walking the fog between bog pools. I don¡¯t know where I¡¯m going. I don¡¯t know even if I¡¯m going straight. There are but two things I do know: in the fog and straight across the Devil¡¯s Bog, no man has yet returned to tell of his travel. And second, up until now, no bottomless pit of muck had I found under any of my steps. But now I am thinking there is a third thing as well: I know where I need to get to. I know what I must do to reach You.


    I must understand that like mathematics and philosophy are mere drops in the ocean, so is all religion. I sense something lying beyond, but the fog will not reveal it from underneath itself before I start stumbling on forgotten headstones and footpaths. Not before I reach the vaulted walls. I don¡¯t need to see it, I already know.


    People say that shadowed in the most poisonous and alien woods of the Devil¡¯s Bog and the Forbidden Forest, there stand the ruins of an old chapel. Chapel and the graveyard around it are a memory of a village which got in the way of a base when it was being built in the 1940s. Just a memory and nothing else. Just like the bog is letting damp smoke rise from the burnt remains of the Metsla farmstead on the nights when mists wave high and strong, the Devil¡¯s Bog, or rather the Forbidden Forest has decided to preserve this chapel.


    The chapel may be within the swamp, but this is no swamp. Under the bottomless layers of peat are the twisted roots of the Forbidden Forest which the woods have sewn into the earth for decades. Starting from the moment when the people who lived here were ripped away and taken from their land, their food and their lives, and the other humans used violence to re-imagine the swamps and the forests.


    Maybe somewhere else in the world this would have succeeded, but not here. Here, separate rules were in place. Here, the swamp and the forest conquered the village, revealing that gunpowder has no domain over forests which had sourced their power from starlight aged millions upon billions of years. From starlight which was billions of years old even back when our Universe was but a hot soup of newborn matter.


    Here the Eastern and Western Holy Roman Churches with their silver and bronze crosses met both black sections of Soviet armed forces, as well as a special mission of the Third Reich, sent by their government-in-exile in Argentina. Here was their secret battleground nobody remembered nor admitted to. Because a mixture of magic and rituals aged between thirteen years and thirteen thousand years destroyed everything living.


    Truth be told, nobody knows what happened. Not the soldiers, no the villagers. Only nature itself knows, only the Forbidden Forest itself knows. What happened was what was supposed to happen. Magic ignites magic. And a meeting of such forces, millions of faithful across the world, awakened the magic that the star folk had left behind here. Only for moment did it awaken, only to protect itself from the eyes of those who do not possess the faculties for comprehending it.


    Does the sky folk not visit this place for that reason? Would they also not want to participate in worshiping the Old Gods and the power they have dominion over? The power they learned to feel and govern a long time before discovering our star system and this corner of the world. A power which they developed and practiced undisturbed to learns it¡¯s peculiarities and mysteries. Here was the perfect place to do it, as this corner of the world was relatively quiet compared to the dead planet in the light of the black stars hanging in the sky. And then at one point they all returned to their black stars, and after them, all others came. To research and otherwise delve into everything that the star folk did not bring away with them. To use it to develop a magic and a world around us these days. The most primordial power of the Old Gods and the Star Folk.


    Argh! Again I fall to my knees. Again, pain. Again knowing, grinding itself against my spirit and mind right inside my skull. As if grinding away my brain to make more room inside my skull, to become a new sensory organ which would allow me to fathom all this history and magic. Again, emptiness in my chest getting deeper. A feeling I cannot remediate.


    Again, the knowledge ridicules me, saying that I cannot win. I cannot continue. That my only hope is to give up. If I at all want to remain who I am and not lose myself into the Forbidden Forest or the Crazy Woods. That my only hope is to surrender to my fate chasing after me and not continue. That You are lost. That I will also be lost should I continue my search. That I will never find You but become like ordinary folk of the Crazy Woods who worship a stick on the ground as the center of their world.


    I do not believe in knowing. I do not trust it! It lies! It wants to turn me away from my way. Back. It knows! It knows where You are! It knows why you are there. It won¡¯t tell me! But I do not care! I will get my hand on all of those answers! I will get my hands on¡­ You. Once yet again. I will find You!


    Slowly, I push myself back onto my shaking feet. I don¡¯t know for how long I have lain in the fog near these ruins, but all my clothes are wet. For how long? The answer has no meaning. Here it is irrelevant. This night is unending, this fog is unending. The World and the Forbidden Forest will hold onto the night for as long as it is necessary for me to find You or to surrender. And nobody will ever know! None of the living will ever know!


    Again I feel I must continue. But now I know where. Into that patch of forest nearby. Into the Forbidden Forest where fog is no longer the king, but instead the forest itself with its endless paths and mysteries. I start running. Through the misty brush, through the dried and dead woods and over thick roots jutting out of the ground and creating an obstacle course for me. It was impossible to find the proper path between them. But I have no interest in a proper path. I know where I have to reach.


    Somewhere in the Forbidden Forest is a lake on the bank of which strange events come to pass. The lake by which You became moonlight and disappeared. Somewhere in the forest is our playground, old vaulted cellars now half-filled with mud. Somewhere is a fire ring around which the youth gathered to drink beer and play guitar. And they are still gathering around it, despite nobody knowing who they are and where are they from. And somewhere is an abandoned and forgotten church the existence or even the appearance of which nobody remembers. It it not just a simple church, it is something more grand. I can sense it¡¯s tall walls and airy cupola with broken and fallen in sections, along with a broken steeple and belfry.


    A church is a church, regardless of the religion. Regardless of who is using it. It is and will forever be a holy place. Something more than just a building. Even when forgotten and abandoned, even when overgrown with ivy and other plants. Even with a half-broken cupola, the arches of which the mosses have broken into dust. I don¡¯t know how old it is. I don¡¯t know if the concept of age even applies to it. To call it a church and possibly a cathedral, I do it so only because that is what it reminds me of. I have no idea if it has ever been used for worship and for whom. The moon and the stars? Christian gods? The mystical pantheon of the star folk and the Old Gods? Some third party who has drifted along in space for so long that it no longer has a name?


    It is not of any importance. They only thing that is of importance it that it now stands before me. I can sense it. I can feel the walls and the arches with a sense that lies beyond my five senses. I can sense that You are there, that it is related to You. I can feel that I must enter this place. I can even feel that tonight, something must happen in there. Something I have no idea about. Something big, heavy, powerful and¡­ unbelievably ancient. Older than the village or the Forbidden Forest itself. Here, tonight¡­ when time starts moving again something will happen that is so incomprehensibly old that it can only be related to the star folk. Or perhaps¡­ it remains unnoticed even to the star folk, because it is so inconsequential.


    And You! You are in the middle of it all!


    Something awakens in me and thirsts for life, as I sneak along the edge of the building with my heart fluttering. I try to peek in through the windows as I pass them, I try to find the smallest view port through the piles of refuse and broken benches heaped in front of the windows. I am unsuccessful. I cannot see anything. Only broken and still breaking pieces of desiccated wood.


    But there is something else, something I cannot see. Something that cannot be seen at all. Something in me tells me that this church is desecrated. Something in me know it. Knows, that hundreds of years ago, it was built as an important Lutheran church, but years perhaps even decades before the church and the village were wiped off the face of the Earth, something happened. The youth of the village started to act out against the public order as well as the church elders. They destroyed the interior of the church, ruined the holy icons and statues, they even broke the silver cross in half. All Christian imagery was throw aside and was replaced with a stone tablet depicting weird underwater plants, which was found in a field near the Southern Village. Reportedly it got there a long time ago when a nearby grove was cleared away and the secret buried within were covered up for all time.


    I advance slowly, towards the other side of the building, towards the main entrance hidden on the other side the blackened thicket. On the other side of all remaining options to stumble in a rut or a hidden root on the ground and fall face first on a sharp little stump. To have it penetrate my neck or eye and thus become yet another lost name and forgotten face. To become yet another random skeleton in the Forbidden Forest, offering my blood and flesh to fertilize both its future and growth.


    A few steps further, some more tall grasses were hiding stones fallen from the church walls. Also copper decorations covered in heavy patina, but otherwise still as sharp as ever. And suddenly there I was, before the doorless main entrance to the desecrated church, looking into an empty dark hall. Sparse rows of black wooden pews between pillars that supporting the vaulted ceiling, bewitching in their slimness. Some of the pews had collapsed on their own, others had marked signs of violence inflicted on them. And these were not the original pews either. Older items much more elaborate in decoration were piled up into the windows so that people outside could never see what transpired within. Only faint glow of light may have been seen when young men in red hoods carried out their rites with the help of books secretly taken from the Institute.


    This church had stood desecrated for years now. Older people said that no man could be alone in the Forbidden Forest. A presence of somebody else always lingered along. This may have also been the reason why the youth were attracted into the forest in groups. But the church was made of a completely different stone. Here, not only a presence could be felt but also the presence of something alien. The presence of something that did not originate from under our Sun. Something which called the eternal depths of the world¡¯s seas its home. A place where life had a completely different meaning than in sunlight. Where one could find tons of little animals with transparent and sometimes bioluminescent bodies. The depths which had gigantic oily black tentacles as its masters. Tentacles which seemed to have no beginning. Which rose from the deep caves as if sensing that another consciousness was present. Trying to reach for it to destroy it. So it would never carry a message to the surface that a portion of the star people had never left, that they were only slumbering in the secret places of this world, waiting for the time when man and all his folly with its 110 chemical elements have fallen into dust.


    Signs, that the alien and blood-curdling knowledge now invading my brain was the real truth, were everywhere around me. Air in this church was forever full of mist and carried a salty taste. The pews around me had no moss or lichen like in a clean breathing forest, only mold of different colors. And to top it all, there was no sign of a pulpit at the other end of the hall. Christian God who had created the world because he had no ability to see what lay beyond his unending had long since been exiled from this church.


    Instead of the pulpit, there was a stone platform, and on top of that, right under the fallen in cupola, there was a wide table. Perhaps an altar... full of countless small nicks, as if numerous lives had flowed through here. Hundreds of people who had been tied to this altar only to be sacrificed under strange planets and stars to some unknown Sea God. Sleeping on the ocean bottom of a moon orbiting some distant gas giant. Using each night to seep into the dreams of all men who have unknowingly opened their minds by learning of it¡¯s existence.


    I slide my fingers along the iron railing on the edge of the altar table. I can not find any use for them. Why are they here? To tie up the sacrifice? As decorations? As part of a ritual where the intersection of stone, steel, human blood and ¡°closed words¡± lie? ¡°Closed words...¡± the secret words that the human vocal apparatus is not capable of sounding out in their true form.


    Not far from the altar there stands a huge block of stone. Almost three meters tall, over one and a half wide. A massive upright sarcophagus. But this is no sarcophagus. There are no secret texts or signs, just a big stone pillar of orderly shape. Brought into this church for some unknown purpose. For which, I cannot tell, and neither can that defiling secret knowledge breathed into me from the mists of the Devil¡¯s Bog and Forbidden Forest.


    Suddenly, the cloud continents in the sky drift apart and I can feel the moonlight falling on me. It bathes everything around the altar in a ghostly radiance and undoes the darkness, uncovering infinitely more detail than my eye should be able to perceive. The bloom shines especially brightly onto that big rectangular stone standing before me. And the stone no longer looks like a stone, the moonlight paints it a block of ice which I now see is clearly sublimating in the light, giving off jets and outflows resembling dry ice or even liquefied nitrogen.


    What are you doing here?¡± A dreamy voice asks of me.


    It stops the blood in my veins, freezes the heart. The world suddenly become a thousand times more phantasmal and a thousand times more real.


    I turn around slowly and¡­ You! It is You, standing before me! Looking like you last did when I saw you, made of bright shimmering moonlight which now cast from the opening in the cupola. You are not sublimating like the block of stone behind me, at the same time I can see through your figure. I can also see how the outline of you which is not illuminated by moonlight is constantly dissipating as mist or smoke.


    ¡°I¡­ I am...¡± I am unable to form any coherent thought or word.


    ¡°What are you doing here?¡± You ask again in that distant dreamlike voice, as if the words were being repeated on a magnetic tape.


    ¡°I came to find you, Rheya!¡± I could finally utter.


    ¡°Me? I don¡¯t need to be looked for. I am¡­ here.¡±


    ¡°Here? But you are made of moonlight¡­?¡± For the life of me I cannot understand her.


    ¡°I am not here.¡± You say looking around.. ¡°I am here. Here where I am.¡±


    Something in your voice is telling me that your ¡®here¡¯ and mine are two very different locations.


    ¡°You should not be here.¡± I hear you say.


    ¡°Why? Something in me told me that I must come here. That I have to see you again and find you!¡±


    ¡°You should not be here.¡± You say again, in that dreamlike and distant voice.


    ¡°What happened to you!? Why are you only visible in the moonlight? Why are you made of moonlight?¡± I can hear panic seeping into my voice.


    ¡°Happened? I don¡¯t know.¡± You say. ¡°You have to go. You cannot be here. I cannot stay with you any longer. You have to go, before something happens.¡±


    ¡°No.¡± I refuse. ¡°I am not going. I am not leaving before I find you!¡±


    ¡°You haven¡¯t found me. I am here but I am not here. You have no need to look for me for I cannot be found. I am there, where the libraries are endless and the spires reach the black stars in the sky. I am not here, I am here.¡± You say. ¡°We will meet again soon¡­ at our secret playground.¡±


    ¡°Like last time?¡± I ask with tears in my eyes.


    ¡°Last¡­ time¡­?¡± You ask with confusion on your face.


    ¡°Yes.¡±


    ¡°It is very difficult for me to talk when I am here like this. Do you understand? Now please get off the stage.¡±


    ¡°The stage?¡±


    Confused, I look as you step off the raised area around the stone and the altar without touching the ground. I watch you head into an aisle between the rows or broken and disordered pews, and then follow you. I follow you into a line of pews lit by the moonlight and then watch you dissipate into thin air.


    I turn around. Towards the altar, to see that the big pillar is no longer stone. It is now giving off quite a lot of mist and most certainly looks as if it too was made of starlight. Out of nowhere, you appear before the altar and lay down on it. A moment later, out of your figure rises a shade much more aetherial than your figure. She steps aside, to spectate everything. You are all almost equally made of the same blooming moonlight, yet as I examined it before, it was but ordinary gray granite.


    Then I notice something. In the surface of the stone I start to discern outlines of something superfluous. As if the stone really was a sealed sarcophagus with no joints. With somebody¡¯s remains in there. But it was somehow different. All of the stone was made of moonlight now, even the sides not directly illuminated by the moon. I look at you approaching the stone and reaching your hand out to it. A moment later a shudder goes though my heart as something grabs your hand and uses it to support itself.


    A male figure steps out of the stone. Taller than you, perhaps even taller than me. Your shade directs the figure towards the altar where you are still lying. Your shade hugs the male figure once more and then approaches the stone again, stepping into it and seemingly becoming one with it.


    By the altar, the male figure bends over you and¡­ I can see him sucking your misty figure inside himself! I scream loudly. The scene having burnt into my mind for all eternity as was your last breath accompanying the process.


    The figure, which had grown more definite by absorbing you is jolted. It raises its head and looks at me with a blank space where a face should have been. It stares at me for a few seconds and then starts moving towards me. I retreat slowly over the broken rows of pews, seeing how the block of stone in the back is no longer made of moonlight, it is back to being ordinary rock. The male figure approaching me is now morphing. It is becoming smaller yet more definite, finally attaining the outline of a female figure. Your figure. The next moment I stumble and fall on my back. I clearly see the figure step out of the moonlight and into the shadows of the church walls. It is corporeal! Her face is clearly Your face but the eyes are black and alien. A few more steps into the darker shadows of the walls and then in a silent agony, she silently disappears.


    I use the soaked wooden pews to support myself as I get up. The church is empty. As if nothing had ever happened here. As if everything I just saw was mere phantasm and a dream. I rush towards the altar once more. I step towards the stone and raise my head to look at the hole in the ceiling through which the Moon is visible. An ordinary Moon, just as I can remember it from my childhood. Nothing inordinately bright or mysterious. Whatever happened here, it has now ended. You are lost to me. Again.


    I fall on my knees with tears, crying. I don¡¯t know what to do next. I have lost You again.


    *


    I do not want to wake from this. I do not want to awaken into a world where I have to experience it again. I don¡¯t want to awaken into a world from where I might awaken yet again to experience it all again. I can change nothing. Time and time again, I come to look for you, whether I want to or not. Whether I am acting by virtue of my conscious mind or not, I find myself here again and again.


    I don¡¯t know if your words carried any meaning or not. I don¡¯t know whether I am closer to You or not. Whether everything I saw was real or just a bout of madness. Whether the secret knowledge now haunting me is real or but madness. I don¡¯t want to know. I will keep looking for You. Forever. Until I find You. Or it dooms me.

 XVII - Object 47

    A telephone made of black bakelite rang out in the dead of night.


    The phone on the night stand rang out again. This time somebody started to move in the bed next to it and then reach out their hand to find a light switch next to the telephone. The few dozen watts used by the incandescent bulb were plenty for a light which initially only blinded. The light reflected off the surface of the black bakelite and cast the whole bedroom in dirty yellow tones.


    Before the phone rang again, a hairy arm reach out to lift the receiver.


    ¡°Do you have any idea what time it is?!¡± an upset yet sleepy voice asked.


    The hand moved the phone on the nightstand to reveal a small mechanical clock with a thick glass pane covering the dial. The clock was showing the third morning hour.


    ¡°Comrade major general.¡± A diplomatic voice in the phone said. ¡°Code: red epsilon.¡±


    ¡°Red epsilon?¡± the anger in the voice was gone at a moment¡¯s notice.


    ¡°Red epsilon confirmed.¡± The voice in the phone repeated. ¡°A car has bee dispatched.¡±


    The phone call terminated. The man in the bed threw the blanket off and got up. He stepped towards the uniform hanging on a coat hook next to the door and started dressing. Only a few minutes later he was pulling on his boots and then stood before the mirror to finish buttoning up the overcoat.


    He put on the uniform cap and then grabbed a small bottle of pepper vodka and a glass which stood beside the mirror. He filled the glass with vodka and drank it. He then examined his reflection in the half-lit room. Gray beard a few days old, graying hair visible from under the cap, a big nose and small eyes close together, the cap sitting on top of a high forehead. He filled the glass again and downed it. In the middle of the night, pepper vodka was a better than any coffee for dispelling any sleepiness.


    ¡°Major general Anatoly Volkov. Commander of the 47. secret base with special subordination. 12<sup>th</sup> main directorate. This is your day.¡± He sighed.


    Anatoly Volkov was an experienced officer. His father had been a polkovnik of Red Army in the Great Patriotic War, his grandfather had been an officer in the czarist army. And now him as the final link in this glorious chain. Having sat here for six years now, having accepted the rank of major general and taken a post in a rear base at some irrelevant republic and turned his back on any chances for a glorious service in Afganistan.


    Somebody up high in the defense ministry of the Soviet Union had put their eye on him. Somebody has chosen him and made him an offer that he could not refuse. To head a secret base with experimental aims numbered 47, hidden under the direct purview of the 12<sup>th</sup> main directorate. A base the activities of which stymied even the scientists in their white overcoats, never mind the military officers or people in Moscow. To risk dying of liver disease in a couple of decades in utter oblivion in the name of a chance that should the mad academics not blow the base up and come up with something truly useful, he could have a promotion skipping several steps to becoming not only a general, but a general with actual power and influence.


    He turned his attention to the dark window in the bedroom, behind which a rainstorm was beating down. Despite the wind and rain he could see the glass panes shudder when on the other side of the window and behind and black hedge row, a convoy meant for him approached along a potholed village road.


    He shut off the lights and walked through the empty and sparsely furnished house, which looked almost unused. He opened the wooden front door and stood on the front porch under the asbestos fiber cement roof in front of the small brick building. There were street lights outside but strangely, they did not offer much illumination, as if all of it diffused into the darkness barely after leaving the mercury vapor bulbs. He did however see how three willys-type military vehicles made in the Ulyanovsky car factory had stopped right before a little paved path from the front door to the street. Out of the three, the front and rear ones had canvas roofs while the middle one had a metal roof.


    One of the doors of the middle vehicle with the metal roof opened and a soldier emerged, producing an umbrella. He opened it and then walked towards the cottage along the paved path.


    ¡°Comrade major general!¡± the soldier saluted him. ¡°We have code red epsilon. Your presence is required!¡±


    ¡°Do you know what is the cause of the alarm?¡± Volkov asked.


    ¡°The base sent a message that red epsilon has been born. That is all.¡±


    ¡°Very well.¡±


    Volkov sighed and followed the sergeant to the vehicle, keeping under the umbrella the soldier held for him. It seemed to be a special model because it was hardly influenced by the rain and the strong gusts of wind. He got into the front seat of the car. The sergeant closed the umbrella and got onto the narrow back seat. As soon as he had closed the door, the convoy started moving towards the various checkpoints that needed to be crossed to exit the Officers¡¯ Village. The village that was carefully hidden between the forests and additionally protected by minefields looking like nondescript grazing fields.


    Six years had he stayed here. This was only a little less than the Officer¡¯s Village here had in age. To be honest, suffering for a quarter of a century in a forgotten military base was not the only danger to doom his future. In the middle of the previous decade, the Officers Village had been to the North of here, closer to that nameless town. But then something happened. A base had produced the initial research, Agroprom had verified that all looked good, but the test fields next to the old Officers¡¯ Village were a disaster. The plants became extremely toxic, winds carried the toxic clouds into the Officers¡¯ Village and before becoming inert, poisoned some of the higher officers and the liquidator squads sent to burn everything away.


    Containing the event locally did not succeed and it is still talked about as the Death Field Incident. The officially propagated story was that the compounds usually found in the rocket fuels entered biological processes and accumulated. But in reality, nobody knows what caused it or who is to blame. It is only known that the problem originated right here, from the 47<sup>th</sup> secret base. A file he had seen once labeled black gamma. The word black indicating that the experiment process has exited the base and info on local testing is allowed to be discussed in print.


    Soon the convoy reached the first pair of gates, occluded by a two-story gate building. On a parking lot near the building 4 tanks stood ready for action, likewise there were heavy machine gun nests on the edges of the building for the 14.5 millimeter KPVs.


    The convoy stopped at the gates and familiar security protocols were carried out. All vehicles were examined with bright flashlights, undersides of all vehicles were checked and of course the paperwork, which became soaked in heavy raindrops as soon as Volkov opened the door. Soon, the cars continued on the twisting road towards the next checkpoint. That had even more rigorous security, including identity verification and tanks running 24/7, treating any approaching vehicles from either side of the gate as possible threats. The tank turrets were only turned away for a brief moment when the all-clear was issued and they were allowed to pass.


    According to the official paperwork, the security forces in the Officers¡¯ Village and the nearby mechanized infantry battalion was subordinated to him. But in reality, he, despite nominally being the commanding officer of Object 47 had never even once managed to issue an order to any soldier here or guarding the Village. It was obvious that they were subordinated to a different unit of the 12<sup>th</sup> main directorate with a different command structure.


    Major general Volkov looked outside the side window, trying to glimpse the roadside trees. After clearing the second gate they were finally outside the Officer¡¯s Village and the local garrison and now heading towards the base.


    There were things in the night. And the bases and roads built here were uninvited guests in this world where the nights were cold and dark. Not even on Siberian nuclear test sites had he encountered a world as hostile as this. He could not even explain what shape this hostility took, but everybody felt it, starting from the lowly recruits and ending with him. A heavy feeling of pressure weight on him. The darkness of the night and the weight of the rain, irreverent of fire and the electric light. The Forbidden Forest next to the base, the black forests around the Officers¡¯ Village which looked like each night they got closer to the village. Stepping onto the mines and ripping buildings apart with their roots. An Unknowable Land, as men and vehicles sent there never returned. And even in carbon night, one could still sense the direction of the Nameless Town reminding them that what they were dealing with here was not exactly a typical corner of the world.


    The Death Fields¡¯ Incident was not the first or the last event in the endless archives of the base. If nothing else then these archives at least made one think why exactly had this place been so important to conquer and hold for the past 800 years. The importance of this place could even be considered desperate if one were to consider the past 300 years. And it had been even more important to keep the value of this place secret from the mundane world. Von Schwann only concentrated the forces hidden in here, he created the foundations that others later built on. Including the great Union of Socialist Soviet Republics which had made prominent advances in this field when compared to both the imperialists and fascists.


    Outside the car window the faint lights on the lead vehicle started to illuminate the fields by the Cottage Raion. This was the last settlement to cross before they reached the base. A sleepy cottage district filled with locals where nothing seemed to change. The locals were a strange folk all of their own. The did not sense the endless darkness of the night nor the haunting frost. They were not afraid to get lost in the night and ending up dead by morning. Not even the Forbidden Forest nor the Nameless Town was something particularly special or threatening to them. They just were. Part of a corner of a world they had lived with since childhood. Which they had learned to live with. Perhaps that was the reason they were not scared of the nights here. That may have been the reason they did not need armed convoys and powerful spotlights cutting into the darkness to do things in the night.


    But them, the soldiers, their bases and research institutes, were strangers. Forcefully scattered here. And it could be felt. It could be felt how this place continuously alienated them. How the nature here was at best tolerating the wounds cut into it and not without scorn.


    How was is possible that a location had such a strong spirit? What had happened here? What had the von Schwanns and their physical and spiritual descendants done here that it twisted this corner of the world into such a misshapen abhorrence? The base had an entire faculty dedicated to researching the history of the town and the Institute and despite hundred of volumes, help and resources from the Institute itself and a fully reconstructed timeline, it was still impossible to answer what had happened.


    The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    Whether anything had happened at all. Locations and named changed but the nature remained the same. People, the Institute and all the unexplainable mysteries of the world remained the same. This corner of the world traversed history, it had done that for centuries, yet at a surface glance, hardly anything had changed.


    On such short yet long drives to the base or to the village, especially in dark nights like this when the grass on the fields and on the side of the road took on a layer of white frost, Volkov sometimes started to doubt whether the rest of the world, the world outside the town and the surrounding area, even existed at all.


    Radio connection with the other bases was impossible to establish, the best they could achieve was one or two seconds of connection despite the massive amounts of RF power poured into the air. Even local short-wave radio was affected, allowing few hundred meters of range at best. And copper cables which had taken considerable manpower to lay down, either spontaneously tore apart or were chewed through by unknown forest critters nobody had ever seen nor heard.


    Rides just like this when no passenger said a word. Even the radio transceivers put into the cars stayed silent or were filled with white noise. When no trouble occurred and on the sides of the road one could often see flashed of lone pairs of eyes one could not classify as human or animal. On nights like these, Volkov felt that he himself as well other Soviet citizens who had come here were now trapped here, as if in a bog. And even if they managed to get out and leave this place, then they would be leaving it as something lesser than they had been when they arrived. They left for a world that was colder and more distant, a world which was less than the world they had come from. This here was a Borderland. A Zone.


    The convoy stopped at a rusty gate on a wide gravel road bordering the Forbidden Forest. From the right window, he could see the trees of the Forbidden Forest, while from the driver side window, there was a concrete fence and the trees of the Southern Forest where no man had gone to for a long time now. And even if anybody had, none had returned. The full power high beams of the Russian willys vehicle diffused before they reached even the barely visible tail lights of the vehicle right in front of them. Likewise, did the full power lights of the front vehicle barely illuminate the gate and chain link right in front of it.


    Guard in a rain slicker examined the soaked paperwork and then signaled the guard post to open the gates and switch on the spotlight on top of the gate.


    Volkov already knew the road ahead. In this this carrion darkness one could only imagine how the road turned into an incline 500 meters ahead, and then reached the blast doors of the underground shelter and embedded machine gun nests on either side of the massive doors. The darkness did also not reveal the massive field of concrete slabs. Bordered by steel towers with powerful gas discharge spotlights. This was the landing field for helicopters along with hidden elevators into the underground hangars. Also, on the border of the Southern Forest, there was another incline into the underground tank base. Further in the east there was a small artificial lake created from pumping the surface water out from the lower levels of the base.


    Supposedly, major general Volkov was a commander of this base, yet many key parameters of the base were being kept secret from him. This included the details on the scientific and technical personnel, number and list of the research departments, even the full area of the base, number of sub-levels or even depth. Also electrical and other technical specifications. Only means to ascertain the extent or activities of the base was either to look into the documents kept by the history department or to wait until a research department had something to show, so he could be present and confirm that something had indeed been achieved. Or when another incident takes place. Usually, incidents revealed more than achievements, because the reports on those were also understandable to non-technical people.


    The convoy rode deep into the underground base and stopped in gigantic motorpool.


    ¡°Major general.¡± A man with polkovnik shoulder boards smiled, as he opened the front passenger door of the willys.


    ¡°You had something to show me?¡± Volkov asked.


    ¡°Follow me, please.¡±


    As major general Volkov followed the nameless polkovnik, he had time to examine the motor pool yet again. It seemed to be about ten meters tall, and shaped like a circle, with a radius of at least a hundred meters. In he center of the area, there was a circular section which contained the main staircase, the elevators as well as the guard post, gate controls and other facilities. The open area was divided up into nine or ten sectors, some for storing military vehicles, others for repairs, and one for guests, as this one also contained non-military vehicles like KGB spec limousines for high ranking members and guests as well as black Volgas to serve as motorcade vehicles.


    They stepped into one of the elevators and as the elevator doors closed, the polkovnik removed a key hanging around his neck and opened a special panel next to the door, revealing a panel of several locks. Volkov could count at least 20 of them. The man put a key to one of the locks and turned it, after which the elevator started to descend at a rapid pace.


    ¡°Where are we going?¡± Volkov asked.


    ¡°That¡¯s classified.¡± The polkovnik said.


    He only smiled at Volkov, giving him an eerie feeling with his round face with no a hair on it, other than faint gray sideburns.


    ¡°I as a long-term commander of this base demand that you tell me where we are going!¡± He now said with militarist demeanor.


    ¡°You are not understanding me.¡± The polkovnik replied. ¡°You are the commander of the surround base, but not the commander of object 47, which is surrounded by the base. Your assignment is to ensure the continued secrecy of the object and to reports its findings to Moscow.¡±


    ¡°Who is the commander of object 47?¡±


    ¡°Object 47 is an autonomous object. You are not subject to any other info beyond this detail. Just as a side note: threatening me or demanding things will not be of any help to you.¡±


    The elevator started to slow down and finally stopped. The doors opened and Volkov stepped into a narrow hallway with metal walls and ceiling. Temporary power lines and few lights were attached to the walls. At the end of the hallway, he could see somebody on a ladder, welding something on the ceiling.


    They walked along the main hallway, passing several adjoining hallways which looked almost identical to the main corridor. Same sections of steel making up the tunnels, same wiring, even same diffused illumination with a greenish yellow tint. Finally the polkovnik stopped in front of an adjacent hallway to the left. This one was different as there were two soldiers with assault rifles stationed there. Beyond the soldiers, there were several layers of thick plastic curtains.


    ¡°This way, comrade.¡± The polkovnik said.


    Volkov stepped past the soldiers and parted the plastic drapes. He stepped in and headed towards the next pair, followed by yet another one. Beyond that last pair, the tunnel ended. There were no steel sections here, only a large circular room of stone, which looked like it had been explosively excavated. Steel beams and trusses supported the walls and the ceiling and in the middle of the room, there was a male figure in a white lab coat bent over some racked scientific equipment.


    He raised his gaze towards the ceiling almost 3 meters high. There was a large circular metal frame about 7 meters across on the ceiling, with an uncountable number or thick wires connected to said frame, running down the walls and disappearing into the stone floor. The frame acted as a support for three pitch black spheres, resting on the frame and against each other, rolling around on it. Each sphere seemed to be smaller in diameter than the steel ring, but because there were three of them, trying to get through at once, all they could do is bunch up and roll around in the opening.


    There was something curious though. As he looked at the spheres rolling, there was no sound. Neither could he tell, whether the three spheres were rolling clockwise or counter-clockwise. At one moment he thought they were clockwise, the other moment, its seemed the opposite. Honestly, he could not even tell if these spheres were physical or corporeal at all, they looked just within reach, parts of them was clearly lower than the steel circle on which they rolled, yet he could only see the outline of each sphere, he could not make any guesses as to the material of the spheres or where their edge was. They did not look like three-dimensional objects, rather like something that was drawn for an animated cartoon.


    There were also faint multi-colored sparks, seemingly created from the spheres rubbing against each other. These sparks fell downwards but always faded before reaching the room underneath the spheres.


    Volkov raised his hand in order to try and touch the spheres, but he could not reach.


    ¡°That is inadvisable.¡± A voice said.


    Major general lowered his hand and his gaze, looking at the old man with gray hair reaching his shoulders. He had a similar mysterious smiles as did the polkovnik.


    ¡°Professor Joonas.¡± The man reached out with a bony hand, looking at Volkov over his thick glasses.


    ¡°Major general Volkov.¡± He replied, shaking the professor¡¯s hand. ¡°Why is it inadvisable? Is it dangerous?¡±


    ¡°Oh no.¡± The professor replied. ¡°Well, we don¡¯t know yet. But you have no hope of touching it, no matter how much you may try. These spheres may seem like they are there, but they are not.¡±


    ¡°What do you mean by that?¡± Volkov asked.


    ¡°Allow me to show you.¡±


    Professor Jonas set an empty vodka bottle on the floor and put a large Chinese firework rocket with a guide stick into it.


    ¡°Are you insane!?¡± Volkov protested, looking at the professor bending over to alight the rocket. ¡°It will bounce off the ceiling and explode in this very room!¡±


    ¡°Please trust me.¡± The professor replied.


    He lit a match and used it to ignite the fuse, then retreating with quick steps.


    The fuse burned up and the rocked headed towards the ceiling, but instead of bouncing off the ceiling and creating a chaos in the room, the rocked flew through the ceiling and headed towards the spheres finally disappearing from sight. When the rocket finally disappeared from sight, he could swear again that the spheres were slowly rotating and rolling on the metal circle and were not some backdrop to it.


    The next moment, the firework exploded in silence, filling the black space beyond the metal circle with a massive multicolored display. When it faded, it looked as if the spheres rolling on the frame were again just about close enough to touch.


    ¡°Okay.¡± Volkov said, having calmed down. ¡°What is it?¡±


    ¡°We don¡¯t know.¡± The professor said as he shrugged. ¡°The best theory until now has been that it is some sort of gate or a window. But a window to where, that we do not know.¡±


    ¡°How is it possible that this window does not suck the air or us into it?¡±


    ¡°We have contemplated that question.¡± The professor said. ¡°Our theory is that it is not space in the conventional sense. Our world is three-dimensional. It has length, height and depth. The world you see up there has more dimensions. We only see it because photons are photons, they don¡¯t care about the number of dimensions.¡±


    ¡°Yes. But what is it?¡±


    ¡°Comrade, I am an honest man.¡± The professor said. ¡°If I say I have no idea, then I have no idea. I say it is an accident. It is an aperture in space-time which should have never happened. We don¡¯t know what goes beyond this window, whether one can go there or survive the experience. We don¡¯t even know how it happened. From our side it is only a 200 megawatt window.¡±


    ¡°A two hundred¡­ megawatt?¡± Volkov asked.


    ¡°Yes.¡± Professor Jonas nodded. ¡°It may sound like a big number, but the reactors at the bottom of the object...¡± he suddenly fell silent, realizing that he had revealed some classified information.


    ¡°I would like to think that this is the mechanism behind the world. That¡¯s what the Universe really looks like. These are the building blocks of a space that curves in a straight line. These are not of the same matter as we are. These are not even the same space as we are. The fact that the rocket reached in there and successfully exploded does not mean that the natural laws in there would not be dissimilar to what they are here. As it was found in a simple and yet specific manner like this, I hazard to guess it is a temple.¡±


    ¡°A temple?¡±


    ¡°A temple.¡± The professor repeated. ¡°A temple where all spatial beings come together for worship. A temple where all sentient beings in the universe come together to pray towards their common cosmic powers, their cosmic gods.¡±


    ¡°You do know that the Soviet people is an atheist people and is sufficiently enlightened by the scientific and technical progress to be able to disregard the lies of religion and the myth of god?¡± Volkov asked.


    ¡°Soviet people do not recognize Christianity or the Muhammad religion.¡± The professor said has he raised his finger and regarded Volkov over his glasses. ¡°But if it disregards cosmic forces and gods, who undoubtedly have themselves personally touched this place and general area, then it is more blind than Christians and Muslims combined.¡±


    ¡°Do you really think that I would believe that there exist some kind of gods that float in open space between the stars and play their own games?¡±


    ¡°Why not?¡± The professor asked. ¡°Finding this window was no coincidence. It is even possible that this chamber here is no coincide. Somebody has created it. And this somebody had to precede us.¡±


    ¡°And how do you imagine me reporting to Moscow of all this?¡± Volkov asked. ¡°That gods exist!? That extra-terrestrials exist?! That both have visited and touched this corner of land? I¡¯ll be laughed out of the army and sent to the psychiatric clinic!¡±


    ¡°That is entirely your problem!¡± The polkovnik said sternly as he stepped into the chamber. ¡°Your assignment is to report our discoveries and findings to Moscow, especially the unofficial ones. It is up to you to what extent and how honestly you fulfill your duties. Maybe now you understand why the secrecy of this object is so important. On one side, the information found here is so unbelievable that for a layman, it lies far beyond fiction and schizophrenia. On the other hand, we cannot allow a single unrelated person running around disseminating this classified information, no matter how unbelievable or schizophrenic it may be. Your little visit in out object is over, comrade! Please come with me!¡±


    ¡°I still have many questions.¡± Volkov said. ¡°You cannot force me to leave!¡±


    ¡°We all have questions.¡± The polkovnik said. ¡°Questions which are never answered because they are too stupid to understand the real answers. We all have a lot of work to do. You have two options: to come with me voluntarily or to wake up in your own bed, not knowing whether all this has been a dream or a reality.¡±


    The major general emitted a deep sigh, took a last look at the spheres rolling around above his head and followed the polkovnik into the dim metal hallway.


    ¡°One little remark if I may.¡± The polkovnik said as they walked back towards the elevator. ¡°If what you just saw starts to appear in your nightmares, please let the medical personnel in the base know. They know what to do.¡±

 XVIII - a Moved Lake

    ¡°Do you know, whats going on?¡± Mariann asked, as she attached the lens to her camera.


    ¡°No.¡± Jaan replied.


    He adjusted the glasses on his nose and turned off the circular road towards the South, onto a road which took them past the Cottage District and terminated in the Underground base.


    ¡°I only know that the mayor came, out of breath and insisted that everybody is needed in the forest, as something has happened. ¡°Everybody¡± would mean people who have something to say or note, but also people who do not.¡±


    ¡°I can see that.¡± Mariann sighed. ¡°The village hags have taken their bicycles and are also heading towards the forest.¡±


    She looked a the two old women in thick coats unsteadily riding their bikes on the edge of the road being unable to maintain a straight line.


    ¡°Really?¡±


    Jaan asked and slowed down to see Village Hags no 4 and 6 biking onward with no regard for the rest of the world. The only accompanying sound being heavy breathing and the metal mudguard flapping against the tire.


    ¡°I never imagined these people would still be able to ride bicycles.¡± He said.


    ¡°Why would you think they cannot?¡± Mariann smiled. ¡°Even I could if really need be. Anyway shouldn¡¯t the Northern Boys take point in this investigation?¡±


    ¡°I think they are. But as the Mayor said that he found a body, the Agents from the North will probably use the services of doctor Sare.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯d be surprised if that turns out to be true.¡± The girl said. ¡°These guys have plenty of resources. More than plenty. We should hurry.¡±


    ¡°Are you afraid to miss out on all the interesting bits?¡±


    ¡°I am afraid that if stuff gets interesting, they will surround the forest and two days later, no sign remains that a single blade of grass was bent in the wrong direction nor a single branch was broken.¡±


    ¡°Sound paranoid.¡± Jaan said.


    ¡°I am already expecting a parade of finned vehicles black and chrome sitting on the side of the road, revealing how correct I really am.¡± She replied.


    ¡°The Mayor said that we can get right by the forest with the car.¡± Jaan said.


    ¡°No we cannot.¡± Mariann replied, lifting her left foot on the dash.


    ¡°You cannot get near Forbidden Forest by car. There is no direction this is possible. The side bordering the base is mined, in the north, there is the Devil¡¯s Bog, and here in the East there are the disused and possibly poisonous fields. People have got stuck here with tracked tractors even in dry summers.¡±


    ¡°You can if you go by the railroad.¡± Jaan said.


    ¡°The railroad?¡± Mariann asked. ¡°You mean the crossing? That¡¯s just a pair of rails in asphalt. It does not come from somewhere, neither does it go anywhere. There isn¡¯t even a proper railway dam.¡±


    ¡°Not the crossing. The railroad. See? Straight ahead.¡± Jaan said.


    The car rolled over the rails left in the pavement for some unknown reason, to stop not half a kilometer away by the railroad and railroad dam heading across the fields and the road. Right by a steel pole covered in rust stains. Some time in the past, there had probably been some kind of a traffic sign attached to it.


    ¡°See? The road.¡± Jaan pointed out of the side window. ¡°It is barely visible in this tall grass, but these are the tracks for wheels. And over there that black Imperial is driving.¡±


    True to his words, the black car was slowly traveling in the tall grass, seemingly without rolling over any of it. But it did rock on the uneven surface so there was definitely a path for cars there. He reversed a bit and directed his almost six meter long dark green vehicle onto a field road covered in tall grass of dull yellow color.


    ¡°Something is very wrong.¡± Mariann said. ¡°I don¡¯t like it at all. This road should not be here. This railway should not be here. I know every square foot of land in this area and I can say that something is very wrong.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t agree.¡± Jaan said. ¡°Your suspicions regarding the world around us have proven true in the past though. We can stop and investigate it.¡±


    ¡°No.¡± Mariann shook her head and then pushed her hair away from her face. ¡°After we have finished in the forest. Not now.¡±


    ¡°Okay.¡±


    The field track was suddenly replaced with gravel tracks with a line of green grass in the center. It continued between the fields for several dozen meters and then disappeared behind the forest with a wide turn. As they reached the patch of trees, a big open area full of tall grass was revealed, cutting the road in two. On the left there stood the Mayor¡¯s willys with the tent roof from the Ulyanovsky factory and a black Imperial, the bright red tail lights of which suddenly shut off.


    On the right however there were five black cars, each clearly with a different styling for the tail fins, yet of the same general proportions and body style. Paint and the chrome embellishments on all vehicles were flawless, as if the cars had just now rolled off the assembly line. There were no signs that the cars had driven down the same forest road, or even seen gravel dust for that matter. The side of the black Imperial was covered in fine gravel dust, but none of that on those five black cars.


    ¡°Disturbing.¡± Mariann uttered. ¡°Five cars. So many black cars with tail fins makes me really uncomfortable. And this black Imperial is also of no help.¡±


    ¡°Your suspicions regarding cars with tail fins almost remind me of the villagers.¡± Jaan said.


    ¡°Maybe the villagers are also noticing things you are not?¡±


    Mariann started to open the door when she noticed an old ambulance with red rotating beacons. It was clearly visible to be from the same era as the black cars of the Northern Boys as it had two fins at the rear with 2 tail lights shaped like jet flames on either fin.


    The lights shut off and then the driver door opened. Out of it emerged doctor Sare¡¯s silent assistant who always smiled, wearing blood red stiletto pumps, which were more fitting to city streets than a swampy forest. In addition to the bright red shoes, she also had a short and shear lab coat which hugged her figure and lips painted in the same color as her shoes. Her ebon black hair had a slight wave to it and carried a faint ashy red tone, there was also a thick white ribbon tied into her hair with a red cross on it.


    She hauled a dark brown doctor¡¯s bag of massive size out of the car and shut the door, starting towards the forest. Despite the bag¡¯s huge size compared to her figure, she had no trouble carrying it, as if it was a styrofoam prop. And also did she manage to not have her heels sink into the ground.


    ¡°I hope you noticed that?¡± Mariann said, getting out of the car and looking at him over the roof.


    ¡°What exactly?¡± them man asked.


    ¡°So you did not notice how a woman in stiletto heels carried a heavy suitcase towards the forest?¡± the girl in black asked.


    She grabbed her camera and sack from the front seat of the car, set the bag over her shoulder and chest and lifted the camera, uncovering the lens.


    ¡°Yeah! Now that¡¯s a car!¡± The balding doctor said as he got out of the white ambulance. ¡°1959 Miller-Meteor. They really knew how to build cars back then! Compared to that, modern cars are like shit on a shingle!¡±


    Mariann paid no attention to him. The doctor was unfazed about that, he took a strong swig from his flask, and walked around the car, only now noticing his old friend.


    ¡°Oh, hello Jaan! You were also summoned?¡±


    ¡°Of course.¡± Jaan replied. ¡°It seems like everybody got summoned, every last Boy from the North. The Village Hags are coming on their bicycles, even the Village Dude is here, with his SUV the size of a sauna.¡±


    He glanced ahead, to see a gray vehicle sitting beside the road, comparative in size to old Soviet medium trucks.


    ¡°Yeah, there¡¯s plenty of that fucking...¡± doctor Sare rubbed his nose, ¡°...rabble here. These Officials from the North were supposed to take control of the situation but when the Mayor invites half the town to take a look, even they are powerless.¡±


    He took a look her assistant standing further by the trees, waiting and still smiling. On her high heels she was noticeably taller than the doctor with his slight stoop.


    ¡°My dear colleague is waiting so¡­ shall we go?¡±


    ¡°I still have to wait for my¡­ colleague.¡± Jaan said.


    ¡°That girl is your colleague?¡± the doctor asked in a surprised voice. ¡°I thought she was a journalist. Snapping pictures of my ambulance, of the Northern agents¡¯ cars, event the dirt road here. She even wanted to talk to Teet Metsla in private in my hospital.¡±


    ¡°There aren¡¯t many journalists in this area, nor are there?¡± Jaan said.


    ¡°Perhaps.¡± The doctor shrugged. ¡°I don¡¯t have much time to look around in this place.¡± He gave a small smile. ¡°There is just too much to be done. Last night a young man escaped. Again. We found him wandering on the side of the road. I have no god damn idea how he manages to escape his cell.¡±


    Mariann continued slowly towards the gray off-roader owned by the Village Dude, which had a blue oval on the egg crate grille of faded peeling plastic chrome. Te car sat on massive mud tires, each of which almost reached her hip. The car dotted with rust was not too important, but the forest behind it was. And now she could see that she had been correct. Back then, in the car, when they reached the second crossing. The road on the side of the forest they were parked along, it did not go anywhere.


    The tracks of packed sand worn into the earth by wheels and dark gravel along with the grass taking root between the wheel paths ended further in the distance near and even under the trees. There was no way the forest has grown this fast and torn apart the road. And there was no way to build a road without disturbing the roots of the tall trees or compromising either the strength of the road, of the root structure of the trees. The best she compare it to was that somebody had cut a road from somewhere else, pasted it here, and then tried to smudge over the edges of the cut with barely any skill.


    She turned around and rushed back to the clearing in the other direction, where cars were still pouring into.


    ¡°I was right.¡± She said as she walked next to the professor, a few steps behind the doctor and his lovely escort towards the blackened woods.


    ¡°This road should not have been here. It has been pasted here like part of a collage.¡±


    Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.


    ¡°How is that even possible?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°It isn¡¯t.¡± The girl smiled.


    The continued slowly and silently and she felt something change. All green plants were suddenly gone from their surroundings. No bush not even a blade of grass, only a black forest floor, full of dry needles and branches. There was also no sound other than people stepping on dried twigs and branches or pushing some lower plants who were strangely still living, away from their path. There were no birds singing or making other sounds. No bugs flying nor forest beasts prowling. Even people did not talk among themselves. As if everybody was somehow enchanted by the black tree trunks and the forest floor in the woods of deathly silence.


    Now walking on the packed forest floor, it felt much darker and more ominous than it had seemed on the side of the forest under the open sky. The tree canopy high above their heads did not completely obscure the skies but there still ebbed a feeling that the forest was a separate world to its own. Divorced from the gray sky and the clearing they had come from. Darker, more dangerous. Full of low dried up firs which had long since starved under the bigger trees and now stood as skeletal sentries. Reminding anybody that if one stayed in the Forbidden Forest for too long, one was liable to join it.


    It seemed that somebody had already become part of the forest. In a distance, off to the right from their path, a villager with a moth-eaten long-sleeved top and loose suspenders was trying to remain hidden behind a fallen log. It was impossible to tell why he was trying to play hide and seek like that as he had a perfect opportunity to disappear among the various invited and uninvited onlookers the forest was now full of.


    Mariann followed the man hiding behind trunks and stumps with her gaze for a long time. Sometimes he even tried to hide behind the dried young firs. Finally he stood next to a small pine which allowed the girl in black to pay more attention to him.


    He was of average height with a stout body and wide shoulders. He was wearing a dirty grayish brown moth-eaten knotted top, with plenty of holes everywhere. Dark green cargo pants with suspenders and dark wellingtons. The suspenders were off his shoulder and hanging around knee level. His matted beard and hair was as if a circle around the bald top of the head. His face was burnt from the sunlight and dark eyes were sunken in. His nose the size of a fist and bloated face indicated some heavy and prolonged alcohol use. At the same he was not fat, rather the top was loosely hanging down his shoulders as if on a clothes hanger.


    ¡°Mariann.¡±


    She turned her gaze towards the voice and then quickened her pace to catch up with the people. Now, she also noticed another thing arousing he suspicions. The thick woods were quickly replaced with a sparser forest, which although still dark, offered plenty of light for the ferns and lowed bushes. A bit further away, between tall ferns and low cinnamon roses there stood Jaan and the doctor among a large circle of other onlookers, surrounding something.


    At the same time, nobody but Mariann seemed to notice how the unearthly attractive assistant of the doctor had raised one leg and was now balancing the doctor¡¯s bag on it, looking for something in the suitcase. Still wearing those red stiletto pumps.


    The thing the people were surrounding was a half-carbonized and barely human-shaped mass of flesh. Dr Sare took a sharp medical instrument his assistant was handing him and plunged it deep into the body of the deceased.


    ¡°Yeah. There¡¯s nothing for me to do here.¡± The doctor said. ¡°He¡¯s done.¡±


    ¡°So completely cooked through?¡± Mariann asked.


    ¡°Yep.¡± The doctor smiled. ¡°deep inside, he¡¯s still warm.¡±


    ¡°I did not need to know that!¡± Jaan said with disgust in his voice.


    ¡°So that¡¯s why you did not come to Yuryev to learn medicine with the rest of us.¡± The doctor said, he had his silent assistant support him as he got up. ¡°You could not keep medicine down.¡±


    ¡°Let me think: pack it up and to the Institute?¡± Mariann asked.


    ¡°Exactly my idea!¡± the doctor remarked. ¡°The medical corps of the Institute has way more room to autopsy this poor thing than my hospital!¡±


    ¡°Does anybody¡­ have any idea what happened¡­ to this poor man?¡± the Mayor asked in a hoarse voice, rivers of sweat pouring down his face, having soaked half his shirt.


    Obviously he had used his huge beer belly to make way for himself and easily reached the body.


    ¡°Perhaps spontaneous combustion of the human body?¡± the Mayor asked.


    ¡°Sure, most definitely.¡± The doctor said in a sarcastic voice. However the mumbling in the crowd signified that almost nobody really cared for his opinion.


    ¡°It cannot be spontaneous combustion.¡± A younger male voice said.


    ¡°Yes, agent Toomas.¡± The Mayor said. ¡°Why cannot it be that?¡±


    ¡°Because too much of the deceased remains.¡± The young man with green eyes replied.


    ¡°Let¡¯s leave aside all kinds of inane theories, shall we?¡± a man in a black suit, black fedora and long black overcoat said.


    Mariann immediately recognized him as the man with the black Imperial who had asked directions for the hotel.


    ¡°It must have an organic and scientifically falsifiable cause.¡± the man continued.


    ¡°Falsifiable?¡± the Mayor asked.


    ¡°Well, something that can be proven or disproven with a controlled experiment.¡±


    ¡°Oh.¡±


    ¡°We can move on.¡± Mariann said to the professor.


    ¡°You know what happened?¡± Jaan asked with interest.


    ¡°No. But I know why it happened. The forest lake. Come.¡±


    The girl in black stepped away from the throngs of people and approached the strange man who had previously tried to hide himself into the forest and still reminded her of yet another village drunk. One of those drunks who could not even recall their own name, let alone where they had worked or what they had been doing before their life as it was now.


    ¡°You should not be here.¡± She said.


    Her starting a conversation with him looked like a complete surprise to him.


    ¡°W-.. what?¡± he stuttered.


    ¡°If you keep attracting attention like that then they just might pack you up into the ambulance with the dead and no more will you see the sun.¡±


    She the stepped past him, completely disinterested if the man had anything to reply. She found a faintly visible trail and headed towards the dark woods once again. A direction with did not look like a direction or a trail at all, rather a wall of thick brush. Filled with nettles and hemlocks some over two meters tall, proud ferns and thistles signifying that the forest carried much more water starting here, but also to convince anybody that it was best to turn around.


    ¡°What was the point of that?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°Just a friendly warning, nothing else.¡± Mariann said, being silent for a few moments. ¡°I would not want him to be yet another person to listen to me playing my guitar.¡±


    ¡°Playing the guitar?¡± the professor asked.


    ¡°Yes. I¡¯m sure Sare told you that sometimes I visit the hospital to play for the patients. The doctor said that it seems to calm the patients almost as good as the sedatives.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s interesting. I had no idea. But Sare has always kept his personal methods for treatment a secret.¡±


    Mariann had pulled her hand into the sleeve and now used it to part a curtain of nettles to reveal a narrow cobblestone path, wandering between the nettles and seemed to end with a small bush.


    ¡°A trail?¡± the professor asked.


    ¡°Part of the village which had once been here.¡± The girl in black replied. ¡°They say that there are even ruins of an old church with a high dome hidden in the forest. Only revealed when the fog of the Forbidden Forest meets the light of the moon in a cloudless night. In other times it is but a foundation of moss-covered stone rarely anybody notices. And if they do then it is most doubtful they will be able to find it the second time.¡±


    ¡°I think I might have found the Forest Lake.¡± Jaan said, looking in a certain direction. ¡°Or, what is left of it by now.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, only now.¡± Mariann sighed. ¡°I hate the Forbidden Forest of the daytime. The distances and the flora are completely different. And seeing the ghosts attend their church is still better than to try and push through all these nettles.¡± She fell silent and smiled to herself. ¡°Some even claim that all these nettles, thistles, hemlocks and ferns are but ghosts frozen into plants due to sunlight. As soon as the Sun sets, they continue their business, with no awareness that there has been a pause during which creatures of a completely different kind have gone about their particular business.¡±


    ¡°You really want to return in the night?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°This is no longer the Forest Lake.¡± Mariann said, as she looked at the mud hole ahead which was surrounded by racks and racks of equipment, and all those Officials from the North whose cars they had found.


    ¡°I also no not recall that there was ever a tree in the middle of the Forest Lake.¡± Jaan said.


    The girl in black approached the mud hole. From the edge, it seemed to have a shape of a shallow funnel, with a bottom now full of shoe prints. With a diameter of at least 20 meters. In the middle of the mud hole there was a twisted tree with no foliage whatsoever and a trunk of carbon black color. The surface of that black trunk was covered in patches of soft bright green moss, a sign that the tree had been here like that for more than just a day. Ominously twisted trunk divided into five main branches which twisted towards the sky like a bony palm, ready to hold and support something very big. Those five branches extended so far that had the tree had any foliage, it would have most certainly extended to the edge of the mud hole. Some of the roots seems to twist out of the ground jutting in all sorts of direction creating wooden loops and nooses near the ground, before finding their way back into earth. Like a nest of snakes frozen in time and half-buried.


    Under and around the tree, the Officials from the North were busy with a variety of instruments. Some small enough to be hidden in the palm, others so big that it was unimaginable how these could be moved by one person. But all those devices had some common features, such as antennae coiled in spirals of various shapes and sizes. Also what looked like vacuum tubes of different shapes, sizes, colors and brightness. The last two aspects were carefully kept track of. Men in black stroller suits paid little attention to the muddy ground, walking around without much care and the shoe prints they left into the mud were rather shallow and did little to ruin the flawlessness of their wool trousers or spotless black shoes.


    Mariann moved closer to the mudhole, stepping into it with one foot but still keeping her weight on the other. She could immediately feel her leg sink. Far deeper than the couple of centimeters of the prints the men in black left behind. The whole mud had a consistency of oatmeal and she was pretty sure that if she really jumped in there, she would be hip deep in no time.


    This gave her another reason for a curious smile, as she pulled her leg back on solid ground, raised her camera and started documenting the activities of those officials in black.


    Jaan followed the edge of the mud crater until he reached one of the men in black who was standing closest to the edge. He was bent over a large device the size and shape of a cupboard, pushing the backlit buttons and switches and noted down onto his notepad the indications of various multi-colored vacuum tubes and dials.


    ¡°Hey! Hello!¡± He started. ¡°Can you tell, what is going on here?¡±


    ¡°An anomaly.¡± the man said without a glance at Jaan. Judging by his looks, he was about 30.


    ¡°An anonymy.¡± another man close by said, and also noted something down into his little leatherbound book.


    ¡°This should not be here.¡± The first man said. ¡°Something went wrong. There is a fault at the Center Station. The forest is not allowing the network an optimal function.¡±


    ¡°What does that mean?¡± the professor asked. ¡°Can you explain?¡±


    ¡°Explanation is irrelevant. The problem is not.¡±


    ¡°I could not have said it better myself.¡± Mariann said, now standing next to the professor.


    ¡°You know what¡¯s going on?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°Nope.¡± She replied. ¡°All I have are but ideas. But the fact that the Boys from the North are worried, shows a lot.¡±


    The man, bent over in front of the device which emitted a faint hum, raised his confused face for a moment before continuing making notes.


    ¡°Is it good or bad that they are worried?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°Both.¡± She smiled. ¡°At the same time.¡±


    She turned around to see the Mayor and the rest of the people finally making it to the mud hole and stopping before it to admire the tree. A moment later, two men in black emerged from the forest, carrying a huge tower of wooden cargo pallets. The set them down and started to create a path from the edge of the hole to the tree in the middle. It seemed like two pallets on top of each other offered enough of a buoyancy in the mud to carry few people.


    Dr. Sare and his assistant were first to approach the tree. The assistant again had no issues walking on the path made of pallets with her stiletto shoes. Mariann watched from the opposite side of the crates as she handed the doctor a small hatchet. She watched as the doctor approached the tree, first he slid his hand across the surface of it and then used the hatchet to put some cuts into the surface of the carbon trunk. Blood red liquid with a similar viscosity started to flow out of the cuts.


    ¡°The tree is bleeding! The tree is bleeding!¡± somebody in the crowd started to shout.


    ¡°Oh please! That is just stupid!¡± The doctor said, not really caring whether anybody heard him or not.


    Dr Sare wiped the thick red liquid off the tree with his finger and then tasted it. This made him frown and he told the assistant to gather some of the liquid into vials for further testing.


    ¡°What is happening here in my forest?!¡± The Mayor asked, as he slowly approached the doctor and the tree along the pallets which kept creaking and even buckling under his weight. ¡°What kind of tree is it? Why is it here? Why is it like that?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m a doctor, not a dendrologist!¡± Sare said with clear disgruntle in his voice. ¡°I don¡¯t know why it¡¯s here! But as a doctor, I can indeed say that it is bleeding.¡±


    ¡°Excuse me?¡± the Mayor asked. ¡°can you please repeat that?¡±


    ¡°The tree. Is bleeding.¡± The doctor uttered through closed teeth. It was evident that he did not like admitting it.


    From the crowd on the edge of the mud crater, cries about the tree bleeding started up again.


    ¡°What does this mean?¡± the Mayor asked again.


    His voice was now calmer and he kept stroking his untamed gray beard.


    Jaan gently grabbed Mariann¡¯s shoulder.


    ¡°You know what¡¯s going on, right? Why this tree is here?¡± He asked.


    ¡°No. But I have some ideas.¡± She replied. ¡°Come. There nothing else we can do here.¡±


    ¡°What kind of ideas?¡± The Professor asked. ¡°Because I still have no idea. The mayor asked me here, but I have no idea what to tell him or what to write in my report to the Institute.¡±


    ¡°The Boys from the North told you everything relevant.¡± Mariann said. ¡°They are not behind it. They have no idea what¡¯s going on, and the forest is not letting the Center Station to function in a proper manner.¡±


    ¡°This cannot be all.¡± Jaan said as he walked ahead of her and made a way back through the brush. ¡°Also, it seems to me that you knew beforehand that the tree could bleed. What happened? How did the Forest Lake become this tree?¡±


    ¡°I think it is quite simple: the Forest Lake was deeply insulted by someone or something and retreated back into itself.¡± Mariann explained.


    ¡°Retreated into itself?¡± Jaan asked, stopping.


    ¡°Yes. There was once a legend how a drunk knight had promised a farm girl that he would marry her and said that his love for her is as unchanging as a certain lake he pointed at. Well, the next morning after sleeping with the farm girl, the knight was gone. But so was the lake. If lakes can get up and just leave, then I don¡¯t see why they cannot feel insulted and retreat into themselves. In this case it seems that it retreated into itself to such a degree that it inverted and became its own polar opposite. From liquid into solid, from something close to the ground and reaching into depths to reaching into the skies. From something that envelops into something that stands apart. And from spiritual into carnal. It is possible that during the night, all the good in the lake simply evaporated and what remained twisted and warped.¡±


    ¡°You are aware that this is one of your¡­ more poetic ideas?¡± The professor asked. ¡°I am doubtful if I can explain that to the Mayor with a straight face.¡±


    ¡°That is your problem, after all.¡± Mariann replied. ¡°The mayor is the last person to attempt to explain anything at all to and the last person that is capable of understanding it. He may say that he wants to know, but really, he wants somebody to tell him a peaceful and boring fairy tale. And my fairy tales are neither.¡±


    ¡°And the deceased?¡± Jaan continued asking.


    ¡°They came to the forest at night to see why the water is flowing out of the lake and through the town. Last night was a full moon, which means than possibly somebody saw part of the water evaporating into moonlight. It is very likely that no man should have seen it. The lake felt insulted that its secret was revealed to a mortal. Maybe it over-reacted and ignited somebody. Maybe the birth of that tree has something to do with not feeling insulted, but with despair felt over one¡¯s own rash actions. Both options are possible.¡±


    ¡°And they sound pretty much alike.¡± Jaan said.


    ¡°I cannot help it.¡± Mariann smiled. ¡°However I have no idea what happens next with that tree. But the Boys from the North will continue working on it and making things worse. Or, they might try to solve their problem with it and make things a lot more worse.¡±


    ¡°So what¡¯s next?¡± Jaan asked, as they made it back to the cars.


    ¡°We could look into the road we used to come here.¡± She said. ¡°I am yet to convince you that this road here does not exist. And maybe I will get some more ideas which help explain this corner of the world and its history.¡±


    ¡°Okay.¡±


    ¡°Professor Kotkas! Professor Kotkas!¡± Mayor¡¯s hoarse voice sounded out from the forest. ¡°Please come back here! We need to talk!¡±


    Mariann saw the Mayor stand right next to the first trees. Next to him were the doctor, his assistant and two men. One of them was wearing a fedora and a long black trench coat and looked very much like one of the Official¡¯s from the North, and the other one was called Toomas.


    ¡°Dammit.¡± Jaan said. ¡°Do you want to explain your thoughts to them by yourself?¡±


    ¡°These would not be the same thoughts if I were to repeat them.¡± She replied. ¡°I think you can explain the ideas perfectly to them. Even if you are mistaken in some aspect or nobody believes you, still you have done everything in your power to to make it understandable to the others. Go. I¡¯ll wait.¡±


    She leaned against Jaan¡¯s dark green vehicle, observing as the Mayor started arguing with the rest of the people on how to interpret what they saw in the forest.

 XIX - a Moved Lake II

    ¡°So what really transpired?¡± a towering bearded man asked, his reeking dirty tee soaked in sweat.


    He kept wrestling with the transmission stick to find the next gear on the Soviet willys.


    ¡°What did you see in the forest? What happened to our village drunk?¡±


    I already told you what happened. What I saw. Suddenly there was a pillar of fire between the trees and by the time I arrived only smoke remained. Both of us saw the body.¡± A young man with green eyes and high forehead started to speak. ¡°The fact that you don¡¯t like my story or that the Officials from the North have their own vision on what happened, does not mean that I would have anything new to say.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry.¡± The obese Mayor said, adjusting the flat cap on his head. ¡°That village drunk was once a good man, y¡¯know. Back then he was known as Aivo and he hated the drink with a passion, as it kept him from doing his job. That was back during the Soviet era when he drove the bus between this and other nearby towns. Six o¡¯clock every morning he started up his LAZ autobus and first started towards Tontla, on his way also detouring to the Agroprom and then to Valgepal? on the coast of lake Talaba. Sometimes he even stopped at the Combine, Center Station and at the smaller villages near his route.¡±


    ¡°So what happened then?¡± Toomas asked, scratching his sloppily shaven chin. ¡°Why did he start to drink?¡±


    ¡°Why, why.¡± The Mayor mocked. ¡°The Russian period came to an end. The military left, bases were abandoned, Luiga was closed down, Agroprom was closed down, Center Station was closed down. Even the fish factory at Valgepal? closed down because suddenly, no fish found its way into the nets. People lost their jobs, died, moved away or, like Aivo, lost themselves into the bottle, some of vodka, others of ether. The saddest part is that he wanted to get sober and again drive his bus between the towns. He kept speaking about how wealth had returned to Valgepal?, after the local sacristan was given a beating and then driven from the town. He said that the people were returning because the nets now catch fish but also strange ancient items of gold.¡±


    ¡°Sounds suspect.¡± Toomas said. ¡°And also similar to something I have heard before.¡±


    ¡°Oh really? And how does that story end?¡± the Mayor asked.


    ¡°With the whole town going mad and burning it all down when the capital sent forces to look into the matter.¡± Toomas replied.


    ¡°In that case I am not too surprised that those slick looking Boys from the North have this deep an interest in the Forbidden Forest as well as the water flowing out of the forest and up a slope. And that at all times they can be seen around.


    The willys started to violently shake, as it slowed down. The Mayor directed it towards the side of the road to turn onto a field trail right at the next railroad crossing, indicated by a rusty road sign ahead.


    Toomas lowered his gaze onto the spartan metal dashboard of the willys. He slid his fingers across screw holes and signs of equipment having been mounted on the dash.


    ¡°Is this a¡­ former military vehicle?¡± He asked.


    ¡°Oh yeah! Yes it is!¡± The Mayor started to laugh.


    ¡°There¡¯s a funny story with that. In the olden days I drove that old Chaika you can see in the courtyard of the town hall. But a few years after the Russians had left, the engine on it went to complete shit. I could never get it to run again. I then took a closer look at the engine and it seemed to me that the engine had gone to complete shit once before, as it had been replaced once already. How else could it have a truck engine, right? A massive monster with 8 pots and plugs. And as the Russians had left, there were no longer any parts to be found anywhere. Even if somebody had parts left over they would not part with them, not for rubles not for anything else. The only thing all the young people wanted was foreign currency.


    ¡°But then I heard that the Russians had also abandoned the Officers¡¯ Village and for some reason all the vehicles in it as well. Of course they had done their best to destroy and ruin everything that they could not take along. However between the Officers¡¯ Village and the local mechanized infantry corps base I managed to assemble a working vehicle and also found tons of spare parts to boot.¡±


    The Mayor depressed the clutch and turned off the engine, letting it come to rest right before the ditch at the end of a small clearing.


    ¡°And we¡¯re here.¡± He said. ¡°Just like during the night.¡±


    He twisted himself on the small driver seat to look out from the rear plastic window.


    ¡°Wow, the Boys from the North are not messing around this time. Look at that! Five cars with fins! That¡¯s exactly what I wanted!¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t think we were here during the night, were we?¡± Toomas asked. ¡°We went through the Cottage District and then came along a small footpath which headed into the forest opposite the Cottage cooperative.¡±


    ¡°I remember us being here.¡± the Mayor said. ¡°The three of us even made it back to the car right here and then we drove straight back to town.¡±


    ¡°We may have driven back to town from here, but I am fairly certain that we did not initially arrive here with the willys.¡± Toomas said as he opened the door to get out. ¡°It is very weird that I feel like this is the first time of me visiting this spot. Or that nobody knew that one could get this close to the¡­ its named Forbidden Forest right? To this forest by car.¡±


    ¡°To wander in the Forbidden Forest is only considered entertainment by children and the child-minded. Be those child-minded either insane or drunks. The grownups know all too well about the dangers lurking in the forest and thus they don¡¯t venture here without a cause. Life is too precious to risk it looking for non-existent churches and lost military equipment.¡±


    The Mayor opened the door and then grabbed the door and window posts of the vehicle to be barely able to extract himself from the vehicle. He then pulled up his dirty pants and pulled the tee down to once again cover his massive gut.


    ¡°Only when...-¡± he suddenly sneezed and then used the long sleeve on his shirt to wipe his nose.


    ¡°This fucking forest air, I say!¡± He continued. ¡°Only when a total shitstorm has hit the fan, like right now, the people come to take a look full of curiosity, like children.¡±


    With some effort, the Mayor left his willys behind. His worn down slippers were not of much help on the wet ground. Rather, there was a chance to lose them forever into one of the softer and remoter mud holes. This could happen even before he could step onto the forest floor under the black canopy which offered slightly more traction and started not fifteen meters ahead. Despite that, the Mayor was in luck on his journey. Neither did an especially soaked patch of ground find it¡¯s way under his step nor did he slip crossing the low ditch between the wet grassland and the car woods.


    ¡°Agent Toomas, come!¡± The Mayor shouted, grabbing around the nearest tree with his hairy arm to rest his legs and back. ¡°You see, everybody¡¯s coming!¡±


    Toomas glanced over the cloud-covered wet clearing towards the grassland where they had come from. He noticed that this seemed to receive the warmth of the sun, although looking at the sky, he could not say from where. He could also see three peculiar vehicles approach.


    The first one was of immaculate black color and curved forms, full of chrome adornments including a grille bisected into two oval pieces, headlights in bottom-mounted pods and tail lights sitting inside chrome circlets above the bodywork. It was quite like one of the cars belonging to the Boys from the North, but yet somehow different.


    Behind that there was a long green two-door car with a green vinyl top. A bit more boxy looking. The front had an inordinately long hood, which at the same time looked perfectly proportional to the rest of the vehicle. A tombstone shaped grille and massive rectangular steel bumpers.


    Behind that there was something clearly influenced by the design of those black cars used by the Boys from the North. It definitely had the same overall styling, in the front and on the sides with quad headlights, pronounced bumpers, egg crate grille and fins in the rear. But this one was white, had the body of a station wagon and on the roof, there were red rotating emergency lights. If he did not know any better, then he would certainly think it an ambulance.


    The mayor finally let go of the tree and headed deeper into the forest along the trail obscured by the thick woods and lower shrubbery. His point of reference was the Village Dude not 20 steps ahead of him. He soon reached some more familiar folks standing around examining something. The Village Dude was as tall as he was, but instead carried a strong body full of muscle and no excess flab anywhere in sight. There was also Eduard with his small dark eyes, shiny head and generally looking like a starving corpse. And of course Virve, the shopkeep.


    The Mayor sighed into his thick gray beard, pressed the flat cap onto his head and quickened his lumbering pace. His main concern was that all the onlookers would keep their hands clear of the body and would leave something for the doctor to examine as well.


    ¡°Oh! Hey, Fartbag!¡± The Village Dude exclaimed, he was wearing some heavy-framed glasses and had not shaved for a few days.


    ¡°Fart¡­ bag?¡± Eduard started to laugh, but then he saw that the mayor was not laughing at all. ¡°I mean mayor, sir, hello.¡±


    He raised one of his bandaged hands to scratch the back of his head.


    ¡°Mayor Fartbag.¡± Virve gave a nod as a greeting, accompanied with a dry smile.


    ¡°Comrade Village Dude.¡± The Mayor started with a disappointed voice. ¡°We have known each other for decades now. Is it not enough for you, in order to leave behind the jokes of our school life, show me even a little bit of respect and call me by my Christian name?¡±


    ¡°I would gladly call you as such, if I still remembered your Christian name.¡± The Village Dude said, pushing his glasses to a higher position on his nose. ¡°But for a long time I have not thought of you in other terms than a fartbag or the mayor.¡± He took a curious smile at both Virve and Eduard. ¡°And honestly, you are much more of a fartbag than a mayor. My uncle who went stupid after getting a piece of artillery shell stuck in his brain in the Patriotic War would have been ten times the mayor you are.¡±


    ¡°Honestly, If you weren¡¯t the only fucking person to get fuel from, I would fuck you up right now!¡± The Mayor said.


    ¡°Yes, but you get your fuel, like the others. Which probably means somebody¡¯s gonna throw another brick through my window!¡±


    ¡°Wouldn¡¯t be my first time, you know!¡± The Mayor shouted.


    ¡°Boys! Boys!¡± Virve tried to calm down the two. ¡°Aivo is here. His body isn¡¯t even cold yet and you¡¯re already fighting! People are coming. Do you really want to offer them a spectacle?¡±


    ¡°True. True.¡± The Mayor said as his calmed down. He took the sweat-soaked flat cap from his head and pressed it against his chest.


    ¡°May I be the first to say I find it a relief that the fucker is dead?¡± Eduard asked.


    ¡°Yes, you may.¡± Virve replied. ¡°I agree. Nevertheless, what a pity.¡±


    ¡°But still, an exemplary peckerhead.¡± Eduard said, pausing for a few moments. ¡°Not that I have anything against him. He was a fine man and his bus line was a good thing. But man, when he started to drink, he turned into a peckerhead of the first order. Remember what happened when he was told from Valgepal? that the bus route is done because the factory is closed? He got drunk, destroyed the whole bar and then as a cherry on top, his victims had to do CPR on him, because what else are you going to do to recoup the damage.¡±


    ¡°He then tried to get back to work but got drunk and then hit a tree on a stormy night. If was a miracle that he was alone in his bus and nobody else got hurt!¡± Village Dude said.


    ¡°Remember how he tried to explain it away?¡± Eduard asked. ¡°That he skipped his regular drinking for one night and started seeing all sorts of things.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, all sorts of things¡­ while drinking, he told me that he only hit that single lonely electricity pole only because something with red eyes, tentacles and leathery wings flew into his windshield!¡± the Mayor said.


    ¡°He tried to hit on me.¡± Virve said. ¡°He even tried to rape the Market Hag. But her old man was still alive back then. And he gave the drunk such a beating that he managed to stay relatively sober until the funeral of the old man.¡±


    ¡°Still, what a dickhead.¡± Village Dude repeated.


    ¡°But still a pity,¡± the Mayor said. ¡°There aren¡¯t many people left anyway.¡±


    ¡°Everybody¡¯s left. Either to the a bigger town or even further. And those that remain try to drown their sorrows into the bottle or try to get by on their own.¡± Eduard sighed.


    ¡°Nothing new under the sun.¡± Village Dude said. ¡°The powers that be may have changed but life did not. One still has to make his own hooch. Of most of the every day consumables, there is a lack of and paper money means precious little to anybody.¡±


    ¡°Look, even now, a local misfit is wandering around in the forest.¡±


    Virve said, pointing at a man standing between the trees not far from them. His skin burnt brown in the summer sun, a knitted moth-eaten long-sleeved top hanging loosely on his body while his bottom half was covered by workman¡¯s cargo pants with the suspenders hanging down.


    ¡°I know that guy.¡± Eduard said, looking at the man with messy curly hair and long matted beard. ¡°That¡¯s Sangaste kid.¡±


    ¡°Sangaste kid?¡± Virve asked. ¡°That young history teacher who worked at the local elementary school before it was closed down?¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s the one.¡± Eduard said.


    He blew his nose into his hand and then wiped his fingers into his pants.


    ¡°He started to drink when he found out that the Institute could not offer him a position and nobody else in town would have a job for a young man whose last job was 6 months of teaching experience in an elementary school with 15 students.¡±


    ¡°And now?¡± Virve asked.


    ¡°Now, sometimes he mows grass for me, sometimes he burns tar. He¡¯s getting pretty good at burning tar but nobody needs tar at current time. He¡¯s no good for making firewater as he had a habit of drinking it before it has even been properly filtered.¡± Village Dude said. ¡°But somehow he still gathers his money for vodka and sausage.¡±


    ¡°Good afternoon!¡± an approaching man in a white lab coat shouted out.


    Doctor Sare with his balding head proceeded on the footpath with unsteady steps. Predatory eyes close-by and embedded deep into his skull, sharply regarded every piece of ground he was about to step on and every piece of shrubbery or moss rising above the forest floor. Clearly signifying that for the doctor, woods of this sort were an especially unfamiliar place.


    ¡°Gentlemen, ma¡¯am.¡± The doctor lowered his gaze in a nod as a greeting.


    ¡°Wow! Does the honorable lady always go about her business looking so beautiful and well made up?¡± the Mayor asked.


    He looked around, seeing Virve look at the nurse with measurable envy.


    The silent assistant for the doctor only gave a smile and said nothing.


    ¡°My assistant and colleague does not speak.¡± The Doctor said. ¡°Nevertheless she perfectly understands what I am thinking about or what I wish, even without me having to say anything.¡±


    ¡°Is her silence voluntary¡­ or is it a kind of medical issue?¡± Eduard asked with curiosity.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know.¡± The Doctor said. ¡°I have never asked her. It has never come up as a topic to discuss.¡±


    ¡°Mariann!¡± Am male voice sounded out.


    The Mayor raised his eyes to see a balding man with glasses and a leather jacket, who had appeared as if from nowhere. Almost as tall as he himself was, with a strong slim build. Defined face and a week¡¯s worth of gray beard growth.


    The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    ¡°Oh, professor!¡± The Mayor said loudly. ¡°Professor Kotkas, you made it!¡±


    ¡°I did.¡± the man replied, ¡°where else would I be going.¡±


    ¡°So, what is the official position of the Institute in this matter?¡± The Mayor asked, rubbing his nose.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know that the Institute has an official position on this.¡± The professor smiled. ¡°If they did, they would have sent their own representative. I am only here to represent my own opinion.¡±


    ¡°And what is your opinion?¡± the Mayor asked.


    ¡°To soon to tell.¡± the professor replied.


    Under the thirsty looks of the village men, the assistant for Doctor Sare raised one leg and balanced the huge doctor¡¯s bag on one knee. Having no trouble with balancing on one leg, in a stiletto heel on soft ground. She produced a silver medical instrument and handed it over to the doctor.


    With some effort and a painful sigh, he knelt down to the body and then stabbed the instrument into it, as he observed the dial at the end of the instrument.


    ¡°Is that a meat ther-¡­?¡± Eduard started to ask but then shut up after receiving a heavy nudge from Virve.


    ¡°Yeah. There¡¯s nothing for me to do here.¡± The doctor said. ¡°He¡¯s done.¡±


    ¡°So completely cooked through?¡± Mariann asked, feeling the gazes focus on her.


    ¡°Yep.¡± The doctor smiled. ¡°deep inside, he¡¯s still warm.¡±


    ¡°I did not need to know that!¡± Jaan said with disgust in his voice.


    ¡°That¡¯s why you did not come to Yuryev to learn medicine with the rest of us!¡± The doctor said, he reached out to his silent assistant, who was still standing on one leg, with the doctor¡¯s bag open on a raised knee. She had no trouble helping the doctor get up again. ¡°You could not keep the medicine down. Nor me putting a bovine eye in my martini.¡±


    ¡°Let me think: pack it up and to the Institute?¡± Mariann asked with disinterested tone.


    ¡°Exactly my idea!¡± the doctor remarked. ¡°The medical corps of the Institute has way more room to autopsy this poor thing than my hospital! Sometimes it feel like Luiga is indeed overcrowded.¡±


    ¡°Does anybody¡­ have any idea what happened¡­ to this poor man?¡± the Mayor asked in a hoarse voice, rivers of sweat pouring down his face, having soaked half his shirt. ¡°Perhaps spontaneous combustion of the human body?¡±


    ¡°Sure, most definitely.¡± The doctor said in a sarcastic voice. ¡°Has anybody ever heard of natural law?¡±


    However the mumbling in the crowd signified that almost nobody really cared for his opinion. What was of much more importance to some of them was whether the assistant, in addition to assisting the doctor offered... cough-cough¡­ other services.


    ¡°It cannot be spontaneous combustion.¡± A younger male voice said.


    Everybody¡¯s eyes now turned on a skinny young man with distinctive green eyes. The only thing betraying that he was no longer a child was a faint red stubble on his face.


    ¡°Yes, agent Toomas.¡± The Mayor said. ¡°Why cannot it be that?¡±


    ¡°Because too much of the deceased remains.¡± The young man with green eyes replied.


    ¡°Let¡¯s leave aside all kinds of inane theories, shall we?¡± a man in a black suit, black fedora and long black overcoat said. ¡°It must have an organic and scientifically falsifiable cause.¡±


    ¡°Falsifiable?¡± the Mayor asked.


    ¡°Well, something that can be proven or disproven with a controlled experiment.¡±


    ¡°Oh.¡±


    The Mayor looked how the professor and the girl in black left the group and went deeper into the forest.


    ¡°Honestly, in your position, mister Mayor, I would not trust this young man.¡± The man in a long coat and gray suit continued. ¡°I know him, and he has quite a bad reputation in the professional circles that I frequent.¡±


    ¡°I have ideas.¡± Toomas replied in defense. ¡°Usually these ideas explain-...¡±


    ¡°You brat are ruining the name of every half-decent paranormal investigator!¡± the man in a fedora raise his voice, a small scar under his left eye twitched.


    ¡°This guy only gets to investigate the things that Volke throws off his desk into the trash bin. Starting with drunks who see giant rabbits all the way to spontaneous combustion events of the human body and looking into weird electrical hums.¡±


    ¡°In that case, mister..¡±


    ¡°Taak.¡± The man said, he removed his fedora in greeting, revealing slick combed back hair held in place with pomade. ¡°Karl Taak, at your service.¡±


    ¡°If Igor Volke has no interest in this, then why are you here?¡± the Mayor asked in a doubtful voice.


    ¡°The fact that Volke is not interested does not mean that there would not be other organizations or forces in Yuryev interested in what goes on in and about the Esoteric Institute, or the town surrounding it. Just like during the Russian times: there is always somebody who listens, always there is somebody who is interested.¡±


    ¡°So you drove here from Yuryev?¡± Edward asked


    ¡°Oh, no.¡± Karl Taak smiled. ¡°I work in Valgepal? in a branch institute of the University of Yuryev.¡±


    ¡°And what is your opinion on what has happened here?¡± the Mayor asked.


    ¡°You have a village drunk in a forest with a flaming torch and an open bottle.¡± He said. ¡°What do you think happened? Having a careless swig while already drunk, the clothes became covered in vodka, the vapors ignited. Because most of the human body is water, so if he burned to death it is possible that some kind of heat remained in the body.¡±


    ¡°I know what burning to death means.¡± the Doctor said. ¡°One needs not to be cooked through, only a surface burn is enough if it is over a sufficiently wide area. And a bottle of vodka is not enough to create such a heat that the flesh would be cooked to the bone. Is there anything else here or can we leave?¡±


    ¡°No, doctor, there is one other thing.¡± Toomas said. ¡°The Forest Lake, or rather, what is left of it.¡±


    ¡°Yes, the Forest Lake,¡± the Mayor said. ¡°We need to investigate that as well.¡±


    ¡°And why is that any of my business?¡± the Doctor asked. ¡°I¡¯m a doctor, not a geologist!¡±


    ¡°Come, I will show you.¡± the Mayor said.


    ¡°What¡¯s the deal with the Forest Lake anyway?¡± the Village Dude asked.


    ¡°Toomas said that he saw how the Forest Lake evaporated away in the night.¡± the Mayor explained.


    ¡°Not only evaporated.¡± Toomas said. ¡°I saw people, made of moonlight, who carried the water away with buckets made of moonlight and poured it into a ditch where it flowed through the forest towards the town.¡±


    ¡°People made of moonlight?¡± Taak asked laughing. ¡°Ghosts? Spirits?¡±


    ¡°You did not tell me of people carrying away the water.¡± The Mayor said.


    ¡°I did not. But that¡¯s what I saw.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not surprised, the little guy is completely off his rocker this close to the Institute.¡± Taak said in a quiet voice.


    ¡°Enough!¡± The Mayor shouted. ¡°This is the Forbidden Forest. All sorts of things happen here. I am not the least bit surprised if agent Toomas says he saw spirits. Especially at night. In the Forbidden Forest, people disappear at night, they meet ghosts, aliens and soldiers who disappear into thin air right in front of them. I myself have wandered the Forbidden Forest when I was young and have seen strange lights moving around between the trees, heard people speaking without understanding a word. I have felt touched by people and creatures I am not capable of seeing. Once I even found an overgrown cobblestone road and heard the carts rolling on it.¡±


    ¡°You¡­?¡± the Village Dude asked. ¡°You have wandered the forest in your youth? At night?¡±


    ¡°Yes.¡± the Mayor said. ¡°If at night you see those ghostly lights darting between the trees and hear carts rolling by you cannot see then you will not rush to tell others about it. Otherwise you won¡¯t be let out of the house in the evenings.¡±


    ¡°It can all be explained...¡± Taak started.


    ¡°Not only people have disappeared into the Forbidden Forest but an entire village center.¡± The Village Dude said, looking at Taak who was still carrying a skeptical smile on his lips and the downcast Doctor. ¡°The church, the church yard and several houses swallowed overnight. Did you think the Institute was built in an empty place? It was built at some distance from the villages and the Lord¡¯s Manor. And as the Institute grew when people came to learn and work, so did the town surrounding it. But where is the Eastern Village now? Where is the village that lied roughly half way between the Institute and the von Schwann manor?¡±


    ¡°Mr. Taak,¡± The Mayor started in a stern voice. ¡°You may be well-educated and proficient in using science to disprove explanations created by common peasant knowledge. But you know nothing of the Institute, the Forbidden Forest, or of our town. You don¡¯t know what goes on here, especially in the dark of night when a torch illuminates more than the most powerful electric light. The Forbidden Forest demands only respect, nothing more. That should be sufficiently cheap to keep one¡¯s life, should it not?¡±


    The Mayor used his hat to wipe the sweat from his face and then, without a change on his face, he used his hand to push aside the last of the tall nettles on their way. The stopped on the edge of mud hole having the shape of a wide yet shallow funnel. It was surrounded by low bushes and shrubs. In the middle of it towered a twisting black tree. No canopy, no leaves of thinner branches of any kind. There were only five large branches reaching for the sky, growing out of a single point which made it look like bony fingers growing out of a diseased palm. These thick branches carried no sign that they had ever had a canopy. In some regard, it looked like a petrified dead body of an unimaginable monster from the depths of the sea. Something that could drive anybody who really knew what they were looking at, completely mad.


    With suspecting eyes, the Mayor looked at the vacuum tubes, antennas, spirals and devices creating free air arcs that the Men from the North were observing, unable to analyze the tree in one way or the other. Their bewilderment was clear and it was also agitating the village folk. This was clearly contrasted by the professor and the girl in black standing some distance away from the crowd and the girl in black with her camera. Their demeanor seemed to say that they knew exactly what was going on. Knew more than the Boys from the North, in a strange way. But this did not cause them any fear or worry, not even any tension.


    ¡°What is sacred to some, may be desecrated to the others.¡± Toomas said.


    ¡°Eh? What?¡± The Mayor asked, turning around.


    ¡°What is sacred to some may be desecrated to the others.¡± Toomas repeated. ¡°To us, this monstrous aberration here,¡± he pointed towards the dead tree with twisting roots and trunk in the middle of the mud hole, ¡°might be desecrated ground. But to those two...¡± he pointed at the professor and the girl in black. ¡°...it might clearly be something more positive and familiar.¡±


    ¡°Agent Toomas!¡± the Mayor raised his voice. ¡°Professor Jaan Kotkas is a well-respected gentleman and a fixed employee of the Institute. We have no reason to doubt his motivations and impartiality! And if he trusts this girl to accompany him then I have nothing against that.¡±


    ¡°Exactly, he is an employee of the Institute.¡± Toomas said.


    ¡°The fact that he is an employee of the Institute does not mean that he would represent the opinions of the Institute.¡±


    ¡°Exactly!¡± Toomas exclaimed. ¡°Look at the body language of those two! If I know nothing else then at least I can read body language! It clear here that the girl is the authority in these matters and not the professor. Look at who is following who and who is giving explanations to whom!¡±


    ¡°And what are you suspecting?¡± the Mayor asked. ¡°What are you trying to say?¡±


    ¡°I want to say that maybe this girl represents the official position and explanations of the Institute which we have no right to know.¡± Toomas explained.


    ¡°You really think so?¡± the Mayor asked.


    ¡°Later, ask the professor what he thinks. And then ask him what the girl thinks. I am sure that there is not much difference in their opinions.¡±


    The Mayor and Toomas turned to see two men in black suits carrying towering piles of wooden cargo pallets. These were laid on the soft muddy ground to create a path from the edge of the mudhole to the tree. This activity also made the girl in black act, as she packed up her camera and then approached the mud hole stopping at the very edge of it.


    The Mayor looked around to see the crowd growing bigger. All village drunks were present, some were even sharing a bottle of vodka. All village hags and other more shy and reclusive folk were present as well. Even ¡°Lord¡± Peeter who usually kept to the boarded up von Schwann manor house, was present. Keeping near the bushes and observing the proceedings from there.


    ¡°Well, doctor, after you.¡± The Mayor said, smiling.


    ¡°What do I know of trees?¡± Sare asked. He took a small metal flask handed to him by his assistant with unearthly good looks, took a drink of it and handed it back. ¡°Did I get up this morning only to look at a tree? Whether it is as a cupboard or fire wood or a forest, it is all the same to me. A wood is wood.¡±


    Despite his grumbling he accepted a small silver hatchet from his assistant who was once again balancing on one leg. He then started approaching the tree. He slid his hand on the surface of the tree and then used the hatchet to hit the tree several times, trying to extract a small piece for study. But already the first hit caused a flow of reddish-brown liquid reminiscent of blood, as it slowly crept down the black bark.


    ¡°The tree is bleeding! The tree is bleeding!¡± Somebody in the crowd started to shout.


    ¡°Shut up, you Sangaste brat! Drink a little less, will you?¡± Virve said, angrily pressing the words through her teeth.


    ¡°Why really! This just stupid!¡± The doctor also raised his voice, but the tone remain apathetic and almost sarcastic, disinterested if anybody really heard him.


    The doctor wiped the thick red fluid off the bark and tasted it.


    ¡°Damn it!¡± he said, frowning.


    He raised his face and locked eyes with the girl in black, still standing on the edge of the mud hole, roughly to the left of him. The mysterious smile on her face seemed to imply that this was the reaction she had been expecting.


    Sare then nodded towards his assistant and she handed him a small medical vial made of glass which he used to collect some of the fluid for further analysis.


    ¡°So what is going on in this forest of mine?¡± the Mayor asked, having approached the doctor on the path made of wooden pallets.


    He was careful in his step, trying not to mind the wood creaking too much. He did not fully step on the pallet the doctor was on, instead opting to remain slightly behind them, with one foot one one pallet and the other on the other one, and the gap between the pallets was slowly growing.


    ¡°Is it or is it not a tree? What kind of tree is it? Why is it like this? Why is it here anyway?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m a doctor, not a dendrologist!¡± Sare loudly said, annoyed. ¡°I don¡¯t know why it¡¯s here. Anybody beside me is more qualified to answer this question, especially that girl in black over there. But as a doctor I can say that this tree is bleeding.¡±


    ¡°Excuse me?¡± the Mayor asked. ¡°Can you repeat that please?¡±


    ¡°The tree. Is bleeding.¡± The doctor repeated slowly through his teeth with utter disgust and annoyance from having to say it again.


    From the crowd at the opposite edge of the mud hole shouts started up again about the tree bleeding. However this time nobody ordered the shouter to quiet down.


    ¡°What does that mean?¡± the Mayor asked, looking around him, but nobody answered.


    He looked towards the girl in black, only to see her and the professor disappearing into the forest again.


    ¡°It means that if something looks like blood, smells like blood and tastes like blood, then I¡¯ll be very surprised if it turns out not to be blood.¡± The doctor said with a forced calmness in his voice. ¡°I have had up to here from this mud hole. Can I go now and collect the body from the forest? I will use a courier to keep you up to date with everything I discover when I examine the body, the piece of wood and this diseased juice, okay?¡±


    ¡°I will agree to this.¡± The Mayor said, turning around and heading out of the mud hole, this time not caring about the creaking and the chance that the wood might break under his weight, plummeting him face first into the soft mud.


    ¡°Professor Kotkas and that girl!¡± He panted at the edge of the hole, again wiping the rivers of sweat pouring down from his forehead. ¡°Which direction did they take?¡±


    Slowly, some of the people started pointing towards the trail which lead back towards the body and the cars.


    ¡°Okay!¡± He said and started after them as fast as he could, hoping to reach the professor before he got into his car and left towards directions unknown.


    The mayor made great effort to head straight through the forest. Whether he was actually on a trail mattered little to him. Neither was he deterred by the need to break through thick patches of man-sized ferns and large clearings of tall nettles, which looked so big that perhaps some unnatural mechanism had carried them here from prehistoric times. These were no longer shrubs under the trees but forests unto their own.


    The mayor finally stopped, realizing that he had gotten lost. Lost somewhere between the forest of 3 meter tall nettles and a pine ripped out of the ground with its roots. The nettles carried an intoxicating smell full of warmth and moisture which permeated this section of otherwise cool forest. He could see no people around him to use as a reference where the trails could have been. At the same time he was doubtful that he could find anybody else walking in the forest at this time, as most of the townsfolk were still by that mud hole.


    He walked towards the root cluster of the tumbled over pine and then stopped to look at the irregularly shaped stones which had been hidden under the roots. These did not look natural to him, instead befitting images of petrified eggs of a monstrous lizard, drawn in a shaking hand and found in dusty tomes located in some forgotten library of the Institute. He did not actually know whether they were petrified, as they seemed to be made of some strange black rock.


    He raised his eyes for a moment and then noticed chrome shining between the trees in the distance. Meaning the clearing with the cars was in that direction. And at the same time, that location seemed off to him. The direction in which it lied was off. Despite that he started towards the shining chrome, being more afraid to lose sight of it. If he tried to compare the direction he was walking in and the path he had taken from the cars towards the body and the mud hole, it felt like this clearing with cars was located on the opposite side from the first one, with the mud hole sitting in between the two. It was hard to believe that mere 5 minutes of rushing through the forest off the trails was enough to corrupt his sense of space and direction in such a way that he could not even walk straight.


    ¡°Professor Kotkas! Professor Kotkas!¡± The Mayor started to shout as soon as he noticed people in the forest.


    The professor and the girl in black were not the only ones who stopped. There were also doctor Sare, agent Toomas, and Karl Taak, who were now standing in a small circle, waiting for the Mayor. A moment later the girl in black continued towards the dark green 2-door.


    ¡°So, gentlemen.¡± The Mayor started. ¡°You have now had time to think over what you saw. What¡¯s your opinion? What is going on in our forest?¡±


    ¡°Nothing¡¯s going on, other than the forest being full of patients.¡± The Doctor grumbled, looking at the ease of which his assistant carried the black vinyl body bag with the deceased towards the car. ¡°I had nothing to say ten minutes ago and I have nothing to say now. Until I haven¡¯t examined everything under a microscope, there is no point in asking me to put forth any theories. I¡¯m a doctor. I have no passion for theorizing. There is nothing wondrous happening here, the forest is a forest and the secrets within can be explained. If not medically then at least scientifically.¡±


    ¡°I agree with you one hundred per cent, Herr Doktor.¡± Taak said. ¡°The village folk and the employees of the Institute have overdone themselves here with mystical explanations. This tree is but a tree. Maybe with a strange shape, maybe diseased, but still but a tree. To claim that merely yesterday something entirely different stood in place of it is frankly moronic. The mosses and lichens on the roots and in sparse areas of the trunk speak that this plant has stood there for far longer than just a day. With regards to those Officials from the North, their activity is farcical spectacle. What they are doing and why for, is completely unfathomable to me. They cannot even repair the outside telephone line. In Tontla and Valgepal? the phone lines within the town are functional, but not here. And the cables running between the towns still contain an unexplained overcurrent.¡±


    ¡°That fact that you don¡¯t understand it, does not mean that it is irrelevant.¡± The young man with green eyes and a red stubble said. ¡°And the fact that they haven¡¯t repaired it does not mean that they are not trying, or that they shouldn¡¯t try at all.¡±


    ¡°Yes, agent Toomas.¡± The Mayor said, raising his hand to force Taak to stop talking. ¡°What are your thoughts on the matter?¡±


    ¡°My first thought is that something is wrong. Wrong with this place here. I am certain that during the night we entered the forest from next to the Cottage Suburb. And we wandered for quite some time before we got anywhere near the Forest Lake. But when we returned from the forest, we came here, to the edge of the forest by the grazing lands. How it is possible I don¡¯t know, but there is no explaining this scientifically.¡±


    ¡°Everything can be explained scientifically.¡± Taak remarked.


    ¡°My second idea...¡± Toomas said, raising his voice for a moment. ¡°...concerns the Forest Lake and this tree. I also doubt that this tree was the forest lake in the night. The Forest Lake was more like a big pond, rather than a lake. Yet it was smaller than the mud hole surrounding this tree-like figure. Neither was it deep enough to shroud the entire tree in the waters. I think that everybody mistakenly believes that this tree and this place is the area of the Forest Lake because this tree is located about as far from the drunk who burst into flames as the Forest Lake was during the night. But in reality, something in this forest destroys one¡¯s sense of direction and the true Forest Lake lies unchanged somewhere nearby.¡±


    ¡°And how do you explain that during the decades till now, nobody wandering in the forest neither day or night has managed to find that tree? But they always manage to find the Forest Lake?¡± Taak asked with a skeptical smile, almost as if knowing what kind of answer he would get.


    ¡°Because this is not a regular forest. The forest is actively shrouding locations hidden within. It affects how we look, in which direction we go. The forest easily betrays our sense of direction. I think the same thing is happening here: people think that they are walking through the forest in a more or less straight line, not realizing how twisted and crooked a path they are actually tracking, if somebody were to plot their paths. This is the only way for it to be possible for people to think they are visiting the Forest Lake, but really they are not.¡±


    ¡°Honorable Mayor!¡± Karl Taak started. ¡°If you are really going to trust the ideas of this kid then you have much bigger problems than what¡¯s happening in the forest. To think that the forest is affecting-...¡±


    ¡°It is affecting.¡± The Mayor said. ¡°Earlier when I rushed through the forest, I managed to get lost between the body and the Forest Lake and managed to reach an unknown fallen tree instead. And standing there I saw the cars in the distance which seemed to be in the same direction as I had just come from. How do you explain that?¡±


    ¡°With a psychosis.¡± Taak said unhesitatingly. ¡°Not at all in a negative sense, herr Mayor!¡±


    ¡°Mr Kotkas, do you have any thoughts?¡± The Mayor continued his queries.


    ¡°At the moment, not much. I need to think it over some more, and also consult the written records at the Institute.¡± The professor said.


    ¡°And what did your beautiful companion think?¡± Taak asked.


    ¡°Her position is harder to put into words.¡± Jaan Kotkas replied. ¡°But she thinks this is a case of a moved lake syndrome.¡±


    ¡°A what?¡± The doctor asked with interest, having heard a medical term.


    ¡°A moved lakelet.¡± Jaan repeated. ¡°Her theory was that something insulted the Forest Lake to such a profound degree, desecrated it to such a level that it twisted and turned into it¡¯s opposite in every sense of the word. She thinks that the Officials from the North are as bewildered as we are.¡±


    ¡°First the forest actively interrupts our consciousness and now the Forest Lake feels insulted?!¡± Karl Taak asked. ¡°Honestly, what¡¯s gonna be your next theory?¡±


    ¡°But why not?¡± Toomas asked. ¡°These Agents from the North we see around here everywhere. They conduct their mysterious experiments in the Institute, Substation, Center Station as well as in the Combine. Maybe something went wrong and that¡¯s why the Forest is no longer how it used to be. That¡¯s why this tree is here and that¡¯s why the Forest Lake can no longer be located.¡±


    ¡°Of course, there is one other option.¡± Toomas continued. ¡°What if the tree is not at all a tree? What if when examining the blood and the piece, it is revealed that it is not at all a plant but something that the Boys from the North or the forest has wanted to keep hidden at all costs.¡±


    ¡°What is it then, if not a plant?¡± The Mayor asked.


    ¡°Well, what does it look like?¡± Toomas asked. ¡°It has five great tentacles. Maybe there is a mouth in the middle of them. I addition, it also has some smaller, but longer and more nimble tentacles, which we currently think to be roots. Maybe it is some kind of unknown creature which usually live in the depths of the ocean.¡±


    ¡°Okay, I¡¯ve had enough.¡± The Doctor said. ¡°I have other things to do besides listening to your theories. My colleague is already waiting.¡±


    ¡°And why would a petrified corpse of this creature be here?¡± Taak asked with interest in his voice.


    ¡°Who said anything about a corpse?¡± Toomas asked. ¡°That is not dead which can eternal lie, and wuth strange aeons even death may die.¡±


    ¡°And what significance does this motto, which, may I say, you have quite crudely translated into our country folk language, this motto of the Faculty of Elder Magic of the Institute carry?¡± Taak asked. ¡°This discussion starts to look more and more like a horror story for children and not a serious scientific discussion.¡±


    ¡°Agent Toomas, do you mean to say that the tree is not at all a tree, but an animal of some sort?¡± The Mayor asked. ¡°And that animal is not at all dead but instead slumbering?¡±


    ¡°Yes.¡± Toomas nodded. ¡°It is sleeping and waiting to be awakened. As far as I know, these sea creatures are so prehistoric, so old, that death is unknown to them. Instead of dying, the fall into deep sleep which to us looks like death, or like being a plant.¡±


    ¡°Oh.¡± The Mayor let out a deep exacerbated sigh. ¡°I think we have no other course of action left to solve this mess, but to go and ask the witch for advice. The witch has always been able to help us.¡±


    ¡°The Witch?¡± Taak asked.


    ¡°The Witch.¡± The Mayor repeated.

 XX - Morning Vision of a Zombie

    Old Leopold was wiping the scratched up surface of the counter with a gray rag. He then carelessly threw the rag into a rust-marked sink once painted in white enamel. He opened the tap and looked how the low pressure stream splashed on the rag and into the sink. He then sighed and took off his glasses, letting the water fall on the left lens, not yet covered in opaque black film.


    Suddenly his eye and face was poked by bright rays of daylight. Annoyed, he turned around.


    ¡°However many times I have said that you do not touch the drapes!¡± His remaining good eye had no trouble finding the offending man sitting by the large windows covered in thick drapes.


    For a few more seconds, he and the villager stared at each other, until the latter let go of the heavy drape and let if fall to cover the window once more. He pulled his flat cap on his eyes and got back to staring his glass of vodka.


    ¡°Hey Leo, I am still not clear why you refuse to let any daylight in here.¡± A male villager with a thick bushy mustache, big nose and slightly oily hair asked, leaning on the counter with his elbows. ¡°Is it because you don¡¯t clean this place properly?¡±


    Leopold only sighed through his nose in response and used his one good eye to eye the mustached villager with an annoyed expression, as the latter was examining some dirt on the sleeve of his blue polo shirt.


    ¡°Think about it.¡± The man continued. ¡°If you let some light in here, cleaned the lamp covers and maybe replaced the dark paneling on your walls with something prettier, an occasional woman might visit this place. Like that chick who they say has now taken rains in the Institute and in other times rides around with that professor and takes photos of god only knows what exactly. It would be quite interesting to take a gander under that frock, y¡¯know what I mean?¡± He winked at the barkeep.


    ¡°Will you shut up if I give you a beer besplatno?¡± Leopold finally asked.


    A glitter appeared in the eyes of the mustached man and he waved at a section of the bar counter in front of him. Moments later, a dark green bottle of beer slid in front of him, the label was missing but moisture had already appeared as mist on the bottle.


    ¡°So please, how it all happened, tell me.¡± A man wearing a brown fedora and ruffled sport coat tried to encourage his partner in conversation, his notepad and pen ready.


    Opposite him sat a skinny young man, wearing worn blue jeans, a white shirt and moth-eaten sweater. Despite the young man¡¯s effort to look presentable for his interview with a journalist from a big town, it was clear to all that he was just a regular bum and a freeloader, living off the sweat and brow of his retired mother and grandmother.


    As far as Old Leo remembered, the young man¡¯s grandfather had been a captain in the mechanized infantry division stationed on the edge of the Forbidden Forest. And one especially stormy night when the wind and sorts of invisible forest creatures howled in foreign voices, he had put the Vintorez suppressed rifle, itself a prize for exemplary service, in his mouth and pulled the trigger.


    The boy¡¯s father had been the last local constable, and his fate was also clear to everybody. He too had blown his brains out. Picking a sunny summer day to do that, right behind Virve¡¯s store. Stories say that he did it for much the same reason as his father, as he had spent years looking into why his father had chosen to take his own life. Perhaps he found something, considering that during that cool and damp summer his inquiries were really making headway into the matter.


    ¡°Well, last Staturday, when I came along the edge of the woods by car, along the Northern section of the circular road¡­ and then I saw some kind of bright light as one can sometimes see from the Center Station. And then I understood that it was them.¡±


    ¡°You mean...¡± the journalist noted something down on his pad and used the rear of the pen to push his glasses up. ¡°...who did you see exactly?¡±


    ¡°I saw the anaks exactly.¡± the young man said. ¡°They came towards me and the took that away from me!¡±


    ¡°Hey Rops, you dumbfuck! Enough with your noise!¡± Leopold raised his voice. ¡°Every god damn week are you here to talk about your anaks!¡±


    ¡°Right, Leo,¡± the mustached man agreed. ¡°Rops, your stories about meeting the anaks are becoming more and more frequent. What¡¯s happened, has your aunt started refusing your hands under her skirt?¡± He winked again as he grinned.


    ¡°So you¡¯re called Rops?¡± the journalist asked and let his fedora on the counter.


    ¡°Robert.¡± The young man said. ¡°But there are several occasions when I have spent the night drinking in here until I puke...¡±


    ¡°Many.¡± Leopold remarked in an annoyed tone. ¡°The word you meant to use is ¡®many.¡¯¡±


    ¡°According to this it s a miracle that you¡¯re let in here at all.¡± The journalist laughed.


    ¡°That old cyclops lets me in here alright, but he refuses to sell me any alcohol!¡± Rops said, pointing at the glass of ice water with a lemon slice on the counter in front of him.


    ¡°But let¡¯s continue on what happened there on the edge of the forest.¡± The journalist adjusted his golden frames again.


    ¡°What happened, you ask? I stopped the car to see what was going on. I have binoculars for just that purpose, to see what they get up to on top of the Center Station. And then, while bending towards the glove box in my Volga, I noticed that the clock had stopped. A moment later the engine died and then I could no longer move. Not my arms or legs nor head. I couldn¡¯t even blink my eyes.


    ¡°Before I managed to start panicking about this, a blinding light appeared above the car. It started moving and landed on the forest road in front of the car, the bright glow hiding everything else. Then faint shadows started to appear in front of the light, moving around. Small bodies, barely human in shape, with narrow shoulders and hips. They have these almost non-existing skinny bodies, no thicker than a piece chopped firewood and big blue eyes on even bigger heads standing on frail necks. These guys are no more than a meter and ten, maybe meter and twenty centimeters tall.¡±


    ¡°Are they gray?¡± the journalist asked with some background knowledge.


    ¡°What fucking gray?! They were red!¡± the boy exclaimed. ¡°Real redskins, I say!¡±


    ¡°Red?¡±


    ¡°Red indeed!¡± the young man repeated. ¡°Their skin was red like wine made of red currant!¡±


    ¡°And what did they do?¡±


    ¡°They stole five crates of vodka from me! Those fuckers are too weak to carry the vodka themselves. They came along the side of my car, did not spare me a glance. Then they waved their hand and the trunk lid opened as if by magic. Another wave and the crates flew out of the trunk one by one, floated down the side of the car and disappeared into that blinding light. Then they too walked back into the light and flew away.


    ¡°Of course, after that I drove back to mum¡¯s house as fast as I could and only there I noticed that the clock on the wall was 9 minutes ahead of the clock in the car.¡±


    ¡°Nine minutes you say?¡± the journalist asked with fascination.


    ¡°Yes, nine minutes.¡± Robert repeated. ¡°Strangest thing ever.¡±


    ¡°And including this one how many times have you met those anaks?¡± the mustached man asked.


    ¡°The fifth.¡±


    ¡°The fifth!¡± the journalist asked in a loud voice. ¡°Those little red men have stopped you five times?¡± he asked more quietly.


    ¡°...and every time they¡¯ve taken all my vodka.¡± The young man said, on the verge of crying.


    At this very moment, the exterior door was thrown open and tons of daylight poured in. A man ran in, carrying with him a strong stink sweat, vodka and forest. He had a moth-eaten sweater on his bare skin, matted beard and hair and worn cargo pants with the suspenders hanging down. Right before the counter, he got tangled in his suspenders and then fell in front of the bar stools.


    ¡°Is he okay?¡± the journalist asked.


    ¡°Of course he is! God saves all drunkards and children!¡± Leopold said. He then looked at the door still open. ¡°First one to close the door gets a free beer!¡±


    Seeing that nobody got up, he added quickly. ¡°Or a glass of vodka!¡±


    Right then and there several village men jumped up and rushed to climb over the furniture and each other only to be the first to close the door.


    The barkeep poured a free drink to the winner of the door-closing competition, and also set a siphon of soda water on the counter to spray in the face of the man, still sprawled out in front of the bar counter. It took several seconds until the jet of water woke him up and he started to recover. He got up slowly, but then, after seeing the glass of vodka on the counter, grabbed it with lightning speed and downed it in one go.


    This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    ¡°More!¡± He demanded, hauling himself onto the bar stool. ¡°More! To the very edge!¡±


    Leopold sighed, then produced another tea glass and filled it halfway. The filled the glass the drunk had just emptied to the brim. With a surprisingly steady hand, the man with matted hair and beard grabbed the full tea glass and not spilling a drop downed it all at once.


    ¡°More!¡±


    ¡°You do have some money, don¡¯t you?¡± the barkeep asked. ¡°This vodka here is not cheap!¡±


    ¡°You too huh? Losing your goods to thieves.¡± The young man asked, occasionally being visible on a stool behind the mustached man.


    ¡°Go fuck yourself, Rops!¡± Leopold said in a loud voice.


    ¡°He¡¯s not.¡± Rops continued. ¡°The Boys from the North are bringing his cargo in, the skyfolk don¡¯t tolerate them.¡±


    ¡°Considering what a day I just had, that 150 grams is still too little!¡± the man said. ¡°So pour some more! My story is worth it!¡±


    ¡°You really think so?¡± Leo asked. ¡°Name me one time when your story has been worth of anything?¡±


    ¡°I would like to hear more!¡± the journalist got up from the stool next to Rops and then approached the barkeep and the drunk.


    He pushed himself back by the bar counter, forcing both Rops and the mustached man to take the spot next to them to the right. He sat on the stool and set the money on the counter.


    ¡°Silver rubles?¡± Leopold noted. ¡°Yeah, you¡¯re not a local, are you?¡± He filled the tea glass for the third time.


    ¡°Well,¡± the man with suspenders said after he had downed this glass as well. ¡°As you might well know, during bright nights like now, I like to drink about half a liter and sometimes more of vodka and then go for quiet walk in the Forbidden Forest. Some think it is stupid and even life-threatening and refuse to walk on the same side of the street when they meet me. They say I am cursed, because noting ever happens to me. But honestly, nothing really has happened to me, thus far.¡±


    ¡°You haven¡¯t seen bogeymen in the Forbidden Forest?¡± the journalist asked.


    ¡°You really want to know?¡± the man bent deeper toward the journalist, as his voice grew quieter. ¡°I have seen ghosts, I have seen the subterranean, the sky people, KGB-folk. I have heard the ringing of church bells, I have even seen ghostly carts rolling by and monstrous beings which can only be borne out of the minds of scientists at Agroprom or some other secret base. But never once has anybody threatened me or attacked me. And that¡¯s the only reason I have returned to the forest. I think they know I am of no danger and that¡¯s why they are not aggressive towards me.¡±


    ¡°And w-what was d-different this time?¡± The journalist asked, wiping sweat of fear from his brow.


    ¡°During the night, I was walking along the edge of the forest near the Cottage district and came upon the Mayor¡¯s willy¡¯s truck, doors wide open and not a soul nearby. You know how much the Mayor loves his vehicles, right? No way would he leave it unlocked with doors wide open on the edge of the forest.


    ¡°My walk in the forest was quite usual, nothing noteworthy happened. But when I woke up in the morning, then at first, I had no idea where I was. It felt as if I had made it to the other end of the forest, the edge near the Death Fields. And the forest was completely different. A dirt road led to the edge of the forest, right across the Death Fields.¡±


    ¡°And that constitutes as something special?¡± Leo asked.


    ¡°I saw the road appear! Out of nowhere! First a strange black vehicle with a rectangular cabin drove across the field. Like a Chaika, but bigger. With four doors, big yet low rear fins, black as the night itself. The road appeared from right under it¡¯s wheels! Without any damage the vehicle rushed into the forest and made all the trees, bushes and shrubs disappear from in front of it, creating a road you can still see there. And it moved fast, at least 70 kph. One blink of the eye, there is nothing, the second blink and there¡¯s a road. And not just a road. The clearing was created at a similar speed, the trees withered in seconds, stumps fell into dirt and out of the ground covered in tree needles, golden grass grass grew. And then things got weird.¡±


    ¡°Weird in what way?¡±


    ¡°Along with the clearing appearing, there also appeared a tight bunch of men in black suits, who then dissipated into various activities. They also seemed to stand or walk in queer ways. It took me time to understand that in reality, they were not actually touching the ground, instead they hovered above it. The stepped and walked like regular people, moving forward, but the soles of their shoes only touched the taller herbs, barely bending these. And only then the vehicles came. Five cars with huge fins on the rear, each with unique fin design, glistening in chrome, flawless piano black paint, as if it was new. These cars drove themselves. I could see no drivers. The made so sound, and I saw them turning into the thick forest and drive through the trees without damaging the trees or getting damaged themselves.¡±


    ¡°Certainly.¡± Leo said in a doubtful tone.


    ¡°I give you my word! One of these cars even drove through me. Of course I did not stay to see what would happen afterwards but jumped away from their path.¡±


    ¡°And what happened afterwards?¡±


    ¡°Those ghostly semi-transparent cars started to get more and more corporeal, while the trees growing through them, were turning more and more etherial. In the end, the cars looked like real cars and the trees disappeared into thin air.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s quite interesting.¡± The journalist remarked. ¡°In Tontla where I¡¯m from, people also investigate what games these Boys from the North are actually playing here.¡±


    ¡°I have heard better stories before. Including some of your own.¡± Leopold stared and the drunk in front of him.


    ¡°And then I saw a different kind of men in black!¡± the man said. ¡°Those that are described in old ufo-books!¡±


    ¡°You meaa the Slick Boys from the North?¡± the journalist asked.


    ¡°No. Men in black I say. One of them looked like a young woman, but it was clear that it could not have been a real woman. She did not step like a woman, she did not talk like a woman. Her voice had no glow. And she was cold. Nothing happening around her caused any change to appear on her face. Nothing surprised her. On the contrary, she seemed to know a lot more on everything going on than that tall special agent acting as her bodyguard. I think that woman was some kind of a zomb developed and grown in Agroprom, who is much more adept in sensing the world that remains hidden from man.¡±


    ¡°Zomb¡­ you mean a zombie?¡± The journalist asked in utter surprise.


    ¡°Hey Sangaste, the vodka is starting to get to you!¡±


    ¡°No it is not!¡± the man with matted hair and beard argued. ¡°but I will talk faster then!¡±


    ¡°Well speak then.¡± the Mustached Man said. ¡°Why could it not have been a woman? Or a person in general?¡±


    ¡°Because as soon as she got out of the car, she found me! I was far away deep in the forest behind the toppled over pine, the same one under which the cobblestone road appears. I peeked out from there. And she saw me! She locked eyes with me! She stared at me for a long period of time. And she did not tell anybody about it! I know she wants to do something to me. She wants to drag me away to Agroprom, straight to the Mayak!¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s a mayak?¡± the journalist asked.


    ¡°According to the older stories, in Agroprom, there was an Industrial Production Cooperative named Mayak which produced laboratory equipment. Quartz sand and steel went in and out came test tubes, vials, cylinders, beakers, scalpels and other such stuff. Agroprom was shuttered when the Russians left and the production co-op could not stay above water with Agroprom as it¡¯s main purchaser gone. Of course, there are also people who say that the botanics department of the Agroprom and using radiation to develop new fruit-bearing sorts was also a cover for more sinister activities, which have not ceased like the rest of the facility.¡±


    ¡°Very interesting.¡± The journalist said. ¡°Agroprom is quite near to Tontla, but honestly, I have never considered what it¡¯s history might be. Nobody in Tontla is willing to talk about the matters as well, not even about whether they worked in the Agroprom or not. So I would like to continue hearing the tale of this man.¡±


    ¡°This woman I tell you! Or whatever she is, she is not human! She took photos, she took photos of everything that had aroused my suspicions before. Of the road, the finned cars, of the clearing where the cars parked. She even walked further away to take photos of how the road ended out of nowhere.¡±


    ¡°And that¡¯s it?¡± Rops asked with disappointment.


    ¡°No, that¡¯s not it. When we were around the body in the forest, then the only words she said were an order to the doctor to pack it up and send it to the Institute.¡±


    ¡°To the Institute?¡± the journalist asked, scratching his ear near the where the frame of the glasses rubbed. ¡°And not to Luiga or to the hospital? Not even to the hospital in Tontla?¡±


    ¡°Nope. To the Institute.¡± The man said. ¡°The doctor agreed at once, without a word in opposition.¡±


    ¡°But then everything is fine!¡± the Mustached Man said.


    ¡°No it is not!¡± the man said, raising his voice. ¡°There were glitters of sweat on the doctor¡¯s forehead. And he also paid a lot of attention to what that girl in black was doing. Much more than the nurse he had brought with him, whose short lab coat and proud cleavage was a sight to behold for everybody else.¡±


    ¡°Oh, so that doctor was visiting with him?¡± the Mustached Man asked with interest. ¡°Dammit, I should have gone to the forest with the others! I have thought several times that maybe I should play a mad person, go to Luiga and get an eval from that godess, alone in the room with me...¡±


    ¡°They say she does not speak a word, so not much point in being alone in the room with her...¡± Rops said.


    ¡°I don¡¯t need her for her ability to speak, okay? I have sometimes seen her lifting big and heavy crates into that ambulance the doctor has. I am sure she prefers a man acting rough with her, forcing himself and his fingers into¡­ you know where...¡± the man¡¯s face again bore a single-minded grin.


    ¡°In addition, that girl knew before the doctor that the dead body was burnt and cooked through. And she spoke to me!¡±


    ¡°What did she say?¡± the journalist asked, now waving at Leopold to get a half-glass of vodka for himself.


    ¡°She knew at once that I should not have been there. She knew I was not there just because of my curiosity to see the dead body and the Forest Lake. She straight up said to me that if I stay there for long, she would pack me up along with the corpse, ship me to Luiga and then come and play her guitar to me as well!¡±


    ¡°Oh yeah, they say there¡¯s a sadist who goes to Luiga to play the guitar to the patients.¡± The Mustached Man said. ¡°That Metsla dude starts his howls every time he hears that girl¡¯s guitar. The doctor however doesn¡¯t mind at all, he even approves of it. He says that the patients are a lot more agreeable when her music is heard and even the medical procedures of that hot chick have a greater success rate.¡±


    ¡°You see!¡± the man exclaimed. ¡°That¡¯s not normal, now is it!? In addition to all that, when she reached the Forest Lake, she also did not act like a spectating village folk nor like the Boys from the North, who were carefully checking everything with tons of equipment they had brought¡­ And this is important! They could not figure it out in one way or the other! But she was acting like she knew precisely what was going on! She even knew before I did that the tree would bleed if it was hit with an axe.¡±


    ¡°The tree was bleeding?¡± The journalist asked. ¡°And you saw that? With your own eyes?¡±


    ¡°I did!¡± The man admitted. ¡°I also saw that girl standing on the other side of the disappeared lake and order the doctor take a sample of the wood and the blood. She even made the doctor taste it!¡±


    ¡°Forced him? How?¡±


    ¡°With her gaze. Only her gaze.¡± the man explained. ¡°I even heard the doctor admit to the Mayor that the girl in black knows more of everything going on than anybody else could, even him! In the end, even the Mayor started to figure out that there was something strange going on with the two of them!¡±


    The small circle of conversation which had by now grown very private, intimate and secretive, was suddenly halted by a bright beam of light, once again revealing how little light there really was inside the bar.


    ¡°I told you already to leave that curtain alone!¡± old Leo raised his voice. ¡°Do it again and I will ban to for all time!¡±


    ¡°I just wanted to see if the people are back from the forest. The town looks deserted.¡±


    ¡°You should have gone to the forest yourself. You could¡¯ve also witnessed a bleeding tree!¡±


    ¡°To the forest? Oh no. No. A bleeding tree?¡± For a moment he seemed interested but then he fell on his table raving. ¡°No-no. No! Not again!¡± He then downed a whole glass of vodka at once and remained lying on the table.


    ¡°What¡¯s his story?¡± the journalist asked.


    ¡°Oh, he complained a few months¡­ or years ago, who even remembers that¡­ He complained that one night, he stayed for a little too long in the forest chopping firewood. And then suddenly, mid swing, the tree turned into a woman, and he hit her into midsection with full force. And as he had spent several seconds looking at the gaping would gushing blood, had felt the cold blood spray on him, he had taken his eyes off the gruesome scene for just a moment and¡­ both the women and the tree had disappeared. And also the blood. Gone from his face, gone off the axe, gone from the ground and the dirt.¡± The barkeep explained. ¡°He also said that only afterwards had he noticed that on that night, the Moon had been strangely tinted blue.


    ¡°These days he avoids the forest, even during daytime. Not just the Forbidden Forest but all forests. He also lost his job in the Valgepal? sawmill. They say that even there, he started to see young women in shear transparent gowns being sawed in two while alive.¡±


    ¡°That is a rough story.¡± The journalist remarked.


    ¡°It really is not.¡± Leopold grumbled and then sighed. ¡°Half the drunks here have some kind of fault in their mind. It doesn¡¯t matter what they see, be they haunts in the Forbidden Forest, or are the anaks visiting them every time their trunk is full of vodka.¡±


    ¡°I say, if I could get my drink delivered by black cars with tall fins in the rear, then they would not bother me either!¡± Rops raised his voice. ¡°Unfortunately I only have my grampa¡¯s Volga.¡±


    ¡°Nobody cares, Rops!¡± The Mustached Man said.


    The door to the bar opened again. This time slower. And in the rectangular opening of daylight, there appeared a female shape, about 175 centimeters tall, with straight hair reaching the figure¡¯s elbows and a skirt or a dress barely reaching her knees. Behind her towered a male figure almost 2 meters tall who had to bend his head slightly to get in through the doorway.


    ¡°God dammit! The found me!¡± the man with matted hair and beard and a moth-eaten sweater got up and with a surprising speed, jumped over the counter, and ran into the back, presumably out the back entrance.


    The front door finally closed and the girl in black walked towards the counter in a deathly silent bar. Leo, the journalist, Rops and the Mustached Man observed the girl with guarded apprehension. It almost seemed like the whole bar had suddenly turned bigger, darker and more derelict than only minutes ago. Not being able to protect it¡¯s denizens even from outside aliens.


    ¡°W-what would you like?¡± the barkeep Leopold finally dared to ask.


    ¡°A shot of vodka for a start.¡± The girl in black said. ¡°After a brief conversation, we¡¯ll see what else.¡±

 XXI - a Detour into the End of the World I

    ¡°Are you sure you know where we¡¯re going?¡± Laura asked.


    ¡°I do.¡±


    ¡°When will make it? It¡¯s gonna get dark soon and we¡¯ve spent the whole day wandering these reeds here.¡±


    *


    It started on a Sunday. One afternoon my table in the back corner of a dim bar full of cigar smoke was visited by a man with an offer that was hard to refuse. In hindsight he looked quite peculiar, but at that time in that bar, sitting by my sixth glass of tequila I was not able to make note of that. Back then I only saw a tall older man with a long beard standing rigidly before me wearing an impeccable black suit, wearing a bowler hat and tinted glassed with small silver frames. He had black leather gloves on and his right hand leaned on a black cane with an intricately carved silver head.


    As it had been a long time since I had had a job that would truly interest me, the unknown stranger¡¯s offer seemed quite a temptation. My small basement office was full of memorabilia from a thousand corners of the earth and boxes full of offer for new expeditions. But after my last contracted journey into the secret places in Siberia ended suddenly and according to the papers classified for decades ¡°as a catastrophe,¡± I had no interest of leaving my drink in this bar called The Black Goat of the Woods With a Thousand Young.


    In short, the man promised me all the right things. My own team, everything necessary for getting to my destination and full support from the Board of Data in what ever I would dedicate myself to next. In other words: total control. Of course at that moment I was too drunk to really considered whether this was not too good of an offer. But at that time, not knowing was far more tempting than being open about things. When I asked where I would need to lead the team, the stranger did not answer me, instead he produced a pen and wrote an address he would be waiting me the next morning. This could only mean one thing ¨C a long time dream of mine, the Route.


    For a long time, that thing called the Route had been part of folklore and nothing more. Just like stories about tunnels connecting old missile bases, catacombs under the city bathing in Northerly winds and spatial ships fallen into the bogs and suburbs. And secret alien bases only visible and perceivable to experienced mediums. And for them too only when traveling as astral bodies.


    As conspiracy theories, for a long time Kaiu marsh and the Route were considered to be under the same heading. The story about both was largely the same ¨C drunks and old people had been taking a shortcut to the neighboring town through the forest and ended up disappearing for several weeks, some even for longer. When they did reappear, they appeared in perfect health which was in no way consistent with having to gather their own food from nature for at least a dozen days. And what the lost people said when they reappeared was enough to commit them to an asylum for a few months. In there, they were examined in every possible way to come up with a rational explanation how poor simple country folk had lost their marbles from staying in the forest too long and had become danger to themselves and others.


    But then something happened. Whether it was caused by hitherto unknown force or only the road workers constructing the new village road, is impossible to say. But the Route to Nowhere turned from a pipe story of the drunk and the senile into a stable local anomaly. It is located in the middle of a newly paved road between two villages which are now again gaining life due to this, being a phenomenon about six miters wide and almost circular in shape.


    It took a long time until it was understood that what they had was a doorway to some other place not located here. A door which functions in both directions. Meaning if one crosses the event horizon traveling in either direction on the road, one will disappear. After this apparition became stable, none who have crossed over have returned. All expeditions were considered lost and the people were considered dead. Those more in the know have theories that the place the doorway takes them to has no doorway back. Or there a more hopeful option that the place of entrance and the place of exit are not the same doorways and do not lie in the same moment and on the same spatial coordinates.


    All this was already known to me when I was a small boy playing on golden fields, but still there I was standing in front of that jugendstil building at the required time with my face shaved clean and hangover slept off. Other than the luxury cars visible from the archway to the courtyard, the building seemed to have been abandoned for a long time.


    My thought was that if the Triumvirate heading the Board of Data really had nothing else to do than to collect people with broken souls and those unsuccessful in life to use as cannon fodder for some vodka money against the anomaly then I could always say no. I could refuse and go back to the bar and continue with my tequila until they decide whether they can trust me to be silent or not.


    Despite that I was not ready for what I heard and saw. Under the watchful eyes of a special police unit I was thoroughly searched and then led to the third floor of the building. I was asked to sit at small wooden table in the middle of a huge darkened hall. After the doors behind me had closed, nine lights slowly started to grow brighter revealing nine dark shapes backlit. A committee consisting of nine members. The brights lights behind them did not allow me to see their faces or even their clothes, but from the outlines I could tell that four of them were women.


    The chair of the board, according to his rumbling voice a man past sixty, clearly said that this would not be a suicide mission. And although none of the expeditions they have sent have ever returned, they are still in possession of materials showing that where ever this anomaly leads to, human-like creatures from the other side have also come to investigate our world, just as we have sent ours to investigate theirs. The only difference being that the people from their side have all managed to return to their side. None have been managed to be stopped, captured or even shot.


    To convince me that this was not suicide mission or a forced move, they offered two scientists for my team and allowed me to bring along one assistant. There reason for asking for me a was simple ¨C in their opinion I had load of experience with environments hostile to humans and my future without this job would be relatively dim and full of tequila.


    I met my final team a few days later in a checkpoint set on the Route. Watched by a branch of the military established for this particular purpose. My choice for a partner in my journey was Laura Mesi, a 5¡¯5¡± woman with dark blonde hair who had accompanied me on the past 13 expeditions out of the 25 or so I have done so far. Different from many of her contemporaries and precursors, she was one of the few to have managed to return with her life and health intact. This had been mostly because unlike other white apes of the Western Society she never had a habit of jumping head first into the unknown or putting unknown things in her mouth without a pressing need.


    The unknown committee had handed over a professor named Anatoly Tamm, a man in his fifties, whose hair, beard and brows had a little gray in them but who was still in health good enough to travel the world, and hike both in sharp winds of the Arctic as well under the scorching equatorial sun. Accompanying him was a young lad who did not arouse in me any feelings one way or the other. He did not seem to have much experience nor self-confidence. Thus I didn¡¯t even bother to remember the brown-eyed boy¡¯s name when the professor introduced him to us.


    *


    ¡°Is this everything?¡± I asked from our group in full hiking gear. ¡°Can we go now?


    ¡°You know this is a one-way ticket, right?¡± Laura asked.


    ¡°More of a one-way ticket to look at a lost city in the Arctic?¡± I asked.


    ¡°It sure is. I¡¯m just reminding you.¡± The woman with big olive eyes said.


    ¡°If you don¡¯t like it, why are you coming along then?¡±


    ¡°I didn¡¯t say I don¡¯t like it. Do you know how many times I¡¯ve said over the years that I want off this planet? I would never forgive myself if let this chance go by me.¡±


    ¡°We¡¯re not yet ready to go.¡± Professor Tamm said. ¡°A Guide should join us and a soldier.¡±


    ¡°A soldier?¡± I asked. ¡°The parameters of this expedition do not specify a need for guns. We have no need for them and I don¡¯t want any member of our team to walk around with them. If we are in no danger of meeting wildlife, we have no need for weapons.¡±


    ¡°You misunderstand.¡± Professor said, smiling. ¡°The soldier is not here to protect you from the Route but to protect you from the Guide.¡±


    ¡°And who is the Guide?¡± I asked.


    ¡°The guide is a Guide.¡± The soldier said stepping closer. He wore his full military kit along with a uniform and a kevlar vest, but his only weapon was a sidearm.


    ¡°My name is major Vernadsky.¡± He raised his hand to his ear. ¡°It is not important who it is, it is important that they have their purpose.¡±


    The major turned to look at an approaching convoy of vehicles flanked by armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicle with large caliber autocannons. In the middle of the convoy was massive 8-wheeled military vehicle the size of a missile transporter-erector. But instead of a missile there was a big specialized contained on the back of it. The convoy was shadowed by at least two helicopter gunships which stayed in the air even after the convoy stopped.


    As soon as the convoy stopped, the dozens of soldiers exited their armored vehicles and started to secure the perimeter. However their focus was not the exterior surroundings but instead the specialized container at the back of the transporter truck. This was strange to see as the checkpoint cordon itself was like a massive military base full of special forces soldiers with assault rifles, tanks and other armor as well as helicopter gunships flying overhead.


    The transporter truck had a specialized crane attachment which now lifted the back end of the container clear off the truck much like a garbage bin and lowered it gently onto the ground. After this, all the soldiers who had arrived as well as the infantry fighting vehicles trained their guns on the part lifted off the truck.


    Dumbfounded, I observed how the locks on drab green container were remotely disengaged and then the sides of the trapezoid container were hydraulically lowered, revealing a single metal chair on which sat a female figure with a thick bag over her head. She was clothed all in black. Knee high combat boots, knee-length skirt and knitted long-sleeved black sweater. Next to the chair there was a small wheeled trolley with a tank and plastic tubes running to the cloth hood over the woman¡¯s head.


    Again remotely, the metal clamps on the arms, legs and her waist were popped under the watchful eyes of the soldiers aiming their weapons at her. She slowly lifted her hands, stretched them and then slowly raised them to pull the sack off her head.


    She was young, in her early twenties at most. Long dark brown hair reaching down to her elbows. Simple yet elegantly beautiful face, strong brow line and dark eyes. The plastic tubes from the tanked ran across her ears and seemed to supply fresh oxygen as the tubes ran under her nose. From her face it was evident that all the measures for detaining, securing and transporting her were more of a source of entertainment for her than anything to be taken seriously. Despite the mechanical locks on the chair there were still leg irons on her feet and metal braces on her arms and waist.


    As she got up, several soldiers approached her along with major Vernadsky. While the other soldiers kept their rifles trained at her, the major attached some chains to her wrists and waist restricting her movements. The chain did not allow her to to raise her hand higher than about 45 degrees from her waist. It was also obvious that she was tall or at least taller than average, being easily the same height as the major.


    ¡°That¡¯s the guide?¡± Laura asked. ¡°Her? She can¡¯t even breathe on her own! And why is she in chains?¡±


    ¡°That is not your business, ma¡¯am!¡± Major said in a loud voice. ¡°And before we start I have a series of rules pertaining to the guide.¡±


    ¡°Yes?¡± I asked with some skepticism in my voice.


    ¡°The Guide will remain in chains. They will not be removed under any circumstance. You are also not allowed to discuss removal of the chains or mention them! Any failure to do so will give me grounds to suspect that you have been compromised by her influence and act accordingly! You may not talk to the Guide! You may not touch the Guide! You may not discuss her amongst yourselves! You may not do anything to risk her oxygen supply! Should these rules be not adhered to, I have been invested with the power to terminate the Guide at once!¡±


    ¡°Terminate the Guide? You mean kill her!?¡± Laura asked. ¡°Isn¡¯t that a bit too much?¡±


    ¡°I assure you ma¡¯am, the authorizations and rules are only equal to the danger the existence of this person creates, nothing else.¡±


    ¡°In any case, you just told us everything we need to know, despite not wanting to.¡± I said. ¡°Good job, dumbass.¡±


    ¡°And what exactly have I told you?¡± The Major asked. ¡°Any conjecture you may draw from this we may just as well deny it especially if there is no evidence to corroborate your claims. And there will be none, as I just mentioned.¡±


    ¡°So you¡¯re major Vernadsky?¡± The girl asked as she closed in, dragging her oxygen cart with her. ¡°Is perhaps the old Vladimir Vernadsky a relative of yours?¡±


    ¡°That is irrelevant!¡± The major barked.


    ¡°So he¡¯s not?¡± The girl asked, fearlessly yet comfortably staring into the major¡¯s eyes. ¡°That¡¯s good.¡±


    It was immediately evident how wary the major as well s the professor was of the tall girl in black. They had the guns, the men, the power and yet they were afraid of her.


    I saw Laura approach me. She put her hands around my neck pulling me down. For anybody observing, this may have looked like a display of personal affection but really this was a way she could hide a serious discussion behind something mundane.


    ¡°What has he told you?¡± Laura asked.


    ¡°She is one of them, I think.¡± I said. ¡°One of the people who don¡¯t exist. One from the other side of the Route.¡±


    ¡°There are people on the other side?¡± Laura asked.


    ¡°There might just be. I see no other reason for her to receive such a welcome reminiscent of a serial killer whose value as an academic subject far exceeds their value as a human being.¡±


    ¡°That means there is a way back, or a way forward.¡± She said.


    ¡°Just what are you afraid of?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Making the greatest discovery on what seems like two Earths and having nobody to tell about it.¡±


    ¡°I see.¡± I said.


    ¡°Are you two just about done?¡± the Major asked, clearly annoyed by us.


    ¡°Just about.¡± I said. ¡°Are there any other rules we should be aware of? Or can we go?¡±


    ¡°We can go.¡± The soldier said.


    Out group of five advanced warily along a road of broken tarmac. Stepping over small clumps of dirt and low grass which grew in the cracks in the pavement. A clear sign that the nature was slowly clawing back some of what had been taken from its domain. Tanks and the rest of the military was left behind us. Ahead of us was only an empty disused road, not a single visible sign that this was anything unusual. No strange smells, no sudden alterations to one¡¯s senses of time and space. Not even any strange lights or ebbing of air. The only thing before us which was somewhat disjointed was a lone raised crossing gate for no discernible reason which we soon passed.


    ¡°You know something about this, don¡¯t you?¡± I asked the girl in black walking next to me.


    The next moment the major hit me in the shoulder. The girl only gave a secretive smile, confirming that I was right in some way.


    ¡°That was not a personal question!¡± I said out loud.


    ¡°She talks, you do not!¡± The major replied sternly.


    ¡°How long do we have to walk?¡± Laura grumbled. ¡°Before¡­ Olavi?¡±


    I heard my named called and turned to look back. An empty road. No raised barrier. No military checkpoint in the distance, just an arrow straight tarmac road being encroached by forest on both sides. Some of the grass which had taken root in the cracks of the pavement was getting pretty tall.


    ¡°I didn¡¯t even notice us slipping in here!¡± The Professor said in a surprised tone.


    ¡°This is a forest, interesting stuff often happens in the forest,¡± I said, ¡°That which just took place is one of the more mundane of such things.¡±


    ¡°Could you at least release my hands from the chains?¡± The girl in black complained. ¡°I have nowhere to escape from here.¡±


    ¡°There is no chance in hell!¡± The major replied.


    ¡°Fine then,¡± she sighed. ¡°A proposition then.¡±


    She walked to the side of the road and used her feet t line up some small pebbles on the tarmac.


    ¡°Let¡¯s say this first pebble is where we are and this next one is where our lodging is supposed to be. We could get there by following the road. It will be a long boring walk and we will get there by sundown at the earliest. If we can even notice a sundown at this place. Or we could take the shortcut.¡±


    If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.


    She turned and used her leg, raising it as much as the chain allowed, to point to a direction off the road.


    ¡°We could be there in a couple of hours.¡±


    ¡°We will not be doing that.¡± The major outright refused. ¡°We have enough equipment on each of us to spend the night right here on the road if necessary. It is no different from suicide, jumping into the woods in an unknown place!¡±


    ¡°You want to spend the night right here?¡± The girl in black asked. ¡°Not even the locals want to spend their nights in the forest after everything went to shit. Compasses no longer work, the air is full of signals jamming everything. And in a dark forest, one can lose their sense of direction at a moment¡¯s notice. I will probably manage to spend the night in the forest just fine, I have never been afraid on any of the forests around this place. I have never been afraid of the forest critters who come out in the open once darkness falls. Of course, during the olden...¡±


    The girl¡¯s musings where stopped by the major who slapped her across the face without holding back.


    ¡°Through the woods then.¡± He curtly said.


    ¡°It is very difficult for us to travel with me like this.¡± the girl said.


    ¡°Not my business!¡± Vernadski replied. ¡°Show us the way and don¡¯t even think about getting away from our grasp!¡±


    ¡°One other thing.¡± The girl in black said. ¡°If in the forest you should lose sight of the others, stay put. I will come and find you myself.¡±


    ¡°We.¡± the major said. ¡°We will find them ourselves.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s the difference if you¡¯re taggling along with me?¡± The girl asked.


    She started walking again, the major produced his pistol and followed after her.


    ¡°Tell me you knew these two would be coming with us.¡± Laura said as we got deeper into the dark damp forest.


    ¡°I had no idea.¡± I replied. ¡°I was only told where I was supposed to be to see the rest of my team. If I had known there was a career soldier involved, I would have considered it with much more care.¡±


    ¡°Remember what happened in Mexico? Mediocre soldiers in a non-military expedition never spell good. And this major and his behavior are the quintessence of mediocrity.¡±


    The way Laura put it made me smirk. Despite that, I agreed with her. Essentially we were all alone in a world, far away from home and culture familiar to us and this was clear to everybody but one person who was still trying to hang on to a former way of life and order of the world, collecting gold he could never exchange. Demanding respect he had no use for.


    ¡°At the very least I hope you know who that girl is?¡± Laura continued when we passed the patch of forest and reached thick grass nearly ten feet tall, it was even more difficult here to not lose sight of the girl and the major.


    ¡°Nothing beyond what I already told you.¡± I said. ¡°I think she¡¯s from the other side. From this side. The Committee told me that the Route is not only unidirectional. Just like people have disappeared into here traveling along it, people have also appeared over there. But they told me that all that have appeared have returned without fail, none have been captured. But maybe that was...¡±


    ¡°You two! Shut up right now!¡± the Professor demanded. ¡°You are revealing information classified at the highest level!¡±


    ¡°It is my own business what information I decide to reveal to my team members!¡± I said, slightly ticked off. ¡°I believe in trust and respect. And considering this is no different from a one-way trip I find it important for each member for the team to know what they are facing, then they are also more serious towards what is expected of them. That information is of vital importance and I have no shits to give whether this is also a state secret or not! Also there is nobody in here to complain to!¡±


    ¡°There is the Major.¡± Professor said in all seriousness.


    ¡°By the way, did any of you notice where the Major and that girl went?¡± The young man following the Professor asked.


    We looked around. Our guide and the person guarding her were gone. The four of us were standing alone on a small wet clearing in the middle of tall man-sized grass. Not a single other sound around us besides us breathing and walking around in it. No wind, no birds, no animals. The deathly silence and the lack of wind were the two things wearing down our nerves the most. This did not at all match the autumn cool and damp air. Seasons here were somehow different, even if in this case ¡®here¡¯ only stood for this very wetland of tall yellow grass.


    ¡°The girl in black said that we should stay put if we get lost.¡± I said. ¡°At the moment we have no other option but to trust her.¡±


    ¡°There is another option.¡± Laura said, dropping her backpack. ¡°That girl in black. She was not captured , instead she allowed herself to be captured.¡±


    ¡°You mean that girl in black is from this place?!¡± the Professor¡¯s assistant asked, frightened. ¡°This is her home?! Maybe then she brought us here to get rid of us one by one!¡±


    ¡°Shut the fuck up!¡± The Professor shouted. ¡°We are lost, that is all. Nobody¡¯s gonna die here. Let¡¯s just stay here until they find us.¡±


    ¡°Yes, let¡¯s wait.¡± Laura said, attempting to get her backpack on again.


    She then stopped, and instead started using the small shovel hanging from her backpack to dig right beside the backpack. She finally lifted out a small metal can covered with a torn label and dark brown with surface rust.


    ¡°What did you find?¡± I asked.


    ¡°A can. I think there is something in it.¡±


    Laura attached the shovel back to the rucksack. She then shook the can, something was rattling inside. She tried to make out the label and the markings on the can.


    ¡°Guatemalan coffee.¡± I said. ¡°It is written right there on the can.¡±


    ¡°Coffee?¡± The Professor asked. ¡°In here? That is impossible. How is it possible to find a can of coffee beans in here that looks like a can we had for sale in the year...¡±


    ¡°But these don¡¯t sound like coffee beans.¡± Laura said, still shaking the can.


    She gave up and used her pocket knife pry the lid off the can.


    ¡°Coffee beans.¡± I said, looking into the can. I picked one and put it in my mouth.


    ¡°And coins.¡± Laura said. ¡°Estonian cents.¡± She pulled a few out to examine them. ¡°From 1928.¡±


    ¡°1928!¡± The Professor exclaimed. ¡°Do you not understand how old these are?!¡±


    ¡°Older than you can even imagine.¡± The girl in black said us, now standing before us, alone.


    She carelessly threw her handcuffs and leg irons into the grass. It took her some effort to drag her oxygen cart on the rutted ground as she stepped closer.


    ¡°Put the coins and the beans back in the can, seal it and replace it.¡± She continued in a steady tone.


    ¡°Wh-why?!¡± the young assistant asked.


    ¡°Because the Lake does not like if somebody makes off with its property.¡±


    ¡°The lake?¡± Laura asked.


    ¡°This may look like a marsh, but once long ago there was a lake here.¡± The girl in black spoke. ¡°But something happened. The lake evaporated¡­ and now there¡¯s this wet and noxious marsh which only remembers everything bad. This is what usually happens to lakes if you seriously slight them. Or outright rape them. Better people than us have tried to take things out of here. It has never ended well.¡±


    ¡°What happened to the Major?¡± I asked.


    ¡°He started to panic and fell into the kolk. He went into the waters and that was it. I tried to grab his belt but the only thing I manage to grab onto were the keys to my irons. Lucky break, huh?¡±


    Shew now threw the keys to her bonds into the grass as well.


    ¡°At least we can now continue onward in peace.¡±


    ¡°Can you show us this place you say he fell into?¡± The Professor asked in a skeptical tone.


    ¡°Showing it is not up to me but to this marsh. And the marsh most definitely will not want to show it to you.¡±


    ¡°What kind of answer is that?¡± The Professor asked, annoyed.


    ¡°An honest one.¡± The girl smiled. ¡°Anger is not helpful here. It will much more likely be a detriment than a benefit. The Major already made that mistake.¡±


    ¡°In what sense?¡± Laura asked. ¡°Why can¡¯t you show us?¡±


    ¡°Because the marsh does not allow me to. We could try our best but there is no chance whatsoever that we would make it back to that very same body of water.¡±


    ¡°Very handy.¡± The professor said, still annoyed and suspicious.


    ¡°Somebody once said that when going into nature, you should only leave there your footprints and only take away the refreshed feeling. In here this is more valid than anywhere else. That which has been abandoned into here, can no longer be retrieved. The only choices are to resolve oneself to leaving or to cling to the abandoned things and become abandoned yourself. To become forgotten.¡±


    ¡°Who are you?¡± I asked.


    The girl only smiled for a few seconds, weight that question in her mind.


    ¡°I think the late Major was right, knowing who I am offers no help to us in our current task. It is way more likely to bring forth other questions.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s your name? Or is that something you also cannot tell us?¡± Laura pressed along.


    ¡°My name is a great part of who I am.¡± The girl replied. ¡°It completely reveals who I am. But if that is your deepest wish¡­ My name is Mariann.¡±


    ¡°And this¡­ is this the Lake of Forgetfulness?¡± the Professor asked.


    ¡°It was.¡± Mariann said in a longing voice. ¡°Once...¡± she raised her face towards the sky.


    ¡°Does anybody else have any questions?¡± I asked.


    There were none.


    ¡°Very good then. We can continue moving.¡± Mariann said. ¡°Our journey is going to be long, if not in time and space, then definitely in this marsh. And the marsh will be doing its best to lure us off our way and mire us into what lies here.¡±


    ¡°Where are we going?¡± Laura asked.


    ¡°It is hard to say.¡± The girl in black replied. ¡°Simply because the names and the places they refer to have not matched up for a long time now.¡±


    Soon I started to realize what the girl had meant with her riddles. I started to notice things. First of all, we weren¡¯t just aimlessly wandering the tall grass and the marsh, there was a faint trail we were walking on. We also started passing various adjacent locations both natural and unnatural of which our guide could tell us little beyond what we saw.


    It started with little things. Again and again, we found ourselves nearby the can of coffee beans, the keys to the irons and the handcuff and leg irons Mariann has discarded. And on each occasion one of us noticed it, she warned us to not pick anything up, not to stray from the path and just ignore what we saw. Sometimes it felt as if we were walking in circles, as if we were stuck in space, always ending back at the starting point. At the same time it felt like the landscape and the plants kept changing each time we rediscovered the items.


    And then something changed. The weirdness grew stronger, the locations appearing and appealing to us grew bigger. For example there was like a good hour while I was certain we were walking round and round on a forgotten cemetery because all around us I could notice iron and steel crosses which had fallen over or were just about to, illegible stone grave markers and orderly moss-covered raised platforms which felt the size of grave plots. Or remnants of foundations made of field stones.


    All this held no appeal to our guide though. She also had no interest in a spectacularly big rust-covered orthodox catholic cross diagonally rising out of the ground, just barely five steps off the trail. Or the tank turret and a barrel just barely above the waters of the kolk at some other place. Even the assistant of the Professor was hit on the back of the head when he started to show a little too much interest in a car wreckage which had long since become one with nature once more.


    It also seemed like the terrain under our feet was changing. It was becoming more solid and less damp. More certain. Sometimes we even noticed patches of cobblestoned areas here and concrete curbstones and walkway tiles there. In the end, we found ourselves before a whole section of street from the 20<sup>th</sup> century. Complete with building facades, pavement, lighting and utility poles and paved walkways and the two-way street between the two sides.


    ¡°What the hell happened in here?¡± Laura asked. ¡°Was there a town here at some time?¡±


    ¡°Some time¡­ I don¡¯t know.¡± Mariann said. ¡°What happened here, I don¡¯t know. Whether there was something here at some time or not. What we see here now does not allow us to make any guesses on what happened here.¡± She smiled. ¡°Even the word ¡®happened¡¯ may be inappropriate to use.¡±


    ¡°You mean it might be deliberately erected to look like this?¡±


    ¡°No, not quite that.¡± She replied. ¡°Not ¡®happened¡¯, but rather ¡®will happen.¡¯ The happening of this place is still in the process of happening. It is continuing its process of happening and us being here is part of this event and this process. This is not only true about the marsh but also about the world itself, in fact this holds true for all possible worlds.¡±


    As we continued, our path became littered with broken pieces and shards of of some gigantic concrete structure the purpose and origin of which was impossible to discern from the broken pieces. Even if these pieces were whole sections of buildings. Rooms and hallways broken off, pillars and towers, corners of rooms. None of those sat level with the ground, jutting out in all sorts of obscure angles which made it even harder to guess what they were. All of it created an apocalyptic landscape which was quite capable of resisting being comprehended and contemplated. As if somebody had broken the buildings like bread between their fingers to feed the birds in the park.


    Some of the surfaces were tiled with black, off-white or cream tiles of various colors, roughly ten by ten centimeters in size. We could see steel sticking out of the concrete, both as rebar as well as pieces of fences, railings, barred windows and such. Some of this steel had been twisted into grotesque inhuman artworks by unfathomable forces. One section of a hallways even had a barred security gate, with thick pieces of steel bent and ripped in all directions as if some massive creature has torn its way through it.


    It was also strange to see, when jumping on a new section of hallway, or a corner of a room, that there was a layer of water few centimeters thick on the tiled surface, or a layer of mud or other sediment. Once one that was wiped off one could also discover old coins or firearms, electrical outlets or lamp sockets. The firearms were usually rusted to the point of seizing, their original purpose only discernible from their shape. Sometimes there were also bilingual old signs on the wall sections, giving the impression that once this had been some sort of hospital.


    ¡°We¡¯re getting closer.¡± Mariann said. ¡°closer to the epicenter of everything that happened, if it can indeed be called that.¡±


    ¡°Why do you think so?¡± The Professor asked.


    ¡°Look ahead.¡± She replied. ¡°An abandoned railroad. That brings us quite close to the place we intend to reach.¡±


    ¡°These pieces of a building, it was once a hospital, wasn¡¯t it?¡±


    ¡°A hospital¡­? Yes it was.¡± Mariann seemed to remember something as she gave a sad smile. ¡°But it was also something more than just a hospital.¡±


    ¡°I-is that an... anomaly?¡± The Professor¡¯s assistant asked, pointing at a twisted evil-looking cluster of trees in the distance.


    The most distinct aspect of it seemed to be a massive blackened tree with multiple forks in the trunk. There were no leaves or thinner branches, the whole thing looked dead. However between the forks there was a massive under-wing turbine engine of an aircraft. And although the tree itself was bare, the trunk was from the ground up covered in ivy, which gave it a look of being covered in dark green soft fluff.


    But the young man wasn¡¯t referring to the tree and the engine but instead some twisted landscape much nearer to us, which looked like an object roughly the size of a communications satellite had dropped here, gouged a massive crate here and then made the roots of the trees or something else stretch up and over it covering it like a winding framework. Fit for building a shelter if one were to cover it with a tent or some evergreen branches.


    ¡°Are these...¡± Laura started.


    ¡°These are not roots.¡± I said.


    ¡°True. They are not.¡± Mariann agreed. ¡°It is glass. Sand and dirt which has burnt into glass.¡±


    ¡°How on earth¡­?¡± Laura asked. ¡°What could have caused this?¡±


    ¡°It is not my place to put forth theories about what was or about what is about to be. I only know most about what currently is.¡± The girl in black said.


    ¡°We should go and take a closer look at that entity.¡±


    The professor said, stopping on a narrow boardwalk which reached from the last section of a crumbled hospital onto a tilted railroad bridge one end of which disappeared into the water not far off.


    ¡°That is not a good idea.¡± Mariann said. ¡°Only one way traverses the marsh and we are standing on it. Should we deviate from it, there is the danger of never getting back onto it. One may simply get mired in the marsh. Not in a physical but in a temporal and spatial sense. That¡¯s why you only see man-made object and tech which has gotten mired in here, but no people. All the people who have ever gotten stuck here have either already died or they have not yet ended up here to get stuck.¡±


    ¡°I am still failing to understand why we couldn¡¯t go along the paved road but had to come into the swamps?¡± The Professor asked annoyed. ¡°You saying that one might get stuck in the swamp or get lost cannot be valid to the least. One can always get out. If not by themselves then with the help of the others.¡±


    ¡°Look ahead into the distance along the railway bridge.¡± Mariann said, not the least affected by the rising emotions.


    ¡°What am I supposed to see there?¡± The Professor asked, straining his eyes. ¡°I see the railway, do I not?¡±


    ¡°And what else?¡± She asked.


    ¡°The railway.¡± The man repeated.


    ¡°Oh yeah...¡± I suddenly said.


    Indeed, I had remembered that each of us had binoculars in our backpacks. I started lowering mine before I noticed Laura handing me hers.


    I raised the binoculars and immediately understood what Mariann had been referring to. In the distance I could see thick fog on the surface of the marsh rising to just about the height of of the elevated railway we were on. But I could also see a railway intersection where the elevated railway on the marsh met a broken steel-trussed bridge, with broken sections collapsed into the marsh on both sides of the elevated railway. I could see no bank on either side of the of the railway.


    ¡°We could not have taken the road, because in the distance the road crosses the railway.¡± I said. ¡°And the road bridge has collapsed.¡±


    ¡°The railroad runs straight, the road does not. And the road winds back and forth crossing the rails at least twice or thrice.¡± Mariann spoke. ¡°But the first one of these crossings is the most serious, which we could not make if we were to be on the road.¡±


    The professor too finally produced a binocular and started observing the objects in the distance.


    ¡°So we have to move along the old railroad?¡± He asked dejectedly. ¡°How long?¡±


    ¡°I think about five kilometers.¡± Mariann said. ¡°This is the shortest route.¡±


    ¡°Copy.¡± The Professor said.


    He used his binoculars to observe other directions as well, including the twisted landscape objects around us.


    ¡°God damn it! That boy!¡± he suddenly shouted out.


    I did not need to use the binoculars to see what had angered him so. While we were discussing the railway and our route, the boy had made off and found a way to that strange half-cylindrical framework of fused sand. He was now standing quite near to that and looking at from every angle, obviously fascinated by it.


    My judgment about the size of the object had been generally correct. The boy was about 180 centimeters tall, and the top of the invisible cylinder the sand was reaching around was about twice his height.


    ¡°Hey! Get back here! Come back!¡± The Professor started jumping up and down and waving his hands to get the boy¡¯s attention, he was standing maybe 50 meters away from us.


    The boy noticed him and waved back. But it was obvious that he was more interested in examining the strange object than following the Professor¡¯s orders. I could see how he even raised his hands to his mouth to shout louder, but despite that, we heard nothing. He saw it too, because soon he raised his hands again to shout something.


    This time something made it to us. And every one of us flinched when we heard it. The way we heard it infused us with some strange and inexplicable trepidation. We could not explain it, it had no clear source. But suddenly I felt like I was standing in the middle of a minefield, where every one of my steps could be my last. But there was also another feeling, like the whole world around us suddenly transformed without a single thing changing outwardly or visually. It transformed from an ordinary marshy forest full of abandoned structures and equipment into something completely different. Something more mysterious, more terrible, unpredictable and incomprehensible. Something more alive and yet more alien. Dimmer, darker and more dangerous. For a long time now this had not been a home or a playground. There were only memories crumbled and torn apart, impossible to match up with anything still remaining.


    This transformation had also torn down all pretenses of being able to help that young man. I knew it was impossible. How can I be an actor in a world I cannot fathom? If I cannot comprehend how even the minutest aspects of it function? That boy was lost. I saw Laura also reaching similar conclusions. The only thing we could do now was to wait for the reality to catch up to the fact of his death.


    And Mariann, the girl in black accompanying us and guiding us, in my eyes she had also changed. Despite the oxygen tank and the pipes running to her nose, it seemed like with just a flick of her finger she had thrown aside all measures the Comittee had taken to capture and to keep her. Simply because she was able to foresee and utilize the secret aspects of the world we could neither recognize nor consider.


    That was the source of my fear. I was afraid that everything that girl was telling us about the world and the way it worked was not just her delusion or some strange philosophy but the very truth, horrible in it¡¯s reality. The shortest and clearest way to explain what was going on all around us.


    ¡°Hey! Professor!¡± they young man¡¯s voice reached us.


    But in a blood-curdling way, it did not reach us at the same time we saw him speak. It also did not reach us from the same direction he was standing. Even to distance felt wrong to my ears. To my hearing it seemed like he was standing maybe 10 meters away from us, on the railway.


    ¡°Come here! You have to see it! It¡¯s¡­ it¡¯s like a fallen sputnik or something!¡±


    A moment later we heard something we did not expect to hear. Something which made all of us look around nervously. It made all of us look for shadow figures we were suddenly starting to sense, made us look for the source for the disembodied voice we heard.


    ¡°Damn it, boy!¡± We heard the Professor shouting.


    But the voice wasn¡¯t coming from the Professor. He hadn¡¯t said anything, instead it also originated from the direction of the railroad, as if he too had been standing on the rails.


    ¡°Pro-fes-sor!¡± We heard the young man shout again. ¡°Come he-re! Sput-nik! The fu-ture!¡±


    ¡°That boy has quite the voice on him.¡± Mariann said. ¡°Quite deafening I must say.¡±


    Soon the boy repeated his message and then everything fell silent.


    ¡°We¡­!¡± The professor wanted to start again, but his words stopped as soon as he had started.


    That was because his discarnate voice from the railroad took over instead.


    ¡°We have to help him! Don¡¯t you understand?! Help!¡±


    ¡°Do you now understand why we cannot help him?¡± Mariann asked. ¡°He can never again reach us. And even if we manage to reach him we would not be able to reach back here.¡±


    ¡°Is there anything at all we could do for him?¡± Laura asked with note of caring in her voice.


    ¡°We can remember him by not committing such a stupid mistake ourselves.¡± Mariann said. ¡°Right now we can still see him, but soon...¡±


    ¡°What do you mean ¡°right now!?¡±¡± The professor asked, rushing to the girl in black and getting in her face. ¡°What are you saying!? Because of you, two people are dead and the first day hasn¡¯t even properly started yet! You don¡¯t care at all, do you?! Because of that you had that soldier accompanying you, wasn¡¯t it?! So you would not kill any people! You better start speaking with some clarity and without riddles, or I¡¯m gonna strangle you with your own oxygen hose!¡±


    The girl in black started to laugh. I kicked the professor in the back of the knee and then dragged him away from Mariann along with help from Laura.


    ¡°I have heard a similar outburst already today.¡± The girl in black said. ¡°From that soldier. He also threatened to kill me in a very creative way after we had wandered the marsh for the 8<sup>th</sup> hour, with his pistol still jammed between my ribs and hip.¡±


    ¡°For the 8<sup>th</sup> hour¡­?¡± Laura asked. ¡°You were gone at most for...¡± she fell in a contemplative silence.


    ¡°By the 8<sup>th</sup> hour.¡± The girl replied. ¡°Strong emotions will hurt our endeavor rather than help it along. On one hand with strong emotion you will fail to notice that something is wrong with the world and you might rush straight into your own disappearance. On the other hand, our own emotions may amplify the dangers around us, never mind the sense of direction fading into ambiguity. But, Professor, you wanted a straight talk.


    The central theme would be synchronity. Where we currently are and where he is, are ticking at different speeds and in a different tempo. Same applies for all places between here and over there. Sometimes all of these are synchronized and sometimes not. When they are no longer in synchronity then we can no longer see this place as it is right now, only as it was between the moments of it¡¯s birth and it¡¯s demise. However we do not know when one or the other event took place or during which point in time do we currently exist. Such uncertainty is exponential.¡±


    ¡°I have an idea.¡± Laura said.


    She lowered her backpack and after spending some time looking for something in it, she produced a little tea candle. She ignited it and set it on one of the rails.


    ¡°See you on the other side.¡± She said, then tried to remember what the boy¡¯s name was. ¡°Professor, what was his name?¡±


    ¡°Sakharinsky, Stanislav Sakharinski.¡±


    ¡°See you, Stanislav Sakharinski.¡± Laura said. ¡°See you on the other side.¡±


    ¡°See you.¡± We all said.


    ¡°We have to continue.¡± Mariann said. ¡°We want to make it to the campsite before the night falls.¡± She smiled. ¡°At least you will after the first night here. I¡¯ll be fine.¡±

 XXI - a Detour into the End of the World II

    One last glance at the strange object seemed to say that our guide was correct as we could no longer see the young man anywhere nearby it. There was no sign whatsoever that he had even been anywhere near it. There was no signs that anybody had ever been anywhere near it. Tall grass bent down by the young man stepping on it had once again been replaced with an untouched pasture.


    Slowly, our remaining group started walking up the railroad standing a dozen meters above the marsh on reinforced concrete pillars. Looking back down the slope of it, it was impossible to tell whether the pillars and the concrete sections on which the rails stood had fallen into the marsh at some time, or was the railway here before the marsh. And the marsh and the waters were now hiding an opening to some underground tunnel. At the same time, the pieces of the crumbled hospital were clearly convincing me that there could not be any tunnel or channel hidden under the waters.


    I turned around and rushed after the others. And then I heard a faint yet heavy sound on metal screeching. A sound I could not put to a source. As if bare metal was rubbing against another piece of bare metal. As if a train or a tram had slowly rolled along uneven rails. I lowered myself down on one knee and touched my hand against one of the rails. I could clearly feel a vibration that was only growing stronger.


    ¡°People. A train is coming.¡± I said.


    ¡°A train?¡± The Professor asked. ¡°This is an abandoned land. There are no trains. There aren¡¯t even people.¡±


    ¡°It is true that there are no trains.¡± Mariann said. ¡°But there are carriages. This is the main line. And sometimes a few carriages get lodged moving from the mine and since it is downhill all the way, the carriages manage to gather quite a bit of speed. If we assume that we are unlucky enough for the carriage not to go off the rails at any of the junctions or corners, it will eventually end up here.¡±


    ¡°You knew this might happen didn¡¯t you?¡± Laura asked. ¡°That a train or a carriage might come straight at us?¡±


    ¡°I suspected.¡± The girl in black said. ¡°I hoped to avoid any panic and also make it faster to the maintenance platform ahead. Over there.¡±


    She pointed a few dozen meters ahead, where nothing out of the ordinary was visible.


    ¡°Should there be something we cannot see?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Rungs of a ladder. We have to hurry up, this train will reach here in no time at all. By the time it reaches the broken bridge in the distance and become visible it is too late to do something or escape.¡±


    ¡°We could always jump into the marsh.¡± The Professor said.


    ¡°You saw what happened to the boy.¡± Mariann said. ¡°Jumping or falling off the railroad into the marsh basically results in the same fate.¡±


    The girl in black quickened her pace. Not wanting to know whether she was right this time as well, we followed her and tried our best to keep up.


    Just where she had pointed at, there was a steel ladder without a protective framework around it descending onto a service platform made of knurled stainless steel. The girl in black was first to descend, spending an inordinate amount of time due to her little cart and oxygen tank. At the same time the screeching of metal was now much more audible and also much more threatening. Also, despite all around us being bare, with wetlands full of small bushes below us, interspersed with kolks, the screeching echoed as if stuck in trees or merely in our ears. I felt the noise radiate into my head and bones straight from the rails and all the metal of the elevated platform which touched anywhere near the rails.


    After Mariann, the Professor descended as well, and again we heard the metallic noise. At first I thought it to be the train getting closer, but instead what was creaking was the metal platform that was supposed to be our savior. Obviously even the weight of two people was too much for the aged welds and bolts on that thing.


    ¡°We¡¯re gonna have to stay on the ladder.¡± I said, as I climbed down.


    ¡°No surprise.¡± Laura said as she climbed on top of my head.


    Again we heard the creaking of the rails, but this time the sound was outright deafening, drowning out all other sensory experience, even human voices and our own thoughts. Then I could see how a lone carriage appeared from the dim fog ahead rushing forward without slowing down. It was impossible to judge the speed of it, but within several seconds it was already upon us, passed us while carrying powerful vortices of air and then plunged in the black waters of the marsh disappearing without a trace. It did not hit the shards of the building, it did not run off the rails, waters came together after it in two big waves and it was gone.


    Laura slowly climbed up and so did I. There was no need to touch the rails to be aware of how hot they had become.


    ¡°What the hell was that?¡± Laura asked. ¡°Some kind of especially strange ghost train?¡±


    ¡°That was no ghost train.¡± I said. ¡°That was real.¡±


    ¡°If it was real then where did it disappear to?¡± Laura asked. ¡°This is a marsh, correct? The rails just disappear into the water. Tat carriage should have hit something when it made it into the water, whether it would be the peat or mud at the bottom or the shards of the buildings themselves. Or...¡± She fell silent for a moment. ¡°Or might there really be a hospital hidden under the marsh?¡±


    ¡°All options are correct.¡± Mariann said as she finished climbing up with the help of the Professor.


    A moment later the metal platform they had been standing on broke off and fell into the marsh.


    ¡°In what way are all options correct?¡± I asked. ¡°All of them cannot be simultaneously correct. There is either the marsh and remains of a hospital or some other structure and a tunnel.¡±


    ¡°They are both correct.¡± The girl in black repeated her thought. ¡°For us there is no tunnel, for the train there is. The theory of special relativity. The world is completely different based on in which direction and at which speed we travel.¡±


    ¡°The theory of special relativity does not function in this manner.¡± Professor remarked in an annoyed voice.


    ¡°No, it does not.¡± Mariann agreed. ¡°But this works as an analogy for explaining things. We should get moving. We¡¯ve wasted enough time here.¡±


    The Professor said nothing, instead he took his binoculars and breathed onto the glass to wipe them off with a cloth.


    ¡°Is it me or am I seeing the contours of an aircraft under the water?¡± Laura asked.


    ¡°You may well be seeing such a thing.¡± Mariann replied. ¡°After the apocalypse a lot of things fell down here. Those faintly visible are but the topmost objects.¡±


    ¡°After the apocalypse?¡± The Professor asked. ¡°This means what? A cataclysmic end of the world?¡±


    ¡°Not quite.¡± The girl replied. ¡°An apocalypse in and of itself is not an end of the world. According to the Bible, apocalypse means that humans attain the omniscience of God and there is nothing left to be discovered or learned. This is not for one person to attain but for the whole of humanity at once. In unison and in general.¡±


    ¡°And?¡± The Professor asked. ¡°You don¡¯t mean to say that all this really happened? In this place?¡±


    ¡°There is no doubt it did.¡± Mariann said. ¡°But then something went wrong. God created the world and man after his image, but when man tried to utilize the heavenly knowledge by himself, he could not even use it to bend the frailest blade of grass. Instead something else got bent. Man as a collective did not understand the clear distinction some individuals had taught their children thousands of years ago already, that logos and tehne are not the same thing.¡±


    ¡°I assume that is the most concise way of explaining it?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Indeed the shortest and clearest,¡± she smiled. ¡°If says everything important to know.¡±


    ¡°Would you look at that!¡± Laura suddenly exclaimed, pointing at a black kolk in the distance.


    I too looked in that direction and saw two objects reaching out of the water half way. The first one seemed be a short and pudgy cruise missile half-submerged into the waters. With a large vertical rudder and a single horizontal wing.


    The other object was much bigger, with a cream-colored surface and looked like a past vision of a future space vehicle, irrecoverably sunken into the forgetfulness. This aircraft was also halfway under the waters, the only part visible was section of the delta-wing rising high above the waters. On the topside of it were two vertical rudders, while underneath there was a row of six exhaust nozzles for turbine engines. The corners of the delta wings seemed to be on hinges and movable. Neither aircraft had any specific country markings and the markings on the tail rudder were either completely worn away or had never been there to begin with.


    ¡°A cruise missile and an old space plane.¡± I said. ¡°Nothing special.¡±


    ¡°It is so painfully obvious you know nothing about aircraft!¡± Laura said, disappointed in my lack of excitement. ¡°This is not a cruise missile, this is a single J58 turbojet engine. And that other thing is an almost legendary piece of technology...¡±


    ¡°Once long ago, Russians were the masters of copying the flying machines of the imperialist West.¡± Mariann said. ¡°Once there was even a massive chemical plant known as the Combine, which produced all sorts of unusual materials for the local super secret OKBs. They liquefied nitrogen and other gases for the particle accelerators, produced small batches of Tammelin¡¯s esters which were later shipped into the N-labs at the 47. Secret Base. They also produced triethylborane used to start up the J58s and pentaborane for the engines of that other aircraft.¡±


    ¡°I am looking at that railway crossing in the distance with my binoculars as well as without them and, is it me or is that whole crossing sitting in the air without any kind of support?¡± The Professor asked.


    ¡°You are not wrong.¡± The girl in black said. ¡°I have no idea why or how it is standing there like this and survives the carriages that get loose from time to time, but the crossing was originally indeed designed without a middle support. The two side arches rested on each other and the cross made by the


    steel beam running along the railway and the steel beam running along the roadway. These allowed to omit the middle support as a kind of tensegrity structure.¡±


    ¡°Right in the middle of a bottomless marsh.¡± Laura said. ¡°They probably tried to fill it in and create a foundation for the pillars but did not succeed.¡±


    ¡°Exactly.¡± Mariann smiled. ¡°And the soft ground on the edges of the bridge also let loose and there into the black waters parts of the bridge disappeared. That is kind of the way this dreamlike landscape before us was born.¡±


    With every further step along the railway, the true size of this strange upended landscape amazed us in a terrifying way. Here, the railway was much higher above the marsh than it had been before, roughly about 20 meters above it. And it seemed that further away it stood even higher. And a pitch black slightly steaming kolk extended to either side of of the railway bridge as far as the eye could see, only on the horizon could we see anything resembling a forest.


    But ahead of us was the railway leading to a crossing with ruined asphalt and broken arches of the bridge. I could not tell where the ends of the arches and the road had been, where had they touched the banks on either side, and that was despite being able to see the blackened steep embankments and the dark ominous forests quite clearly. Some kind of twisted metal beams were reaching out of the waters but their origin was unclear.


    ¡°The span of the arches was much shorter than it might seem now.¡± Mariann said. ¡°But when the world was twisted, the arches fell first, and then the landslides into the bottomless marsh stretched the kolk under the bridge into this maddening chasm you now see before you.¡±


    As we got closer, our eyes started to make out the broken pavement, the still remaining metal barriers on the sides of the lanes and a few remaining concrete poles which still had lamps on them but the torn wires swung in a slight breeze.


    ¡°The most disturbing thing is that these lights on top of the pole light up at night. Just like some of the street lights on either bank tend to do. And even some that reach half way out of the water.¡±


    ¡°How do you know that?¡± Laura asked.


    ¡°I just know.¡± The girl said, smiling. ¡°it doesn¡¯t matter, how.¡±


    Soon, our group made it into the middle of the railway crossing, between the crossing gates with faded paint and patches of reddish rust. Onto the broken pavement between the rails and onto the remnant of the bridge on either side of the rails.


    Even here, in the middle of the railway bridge, at least 30 meters above the surface of the water, I could not tell the light poles from the black forest and the pavement on the banks from the grounds. Despite that I was beseeched by a strange and ghostly but also dream-like feeling. A feeling that as I had now seen this strange remnant, I could wake up and find myself in a hangover.


    ¡°What if that soldier had not let you go through the marsh?¡±


    ¡°Then by the time darkness was truly falling, we may have only made it to the bank of this chasm here. You can see that the dark waters reach far, very far. And the road wanders around all that, making the journey several times longer. Much longer than I previously said it would be.¡±


    ¡°And if we had to spend the night here?¡± The Professor asked.


    ¡°There are secure places one can spend the night at.¡± Mariann said. ¡°There are also others which are not, so it would be inadvisable. The problem is that should you fall asleep where it is not safe to do so, the place you wake up at might not be the place you fell asleep at. For example, should you fall asleep here, you might wake up in the morning to a convoy of military trucks traveling over an intact bridge. Or to something even more unpleasant.¡±


    If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    Mariann raised her face towards the sky.


    ¡°We should continue moving.¡± I said.


    ¡°Indeed.¡± Mariann agreed. ¡°The next crossing is already visible, about half a mile away from here.¡±


    ¡°That dirt road?¡± The Professor asked, having raised his binoculars once more.


    ¡°The very same. After that there is some distance to travel across the marsh and then about a mile before the destination, there is a final crossing.¡±


    ¡°What if we cannot continue along the railway?¡± The Professor asked.


    ¡°We must go.¡± The girl in black said. ¡°The safest way is to follow the rails.¡±


    ¡°But what if the railway is broken?¡± The Professor asked.


    I too now raised my binoculars to examine the distance. It seemed our crewmate was correct: not far from the next crossing the rails were ripped and twisted towards the sky as if something big had come out of the earth and rushed up into clouds. It was impossible to understand or even imagine the force capable of twisting steel rails like aluminum wire, bending it back and forth and ripping it out of the ground.


    I lowered my binoculars to hand them to Mariann.


    ¡°This is bad news.¡± The girl immediately said. ¡°We must go along the railway. And much faster. I can already feel everything growing dimmer. And to remain in the middle of the rails when night falls and all the shadows come out of the woods to examine the strangers¡­ a bad idea.¡±


    *


    ¡°Dammit, it is already getting dark.¡± The girl in black said, having stopped and was now observing the sky.


    The gray clouds now looked much clearer than during the day, with a much better contrast. As if they were now hanging much lower than before. On the fields of reeds surrounding the elevated railway we could hear a familiar and yet so alien wind rustling, carrying with it the cool and damp air of an autumn day soon about to end. It blew the clouds slowly across the sky. All the signs were pointing to the fact that as soon as it really got dark, freezing rain would start as well.


    It was unclear where the wind was driving the clouds. But the direction was irrelevant if the needle of a compass was revolving like a propeller. The only variety being in speed. In the middle of the black kolks and the broken bridge it had happened much slower than here, on the railroad.


    ¡°I think we are almost there.¡± Mariann said. ¡°About half a kilometer further away the rail line takes a left turn and the reeds will end.¡±


    As if to sure up her words, she started pulling her oxygen cart with renewed vigor.


    ¡°There is one thing I still find myself unclear on. And I am pretty sure I did not receive a proper explanation for that.¡± The Professor started.


    ¡°How is it possible that the loose carriage got across the section of the rails ripped apart? I could not see a single fork in the rails before that. And here too I haven¡¯t seen a single one. Despite the fact that the gravel road we walked on also had no railroad crossings. I just cannot make sense of it.¡±


    ¡°You are not the first and you won¡¯t be the last person to not understand that.¡± Mariann said. ¡°Better and more skeptical people than you, Professor, have reconsidered. Usually of course after they have had to learn and adapt without external help. And those who have not managed to learn and adapt¡­ sometimes you can even see them. For example when in the middle of a desolate marsh you suddenly come across some scientist who is desperately gathering soil samples and trying to understand them with unsane single-mindedness.


    These people are everywhere. Here they usually come across as scientists, over there where our journey began, people have also seen all sorts of strange people in places and at times they should not be present at all. Places like that have a kind of amplifying effect on people¡¯s mind. If man clings to science in the marshes, the marsh will also cling to man.¡±


    ¡°And if a person totally lets go and steps along the marsh in perfect peacefulness, he can go where ever he wants without fear of getting lost?¡± Laura asked.


    ¡°In general terms. If you are no longer afraid of getting lost in the marsh and into this world then there is nothing left for you to be afraid. The marsh is like a circular track. In an ideal case you will always end up back where you started. But depending on how hard you hold onto the world, in turn depends on when and if you make it back to the original location. If a person does not follow this track then on one hand he will always find himself from the beginning where he wants to find himself in, but on the other hand he is also stuck in his beginning and in his space-time. However if one were to travel the marsh without fear it is possible to move away from the starting location, but one must be aware that to get back to the beginning may take an uncountable number or circles around. The same place and the same time are not necessarily the place where the journey began.¡±


    ¡°This is not at all what I asked.¡± The Professor said.


    ¡°I know.¡± Mariann said. ¡°I apologize. But the story is the same in general terms: we see the world from a certain point of view, the carriage¡¯s point of view is different. And space-time is dependent on point of view. This is one explanation. The other explanation is more of a question: what is a ghost train?


    ¡°A ghost train is a train that does not follow conventional rules.¡± The girl in black continued. ¡°It rides on rails that do not exist or are not in use, it has no engineer driving it, it does not obey the laws of physics except should it hit somebody. Same thing: the train is seeing the world as it was back when it was a real train. Us ¨C we see it a little differently. Since it is a railway train, then as a ghost train it can only exists where there once was a railway. Since time and space have been twisted into a pretzel in this place, it may also exist in places where there is not yet a railway.¡±


    ¡°Wait-wait! Just wait a second!¡± The Professor started waving his finger. ¡°This raises several questions about time! Are you saying that this place, this world here, in a fragmented form is again and again living through the times between the moments of its birth and its death, unchanging? But us and all other creatures who have traversed this place or have gotten stuck in here, live though it as a singular and un-repeating experience?¡±


    ¡°Something along those lines.¡± Mariann said. ¡°When we get to the house, I can give further explanations on how I see this world and time.¡±


    ¡°I cannot see any house yet.¡± Laura said. ¡°Only this brown mountain with no vegetation beyond the reeds.¡±


    ¡°The house is on top of that, quite nearby.¡± The girl in black replied. ¡°And if I¡¯m honest, then this is not a mountain but instead a shoulder of a crater.¡±


    ¡°A shoulder of a crater?¡± I asked, hearing something completely unexpected. ¡°A crater of what?¡±


    ¡°Now that¡¯s a question unto it¡¯s own.¡± Mariann said. ¡°There are as many answers as there are theories about the marsh.¡±


    It didn¡¯t take long for us to make it out of the reeds and then we finally stood on a railway on the foot of a tall rim in front of us. The railway made a turn to the right and followed along the edge of the crater rim. As much as we could tell in the encroaching darkness, there was not single plant on the hill before us, not a living nor a dead one, as if the whole earth was salted. There weren¡¯t even any traces of anything having ever grown here, there wasn¡¯t even any dirt. It was all reddish brown, smaller and bigger boulders, lots of dust and dark gravelly sand and a barely noticeable footpath. Or marks of something heavy being dragged along the ground. It was impossible to tell.


    However something what our attention immediately focused on were two ditches or channels with vertical walls running in parallel right up the side of the mountain, or the crater as Mariann said. These seemingly started quite far in the distance and went up the side, leaving a large squarish wave pattern on the crest of the rim. These two tracks were so massive that the small hut at the crest of the hill made of seemingly incidentally found materials easily would have fit into one of the tracks without reaching above it.


    From the intersection of these tracks and the rails it was obvious that whatever had driven through here and up the hill had done it after the rails had been built, while the rails had clearly been built after the crater appeared. This conclusion was supported by the fact that sections of the railway were sunken into the earth and this reddish brown stone with sections of the rail twisted into all sorts of shapes. Whatever had made these tracks up the flank of the crater had also driven across the railway without even noticing it, stretching and bending the rails as thin wires. At least this solved the issue of how to get across those gigantic depressions.


    ¡°I only have one question.¡± Laura said. ¡°What in the hell has created these tracks?¡±


    ¡°An excavator dug them?¡± The Professor asked in a sarcastic tone. ¡°Why is a much more interesting question.¡±


    ¡°These have not been dug with an excavator.¡± I said. ¡°At the bottom you can clearly see the marks a caterpillar continuous track would make and the granite boulders have been damaged in a similar way.¡±


    ¡°You mean to say a vehicle made these?¡± the Professor asked. ¡°There is not a single vehicle in the world which would have caterpillar tracks this wide. No super tanks, no mining equipment, no orbital launch vehicle moving platform. Never mind that even smaller vehicles would have problems making this gradient, the most these most massive tracked vehicles could make is between 2 and 5 percent of a gradient. And the speeds would be less than 5 kilometers and hour.¡± He fell silent, looking around. ¡°Never mind that¡­ does any one of you even know how to make calculations?¡±


    ¡°What do you mean?¡± Laura asked.


    ¡°Caterpillar tracks nine or ten meters wide. More than 4 meters of clearance and a total width of close to 30 meters.¡± The Professor pointed at an area between the tracks. ¡°Can you imagine what the weight must be to sink so deep into the rocky ground? Can you imagine the power requirement of such an object?¡±


    ¡°All this may hold true for the place all of you are from.¡± Mariann said. ¡°But in here things were different. One or two modular reactors with closed fuel cycles each putting out a couple of hundred megawatts of power, which were once off the shelf stuff at the Yadernoprom, some DC motors and the rest is right before us. What on God¡¯s green earth all this was necessary for, that I cannot answer.¡± She gave a pensive sigh. ¡°We should hurry, it grows dark much faster than it might seem right now.¡±


    Bu the time we made it on top of the circular flank towering above the marsh and the fields of reeds, it had gotten properly dark. Also during the rest of our ascent, the girl acting our guide refuse to share any more explanations on our twisty and barely noticeable trail up the hill, only pointing towards the crest above.


    The low light only made our journey harder, despite us using the flashlights. The darkness was heavy and all-encompassing, like a thick silty soup. During the daylight everything seemed mundane, but the electric light the flashlights produced was strangely powerless. Sure, we could point the lights on the ground right in front of us and see something, but more than a couple of meters ahead our flashlight could not illuminate anything. As if we had tried to use our flashlights to light up a bottomless pit.


    This meant that we mostly had to resort to our sense of touch to find our way, trying to sense harder and smoother ground under the soles of our boots. Or to perk up our ears and try and follow the creaking of Mariann¡¯s oxygen tank.


    By the time we made it to the building made of pieces of ruined construction containers, pieces of wood and concrete elements, the flashlights had turned completely useless. Darkness swallowed all, the light didn¡¯t even reach our boots, never mind the ground. It only blinded our eyes. And even that only at a distance of maybe 20 centimeters, no further. Even an inch further it seemed that it was just an old light emitting diode with no discernible use.


    Only the door creaking and the keys rattling against the door let us know that we had finally made it. A moment later we heard boot steps on a rough wooden floor, which got muffled by layers upon layers of scrap carpets spread on the floors. The flashlights were still useless, only by putting the light straight at the surface could we make something out.


    We could also hear somebody shaking a matchbox and soon candle upon candle big and small started lighting up. Strangely, the candles were far better sources of light than our flashlights. And the more candles were lit up, the clearer we could see the interior of the building. Inside the house was much bigger than it had seemed on the outside. A single level, a single room with a flat roof.


    On the inside the house looked much less dilapidated than on the outside. It was almost normal. All walls were covered with vertical wooden boards, and it also seemed there was insulation against cold there. All walls were covered in bookshelves from ground up to the ceiling, most were filled with old and thick books, Only one small shelf was without books, and this mostly had candles on it that Mariann was now lighting up. There was a bed by the side of the wall and underneath the bed one could see a ladder used to reach the higher shelves under that ceiling which rose to more than three meters in height. Next to the bed there was also a small dirty window.


    In the middle of the room there was a stone oven with a big fireplace. Above the fire place there was another chamber for cooking food, almost looking like a pizza oven. Next to the bed, there was also a stack of folded up chairs and many rolls of pelts. On the ceiling surrounding the oven there were six or seven sockets with bulbs hanging down.


    ¡°Smells like a wooden cottage which has not had inhabitants for a long time now.¡± Laura said.


    ¡°This place also has electric light?¡± I asked.


    ¡°It has.¡± Mariann said. ¡°But somebody has to switch it on from the garage.¡±


    ¡°There¡¯s a garage here?¡±The Professor asked.


    ¡°Somewhere there¡¯s a door there.¡± Mariann said. ¡°There should be two cars in there.¡±


    ¡°How do you know all this if you have never before been here?¡± Laura asked. ¡°And where did you get the keys?¡±


    ¡°The keys were in the lock on the inside.¡± The girl in black said. ¡°The man who once lived here left for better hunting grounds. I don¡¯t know if literally or figuratively. In any case he left his little cottage unlocked for those worthy of it. And in his opinion everybody who managed to get through the marsh were worthy. I met this man once, a long time ago, that¡¯s why I know.¡±


    Mariann dragged the oxygen cart to the door I had not noticed earlier. She pushed it open and disappeared into a dark room on the side of the building. Moments later a heavy crack rang out and bright electric light lit up in the dark room. I followed Mariann into the room, which turned out to be a garage. My gaze fell on two cars which had probably been there for a very long time. Both stood on bricks. The tires along with wheels were stacked into two neat piles not far from the main breaker box.


    One of these was at low four door sedan at least 5 meters long. Dark green in color. Honestly speaking, I had never seen such a vehicle before. With a long hood, a slightly shorter rear deck and spacious and massive cabin. All that despite the roof reaching barely above my lower ribs. The emblem on the nose was also unfamiliar to me, an escutcheon of a noble family surrounded by oak wreaths. But the ribbed and patterned glass on the headlights told me that this car was very old. From an era before light emitting diodes and gas discharge lamps became common in cars.


    The other vehicle was much bigger, also at least a meter longer. And a pickup truck. Wine red in color. With a cabin that could easily hold five or six people. A bed over two meters in length. The shape of the hood and the nose spoke of power and potential, while straight axles and leaf springs with a deep curve also meant that the vehicle was reliable enough. The depiction of a ram in the front and center of the grill was also unknown to me, but something in the general shape of the two vehicles and the similarities in headlights told me that these two vehicles were roughly from the same era.


    ¡°I had one like this once.¡± Mariann said, looking at the green car. ¡°Well not like this, but one with the same emblem. From an era before the people on the other side of the ocean started mounting big eight cylinder engines transversely in the front and mating them to front wheel drive.¡±


    ¡°I sincerely doubt that a low passenger car like this was able to traverse all those gravel roads, dirt trails and even terrain with no roads at all.¡± I said.


    ¡°And yet it was.¡± Mariann smiled. ¡°The man who built this house, it was his first car. When things went off the rails he refused to abandon it, despite there being tons of better vehicles to use and most people were gone. Didn¡¯t matter that it wasn¡¯t the best to roll from one pothole into the next and every pothole ripped plastic parts from the bumpers and the side sills. He even used it to make it up here and find a good spot for a house. Only when he had to start carrying material up here for building the house did he find other vehicles to do the work with, that red one included.¡±


    ¡°There¡¯s some decent light in here.¡± The Professor said as he stepped in. ¡°Why can¡¯t we get similar light in there?¡±


    ¡°There are no windows here, that¡¯s why it is brighter in here.¡± Mariann said. ¡°The darkness has no way to intrude from anywhere. And nobody outside can see this brightness. It is slightly darker in the toilet. And in the living room the bulbs are the same, just that there¡¯s a dimmer wired into the circuits in there, to keep the amperage low.¡±


    ¡°Why?¡± The Professor asked.


    ¡°Because the darkness here is not the same as elsewhere. Outside you all saw it on your own when flashlights became useless. The light attracts the darkness. And the brighter the light the more darkness can swallow it. That¡¯s the reason a candle illuminates more than a flashlight. The other thing is that the darkness flows in through the openings, through open doors, through window glass. If we make the living room as bright as it is here, you will definitely see how the darkness presses in through the window panes and soon there will be complete darkness around the fireplace not remedied by neither the candles nor incandescent bulbs at full power.¡±


    ¡°I would not disturb you otherwise...¡± Laura said. ¡°But there is something you must see.¡±


    ¡°What?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Through the window.¡± Laura said. ¡°What¡¯s visible through the window.¡±


    All of us, except the girl in black, followed Laura to the dirty window beside the bed. She was right, the view visible from it was worthy of our attention. I had thought that the darkness was all-encompassing and both the sky and the earth would be melded into one in it. But despite that, in the distance I could see two sources of light. On of these was located within the crater, slightly to the right under the flank. Through the window it was too difficult to understand what it was exactly we were seeing, but I could discern enough about it to see that they illuminated some kind of metal construction or lattice. Among others a tall tower which however did not reach beyond the edge of the crater.


    The other source of light was located further away. Much further, probably beyond the opposite crest of the crater and probably down the flank of it. To be fair, the source of the light wasn¡¯t even visible, they only things that reached us were powerful spotlight beams that scraped the night skies as if looking for something.


    ¡°Beautiful, isn¡¯t it?¡± Mariann asked. ¡°Makes you shudder all over, doesn¡¯t it? On these rare occasions the clouds do not cover the whole of evening sky, the sunsets here are truly marvelous. The whole of the crater is but a black land under the horizon and the strip of sky above the horizon is burning with reddish orange color before the approaching night time cloud cover.¡±


    ¡°You know what these are?¡± Laura asked. ¡°Especially the one more distant?¡±


    ¡°In the crater, there is old mining equipment. It kind of reminds me of something that could leave these caterpillar tracks climbing up the to the crest of the crater¡¯s edge. And on the other side of the crater, there¡¯s...¡± the girl in black gave a smile, probably already knowing the reaction her words would give rise to. ¡°Center Station.¡±


    ¡°The Center Station!?¡± The Professor exclaimed. ¡°The Center Station? Do you mean that in the crater there are...¡± he fell silent for a moment, ¡°the ruins of the Nameless Town?¡±


    ¡°The ruins...¡± the girl in black said. ¡°In most concise terms, yes. And the forest and the marsh surrounding the forest is what the Forbidden Forest became after everything had ended.¡±


    ¡°But what happened here?¡± Laura asked. ¡°As far as I know, they say that the Nameless Town was hit by a meteorite...¡±


    ¡°More like an asteroid.¡± The Professor said.


    ¡°All these stories start the same.¡± Mariann started with a slight annoyance. ¡°¡°A few dozen years ago a meteorite fell here. And then people realized it was no ordinary meteorite.¡± I have heard that story a thousand times over. Some say there fell a meteorite, there fell an asteroid, project Midas or Daedalus or Icarus or Medusa, Orion et cetera. Something related to nuclear impulse engines.¡±


    ¡°So what really happened?¡± The Professor asked. ¡°Because what you¡¯re telling us is considered to be information classified at the highest levels.¡±


    ¡°A lie classified at the highest levels.¡± The girl in black replied. ¡°Nothing more. I don¡¯t know what exactly happened, but I definitely know what could not have happened. All of it started with the Center Station. The first switch was turned in there.¡±


    ¡°Can¡¯t we check that out tomorrow?¡± Laura asked. ¡°By going to the Center Station?¡±


    ¡°Unfortunately not.¡± Mariann said, leaning against a small desk. ¡°The Center Station lies on the other side of the crater and on the other side of all possibility. One can never reach that place, not by going along the ridge, not by going around the footing of the crater. Not even by going through the bottom of the crater. At least one will not reach the Center Station we see illuminating the sky at night.¡±


    ¡°What do you mean it is impossible to reach that place?¡± The Professor asked. ¡°It wouldn¡¯t take even a day to get there! I could go there and return on my own as soon it gets bright outside!¡±


    ¡°You can.¡± Mariann said. ¡°But I cannot guarantee you will make it there. I also cannot guarantee that should you return, you would manage to return to us. Or even to this house. Considering how twisted and knotted up the world is in this place, I would not be the least bit surprised if you would turn out to be the person who actually erected this house. Or some other abandoned dwelling is this place.


    To be fair, I have my own reasons for coming here. And I can fulfill that even without your presence, Professor. If you wish to leave and try and manage the best you can on your own, be my guest, I won¡¯t feel offended by that. This place has seen plenty of people who have wanted to either test themselves or escape a world full of idiots which has nothing left to offer them.¡±


    ¡°As much as I remember seeing, you had little choice in the matter or coming or nit coming here.¡± The Professor said. ¡°You were under military arrest and bound from hands and feet.¡±


    ¡°I was, but that was only because they had no choice in the matter or whether to let me come here or to not let me. All that theater was their idea. The subordinates knew that no lock would work while the superiors demanded that everything humanly possible and impossible was to be done...¡± She paused to take a glance at the rest of us. ¡°I¡¯ll go light up the fireplace.¡±

 XXI - a Detour into the End of the World III

    ¡°Professor?¡± I turned towards the gentleman next to me. ¡°Why did you come here? Participation in this expedition was strictly voluntary. I have never forced anybody to go where they do not want to. It is obvious that you are as knowledgeable on these matters as that girl in black. And I also suspect that you know only because you learned it from her. Why all this secrecy?¡± What do you know about the Nameless Town?¡±


    ¡°Nothing. If it indeed exists, I have heard nothing about.¡± The Professor said.


    ¡°Different from, you, for Mariann information in and of itself has no intrinsic value. Information is but folklore, nothing more. Whoever knows even a little bit can find all the information on their own based on that little bit. But for you information is priceless, that¡¯s why you are trying to keep it to yourself like this. But here, in this place information does not have the value it had over there. That girl in black knows plenty to not be afraid of the things she knows. While you are afraid of both what your yourself know as well as what she might know. And the soldier who was sent to accompany her, he too was afraid to know, even more than you are. You see what I¡¯m getting at?¡±


    ¡°What am I supposed to see?¡± The Professor asked, his voice still contained his intent to keep anything to be considered a national secret to himself.


    ¡°There is no place here for secrecy and privileged information. Nor for being afraid of something or scared for something. That girl has spoken enough about these matters so that even if we should find our way back, there is no real life remaining for any of us in there. The state and its secrets are worth much more than our lives or even what we have learned.¡±


    ¡°I am still not sure what you are accusing me of.¡± The Professor said in a defensive tone. ¡°I don¡¯t have the slightest idea what you¡¯re talking about.¡±


    ¡°Look,¡± I leaned closer to him and grabbed his shoulder to turn him towards the window. ¡°You have two options here. Option one, you speak to me right here and answer my questions, or...¡±


    ¡°Or¡­?¡± The Professor asked.


    ¡°Or I¡¯m asking that girl in black what is it that you are so afraid of.¡±


    The Professor took a silent glance out the dirty window and sighed dejectedly. ¡°Fine. Fine, I¡¯ll talk.¡±


    ¡°The government has been aware of the Route for a long time now. Different central powers since Peter I have been aware of the Nameless Town. Reportedly it has always been known as the Nameless Town, because never has anybody remembered what the real name of it was, despite assurances throughout the ages that at one time it indeed did have a name. There still exist rare maps from the 19<sup>th</sup> century which have on them the Nameless Town and the whole surrounding countryside. Reportedly it lies straight down southwards from Yuryev.


    ¡°But at the beginning of the 20<sup>th</sup> century it was discovered that this place would not submit itself to aerial photography. You could reach it by car, you could see planes flying over, even be in radio contact with them, but what one could not do was capture this area on photographs.


    ¡°German war on two fronts was partially caused by Ahnenerbe and the Thule Society notifying Hitler a little too late that the Nameless Town really exists. Hitler and Himmler were convinced that should they manage to keep the Nameless Town and the Balto-German Esoteric Intitute in the middle of it in their hands long enough, then conquering Russia this side of the Ural range and winning the war would not be a problem.


    ¡°Our problems, ergo the Route, started when some strange trouble started cropping up. It started with people being able to access the Nameless Town along other roads than the one people had become accustomed to using during the centuries past. For example one could be driving the road between Reval and Baltiisk and then suddenly find himself on a road not far from the Nameless Town. As a singular event.


    ¡°However such singular events started to repeat far too often and a legend about a depressive small town with no name started to spread. And then something happened. At first moving back and forth simply became unstable. A few dozen minutes spent in the Nameless Town could have meant that three week passed in the rest of the world. Also the places of going and coming were no longer the same. And then the Route appeared in the form it currently exists in: as an unstable unidirectional anomaly. I was sent to look into what had happened, if possible to look into reversing this change.¡±


    ¡°Wait a second.¡± I asked, now feeling waves of cold running over my back as I started to understand what the Professor had just told me. ¡°You know how to leave this place? To get back?¡±


    ¡°Yes, I do.¡± He said. ¡°This is not my first time to be in the Nameless Town. But to get back, I must first get to the Center Station and activate the machines located there.¡±


    ¡°When did you plan to tell the rest that you had a way back?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Before what we saw and what happened in the marsh, there was no need for any of that. But that soldier and the boy disappearing changed everything. It clearly told me that not only those two were lost, but all of us were equally lost in here. This whole place has become lost. The vectors are that diametrically different. This what that girl did not mention. What she also hasn¡¯t spoken of is that the way back might be possible at all. I am pretty convinced she came along for the sole reason of also becoming lost herself.¡±


    ¡°She came here looking for her demise?¡±


    ¡°Yes.¡± The Professor said. ¡°This is all I am willing to talk about. And I will deny that this conversation even took place. I advise you to do the same. If that does not suit you then you are free to continue to listen to the fairy tales that girl tells. These will certainly be of immense help to the both of you.¡±


    ¡°They have been thus far.¡±


    ¡°Thus far her fairy tales and the three of us staying alive have been to her benefit.¡± The Professor gave an evil smile. ¡°When we are no longer of use to her¡­ can you be sure which one of us is the first to disappear?¡±


    The professor gave a small nod and left to find a small tin with evening meal and a sleeping bag from his backpack.


    I sat down onto the blanket on the bed, next to the pillows. I looked as Laura sat next to Mariann who was kneeling in front of the lit fire in the fireplace and finally grabbed her attention. If I really focused I even managed to hear snippets of what the two of them were talking. It seems that the events of today had seriously rattled Laura and she was now looking to get clarity about everything that had happened. Starting from the beginning.


    ¡°Mariann¡­?¡± Laura asked. ¡°What exactly did happen to that soldier in the marshes?¡±


    ¡°I told you what happened.¡± The girl in black sighed. ¡°We lost sight of you and then that idiot stepped into a kolk.¡±


    Laura did not have to say anything to express her deep disappointment in her conversation partner and her lie. However she also conveyed her desire to hear what really happened.


    ¡°Remember how I spoke about the marsh grabbing onto a people if a people allows themselves to be grabbed onto? Fixations are never good, even if they are only on the level of dedication. That soldier dragged me onward and we lost sight of you. Only for a moment but that was enough to become hopelessly lost. It was obvious we had stepped off the path. We wandered around for three hours before the major finally released my bonds. He left the belt around my midsection hoping to chain me up after we had found the path once more.¡±


    ¡°How long did you spend in there?¡± Laura asked.


    ¡°At least a full day, according to my local time. We spent all that time wandering around, always ending back on the edge of that very same bog pond he initially dragged me to. More than ten times we also found our way back to a path, but not the path.¡±


    ¡°In what way?¡±


    ¡°To the right place but not the right time.¡±


    ¡°I assume he did not simple fall into a bog pond?¡±


    ¡°You assume correct, as did your companion earlier.¡± The girl in black gave a sad smile and then glanced at me. ¡°In the light of the early morning he woke from a short nap, he drank a few handfuls of bog water, stretched his body, took a deep breath of cool air from the morning marsh, full of dew¡­ and then without pause produced his pistol, put it in his mouth and pulled the trigger.¡±


    ¡°He shot himself in the head?!¡± Laura was stupefied.


    ¡°Into the brain stem. He was a soldier, after all. He would not risk damaging any components with higher functions and dying slowly. From his body I only took the keys to the belt and the irons and one of his dog tags.¡±


    Mariann opened her left palm to show Laura something.


    ¡°After that, I made it back to you in less than half an hours. That¡¯s all the story.¡±


    ¡°How is that possible?¡± Laura asked. ¡°For us you weren¡¯t gone more than ten minutes!¡±


    ¡°In this place the world is all twisted up.¡± Mariann said. ¡°Time and space no longer carry the same meaning they once did. And there¡¯s of course what the marsh wants and the intentions with which a person enters the marsh. All that creates quite a complicated structure.¡±


    ¡°And what happened to that boy? We all spoke of him getting lost as if he was dying, but that is not exactly correct, is it?¡±


    ¡°No. Becoming lost is not something akin to death. It is just a term some third party is using. When we ended up in here, we also became lost, from the perspective of those over there. We became unreachable. It is sort of like the story of the wayward son in the Bible. When the son returned home, the father held big festivities justifying it with his son having been dead and now again living. For a third party, a person becoming separated and lost might be similar to dying, and the presence of a kind of an event horizon reinforces analogy with a black hole. But for a person who becomes lost, it is not the least bit as dramatic. He still exists, he still lives, but is no longer located on the same timeline.


    ¡°In here one can only die by four means: suicide, an accident, some pathological condition or old age. If that young man makes no stupid mistakes he may stay alive until he is old and shriveled. And as the world is as twisted here as it is, he might meet individuals, see their abandoned property or even stumble upon it literally during the process of it being piled up into a makeshift shelter, on a parallel timeline. There is a myriad of options.¡±


    ¡°This makes one think, about the world.¡±


    ¡°Only at first. It a way of thinking unaccustomed to us and thus needs practice.¡±


    ¡°There was one other question I had.¡± Laura said. ¡°This pertains to the railway and the path you spoke of. If the rest of the world is as twisted up as you say¡­ Full of chances to simply go missing, drown into the bottomless marsh, be impaled on underwater ruins. Be poisoned by exotic aircraft fuels¡­ Why then is the railway so safe? If we disregard the carriages rushing by on their own accord. Even by that broken section of the line, you asked if there was no option to get across it by some other means.¡±


    ¡°I did ask that.¡± Mariann said. ¡°Railway here is something more than simply a railway. It is a pair of rails, but at the same time that pair of rails can also be seen as a kind of electric cable. A long time before everything went to hell, it was discovered that strong magnetic fields repressed certain occurrences or disallowed them from ever even appearing. This was discovered while experimenting with the creation of man-made Routes. This also meant to places outside the confines of a single space-time continuum. The original discovery was made in the 47<sup>th</sup> Secret Base, but the real work with the results of that discovery was carried out in the 48<sup>th</sup> and the 49<sup>th</sup> Secret Bases constructed singularly for that purpose. Outside the H-labs of the 47<sup>th</sup> Secret Base nobody even knew about the existence of those two bases.


    The railways were the first objects to experiment on. They even built a closed railway track at the test polygon in the old open pit mine. This was used to test how temporary space-time warping and magnetic fields counter-influenced one another. Based on the results, thick copper cables were also placed under all streets and mayor roads in the area, just in case an enemy should attack using their own weapons of spatial warping, or something else should go catastrophically wrong. To a location classified at the highest of levels, a special closed reactor complex was placed which was supposed to keep the railways and the cables under the roads constantly electrified.¡±


    ¡°Classified at the highest of levels?¡± Laura asked. ¡°Wasn¡¯t this whole region classified at the highest of levels?¡±


    ¡°That means that every person who had the smallest inkling of knowledge where the complex had been built, was executed. This included the builders, the locals, but also soldiers guarding the construction site and keeping the on-site personnel in check. So that the only things remaining on the lips of the common folk were stories of a facility that did not exist. Like the submarine base on the Northern coast built into the Baltic Klint rockface.¡±


    ¡°Does this mean you know what went wrong in this place?¡± Laura asked. ¡°Why the world twisted out of shape like that?¡±


    ¡°I do, that¡¯s quite a simple thing to know. Local experiments with the Routes were successful but the energy consumption to carry them out was unimaginable. They then started to research into keeping the Route open with the energy contained within them...¡± Mariann fell silent for a moment. ¡°What lies all around us is the result of the first and the last experiment into that.¡±


    ¡°But the Route we used to get to this place, that is remaining open using its internal energy?¡± Laura asked.


    ¡°That¡¯s what made the scientists scratch their heads. In their opinion it was being kept open exactly by such a mechanism. It is possible they were mistaken.¡±


    ¡°And the crater?¡±


    ¡°Have no idea.¡± The girl in black smiled. ¡°There are limits to my knowledge. However the world being bent of of shape like that made a few things pretty clear.¡±


    ¡°Like what?¡±


    ¡°People have become used to thinking about space as a three-dimensional thing and time as an illusion or a time arrow with a single dimension. But the truth is a bit more complicated.¡±


    The girl in black revealed a black Swiss army knife and used it to scribble on the sheet of brass protecting the wooden floor from the embers jumping out if the fireplace.


    ¡°The world bending out of shape made it possible for the time to become relative and fragmented, it brought out at least another dimension to time. But I like to think that the truth is even more complicated.¡±


    She drew a square, then turned it into a cube and that in turn to another figure Laura could not recognize.


    ¡°What¡¯s that?¡±


    ¡°A hypercube. A four-dimensional cube. The world being bent out of shape mainly consists of the aspects that while space likely remained three-dimensional, time became four-dimensional. You could understand it by imagining that every dimension must be standing on something. A line must stands on a point. A square on a line. A cube on a square, a hypercube on a cube. That¡¯s the source of that internal energy that keeps the Route open.¡±


    This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.


    ¡°Does that not mean that the Route was never open spontaneously or by chance?¡± Laura asked. ¡°It was always open by virtue of some source of energy?¡±


    ¡°Or alternatively, one of the locations it was open into possessed more temporal dimensions than one. Even a fractional dimension would have been enough.¡±


    ¡°A fractional dimension? How do you imagine that?¡±


    ¡°Beats me,¡± Mariann smiled. ¡°I can draw you all the strange figures here you want but it remains a fact that I am drawing them while sitting on a linear timeline. Despite that, I am certain that fractional spatial and temporal dimensions exist. Just that they are very hard to pick out from between the whole numbered dimensions.


    ¡°Just keep in mind that everything I¡¯ve told you is just one of many ways to understand what transpired. Nothing more.¡±


    ¡°Hoe do you know all these things?¡± The Professor asked, having seemingly heard the whole discussion.


    ¡°If your aim is to experience becoming lost as many times as possible, you will learn many things during that.¡±


    ¡°This may not be the correct question, but...¡± Laura started. ¡°How old exactly are you?¡±


    Mariann smiled, wordlessly indicating that this was very correct a question.


    ¡°Old enough to remember everything.¡±


    *


    The next morning I was woken early by a cold yet bright sun. It felt like spring was in the air. According to my watch it was three o¡¯clock in the night but I knew that here timepieces were affected in the same way compasses were. That had become abundantly clear last night when at one point Laura directed my attention to my wristwatch. Namely, the minute hand had started to make its rounds disturbingly fast, almost a full revolution every second. I observe it do this for a dozen seconds or so and then in stopped completely for the rest of the night.


    I myself could not sense any change in my sense of time, as if the anomaly was only affecting clocks and in this particular case only my wristwatch. While all this was happening the girl in black was explaining how in this place stability was but a relative thing. Even the most stable location would be riddled with floating pockets and tears vibrating forward and back in time, unique to those particular spatial coordinates.


    Standing outside, in front of a bare ground covered in white frost which radiated cold towards me it was even harder for me to tell what kind of season it was. Blinding cold sun in my eyes and on my face did not help at all. Some signs pointed at the spring, others at winters, still others at autumn. And the morning sun still blinded me though sunglasses supposedly able to block up to 80% of solar rays.


    I walked around the perimeter of the house, all the while keeping to its wall, to take a look at the gigantic crated that the darkness had kept hidden from us last night. After last night I felt unnerved. I only held a slim hope that during this small and solitary expedition I did not slip to some other place in this world or some other one. That when returning to the interior of the house I would not find it empty and devoid any signs of presence other than my own. Or conversely, meet some stranger I had never seen before.


    My eyes found the crest of the crater rim, which seemed to be pretty sharp in places other than this house and the tracks next to it. In some places the crater wall near the rim was almost vertical. As if a sheer rock wall. It was difficult for me to judge how deep the crater was, with or without the rim, didn¡¯t matter. But on the relatively flap bottom of the crater there was a massive bucket wheel excavator. This was probably the object which had been full of lights last night. At the same time, the tracks going over the rim traveled down the crater wall and straight across the bottom. It was obvious that these tracks did not belong to that excavator, as the tracks rose up on the opposite wall of the crated and climbed over the rim having rammed it from a vertical wall into a steep ramp. Also, in the middle of the crater these tracks were much more shallow than here on the rim. But whatever it was, it had come and gone a long time ago.


    At least this massive excavator allowed me to guess how big the crater was, both in width as well as depth. These excavators were originally designed to mine brown coal. Each one was 300 meters across and nearly a hundred meters tall. And looking at it from here it seemed that could have set a bit more than 2 of them on top of each other to reach the crest of the rim. So a depth of about 250 meters. As for width, I could easily imagine more than ten of them from end to end at the bottom of the crater, so the ¡°bowl¡± of this thing was nearly 4 kilometers across.


    In the middle of the crater I could also make out a small collection of low ruins. It was impossible to tell from this distance what were they the ruins of. Compared to the giant excavator left behind it seemed that if there had indeed been a settlement in the crater after it had been created then there wasn¡¯t too much remaining of it. Low walls only enough for a few intersecting streets, no more. And these too seemed to rise out if a lifeless sandy surface reminiscent of Mars, if one disregarded the color.


    I also noticed a slightly brighter line near the ruins. The lined seemed to run straight from the house, down the rim and across the crater, ending up at the excavator. Then I finally realized: it was rock surface blown clear from the sand and dust, but a car having driven over it at speed.


    ¡°Good morning.¡±


    Laura stopped next to me, handing me a metal mug with hot coffee. Wind played with her loose slightly messy hair.


    ¡°Have you been up for long?¡±


    ¡°For a while now.¡± I said. ¡°Thanks for the coffee.¡±


    ¡°During the day, this crater seems even more disturbing than in darkness.¡± Laura said. ¡°These ruins at the bottom, these caterpillar tracks, that mining machine there¡­ do you believe a town might have been here in the past?¡±


    ¡°Honestly? I don¡¯t know.¡± I replied. ¡°This is most definitely an impact crater, not one caused by explosion or underground collapse. And those last two would explain some of the ruins surviving. But a meteorite of that size would turn everything to molten stone and destroy everything within hundreds of kilometers. The only explanation that could fit in any shape or form, if we tie in the ideas of that girl in black as well, would be that whatever fell here did so after the world and time were warped out of place.¡±


    ¡°That¡­ would be¡­ the right¡­ thinking.¡±


    We heard a weak voice grasping for air. Heavily leaning against the wall, the girl in black stepped closer. And as she reached the corner, she collapsed to remain sitting on the ground. Trying to breathe air clearly too thin for her.


    ¡°Where¡¯s your¡­?¡±


    ¡°Empty.¡± Mariann said before Laura could finish her question. ¡°At night already.¡± She laid down on her back and this seemed to ease her struggle to breathe. ¡°I did not expect to spend a whole day wandering the marsh.¡±


    ¡°Is there anything we can do for you?¡± I asked.


    ¡°I doubt it.¡± The girl on the ground said. ¡°I need to get to the bottom of that crater, to those ruins. That¡¯s the only way I can get back to normal, more or less.¡±


    ¡°I should have thought of this last night and charge up the car batteries, or at least mount the wheels.¡± I said.


    ¡°I think the Professor...¡± Mariann started to say.


    ¡°When I left the building, I could hear him making noise in the garage, so¡­ I wouldn¡¯t be surprised if he got something working.¡± Laura said.


    ¡°Both¡­ can be gotten to work.¡± The girl in black said, having sat up and again, grasping for air. ¡°Diesel fuel doesn¡¯t lose much¡­ of its properties as it ages. And that other car¡­ is old enough to¡­ burn unleaded gas that¡¯s¡­ several years old.¡±


    A moment later the doors to the garage opened up and the burgundy red pickup truck reversed out of it puffing pitch black smoke.


    ¡°Too bad.¡± Mariann said. ¡°I myself would have preferred the other one.¡±


    The red pickup truck with the word ¡®Dodge¡¯ on the back did not stop however, instead to surprise both me and Laura, it took off and then started down the winding road which headed into the crater.


    I managed run a few steps after it and shout, but then I understood that it was pointless.


    ¡°It would seem the Professor was adamant in his desire to get to the Center Station.¡± Laura said.


    ¡°I¡¯m nut surprised.¡± Mariann said. ¡°Doesn¡¯t matter though. The car he¡¯ll be leaving behind on the opposite edge of the crater is probably already back at the garage, so don¡¯t worry about it.¡±


    ¡°I doubt that he will be able to climb up the edge of the crater with that truck, even if he picks the mildest gradient he can find.¡± I said.


    ¡°Oh, he will.¡± Mariann smiled. ¡°And he will even reach the Center Station.¡±


    ¡°What will he find in there?¡± Laura asked.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know. The Center Station is a wonder unto its own in this out of shape world. I cannot see through the fields surrounding it and I have never traversed them. But we can be pretty certain that the Professor has abandoned us. We should see if the other car starts at all.¡±


    Mariann tried her best to get up in any way possible but remained to sit in her former position.


    ¡°Yeah, I¡¯m gonna rest here until you find something useful.¡± She said.


    Surprisingly, it did not take me much time to get the remaining green luxury sedan into working order. The Professor had probably calculated how much of a lead he would need for us to not interrupt him and had not set up any additional hindrances for us. On the contrary, the battery was charged and already installed under the hood and the tires had the proper pressure. The engine started up with a single crank and soon found the stable cold idle, hovering around a thousand revs per minute.


    I reversed the car slowly out of the garage into the morning sun still pale and blinding and onto the small driveway before the garage.


    ¡°So where are we going?¡± I asked as I opened the driver door.


    I then headed to the side of the building to help carry Mariann to the car.


    ¡°It is obvious we have to get back there with a car somehow.¡± Laura said. ¡°You won¡¯t last long in this situation.¡±


    ¡°I could ask you to leave me behind.¡± Mariann said. ¡°But I know you would not do that.¡±


    ¡°You can be sure we won¡¯t!¡± Laura said. ¡°I have no desire to remain here wandering until the end of times with only him to accompany me!¡±


    The way Laura put it made me smirk, again, but her words had a lot of truth in them. Struggling on some distant Siberian permafrost mountain or on an ice shelf in Greenland and getting into a serious fight only because who and how should set up the tent¡­ the two of us had more than enough experiences like that. And in situations like that even wild wolves and polar bears were welcome party crashers, As long as they ate the other person first.


    ¡°In that case¡­ we need to get down into the crater, to the ruins there.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s there?¡± Laura asked. ¡°How can those help you?¡±


    ¡°Let that be my problem.¡± Mariann gasped. ¡°I recommend you make haste. I Doubt I will last more than half an hour like this.¡±


    We helped Mariann onto the back seat to lie down. And after fastening our seat belts we started on the winding gravel road down side of the rim towards the bottom of the crater.


    ¡°It is quite a.. mystery.¡± Mariann said after awhile.


    ¡°What¡¯s a mystery to you?¡± Laura asked.


    ¡°This car. No matter what era it is from, whether it has an age of a quarter or half a century, whether the interior is in royal leather or hollow velour, still the same kind of familiar nostalgic feeling develops. Nostalgic for home and childhood that never was. Something about the seats, something about¡­ something¡­ else¡­¡± The girl fell silent and she seemed to have lost consciousness, her chest though kept rising and falling, indicating that there was some life left in her.


    ¡°At least in this way she requires less oxygen and manages to stay alive a little longer.¡± Laura sighed with a slight relief.


    ¡°We¡¯ll see if that¡¯s gonna be enough.¡±


    The gravel roads at the bottom of the crater were strangely smooth and even. Disturbingly smooth compared to average village roads full of clay, crushed granite of all fractions and deep potholes with edges sharp enough to destroy tires. However here one could fearlessly get up to triple digit speeds without fearing that a pothole popped the tire or turned an axle into a healthy salad of small metal bits. Or started to break plastic details off the body.


    Compared to the marsh and the dark woods surrounding it, the crater seemed to located as if in another world, in a climate much drier and hotter. No matter that the true climate outside the car was still familiar by being Nordic and frigid. Despite that I doubted if this crater had ever seen any snow. And by that I meant a decent layer of snow lasting throughout a long winter. A snow cover which grew a meter thick with just a few hours of blizzard and then took months to finally melt and disappear. In some places never ever really melting. The world here was a world ready for snow. A world waiting for it and longing for it. But all it got was some frozen dew in the morning and perhaps the slightest of snow, which melted under an hour.


    The view while driving towards the center of the crater bottom was astonishing. Before us were the black ruins with the reddish crater wall as the backdrop. And underneath that rested that towering gray metal monster. A mining machine, it¡¯s tower swaying and loudly creaking in the wind. The sound of metal flexing echoed across the crater, it even reached our speeding green car, it penetrated the body and the closed windows and we could all hear that metal thing slowly but surely breathing.


    It seemed as if the machine could start moving under it¡¯s own volition. Rise from it¡¯s seat with organic suppleness and attack both people and objects using the bucket wheel as a weapon. In a situation where each bucket on that wheel had the volume of over seven cubic meters it really mattered little how fast it revolved.


    I stopped the car in the middle of a ruined street which barely reached out of the dusty ground. There had definitely been a street here as I could recognize four building corners which had made up the buildings and the intersection between them. Tarmac pavement was just a shadow of a dream here, as were the utility poles with lighting. All that remained were blackened low walls and broken window frames. Not a single other sign of civilization or past human activity. Beyond this intersection, the ruined walls quickly grew lower and became level with the rest of the ground.


    ¡°What¡¯s next?¡± Laura asked.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know.¡± I said. ¡°We probably have to wake her and ask.¡± I glanced into the rear view mirror to see the girl in black still breathing on the rear seat. ¡°Without her help, we may well search ourselves mad.¡±


    I stopped the car and got out of it. I walked a few dozen steps on the sandy-dusty ground, which I could not tell whether it was solid rock or compacted gravel and sand. The tracks the Professor had made when he drove thorough this place were still visible. Never mind other tracks, lots of different tires and footwear. Something that should have never been here like this. Not in a million years. I knelt down to lay my hand on a warm dusty sand. I observed the wind sift the dust out of the red sand on the ground. Turning it into strange smoke looking like it was sublimating and then fading away.


    Despite that, faint footsteps and tire tracks seemed to stay here for decades, just like on the Moon. And still this place saw rain, day and night changed. Nighttime fog and morning dew from the marshlands. This crated could not have been an isolate pocket of desert climate in this strange world. Maybe some of the ideas of that girl really were the truth? For example that the whole crater was ripped out of some distant future and carelessly thrown here. That the whole crater was but a temporal bubble, originating from a future much more distant than the landscape surrounding it. From an era where the marsh has long since dried up, lakes and seas evaporated. And humankind along with their civilization have turned from a distant memory into a strangely shaped piece of rock the wind and sand were mercilessly eating away at.


    While I knelt there like that, drowning into my dream-like musings, I noticed a small metal dome just barely reaching out of the ground. I walked to it and started to clear away the sand and crushed stone from around it. The dome turned out to made of brass and was likely a sphere with an approximate diameter of half a meter. It seemed to be attached to a metal pole slowly growing thicker and sturdier inside the ground. My hands suddenly fell as I realized what it was or could have been. A decorative sphere set at the top of a spire. Perhaps belonging to some church, or perhaps to the Esoteric Institute, which in and of itself had looked like an anti-christian church.


    As I continued to examine the sphere, my fingers found a hair-thin demarcation line on the equator of it, which seemed to split the sphere into two halves.


    ¡°Could you come here and...¡± Laura asked, still by the car.


    ¡°You better come here!¡± I said out loud. ¡°I think I found the tower decoration of the Institute.¡±


    ¡°What?!¡± Laura asked, now approaching me at a quick pace.


    I forced my hands against the sphere and tried to rotate the upper dome on it. Slowly but surely it seemed to give, although more often than not, my palms slid along the surface of the dome.


    ¡°That¡¯s the ball at the top of the Institute main tower?¡± Laura asked. ¡°By the way we should deal with Mariann first.¡±


    ¡°I know.¡± I decided to give up on the sphere for now. ¡°We need her.¡±


    ¡°What for?¡± A familiar voice asked. It literally made me jump.


    Laura had also flinched. The voice did not originate from behind us, but instead from in front of us, where there stood the girl in black, holding a shovel on her shoulder. Strands of her elbow length dark hair moving in the weak wind.


    ¡°What happened!?¡± Laura asked. ¡°How did you¡­?!¡±


    ¡°Doesn¡¯t matter.¡± Mariann replied. ¡°It is done.¡± She threw the rusty shovel aside. ¡°The thing I came here for.¡±


    ¡°You¡­ no longer need additional oxygen?¡± Laura still continued. ¡°How?¡±


    ¡°No, I no longer do.¡± The girl in black replied. ¡°How, that¡¯s not important. Let¡¯s just say that I left something behind in here a long time ago. Something that would help me to recover should I ever¡­ become injured. And that sphere, by the way.¡± Her gaze fell on the ground in front of me. ¡°I don¡¯t recommend opening it, or even touching it.¡±


    ¡°Why?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Do you have a dosimeter on you? I¡¯m certain that this sphere is brass on the outside but beryllium on the inside. In the middle of the sphere there is a sub-critical mass of radioactive material and in the top of the sphere there is a thin lead window. It would be best to cover it with sand once more.¡±


    ¡°Temperature?¡± Laura asked.


    The girl in black nodded, not saying a word.


    ¡°A radioactive dome?¡± I asked as I used my legs to push the removed materials back onto the sphere. ¡°What the hell for?¡±


    ¡°To set up radioactive material at barely sub-critical amount and modulate the criticality was considered a cheaper and more robust alternative to building an electronic device to do that.¡± Mariann said.


    ¡°You said that there are ruins here,¡± I started slowly. ¡°And the re is a crater here, so something had to come down here. And yet down here there¡¯s the radioactive sphere off at least a single tower of the Institute. What did really happen in here?¡±


    ¡°Who knows.¡± The girl smiled. ¡°Doesn¡¯t matter whether a meteorite fell, or a non-meteorite or some aircraft. Or there was a malfunction in one of the thousands of military satellites circling above our heads, and that satellite dropped its seismic charges right here. The end result is the same. But an aspect which has thus far become known only to the few worthy ones far and wide, is that the Nameless Town is not lost forever. These ruins here don¡¯t belong to the Town, they belong to a mining settlement which was in the process of excavating the Town.¡±


    ¡°The Nameless Town is¡­ right here?¡± I looked down, ¡°Under our feet?¡±


    ¡°Yes.¡± Mariann replied. ¡°That big excavator is also here for that sole reason. Modified so the beak and the bucket wheel could cut deeper below the level it stands. Something did fall, but the town was surrounded by an invisible force field which directed all the energy from the strike down the sides of the field dome and into the ground.¡±


    ¡°A force field?¡± I asked. ¡°Really? A dome protecting the town? There are no such things.¡±


    ¡°It all started with a plasma window and a major discovery on a nameless and unnumbered secret level of the 47<sup>th</sup> Secret Base. Eight kilowatts of RF power for every centimeter of diameter. At first glance that seems like a lot, but one readily has access to 20 and 50 megawatt reactors the size of shipping containers, measuring the power consumption no longer matters. The only question left to be solved was how to create parabolic force fields. I don¡¯t know how they solved this problem but that sphere you found was part of that solution. Barely sub-critical mass of radioactive material created a sort of stabilizing resonance throughout the force field, keeping it up.¡±


    ¡°What powered that field?¡± Laura asked. ¡°One reactor is not gonna cut it, especially since the power requirement goes up as exponentially as the diameter grows.¡±


    ¡°A complex of 500 megawatt modules located several hundred meters under the town. A series of ten kiloton nukes created the necessary cavities and 24 months later it had cooled sufficiently to start the construction. The 49<sup>th</sup> Secret Base was created in much the same way, but that only needed a single test of a few dozen kilotons.¡±


    ¡°So what went wrong?¡± I asked.


    ¡°What went wrong, that I don¡¯t know. The world twisting out of shape and that of which I am talking about are two very different things. But a single thing went wrong with the force field and the thing that hit it. A fraction of a second after the detonation, the second, external force field activated above the first one. The energy of the explosion was caught between the two layers and it went straight into the ground.¡±


    ¡°Into the nuclear complex?¡± Laura asked.


    ¡°Yes. That started a self-destruct program which allowed the whole complex go super-critical. The exact level of power is unknown but the bang and the resulting hole were big. The earth gave way, the town fell into the hole and since there was no force field, all the earth sent into the atmosphere by the explosions fell back onto the town, burying it.¡±


    ¡°And the Center Station and other facilities remained intact only because they had their own fields?¡± I asked.


    ¡°That¡¯s the only explanation I can give.¡± The girl in black smiled.


    ¡°I have a much better question.¡± Laura started. ¡°What¡¯s next? We came here to look for something. I think we have found it. Is it now time to return?¡±


    ¡°It depends what you came looking for.¡± Replied Mariann. ¡°I came looking for something other than the Professor, or you. And that soldier had his own agenda altogether. But yes, we can go now. But before that, let¡¯s just see if the Professor has already exited the crater or not.¡±


    ¡°I assume the exiting does not take place at the same location as entering it?¡± I asked. ¡°And also it won¡¯t be as easy?¡±


    ¡°In a sense.¡± The girl in black said. ¡°We have to journey some more, find the pasture. It is not far though, only on the other side of the crater.¡±


    ¡°You said it is nit possible to go beyond the crater.¡± Laura spoke.


    ¡°Did I?¡± asked Mariann, also giving a strange smile. ¡°Well, right now I¡¯m a bit better informed.¡±


    I looked at the girl in black clothing walking to the car with unhurried steps and getting into the driver¡¯s seat. She turned on the engine and did a reversing J-turn putting a huge cloud of dust in the air before stopping right by us.


    ¡°Do you want to come with?¡± She asked, lowering the window.


    ¡°Where are we going?¡± I asked. ¡°To the excavator?¡±


    ¡°Near the excavator.¡± Mariann said. ¡°The road ends there. A bit further from there is the only place the Professor might exit the crater and try to make it to the Center Station.¡±


    ¡°Can¡¯t we find him looking for that red pickup truck?¡±


    ¡°I doubt the red pickup truck will lead us to the right location.¡± Mariann said. ¡°That pickup truck is probably back at the garage by now.¡±


    ¡°How?¡± Laura asked.


    ¡°Get in and I¡¯ll tell you.¡± The girl smiled.

 XXI - a Detour into the end of the world IV

    For a few more seconds, Laura remained in her position, still doubting. She then opened the rear side door and got into the car. I instead walked around the car and sat on the front passenger seat next to Mariann.


    It had been clear that for a long time now, I was not the lead on this expedition. Mariann had taken over on the very first minutes and proved herself with her knowledge and experience. Never mind the fact that without her it would have been very difficult for us to even travel in baby steps at this place, not even mentioning attempts to leave or escape this place. It was hard for me to admit it to myself but I was about as lost here as that soldier had been.


    Slowly, the car started moving and following a barely noticeable road. We rode towards metal monster in the distance under the rim of the crater.


    ¡°So?¡± Laura asked. ¡°Why might we not find that red vehicle here?¡±


    ¡°Because it is probably back in the garage by now. The time here is not exactly linear, as I¡¯ve mentioned before. We arrived at an empty house where there were both vehicles. The Professor took one of them and left. But on a different timeline, the man living in this house discovers when going for his morning dump that one of his cars is gone. Standing on the rim of the crater, observing it with his binoculars, he will see that again the car has been left into the crater somewhere. The keys will either be in the door lock cylinder, in the ignition, on the tire, or behind the visor. Or in bed or on the hood. Or on the antenna. Or nearby in the sand next to some footsteps which end there.¡±


    ¡°And why do we not meet that man?¡±


    ¡°Because the timelines run in parallel, they do not intersect. Just that sometimes they happen to come so close to each other that an interference is created, never mind that the amount of time between the different events is not always the same.¡±


    The girl in black stopped the car next to one of the continuous tracks of the excavator, under the rotating center section of the main tower. That machine was truly gigantic. Although in the distance it seemed bluish gray, close by we could see all the black steel used in its construction, some of the beams thicker than several people standing side by side. And the platform the beams were attached to lied more than five meters above out heads. Much further away that it had seemed from the distance.


    The caterpillar tracks themselves were roughly three meters tall, at least twice as wide and more than sixteen meters long. In total, the machine had six tracks in two groups of three. Thus is was clear that this could not have left the tracks on the rim on either ends of the crater. And despite the negligent ground pressure it produced, it was still a fascinating question how did they even manage to get it here. On its own it could have never crossed the rim of the crater and being delivered here would have required scores of other heavy motor vehicles and an army or engineers, mechanics and other construction workers. And besides the ruins at the bottom of the crater, there was no sign of any of that ever being in here.


    Down here the ominous creaking of that rusty construct which had seen endless winds, rain, dust and cold was even sharper than before. Tall black tower, thick cables keeping in place the long steel truss with the wheel and the much shorter truss for counterweight at the opposite side. The cables also created their own sound. The whole thing looked like it might collapse at any second under its own weight or, conversely, wake up under the influence of some unknown intellect and start moving and working.


    ¡°Do not let yourselves get frightened by the way it looks.¡± Mariann said as if having read my thoughts. ¡°It is still in full working order. It just needs lubrication and a new reactor module.¡±


    She pointed at the thick open doors with large safety markings and an approximately container-sized void between them high above the tracks of the machine.


    ¡°You sure it won¡¯t collapse right here?¡± Laura still doubted, still standing at some distance, out of the tall shadow the tower was casting.


    ¡°Sure. Also this was not at all the thing I wanted to show you.¡±


    She headed in a different direction, towards the two parallel trails about 200 meters away which some other caterpillar tracks had left in the crater.


    ¡°This is the only place the Professor could have gotten out.¡± She said, stopping.


    The tracks left by the caterpillar drive were at most two or three meters deep here and got even shallower as they climbed up the wall and then towards the crest of the rim. If elsewhere the question was how anybody could get out of the crater with that vertical wall, here if one were to follow one of the tracks it could not have been much of a challenge.


    ¡°Dammit!¡± I shouted, suddenly realizing it. ¡°The machine that crossed the crater! It came from over here! It crossed this rim first, and with it¡¯s weight pushed down on the edge of the crater turning it from a sheer vertical wall into the mild gradient we see right now. But whence we came from the tracks are that deep only because the machine had to climb it under it¡¯s own weight and then slid down in a much softer ground and lower gradient.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, that¡¯s likely what happened,¡± the girl in black said.


    ¡°You have probably had more time to contemplate that, haven¡¯t you?¡± Laura asked.


    ¡°On one hand¡­ and on the other, the right timeline has touched our own. Sometimes in dreams, sometimes when awake, I have seen these tracks being made. I have heard the ground give way. But I have not see the thing that creates them. But I do know that when these tracks were made, the bottom of the crater still had fertile soil and there were grass and trees. The local climate was different. Mud was¡­ something more than a distant memory.¡±


    ¡°We won¡¯t be going from here?¡± Laura asked.


    ¡°No. Not here. From here one can only get to the Center Station and to¡­ places¡­ beyond that. One can¡¯t usually even dream of those places. Anomalous fields are too strong and bend the timelines away from each other. We¡¯re gonna use the tunnels.¡±


    ¡°The tunnels?¡±


    ¡°Yep. Between the Nameless Town and the Center Station, there was once a tunnel a few kilometers long. Arrow straight. In that tunnel there was a linear accelerator. The generators and the injection complex were located in the Center Station and the detector complex was built deep under the Institute, partly into the sections and departments which had for a long time been considered totally destroyed and forgotten. The event that created the crater may have buried the town underneath but the tunnels should still exist. After the event they even managed to clean it out and create new access shafts.¡±


    ¡°A linear¡­ particle accelerator?¡± I asked with strong skepticism. ¡°Here? On the territory of a former Soviet Socialist Republic?¡±


    ¡°Yes.¡± The girl in black gave a strong nod. ¡°A conducive region for all sorts of science and experiments. The world here was much more sensitive, much thinner than elsewhere. Here the fabric of reality was much easier to pierce through. I don¡¯t know about everything they researched in here but you can be sure that ultimately it was about military applications. When the Union collapsed then for a few decades nothing happened in here. It is very hard to justify hanging on to a black project classified at such a depth that not a single physical document exists to tie it to the government apparatus.¡±


    The girl in black took a last look at the two caterpillar tracks before us and then turned to look a the towering excavator not too far and the¡­


    ¡°Where¡¯s the car?¡± Laura asked.


    I too turned around, carefully examining the surroundings of the excavator base in order to try and notice either the front or the rear of the vehicle. Then I suddenly noticed it, much further away, several hundred meters away on the other side of the mining machine near the edge of the inner wall of the crater.


    ¡°We definitely did not leave it there.¡± I said.


    I was still peeling my eyes to try and find the force or the people who had moved the car without us noticing it. The car itself was barely noticeable at nearly a kilometer away. Only the color of the vehicle contrasting with the red and brown bedrock of the crater allowed me to notice it.


    ¡°What the hell¡­?¡± Asked Laura, stupefied, after raising her binoculars.


    She lowered them again and for a dozen or so seconds she kept staring into empty space before raising them again.


    ¡°That¡¯s not possible.¡± She said again, more to herself than to us. ¡°Impossible I say. This sun, the crater and those stories of Mariann are starting to affect you mind Laura, time to wake up.¡±


    I too got my binoculars out to look at the car in the distance, immediately noticing a group of people standing near it. The first person I recognized was the girl in black, those two guys to the left looked like the Professor and his young assistant. By the front of the car there was a woman whose hair looked like Laura¡¯s. The group seemed to be arguing over something. The man that looked like the Professor was repeatedly pointing at the excavator.


    That woman who looked like Laura got her binoculars, raised them and then she froze. For a moment, she lowered her binoculars to be sure that the thing she was seeing was indeed the thing she was seeing and then from her lips I could read words that also immediately reached my ears.


    ¡°Mariann? What¡¯s going on?¡±


    The group in the distance by the greenish blue sedan glistening in the sun froze and started to scan the distance. Those that had their binoculars were soon observing us in return. The only person whose demeanor remained unchanged was the girl in black, not disturbed by the least by this strange phenomenon.


    ¡°Indeed.¡± I lowered the binocular. ¡°What is going on?¡±


    ¡°The timelines touching each other.¡± Laura stated. ¡°Right now we¡¯re seeing that, right?¡±


    ¡°Yes.¡± Mariann said.


    With the tip of her boot, she drew two parallel lines on the ground. Next to those she drew two waves.


    ¡°Let¡¯s say that these two express some period of time in both time and space. They run in parallel, so they cannot intersect. These are the timelines I mentioned. But as with everything in nature, their true form is a wave. Now these waves stretch and compress, they phase and move like normal waves. We ourselves cannot sense any of that because we live on a wave. However the space in which these waves exist, moves as well, just like how orbiting heavenly bodies are free-falling in a straight line along a curved space, these waves may also travel in a curved manner because the space is curved. And thus sometimes the crests of these waves come so close to each other that some things will bleed through.¡±


    ¡°And at the moment, we¡¯re located¡­,¡± I started.


    ¡°At the crest on one such wave.¡± The girl replied. ¡°As are they. This roughly a kilometer between us is the distance between the centers of two timelines in this space. The true distance may be much less, maybe just a few meters. If we try to make it to them then we will see them disappear, the car will also disappear from there and reappear under the excavator.¡±


    ¡°So that there is a parallel universe?¡± Laura asked.


    ¡°Its an adjacent world.¡± Mariann said. ¡°I have no idea how much of a parallel to us it is and neither how much of a universe it may be.¡±


    ¡°How many of such adjacent world are there?¡±


    ¡°What did Mar¡­ I mean what did I tell you in that house under the darkness of night in front of the fire?¡±


    ¡°At least a four-dimensional...¡± Laura started pensively, ¡°...hyperfabric?¡±


    ¡°Yes, at least a four-dimensional hyperfabric.¡± Mariann smiled. ¡°That¡¯s a great analogy.¡±


    ¡°Why here?¡± I asked. ¡°Why is it that we see that adjacent world precisely here?¡±


    ¡°The same reason why we will never again see the Professor. The Center Station. This proximity to the Center Station takes what is already a twisted up world and adds yet another level of incomprehensibility to it. We can go by the way, the entrance to the tunnel is about a hundred meters further from the spot you saw the car and them standing.¡±


    ¡°Let¡¯s say, I send a rocket at them.¡± I said. ¡°What will happen?¡±


    ¡°They will see the rocket fly right thorough them and disappear because it is not real for them. You see the rocket fly right through them because for you, they are not real.¡±


    ¡°Mariann, maybe it is time for you to tell us why we¡¯re here.¡± Laura said. ¡°What is our goal?¡±


    ¡°The goal?¡± Mariann asked. ¡°That¡¯s a really long story. The goal is never unified. For that we need to talk about your goal, his goal.¡± She glanced at me for a moment. ¡°Mine, the Professor¡¯s, the goal of those who sent us here. We need to speak of the goal of this place here and finally the goal of the place we will finally reach. That¡¯s the least amount of goals we need to cover. As all these goals are related to each other and have an influence on each other.¡±


    Without anything else to say, she started walking back towards the excavator. Despite how far it was from us, it still seemed to tower above us in a threatening manner. Sometimes it seemed as if the top of it was shuddering in the wind with soul cleaving creaks. The sun had also turned more desolate and pale, the air more autumn-like.


    On a more poetic moment I would have been certain that the girl in black was correct. In here, to believe in something also meant to create it into existence. And it seemed to me more and more that the world was reacting to how we were located in it and how we behaved. If the speed and the direction with which we moved within the world was unsuitable for said world, it would immediately become a little more hostile to us. The air grew colder, the sun paled and the wind rose. The blue in the sky lost all color and become covered in gray clouds into which started flowing darker tones still. These darker shades seemed to be heavier as they flowed and pooled into the lowest depressions between the clouds. And then a strange gentle wind started to blow across the bottom of the crater, preceding a massive thunderstorm.


    ¡°If you spend too much time observing the sky in this place, you really will see a storm.¡± Mariann said, gently touching my shoulder. ¡°Let¡¯s go. We still have a lot to talk about.¡±


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    ¡°About goals.¡± I said.


    ¡°Yes.¡±


    ¡°We started walking again. Straight towards that green car and the group of people still hanging around nearby it.


    ¡°Your goal, Olav, was to die.¡± The girl in black suddenly said. ¡°To die in a better way than by spending your days in the bar and drinking yourself to death.¡±


    ¡°Wait, what?!¡± Laura asked, stopping. ¡°You want to die?!¡±


    ¡°That is not quite correct.¡± I said, feeling the need to calm the situation.


    ¡°That is relatively correct.¡± Mariann said. ¡°You have traveled far, discovered much of the world. It no longer excites you. There¡¯s nothing left for you. The world has lost its mystery. That¡¯s why alcohol. To spend the night drinking so that in a sleepy stupor a memory would brightly come to you, even for a fleeting moment, as if a dream long since forgotten. That¡¯s also the reason you came here. I¡¯m pretty sure you were told that this was suicide mission and a one-way ticket. And despite that you came.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re correct, I like to drink and to remember.¡± I said. ¡°But to be honest, there was no chance for me to refuse. To visit the Route had a long-time dream of mine. And then finally I was contacted and made an offer I could not refuse.¡±


    ¡°First of all, maybe once a long time ago it really was your dream. But that dream died a long time a go. For you, this expedition to the Route was akin to having another bottle of tequila.¡±


    ¡°Now wait a minute!¡± I raised my voice.


    ¡°Second of all!¡± Mariann continued in a demanding tone. ¡°Second of all, it¡¯s not really like you did not have any other options. During the last two months there have been offers to search for Xanadu, or walk the trail of admiral Byrd in the Antarctic or the Nazis when they looked for Shambala. The Order or the Black Sun has made you at least two offers to go to Scandinavia to look for traces of Hyperborea. Never mind the Russians who have sent you carts full of research on Tikal, the Dead Cities, the twin towns of Iram and Wabar, even on the mythical Livium and the Seven Pillars. Despite all that, you choose drinking and the Route. While instead you could have been managing the excavations in lost city erected in honor of the cosmic Old Gods.¡±


    ¡°Where did you...¡± I tried to find the right words which would express both my astonishment and my exasperation at the same time.


    I could not. Mariann was correct. I had received offers. Wondrous, astonishing, unbelievable offers. Some that would have taken me to places millions of amateurs look for each year and others to places which were so secret that even knowing their true names were grounds for getting extra-judicially shot. And still I had come here. Despite that, my journey to the Route, to nowhere, to here had been my own choice. And how the hell could that girl know all this anyway? How did she know of things she could not and should not have known anything about?


    ¡°Did you spy on me or did my employers do that?¡± I asked, still incensed.


    ¡°They did.¡± She replied. ¡°During my voluntary¡­ incarceration to get info from me, they were forced to reveal all they knew about it to learn anything new. It really was a surprise to see how little they knew.¡±


    ¡°You also told them what you have told us?¡± Laura asked.


    ¡°Yes. Just as Olav guessed back at the house, for me, information in itself has no real value. It¡¯s more like folklore.¡±


    ¡°And because of that, you are invaluable to everybody.¡± I said.


    Mariann only shrugged, still smiling.


    ¡°Why did I come here?¡± Laura now asked playfully, as if expecting Mariann to guess her reasons as well.


    ¡°Your curiosity about the Route. And also to find out what would be the assignment which would pull Olav from the bar and sober him up. And if I understand it correctly, it has been some time since you grew tired to death of your professorship.¡±


    ¡°Damn,¡± Laura smiled. ¡°That is the truth.¡±


    ¡°The Triumvirate put in a lot of work to build a team to be sent here. People willing to die and perform their duty even when in certain death.¡± Mariann said.


    ¡°What was their goal?¡± I asked. ¡°It is pretty clear it was not just a simple expedition.¡±


    ¡°Their goal was carried by the Professor. The only thing they saw was the Route being out of order. And the best they could come up with, despite me revealing to them, everything they wanted to hear, was that there must be some kind of malfunction in the Center Station. In essence he was supposed to guide the expedition. You only accompanied them because of your extensive experience about things going wrong. I was brought along in case I should remember some new information that could be of help. And the soldier...¡±


    ¡°...because for you something being classified means nothing.¡± Laura finished her thought.


    ¡°Indeed.¡± Mariann smiled.


    ¡°Is there really a malfunction in the Center Station, though?¡± I asked.


    ¡°That is impossible to know.¡± The girl in black said. ¡°The Center Station was a mysterious place even before everything went to hell and the world twisted out of it¡¯s original shape. It was the place all suspicious and unexplainable phenomena tended to be focused on, whether due to their nature or their origin. That¡¯s why it is called the Center Station. However when things went off the rails, everything distorted. The Center Station, what it was in nature, got amplified, it became inaccessible in the very literal definition of the word. Spatially, temporally. One cannot even know anything specific regarding it. It disallows the release of information located within it¡¯s grasp.¡±


    ¡°But then does that not make it possible that the Data Agency which orders around the Committee was right? That should the Professor reach the Center Station and resolve the malfunction, the Route will go back to being what it used to be? And then one can return from the Center Station?¡± I asked.


    ¡°The Route can never go back to what it used to be. It it tightly tied to the order of the world in here. Supposing that through some miracle, the Professor does make it to the Center Station then considering how messed up the timelines are in here, more than two kilometers from the Station as the crow flies, and how the weirdness increases as the distance decreases on a scale of natural logarithm, then it is possible to say with a lot of certainty that by the Yefremov generators at the at the Center Station the things are so complicated that human personality, the existence of a malfunction and resolving it lie in a superposition with eight valences. Add to that a four-dimensional time, never mind the four-dimensional space.¡±


    ¡°So there is no way back?¡± Laura asked.


    ¡°A way back you say?¡± The girl in black started to laugh in a hollow disappointed mockery. ¡°Terms like ¡®forward¡¯ and ¡®back¡¯ are useless and without meaning, especially here. Mainly because they cannot be used to refer to the same object or concept each time they are used. All they manage to express is a clear way in which a human mind is limited when trying to make sense of the world, especially if the world decides to or is forced to reveal itself before us in its true form. ¡®Forward¡¯ and ¡®back¡¯ is a bivalent conception over a single dimension. But if time has opened up like a four-dimensional fabric made of timelines or time-threads, then describing movement in the terms of a single dimension is of no use.


    ¡°¡¯Forward¡¯ and ¡®back¡¯ cannot describe our movement with enough definition. We also don¡¯t know in which direction ¡®forward¡¯ or ¡®back¡¯ point to or in which direction we ourselves are moving. It doesn¡¯t matter though that we are stuck here nor that we would not have the option to move anywhere. Becoming lost is still possible though, as that is only dependent on traversing an event horizon of some certain type.¡± Marian kept staring at the two of us for a few dozen seconds. ¡°For example that group still standing around that car over there.¡±


    I turned my eyes towards the group and the car, to whom we had gotten quite close by to. Still they eyed us, looked at us with their binoculars and probably created numerous theories among themselves about our nature and existence. It seemed that even though from our perspective we were standing no more than 30 meters from them, from their perspective we were still more than half a kilometer away from them.


    ¡°Just a few more steps and...¡± Mariann mused.


    Just a few more steps and both the group of people people and the car faded into nothingness right before us like a shimmering mirage above a hot desert sand. Due to my gut feeling, I turned back towards the excavator and saw that very same green sedan stand right under the main tower of the excavator.


    ¡°And now, if you were to look back towards the caterpillar tracks at the bottom of the crater...¡± Mariann said.


    I turned and rose the binoculars hanging around my wrist. It took me no time to locate the dark red pickup truck parked at the two massive tracks. And I also noticed 5 people nearby it. This time I recognized them much faster; it was all of our expedition team, minus the soldier. The Mariann over there still had her little carriage with the breathing tank. The people were examining the tracks, until the Professor¡¯s assistant alerted them to what was presumably our presence.


    ¡°There¡¯s no soldier there.¡± Laura said.


    ¡°No there is not.¡± Mariann agreed. ¡°Something here demands that the soldier perishes. And there exists no timeline on which he survives for more than two hours after entering the Route. Two hours of the time of the general group, I mean. At least I have not found such a timeline yet. But at the very least I hope this has been enough for the two of you to see how the threads of time function in reality, such as it is here.¡±


    ¡°The threads of time are separated from each other by the event horizons which are like the walls or borders of the timelines...¡± Laura said.


    ¡°That¡¯s how they are supposed to be like.¡± The girl in black said. ¡°But in here the event horizons have fractured and crumbled away in pieces and shards, leaving the timelines naked. That¡¯s why there exist these places where one may bleed through into the next. However in the Center Station, all timelines are positioned at the same space-time coordinates all mixed up with one another. There are no event horizons between them, they are all one. And the only thing keeping that bunch of waves together is the quaternary field of the Yefremov generators.¡±


    ¡°Let me guess, that¡¯s just one way of explaining things?¡± I asked.


    ¡°One of the more scientific ones.¡± Mariann said with a smile.


    ¡°Why did you come here?¡± I asked the girl in black. ¡°What is your goal?¡±


    ¡°To find myself once again. And by doing that I would be free of the oxygen tank and the breathing problems.¡±


    ¡°Before you said that all this military guarding the Route could not have stopped you if you had really wanted to leave against their will.¡± Laura said. ¡°What did you mean by that?¡±


    ¡°I meant what I meant.¡± The girl said.


    ¡°You are not the same kind of a human as we are, are you?¡± Laura asked. ¡°Most definitely you are not from a world that is familiar to us. As I have gathered from your stories, you are also not from this place. You are from somewhere else, some other timeline.¡±


    ¡°Maybe I am.¡± The girl said in a thoughtful tone. ¡°But this place has become my home. Here I am, here I will always return to. This corner of the world, the limits, the twists and turns and the mechanics I know best. But that is irrelevant, ultimately.¡±


    ¡°Why did you have that oxygen tank?¡± I asked. ¡°What happened to you?¡±


    ¡°My lungs got burnt. I lost more than sixty percent of functional lung tissue. When I got pulled out of this place into the world you are from. This way.¡±


    She pointed at a large concrete pipe jutting out of the vertical crater wall at a height of about five meters.


    ¡°Where are we going?¡±


    ¡°A simple answer would be ¡®forward¡¯. Forward from our current position.¡±


    ¡°So the story about your lungs¡­?¡± Laura insisted.


    ¡°As you have probably been explained to, an uncountable number of expeditions have entered the Route, both with military as well as with civilians. And none have returned. At the same time, off the route many people have appeared and then also returned to it, without anybody managing to capture them.


    ¡°Let me guess, you were the first one that was captured?¡± Laura remarked.


    ¡°I was the first one who had no means to stop my own capture. It isn¡¯t only our own familiar human kind who uses this place and the Route as a kind of natural crossing formation, there are many other human civilizations and parallel worlds who also want to know what goes on other timelines. Maybe they can even navigate between them with certainty. With regards to people who have entered the Route but have never come back, they are not lost forever, if the timelines here truly make up a four-dimensional fabric then you can be sure that people who have not chosen to remain here, have all gone back, but apparently none have made it back onto the same timeline or worldline they came from.¡±


    ¡°And since one cannot sense changing the lines and no trace of that ever taking place remains, then it is also impossible to say if one has changed the lines and how many times already.¡± I said.


    ¡°And whether you have changed into one that has been ripped apart like it happened to our soldier or instead onto an Ouroboros.¡±


    ¡°An Ouroboros?¡± Laura asked.


    ¡°A thread with the ends tied together. A closed time-like loop. A pole, if you were to run around it, you might catch up to yourself and run yourself down.¡±


    ¡°Frightening.¡± I said.


    ¡°Indeed.¡± Mariann agreed. ¡°There aren¡¯t too many worse thing than going outside to gather firewood and then to get back to your hose to see yourself already having fired up the stove and making tea or something.¡±


    Without much effort, the girl in black heaved her body into the reinforced concrete tunnel with surprisingly thick walls. Or was it really some sort of a pipe for fluids or gases? She then bent down to also help up Laura. I also climbed up and noticed a closed hatch with rust spots and a wheel on it a little deeper in the pipe.


    ¡°The accelerator tunnel has long since collapsed.¡± Mariann explained, reaching her hand out to me. ¡°And those segments which are still intact, I don¡¯t think you want to know what goes on in there. It is still the Center Station. But this here is a service tunnel. Properly shielded and it has survived everything that happened. The effects of the Center Station are properly neutralized as well.¡±


    ¡°And where are we going?¡± Laura asked.


    ¡°You¡¯ll see when we get there.¡±


    Mariann advanced along the bottom of the tunnel towards the large steel bulkhead door. The concrete inside the tunnel had crumbled in spots revealing the rebar reinforcement lattice. She climbed over the larger piece which had fallen from the ceiling and finally stopped in front of the door. She slid her fingers along the handles on the wheel and then grabbed onto it, trying to get it moving.


    I kept observing her struggle for a few moments, hearing the rusty surfaces creak as they rubbed together, it seemed the wheel moved no more than five centimeters back and forth. I then decided to join her and offer my help. I leaned in over her and also grabbed the wheel with both hands, With both of out efforts the wheel finally started moving and soon Mariann could open it up on her own. She soon opened the bulkhead door.


    From the pitch black darkness behind the door blew a draft of cool air full of smells of crude oil products.


    ¡°Are we the first people who have stepped in here since the end of the world?¡± Laura asked after having climbed through the small opening.


    ¡°I doubt it.¡± Mariann replied. ¡°Although it really is not a path that¡¯s exactly known. Most people won¡¯t even make an attempt at the bulkhead door, assuming it to be bent with damage or seized up with rust.¡±


    ¡°Does the same thing happen here as with the cars that somebody comes, sees that the hatch is open and then closes it again?¡± I asked.


    ¡°It does.¡± The girl in black said.


    She produced a small silvery windproof lighter and ignited it. It worked surprisingly well at bringing light into the pitch darkness in the tunnel. We could see the dusty bottom of the pipe we were in, we could see the walls with crumbled concrete which revealed the steel reinforcement, and also, the pipe seemed slightly oval as if it had buckled inward slightly with all this time. The pipe seemed to be nearly three meters in inner diameter.


    ¡°For the man who lives on the edge of the crater, or who lived there, depending on when you happen to come across his house¡­ for that man it is important to keep this hatch closed at all times to keep those living in the tunnels out of the crater.


    ¡°Somebody lives in here?¡± Laura asked with a suddenly frightened voice. ¡°Or something?¡±


    ¡°Somebody or something. The man on the edge of the crater could tell you many stories of them, but in his stories the monsters are always different. Sometimes they have wings, sometimes they do not. Sometimes they have thick pale skin, other times they have long hands and fingers with underdeveloped hind legs. Skulls devoid of eyes and instead of a nose there is a tall slit above the mouth which gives them an extraordinary sense of smell. Until now though I have not seen a single creature though, not of any kind. But I also haven¡¯t gone too deep into the tunnels. However strange voices and sounds, boxes falling down and rolling around, pipes rustling¡­ all that is quite common and dare I say, normal.


    The people may be gone and the world is twisted out of its frame but the equipment in the center of it all is for the most part still functional and running. The scientists here were incredibly adept at creating cybernetic backup systems. Although I doubt they ever planned for the one in a billion chance that the whole complex would be kept in check by a satellite network up high on a geostationary orbit, still observing the whole region. Not a single person, just cold self-adjusting tech.¡±


    ¡°It is amazing it has stayed functional for this long.¡± I noted.


    ¡°If there¡¯s one thing these Russians can do at all, it is mindlessly simple military equipment.¡± Agreed Mariann.


    Soon, remains of crumbled concrete access shafts started to appear in our way. There seemed to be one after every twenty meters or so. In each shaft, although they were dark, I could see rusty rungs sticking out of the much narrower vertical shafts. They seemed to be about the diameter or sewer manholes.


    However in most cases, almost the whole shaft had collapsed along with the ladder inside it, laying as an unordered pile of rubble on our way which we had carefully climb over. We also felt occasional vibrations all around us which dropped pieces of loose concrete all around us. However the girl in black was not alarmed by them the least.


    ¡°What about these vibrations?¡± I asked.


    ¡°The Center Station.¡± Mariann said. ¡°The tunnel might be shielded from the fields but the physical rotation of those generators causes tensions in the surface that surrounds the complex.¡±


    ¡°How far do we have to go?¡± Laura asked. ¡°I have no wish to meet some monster while we only have your flip lighter for illumination.¡±


    ¡°They don¡¯t like the smell of fire.¡± The girl in black said. ¡°Not too far now. The next access shaft should be the correct one.¡±


    Soon yet another vertical access shaft appeared from the darkness. The only notable feature on it was that it was intact. Both the concrete collar that reached down from the ceiling as well as the ladder, seemingly. There was one other strange feature here. Onto the wall of the pipe was fastened a rod with a hook at the end of it. With some effort, Mariann took it off the pipe wall and used it to pull down the sliding section of the ladder. This section slid under the narrow steel U-shaped rungs so it was even narrower. She replaced the hooked rod and then stepped onto the first rungs of the ladder. Despite a layer of fine rusty powder being left on her fingers, it seemed to be still able to bear weight.


    She slowly started to climb up of it, followed by Laura and then me. As I was the last one, I had no idea how long our travel up the ladder was going to be. Ahead was pitch dark, and perhaps an endless emptiness, same was definitely behind us. And around us was claustrophobic concrete tunnel our bodies constantly rubbed against. We did not talk, we only climbed.


    My fingers suddenly touched Laura¡¯s legs. She had stopped, and so had the girl in black ahead of her, apparently. I could feel the somebody above me shift their weight and then blinding daylight reached me, bouncing around the two bodies above me and making my eyes water. A heavy cast iron cover above us was moved to the side and after that we slowly climbed out of the pipe, still half-blind, onto a cracked damp pavement.


    I stayed there on the pavement, sitting until my eyes became adjusted to the daylight. As I looked around, I could see a possibly abandoned and forgotten cottage district around me. The grass in the yards had grown tall, the colors had faded, the steel chain-link was rusted, pavement was cracked and full of potholes and buildings looked like they were slowly falling into ruin. The sidewalks and the curbstones were sinking into the ground, I now also noticed chain-link fences ripped and the wooden fences about to topple over. I could see something else as well, just about the only thing that did not look dilapidated in this place. A boxy green four door sedan with mirror finish chrome surface on the wheel faces. That very same car we had used to drive to the excavator in the crater and then left there. And then found gone.


    ¡°Now that is an interesting coincidence!¡± Mariann said, having also noticed the car.


    ¡°I don¡¯t believe in coincidences.¡± I said.


    ¡°That is bad, In here you will have nothing besides coincidences. If you start attempting to divine some patterns or rules behind them, it will not end well for you.¡±


    I crawled back to the manhole in the ground and took a look down the hole. But instead of all-encompassing darkness, I saw water down there, reflecting the sky and a dark shadow of my face back at me. I put the cast iron lid back onto the manhole.


    ¡°Where are we?¡± I asked.


    ¡°A few decades before the end of the world.¡± Mariann said.


    ¡°So where are we?¡± Laura repeated my question with a slightly different intonation.


    Mariann sad nothing. Instead she opened the driver door of the car and found the keys and then went to open the trunk. As the trunk lid rose, it revealed mine and Laura¡¯s backpacks with out stuff.


    ¡°But still? Where?¡±


    ¡°Look over there, towards the North.¡± Mariann said, pointing at an overgrown yard next to us.


    Behind that overgrown yard was a small patch of forest, but through the trees we could see a pale yellow pasture, extending for at least a few kilometers. And on the horizon I think there was a small town. But what really grabbed my attention, even through the trees, was a steel triangular tower hanging down from the sky.


    ¡°As I said.¡± Mariann gave a smile while walking back. ¡°Welcome!¡±

 XXII - Bewitched Concert

    I saw a dream. At least I think I saw a dream. I cannot be sure. I hope what I saw was a dream. It felt so real that¡­ I awoke from it, at least. In that I am certain of. But what disturbs me most is that I have no idea when exactly did I fall asleep. I don¡¯t know whether I fell asleep, I don¡¯t know where the border of dreaming is. At the same time I remember perfectly everything that happened.


    It happened last week. I had finished my day shift in the vodka plant of the Village Dude Peeter and was sitting in old Leopold¡¯s bar with a few other workers and the village folk. That was the first time I heard of them. Somebody¡¯s errant remark of a band by the younger folk which was on its way to the town to perform at a concert in the Substation.


    It seemed rightfully funny to me. A concert inside the Substation? The Substation had been locked up for years now. Nobody has managed to break in there. Nobody knows where the keys which once opened those doors have disappeared to. And truthfully there wasn¡¯t anybody, who even knew anybody who had ever entered or exited said doors to the Substation. The only sign that something was still going on in the Substation, was coolant pool for the radio tower which was filled with hot water at all times.


    Despite that I did not think it a bother of me to step closer to the counter, ask the barkeep for a beer and keep listening to what it was that had driven the villagers to such a fervor. Strangers arriving into the Nameless Town was always an event, but musicians arriving¡­ and somebody other than a local musical collective from Tontla or Valgepal? playing age old songs over and over again, that was a big event unto itself.


    ¡°But I said, I only heard it form other village folk that those boys are already on their way here with their guitars and their amplifiers.¡± A man with a thick bushy mustache said. He had not shaved for a few days and there was a fain smell of stale fish hovering around him.


    ¡°Hey, Fishy George! Are you sure heard it from around here? When on the town?¡± Old Leopold asked. ¡°and not from the Fish Factory at Valgepal??¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m sure it was from somebody discussing it here!¡± The man said. ¡°I don¡¯t know, maybe it was Eduard or...¡±


    ¡°Hey fisherman, don¡¯t even try to drag me into it!¡± A short and frail man with a reddish face shouted from a table nearby. ¡°You heard shit from me!¡±


    ¡°¡­ or maybe it was the Mayor.¡±


    ¡°The Mayor, eh? That old and fat can¡¯t even tell the weather, never mind rumors!¡± Village Hag No.5 with her purple coat placed her cane on the counter and then leaned against it. ¡°Hey old man! Pour me a vodka!¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re usually at Virve¡¯s are you not?¡± Fishy George asked, trying to get the creases out of his striped polo.


    ¡°I am. But these days nobody else visits Virve any more. All the other village hags sit at home. ¡°This place hurts, that place hurts, cannot get up, cannot sit down.¡±¡± She mocked. ¡°Dammit! All of them are at least a decade younger than I am!¡±


    The old lady downed a shot with no difficulty and hit it against the counter.


    ¡°Virve ran out of coffee. Eduard, that boy forgot to bring more from the town.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m going! I¡¯m going!¡± Eduard grumbled from his table. ¡°Let a man finish his beer and I¡¯ll go get your coffee from Tontla!¡±


    ¡°Hey, what kind of tunes do these youngsters produce in that band of theirs?¡±


    My attention was grabbed by a younger man who had appeared to sit by the counter next to me. Worn jeans, dirty shoes, cotton sweater full of small holes burnt by embers on a bare body. Yeah, Rops it was.


    ¡°What?¡± Village Hag no.5 asked, looking in my direction.


    ¡°I mean what kind of music are they making with their band?¡± Rops asked again,


    ¡°Aah! I head about that!¡± the village hag started to talk excitedly. ¡°There are three or four of them. The come in some big ZIL, just like the one those Boys from the North drive around but taller and boxier, Behind it is a big round silver trailer, full of all their instruments. Oh, and it looks like an airship of the sky folk.¡±


    ¡°How do you know?¡± An old man asked, stepping closer.


    ¡°Y¡¯think I ain¡¯t seen the sky folk ships before, ¡®uh?¡± She asked getting annoyed. ¡°Just the other Saturday one hovered above the road!¡±


    ¡°I told you! I told you!¡± Rops shouted, vindicated.


    ¡°Oh, go fuck yourself, boy!¡± Leopold shouted. ¡°All other young people have long since left this place for the North. Some to Yuryev, some to Reval, some even further. If you had any sense left in that head of yours, you too would be somewhere else, at least in Yuryev, doing something useful!¡±


    ¡°Leo, don¡¯t get angry at a child!¡± a sharp yet old voice cried out from somewhere.


    ¡°Old crone?¡± the village hag at the counter became more excited.


    ¡°Yeah, it¡¯s me.¡± The source of the voice moved behind the backs of the men sitting by the counter and finally Village Hag No.6 appeared, standing next to the other old lady.


    ¡°it is not his fault that he¡¯s a bit dull.¡± An old woman with green eyes and silver white hair that barely reached her neck spoke.


    ¡°It really is.¡± Leopold said.


    ¡°You yourself were quite the same at that age.¡± The old woman said. ¡°Yes, you were! I remember just fine!¡±


    ¡°If these boys made the same kind of music as Jaanus, Rein and Urmas when they were young then one might actually go and see them.¡± I said.


    ¡°Yeah, they are not.¡± The older village hag said. ¡°They are young. They¡¯re from P?lve, and like most people from that place, they are not right in the head. Nobody there understands the music of our younger days. All of them make some sort of screeching music fit for beating dust out of the carpets. Nobody sings either, they just scream into the microphone so you can¡¯t understand crap.¡±


    ¡°Well, I can see then that nobody really goes to see them.¡± Fishy George said. ¡°Maybe those two girls from the Institute, that one from the nuthouse and Rops will be going, but that will be it. They should be plenty young to understand music like that.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t understand what business do they have here anyway.¡± The village hag in purple coat remarked. ¡°All the young people have long since left this place. Who are they performing to? To themselves? There has to be some kind of gimmick to it.¡±


    ¡°And the Substation itself is also just a little shack!¡± Rops said loudly. ¡°There is no way that it can fit the band, their equipment and all the village folk!¡±


    ¡°Oh they¡¯ll fit.¡± The old village hag said.


    ¡°Wait, what?¡± Fishy George asked, having stopped laughing.


    Silence fell around both the counter and seeming the entire rest of the bar as well. Everybody wanted to be a part of the mystery the village hag was about to reveal.


    ¡°I have seen the Substation from the inside. Once, when I was a little girl. The brick shack you see is just the above ground portion. The true Substation lies several floors below that, where there are hidden halls as wide as the eye can see and several stories high, full of strange machinery. Some of which work by emitting a scary hum, others are glowing hot and even pour out smoke. Little lights of every conceivable kind and color glowing and blinking in mysterious patterns. Illuminated dials moving back and forth.¡±


    ¡°What machines?¡± Fishy George asked.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know what machines, I was maybe five years old then. But they were big. My dad was already a big man, but the machines were big even compared to him, more than twice his height. I don¡¯t remember much by now, just big black machines, thick cables and hoses and forged black wheels carrying belts. The wheels were likewise fastened to hand forged metal frames with designs of loops and curves. One side of the wall was full of them. I guess they were some kind of old scientific machines or calculating machines. Most certainly connected with that tower and the mists rising from the pool.¡±


    Silence again fell into the bar, as the village hag finished her story. It seemed as everybody was deep in their thoughts. Only Leopold was refilling the beer glasses with shaking hands, not making a sound about money. Ans also there was some tension in the air, as if somebody had outed some great big secret. As if right this moment, the door to the bar would open and a whole bunch of men in black suits would enter to¡­


    The door to the bar suddenly opened and anybody who had even a partial line of sight to the door, turned to look towards it and see what wondrous creature was going to enter. Whether it was Boys from the North or the girl in black or somebody altogether different. But there was no wondrous creature. When my eyes recovered from the sudden influx of evening light, I could see that it was honorable doctor Sare. A brown belt tightened on his worn formal pants and a white labcoat over dark tartan patterned shirt.


    ¡°Wow, there¡¯s a lot of you in this bar tonight. As if the whole village was here!¡± The doctor said, rubbing his bald head. He stopped, looking around the bar. ¡°What¡¯s this? You look like you¡¯ve seen a ghost.¡±


    ¡°There are stories abound that musicians from P?lve are coming to town and the whole village is excited.¡± I said.


    ¡°Musicians you say?¡± The doctor walked to the counter and with the indifference of a car, pushed Rops aside and sat on a bar stool right next to me.


    ¡°What would the honorable doctor wish?¡± Leo asked. ¡°Vodka?¡±


    ¡°Beer.¡± Sare said. ¡°I took a tea glass just before coming here. And refill my friend¡¯s glass as well, I¡¯m buying.¡± He slapped me on the back.


    ¡°Thank you, doctor.¡± I said.


    ¡°Actually I came for a nice drive around the county.¡± Doctor Sare said. ¡°And then I thought, what the point of aimlessly driving around, I¡¯d rather come here, get a beer, talk with the townsfolk and then get back on my way. The last time there on the edge of the forest, when I drove that ambulance, I actually started to like it very much. How it rode, nay sailed over the potholed roads without me feeling anything. But the ambulance is so damn long I cannot tell where the back end is. It is also low and fat like an obese dachshund. But then I went to the Boys from the North and asked them.¡±


    ¡°You asked them?¡± Fishy George asked. ¡°For a car?¡±


    ¡°Yes, indeed.¡± The doctor sipped his beer.


    ¡°Wow, some people really are connected up high.¡± Fishy George replied.


    ¡°And they actually had one they could give me. White, two-door, tall fins in the rear and tail lights in the shape of jet exhaust. And oh what a wonder it is to drive. Like a flying carpet.¡±


    ¡°Hey, doctor,¡± Village Hag No.5 asked. ¡°You probably have many wise saying about vodka. Can we hear one?¡±


    ¡°I have not wise sayings, only experience.¡± The Doctor replied. ¡°One mustn¡¯t drink oneself under the table. But to drink in such a manner that one does not get drunk, that is agreeable. Vodka is pure, you see. Much better for an ironclad health than water.¡±


    ¡°Really?¡± Rops asked.


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    ¡°Oh yes, my dear boy.¡± the Doctor assured. ¡°Every day for the past 40 years I have had 2-4 tea glasses of vodka and my health is better than ever before. And vodka no longer makes me inebriated.¡±


    ¡°Words of truth!¡± the Village Hag remarked.


    ¡°So where that looker of a nurse?¡± Fishy George asked with a glint in his eyes,


    ¡°She left behind to keep watch over the hospital. She¡¯s not interested if there is not some kind of medical pathology. And you probably don¡¯t have any drinks fit for her.¡±


    ¡°She only drinks some fancy cocktails?¡± Fishy George asked.


    ¡°Nope. Ether.¡±


    ¡°Ether?¡± the man was surprised.


    ¡°Yes, ether.¡± the Doctor repeated.


    The discussion between the doctor and the rest of the townsfolk had made me forget that something was different from the usual. There was a weird feeling possessing me, a feeling I could not shake off me. Something was wrong. Something was¡­ coming. Something had awaken.


    It started quietly. As if a faint music I was only hearing in my thoughts. A gentle but lonely tune played on a guitar, full of cold crows of rooks and the rustling of dried autumn leaves. A music those boys from P?lve definitely could not be making, if the Village Hag was to be believed. A guitar tune which was inviting me along. Both in body and mind, It asked me to focus on it, to submit to it. To forget the rest of the world around me and to just float and flow along with it into the world opening to me through the sounds.


    In this way, I had not noticed how the sound had grown from a quiet and gentle guitar tune, reminding one of youth a long time ago when children in the Forbidden Forest sat by the fire right next to the Border, into a music with heavy guitar sound and complicated rhythms, of which the Village Hag had spoken of. It was still inviting me though. It had something, some sort of deeper rhythm hidden within which was impossible to resist. Despite all of it¡¯s heavy otherness, violent sounds and the music generally disagreeing with my ears, there was still something earthy and anciently homely. Something which brought my mind¡¯s eye to warm sun, fresh grass, black forest and grandma¡¯s soft hands.


    I managed to force my mind to awaken from this enchantment and realized that I was not the only one beguiled. Something very strange was happening, as the heads of all the people in the bar were moving in the rhythm of music I could only hear in my head. As if everybody had lost themselves into this music and were now genuinely enjoying it, having forgotten their former animosity. This included the Village Hags, Leopold and even doctor Sare, who generally avoided any participation in such matters. I could also see people who were affected by the music to such a degree that they rose from their tables and the counter and slowly lumbered out of the door.


    I too started to go, having finished my beer. Whatever was going on, it could not have been limited only to the bar. The whole town was probably involved. As I reached the street outside, I understood what it meant. The streets were full of people with sheer bliss on their faces, moving slowly towards the Substation along the straightest route possible. On foot, exclusively. I could not hear a single engine. Only this alien music with it¡¯s strange effect. It was also most certain that the music was not only in my hear or in the heads of every other person, but also in the air all around the town, as if the band had been playing right behind the next corner.


    Something else was also different. It was dark. It had grown dark imperceptibly quickly. The sky was still blue, there were still but a few lonely clouds in there, but there was no sun, just an undefinable dusk of early summer which seemed to grow dimmer with every step closer to the Substation. As the crowd moved, I could see glimpses of the metal doors of the Substation which were now wide open, funneling people inside.


    I also quickened my pace, although the music did not have the same hold over me as it did with the other townsfolk. I could not tell why. Maybe it was only a trick of my mind and everybody else was also heading towards the Substation, only to find out what was happening while considering others beside themselves bewitched.


    Between the metal doors of the Substation, there was only carrion black darkness. At the same time, I was not afraid to step inside it. My foot found a study iron grating for a floor. Soon my eyes started so see a spartan room with brick walls, of which more than half was taken up by a massive cargo elevator with grated walls. In the other corner of the room there was an old metal staircase made of wrought steel with lots of decorations and embellishments. The people were crowding on this staircase slowly moving downwards. I finally decided to join them.


    The staircase was much sturdier and firmer than it had first seemed. I don¡¯t know how many turns it made until I managed to get by the black gigantic machinery of some otherworldly past ages which was attached to the ceiling of the great underground hall. This machinery was connected by various gears, chain and belt drives. Finally, I manage to start seeing a mist-filled floor of the hall. The hall was full of people from one end to the other. In the distance a stage was set up on which the band performed, flanked on either side by massive speakers and concert lights.


    In here, I was pretty sure I was hearing real music, real sounds which where vibrating my innards, not just something created by witchcraft which, despite cutting through all other sounds, still remained enticingly distant and ephemeral. However the beguilement of the real music was also strongest. In front of me and around me were the village folk. Tens and tens of villagers I was familiar to. Co-workers from the vodka factory, both those of the same shift as well as those who should have been resting or asleep at home.


    I tried to shake and talk to a couple of mu co-workers, Matti and Styopa, but they did respond to me, they weren¡¯t even aware of me being there. Both had their gazes fixed on the stage with their bodies, heads and hands moving along with the music. Soon I also saw the owner of the vodka factory, the Village Dude Peeter was present, as well as the Mayor, Virve and even a couple of Boys from the North. The latter were not throwing their hand in the air, but from the way they were nodding their heads along with the music, they too were obviously affected. They didn¡¯t even bother hiding the fact that they were hovering just a few centimeters off the floor.


    What was going on here? Why was I the only one this did not affect?


    The band on the stage started with a new song which seemed to be about a bloody forest. Some moments after that, I started to sense that something was again changing. There were flashes of something I could not be sure of. For a moment I was sure to see trees, a black sky above me, and suddenly the strange machinery under the concrete ceiling was back. For a moment I even felt a cold fresh breeze which felt like heaven in this stagnant underhall. And also for a moment I no longer saw the stage and the band playing on it but a huge fire in the forest and the band playing on the other side of said flame.


    And then suddenly¡­ I do not know how it happened¡­ we were no longer in a gigantic hall under the Substation. We were on a clearing in the Forbidden Forest. And nobody noticed it. A clearing so familiar to me from my youth. On the left, not far, were the concrete posts with rusty barbed wire fastened to them. I could also see a sliver of the brighter sky there, but above my head hung an inordinately dark summer sky. It all seemed very fitting for the Forbidden Forest, all around us were only trees, and before us was a gigantic fire, behind which and it also seemed, in the middle of which, the band was playing. And a moment later everything flashed back into the hall under the Substation.


    And yet, all this could not have been only a phantasm of mine. The underhall was still full of cool and fresh forest air. The air was clear like the moonlight and tasted of evening dew on tall grass. And nobody beside me had noticed. The concert continued, the song changed, but people had no idea what was going on. How the site of the concert was changing from Substation into the Forbidden Forest and then back into the Substation. I saw some more flashes, I felt a few more breaths of fresh forest air, a few more glimpses of dark sky, starlight and even tastings of nighttime dew in my nostrils and I finally started to understand.


    This blinking between the Substation and the Forbidden Forest was not incidental. It was happening in tune with the passages in the music played. The stronger the band played, the deeper under it¡¯s influence the people fell, the more people were under the influence, the longer the duration of blinks into the Forbidden Forest stretched. Until finally, during a slow and breathtakingly beautiful guitar solo of a particular song, when people reacting to every single note was clearly visible, ...it did not blink back into the underhall.


    At the same time people were still gathering. But not by descending the staircase, which was curiously still there, growing out of the dirty ground and reaching into the sky, turning into moonlight a few stories up. Instead they were appearing from everywhere around the clearing. Lots of strange people in weird old-fashioned peasant clothes. All of them beguiled by the music, just like the townsfolk, not even minding the fact that the music could in no way fit into their world and time. And still there seemed to be something in this music for them as well. Something they could not deny. For them as well, this music carried some kind of life force, a reflection of the power which has brought them here. The power which had not let them fade into smoke, morning dew and moonlight after they died.


    ¡°You are¡­ aware, right?¡± I suddenly heard a female voice addressing me. ¡°The music does not hold this power over you?¡±


    Before me stood the girl in black. A bit shorter than I was. No less than seventeen years of age by the looks of it. Knee high leather boots with flat soles, simple black knee high skirt, a black cardigan and dark loose hair reaching down to about elbow level. The girl everybody in town was talking about. The girl who was connected with the disappearance of the Forest Lake, who took photos of people and played guitar in Luiga.


    ¡°I have done other stuff as well.¡± The girl said.


    ¡°What?!¡± I asked with trepidation in my mind, suddenly understanding. ¡°You can read my thoughts!?¡±


    ¡°I can hear them, not read them.¡± She said. ¡°Just like you here are hearing everybody else¡¯s thoughts.¡±


    ¡°I am not.¡± I shook my head. ¡°I am only hearing this music.¡±


    ¡°This music is the only thing in everybody¡¯s mind right now. They have no other thoughts. Not the village folk, not the forest folk.¡±


    ¡°Who are you?¡± I asked. ¡°What¡¯s going on here?¡±


    ¡°The first question is much harder to answer than the second one.¡± The girl smiled. ¡°And you already know who I am. That¡¯s enough for now. What¡¯s going on is that this is a concert, a bewitched concert. However¡­ ¡­their own fault?¡±


    ¡°Err...¡± I could not say anything. I understood she asked me a question, but I could not understand what the question was about. Or I couldn¡¯t hear it... Or something.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know how exactly, but they brought on themselves.¡± She continued. ¡°Everybody who is currently here, everybody who is still gathering here is themselves at fault for being bewitched by the music.¡±


    ¡°Me too?¡± I asked. ¡°What did I do?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know if you too. It does not seem like it because you are not enchanted by the music like the others. I don¡¯t know what exactly happened, maybe they went to see the witch and she was in a bad mood. Maybe somebody made a deal with the fairies in the name of the whole town and then broke his word. Maybe somebody ridiculed the Forbidden Forest and it decided to respond. There are many possibilities here. The balance of the world is weaker here and the world is much stronger in deciding what ii is willing to put up with and what it is not. Of course, the fact that S?jaruun was invoked, means that something serious is going on.¡±


    ¡°S?jaruun? Is that the band¡¯s name?¡± I asked.


    ¡°That is their name, that is their soul and that is the method to invoke them. To get a band to perform somewhere is a simple matter, but to invoke the music created and given life by said band¡­ that is something altogether different.¡±


    ¡°And this is what has happened here?¡±


    ¡°Yes.¡± She smiled. ¡°Either by design or by incidence, but somebody invoked them and their music, called them out of the world that is their home. This music, be it with or without the bewitchment, reflects the ancient life force of the country folk. That¡¯s why why it enchants people this easily. Both those that are still living, as well as those who who have already gone or those who have not come yet. That¡¯s why the forest folk is here. All of those who have died in the Forbidden Forest in this way or that and have become the trees and plants you see here.¡±


    ¡°But how¡­ what can I do?¡± I asked.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know.¡± She smiled again. ¡°But I do know what¡¯s gonna happen next. If nothing intervenes, the people here will continue to be enchanted until the band finishes their performance. However, should they stay in here for much longer while mingling with the forest folk, they may become forest folk themselves. Which means once the band finishes their performance and morning dawns, they will have to freeze in place and turn into various plants growing in the clearing.


    ¡°Wait¡­ what!?¡± I asked, not being able to believe this girl.


    ¡°Until the next concert. Or the next blue moon.¡± She said. ¡°Whenever those come to pass. However, recently something similar happened to some girl. But not by natural witchcraft but by artificial one. Of course, she did not become forest folk but rather moon folk. Maybe they are different kinds of witcheries...¡±


    ¡°But that means¡­!¡± I shouted.


    ¡°It means two things.¡± The girl continued in a calm tone. ¡°Firstly, that by now it is too late to do anything to keep this from happening. Measures should have been taken before somebody invoked their music like this. Maybe even before the band S?jaruun arrived in Nameless Town. And secondly, even if everything seems lost and hopeless, this artificial witchery can be used to turn everything back, if you manage to use it the right way. The girl I mentioned before¡­ in her disappearance all the elements came together as a coincidence. And something happened that was similar to this thing here...¡±


    She fell in pensive silence.


    ¡°There is another chance though...¡± She then said. ¡°This might all be a dream.¡±


    ¡°A dream?¡± I asked, suddenly sensing that it was starting to get more and more difficult to resist the music.


    ¡°Yes. Either your consciousness has been brought forward in time, or¡­ much more likely that a memory of what happens in the future has been inserted into your dreaming consciousness by a concentrated burst of tachyons. Perhaps by your own self. It is very hard to overcome the field of consciousness and to transmit memories directly. The Russians did some experimenting with this in Center Station during the nineteen-...¡±


    ¡°Hey! Hey sleepyhead!¡± a familiar voice was ripping me away from the crowded clearing in the middle of the Forbidden Forest.


    ¡°...-seventies...¡±


    I opened my eyes and lifted my head off the bar counter.


    ¡°What¡¯s going on?¡± I asked as I stared wearily at Styopa¡¯s smiling face.


    ¡°I understand you had a hard and tiring shift but I would ba never guessed that you¡¯d fall asleep right at the bar counter before even finishing your beer.¡±


    ¡°What time is it?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Almost ten already.¡± Styopa said, brushing his gray beard with his fingers. ¡°It¡¯s time for you to go home.¡±


    ¡°Hey barkeep!¡± Styopa turned towards Leo. ¡°Give this guy a small shot of your most disgusting drink which awakes him at once and gives his mind a thorough clean!¡±


    A shot glass full of suspicious dark brown liquid appeared in front of me. I remained staring at it with no feeling, trying frantically to keep everything I saw in my dream in my mind. Even if it was only a dream, it was too real. There was to much important within to let it all be forgotten.


    ¡°What is this?¡± I asked, still staring at the shot glass.


    ¡°Some kind of old Chinese snake vodka.¡± Leopold said. ¡°During the Soviet era some traveling salesman was selling it. He said it was the best thing ever for a man¡¯s health and one shot in the evening would make me bed women all night long. So, in my stupidity I bought a whole case. It had none of the promised effect but I did find that it kills morning grogginess so fast that coffee is no longer necessary.¡±


    ¡°Where¡¯s the doctor?¡± I asked, looking around. ¡°And Rops, and the village hags and Fishy George?¡±


    ¡°All gone already.¡± Leopold said. ¡°They finished their talks and decided in unison that this coming Thursday, they will not go and see what kind of music those youngsters from P?lve are making.¡±


    ¡°The boys from P?lve...¡± I mused.


    Suddenly I no longer needed to force myself to remember the dream I had, at that very moment the whole dream with every particular was seared into my mind.


    ¡°So it was not a dream?¡± I asked.


    ¡°You still cannot tell the difference between the dreamworld and the real world?¡± Maybe you should really drink less like doctor Sare recommended you do when you started to fall away. Drink your snake vodka and let¡¯s go.¡±


    ¡°So it was a dream?¡± I asked in a low voice. ¡°Fine.¡±


    I emptied the shot glass in front of me and then felt it using all it¡¯s snake might to crawl back up inside me. Alcoholic, bitter, pungent like pepper. And right away it twisted my tongue, my throat and my stomach into knots.


    ¡°Vot-vot!¡± Styopa said. ¡°And the sleep is all gone!¡±


    ¡°Good night, Leo.¡± I got up from the stool and walked out of the bar into a dim summer evening.


    The snake vodka had not helped one bit, I still felt cold and drowsy. Slowly, I walked across the street towards South, towards the cottages by the old graveyard. Styopa walked alongside me, and ignited a cigarette.


    ¡°You do remember, don¡¯t you?¡±


    I stopped. Before me stood the girl in black. She used her back to lean against a concrete fence post. This same girl I had seen in my dream.


    ¡°You remember the dream you had, don¡¯t you?¡± She asked again.


    ¡°It was only a dream.¡± I said.


    ¡°Are you sure?¡± She asked, smiling. ¡°Maybe it is time to start looking into what happened to that girl?¡±


    ¡°You don¡¯t know what you¡¯re talking about.¡± I said. ¡°Go away.¡±


    ¡°On the night of the coming Thursday...¡± The girl started. ¡°The concert takes place. I myself cannot attend it, I have other affairs to attend to, but...¡±


    ¡°Hey, are you coming?¡± Styopa asked.


    ¡°Yea, I¡¯m coming. I¡¯m coming.¡± I replied to my friend who had made it much further ahead. ¡°I am still talking to that girl dressed in black.¡±


    ¡°What girl?¡± Styopa asked.


    ¡°With me, I guess.¡± The girl said, approaching Styopa from the darkness ahead of him. ¡°In his opinion at least.¡± She smiled. ¡°One of you drank Leopold¡¯s snake vodka, didn¡¯t you? I have told him numerous times that the only place fit for it is a fuel tank. But no, he has to continue selling it to the public.¡±


    ¡°My mistake.¡± Styopa said. ¡°Really.¡±


    ¡°Well, if you limited yourself to only one shot, then maybe you¡¯re still fine. Maybe you won¡¯t go blind.¡± She smiled.


    ¡°Hey,¡­ what¡¯s your name?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Mariann.¡± She said. ¡°I thought everybody in town already knew it.¡±


    ¡°Not all of us went to see the sick bleeding tree in the forest.¡± I said. ¡°Some of us had to go to work.¡±


    ¡°Don¡¯t forget then.¡± The girl in black was suddenly standing beside me and was holding my hand. ¡°Not your dream, nor what I told you. You have until the next Thursday.¡±


    *


    It was a dream. It had to be a dream. One long dream I only awoke from when next morning came. But today is already Wednesday. And people tell that the boys from P?lve are already coming. The name of their band is¡­ S?jaruun.

 XXIII - a Few Words on Local Legends II

    ¡°Music is interesting.¡± The girl in black said. ¡°When somebody is making music, doesn¡¯t matter if he writes it or listens to it in his mind or performs it in a way that can be heard, he has a chance to enter into contact with a kind of spirit hidden in the music. Creating music while being in connection with such a spirit, the spirit may take over the creation and start conducting it, making it look like the music is creating itself. The Ancient Greeks were aware of this, that¡¯s why they started to differentiate music into what was prudent for man to be listening and what is not.¡±


    ¡°Is this story related to all those musicians who are suddenly appearing in town?¡± A young politely dressed man with blonde hair asked.


    He did his best not to lean against the car to not make his pleated pants dirty.


    ¡°In some aspects it is. The thing is, that around here, things do not happen in the same fashion as in the Big Wide World. The forces are greater. And should a musician make a connection to some sort of a spirit during his creative process, then this spirit may be so strong that it takes over both the musician and the music like a marionette doll. The musician thinks that inspiration has struck him, but really, the spirit is becoming music itself, becoming inseparable from it. It may even burrow into the recording of a track, especially if it is being mastered somewhere deep in the forest.


    ¡°This magical spirit will take over the musicians and start guiding them here where the secret and invisible spirit powers are the strongest. Some come for the Institute, some for other establishments past or present. Those called S?jaruun were the first and luckily they only came for the Forbidden Forest. But more are coming. Lots of musicians have left the Glass City and most of them have not made their connection with such a folksy and positive spirit like the Forbidden Forest.¡±


    ¡°That was positive?¡± Kadri asked.


    She adjusted her black skirt which almost reached the ground, then pushed her long black hair back over her shoulders, still staring at the one everybody kept referring to as the Girl in Black.


    ¡°That really scared people.¡± Kadri continued. ¡°Both dreams about the Substation and the witch, as well as how they ended up performing in the bar.¡±


    ¡°Some musicians have made their connections with demons.¡± Mariann continued. ¡°That last one that came here, Zorg for example, with the spirit of the Glass City. A connection with a demon is especially bad. The demon will most certainly take over the music and use it to burrow itself into the souls of those who listen to it, like an illness being passed around during the cold season.¡±


    ¡°But how do you know that they have¡­ willingly come here?¡± Tiina asked. ¡°And won¡¯t they return?¡±


    Mariann looked at the girl leaning against the black car further down the side of it. Eyes of dark brown, hair of dark blonde. Neat bangs with hair ends covering eyebrows.


    ¡°The road here and the road back are not the same.¡± Mariann replied. ¡°Usually when people come here, a mark is left behind of the moment and the place they crossed the boundary. Usually it takes the shape of a car which is left abandoned somewhere regardless of how the people crossing over explain their journey. I cannot say why precisely a car. But I do have a thought about it. The road here is like a lock and a car would be a key. Why one car opes one position of the lock and another opens a different one, that is a question unto it¡¯s own. Maybe nobody beside us hasn¡¯t even noticed this. Zorg, for example, came with the police cruiser from the Glass City, which they say is strangely angular to a spectacular degree and has an evil look to it. Reportedly the car is still hidden in the roadside brush somewhere as it requires a tractor to get out.¡±


    ¡°And?¡± Siim asked, crossing his hands over a knitted waistcoat.


    ¡°Some people have explained that they have unexpectedly found themselves in this place and although they cannot remember how they got here, the first thing they saw when waking up was some kind of an old car.¡± Kadri said.


    ¡°Exactly.¡± Mariann smiled. ¡°I¡¯ve been to Glass City. Once, many years ago. And the police cars of Glass City are indeed very strange. Big from the outside, small from the inside, low to the ground, with bucket seats, huge wings for downforce and huge wheels. Angular and heavy like small tanks. Something like that cannot fit six people. And according to the band themselves, they came here with all of their instruments and equipment. But if six people cannot fit into a two-door, then neither will six people and all their instruments. And yet...¡±


    ¡°And yet they are performing in the bar.¡± Siim said.


    ¡°Exactly.¡±


    *


    ¡°Anyway, some time ago, when I was sitting on the trunk of of car, I told you that the Nameless Town where we are and the real nameless town somewhere further in South are different places. That is not exactly correct. They are different in the sense that there are two of them. But they exists with one on top of another. And at any given point in time it is not possible to say whether we exist in one or the other. We are in both, because they exist as the same precise time and occupying the same space. We maybe in contact with both at the same time without even realizing it. This kind of synchrony or same-timeness and same-placeness of things is a kind of key to understanding what is going on with this place.¡±


    ¡°Does this mean that here one thing can be in two different places at the same time?¡± Tiina asked.


    ¡°Not quite. More likely that here two things can be in one place without coming into conflict with one another. However the question of what ¡°at the same time¡± means, is a rather difficult one. This is because although the time of the nameless towns can be set atop of each other like a matching punch card pattern, they do not have the same point of origin. There exists an offset between the timelines.¡±


    ¡°So are we or are we not in the Nameless Town, if we are here...¡± Siim asked, looking around him, ¡°...on an overgrowing concrete landing strip?¡±


    ¡°The simple answer would be that it is impossible to say. We may be freely slipping from one into the other and back without ourselves or anybody around us noticing anything different. That¡¯s the theory. But all theories are generally from the other side of the border crossing and become useless as soon as one crosses over.¡±


    Mariann paused for a moment.


    ¡°The things we have talked about, have you seen all of them happening here? You have not, have you? Seems like a completely normal provincial town in Southern Estonia. In the forests, there is an active border trade with the Russians and nobody cares much for the Latvians. And places like Death Woods, Forbidden Forest, Irradiated Woods, and the Combine are old names still carried on the lips of aged country folk rather than actual names for places. And only the oldest of people still talk about the building in the middle of the town as the Institute with a capital I.¡±


    ¡°So we are not.¡± Kadri said.


    ¡°It is still an interesting thought.¡± Mariann replied. ¡°For example, have you ever heard of Tontla? And I mean the town in this general area, and not a forest of the same in Alutaguse. Of Valgepal?? By the Lake Talaba? Or of Yuryev?¡±


    ¡°Of Yuryev? You mean to say Tart-...¡±


    ¡°I mean exactly Yuryev.¡± The girl in black stopped Kadri. ¡°That¡¯s interesting, right? Of the Nameless Town there are two, but there are one of everything else. Why do you think that is? These are different worlds. When we end up in this real Nameless Town then exiting it we cannot get back to where we were before entering it. It may even be a blessing that we cannot get there without passing by the Lake of Forgetfulness first. However, since these two nameless towns are as if placed on top of each other, we can find the signs of that real town everywhere. Whether we want it or not.¡±


    ¡°But where is the Lake of Forgetfulness located?¡± Siim asked.


    ¡°I have no idea where.¡± Mariann replied. ¡°It would have to be much easier to find than the Town itself. But only for those who really seek it. But not far from the Nameless Town. In theory. In the same county if not in the same parish. Stories say that it is located behind the Underground Base. But how would you go locating the Underground Base from here?¡±


    ¡°It all sounds rather pointless.¡± Siim said, walking further away and stretching his legs.


    ¡°It is rather pointless. In here. But in there things get a lot more interesting.¡± The girl in black said.


    ¡°How do you know all this?¡±


    ¡°Because I¡¯ve been to the Nameless Town. Maybe I am still there. Maybe even now and I am not really realizing that you are only shining through the thin fabric between the worlds. And you are not realizing that I am only shining through.¡±


    Mariann fell silent again, before continuing.


    ¡°And if you ask why exactly here then... nobody really visits old airfields. Not here and not there. Which mean that the world fabric has had time to recover and grow thin again, as usually it is the action and hustling of people which wear it thick. Or, the inverse may be true, and they have worn it thick here. I have also no idea how it works. But I know that should all of us be in different Nameless Towns... if all of us are in different towns then in none of them would anybody consider it weird that a person in thought is leaning on a car in the middle of a disused overgrowing airfield.¡±


    ¡°Wait, is this not your car?¡± Siim suddenly got interested. ¡°I had always thought it to be yours.¡±


    ¡°Nope. I have no idea whose car it is. Maybe it is not important. Maybe it has all the importance of the world. Because like the Nameless Town, this car is everywhere. Maybe a little different in every place, but still the same. Like a common center.¡±


    ¡°Like the Nameless Town?¡± Kadri asked. ¡°Because it is a key?¡±


    ¡°Not quite. It is a center because it is an anchor. A weight on the world fabric pushing it into contact with another one. The way it is the key is a property independent of that. However I have no idea how it is possible that something that is a composite and impermanent like a passenger car has been turned into some¡­ thing like this. But it is interesting that none of you know whose car it is.¡±


    She smiled, thinking of something else.


    ¡°Does any of you even know how we got here¡­?¡±


    ¡°We¡­,¡± Siim started. ¡°I¡­, we¡­, I cannot remember.¡± He kept staring at the girl in black with some trepidation. ¡°I cannot remember! Your god damn stories have made it into my mind and stated to affect it!¡±


    ¡°Exactly. This may give some sense that I might be right. Things are definitely not as they seem.¡±


    *


    ¡°Do you know how the town of Tontla has gained it¡¯s name? Do you know know that it is not a town at all? Despite the cobblestone paving everywhere and the low 2 story houses built in the mid 1800s on one side of the main street and the three and four story building on the other side of the street built in the turn of the century in German Art Noveau and Jugendstil. Despite those, Tontla was still a village. Even the two massive churches too big for a small village, each built on the opposite side of the main street, were not enough for to make it a town. Once in a long time ago a courier was dispatched from the Glass City with a missive that gives Tontla the rights of a town. But as you may see, he has not yet arrived. It is possible he won¡¯t arrive before the world ends.¡±


    ¡°I have heard of the Tontla bog were all sorts of weird things happen in the night.¡± Tiina said.


    ¡°Exactly. Tontla is a peat village. Tontla village was established when they started to drain the Tontla bog and started taking peat peat out of it. That happened way before the first World War. At the turn of the century perhaps. That¡¯s why the rail connection. However as time passed, peat lost it¡¯s importance, people found other jobs. But Tontla remained. All of it¡¯s wealth also remained. Also, there were stories that not all the wealth came from peat. Not from the peat itself, but what was hidden beneath that peat. These stories did not cease even when the Russians returned in ¡®39 and built Agroprom with all it¡¯s secrets. Agroprom consumed far more peat that people had been extracting during the Republic. It consumed more than was necessary for producing the peat bars for burning in the stoves or to use as fertilizer. It was never revealed what Agropom got up to with the peat. Or why every week tens of carts of the stuff were delivered to secret bases in the Moscow oblast by armored trains.


    ¡°Not even the years of war changed anything. The Russians started building the Agroprom, the Germans continued and after the Stalingrad gave it back to the Russians without a single shot fired.¡±


    ¡°Without a single shot?¡± Siim was surprised. ¡°I sincerely doubt it, the Germans have always demolished important building and structures when retreating.¡±


    ¡°They have, without exception.¡± Mariann said. ¡°But not here. It was considered too dangerous. And by that time, the Germans had already burned themselves with their thoughtless activities. The whole Schwartze Sonne division had been reduced to a single dusty folder in the half-burnt archive of the Ahnenerbe.¡±


    ¡°Since the Russian era, all sorts of things have been told of Tontla.¡± Kadri said. ¡°Always have been.¡±


    ¡°Always have been. But why do you think that Tontla is considered this important? Why was it necessary for Agroprom to be built on that small hill where it is, while the experimental fields were located around the Nameless Town? There are many ideas regarding that. For example, did you know that Tontla has a small park built on the edge of the cliff? I think they even named it the Edge park. It affords a wonderful view to the Nameless town and the roads and fields not obscured by the forest.


    Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.


    ¡°However if you try to look for Tontla and the Edge park from the Nameless Town, it is not even clear which direction one should look at to see it. Although they say that the forest is in the way, sometimes it seems that the sky itself is in the way. As if the dome of the sky above the Nameless Town has it¡¯s edge touch the ground before it reaches Tontla. Or maybe the transparency of the atmosphere varies exactly in that singular direction. However on some rare occasions, some local crazies here in the Nameless town have seen the hills and the buildings above the forest. Sometimes only in the corner of their eye, sometimes even longer. Images have been drawn and painted, but there is not a single clear photograph. Of the unclear ones there are several albums¡¯ worth. Scores of people have gone into the forest trying to locate the hill or the cliff face atop which the houses should be located but nothing has come of it.


    ¡°There is even a large picture book the locals sell to the tourists, filled with photos of all the strange things that have appeared here. Photos which you can neither authenticate as real nor as fake. Neither is is possible to tell whether they were really taken around here, or are they from the Big World or that other nameless town. The subtitle of the book is a very significant ¡°Silver Halide Does Not Lie¡±.¡±


    ¡°What does that have to do with anything?¡± Siim asked.


    ¡°It has to do with everything being planned and premeditated. The choice of buildings and building sites, the skill of the builders to make use of the strange properties in this place, perhaps even add to them. The Edge park offers the common man a first chance to see if something has gone terribly wrong in the Institute or the Substation, the Center Station, Train Yard or in the cottage district. From simple explosions to everything that people cannot find the right language for until they sit at length at a glass of vodka.¡±


    ¡°And the stories? Of Tontla?¡± Tiina asked.


    ¡°The town of Tontla has gained it¡¯s name from the bog of Tontla. The bog has got its name from how many people have drowned there during the centuries and how often the foxlights can be seen there. Part of the mystery is that during the past 100 years, nobody has seen fog in the Tontla bog. The darkness is permeating but always clear. This is also why the foxlights are much more visible. Every single night. They can even be seen in the winter. The Tontla bog never freezing over is another strange sign. The falling snow never makes it to the swamp and despite the cold, the bog lakes never get covered in ice.¡±


    ¡°I think you have told much the same stories about the Devil¡¯s Bog, how it has gained its name for how many people have stayed there.¡± Siim remarked.


    ¡°Most certainly I have not.¡± Mariann said. ¡°Tontla bog is not similar at all to the Devil¡¯s Bog, or to the Heavenmire. Despite the latter two being nearby to one another. To say what you said is to insult the bog. And we have a pretty good understanding what happens to people who cannot appreciate a bog. The Devil¡¯s Bog has been ruined by the willful but maybe unknowing actions. The Russians, Metsla. Tontla was created by involuntary actions of man.


    ¡°The Devil¡¯s Bog to an experienced person is as safe as their own back yard, same with the Forbidden Forest, despite everything people have seen happening in them. But Tontla swamp can swallow even an experienced hiker as he had never existed. Something in there interrupts the minds of men, and to a much greater degree and towards a different direction than in the Forest or in the Devil¡¯s bog. That¡¯s why there are not many who have returned from that place alive.


    ¡°When the village of Tontla was first built before the war, the Russians had tried to build a rail line straight through the bog. But nothing came of it. Draining it did not make the ground sufficiently dry and the bog ponds and kolks are essentially bottomless, as none of the steel or concrete pillars rammed into them found any sure footing nor reached bedrock to be attached to. All disappeared into the waters as if nothing was there. The say there¡¯s a place where a pair of rails attached to wooden ties juts out of the water at an obtuse angle, looking like the rear of the ship after the front has sunken into shallow waters.


    ¡°Some say that on sunny days, one can even hear a quiet sound of the carts rolling on rails near them. Which is especially weird. Maybe that is a place where sounds from some other Tontla bog echo through, a place where the railway was successfully finished and put into use. Or maybe the bog is remembering the times passed when the sounds of the train on rails could have reached that area of the bog.


    ¡°After that fiasco it was decided that a long and meandering line was better that trying to break through the bog towards the South. And even that rail line had a whole set of safety rules for its use which was followed to a T.¡±


    ¡°What kind of rules?¡± Siim asked.


    ¡°Like forbidding all stops within the limits of the bog at nighttime. Even emergency stops. The doors and windows were to be shut, people were ordered to stay away from the windows and under no circumstances were they allowed to take a look outside. All carriages ferrying people or sensitive documents had to be overpressured. Also, should a person while traversing the bog either jump or fall off the train, he would be considered irreversibly contaminated and would be shot on sight if he survived and returned to any of the bases afterwards.¡±


    ¡°Bullshit.¡± Siim said.


    ¡°How many were there who fell out and got shot?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°There were far fewer shot that there were those who jumped off the train into the bog. Life went on and if one did not manage to get a bullet from their old friends, they usually hiked out of the bog, came to one of the three towns here and found a job. Soon, nobody cared where they were from. One could even use their gun to make a living as the need for local mercenaries to be used as security detail in dangerous places was great. Of course, being blacklisted by one of the bases meant that exiting this area was no longer allowed. On the border of the county you were turned back at gunpoint.


    ¡°The immigrated Russians living in bases had a much more darker vision and darker experiences in this place and thus they honestly believed that to be tied down here was tantamount to death sentence. Of course, the nature also treated the cadre officers differently. Those who jumped or were pushed off the trains in the bogs had to prove themselves and soon became accepted as locals. They even learned the language of the country folk, as without it, they could not get by.


    ¡°Also, they say that on the other side of Tontla bog, there is a tar lake. One of five or six in the world.¡±


    ¡°A tar lake? You mean like LaBrea? Full of bituminous tar?¡± Siim asked in a skeptical tone.


    ¡°Yes. I know there are no suitable rock types in these lands for tar, but still, due to some kind of chance or a weird past event, there is a tar lake. Or rather a pond, as it measures about 4 meters by 5 meters.¡±


    ¡°Do not tell us that you have been by it.¡± the young man continued.


    ¡°To reach it, it is about a day¡¯s hike around the Tontla bog.¡± She smiled. ¡°I usually avoid such hikes if I can. If one starts early morning then by dark they might make it. But even if one has light, it would be better to spend the night on solid ground. Looking for it in the dark may easily make a person its permanent resident and in the dark it is much harder to keep away from the Tontla bog.¡±


    ¡°Tell about the ufo as well then.¡± Kadri said.


    ¡°Of the ufo? Very well. To speak of that we must first speak about the foxlights, the marras, as well as the gray sickness living in the bog. Old folks have many tales about the workers who drained the bog or who cut the peat from the bog. Some of them fell ill with some strange illness which the doctors could neither treat nor explain. They tired easily, lost all appetite, developed cold shivers and high fever, some started losing their hair.


    ¡°The regular medication for cold had no effect. The only cure was a long rest far away from the Tontla bog. Although there are stories of locals who had received help from their local witch. They had to travel 7 circles around the Tontla bog while sick and would then find the moss-walled witch house under a big willow tree on the border of the bog and the forest.


    ¡°The gray sickness is probably still floating around in Tontla bog. Some witch had used the secret words to say the sickness out loud a long time ago and due to the strange properties of this place, the curse has become stuck in the bog air, like radio transmissions get stuck into aether or a phone call gets stuck in the wires. And in the right kind of weather, it leaks out.¡±


    ¡°That sounds like a ghost. The gray sickness is a ghost making people sick?¡± Tiina asked.


    ¡°The gray sickness living in Tontla bog might be.¡± The girl in black said. ¡°In addition to the weird sickness and the foxlights, to which a clear reason has never been found, sometimes during the night people can also hear cries and screams of a woman, carried by the wind. Some have even seen a lone woman with black matted hair and a dirty dress torn to shreds, sitting on an old trunk or a fallen log. Her skin is as pale as death, eyes are as black as space and her scream will rob a person of his consciousness.¡±


    ¡°How is that connected to the ufo?¡± Siim asked.


    ¡°For a long time, stories like this were told by women in saunas and drunk husbands in the bar. It was a given that lots of vodka would accompany work in Tontla bog. One was supposed be ready for a marras having gotten into one¡¯s soul and coming back home with a person when his dat was finished. It was also considered the last entity one would want to meet on on their way home from the bar. But when the Russians tried to build a rail line into the bog the second time, after the Base Agreement in ¡®39, that¡¯s when things went to shit. The locals would rather be sent to Siberia than build the railroad into the bog. The construction battallion took major losses as both the dead and those who went mad. Finally the prisoners of war were brought in. They never managed to build a rail line into the bog, but under the layers of peat they found something that most definitely should have been there.¡±


    ¡°A ufo?¡± Tiina asked.


    ¡°In 1940, there was not yet such a definition.¡± Mariann said. ¡°In none of the languages. But is is interesting to think how fast a special train from Moscow was dispatched, considering that the protocols on how to deal with such a thing were mostly about destroying and burying the object, rather than excavating and researching it. But Hitler was at the door and Stalin needed lifelines.


    ¡°In any case, Project Nesno was started. Named for nesnakomiy object or unknown object. And trains started to arrive in Tontla labeled as nesno-shipments. First there were the military forces and then everything necessary to lay the groundwork for Agroprom.¡±


    ¡°So it was a ufo? A flying saucer?¡± Tiina still wanted to know.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know. There was a strange object. Whether it had ever been flying, nobody could say. But it was most certainly not a saucer. A complete excavation of the object was never achieved but the little that was, revealed that it was big. At least 15 meters wide, Seventeen tall and forty long. Shaped like a rectangular cuboid. And it either sat on or had as its base, a rectangular frustrum with steps on every side. The material seemed to be either granite or dolomite at first look, but it was impossible to damage with the tools or penetrate with a drill bits.


    Reportedly it is still hidden under the Agroprom. Unmoved for fifty years and despite the advance of science and technology during that time, nobody has managed to get any closer to it¡¯s secrets. Back in the 1980s they were still trying to excavate and research it. There were tests to see whether it was transparent to radio waves, x-rays or gamma rays, but none succeeded. It was also impossible to penetrate or ablate the surface with lasers. An electron microscope could also not offer any ideas on the material the object. Thus, when the Soviet Union fell, the officers decided to take the same action they did with the object that resided near the military port of Paldiski. Namely to bury it under hundred of cubic meters or concrete. And that¡¯s it.¡±


    ¡°If it really was some sort of a ufo, then it was so far ahead of us technologically that...¡± Tiina started wondering out loud.


    ¡°Ufo this and ufo that.¡± Mariann sighed. ¡°The sky people and the star folk are such a frequent guests in these areas that the people should be long since aware of what ships belonging to one or the other look like. And go and ask whoever you like, nobody agrees to call the object buried under Agroprom a ufo. Maybe the thing buried on the Northern coast is really a ufo but not the thing here. However if it something cosmic in origin, it is far ahead in technology but not just for us but also for the sky people. Maybe not so much for the Star people, as the Star people has no need for neither vehicles nor space-time to fly through the cosmic aether.¡±


    ¡°So it might not even be a spaceship in the sense or traveling through space in the common sense, but a space ship in the sense that it travels through space by phasing through it. Meaning the ship stays in place and moves the space around it like tape deck.¡± Tiina said.


    ¡°With regards to that idea, there are two interesting concepts to point out.¡± Mariann said. ¡°The first being that in the 1960 and 70s, alternative theories of sensing were experimented with to gauge the object. Several psychics from all around the world visited the Nameless town, Tontla and Valgepal?.¡±


    ¡°So what happened?¡±


    ¡°While Valgepal? and Tontla were of not much difficulty, the Agroprom and the Nameless town were described as requiring special preparation, with very active presences, whatever that meant. The Officer¡¯s Village, the Underground Base and the Institute were deemed as straight up impossible. Meetings that were supposed to take place within a few days had to be extended to several long weeks for the psychics to acclimate to this place. And in the end it turned out to still be an insufficient time when they finally met the object. Almost all seers, when finally taken to the object, went mad. One of them even grabbed the service weapon of the closest solider and used it to shoot themselves in the head. Many of them ended up at Luiga in the military wing. Some had to be evacuated by aircraft and one showed no reaction. Afterwards it was found out that the one having no reaction was an impostor.¡±


    ¡°And? What did they learn?¡±


    ¡°Nobody knows. On a winter night in 1981, the commanders of Agroprom, the Underground Base, and the Center Station met and agreed to sweep the event under the rug. There might even be a photograph of the meeting on the wall of the bar. In any case, the original reports were destroyed. However the documents these reports were based on might still be hidden somewhere in Center Station archives. If anybody dares to go looking for them.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s the other interesting thing?¡± Kadri asked. ¡°You said that there were two things?¡±


    ¡°Oh, right.¡± Mariann said. ¡°The other thing is that reportedly all work in the Valgepal? mine was stopped when a second similar object was found. That took place before 1981. The wall at the Southern Forest was erected a few years after that. Not at all because of the forest itself but rather to ensure that nobody could get in or out of the mine.¡±


    *


    ¡°There is one other matter to talk about: Olav.¡±


    ¡°Olav. That local horror story children are scared with? ¡°If you don¡¯t listen to your parents then Olav will come out from under your bed and eat you with hair and skin and all.¡±¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°The very same. But it is not just a story.¡± Mariann explained. ¡°A true story. And scaring children with Olav is a taboo in these parts. Everybody does it but everybody also condemns doing it.¡±


    ¡°But what¡¯s Olav¡¯s story then?¡± Siim asked.


    ¡°During the 1930s, Olav was a young village drunk, skirt chaser and a freeloader. He was blessed with outstanding looks which drove the women wild. Long golden hair and beard and deep green eyes. But at the same time his personality was generally disdained and turned almost every woman in town against him. In the end, he settled on three favourite activities: drinking, a woman named Kaarin he often visited and wandering the bog of Tontla when drunk.


    ¡°The funny think is that pure vodka was not enough for him. He used ethanol with high purity and gathered different medicinal plants from the bog and the Forbidden Forest. Then leaching these from full moon until lunar eclipse. He then brought the strength down to about 50% alcohol content by volume and then drank that until the next batch was ready. It was not rare for the workers cutting peat to meet not with the marras in the dark bog but instead with Olav, with matted hair and beard, face pale and a mad glint in his eyes from the crazy vodka he drank. One of the workers was a hobbyist photographer and even took a photo of him in that state. A large print was made of that image and it was hung on the front gate of the peat mine to let everybody know that this man was not to be admitted. As Olav was a son of a high ranking military commander, he was only named as Olav K.


    ¡°The tales start with the day when the morning shift in the peat mine discovered Kaarin¡¯s dead body on the peat fields. Cold, pale and naked. Olav was arrested right away but as there was nothing to connect him with the crime, he was soon let go.


    ¡°Kaarin¡¯s death however affected Olav greatly. He started to drink even more and several times he ended up in the medical section of the Institute. Sometimes due to his blood alcohol content, other times due to being poisoned by the medicinal herbs. Until one day when he rushed into the local constable¡¯s office and announced that he knows who killed Kaarin and why. He said that goblins had done the deed, those that lived under the Tontla bog in their Castle of Secret Stone with a hundred and thirteen steps. And they killed Kaarin because he told and showed her what he sees when drunk on crazy vodka.¡±


    ¡°Wait.¡± Kadri asked. ¡°Castle made of Secret Stone with one hundred and thirteen steps?¡±


    ¡°Exactly.¡± Mariann smiled. ¡°The constable did not even bother to arrest Olav. With a grin he threw Olav out of the police station and the next day his story could be read on the last page of the Valgepal? local paper, where there was also a copy of the image mounted onto the fence of the peat mine. Olav became a laughing stock for young and old alike. Especially for young school children who constantly made fun of him because of the goblins. Until one day Olav returned to the constable with a big stinking bag which he emptied on the constable¡¯s desk.


    This time the constable did not laugh. He locked Olav up and called into Valgepal? to get additional forces to guard Olav. The bag had revealed different body parts of seven local orphans. Arms, legs and heads. From the farm of Olav¡¯s father where he lived alone, they also found seven cut up hearts leaching in a large vat of alchohol.


    Quickly, a trial was held and Olav was sentenced to indefinite treatment in a new state of the art psychiatric hospital now known as Luiga. He made his escape in 1939 and for a few years nobody heard a peep of him. But then right before the end of the war in 1945, young school children started going missing. First, only orphans disappeared, but then some children from local farms also went missing.


    After this, the village men came together and in the light of torches went to the bog at night to find Olav from the last place he could still hide at. He was found that very same night. Still with golden hair and beard and with a crazy look in his eyes. They also found some bedding and the remains of some children. The villagers did not care much for his explanations, Olav was tired up and drowned right there into the bog pond. His body was then recovered and dragged to the center of Tontla where it was set on fire. As no church allowed his remains to be buried in their yards, he was buried without rites into a nameless grave at Luiga¡¯s patient cemetary.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s one scary story.¡± Siim remarked.


    ¡°But the story does not end there. Children started to go missing again in 49, then 53, then 59. Due to some good detective work, the militsiya found the culprit in no time. And the culprit very strangely looked like Olav K. The court in Valgepal? blamed the village men for lynching an innocent man fifteen years prior and sentenced Olav to be shot. In the closing days of 1959, the sentence was carried out. The children however disappered again in 64, 70, 81 and 90.¡±


    ¡°That cannot be the same Olav.¡± Siim said.


    ¡°No it cannot. He¡¯s been killed at least twice or thrice since the forties. But it is. He himself is adamant that the goblins won¡¯t let him die. That he might try as he will to keep away from any people or activities during his madness but he will still end up being discovered in some shithole, gnawing on bones of little children.¡±


    ¡°Was Olav captured after 1990?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know if he was captured, but right now he is in Luiga. In a secure section under the watchful eye of doctor Sare. So in theory, he should not be going anywhere.¡±


    ¡°In theory?¡±


    ¡°A couple of times there have been alarms that Olav cannot be found, but he always ends up back in his cell. He himself only has one word for it: goblins. But children are still going missing, so there is a chance that he is getting in and out unnoticed. It wouldn¡¯t be a first escape from Luiga, even in recent times.¡±


    *


    ¡°By the way, can you see that black car on the edge of the grassland?¡± Mariann asked.


    ¡°What car?¡± Siim asked.


    ¡°Black body, black glass and roof. Front bumper decorated with missile nose cones. Fins with chrome edges in the rear. And rear side doors opening the wrong way.¡±


    ¡°I can see it.¡± Kadri said.


    ¡°I think I can.¡± Tiina said.


    ¡°What car?¡± Siim asked. ¡°I cannot see a thing.¡±


    ¡°You can¡¯t?¡± Mariann asked. ¡°Now that¡¯s interesting.¡±

 XXIV - Grampas Pipe Story

    ¡°Grampa, please tell us a story!¡± Children ran and surrounded a gray-bearded grandfather who had just taken a seat.


    ¡°A story you say¡­?¡± The old man said while in thought. He produced a pipe and started stuffing it with tobacco.


    ¡°What kind of story should I tell you?¡± He asked. ¡°I have already told you all the funny and beautiful stories.¡±


    ¡°Then tell us a story that is not so beautiful. A scary story.¡±


    ¡°A scary story, huh?¡± Grandfather looked at the expectant faces of the children. ¡°Okay, you are all old enough to hear stories about secret knowledge and of the strange things happening in the forest. Have you even heard of the witch house?¡±


    ¡°We have, granny has told us.¡±


    ¡°Granny does know much.¡± Grandfather noted. ¡°But she does not know of this. We have three towns here, Tontla, Valgepal? and the Nameless Town. In every town the locals claim that they have the true witch house. Either because one of the locals there has arranged a meeting with the witch and then met her, or they have a house where something so horrific happened that people refuse to even walk by it. But events like that do not turn it into a witch¡¯s house.


    ¡°The true witch house is not in the town but rather in the bog. Deep in Tontla bog, where a common man has no business going and a place a common man will never be able to find. Before he ever finds it, the bog will claim him from the living. Stories say that my dead father once met the witch.¡±


    ¡°The real witch?¡± the children asked.


    ¡°The real witch indeed.¡± The grandfather said. ¡°The have now been many years since, but during the presidency of P?ts, there was a peat mine in the Tontla bog. The bog was drained, the peat was cut and then pressed into bricks for burning. My father worked there.


    ¡°But there were some problems with digging for peat in the Tontla bog. People who worked there often fell ill. They did not want to eat nor drink, their complexion turned gray and they started to shiver, sweat and complain about the cold. Some started losing their hair. None of the local doctors could treat them. The only recommendation was to go on a trip to a health resort far away from Tontla and stay there for a few months. Once, the bog was even visited by important scientists from the Second Laboratory of the Academy of Sciences to be sure that this illness was not some sort of strange radiation sickness.


    ¡°But my granny who was still alive back then, knew right away what was wrong. That father had not come down with some usual kind of an illness but with the gray sickness. A sickness some witch had shouted into the bog, back in the days where animals and humans spoke the same tongues. And the windmill in the castle of the below-grounders is spinning this shout around, not letting it fall to the ground, starve and become extinct.


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    ¡°Granny knew that if dad wanted to live then we had to pack him some food for his travels and send him back into the bog that very day. In there, he had to walk seven circles around the Tontla bog until he made it to the witch house, where he could find remedy to to his sickness.¡±


    ¡°Did he find help?¡± The children asked when grandpa fell silent and smoked his pipe.


    ¡°Let me tell you.¡± Grandpa said, taking the pipe out of his mouth. ¡°Mother did not want to hear anything about wandering the bog while sick, but my grandmother managed to convince father to take the journey. He walked a day, walked another, walked even more until he could not remember whether it was day or night nor how long he had feverishly wandered the cool bog. He then finally noticed a small wooden sauna made of rotting wood, sitting on the edge of a bog, near some of the lower birches and it looked quite funny with how out of place it was.


    ¡°When father had knocked on the door and then entered the house, he was struck with a surprise. Inside it looked much bigger than on the outside. The walls were tall and thick. The floors were covered in smooth limestone and the building was big enough for a witch¡¯s kitchen with a big stone fireplace. Tens and tens of different secret herbs were being dried on the hot stone, while he could also notice a small bed beyond a screen in the corner as well as a simple wooden table and two chairs nearby.


    ¡°Suddenly there stood a young woman in front of father with unearthly beauty. As father described her, she was slightly shorter than him. With long loose hair as golden as the sun, hanging down to her hips. She had a small nose and penetrating blue eyes. And yet she looked like a simple country girl. With some familiarity to her. Father said that looking at her was like meeting the country girls once all over again when he was fourteen.


    Indeed, in his eyes the girl in front of him could have been no more than fifteen. She had a long linen dress and bleached linen apron. But at the same time also a sad look in her eyes. She invited father in, undressed him and sat him down behind the table. She then retreated to the fireplace to mix the medicine. Father said that despite having a fever, he felt no cold in the hut. The large fireplace made it so warm that he felt like he was sitting on a stove.


    Soon, that unknown country girl came to the table with a steaming mug. She sat down and used her little finger to taste the drink in the mug. Satisfied, she pushed the mug in front of him and said that he will recover if he closes his eyes and drinks the mug all at once, then goes home and stays unwashed for three days, and then goes to a hot sauna on the fourth. She then fell silent, raising her feet on the chair and grabbing them with both hands.


    When dad opened his eyes after downing all of the hot and bitter drink, everything had changed. He was sitting bareback in a hut with wind blowing in through the wall and the sky showing through the fallen roof. The fireplace had turned into a pile of mossy stones, and there were no signs that anybody had lived here or even could live here. The only things in any usable state were the table and two chairs.


    On the other side of the desk, there was no girl with golden yellow hair, instead there were only three brooms tied together, a couple of pieces of torn cloth and a small pigtail of gray human hair. When father got back home and told us of everything he had seen, grandmother recommended he¡¯d do as the witch had instructed him, even though father himself was sure that all he saw was a fevered dream. Grandmother also said that every witch knows best how to cure her own curse.¡±


    ¡°The witch who treated your father had herself witched the gray sickness?¡±


    ¡°So it seems.¡± Grandfather said, knocking his pipe empty. ¡°Once a long time ago. A country girl had loved a knight. The knight however broke his word and his love and the country girl learned to become a witch and had tried to curse the knight. She finally turned the knight into stone. But the gray sickness is one of her first failed attempts in cursing him.


    ¡°Only later did she learn what became of her curse in the bog. And thus she started to make up for the thoughtlessness in her youth. However, since the curse is now forever in the air due to the below-grounders, the witch is also forever tied to it and not even death saves her from her obligation to keep her curse in check.


    That¡¯s quite a story to think over now, isn¡¯t it?¡±

 XXV - Things that Happen in a Bar

    Old Leopold wiped the bar counter with a rag and frowned at the band at the other end of the bar. As long as he remembered, he had been a barkeep in this town, more than thirty years by his count, but he had had no idea that this bar had a stage for live music. He knew there was a storage room through the door in the left corner of the bar, opposite the counter and the entrance, full of broken tables and chairs and extra furniture. But it was a surprise to him that the door to the storage room was actually a superfluous one and instead there were tall folding curtain doors revealing a stage.


    True to that, the walls of the bar were full of photos from the 1950s and 60s when live bands had last performed in the bar. The bands and the singers carrying the pre-war Republic if in nothing else then at least in the spirit of the music. But that all happened before Leopold¡¯s time and thus far he had thought that the stage had been by the wall and not inside it. Or maybe he had spent all these years looking at the photographs wrong.


    In any case it still felt strange to hear live music drowning out all the regular conversations in the bar. Especially the kind of music these young people had come here to make. With their synthesizers, transistor-based amplifiers and de-tuned guitars sounding so unnatural. And of course miles and miles of cables and switches to get the exact sound they wanted. It was all topped off with the fact that they only sung in English, of which the average villager understood nothing. And there was something in their music. That slow, heavy and mechanical rhythm was well suited into this dive. As if this bar was the last place to get a drink before the end of the world. And this band whose name started with the letter Z was the last music to hear. The last girl able to sing being reduced to singing along to music like this.


    Every day they arrived at the same time, spent an hour playing about fifteen songs and then left to return in the evening and play the same setlist in a different order. In the evenings, the performance actually dragged on when they played one of the songs of the girl, which usually took about 4 minutes, stretching it out to be much longer and much more sleep-inducing.


    But the villagers did not care. They did not care who was performing, whether they performed at all or not, or how they performed. Only having music mattered. But Leopold cared. He felt as he had lost his bar. Some asshole came to perform and he could not forbid them or stop them. At least this group was better than some tall guy with red beard who liked to sing about some drunk hole in Valgepal?, a winter lasting forever and spiders. Or these young people from P?lve, whose music still haunted people¡¯s dreams and brought horrors into being awake. It was actually good that nobody else besides those three had come to make music.


    Or, actually there was one other group. Young boys and one other fat bearded guy. They too sang in English and made music that was fit for the last ever bar remaining in the world but not here. Now also did they take their places of the stage, replacing the other band and their instruments, moved around the drum set to soon start playing their own music which nobody listened to, the musicians least of all.


    Suddenly, the door to the bar opened and bright daylight blinded Leopold for a few seconds. He could still hear how somebody ran to the counter with rough steps and then tried to catch his breath with large deep gulps.


    ¡°And who closes the door?!¡± Leopold asked, still being blinded in his one good eye.


    ¡°Vodka! Now!¡± A man with a buzz cut, heavy forehead and non-existent jawline demanded between breaths.


    ¡°And the door?!¡± Leopold asked. ¡°If I wanted light in here, I would hold an outdoor bar!¡±


    ¡°And if you wanted people to be warm, you would light up the fireplace. Fuck the door! You do not want to know what just happened to me!¡±


    ¡°I really don¡¯t.¡± Barkeep put two tea glasses on the bar counter and filled both to the brim. ¡°This other one is not for you, it is for the one who closes the door. But you¡¯re still gonna pay for it.¡±


    ¡°The fuck?¡± the man with the buzz cut asked, taking the suspenders off his shoulders.


    ¡°I told you to shut the door.¡± Leo said. ¡°My bar, my rules.¡±


    ¡°In that case you will hear what happened to me. I¡­ I am not sure sure, but I think I met some ufos!¡±


    ¡°Ufos, you say?¡± a man smelling like fish with long unkempt mustache sat at the counter. ¡°Every Thursday, Rops keeps seeing ufos who relieve him of his vodka, or who get him between his ass cheeks when he has none.¡±


    ¡°Rops is blind drunk even when driving!¡± the man replied. ¡°But I met the ufos a few minutes ago! During broad daylight! I came from Tontla by bicycle and there they were! The five of them stood by the side of the road around some strange machine and stared at a huge flying saucer hanging in the air right above them.¡±


    ¡°And what did you do, Manivald?¡± Fishy George asked.


    ¡°I have always thought that should I meat a real ufo, I will be scared out of my mind. But there was nothing like it. I stopped, came off my bike, and pushing it along I walked up to them as if they were regular village folk.¡±


    ¡°Keh?!¡± was the only thing Fishy George could say in his bewilderment.


    ¡°So what were they doing there on the side of the road then?¡± Leopold asked.


    ¡°They were worriedly walking around the field and kept staring at their flying saucer.¡±


    ¡°Out of gas?¡± George asked, grinning.


    ¡°You¡¯re as stupid as those red-skinned ufos!¡± Manivald swore at him. ¡°How the hell can it be out of gas if it still hovers in the air!?¡±


    ¡°Red-skinned you say?¡± Leopold asked.


    Only a week ago, the young town drunk had also talked about the red ufos but everybody had laughed at him. Well, except for that one silly journalist from Valgepal?.


    ¡°In any case.¡± Manivald continued after a big sip of his vodka. ¡°Only some strange magic kept me from running away. Instead, I asked them what were they doing here with their saucer. Those guys looked at me for a really long time, then looked at each other and finally one of them produced some weird pen which had a series of lights on it.¡±


    ¡°What was it?¡± Fishy George asked. ¡°An ass probe?¡±


    ¡°What fucking ass probe?!¡± Manivald swore. ¡°The ufos are no ass doctors! You¡¯d really think they put a pencil up your ass for no reason in broad daylight?! One of the ufos explained, pointing at his pencil that the spatial ship it not working, that nothing is working.


    ¡°Of course I asked in return how exactly isn¡¯t it working, as it was obviously hovering and rotating and giving off a low hum like the Substation.


    ¡°¡°That¡¯s the thing that means it is not working.¡± the red ufo said and hit his fingers with the pencil a couple of times. ¡°Beduin is also totally sloblok.¡±


    ¡°¡°Schto? I mean what is¡­ what?¡± I couldn¡¯t even posit a question properly.


    ¡°¡°Screen field.¡± The other smaller ufo said from the distance. ¡°is in rectum. That¡¯s why you found us. Antag may still be working.¡±


    ¡°¡°But still...¡± I could not understand. ¡°How can it be that the saucer is not working when it obviously is working? It is doing something.¡±


    ¡°¡°It is not working.¡± The first ufo said in a convinced tone. ¡°We also don¡¯t know why. This has never happened before.¡±


    ¡°¡°If it wasn¡¯t working, it would be on the ground like a stone.¡± I said.


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    ¡°¡°Rocks work on the ground.¡± the ufo said. ¡°If our ship was on the ground like a stone then it would not exist. Then there would be nothing. Then we might as well collabate.¡±


    ¡°¡°To detonate.¡± The other ufo said when I did not understand.


    ¡°¡°You were on a road to someplace?¡± I asked.


    ¡°¡°On a road?¡± the bigger ufo tilted his head like a dog, not understanding me.


    ¡°¡°We have to get to the Deefa base.¡± The other alien said. ¡°But the program found a lighthouse and brought us here. And the machine stopped working. Now we can do noting else before the program finds the lighthouse again.¡±


    ¡°¡°What kind of lighthouse are you looking for?¡± I asked. ¡°There is no sea here so there cannot be any lighthouses.¡±


    ¡°¡°The lighthouse sends signals.¡± The ufo in front of me spoke. ¡°The program found a signal, but it cannot see the lighthouse.¡±


    ¡°¡°So it is looking for a lighthouse?¡± I asked.


    ¡°¡°No.¡± The ufo said. ¡°It is not working. There is signal, but there is no lighthouse. That is the reason it is not working. It cannot work any less then it already is.¡±


    ¡°¡°It could not work any less¡­ what does that mean?¡±


    ¡°¡°If it worked any less than it is, it would not exist.¡± the ufo replied.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know how long I stayed there with them, trying to understand what they wanted, but it felt like a long time. Finally I had nothing else to say and they also had nothing else to say so I started coming here. Only after biking another kilometer did I realize that oh, shit, those were ufos! And then I drove into the ditch along with my bike! But those apes never managed to realize that if their saucer is hanging in the air and humming, then it is not possible that it is not working.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re the stupid ape who could not understand!¡± a discarnate voice suddenly said.


    The villager with the square cut flinched so violently that he lost his balance on the bar stool and started tumbling over. In his last ditch effort he grabbed the tie on the barkeep, which finally stopped him and his stool from falling over. Fishy George had no such luck and he along with his stool fell, back first on the bar floor.


    ¡°What are you youngsters so afraid of me?¡± Village Hag No.5 with her purple coat asked, pouring down the glass of vodka set aside for whoever closed the front door.


    Leopold forced the villagers fingers off his tie, adjusted it and for a good measure took a step away from the counter.


    ¡°How did you¡­?¡± Fishy George took a look at the Village Hag now sitting at the counter on top of the bar stool. ¡°...get on top of that stool?¡±


    ¡°Oh George, little George. Didn¡¯t your granny ever teach you not to ask women such impolite questions?¡±


    ¡°What was the thing I could not understand concerning these ufos?¡± Manivald asked.


    ¡°What it means for the flying saucer to work and not work.¡± The Village Hag said. ¡°They told you right away, right? That it was no flying saucer, but a spatial vessel.¡±


    ¡°Is there a difference?¡± the barkeep asked. ¡°It is just a fancier word to describe the flying saucer.¡±


    ¡°So you know what a flying saucer is?¡± the Village Hag asked as a mysterious smile appeared on her face. ¡°Airship moves thought the air. Spaceship moves through the space. But a spatial ship moves through spatial dimensions. Whether anything fills this spaciality is irrelevant.¡±


    ¡°And what does that have to do with the ufos?¡± the man asked.


    ¡°A spatial ship moves through space, not along space. That¡¯s the difference. A spatial ship which does not move through space but instead along space is a flying saucer. Do you get it now?¡±


    ¡°So what hovered there, was a spatial ship?¡± Manivald said dejectedly, still not understanding the difference.


    ¡°Yes.¡± The old woman said. ¡°Ufos do think rather differently. Stones work on the ground, because that¡¯s where they are supposed to be. Stones do not work up in the air the same way as on the ground, because they fall down. At the same time stones work in the air in a different way because they fall down. Likewise a spatial ship is not working when it is hanging in the air and visible to everybody as a flying saucer.¡±


    ¡°Because in this manner it is useless as a spatial ship?¡± George asked.


    ¡°Yes.¡± The Village Hag smiled. ¡°Just like a bicycle is not made for flying, a spatial ship or a flying saucer is not made for landing. Just like you¡¯re asking how come the flying saucer is not working when it is clearly working, i. e. spinning and buzzing, I may also ask how a bicycle is able to work if it is clearly not working. For example when you are trying to balance on a bicycle standing still.¡±


    ¡°But a bicycle is not intended for trying to balance it on two wheels while standing still.¡± George said.


    ¡°A spatial ship is not intended for hovering in the air.¡± The Village Hag smiled.


    ¡°I remember!¡± Manivald, the villager suddenly shouted out.


    This time Fishy George could focus better and not fall down with his stool.


    ¡°What did you remember?¡± Leo asked. ¡°That you have to pay for the vodka?¡±


    ¡°I remembered what signal it was that messed up the program on their airship and brought them here. They said it was music. That their program picked up a music that should not exist. A music which they said is from autumn.¡±


    ¡°Music?¡± Leopold ask. ¡°Just some music could mess up the ufos¡¯ flying machine?¡±


    ¡°What music was it?¡± George asked.


    ¡°The said that some band whose name started with P. I can no longer remember. They said it was an unimaginable music of the world¡¯s end and that was the thing to pull them and their ship here. But something went wrong and the ship stopped.¡±


    ¡°Paean?¡± George asked.


    ¡°Yes, I think it was a weird name like that. No wonder I could not remember.¡± Pete fell silent looking at fear on Fishy George¡¯s and barkeeps face. ¡°What? What¡¯s going on?¡±


    His eyes were then pulled towards the other end of the bar, where the band was still performing. Their wide-shouldered leading man making all sorts of noises into the microphone, while producing some unearthly sounds from his guitar. Everybody around the bar counter fell silent.


    ¡°What do you think?¡± Fishy George asked, having observed all the people currently present in the bar. ¡°Could these ufos be here right now?¡±


    ¡°They most certainly are.¡± The Village Hag said. ¡°They wouldn¡¯t miss a performance like this.¡±


    ¡°It cannot be.¡± Leopold said. ¡°I would¡¯ve seen if four short red-skinned ufos came here. And nobody weird has come here in the mean time.¡± He looked at Manivald. ¡°Other than you, that is.¡±


    ¡°Weird, am I?¡± the man asked.


    ¡°You come in here, demand vodka and then you tell us how you argue with ufos by the roadside under a flying saucer. That¡¯s pretty weird.¡±


    ¡°Has any weird customer been here today at all?¡± the Village Hag asked. ¡°Ufos are not stuck in time like we are. Meaning they could have been here long before this guy here met them.¡±


    ¡°Wait what?!¡± Manivald got bewildered. ¡°You mean to say that they weren¡¯t really there while I saw them there?!¡±


    ¡°Stupid.¡± George laughed. ¡°She wants to say that the ufos met you, you came here running yourself ragged, while they fixed their machine, traveled back in time and then¡­ came here first thing in the morning¡­?¡± The man¡¯s voice grew shakier the further he got with his explanation.


    ¡°Exactly!¡± The Village Hag exclaimed.


    ¡°Old crone, you¡¯re gone mad with old age! Honestly!¡± Leopold said.


    ¡°That may well be,¡± the Village Hag replied. ¡°Or maybe I finally see things how they really are. That¡¯s why I usually don¡¯t talk to young people. Only with other old hags or ufos, as they are the last remaining people to still get me.¡±


    ¡°Wait, you talk to ufos, you old crone?¡± George asked.


    ¡°Well, the sky people.¡± the Village Hag said. ¡°One lovely young man from among the sky people comes by my house every Sunday, we drink tea, we ear cake. And we talk about people and the sky folk and the world.¡±


    ¡°That I would like to see!¡± Fishy George said.


    ¡°You are welcome to come and see.¡± the old woman said.


    ¡°In answer to your question.¡± Leopold said. ¡°No, nobody strange has been to this place today. There were some young guys who were slightly drunk and wanted a hundred liters of vodka each. But when I told them that I¡¯m a bar and not a vodka factory, they relented and settled for a bucket of draught each.¡±


    ¡°How much is your bucket?¡± George asked.


    ¡°Five liters.¡± Leo replied.


    ¡°Five liters, eh?¡± George continued, rubbing his nose. ¡°That¡¯s nothing one cannot finish in a few hours, nothing strange about it. That¡¯s only ten bottles.¡±


    ¡°Hundred liters of vodka, you say?¡± The Village Hag asked. ¡°that would be a hundred thousand grams, would it not?¡±


    ¡°It would be.¡± Leopold said. ¡°What of it?¡±


    ¡°¡°When we order vodka, thousand time a hundred.¡± like these youngsters once wrote in their song.¡± the Village Hag said.


    ¡°Get outta here! Them?!¡± George shouted. He then lowered his voice and bent closer to the others. ¡°Those are the anaks Rops is seeing?!¡±


    ¡°If not the same anaks, then at least of the same species.¡± the Village Hag said. ¡°They can carry an inordinate amount of hard liquor. But now it seems they have found themselves a whole new thing which has a far better effect that vodka.¡±


    People at the bar counter now kept glancing at the table in front of the stage in the middle of the room and the five young men sitting around it. Despite the low light, it was obvious that they were all dressed the same: black shoes, black leather jackets, blue denim pants and white tailored tees. The thing that made them stand out from other bar customers was that they were the only ones to really enjoy the music. For everybody else, the music might as well have been played off the radio or a vinyl record. That would not have affected the air in the bar the least.


    ¡°Your stories are way weirder than these young men.¡± Leopold said to the Village Hag. ¡°Honestly, even the fact that they are actually listening to the music is not that weird.¡±


    ¡°Maybe. It was just an errant thought of mine, nothing else.¡± The old woman said.


    The band on the stage finished with one song and started the next. From the way the young men with buckets of beer in front of them changed their position and perked up, it was clear that they were going to really enjoy this new song. Music and the growls of the singer traveled the hall but only managed to make it to that single group in the front.


    Then something changed. Following some guitar passages, the figures of the five young men around the table started to shimmer like mirages. And seemingly nobody besides the group sitting at the bar counter noticed this.


    A few dozen seconds passed, and shimmering turned into flashes other people around them started to notice as well. Flashes where the strapping young lads with blonde hair disappeared and instead of them sat five short red-skinned aliens with big heads, moving their legs along with the music and used some sorcery to make the buckets hover so they could drink from them.


    Some more music and more flashing between the young men and the red-skinned aliens and the final flash happened. The young men were gone. But the red-skinned aliens were present. George and the villager with the buzz cut could only rub their eyes. The band stopped playing and the bar was suddenly full of different shouts and screams when people got up from their seats only to escape the group in the middle of the room.


    One of the aliens looked around, now paying attention to what was going on.


    ¡°Sloblok.¡± He only said.


    Then a new flash happened. In the middle of the bar, only five chairs around a table remained. No young men. No red aliens. No buckets with beer either.


    People started settling down and the band on stage restarted the song.


    ¡°God dammit!¡± Leopold swore. ¡°God fucking dammit!¡±


    ¡°I told you.¡± The Village Hag said.


    ¡°They ran off with my beer! Without paying! Twenty five liters!¡± the barkeep cried.

 C - Journey to South I-III

    I


    He sat on the side of the road, on his old familiar bag he had found in a small illegal dump. This bag contained everything he needed to live. Socks, clothes and some money in the pocket of some worn jeans. This was everything he wanted to bring along from his current life. His life up until now was no longer relevant. He had washed his hands of it. He had had his revenge, blood for blood, and now there was nothing else left to do, just to sit here and wait for the end to come to him. Or that somebody on the road would take him and carry him closer to the end.


    He looked at the white line passing the tips of his brown boots, stretching into eternity on both his left and right. An endless unbroken white line measuring kilometers, forests and fields, real at some places, imaginary at others.


    He was trying to reach the imaginary or at the very least to South far away form here. To a village the name of which had sunken into the mists of history. A place which was more like an old wives¡¯ tale than a real village marked on a map. After which there was nothing else. Only a road to turn around and leave.


    He had made the decision to go. To pack his seven by seven items and go sit on the side of the road, to wait and hope for anybody to take him with them. He was willing to ride with anybody, be it a horse-drawn carriage with a tank of human feces, some millionaire or the devil himself. Or some officials in blue uniforms, taking him back to Big Town, to do whatever honorable judge in the North thought prudent to do. Not even trying to understand his actions, that his motivation and action had also been right and just.


    The young man with a black knit cap gave a heavy sigh and found the wallet from the pockets of the jeans in his bag. He looked over the bills. Each one had a face on it, each of them was a person who had done something significant for the science, politics or culture of this small Northern nation. Themselves of course never living long enough to learn of their immortality.


    There was another face. An old photo in weathered pink shades of a smiling woman with long dark blonde hair. Taken when the sky was red, and the letters CCCP had a meaning. It was visible even on that old photo, red flags flying in a summery weather. At a corner of the image there was an off-white arc, raising like a backbone of some unknown dead monster. He turned the photo around. There were some brown stains on the back, looking like some paint had smeared and dried a long time ago. But this had never been paint, this had been alive.


    With a muted clap of the material, he closed the wallet and put it back in his pocket. He then raised his face towards the sky. The dark gray clouds and the rooks flying along the road were almost trying to tell him to expect rain, and to him, this would have been the perfect weather to wait for a black carriage to take him. Only darkness would have been more perfect, something to help him to get sooner on his way. To let the black carriage with ominous red lights pass right through him, leaving behind only a smell of sulfur.


    At one point he noticed a bright glare in the distance. As it got closer, it grew so bright that he felt like dozens of spotlights had been focused on him. The light drowned out the whole world from his vision, caused him to loose all sense of time and space, as well as all his fear of leaving this world behind. He continued to sit, frozen by the white light, wishing it to burn away his sight and then his consciousness. So that even for a brief moment, before his mind left the dying body, he could escape to the world depicted on that photo between his wallet. He wished for the light to be the black carriage he had wished for. To hear the hooves of the black blind horses pulling it. He wished for them to run him over and trample him so that the carriage could bring him along.


    A deafening noise, a loud screeching and then darkness. Pitch-black darkness, almost like the one he had desired. But just moments later, his eyes started to discern the world once again. He listened to low rumble of an engine not far from him. He slipped off his bag and then pulled his knees under his chin, laying on the side of the road, cursing his fate that had taken away yet another chance to escape this place. Almost as if telling him to do it properly, as chance had much better things to do than bother itself with killing him.


    Only now did he notice how dark it was outside. He heard as the low rumbling got closer, as the car reversed. Then the rumble stopped and its doors opened. He sat up once more and then noticed a black square body Volga parked on the side of the road not 30 feet from him. It looked brand new. Better than new, actually. Spotless chrome decorations, paint as perfect as volcanic glass. The plastic lenses of the tail lights perfectly unfaded, giving off blood red incandescent glow, same with the opera light on the rearmost pillar. A perfect modern embodiment of a black carriage. He watched as people climbed out of it, one of them opened the trunk to get some luggage.


    With a tinge of repulsion he looked on as the girl driving the car hugged the other passengers. She then waved at the young man. The young man sitting by the side of the road looked around, as if wishing there to be somebody else she was trying to get the attention of. He also knew that there could not really be anybody else to answer that beckoning, and he himself had given a promise to go with anybody who stopped, even the devil himself. He got up, still regretting his decision, also getting mad at himself that his wishes and desires were so divergent from one another. He stretched his legs, still numb from the cold and the rain, and then walked towards the car.


    The passengers were still busy getting their luggage from the trunk, as well as cleaning the interior from anything the had dropped in there. Several big plastic bags, from the faint noises their contents seemed to be empty glass bottles, were thrown over the railing on the side of the road. The people talked among themselves in quiet voices. He did not even attempt to pay attention to their discussion, even though the language was familiar. The young woman who had waved at him was now approaching him. She was of slim build, taller than average, maybe even 6 feet tall, with long loose dark brown hair reaching her mid-back. Black jeans, black tee.


    She kept looking at him. He kept looking at her, all the while wishing to turn away from the irradiating glare in her eyes. To escape from her, even into the woods if necessary, if necessary to even give up any chances of reaching the South.


    "Are you Marco?" She finally asked, flipping open a small wallet.


    "Yes, I am," the young man replied with a faint voice.


    "You know how to drive?" there was a note of shortness in her voice.


    "Yes, I do." he replied, deciding to speak as little as possible.


    She then stretched a folded piece of green paper towards him.


    "What''s that?" He asked.


    "Title for the car. Are you going to take it or not?"


    Still hesitating, he took the piece of paper, paying attention to not touch her fingers. He unfolded it and then stared at the document dumbfounded.


    "It has my name in it."


    "Yes, it does." She replied. "Keys are in the ignition, don''t let it wait for you."


    After those final words, the young woman turned around and caught up with the people who had been traveling with her.


    The young man was left alone at the side of the road, a ruck sack in one hand, a green piece of paper in the other, and in front of him stood a black Volga in impeccable condition. This was not a scenario he could have foreseen. He had not expected this to happen when leaving home, neither could he figure out what to do with the vehicle which now, seemingly by a strange mix-up, had ended up in his possession.


    He looked about him, just to make sure, that there was nobody around to later blame him for stealing the car. Also, the people who had came here with the car were now gone, either they had disappeared into the darkness or the forest beside the road. He started walking towards the old four door vehicle.


    In and of itself, this car was nothing special to him. Other than its excellent condition, it seemed to be a regular GAZ-24 from the mid-seventies. His uncle had once had a similar one, and at one time these were used as taxis, giving even a common man a chance to ride around in one.


    He walked around the car and opened the trunk. This was also the end of the excellent condition. The inside of the trunk looked very much like a car several decades old. The bottom of the shallow trunk was also covered with a dark red blanket. He threw his backpack onto the blanket and was just about to close the trunk when he noticed something weird. The red blanket was covering something. Cool stone surface under his fingers. Bricks. Indeed, the whole trunk of the car was lined with red bricks packed neatly beside one another and in two layers. Too tired to offer any explanation why one would make a slow car even slower, he pulled the blanket back onto the bricks and shut the trunk lid.


    He then got behind the wheel and grabbed the keys still in the steering column. However he then noticed a large note taped to the steering wheel. It said ''automatic transmission.'' Black letters drawn on a yellowing sheet of paper. He then glanced into the foot well. There were three pedals. He looked at the gear stick. Also looked like a regular gear stick extending from the floor. There was even a glass knob with a small scorpion poured into the glass. He took the note and pushed it under the wind screen.


    Still feeling suspicious, he pushed down the clutch pedal, it offered little to no resistance. He then tried to move the transmission lever, but it only seemed to move forwards and back, no side to side movement whatsoever, even when he applied some force. He then moved the gear stick back into the forwardmost position and turned the key.


    He immediately noticed that the was something wrong. There was something different. The sound, the vibration violently shaking every piece of interior trim the vehicle had. This was nothing like a regular Volga. He released the parking brake, pulled the gear stick three steps towards himself and then released the brake pedal. The car started to move under idle engine power and pick up speed. He then noticed a small compass standing on top of the dashboard. The needle was pointing towards South.


    II


    A girl in blue jeans was walking on the side of the road. Back and forth, over and over again. The center for her rounds was her bag, from which she never strayed further than 30 meters away. As if she was wary of somebody with an unhealthy interest in her luggage suddenly appearing from the forest here or the field on the other side of the road. For a moment, she raised her face towards the sky, to sense how everything around her gradually got darker, as the sky was growing blacker and the crows on the foreground became harder and harder to notice.


    Could anybody even tell what they were doing here? They certainly weren¡¯t here to wait until she kicked the bucket. Things did not work like that in this kind of desert. A desert without sand, a human desert. She lowered her gaze and setting one foot in front of the other walked the side marker back to her things. She then noticed beams of light behind the turn ahead. They were coming closer, becoming brighter and instead of keeping to the road shoulder, she kept advancing towards the lights. There wasn¡¯t even any reflectors on her clothing to help make her visible to the driver. At the last moment, she stepped half a meter to her side and let the vehicle disappear into gray darkness behind her.


    She felt something wet fall on her head. She could not tell if this was something she did not expect or were the crows sufficiently startled by the noise of the car. She raised her face and a few more drops hit her, this time on her face. Yep, it was the thing she had not been expecting ¨C rain. It also felt prudent somehow, as if there was a small rain cloud secretly following her everywhere just about to pour everything down her neck as soon as she dared to think of the person accompanying her on this trip, at least in her thoughts.


    Within these few hours of standing on the side of the road, she had seen more vehicles pass her than during the whole preceding day. She gave a sorrowful smile and focused on a new pair of lights closing in. As they passed she could see the heavy drops fall on the pavement scattering after impact and creating a momentary layer of wet mist. If this continued then she was destined to spend this night under the thick cover of the fir canopy by the side of the road. Because who¡¯d really want to stop their car in such a downpour and let a soaking wet person into their vehicle? Especially into one of these modern cars which had interiors intolerant of water or even moisture, materials and technology so frail and complicated.


    With thoughts like this she again reached the apex on the other side of her baggage, towards any vehicles possibly moving towards her. Sitting down was the last thing to do, Then there was truly no dry place left, never mind the feeling of cold which would only intensify. She rose her eyes from the white line she could only barely see now. There was a sound she felt approaching, as if a car with no lights was coming towards her. At least her mind forced her to think so, according to what her ears heard.


    But then the blinding light broke through and she had to over her eyes with her hands. Those damned people in their car! This damned light! The lights on the car had ignited so suddenly that she could see nothing, in addition to her eyes being in pain and full of tears. She listened to the car stop on the side of the road not too far from her. She opened her eyes and turned around, first seeing the bright devilishly red tail lights. She was pretty sure it was a Volga, but seriously modified, because she did not know any old Russian cars with such bright tail lights.


    She rushed back to her things, wiped the small puddles off her waterproof bag and lifted it onto her back, wincing as the heavy rucksack pressed the cold wet clothes against her body. It felt something between disgusting and unpleasant. Her health was strong, and if would have been much worse if this rained gave her an inflammation of some part of her body.


    Black and presentable old Russian passenger car with restrained chrome decorations. There were not many like it out there. So clean, with all the lights attached intact and burning with devilish brightness. Several more modern cars passed the stopped vehicle, but compared to the old Volga on the side of the road they were but specters in the night. She headed towards the vehicle, opened the rear side door and sat into a cozy twilight there. The only thing illuminating the blood red interior were small incandescent bulbs under clear plastic covers on pillars between the front and rear doors. The vibration inside the vehicle was of a slight surprise to her, but soon that faded from her focus like the ticking of a clock.


    She sat the bag beside her and then took a look at the black cap and blue eyes in the rear view mirror.


    ¡°That was disturbingly bright.¡± She said.


    ¡°Marco.¡± The young man said.


    ¡°Maris.¡± The girl replied, the timber of her voice was surprisingly bright. ¡°It was really shitty of you to switch to high beams so close to me.¡±


    ¡°I did nothing.¡± The young man in the drivers¡¯ seat replied. ¡°I¡¯m certain I did not.¡±


    His voice sounded weak, as if he was ill.


    ¡°In any case I did not expect it. Or maybe the engine is so loud that it can be heard far away.¡±


    She fell silent, half expecting for the driver to ask how far she wanted to get. But the eyes in the rear view mirror indicated that this question would never come.


    She directed her gaze out of the side window. It really had been the final moment to find herself a driver. That which she had experienced outside, if that was rain, then whatever was now raining on top of the car sounded more like small nails. Also the ceiling of the car had no liner, at least none acting as sound insulation. She looked behind her at the rear glass, to notice the big circles that the drops made as the hit the glass. She then moved to the other side of the rear eat and lifted the bag onto the seat.


    She noticed needle pins on the rear pillar and used them to pin some photos onto the liner. She then pulled away from them. All photos were of the same person, made at different times, depicting different memories, some of which would probably have dulled without these photos and gone to where all memories eventually go. In the end she also unfolded a letter written on a yellowing sheet of paper. She sniffed it and pinned it under the photos, the lower half of the letter resting on red faux leather. She then rose her gaze, which them net the pair of eyes in the rear view mirror. The eyes in the mirror then turned away.


    The young man driving the car put his hand in his pocket and revealed something. The girl on the rear seat was not too concerned with what it was, but from the sounds she could tell it was a wallet. She then saw as a hand rose to the rear view mirror and pushed a small pinkish photo into the frame of the mirror. The wallet was thrown onto the front passenger seat and the vibration in the vehicle rose for a moment before dying down once more. Again something the girl could not comprehend as correct or even possible, a Russian car making noises as if it had an automatic transmission.


    Only silence, road noise and the low rumble of the car engine accompanied their drive. The engine sound was yet another weird thing in the whole matter.


    Curious eyes reappeared into the rear view mirror with ever increasing frequency, looking like they wanted to ask something, to learn something. And at this moment the girl wished him to ask, only for her to tell him that it was none of his business. But there was no such luck, at least not now.


    This kind of forced silence lasted for some time, until finally the girl, Maris, asked a question which had been on her mind for quite some time, even before she had sat into the car.


    ¡°Don¡¯t you have any music?¡±


    ¡°There is a bunch of wires, but no radio.¡±


    ¡°Too bad. If we had a radio then even if it wasn¡¯t connected, I could do something about it. If have disconnected plenty of head units from cars in the past.¡±


    Right away she started to regret that she had said anything at all. Something felt inappropriate. Clearly the other person wanted to stay silent and she should have considered that. In her mind she cursed her own stupidity.


    ¡°You could have thrown your bag in the back.¡±


    ¡°I could have.¡± The girl replied, looking at the rear view mirror. The young man focused on the road once more.


    She opened up her bag and revealed a tied up stack of letters. Without envelopes to make the stack thinner. Slowly and still hesitating whether to do it at all, she untied the stack and set it on the seat next to herself. She picked the first letter on the stack and switched on the interior light just above her on the headliner. Again finding herself thinking that this was yet another thing that an original Volga would not have at that place. The letter had been written onto a thin piece of paper using a pen. Even before unfolding, she could see the pattern of the handwriting on the other side of the sheet.


    ¡°We¡¯re gonna have to make a stop.¡± The girl rose her eyes from the letter ash she head those words. ¡°There¡¯s an illegal landfill not far from here.¡±


    ¡°What are you expecting to find there?¡±


    ¡°A radio.¡±


    ¡°Okay.¡±


    Both of the voices were barely above a whisper.


    She lowered her gaze back onto the letter in her hands. Her eyes moved across the lines of text. She had read the letter dozens of times already, but still went over it again and again. To again recall his touch on her skin, his love, that unfathomable connection they had had and neither of them could offer any explanation.


    She set the letter aside and took the next one into her hands. She felt the car slow down and turn somewhere. There was also something news that reached her senses: the rain was nowhere near as intense as it had been before. There was none of that sound of dried peas or steel nuts hitting the metal, only quiet impacts of lone drops now rolling down the glass. Also, the noise emanating from under the wheels clearly indicated that the car was riding on something else than smooth pavement.


    This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.


    ¡°How did you even know of the illegal landfill here?¡± Maris asked.


    ¡°I just did.¡± Marco said. ¡°There were certain signs.¡±


    They reached further down the dirt road, which finally turned into an overgrown forest road with tall grass between the wheel tracks. On the side of the road, they could soon see white home appliances and water heaters partially obscured by tall grass, of course there were probably piles and piles of garbage still hidden in the dark.


    Maris looked out the window and understood that the refuse here was indeed really varied and from how everything was scattered, it would seem that most of the garbage was brought here not by civilians with their small trailers but instead big dump trucks.


    The Volga was stopped on the road, but the engine was left running and the lights still on. Marco opened the door and stepped out, shutting the door with such force that the car shook a little. Maris waited for a little and then also got out, deciding not to be to far behind the young man. She was also really familiar with dumps like these. Together with her lover she had combed through many such locations looking for parts for customizing his bike.


    ¡°Tom was familiar with garbage dumps.¡± She said quietly. ¡°I could often find him from such a place, looking either spare parts or decorations for his rat rod.¡±


    ¡°Rat rod?¡± Marcos voice replied from the distance. Then something heavy tumbled over.


    ¡°Yes, a rat rod.¡± Maris said. ¡°a motorcycle partially repaired and modified with stuff other people have thrown away.¡±


    ¡°Have you seen anything looking like a car radio?¡± Marco asked. ¡°or anything else useful?¡±


    ¡°A mattress and waterlogged pillows perhaps?¡± the girl asked.


    ¡°No.¡±


    Still bathing in the powerful headlights of the vehicle, they kept walking around between small piles of garbage. Their shadows were pitch black, the darkness obscured anything within the umbra. The shadows moving around also created a feeling that there were many more people silently moving around in the light. As if this powerful light was also shining through the fabric of this world onto fabrics of other worlds beside it.


    Maris sighed, as she finished contemplating and imagining this. There were too many nights she had spent with Tom, watching science-fiction and mystery programming as well as documentaries about unexplainable phenomena. She walked towards the next heap of garbage with an intent to take a look into the shadow side of it. Despite the dark night and the powerful headlights of the car, the garbage dump was not like lunar terrain with perfect illumination and areas with perfectly black shadows. The shadow side of the heap was also easily visible.


    Another step forward and suddenly dozens of pairs of wings started flapping and rose from the indiscernible shadows in the ground, into similarly indiscernible darkness in the air. From the noises, these seemed to be rooks or crows, who had made this their place of congregation. Souls of dead people whom she had now driven away.


    ¡°Is this your rig?¡± An unfamiliar male voice asked.


    Maris turned around, looking at a man-shaped dark figure standing right before the lights of the vehicle.


    ¡°Yes, it¡¯s ours.¡± She replied, noticing how Marco appeared from between the heaps not far.


    He too was now heading back towards the car.


    ¡°You should not leave such a valuable vehicle standing unlocked and running. Somebody might take it and park it in a tree or something.¡±


    ¡°Valuable how?¡± Marco asked. ¡°It¡¯s just a Volga.¡±


    ¡°Did you take a look at the title? This is a special model for the KGB. Also these dual HID headlamps are most definitely not a factory equipment. Where¡¯re you headed anyway?¡±


    ¡°To the South.¡± Marco said. ¡°I am heading to South, I don¡¯t know about her.¡±


    Maris now felt the burning gazes of two people on her.


    ¡°Suits me.¡± The unknown young man said. ¡°South is a good place to go to. If I am think about the same place I think you¡¯re thinking about. I¡¯m Carl.¡±


    ¡°Marco.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m Maris.¡± The girl said, stepping closer. ¡°Do you not perhaps have a car radio on you?¡±


    ¡°As a matter of fact...¡±


    Carl turned, now facing the headlights and dropped his rucksack. He opened the zippers on it and produced an unopened package.


    ¡°Would this fit?¡±


    ¡°Don¡¯t know yet.¡± She said. ¡°in the car.¡±


    The three of them walked around the car. Marco was left at the front door while the young man with several days worth of beard, who had introduced himself as Carl continued and then opened the trunk, throwing his olive drab backpack into it. He then produced the packaged car radio and seeing that the girl was about to move her bag as well, left it open.


    ¡°This is brand new.¡± Maris said. ¡°Where did you get it?¡±


    She was leaning on the rear quarter panel of the car, looking at Carl in action. The water still on the metal did not bother her the least.


    ¡°A long story.¡± Carl said as he smiled.


    He looked at the girl tearing the package open and then got into the rear seat of the car. Soon, Maris got onto the front seat with the radio unit.


    ¡°Who¡¯s that?¡± Carl asked, noticing the letters and the photos pinned on the rear pillar.


    ¡°That¡¯s Tom.¡± Maris said, as she tried to find a place for the radio.


    Saying his named out loud made her memories flood in once again. All those moments together, moments apart, all these painful yet happy events. Life was strange. Love was even stranger. And yet it the same time it was not too strange for somebody to turn it into yet another YA novel or TV series.


    Her train of thought was interrupted by the sound of rain once again playing on the roof of the car. Through the open door behind her she now heard it from everywhere else as well, and some of it fell onto her jeans which had barely managed to stop dripping. The thought ¡°fuck¡± floated atop all other considerations.


    ¡°What is a KGB Volga?¡± Marco asked.


    ¡°You don¡¯t know?¡± The newcomer asked and grinned.


    Marco shook his head. He removed his cap and revealed an extremely short buzzcut.


    ¡°KGB Volgas were hand-built. Of this body style they made about 600 units. These were equipped with the three-speed automatic and the five and a half liter 200 horsepower V8 from the Chaika limousine. Externally it was made indistinguishable from the standard model. By the way, did you find a lead or concrete slab in the trunk?¡±


    ¡°A bunch of bricks.¡±


    ¡°Well, you see then, throw those out and this car will easily go beyond 200kph. Since I am pretty sure this has been modified even beyond the KGB specs, it should go far beyond 200 and quickly.¡±


    ¡°What do you mean?¡± Maris asked.


    ¡°Did you see the two chrome-tipped exhaust pipes at the rear? The KGB model had one thin pipe to look like a standard model with the 2.4. I would bet this one has been straight-piped, and the factory carbs have also been replaced with a modern four-barrel. Never mind the bi-xenon headlights.¡±


    ¡°Turn it back on, I¡¯m about to start with the wiring.¡± Maris said.


    Marco had turned off the lights and the engine, as they sat in the car and talked.


    ¡°Wouldn¡¯t you rather do it with the power off?¡± Carl asked.


    ¡°Nope. I don¡¯t know gazelles that well. This is going to be a trial and error installation. I also need the light.¡±


    The Volga started to rumble and vibrate once more. The girl turned herself on her back and started disconnecting the wires behind the transmission lever. A place for a modern DIN radio was already dug out into the dash board by some previous owner.


    ¡°And she?¡± Carl asked, noticing the rear view mirror. ¡°Is she also yours, Maris?¡±


    ¡°Mine are all in the back.¡± She replied.


    She had no intention to twist herself out if where she was until she had managed to connect the radio or give herself a shock.


    ¡°That¡¯s my mom.¡± Marco said quietly. ¡°She¡¯s dead.¡± This was the only relevant information he could give about her.


    ¡°Too bad.¡± Carl said. ¡°And why are you here?¡±


    Marco stayed silent and looked out of the window. He looked at the rain which had restarted.


    ¡°Why is he here?¡± Carl asked Maris.


    ¡°How would I know? Only when you appeared did I learn he was heading towards the South. Don¡¯t ask me stuff like that.¡±


    ¡°Oh.¡± Carl said.


    Suddenly a small beep and a tri-tone rang out. Basic and electronic.


    ¡°What the hell is that?¡± Carl asked, annoyed.


    ¡°My cell phone.¡± Marco said.


    ¡°Give it. Who is it anyway?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know. The police probably.¡±


    ¡°Give it to me, now!¡± Carl shouted.


    Without knowing even why, he handed his ringing cell phone to Carl who stepped out into the rain. A few moments later he got back into the car.


    ¡°Your problems are solved.¡± He said.


    ¡°What did you do?¡± Marco asked, his voice was stable and full of disinterest.


    Maris climbed out from under the dashboard. She was not yet finished but she wanted to focus on the discussion, as it seemed important, or at the very least entertaining.


    ¡°I threw your phone away.¡± Carl said without a hint of guilt.


    ¡°Why?¡±


    ¡°Did you want to speak to them?¡± Maris asked.


    ¡°Maris.¡± Marco said.


    She turned towards the young man on the driver¡¯s seat and from his gaze she understood that she may have gone too far.


    ¡°Fine.¡± She mouthed.


    ¡°Exactly right, my dear.¡±


    Maris gave an involuntary smile, as she heard Carl continue.


    ¡°Did you want to talk to them?¡±


    ¡°No.¡±


    ¡°Exactly.¡± Carl pointed at Marco. ¡°Also, did you know that one can triangulate your position using the signal your cell phone emits? It is much better for all of us that it lies on the forest floor in several pieces.¡±


    ¡°It is not about that.¡± Marco said.


    ¡°No, it is exactly about that.¡± Carl continued. ¡°I think you haven¡¯t fully realized why you¡¯re here. Why we¡¯re here. I don¡¯t know why fate picked you, and frankly I also don¡¯t care. But you are one of us. Like all of us, you too sat on the side of the road and waited for somebody to come and take you away. To a world better and more secure. In a sense, somebody did come. But what you were not expecting was that you yourself would have to be the one to decide where to.¡±


    ¡°I already decided, I¡¯m going to South.¡±


    Carl smiled.


    ¡°You think, that you are going to South. You can¡¯t believe anything you see in this car. Maybe you haven¡¯t realized this, but this is not an ordinary car and not an ordinary trip. You have some obligation before those you collect onto your car.¡±


    ¡°And if I do not want these obligations? If I pass the car to you?¡±


    ¡°I cannot, even if I wanted to.¡± Carl said. ¡°Th title still has your name on it, does it not? Which means this is your car, at least for now.¡±


    ¡°Done!¡± Maris said in a loud voice.


    She fiddled with the knobs and first found some white noise and then some terrible pop music started emanating from the speakers all around the car.


    ¡°Somebody has touched this car before.¡± She said. ¡°All the audio has been redone. It only needed a head unit to be wired in.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s next?¡± Marco asked.


    ¡°You¡¯re the driver, you have the car, you decide. In the end, you can only go where the road takes you and nowhere else.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re pretty smart for a thief.¡± Maris said as she made it back to the rear seat.


    ¡°For a thief?¡±


    ¡°This was a brand new radio with all the security tags intact, I¡¯m not stupid.¡±


    ¡°Then we¡¯re going to South. Does either of you have a watch?¡±


    ¡°I do. It is in my bag.¡± Maris said.


    ¡°Very good. Take it out and throw it away.¡± Marco said.


    ¡°Why the hell for?¡±


    ¡°Because where we¡¯re going, the correct time is no longer relevant.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re learning fast.¡± Carl said. ¡°Okay, we¡¯ll go where you think the South is. But be advised that in reality you might never get there. Not with this car.¡±


    ¡°What are you saying?¡± Maris asked.


    ¡°The black coach runs it¡¯s own path, we are merely passengers on it. The black coach will not go where the coachman wants, instead, it goes where it wants to go.¡±


    III


    The black Volga sped towards the morning Sun slowly rising above the horizon. Shaking with the vibrations of the drivetrain. The black body shining without a single water spot or speck of dust. It reflected the morning light towards the trees on the sides of the road and all the creatures that moved around in the cover of darkness who could now use a rare chance to glimpse the beginning of the world they could never be a part of.


    Carl sat on the front passenger seat and with a strange smile observed the car eating up the kilometers and the road markings. He had been correct and that was enough. What he had spoken of was also enough for the other two. People really did believe everything, one only had to present it convincingly enough. For some reason it was also more pleasant to sit shotgun in a speeding car, especially if one wanted to keep a low profile. And there was nothing better than retelling an obscure urban legend and see how believing it affect them.


    He glanced at the young man beside him who seemed to avoid making any conversation. Very suspicious. Before the driver reciprocated his glance, Carl turned his gaze towards the girl sitting behind the driver, observing how she was trying to pin the photos back onto the pillar next to the seat, but the vibration kept shaking them loose.


    Carl turned back and then while rubbing his face, decided to put on his seatbelt.


    ¡°Five and a half liters,¡± he said, in thought, ¡°make a Russian car move obscenely fast.¡±


    ¡°Yes, too fast.¡± Maris said. ¡°The photos are detaching. Slow down please.¡±


    ¡°You better worry about yourself, rather than your photos.¡± Carl said, turning again towards the girl in the back. ¡°Otherwise at first push of the brake pedal, you¡¯re gonna fly out through the windscreen.¡±


    ¡°If you think so.¡±


    Carl turned back, still looking at the sun rising up from behind the end of the road on the horizon. This decreased visibility quite a bit. However the compass on the dashboard was still pointing towards the South. This made him smile, a non-functioning compass was yet another thing reinforcing the urban legend he had retold.


    Suddenly he noticed something that obscured the sun and thus increased visibility down the road. There was a dark figure on the side of the road, only visible because it covered the very center of the rising sun, while seemingly there was a halo around it.


    The car started to slow down.


    ¡°You¡¯re gonna pick up another one?¡± Carl asked.


    ¡°Yep, she is the right one.¡±


    The car got closer to the figure and the featureless black shape turned into a young woman of average height in black. She walked slowly towards the sunrise, often pushing her long loose hair away from her face and over her shoulders.


    ¡°A satanic? Are you sure?¡± Carl asked. ¡°She might sacrifice you to the devil, you know.¡± He gave a smile.


    Volga slowed down even further and finally rolled forwards at walking speed purely on idle power, right beside the girl in black. She did not react. Did not even turn her head to see who was following her. As if she knew without looking.


    Carl rolled down the front window and put his head outside. Marco touched the accelerator petal with his toe and the vehicle started to move a bit faster.


    ¡°Where¡¯re you going?¡± Carl asked.


    ¡°Somewhere.¡± The girl in black replied in a dull voice. She still did not look at the people, only pushed her messy hair away from her face.


    ¡°You seem familiar. At least from afar. Have we met before?¡±


    ¡°Not in this life.¡± The girl replied Carl.


    ¡°We have the same direction.¡±


    ¡°It would seem so.¡±


    ¡°Wanna get a ride?¡±


    ¡°I could.¡±


    ¡°We only have three rules.¡±


    ¡°What kind?¡± the girl stopped and the car also jolted to a stop, perhaps too suddenly for Carl.


    ¡°First, the driver makes the rules. Secondly, watches and thirdly the phones should be left behind.¡±


    The girl in black said nothing. However she took the watch off her wrist and dropped it in the ditch by side of the road. She then pulled her back pack to her side, produced a cellphone and dropped that too.


    ¡°Very good.¡± Carl said. ¡°Throw your backpack into the trunk, Volga¡¯s a small car as it is.¡±


    The girl in black still said nothing. She walked to the rear of the car, popped the trunk and dropped her rucksack into the trunk, then slamming it shut. She got into the back of the car and soon Carl could hear a snap of the lap belt.


    ¡°Good idea.¡± He said. ¡°With a bomb like this, you can never know what could happen. By any chance do you have a name?¡±


    ¡°Mariann.¡± The girl said a voice full of apathy, as if her desire to converse with people was even lower than the person driving the car.


    ¡°I¡¯m Carl, by your side is Maris and the guy keeping the car on the road is Marco.¡±


    The girl said nothing.


    ¡°You¡¯re not much of a talker now¡¯re you?¡± Carl asked.


    ¡°Not much.¡± The girl in black replied, observing the marker lines painted on the road run past, as the car moved.


    ¡°We¡¯re out of fuel.¡± A quiet voice emanated from the driver¡¯s seat, barely reaching above the engine noise.


    ¡°Yeah, a hundred liters drain really fast if you run the engine at full tilt. How out are we?¡±


    ¡°A millimeter from the lower mark.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s about twenty kilometers.¡± Carl said without a slightest worry. ¡°The V8 on Chaika eats gas but not that much.¡±


    ¡°Yes.¡± The quiet voice replied.


    To Carl this voice sounded more and more annoying with each exchange they had. This meant he had to get his thoughts off it.


    ¡°Hey Maris, what¡¯s the deal with this Tom? Why stick photos of him everywhere?¡±


    ¡°Tom was my lover.¡± Maris said after sighing. ¡°He died.¡±


    ¡°When?¡± Carl asked.


    ¡°Not long ago, maybe a few months. Terminal cancer at 22. And that asshole refused to tell me about it! His parents knew, his friends knew, the local mailman knew! But not me!¡± Tears started running down her face. ¡°Any other questions?!¡±


    ¡°No. I didn¡¯t know, you see.¡± Carl said.


    ¡°Yes, you did not know. I am pinning photos and letters here, you could have assumed!¡±


    ¡°I could have.¡± Carl agreed and turned back to look out the side window to see the road markings run past them.¡±


    ¡°There¡¯s a gas station nearby here.¡± Mariann said.


    ¡°A chain store or a pump attached to a tank next to a shop in a TEU?¡± Carl asked.


    ¡°A chain.¡± Marco said. ¡°I don¡¯t have enough for a full tank, I only have three hundred.¡±


    ¡°I guess collection then.¡± Carl said, as he looked around in the car. ¡°start airing our your wallets, girls. Fuel is expensive and we need like fifteen hundred for a full tank. This means about 370 per snout. Maybe slightly less as the tank is not completely dry and this can also run the cheap stuff.¡±


    He produced a wallet and from there 4 bills, each had an image of a famous poetess who died in 1886


    ¡°Here¡¯s my 370.¡± Carl said.


    A pale hand with black fingernails in a long loose sleeve crawled over the seat, holding a purple bill with the image of another cultural icon who died in 1882.


    ¡°I only have 350.¡± Maris said, handing her bills to to Carl as well. ¡°Also, I hope to get to eat something for this as well.¡±


    ¡°We¡¯ll see.¡± Carl muttered.


    Slowly, the car turned into the gas station which had no other customers in this early morning hour. The black Volga crawled slowly across the stone pavement and stopped bu the first pump. This forced a rook who had been sitting on the pump into air, who moved to the roof edge of the gas station store. If there had not been an illuminated ¡®24h¡¯ sign above the door, then it would have been pretty hard to tell that the place was open. The interior of the store visible through the window made it look as if it had been closed a long time ago.


    Carl got out of the car, walked around it with long steps and stopped to observe Marco who started putting fuel into it. He took the money and set it under the windshield wiper of the Volga. She then took a last look at the girl in black who was now was absentmindedly staring at a large warehouse with gray steel walls, while she produced and lit a cigarette. He then headed towards the store.


    He was not alone though. Maris followed him.


    ¡°Did you want anything?¡± Carl asked.


    ¡°Cover for my money and your promise. I haven¡¯t eaten anything since yesterday morning.¡±


    ¡°Did you spend the whole day walking on the side of the empty highway?¡± The young man asked. ¡°I saw you before.¡±


    ¡°When?¡±


    ¡°Driving by. There was a large truck. The driver dropped me off before the garbage dump.¡±


    ¡°How can I help you?¡± the salesboy at the gas station asked.


    He was a young man, with short blonde hair, slightly taller than Carl.


    ¡°What do you have for food anyway?¡± Maris asked, looking around.


    ¡°Well, it¡¯s like this.¡± The young man in a dark blue apron and baseball cap started. ¡°The truck that was supposed to bring the goods to the store has not been yet. The police have set a road block on the highway. They say they¡¯re looking for some violent axe murderer.¡±


    ¡°So what do you have for food anyway?¡± Carl repeated the question.


    ¡°Well, we have pies and hot dogs and non-alcoholic stuff. Alcohol is all gone, A group of friends came in the night and bought up everything. Even paid in cash. They drove some black suped up Volga.¡±


    ¡°Well, let¡¯s have something then,¡± Carl said, trying to swallow a strange feeling he had.


    Soon, they exited the gas station convenience store. The young man a little ahead, with a can of energy drink. The girl behind him, eating her first hot dog, with the other one in her other hand. Carl looked behind him and gave a small smile, such a small girl yet such a big appetite. He quickened his pace, seeing Marco and that girl in black leaning against the other side of the car, each on either side of the fuel nozzle pumping fuel into the car.


    He watched Mariann put a cigarette on her lips and ignite it without much hesitation.


    ¡°Mariann, or whoever you were.¡± Carl said. ¡°could you remove your cigarette from this cloud of gasoline vapors and put it out? You believing that after we die we get reborn with help from the Dark Lord does not mean that we believe it too, or for it to be true.¡±


    ¡°A lit cigarette does not produce enough temperature to ignite gasoline or the vapors. It¡¯s been proven before.¡± He voice was monotonous and without any emotion to be discerned.


    ¡°How can you be so sure?¡± Maris asked from a distance.


    ¡°Because we are still alive.¡±


    She put the cigarette back in her mouth and knelt down, getting really close to the gas nozzle of the pump. She then took a deep and strong drag and blew it out through her nose.


    ¡°See? Nothing. But should I produce a lighter...¡±


    She revealed a black plastic butane lighter.


    ¡°Then Maris should stand even further away to feel safe in any way.¡±


    While she said that, there was something on her face that could have been mistaken for a smile, but it was more likely a content grin.


    To everybody¡¯s surprise, even Mariann¡¯s, the fuel nozzle clicked, breaking the tense silence. Marco, who had been counting money several times over, took the fuel nozzle and put it back on the pump. He then headed towards the store to pay.


    Mariann got up, screwed the fuel cap back on and closed the fuel door. She then raised her eyes towards the clouds slowly moving across the morning sky. Carl leaned against the car right next to her. But his eyes were not transfixed on the sky but instead on the knee length skirt of the girl next to him. Instead of belt, it had a thick steel chain keeping it on her hips. She also had laced up knee-high leather combat boots. Seemingly she was not disturbed by the least by his gaze.


    His attentions was then grabbed by Marco, who had been stopped by a girl in a long dark skirt which reach the ground. She also had a black velvet blouse with long sleeves. For a few minutes he observed them talking, although he could not hear their conversation. But their silent coachman was obviously not as silent as he made out to look. Both of them started walking towards the car.


    ¡°It seems we have yet another passenger for our car.¡± Maris said.


    ¡°It would seem.¡± The young man next to Mariann said.


    ¡°She¡¯s coming with.¡± Marco said, before getting back into the driver¡¯s seat.


    ¡°Who is she anyway?¡± Maris asked.


    ¡°Aliis.¡± The new girl said.


    She stopped next to Maris, giving Carl the opportunity to see that the two girls were not that different in height. Of course the girl in black on his side towered over both of them. He watched Mariann open the front door, which meant that he had to get in the back with the new girl and Maris.


    ¡°I want the center!¡± He said quickly.


    ¡°That¡¯s fine. I¡¯m not moving my pictures.¡± Maris replied.


    The new girl with short red hair said nothing. She also waited until everybody else was in and then finally sat in the rear next to Carl, as he observed her. Soon he was sitting between two short girls. Of course that suit him just fine. Somebody had put three lap belts on the rear of the Volga, however no headrests.


    Marco sat in the driver¡¯s seat and then his gaze fell on the girl in black sitting next to him. She had turned the sun visor down and had tacked a photo of a smiling little girl onto it. Seeing Marco¡¯s eyes, she threw the end of the cigarette out of the window.


    Marco started the engine, and soon after Carl could enjoy the sound of the large V8 while being pushed back into the rear seat of the Volga.

 C - Journey to South IV-VI

    IV


    Darkness. Glow of camp fire reflecting off a piano black car body. Quiet music emanating from the car, or rather the speakers of the car, from the radio to which a small black box was wired to. This box was from a far different era than the car or even that brand new radio in it. And at the moment this little box was the source for this timeless and yet out of time music.


    The camp fire built at a safe distance from the car was also reflecting off the spotless chrome hubcap. The hubcap also reflected the people who had lit it up. Five figures sitting around it on the ground, one of them wrapped in an old dirty blanket.


    This was good. Only her, the fire and music. So wonderfully alone, and also not. He too was here, along with these people. Some of them were connected to her by their past. Others would never be connected to her, not even by their future. She especially meant the person sitting opposite her, being another upper point in this pentagram and to whom she was another upper point. She smiled, this time on the inside, that everywhere she looked, she saw figures like this, like a special case of the tetris phenomenon.


    The girl in black gazed at her black fingernails and the fire reflecting off them. This eternal unfathomable dance of the flame which had lasted for thousands and millions of years and probably lasted at least as long a time. And the fire danced only for itself, alone, in many places at once. Somewhere with supple grace, hiding powerful forces underneath like ballet. In other places it let the Latin rhythms fly high in a perfect storm of passion and temperament totally uninterested in who got in its way or what the consequences of that were. Eternal dance in eternal change. The fire cared not whether it had any audience or not. Just like Sisyphos keeps rolling his stone, so does fire keep dancing, without any option for something else.


    ¡°They started producing these cars for KGB in the seventies. Altogether maybe a little more than six hundred. Most were destroyed after the collapse of the Soviet Union to avoid them being sold to private citizens. But some survived.¡±


    The young man with a few days worth of beard on his face who had been so bright and animated during daytime was now talking in a serious, almost detached voice. He added wood to the fire, causing a puff of burning embers rise into the night. To the silent pleasure of Mariann.


    ¡°The cars were equipped with a 5.53 liter motor off Chaika. With about 200 horsepower, allowing it to travel nearly 250kph. Chaika was much heavier so that also had a slower top speed. But for the Volga this was possible, especially without the concrete slab for ballast in the back. With the ballast 200 was the best it could. The concrete slab had another purpose though. That V8 had a lot of torque and Soviet tire technology was non-existent. Without the slab, the car would light up the rear tires and leave most of the tread on the pavement. Usually this V8 was fitted to 3 ton trucks, not passenger cars.¡±


    ¡°Carl.¡± A quiet voice opposite Mariann said. ¡°I¡¯m sorry I yelled at you earlier. I still haven¡¯t gotten over it.¡±


    Her voice sounded sad, on the border of tearing up and crying. As if the person she was about to speak of was her unseen conversation partner.


    ¡°I could see that.¡± Carl said.


    ¡°Tom hid it from me. His parents knew of it. Both of how far his illness had progressed and also that he was hiding it from me. His sister, his friends. All of them hid it from me, and not even as a request from him. Totally on their own accord.¡±


    ¡°Why?¡± Aliis suddenly asked.


    The girl in black felt it rude. Not towards the speaker but towards the silence to whom too little time was left for it to take effect and seep into people¡¯s emotions.


    ¡°Because of this.¡±


    She pulled back her sleeves and stretched out her arms revealing to the light of the campfire injection marks and two darker scars on either wrist.


    ¡°Tom picked me up essentially from the outside the door of the asylum. I was once addicted, and then I tried to escape it using the only way I could think of. One of the two succeeded. Not bad, huh?¡±


    Tears started to roll down her face.


    ¡°They were all afraid of me killing myself, should I learn of it. Afraid of that in turn shortening his life even further. And Tom also did not want me to kill myself. In either case, whether he was afraid of it or not, he did not trust me.¡±


    Mariann stared at the girl with thin frail forearms who had now fallen silent and repeatedly wiped her tears. The girl hid the lines and permanent scuffs on her arms back under the fabric. More as a deliberate move than a reaction to people¡¯s gazes.


    ¡°You know what he did?¡±


    Maris pushed a letter into the fire, then pulled it back and watched the flame travel downwards while eating up the paper.


    ¡°He left me, saying that he had to go and visit a friend who just got out of hospital, for two weeks. While he was away, he managed to send me three letters. Like a fairy-tale, right? He died the same night he had mailed the last letter. He even promised to return in three days and customize my bike as well.¡±


    She dropped the burning letter into flames.


    Nobody broke the silence this time, nor during the previous pause. This was good. It seemed that people had been quick to learn the importance and magic of silence. It seemed so, she could not say to herself that it indeed was so. She felt she was too optimistic about these people in general. And then there was a voice which pushed all her thought back into the manure they had risen from while sitting by this fire and listening to the music and people.


    ¡°You you all know why I¡¯m on the run?¡± Carl asked. ¡°I¡¯m on the run, because I¡¯m on the run. I¡¯m on the run because of this radio. Because messing with the drug addicts...¡±


    ¡°You sold them cement.¡± The girl in black said quietly but decisively.


    It felt like an automatic reaction. As if there was some kind of mechanism inside her which could not tolerate lies or incorrect statements so close to her heart. Something which had to respond as soon as soon as possible, without allowing her a chance to alter or control it.


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry?¡±


    ¡°You sold them cement.¡± Mariann repeated in a louder voice.


    ¡°Yes. You knew about it?¡±


    The young man who had been a happy go lucky person in sunlight had turned into a misshapen inhuman mass crushed under the weight of conscience and honesty.


    ¡°Yes. You may not remember me. My best friend wanted to try on a bet. It was her first time using. And she lost the bet. I did not agree. Not even when I saw that gray powder you were selling. In the end she managed to convince me. She tried more, I tried less. I came back, she did not. While she was being buried, my chances to survive were still below 10 per cent.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry.¡± Carl said.


    ¡°No, you¡¯re not.¡± Mariann replied. ¡°I can clearly see that. Whether your actions cause one or two more people to shuffle off this mortal coil does not faze you the slightest. I am too good at observing people to not see that. After her death I gave up on colors. Arianne was my only friend. And after her passing¡­ Well, here I am.¡±


    ¡°Indeed.¡±


    Silence again fell round and above the people sitting by the fire. Cool calm and silence. Rising flames being the only company for people contemplating in the cool of night. Discussing these past events, setting in line all secrets from their pasts. To reveal them when the right moment came, when the order or chance fell to them. One could feel, see and read people¡¯s thoughts from the flames. How the fire burned stronger when people with heavier and deeper secrets revealed them. At least that¡¯s what Arianne¡¯s grandpa had told her and taught her long ago. How he had guided her in secretive knowledge for the correct understanding and utilization of which his blood had strayed way too far from nature.


    Aliis, wrapped in a carpet, burnt a dried flower in the flames. She looked around at people who had focused their gazes on the flames. Maybe thinking how pleasantly warm it was there. Under the fiery logs in those gray ashes. Warmer than anybody could think or even imagine. Burning.


    ¡°Remember that big building by the gas station, with lots of burnt candles, dried flowers and wreaths? I am here because of that building. My boyfriend had a bike and we rode. He wanted to show me how fast his bike was and how good he was at keeping it under control.¡±


    She sighed, pulling the blanket tighter.


    ¡°We rode in circles around the gas station and nearby. At one point he asked me to take his his helmet as I had none and it was becoming really difficult holding on. However this made him lose his focus as he did not notice the car which had turned into the gas station. He managed to dodge it but despite braking he could no longer stop nor avoid the wall of that warehouse. So we hit it flat.¡±


    ¡°When did that happen?¡±


    This time, the question by Carl did not seem at all out of place.


    ¡°About a year ago.¡±


    This was all she said, hiding her eyes behind the dirty blanket. She wiped her tears and with her other hand let go of another dried flower as the flames burning it were now reaching her fingers, desiring to involve them too into their fiery dance.


    Silence again fell between the figures sitting around the fire. Well, not a complete one, as it was impossible to get rid of the sounds the fire made, the flames rushing, the burning wood crackling, people breathing and other sounds of the forest. Under the cover of night, the weak creatures of the daylight had no ground to go to, only those did which had grown accustomed to the night and were able to let the monsters of the other world not hurt them.


    The girl in black was fully aware that while they were sitting here by the fire, in the darkness the night creatures with dozens of eyes and tentacles extended their limbs trying to fight this new power. This very same thing which forced them into their dark crevices in the ground when night ended and did not let them out until a new night begun.


    ¡°What¡¯s your secret? Huh?¡± Carl suddenly asked, turning towards the young man sitting between him and Mariann, the one driving the car. ¡°You¡¯ve been silent until now. We want to know.¡±


    The young man named Marco was still silent. His solemn gaze focused on the fire clearly spoke of his lack of desire to open any drawers in his chest of past.


    ¡°Well? Say something!¡±


    ¡°Carl.¡± Mariann¡¯s quiet voice full of apathy started. ¡°You have no chance nor right to demand him nor anybody else anything. A person will open themselves when they¡¯re ready. You probably have other skeletons in your closet as well. We are not demanding you to knock over this closet of yours.¡±


    ¡°Carl, there was something else you said about this Volga.¡± Maris said, ¡°How it transfer from person to person.¡±


    ¡°Oh yes.¡± Carl suddenly looked animated as if the girl¡¯s question had returned him some of his daytime mood.


    ¡°There is an old urban legend. That there is an old car, black as the night itself and yet totally unremarkable in the world around it. And it is in constant use. The car moves from person to person, according to it¡¯s own wishes which nobody can influence. The car, the keys to it and the title are all a singular unit. And then a person drives the car. As he must use it for gathering other tired souls in order to restore the will of life to them.¡±


    ¡°The car is driving the person and not the person the car.¡± Mariann said quietly. ¡°The car picks a person and drives them, regardless of what the person wants to do, it alters the person¡¯s free will. Where ever the person wants to go to, in the end he will reach only one place.¡±


    ¡°Where?¡± Maris asked, breaking a long silence that fell after Mariann¡¯s words.


    However after her question, heavy frightening silence fell again. Perhaps even she did not realize that allowing it to fall also allowed the darker sides of everybody¡¯s fantasy to scare them.


    ¡°To the Lake of Forgetfulness.¡± Mariann continued. ¡°Some refer to it by the Latin definition Lacus Oblivionis. A place where everything dead ends up. It it not Hell nor Heaven in the common sense, it is a world similar to the one in Franz Kafka¡¯s writings. Looking at it from our side, one might call it the Zone, a hell. Because life there is more unbearable than life here. More boring, more dull. In reality it is not even a lake, it is a separate level of existence, which touches our realm in places where bodies of water a located.¡±


    ¡°All dead people go there?¡±


    ¡°All of them.¡± Mariann repeated. ¡°Regardless of whether they dig their own graves or if somebody says funerary rites over them or not. The end result is the same.¡±


    People fell silent once more, observing the flame rising above the logs. Imagining how pleasantly warm it would have been under there. To be small, to stand in that white ash and look up to see how the flames were flowing and ebbing over the wood. Heading upwards while also sending a warm draft downwards.


    ¡°Lake of Forgetfulness allows us to let go of all our doubts we have with death and the dead. In some sense, it allows us to say what has been left unsaid.¡± She paused for a moment. ¡°I don¡¯t know what will happen once we get there. But I also know that the Volga will also bring us back from there. Deciding on its own where it lets us off and where it finds a new driver.¡±


    ¡°That is a nice addition to the legend.¡± Carl said. ¡°Did you come up with it yourself?¡±


    ¡°That too is part of the legend.¡± The girl in black replied. ¡°You may have heard a different version, I have heard this one. The legend and it¡¯s aspects are in constant flux. However, the problem does not lie in the multitude of variations but instead in where reality ends and fiction begins.¡±


    ¡°How do you know all this?¡± Maris asked.


    ¡°From urban legends, like Carl told. But I have spent a lot more time walking on the side of the road. This car is a part of the cultural strata of the road.¡±


    She fell silent once more, remembering why she was here, why she was on the side of the road. The reason for it all. Arianne¡¯s death, that was only an origin. Her main reason was that she wanted to find the right car, with the right people whose destinations was the right one: the Lake of Forgetfulness.


    Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    ¡°There are different cars in different countries and their purpose is also different. Old stories told of black stage coaches pulled by blind black horses, in which the devil himself rode to find nighttime travelers he could bring to hell. Later, in the Eastern Block, there stories were replaced by stories of NKVD and KGB agents driving around in black ZILs, ZISs, ZIMs, Chaikas and Volgas who kidnapped people to fill their enemy of the state quotas and practice torture.


    ¡°Outside Soviet Union and also after the fall of the Soviet Union, there were legends of satanists riding in black German luxury cars looking for people to sacrifice to Satan and to do all sorts of other depraved things to before.


    ¡°In English-speaking countries people were accosted by either Men in Black or phantom social workers. In Britain they rode black Jaguars and on the other side of the ocean they had either black fleet vehicles at least a few decades old or black pursuit vehicles which have only recently fallen out of use. Used primarily by law enforcement and intelligence communities.


    ¡°These are the stories and legends people tell at night while long haul trucking. Trying to keep both themselves as well as the hitchhikers awake. Or people end up telling stories like these by campfires just like we are doing here right now. Nobody knows where it started nor where it will end. And nobody needs to know. It just is.¡±


    ¡°So you¡¯re saying there are other vehicles like this?¡± Maris asked.


    ¡°I¡¯m not saying anything. What you believe is up to you, I¡¯m only telling you of the stories I¡¯ve heard. Even about this car, one cannot be sure. What is real and what are only legend are two separate things. They always have been. At the same time the line between what is real and what is legend is almost invisible.¡±


    Silence fell again. If there had not been fire to embrace them with its warmth, then the cold would have also fallen. Dance and embrace at the same time.


    ¡°I have heard a different version of this legend. On some birthday party some time ago. In essence it was like the story Carl told, but it also had info about the past and the origin of the Volga.¡± Marco said.


    ¡°How does that one go?¡± Mariann asked, even surprising herself with this uncontrolled outburst.


    ¡°Some youngster said that several years ago he was looking for an experienced man for his very rare car. And while visiting various shops, he heard the story about a some young man and his girlfriend in black who had an old Volga and tons of spare parts they wanted to use for modifying the vehicle. Lights, engine parts, new and used spare parts. According to him, by tracing these stories, one could put together the chain of modifications and perhaps even find the vehicle itself.¡±


    ¡°Did these parts also include Porsche racing brakes?¡± Carl asked.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know. I head this story approximately a year ago. Sometimes the car was added tons of bracing to make the body stronger, sometimes the rust was taken care of and in the end it got an expensive respray. In any case it was considered a solid vehicle whenever it popped up. The youngster could also add that if a car like that would continue to be modified then at one point nobody could tell what it originally was. More of a Western car than an ancient legacy.¡±


    ¡°That could have been any Volga.¡± Carl said. ¡°There are plenty of ordinary Volgas on the road, especially in Southern parts.¡±


    ¡°That I think was the greatest curiosity that it was in no ways ordinary.¡± Marco continued. ¡°The engine itself was reportedly not the Soviet original unit but instead something off an American car with similar age, engine weight and dimensions. And it was coupled to a strange-looking automatic transmission.¡±


    Silence flowed again around the people, the fire and that black car nearby. Darkness in sound, accompanied by visuals. Allowing the imagination of every one of them to crawl out and start influencing them. Mariann thought it more than plausible, considering the amount of information they had exchanged, each of them was likely trying to put all the information together, to make connections and create interpretations. In this silence, she could almost imagine the thoughts of other people and the one conclusion everybody would eventually reach: no single story was true, but each of them had aspects to them that were true.


    ¡°It is beautiful here.¡±


    It wasn¡¯t even important who said it, probably one of the girls. Mariann knew that it was not her. But she was not certain whether it was one of the other two girls sitting around the fire, or one of the girls sitting in the thoughts of the people sitting around the fire. In the end, nothing else mattered beside this singular moment of thought and silence right here.


    V


    Marco leaned harder and harder onto the gas pedal, forcing the car move faster and faster. Ordering the engine to give more and more, which it did with playful ease. As a result, under these overcast morning skies, the Volga flew on the empty highway quite a bit faster than the signs recommended by every smaller or even bigger intersecting road. The bricks had been left behind on their last stop. Around a warm pile of smoking ash. Only few broken pieces were still left in the trunk and moved around in there.


    The driver focused on the road outside the windscreen covered in road dust. He also noticed a flock of black birds flying high under the clouds in the distance. A glance in the rear view mirror allowed him to see three heads above the rear seat. And also there was a pale arm in a black loose cuff resting on his side. He knew the girl next to him was not sleeping, not now and not during the night by the fire. She just stared in front of her in silence.


    ¡°Is there anybody else we need to collect?¡± Marco asked, trying again to make his voice low and soft.


    ¡°No.¡± Mariann replied. ¡°The car is full, there are no vacant seats. Also, you yourself cannot decide who you give ride to, the car is influencing your free will. Whatever you decide, you cannot be sure it was decided by your own free will. For example, that.¡± She pointed at the large compass glued on the dashboard. ¡°This needle is pointing towards South. It has been pointing towards South since you got the car, probably. And yet it is almost certain that we have not been traveling directly towards South.¡±


    ¡°Yes, it is all so complicated.¡± Marco said.


    ¡°it depends to whom.¡± Mariann said, directing her gaze out of the window once again.


    ¡°Are we there yet?¡± Carl¡¯s sleepy voice asked from the back.


    ¡°No.¡± Marco replied quietly.


    ¡°Depends on where you want to get to.¡± The girl in black said.


    ¡°To that dream¡­ thing¡­ lake.¡±


    ¡°No, we are not there yet.¡±


    ¡°Well, we have driven for several hours. When will be be there?¡±


    ¡°Before the fuel runs out. It¡¯s like a sacrifice to a god.¡± Mariann said.


    ¡°Volga as a god.¡± The young man in the back seat mocked. ¡°Does that not sound like adding to the urban legend?¡±


    ¡°How else did the legend came to be other than one person telling to the next and changing something, and after several retellings and many people believing it as fact, it finally became real.¡± Marco said, this time not so quietly.


    ¡°So much for wanting to entertain people when on the road.¡± Carl continued to grumble. ¡°You tell them a funny tale about road trips and then some satanic comes and turns it into a god damn religion.¡±


    ¡°What are you yelling about? Let me sleep!¡± Maris said sleepily.


    ¡°Satanic is an adjective.¡± Mariann said quietly.


    Marco was unsure whether anybody beside him and the girl saying it felt the hurt tone in her voice.


    ¡°These two here believe that the car is here only because there are enough people who know and believe in the urban legend and whose spirit power gave birth to it.¡±


    ¡°I did not mean it like that.¡± Marco replied, by now he was pretty indifferent what people thought of his voice or ideas.


    ¡°I meant that it became a truth in their heads. They started to see that car in every pair of bright lights speeding down the road at night, in every pair of bright tail lights.¡±


    ¡°Although the other option may be true as well, there is no reason for getting agitated.¡± The girl in black said. ¡°If it is not true, then we only have a rare car, especially talented storytellers and imaginations too powerful for out own good. We have it good here, better than in the room we came from. However should it be true, that there exists some sort of critical mass of thought power, a collective unconsciousness able to create an artifact such as this Volga, then¡­ the real world is unbelievably more complicated and mysterious than we had known until know.¡±


    ¡°Reality does not work this way.¡± Carl replied.


    ¡°You doubt.¡± A small smile floated on Mariann¡¯s lips. ¡°Your consciousness believes one thing and subconscious believes another.¡±


    ¡°Psychoanalysis is not much of an empirical science, especially if one tries to do it in a moving Volga.¡± Maris muttered.


    ¡°The fact that something cannot be scientifically proven, does not mean it is not real.¡± Mariann said. ¡°A psychoanalyst would require the patient¡¯s permission to find the childhood conflict from which all originates. However we do not have such a permission, not on this trip.¡±


    ¡°Whatever.¡± Carl muttered. ¡°I might as well argue with a true believer.¡±


    ¡°True. At the same time, we are all believers, just that we believe in different things. And I am pretty sure that due to me believing, my world is way richer than yours.¡±


    ¡°Has anybody even understood, why we have to go there, to that lake? We have a free will to ride where we want to, wherever Marco is taking us.¡±


    ¡°There is heavy rain ahead.¡± Marco said.


    ¡°So what?¡± Maris asked.


    ¡°Nothing, just that¡­ I have never before noticed how beautiful a cloud from which rain is falling looks from a distance.¡±


    He glanced at his side, to see that the girl in black had noticed the same thing he had and was still mesmerized by it.


    On this highway between the grasslands, the traffic seemed much denser than elsewhere. They could see at least a few other cars which were definitely traveling slower than they were. The oncoming traffic was something that did not let them forget that they were still driving in the real world. That somewhere out there, there still was the life each of them had left behind, their former friends, former acquaintances. Former relatives, their former world.


    The road slowly curved away from the rain. Marco however slowed down and turned right, onto a gravel road in the forest, picking up speed on the bad road.


    ¡°What is this then?¡± Carl asked, looking at the surrounding trees and a wide arrow straight gravel road cut straight through the forest. The rain had just fallen on it.


    ¡°A shortcut.¡± Marco said. ¡°A shortcut where we need to get to.¡±


    ¡°A shortcut? Okay.¡±


    ¡°Looks like an access road into some military base.¡± Aliis muttered in a sleepy voice.


    ¡°True.¡± The girl in black said.


    ¡°You know this place?¡± Carl asked from the girl to his right.


    ¡°No, but I know the general layout, my boyfriend...¡± She stopped, but her gaze spoke volumes.


    ¡°...Was interested in them.¡± Mariann said.


    ¡°Yes.¡± The girl in the back seat nodded with tears in her eyes.


    ¡°Meaning we¡¯re going to a military base?¡± Carl asked.


    ¡°Why is it even important where were going?¡± Marco asked suddenly. ¡°We¡¯re just going, just as we have been doing since the day before yesterday. We¡¯re just going.¡±


    ¡°Yes.¡± Carl repeated. ¡°We¡¯re just going.¡±


    VI


    Volga with a non-existent suspension kept riding on a potholed gravel road. Each time it hit a new pothole, it displaced the water in it and threw it into the plants and bushes on the sides of the road, some also ended up on the sides of the vehicle. Just like the car, so shook the people inside the car, but this did not mean that the vehicle would slow down before the pot holes. The noise of the approaching 8 cylinder engine scared several rooks off the lower firs first into the skies above and then escaping in the same direction as the moving car.


    At least that¡¯s how it seemed in the thoughts of the girl with the long dark skirt, at least in those moments when one singular mental image was no replaying in her mind¡¯s eye again and again. And now that she thought of it, it came up again. Her feeling how a sharp change in the angle of the bike wants to force the sandwich she had in the morning out of her system. How she feels nauseous, how she wants to dig her nails into the stomach of the person sitting in front of him to force him to stop.


    And the next moment ecstasy from speed and fear of death have removed all earthly troubles from her mind and again she is traveling nearly a hundred kilometers an hour 20 centimeters above pavement, knowing that if her partner makes one stupid mistake then the both of them will pay dearly for that. And yet at the same time there is the feeling that the chance for such a mistake does not exist. There is nobody to stop them, nobody to suddenly come and they will continue to forever drive circles around the gas station and that old car wash.


    And then suddenly, in the middle of an ecstasy bordering on fainting, a helmet appears in her field of view which the young man is handing her. She puts it on and fastens the strap. Then, just as she has managed to put her hands around the young man, she sees a black Volga in the corner of her eye. Too late they manage to dodge it, heading back towards the main road. A feeling of something pulling her out of some imaginary circle, centrifugal force. And then the bike slips and the both of them are sliding fast towards the wall. Darkness. And then a black Volga rises from it.


    Suddenly she opened her eyes, in her vision there still lingered the black vehicle shining in sunlight, she felt the heavy bandages on her left leg running down from her hip to the ankle. She pushed herself away from the side window and glanced out the windscreen. From behind the glass constantly being wiped she saw the gray sky and a road turning right in the distance. The shaking of the car now also entered her consciousness, as he head gently hit the side glass which in turn made her focus on hearing, which brought to her the rain hitting the metal roof of the car.


    ¡°How far are we?¡± She asked, still groggy.


    ¡°Can¡¯t remember anymore.¡± Maris sitting on the other side of the young man said. ¡°Concrete posts some of which still carried strips of barbed wire disappeared into the trees some time ago.¡±


    ¡°The outer perimeter.¡± Aliis sighed quietly, she thought quietly enough to not be heard by others.


    ¡°See that?¡± Mariann asked, pointing at the black metal tower rising above the trees.


    ¡°Yes. What is it?¡± The young man at the back asked. ¡°Something that can be climbed?¡±


    ¡°Something that could be climbed.¡± Aliis muttered quietly.


    She was again resting her head against the side glass, this felt better. The cold cool of it and crisp strikes of the rain landing on glass.


    ¡°It¡¯ll collapse, it¡¯s probably all rust.¡± Marco said, trying to keep the car under control.


    ¡°We once tried to climb a tower like that.¡± Aliis said barely audibly. ¡°Half of the rungs on the access ladder came loose. Rust.¡±


    ¡°So you came down pretty fast from there?¡± Carl asked.


    ¡°And not at all voluntarily.¡±


    Marco smiled for a second, imagining two people fall from a rusting steel watchtower under a gray sky.


    ¡°It would be nice to climb up there.¡± The girl sitting next to Marco mused, eyes still fixed on the tower standing under the rainy sky.


    ¡°Getting down might be difficult.¡± Macro said, immediately earning a displeased look, obviously because he interrupted her dreamscape.


    ¡°How far is it?¡± Maris asked. ¡°I¡¯m getting tired of this shaking.¡±


    ¡°We¡¯re still in the security zone.¡± Aliis said. ¡°this is followed by a clearing with another security post. And then we will reach the core area of the base.¡±


    ¡°Can you give some more information? Just to distract us from this shaking and rocking.¡±


    ¡°There are no silos here. Only one base had silos and that¡¯s located in the Southern forests. Four silos, most of them filled with water.¡±


    ¡°Silos? This is a missile base?¡± Carl asked.


    ¡°A nuclear missile base.¡± The girl behind Mariann said. ¡°The missiles here were aimed at London and other Western and Central Europe. They had a range up to 2200 kilometers. This road here is pretty deteriorated, be it from frequent use or problems with the subsurface. All Russian military bases had the same build quality. Five meters wide and depending on location two to three kilometers long. Designed to be strong enough to carry the weight of those massive transporter-erectors.


    ¡°We¡¯ve reached the second checkpoint.¡± Marco interrupted the uncomfortable silence.


    ¡°We¡¯ll reach it soon. There should be another open field here, paved with large thick concrete slabs, formerly used to park trucks, choppers and other equipment.¡±


    Aliis fell silent, feeling herself deviate from what she wanted to be here, a small and quiet girl.


    As if to validate the words of the girl in a long dark skirt, the car covered in yellowish gray mud rolled onto a large lot paved in concrete slab. It stopped, still idling with a low rumble. Rain was still falling, heavy downpour sounded like steel nails when it fell on the roof and the car glass. The sound was especially prominent on the roof, as if instead of rain, hail was falling. However inside the car, silence had found a place for itself.


    ¡°We can go no further than this. At least with this car.¡± Aliis said. ¡°We could continue with an off roader, on a bicycle or on foot. The tower is a few hundred meters from here, near the buried control station. And all other structures should also remain.¡±


    ¡°How do you know all this?¡± Maris asked.


    ¡°I said I¡¯m familiar with the general layout.¡± Aliis said, but there was also another feeling gnawing inside her. ¡°Also I have a feeling that I¡¯ve been here before. Maybe I have not approached this place from this side, but still, I may have been here.¡±


    ¡°Shall we wait until the rain ends?¡± Carl asked.


    ¡°You can try that.¡± Mariann said. ¡°But I think the Man will first reach the Law before this rain ends.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know what this means, but I¡¯d rather wait it out in here.¡±


    ¡°I won¡¯t.¡± Aliis opened the door and stepped out. Others followed her.


    She stood in the rain, looking at the water which had made many shallow puddles in the minute recesses on the concrete slabs. Small ponds, for some maybe even small seas, grass and shrubs growing out from the cracks between the slabs,


    Aliis started walking to a small rocky footpath leading into the forest. She cared not for the rain, the only thing she now cared for was whether she was right, whether she had really been here before. As she got closer to the area where the concrete lot ended and the forest began, she saw that the it wasn¡¯t really a footpath but instead an old vehicle path, of which only one side of the track was still in use. She stopped and lowered herself down at the start of the footpath, running her hand across the shrubs and grass growing out of the middle of between the tracks. She could still see patches of dry concrete and pavement under the grasses. She got up again and continued along the path. On her right side an overgrown ditch full of small trees, on the other side young trees one could have broken down with the Volga probably. Thus she hadn¡¯t been correct thinking that one could not pass with a car.


    She continued walking, somebody else could come and tell her if she was right about the small trees. If Carl was right, then breaking through with a car should not have been a problem. At least the trees sheltered her from most of the rain, although considering she was already soaked through from stepping into a downpour this was of little consolation. However this would soon end, as she started to once again see gray sky from between the trees. She could also see the layers of rain in the distance, which shaded the whole world in blue-gray colors.


    In the end, she got out of the patch of forest and reached another much larger field. This place had a much darker concrete with more marks of it having been in heavy use. There were broken up pieces, shards missing, rebar showing. She decided to stop and wait for the others.


    She had been correct. As she saw three people and a black Volga emerging from the woods.


    She continued onward from some distance finally stopping again in the middle of a circle made of metal plates of different sizes which extended out from the middle like a halo of the Sun.


    ¡°What is that?¡± Maris asked, keeling to take a closer look at the plates.


    ¡°Launch anchor for the SS4 ballistic missile. And that thing over there.¡± She pointed at a hill not far from them. ¡°Is a pantsir. Warhead storage building.¡±


    ¡°So where¡¯s the lake?¡± Carl asked, having reached them and now pushed rainwater out of his hair.


    Aliis said nothing, only gazed at the young man who had asked the question. There was nobody to answer his question, at least she thought so, as Aliis was now heading towards the warhead storage.


    Mariann looked at the forest in the distance, which due to the rain was no behind that same gray shear curtain which partly melted together the forest and the sky. Marco however whose job was to bring the car along still looked longingly back towards it. Outside it the rain falling on metal was barely audible, but this was mostly due to the heavy gray noise the downpour was making all around them. He did not like the rain, rain was wet, and cold. He felt like getting back in the car and waiting it out. But for some reason, others did not mind the rain so he also tried his best to follow suit.


    ¡°The lake?¡± Mariann asked, as a complete surprise to Aliis. ¡°The lake is within yourself, we only came on the bank of it..¡±


    She closed her eyes, still standing facing the derelict lands and the fields beyond it. She then started to look around, as if looking for something, finally noticing the metal tower above the trees.


    Aliis was also looking at it, almost knowing the thoughts in the head of that girl in black. Those same thoughts she had expressed previously in the car. Despite that, she felt that there was no point in repeating the story about trying to climb it being a bad idea. But one thing was certain: she had been here before. This tower made her remember everything that had happened here. And that long pillar stretching out of the tower horizontally about a fourth of the way down from the top was an especially painful reminder. She started walking after Maris towards shelter from the rain.


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry, but now, even I¡¯m not understanding you.¡± Marco said.


    ¡°You¡¯ll see.¡± Mariann did not turn herself towards the people. ¡°We need that emotionally frail girl...¡±


    ¡°Aliis?¡±


    The girl named stopped and turned towards people, focusing again on their conversation.


    ¡°Yes. She¡¯s the only one who can lead us underground.¡±


    She retreated a couple of steps as if she was standing before an invisible wall and then turned to stand with her side towards the other people.


    ¡°But you must excuse me now, as the tower is calling out to me.¡±


    Aliis started walking again, trying to make sense of what Mariann meant by her words. Was that merely finding a physical entrance, or did it include something else as well. Like navigating the tunnels and then finally exiting into some other place. Sure, she knew the place one could access the underground parts. But that was all. And that also reminded her of her boyfriend, that cherry red bike and their unbelievable night in that shelter that she had still not gotten to. Despite the rain, she could still sort of hear the conversation.


    ¡°This is quite a stupid activity.¡± Carl muttered, ¡°chasing ghosts.¡±


    However since there was nobody who could or even wanted to reply to him, he too started walking after Aliis, although his attention was grabbed by Marco running after Mariann who has heading towards the black steel tower.

 C - Journey to South VII-IX

    VII


    The girl in black walked slowly through uncountable layers of rain curtains. Traversing layer after layer of rain. Water was in her hair and clothes, even on her skin, only her boots were still dry. However she did not care. It wasn¡¯t important, it had no relevance to her. During the rain the whole world was more beautiful. More beautiful and more mysterious, seemingly allowing her to sense everything usually hidden by sunlight. Of course during direct sunlight hours it was also a time for different details and different kind of sensing. And those details too had their own peculiar importance. But the present moment was most important of all. Only during a moment of time could one sense and research. The past one could not, not directly, because any account was always limited. And the future could not be known as it had not yet taken place.


    She knew she was not alone. Marco was following her. Mariann sensed his presence, she knew he was there, probably feeling a similar mysterious need like her, to get away from other people who did not understand the mysteries and the unfathomable intricacies of the world. To enjoy this special feeling somewhere else, along with a person who understood it at least to a similar extent he did. But it could have been about emotion as well, that she aroused some sort of desire, some sort of earthly physical need she did not necessarily want to arouse, something she did not need. She was Mariann, nothing more, nothing less.


    As she continued walking along concrete slabs turned dark gray with age, with each step scattering water in those small puddles in minute depressions, she started to notice other facilities behind the buried control station. The garages with moss-covered roofs of small grasses, old lanterns hanging off bare concrete ceiling, the cables between them long since gone. And of course, the front of the garage complex was full of all sorts of metal and concrete garbage. It probably had not been worth to cut it out, transport and sell it.


    People had a problem. This problem had existed long before her birth. Before the birth of her parents and even the parents of her grandparents. The problem which could be summed up with the words, ¡°if unattended, it is up for grabs.¡± As if a naturally stemming need of people to steal and sell away anything they found on their way, which somebody else had built with heavy effort and hard work. Instead of saving something for future generations, to show to children and youngsters who might not even be aware of something like this being hidden in the forests of our small country. And not just in some forest, almost in all major forests.


    She headed towards the garages, there were also some reinforced concrete ramps, once used for vehicle repairs. Not far stood the tower. From the distance and through the rain, it had seemed dark brown, almost black. Bu now as she stood near it and could see the four tension cables anchoring it to the ground and keeping it upright, it seemed to possess the color of red rust. The tower stood on a large circular concrete field.


    Mariann raised her eyes towards the sky, noticing again rooks flying in it, circling high above her head. Four or five of them seemed to be aware of her plans as the landed on the concrete edge of the garage building. Two of them cleaning themselves, two fighting over something and one simply strutting around. Witnessing this made her smile. She headed into the large truck garages, looking at the deep channels in the floors, again built for repairing the vehicles.


    The girl in black turned around and retreated against the side wall of the garage. She felt her wet clothes stick against her skin. As she pulled her hair aside, she saw the young man approach. He too was not too disturbed by the downpour. Just like the rooks flying above him and following him. As if they too had some task or aim, something to celebrate.


    He stopped before stepping into the garage, standing in the rain right outside it. From the sounds that reached her, she could sense that the birds had landed on the roof of the building. Marco looked at the dry garage and the plants that had found their home now growing it in. Obviously the limited amount of indirect sunlight was enough for them. The girl had no intention to invite him in. This was not her personal space nor was this building much of a building, more like a structure. Despite how Marco might have seen it.


    ¡°There are lots of rooks here.¡± Marco said, raising his face towards the edge of the roof.


    Mariann also took a couple of steps outside into the rain to see what was going on. There were indeed many more birds than just five.


    ¡°Maybe they have a reason to be here.¡± The girl said. ¡°A purpose unknown to us.¡± She did not look away from the birds, but pulled her wet black hair way from her face.


    ¡°A purpose?¡± The young man asked.


    Mariann felt his gaze burning on her body. But she did not turn towards him.


    ¡°Yes. A purpose.¡±


    Somehow she felt content in a way. That the young man understood that she did not mean just any reason. That she did not need to explain him what she had meant. That he himself understood it and had also seen the corresponding signs. And of course that he was able to draw some sort of conclusions from them.


    She stepped past the boy and headed into the wide open. Along a cracked sun-bleached tarmac road filled with industrial and construction garbage. Here too, there was a thin layer of standing water on the tarmac. The road curved around the garages and towards a row of tall concrete pylons which had probably carried electrical wires in the past. This line of pylons ran from the metal tower to the huge earthen mound which according to Aliis had been the control station. Some of the pylons had even fallen onto one another like domino pieces. But the tower was still standing strong, it seemed.


    She headed towards the nearest cable anchor and slapped her hand against the rusty wet steel cable. It was about twice as thick as her wrist and felt absolutely solid, like a rigid beam. Similarly rigid was the wire attached to a massive steel hoop in the ground.


    She turned around to see the young man standing on the other side of the tower examining the opposite anchor and wire. He too glanced back at the clearing where Mariann was looking. She headed to a certain point on the outer edge of the large concrete field, which the rain had painted a darker shade of gray. At the edge of the clearing they could barely see a line of tall concrete posts. Tall posts which carried metal fixtures for lanterns. The border of the inner perimeter.


    ¡°An edge to a world.¡± Marco said, looking down.


    Mariann also looked down. In order to build a military facility here, the Russians had to cut down huge swaths of forest and bring on hundred of truckload of earth to turn a wet muddy forest into something capable of carrying large trucks and tracked armor. This meant that even when compacted, the level of ground in the base was at least 2 to 3 meters above the surrounding forests. And with this rain they could see the water run off the concrete circle like a small waterfall and then down the grassy slope into the forest.


    ¡°Indeed.¡± Mariann agreed.


    ¡°It is pretty surprising that it is so much above the forest floor.¡±


    ¡°Not that.¡± Mariann said. ¡°Look down. The edge of a world. We don¡¯t sense the circular platform sloping towards the edge, but the water does.¡±


    The young man observe the water flowing off the concrete and also smiled, saying ¡°yes.¡±


    She looked at him. Here, his voice was not quiet and hollow. Right now, here he spoke like a regular person. Like he had nothing to hide or cover about his voice. She had not expected that. Unexpected, but not surprising. There was almost nothing left that could surprise her.


    ¡°One aspect of standing at the edge of the world is this edge here, but we make our own world. We build our own borders to it. And if you don¡¯t let yourself to step or jump down there, then it lies beyond your world. As if we¡¯d be standing on the side of the sea in winter, when there is some ice near the land. You stand on the beach and refuse to go on ice, because the ice is something completely different, a world infinitely more dangerous. When you can sense the danger and myriad possibilities of not returning from it.¡±


    Mariann took a deep sigh.


    ¡°Do you sense it? This smell?¡±


    ¡°Yes.¡± He replied. ¡°The rain.¡±


    ¡°No. This is the world.¡±


    This was right. Not just this place, but the act of standing here. Right here, at this very moment, in the rain, them sensing the rain splattering on the concrete and falling everywhere all around them. Sound originating from everywhere rain was. Even her wet clothing and the creeping cold making her judder could not rob her of this particular sensation.


    Mariann stepped to the right, raising one leg across the tension line attache to the ground. She sat on it and lowered her back onto the rigid steel cable. Despite the thickness of it, she could feel it bend slightly under her weight. She looked behind and above her, towards the top of the tower, now sensing an even greater need to reach the top of it. Or at least try. I didn¡¯t matter how much anybody tried to convince her to not do it. A flock of rooks seemed to be sitting on the railing at the top of it. This made her smile, just for a moment.


    She got up and headed towards the tower, eyeing the steel gridwork and the ladder sitting in the middle of it, leading towards the top. And she was standing here, under it, at the beginning of this cheese grater of a tunnel. She could also see the missing rungs on the ladder. And there weren¡¯t just few and far between missing, there were sections several meters long with not a single rung left. That was not necessarily an obstacle, one could also climb up the structure itself.


    ¡°What is forcing you to climb up there?¡± Marco asked from behind her.


    ¡°The rooks.¡± She said, still looking up the ladder inside the structure. ¡°There is something up there. Something I have to see. It cannot be explained, only felt. But it is important, if not for the both of us then at least for me.¡±


    ¡°And if we fall?¡±


    ¡°We won¡¯t. At least I hope we won¡¯t. Everything happens for a reason, not with a direct causal reason but an originating prime reason. What is this prime reason I cannot say. Maybe it is the decision all of us made to leave behind our former lives. Maybe it was the decision to sit into the Volga. Or maybe just a chance due to which the Volga chooses its passengers. And our demise would not help the other people reach their destination in any way.¡±


    To be honest, she didn¡¯t even know what came out of her mouth was correct. It certainly felt correct before she voiced it. But she was certain that there was something important at the top of the tower, something she just had to reach. And with every passing moment, this feeling grew stronger. Carefully she started climbing the ladder. Slowly and without rushing. In her mind¡¯s eye she was already imagining how a rung might end up in her hand as she grabbed it and she falls, back first, to her death. Or the same thing happens when she pushes off a rung with her full weight.


    She knew that the young man was behind her, not immediately, but leaving some space for accidents. Like his fingers being left between two rungs when one of them buckles under her foot.


    She grabbed the next rung and for a moment a cold wave rushed over her body as it detached. Thankfully the next lower one did not. She looked down not to hit Marco and then dropped the loose rung down the interior of the tower.


    ¡°I hope it still remains when we get down.¡±


    ¡°Why?¡±


    ¡°It might be the only true evidence of us even climbing the tower.¡±


    She continued upwards and without much trouble moved from the ladder to the structure of the tower. As an upward trail this was harder to climb, but also much more interesting, never mind safer. Having bypassed the missing section of rungs, she transferred back onto the ladder.


    ¡°You probably have a hunch why I did not want say anything about my secrets when we sat around the fire.¡± Marco said from below.


    ¡°You have your own secrets. You will tell them when you¡¯re ready. Regardless of whether any of us is present to listen to you or not.¡±


    ¡°Indeed. You want to know why I am here and running? I am running from the police.¡±


    ¡°And what did you do for the police to want to capture you?¡± Mariann asked.


    She did not receive an answer. At least at first. For a few moments she held her breath, listening to him breathing, the rooks, the rain. She then continued climbing.


    ¡°Doesn¡¯t matter.¡± He finally said.


    ¡°As you wish. I don¡¯t demand anything, of anybody, secrets least of all.¡±


    Having passed another gap in the ladder she transferred back onto the rungs and immediately lost her footing falling onto the last intact rung before the gap. A total of three rungs fell down the shaft clanking as they hit the framework of the tower and finally reached the ground, She also tore her jacket and perhaps even her skirt. Thankfully not her skin, although her back and butt did hurt.


    ¡°Are you still in once piece?¡± A voice sounded from above.


    ¡°Yes.¡± She replied. Her mind was still reeling from the drop. Her heart was beating a mile a minute and she could barely get a sound out.


    Mariann looked up, at the gap in the ladder which was now even longer. She transferred back onto the structure and diagonal beams of the tower and climbed up towards the young man. Now the situation was reversed. She no longer had somebody below her to fall onto when she slipped, or something buckled. This disconcerted her. And the young man above her was moving with even greater care than she had, putting more trust into himself rather than some mythology.


    ¡°Indeed a religion.¡± She said quietly. ¡°For me. Although one¡¯s believe does not protect one from the world.¡±


    ¡°Did you say something?¡± Marco asked from above.


    ¡°No. Nothing.¡±


    The young man above her climbed out of way to the side and this filled Mariann¡¯s view with both gray light as well as rain falling on her face and in her eyes. The light was blinding, as the for the last 15 minutes her view had been shaded by his figure above her. She continued onward and soon she too emerged into the light beyond the tunnel. Again in heavy gray rain, making her feel cold once again. She looked at the young man admiring the view.


    She too looked around, most of the base below them looked as if on top of her palm. She could see the pantsir, the black Volga on the 8 by 8 grid of massive concrete slabs below, smaller mounds, buildings, workshops, substations, and even overgrown launch sites and hills for mobile radars. In the distance, behind uncountable layers of rain, she saw another tower standing above another forest. Was is part of the same base? Was it another base? Or was it the same tower they were on? The same forest and base, and that one over there was simply an apparition caused by the heavy rains, one of those rare cases when one could glimpse a the mirror realm.


    She turned her attention from her thoughts back onto the forests extending below her in every direction. To the rain curtains shading everything from the forests to the distance to the ground and everything on the ground in gray tones.


    She turned around and sat on the railing, looking at the young man.


    ¡°I think you have other emotional skeletons besides being on the run from the police.¡± Mariann said.


    Starting a conversation like this still felt unnatural to her.


    ¡°What kind are you thinking of?¡± Marco asked, getting closer to the girl, his voice carried that old familiar quiet tone.


    ¡°It would seem you find me attractive.¡±


    ¡°It is possible.¡± Marco said. ¡°You are a unique kind of person, even compared to the others.¡±


    ¡°My uniqueness is only a phantasm.¡± Mariann replied. ¡°There are other, much more interesting people.¡±


    She mover almost he whole body weight onto the rusty railing, crossed her legs and then felt herself instantly accelerate downwards. And then it stopped. Marco had had grabbed her by the front of her jacket, pulling her back onto the top of the tower. She instinctively grabbed Marco and pulled herself close to him. Her heart was again beating a mile a minute and she was breathing heavily. That same cold wave she had felt due to the rungs breaking, still lingered in her gut. Slowly and with deep breaths, her heart started to calm down. However because of that she now felt another heart not being calm at all. His heart.


    She pulled away from him, but still kept to an arms reach, should she fall again.


    ¡°Do you know why I am running from the police?¡± Marco asked. ¡°They are looking for me because the night before ending up on the side of the road, I took an axe and planted it into my stepdad¡¯s head. After I was drunk and he was drunk and our little conversation turned into a fight about mom¡¯s death and we started blaming each other.¡±


    Mariann listened to it with a disinterested look in her eyes. Once again everything felt calm around her.


    ¡°I managed to axe him before he managed to discharge a shotgun at me. I consider it self-defense, but who would believe that.¡±


    ¡°I would.¡± Mariann said. ¡°It is a matter of being honest. I also thank you for not letting me fall to my death.¡±


    ¡°There is no free will.¡± Marco said. ¡°That¡¯s what you said. Thus it might not be me you should be thanking for saving your life. Maybe that too is the deed of the car.¡±


    ¡°Unfortunately we may never know it. Would you keep what happened here between us?¡±


    ¡°If you are willing to do the same regarding my reasons.¡± Marco said.


    ¡°Not an issue.¡±


    Mariann looked down once more and again pushed her wet hair out of her face. Volga which had stood quietly on the concrete chopper field was now moving towards the pantsir.


    ¡°Volga¡¯s moving.¡±


    ¡°Maybe they are bringing it under a cover from the rain. Weren¡¯t we supposed to stay here for a while?¡±


    ¡°True.¡± She said.


    ¡°It seems Carl found something.¡± Marco said, glancing down the other side of the platform on top of the tower.


    Mariann also looked down that side. At the edge of the clearing there was a small hill. Carl had climbed atop it and had managed to fall through with one of his legs now stuck in the ground. Most likely he had not noticed this wile exploring, but the hill had a clear opening to within it. Maybe even underground.


    ¡°I think that is the sign I originally came here for. That thing that was burning inside me. Let¡¯s go down.¡±


    With these worlds, she approached the ladder in the middle of the tower and before starting on her way down, brought her fingers to her nose to sniff the smell of wet rust from her fingers.


    VIII


    ¡°I remember tens of times.¡± A sad female voice echoed under the vaults of reinforced concrete. ¡°When we stood in hangars like this. Me, him and his bike. Hiding from the scorching sun, cold rain or snow and sleet. Or perhaps even to hide into some cave from the blistering wind.¡±


    ¡°It would be nice to drive a car inside this place. And then build a fire.¡± Another female voice with no sadness in it said. ¡°A perfect place for spending the night.¡±


    ¡°I think it is already coming.¡± The first one replied.


    Maris observed the black Volga rolling towards them with a low rumble. The sound of the engine echoed back from all the concrete surfaces around them. It was turned diagonally to shelter them from the winds and finally stopped. Silence again fell under the graffiti-covered vaults and tens of tons of earth and even trees growing above these arches.


    Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    The driver¡¯s door opened and Carl stepped out. He then jumped and slid over the hood of the car and opened the front passenger door while muttering to himself.


    ¡°What going on with you now?¡± Maris asked.


    ¡°I need to know how much exactly has this car been modified.¡± Carl said. ¡°I have driven a Chaika, I know what sound it should be making.¡±


    ¡°Hey, didn¡¯t you think before that it was only about a different exhaust or something else minor in technology?¡±


    She looked on as Carl dove into the car and then a muffled click sounded out which popped the hood a few centimeters upwards.¡±


    ¡°I did think so.¡± He straightened up and shut the car door. ¡°But to be behind the wheel myself is something completely different from riding along.¡±


    Maris got closer to the front of the car, leaving the young man plenty of room to move around the car. She glanced to her side noticing Aliis also approaching with an unsteady gait, dragging her left leg, trying to use it as little as possible. Despite her curiosity she swallowed her urge to ask.


    Carl lifted the hood but instead of supporting it with the iron bar, he kept weighing it in his hand.


    ¡°Well, this is definitely not right.¡± He said while in thought.


    ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°Come. Try it.¡± Carl said, beckoning them closer.


    Maris stepped closer and grabbed the hood. She moved it up and down and finally used her little finger to effortlessly keep it up.


    ¡°It is quite light, just like the door or the trunk lid.¡±


    ¡°Exactly.¡± He finally set the metal support rod under it. ¡°I think it is made of aluminium, and not steel like it it supposed to. Just like the doors and the trunk lid. And this engine room is also not what a Volga¡¯s or even KGB Volga¡¯s engine room should look like.¡±


    Maris looked at the big pile of metal shoehorned into the engine bay, topped with a large circular pan-like thing and covered with all sorts of wires and hoses.


    ¡°Now this is an engine!¡± Carl exclaimed.


    ¡°Some sports car engine laden with electronics?¡± Maris asked.


    ¡°Nope.¡± Carl laughed. ¡°See, there¡¯s a carburetor on top of it.¡± He knocked onto the big round chrome pan on top of the engine. ¡°This is most definitely an American engine. A big V8, although I cannot tell which company and what era. What I can tell is that it is definitely way bigger and way more powerful than the 5.5 liter off Chaika.¡±


    ¡°Maybe there¡¯s more info on the title.¡± Maris said.


    ¡°Marco has it.¡± Carl shut the hood. ¡°And he¡¯s somewhere with that satanic.¡±


    ¡°Not anymore.¡±


    Maris flinched, hearing new voice echo under the concrete vaults. She turned to look at Mariann. Despite the pleased tone in her voice, her face still reflected no emotion.


    ¡°Were back.¡± The girl in black continued.


    Maris still could not understand how a face like that could accompany a voice like this.


    ¡°From atop the tower.¡± She finished.


    ¡°You succeeded?¡± Aliis asked, coming closer.


    Mariann raised her hand and then let go. From her fingers dropped the five or six broken rungs of the steel ladder.


    ¡°Nothing difficult, if you opt to climb the framework. I cannot recommend the ladder.¡±


    Maris looked at the few rungs Mariann had dropped on the ground. She then turned around and headed towards the back end of the vaulted sections of reinforced concrete. There was a small doorway there, at some time in the past there was probably a metal door and door frame in the doorway but not anymore, it was knocked out and sold for scrap a long time ago. She kept listening to her own steps.


    ¡°Beautiful, isn¡¯t it?¡± Mariann asked. ¡°Voice of the world, your own voice. Voiceless and yet audible.¡±


    ¡°Do you have to be here?¡± Maris asked, heading back towards the rear end of the large tunnel.


    ¡°I understand you found something?¡± Mariann asked, looking at Carl.


    ¡°Yes. This car does not have an engine off a Chaika.¡± Carl said. ¡°Instead it is some American unit.¡±


    ¡°Not that. When you went on top of that hill for a smoke.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ve never gone anywhere. The only thing I did was to bring the car under the cover of this garage here.¡±


    ¡°We saw that.¡± Marco said. ¡°But we also saw you on top of the hill, pulling your leg out of a hole you stumbled into.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know what you saw, but it was not me at that place. ¡°Carl said, trying to defend himself. ¡°Those two.¡± He pointed at Maris and Aliis. ¡°Can verify it.¡±


    ¡°So it wasn¡¯t you?¡± The girl in black asked again.


    She then fell silent and a smile appeared on her face. For Maris this was the first time to see any kind of smile on Mariann¡¯s face. And then it was the latter¡¯s turn to walk away towards the back of the warhead storage tunnel.


    Maris looked at her walking, with her head fallen on her chest, slowly setting one foot in front of the other. Then, from the movement of her hair, she could discern that she raised her head. Mariann then turned around to look at the others, raising her hand to her sides in the shape of a T.


    ¡°That was the sign.¡± A small drop of amusement had appeared in her otherwise emotionless voice. ¡°That was the reason to climb the tower. Up high, everything can be seen better, even that which is usually unseeable.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s that satanic talking about now?¡± Carl asked. ¡°Why can¡¯t she ever tell things straight? Why does she always have to circle around the point and bring in mystical language?¡±


    ¡°She is saying it as straight as possible.¡± Marco said. ¡°If she tried to put it even more straight then she would be silent. You¡¯re simply not getting it, the world which she is in.¡±


    Maris kept looking at the black Volga. A rook flew into the tunnel from outside and landed on the hood of the car. It made a couple of steps while regarding the people with its black eyes. Maris wished for this to continue, that the bird would stay silent and she herself would be the only person to witness it. To see this something that could not be sensed, the recognition of which made the stories of that girl in black seem sound and logical even. She was not trying to say that she understood it all, rather the stories sounded more reasonable and not as mystical as before.


    ¡°Well what is her world then like?¡±


    To Maris it wasn¡¯t even important any more whether Carl really asked this or she only imagined him asking that, the answer was already forming itself on her lips.


    ¡°Like this.¡±


    The rook cried out at Maris¡¯s words and she could then hear wing beats growing ever more distant.


    ¡°Meaning, if you did not see me there, who did you see?¡±


    ¡°Nobody.¡± Marco said. ¡°There was nobody there.¡±


    ¡°Wait, so did you see anybody there or did you not?¡± Carl continued asking.


    ¡°We did see.¡± Mariann¡¯s low voice echoed under the ached ceiling. ¡°We saw nobody. We saw no one. That not anybody was there for us to notice them. That we would notice the place he was at, because that place is important. That¡¯s where our journey begins. Why that nobody looked like Carl, I think cannot be explained. Maybe it was a just an incidental recognition on our part. Or maybe not. But in any case it was a sign.¡±


    The girl in black fell silent and turned once more, kicking small pieces of concrete away with her boots.


    ¡°We should build a fire here.¡±


    ¡°Okay, I will no longer even try to understand what that madwoman is saying.¡± Carl spoke.


    He hit the air with his palm and tuned back towards the Volga.


    ¡°Hey, Marco,¡± he said. ¡°Give me the title, I want to see what the hell kind of engine this car has.¡±


    Maris looked on as Marco produced a wallet from the pocket of his jeans and pulled out a green piece of paper. He handed it to Carl without paying much attention to it himself.


    ¡°Wow, this fucking thing has been built properly!¡± Car said loudly.


    ¡°What do you mean?¡± Maris stepped closer, wishing to also be involved with the secret knowledge recorded on that suddenly so mystical piece of paper.


    ¡°According to this, it has a modern seven liter aluminium Chevrolet V8. Producing about 500 horsepower and about 700Nm of torque. That carburetor air cleaner under the hood is just to throw people off. The power is routed to the rear through a 4-speed automatic transmission. The rear has also been built. Independent rear suspension from some other car, aluminum drive shaft and an lsd. No wonder it is this stable at high speeds and has no trouble with cheap gas.


    ¡°That little field on the title for modifications is essentially filled. Just about the only thing that is still original about it is the interior and the general shape of the body, glass probably as well. Everything else is new, modified or improved. It would be sorry to give up on such a beast.¡±


    ¡°You can¡¯t get it for yourself.¡± Mariann said. ¡°And you know it. Don¡¯t even try it, the result will remain unchanged.¡±


    ¡°You say a lot of things, bust most of them sound like you yourself don¡¯t really believe them.¡± Carl said.


    ¡°Yet most of what I say hits the mark.¡± The girl in black said. ¡°Doesn¡¯t that not show that there is something very wrong with your world?¡±


    ¡°My boyfriend always said that as well when we came here, or when he came here alone. That when he was here, he could always see me in the distance, but he would never be able to catch up to me. Sometimes when I was away, usually when I was at school in the countryside, he always came here because here he could always see and feel me present. Possibly even behind that same rain raging outside.¡±


    ¡°Does it always rain here?¡± Carl grumbled.


    ¡°No, not always. During summertime it is very beautiful here.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s not the same.¡± Mariann said.


    ¡°It may be the same place geographically, but it is not the same place.¡± She continued. ¡°The world you would be in during the summer and this place here are two completely different places. I don¡¯t mean it necessarily in time, nor in ideas. If you come here in the summer, then you are not coming here, where we are. This place, as it is right now, exists only for us, only right now. At one point you will understand what I mean.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m gonna go for the firewood.¡± Carl said.


    ¡°We¡¯re going below before that.¡± Mariann said, now walking back towards the group with a quick pace.


    ¡°I don¡¯t care about the base, I¡¯m going for the firewood.¡±


    ¡°I recommend you come below with us.¡± Mariann said. ¡°This would be better. You too could get done the thing you came here for.¡±


    ¡°At least taggle along and make your decision there.¡± Maris said.


    ¡°Okay then.¡± Carl said. ¡°Let¡¯s see where is that hole of yours.¡±


    ¡°Aliis?¡± Mariann¡¯s voice echoed under the vaults.


    ¡°Yes?¡±


    ¡°You know this base the best. Show us, where that place is.¡±


    Maris looked on as Aliis passed them all and following her, all of them headed out, out from the cover and into cold rain still raging outside. It got pretty clear that if there had been any dry places left on her clothing before then there would be no chances for that this time. She sighed and also stepped into the gray curtains of rain still covering the whole of the base.


    This was part of the base they had not yet gone to. A part she hadn¡¯t even noticed. A small trail of concrete slabs obscured by grass growing on it. It led aside, to some former wildlands, now home to young birches and other deciduous trees. This trail crossed it and headed towards a small hill not far. And despite the rain and the wet and everything else, all she felt right now was a desire to lay down in the wet grass and stare at the gray sky.


    She looked down. Here things were different, she could still spot patches of gray concrete under the grass. And these patches of concrete often had rusty loops rising out of them. This world was weird.


    Aliis stopped. The people following also stopped. The stood together. In the rain. Next to a concrete wall that was not visible just a few steps behind, so well was it hidden behind the ridge of the small hill. Here stood broken and moss-covered stairs downward, towards a massive rusty iron door. Its sheer mass was about the only reason why nobody had yet managed to pry it out of here and sell it for scrap. As soon as the noise of the rain quieted even slightly, one could hear water gently running and dripping behind the door.


    ¡°Please. Let¡¯s go down. The lake is down there.¡± The girl in black said. ¡°The lake is within you and around you, but accessing it is more difficult.¡±


    ¡°How can the lake be down there?¡± Carl asked in a doubtful voice.


    ¡°An underground lake?¡± Maris asked.


    Mariann turned around and, descended the stairs, slowly. She grabbed the black circular hole in the door where a wheel or a lock had once been and pulled it, opening the door with the sounds of concrete and steel scratching. This allowed diffused light to get in, further down the stairs, onto dry concrete with some dried leaves. She turned around to look at everybody else.


    ¡°What happens if we don¡¯t do it?¡± Aliis asked.


    ¡°Nothing.¡± An emotionless voice replied. ¡°It is your own decision whether to believe in it or not. In one case you miss something unbelievably liberating, in the other case you will be missing a couple of steps into a dark damp and foul concrete tunnel. The choice is yours.¡±


    The people continued downstairs, keeping to either side of the tunnel to obscure as little of the rainy daylight as possible. Despite that, they still advanced slowly to not stumble on rocks or pipe segments or something else. Towards the sound of the running water. Slowly, their eyes got used to the darkness, although this was of not much use as they soon stepped out of the last bit of light flowing in through the doorway.


    The air was again cut by a noise of steel rubbing against concrete. Maris turned to see Mariann close the door outside.


    ¡°Why?¡± She asked.


    ¡°Just being polite.¡± The girl in black said. ¡°Carl did not want to participate and thus he has no need to see what is going to be transpiring here. But I am also being polite to this place.¡±


    Only now did Maris realize there were only four of them. She looked behind her to see a small circle of light drawn on dry concrete not far from the door. And of course the door itself, through which this circle of light was cast. And behind it was another member of their group who had decided to stay aside. This wasn¡¯t right. All of them should have come down here.


    ¡°There is something ahead.¡± Aliis said. ¡°Some light. Perhaps a broken ceiling.¡±


    ¡°How far?¡± Marco asked.


    ¡°Don¡¯t know. Twenty, thirty meters at most.¡±


    With a quickened pace Maris rushed after the others, trying not to lose sight of them. This was not the best place to get lost in, especially if she put some more thought into what Mariann had been telling them the last couple of days. How their own mind could easily scare the shit out of them.


    ¡°Is there any water there?¡± Maris asked, slowly moving forward, unable to tell who was in front of her.


    ¡°Nope, this is just a corner.¡± Sad voice of Aliis sounded out. ¡°There¡¯s a hole in the ceiling right in the middle of the hole.¡±


    ¡°Does this not remind you of the movie Stalker?¡± Mariann asked. ¡°Same kind of road, in the same kind of hallway.¡±


    ¡°I doubt there¡¯s an iron door at the end of it, like I doubt that Aliis has a revolver.¡±


    ¡°There¡¯s another corner here.¡± The same voice continued. ¡°And behind this corner a couple of dozen meters ahead there is a staircase or a ladder or something.¡±


    Maris could now also see the light falling through a crack in the ceiling in the corner of the corridor. She also managed to see the face of the taller person ahead of her. It was Mariann, A step later she again disappeared into the dark, her existence and realness only revealed by her breathing and voice. She turned around a corner and then stumbled into something heavy. It seemed to be a brick.


    ¡°Why did you not say there¡¯s a brick here?¡± She asked.


    ¡°Was there?¡± Marco asked.


    ¡°I was hoping you too would stumble on it.¡± Mariann said.


    ¡°Well thank you very much.¡± Maris said.


    She turned around the next corner, this time not being able see a glimpse of the person ahead of her.


    ¡°Where are those stairs going?¡± Mariann asked. ¡°Up or down?¡±


    ¡°As if they could go anywhere but down.¡± Maris muttered.


    ¡°This is the Zone.¡± Mariann said, stopping Maris from stumbling into her. ¡°One can go anywhere in here.¡±


    ¡°Downward.¡± A voice said far ahead of them.


    A sensation that somebody was nearby her disappeared and Maris could continue walking. Going by hand she finally found the staircase and descended into a great big hall. At one wall of that hall, Mariann had already managed to ignite an oil lamp. She looked around. This was an expansive room full of small support beams. In the middle of the hall there was the staircase they had descended on. On every wall of the hall there was at least one hallway into darkness.


    ¡°This is the right place. This is where we are. This is where we are supposed to be.¡± Mariann said.


    IX


    ¡°Why are we here?¡±


    Aliis turned around, but instead of seeing Mariann, she saw a girl in blue denim with her clothes soaked with water.


    ¡°As I said, this is the place where everything really began.¡± Mariann looked around.


    Aliis too examined the walls. To her, the walls told more than they may have told the others there. All that her beloved had shown and explained her. Had tried to make her understand. Back then, all of that seemed so complicated, boring and it had been almost impossible to grasp all that shit back then, illuminated by a small flashlight. And now she was here, with knowledge others would have difficulty grasping.


    ¡°This is where the weapons were kept.¡± She suddenly said, turning around.


    ¡°Weapons?¡± Maris asked.


    ¡°Yes.¡± Aliis eyes Mariann as she said that.


    She looked at her, leaning against the wall, rubbing her arms and legs against it like a cat trying to leave her scent.


    ¡°What are you doing?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m thinking.¡± Mariann said. ¡°Do you know where these corridors leave to?¡±


    ¡°No.¡± Aliis said. Se fell silent, trying to remember things from her many subterranean lessons. ¡°I don¡¯t know, that part I have forgotten.¡±


    ¡°Very good.¡± Mariann said, but kept staring at hear with a strange gaze.


    ¡°From this moment onward, we are all equal.¡± Allis looked at the girl in black push away from the wall and walk towards the center of the large room. ¡°Each of us gets one path. You cannot turn back and in reality there would be no point to it. Nobody gets a lantern. And nobody can go together. To explain it in more precise terms, here is a way to the reasons why we are here. Each of us has their own reason, their own circumstances. To share that later is up to each of you to decide. There is no point in turning back because you will end up in the corridor anyway. You can get out of here only by meeting your past. See you on the other side of the Lake of Forgetfulness.¡±


    With these words, Mariann picked the hallway behind her and disappeared into the darkness. Aliis stayed to gaze at the dark tunnel for a few moments, only then realizing that the girl in black had disappeared into her prime element ¨C darkness. There was nothing more they could do here. Despite the three of them being together, each of them was now alone. Each of them had to face their own corridor, their own darkness.


    She still remained standing there, now looking how Marco disappeared into another dark tunnel. She decided not to wait any more. Instead she turned around and walking into a dark tunnel behind her. With a brave quick pace and her skirt flowing. As it was supposed to take place according to Mariann. She just went, listening to the silence, her own steps, small rocks and how her skirt rustled as it rubbed against the concrete floor. Having walked down the hallway for some time, she decided to look back.


    Emptiness. Total nothingness. Both ahead and behind her. She was used to it being dark, she did not need sight to walk here, she just needed to go. She rested her hand against the wall for a moment, just to be sure it was still there. Yes, it still was. But there was something else, a cable, it seemed like regular electricity cable, two wires, no ground. And there was yet something else. A switch, something she could press. She slid her fingers over the panel and pushed the top button. Somewhere in the distance a relay engaged with a dull thump and a series of dim yellow incandescent bulbs under heavy glass domes turned on, illuminating the whole hallway and it turning right at the end. There seemed to be one light every ten meters or so.


    The light was dim but at this moment, even that was too much for her eyes. She peeled her eyes and rushed along the hallway. She reached the end of it, turned right and stopped. The hallway ended with a ladder raising upwards. This immediately reminded her the metal bars Mariann had dropped into the garage, as proof of climbing the tower. Despite that unpleasant memory, she grabbed the ladder and started ascending. She found herself in darkness again, there was also cool fresh breeze. Had she seen anything at all she would have been convinced that she was outside. Or at least in some well ventilated place. She got up and continued in a single direction, finding a door. She opened it and then found herself in a brightly lit toilet.


    Everything was still silent, as if she had lost her ability to hear. She knocked on the tiled walls. This produced a slight sound, maybe even louder than she had expected it to be. She lowered her hand and looked at it. Black sleeve, much longer than seemed right, also black not too long nails on her pale fingers.


    She rushed towards a large mirror and then froze in place. There was nothing left of her own appearance. It was all gone and she looked like Mariann. She was Mariann. A strange feeling welled up within her. She was herself, Aliis and yet she was Mariann. Had Mariann also been present at that time? She could not remember and thus the question remained unanswered. She pushed herself away from the mirror and then walked back towards the door. She kicked it open and found herself in an empty gas station convenience store. There was no attendant present. It was lit, well-stocked and seemingly open. She walked around the front counter and headed outside, hearing loud high-pitched engine noise.


    As soon as the door to the gas station store closed behind her, she saw a young man and a girl riding their bike round the gas station, circling it many times, seemingly still at rational speeds. A few laps later, the young man slowed down and they stopped quite near Aliis. She could see how the young man and the long-haired girl in blue denim jeans headed towards her, although she was pretty sure they were instead heading towards the store behind her.


    ¡°We¡¯ll try it at 100kph next.¡± The young man said with excitement.


    ¡°Oh yes.¡± The girl replied in a similar tone.


    ¡°That¡¯s some idiocy.¡± Aliis said in Mariann¡¯s voice, this bothered her. ¡°Maybe you¡¯re not thinking that much in advance but should some other vehicle turn into the gas station, they¡¯re gonna have to clean you off the pavement with a broom and a shovel.¡±


    ¡°Thanks for worrying, but that¡¯s not gonna happen.¡± The young man said.


    Aliis walked away, still hearing the young man muttering the word ¡°idiot¡± under his breath.


    The reality was different, different for that young man. Parallel temporalities, options. And this gas station was a border where all those things intersected. This was the place for one to decide whether to cross over to one side or the other. Whether to choose life or death. In the end it was but a blind choice, people could only foreknow the possibilities. Aliis shook her head, if indeed it was still her head, trying to get rid of the Mariannian ideas in it. She was not the girl in black, despite her appearance and clothing.


    She followed to people into the gas station store. It was a compulsion to follow them in, these people were important, at least in this place. They were people. Regarding the rest she could not be so sure, the rest just¡­ were. Not people and yet not something unbeing, they just were. Their idea of a dinner was some domestic energy drink unfit for human consumption that the vodka factory in the center of the country produced. And then shipped into the stores either in small cans or large plastic bottles.


    Aliis kept one isle away from them, eyeing the face that looked back at her on the glass door of the beer refrigerator. Who was not the person she was. She was something else, something different. She did not want to be the one who stood here right now. The girl in black turned away, now noticing a puddle of milk which had appeared under the adjacent door. The girl and the boy were probably in the next aisle, weighing a one and a half liter cherry red plastic bottle in their hands and talking. Quietly, with no significant thought or emotion, just a quite exchange of words as if they knew she was standing here frozen, eyes towards the shelves.


    She raised her eyes. There was parabolic mirror in the corner, allowing either a camera or a person to keep an eye on the whole store at once. According to the mirror, the girl and the young man were no longer in the next aisle. She turned around the corner to be sure that the mirror had not been lying to her. Indeed, there was only an empty aisle lined with plastic bottles on shelves. Them not being located on these spatial coordinates made it seem as if the space itself had a fault to it. She then heard the till popping open and being pushed closed a little later.


    Now she too headed towards the checkout, she heard the front door open, as the bell on the door gave a distinctive ring. And then a different ring when the door fell closed again. She had told them everything she knew or could say. Why then did she still feel like something had been left undone? She walked away from the abandoned checkout towards the door. She pushed it open and stepped outside, watching as several bikes sped past the gas station at high speed. Followed by several sports cars.


    ¡°They¡¯re always speeding on this road.¡±


    Aliis was startled by the young gas station attendant who was wiping dirty oil off his hands.


    ¡°It¡¯s a mild turn and you can see far ahead. Sometimes the police set up their ambush here as well, chasing down anybody doing more than two hundred.¡±


    She again heard the bell to the door and only now did she think to turn her attention back to the people by the motorbike, to the young man and the girl sharing a bag full of pastries and a big bottle of energy drink. As she kept looking at them she also started to remember why she herself was wandering the gas station like a homeless hitchhiker. She remembered the truck, the hairy stinging driver and lots of other moments from the ride up here. Also flashes of throwing herself into the road side ditch again and again to not be run over by passing vehicles.


    She walked back and forth between the fuel pumps. Looking at the prices, the scratched up fuel pumps and screens with plastic protective covers still barely transparent. Still keeping watch over the young people by the wine-colored bike talking and eating. The two of them had almost finished off the bag of pies they had bought. The bottle with the remainder of the contents would probably be stuffed into the saddle bag on the bike. Metal shining in the sun. Even from the distance she could see that the cherry red surface was full of shallower and deeper scratches and other damage.


    She walked to the large windows of the store, leaned against the glass and then slid down to sit on the ground. She now also remembered the reason she was here, and also that it was something she should have arrived to had she given it some logical thought. She was waiting for a person and a vehicle which had room for her, to take her away from this place. For her and the clothes on her back. The people with the motorbike seemed to be ready to go, Aliis still had nothing left to say to them.


    Aliis? Or was she Mariann? Or was she really neither, just a girl in black. Somebody that everybody felt about like she was a stranger and yet somehow familiar to them. That there was no particular name as such, nothing concrete, just a description, short and to the point because it made everything much simpler.


    Now the feeling that something was about to happen was much stronger. The feeling which had compelled her to follow these people, talk to them and observe them. This overflowing feeling that something bad was going to happen that somebody would die and the color black had some part to play in it. That this was her last chance to go and tell them that what was about to happen could also not. She was afraid of this feeling, just as she was afraid of going and talking to them. As maybe that would be the cause to bring forth the event she was so desperately trying to avoid, just sitting here.


    She could hear the machine start to life again. How the springs creaked as the people got on it. And then how due to the exertion of the young man, the contact patch of the rear tire heated up and quickly filled the whole gas station with tire smoke, probably leaving several millimeters of the tire tread onto the pavement. And again the crazy riding began, sharp figure eights around the gas station pumps and also further away. With ever increasing speeds. The girl in black could hear how the machine between the young man¡¯s legs screamed as if Old Granpa had blown life into it and given it the soul of a pig. She could also hear the rear wheel slip as the driver of the bike was inches from the moment of the pavement peeling cloth, skin, flesh and even part of a bone off his knee.


    Finally, the young man managed to achieve what he had promised the girl. When the roars of the engine and the tire screeches collapsed into one and the same, when speeds grew so high that keeping the vehicle under control had become a real problem. At least it seemed to her that way.


    And there was another noise a low-pitched rumble she could not tie to the bike nor anything else, but she knew it had to originate from a vehicle. And then, after the bike had passed her again with deafening engine noise, a black Volga turned into the gas station. A GAZ-21. It passed her with a low rumble of a V8 engine and then stopped. Suddenly that cherry red bike appeared out of nowhere it dodged the black car with impeccable paint glistening in sun and after making a wide arch sliding on the ground, it hit the wall of a warehouse next to the gas station.


    Not even noticing it herself, she had gotten up from her position leaning against the store window and walked to the nose of the black Volga. She kept looking at the pile of broken metal and flesh which had appeared at the wall of the old warehouse. The people who had emerged from the Volga were staring at it as well. Even the tall slim guy with long hair wearing black denim, a black sweater and combat boots.


    ¡°You knew this would happen, didn¡¯t you?¡± the young man asked, looking at the girl in black. ¡°Come with us. You know it needs to happen. You know you must come.¡±


    Aliis was standing alone in a hallway, peering into the large dark chamber in front of her. She could see nothing. Even the stairs descending into the darkness were something to perceive with one¡¯s imagination rather than sight. She took a look behind her and saw a bright circle of light on the floor. She then turned back to continue staring into the dark. This darkness was mysterious, it felt as if it demanded that she step into it, demanded her inside. As if something within it was rushing towards her but at the same time never getting any closer to be revealed. And then a strange feeling conquered all her thought again. Not being able to tell whether she was Aliis or Mariann. Or the girl in black.


    And in that case, who was the girl in black anyway? Was she one of the two of them or somebody third? An unknown being Mariann had not yet told them of but whose existence was clear as day. She retreated from the darkness and turned around to head towards the small circle of light. An exit, finally. Se wanted to get out of here, she needed fresh air, reality, clarity, that she was still her and not somebody else, whoever that else was, whether Mariann or Aliis. Or Mariann. Or Aliis. Or both at the same time. Or the girl in black.


    She walked faster and finally stepped into the circle of light. She looked at her dark skirt. This gave her no hope, it only deepened the controversy, confusion of thought, the disturbing world. The confusion about her own personality and being. A confusion which did not allow her to know who she was. This annoyed her to such a degree that she wanted to find a sharp pointed steel rebar poured into the wall and use it to beat clarity into her mind and the lack of clarity out of it. Or to put it in a simpler way to beat either Aliis or Mariann out of it.


    She pulled the door open and squinted her eyes as the daylight hit her. She felt the post-rain cool of the night and the sharp sweetness of cigarette smoke in her nostrils. And finally a voice that brought clarity and calm to her mind.


    ¡°Are you pleased with what you saw?¡± an emotionless voice which could only belong to Mariann asked.

 C - Journey to South X-XI

    X


    A young man was sitting by the fire. Not alone any more, although for the last few hours he had been. Alone, in the dark of night, sitting by the fire, observing the evening becoming night yet again. How a short break in the rain was too much for the world and water started falling again, most definitely accompanied by strong wings howling outside. Rubbing against the sharp edges of the old bomb shelter. Some of it was stopped by the black Volga, now parked perpendicular to the door, covering the doorway. The other side of the car was probably wet by now. But the wind no longer got in, and if it did, then at least it no longer reached them.


    Looking at the other people sitting by the fire, he still had to smile. He remembered the words the Satanic or somebody else had said, that this shelter was like a cave, allowing the fire to warm them better all the while protecting them from the cold, the wind and the rain. In the same way caves had their forebearers.


    Carl¡¯s train of thought was stopped by Mariann.


    ¡°This is a nice fire. It is good to see you found some decent fuel.¡±


    ¡°I did not have to spend much time looking. It was right here in the corner, buried under the bricks, three or four loads of fir and pine mixed up.¡± He replied, gazing at the circle of white brick he had built to make the fire pit.


    ¡°There was.¡± Mariann said quietly.


    Suddenly the girl sitting left of Carl flinched at those words. The one named Aliis.


    ¡°What is is with you?¡± Carl asked in a low voice, hoping for the others not to hear him.


    ¡°Aliis is remembering what she saw.¡± Marian said again, surprising Carl. ¡°Want to talk about it?¡±


    The girl next to Carl shook her head.


    ¡°What went on in there anyway? What were you doing down there for five hours?¡± he asked.


    ¡°We were meeting with the demons of our past.¡± Mariann said. ¡°That¡¯s the simplest way to put it. We met with the part of our past which in our ideas, in the ideas of each of us took place wrong. It took place in a way we were not expecting to see it. We saw it happening again so we could at least for us to put everything in it¡¯s right place, to fix it. You, Carl, did not come down there, you did not have a chance for it.¡±


    ¡°Was the thing that happened down there, real?¡± Aliis asked, this earned her the burning gaze of the young man next to her.


    ¡°As real as you believe it to be. Was it more real than what happened in your memories?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know, what happened down there and my memories are fusing together into one.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s good. That¡¯s how it¡¯s supposed to be. The Lake usually has such an effect on human consciousness.¡±


    ¡°The Lake?¡± Marco asked. ¡°Those were tunnels, weren¡¯t they?¡±


    ¡°Maybe they were for you.¡± Mariann said. ¡°If it is not a secret, what did you see?¡±


    ¡°My mother.¡± Marco said. ¡°My dad and stepdad. The fight between mother and stepdad. Because of me, because of what either of them thought to be right for me. And then dad coming and solving the problem, axe-¡­ I mean driving the stepdad from home. And me finally saying goodbye to both of them before leaving home.¡±


    ¡°Very interesting.¡± Mariann said, trying to force down her smile. ¡°Very interesting indeed.¡±


    ¡°What did you see?¡± Aliis asked.


    ¡°Me?¡± Mariann asked. ¡°I saw a past mistake of mine from somebody else¡¯s point of view. From the perspective of that one person I wished to warn. And I realized that everything I had known back then was purely by chance. And me acting differently would not have changed the final outcome. And yet I managed to fix a mistake I made after my first mistake of not understanding, of not trying to understand. Back when I was younger and a lot less experienced.¡±


    ¡°I saw Tom.¡± Maris said. ¡°Down there. I walked in that cavernous hall and there he was standing. Leaning against a pillar, chewing on a toothpick and ringing the short chains on his wrists.¡±


    ¡°I imagine you had a pleasant conversation.¡± Mariann said.


    ¡°We did. I think I¡¯m still feeling that he¡¯s here. He apologized for leaving. And I learned that I was right in some regard. And he had been right too. He was trying to spare me and there was really no reason to spare me. Not with regards to that, not at that time. But he could not trust me. And honestly, I would not have trusted myself as well.¡±


    She gave a small smile and then laid down the dirty blanked that had been in the trunk of the car.


    ¡°Are you aware that us being here might not be by chance?¡± Mariann suddenly asked, breaking the joyful silence Carl had barely started to appreciate.


    ¡°You already explained that.¡± Carl said in a tired voice. ¡°The car picks out people, drives them and brings them here.¡±


    ¡°No, that is a completely separate thing.¡± Mariann said. ¡°You also explained that.¡± She then grinned. ¡°And also you did not. Right now it is only on a level of a theory but I think that theory has a significant amount of truth to it. We have all once met each other before this. With me and Carl is was a little more noticeable but meetings with the others have always existed in our minds as half-dreamt memories or familiar feelings. Or fallen into forgetfulness from where it will likely never rise again. You have all met each other before. Was in the kindergarten, daycare, at school or somewhere else, whether by chance or by design. And I have met all of you. You may not have known it, I may not have known it. But the car did.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s bullshit.¡± Carl said. ¡°That the same kind of theory pulled from out of thin air that the Southern Forests are the UFO capital of our republic. You and Marco already talked about it, that if enough people keep talking about something then they will believe anything, continue to talk about it, somebody adds something and thus urban legends are born.¡±


    ¡°But urban legends always have some truth to them, do they not?¡± Mariann asked. ¡°No matter how small it is, there is always a basis. Some idea, that generated another idea from which a modern folk tale could arise. However this is not our current topic. We¡¯re not talking about urban legends in general but of the legend we are currently in. Of this car standing right here behind us, which in it¡¯s design is already so mysterious that should we try to penetrate that mystery we would only find lots of questions and even more mystery. It is a mystery that requires no explanation, people have long since ensured that it never would, long since the car became what it currently is.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s still bullshit. This car has been modified a lot, true. But that¡¯s all. There are no other secrets, it is all just tricks and imagination.¡±


    ¡°Maybe.¡± To the chagrin of Carl it seemed she again had lots to say. ¡°You can believe it if it makes you feel better. It certainly would not make me feel better. I cannot see the world in such a simple way. For me there are always hidden designs and systems. Everything that the people are not consciously aware of or cannot notice with their senses or their mind. Or which they don¡¯t want to notice. Everything can be sensed, if one would only make an attempt, even indirectly. I¡¯m of a solid belief that we have met before, whether you also believe it is up to you.¡±


    ¡°There is one other urban legend related to the black car.¡± Maris suddenly said. ¡°Tom once told me. And he reminded he with this visit. He said that every time the car arrives, there is an attendant accompanying the car. Somebody who knows more than the others. Who knows how the car works, what the purpose of it is. How it drives people and there are traditions connected to it. They usually wear black and their knowledge in that area scare or at least disturb all other passengers.¡±


    Carl and all the others directed their gazes towards Mariann who seemed to be profoundly amused by this story.


    ¡°Also, usually the coachman is not aware of his importance or position in the group.¡±


    Still, the gazes were focused on Mariann, observing the fire with a strange grin.


    ¡°What¡¯s so funny?¡± Carl asked. ¡°You¡¯re that coach boy, as Maris is claiming.¡±


    ¡°What is really funny, is that this is claimed by you, somebody who also claims to not believe in supernatural BS, who claims that it is all trickery. You, who refused to come down into the tunnels to waste your time. You are now saying that a relatively incredible and yet in some way logical shard of an urban legend is suddenly as true as that the fire here is hot and burns the wood. Honestly I would not have believed it, not from you. Of course I cannot claim that it untrue. I may not know, likewise Marco might not be able to sense that the car is driving him and none of us may be able to foresee what consequence one or other action may bring.¡±


    ¡°You want to know what I saw?¡± Aliis asked.


    Her voice was quiet but it was very effective at breaking the tension and the argument heating up between Carl and Mariann.


    People fell silent again, now focused on the face of the girl with the long dark dress, illuminated by burning fire. Tears were rolling down her face.


    ¡°I saw that I was back to that gas station where we met. I saw myself be Mariann. I was convinced that I was her. I looked like her, my voice was hers. And I was there a year ago. I saw myself with Dani. I saw myself ride, I saw the accident. I knew in advance that something would happen, yet I did not know that exactly that would happen. I also could do nothing to avoid it happening.¡±


    ¡°Very interesting.¡± Mariann said, she noticed Carl again looking at her. ¡°Do you remember if I was there?¡±


    ¡°No.¡± The sorrowful voice replied. ¡°It keeps repeating in my head but I remember no particulars, only the accident. I can¡¯t remember whether you were there. I cannot remember even whether I was you. But when it ended I had a feeling that I was either you or me or the girl in black. Or part of all three. Also, when it ended, I saw that the car was driven by a slim young man in black.¡±


    ¡°Aren¡¯t Mariann and the girl in black the same thing?¡± Maris asked, her voice drowned out the sorrow of Aliis.


    ¡°Not necessarily.¡± The girl in black replied. ¡°There is a clear distinction. You yourself said that the coachman changes on every trip. And the person in the position may not be aware of it at all. Maybe right now it is me, maybe it is not. With the girl in black it has the common aspect that I am me, Mariann, as a person I am concrete. But a girl or a young man in black is an idea, a role anybody can play. It is also a sign one can apply to anybody, just like Carl demonstrated just a short while ago. But not all people in black necessarily wear black.


    ¡°As an explanation to you, Aliis. You said you were unsure if you were one of the three or part of each? But what if at the moment you were down there, in the dark hallway, you were all three? At the same time? That is possible. It s a strange and disgusting feeling, but a possible one. Especially on the Lake. The Girl in Black is an idea that is not limited to this car. The whole world is filled with mysterious figures like that. And one of them is connected with the phenomenon we are part of at the moment.


    ¡°And at the same time, Carl.¡± She raised her voice as she mentioned his name. ¡°This is one other piece of evidence in support of my theory that all of us have met in some way before, even if we are not aware of it. Carl sold my best friend powdered cement, that is my connection with him. Aliis saw me in the gas station...¡±


    ¡°Were you there?¡± Maris asked.


    Mariann fell silent.


    ¡°I may have been.¡± She said. ¡°Aliis is not insane, although my recommendation and warning back then were stemmed from common reason rather than some feeling that something bad was about to take place. Can I turn back to my previous train of thought?¡±


    Nobody had any objections and silence again fell.


    ¡°So, Aliis saw me in the gas station. In a similar manner I may have met each of you in the past and you likewise may have met each other. One selling something to the other, meeting of gazes on the street. They may not have been dramatic events, but again who knows for sure, certainty like that lies beyond the limits of our perception.¡±


    This last part of Mariann¡¯s sentence caused a wave of cold come over Carl, and he had no explanation why. He tried not to look at her, feeling she might sense it too. The wind was getting stronger again, maybe that was the reason why he felt cold. And the wind howling as it cut against the sharp edges of the building intensified that feeling.


    ¡°Can anybody hear that?¡± Aliis asked.


    Carl now too involuntarily perked up his ears.


    ¡°It is just the wind howling.¡± Marco said.


    ¡°No¡­ it is not.¡± Maris said, eyeing the car and the darkness of the night behind it. ¡°It is not just wind, there is something else as well. Some kind of engine.¡±


    ¡°I hear it too.¡± Carl said and got up, heading for the car, Aliis was already ahead of him.


    As he had thought before, the black Volga parked with it¡¯s side across the entrance protected them from the rain and the wind, because now, standing in front of it, he could feel the cold on his face. Aliis had already disappeared however, into the rain and wind. Carl continued walking, sensing how more and more rain finished it¡¯s journey on his skin and clothes and how the wind was trying to blow him down. Aliis was gone, but the sound persisted, it had even grown slightly louder.


    Higher and lower notes, the high-pitched whine of the engine. Then he noticed a beam of light driving back and forth on a black featureless plane in the distance. It then stopped, starting with a different movement, driving in what could be seen as figure eights. Finally, when his eyes had adjusted to the darkness, he saw the girl standing before her, standing like a pillar of salt and observing the spectacle.


    ¡°It¡¯s Dani, I know it.¡± She said. ¡°It¡¯s him. He¡¯s dead, but it¡¯s still him.¡±


    As if hearing the girl¡¯s words, the light went out and the noise grew stronger and nearer. Only a madman would act like that, Carl thought, riding towards people with no lights and trying to scare them.


    ¡°Get out of the way.¡± Carl said, pulling the arm of the girl. ¡°You do not want to stay in the path of a speeding motorbike. No matter who it its. He¡¯s either a suicidal maniac or somebody unbelievably stupid.¡±


    ¡°It is him.¡± Aliis kept whispering. ¡°I know it!¡±


    The engine sound grew stronger and stronger, the pitch kept climbing higher and higher and Carl felt a strong desire to get back into the cave. The glow of the fire reflecting off the walls was a nice guide in this darkness.


    The source of the deafening sound suddenly passed right by him, with no more than a meter between them. It brought along a wave of air which even managed to dissipate the winds of the storm. And then it started to grow distant again and Carl looked behind him towards the sound, towards the black woods under a dark cloudy sky. The whine of the engine still grew more and more distant until it disappeared into the noises of the rain and wind.


    ¡°Shall we return?¡± Carl asked the girl next to him, whose arm he was still holding.


    He could not see her face, but still sensed that she nodded. With a quick pace they headed back towards the cave that was their home this night.


    The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    ¡°Did you see anything interesting?¡± Mariann asked, giving at least Carl a strong impression that she knew more of what happened than all others combined.


    ¡°Dani!¡± Aliis said, sitting down by the fire. ¡°I saw him! He came to say goodbye!¡±


    ¡°There was some nut.¡± Carl said. ¡°He did some tricks with his motorbike in the distance and then drove right by us very fast and very close by. And then disappeared into the forest.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯d like to see the guy who rides a superbike into a forest.¡± Maris said. ¡°not here, not with any speed.¡±


    ¡°Did you see your beloved?¡± Mariann asked.


    ¡°No. But I know it was him. He loved tricks like that. Not as dangerous as this, but still similar ones.¡±


    ¡°I still believe it was some mad biker.¡± Carl said.


    ¡°If it really was, then you can probably explain how a biker can pass us at 160kph, break the speed down about a hundred meters before the forest but maintain the sound of bike opening up the distance without losing any of the speed it approached and passed with? It was Dani.¡±


    ¡°Maybe it was and maybe it wasn¡¯t.¡± Mariann said. ¡°Carl is claiming something else though. It is also possible for both of you to be wrong. There is an inordinate amount of concrete here, which in turn contains lots of crushed limestone and granite and there¡¯s also bedrock.¡±


    ¡°How is that related to anything?¡± Marco asked, managing to do it before Carl could even form the question in his mind.


    ¡°Well, It could have been an insane biker.¡± Mariann said. ¡°But it could have been a ghost. In the former case the question is how, and in the latter, why. But there is a third way. And maybe even more. It may have been an echo of the events from the times past, recorded into the rock and something gave you a chance to see it replayed. It may have been Dani but only as a memory recorded into stone depicting what he did here maybe years ago. It also could have been some other biker speeding here, who knows.¡±


    ¡°You say that rocks have memories?¡± Carl asked. ¡°I¡¯m sorry but this is getting too science fiction-y even for me. This is impossible to believe.¡±


    ¡°Do you have a better idea?¡± Mariann asked. ¡°No, it is not like if I have spun a great great deal of unbelievable yarn about this car, and if it proves true then I have earned a license to spin a similar yarn about the whole world, no. I am just introducing you to some alternative ideas which have much greater success in explaining things than explanations not as outlandish. I have said it before, despite how believable the theories might be, they still remain but speculations. The world and the Universe are much too complicated for us to claim anything with any certainty.¡±


    ¡°It is not only about rocks. Places, things, locations without rock may also possess this memory. And Aliis, the fact that you heard something, that we all heard may have been caused by our desire to believe.¡± Maris quietly spoke. ¡°I have read about this before.¡±


    ¡°Not you too!¡± Carl said in a depressed tone.


    ¡°But it is very interesting.¡± Mariann said. ¡°I can see two parallel ideas here, which we already discussed. Either we want to believe and our minds trick us or our strong belief in certain matters changes the world in ways we do not consider possible. Both options are plausible and non-exclusionary. It is like believing in what happened in the hallways or in what the car is. Whether it is self-deceit or something altogether more complicated, we may never know.¡±


    Carl looked around, he had not a single thought remaining to reveal and it was obvious that nobody else had anything left to argue against Mariann¡¯s points. And despite that it seemed that she would have wanted it, as it would have given her new options to talk about what she believed in.


    ¡°Is this like your earlier story about critical mass?¡± Maris asked. ¡°That if a certain amount of people believe in something then that something becomes possible?¡±


    ¡°In broad strokes.¡± Mariann said. ¡°The idea itself originates from Marco though. We cannot say that something is definitely possible. For example if two billion people believe that if they say Marco¡¯s name three times in front a mirror, Marco will jump out with an axe and start opening up skulls, we cannot say that this will happen for sure, should somebody try saying it. But it also means that the majority will not try it. Also something might jump out that is only Marco for them, an insane young man wielding an axe. The problem lies in the aspect that we have no idea what is the rate of belief and what is the critical mass. It may be possible in absolute terms but at the same time impossible with regards to subjective perception of a person.¡±


    Carl observed Marco being uncomfortable, especially him flinching every time Mariann mentioned him and the axe. In the store, the attendant had also said something about an axe murderer.


    ¡°Are you claiming that in reality we weren¡¯t by the lake? That in reality there is nothing special about that car, that the only thing making anything special is us believing it?¡± Aliis asked.


    ¡°It is one way of thinking about it.¡± The girl in black replied. ¡°We are here because most of us believe in this situation being unusual, while there is nothing unusual about it. At the same thing it may also be about the latter. But something unusual might also be happening, while we¡¯re refusing to believe it is anything but usual. That already would be a good reason for us to be here. If we look at it in general terms, it might seem that at the same time we believe in something we also doubt it. This is not about our mind, it¡¯s about our soul.


    ¡°Getting back to believing and reality, then who knows, maybe Allah and God are also located in some pockets of space in higher dimensions into which the wills of billions of people have borne them to. We don¡¯t know if this is so. And the lack of knowledge does not result in something positive or negative, it is just an unknown.¡±


    ¡°I am just about the only clear-headed person here not believing in this BS.¡± Carl said. ¡°Stories and ideas like these don¡¯t add anything to one¡¯s life, they only make it harder and more complicated. We do not need this complexity. I see no reason in looking for patterns, signs and lines in a trip five people are taking together, especially if these make it some mysterious meeting which will never again repeat in the future and which is only important because it is taking place right here right now. As much as has become clear to me, here is but our common journey during which we share the vehicle, the roads and our thoughts, nothing more.¡±


    ¡°It is already good you¡¯re not calling it some satanic philosophy.¡± Maris quietly muttered.


    ¡°I can call it that, if you so wish. But I did not feel that prudent.¡±


    ¡°There is mystery here.¡± Marco said quietly. ¡°We have all seen it, experienced it. Even if it is only because one of us is the storyteller and the others listen to her, enchanted by it like little lambs. This is actually for the better, because in us sense of mystery that was extinguished early in our youth is being reawakened. But if it is not so then we have much more to contemplate than reality and possibility. I like that certain conclusions can be drawn from anything, I like to believe in it.¡±


    ¡°Carl, do you know what¡¯s the most interesting thing about all this?¡± Mariann asked. ¡°That you might be precisely right. Maybe life really is not as complicated as I see it. And it is most certainly possible to live with a much simpler look on life than even yours. But as Marco put it, I like believing that the world is more complicated than I am perceiving. I like seeing patterns and waves the source of which I am not able to sense. At the same time, nobody knows whether we¡¯ll meet in the future or not. As the old proverb says: ¡°third times the charm.¡±


    ¡°You forgot a few things though. We¡¯re not only sharing the car, the journey and our thoughts, we are also sharing time and space and of those two originate the core things that have brought us here by this fire on this panel of discussion.¡±


    Mariann sighed and threw a few logs into the fire, which caused a cloud of embers to appear.


    ¡°Every person has a different understanding of the world. Enjoy it, as it is one of the few things that truly can be enjoyed and with regards to which you will always be right... at least in some partial sense.¡±


    XI


    Black vibrating sedan flew along a highway, while mile markers flew right towards it and the reflecting line dividing the lanes flowed towards them like liquid paint. The Volga vibrated stronger than in the previous days. It also moved faster. Marco knew it as well, he felt he could squeeze every last drop of performance out of it, and then some. The car was still clean, it glistened in the sun, capable of blinding anybody looking at it at a wrong angle. This was partly the service of nature, the night wind and rain which gave the car back this peculiar shine with which it had greeted Marco and all the others before and after him.


    There was no doubt that the people inside the car were familiar to each other, even good friends. There was a young man sleeping in the middle of the rear seat. From one side window, somebody¡¯s long hair waves in the passing wind, on the other side, a girl was plucking holes into the pillar liner with a needle pin. In the front seat there was was a young man with a buzz cut, next to him sat a girl in black, her gaze directed into the distance. Yesterday was all but forgotten. Each and every one of them remembered their personal experience down below, each of those of course that had experienced it. And pieces of the long and very confusing and thought-requiring conversation that followed in the evening.


    At least that¡¯s what Marco¡¯s description sounded like, as he looked around in the car and observed the people in it. He himself and the others probably as well were feeling that their time together, in this realm, in this car was nearing it¡¯s end. The car was giving its last for them, their three days, their journey was coming to an end.


    ¡°Has anything happened yet?¡± Maris asked, bending towards the front seat.


    ¡°Not yet.¡± Marco said and again glanced at the green unfolded piece of paper on his thigh.


    ¡°Nothing is supposed to happen, anyway.¡± Mariann said in a cold voice, still staring at the pale yellow blinding solar disc rising above the horizon. ¡°You don¡¯t know how the name is supposed to change, you are only making suppositions. For example, what are you remembering from the moment you met the car at first?¡±


    ¡°Nothing special.¡± Marco said, staring at the wide open highway. ¡°Only that the driver of the car braked a little too suddenly when seeing me. But I think this is more about me sitting on the side of the road and waiting for death with nothing to make me more visible for the drivers.¡±


    ¡°Probably that sudden braking was a sign and at the same time a synchronistic event, marking that the journey and the trip of the former group were over. You say that you were sitting by the side of the road and waiting for death. If we continue along those tracks then we might say that you found death. Death came to you, but not to take you along but to show you what and how the other side looks like and that waiting for death was not the best thing to do at that time.¡±


    Mariann turned to look at the people on the back seat.


    ¡°Hey Maris, is there anything interesting visible from the back window?¡±


    Marco observed from the mirror as the girl sitting in the back row craned her head to look out the window.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know. Would a flock of rooks be special?¡± the girl asked.


    ¡°Marco, how fast are we going?¡±


    ¡°Hundred and thirty. These rooks must be damn special if they can keep up with that.¡±


    ¡°They¡¯re special enough.¡± Mariann replied quietly.


    ¡°Why are these birds so important?¡± Aliis asked.


    ¡°They aren¡¯t. But sometimes one must be convinced in their faith. And these rooks are a sufficient sign to be certain in what I believe.¡±


    ¡°Please ask if Carl wants to get his radio back.¡± Marco said.


    ¡°I won¡¯t. He¡¯s sleeping.¡±


    ¡°Sleeping?¡± Mariann asked. ¡°We¡¯ll see about that. Hand me that bottle of engine oil, I will sacrifice him to the Volga and then we can keep the car.¡±


    Maris stared at Mariann with a confused face. There was no chance in the breathing rhythm of the young man between Aliis and Maris.


    ¡°Very good.¡± Mariann said. ¡°Now I¡¯m certain he¡¯s asleep. No, Carl cannot get his radio back. He may try to take it, but it may never work correctly even again. It has already become part of the Volga both in the physical as well as the spiritual sense.¡±


    ¡°How do you know this?¡± Aliis asked. ¡°Also off the side of the road?¡±


    ¡°Yes.¡± Mariann again directed her gaze at the sun which was now slowly starting to paint the road with its light. ¡°Aliis. Slightly more than a year ago, I really was at that gas station. I really did talk to you. I really did recommend against continuing your endeavor. Deep down I did know what was about to happen. Maybe it was the smell of death alerting me to it, maybe something else. In any case, I knew that something bad was to happen and that somebody would die. It is possible that everything you saw really did take place a year ago. Also, when he lost control of his bike and had to dodge the Volga, do you know what were the first words of the young man driving the Volga?¡±


    ¡°¡°You knew this would happen, right?¡±¡± Aliis said.


    ¡°Yes.¡±


    ¡°He was the one to make you who you are now?¡± Marco asked.


    ¡°No. Nobody did anything. I myself wanted to be like him, back then I was young and naive. And after our journey came to an end, I continued my life trying to learn that same knowledge he had. And up until know I am still not sure I have learned anything at all. I still feel like the little girl I was a year ago.¡±


    ¡°Why did you not want Carl to hear it?¡± Marco asked.


    ¡°It is not about this. It is about what comes after. Aliis, you also saw a dark hallway which pulled at you and in which a part of you could not enter?¡±


    ¡°Yes, this followed straight after what happened in the gas station.¡±


    ¡°That was also my thing. During the first time we made it to the Lake. This did not happen here, but in some other place, at another nameless old military base in the distant South. Back then I could not go. I did not want to. I was left aside like did Carl in our group. But this time I did go down and I made peace with myself. The next time Carl meets the car, he too will have to go down and he probably will.


    ¡°Maris, you were right that every time the car will have a coachboy or a coachgirl. Somebody who knows more than the others about everything going on merely because they did not want to be a part of it the previous time. In some sense they are also behaving as the storyteller, whether they want it or not.¡±


    ¡°So the next time, Carl will be like you are now?¡± Maris asked.


    ¡°I doubt it. Carl¡¯s position is going to be interesting. He feels skeptical about all of this and yet he will know what is about happen. How it will happen. He does not believe it and yet he knows and sees the pattern repeating. That is all I can say, that his journey will be different from mine.¡±


    ¡°There is one other thing though. The thing Carl was so excited to speak about. Or rather what he found weird. Namely the brakes, the transmission and the engine. I was there when these got installed. That was my and Osvald¡¯s gift to the Volga, so to say. A gift to the legend. Nobody meets this car twice in the same shape.¡±


    ¡°The what do you know about the origin of the phenomenon?¡±


    ¡°For us, everything started when we sat into the car. Or maybe when we were born, I don¡¯t know really, everything¡¯s possible. The car may also be a divine being. Why must everything have a beginning? We are already claiming that the Universe has it and the Christian world as well. I cannot really explain which idea is more primitive, whether it is assuming that everything has a beginning or that everything has always existed. It would be the same to ask when rain came into being.


    I think this car, this coach, has always existed and will continue to always exist as long as there are people who believe in its existence. Perhaps once long ago it was a coach drawn by six black horses, maybe a car driven by oxen even before that. Perhaps a lone horse before that and a curious companion able to tell stories about the magic of the world at the very beginning. But in time, things have changed. Maybe in a few decades the Volga will be replaced with a German luxury car from the current era. Who knows.¡±


    ¡°Mariann, how long exactly have you walked the side of the highway?¡± Aliis asked.


    The girl in black fell silent. She again directed her gaze into the distance outside the window. It seemed to Marco that she focused all her attention to that.


    ¡°Why was it important for Carl to not hear this?¡± He finally dared to ask.


    ¡°Because that¡¯s how it is supposed to be. I cannot explain why. It was done to me and so will each preceding coach boy do with the succeeding one. Maybe it is a cautionary measure to not break the chain, or maybe something else. Maybe somebody already broke the chain in the past, who knows. History stays quiet about those people. I however have no wish to experiment what happens if something like this should take place. But I can tell your name three times while standing in front of a mirror.¡±


    ¡°I thought last night that you would do it.¡± Marco said.


    ¡°Sorry. The connection between you and the axe felt regretful only after I had said it out loud. As long as it remained in my thoughts, it didn¡¯t have nearly as many meanings, in any case I never had the true intention to do it. If there is one thing I have learned walking on the side of the road, it is that there is confidentiality in this. The names are not important and they shouldn¡¯t be, just like ideas. One must present ideas under their own name, to protect those who have been in this car before us.


    I am speaking of it like this, because it is hard for me to be who I am not, even if I try to do it for a short time. It is part of human nature to add something to a story when conveying it. Or to remove something, to speak in their own name as their own thoughts. Just like you talked about your meeting, or me, or somebody else. Who knows, maybe there is no Arianne nor Osvald, it is just a story I am telling. As there are no Dani, Tom or whoever else has cropped up in our stories. All the experiences we have spoken about may possibly be somebody else¡¯s.¡±


    ¡°How can one know that? Whether the other person is how they are. Whether what he¡¯s talking about is his own or not?¡± Marco asked. ¡°How would I know you are really Mariann?¡±


    ¡°You won¡¯t. Just like in Stalker. For all of you I am the Girl in Black, you are the Buzz Cut Young Man et cetera. On a daily basis with no special agreements it is not possible to really know another person. They either won¡¯t let it happen for some special reason or only because they don¡¯t trust the other. All information can be used for at least two purposes, for good and for evil. But no person completely changes their role, they change only lies in our behavior and speech. Our selectivity changes. But how we think and what we are, that does not change and if a person does not maintain an impeccable control over his body and manners, everything becomes visible if only one pays enough notice.¡±


    ¡°So in our case nobody is really pretending?¡± Marco asked.


    ¡°We don¡¯t know and that¡¯s the magic of the whole thing and legend.¡± Mariann smiled.


    The girl in black directed her gaze back on the road. Marco did so as well. Unnoticed by them and the others, the road had changed. It was no longer a black surface reflecting the sun with white lines on the sides of it running from the lack of beginning into endlessness. It had become a potholed road the top layer of which mostly consisted of crushed granite suspended in oil shale bitumen. On the side of the road, the were tall black firs and deep woods. In the distance they could see sunshine, but sun itself was hidden behind the gate or a fence at the end of the road. It was impossible to say which of the two it was.


    ¡°You wanna offer an explanation?¡± Mariann asked, still grinning, she turned to talk to people on the back seat. ¡°Can anybody offer an explanation how exactly did we end up here?¡±


    ¡°Where?¡± Maris asked, befuddled.


    ¡°Look out the window.¡±


    ¡°We are no longer on the highway? Why here?¡±


    ¡°Because we were supposed to come here.¡± Mariann said. ¡°Even the compass says so.¡±


    Margo lowered his eyes to see the needle of the compass mindlessly spinning around as if there was massive reserve of natural magnetite under the car.


    ¡°I bet this is the sign all of us have been waiting for. For Carl it was not anything noticeable because he was asleep but next time he too will understand what is about to happen. Perhaps between these two trips he might come to understand his fate as well. We¡¯re not allowed to tell him that. I did, partly, but it really became clear to me when I saw the Volga again a few days ago.¡±


    ¡°There¡¯s a gate ahead.¡± Marco said, getting Mariann¡¯s attention. ¡°Is that the nameless Southern town?¡±


    ¡°This is the external limit of the Border Town. Calling it a town is a bit too much though. In any case this is the place you and the rest wanted to reach, deep down.¡±


    ¡°You as well?¡± Aliis asked from the back.


    ¡°Me as well? I don¡¯t know. Maybe. We are not always aware of our deepest desires, sometimes we push them aside as moronic fantasies, thus giving way to wishes which are the true moronic fantasies.¡±


    ¡°There¡¯s a person at the gate. Some girl.¡± Marco said.


    ¡°If the green piece of paper on your laps has a girl¡¯s name on it, then it must be her. I¡¯m pretty sure it is.¡±


    Marco lowered his gaze on the green paper. ¡°Yes, some girl¡¯s name is here now. Maria.¡±


    ¡°Did I miss anything?¡± Carl asked.


    He leaned forward and grabbed the front seatbacks to stretch his shoulders.


    ¡°No you didn¡¯t.¡± Maris quietly said. ¡°You woke up at just the right time. We¡¯re here.¡±


    Carl raised his face to now also notice the gate in the distance growing nearer and nearer and the old sentry post next to it.


    ¡°The Southern town.¡± Mariann said. ¡°The place you wanted to reach.¡±


    ¡°I did. All of us did if we¡¯re to believe your stories.¡±


    ¡°Or your own claims before I even sat in the car.¡± Mariann replied, forcing Carl to fall silent.


    Marco stopped the car about five meters before the gate. He turned off the engine and opened the door, bringing along the green title sheet. He got out of the car and approached the half-collapsed checkpoint with no roof. In front of it, on a green bench with peeling paint there sat a girl with gray skirt reaching down to her knees.


    ¡°Are you Maria Makhov?¡± The young man asked, looking at the green piece of paper.


    ¡°I am, what about it?¡± the girl asked.


    She got up and approached him, only stopping in his personal space.


    They were about the same height. Marco forced his eyes off her long blue hair and reached out his hand with the title.


    ¡°This is now yours. Take this and take care of it. The car has automatic transmission, by the way.¡±


    ¡°And what am I supposed to do with it?¡±


    ¡°You drive it. It is up to you where to. I cannot help you any more.¡±


    Marco turned around and walked back to the car. The others had already gotten out. Carl walked around and stretched his legs, which had grown numb from his long sleep. Mariann threw him his bag.


    ¡°And now?¡± He asked.


    ¡°Now there¡¯s nothing. Our journey has ended. Her¡¯s is only beginning.¡±


    They looked on as she sat in the car, reversed and then drove away. Marco kept looking at it as it drove away and saw the car disappear into a cloud of dust accompanied by the roar of the engine at full tilt. He then turned to see somebody open the latch on the ironclad gate and push the two sides open. It was Carl.


    ¡°Welcome to the land of the Fools.¡± He said, grinning.


    ¡°What are we doing next in here?¡± Aliis asked, wit a doubtful voice.


    ¡°Maybe that young man with the green off-roader knows?¡± Maris said.


    Marco now too noticed that the road climbed a small hill a few hundred meters ahead of them. And on top of that hill stood an old American SUV and a young man next to it.


    ¡°You¡¯re not coming?¡± Marco asked the girl in black who had sat down on the bench next to the gate.


    ¡°No.¡± She looked at the rook perched on the concrete gate post. ¡°I feel it. My place is still on the road. My journey is not yet over, there is still much left to learn. Maybe I have to meet the Volga once again. Maybe the proverb ¡°third time¡¯s the charm¡± in this case applies to me. In an ironic twist.¡±


    ¡°Does that apply to Carl as well?¡± Marco asked. ¡°Will he too have to take two more journeys on the highway?¡±


    ¡°I cannot know that. I don¡¯t have to know that anyway, the journeys of others are not our business, especially if they haven¡¯t taken place yet. But I do know that he won¡¯t get to enjoy peace for long, soon he¡¯ll be back on the road.¡±


    ¡°And me?¡±


    ¡°You went down to the lake. Of you I know nothing else. This is a totally different journey you¡¯re standing at the beginning of. But my place is here, on the road. It was here a long time ago and it will be for a little while more. But your place is there. In the Border Town. I¡¯m sure we will meet again, at some time, in some place. Now go, the others are waiting.¡±


    Marco started to go. With a slow and steady pace. Never stopping nor looking back. His direction were the fields and the gravel road bisecting them. And the green SUV by which people were already waiting after him.

 CI - God at the End of the World

    ¡°Mariann! In this place I am god!¡±


    A thin boy with glasses lowered his arms and looked at the girl standing a few steps away from him.


    ¡°In this place, you are god.¡± The girl in black repeated in a contemplative voice.


    She looked around, at the pasture the two of them were standing in. Golden yellow grass reaching to her hips, and a few nettles and thistles visible in the grass as well. Above the grass flew bumblebees and butterflies. She raised her face towards the blue sky without a single cloud present. Only bright scorching sun. Somewhere on the horizon far away black forest loomed and above that stood steel towers carrying high tension power lines.


    ¡°In this pasture?¡± She asked. ¡°You are god?¡±


    ¡°In this pasture.¡± The boy replied confidently, pushing up the glasses on his nose. ¡°Here, everything is exactly how I want it to be. There is nothing I would want to change. That¡¯s why I am god in here.¡±


    ¡°Because here you cannot give an unreasonable command that the World would not fulfill?¡±


    ¡°Exactly.¡± The boy smiled. ¡°This place is here. You are here. I am here. Nothing else is required.¡±


    ¡°You know this is not an ordinary pasture, don¡¯t you?¡± Mariann asked, a faint smell of dry rot reached her nose.


    Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.


    ¡°Exactly because of that I am god in here. Exactly because of that I want to be god in here.¡± The boy said. ¡°This the only pasture with missile silos. Once a long time ago, Vilaski base was here. The warheads here were aimed at Western Europe.¡±


    The boy snapped his fingers and further away in the middle of the pasture, suddenly four gray concrete domes appeared out of thin air.


    ¡°Come!¡± He grabbed the girl¡¯s hand and they started down the footpath in the grass towards the domes.


    ¡°Do these domes also belong to a World existing according to your will?¡± The girl asked.


    ¡°These domes, the silos underneath them, everything that belongs with them.¡± The boy nodded. ¡°I cannot rip out of the World that which is not to my liking. That would not be fair to the World.¡±


    The boy let go of the girl¡¯s hand and then ran up the crack dome. He crouched down and then gently caressed a leaf growing out of the concrete dome.


    ¡°Come.¡± He beckoned.


    Both of them laid down on the concrete dome.


    ¡°1757 different military facilities, 2 per cent of our country that is small as it is. All of this is Zone. Zone of Tarkovsky and the Strugatsky brothers. Somebody else came here, just took the land, transformed it in monstrous ways and then gave it back to us. And like ants we started to climb about their place of picnic. All of this is a historic fact. But as we lay here, it doesn¡¯t feel like it.¡±


    ¡°How?¡± The girl asked, gazing at the blue sky.


    ¡°Everywhere the pasture is the same. Only in this place it is not. Not for us, who currently live. History is irrelevant, the only relevant thing is all this happened before the current time, before our time. This makes these domes and all the other facilities a Zone. We are here, but all these places no longer are. These domes no longer are. Their time has long since passed.¡±


    ¡°Do you know what apocalypse means?¡± Mariann asked, looking in the boy¡¯s eyes. ¡°It is not only the end of the world, it is the moment all of god¡¯s knowledge becomes human knowledge. And this pasture here...¡±


    ¡°...is post-apocalyptic.¡± The boy smiled. ¡°For this base it makes no difference whether it is forgotten due to a bomb strike or because the world for it ended.¡±


    ¡°Exactly.¡± The girl said in a dreamy voice. ¡°This place is the end of the world. But not our world but the world of this place.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s why I am God here.¡± The boy said. ¡°God at the end of the world.¡±

 XXVI - a Conversation in the Dark of Night

    By the time Toomas had made it back to his hotel, the downpour had resumed. It was a regular rainy day in the Nameless Town. It had been pouring since morning and the clouds of dark gray hanging low in the sky seemed to have not moved at all. There was no sun and the whole world looked dim and heavy like a late night in early summer. If the weather had been only slightly warmer, the streets would have been filled with children playing in the puddles which had appeared on grass.


    The streets in the Nameless Town were also partly under water. The drainage system was essentially at capacity but the water level on the street was still even with the edge of the sidewalk, sometimes even with the edge of the first step. And yet Toomas had met people outside. Those few people not warming themselves in front of the fireplace back in their homes or in Leopold¡¯s bar to sit apart from the surrounding world and take glass of beer or a shot of vodka to warm one¡¯s insides. And eat sandwiches with smoked fish. It seemed like a downpour lasting the whole day was nothing special in the Nameless Town and people had long since learned to live with it.


    In the reception of the hotel, a surprise was waiting for Toomas, however. The old woman who usually sat behind the counter and did not raise her her eyes off her book even when somebody entered, was now standing behind the counter and smiled as she handed him a yellowed envelope.


    ¡°What¡¯s this?¡± Toomas asked, staring at the envelope.


    ¡°There¡¯s a letter for you.¡± The woman said, pushing the envelope towards him.


    ¡°A letter? I did not know mail works in this town.¡±


    ¡°We don¡¯t have mail service as such. The post office is more for sentimental values too, and to gather letters for Tontla and Valgepal?. But we have Ets, who rides around his motorbike with a sidecar and carries letters and notes around. He¡¯s the one to bring this letter to you.¡±


    Toomas took the envelope from smooth acrylic-covered wooden counter and headed towards the stairs.


    ¡°If you want to reply to the letter, please let me know!¡± The old woman shouted after him. ¡°Ets runs twice a day!¡±


    Toomas did not replay to her, only continued along the hallway covered with carpets knitted from rags.


    Having finally reached his small and cozy room two stories above the entrance, he hung up his waterlogged coat in the bathroom. He sat down by the desk near the window and opened the envelope. In it was a short message that a man named Neighbor-Arno or Arno the Neighbor wants to see him in his house and have a conversation in the evening when the rain finally lets up. According to the explanations in the letter, his house was located on the edge of the cottage district near the Forbidden Forest, one of the last houses before the area belonging to the Underground Base.


    ¡°When the rain lets up?¡± Toomas said to himself, looking out of the window. ¡°How can he be so sure that the rain will ever let up?¡±


    His attention was suddenly grabbed by a big red two-door car with tan cloth roof and rectangular body lines. The red tail lights in the shape of steeples had a devilish shine to them. The hood alone seemed longer than a Sapak cat. It was strangely frightening to see how much this vehicle dwarfed the two Soviet era cars. As if it had emerged from some other parallel world.


    Toomas sighed and looked at the clock on top of the cupboard. It had stopped. Although he was certain he had wound it up before leaving his room in the morning. This meant that he had to find his notepad and a pen. Every strange event, no matter how minute, had to be taken note of.


    *


    As the man who had sent the letter had wished, Tomas again put on the coat with the black hood. After he had the old lady at the reception draw him a map of where Arno the Neighbor had his house, he started toward the cottage district.


    What surprised him the most was that in his letter Arno had been correct. The rain did indeed let up. The whole day it poured and the air was wet and cold, but then the clouds started to move again and the rain weakened. By the time Toomas had walked a few kilometers, the dark rainclouds faded and for a moment he saw pink evening sky above the Nameless Town and the setting of the pale sun. He could even feel the temperature rise.


    But the sun was falling fast. Slightly before Toomas made it to the cottage district, it had gotten dim, and suddenly all was dark. So dark that he could not even read the map the old woman had drawn him. He was only able to know about being on the right track by the gravel road he was walking on, as the gravel made the road slightly brighter than everything else around him.


    Actually he did not really need the map the old woman had drawn him. In the wet and cool post-rain dark of the night, the cottage district was clearly visible as the only collection of lights anywhere on the horizon. Toomas had hoped that there would be more of those lights. That the cottage district would be something similar to a small suburb or a village with some life left in it. Considering what he had heard in the town, they should have even had a decent and bright street lighting.


    But there was no life here. The lights of the cottage district were few and they were so far that they seemed unfamiliar and dreamlike. Unreachably far from him, walking along a potholed gravel road full of puddles in the middle of the night. And the cottage district in the distance walked had in hand with him, stepping deeper into the darkness. There weren¡¯t even any stars in the sky. Only the nature around him dripped with the rain.


    Only by chance did Toomas find the correct building. Somebody had hung a lit oil lamp on the wooden fence the side of the road. Further down the oil lamp he could see a small fire giving off flames in a private yard of a small cottage. From the road it looked no brighter than a candle.


    ¡°The stars are out.¡± A raspy voice right in front of Toomas uttered.


    Toomas too raised his eyes towards the sky, seeing many different stars shining with varied brightness. He could almost make out a river of stars running across the sky. And yet as he had walked here from the Nameless Town, the sky had been cloudless yet dark. Without the Moon. Without a single star.


    ¡°The Milky Way is bright tonight.¡± The raspy voice continued. ¡°Or maybe the darkness is more restrained today than usually.¡±


    Somebody took the oil lamp hanging on the fence and raised it to his face. Toomas could make out a long coat at and a hood attached to it. Under the hood there was a male face of roughly sixty years in age and his beard as white as the snow. Also small black eyes sharply staring at Toomas.


    ¡°Let¡¯s go.¡± the old man took the lantern and started heading towards the back yard.


    Only now did Toomas notice that what he had seen before was not a simple fire, instead it was a flaming upright log somebody had cut slits into. Besides the lantern, this was the only source of light. The house itself was ominously dark. However it also seemed that in the back yard, it was slightly less dark than on the road. The burning log did not give off too much heat, yet in a strange manner, it did also not give off much light. It only burned, standing aside of the world it was located in. And yet Toomas could see the outline of the house. The brick wall, the cut grass and the garden well cared for. As well as a large garden swing the old man now sat down in, placing the lantern on a thick log next to it.


    ¡°Come, sit down.¡± the man said.


    The swing creaked as Toomas sat down on it and the old man pushed it to move back and forth in a gentle manner. Both were quiet. The black nature surrounding them was still dripping with the day¡¯s rain. Somewhere out there was wind blowing and shaking water off the leaves and soon a warm breath of wind reached them as well.


    ¡°I am Arno the Neighbor.¡± The old man finally said, as if the wind had given him a permission to speak. ¡°I asked you to come here to talk to you about a thing.¡±


    ¡°About a thing?¡± Toomas asked. ¡°What would it be?¡±


    ¡°At first, I wanted to talk about a dream I had, which turned out not to be a dream at all. But when I started to contemplate it, I realized that I would have to tell you of so many other things for everything to be understandable to you. That¡¯s why I ask you to listen to everything I have to say.¡±


    ¡°Okay then,¡± Toomas said.


    ¡°Very good.¡± The man replied.


    Both of them silent, they kept swinging back and forth while the old man gathered his thoughts.


    ¡°Sometimes I come here and look at the sky.¡± He said. ¡°The world is so strangely gray. All that we see and have lived, that is everything that could ever be. And it is all so gray.¡±


    ¡°Gray?¡± Toomas asked.


    ¡°Yes. There is no mystery. Everything exists. The world is done. There is nothing left to add to it. There is nothing left to discover nor to repair. The world is like a sandbox for me. But I don¡¯t want to play. I don¡¯t know how to play. I see so much and yet I can do nothing to change or even influence anything. People will still follow their paths, much like the moon and sun in the sky. I cannot stop them. All I do is useless and the world remains the same. And gray.¡±


    ¡°There is no mystery?¡± Toomas asked. ¡°Even around these places?¡±


    I understand what you mean.¡± He could hear the old man smiling. ¡°This secrecy that lies here, this mystery. It does not make the world more mysterious. It does not make the world more likable to me or more colorful. This mystery is flat. Neither is it capable of changing the world or overcoming it. It cannot surprise me, all there is has already been seen and repeats itself. All this world, all our lives are but a faded photograph.¡±


    Toomas could not say anything with regards to this. For some time again they swung back and forth in silence, staring at the flaming log in front of them.


    ¡°And then something surprises me.¡± Arno said.


    ¡°Surprises?¡± Toomas asked.


    ¡°When I lie here like this and look at the sky, so many times have I found myself contemplating if this is really the sky. Is this the world? That sky is so black, so full of stars hiding all sorts of mysterious secrets. Secrets I can almost grasp, but not with my mind. It feels like I am looking at a perfectly ordinary sky somewhere far away, someplace normal. But as soon as any of the trees enter my field of view, as soon as a faint wind rushes across my face, I sense that this is not an ordinary sky. This is not an ordinary world. It has depth. All the mysterious secrecy does not lie there, in the depths of outer space, it lies here in the darkness around me. As if everything lying outside the yard of my cottage was a cold and distant outer world I have no business entering. And should I step into it, I will lose everything.¡±


    ¡°I feel the same heavy mystery every day I spend in this town.¡± Toomas said. ¡°I feel I am never alone. This heavy presence the air is thick of. I thought that when I grew up, I would no longer fear the darkness and the mystery. But here, the childlike unfamiliar world has come back to me and with it all the fears I once had.¡±


    ¡°So I am not alone?¡± Arno asked pensively. ¡°Good to know.¡± He fell silent again for several swings before continuing. ¡°In the past years, the cottage district has run out of people. I am one of the last ones here. Maybe even the last one.¡±


    ¡°Everybody¡¯s leaving for towns?¡± Toomas asked.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know.¡± The old man replied. ¡°To be more honest, I don¡¯t believe it. I think they are just disappearing. One night the house is warm and the lights are burning and in the windows I can see people living their lives. And by the next morning the house is cold, distant an empty. The doors are wide open as if the house no longer belongs to anybody and when I go to take a further look, it seems like nobody has lived there for years. That¡¯s exactly what happened to my neighbors.¡±


    ¡°They disappeared overnight?¡± Toomas asked.


    ¡°Yes. Once upon a time, an old man and an old woman lived in this house. Albert and Maiu. Their grandchildren lived with them. When the grandchildren were young, the old man swore to the depths of hell but nevertheless he dragged home a launching anchor for a nuclear missile. But back then the forest was utterly contaminated with all things military. The old man fell ill and died. The doctor from the town spoke of a hard case of a simple cold but in reality it was the hydrazine that had seeped into the ground that finally broke him.


    ¡°After that, the house was empty for some time until the grandchildren as young adults returned to it. A young man and a maiden who drove around in a dark green vehicle which was not much bigger than a Lada Niva but had the engine sound or a truck not too dissimilar to a ZIL. They say the youngsters had bought it from the North. It was quite recently that I saw them minding their business, but recently, I haven¡¯t seen either of them. I don¡¯t know when exactly did they disappear but one night I noticed that in their house, the lights no longer burn at night and there is no green off-roader in the yard any more.


    ¡°What happened to them? When did it happen? How many days, weeks or years back it was? Every day that passes, the past grows further away from me than there are actual hours in the day. While future never really arrives.¡±


    ¡°In your opinion, what happened to them if they did not move anywhere else?¡± Toomas asked. In this darkness he could barely see his notepad and the text he had written on a random page of it.


    ¡°I think.¡± The man started. ¡°That it is impossible to answer. Maybe one of them got lost during their nighttime wanders and the other one went to look for her. Or him. The cottage district is located at an unusual place. Nearby is the Forbidden Forest, old nuclear base, the Underground Base. What lies in the South beyond the concrete wall, even I have no idea of. Even though I still remember my childhood when I could freely wander in the Southern forest picking berries and mushrooms. Even hunting.


    This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it


    ¡°Life in an almost derelict cottage district is more dreamlike than one might think. The fact that the town is only a few hours of walking away does not matter. The difference between the town and the village here is much greater. Sometimes it feel like this village belongs to a world of its own. Not to a world where the town also exists but instead to a world where the mysterious Southern Forest lies, the Underground Base and only the devil knows what lies to the East. The people who disappeared from here, they did not just leave, each of them brought along a piece of the cottage district as they left. And now all that remains here is a hole. An opposite to an existence.


    Sometimes I feel like I am not here at all. That we are not here. That I am dreaming. That the town and the world is somebody¡¯s dream long since forgotten being repeated again and again. I would like to meet the person whose dream I am.¡±


    Toomas¡¯ fingers stopped and he raised his eyes to look at the old man still staring at the flames.


    ¡°And you don¡¯t want to leave this place because¡­?¡±


    ¡°Because this is my home. I have lived here as long as I remember. Sometimes during the nights, when I look at the skies and listen to the stars I feel like I could never leave here. That I am stuck in this place. That I have not been given the right to neither die nor to leave this place. That I am the last person who still lives in this village and thus allows this village itself to live.¡±


    ¡°Is that so?¡± Toomas asked, still in thought.


    ¡°Recently, this place has grown to be more and more like dreams.¡± the man continued.


    ¡°How?¡±


    ¡°Sometimes when I lay here and stare at the sky, I feel like I¡¯m still just a little boy. Just like I felt myself years and years ago playing in this very same grass. When suddenly, right before the sunset, a flying saucer hovers across the sky without making a sound. At these moments I really feel like a young boy who has fallen asleep early in the evening and is seeing a strange dream.¡±


    ¡°A flying saucer?¡± Toomas asked.


    ¡°Yes.¡± The man said. ¡°As a child I saw them all the time hovering around this place. Almost every night near the sunset I could see starships of different shapes floating across the house. They seemed to hang so low that they would bend the lightning rod on the roof. During the summers not a week passed until I saw yet another one fly over.


    ¡°By now it feel strange even to think about it, how back then I had no fear when I saw them. Although I am almost certain that even back then I knew what a UFO was. I played my games and they played theirs. And at the same time I spent every available moment witnessing the wonder of them.


    ¡°In recent times it has again been active like when I was still a child. They seem to go to and fro between the Underground Base. The road to the base passing the cottage district is like a landing strip fro them. But really they land into the lake behind the base.


    ¡°In the town, nobody has seen or heard anything about it.¡± Toomas said. ¡°Only Robert keeps talking about his anaks.¡±


    ¡°Anaks have about as much common with the starships as with me or with you!¡± Neighbor Arno raised his voice. ¡°No anaks walk around the Underground Base. If you haven¡¯t noticed there are at least four different species of ufos hanging around the town. Including Boys from the North who don¡¯t touch the floor while walking on it and who never get wet in the rain. Rops¡¯s anaks, star folk of the Village Hags and those that go about their business in the Underground Base. All of them are here for different reasons. They have always been here for different reasons.¡±


    ¡°If there are really different species of ufos here, then it is more noteworthy that they are all congregating here.¡± Toomas said.


    ¡°That¡¯s what I wanted to get to.¡± The old man said. ¡°Something has been set in motion, but we cannot even understand it. Those who arranged and guided the process last time are all dead or forever lost. Lifespan of humans is fleeting, the world changes too fast for us to keep up with. And now they are back, expecting everything to be the same.¡±


    ¡°You think it is only about them?¡± Toomas asked. ¡°People are again dying in the Forbidden Forest, townsfolk see nightmares in broad daylight, strange musicians are gathering in the town to perform, practice and write songs...¡±


    ¡°If my grandpa was still alive than he would only come to one conclusion: demonic forces are again rising in our town. But you and me, we are no longer as religious as him. We want to explain everything with science. However, considering how after the end of the Soviet era everything has fallen into ruin and disuse, we no longer have science that could explain anything, never mind religion.¡±


    ¡°The mayor said that they plan to go to the witch in two weeks..¡± Toomas said.


    ¡°To the witch?¡± Arno spat. ¡°What for? Do you know when was the last time the villagers went to the witch? During the pre-war Republic. At the end of it. I think. In the spring of 1940. And the witch told them to go pound sand, she had no interest in human competitive crapping. That she would outlive both Russians and the Germans. My father oft repeated this story after a bottle of vodka.¡±


    ¡°Isn¡¯t the witch¡¯s business to to help when she can help?¡±


    ¡°If you¡¯re lucky.¡± Arno said. ¡°Usually the witch only helps those that are useful for her to help. Considering how invoking the witch is to be done, there is nothing particularly special about the witch constantly being in a bad mood and unwilling to help.¡±


    ¡°How then is the witch called?¡±


    ¡°Usually it is talked of as a great secret that on the night of a Thursday when the Moon is full, one must go to the crossroads and bring along a black goose. And if you don¡¯t have a black goose, then a black cat will also do.¡±


    ¡°That would be a sacrifice to the hell dweller?¡± Toomas asked.


    ¡°Not quite.¡± Arno said. ¡°Calling out the witch or the hell dweller is a dangerous thing to do. Black cats are favored by both witches and the hell dwellers as beings to possess. Strangling a black cat on the crossroads is not a sacrifice but¡­ more of a disturbance and annoyance. Something neither witches nor devils like. And when you do not have a good reason why you killed a cat and invoked them then they will drag you to down to hell.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s an interesting approach.¡± Toomas said.


    ¡°It is tried and tested practice. It may have been at the end of the 1970s when one of the village folk got drunk and promised to call the witch out. He took his neighbors¡¯ black cat and strangled it on the crossroads on a Thursday night in front of his other drunkard friends. At first nothing happened. But then out of nowhere a huge black rectangular ZIL limo appeared, with brightly burning lights front and rear. Just like the one you could see the premier ride on TV in Moscow. It reportedly made no sound when driving.


    It stopped by the men, the rear side window descended and a girl in black sitting in a cabin awash with red light asked what the hell they were doing. When the man admitted that he had strangled a black cat to call out the devil, the doors of the car opened, 3 tall men in black suits emerged and pounded on him with their fists, eventually stuffing him in the car. The car took off with the tires squealing and disappeared into the fog.¡±


    ¡°And the man went missing?¡± Toomas asked.


    ¡°Yep. His clothes and shoes were later found nearby in the ditch by the side of the road. But the man was never seen again. Maybe the KGB special service abducted him and later shot him in the forest. For being drunk and playing around with forces he had no idea of. Or perhaps the devil really brought him to hell.¡±


    Neighbor-Arno became silent and raised his gaze towards the sky. The nature around them was still dripping. Sometimes the wind shook water droplet from the trees and they could hear them dropping from higher leaves to the lower ones, sounding as if the rain had returned but only above the trees.


    Arno rose from the swing and stretched.


    ¡°Come. There is something else I must show you.¡±


    Toomas followed Arno along the edge of the house into darkness. It really seemed like there was slightly more light in the back yard than there was on the road. And true darkness awaited on the paved heading towards the left. Darkness that you could not discern anything from. No sky, no road, no forest. As if the darkness was flowing out of the Underground Base.


    ¡°You¡¯re seeing it too, aren¡¯t you?¡± Arno asked. ¡°There is more light in the yard than there is here. And the more you head towards the base, the darker the night gets.¡±


    ¡°Yes, do you know what causes this?¡±


    ¡°No, not really. Maybe the amount of darkness correlated with the amount of the unknown and the mysterious. Or maybe an aspect of it. In my back yard it is quite innocent but in the Underground Base something profoundly evil lurks. But that was not the thing I wanted to show you.¡±


    Arno led him across the road to a small patch of grazing land that bordered the Forbidden Forest. With a careful step and trying to find his way with an arm stretched out in front of him, Toomas walked in tall waterlogged grass. He did not need to walk far until the ground got so soft that water started flowing into his shoes.


    ¡°Where are we going?¡± he asked. ¡°I must admit, I cannot see a thing.¡±


    ¡°Neither can I.¡± Arno said. ¡°But because I have lived here for years, I have no need to see in the dark. Every step I take here is as familiar to me as my own back yard. Only you must be careful to not hit yourself against that thing.¡±


    ¡°What thing?¡± Toomas asked. ¡°What do you want to show me?¡±


    ¡°That.¡± Toomas could now hear knuckles being hit against a thick steel piece.


    Soon Toomas too made it to the unknown object and from his first touches recognized as the Russian willy¡¯s, a 469 UAZ model. By touch he located the steel roof and the door latch. He opened the door and slid his hand along the dash of the vehicle finding a lone key in the ignition. He pumped the pedal once and turned the key. With a small powerless rumble the engine started, a few dials and the interior light of the vehicle lit up.


    He also switched on the headlights, but even the full beams only lit up some ten meters before the vehicle.


    ¡°It really works, and no we can see as well.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s the mayor¡¯s willy¡¯s.¡± Arno said in a quiet voice, staying out of the beams. ¡°The one you came with to examine the Forbidden Forest.¡±


    ¡°This car?¡± Toomas asked, staring at Arno. ¡°Is the mayor here as well?¡±


    ¡°You misunderstood me.¡± Arno said. ¡°It is the mayor¡¯s car from the night when you with the town drunk came to examine the Forest Lake. The mayor parked his car here, went to the forest and hasn¡¯t been back for his car since.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s not possible.¡± Toomas said. ¡°We took the mayor¡¯s willy¡¯s back to town! The mayor has continued using it in his day to day business.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know what you drove back to the town, but I was awake that night and I remember it clearly. Nobody has any business here when the night comes. The neighbors moved away and nobody dares to visit the base day or night. That¡¯s why the engine noise woke me. The mayor came here, left his car on the side of the road and went into the forest. I haven¡¯t seen anybody come out of the forest.¡±


    ¡°And I remember the mayor driving back in the night with his willy¡¯s. And the next day when the whole village came together to look at the lost lake, he too was present with his willy¡¯s.¡± Toomas said.


    ¡°As it is doubtful the mayor has two of the willy¡¯s cars, either of which he considers as disposable, there are two options.¡± Arno said. ¡°Either you drove home with a car that was not the mayor¡¯s willy¡¯s or...¡±


    ¡°Or?¡± Toomas asked.


    ¡°Or you did not drive back with the real mayor.¡±


    ¡°In what sense?¡±


    ¡°The mayor came here, left his car on the side of the forest in the tall grass, and went to the forest. That¡¯s it. He hasn¡¯t come out since. Maybe he is still wandering the forest like so many before him.¡±


    ¡°And the one who drove back to town with us?¡± Toomas asked.


    ¡°It wasn¡¯t the mayor. It may have been a shadow of him, but not himself. Because it is much more unlikely that the mayor left his car on the side of the forest and unwittingly from some other place took the willy¡¯s of some other person who also had left his keys in the ignition. And it would also be unlikely that the mayor is the correct one, but the car is ghostly.¡±


    ¡°Can a car really be ghostly?¡± Toomas asked.


    ¡°Why not? There are ghost planes, ghost ships, ghost trains. Why not ghost cars?¡± Arno asked. ¡°They say that all those strangers who have recently found their way to the Nameless Town have made it with ghostly cars. Cars which nobody has seen other than the newcomers and few mysterious townsfolk. Those flying saucers I mentioned before may well have been ghostly. Something is happening either in the Base or our in the world, and it is bringing back to life the traces left in the world by the flying saucers.¡±


    Arno opened the passenger side door and climbed to the front seat. ¡°Okay, go drive to my house. There is something else I have to show you.¡±


    ¡°Something else?¡± Toomas asked.


    He wrestled with the gear stick, finally managing to get it in gear and then drove across the wet field back towards the road and parked by the side of the fence.


    ¡°Yes. I can show you a real ghost car my dad left me several years ago.¡±


    ¡°Where did your father get that ghost car?¡± Toomas asked as they used their hands to find their way to the garage next to the house.


    ¡°From the same place one usually finds ghostly girls. Off the road. In a dark and rainy night.¡±


    The old man opened the door to the garage and waved to Toomas to get in after him.


    ¡°I apologize for having so little space in here but the car is pretty big. I would love to show it to you with the doors wide open, but I can¡¯t do it at night. That damn darkness gets in and then nobody can see anything, even if there were a hundred lamps alight.¡±


    ¡°I get it, I get it.¡± Toomas said.


    ¡°So here it is.¡± Arno closed the garage doors, dropped the latch and then switched the lights on.


    The whole garage was taken up by a low yet wide rectangular military vehicle with riveted bodywork. The deflated tires with big knobs were partially off the rims, and on the rear bumper there was a rusty Soviet license plate. The bumper itself only had surface rust but the strangest thing was that the bodywork of the vehicle did not have a single rust blemish. It was impeccable.¡±


    ¡°My dad said that the body is made of aircraft aluminum, that¡¯s why there is no rust.¡±


    ¡°How big are the tires?¡± Toomas asked.


    ¡°When they are full of air then about a meter in diameter. The body would then sit at about 60 centimeters from the ground. If I start the vehicle it will pump the tires up on its own.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s like a truck.¡± Toomas said. ¡°Red trailer lights in the rear, amber in the front. And it is really wide.¡±


    ¡°I once took a tape measure to it. 2.25 wide and 4.6 in length. Abut 2 meters in height. But there is little room inside, only four seats. Reportedly built like this so it could follow the same tracks as tanks and armored personnel carriers.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯ve driven it?¡± Toomas asked.


    ¡°No, I have not.¡± Arno said. ¡°I have only sat inside. There are only two pedals and so many dials, levers and little buttons that my head starts to hurt. It has been sitting like this for 40 years. I think 40? A few years after I was let go from the Russian navy, it was left here.¡±


    ¡°It looks to be in quite good condition, considering.¡± Toomas said. ¡°I really cannot say anything either way. Maybe you should talk with Peeter the Village Dude. He already has one off road vehicle the size of a sauna. Or with the Professor. The girl in black might actually be your best bet.¡±


    ¡°Yea, I¡¯m never going to talk to that girl!¡± Arno said with a determined voice, while leading Toomas to the house. ¡°I trust no man who regularly goes to the Underground Base!¡±


    ¡°You¡¯ve seen her going there?¡±


    ¡°I have.¡± Arno nodded. ¡°She drives a car similar to all the suspicious people coming from outside the town. Long and low like a ZIL, makes a sound that reminds me of big military trucks, and curiously also the flying saucers of my youth. It is red like blood, only two doors, tan canvas top and bright red tail lights the shape of church steeples.¡±


    ¡°I think I saw it in town today.¡± Toomas said.


    ¡°In any case she is the only one I have see going to the Underground Base and coming out of the Underground Base. And this I find very suspicious considering that everybody else is afraid of the Underground Base like hell itself.¡±


    ¡°If I meet her, I will ask what¡¯s she doing in the Undergound Base.¡± Toomas said.


    ¡°Please never mention my name anywhere in the conversation.¡± Arno said. ¡°I don¡¯t want that girl stopping in front of my house in the middle of one of her nightly drives.¡±


    ¡°You don¡¯t have to worry about that.¡± Toomas replied. ¡°I haven¡¯t been here, I haven¡¯t come here. Just like Rops has never seen anaks.¡±


    ¡°Rops may well have seen anaks. And Rops would not be the first.¡± Arno explained. ¡°Reportedly they kept hounding the local kolkhoz and the vodka factory back in the 1970s. What happened many times was that a truck would leave the factory fully loaded, and then a blinding light would flash, the driver loses 9 minutes of time and the wooden crates, still nailed shut, are present but the bottles in them have disappeared.¡±


    ¡°Really!?¡±


    ¡°Really-really.¡± Arno continued. ¡°This whole area from the cottage district to Tontla and Valgepal? was once a dry region, because anaks stole all alcohol and even industrial ethanol. They finally managed to stop it when the officers decided that a limit has been reached and vodka shipments were shadowed by mobile triple-A batteries. At the same time there were helicopter gunships in the air and above that patrolled Migs with free fire against any non-friendly aircraft in the airspace.¡±


    ¡°Interesting that it helped at all.¡±


    ¡°It only helped for a little while.¡± Arno smiled. ¡°A week later the premier of the local kolkhoz was having a party, where vodka flowed like water. He was named Anatoly Tereshkov, if I recall correctly. His wife was a short and stout one named Valentina.¡±


    ¡°Like the famous cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova?¡±


    ¡°Indeed. The premier and the accountant had barely managed to hit their glasses together when there was a sudden flash and in the middle of the hall, there stood three young men in black leather jackets, white shirts and blue jeans. The looked so similar to one another that they could have been triplets. And the also looked like movies starts from America. But then the show started. The young men emptied every bottle they got their hands on. It didn¡¯t matter whether it was beer, liqueur, vodka or whiskey. There were several strong men at the party but none could fight the youngsters, all were sent flying across the room like ragdolls. Sharp implements like knives or forks could not injure them and even the local militsiya officer was dumbfounded after he emptied both magazines of his TT pistol into the chest of one of the men but could not even break his shirt.¡±


    ¡°How were they dealt with then?¡±


    ¡°They weren¡¯t.¡± Arno said. ¡°The young men ate and drank everything without discern. Hearing the kolkhoz premier yelling his own name repeatedly and making demands, one of the young men made his way towards the wife of the premier. He forced the woman on the table belly first and started taking her right then and there. To some onlookers it was even funny to see a young man with considerably good looks taking a fat woman from behind and throwing everybody who try to stop him across the room with one hand.¡±


    ¡°So the anaks raped that poor woman?¡±


    ¡°Yes. The whole village suspected that the reason was the name of the woman ¨C Tereshkova. The kolkhoz premier was red in the face with shame and did not show his face for weeks while the whole village was full of stories of the rape and how the anaks dragged three crates of vodka and two pigs into their flying saucer before leaving. The militsiya officer was the first to speak of it as rape. But they only person who did not speak of it as rape was the woman herself.¡±


    ¡°Wait? What!?¡± Toomas could not believe his ears.


    ¡°The marriage of the kolkhoz premier soon hit the rocks. There was a story circling the village that mrs. Tereshkova had herself said that she had never been fucked better before in her life. That her husband has never offered her such passion like that anak smelling of vodka. Soon another story started. That the wife of the premier was sleeping around with young men to re-experience even a little bit of that which the ufo had offered her.¡±


    ¡°That is a funny story.¡± Toomas smiled.


    ¡°Yeah, it is.¡± Arno said. ¡°That¡¯s also what I wanted to tell you. The world is changing, things are happening behind the shadows and Rops in not as crazy as one might think. I won¡¯t hold you any more, I bet there is a lot you need to think about.¡±


    ¡°Thanks for inviting me.¡± Toomas said. ¡°It was a pleasant conversation. I will try to look into these matters when I get back to town.¡±


    ¡°And most importantly.¡± Arno said, raising a thick index finger in front of his face. ¡°We have never met.¡±

 XXVII - Night in the Cottage District I

    Professor Kotkas only awoke because somebody was banging hard on the door to his apartment. His first glance was at the dial of an old alarm clock with the radium paint on hour marking and hands still offering some illumination. It was the fourth hour in the morning. It was a dark night and he could hear a thunderless rainstorm outside his window. Then the noise started again which startled Jaan from his idyllic semi-sleep and finally made him get up. He turned on the light, grabbed his robe, put on his slippers and headed towards the door.


    He quickly opened the door and froze. In the hallway in soaked clothing and hair still dripping with water, there stood the familiar girl in black, her hand risen, ready for continuing to knock on the door. In her eyes there was a tired and annoyed glint.


    ¡°Mariann.¡± The Professor said, having forced down his incensed mood. ¡°Do you know what time it is?¡±


    ¡°I do. I know far too well.¡± The girl replied in a tired voice. ¡°I have something to show you. Can I come in?¡±


    Her voice and the demanding demeanor did not allow the Professor to continue contemplating the question. He stepped aside and let the girl in. She produced a small transistor radio with a cassette player tightly packed in a plastic bag. Without taking off her boots, she unpacked the radio from the plastic bag covered with water droplets and put the power cable into the wall socket.


    ¡°What happened? I haven¡¯t seen you in three days and now suddenly...¡±


    ¡°I haven¡¯t slept in three days.¡± The girl said. ¡°An opportunity has presented itself to us.¡± She produced an audio cassette from her jacket pocket. ¡°An opportunity, if we were to let it go by, we would definitely regret.¡±


    She put the tape in, turned up the volume and pressed play. A deafening white noise from the airwaves filled the apartment wiping the last inklings of getting back to sleep from the Professor¡¯s mind. All kinds of interference noises, squeaks, beeping, trilling, screams that sounded neither biological nor mechanical. The Professor could only be thankful that the building in which his apartment was, was mostly uninhabited and thus there were no other neighbors on this floor or above who would be disturbed by this noise.


    Suddenly, the noises from the airwaves stopped, as if they were switched off and for a while only faint rustling of green noise could be heard. And then a mechanical monotonous female voice started counting numbers.


    ¡°One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, null.¡±


    ¡°You found a numbers station?¡± The Professor asked.


    Mariann who was still bent over the radio, only raised her index finger and directed a sharp glance at the Professor.


    As soon as the female voice had finished counting the numbers, a short beep in sine tone was heard and then they could hear a familiar male voice saying those very familiar words over a phone line with 8 kilohertz sample rate.


    ¡°That¡¯s the reason, I remained because I thought I would go there early-early-early-early...¡±


    After this, the female voice continued with ¡°three, six, two one.¡±


    After these final four numbers, the airwaves fell quiet again to the floor of faint green noise. A few seconds after that, the usual white noise full of signal interference was switched on again as if nothing weird had happened.


    Mariann stopped the tape.


    ¡°This recording was made...¡± She raised her hand and pushed the wet sleeve up revealing a watch a little too big for her wrist. ¡°Now 27 minutes ago. This means we have 5 hours and 35 minutes remaining to get something done.¡±


    ¡°Okay, could you start at the beginning please?!¡± The Professor said.


    She straightened herself up with an annoyed face.


    ¡°The airwaves are thick with all sorts of interference signals and jamming. That¡¯s the only reason most normal radio communication is impossible. Very powerful transmitters and the right weather conditions are required to cut through the noise and to cover the whole region and maybe even reach further. And even then, half of Valgepal? needs to be blacked out to feed the transmitters. If people in Tontla want to know the morning news on Valgepal? radio, then the most economic way is to go and get the tapes.


    ¡°Now, I¡¯ve been monitoring the airwaves for a while and we have maybe seven or eight different noise signals on the air. Because of that, it is very unusual if all those transmitters suddenly fall silent to let through one special signal. This is my first point.


    ¡°My second point is that repeating sentence which was once uttered in that single phone booth in town. At first I only thought that it had burnt into the airwaves and was now circling along the field lines of the magnetosphere powered by some strange force. That because of this, it is untouched by the local noise which disallows the signal from most radio stations from here or elsewhere. But that was not correct. Or to be more precise, that is not all. A numbers station of some sort has picked up this segment from the air and is now using it to signify a fulfillment of a certain condition. Everything is automated and there¡¯s probably nobody left on the outside who knows that such a station here is active or that it¡¯s predictions have any merit to them.¡±


    ¡°Okay, this is a long story you just told me but I¡¯m still not getting what you¡¯re talking about.¡± The Professor said. ¡°What condition?¡±


    ¡°It sends out a notification when a super secret research lab called Mir-8 becomes accessible. In this case, the access exists for 362 minutes since the ending of the notification.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s a Mir-8?¡± Jaan continued asking, still weighing in his mind whether all this justified ruining his sleep.


    ¡°Russian research laboratory, which during some periods swallowed the whole output of the Center Station¡¯s generators. If you want to know what¡¯s going on with the world, we should get as fast as possible to the cottage district under which the Mir-8 lies. Tentatively speaking.¡±


    ¡°Tentatively speaking?¡±


    ¡°I will continue after you put your clothes on.¡±


    ¡°Can we not wait for the next time?¡±


    ¡°The time between the access periods has been increasing slowly but surely. Months may pass until such an opportunity comes upon us again. And then too it may occur in the middle of the night.¡±


    ¡°What do you mean by ¡®tentatively¡¯?¡± Jaan repeated his question.


    The girl did not reply him, only stared at him with her penetrating gaze until he finally started dressing.


    *


    ¡°This is your car?¡± Jaan asked, stopping under awning on the main staircase.


    Only a step further, there was a powerful downpour capable of soaking every item of clothing under a second. Another five steps further right by the sidewalk a massive red two-door car bathed in dark shadows.


    ¡°In it, I can sleep and listen to the nighttime rain. I don¡¯t need much else.¡± The girl said. ¡°Red leather is also quite nice.¡±


    Ignoring the rain, Mariann unhurriedly stepped down the stairs, walked around the car and opened the driver side door.


    ¡°Seems to be of a same era as my two-door.¡± The professor said after he quickly followed the girl and had sat into the cool car.


    ¡°A bit older. ¡°The girl said. ¡°But the engine is the same.¡±


    With a quiet low burble, the car started and a whole array of little incandescent bulb lit up both on a colored idiot light panel in the dashboard as well as yellow bulbs behind knurled transparent plastic panels, the latter of which filled the interior of the car with warm yellow light. Mariann took off and let the car roll through the potholes on the street. Water kept splashing onto the windscreen, reducing visibility to zero but she seemed to not care at all.


    ¡°Damn rain.¡± She only said. ¡°It started right after the radio transmission had finished. It is quite possible that the Mir-8 facility or some of it¡¯s local support systems are affecting the local weather.¡±


    ¡°What did you mean by ¡®tentatively?¡¯¡± Jaan again repeated his question. ¡°You said that Mir-8 is accessible. ¡®Tentatively.¡¯¡±


    ¡°It means...¡±


    The girl turned onto the circular road that surrounded the whole town, and struggled slightly with an unexpected slide due to the heavy rain.


    ¡°...that the facility is accessible through the post office located in the Cottage district. However that does not mean that it is physically located beneath the post office.¡±


    ¡°Where is it located then?¡± Jaan asked. ¡°If not at the place it is accessible from¡­?¡±


    ¡°Where¡­?¡± A smile smile floated on the girl¡¯s lips. ¡°Who even remembers that? Maybe it has never been located anywhere and has always been intermittently accessible. Just that in the past, this period of accessibility has been so long that people have mistaken it for presence. But now, when the access itself and the thing it accesses are no longer controlled, the existence of the object has become unstable.¡±


    ¡°Unstable?¡± Professor muttered, in thought. ¡°Could you start from the beginning why this laboratory is important?¡±


    ¡°In the simplest of terms, Mir-8 is an intersection facility, in charge of managing access to other facilities. Among which there are the Center Station, the Underground Base and the Combine. But also the Valgepal? mine, The Route and the 4<sup>th</sup> Town. These latter facilities have no other accesses besides Mir-8. In theory, Mir-8 could also access the lost sections of the Institute, if only one knows the parameters required to access them.¡±


    ¡°I know of the Center station, the Underground base and the Combine. But I have never heard of the Mine, the Route and the 4<sup>th</sup> Town.¡±


    ¡°The Mine is located on the other side of the concrete wall in the Cottage district and the forest beyond the wall.¡± Mariann explained. ¡°It looks like the phosphorite and uranium argillite mines of Northern Estonia, but of the actual resources to be mined, there is a suspicious lack of. The devil only knows what they really mined there, but at one point the Russian military blocked it off and explosively collapsed all tunnels leading underground. According to some rumors, it was all leveled later with remotely controlled bulldozers.¡±


    ¡°Remote-controlled dozers?¡± The professor asked. ¡°The only place I have heard of radio-controlled equipment is...¡±


    ¡°Chernobyl.¡± She finished his sentence. ¡°And the irradiating lake of the Mayak production company. There probably was something in that mine. Something mysterious and dangerous. We may never know. Unless we go to Mir-8.¡± Mariann gave a small smile. ¡°The 4<sup>th</sup> Town is as it sounds. If we imagine this region seen up high, then the Nameless Town is the Northern-most. Tontla and Valgepal? are slightly to the South and off to the sides. And the 4<sup>th</sup> Town would be at the bottom peak of this diamond. At least in theory.¡±


    ¡°I sense a ¡®but¡¯ coming.¡± Jaan said.


    ¡°But the problem is that there are only two kinds of maps: Those which have the 4<sup>th</sup> Town marked on them in all of it¡¯s Stalinist beauty but with no directions or a way to get there. On the maps of the second kind, there are the rest of the three towns and all the roads but not a mark of the 4<sup>th</sup> Town. Although according to old stories it should be no more than 10 kilometers as the crow flies from Tontla or Valgepal?. And there¡¯s something else, something that goes beyond the stories. There exists a small Soviet Era picture book of postcard photos of architecture and other points of interest in the 4<sup>th</sup> Town. Some of the village hags even remember visiting the 4<sup>th</sup> Town but nobody remembers these days how they got there.¡±


    ¡°The 4<sup>th</sup> Town must certainly have it¡¯s own secret purpose?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°All towns in this area did. According to the rumors, some sort military industrial institute, an OKB was located there. Best known for something called Project 62. However the name of the town, the name of the institute or what Project 62 was all about, these are the things one can no longer learn.¡±


    Mariann fell silent again, just for a moment though.


    ¡°The Route is the most mysterious of the three. Nobody knows anything about that. Even I don¡¯t know so I cannot tell you unbelievable stories about that place.¡±


    The professor directed his gaze through the windscreen, realizing he could not tell the sky from the forest or the pastures. The rain was coming down with the same unyielding strength and the wipers could only barely clear away the water. There was no moon, he could see no stars and it felt like the headlights on the car only illuminated a couple of meters of road in front of them. It was clear that this was no usual nighttime darkness, instead it was that infamous living darkness or dark fog that sometimes came up in conversation at the bar. Darkness which acted like light, like a very fine black mist which could turn the most powerful spotlight as useless as a scratched up flashlight.


    Despite that, the girl did not decrease the speed she was driving at.


    ¡°How can you see in this darkness?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°I¡¯m not seeing, I am sensing the road.¡± The girl said. ¡°I know this area so well that I could drive at night with my eyes closed. But if you want to feel comfortable...¡±


    Mariann ran her fingers under the dashboard and the next moment blinding source of light illuminated at nose of the car. Bright clinically white beam pierced through the darkness and scared the black mist away from everywhere around them. It was as bright as with regular high beams on a clear night.


    ¡°What the hell kind of searchlights are these!?¡± The professor exclaimed.


    ¡°Modules of light-emitting diodes.¡± Mariann said. ¡°Not long ago I found a car on the side of the road, which had been used by one of the bands arriving in town. It had two light bars as wide as the grilles. I took them and put the behind the grille on my car. That darkness flowing out of the Underground Base at night eats away all the light that a halogen or even a gas discharge bulb produces, but it cannot digest this light. At least not yet.¡±


    ¡°You think it¡¯s gonna get¡­ darker?¡±


    ¡°I am certain of it.¡± She said. ¡°The whole world is alive. The Underground Base is also alive in some sense. It may take a week or two, but the darkness will adapt to the light from these diodes and then they will fail to illuminate anything like the rest of the lighting. Next to the car it will seems as if you were looking into the sun, but the light from it won¡¯t even reach the ditch by the side of the road. And then there¡¯s that other problem.¡±


    ¡°What other problem?¡±


    ¡°The tone on the light-emitting diodes is wrong. The nature and the life forces in this place are not willing to tolerate it. Usually, the darkness is scary because it seems that there are things in the night which the eye cannot see but the senses can perceive. But bright light like this will bring them all out, every shadow creature and spirit being who usually lurk in the corner of the eye. This kind of revelation however will make a person fear the dark even more. It ruins his contact with this place and the nature here so that the night and the darkness really do become dangerous for him. That¡¯s the reason I do not want to use these light-emitting diodes.¡±


    ¡°You mean to say that a burning fire or powerful halogen lights are fine, but xenon or LED is not?¡±


    ¡°Yes. Luminescence is also not. That¡¯s why the Russians kept walking around in the night as if this was some inhabited alien planet. So much heavy weaponry unable to provide the slightest amount of security or comfort. The color temperature of the lamps mimicking natural daylight was wrong, and from the darkness it brought out both that which was there but also that which was not. There were several occurrences of the night watchman thinking he had shot some monster, which he even dragged under the spotlights of the sentry post, which the researchers and the medical techs photographed, sketched and dissected as if an alien lifeform. But when morning came and the sun dawned, suddenly it turned out to be a fellow soldier who had gone into the bushes to take a dump. With his body riddled with bullet wounds and his pants around his ankles.¡±


    Mariann fell silent for a moment.


    ¡°Just try and explain that to your superior officer.¡±


    Black macadam under the wheels of the car was replaced by gravel road and soon a small cluster of birches appeared at the right edge of the powerful cone of light. While straight ahead there was a small opening in the hedges into the front yard of a farmhouse. Wide right angle turn to the right towards the Underground Base was clearly visible. However before that was an even sharper turn to the left towards the cottage district, this came upon her so fast that she had slam the brakes on wet gravel road.


    Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    ¡°Sorry.¡± She said. ¡°I¡¯m used to going to the right.¡±


    ¡°To the Underground Base?¡± The professor asked.


    ¡°Yes.¡±


    Jaan said nothing further on that. The girl felt that the true meaning of her words had gone right by him understanding. No matter. If nobody asked a question, she had no reason to talk.


    The streets in the cottage district were wide and covered with black macadam. The wider street at the side of the cottage district Mariann was now approaching by was even wider, with a sidewalk on one side of the road. But this did not mean that the cottage district was inhabited. The streets were dark. In rain, the street lighting short-circuited and from between the buildings one could see only a few windows from which light still shone.


    In this place there was nothing unusual about going to sleep but leaving the lights on in at least one of the rooms of the house. Electric light kept away that strange unearthly darkness which crept in even through the window glass. In addition to that, an illuminated window was a clear indicator which yard was safe for a nighttime traveler to spend the night sleeping in grass and which was not.


    The cottage district was an exception in that regard. Uninhabited buildings were not as protected from the influences of the Underground Base and other mysterious forces as the inhabited buildings. If one were to fall asleep in an abandoned building, it was quite possible for the sleeping person to not wake up in the morning. This was also possible in an inhabited house if one were to kill the lights for the night. But a single fourty watt incandescent bulb burning in the outhouse was enough for a safe night.


    Mariann slowed the car down. Something familiar had appeared into the beam of light. A long low four-door car. With a side profile shaped similar to a wedge, somewhat. Faded green color and collapsed tires. On the trunk lid there was a brake light almost as wide as the lid itself.


    ¡°What is it?¡± The professor asked.


    ¡°I remember this car.¡± Mariann said.


    ¡°I think it has been here for quite some time. What do you mean you remember it? You¡¯ve seen it before? You¡¯ve driven it?¡±


    ¡°No. I¡¯m pretty sure I haven¡¯t yet. But I remember it. That means something.¡±


    ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°Maybe the facility has also been active in the past. Or in the future. Doesn¡¯t matter, time is cyclic. And Mir-8 breaks that. Or maybe it it possible that Mir-8 is not the prime switch, but it¡¯s protocols can be remote-controlled. Across time and space. Maybe even with insignificant events.¡±


    ¡°Events which have not yet happened and that mysterious facility.¡± Jaan said, in thought. ¡°Is there some connection here?¡±


    The girl in black smiled.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know. Maybe. I myself am still trying to make sense of it.¡±


    ¡°What is that Mir-8 anyway?¡± Jaan asked. ¡°You never explained that clearly. The word ¡°intersecting facility¡± tells me nothing.¡±


    ¡°I cannot explain it clearly.¡± Mariann said. ¡°I¡¯m only telling you what I see and feel. The Russians also could not speak of it clearly, only in terms they knew and understood. Earthly mathematics, protocols, signals and classifications, which only meant something for them and transformed something simple but incomprehensible into something complicated but comprehensible.¡±


    The girl went right on the next intersection and stopped in front of the two story stone building which in no way tied architecturally with the rest of the houses in the cottage district. The walls of the stone building were vaguely brown like creamy coffee and surrounding the entrance were two white pillars on either side. Above the main entrance there was a small balcony and above that a small bell tower on the spire at the top of which there seemed to be either a red star or a hammer and a sickle. It was difficult to tell due to the darkness. There was a broken light-up lettering above the door, with only the second word ¡°office¡± still readable. The letters for ¡°post¡± were broken and scattered on the pavement in front of the door.


    Mariann parked the car on the side of the road and killed the engine. It was still raining. Less that before, but still raining. A downpour had become a strong sprinkle and sounds of everything around them constantly dripping.


    Suddenly a pale orange light appeared in the middle of the darkness. This made professor¡¯s heart grow cold. He had heard of motion sensors, but not here, not in the Nameless Town. In here, the true reason for lights suddenly turning on or off was almost always something else.


    ¡°This not unusual here.¡± Mariann said. ¡°The motion sensors the Russians left behind are exceptionally robust. It it surprising really. Everybody damns the Russian tech for it¡¯s lousy reliability, but if you put together electrics and extreme conditions and Russian tech it is the most reliable thing to use.¡±


    ¡°I hope you brought something else besides your good mood.¡± The professor said.


    Mariann gave him a disappointed glance.


    ¡°I brought you along. Because you¡¯re the only person in this town I trust.¡±


    ¡°I¡­ I have no response to that.¡± Jaan said, fazed.


    ¡°Of course I brought along some flashlights. Hopefully there¡¯s no darkness from the Underground Base inside the building.¡±


    ¡°I only have the revolvers.¡± Jaan said as he opened the door.


    ¡°Very good, leave them in the car. We¡¯ll fare better if we have no weapons.¡±


    ¡°You have that much experience with wandering around secret military bases?¡±


    ¡°Do not ask questions you do not want answered.¡± Mariann said and opened the trunk.


    The professor had some doubts but he still dropped both of his revolvers into the trunk of the car. In their place he received a heavy flashlight with a long tube.


    ¡°This is some kind of Russian era item, huh?¡±


    He turned the front towards his face and pressed the button. The beam of light was much more powerful than he had expected. It not only blinded him and made his eyes water but also caused a hellish amount of pain in his eyes.


    ¡°Fuck!¡±


    He was now rubbing his eyes.


    ¡°Just an unrelated question, if I may. Do you also check whether the gun is loaded by looking into the barrel and pulling the trigger? I guess not. So why do this with a flashlight?¡±


    ¡°I did not expect it to be so bright!¡± He said, trying to get his eyes adapted to the darkness once more.


    ¡°As an answer for you, no, it is not from Russian times. This has proper rechargeable batteries and the bulb is modern halogen item with a reflector coated in real silver. This is not some cheap thing boasting the Soviet seal of quality, but it is about as reliable and foolproof.¡±


    Mariann froze all of a sudden and raised her hands to her sides, as if trying to sense the flow of air.


    ¡°Tell me you felt that.¡± She said.


    ¡°Felt what?¡± the professor asked.


    ¡°So you did not?¡± She asked, with careful steps she walked away from from the car.


    ¡°What are you talking about?¡± The professor could not understand her.


    He looked about himself, trying to notice that mysterious thing the girl had sensed. But he could see nothing. Only black broken asphalt, cottages and houses with overgrown yards and few lone lights in the distance.


    ¡°It¡¯s a¡­ strange feeling. As if something beneath our feet was¡­ active. As if beneath our feet was a gigantic empty chamber the resonance of which is reaching us through the ground and the pavement.¡±


    ¡°An empty chamber?¡± The Professor asked. ¡°Under the cottage district?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know. I am interpreting this feeling like that. I don¡¯t know it it really is that. But it is clearly indicating that the ground under the post office right now is not as it is supposed to be. As it is elsewhere. Let¡¯s go.¡±


    She finally closed the trunk of the car and headed towards the main door on the corner of the building.


    ¡°Even if there¡¯s some military shelter under this, such a large and grand post office for a small village like this seems a bit much.¡± Said Jaan.


    ¡°Stalinist tastes.¡± Mariann said. ¡°Buildings of state power must be as grand as possible, even if it surrounded by dachas. Also, this was not just a post office, this also had the provincial government and district housing management. It is quite interesting that those were here, not in the Nameless Town or in Valgepal?. Maybe the Russians felt distrustful about the Institute or the stories locals told about the Lake.¡±


    Mariann pushed at the blacked waterlogged door and allowed the beam of her flashlight wander across the tiled floor until it found a grand staircase leading to the second floor. Somewhere in the building, wind was banging the window frames back and forth and somewhere else something metal was creaking. Both noises made the girl feel secure, familiar and at home, so much in fact she was almost about to forget why they were here. She could not explain how or why this was.


    Jaan right next to her however was rattled and clearly not ready for something in a building abandoned for at least a decade to be still making such noises. Each sound made him flinch. He was a grown man with some experience in life but in this corner of the world he constantly felt as if he was back in his youth, as a little boy still afraid of the dark.


    ¡°Are you sure nobody lives here?¡± He asked.


    ¡°You want an honest answer to that, don¡¯t you?¡± Mariann asked as she pressed water out of her hair. ¡°That¡¯s why I brought you along. Because you are able to listen to my honest answers and make sense of them. But we don¡¯t have time to give that question an honest answer.¡±


    Jaan did not say anything, only looked at Mariann with a questioning gaze.


    ¡°You want and answer? Okay.¡± She sighed. ¡°There are no people here. Mice, rats, spiders, feral dogs and cats who return for the night, wild animals. I don¡¯t know it these count. At the same time many such creatures who are not alive, technically speaking, also wander this place. Who don¡¯t mind the animals but people¡­ people have something that attracts them. Something they want, if not to acquire it then at least to be near it. Most are content only with being near it. Those are the ones you see lurking in the corner of your eye. And those are the ones you should fear the least.¡±


    Suddenly a phone rang out in the cold building. That ring tore apart the silence and drowned out all other noises in the building, both in their ears but also in their minds, demanding all their attention.


    ¡°And then there¡¯s that. ¡°Mariann noted. ¡°The other extreme. Just a quick heads up: it would be better if you did not answer any ringing phones in here.¡±


    ¡°Did not even plan to.¡± The professor said. ¡°Could anybody know or suspect that we¡¯re here?¡±


    ¡°No, nobody from the town.¡± She said. ¡°But here is it not about the town. A ringing phone here is not the same phenomenon it is in the Institute. If in there, the phones and the wire are still present but nobody uses them, because nobody remembers the numbers, but here things are much more interesting.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s the case here then? Phones that are not connected?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°Exactly.¡± Mariann smiled. ¡°And it is just about the worst idea to answer a phone which is not connected anywhere. First of all, you have no idea who wants to contact you. Secondly, while you are busy answering the phone, something might sneak up on you.¡±


    ¡°And third?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°Third, if something mystical is really calling you, it is better if there is some distance between you and it. If a phones has a cable, there is at least some kind of distance between the two of you.¡±


    ¡°Hey, isn¡¯t there a phone booth in town which is also unconnected?¡±


    ¡°There is but it is connected into the airwaves. The phones here however are connected into nowhere. That¡¯s a difference. The second difference is that here, the proximity to Mir-8 is dominating, while there, it is the Institute. In that scale, the influence of Mir-8 is considered to be bad. And that is a very important difference.¡±


    ¡°Why is one good and the other bad?¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s a good question.¡± The girl smiled. ¡°It is not a difference in morality, it is¡­ based on how I sense things. Even the Underground Base is not as negative a place as this post office right now. Come.¡±


    Mariann started down a hallway full of trash from Soviet times towards the left wing of the building. Jaan followed her and soon they found themselves in a small but imposing main service hall of the post offce, reaching through two stories. Service counters made of dark brown wood and tall glasses like a bank hall in the 1930s. On the floors black and white ceramic tiles, with many broken patches all across it. There was wind blowing through the broken windows on the upper floor, carrying with it droplets of mist and some dry leaves.


    ¡°Do you hear that?¡± Mariann asked. ¡°The wind I mean.¡±


    ¡°I hear.¡± He said. ¡°It seems to be getting stronger, based on the whistle.¡±


    ¡°Steady flow, not getting stronger, not getting weaker, not even pausing. This is not wind.¡±


    ¡°What is it then?¡±


    Before she could explain anything, powerful bright searchlights turned on outside. These drew long sharp shadows onto the floor of the main hall, including some shadows which had no sources that would cast them, which then moved across the floor to merge with those shadows which had a source.


    ¡°You saw that, right?¡± Mariann asked. ¡°Those fucking Russians! The were watching the airwaves! This bad! If they know how things are done here then...¡±


    Mariann¡¯s words was interrupted by automatic gunfire from outside. Some of the bullets broke more if the building¡¯s windows and ricocheted off the walls and ceilings on the interior.


    ¡°The Old Gods be thanked, they did not know.¡± She said. ¡°Come, access to the underground is right here.¡±


    Suddenly the whistle of the wind outside was replaced by a loud chopping sound and the noise of a turbine engine, as if somebody had taken plugs out of the professor¡¯s ears. This was then overshadowed by sounds of metal bending and breaking in turn followed by deafening crashing noises and then a loud explosion with powerful orange glow, which broke some more windows but also killed the searchlights outside.


    ¡°If that thing fell on my car, I¡¯m gonna be really mad,¡± said Mariann.


    ¡°That was a¡­ helicopter?¡± Jaan asked, surprised.


    ¡°Yes, with quite sophisticated noise reduction systems. Unfortunately, the people themselves have not developed as fast as their tech has. Still they come here with weapons and light alien to this place and then they¡¯re surprised if things immediately go south. No difference for me.¡± She took an agitated sigh. ¡°We should hurry. Just in case the moronic special forces are accompanied by somebody who can actually think.¡±


    ¡°You think they¡¯re sending somebody who won¡¯t come by a chopper?¡±


    ¡°Not necessarily. At least one chopper crashed, but that doesn¡¯t mean there aren¡¯t more. Or that we don¡¯t have air assault infantry with proper training for operations in environmentally unstable situations coming in. In any case¡­¡±


    With a purposeful step she headed towards a narrow door, which Jaan had not noticed at all. She opened it. He directed the beam of his flashlight into a room full of cleaning supplies. The only noteworthy thing about the room was that it seemed to be a little too big and too prominently located to be just a storeroom. The floor was full of dirty wet rags, brushes with bristles missing or permanently bent and rust-covered metal shovels. There was even a lone gray vacuum cleaner the bellowed hose of which shattered into pieces as soon as she moved it.


    Mariann however was not affected by the disappointment on Jaan¡¯s face. She pushed all the stuff that had been near the door to the other end of the room and then used a flathead screwdriver she had pulled from her boot to pry up the ceramic tiles on the floor.


    The professor felt skeptical at first, but when the tiles came off a little too easily, he was intrigued. And the tiles most definitely revealed something that in no way should have been under them. Black forged steel under a thin layer of stucco.


    Carefully, she continued her work, removing more and more tiles and stucco until she uncovered big old-looking forged metal doors and heavy hinges. There were thick wires running across the doors, which ran into small clumps of concrete near the hinges and the padlocks, she had not cleared away.


    ¡°Technically speaking, this is an exit, nit an entrance.¡± She said and produced a keyring with keys. ¡°The emergency accumulator packs of the facility have enough energy stored that in case of any accident, Mir-8 will be directed here and people can get home. More or less. After that, an explosive charge is triggered which breaks the tiles, the locks and the hinges, so one can exit a closed shelter.¡±


    She unlocked and threw away both padlocks. The last lock built directly into the door allowed her to remove a panel from which she could disengage the explosive mechanism.


    ¡°Where did you get these keys?¡± The professor asked.


    ¡°You know what? I can no longer remember.¡± She said as she got up. ¡°This area has so many different mysterious facilities and military bases that...¡± She sighed. ¡°In addition, the world has been twisted into such a pretzel that¡­ But I do remember that I found the keys long before I know what they could actually be used for.¡±


    She opened the heavy iron doors and the beam of his flashlight revealed a dusty rust-covered steel staircase full of cobwebs. It descended several meters until it reached rough concrete floor below. Slowly she set her foot on the first step and the started to descend into darkness along the creaking staircase.


    ¡°I have never liked any stairs which cover my fingers with rust powder.¡± She smiled. ¡°It just doesn¡¯t speak of reliability to me.¡±


    ¡°To me, wandering old military facilities does not speak of reliability.¡± Jaan said. ¡°Chemistry lab, a nuclear missile base, or an observatory, at the very least I can make sense of what they are. But here I have no idea what people were trying to do. And as an anthropologist, this aggravates me.¡±


    ¡°Nothing surprising in that. Those people working here also had no idea.¡± Her voice echoed in the darkness below. ¡°This whole base was built on mistaken intelligence reports and some strange phenomena which were experimentally repeatable only at this general area.¡±


    Jaan also started descending.


    ¡°What do you do if you have a phenomenon and knowledge how to bring it forth, but there is no science to explain it?¡± She continued. ¡°Whether some external force you cannot isolate, which only exists here and not anywhere else, is catalyzing the appearance of the phenomenon? The fact that paranormal may become normal depending on location does not mean that the para-science explaining it turns into real science under those same conditions. In a situation like this, people would much rather research into things and discover where is the discrepancy, what is the prerequisite of this happening.¡±


    She glanced at her watch.


    ¡°Damn it. Time¡¯s a¡¯wasting.¡±


    As soon as she had set her foot on the concrete floor, a dull thump of a breaker box echoed out in the darkness and one by one, wall-mounted electric lights in watertight assemblies started turning on. The glow of the lights revealed a large underground hall which was about ten meters wide and twenty long. It was completely empty, there weren¡¯t even any pillars to support the ceilings. Also, there wasn¡¯t the slightest mark that this room had even been used for anything. Only knurled concrete panels for walls and black wires running across them from one light to another.


    The row of lights turning on one by one finally reached the opposite wall of the hall. There, much brighter luminescent lights revealed a big gate with horizontally opening doors made of blue steel. A moment later next to the gate a large mechanical flip clock became illuminated with the white flippers counting down hours, minutes and seconds. Next to that another luminescent light revealed a semaphore with red and green light. At first both lights came on but then only green remained illuminated.


    ¡°You were right.¡± The professor said, looking at the dial of the flip clock with a little less than five hours still on it. ¡°Time really is limited.¡±


    ¡°Isn¡¯t it about time for you to start trusting me?¡± Mariann asked. ¡°So that the next time I appear behind your door in the middle of the night and claim that the end of the world is upon us, you don¡¯t start asking me what time it is.¡±


    ¡°It that a realistic possibility?¡± Jaan asked with a worried tone.


    ¡°I¡¯ve been to the end of the world.¡± She smiled. ¡°That should be enough of an answer.¡±


    She walked to the big blue gate. Judging based on her own height, the gate was about three meters tall and at least as wide. The sides of the gate were covered in red and yellow high visibility striping and the door had tall red Cyrillic letters saying ¡°Danger.¡± But a true peculiarity was that above the red lettering was a Nazi-German eagle grasping a wreath with a swastika.


    ¡°You said this was a Russian base. Then why is there German eagle with a swastika?¡±


    ¡°Did you think the Russians built it from scratch? Oh no. They also had to get rid of the original inhabitants. And what was waiting for them with experimenting with Mir-8 was everything but historic.¡±


    ¡°What does that mean?¡± the Professor asked.


    ¡°As I said before, the world and the space-time is so knotted up in this place that in some regard it even transcends the capacity of the human intelligence to make sense of it. They too did not understand, they just worked on it. They did not spend their time contemplating why the door features a swastika and why some of the hallways have hexagonal profiles.¡±


    She pushed the red button under the semaphore. Following that orange rotating lights turned on on either side of the gate and the large door slowly slid open, half of it disappearing into the floor and the ceiling respectively. The door opening revealed a brightly lit complex with a flawless concrete, yellow railings and white floors.


    If the post office and the gray concrete chamber behind them were the remnants of a forgotten world then the facility before them seemed to be brand new and never been used.


    Suddenly, a deafening noise started above them. The upper part of the door jammed into the ceiling and did not disappear up there completely. An alarm started and red rotating lights in both upper and lower corners of the gate turned on.


    ¡°This is not something that would hinder us.¡± Mariann said, walking forward. ¡°The doors exist only to keep people away during the brief moment the door is activating or deactivating. And of course to cover up the true nature of the facility.¡±


    She stepped through the gate. Professor followed her, stepping onto a bright floor which seemed to have a light source underneath it. He then noticed that he was standing in the middle of a room with a total of nine such bluish gray gates arranged in a quarter circle. All of them had their doors closed, but not all had red lights illuminated in the semaphores. In addition to the jammed gate they had come from, there were three gates with green light illuminated and two gates which had neither the semaphore nor the lights surrounding the gate illuminated.


    Above each gate there was a familiar flip clock with a total of fourteen digits they could display. Some were illuminated, and the flaps on the dial had black numbers on white background. Underneath the flip clock there was another similar display which displayed a name, possibly a location the gate was opened to. On the jammed gate the flip clock on this side was also counting down the seconds. On the flip display below the clock, the word ¡°Institute¡± was displayed in Cyrillic lettering.


    ¡°Institute, The Route, 4<sup>th</sup> Town, Institute, The Crater, two dark ones, Door to Chthon and Sarnat.¡± The Professor counted in clockwise order.


    His voice reflected back from the high ceilings shrouded in darkness and metal pipes of various colors. At the moment, in addition to the gate they had arrived by, only the second Institute gate, the Route and Crater were active. The last of them had a count of fourteen zeros on the clock dial.


    ¡°As I had thought,¡± Mariann said. ¡°Mir-8 is no longer permanently synchronized with the Institute but rather with some other place.¡±


    ¡°I see there must be some other locations besides the nine here which the gates currently allow access to?¡± The professor asked. ¡°And why are there two gates pointing to the Institute?¡±


    ¡°There is an endless amount of locations. They do not have to be on this planet nor even in this Universe. And Institute seems to be a general term not a unique location. These two gates are dark because the locations they are connected to cannot be determined at this point. Of course, this does not necessarily mean that the gates could not be opened.¡±


    ¡°So a gate may be opened to a place that cannot be determined?¡±


    ¡°Yes, come here.¡±


    The professor walk up the stone stairs to a raised platform with all sorts of consoles set slightly to the right from the gates. The girl was pointing at the biggest display which was divided into three sections. The leftmost panel displayed a roughly ninety degree sector with nine outcroppings which was lit up in yellow. The outcropping subsections were lit with with different smaller lights: four green ones, three red ones and two blue ones. A similar sector was on the rightmost display section, but this was not illuminated, likewise unilluminated were the nine indicator lights for the presumably nine other gates. The middle section seemed like a sphere with a thick horizontal strikethrough. This section also stood unilluminated,


    ¡°There are more than nine gates here?¡± The professor asked.


    ¡°Not quite.¡± The girl said. ¡°It is more about Mir-8 being a mirror facility. It means we don¡¯t have only 9 gates but 9 + 9 gates. And one side of the complex is mirroring the other.¡±


    ¡°So in the other end of the facility, the gates are connected to the same locations...?¡±


    ¡°But not to the very same locations.¡±


    Mariann looked at the Professor hoping to see understanding dawn on his face.¡±


    ¡°Luckily...¡± she turned her gaze away, ¡°...the Russians kept details logs up until the moment they decided to abandon the complex.¡±


    ¡°Nine gates may be active at once, but each gate on it¡¯s own has a total of 27 positions.¡± The professor said, looking at the introduction section of the log book. ¡°So at the same time it can interface with up to nine locations out of 27.¡±


    ¡°Not quite. Nine gates, each with 27 positions gives us a total of 243 unique locations at once. So if they want to get to anywhere else, they have release a pre-stored location to load another one. Also, as much as I can see, the number nine is not necessarily an energetic limit but it is most definitely a mathematical limit.¡±


    ¡°Why 18 gates then?¡± Jaan asked, ¡°is that other side a backup facility for emergency use or...¡±


    ¡°It is not for backup.¡± Mariann said. ¡°If it was only as a backup we would not be able to talk of it as a mirror facility. One side of the mirror reflects the other. It is also of interest to me how they managed to exceed the mathematical limit and create a mirror facility.¡±


    The placed the log book back onto the desk.


    ¡°Let¡¯s go and take a look. We have slightly more than four hours remaining. Here.¡±


    She pointed at the circular center section of the facility on the map displayed.


    ¡°What is there?¡± The professor asked.


    Mariann gave a mysterious smile. ¡°I can¡¯t tell you, Ask me again after we have seen it. By then I probably can.¡±

 XXVII - Night in the Cottage District II

    Following the beams of flashlights, Mariann and the professor walked down a wide main hallway covered in a heavy layer of dust. The true measurements of the hallway as well as the whole facility were impossible to imagine. The hallway seemed to be wide enough to allow 2 lanes in either direction for massive transporter-erector vehicles, while the height of the hallways easily reached the height of three story apartment buildings. The ceilings above were filled with massive lights, each seemingly the size of a passenger car.


    The right hand wall was filled to the ceiling with strange electro-mechanical machinery connected with cables that were thicker in diameter than Mariann¡¯s whole body. The cables seemed to disappear into the floors. One could only imagine that when switched on, these machines swallowed an unfathomable amount of energy while producing an infinitesimally small effect, whatever it was. And that¡¯s why this many machines in parallel were required to aggregate the results and achieve anything at all.


    The left side of the hallway had a wall that was covered in metal panels and layer of rust-covered small-gauge steel net. Every couple of done meters there were metal doors with small windows and next to each door there were non-functioning consoles with many analog dials and indicator lights. Something told Jaan that behind these doors were the many sections of computing machines which controlled the facility,


    It was almost unimaginable that actual humans had once built this place. An inordinate amount of people spending time and resources to erect something which in the terms of common science stood on top of a tower made of goose feet. It was also hardly imaginable that they had managed to keep it all in check and functioning as intended. This wasn¡¯t just a cybernetics department of some university, this was the real thing. An experiment in the deepest sense of the word. An experiment they were afraid to stop because the repeatability of that experiment was unthinkable.


    Mariann stopped walking.


    ¡°Do you see?¡± She asked, pointing the beam of of her flashlight into the distance.


    ¡°What am I...¡± The professor started to ask but then fell silent.


    It wasn¡¯t about what the beam of light fell on but rather about what it did not fall on. In this hallway there was some other source of light besides their flashlights. In the right side wall, under the ceiling up high there was a long row of low yet wide windows from which emanated a barely noticeable orange glow. They simply could not notice it before now as the light from their own flashlights dulled their vision.


    ¡°There¡¯s some scaffolding on the wall right over there.¡± She said, finding said scaffold with the beam of her flashlight. ¡°I¡¯m taking it.¡±


    With a steady pace they walked up to the scaffolding and the then looked up it. The scaffold reached the ceiling and the row of small orange windows seemed to be on the seventh or eighth layer of it. She switched off her flashlight and placed it on top of a nearby machine of unknown purpose made of thick gray metal. After doing that, she started to climb the scaffolding.


    The whole structure creaked and shook as she made her way up it. It even started to rock back and forth slightly almost threatening the fall into a pile of planks and pipes on the floor. This made her change her tactic and she made her way to the narrow side of the scaffold, using that to continue her journey upwards. However even after making it up, she had to rise to her tiptoes to be able to see out of the window.


    ¡°What do you see?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°The sky.¡± Mariann said. ¡°And clouds. I see an endless orange sky and in the middle of it shines an orange sun which is bright but it doesn¡¯t blind me. I see a layer of clouds slightly below us, but there seems to be another one above us. But nothing more. Only a sea of white clouds below, errant white clouds around us and some weaker clouds above us. And between them slightly higher than us shines an unearthly and powerless pale sun, coloring everything orange. Giving it roughly the same tone as street lighting.¡±


    She fell back on the flat of her foot and then leaned on the wall, closing her eyes to try and make sense what she saw.


    ¡°There is no life out there. No time. There is nothing. We are definitely not in the same world we woke up in last morning. You should come up too.¡±


    ¡°Better not.¡± Jaan said. ¡°I don¡¯t want to rain down along with all this metal.¡±


    ¡°Maybe it is really better if you do not.¡± She sighed.


    She then started climbing down, easily making her way down in a couple or minutes.


    ¡°I never imagined.¡± Jaan said. ¡°That your body carries this kind of strength.¡±


    ¡°Well, going spelunking in abandoned sub-terranean bases is not for the heavy nor the weak.¡± Mariann said.


    She picked up her flashlight and the continued walking.


    ¡°To be fair, what I saw from the window only raises questions.¡± She said. ¡°First the Germans. Then the Russians. The matter that we seem to be hanging in the sky somewhere, the lonely view I saw behind the window.¡±


    ¡°Are you scared?¡±


    ¡°No. I cannot say I am scared.¡± She said with a faint smirk. ¡°But I have no answer for it. I don¡¯t even have the proper thinking for it. This is not usual and it causes me some discomfort.¡±


    ¡°I didn¡¯t think there was anything that could cause discomfort for you.¡±


    ¡°There are many things which case discomfort for me.¡± Mariann said. ¡°That¡¯s why I¡¯m here. In this world. To get away from most of those things. And discomfort is mostly caused only by the initial contact.¡±


    The long wide corridor with a high ceiling seemed to end in the distance. But not with a fork or some door but a massive gate with a horizontal seam, similar to the gate they had accessed this facility. The gate here however was absolutely massive. As wide as the hallway and about half the height of the ceiling. However before reaching that, there was a short section of the hallway with a row of tall yet narrow windows in either wall.


    Only a single glance out this window was enough to be frightened through and through. Surrounding the hallway section was an endless darkness extending everywhere the eye could see. There were lights outside the window but these only managed to illuminate scaffolds and lattices made of round metal beams painted bright red. The beams looked absolutely massive, even the thinnest ones seemed to meters in diameter. The bigger ones may have been as wide as the very hallway the were standing in.


    Despite being able to see the red beams they could not see what they were supported on nor what they were supporting. They just seemed to grow out of endless darkness at the bottom and extend into endless darkness above. There seemed to be no connection between those red beams and the hallway they were standing in, but there seemed to be an intersecting hallway of similar dimensions behind the closed doors in front of them.


    But there was something else they could see. The edge of a massive silver sphere slightly above them. The section visible to them had no points of contact with the red round structures nor the hallways freely hanging in the middle of the darkness. And the other peculiar thing besides its size was that it seemed to be unblemished and incredibly smooth, with a positively mirror finish, which still only reflected back that endless darkness.


    ¡°Do you perhaps know why these hallways are this massive?¡± Mariann asked.


    ¡°Because of the computing machines in that department behind the panels to the left?¡± Jaan replied with an unsure question.


    ¡°No. Because of transportation. Perhaps you noticed that at the place we arrived at, a pair of rails disappeared into the darkness on the left? Or that there¡¯s a massive gantry crane above us extending the whole width of the tunnel. Why are the gates as big as they are? Because a naval container must fit through. Or an eight-wheeled MAZ-543.¡±


    ¡°What was the point of this facility?¡± Jaan now asked. ¡°Honestly speaking, you do know, don¡¯t you?¡±


    ¡°Not really. I have an inkling. I have a feeling. But I don¡¯t know whether it is correct. That¡¯s why we are here. To learn the truth.¡± The girl in black smiled. ¡°Oh, look, a door. I wonder if it¡¯s locked.¡±


    She pointed the beam of her flashlight to the massive gate at the end of the hallway and in the bottom section of the gate there really was a door. Small compared to the size of the gate itself, but with perfectly normal dimensions for a human to use.


    Mariann walked up to it, Jaan in tow. The door had perfectly normal steel door handle, something from a standard Soviet lock and door handle factory. She pushed down the handle and opened the door, stepping into darkness. The professor who did not want to remain alone in this unknown facility in which numerous Russians had already disappeared in and not that long ago, took a deep breath and followed her in.


    On the other side of the door, there was that intersection of gigantic hallways they had noticed before. An intersection the size of a main intersection of a city. But it was located inside some place. With enough clearance and wide lane markers on the ground for the oversized military vehicles to use. He raised his beam to the ceiling and saw massive bundles of cables and pipes running along the ceiling.


    But the most interesting aspect of the wide hallways here was a bulging wall which seemed to be following the shape of the silvery sphere they had see from the window.


    ¡°There¡¯s a large complex of freight elevators to the left. One could also get out from there.¡± She said.


    ¡°Out?¡± Jaan asked. ¡°What does ¡®out¡¯ even mean in this context?¡±


    ¡°A few things. If you think about it, whence we came from is not really the entrance. The entrance should be over there if we suppose that it opens to a world familiar to us in any way at all. If we suppose it to be a point of origin of sorts from when they started to build the facility, an anchoring point of some sort. Meaning that in theory one could enter this place by that so-called door.¡±


    ¡°Okay.¡± Jaan said, still in thought. ¡°You mean to tell me that somewhere out in the world, possibly near the Nameless Town, there is a closed hangar door?¡±


    ¡°Yes. Somewhere there might be a closed gate.¡± Mariann said. ¡°The other option is that this exit is not an anchoring point but rather a side experiment. An experiment into the unknown world outside the complex. This supposes that the facility has either from the beginning or since some moment in time in between been untied from the world familiar to us. And thus the role of that gate has changed.¡±


    ¡°You mean to tell me that people entered this place from over there, they turned on the facility and then started to research into what was really behind the gate?¡± The professor asked.


    ¡°Yes. I would not at all be surprised if this is how it really went. This facility is essentially like fire for prehistoric people. Here they managed to get it going and they used it to do the maximum amount of work until it died down or went out of control.¡±


    ¡°Okay...¡± Jaan said pensively.


    ¡°But...¡± She raised her index finger. ¡°There is a third option.¡±


    ¡°A third option?¡±


    ¡°Yes. What if the first people to come to this place did not use the service gate over there, but instead the same place we came from. What if the facility, or some rudimentary part of it was in existence before their arrival.¡±


    ¡°You don¡¯t mean to say...¡± the Professor asked, already seeing where the girl was aiming.


    ¡°A possibility the ideas of both the Russians and the Germans started with. Something the powers that be grabbed onto with all ten fingernails and which the employees here forgot as the first thing when they first made contact with the dreamlike and empirically unsound yet fully functional science. There is a door to exit this place, to the external outside, to the world familiar to us. But those who discovered this place entered via the gate complex, not the entrance. And they wanted the gate complex to act like an entrance, despite it never having been created to be an entrance in the first place.¡±


    ¡°What are you trying to tell me?¡± The professor asked. ¡°Honestly, I am having trouble understanding where your words are going.¡±


    ¡°Come then.¡± She replied. ¡°Ahead of us is something that will help you to understand everything. The center of the facility. Right here, behind this door.¡±


    She opened another metal door and then disappeared into darkness. Jaan followed her.


    As soon as he had closed the door after himself, something happened. First a weird snap happened in his mind as if he had just awoken from a daydream or some thought he had been hard at work on. He was standing in darkness, trying to understand where he was, why he was here and how he had ended up here. Then, before he had even managed to give a proper analysis on the entire situation, one by one small yellow and orange lights appeared in the darkness. And then there was light. Along with the lights coming on, he also suddenly remembered answers to all three of his questions.


    They were standing on a circular walkway made of metal grating. The walkway surrounded a strange apparatus in the middle of it, which looked like a huge pitch black lens of some kind. This whole circular section they were in felt much smaller on the inside than it had seemed on the outside. Also, while the strange device in the middle of the room was like a strange obsidian lens a few meters in diameter, the concave walls of the room were a monochrome screen capable of showing images only by switching the yellow and red indicator light on and off.


    ¡°Jaan.¡± The girl gently said.


    He turned back towards her and now noticed that something had appeared in the air above the strange lens. It seemed to be a three-dimensional hologram of the whole facility, looking like a space station from Soviet utopian science fiction. With the central spherical section and the gate complexes on thick stalks on either end of the center section. One side was colored yellow, the one one blue and in the middle the colors mixed producing green. Which was the upper and which the lower side was easy to understand. Much more complicated a question was, which was the left and which the right side. Or rather, from which side of the room had they entered it.


    ¡°Are you starting understand it now?¡± Mariann asked.


    ¡°Understand what?¡± He asked. ¡°I can¡¯t even understand the machines here.¡±


    ¡°Could you perhaps tell me from which side we entered this room?¡±


    ¡°We came...¡± Jaan started to think. ¡°From there.¡± He pointed to the door behind him.


    ¡°Are you sure?¡± Mariann asked. ¡°Do you see where you¡¯re pointing?¡±


    Jaan looked at his hand which was pointing at the door behind Mariann.


    ¡°What the¡­?¡±


    ¡°Look again.¡± She said.


    He focused on his hand again and it was pointing to the door behind him.


    ¡°The fuck¡­?¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re seeing it. This is the center of the facility. In here there are fields of some elementary particles hitherto unknown to common science which interfere with the neuro-chemical processes which make up or convey human consciousness. At the same time, these fields are necessary for the human consciousness to be able to persist at all, since we have to deal with the matter that we have two doors, two sides of the facility.¡±


    The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.


    ¡°So I haven¡¯t yet gone insane or had a stroke?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°Nope. I¡¯m affected too. I can try to raise my right hand in here however many times I want, but statistically I will be raising the correct hand on half the time. In this room it is impossible to tell, which is the left and which is the right side. Not subjectively and not objectively. Also, there is another mechanism taking care of the objective aspect of the matter.¡±


    ¡°Why is such a strange thing necessary anyway?¡±


    ¡°Because this is the way they achieved the two opposite sections of the complex. The raised the center to the 4<sup>th</sup> dimension and then mirrored one side across the 4<sup>th</sup> dimension, essentially changing it¡¯s chirality. That¡¯s how they created 2x9 gates and 2x27 positions. Since the center of this section is in the 4<sup>th</sup> dimension, it is acting almost like as superposition of both chiralities.¡±


    ¡°I think you can already imagine the question I have.¡± Jaan said. ¡°Are we currently in superposition of our three-dimensional selves?¡±


    ¡°I can understand what you¡¯re trying to say, and my honest answer is that I don¡¯t know. If we were right-handed before stepping into this room then I don¡¯t know if we will be left-handed if we step out of this section into the other side, with our bodily features mirrored. But there is one other thing to note in here.¡±


    ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°This facility, on whichever neutral plane it exists, is movable, in three spatial dimensions. At the moment it is tied to the 2x27 background system but it is possible to connect it to different background systems. It may also be at an angle with regards to the 2x27 system.¡±


    ¡°I can imagine it as a simile but I cannot imagine how it could be possible physically.¡±


    ¡°Physics won¡¯t help you here. People who operated this in the past broke the balance so profoundly that I wouldn¡¯t be surprised if they untied this facility from all possible connections and background systems it was tied to and let it freely float in indeterminate space, meaning it may never be tied down ever again.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re telling me of experiments, the mirrors and a facility of some kind that would seem to be older than the people who built it in the first place. What¡¯s the point of it all?¡± Jaan asked. ¡°Why are we here?¡±


    ¡°The point?¡± Mariann asked. ¡°I can explain you what the point was that the Germans and the Russians had. Twice upon a time Germans fought a world war in Europe. The year was 42 and they needed a quick plan to conquer the UK and the US. They bullied UK with primitive rocketry, which although novel at the time, did not have much effect. The best idea they had for the US was an Amerika bomber with early jet engines, which would be carrying a Heisenberg device created by the Uranium Society.


    But then the Germans found something they maybe should not have found. And above the long distance bomber, a nuclear weapon or everything else triumphed the goal how to achieve a phenomenon that in here, Waffen SS soldiers enter and over there they come out. On the surface, quite simple idea, right? But considering the nature of this facility, the difficulty was not about the ¡°enter here, exit there¡± aspect but about ensuring that the ¡°there¡± they could achieve was located in this world and not in any other. And that is where the insurmountable problem lied.¡±


    ¡°So¡­?¡± Jaan asked with doubt.


    ¡°The Germans did not get too far with their ideas, the war managed to end before that. 20 years passed and the Russians discovered the Germans¡¯ secret. It was immediately obvious that nuclear weapons are useless if each side has about 22 thousand of them. But if the American nuclear launch sites are suddenly taken over by men dressed in olive drab who appear out of nowhere then that would be agreeable. But oh woe! The Russians stumbled upon the same problem as the Germans had: the problem of here and there.


    Thus, a whole separate science was established to explain what is ¡°here¡± and what is ¡°there.¡± But again oh woe! Before the Russians could achieve anything serious, the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union collapsed. But the Russians who, unlike the Germans, had actually managed to build something, were not going to just give it away, they planned to return here. For this purpose, one operational detachment remained into the facility and for the first time the facility was untethered from the background systems it has been connected to up until now. Up until now the facility had been connected to our town and the world from at least one point. It is possible that after this had been achieved, the experiments continued along their old paths and the things slowly slid into the state they are currently in.¡±


    ¡°And what is the current state of things?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°That the artificial has become natural.¡±


    The girl smiled, she pressed various buttons on the console which wrapped around the black lens. She pointed at the bottom of the hologram, at the many cylindrical objects there, sticking out of the bottom half of a sphere.


    ¡°Those are the reactors. Those are used to generate the force fields here. The Center Station has similar reactors but on a much smaller scale. Each gate requires at least one reactor.¡±


    ¡°Every gate needs a single reactor to work?¡±


    ¡°Every active connection requires the output of at least one reactor. The Russians called them reactors because based on their power output they are most similar to nuclear reactors, but nobody really knows what kind of energy generating processes are really contained within. They only quantified and directed it.¡±


    ¡°And how is that related to what you said before?¡±


    ¡°The idea the Russians had was to make the facility autonomous until such time that they return. In some way they managed to achieve that. They came here and untied it from all locations the 9+9 gates were connected to.¡±


    ¡°And?¡±


    ¡°And then from the 1+1 service access.¡±


    ¡°And?¡±


    ¡°And then from the 2x27 plane itself.¡± She paused, staring at the professor. ¡°You get it? They untied the facility from all background systems, they sent it to float away into the indeterminate space between areas and locations. There was no way to access this place, there was no way to exit this place. They cut it off from everything that surrounded it. The Russians hoped that their philosophical theory about the nature of the gates helped them out, but this only worked in part.¡±


    Mariann fell silent for some moments, considering the words to use.


    ¡°The fact that you have contact with some gate means nothing. It doesn¡¯t mean that your location is fixed with relation to the gate, just like seeing the Moon does no mean that the Moon is somehow fixed with relation to you. It also does not mean that you have any idea what lies beyond the gate.¡±


    ¡°How is that possible?¡± Jaan asked. ¡°You say that this complex is untied from all locations in the world. You say it can connect distant places with each other. How we were in the Town, but now, suddenly, in this facility were no longer even on Earth.¡±


    ¡°Very good. You are starting to see it.¡± Mariann smiled. ¡°Your rational mind is unable to accept it all. This is a healthy reaction.¡±


    She pointed at a small table with wheels, covered in yellowing documents.


    ¡°The common understanding is that the most direct route between two location is a straight line. The slightly more intelligent understand that the real distance is zero if two distant points can be brought as close as possible to each other, so you can step off one and onto the other.¡±


    She picked a document off the table and folded it.


    ¡°Those even more intelligent will manage to figure out that bending space and time like that is an infinitely difficult thing to do and even the Russians could not, even in here, never mind the Town or the Institute, come up with even practical mathematics for it.¡±


    ¡°So?¡± The professor asked, having not noticed that the girl had intentionally used the word ¡®even¡¯ thrice in one quick succession.


    ¡°It is much easier to bend space very little or not at all, and instead set between the origin and destination something that already is appropriately bent. This facility is exactly that.¡±


    Mariann took another piece of paper and rolled it up, bending it slightly to connect two points on a different slightly bent piece of paper.


    ¡°So, instead of bending space between two distant locations, instead this facility is bent in space in such a way that it fits between the two points?¡± The professor asked, he spoke slowly and pensively trying to put appropriate amount of weight on each word.


    ¡°How?¡± He suddenly asked. ¡°How is that possible?¡±


    ¡°They are not bending the facility itself but the space it is located in. Just like the drawing on the paper cannot understand when the paper is being bent or crumpled, the facility and the people within cannot understand when the three-dimensional space-time fabric it lies on is bent.¡± She explained. ¡°To me it seems that bending the space-time itself was not the greatest problem for them. The greatest problem was about singling out and locating the same location in space and time each and every time. For me that would be the greatest conundrum in such an experience. Or to illustrate, how is a stick man drawn near one edge of the paper to know what¡¯s near the other end of the paper without being raised into a higher dimension. Or when he bends the tunnel, then that the other end touches the same paper and not any other random one.¡±


    Mariann dropped the folder back on a metal table and then headed towards the door along the grated walkway. It wasn¡¯t even important which door it was. It didn¡¯t matter whether it lead back to the room they had been in previously or into one she had not yet been in, If she did not end up on the side she wanted to, then she only needed to retry the same door until she found herself from the location she was pleased with.


    ¡°Stay after me!¡± She said in a stern voice. ¡°You don¡¯t want us to end up in different wings of the facility after going through the door. Should that happen it will be devil¡¯s own job getting back together!¡±


    She opened the door to exit the sphere and staying close to one another, they walked through the door. Again a strange feeling assailed Jaan, as if his mind has stopped for a moment. Or as if he had just now awoken from a daydream.


    Before them again were the extremely wide and tall tunnels made of concrete elements. An underground street with lane marking to allow fast and safe traffic for three meter wide special chassis vehicles. Seeing how the beam of flashlight jumped everywhere in the long hallways as they walked, it felt like these were the very same tunnels they had been in before and from which they had stepped into the control center of the facility. But then the beams of both flashlights stopped on something which immediately convinced them.


    Maybe fifteen meters ahead, there was an emaciated human figure lying on the floor in tattered clothes.


    ¡°A body?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°A skeleton.¡± Mariann said in a cold voice. ¡°And this is not the only weird thing in this hallway. The other wing of the facility had been dusty from years of disuse. The only activity within had been automated heating and ventilation. But the dust here...¡±


    She crouched down to touch the dust with her fingers.


    ¡°...seems to originate from outside. This sand, soil, gravel. The hallways here are full of signs of actual use. There are scratches and pits in the wall surfaces. There are signs leading to all sorts of places and posters with information how to behave in different kinds of emergency situations.¡±


    ¡°Messages of the red propaganda¡­,¡± Jaan noted, looking around. ¡°Rust-covered metal pipes, even¡­¡± his flashlight stopped on something strange on the wall. ¡°These are roots.¡±


    He quickly approached the wall and knocked against the roots with the back end of the flashlight. The roots seemed to rise up high under the ceiling and even penetrate the floor. The roots made the sound dry wood would make when being knocked on. As he examined the hallways he started to notice this gray wood being elsewhere as well, because of it¡¯s color it seemed to disappear into the general grayness of the concrete. Unforked trunks of roots which were about the thickness of a man¡¯s forearm ran up the walls and created vaults of roots meeting and intertwining above them. Hiding the real sources of light as well as any equipment mounted to the ceilings.


    ¡°It is so wonderful of them to place these location maps here.¡± Mariann said, a little further down the hallway.


    She ran her fingers down the map on the wall.


    ¡°We are¡­ here. The gate sections are here and¡­ the technical section that services the gates...¡± She suddenly started to laugh. ¡°Is here.¡±


    Jaan too finally looked at the map and stared at it, frozen in place. When they had entered the complex there had been a much simpler drawing of the facility with the center section and the two sides with the gates. But this drawing also contained a technical section which dwarfed everything else, being located on both ends of the complex behind the gate rooms. And this made no sense, because according to this, the huge underground hallway under the post office was either the unfinished technical section itself, or supposedly occupied the same space at the same time.


    According to this diagram, on the other side of the technical section, there were storerooms for samples and spare parts, but also the vehicle depot. Also, the whole facility seemed to be at least 10 stories tall, among other things containing the archives, residential section, fully equipped military hospital, but also an armory of impressive size. Along with facilities for rest and recreation.


    ¡°You¡¯re starting to see it, aren¡¯t you?¡± Mariann asked as she smiled. ¡°This wasn¡¯t just a simple experiment. This was a full-fledged military base. But also autonomous and mobile in a completely new sense. At least it was supposed to be.¡±


    Without any sign of fear, Mariann headed towards the dead figure in the hallway. She directed the flashlight to its pale skull. This skeleton seemed to have survived with almost medical precision. There was no sign of any other organic matter remaining on the bones. The whole skeleton looked like it had been scraped clean from flesh and other tissues, then boiled and then redressed.


    Looking at the tattered clothing, this person seemed to be either medical specialist or a scientist. Tattered white lab coat, white dress shirt and black tie. No name tag or any other kind employee ID anywhere on the body. Not even in the pockets. For a moment an option flashed in her mind that this was not a skeleton of a real person at all, instead it was some prop gone missing from a medical office. Put down here to confuse or prank devil know who. At the same time, this thought demanded there to be at least one other live person in this facility. Which would have made things a lot more interesting for Mariann.


    ¡°Le¡¯ts go.¡± She said, turning to Jaan. ¡°Let¡¯s check out the archives first. That should give us at least some sort of idea what really happened here.¡±


    ¡°You already have some sort of feeling, don¡¯t you?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°I have a feeling.¡± The girl nodded. ¡°but I don¡¯t like it. And the more I think about it the stronger and likelier the feeling is.¡± She sighed, as if trying to pick the correct word and correct thoughts with which to begin with.


    ¡°I think we have thus far been viewing the facility from the wrong end.¡± She finally said. ¡°We talk about how they managed to make a 1x9 system into a 2x9. And it was impossible for me to understand, how. That gray egg full of control panels, gave me some ideas how the technology could be possible. But now, on this side of the complex, a feeling has arisen which should be the closest to the truth thus far.¡±


    Jaan looked at her, expecting her to continue. He did not say anything.


    ¡°The wing we entered from...it should not exist.¡± Mariann continued. ¡°Did you notice the wing we entered from being clinically clean and fresh. Although aged and stagnated, but still without any marks of use?¡±


    ¡°Yes, relatively.¡± Agreed Jaan.


    ¡°But this wing here has clearly been in use as a fully stocked military base. It seems to point at the fact that building the whole facility began in earnest with this wing. Base was built here, garages, warehouses, then it was stocked with weapons. A hospital and barracks were added as well as residential sections for the scientists. Then the reactor complex, one gate section. And that should have been it. Without the second gate wing, the center section is completely unneeded. But we have two sides with gates.¡±


    ¡°And we stepped directly into the new wing and not the old one.¡± The professor said.


    ¡°Yes.¡± Mariann replied. ¡°What does it tell you about the world whence we came from? If they started to build this complex from out world, we should have entered the old section. In my opinion. Which would mean that the origin of a complex could be somewhere else than world we live in.¡±


    ¡°But could it not be about what you said before?¡± The professor asked. ¡°That this complex has been untied from all background systems. Which means it could have very well turned itself around, or have been turned around by design as the first simple experiment?¡±


    ¡°It is quite possible.¡± Mariann said with some disappointment. ¡°It may sound funny but it is possible. If my example of a stick thrown into air rotating is similar to how this base relates to it¡¯s background system then it might be possible that the base has turned itself around and created the same connection. Because it is floating freely as it is and the connections it makes are not permanent. But. If the base is really bent between two destinations, then the background system is important, not like with a stick rotating in the air. And if one half only has the gates, but the other end also has all sorts of additional sections beside the gates, then the two section are not equal, they are not similar. At the very least regarding where the center of mass is. Meaning that they may not be equal when gravitation is applied, meaning that they cannot be covered under similar mathematics. And as the background system is important, it may no longer be possible for the complex to simply turn around and end up making matching connections.¡±


    She fell silent for a moment.


    ¡°It also supposes that the indeterminate space in which the complex is floating follows the same laws of nature as the cosmic space familiar to us.¡±


    She took one last look at the skeleton on the ground and then continued to head down the wide hallway. Soon they reached wooden double doors in the wall with tall yet narrow rectangular windows.


    ¡°Come on!¡± She beckoned the professor, ¡°I found a staircase.¡±


    They started to descend along a wide staircase, segmented by zinc plated handrails. Every level seemed to be the height of a three or four story building, meaning they had to descend quite a few floors to reach the last level before the technical sections, the level where the archive and the library were located.


    ¡°I am in pretty good health for my age.¡± Jaan said. ¡°but even I am perturbed by the idea that on our way back I have to run up more than ten floors of stairs. It would have been a little hassle, but we could have managed to get the elevator to work.¡±


    ¡°No way in hell.¡± She said adamantly. ¡°In this facility I hate all elevators. I cannot trust them, they do not act like doors, they act like gates. I can never be sure where they open into. There is no way for me to be sure that I won¡¯t be traveling lower than the lowermost level or higher than the highermost level.¡±


    ¡°Wait a second now!¡± The professor exclaimed. ¡°This is ridiculous! Such a thing is not possible! Elevators are attached ta cable spool which raises and lowers it.¡±


    ¡°That is the regular and simplified view of elevators. It may hold true anywhere else in the world but not in here. In simple terms, an elevator is a confined space moving back and forth along a set of rails. Within that space you are unable to sense in which direction and by how much the space moves. That¡¯s why elevators fright- I mean annoy me that much.¡±


    ¡°The elevators frighten you?¡± Jaan asked with a slight smile of schadenfreude.


    ¡°They annoy me.¡± The girl said confidently. ¡°And only in this facility.¡±


    ¡°Why though?¡±


    ¡°Like I said, on one hand, an elevator cabin is an enclosed space the movement of which in space cannot be predicted while inside it. Secondly, every elevator can be thought of as a gate. And in a gate complex floating in an indeterminate space it is not wise to step through every door, especially if you have no idea what lies beyond that door.¡±


    ¡°I am still not following your thoughts.¡± The professor said.


    ¡°Every gate is a singular object. It cannot be divided into components.¡± The girl in black continued. ¡°There either is a gate or there is not. At the same time it is double-sided. It is a gate from somewhere and into somewhere. At least that is the usual understanding. However if a gate can be divided into two, it turns into a triple-sided gate. From somewhere, into somewhere and nowhere. ¡®Nowhere¡¯ is created when ¡®from¡¯ and ¡®to¡¯ are no longer exclusively tied to each other. If ¡®from¡¯ and ¡®to¡¯ are no longer physically tied to one another but act as philosophical concepts and not empirical objects, then the understanding of ¡®nowhere¡¯ becomes important as well.¡±


    ¡°Why?¡±


    ¡°Modern elevators have double doors, don¡¯t they? Let¡¯s say you¡¯re waiting for an elevator. A bell rings and the doors open and you take a step without looking. But not into the elevator but into an empty elevator shaft. Let¡¯s say you survive. You left ¡®from¡¯, but you did not reach ¡®to.¡¯¡±


    ¡°But I reached somewhere else.¡± The professor said.


    ¡°From ¡®somewhere else¡¯ you can return. From nowhere you cannot. The elevator shaft is nowhere because all the external doors are closed and they cannot be opened. How do you get out from there? Another example. You wait for an elevator, the elevator comes. You step into the elevator. You notice something weird. You think the building has 7 floors but the elevator has 14. But you need to get to the topmost floor, so you push the button for it. You hear a ding, saying that the elevator has arrived, doors open, you step out of them and fall to your death. Because the building indeed only had 7 floors. But the elevator shaft for some reason had 14.¡±


    ¡°Who builds something like that anyway?¡± Jaan asked. ¡°But I am starting to get you.¡±


    ¡°There is a small addition to that.¡± Mariann said. ¡°As you fall you start to think that when you stepped into the elevator, you were on the tenth floor. This is the true meaning of ¡®nowhere.¡¯¡±


    ¡°Okay, but how does this pertain to the base here?¡±


    ¡°Russians probably developed it the most.¡± She said. ¡°Let¡¯s suppose they have an approach how to experimentally get the interior and exterior doors aligned to each other. To touch, to move the doors simultaneously. But what if they are not exactly aligned, or are not aligned at all? Will the gate open or not?¡±


    ¡°It shouldn¡¯t open.¡± Jaan said, in thought.


    ¡°How so?¡± Mariann asked with fake surprise. ¡°If you cook food at home and fuck up the recipe, then you don¡¯t end up with all the ingredients remaining, you get a pot full of inedible crap, which you throw out or eat with a teary face. Now the question is, whether every meal is a simple digital unit or an analogue composite unit. If you mess up the recipe, do you get absolute crap or do you end up with something that is half something you wanted and half crap? Same question applies to the gates here. If you mess something up, do you open a gate to nowhere or do you open a gate to somewhere with is not one or the other.¡±


    ¡°I have nothing else to add, to be honest.¡±


    ¡°Okay. But here¡¯s the main problem. The Russians measured out 27 locations they could connect to. But if there are only 27 locations across the whole spectrum, then the world is digital and a door to nowhere is a significant danger. If there is no door to nowhere, then the maximum number of 27 is arbitrary or a technical limitation of some sort, because in reality we have an endless amount of locations as each locations even slightly different from any other is a new location.


    ¡°But this leads us to the next question: if every location that even slightly differs from the others is a new location then it is possible that the gate itself is creating and destroying locations and therefore also worlds. At least in the eyes of a person on this side of the gate. Meaning every location can only be visited once and never returned to because the visited location simply cannot be found again from among all the others.


    ¡°This leads to the last idea I have with which to reconcile it all.¡± She continued. ¡°Namely, although we are centered on a fixed world fabric, we are not located solely on that world fabric but also on an uncountable number of other fabrics. Let¡¯s say the width of our existence is m world fabrics. This would also mean that if we open a gate to a location at least 1m world fabrics away from us, we have opened a gate to a location we ourselves can no longer reach by simply walking. It is possible that the Russians found out that there are 27 different m-infinities which make up an n-infinity. Mathematically it would mean that we must have an equation with only 27 solutions, each of which is an infinity.¡±


    ¡°If I try to imagine your solution visually, I immediately see a problem.¡± The professor said. ¡°Namely, it doesn¡¯t exclude the chance that people who see each other day to day may be centered on different world fabrics.¡±


    ¡°True, this is something to take into account. The other thing to take into account is that the n-infinity I mentioned before is not a single-dimensional but 0-dimensional object. Which kind of turns our last thought development mostly pointless. Meaning that what we discussed really explains nothing, only offering yet another mythological way to see the world.¡±


    ¡°It cannot be mythological if the science based on it works.¡± Jaan said.


    ¡°Why do you think that?¡± Mariann smiled. ¡°In here, science actually is working on a mythological basis. Or, I apologize, a philosophical one. There¡¯s not much difference between them.¡±


    ¡°And how does that theory explain your fear of elevators?¡±


    ¡°Because in this facility when I step into the elevator I have no certainty that when I push the buttons on the panel of the elevator cabin, I am actually in control of the elevator. No certainty that after the doors to the elevator close I may yet get back to where I was before I stepped into the elevator.¡±


    ¡°Okay, I see that.¡± Jaan said, in thought. ¡°How much further do we have to go?¡±


    Mariann took a look over the railing, down the slit between stair panels.


    ¡°I think one more level. After that start the bright red steps of the technical section.¡±

 XXVII - Night in the Cottage District III

    Mariann stepped into the large hall decorated with dark wood. The whole facility on this side had thus far been full of cold concrete and metal, with only one or two pairs of wooden doors for staircases. Compared to that, the library was very luxurious and lavishly decorated. The tall walls were covered in panels of dark oak, the reading area was full of massive dark desks and the same style followed the counters and work areas of the assistants and the archival workers. Above the latter there was even a big sign in Russian saying ¡°archive for Station Mir-8¡±.


    It seemed like the archive was divided in two sections. The first section was the one they had just stepped into. It contained a large reading hall and a library full of materials copied and bound right here. Further away, behind tall metal doors was the real archive which reached to the second and third floor above their heads.


    Also the archive seemed to be the only large room in the entire complex in which all the lights were constantly on. In the reading hall reaching through three levels, in addition tot he small library and a huge archive there was one other thing: A commemorative tableau. Large section of a wall with flags of the Soviet member states on both sides was covered with tens and tens of black and white photos in white wooden frames. Under every photo there was the name of the person and in the right corner, a small diagonal strip of black ribbon. Above the photos there was text in large letters ¡°Brave heroes who gave their lives for Mir-8!¡±


    Right in front of the wall full of portraits there was a small stone pillar, atop which burned a lone gas flame.


    ¡°This indeed is real military base!¡± Jaan exclaimed. ¡°So many soldiers have died for this peculiar undertaking. And nobody has thought that this should be discontinued! There must be 100 portraits here!¡±


    ¡°81.¡± Mariann said. ¡°In three rows. Thirty photos in each. And the wall has room for more that a hundred more. But.¡± She walked closer to the wall, examining the portraits. ¡°These are not soldiers.¡±


    ¡°Excuse me?¡± He too approached the wall.


    ¡°These are the portraits of the scientists.¡± Mariann said. ¡°All the people who died here were scientists. And although a great number of them have Russian names, there are those as well with English, German and French names. This already speaks volumes of the exceptional nature of this endeavor. Had these Western scientists been forcefully brought here and threatened into working, they would not have received commemoration after death. Meaning they had to have come here voluntarily or had to be working voluntarily after finding themselves here.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, but why?¡± Jaan asked. ¡°What would be worth of so many scientists dying here during the time it was under Russian control? We¡¯re talking about a span of only maybe 15 years?¡±


    ¡°Are we?¡± Mariann asked. ¡°Do you know what year it currently is?¡±


    ¡°I do, right now it¡¯s...¡± the professor fell in thought and did not say anything further.


    ¡°There is a commemorative book here as well.¡±


    Indeed, behind the pillar with the eternal fire, there was a small stand with a leather bound book on it which Mariann now started to browse. Every page in the book was dedicated to one dead scientist. The first thing she noticed was that most of the scientist were relatively mediocre in their contribution or even education in traditional sciences, but according to this, their contribution to the project was immeasurable. Also, most of them were very young and has managed to work in this facility for less than a year before they died. At the same time, each of them had some major contribution into the science perpetrated in here.


    ¡°Vladimir Andreyevich Kerchin. Mathematician. Born in Chusovoy in Perm Oblast. Studied in Perm national university named for A. M. Gorky. Started work in Mir-8 in the department of theoretical physics on April 01, 1965. Took part in 25 exploratory missions. Established a mathematical proof for mirror complex theory. Left us on March 27, 1966.¡± Mariann read out loud.


    ¡°Olga Dmitreyevna Richtera. Physicist. Started work on December 2, 1965, died October 13, 1966. Was first to complete the functional description of the type F4 reactor.¡± The professor read, having stepped behind Mariann.


    ¡°The book is full of such descriptions. Young scientists. They came here, died less than a year after getting to work, yet each and every one of them gave an unfathomable contribution to the development of the facility.¡±


    ¡°But why did they die?¡± Jaan asked. ¡°Was it some kind of pathology caused by them being here or was it a decision by the higher-ups to remove them after they became useless?¡±


    ¡°Or maybe the high command decided to remove them because they learned too much and became too useful.¡± Mariann said.


    ¡°Who was the very first to perish?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°Maksim Dmitreyevich Makarichin. Died August 16, 1950. Located Object 23 based on the documents the Germans had left behind and measurements of electromagnetic fields.


    ¡°So this very facility is designated as Object 23?¡± Jaan said. ¡°I¡¯m curious, who¡¯s the last one.¡±


    Mariann kept browsing the book and took a look at the last pages in it. A strange smile appeared on her face.


    ¡°You don¡¯t want to know.¡± She said.


    ¡°Okay, at least tell me his date of death.¡±


    ¡°There is no date of death. Only a remark ¡°missing without a trace since December 12, 2013.¡±¡±


    ¡°What was the year? 2013? How is that possible?! That is a date in the future! Show me.¡±


    She did not attempt to stop the professor, handing over the book. He grabbed it, turned the page to the last entry and started to read out loud.


    ¡°Ivan T?nuyevich Kotkas. Established a solution to turn back protocol B. Missing without trace since December 12, 2013.¡± Jaan lowered the book. ¡°What¡¯s so special about that?¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s you.¡± Mariann said. ¡°Jaan, son of T?nu, Kotkas. That is a photo of you, isn¡¯t it?¡±


    The professor turned his eyes towards the wall and stared intently at the last photo on the bottom most row. On a black and white portrait, there was a young man, aged around thirty at most. He did have some external similarities to Jaan, especially to how he remembered himself looking some twenty five years ago. But he certainly could not say that he recognized this as a photo of himself. Also, his mind was also occupied with another matter now. If this really was him, then what had he been doing during his 20s? Right, several years of field work in the Southern Ural range, researching the daily lives and mythologies of the native tribes. And this was something he had a recollection of. Working in an unknown and non-existing underground facility in a South-Eastern corner of some Soviet Republic was something he did not have any memories of.


    ¡°It cannot be me.¡± Jaan said. ¡°I was doing field work in the Khanty-Mansi autonomous region. This was right after I finished the anthropology department. I wanted to go and do some field work in the West but could not get a permission for foreign travel. Never mind that whole 2013 aspect. That¡¯s impossible.¡±


    ¡°What is future for us, may be distant past for this facility. The temporal incongruity may be the simplest question to solve.¡± Mariann said. ¡°In any case, this you seems to be the only scientist who has ever survived this place.¡±


    ¡°Not me. Some other Jaan Kotkas.¡± The professor was resolute. ¡°I have a better question: why did all the young scientists only last slightly under a year in this place? Was it some sort of environmental factor which destroyed their health and which we should also worry about or was their death planned from up high to maintain the secrecy of this place?¡±


    ¡°If that is what interests you, you are in luck.¡± Mariann said. ¡°To get rid of the bodies, a crematory had to be built into the medical corps. That very same crematory was also used to destroy documents and sensitive materials from the archives, as well as biological samples. This is also reflected in how the levels of this place have been set out. Above the archives is the medical section and above that is the biological section. The highest level of the archive is the fourth sub-level, which is the medical archive.¡±


    ¡°Which means we need to climb up four floors to reach the medical archive?¡± Jaan asked. ¡°And they yet another floor to reach the medical corps?¡±


    ¡°Yes, the medical archive should not be too extensive. It should only contain base employee medical files, autopsy reports and other similar documents.¡±


    ¡°Do you think that or do you know for sure?¡± The professor asked.


    ¡°I think so.¡± Mariann said. ¡°Not much information or documents leaked out of Mir-8. Looking into the whole structure of the base itself took an insane amount of time and dozens of different sources. And even then, some things still remained as conjectures.¡±


    ¡°Let¡¯s get going then.¡± Jaan said. ¡°I don¡¯t know though how much time there remains on your clock.¡±


    ¡°A bit less than two and half hours.¡± She said, glancing at her watch. ¡°Enough time to get back to the post office.¡± She pointed at the spiral staircase in the corner of the reading hall. ¡°We can get to the fourth level with this. Bring along that book of remembrances. We should be able to find out from the medical archive what these scientists really died of. I have a very suspecting feeling in that regard.¡±


    Mariann started walking, and soon they ascended a wide stone spiral staircase. The professor did not get too far behind her, but he was evidently weighed down by his thoughts about this base, his similarity to that one scientist and the cause for so many sudden deaths.


    ¡°That book of remembrances. It was left behind the pillar of eternal fire, where it should have been placed after all.¡± The professor said. ¡°Does this mean that we are the first people here after the destruction of this facility?¡±


    I wouldn¡¯t say so.¡± Mariann said, stopping on the stairs. ¡°It is possible that somebody is still walking around in this base. Tired to death of having to recover that book from different places to put it back to where it belongs.¡±


    With a peculiar smile the girl fell silent, looking at the professor trying to think through all this.


    ¡°Maybe all the people in this base are still living and working in here, just that they are located a certain amount of world fabrics away from us so they cannot see or sense us. Not even in a spatial sense.¡±


    ¡°How is that possible?¡± Jaan asked. ¡°In essence you are saying that this facility, this base is somehow spatially and temporally more permanent than the people manning it. How can there be this kind distinction between a human being as a physical object and this base as a physical object?¡±


    ¡°The difference is very simple.¡± The girl in black said. ¡°One is alive, the other is not. One is changing both in time and in space. People don¡¯t grow in one spot like trees, they move around. They also do not remain unchanged. They grow and age, they are born and they die. Those two aspects together are something much more fluid than wood or concrete. If time is linear and uni-dimensional, then matters may be just like I said. In a space-time we can perceive, we take this book from its location and somebody else we cannot sense and who cannot sense us later brings it back after you have discarded it. But nobody will see you take it and nobody will see it hover around. It just disappears from this place and reappears at that place. I think in our world it is called haunting, is it not?


    ¡°However if time has at least two dimensions then sychrony may be an option. Meaning that it becomes possible that whichever move we make here, it will instantly be transferred to the world fabrics they are on. You hit a shard of concrete out of the wall and at the very same moment, in their continuum a shard concrete mysteriously jumps out of the wall. And nobody can tell you why or how. Again, if we were to see that in our world we would call it haunting or poltergeist activity, right? And in this corner of the world we would think nothing of it.¡±


    ¡°True.¡± The professor said. ¡°Although it still feels like there is something in your explanation that does not suit me.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll continue then and you can tell me what it is when you have figured it out.¡± Mariann said. ¡°Continuing from my previous thought, it is possible for events to not be openly synchronous. You hit a shard of concrete out of the wall. None among the inhabitants of this facility see it happen, but at the very moment you break it loose, they notice the shard and the gouge and wonder if it has always been like that.


    ¡°However if time is three-dimensional then spatial memory might be a thing. Meaning space saves the traversal of bodies within it and is capable of playing it back in a fashion more or less complete. Like people seeing phantom soldiers or hearing battle noises of ancient fields. Or seeing Russian soldiers scaring people away from abandoned and long since moss-covered military bases. Person A traverses a section of space between k and l during the time period from x till y. Now, if people B and C traverse that same section of space at a time period from z to w, which takes place after k to l, the matter in that space may play them back the trajectory of person A. And again...¡±


    ¡°...we would call it haunting?¡± Jaan asked in a sarcastic tone.


    Mariann only gave a mysterious smile, not saying anything else.


    ¡°Your theory lacks two important things.¡± Jaan said. ¡°First, the conditions under which space records the motion traversing it. And secondly the conditions of playing them back.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know.¡± The girl in black shrugged. ¡°What were the exact conditions on that stormy night when somebody made a phone call to a friend from that lone phone booth in the Nameless Town? What were the conditions that allowed his voice to be burnt into the airwaves? What was the defining condition for an electrical signal in the telephone wires to be turned into a radio signal in the air and then into a so-called spontaneous radio emission. There are complicated things I know, there are things with average difficulty I have theories on and there are simple things I don¡¯t know.¡±


    Mariann continued ascending the stairs.


    Jaan fell back into thinking about all these dead scientists. The question of what was it to drive all those people to death in less than a year was still something that unnerved him. There had to be something that was way clearer and simpler than what the strange girl before him had just spoken of. Something else than theories which demanded a person to exercise all their faculties at once to perceive ghosts of one variety or the other. Which even made Jaan to look behind him more often and created a deceiving feeling that he and Mariann were not the only people in this base.


    ¡°When you gathered information about this military facility, did you not discover any secrets about chemical, biological or radiological dangers?¡± Jaan asked. ¡°That there might be fields or particles which have dangerous effect to people constantly working near the gates and the reactors?¡±


    ¡°I can understand your fear, but do you really think that even if such a danger existed and the scientists in here forwarded the info to the base commander, that he would let this information out? No way in hell! Just like in Chernobyl and at the Mayak production facility, the information about dangers to civilian workers was classified at the highest level and people who tried to interfere with the work of the base or spread fear were neutralized at once.¡±


    She glanced back at the professor.


    ¡°I did not find any such document or rumor but I would also not use this lack there of as basis to suppose that dangers like that do not exist. The true answer lies in the medical archive. And if that is not enough, we still have the office and the living quarters of the head medical officer. I am pretty sure that we can find something between all of those.¡±


    The stepped onto the fourth level of the reading hall, now looking down toward the floor. The professor had not planned on looking down, but now that he did, he noticed something he had not expected to see. There was a slightly brighter section in the wooden parquet floor, depicting a pentagonal shape which lined the numbers 27-27.


    ¡°Now that is interesting.¡± Mariann said, also looking over the railing. ¡°This is almost mythological. And also almost the reason I really came here.¡±


    ¡°I wonder why we didn¡¯t notice it when we were down below?¡± Jaan said.


    ¡°Because the wooden pieces making up the floor have been cut in a specific way to reflect a slightly different color when viewed at a certain angle. Like plastic reflectors. It is much more interesting to consider why would the numbers be put here at all, especially after the base itself was built.¡±


    ¡°Why did you come here?¡± Jaan suddenly asked, now noticing what Mariann had said before. ¡°For real.¡±


    ¡°For real?¡± Mariann said, falling in thought. ¡°According to Newtonian mechanics, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. If the space the facility lies in has been twisted in a certain way to act as a bridge between two points in the same world, then it is quite possible that if a person were to cut the power maintaining the twist, the facility bends back, assuming it¡¯s original shape. However it may not let go of the world, in turn bending it out of it¡¯s normal shape. Maybe the strangeness of the world around the Nameless Town is connected to that. Even if Mir-8 is not the prime mover, it still has some connection to it. But to understand the connections, we should continue.¡±


    She opened the wooden double doors with a small vertical window in front of her and then used the black rotating switch on the wall, turning on the lights. This revealed long rows of shelves with narrow aisles between them and the ceiling lamps exclusively hanging above the aisles.


    ¡°That the facility here is the prime reason for all the troubles in our corner of the world?¡± The professor asked.


    ¡°No, quite the opposite actually. It may be a reason for some of the troubles, but certainly not all of them. But we have to begin understanding it from somewhere. Even if the beginning has not been anchored anywhere but stands in the air like a cloud or morning mist.¡±


    This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.


    She walked along a long and narrow space between the rows, looking for the correct aisle.


    ¡°Personnel files, personnel files, where are you?¡± She quietly said to herself.


    It wasn¡¯t about having issues with finding the personnel files but rather about finding those exact files she was looking for. There were plenty of documents about the base commander, medical staff and countless soldiers, engineers and drivers and one could lose their mind reading all of that. But this in no way helped to understand what happened to the scientists.


    At that moment Mariann actually felt a tinge of regret. A uniquely rare opportunity had presented itself. She had grabbed onto it and now she was clearly sensing the time disappearing like sand through her fingers. With each and every passing moment, she had less time to contemplate this facility, what transpired here and the effects it had had on the world. Deep down she wanted nothing more to just sit down and read each and every file, document and a scrap of paper in this archive. And then to move on, scouring each and every office from lowly doctors to officers of every kind.


    But time was lacking and the dim hallways bathing in that weak electric light were endless. The silence in the air was deafening. As long it was a silence suddenly torn apart by soul-rending screech when some metal scaffolding or machinery submitted yet a little bit more to some force of nature. The facility may have disappeared into some unthinkable and imperceptible world but this did not mean that whatever lied out there was not nature. Nature that was strange and utterly alien compared to what they had been familiar with thus far.


    ¡°Give me that book full of obituaries.¡± She said.


    She opened the small book and then let the pages slip through her fingers. From cover to cover. She then lowered her gaze to the open drawer of documents before her. With a disappointed sigh, she kicked the drawer with her knee, closing it.


    ¡°This has the medical histories, but none of the scientists nor top officers. Only assistants and lower ranks. I don¡¯t even have to open any of these files to know what they died of. Let¡¯s go.¡±


    The girl in black walked the aisles between tall metal archive shelves with such a sense of experience that it looked like a home library and not an archive classified beyond top secret in a forgotten almost non-existent military facility.


    ¡°What did they die of then?¡± Jaan asked. ¡°Most of them probably from accidents with mechanized equipment of all sorts, I would imagine.¡±


    ¡°You are partly correct.¡± Mariann smiled, not slowing her pace, her destination being another set of double doors leading to another staircase. ¡°There were indeed many accidents. An unbelievable number of people managed to get run over by wheels and treads of various military vehicles. There were also those who were exposed to radioactive emissions or got cooked alive in powerful RF and microwave fields. The main goal of Soviet military tech was function and reliability in extreme conditions. Safety was least of the concerns. But the greatest amount was attributed to suicides.¡±


    ¡°Suicides?¡± Jaan asked, surprised.


    ¡°Yes.¡± Mariann started to ascend the stairs. ¡°Almost half of all deaths. I was lucky to notice this trend at all. With some of the earlier named in that drawer it was written explicitly that the cause of death was suicide. With later ones, almost exclusively the cause of death is labeled as the SU Syndrome.¡±


    ¡°SU? Samoubistvo? Suicide in Russian.¡± The professor asked.


    ¡°This got so dark in fact that the head doctor suspected some sort of bug brought along from outside somewhere which caused people to kill themselves. The main ward of the medical corps suddenly became an isolation ward full of people restrained to their beds. Some were only suspected of being afflicted, others had unsuccessfully attempted suicide.¡±


    She pushed open a set of double doors labeled ¡°Hospital¡± in Russian.


    Before them was a large lobby not too dissimilar from civilian hospitals Jaan had seen before in his life. The floors were covered in scratch-resistant material reminiscent of some plastic, which seemed to have been poured in one go and then polished afterwards. The walls were light brown and the ceiling and all doors were white. In the corner right next to them was a large registration area with the center section of it surrounded with tall glass windows. However, unlike civilian hospitals, these windows had no openings to pass documents or for voice to reach the other side. For the latter purpose there were sets of phone receivers, lined up in long consoles on either sides of the glass. Jaan managed to count about 30 receivers on the closest side, every tenth and eleventh phone were red, possibly with some priority to them.


    On the other side of the registration there was a wall and elevator doors. The professor noticed a total of six pairs of elevator doors with wood grain imitation. There may have been even more of them behind the corner. To the right there were two hallways labeled ¡°operation¡± and ¡°x-ray¡±. And straight ahead were the ¡°doctors¡± and ¡°wards¡±.


    ¡°Doctors and wards are together?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°Indeed. The workers in the medical corps lived, worked at slept in this section. They were only allowed out to visit the archive and for recreation. But that too was often restricted. The patient rooms here are large, like in all military hospitals. Only contagious patients were secluded from others, all others were together, whether the diagnosis was overwork, insanity or recovery from major surgery. Even those dying and permanently bedridden were in here. These last ones often followed the dying ones, usually with the decision from the base commander. The resources of the base were limited and the level of secrecy was high.¡±


    Mariann led Jaan along a dim central hallway. In the walls on either side, after approximately every twenty meters there were wide double doors. There were also large signs detailing which doctors lived and worked in each subsection, along with their names. Generally they were organized by organ groups they specialized in. Plus military EMT, surgery and contagious illnesses.


    She finally stopped before another set of double doors, which like the others had only darkness visible through the windows. Above the doors there had once been a sign but now only marks of it being ripped off the wall remained.


    ¡°Here lies what I told you before.¡± Mariann said.


    She opened the doors and they entered a wide hall. Jaan felt his ears affected by the air pressure, and it took several swallows to equalize the pressure in his inner ear.


    ¡°There is a pressure difference here.¡±


    ¡°Indeed.¡± She replied. ¡°The whole medical section is under pressurized to keep possible contagions inside. For the same reason, all widows and doors have rubber seals and main entry and exit doors have been paired into airlocks. There doctors¡¯ living quarters however are over pressurized. In this hall, there also should have been over pressure but¡­ some of the peculiarities have change the pressure to be kept here.¡±


    Only now did Jaan pay attention to what was before him. Initially he had only thought of this as yet another dark hallway full of offices and living quarters of the medial doctors of various sub-disciplines. Instead however it was a ward with two rows of beds, a row by either wall. The only source of light was two mercury vapor lights above the first beds, the rest of the rows faded into darkness in the distance.


    ¡°They put the SU ward here?¡±


    ¡°Yes.¡± Mariann said. ¡°And on the other side of this is the office of the chief medical officer and the offices of the board of medical corps. The SU syndrome was one of the more important medical problems to resolve in here. And after they managed to figure out that it was not contagious, they put the ward with the patients here for easy access to the chief medical officer.¡±


    ¡°But what was it then, that caused people to suddenly want to take their own lives?¡± Jaan asked. ¡°Maybe it really was something contagious¡­?¡±


    ¡°You haven¡¯t tried to kill yourself since stepping into the facility, so don¡¯t worry about it.¡± Mariann said. ¡°The reason so many people tried to kill themselves was more about their thinking than about this facility. That¡¯s why I¡¯m not surprised so many people tried to kill themselves here, because it may have looked like the only way out.¡±


    She sat down on a bed in the ward.


    ¡°What happened, then?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m surprised you haven¡¯t figured it out yourself by now. Anthropologist and researcher of mythologies as you are.¡± She said. ¡°The issue was that their minds simply could not handle the peculiarity of this corner of the world and this facility. What killed them really was scientific thinking. Trying to make sense of it all. They lacked the skill to change their thinking from scientific to mythological while still continuing with real science they were being demanded at every step.¡±


    ¡°You mean to tell me that their minds broke under all this supernatural?¡±


    ¡°In simple terms, yes.¡± The girl in black replied. ¡°To us it may seem unbelievable and just plain weird, but that¡¯s what happened. A person with mythological thinking explains everything with forces and rules issued by intelligence from above. His explanation is his understanding. A scientific man however is trying to understand something he cannot, instead of explaining it as he understands it.


    ¡°The people who live in the Town and whose ancestors have lived here for hundreds of years have long since grown used to the unexplainable ways things are done and don¡¯t worry too much about it. But people who visited this corner of the world from elsewhere, who wanted to explain things scientifically, bumped against a world that would not submit to scientific cognition. The order and practices of which would not submit to their thinking and understanding.¡±


    ¡°That sounds like a very extreme example of a cultural shock.¡± Said Jaan.


    ¡°Which it is, in essence. In part. The other part is the environmental shock. What doomed them was the effect from both shocks at the same time. Their thinking lost it¡¯s flexibility and broke.¡±


    ¡°They had left their familiar Soviet world and come into our world the order of which they could not comprehend. And then they came into this base and lost their contact with that peculiar world outside of it. And they also lost their connection with other people. Science which could not have been logical, worked. And nobody really thought that had lost anything.¡± Jaan spoke, in thought. His gaze fell on Mariann. ¡°I was just imagining how I would feel.¡±


    ¡°It indeed was something like that.¡± She replied.


    ¡°Meaning the scientists in that books or remembrances died the same way in the end?¡±


    ¡°No.¡± Mariann got up. ¡°Their demise is much more mysterious and interesting. And that¡¯s what we came to look for. The office and quarters of the chief medical officer are over there.¡± She pointed into darkness. ¡°Let¡¯s go.¡±


    Having walked several dozen steps, they appeared before a thick wall of several layers of plastic curtains. On the other side of these curtains there were three white work desks with telephones and beyond those, three white doors, with large Russian signs on each door.


    ¡°Director of medical personnel. Chief medical officer, supreme commander of the medical forces.¡±


    ¡°I can understand the first two.¡± Jaan said. ¡°But whose the third one?¡±


    ¡°Supreme commander of the medical forces comrade polkovnik Anatoly Samolin.¡± Mariann said with disdain in her voice. ¡°A career officer who could not make heads or tails of what really went on in here.¡± She turned her face towards Jaan. ¡°You asked something, right? The director of medical personnel was in charge of the nurses and orderlies. The chief medical officer was in charge of the doctors and polkovnik Samolin was there to remind the former two that they work in the interest of the facility and not the other way around. We can disregard the quarter of Lyudmila Kornilova who was in charge of the nurses. But we should go through Samolin¡¯s and chief medical officer Chischev¡¯s quarters. You take one, I¡¯ll take the other.¡±


    With these words, she opened the chief Chischev¡¯s office door and entered it.


    Jaan took a deep breath to calm himself and opened the door to the offices of the polkovnik who had been in charge of the medical section. Feeling around in the dark with his hand, he managed to find a rotating switch and by turning that a crystal chandelier in the ceiling lit up. He closed the door behind him and then froze. The contrast between the rest of the base and the office of a high level officer and a party member was so profound that for a few moments, it paralyzed his thinking. Comparing one to the other, one was like a stage in a theater, with the items there only being props and the action there only a spectacle.


    While the rest of the base looked unearthly and driven by pure functionality, in this office, it was all upside down. The base looked like it was created for heroes of socialist labor who only required sleep and food to continue working and whose work was also their sole purpose in life. But here he saw a high painted ceiling, a crystal chandelier. On the floors, instead of concrete or that weird plastic coating slippery with dust, there was wooden parquet in fishtail pattern. Walls covered in decorative wood paneling.


    The centerpieces of the office was a massive writing desk of dark wood and a wooden swiveling armchair with thick padding of dark red leather. At the back of the office there were large chests of drawers made of precious red wood, and on the wall, there was a large painting of some historic city skyline, which at closer look and according to the title was Kazan. On another wall there was box with a glass cover and a Mosin-Nagant rifle contained within.


    The desk was full of various yellowed papers, the position of which made Jaan feel as if work was still on-going in here and the person working on them had just stepped out of the room for a moment. At one corner of the desk, there was a czarist-era globe and on the other corner stood a strange piece of art looking like a pair of cubes connected by their corners with a metal bar and centered on a stand by that bar.


    He looked around for a few seconds more as if to be certain that nobody would come to disturb him. He then started looking closer at the paperwork on and in the desk. Setting aside everything that could have been of interest to the girl in black, he moved from drawer to drawer in the office, finally getting to the chests of drawers of red wood.


    As much as he could tell from everything he had glanced over thus far, the work of commanding the medical section was unbelievably boring and monotonous. The main bulk of the documents consisted of redacted versions with heavy blacking out. With references to unredacted documents being passed to the base commander. It seemed like the chief medical officer Chischev and polkovnik Samolin had a serious and long-standing conflict over how the medical section conducted it¡¯s work. The chief medical officer wanted to treat the patients, to fight for every life and find the cause for the various ¡®letterform syndromes¡¯ which affected the patients. The section commander however wanted that all medical cases would be solved by the most efficient means. That meant both soldiers and medical workers as manpower as well as medicines and time.


    Kornilova who was in charge of the nurses, which made up more than 80 of the medical personnel was constantly forced to navigate between two headstrong men both in her speech and her actions. Men who had radically different visions about military medicine. Thus there remained the letters exchanged between Samolin and base high command on Chischev and his ¡®letterform syndromes¡¯.


    The letterform syndromes were a collection of 27 pathologies of body and mind which only manifested in the people living and working in this base and which had no equivalent in known medicine. The most infamous of those were syndromes N and SU. While the latter one was discussed openly and polkovnik Samolin had been of the opinion that all who suffered from it should have been shot at once, the former, syndrome N, was something that wasn¡¯t explained properly anywhere.


    It was pure luck he even found these few references to it, as most of the documents referring to it had been heavily redacted with black ink. It was also evident that even the name ¡®syndrome N¡¯ was being redacted at one point. It was clear that all the documents he could find from Samolin¡¯s office were either photocopies of originals or produced with carbon paper. Which meant the originals had either been destroyed on stationed within the base commander¡¯s archive. Or long since sent to Moscow as the third option.


    Suddenly Jaan felt that he was no longer alone in the office. He knew only one person who could step into the room without anybody noticing and it was that very same person who had brought him into this facility. Because of that he did not allow himself to be distracted by that presence.


    ¡°Hey Mariann, I found¡­!¡± He raised his gaze.


    The office was empty.


    Jaan was still alone in the office. The door outside was closed. However a side-door to Samolin¡¯s personal quarters moved as if it had bounced back from the wall. He put the folder in his hand back onto the cupboard and then went to look if perhaps Mariann had passed him by and entered the base commander¡¯s quarters.


    The answer though was ¡®no.¡¯ Large living room right next to the office where polkovnik Samolin probably spent most of the little free time he had, was empty. Same for the bathroom and the bedroom. Those same three rooms were the source of another surprise for him, about the contrast between the base itself and the living quarters of the top command. The base was cold and desolate, the living quarters however reflected a warm life frozen in time, now laid bare before Jaan. While the office at the front was ¡°official¡± and grand, prudent for a top Soviet officer, the living quarters felt homely and perhaps even rustic.


    Floors were covered in slightly brighter fishbone pattern, but covered in carpets. The walls of the rooms were covered in lighter wood paneling up to about four feet of height and above that wallpaper with vertical stripes of yellow and purple. In the ceiling there was a chandelier more modest in design and in the corner there was tall cocklestove with white tiling. In the other corner there seemed to be what could be regarded as modern technology for it¡¯s time ¨C a record player with wood framing, large buttons made of white bakelite and fabric covering the speaker and as background for the illuminated radio dial. There was also a reel to reel tape deck with similar design. Instead of the red phone in the office, there was an even older model on a small table in the living room, decorated with both lighter golden wood and darker walnut.


    By the wall there was another small table and two chairs with a doily and an empty crystal vase on the table. In the corner by the door there was curio with a mirror in the back wall full of crystal and porcelain which made sound every time¡­


    Suddenly Jaan stopped. He then continued walking, towards the curio. Silence. The porcelain and crystal in the curio did not make a sound. He quickened his pace, ran across the room, even jumped. But still nothing. As if he really wasn¡¯t in this room. As if he wasn¡¯t touching the floor at all, as if the floor under his feet was in no way tied to the floor on which the curio stood. A strange feeling started to rise in him. A fear about all the unknowns he could not sense.


    He carefully opened another side-door between the living room and the bedroom. That one was a washroom, cold and desolate like a soviet-style military washroom should be, as if to remind people at their most vulnerable the place they were in. Pale white tiled walls, dark red almost brown small tiles on the floor. Toilet bowl of white porcelain, cart iron bathtub with heavy white enameling and a sink of stamped steel, also enameled. All piping exposed and painted with thick layers of enamel paint to protect against rust and leaking connections. The shower with rotating valves was also something very familiar to him. In short, this was just about the only room which was true to it¡¯s age in this facility otherwise filled with strange devices and machinery, personal quarters which looked like a stage and unexplainable architecture.


    From the washroom he could step into the bedroom which again was everything but desolate. In professor¡¯s honest opinion it looked surprisingly and perhaps even fearfully common. A large twin bed made up with military-style perfection. Tall and wide wooden wardrobe covered in thick clear lacquer, reminiscent of Soviet era wall units. An ashtray, pack of cigarettes and matchbox on nightstand next to the bed under a small lamp. There was a heavy carpet on the floor and an armchair in the corner with a parade overcoat resting on it.


    Suddenly Jaan felt that something in the air had changed. Sharp smell of unfiltered Soviet cigarettes assaulted his nose. He turned his gaze back on the nightstand and saw a thin gray line of smoke rise into the air and freeze there like a strand of spider silk torn from the web. But what unnerved Jaan the most was that there was no cigarette in the ashtray from which the trail of smoke was rising. There was no cigarette, no extinguished stubs, not even any ashes. Ashtray made of thick pressure-formed glass was pristine. The thin trail of smoke had also dissipated by now, but the strong nostalgic smell of Russian tobacco still lingered.


    However what happened next made his blood curdle. He heard the door open and then heard and felt steps walk across the bedroom floor.


    ¡°So what did you¡­?¡±


    He turned around and his words stopped at once. He had hoped to find the girl in black behind him, but there was nobody. He was still alone. He walked back to the living room and now heard steps again, this time rushing over the floor towards the office. And he then saw the door opening and bouncing from the wall with such a force as if somebody had forced it open and then slammed it afterwards.


    After that, silence fell and slowly grew to become deafening. Only broken by ghostly creaking on the floor and sound of invisible steps approaching the bedroom. And then suddenly the floor creaked right next to him, and he could feel the wooden tiles slightly buckle and bend under what was now the weight of two people, one of them invisible. Then a pressure assaulted his body as if he had stepped into a strong gale. But there was no wind. And this was inside, and the next moment the pressure was gone and the floor next to him creaked.


    ¡°Cool, isn¡¯t it?¡±


    Apprehensive silence was suddenly broken by the girl¡¯s question, which for a moment froze the professor¡¯s thought, heart and breath.


    ¡°Dammit! Do you have to startle like this?!¡± He asked with an angry voice.


    ¡°Startle you?¡± Mariann asked in a hurt tone. ¡°Me? You? Don¡¯t make me laugh.¡± She looked around in the room. ¡°Don¡¯t blame me if you spend your time spying after ghosts and pay attention to little else.¡±


    ¡°Spy after ghosts?¡± Jaan asked, now calm.


    ¡°Indeed.¡± She smiled. ¡°It would seem my theory is proven true, at least in part. But also that the world it much stranger than I had thought. For us and the polkovnik, the room and the furniture are the same, even the smell of the cigarettes is the same, sound is the same. But smoke is not, cigarettes placed in the ashtray are not. The polkovnik probably felt that very same strange wind when you two occupied the very same three spatial dimensions. The only difference between you lies in the fourth, packaged dimension. The polkovnik is probably thinking that his cigarette smoke is dissipating into air as an invisible thread of smoke. And not that it would cross the fourth spatial dimension and reach our world fabrics.¡±


    ¡°You found something?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°Something.¡± She smiled, lifting a thick stack of cardboard folders. ¡°The base commander stood more than a few levels above the rest of the officers.¡±


    ¡°In what sense?¡± Jaan asked. ¡°He had more benefits than those two of them here?¡±


    ¡°He had two offices.¡± Mariann said. ¡°All sorts of guest from Moscow were received in the base at the officers¡¯ wing on the highest floor. But all his personal documents, working office and living quarters a located in...¡±


    ¡°In?¡± Jaan asked. ¡°Where?¡±


    ¡°In experimental laboratory section. Right above the reactor level.¡±


    ¡°The reactor level is the lowermost...¡± Jaan said. ¡°We have to descend some more stairs?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m afraid so. There is an upside though. From the base commander¡¯s personal quarters there is a direct connection to the gate rooms.¡±


    ¡°Is that ¡®direct connection¡¯ a set of elevators you¡¯re so afraid of?¡±


    ¡°I just don¡¯t like them.¡± Mariann said. ¡°But no. According to the documents, straight connection means something else than elevators. It also has not been elaborated further, just a term in Russian ¡®direct connection¡¯, what it means, we will have to see for ourselves.¡±


    ¡°How much time do we have?¡± Jaan asked. ¡°I remember I haven¡¯t asked you about it for some time.¡±


    Mariann gave her watch a disinterested glance.


    ¡°Yeah¡­ If were to start rushing up the stairs right now, we would just about barely make it to the gate room.¡± She gave an apologizing smile. ¡°Our only chance is to traverse the commander¡¯s office on the laboratory level.¡±


    The professor fell into contemplation, not able to really decide whether it would be better to barely not make it through the gate or to follow the girl and discover something else of importance before the time is up. His train of thought was broken by the floor once again creaking in the living room. Based on the location of the creak, it was almost possible to predict where the next invisible step would fall.


    ¡°It would be better for us to get going.¡± She said. ¡°Before they figure out we¡¯re here.¡±


    ¡°It is possible for them to sense we¡¯re here?!¡± Jaan asked surprised. ¡°Did you not tell me that for us they are only ghosts? And some story about the memory of earth or the base when people within are constantly moving around.¡±


    ¡°I have said such things.¡± Mariann said. ¡°However things are a bit different here. If we are located on different world fabrics then for them, we are ghosts and vice versa, as I said before. It may even be simultaneous. But it does not mean that our world fabrics would be equally along on the timeline. The difference in such points between us and them may be in decades, and from our point of view, into the past or into the future. But the main point is that this is not news neither for me nor for the inhabitants of this facility. Meaning they most certainly have equipment to discover us if we stay in one place for too long. To speak in visual terms, as long as they go about their business as usual, and as long as we a re doing the same, compared to the base and the stationary equipment within, we are impermanent, and even more impermanent compared to them. But if we stand still, our permanence increases, until we begin to bleed through.¡±


    With a quick jog, they headed back towards the main staircase.


    ¡°But these strange scientists? Who only survived 12 months in their positions?¡± Jaan asked, trying to catch his breath. ¡°Did you find any new info? On them?¡±


    ¡°Nope.¡± She shook her head. ¡°It is classified so strictly that not a line is available in here. The head of the medical corps had a massive conflict with base commander over this. They kept putting together accounts and reports and sent them up the chain of command. But the commander did not send them to Moscow as he was supposed to do but instead collected them to his secret office.¡±


    ¡°To the place we¡¯re now going to?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°Yes. And I also remembered the most important piece of information which allows us to get there, the parole.¡±


    ¡°It is locked up somehow?¡±


    ¡°We¡¯ll see. Again it is something I know of somehow, but I cannot explain, how.¡±


    Again they quickly slid down the stairs in a staircase with pale walls and even paler mercury vapor florescent light. Four floors again to get from the medical corps level to the archival level and then another four floors down to get to the laboratory level.


    Here, there were not wooden double doors with windows between the staircase and the section, but thick windowless metal doors. Gray in color and with obvious rust spots. Their creaking had a positively deafening echo, when Mariann pushed the door open for them to continue.


    ¡°Do you feel that?¡± Jaan asked as soon as they had taken their first steps on the gray floor under the endless darkness above.


    The question arose due to a strange pressure he felt in his mind as well in his sense of hearing. A low-pitched vibration which did not reach them through the floor but instead seemed to be all around them in the air. The eerie feeling was elevated further by the partially lit wide hallway before them. He could not see walls nor the ceiling. It was almost like standing in the middle of some underground runway. The floor too was as smooth as glass, looking a bit like frosted glass. Light sources of which he could not see, only illuminated the center of the hall, leaving the edges into darkness.


    Also the death-like lack of sound was was often cut into by different metallic mechanical noises echoing along the hallway. Rubbing, creaking and rattling which repeated as if on some schedule. This is why it felt more like the work of metalworking machinery than a high tension mast swaying back and forth in the wind.


    Carefully, they advanced along the hallway. The light was just strong enough and just directed enough to not let their eyes grow accustomed to the darkness. Also no doors or any kind of intersecting hallways were visible in the darkness. As if the whole section was but a single long tunnel. In the middle of which stood a strange statue.

 XXVII - Night in the Cottage District IV

    At first the statue seemed to fade into the background but as they got closer, it was clear that it stood right in the middle of the hallway. Under any usual circumstances Jaan would have thought it to be a statute or some artful installation of interior design that could not be subjected to conscious comprehension. But this was no usual circumstance.


    Before them was a large rectangular pond, roughly three meters by three meters, filled with a liquid similar to dull mercury. In the ceiling above them, the only part of the ceiling they could see was a similar pond of similar size, with seemingly similar liquid in it. The liquid had no issues sticking to the pond in the ceiling as if gravity up there was acting in a different direction. There were ripples on the surfaces of both ponds, ripples of which he could not tell whether the ripple in one was a reflection of the other pool or not.


    And then the weirdest element of all: the liquid seemed to flow from one pond into the other: from the pool in the floor into the pool on the ceiling, possessing the same kind of velocity and consistency as water from the edge of the roof during a downpour.


    ¡°What¡­ the¡­ hell¡­ is that?¡± Jaan asked, with the strange object exerting a much greater effect on him than the low vibration in the air.


    ¡°This is a gate.¡± Mariann said. ¡°It fills much the same function as the gate we entered this place by. However it it much more¡­ advanced. This is some of the technology the commander did not want to let out of the base.¡±


    ¡°A gate? This?¡± Jaan asked pointing at the metallic liquid dripping towards the ceiling. ¡°A gate?¡± He asked again.


    ¡°Yes. The parole in this case was not a password or a passcode which would allow opening a coded lock and not even a list of procedures how to manipulate some console, but instead information on how to recognize what it is.¡±


    ¡°It is a gate.¡± Jaan said again, still trying to calm himself. ¡°How would knowledge here act as a parole?¡±


    ¡°If you know what an unknown thing is, then you regard it differently compared to when you have no idea what it is. You expect it to fulfill a certain function. In this form, that gate could lie in the middle of a conservatory or in the foyer of a university. Every day, thousands of people would pass it by, never figuring out it was a gate. Many small children would look at it with a sense of wonder, only thinking it to be a pretty pond with some strange water. None of them would think it to be a gate and with them it does not function as a gate.¡±


    ¡°So I would have to understand it as a gate?¡± The professor asked. ¡°That I simply step into it and it brings us straight into the commander¡¯s offices?¡±


    ¡°Not quite.¡± Mariann smiled. ¡°That¡¯s how it was supposed to work under an ideal case. Unfortunately they could not get it to work like that. Because of this, they use things like these.¡±


    She put her hand into the pocket on her skirt and produced a small egg which seemed to be made or spotless black obsidian. She did not allow Jaan even a few seconds to admire the egg before she threw the egg into the bottom pond. He observed the egg slowly float towards the stream flowing towards the ceiling, and then a thin black thread, like a wisp of smoke appeared in the stream, reaching towards the ceiling.


    ¡°This is an anchor.¡± Mariann said. ¡°Every gate produces it¡¯s own specific element. An anchor, or a key is that very element in a concentrated form. If I take the anchor for gate A, and throw it into gate B, then I am tying gate B to gate A for as long as the element is affecting the gate as this black thread.¡±


    ¡°So this gate right on the floor before us exists in reality and is right before us, but the gate in the ceiling exists somewhere else, and we only see it as an apparition?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°It is an interesting perspective.¡± Mariann said. ¡°Not necessarily wrong though. It is more precise to say that the thing in the ceiling is simultaneously all other similar gates in existence. You can think of it as an apparition but the way it is all other existing gates simultaneously is not an existence our minds can comprehend to the finer details.¡±


    ¡°What happens if I throw the pond¡¯s own anchor into the pond?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°Then you get a circular gate which brings you back to where you stepped into the gate.¡± She reached her hand out to the professor. ¡°Let¡¯s go. If I were to step into the gate before you, I am almost certain you will not follow me.¡±


    Jaan grabbed the girl¡¯s hand and he allowed himself to be pulled into this strange silvery pond. The substance in the pond was not wet when his foot sank into it. It was difficult to even describe it as some kind of a liquid, it was more like a very, very thick mist. By it¡¯s physical properties more alchemical and aethereal than fluid. It did not rush into his shoes nor grabbed his foot into itself. He however sensed that the pool had no bottom. His foot sunk deeper and deeper into the pond. His body lost it¡¯s balance and he felt himself fall towards the stream in the middle of the pond that flowed towards the ceiling. It seemed like a central heavenly body in the small world of of that pond. The gravity it exerted was the determining factor, as all bodies within the borders of the bond started at once and at speed flowing towards the streaming pillar.


    Along with losing his balance, his consciousness also seemed to change. His field of vision narrowed in such a way that the silvery pillar filled that whole field. All sounds and even the air in the room became background noise. Jaan suddenly felt indescribable fear as well as desire to get as far away as possible from what was happening, as if it was his last chance at life. He feared for his life but it was far too late to do anything about it. The paralyzing fear grew and grew, faster and faster until suddenly¡­ he discovered himself face down on his knees on a floor covered in large tiles of fire red granite. Gasping for air as if he had just escaped from the clutches of death.


    ¡°It¡¯s okay.¡± Mariann said, bending down towards him. ¡°First time is always like this.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯ve experienced something like this before!?¡± Jaan asked, still feeling the weakness of deathly fear in his body, his hands and legs still shook from fear.


    ¡°Maybe.¡± Mariann said. ¡°I don¡¯t know. But going through the gate neither surprised nor scared me.¡±


    Jaan turned to look around him and then stopped. They were no longer in a mysterious military facility with smooth concrete walls. Of the humanly familiar military base now remained but a dreamlike memory. The place he and Mariann were now in could only be described by one word: a temple. Walls of orange red stone, tall, really tall walls turning into robust rough arches, megaliths making up walls, pillars and even ceilings.


    Jaan looked around. The pillars were indeed rough pieces of single stone, standing around the pool of silvery liquid substance streaming upwards towards a similar pool on the distant ceiling. On either side of the pool there were short hallways between pillars ending in archways and under them staircases leading upwards. And everything, literally everything was bathed in warm diffused orange light, like during a sunset.


    Even more surprising to the professor was that only the floor here has been polished to perfection. Everything else was rough stone surface, either cut and hewn by human hands or worn into their current shape by thousands of years of sandstorms blowing through the structure. Quite possible due to both.


    In the middle of all that titanic architecture was feature Jaan could not get his eyes off. In the base, he had seen the pool filled with liquid metal like mist, and a physical reflection of that on the ceiling. And how the fluid was streaming from the bottom pool to the upper one. But here, the bottom pool resided in a circular depression in the stone floor, with the level of the substance being equal with the floor. The ceiling was high, by his estimate, some 40 meters away. And the substance on the ceiling was not contained in the circular pond but was spread out like a patch of tar. The silvery stream flowing up from the pool and towards the ceiling. As soon as it reached about one and a half meters in height, it had narrowed to a single silvery strand thinner than spider silk. This very same strand gave powerful reflections of light which although not blinding still played on the walls and when reflecting off the stand, made it look as the air itself above the pool was shining and casting the reflections.


    Silence was all around them. Not a single sound besides their own steps and breathing. No smell other than stone dust. Even the air temperature was pleasantly cool and perfect to fall asleep in.


    ¡°Have you ever seen anything this beautiful?¡± Jaan was absolutely mesmerized.


    ¡°The way you are enchanted by this should scare you more than anything you¡¯ve seen thus far.¡± She said.


    ¡°How so?¡±


    ¡°You don¡¯t know where you are. You don¡¯t know how you got here. And you don¡¯t care. Your only concern is to be enchanted by a phenomenon you cannot understand nor make sense of. We did not come here to admire the incomprehensible. We came to the commander¡¯s offices.¡±


    ¡°The base commander put his office in here?¡± Jaan asked, turning his eyes towards the girl. ¡°Into this holy temple?¡±


    ¡°Yes, he did.¡± Mariann said. ¡°I have no idea why, though. Or why he thought of this place as part of the facility or an extension of it, unless...¡±


    ¡°Unless what?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know. Yet. Come. I have a feeling that all of our answers will soon get resolved.¡±


    She headed towards the stairs at the end of the hallway on the other side of the pond. Jaan rushed after her, soon being only a few steps behind her.


    However this place had a trick in storage for them. Having walked for some time, the professor noticed that something was wrong. The hallway which had seemed no more than thirty meters long from the pond, was now growing wider, longer and taller. Also the portal at the end of the hallway kept growing bigger.


    ¡°This temple is playing with our sense of perspective.¡± Jaan said.


    ¡°With the ceiling as high as some famous cathedral it¡¯s no wonder that the portal in the opposite wall reaching half the height of the room would not be of normal height. Which means the stairs may also not be normal.¡±


    Even the floor which had been polished smooth by the pond was now growing more coarse and rough. Darker spots which he had mistaken for darker crystals in natural granite were instead shadows in large potholes, scrapes and nicks.


    ¡°This is the portal?¡± Jaan asked, standing before a towering stone archway.


    The arch of the portal consisted of seven stones and was in turn supported by stone pillars made of seven layers of stone each. Even the first stone on the ground was several times taller than Jaan was. And every step visible from the portal was about 80 centimeters high.


    ¡°It¡¯s gonna take me an hour to get up here!¡± Jaan sighed.


    ¡°You¡¯re most definitely not that old and frail!¡± Mariann replied. ¡°It¡¯ll take me only a few seconds to climb up this. For you, it may take perhaps five minutes, I¡¯ll wait.¡±


    Mariann bent slightly and unbuttoned her skirt from the side, up to the hip, not really caring about the professor observing this. She then walked to the first step and then jumped on top of it. And then onto the next one, and the next one. In fact, it took her less than a minute to get onto the thirtieth step which was the halfway point.


    Jaan only took a hard swallow, looking at that. He had no hope of making it up the stairs that fast. For that he was too old and too out of practice. The best he could do was climb the steps one at a time. This too did not take too long. Heavily panting, having reached the halfway point, he collapsed against the wall, staring at yet another thirty steps to get up. Also that Marian had already jumped up there, and was now buttoning down her skirt again.


    ¡°Who the hell wants to climb this staircase every day!¡± Cursed Jaan.


    ¡°You¡¯re supposing that those who used this staircase were human.¡± Said Mariann. ¡°That may be a mistaken assumption.¡±


    She smiled only wider, seeing how Jaan¡¯s tired face reflected the thought developing in his mind.


    ¡°Also, the commander of the base may also not have been completely human by the time he decided to move here.¡±


    About five minutes later Jaan had made it up the rest of the stairs. It would have probably been sooner, but he had to take two additional breaks, one every ten steps.


    ¡°What was he then if no longer completely human?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°Somebody for whom running up the stairs with 80cm steps was no more difficult than with 15cm steps.¡± She said.


    ¡°Like you?¡±


    ¡°Do not expect that two similar phenomena produce two similar results.¡± Said Mariann, smiling.


    She pointed at the wooden double doors not too far. The doors made of red wood were covered in all sorts of intricate golden symbols, the ordering of which reminded him more of magical diagrams than some sort of organized language with symbols and meanings.


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    ¡°And here we are, the commander¡¯s office.¡±


    The tall wooden doors were so heavy that they had to push one with all their might, dragging it along the stone floor to have even a chance to peek into the office, let alone enter it. They finally managed to create an opening big enough for the professor to also slip through.


    That which lied behind the door was a source of surprise but also disappointment to the professor. Behind it was the most ordinary office a commander of a military base would have. The only way it differed from the medical corps commander¡¯s office was that this one was much bigger. But otherwise, a relatively normal office. Not a single outwardly detail to make one think that it was located at some ancient temple. The walls were plastered white, the was wooden parquet on the floor as well as red carpets. All walls except one were lined with dark gray metal archival cabinets. The one remaining wall was arranged to look like a fake window covered in heavy dark red curtains, which did not let in a single ray of light. Before it stood an intricately decorated massive white desk and an armchair, both facing away from the curtains.


    ¡°I still cannot see the reason why a person would want to make his office here.¡± Jaan said.


    ¡°You don¡¯t? Because I do.¡±


    With quick steps she slid across the office floor and stopped before the curtains. She pulled the curtains aside, revealing a glass surface which extended from floor to ceiling and from corner to corner.


    Jaan had to hold onto a wall to not collapse with surprise. The view out of the window was simply stunning. It was that very same unearthly view the girl in black had described to him shortly after they had entered the base. He could see a stone geison surrounding the window on the outside on all sides. Beyond that were thick white clouds tinted in shades of pale orange quickly drifting by, both above the window level but also below the window level. He could almost see the buffeting wind blowing dust around. And far in the distance, slightly above their level in angle, was a bright circular body of light. But it was no sun. Neither Jaan¡¯s thought nor tongue could muster the effect of calling that thing a sun. It could only be a star of some sort. The star of the local star system. It wasn¡¯t even possible to say whether it was the only star here.


    He slowly walked towards the window. He had no words to describe what he saw. He could have described the clouds, the winds, the dull gray-colored sky and the star. But all this could not convey this unearthly feeling it had giver rise to. There was nothing familiar here. It was as alien, mysterious and unexplainable as visions in dreams. An unreachable world a shard of which he could now see before him.


    Jaan raised his hand to touch the window, but Mariann quickly stopped him.


    ¡°You do not wanna do that.¡± She said. ¡°This is not a window.¡±


    ¡°This is not a window?¡± The professor asked.


    Mariann grabbed and empty sheet of paper from the desk and crumpled it into a little ball. She then threw it towards the window.


    To Jaan¡¯s frightened awe, the piece of paper did not bounce off the glass, but instead passed it, immediately igniting and burning away into nothingness.


    ¡°This is not a window.¡± Mariann repeated. ¡°This is a one-way gate. It allows nothing but light to pass through from that side, and everything to pass through from this side. Well, not quite everything. Not molecules of nitrogen, oxygen, CO2 and argon.¡±


    ¡°According to this external world, it was supposed that the facility and the temple are located at the same place?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°Indeed. This supposition too is a bit off-kilter though. Best one could say it that they are located on the same planet. Although even that is unclear.¡±


    ¡°You came here to look for the secrets of the base.¡± The professor said, still not turning his eyes way from the strange orange world outside.


    ¡°I did.¡± She said. ¡°I already found the secrets. I have some idea what happened in here, or what is still happening in here.¡±


    ¡°Without opening a single drawer?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°I could say that all secrets of this place were reminded to me as soon as I took a step into this office. But that doesn¡¯t make anything clearer for you, now does it?¡±


    ¡°No it does not.¡±


    Jaan stepped away from the window and weakly sat into the commander¡¯s chair.


    ¡°So tell me then, what happened here? Maybe that will help me better to make sense of it.¡±


    Mariann opened her mouth to say something but before she could utter any sound, her watch did it for her with loud beeping.


    ¡°It is time for us to go.¡± She said, not even looking at her watch. ¡°We have exactly 15 minutes to run through the facility back to the gate.¡±


    ¡°Fifteen minutes!?¡± Jaan exclaimed. ¡°It¡¯s gonna take me at least ten minutes to descend those god damn stairs!¡±


    ¡°The you have to act faster.¡± Mariann said. ¡°There¡¯s one other thing I must take.¡±


    She reveled a set of keys in her hand and with that she opened the two locks on the top drawer of the commander¡¯s desk and slid it open. She then removed a small gray cassette tape.


    ¡°We can go now.¡±


    What¡¯s that?¡± Jaan asked, rushing after the girl.


    ¡°A small program.¡± She said in a carefree tone. ¡°As much as I gathered from the materials that made it to the 47<sup>th</sup> Secret Base, this should anchor the base to the world familiar to us.¡±


    ¡°You want to access it in the future as well?¡± Jaan asked, looking at the girl jumping down the giant steps.


    ¡°Which would anchor it, not grant access.¡± She said from the lower midpoint of the giant staircase. ¡°Those are two different things. As I¡¯ve said several times, the world in this place is hopelessly twisted out of shape. It will only get worse in the future. It may have a singular reason, it may have several different kinds. This facility being untethered from the world may be one of the reasons. Without this facility, the world is no longer complete, it has suddenly become something less than it has been thus far. Also if the facility drifts in one direction with regards to the world, the world drifts in the opposite direction with regards to it. It is quite possible that such a relationship is something that has twisted the world out of shape. Or maybe it is one of several such influences.¡±


    ¡°Is it not possible that what you are doing makes things worse?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°Of course it is. But I will never know it unless I try.¡±


    ¡°Wait.¡± She said, stopping the professor from stepping into the mercury pond. ¡°You do not want to step into a gate with an undefined exit. You¡¯ll have no way of knowing where you might end up at. Or whether you end up in once place or several.


    ¡°Do you have more of those¡­ anchors?¡± Jaan asked. ¡°To somewhere near the gate?¡±


    ¡°I do.¡± She threw a small black egg into the pond.


    The ball dissolved and a black spot slowly drifted towards the center of the pond and then appeared as a thin black strand in the upward stream.


    ¡°Exactly where you want to get to.¡± She said. ¡°¡°Somewhere near the gate.¡±¡±


    She grabbed his sleeve and pulled him into the pond right after her. This time Jaan no longer felt deathly afraid. However he also did not step into the pond with his feet first but instead the first thing to touch the stream of substance flowing towards the ceiling was his head as he lost his balance. He still felt the change in his state of consciousness. A thin silver stream quickly grew into a thick pillar and then filled his whole view. The air of an ancient temple and the taste of dry dusty stone disappeared and a moment later Jaan fell onto a cold damp and dusty concrete.


    For a few moments he laid there, but the girl¡¯s words forced him to get up.


    ¡°We have less than ten minutes! If you want to become one of the permanent inhabitants of the facility, just tell me and I¡¯ll leave you behind.¡±


    Jaan got up and looked around. The beam of Mariann¡¯s flashlight showed that they were indeed quite close to the gates. On the other side of the chain-link gates. In the middle of dusty forgotten computing machinery and other mechanisms. It was absolutely surprising to see one of those gates looking like ponds of liquid metal be placed here behind the corner and into the darkness. When he had stepped into the base and stood earlier on the other side of this very gate he had had no idea that something like this could be hidden in here.


    Mariann opened the gate and they headed along the hallway towards the lit gate room. They only stopped on the black steps which led down to the floor of the gate are with lighting underneath the floor.


    Before and around them they could see different shadow figures flash into being and then disappearing into thin air less than a second later. Some of these shadow figures were so sharp that one could recognize them as individual people, changing their positions in the room between their appearances. It also seemed that each time, their flashes into existence lasted a bit longer.


    ¡°The facility is starting to turn away! We have less than five minutes!¡± She shouted, seeing the mechanical flip clock counting the fourth minute before losing contact with the Nameless Town. ¡°Go through the gate! Right now!¡±


    She paid no more attention to Jaan and headed into the small control room on the side. She produced the cassette and entered it into a tape receptacle in the console. She then pushed the button next to the receptacle which made the machine read the data off the tape.


    A moment later, all lights in the gate room went out. Both illumination, as well as emergency and indicator lights on the gates as well. Only the button panels and keyboard with labels in Russian remained lit. At the same time she could hear how powerful low frequency power circuits cycled down.


    ¡°Now!?¡± She asked in an aggravated tone. ¡°You decide to activate now, you fucking virus!?¡±


    ¡°Mariann?¡± Jaan¡¯s voice asked from the darkness.


    ¡°God dammit! You didn¡¯t go through the gate?!¡± The girl who was usually the essence of peace itself was now in panicky fury. ¡°I told you to go right away! Fine! We¡¯ll do it the hard way! I happen to have precisely three minutes available!¡±


    At the very moment she said that, her watch emitted three short beeps.


    She cracked her fingers and then let them run across the keyboard at a maddening pace. The green terminal screens before her came back to life and accompanied by the mad clicking of the key presses, she managed to bring back the lights as well as the low frequency power circuits. But the illumination and the lights on the gates remained off.


    ¡°The reactors have been given the startup order. They require sixty seconds to reach minimum power, then another fifteen to reach full power, it then requires 35 seconds for the first power impulse to reach the gates. That leaves us with 20 seconds to go through it.¡±


    ¡°Twenty seconds to run five meters and jump into the gate.¡± Said Jaan. ¡°I think we can make it.¡±


    The watch on the girl¡¯s wrist made one last beep. A moment later a low frequency vibration shook the floor of the facility. It quickly grew audible and then faded again as quickly.


    ¡°Reactors.¡± She said. ¡°The power impulse should be on it¡¯s way. This leaves us with fifteen seconds.¡±


    Mariann and Jaan held their breath watching the gates. Suddenly the flip dial above the gate lit up again and so did various safety lights on the gate. However the blue metal gates, which should have slid into the floor and the ceiling, remained closed.


    ¡°Fuck!¡± Cursed Mariann at the twelve second mark. ¡°The doors opening is never automatic! Jaan, be ready to go through the gate as soon as the doors are open!¡±


    She rushed back into the control room and hit her palm on the large button which opened the sliding doors.


    As soon as the doors on the gate to The Nameless Town slid open, Jaan ran through the gate, barely managing to duck and not hit his head on the seized upper door on the other side. He had a painful landing on a cold concrete floor in utter darkness. A moment later, incandescent lights in the dark underground hall started to turn on. He turned on his back only to see the flip dial count down the last three seconds and then the opening into the facility in the gate was, in the blink of an eye, replaced with a wall of rough concrete.


    Professor Jaan Kotkas was completely alone in this expansive basement hall with a gate made of strange blue metal embedded into concrete and also seemingly filled with it. The lights on it had just shut off and the next moment the semaphore next to the gate also went dead. The gate now looked as dead as it has most certainly been every single day before tonight.


    Jaan slowly got up. But he did not head towards the exit, instead he walked towards the now unpowered gate, keeping the beam of his flashlight on the gate and the concrete between the doors on the gate as if there was some chance for the lights and the mechanisms to come back to life again. He even used the handle of the flashlight to knock on the concrete, only managing to make small dings into the surface of it. But this did not change anything. It was clear that if whatever just had happened was not some mad fever dream, the function of the gate had to interfere into how natural materials interacted with themselves and with space-time. This was the only conceivable way for the gate particles when activated to fill the same space that was now filled with non-soluble molecules of silicates and oxides.


    Finally realizing that there was no point in remaining down here, he started walking towards the exit with heavy steps. The rusty staircase creaked with warning noises and left a layer of reddish brown dust to his fingers as well. This made him think of another option ¨C maybe it wasn¡¯t the moisture that had made the staircase as it was, maybe it had been all sorts of acids and salts. Although he could not imagine, how.


    Having made his way up the stairs, he again found himself in the cleaning supplies closet at the back corner of the reception hall. But it was baffling to step from the dark supply closet into a relatively well-lit main hall. A moment later this faded. If course it was light outside. Mariann had woken him in the middle of the night. They had driven here and spent about five hours in the base. And now it was a sunny pleasantly cool early morning a few hours after sunrise. Completely unnoticed to him, a new day had started and the five hours they had wandered in the base now seemed like a bad dream he could not forget.


    Now, in the morning sun, with no traces from the nighttime storm and rain, the broken windows and roof damaged by storms and partially ripped away were much easier to look at and examine. During the night, Jaan had been quite interested in it, but now, a much more important question was weighing on his mind: how to get his revolvers out of Mariann¡¯s car. Also the fact that he had to walk all these kilometers back to town.


    He walked through the post office and finally paused for a moment on the exterior stairs of the building. He noticed the girl¡¯s red car with a tan soft top, a vehicle which beat in size just about everything the Soviet Union could ever produce. A bit further away, a partly black, partly olive drab pile of metal and rotor blades, broken plexiglass domes and some tail and side booms was still emitting black smoke, twisted into unrecognizable shapes.


    Jaan scratched the back of his head. So what he had heard and seen in the night was correct. At least one Soviet military helicopter really did crash here.


    ¡°You certainly took your time to get out, didn¡¯t you?¡± A familiar female voice said.


    Jaan froze, seeing Mariann emerge from behind the car.


    ¡°Honestly, it got boring to wait for you here the whole night.¡± He walked up to Jaan. ¡°I get it. You¡¯re surprised.¡±


    ¡°You remained in the base.¡± Jaan said, stunned. ¡°Not five minutes ago.¡± He even took a step back. ¡°How, suddenly?¡±


    ¡°Our times are not synchronous.¡± Mariann said, smiling. ¡°Let me tell you.¡±


    ¡°Let me...¡± said the professor, ¡°...think a bit. Please don¡¯t come closer.¡±


    Mariann leaned against the car and gave a sad sigh. ¡°Let me know, when you have figured something out.¡±


    ¡°Mariann was left behind in the base.¡± The man said to himself. ¡°By now, slightly more than five minutes ago. How is she now suddenly before me¡­?¡±


    He again looked at the girl in black standing before him. ¡°You found another way out of the base?¡±


    ¡°Yes. Remember those shadow figures we saw when we reached the gate room? The gate closed after you and the shadow figures became real people. Who were very surprised to see me. Just like we had spent five hours wandering the base noting anomalies, they had spent five hours searching around for their anomalies.¡±


    ¡°Their anomalies¡­ were us?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°Yes.¡± She nodded. ¡°After a long discussion I managed to explain to them who I am, where I¡¯m from and what I want. After that, the next time the facility was near our world, they allowed me to leave.¡±


    ¡°it was that simple?¡± Jaan asked in a distrusting tone. ¡°At night you told me that if we let this chance slip by, then the next chance to access it may three months later. How do you explain that?¡±


    ¡°With the same words I started wen you existed the post office: our times are not synchronous. While three months may pass here, the same may not be true there. Only ten seconds may pass there, or minus seven days.¡±


    ¡°How long did you wait in there?¡±


    ¡°Waiting there was easy, that did not take too long. But it got difficult when I got back here.¡±


    ¡°When?¡± Jaan asked, already feeling he would regret that question. ¡°When did you get back?¡±


    ¡°Three months and sixteen days ago.¡± She said. ¡°If my timekeeping is correct.¡±


    ¡°How is that possible?¡± Jaan asked. ¡°That isn¡¯t possible! You got back before you left!¡±


    ¡°Yes, but that¡¯s how it happened.¡± She said, now again smiling. ¡°For the last three and half months, two me¡¯s have been moving around in the Nameless Town and the Lost County. It is called a paradox. Well, rather the result of the thought experiment is called a paradox. The thing in reality is simple physics of our corner of the world. Nothing special about it.¡±


    ¡°You came back before you left.¡± Jaan quietly said. ¡°Which meant you knew exactly what time to come here. For three months, you and your original model have been acting around in town. Have we met before?¡±


    ¡°It would seem so, would it not? No, we haven¡¯t. My original me was of course aware of my presence, she sometimes allowed me to use her car. You may have seen me around, but we have never spoken for the duration both me and Mariann 1 were around. This is something I have agreed to with myself a long time ago. I will notify myself that a time loop has been created and try to keep away from myself before the originating moment of the loop.¡±


    She again stepped away from the car and approached Jaan.


    ¡°The fact that there might be a hundred ideas in my mind and I am analyzing local rumors, myths, history, and only hell knows what and because of that sometimes it feels like I am not myself, it is only what seems.¡±


    ¡°You mean to tell me something like that has happened before?¡± Jaan asked. ¡°You have created a time loop before?¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s not a question I will answer. But it was not a good day. What I will tell you that there may well be yet another me in the Lost County right now who is keeping to herself and either is not aware of our agreement, doesn¡¯t remember it or outright ignores it.¡±


    ¡°Enough, enough!¡± Jaan said, rubbing his forehead. ¡°I think I¡¯ve had to much of this kind of excitement for one night.¡±


    ¡°I agree. If it is amenable to you, we could to to Valgepal? for a decent breakfast. I had to spend three hours walking here from the town in pitch black to make it in time and then sit by the car for another five hours until you emerged. I should have brought a book along.¡±


    ¡°So you you did not get here only now?¡±


    ¡°I saw you drive by me. Luckily it rained and you did not see me walk by the side of the road. And no, I reached here only a bit earlier than you did. You went into the post office, I came to the car, and recovered the necessary equipment from the car.¡±


    ¡°Necessary equipment?¡± Jaan asked. ¡°You don¡¯t mean...¡±


    ¡°You thought the choppers fell down on their own?¡± She asked, then shook her head. ¡°No such luck. A PG-7VL shot from an RPG-7 into the tail rotor and down she came. Those that survived could not enjoy their luck for too long.¡±


    ¡°Honestly, I can no longer understand who you are.¡± Jaan said.


    ¡°Is that good or bad?¡± She asked.


    ¡°You have kept things from me.¡± He said.


    ¡°Yes I have. And there¡¯s a ton of things I am still keeping from you.¡±


    ¡°Like the true nature that facility? The N syndrome, that temple?¡±


    ¡°Let¡¯s go eat something.¡±

 XXVIII - Breakfast at Valgepal?

    Thursday morning rolled into Valgepal? along with morning mists from the Talaba lake. Nobody seemed to have any idea that the last night had somehow been different from the others. The downpour in the night was but a distant memory and trash carried around by the winds had been taken care of by the street sweepers long before the sun rose. The cottage district with it¡¯s larger and smaller cooperatives surrounding old farm hearts was located far enough from permanent settlements for it to take days before anybody even discovered the wrecks of the military choppers.


    And thus in the minds of Valgepal? locals there were instead preparations to honor a weekly tradition that for locals from other town nearby had long since become obsolete. And this may have been one of the reasons it had attained fanatical importance from the locals here. For them, although the new Russian era had turned into a fledgling restored republic, a very important tradition had survived the transition ¨C Thursday was Fish Day. Fish Day tradition was carried by all employees of the former fisherman kolkhozes, for whom the only visible change with the fall of communism was that people from the kolkhozes now got employed at the Valgepal? fish factory. And the fish factory was also used to it¡¯s product having such a popularity once a week.


    In Tontla and in the Nameless Town, there was much less focus on Fish Day as a tradition. But Valgepal? as a lakeside town and a fish factory town could not get over or around it. This however meant that on Thursdays it was impossible to find food with out fish as at least one ingredient. Public canteens, bars, restaurants, even people offering street food. None were exempt. Some local comedians even came up with fish ice cream, which they sold from the cart on corner of the main square. As a curios side note, fish ice cream was not half as disgusting as a competing roe ice cream.


    But today, there was a disturbance in the routine of that misty morning ¨C Mariann¡¯s red land yacht, slowly rolling down the wide cobblestone streets of Valgepal?. While Tontla was a town with streets a little too small for her almost six meter long car, Valgepal? was the opposite. Streets were big and wide, the only thing missing was traffic to use them. Sure, the locals had their own Zhigulis, Moskviches, the Willy¡¯ses and Sapaks. Some even had Volgas and Chaikas they had picked up or inherited from the premiers of the local kolkhozes, production cooperatives and other important establishments. One fearless man even had a ZIL he had picked up from the Underground Base and which had made him famous for a few months. But still it was more likely to see people simply walking, riding bicycles and even motorcycles. However nobody paid too much attention to Mariann leaving her red car on the side of the road, not even bothering to put up the top.


    Valgepal? had a total of three streets considered as main streets. These ran in parallel through town and ended with a seaside boulevard and boardwalk. Right there, during the Stalinist era, the fish factory and cannery were built. Along them a big fishing port up the coast. The other thing special about the town was a salty mist rolling in from the lake, flooding the streets and burying half the town under it. This was especially abundant in the morning, like now.


    Why salty mist would emerge from a freshwater lake, nobody could tell. From time to time, all sorts of meteorologists, lake and weather scientists found themselves in town, bringing along both theories and measuring instruments but nobody could come up with a satisfactory answer. Locals tended to blame Northern winds bringing the mist in from the Baltic sea. But also chemical factories near Pskov and Greater-Novgorod. However most of the time, the Weather Station was to blame.


    The locals treated the mist in much the same way as they treated a downpour. During downpours, the bar in Nameless Town was full of drunks, freeloaders and other villagers. Here, the bars were full with both downpours and the mist. And as a strange twist, with downpours sale of beer grew and with mist, sale of vodka grew. And on misty days, it was impossible to find a worker in Valgepal? who wasn¡¯t at least slightly inebriated.


    Mariann exited the car and headed down the sidewalk lined with forged black streetlights, only stopping in front of a three story czarist wooden building. Where one of four or five local bars was. ¡®Stunned lamprey bar.¡¯


    ¡°Are you sure you can leave your car like this?¡± Jaan asked with hesitation. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t.¡±


    ¡°Relax.¡± She smiled. ¡°Everybody in this entire lost county know that this is my car. Nobody¡¯s gonna even lay a finger on it.¡±


    She opened the pub door and headed directly towards the counter.


    ¡°What¡¯s good for breakfast here?¡± She asked.


    ¡°Smoked burbot sandwich.¡± The old man behind the counter replied, without even raising his eyes to look at her.


    ¡°I¡¯d much rather have something warm, I¡¯ve been on my feet all night long. Do you do early lunch?¡±


    ¡°I do.¡±


    ¡°Good. Let it be fish, fried, and it better not be zander. Also whatever you offer on the side of that.¡±


    Mariann took her seat at a table not too far from the counter and waited until Jaan finished ordering his share. As was a misty morning tradition, the bar was full of people. But Mariann was just about the only person here who wanted something to eat. Everywhere around her she could see people sitting around tables taking their traditional morning shot which was supposed to drive the mist back to the lake. Didn¡¯t matter whether a person was a conveyor line worker or wore a suit, the tradition was the same.


    ¡°What do you have against zander?¡± Jaan asked when he took a seat at the table.


    ¡°I don¡¯t have much against zander nor the Fish Day.¡± She said. ¡°But those two together have ruined Fish Day forever for me. It isn¡¯t just about zander, it is also about perch, pike and whitefish. Or rather about the pinnacle of Fish Thursday being fish stew with the broth made from just about every part of zander left over after all the good parts have been taken.¡±


    ¡°You talk about it like for you every day has been Fish Day.¡± The professor said.


    ¡°It it possible it once was.¡± The girl in black replied.


    ¡°So could you continue then?¡± He asked.


    ¡°With?¡±


    ¡°With what you were saying in the base before we got interrupted by your watch and had to flee. What happened to those people in the base? What were the things you suddenly remembered when you stepped into the commander¡¯s office?"


    ¡°Oh, that.¡± She paused for a bit. ¡°Very well. In the simplest of terms, the people there learned the true meaning of the world. They discovered knowledge one can only consider as divine and this knowledge doomed them. But they don¡¯t know it yet. They keep existing and working there, sometimes making contact with places they cannot tell whether they have been to or not in order to ingest new talent. But in the end it is all for naught.¡±


    ¡°How do you know that they will never achieve anything?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°I did not say they won¡¯t achieve anything, but they will not achieve what they set out to achieve at the start of it all. And that¡¯s because they haven¡¯t achieved it thus far. They have the ability to travel in time or to send the facility back in time. The fact we are not currently living in a Thousand Year Reich or under a fledgling Communist World Government is proof enough that they never succeeded. And since they too see neither of those things when connecting to the worlds from time to time, they keep trying.¡±


    ¡°Doesn¡¯t the multiverse theory state that anything is possible in a multiverse?¡± Jaan asked. ¡°That there must be a universe where either of those things or both of them exist? Or are you telling me that those things are impossible across all of multiverse?¡±


    ¡°That is certainly one way to interpret things. But I think the issue here is that they have never reached any of those universes because they haven¡¯t even tried. They keep hovering around the part of the multiverse they originated from. This facility could travel forwards and backwards in time, across multiple universes and world fabrics of the same universe. But the people who run this place are interested in none of that. They are not explorers. All they want is a little more time to win the war. World War 2 for the Germans, the Cold War for the Russians, or possibly World War 3 for them too. They want to turn the tide in this century and so the keep hovering around here in this 100 year span.¡±


    ¡°That is strange to me too.¡± Jaan said, sipping some of the beer the barkeep had brought. ¡°They could just travel into the future and use the technical progress to win the war in the past.¡±


    ¡°Their hope is that if they achieve their goal in one universe, a cascading domino effect will take place in this corner of the multiverse and they find themselves in the center of that cascade, meaning they would be surrounded by endless universes where they have achieved their goal. But the problem with that is that they keep plundering the multiverse they are in for scientific minds to further their goals, which ensures that they will never get closer to their goals but may in fact be drifting further away from them, spawning new universes but also harming the whole and damaging collective intellect, especially in this field.¡±


    ¡°So did you manage to install that little program you had?¡± Jaan asked. ¡°To anchor it?¡±


    ¡°I did, but they discovered it and removed it. I tried to explain the futility of their endeavors but they¡¯re all idiots. But I did spend enough time in there to find out that the facility is not completely independent. There are facilities outside of it which it can interface with. I don¡¯t know if any of them are located anywhere near here though.¡±


    ¡°Do they know you found that out?¡±


    ¡°They still hadn¡¯t when I left there.¡±


    ¡°Did you at least get to meet the base commander?¡±


    ¡°I did not.¡± She said. ¡°Nobody meets him. He hasn¡¯t come out of his office for years. People send him their reports and only the department heads know what he looks like. Or rather, they know what he is supposed to look like according to his photos, but even right after meeting him, they cannot say whether he looks anything like his photos.¡±


    ¡°So what you said in the temple. That he might not be completely human anymore.¡± Jaan said.


    ¡°I asked about that too, the temple. Apparently that¡¯s the default destination of all gates. Those small eggs are but artificial constructs they came up with.¡±


    ¡°So what¡¯s that temple really? A labyrinth for a minotaur of some other civilization? Some sort of eternal arena for the entertainment of gods?¡±


    ¡°They have no idea either.¡± Mariann replied. ¡°I did learn a couple of other tidbits about those gates though. Apparently they need to be installed between two parallel surfaces, either walls or a floor and a ceiling. Just a single pond will not work. Also, all gates seem to be powered by the connection they have to the temple.¡±


    ¡°Again that temple.¡± Jaan sighed. ¡°Did they at least reveal to you where the base is located? What is that pale orange world we saw at the temple and you saw near the gate room?¡±


    ¡°They don¡¯t know.¡± She said. ¡°It was surprise when it started to appear in the windows after they untethered the base. And even bigger a surprise when they discovered the temple. Although most of them haven¡¯t seen the temple, as the temple is the sole domain of that secretive base commander.¡±


    ¡°Then what about the young scientists all dying in less than a year?¡±


    ¡°This related to that divine knowledge I spoke of earlier. They only wanted it for a frankly idiotic reason. But they attained all of it. And the facility was not built in one go. Behind it becoming what we saw are the lives of those dozens of young scientists who literally worked themselves to death. Tortured themselves to death with their work. Each of the scientists had solved some important problem or simplified the way the facility worked or how the equipment functioned. But thinking and understanding which this kind of science requires, is superhuman. It exceeds corporeal flesh. The physical bodies of the scientists could not bare the mental pressure caused by the knowledge of principles by which the facility functioned. Comprehension itself killed them.¡±


    ¡°Superhuman comprehension?¡± The professor asked. ¡°In that case what is Pathology N?¡±


    ¡°Pathology N, also known as numinous pathology.¡± Mariann said. ¡°Interaction with any of the scientific materials was in essence an experience that countered cognition. Overcoming the anticognitive could only be achieved through pain and tension. Synthesis of new knowledge and concepts after transcending the anticognitive was at it¡¯s core a numinous experience. An apocalyptic experience because a person¡¯s mind learned something that his physical body was incapable of knowing.


    ¡°These scientists came here, spent ten months to transcend the anticognitive and the last months to write down the new knowledge with ample clarity before their corporeality gave out. And this wasn¡¯t always the simple part. Scientists who had reached that level were both revered and feared.¡±


    ¡°How did they die, in the end?¡±


    ¡°Their brain matter broke down bit by bit. On one moment they might have been working on new scientific concepts and the next moment their nose would start to bleed heavily, then ears, then eyes, then mouth and within a few minutes they would collapse. By that time most of their brains were usually no longer located within their skulls but had instead drained along with their blood.¡±


    ¡°And the high command let that happen?¡±


    ¡°Of course they did. The scientists themselves let that happen.¡± Mariann continued. ¡°The facility had to advance as fast as possible. Also, understanding all sorts of supercognitive concepts was nothing short of a narcotic experience. Dying as a consequence of understanding a principle was to become a part of the very principle they were in the process of understanding. Sometimes, the more active scientists were even prescribed lysergic acid diethylamide to soften the effects of them comprehending something. If lucky, it extended their lives a few months. But at some point the outside stopped supplying the substance. Similarly narcotic was how fast the facility developed. How fast new discoveries were made in theory, in practice and in field work.¡±


    If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    ¡°Can you say what that numinous knowledge consists of?¡± Jaan asked. ¡°Or would saying it out loud be like a casting curse which immediately takes effect?¡±


    ¡°It is more like poetry or speaking in riddles or perhaps philosophy. Words that are really akin to physics formulae. Without proper context they are just a bunch of unknown word with no meaning. Also there is no single piece of knowledge that can be said out in words in one lifetime. It exceeds all that, the limit of one¡¯s lifetime, the limit of our language. But it can be understood all at once. That¡¯s the paradoxical aspect of it.¡±


    Jaan fell silent, thinking about these words. But also looking at the ample early lunch Mariann was about to start with. Pan-fired fish was but a single part of that meal. This also included yeast free blackbread, a raw egg, some mayonnaise and horseradish.


    ¡°In the Cold-Talaba lake system there are more than 30 species of fish, many of them at risk of extinction due to overfishing.¡± Mariann said. ¡°That¡¯s why weekly Fish Day helps to raise awareness on all the other species the lake is full of and which also make good eating. That¡¯s the reason in the Soviet era they came up with a fish stew made of 5 predatory fish.¡±


    ¡°Did you manage to learn about the history of the base?¡±


    ¡°I did. That is kind of a long story. And the middle section is kind of messy, but if you¡¯re interested I can try. When they started to build the facility, their aim was simple: how does elementary physics work in places with abundant supernatural phenomena. All major nations and countries have done experiments like that since the beginning of times. They have researched chemistry, physics, medicine, biochemistry. But the special thing this time was that it was researched here, in our lost county.


    ¡°However here they stumbled upon a strange phenomenon they could neither explain nor control. The core of this phenomenon was the fact that if one left this place they could travel to Reval or City of Glass in the North, or to Yuryev not as far. Or to Perno to the West. But people who come to this place for the first time have never before heard of such places or for them such names are historic only, dating back to mid 19<sup>th</sup> century. At the same time nobody has heard of our Tontla or Valgepal?.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ve heard that story both in the Institute as well as in the bar. I think last year we even had a researcher in the Institute who was focused on collecting such folklore.¡± The professor said.


    ¡°During research one very important and interesting aspect became clear. Mathematics was suddenly no longer universal. Laws which are valid outside out lost county may not necessarily be valid here, additionally, new laws cropped up. One such mathematical equation which was unsolved outside, when they tried to solve it here, it resulted in giving two answers: 9 and -9. I cannot tell you how exactly that was possible but after examining the equation and the solution to it under the effect of various local psychoactive herbs the first written explanations were created, both on the meaning of the equation as well as the concept of a gate as such. The equation was interpreted in a way that a practical application of it could, in theory, bring into reality the same kind of effect as the use amanita muscaria had on human consciousness.¡±


    ¡°I have read of and even taken part of rituals in which psychoactive chemicals allow people to access knowledge not their own and perhaps even supernatural. But this knowledge has never been direct, free of interpretations and technological.¡± Said Jaan.


    ¡°Well, here they were exactly that.¡± She replied. ¡°Based on that initial info, the first half of the facility was built, then called Mir-4 ¨C the so-called old section with it¡¯s 9 gates. It was built in the Fourth Town, under the local campus of the academy of sciences. The initial version of the facility looked nothing like the one we saw. The center section of the base was a parking garage on two levels, below those were computing machinery on four levels, below that four levels of electronics and electro-mechanics which fed the gates. The gate room itself was almost the same with nine gates in a quarter circle shape around a hall accessible by both large vehicles and also indoor rail. And at the top of the sector was the control room.¡±


    ¡°So they even started with a facility to connect to nine different locations?¡±


    ¡°Not quite. That wasn¡¯t even the goal of the facility. That wasn¡¯t the goal of the gates. At that time the gates were not really gates, strictly speaking. At that time the gate doors hid chambers behind them, each with an antenna with slightly different design and purpose to it. The purpose of the antennae was to radiate out a signal. The nine antennas would create an interference pattern and hope was that there was an intelligence that had recognized a similar principle and they could perhaps establish contact. And they did.¡±


    ¡°What?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°It was a surprise to them too. Contact was made and theories were suddenly proven. The 9 antennas not only found a similar signal, theorized to be a similar facility, but made contact. Morse at first, then radio signals exchanging data in hexadecimal form. Whoever or whatever they managed to contact, it gave them further instructions how to modify the facility in such a way as to turn the chambers into gates. So that the facility would not only locate the source of the signal but could actually achieve direct contact and connection with them. And thus, during an experiment with the modified chambers, they managed to create a stable gate to another similar facility. Antenna chambers disappeared and on the other side of the gate doors there was another facility.¡±


    ¡°They created simultaneously 9 Einstein-Rosen bridges in parallel to another facility like that?¡±


    ¡°They created 9 gates.¡± She replied. ¡°There were no wormholes. It was more like our experience, like a magical door. The door is either closed, or in the next position connected to the antenna chamber or in the next to the concrete wall and in the fourth position, to the other facility.


    ¡°Of course, there was more astonishment for them to be had. The other facility they had made contact with looked almost the same! With the difference being that it had the tech but no people. Everything was automated, the information provided to them for modifying the facility came from the microcomputer data storage. The running program had detected their signal and in response provided them the necessary data. It also contained thousands of hours of audio notes recorded by the scientists who had worked there.¡±


    ¡°So that¡¯s how they got the information how to finish the facility with the center section and the other wing?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°Well, again, not quite. This was not the end for their astonishment.¡± Said Mariann. ¡°In this new facility they found the circular center room and also the other wing, with it¡¯s own accesses, garage levels and gates. And if that was not enough, when they turned back into their own facility, it was no longer the same it had been. From their own facility they also now discovered the circular control section and the other wing. To the appearance or existence of which they had no explanation. Ironically they only discovered it only after severing connection with the base. The only thing convincing them that they had not suddenly got lost in the other facility instead was the fact that the vehicle bay door still opened to the Fourth Town.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re kidding, right?¡± Jaan asked. ¡°I am not gonna say this is not possible, because it feels like I¡¯ve been saying that for 7 hours now but¡­ at moment of making contact with the other facility, the control center and the other wing also materialized in their facility? One reality just overwrote the other?¡±


    ¡°I can retell it like that and it might seem like that to you or to the scientists who had to experience it for themselves. But do you not feel that there might be a much simpler explanation?¡± Mariann asked.


    ¡°A simpler explanation?¡±


    ¡°If you think about as one reality overwriting the other, it seems ridiculous, right? But what if it instead just took it¡¯s place? All it had to do was to switch the exit data. Mir-4 had a regular exit to the world outside, but on Mir-8 it may well be another gate. And since Mir-8 is a mirror facility, it has two exits, one for each side of it. And that would explain why two gates were completely off.¡±


    ¡°Ergo, people built a facility and then found a signal from a more advanced facility, this more advanced facility sent them data to modify their own.¡± Jaan mused. ¡°When they had undertaken these modifications, the connection was established, at the same time, the advanced facility reassigned the other¡¯s facility¡¯s exit to itself, thus taking it¡¯s place and completely blocking the other one off, except access through the gates.¡±


    ¡°And people who went to the new, more advanced facility, after they had visited the center section, could no longer tell on which side they were. And since the exit was reassigned, it ended up looking like one reality had written over the other.¡±


    ¡°That is a neat explanation.¡± Jaan said.


    ¡°It also lines up with what I learned during my stay at the base.¡± Mariann continued. ¡°For example the fact that the current scientists working there are not the original ones. Although they still have their original goal, they no longer burn through brains at such a rate and as a result the speed of their scientific advancement has slowed down. The portraits of the dead we saw were of the original scientists.¡±


    ¡°That just raises more questions.¡± Jaan said. ¡°Like where did the advanced facility come from? And whose marks of use were they? And whose skeleton was it?¡±


    ¡°The first one is one I cannot answer. But I did learn about the other ones.¡± Mariann said. ¡°In essence, the current scientists are at the moment only using half the facility. The one we saw as clean. The other side is indeed the older and more used one, which they made initial contact with. But there is a problem currently with the center section.¡±


    ¡°What problem?¡±


    ¡°They did not do too god a job elaborating on it, but essentially, it¡¯s on the fritz. Since Mir-8 is a mirror facility, the two sides of it are reflections of one another, functionally. The theory is that for the facility to be in full working order, the two sides need to be balanced in some way, in this case the facility would exist on a certain range of world fabrics, with people on one side occupying one end of the range, and people on the other side occupying the other end of the range. They can travels to either side of the facility, but only see one another in the center chamber, that silver ball, were the fabrics have been reduced to a single one.¡±


    ¡°So what¡¯s the problem?¡± Jaan asked again.


    ¡°The current inhabitants think that it is either their doing or the base commander¡¯s but there was a mistake and they¡¯ve lost the balance. The old section started suffering from extra-dimensional incursions. Strange creatures, people and plants showing up. Probably other stuff too they could not classify. They knew about the roots and the skeleton. And they sad that the base commander said to leave the skeleton where it was.¡±


    ¡°So there could have been something stalking the base at the same time as we were there?¡± Jaan asked. ¡°Something that eats flesh off bones, leaving them clean and in once piece? That is disconcerting, even in hindsight.¡±


    ¡°It is conceivable. They have been trying to repair the issue, but the only thing they have managed to do was to push back the time of the incursion repeating. That¡¯s why the time between chances to access it has been increasing. At first they thought my presence to be one such incursion. It took quite a bit of explaining for them to understand how I got there. By their calculations, if there was no problem, we could not have accessed it. But I think they are wrong, for several reasons.¡±


    ¡°So them being in the base at the same time as we were, was true?¡± Jaan asked. ¡°I wonder how did it look for them, during these five and a half hours? Also, how are they wrong?¡±


    ¡°They explained the error and the incursions happening like a buildup of unwanted energy which finally breaks through and releases. But it releases into higher dimensions, breaching world fabrics and either creating breaches or severely weakening the fabrics for a time. However, the timelines are not equally far along. For them, the number of the current year is completely different than it is for us. When the base is inaccessible it is irrelevant at what speed time passes or how it changes. The people inside the base cannot sense it and live and age at the same pace. But they can measure the speed at which time passing changes ¨C the temporal flux. When such a release of energy takes place, the temporal flux remains unchanged, a weakening period may last for hours or it might last a microsecond.¡±


    ¡°Okay¡­?¡±


    ¡°But when we went there, and when I left almost 4 months ago, the temporal flux became zero and the facility got locked into normal time for those almost six hours. Normal time being the time here. They treated it as an error and as a fault event, reasoning that it would not be possible to establish connection if it worked properly. But it think that they are mistaken. There are protocols on place, either internal to the facility or external, which force it to make contact. However it is yet unknown what kind of event or counter triggers this contact. This is supported by the fact that the Russians knew it would happen beforehand. Also that during the time we were in there, we only saw an empty base, no monster chasing us.¡±


    ¡°So they have two problems, one being a problem with machinery and they other being a problem with the control logic. But they think it is a single problem, the former one?¡±


    ¡°Yeah. And for them it was even more frightening than for you. They knew beforehand that there would be an almost six hour window during which their permanence would be weaken than that of the bases, due to them being on different and on not as many world fabrics as the base. So all they could do was to continue working and hope that nothing would happen.¡±


    ¡°Interesting.¡± The professor said, eating his warm sandwich. ¡°So, under the 4<sup>th</sup> Town, these should be an inaccessible original facility, which is only accessible by explosive excavation perhaps?¡±


    ¡°Pretty much.¡±


    ¡°What about the untethering? How would that have happened?¡±


    ¡°Believe it or not, with the nine antennas I mentioned before. Both the facility and our world have an atomic clock. These are tied to radio beacons which radiate the clock signal on certain frequencies. It was discovered that by affecting the function of certain generators in the facility, they could manipulate the incoming clock signal. Speed it up, slow it down, squeeze and stretch it, even reverse and manipulate it in tens of other ways. However this obviously meant that the function of neither the atomic clock nor the radio beacon where the signal originated from was altered, but instead the receiver¡¯s relation with said signal changed. Untethering from space had a different means, but similar mechanics.¡±


    ¡°I imagine you found it the same way, by discovering the clock signal?¡±


    ¡°Indeed. A radio receiver and an oscilloscope to compare signals. A few weeks ago I started to notice that the clock signal emitted by the Center Station and another clock signal I could not triangulate were growing closer in their timings. As you know, this is something impossible under any ordinary conditions. Then, about 72 hours before we made it to the cottage district, the numbers station also became online, letting me know of the opportunity that was about to come up.¡±


    ¡°But how did you get back? If they had and still have a problem of making sure that they can reconnect to the same universe twice. How did they manage to do it in your case?¡±


    ¡°Who says they did?¡± Mariann asked.


    ¡°If they didn¡¯t then how can you be here, unless you¡¯re a Mariann from a different reality?¡±


    She did not reply to that, only smiled.


    ¡°Wait, you are? From somewhere else?!¡±


    ¡°Not quite. They opened a gate to a wrong place and at the wrong time. And I had to do some traveling to get back here. Luckily the wrong place was somewhere in this lost county. Had it been somewhere outside of it, things would have been a lot more difficult. Had it been somebody else than me, then also,probably.¡±


    ¡°But you made it back.¡±


    ¡°Nope. I don¡¯t think I have yet, but this is close enough for my comfort and for the most part matches my knowledge.¡±


    ¡°And you¡¯re not in any way unnerved by that?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°Why should I be?¡± She asked in return. ¡°I left behind a world quite similar to this one. All the major aspects are the same, which means I¡¯m in the right ballpark. People tend to think of multiverse in broad strokes, that in a different world they might have been born the opposite sex, might have not acted the dumbass and gotten the girl, killed the bully instead of taking it etc. But each insignificant event or choice is a branching point as well. There are an uncountable number of universes in the multiverse, each branching event creates an uncountable number more. To us, potentially all alternate universes are right beside ours. But thematically, considering how much they differ, they might be light years apart.¡±


    ¡°But still.¡±


    ¡°But still nothing. One literally cannot make difference between them in any meaningful way. Universal constants even are identical to the millionth billionth billionth decimal place. Like I said, I¡¯ve been here for some time, in major aspects this universe is like the one I¡¯m from, and thus I might as well stay here and an uncountable number of me-s have made the same choice across all of multiverse. What matters in the end is if you are willing to accept me as Mariann you¡¯re familiar of, especially if I look the same, act the same, remember the same. Qualitatively, you have but a choice whether you accept me saying that I am not the original, or you don¡¯t, which would mean I am.¡±


    ¡°True.¡± Jaan sighed. ¡°Just that all of it is so strange. Especially if I trust you.¡±


    ¡°Then don¡¯t. If it helps you.¡± She replied.


    ¡°How many radio signals are out there anyway?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°More than you could ever imagine.¡± She said. ¡°Locally I have managed to isolate about 80 noise signals, 3 dozen encrypted transmission patterns, none of which I can triangulate. Maybe 20 different clock signals and 12 numbers stations. And then there¡¯s of course the radio of the Nameless Town, radiating out with such power that I¡¯m amazed all of our brains have not yet boiled off. In addition to all that an uncountable number of errant transmissions and transmission scraps, which under normal circumstances seem to have no power at all to them but after thunderstorms they grow strangely prominent for a few hours.¡±


    ¡°You live in the Underground Base?¡± The professor suddenly asked on a completely different topic.


    ¡°Sometimes. I know all the ghost stories the Mayor and the bar flies tell about the place and in my experience, most of them are not true. At least not for me. Although I am pretty sure that some of the hauntings people have seen have been me just hanging around in there. Although I mostly keep to the first few levels. Which have mostly been stolen bare from all the equipment capable of moving under it¡¯s own power.¡±


    ¡°What do you do there?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s my base of operations. A library, a repair shop. A peaceful place to crash for the night when I become tired of sleeping in my car. It feels quite cozy and mystical. We can go there and I can show it to you, but there¡¯s not much to see.¡±


    ¡°You have aroused my curiosity, I must admit.¡± Jaan said. ¡°But I think not. I¡¯m tired and unlike you, I need my seven hours of sleep to do strenuous exercise like last night.¡±


    ¡°You also ought to drink less.¡± Mariann said.


    ¡°You said something about the Nameless Town having a radio station? I wasn¡¯t even aware of anything like that being active.¡±


    ¡°It only recently became active and with regular broadcasts, something about an agreement with the Boys from the North. The radio tower is used for transmitting it, the studio building is right next to the town hall. There¡¯s probably nothing happening right now, the station is playing old vinyl records on auto-pilot and the host is sleeping off the previous night. But it gets more interesting in the evenings. Some cool old dude named Allan Helde runs his show. And every time he asks at least one local to come to the show to discuss mystical stuff or unusual phenomena which has taken place around town or with the show¡¯s guests. He has extended a welcome to me a couple of times, but thus far I have turned him down.¡±


    ¡°But why?¡±


    ¡°Every time Allan hosts his show, a hundred other fascinating things are also taking place around the county. Starting from heavy downpours and meteor showers and ending with some strange tension in the air which seems to grow stronger as darkness falls. I think it¡¯s an infra-sound of some sorts. It is also much more interesting to listen to Allan and his guests, rather than to be there and speak myself. And some of his guests have such wild stories and theories that¡­ even I¡¯m stunned.¡±


    Mariann finished her meal and emptied the mug of the remaining beer.


    ¡°That was good. Not perfect, but good.¡± She said. ¡°I guess you wanna go home and sleep?¡±


    ¡°It would be nice.¡± Jaan said. ¡°Although I would like to see your base of operation sometime.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll find the time to do some cleaning then. Shall we go?¡±


    She got up from the table.


    ¡°Yes.¡± He replied.

 XXIX - Back in the Old Homestead

    I am back. I am finally back. I don¡¯t know how it happened. When I think back to it, it seems like one single long and impossible dream. Somehow, in the light of the Moon and the Stars, I escaped hell I was bound to. After this is journeyed across fields of dream, bogs of delirium, I forded streams of forgetfulness and climbed over the ramparts of the world. I saw an uncountable number or worlds, I experienced numerous parallel histories retold to me by wrong strange stars and the pale Moon.


    And then, at the end of this unexplainable labyrinth, I found myself on a familiar potholed gravel road. The road which passed the rusty chain link fence bordering the cottage district, made a broad turn to the right and continued straight towards the base. This was the road to the Base. It was also the road home. To your grandparents¡¯ farmhouse. To the place where it all began. And the place where it must all end.


    I finally understand how your grandmother must have felt in those final years. I feel the same. You are here and yet you are not. Every single thing around me says that you are here and at the same time they so clearly indicate that something is missing. You. The paths you walked, the tracks you left behind. Your bed, the radio equipment. Again and again I find myself sitting on the second floor and waiting. That the rain would return, beat against the roof and the windows, I wait for the cold wind, dark night, hail. So I could sink deeper and deeper into memories. Maybe the heavens and the forest will smile to me and I can pull you out of my memories. Back into this world. Like the old times.


    Do you still remember the old times? That quiet fall after grandfather had died? The cold rain, the bare trees, the dark nights when all of nature sudden fell silent. Fall which looked like in the Moominvalley but heavier, blacker, darker, wetter and colder. When even fire in stove could not offer any warmth. When incandescent bulbs could offer no more light than candles.


    Grandmother recognized something in all this. She knew something we did not. A secret knowledge her parents and grandparents had also known, but not father or mother of yours or mine. Knowledge that only traveled from grandparents to grandchildren because only the elderly and the very young possessed the common language the adults did not understand. The elderly who had once again started to believe in magic, having seen everything going on in the world. And children who believed in magic because they had not yet seen enough.


    To the children they were supernatural, sometimes frightening stories behind which one could not imagine any real practice. To the old, there was only practice, to tell children as stories and thus to also contemplate and try to overcome the unexplainable mystery of the matter.


    *


    This happened not long after grandpa died. After he had went to some abandoned base in the forest and found metal objects in the shape of a star halo. He brought them home and laid them around the well as decoration. Dragging those pieces home had been hard work and afterwards grandpa spent several days in bed recuperating, with a deathly gray countenance. But as time passed, people in the town learned that things weren¡¯t as simple as grandpa had said. Grandpa had not gone to the base hidden in the forest to only look for metal. And he had also not gone alone. But he was the only one to return.


    Grandpa never told anybody what happened in the base, who he had gone with and what happened to the others. Grandpa stayed quiet even when the militsiya came to talk to him. From that day forward he did not say much on anything any more. Also, with every passing day, he grew weaker and weaker. Everybody could see that. At the beginning of the week, it was only slightly difficult to go up the stairs, but by the end of the week even getting out of the bed required the use of a cane. By the end of the following week he was no longer able to even turn the other side in bed and a few days later he closed his eyes for the final time.


    And then, a month after grandpa¡¯s death when grandma had been crying every night, something changed. Grandma changed. All of nature changed. Evenings and nights turned deathly quiet. Darkness as a substance flooded in through the smallest of cracks and nights were full of foggy rain. Maybe grandma felt this change and that¡¯s why she again grew more active. She baked cake, burnt candles, mixed the fire in the stove and fireplace. Dusted grandpa¡¯s rocking chair which sat in front of the fire place. And every night she placed a small table next to the rocking chair where she put a shot glass, a bottle of vodka, a pack of cigarettes and a small bowl of gruel. She then ignited a lone candle. She shut of all other lighting in the house and sent us, the children, upstairs with a stern order to not come back down. After which she sat alone in the dark.


    At that time we could not fathom what she was doing or why. Maybe on these cold autumn nights she missed grandpa so bad that she could not be alone and had to change the air in the house. To let herself imagine that grandpa was back, that he was alive again. As if grandma was left out from having the dreams we children had had, in which grandpa came to explain how he ad fallen ill, how he had died and how now he was all better.


    At first we listened to grandma. But after she had sat and waited like this for several nights, a night came when we did not listen and sneaked back down the stairs. My pajamas, your nightgown. Back then we were like brother and sister. It was devastating to see grandma like this. Sitting and waiting for something which was not possible. That could never happen. Grandpa was dead and buried. We all went to the village church, we all said our goodbyes. We were children, but even we knew that grandpa would never return.


    And so, each following night, after grandma had sent us upstairs, we came back down, as silently as possible and his behind the low bookshelf. From behind the bookshelf we actually had a great view on the fireplace and the rocking chair and the table in front of it, as well as the carpet-covered sofa grandma was sitting in. Our wish was to secretly accompany grandma, to sit and wait alongside her even if she did not want us there. Even if nothing happened.


    But at one night something did happen. It may have been about two weeks after grandma became active again. A Friday night. When grandma was sitting on the couch just like on many nights before. And we were hiding behind the bookshelf like on many nights before. When everything was set ready on the small table near the rocking chair.


    This night was somehow more special. Darkness was darker, The night was colder. Already at ten o¡¯clock in the evening the dew turned into white frost and turned the grass into a glittering field of pale gray. It didn¡¯t matter that the preceding night had been quite warm.


    Grandma sat on the sofa between the carpets and blankets and waited. We were in our place behind the bookshelf. It was deathly silent. The only thing making more sound than our own hearts was the fire crackling in the wood stove. My eyes were fixed on the rocking chair near the wood stove. It had struck half past eleven in the night when I felt a cold draft rush though the house as if a window had been left open. But all the windows were closed. For a moment I looked away from the rocking chair and lowered my gaze, feeling how my body shuddered with the cold.


    I could only regain my focus when you pulled my sleeve. Even before my eyes found the rocking chair again, I heard wood squeaking. The empty rocking chair was going back and forth as if somebody had pushed it. As if the wind itself was now rocking it. But there could be no wind in the room. Even that cold tide which had passed us was not enough to rock the chair. The empty chair kept rocking back and forth. The suddenly, the candle went out.


    It wasn¡¯t the wind which had extinguished the candle. It also wasn¡¯t somebody quenching the flame with a bell or one¡¯s fingers. The flame just died, as if all air had suddenly disappeared. I kept contemplating the disappearance of the for quite some time before I noticed that the squeaking of the rocking chair had changed. It no longer squeaked like an empty rocking chair, instead there was some weight to it. As if somebody was sitting there. I directed my gaze back towards it, but I could see nothing else besides the chair rocking.


    Somehow, the room had grown even darker than before. We had been sitting behind the book shelf in the dark room for quite some time and our eyes had already adjusted to the darkness, but now it felt like they no longer were. The glow of fire emanating from the wood stove which had lit up the whole room, had receded into a dull red shine of the ashes barely reaching beyond the stove itself. Grandma and the sofa were still somehow visible, but the rocking chair¡­ I could not say that I did not see the rocking chair but I could not see if anybody was sitting there. And at the same time it felt like somebody was sitting there. A black figure with the same color as the darkness surrounding it, who seemed to spread darkness all around itself. As if darkness were not the lack of light but a fog or a substance unto its own.


    During a single blink I did see the figure sitting in the rocking chair. When a match ignited near his face to light up a cigarette. It is hard to describe what I saw. It was grandpa. But it also wasn¡¯t. It was somebody or something that looked like grandpa, but wasn¡¯t. It looked like a doll, as if somebody had made a life-sized doll which looked surprisingly similar to grandpa and could freely move itself.


    I could not pick between excitement and fear. I felt both. Fear, because I could not make sense of what I was seeing, and excited, because it was still grandpa. It mattered little that he was slightly different. Being dead did make people look different, nothing special about that. In his coffin he had also looked different than when alive. But still! He was back!


    ¡°Dear, is it really you?¡± Grandma asked.


    ¡°It is really me.¡± The figure replied in a hoarse bloodcurdling tone. ¡°Did I not tell you that there will be nights when I can come back. Like this one. You called for me. You wanted me to return.¡±


    ¡°I did!¡± Grandma said. ¡°What happened to you!? Why did you come back from the forest like that?¡±


    ¡°Why¡­?¡± Grandpa sighed. ¡°What does it matter now?¡±


    The room was filled with the smell of wet cigarette smoke. The end of the cigarette started to glow, but this could not illuminate the figure. It poured itself some vodka and ate the gruel with the sound of metal spoon scraping against the porcelain.


    Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.


    ¡°Why did you return?¡± Grandma asked, fear had suddenly appeared in her voice.


    ¡°Because you called. Because I could. Because you wanted so badly to see me again. Now I am here. Come and look at me.¡±


    You pulled my sleeve again.


    ¡°Let¡¯s go upstairs, I don¡¯t want to see it!¡± You whispered to me.


    ¡°But it¡¯s grandpa!¡± I whispered back.


    Your following words were to me like witch¡¯s words. Something that was said using simple words but the meaning was not at all simple.


    ¡°It is not grandpa.¡± You said. ¡°It is wearing grandpa. Let¡¯s leave.¡±


    I wanted to reply something else to you but was happening in the room got my attention once again.


    ¡°You are not my dear.¡± Grandma said quietly. ¡°You are not my dear!¡± She hissed again, loudly. ¡°Go back to hell, you!¡± She screeched, throwing a bible at the rocking chair.


    Suddenly, the room was again full of light. Well, as much light as the fire in the wood stove could offer. The empty rocking chair was rocking back and forth. Shot of vodka on the table had tumbled over, the bottle was still upright, the bowl with the gruel had fallen on the floor and broken.


    Grandma got up from the sofa and almost immediately she found us peeking out from behind the bookshelf. I have never seen her that mad before or since that night.


    ¡°You saw it didn¡¯t you!?¡± She asked sternly. ¡°You saw it, didn¡¯t you!? You will never speak of it to anybody if you ever want to come here again! Now go to bed! Right now!¡±


    She grabbed my shirt and your shoulder and dragged us upstairs, and then shut the hatch and locked it. I tried the hatch, but it was secured and would not budge. My gaze moved to you, as you weakly got up and went to your bed.


    ¡°Rheya.¡± I wanted to say something, but could not find the right words.


    ¡°It wasn¡¯t grandpa. It was only wearing grandpa.¡± You said again.


    But I did see something else when grandma was dragging us upstairs. Just for a single moment. Something I did not want to tell Rheya, something she had definitely not noticed as she was twisting in grandma¡¯s grasp. I saw somebody¡¯s hand picking the bible up from the floor and wiping dust off it. It was grandpa¡¯s hand.


    *


    ¡°Because that was grandpa. That finally was grandpa.¡±


    Your voice. Your voice awoke me from my memories. In this empty house. Right here, in front of the quietly burning wood stove. I opened my eyes again and looked around to see nobody. I was alone. And yet I did not feel alone. But in your grandparents¡¯ home this feeling was nothing special. According to grandpa, he had often felt the presences of his mother, father and even uncles and aunts. Everybody who rested in the church yard in the Nameless Town.


    You too were able to sense their presences, to see them in dark corners of rooms and in mysterious twitches. I never understood that. I was not that sensitive, and that was always the defining difference between me and the locals, no matter what I did. And thus I couldn¡¯t even now be sure if I really heard your voice in my ears or only in my mind. Whether I was sleeping or awake.


    ¡°Is there a difference whether you¡¯re sleeping or awake?¡± You asked again. ¡°I am here, that is all that matters. And that you see and hear me.¡±


    Death-like silence hanging in the air following your words. My head was completely without a thought. Finally I again heard the wind beating tree branches against the building.


    ¡°Where are you?¡± I finally dared to ask.


    ¡°Here, right beside you.¡± You replied almost immediately.


    I looked about myself once again. I was most certainly dreaming. I had to be. Before remembering grandma¡¯s nightly meeting, I had reach upstairs to your bed and the radio, but now I was sitting in the same place where grandma had sat in my memories ¨C on the sofa near the wood stove. But the room was illuminated with incandescent light.


    ¡°You cannot see me but I am here.¡± You said in a serious tone. ¡°I have always been here, but only today there is such a rare moment.¡±


    ¡°Why today?¡± I asked. ¡°Why can I not see you but I can hear? Is it again like that dream in the forest, on our old playground?¡±


    ¡°No. This is not a dream. You can hear me but not see me, because there is a veil between us. I am here right next to you, look!¡±


    Following your music-like voice, I saw how a cotton sheet on the sofa started to move, and for a moment, the contours of female fingers appeared in it. Even surprising myself, I grabbed for the fingers and felt a jolt go through me when I did not find merely fabric between my fingers but also somebody¡¯s slim and frail fingers.


    ¡°Can you feel it?¡± A question was asked. It no longer mattered whether it was in my ears or in my mind.


    Invisible fingers in the sheet squeezed mine.


    ¡°I am here. Only I am behind the sheet and the veil of the world. I am bending the veil of the world to touch you. For some reason light cannot penetrate the veil but from this side, I can manipulate the veil in such a way that you can hear my words and voice.¡±


    Your fingers were still in my palm. I could not understand what you meant bu the word ¡®veil¡¯. I could not understand how you were here and yet how you weren¡¯t. It was still like that one time back in the forest. When I felt and heard you, but I could not see. When you only touched me in the wind.


    ¡°How is this possible?¡± I asked. ¡°Am I sleeping again?¡±


    ¡°No, you are not sleeping although it might seem like that. I am here just like grandpa was in your distant memory when she returned to grandma for a short moment. I am here for the same reason. In the same fashion. Grandpa had reached the other side of the veil when he died, that¡¯s why he was visible. I did not traverse the veil in the same way, that is why I am not. But we could return for the same reason.¡±


    ¡°Why?¡± I asked.


    How come in the same fashion? Were you lost or dead? Grandpa was dead and he returned. You also returned and now you say that in the same way. Are you dead as well? I did not want to believe it. I could not believe it.


    ¡°Do you remember why grandma started making preparations two weeks before? Why she waited for grandpa every night for 2 weeks? Why grandpa only came on Friday night? You should remember, the doctor and the pastor also talked about it when grandma died. What did they tell us on that winter day?¡±


    Desperately I tried to remember what you were talking about. It was evidently a conclusion I myself had to reach. Something you could not or did not want to tell me yourself. Yes, grandma was buried in the winter. On a sunny day which was beautiful yet freezing cold. Snow was on the ground. The earth was hard. The pastor said something in his eulogy. Something at that moment I could not understand. Which you too could not understand. You could not tell me what he meant by those words.


    ¡°The witch house!¡± I shouted. ¡°The pastor said something to the tone of if we want to see grandma again, then after the burial we have to go build a fire for the witch!¡±


    ¡°Exactly.¡± Your voice said, laughing. ¡°The witch is the one who keeps all the keys. Back in that time, grandpa could only return because the witch opened the doors for him. However this also allowed through the one who was wearing grandpa. And I am here too because the witch has opened the door for me. However since I did not die, then luckily nobody can wear me.¡±


    ¡°The witch opened the door?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Yes. When somebody calls out the witch, it can only happen on Thursday night. And on that night a week or two weeks later, the witch will come. But to come here, the witch must traverse several veils. For each veil she has a key. When the witch opens a veil to pass through, then in addition to her, many other forces may pass through, some good, some evil which have either born behind the veils or made it there as an accident. When the witch returns, she locks the veils once again and only the usual ways to traverse the veils remain.¡±


    ¡°But if the witch is here, why is there a veil between you and me?¡± I asked.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know. I can freely traverse all the veils but I cannot cross this last one. But I cane here to tell you something regarding this. I am always here, in this house, in this village in this town. But nobody sees me. I have seen other towns, other places, other things everywhere around here. I have seen grandpa and grandma. I see you every day but it hurts me so that I cannot touch you or talk to you. Only today.¡±


    Tears rolled down my face as I listened to you. Tears flowed, because I could also hear tears in your voice.


    ¡°But today I have to tell you something else before there is no more chance to.¡± You said. ¡°On the night I disappeared, it too was a witch¡¯s night. Somebody had called out the witch for that night. That is the only reason the moon fairies managed to lure me away.¡±


    ¡°The moon fairies?¡± I asked.


    ¡°The moon fairies are like the sisters of the witch. The witch knows...¡±


    You started to say something else, but your voice dissipated into deathly silence. Your fingers in the sheet and in my palm also faded and only the crumpled corner of the sheet remained in my palm.


    ¡°Rheya?¡± I asked. ¡°Rheya? Rheya?!¡±


    *


    I cannot recall how many times I shouted your name before I fell to my knees, crying. You were here and then gone again. Like a waking dream.


    But then I remembered something. I ran out of the house. Across the yard, across the road and the grass. I ran into the forest without a flashlight or other source of illumination. The night was cold and damp. There was no moon, there were no stars. You had come because the witch had come. You told me that. And I also knew that. Today was the day the Mayor and some other people had gone to meet the witch. Today a week ago was the day they had called for the witch. If the maidens bathing in moonlight were moon fairies as you called them and they were the sisters of the witch then only the witch could help me find you. The witch held the keys. Every key opened a veil. I did not understand what it meant, but there was an idea. There was a veil between you and me. But could this also mean that there was more than one veil between us? Could it be the place the witch was from and where I was, were separated from each other by tens or hundred of veils?


    I rushed forward. I needed no light. Grandpa had often warned us not to go to the Forbidden Forest. Not during the day, not during the night. This no longer applied to me. Since you disappeared, I had been to the forest day and night so many times, I had seen so many things that nothing remained that could frighten or endanger me.


    I ran by the trailhead leading to the Forest Lake. In the corner of my eye I soon noticed the forgotten church. One moment I was making hooks between the concrete posts carrying barbed wire, the other moment I ran past the old earth cellar with the collapsed floor which had been our playground. I cut across the corner of the overgrown missile base, leaving the Devil¡¯s Bog to my right and ran onward, towards the forest where meeting the witch was supposed to take place.


    This here was finally a forest that was unknown to me. Full of tall black trees, lifeless forest floor full of dried needles and thick roots, one could twist their leg on. Still I continued running, across the buffer strip ditches, trails, rocks and stumps. I even climbed over fallen trees. I ran until I was out of breath and I fell down tired to such a degree that I could not even move my body.


    There I laid. Under the black forest canopy. In a dark cold night. I cried. I watched my breath dissipate. But there was something else. Something that took me tens of minutes to notice and confirm. The smell of a fire.


    I got up and noticed that not far from me a small fire had been built in the forest. But it had gone out. There weren¡¯t even any glowing embers, only smoking remains of logs and old moss-covered concrete blocks surrounding the fire ring. I was late. Meeting with the witch had happened here, but the witch was already gone. And you were gone. Those that had met with the witch had brought their secrets along with them, as they left.


    I fell to my knees again. You were gone.


    But then suddenly something glittered at me. Bare metal. I looked around. It was pitch black. There was no moon, no stars. I was so deep in the forest that there was no chance I would find my way back home before the light dawned. I was surrounded bu tall black trees. And thick brush surrounded the campsite. The ones who had been sitting by the fire had to feel how the branches poked them in their faces. And still I saw bare metal. Something that could not glitter, did nevertheless.


    I headed towards it and found myself before a concrete block by the fire. Rusty steel loops jutted out of the block. And by one of the loops, there was a brass key with a rectangular profile, made by the Vasar lock factory.


    Could this have been a key to a veil? I did not know. But at that moment, this key was the most important thing I could ever hope to find.


    Rheya! I will find you again!

 XXX - Before Meeting the Witch I

    To the West, not too far from the Nameless town, on the edge of the Tontla bog, there was the town of Tontla. Well, mostly only the locals called it a town, this was because the few taller buildings made of prefabricated concrete panels, which for the most part stood empty. And also because of the cobblestone streets lined with one and two story wooden buildings. According to the most recent surviving papers it was barely a township. But this did not stop anybody going around as if it was a town. Not the locals, not the mayor and not those who pulled peat from the bog of Tontla and pressed it into bricks for burning.


    Usually, Tontla felt like a quaint and quiet town in the lost county where almost nothing happened. If Valgepal? felt like a real big town and the Nameless Town was something between a sleepy township and a town, then Tontla felt like a town still asleep. The people were more local and set in their place than in the Nameless Town. This was expressed by the lack of people on the streets, even on the hottest of summer days, as well as by the fact that most locals preferred to get around on foot, on bicycles and motorcycles. There were few cars on the streets and usually if any were on the streets, then they had likely been there over five years without moving. With flat sun-bleached tires. This did not mean that the locals had no cars, of course they did, but most had them in their garages for years now or were becoming one with nature in the corners of their yards.


    But today something was different. In the morning it did not get bright outside. Sky was covered in dark clouds and although there was no rain, anybody looking at the sky could sense that soon, the trap doors would open and three months worth of rain would fall in three hours. But this was not the only unusual thing about this day. In addition to the weather, the town was also full of cars. And not just cars. Big cars, unknown and strange to the locals and never before seen. At least in these numbers.


    Although Tontla was a quiet town, they were still not that removed from the world that they did not know what went on in the neighboring Nameless Town. How in there either due to the Institute or Luiga, the amount of such land yachts has grown. On the edge of Tontla from the Park of the Edge a man with sharper eyes could even see what exactly the people in the Nameless Town were driving. But to see with one¡¯s own eye similar things happening in Tontla was something else.


    As such, almost all locals used their gazes to follow the big machines glistening with chrome, as they silently passed by. As if to try and make sense what they were seeing. Yes, the general shape, four wheels and the sound of a gasoline engine betrayed what it was in purpose, but this in now way helped to understand what it actually was. Or what kind of thinking would come out with a passenger car whose hood and trunk put together almost exceeded a Moskvich in length.


    Also, all these massive vehicles gathered on the widest street of Tontla, the Church street, right before a bar named Fire Tail. Fire Tail was much like the Stunned Lamprey in Valgepal? or Leopold¡¯s bar in Nameless town. With the difference being that while latter were dives at the end of the world where the dead and people who had not yet realized they were dead drowned their sorrows in vodka, Fire Tail was something else. Fire Tail was like a¡­ real bar. Of course here too one could get beer, vodka and something to eat. But the aura was warm, mostly due to fire burning in the half circular fireplace. People ate and drank, laughed and talked loudly among themselves. The place had activity and a party, as if outside the bar nothing was suspiciously wrong.


    It all felt strange, considering how quaint and restrained the locals were and how many inhabitants Tontla had. Next to that, the air in the Nameless Town was like a stale smell of the crypt and in Valgepal? like cold rot. But Tontla, Tontla was alive. At least tonight and in this bar.


    And that¡¯s why among the jovially minded locals, one could easily tell who were not local. Quiet and almost anti-social people who, although sitting around the large circular tables in the middle of the bar, were still seemingly cut off from all the other customers.


    Around one such table five youngsters were sitting. Two young men and three girls. All five were slightly bent over the table, to discuss secret matters only fit for discussing in a noisy bar.


    ¡°You know what I am talking about, don¡¯t you?¡± Siim asked. ¡°You also feel that something is in the air, don¡¯t you?¡±


    ¡°Of course we feel it.¡± Johannes replied. ¡°Are we not here because of it? There¡¯s nothing happening in Valgepal?, in Tontla everything has already happened and in the Nameless Town¡­ well, we would need to hear what they are discussing on the next table...¡± He glanced at a side, finding another large table where the Mayor and the rest were sitting.


    ¡°We know what they are talking about.¡± Tiina said. ¡°They have a plan to go and see the witch. People have talked about it for a couple of weeks now. And my grandfather said that going to the witch will make everything happening here at least a hundred times more weird.¡±


    ¡°More weird or more dangerous?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°More weird.¡± Tiina repeated. ¡°Ne never said anything about danger. Well he said nothing other than it would be dangerous to go look for the witch if you are not the one inviting it or taken along somebody not part of inviting it.¡±


    ¡°I am aware that city folk who have not lived here and haven¡¯t become used to the strangeness here go mad, quickly. For some strange reason. Just one meeting with anaks and a person can be fitted for a strait jacket.¡±


    ¡°Still, the Mayor and the rest want to go to the witch.¡± Kadri said. ¡°So what are we going to do?¡±


    ¡°We?¡± Viivika asked. ¡°We¡¯re gonna witness it all. Going to the witch is not as easy as lifting a receiver and saying hello. The witch must be invocated, called out to. And I believe Mariann said that there is a lot in common between summoning witch and calling out the devil. I wasn¡¯t on that meeting but I think you all were.¡±


    ¡°I think.¡± Kadri said, hesitating.


    ¡°Oh, I can remember now!¡± Siim exclaimed.


    ¡°With his stout body he almost laid on the table, making it creak.


    ¡°To be honest about everything, I must start at the beginning.¡± He said, smiling. Trying to fill his voice with mystery.


    ¡°Oh no! Don¡¯t you start...¡± Johannes sighed, but it was too late. Siim was on a roll.


    ¡°To narrate it like Mariann narrates. ¡°Cold and dark rain was crackling on the vinyl roof of an old factory limo...¡±¡±


    *


    Cold and dark rain was crackling on the vinyl roof of an old factory limo. The vehicle itself was standing at a familiar place on the northern edge of the Nameless Town which once had been a location for the airfield. A bright day on the other side of the tinted side glass has become night without any notice. The cold breath of the rain was trying to get in through every cracked seal and if there had not been little yellow lights or the radiators for the standing heater, sitting in the car would have been quite similar to sitting under the eaves.


    ¡°I have waited for so long for some real rain.¡± there was excitement in Mariann¡¯s voice. ¡°Cold and black. When every drop hitting the skin is like a drop of liquid ice.¡±


    Mariann lazily reclined on the back seat of the limo, covered with brown velour. Her combat boots resting on a small folding table in the middle of the cabin.


    ¡°You may have been waiting it, but I am still cold.¡± Kadri said, trying push herself deeper into the seat cushions in the opposite corner of the back seat. ¡°The radiators may be hot as hell, but I am still cold. It¡¯s like its autumn.¡±


    ¡°Autumn.¡± Mariann said pensively. ¡°This is not autumn. I don¡¯t even know what season it is right now, or whether it can be considered a season at all. The rain is almost a daily occurrence, the temperature is falling, you can find white frost in the mornings, but trees still have leaves and nothing is growing yellow. Only every day, the colors in the nature are getting duller or the light is transforming in such a way that we can no longer tell the colors apart. In any case, the Weather Station is clearly malfunctioning.¡±


    ¡°You called us here!¡± Siim raised his voice.


    ¡°You found something new didn¡¯t you?¡± Tiina asked.


    ¡°I did not call you here.¡± Mariann said. ¡°This is the one thing you are constantly mistaken in. You are the ones who have called me here. I am the witch here, not you. And the mortal always come to the witch looking for immortal knowledge.¡±


    ¡°Is the witch not mortal?¡± Johannes asked.


    ¡°She assuredly is.¡± Mariann said. ¡°But the mortality of the witch is different from the mortalities of others. But this is not what I wanted to talk about. You are invoking me, and I am not invoking you. You come on a moonlit night to the crossroads looking for the sign of the witch. And do so every time I have something to say.¡±


    ¡°I can put my hand on my heart and swear that I have never gone, a black goose in a burlap sack, to a crossroad to call out the devil!¡± Johannes said.


    ¡°Do not touch things you are not willing to part with!¡± Mariann warned him. ¡°That is the first rule in conversing with the supernatural. And also the reason why bring a black goose along. At least according to the theories about not murdering cats. Second, why do you think that everything is so straightforward?¡±


    ¡°What do you mean?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°What day is it today?¡± Mariann asked.


    ¡°Thursday.¡± Tiina said.


    ¡°Is it dark outside?¡± The girl in black continued.


    ¡°It is, but...¡± Kadri said but was cut off by the girl in black.


    ¡°It is dark, thus it is nighttime. And as the fabric of the world is much thinner here, then the whole of the Nameless Town is one great big crossroad.¡±


    ¡°What about the moonlight?¡± Johannes asked.


    ¡°A moonlit night means a full moon and not a cloudless sky.¡± Mariann said. ¡°Better wonder about how the rain started just as you stepped out of your car. And how it herded you into this one by slowly getting stronger and colder in the right direction. And how it is trapping you here with this downpour that just goes on. Not leaving you any other viable chances but to sit and listen what I have to say.¡±


    ¡°That we invoked you? And the rain?¡± Tiina asked in a skeptical tone.


    ¡°Is it really that hard to believe?¡± Mariann asked. ¡°And is it not a better thing to believe than the alternative theory?¡±


    ¡°What alternative theory?¡± Siim asked.


    ¡°That neither you or I have an an ounce of control over this. That some third party is aware when I have learned something new and has arranged for me and you to be here so that I could convey the new information, before it is lost from my thoughts as I either forget it all or start to think it stupid.¡±


    ¡°Do you forget, really?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°You really think that on every one of our meetings I am honest to reveal everything I know?!¡± Mariann asked laughing. ¡°Of course not! I only tell of what is currently on my mind and what feels right at the time.¡±


    ¡°And what is it that feel right to you today?¡± Tiina asked.


    ¡°The fourth route.¡± Mariann said. ¡°That¡¯s what interests you above all, isn¡¯t it? The fourth route and the Lake of Forgetfulness.¡±


    ¡°You know where it is located?!¡± Kadri grew excited. ¡°You know how to get there?¡±


    ¡°I know what it is.¡± Mariann said. ¡°How to get there, that is something for yourselves to find. Whether my information is of any use to you is also for yourselves to figure out.¡±


    ¡°We already know what the Fourth Route is.¡± Johannes said. ¡°It is a road out of the Nameless Town. A way back!¡±


    ¡°To assume that the way here and the way back are the same is the most naive thing in the world.¡± Mariann said. ¡°And in this region it is an elementary and maybe even a fatal mistake. Let me educate you a bit.¡±


    She produced a yellowing newspaper and a pen.


    ¡°Just like one cannot speak of this place in singulars, one cannot speak of the Fourth Route in singulars. In very simple terms, we are talking of two sections of the Fourth route side by side.¡±


    She drew two parallel sections of road on the newspaper.


    ¡°The first one, where we are located now, and the second one, where you came from. But as the arrow of time is uni-directional, one can get from the second one to the first one but not the opposite. To get from the first to the second one, you need the Fourth Route, or the third Fourth Route.¡±


    She drew a third section of road next to the other two.


    ¡°If these two are the Fourth Routes of past and present, then this third one is the Fourth Route of the future. That¡¯s the place you need to reach.¡±


    ¡°So we need to get in our car and drive to the Fourth Route.¡± Johannes said. ¡°And we can drive from we are right now,¡± he pointed to the two side by side sections. ¡°to here.¡± He pointed to the third section.


    ¡°You don¡¯t see the problem?¡± Mariann asked.


    ¡°I don¡¯t see any problems with that!¡± Johannes said. ¡°If we came from the first section, unwittingly slipped into the second section where we are now, then continuing onward, we should get to the third section.¡±


    This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    ¡°It won¡¯t work.¡± Tiina said. ¡°I cannot say what is wrong about it, but it will not work like this.¡±


    ¡°The thickness of the world fabric is different,¡± Kadri said, leaning forward. ¡°We slipped from first into the second because the world fabric is very thin between them. But to get from the second to the third, we have to jump over a much thicker fabric.¡±


    ¡°Girls, you are both right.¡± Mariann said. ¡°Kadri being right has something to do with a thing that comes a little later. But it is true that things are not as simple as they seem to Johannes. First, do you know what a roadway is? What is the purpose of a road?¡±


    ¡°To get from point A to point B?¡± Siim asked.


    ¡°Correct.¡± Mariann smiled. ¡°But also incorrect. On this paper we have three different dimensions of the same road. Only in the first dimension is the purpose of a road to take from some place to some other place. Here, where we are now, things are not as simple. Here the place you end up traveling on the road has nothing to do with where the road starts or ends. The road is a thing existing for its own sake, without a beginning or a destination. If you yourselves don¡¯t have a destination to reach then you might drive the whole eternity without leaving the starting point. This is the role of roadways on this fabric of the world. To only connect places where a person truly wants to reach.¡±


    ¡°So there is no problem?¡± Johannes asked. ¡°I am here, let¡¯s call it the world fabric of the present. And I want to reach here, the world fabric of the future.¡±


    ¡°How do you tell one apart from the other?¡± Tiina asked.


    ¡°You have hit the nail on the head.¡± Mariann agreed. ¡°How do you differentiate the present from the past or the future on a linear scale?¡±


    ¡°The present is happening, the past has already happened, the future has not yet happened.¡± Johannes explained.


    ¡°That¡¯s not linear.¡± Siim noted.


    ¡°The past cannot linearly transform into present and then the future, that is impossible.¡± Kadri said. ¡°Our of sense of time does not work like that.¡±


    ¡°Exactly that.¡± Mariann said. ¡°Again, it is about the arrow of time. When continuing onward in the present, one cannot get to the future. Just like when standing in the present it is not possible to slip into the past. Meaning that if you are traveling along a road in our world, you are not able to distinguish where you are from where you were or where you you will end up. And thus you will never get anywhere. The only way to cross the present is a jump. You only become of the past if you end in present, or die. You only become of the future if you begin in the present or you are born.¡±


    ¡°So what is the solution to this situation?¡± Kadri asked. ¡°Is there no way to get back?¡±


    ¡°There is. And that¡¯s why you need to find the Lake of Forgetfulness. Finding the Lake of Forgetfulness and it¡¯s existence is the secret of the Fourth Route and the reason the Fourth Route is so hard to find. The true Fourth Route. In the easiest terms, to reach the Fourth Route, one must turn off the road.¡±


    She pointed at the newspaper with the drawing.


    ¡°If the first dimension is a Fourth Route that takes from the capital of Estonia to the capital of Latvia, and the second dimension is the Fourth Route by which one can reach Reval, Perno or Riga, but the road itself does not originate from anywhere nor end up in anywhere, then this here on the side would be the fourth dimension. In the fourth dimension, there is no Fourth Route. I am saying ¡®on the side¡¯, but you can think of it as being located above it, laid over it.¡±


    ¡°The fourth dimension?¡± Kadri asked. ¡°so that means...¡±


    ¡°That there lies a third dimension between them.¡±


    Mariann drew a fourth section of the road in a free place and then drew a sloppy circle around it.


    ¡°This is what people mean when they talk about the Fourth Route.¡±


    She also drew a T-intersection and a small rectangle above the roof of the T.


    ¡°Everybody have a habit of talking about the Forth Route, but as they have never been there they cannot pay attention to the right thing. Here, the road is not at all important. The Fourth Route takes you nowhere and it is not possible to use it to get anywhere. It is the end, just like Alex Snewahr once said. From this place, only a road back exists.¡±


    ¡°Back to where?¡± Tiina asked.


    ¡°Back to the Sixth Route.¡± Mariann said. ¡°To reach the third dimension of the Fourth Route, one must drive on the Sixth Route until it meets with the Fourth. On the crossing of the Fourth with the Sixth Route, with the facade straight towards the Sixth Route, there is a roadside bar. Coffee and tee taste like pee and ass water. I won¡¯t even try to explain how the burger tastes. But you can be sure that when you reach there, you will drink and eat, because it is the last bar, ever.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s so special about that bar?¡± Johannes asked.


    ¡°You still cannot see it, can you?¡± Mariann asked. ¡°On the first dimension, the road takes you somewhere. On the second, it does not, but you can still reach places. You can slide, from first to second because the fabric is thin. On the third, you can no longer even reach places, but you can be present. You need to jump from second to third. On the fourth there is no presence either, there is nothing. You need to turn off the road in the third.


    ¡°This final bar in the world has one other noteworthy aspect. Namely, the whole back wall of the bar is covered in mirrors from floor to ceiling. When one looks at the mirror with the right mindset and from the right angle then one might notice a door in the mirror wall. A door which at one moment looks like a reflection, and on the other it no longer does. A door which turned from reflection into reality only for the chosen ones. That door takes one forward to the fourth dimension, here.¡±


    She pointed at the last section of the road.


    ¡°Where there is no road. No bar. Where there is nothing.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s the end of the world...¡± Tiina said, but her voice was almost drowned out by Kadri¡¯s shout.


    ¡°That¡¯s the Lake of Forgetfulness!¡±


    ¡°Yes. That thing here finally is the Lake of Forgetfulness. And the bar one can reach the Lake of Forgetfulness is the last bar in the world. Bar at the end of the world. On the other side of the bar, the world has long since ended.¡±


    ¡°So to get back, one must go and visit the end of the world?¡± Siim asked.


    ¡°Yes,¡± Mariann said. ¡°That is the order of things right now.¡±


    ¡°And what would be the place we would be returning to?¡± Kadri continued. ¡°The beginning of the world?¡±


    ¡°You may think of it like that. But that would be incorrect. Visiting the end of the world would allow one to return to the beginning. But it is not the beginning of the world. It is the beginning of the end of the world.¡±


    ¡°WHAT?!¡±


    ¡°The beginning of the end of the world.¡± Mariann repeated.


    ¡°The end of the world begins from where we come from?!¡± Tiina asked.


    ¡°No, the end of the world starts where you want to return to. The place you come from and the place you want to return to are different places, but identical in major aspects.¡±


    ¡°Does this mean that everybody who have come here, stayed here and later returned from here, have gone back to the beginning of the end of the world?¡± Siim asked.


    ¡°Yes.¡±


    ¡°The Russians who came here, built their bases here and eventually left, they to went back to the beginning of the end of the world?¡±


    ¡°Yes.¡± Mariann repeated. ¡°It seems to me you are misunderstanding something. The beginning of the end of the world is not a singular moment or some noticeable event. It is an unremarkable process the duration of which is unfathomable compared to the human existence. Secondly, why do you think that the ending of the world is something you are able to witness in any way meaningful or even comprehensible to you? The world may well end without a single person noticing. Without the life of a single person changing. It is quite possible that the world has long since ended and we re just not aware of it yet. We cannot comprehend when the beginning of the end of the world became the end of the world.¡±


    ¡°This is complete bullshit!¡± Johannes leaned back, crossing his arms on his chest. ¡°Mariann, you have been telling your scary stories for so long that they have finally broken your mind!¡±


    ¡°It may seem bullshit. But nevertheless it is an interesting perspective on the whole matter. Perspective which is only possible thanks to the fact that the world is so misshapen as it is. Our empirical experience creates our perspective on the world. But the bar at the end of the world, the Lake of Forgetfulness, never mind the lost county itself, have opened a completely new empirical experience and created a completely new perspective on the world. Whether we admit to it or not.¡±


    *


    ¡°That was a very nice story, Siim.¡± Johannes said. ¡°I cannot really say if Mariann really said something like that..¡±


    ¡°..or whether the whole second part of the story is at all important at this point.¡± Tiina added.


    ¡°But the key part is correct. That¡¯s like in the folk tales gathered by Kreutzwald. On a Thursday night, with a full moon, one must go to a crossroad, take along a black goose and bleed it out on the crossroad.¡±


    ¡°But Mariann said nothing about a goose. She mentioned a cat.¡± Tiina said. ¡°Johannes told about a goose.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s the other side of the folk tale. If one cannot get their hands on a goose, a cat will do.¡±


    ¡°And what happens next in the folk tale?¡±


    ¡°Supposedly the devil will appear and ask you what you want.¡± Siim said. ¡°But I don¡¯t think it really works that way. Because they, at that table over there,¡± he nodded his head towards the other table, ¡°are right now discussing how exactly one meets the witch.¡±


    ¡°But you assuredly know already, how?¡± Tiina asked.


    ¡°Yes, I do.¡± Siim smiled. ¡°Mariann once told something about the rituals being connected with the rhythms found in the...¡±


    ¡°..world.¡±


    Everybody sitting around the table flinched to that voice, allowing a few glasses to tumble over. That was because that last word of the sentence was not said by Siim, but instead somebody who at this moment could well have been the old devil herself: Mariann.


    ¡°As Siim said, the rituals are connected with the rhythms existing in the world.¡±


    Mariann grabbed a chair from the next table and sat down. She grabbed the pitcher of beer in the center and unceremoniously downed more than a quarter of it.


    ¡°There are many rhythms in the world. Some we can see and many we can not. The sun rises, the sun sets, there are 24 hours in a day, that is one rhythm, Winter and summer solstices, spring and fall equinoxes is another example of natural rhythms. In some languages the Moon is a month is a moon because the orbit of the moon and the length of the month is very similar. Same for the names for the menstrual cycle.


    ¡°It really surprises me you have not figured out the crux of the matter. When a folk tale says that first you need to go a sacrifice a goose on a moonlit night and then return two weeks later, what do you think, at what time would you be returning?¡±


    ¡°New moon?¡± Johannes asked.


    ¡°New moon.¡± Mariann repeated. ¡°Why do you think that is?¡±


    ¡°Because without the moon, it it dark in the night and the forces of darkness...¡±


    ¡°Really?¡± Mariann incredulously asked. ¡°That is your explanation? That!? It like I am in the church listening to deacon who has read the bible but not understood a word of it and cannot even give serious answers to the simplest of questions. Let me tell you then. What is moonlight?¡±


    ¡°Sunlight reflected by the Moon?¡± Tiina said.


    ¡°Correct. Light reflected by the Moon.¡± Mariann nodded. ¡°Light consists of photons, massless elementary particles which always travel at the speed of light. But the Moon is not a mirror. It does not reflect all light that falls on it. And on the other hand it also reflect something that is not light. Something that is not at all on the world fabric familiar to us. The answer why it is like that, is quite simple.


    ¡°Space. It is not completely cold, as the temperature of our universe is about 2.7 Kelvin above absolute zero. In science, this is know as cosmic background radiation. But there is a theory claiming that cosmic microwave background or background radiation are really photons from some other universe. According to that theory, the ¡®other universe¡¯ meant the universe preceding the Big Bang. However in my opinion, this may also be a subsequent universe or even a multi-verse.


    ¡°However, this theory is very good at explaining the specialty of light and moonlight. Light can penetrate the world fabric. But direct sunlight falling to earth is somehow wrong. Whether it is the frequency that is wrong, the temperature, too energetic, whatever. It does penetrate the fabric of the world, but that is all. But the moonlight is just right, it not only penetrates the fabric of the world, but can also carry information.¡±


    ¡°What information?¡± Johannes asked.


    ¡°Light information. Your eyes can see because the light reflecting off the surfaces in the world reaches them. So, when you¡¯re at a crossroad on a moonlit night and you bleed a goose or something else suitable, the light reflected by the moon, reflects off you, penetrates the fabric of the world and whoever lives on the other side of the fabric can see what you are doing as if from behind the wall of an aquarium. And since some of them certainly have something to say about bleeding out a living creature on a Thursday night when the Moon is out, as soon as possible they will come over to see what the fuck you are trying to do.¡±


    ¡°But what if it is a moonlit night when the Moon is covered by clouds?¡± Tiina asked. ¡°I think you said that it doesn¡¯t matter?¡±


    ¡°It doesn¡¯t.¡± Mariann said. ¡°I am calling the radiation being reflected off the moon light, but that does not mean that it was a light visible to the human eye. Electromagnetic spectrum is big and wide, and the human eye can detect but a very small section of it.¡±


    ¡°Why two weeks later?¡± Siim asked. ¡°I haven¡¯t managed to figure that out yet.¡±


    ¡°Again, light.¡± Mariann said. ¡°Which is strangely also the reason why all sorts of ghostly apparitions happen in the dark and during night time. Sunlight and the visible light reflecting off the Moon possess such faculties that they either cannot penetrate the world fabric or the light that gets caught by the world fabric is strengthening it, making it harder to pass through for both electromagnetic energy as well as objects. With moonlight, this is much less of a problem and transfer of information is possible. However if there is no moon..¡±


    ¡°The it is clear!¡± Siim exclaimed.


    ¡°When others go to meet the witch might we also go and meet the witch?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°In theory, yes. In practice, no. Only those invoking the witch or those the witch invites to meet her may go. If the witch has nothing to say to you then she doesn¡¯t want to see you. If you have nothing to say to her, then also she has no reason to see you. Generally, those living over there have a very bad opinion on those living over here, including us. Thus the consequences of wasting the witch¡¯s time may be quite dire. Also, even if the witch had anything to say to you, it would be of no use.¡±


    ¡°How so?¡± Siim asked.


    ¡°You think the things I say and truths I speak are hard to understand?¡± Mariann smiled. ¡°The witch speaks in riddles that are many times harder. I am at least trying to explain you things in the simplest of language and the most ordinary of words. But a witch is like a woman in all male jokes: she says something simple and not only supposes but demands that you understand what she said in all the available meanings, hints, theories and contexts. As people generally cannot do that, those over there are mad at the fact that people over here can no longer think and live their isolated small and pointless lives.¡±


    ¡°What do you think about going to the Center Station?¡± Johannes asked.


    ¡°Going to the Center Station?¡± Mariann asked, grinning. ¡°Going to the Center Station is suicide, even on days when witches are not moving around.¡±


    ¡°But you have seen the Center Station?¡±


    ¡°I have seen the Center Station, I have been to the Center Station. But that does not mean that I have gone there nor that I would want to find myself there again. I can understand what you want. While everybody else is going to meet the witch, you want to do something cool and stupid. The Center Station is neither of those things.


    ¡°If you want to do something cool and memorable, then there is a thing I can recommend. When people go to call out the witch today, come along and make a note of what time exactly the sacrifice is made. On Thursday night in two weeks, return to the crossroad by that time. I guarantee you, after that you will lose all desire for adventure for a long time, doesn¡¯t matter if it takes place during the day or night.¡±


    ¡°Okay...¡± Johannes slowly said. ¡°We will take it into consideration.¡±


    ¡°You said that Center Station is suicide. Can you tell us more about the Center Station?¡±


    ¡°I can, a bit.¡± Mariann agreed. ¡°Center station is nothing alike a big complex in the middle of the forests or some abandoned lands. Center Station itself is a relatively compact nuclear power station with six gas core reactors and the control station. The Center Station has two purposes: one, to feed the stations dependent on it. And two, to keep these stations in optimal state using simple cybernetic feedback loop. The power of each reactor is used to feed one of the complexes in the area. There are: the Weather Station, the Temporal Station, Spatial Station I, Spatial Station II, the linusk at the Irradiating Woods and the other linusk on the Fourth Town.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s a linusk?¡± Tiina asked.


    ¡°Same thing a linac is, just in Russian. From the words linyenoy uskoritel. Or linear accelerator. The Weather Station keep the weather in this area in check. Temporal Station keeps the time. Without it, the anomalies resulting from numerous past experiments would twist the time pattern into a knot so complicated that human life would either be impossible or sheer hell and torture. Spatial Station I keeps our little corner of the world in one piece, Spatial Station II keeps our corner of the world synchronized with the outside world. The linusk at the Irradiating Woods lies directly north of the Nameless Town, under the woods, in a long tunnel. The Irradiating Woods themselves have gained the name from an accelerator explosion which released and inordinate amount of radioactive waste all over the forest. Before the accelerator under the Irradiating Woods was constructed, the Fourth Town had their own. But there was an incident in that one too. An explosion which destroyed the whole facility and the town attached to it. The remains of the town lie to the South, on the other side fo the Southern Forest.¡±


    ¡°Wait just a minute!¡± Johannes loudly objected. ¡°If the Fourth Town was destroyed along with the accelerator, why direct the energy from the reactor at it?¡±


    ¡°Because the energy from the reactor is not keeping the accelerator powered in the present, but in the past. Should the flow of power be stopped in the present the past will change. History will change. It is something akin to the limit set by the speed of light, because of which we don¡¯t see distant heavenly bodies as they are now, but as they were millions of years ago. One cannot exceed the speed of light, but one can go around it. Same thing with traveling in time, at least in semblance.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s a cybernetic feedback loop?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°The Center Station collects data from all the branch stations and according to that regulates the output of the reactors and the balance between the branch stations. The core of the thing consists of the eighth Strela built in 1956.¡±


    ¡°So what is it that makes the Center Station so dangerous?¡± Johannes asked. ¡°Radioactivity?¡±


    ¡°What makes Center Station dangerous is the same thing that makes the whole lost county dangerous. Only the scale is much smaller, but also much more intense. If you look at the existing maps, then the whole of Center Station is only this much.¡± Mariann ripped a small corner piece from a folded napkin. ¡°But when you get anywhere near Center Station, you will see that it is a massive area.¡±


    She opened up another napkin on the table.


    ¡°The funny thing is that both perspectives are valid. Surrounding the Center Station lies the circular kickback field caused by the generators at the Spatial Stations which in some areas compresses space and in other areas folds it on top of itself. This is why outside this fold, the area of the Center Station seems much smaller than inside the fold. How the state of things reached such a point, that I cannot explain. But I can say that there is no place this spatial fold can be be traversed without incurring deadly consequences. The only relatively safe entrance, if one disregards the radioactivity, is the accelerator tunnel under the Irradiating Woods.


    ¡°The Weather Station and the Temporal Station have similar problems. The output of the generators primarily creates two kinds of fields. An action field, which is deliberate and which can be directed and from which useful work can be extracted. And a reaction field one must simply live with. The initial mathematical models proved that the reaction field cannot be avoided nor mitigated. And thus, the fields created by all four remaining stations create an impassable wall that surrounds the Center Station.¡±


    Silence fell around the table. At that moment, nobody had anything to ask. The silence was finally broken by a voice from the radio on the wall, which replaced the music that had been playing.


    ¡°Do not try to attempt to adjust your radio receiver. Everything is just fine and tonight I, Allan Helde will join you. As a warning to anybody listening: what you are about to hear now is no fantasy. It is not a forgotten science fiction novel by the Strugatsky Brothers, it is not a radio play. It is not even a poor attempt by the radio presenter to narrate his own horror stories. What you are about to hear is a true story. A story from the world which surrounds us every day, of the hidden corners within it and of the mysterious events that have happened to your very neighbors. Welcome to the Nether Lighthouse.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s that?¡± Johannes asked.


    ¡°Some local man from the village hosts a radio show.¡± Siim said. ¡°Considering how many strange things happen in these parts, it is no wonder somebody makes a radio show about them. On some nights I have listened to it. Sometimes it gives me quite a fright if I listen to it alone.¡±


    ¡°Gives you a fright? In this place? Really?¡± Johannes asked.


    ¡°Yes, really.¡± Siim said.


    ¡°I apologize, but I will be leaving you now.¡± Mariann said. ¡°In conclusion I can say forget about the Center Station, forget about the Irradiating Woods, forget about the witch. Anything else you can do. But if you want something certain and safe, then go to the crossroads on a Thursday night two weeks after the witch is invocated and¡­ I cannot say you won¡¯t regret it, but at least it will be interesting.¡±


    With these words, Mariann stepped away from the table and disappeared into the bar crowd.


    Immediately she was replaces by two unfamiliar people. A woman in her thirties and a middle-aged man.


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry.¡± The man said. ¡°I just want to ask you one thing. Do you know that girl who just left?¡±

 XXXI - Before Meeting the Witch II - Allan Helde

    Nobody remembers the old Devil¡¯s Bog, people only see the missile base which swallowed half of it and drained the other half. People say that the bog did not like people meddling in it¡¯s affairs and moved a bit further away, to a place where the current Devil¡¯s Bog is located. Before that, there was a much smaller and younger Heavenmire, and a long narrow strip of forest people called the Shadow Woods. It was mostly called that because it hid the Forbidden Forest from people¡¯s view. The Forbidden Forest was forbidden because the parents were afraid of it, the children were forbidden to go there and nature itself had forbidden people from seeing it. All this was witnessed by people and took only 50 years to happen.


    But merely a year after the base was established, a change appeared in the Shadow Woods. Young trees stopped growing and old trees started dying, they lost all their leaves and started rotting. In few short years, the mighty forest collapsed into a bog full of birches and junipers, we see today. There were people who named it Devil¡¯s Bog, but others, who wanted to distinguish it from the Old Devil¡¯s Bog, started calling it Heavenmire instead, claiming that this bog did not yet possess the evil presence so natural to the Devil¡¯s Bog.


    The same people said that the Old Devil¡¯s Bog only perished because evil attracts evil. Therefore evil and darkness were the reasons the Old Devil¡¯s Bog turned into a badland, where people could at any moment be mowed down by heavy machine guns installed at the border of the base. But even after the base was closed down and the missiles were taken to a place that was less volatile culturally, geologically and mythologically, the area remained abandoned badlands. The bog never returned there. Again, there are stories that people had ruined the land and by now it had been desecrated to such an extent that not even nature could do anything with it.


    Some people still refer to the few dozen meters thick section of forest untouched by the creation of Heavenmire as Shadow Woods. And say that the dying off of the original Shadow Woods was caused by hydrazine leaked from the base. There are others who only dare to look at this section of the forest from the road and say that the Death Fields finally dug their roots into the Shadow Woods.


    But both are mistaken. The former by almost 20 years, the latter by more than 30. Reportedly, of this corner of the world, where our country folk have minded their own business for thousands of years, more than a third are bogs. Therefore bogs carry quite a power and have a strong bond with the country folk. Stronger than the regular forest would have. Only the sacred Oakwoods can withstand the will of the bog. As for other forests, the bog will break them much faster and harder than any storm or sickness carried by strange starlight.


    Heavenmire wasn¡¯t turned into the New Devil¡¯s Bog by neither the hydrazine poured into the ground when the base was dismantled, nor the Death Fields phenomenon which appeared in the 1970s. The forest easily swallowed all the hydrazine without any suffering with unfamiliar force. While what sacred the people most about the Death Fields was a possibility of the sickness continuing it spread underground. It was already enough when wind carried the poisonous dirt and dust to the cottage cooperative nearby. No, it was blood of the innocent which turned Heavenmire into New Devil¡¯s Bog, spilled when Teet Metsla was active there.


    His Kitchen of Hell, a small cluster of junipers, was located away from the old farmlands, right where the territory of the Base, Old Devil¡¯s Bog and Heavenmire met. As the old bog had been drained, all the innocent blood flowed into the Heavenmire, and along with it, the will of Teet Metsla. Thus, when the Heavenmire became poisoned, it only became New Devil¡¯s Bog, because of Teet Metsla. They say that these days, there is no longer much difference, the blood of the killed will flow equally in either direction.


    Scientists from the North have even gone there and performed experiments, finding that there is a microscopic difference which direction human blood poured on the stump will take while flowing. The Old Devil¡¯s Bog still retains its evil, despite the fact that the bog no longer exists. And the New Devil¡¯s Bog, has evil within it as well.


    *


    ¡°This little story about local myths makes a nice introduction to our tonight¡¯s show doesn¡¯t it?¡± Allan Helde said. ¡°But let¡¯s get down to business.¡±


    Radio host in a dim studio pushed a button on a console in front of him. This started a reel-to-reel tape player in the corner which started to play a recording.


    ¡°Do not try to attempt to adjust your radio receiver. Everything is just fine and tonight I, Allan Helde will join you.¡± This voice was accompanied by the tape crackling. ¡°As a warning to anybody listening: what you are about to hear now is no fantasy. It is not a forgotten science fiction novel by the Brothers Strugatsky, it is not a radio play. It is not even a poor attempt by the radio host to narrate his own horror stories. What you are about to hear is a true story. A story from the world which surrounds us every day, of the hidden corners within it and of the mysterious events that have happened to your very neighbors, maybe even to you yourself. Welcome to the Nether Lighthouse.¡±


    The tape stopped and was then switched off the air and rewound.


    ¡°Today we have in our studio a person many of you have seen every day. Whose thoughts and ideas you have heard. Who herself and whose stories are feared by many, because often they point our attention, perhaps too sharply, to what is happening around us. Today in our studio, the girl in black herself ¨C Mariann. Hello.¡±


    ¡°Hello-hello. Thanks for asking me to be here.¡±


    The studio with walls covered in wooden boards was dim. This was partly down to the lighting, but also because the walls were covered in sound deadening mats and honeycombs mats which swallowed all the echoes. Allan Helde, the host and local expert of mystery and high strangeness, kept the air in his studio conducive to the topics discussed. This meant near darkness. The only light in the studio was emanating from the marker lights on the radio equipment and low power incandescent bulbs which were barely glowing with such low amperage that one could easily make out the illuminated tungsten wire. The large red plastic light under the ceiling was also of no help, indicating only whether the studio was currently on air or not. Allan himself kept the studio at a constant temperature of 15 degrees centigrade, something he himself considered comfortably cool.


    The man on the other side of of the table, whose face Mariann could barely make out, continued.


    ¡°Honestly, I have been trying for a long time to get you into this studio, but it is surprisingly hard to make contact with you.¡±


    ¡°Is it?¡± Mariann asked. ¡°That¡¯s a surprise to me. It may be true during daytime. But on evenings I am often in some bar, either in the Nameless Town, Tontla or Valgepal?, where I am sharing my stories.¡±


    ¡°Speaking of those stories of yours. Many of the people I have met are most certain that you are a witch. Because you have an explanation for every occasion. An explanation which sounds insane but which is also impossible to overturn. An explanation which causes trepidation and makes one judder with cold.¡±


    ¡°I can perfectly understand why such a perspective. But I am also pretty sure I am not a witch. I do not know enough about all the things going on to consider myself a witch or to be a witch. The witch as such is a matter of perspective. The more somebody seems to know than you do, the more their knowledge looks esoteric or like witchery, especially in it¡¯s simplicity. Especially if your knowledge, or rather, understanding of the world does not allow you to figure out how they have attained their knowledge, made their conclusions or how it is possible that suddenly, as if from the moment they uttered their explanation, you feel a wave traveling forwards and backwards in time, by which the world is aligning itself to fit these explanations.¡±


    ¡°You are speaking of mythical thinking, right? Or some explanations by way of magic?¡±


    ¡°Not necessarily. For example, if all your knowledge about chemical reactions or the ways human body works is based on alchemy, then modern chemistry or medicine is pure witchcraft. Your explanation is unclear, magical, while mine allows to predict processes in its simplicity. And that would look like witchery.¡±


    ¡°True. But let¡¯s be honest, this is still the supremacy of the scientific theory over quackery and metaphysics.¡±


    ¡°Did I say anything about science?¡± Mariann asked. ¡°All unscience was once science. But then our world expanded and one paradigm was cast aside when a newer and better one was found. What if our current science can only explain a very small slice of the world? What if the ¡®science¡¯ of the witch is better than ours simply because her world is more expansive than ours?¡±


    Allan Helde fell into thought.


    ¡°American science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke once said that every sufficiently developed technology is indistinguishable from magic. I must admit that in a situation where somebody makes me think how a world is suddenly following a strange explanation or theirs and no longer submits to the logic I hold dear, I would suspect being bewitched. Maybe I was not really enlightened about the true order of the world, and instead I was simply merely bedeviled.¡± Allan said.


    ¡°Exactly.¡± Mariann gave a smile. ¡°It would seem that many of the villagers are facing the same problem. And the situation is in no way helped by the numbers of old American land yachts which are suddenly appearing in town, while only a few years ago most of us could see such things only on pictures. Witchery may mean different things to different people.¡±


    ¡°Speaking of cars, you are not the only one whose choice in cars is remarked upon. Doctor Sare drives around a white car with fins, the Boys from the North who are guarding the border are driving around black cars with fins. People have seen a group of strange youths who ask about local matters drive around a big black limousine. And you too have something comparable, a gigantic two-door car with tan fabric roof.¡±


    ¡°I am not arguing that people may see it weird. But it is also a very obtuse way of seeing things. Yes, doctor Sare may have received his car from the Boys from the North. But I and many of the local youths have gone to Yurjev or to Pskov to buy their piles of junk. And if your childhood only consisted of seeing cars like Zaporozhetses, Zhigulis and Moskviches then a massive old passenger car is an easy choice for standing out and being noticed.¡±


    ¡°So you think it is merely a coincidence and a stereotype?¡± Allan asked.


    ¡°Yes. But it is also an interesting thing to make note of. That all the people who are interested in finding out what may have happened or what may still be happening, have a similar taste in cars.¡±


    ¡°Okay. But let us get back on the topic of the witch. You said that witchery may mean different things to different people.¡±


    ¡°Yes. For example if one looks at things from my perspective, then I am not doing anything special, I am just taking a more in-depth look at things. I look into history, into places more or less abandoned. I talk to people, I sit in bars, listening to stories about Rops meeting anaks, how one person has a weird dream, the other person has a Wiederg?nger. The third one sees apparitions in the forest. In the end I have a set of unconnected stories and flashes of ideas.


    ¡°Many of these are never heard by anybody. Some don¡¯t even make it to my own lips. They swim around in my subconscious without a slightest of meanings and then strike me as dreams. And then there¡¯s a small chance that I manage to bring them into a world of language before they leave my mind and fall back into the subconscious.¡±


    ¡°If we return to the analogy you brought up in the beginning, then the information you have gathered and understood, would it be like having read medical literature and also having never treated anybody or operated on anybody?¡± Allan asked.


    ¡°In core meaning, yes. This is why I would not consider myself a witch. In my eyes, a witch would be somebody who at the very least has a fleeting generalized insight of of the matters at hand. Because a generalized insight also affords one some degree of control. An opportunity or an ability to predict what happens next. I do not possess this capacity. I don¡¯t know how events are connected to one another and what is the real history. I don¡¯t know if my inferences are about the present, the future or the past. Considering the past and the special aspects of this region, I don¡¯t think knowing that even matters.¡±


    ¡°So you are not the witch. The witch is somebody who is more knowledgeable than you?¡±


    ¡°Yes.¡± Mariann said.


    ¡°But let¡¯s be honest: they ways you have explained things to the villagers, they are quite nonsensical yet also frightening. Simple words which are very hard to understand until everything suddenly falls into place, as the story continues.¡±


    ¡°Oh, that.¡± Again there was a small smile on Mariann¡¯s lips. ¡°It is strange, isn¡¯t it? If one uses foreign terms, loanwords, and long sentences that drag on to infinity, then we have become so accustomed to the scientific way of putting things that even if we don¡¯t understand anything, it still sounds earthly, logical and intelligent. However when we try to explain things in the simplest of languages, with the simplest of words and ideas, which play around like poetry, then as long as we do not fully understand them, they are but harmless riddles. But if it explains something new about the world, something we cannot scientifically make sense of, then we¡¯re screwed, because it must be witchery.¡±


    ¡°So, what they are seeing as witchcraft is not about what or how you are speaking, but about how they are gradually understanding it?¡±


    ¡°Yes.¡±


    ¡°But let¡¯s suppose that a daft villager like that meets the witch. How is he to understand that the witch knows more than you, whom he has thus far considered to be the witch?¡±


    ¡°He will understand it perfectly well. He will understand it even if he understands nothing. A witch with a more complete vision of the world will speak in riddles that are much more full of meaning. That¡¯s the difference. Because she knows and sees more, her language to explain things is simpler. Also, her vision of the world may not be more complete into the directions we assume it to be.¡±


    ¡°What does that mean?¡± Allan asked.


    ¡°It means that the witch¡¯s vision of the world and her knowledge may be like that of the Mothman seen in the United States, who saw what a person had hidden in his closed hand. Or what was written on a random page of a closed book sitting in a closed drawer.¡±


    ¡°That is a quite scary perspective.¡±


    ¡°And that¡¯s why the riddles the witch speaks are so full of meaning.¡±


    ¡°So speaking with the witch is like speaking with somebody who can read your thoughts? Ow who can see 30 minutes into the future?¡±


    ¡°It is a good simile although I suspect that the witch¡¯s ability is far more mundane, which makes it look even more like witchcraft.¡±


    ¡°But turning back to the thought experiment that the some villager goes to the witch. How would he know that the witch is more knowledgeable than you. That the one he is visiting is indeed a witch?¡± Allan asked.


    ¡°That depends on what kind of questions or intentions he visits her. If he goes to ask about something he has a previous experiential knowledge then the riddles the witch speaks are meaningful to him. If he goes to ask about something he has no knowledge of then it is possible that the riddles of the witch have no meaning for him.¡±


    ¡°That is an interesting way to see things.¡± Allan remarked.


    ¡°Yes. But there is a hidden problem concerning this nobody has yet noticed. If I am right and the witch indeed speaks in riddles, then it is very important to know the difference between asking an answer to a question or an explanation for something. The Mayor said he would be going to ask for advice. This is not one or the other, and that makes me worried.¡±


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    ¡°Do these two really have such a great difference?¡±


    ¡°Indeed they do. If the witch did not speak in riddles, the problem would be much smaller. But the witch only speaks as much as somebody asks of her, not more, possibly less. Let¡¯s suppose I go with a clearly defined question. The witch finds that she can answer it. And she does. But she answers it in riddles. What I will do with that answer, how I interpret it or understand it is all up to me.¡±


    ¡°I am not arguing against that.¡± Allan said.


    ¡°But things are different if I go to the witch with a wish that she explained something to me. If it is something she can answer, then it is her duty to make it understandable to me. She will have to climb down the levels of speaking riddles to a level that I can either understand or barely understand. Now, if I go asking for advice, which of the two is it? I may think I am asking for explanation because if I don¡¯t understand the advice it is of no use to me. If I don¡¯t understand it then I don¡¯t know what I should do, right?


    ¡°But from the perspective of the witch, giving advice is answering a clearly defined question, they can give me advice in such a way that I myself have to interpret what it means. Never mind the chance that my interpretation of her advice does not agree with the answer I was expecting from her. Do I follow it or not? That¡¯s why asking for advice is a bad question to approach the witch with.¡±


    ¡°So you think invocating the witch and going to see her is a bad idea at this junction?¡±


    ¡°Yes.¡± Mariann said. ¡°In the past, people went to the witch in times of great trouble. War, plague, famine, an undying serial killer hunting children. In short, a defined problem. When there was nothing left to be done and all solutions more or less rational had not provided a satisfactory result. But now people go to the witch because..? A lake has moved? The phone lines with the external world do not function? There are strange weather phenomena, paranormal phenomena, a strange organization has taken over the local institution of higher education? Sure, all those things require looking into independently, but what is there to ask a witch about, I cannot understand. I also cannot understand what kind of useful thing the witch could answer about them. The witch does not have unlimited time to explain all the mysteries of the world to the mortal and the ignorant.¡±


    ¡°What about the various stories you have told people. For a start, let me ask you, do you have some sort of internal account about what you have told whom, or how a story would change when something becomes clearer concerning one story or another?¡±


    ¡°There is a kind of. But honestly, it is not required nor advised. My stories are nothing that should be or could be put in writing. It¡¯s like an oral tradition of a culture. If it is written down, it dies, petrifies in signs and means of data storage which are used to note it down. Also, I would then also have to keep track of when a certain fact or an aspect changed and why it changed.¡±


    ¡°Okay. My question stemmed from you mentioning several times that the world we live in is spatially or temporally twisted into a knot. That one might take old military maps and draw a whole pile of mysterious locations on them, like the Substation, the Center Station, the Weather Station, the Linusk, and the Antenna Field. All of them once built by the Russians but none of them still accessible to fix anything, either because of some contamination with human origins or some fault in spatial dimensions. You have also said that these location are connected with both the weird weather and paranormal phenomena as well as the stuff happening in the institute. Could you expand on that so all our listeners would understand?¡±


    ¡°Actually there is nothing complicated or mystical here.¡± Mariann said. ¡°The Soviet Union had a whole slew of closed towns. Towns with military importance, production centers for nuclear weapons and reactor technology, uranium enrichment facilities, mining towns and scientific towns. Many know that there were two closed towns in Estonia: Sillam?e where uranium was mined and enriched, and Paldiski with 2 submarine training reactors. But there was also a third closed town. To be fair, nobody has determined how big or small in area a closed town has to be. Neither has anybody determined how much or a town a closed town has to be.


    ¡°This allowed the Russians to shove a whole county under the guise of a closed town. This area we are in. As closed towns were often known to the public only as mailing addresses of the closest biggest town, this place was also known as Pskov-14.¡±


    ¡°But why close up this region?¡± Allan asked.


    ¡°Now that¡¯s a much better a question. If we look at history, even before World War I, the Russians realized that this corner of the world was special. There was something here. What exactly was it, of that there is no information. But there were plenty of stories back to the beginning of written records how people have been seeing weird things here. Here, people act strange, life and death act strange, the nature itself acts strange. At first the Russians and Estonians may have had a common interest in researching this region, but as soon as World War II started, and Hitler and Stalin decided how to divvy up Europe, Stalin found that for the good of the Soviet People all of this must be made use of.


    ¡°And then it started. At first, the railway was built which connected all the bigger villages, but also military bases, excavation sites and everything else that was of interest. The Train Yard was built which allowed carts and locomotives to be turned around and trains to be composed. The railway was the first thing to ruin the landscape. Fields were cut in half, even the old cemetery was cut in half. Railroad was was built into the bog without even attempting to properly drain it, concrete piles were driven into the ground until the went no deeper. Somewhere in the South a mysterious object was being excavated. For the officers, their families and other workers, the cottage district was built. And everybody should already know how big that is.


    ¡°Air defense bases were built, a nuclear missile base. Underground bases for mechanized infantry and armored cavalry as well as helicopters. After that research bases and laboratories were built to research phenomena of various kinds. When the Russians had to left in the beginning of the 1990s they left behind everything they considered without value. All their junk and contamination. Radioactive, chemical and physical waste, results of failed experiments. All of which required effort to be cleaned up.


    ¡°Although I said that they left in 1991, before the armed forces, the real winding down started during perestroika, in the 80s. Flow of money was cut off. The scientists left, higher officers left. The importance fell and only non-essential personnel remained whose duty was no longer performing experiments and discovering new science but instead keeping things running. And then in 1991, they too were recalled. The few research bases still accessible were closed down, devices used for experiments that had thus far been keeping the world stable were turned off, uninstalled and removed before the damage done started to manifest.¡±


    Allan started to laugh.


    ¡°Mariann. I asked you to explain your stories and what you speak in them. You have told us a long story, but it seems like you haven¡¯t really said anything. What devices? What keeping the world stable?¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s exactly what I meant. Russians did not use this place to only experiment with chemistry and physics, but also with time and space. This required massive amounts of energy. But some experiments broke out of the confines they were set in, and started to affect the world outside these limits. This effect grew stronger when the influence of devices which had to stabilize and filter space for experiments was decreased. When the machinery was turned up, the space-time stood in its proper place. However when they were permanently turned off, it twisted out of it¡¯s limits and it has kept twisting to this day. This in turn has allowed us to peek behind the fabric of the world and see all the mechanics that keep the world turning.¡±


    ¡°This is getting us nowhere.¡± Allan sighed. ¡°Do you have any examples of such experiments or their consequences?¡±


    ¡°I have several. The Irradiating Woods for example. The black forest North of the Nameless town, so contaminated with chemical and radioactive materials that an hour long walk will result in death.¡±


    ¡°That is true. I too have seen confused animals on the border of the forest and the bodies of animals who have gotten lost there and have been too late to find their way out.¡± Allan said.


    ¡°Yes. But the mystery lies in the fact that none of the animals have made it to town. All of them go missing in the town or die in the deep ditch on the border of the forest. Nome make it across the ditch into town to irradiate or contaminate people or items.¡±


    ¡°This is something we should ask the local hunters about. It is interesting. But it is not connected with time or space in any way.¡±


    ¡°We also have the case of the Death Fields. When some experimental war chemical escaped into nature in1970s and poisoned all potatoes. The plants became so poisonous that even being nearby them could kill in minutes or even seconds. And not just people, but all animals. Even insects. In the end men in protective suits used flamethrowers to burn away the potatoes and other vegetables of that year. And never since has this event repeated, as if it never happened.¡±


    ¡°That too is not connected with time or space.¡± Allan said.


    ¡°I may be connected with time and space. There are almost no poisons which would be safe for plants but deadly to animals within seconds. Not even radioactivity nor organophosphates. And considering that it only occurred on a single year without a single sign of it later, it is possible that this poisonous compound was neither natural nor earthly.¡±


    ¡°What was it then if not earthly?¡± Allan asked. ¡°Created by the ufos?!¡±


    ¡°That which is not earthly is unearthly.¡± Mariann said, not minding the radio host. ¡°Something being unearthly means that it is not from our world. It being not of our world does not mean that ufos have brought it. It may mean that that it is from some future world, or some parallel world where the rules of the order of the world and scientific constants are somewhat different.


    But OK, you want a concrete plain as day example, right? Have you been to the Park of the Edge in Tontla?¡±


    ¡°I know that a small park like that exists, but I have never been knowingly.¡± Allan said.


    ¡°The Park of the Edge in Tontla.¡± Mariann began. ¡°Tontla itself is strange. If the Nameless Town is located in a valley then Tontla is almost atop a cliff, or a taivaskota. From the Park of the Edge in Tontla, one has a wonderful birdseye view on the Nameless Town, a few miles away as the crow flies. But it is interesting that from under the cliff, be it near or far, one cannot tell where the Park of the Edge lies. Also during the same hours of the same day, the weather in Tontla and the Nameless Town may be completely different.¡±


    ¡°This should be explainable by the fact that one sits atop a cliff. These few dozen meters of height difference might have sufficient influence or air pressures.¡± Allan said.


    ¡°Let us suppose it so. But for years people have attempted to signal one another with one of the parties being in the park and the order under the cliff or in the Nameless Town. They have tried flashlights, powerful port lights which can illuminate even clouds. Even signal flares which should have a night time visibility of at least 20 miles. No attempt has ever yielded a positive result. During nighttime, one cannot see the Park of the Edge or any lights or flares sent from there from anywhere under the cliff, including the Nameless town.


    ¡°But many times, villagers visiting the park have seen strange things. In Nameless Town, during daytime, somebody keeps flashing powerful searchlights, they also keep shooting signal flares of various colors and even fireworks. At the same time, similar strange activity has been seen above Tontla, not not from the direction of the Nameless Town or anywhere under the cliff but from the direction of the bog and the forest. People have made several attempts to catch these thoughtless criminals wasting the resources of emergency services like this. And there have often been articles on radio and in newspapers that red signal flares should only be used for real emergencies. But the activity continues.¡±


    ¡°And in your opinion, the fact that these experiments to signal one another fail, is a sign that the space-time between Tontla and the Nameless Town is not contiguous and invariant. That there must be a crack or a disjoint?¡± Allan asked.


    ¡°Exactly. And if that is not enough to convince you¡­ have you ever heard of the Paraplaner Incident?¡±


    ¡°The Paraplaner Incident?¡±


    ¡°It happened several years ago in that same Park of the Edge. I am actually surprised you have not yet turned it into one of your radio shows. Anyway, a paraplane enthusiast came here for a vacation and brought along his machine. In Tontla he discovered that the widest footpath in the park which cuts straight through it, is just long enough for his parachute to catch wind before the edge of the cliff which would allow him to take off.


    Well, he set up his flying machine, and by the time he was ready to take off, a few hundred locals had come to witness his endeavor of using the park as a runway. The local paper even published a long article and series of photos how the man set up his paraplane. When ready, he started down the footpath, the chute caught wind and he drove over the edge.¡±


    ¡°You mean to tell he drove his flying machine over the edge of the cliff and fell to his death?¡±


    ¡°Nope.¡± Mariann smiled.


    ¡°He took flight then?¡±


    ¡°Not that either. If it was one or the other, I would have no reason to talk about it.¡±


    It took Mariann a few seconds to get her words in order.


    ¡°He went over the edge of the cliff with his flying machine. At least a hundred people witnessed it. What happened next, nobody knows. He did not fall and nobody saw him take flight. For half an hour people were trying to spot him in the sky both by naked eye and by binoculars. After that, people began to consider the option that he might have crashed and the rest of the day, a few hundred people combed the underside of the cliff. Hoping to find if not a living person then at least signs where the flying machine might have crashed.¡±


    ¡°And they never found anything?¡±


    ¡°Nope. No man, no wreckage of the flying machine, no chute. Disappeared like smoke into water. The local constable or rather the militsiya lieutenant at Valgepal? was still active at the time. It took him less than half an hour to arrive and he started questioning the witnesses. Since the lieutenant was used to the parish secretary doing all the typing for him, he had a habit of recording all his questionings and interrogations on reel to reel tapes. These should still exist.¡±


    ¡°This matter does require further investigation.¡± Allan said. ¡°Especially the aspect that the disjoint in space-time starts from the edge of the park, right on the edge of the cliff.¡±


    ¡°But the story gets even weirder. In the evening, when they stopped the searching as darkness fell, they did indeed find the flying machine itself. The car of the airman was still there. And the paraplane was still tied down on the trailer. As if nobody had even touched it.¡±


    ¡°And the airman never surfaced?¡±


    ¡°Nope. His car and the trailer with the paraplane stood there for a few months until it was decided that nobody was likely to collect it and Peeter the Villager dragged it to his pick-a-part yard to wait for it¡¯s new owner. It might still be there if it hasn¡¯t been cut into spare parts and scrap by now.¡±


    ¡°Very interesting. But let us return to the witch. What strikes me as especially interesting is that the witch speaks in riddles. Does this not mean that the riddles the witch speaks in might as well be speaking tongues or glossolalia. Or a form of aphasia when a person cannot recall the proper names for things, creatures of phenomena and he instead uses words that are similar or close by by some virtue?¡±


    ¡°There are a couple of things wrong with this. First, the riddles the witch speaks are only riddles to the listener, especially for the listener who does not understand the prevailing terminology. Like a doctor talking to a layman whose understanding of medicine is on the same level as of the country folk of the ancient time. For the witch herself, her words are clear as day. It cannot be said any clearer that it is already being said.


    ¡°However, the problem of the human animal is that he thinks himself to be measure and standard of all things. That things can only be considered and understood in ways that he considers them and all alternative means and paths are deviations from the norm and are in need of correcting towards the norm. When a witch speaks riddles to us, we naturally try to figure out why we cannot understand. And since our own way of thinking seems reasonable to us, then the fault must obviously lie with her. That she cannot express herself properly, be the reason a disease of the mind or the body.


    ¡°To think that the flaw lies with myself, that the witch might be more sane and more intelligent than me and that is the reason I do not understand seems as preposterous an idea as considering that there might be an error in the function of my mind and my rationality. Man is stupid, his first reaction is to think in absolutes. To think that the witch¡¯s rationality and the world perspective might be more complete than mine and yet it does not necessarily invalidate my own rationality and world perspective, as there is no absolute is not a way of thinking that comes naturally.


    ¡°Such a widened rationality can also accept things that at first glace seem to oppose all common sense. Like space-time twisted into a pretzel and that in some circumstances, one can be in two separate places at the same time.¡±


    ¡°Now that is an interesting topic.¡± Allan said. ¡°Especially in light of the Paraplaner Incident. How can it be that a man falls off the cliff with his flying machine and yet the same flying machine sits on the trailer with nobody having touched it. Does this mean that the man never actually tried to take flight with it?¡±


    ¡°That might be interesting but not exactly what I was thinking of. Since time and space are no longer in their proper shapes, it is possible that events that are not concurrent seems to take place concurrently. And also the reverse is true ¨C events that are supposed to be concurrent, seem to take place divergently.


    ¡°For example, it is possible that at the same time as we are sitting here in the studio in a live show, some other versions of us are somewhere else doing something completely different and maybe even listening to this live.¡±


    ¡°How would that be possible? Since you are here. And I am here. And this is live.¡± Allan wondered.


    ¡°How exactly this might be possible, I don¡¯t know. Like you said in the beginning, sometimes my ideas direct maybe too much of our attention to what¡¯s going on around us so that other people who otherwise live their lives, start to notice that as well. My intention has never been to give conclusive answers. I only explain how things seem to me based on all the fragments of information I have found in abandoned houses and derelict bases. Sometimes my theories even scare myself.¡±


    ¡°This must be one such theory.¡±


    ¡°Not necessarily. As long as I don¡¯t run into myself, I consider everything going just fine. What really scares me is the chance that words might have power.¡±


    ¡°They say that the limit of our world lies at the limit of our language to describe and understand it. For example, in the film Dead Mountaineer¡¯s Hotel, there is a character Hinckus who tries to explain how ¡°me tied up me.¡± He did not have the language to express that there was something or somebody that looked like him but was not him.


    ¡°Sometimes I find myself upon a thought that the clarity I possess, the way I put things. The way I describe this mysterious and strange world, that I am not simply giving opinions on how things are, but instead my words are actively creating this world, they are changing it, affecting how things really are. That would be witchery.¡±


    ¡°That would be God.¡± Allan said.


    ¡°God or witchcraft, same difference. As we already know, the country folk has little belief in God.¡±


    ¡°But let¡¯s say it is possible.¡± Allan continued. ¡°What would you do if the door to the studio were to open right now and you would see yourself walking in?¡±


    ¡°I think it isn¡¯t possible. The world would not let it happen. Either I would manage to leave before I steps in, or I would step into an empty studio and you would ask, surprised, how did I manage to get from the desk to the door so fast. Or the me steps in and asks about the live show which just ended, while your clock says that it ended 2 hours ago. There are many possibilities. I think that there would be something very, very wrong going on if the world lets two mes or two yous meet one another.¡±


    ¡°Very fascinating. Anyway. It seems that our time today is over. Thank you for coming to my studio, Mariann. Thank you for having this talk with me and opening up about how you are seeing the world that surrounds us. Although we did not get to everything I wanted to talk about, there is always next time.¡±


    ¡°Most certainly. It was quite pleasant.¡± Mariann said.


    ¡°And now some music to contemplate everything you just heard.¡±


    Allan switched the vinyl to the input. Mariann removed her headphones with a microphone and got up.


    ¡°Hey, next time maybe we can use the second half of the show for you to tell stories about the strange things that has happened to you. Or maybe interesting tidbits of history you have found. I think our listeners would very much like it.¡±


    ¡°We¡¯ll see.¡± Mariann said. ¡°Good night.¡±


    She left, closing the door to the studio behind her.


    Not a minute passed when the door opened again. And there again stood Mariann, but something was different. It took a few moments for Allan to notice that she was soaking wet from head to toe and breathing heavily, as if she had run through pouring rain.


    ¡°Was there something else?¡± He asked, turning off the music and switching on the studio mike.


    ¡°You just finished a live show?¡± Mariann asked.


    ¡°Yes.¡±


    Suddenly Allan felt strange. There was something in the girl in front of her that did not suit him.


    ¡°You were here, weren¡¯t you?¡±


    ¡°That was not me who was here.¡± The girl in black replied.


    Despite her heavy breathing she was calm. As if there was nothing new in the possibility that her doppelg?nger was walking around the town.


    ¡°I just rushed here from Tontla. I started coming before the show ended.¡±


    ¡°You. From Tontla?¡± Allan asked, dumbfounded.


    ¡°Yes. I cane to see what¡¯s going on, because the show I was hearing from the radio was not exactly the show we recorded.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s some kind of joke, right?¡± Allan asked. ¡°We have never before met or hosted a show together. Tonight was the first time.¡±


    ¡°Very interesting.¡± Mariann smiled. ¡°In that case I apologize, I have come too soon. We have not really met yet.¡±


    ¡°What?!¡±


    Allan indeed was disturbed. Mariann who had just burst into the studio was not the same girl who had just left. And she also mentioned an interview and a meeting which had never happened.


    Suddenly, Mariann noticed the red light on the wall of the studio.


    ¡°We¡¯re live right now, aren¡¯t we?¡± She asked.


    ¡°What? Yes. Yes, we are.¡±


    ¡°Well, that¡¯s gonna be really interesting to the Mariann who is still sitting in a bar in Tontla.¡±


    With these last words, the girl in black stepped out of the room and closed the door.


    Allan was left sitting in the studio, still dumbfounded. He sat for a few more seconds before jumping up from his seat and rushing out of the studio. He ran to the front door following the wet footsteps and stepped into a warm dry night. No downpour, not even clouds. Clear black sky full of stars. An empty street with not a soul in sight.

 XXXII - a Conversation in the Dark of Night II

    She had lost count of how many nights like this there had been. When the heat was impossible. It was so hot that she couldn¡¯t sleep. The night was as dark as in winter but as hot as in summer somewhere far South. All the windows were open on the possibly only inhabited house of the whole cottage district, but it was still hot. No wind, not the slightest draft. It would have been better if the windows had been closed, then the inside would have been cooler than the outside.


    Kadri could not sleep. She was the only one who could not sleep. The past several nights had made it abundantly clear. She had gone with the other to look for the Lake of Forgetfulness. But in the end, all of them had made it here. To the Nameless Town, to Tontla, Valgepal?. Without themselves knowing how. On the road. On a dark night. They had visited some pond. It seemed to be the thing they had been looking for. But it was not possible to make a truthful and honest claim. And Mariann, that mysterious girl in black was certain that it wasn¡¯t the Lake of Forgetfulness. That she knew where the Lake of Forgetfulness was, that it lied right behind her window. But she was never willing to open up on neither where the lake was nor where she lived.


    Kadri and her friend who had come here. Siim, Tiina and the others, they had met Mariann several times. And every time, it was weird. The meeting itself was noting strange but, it wasn¡¯t exactly a meeting, it was more like running into one another, bumping into one another. Usually this was preceded by a lot of unexplainable and personal. Strange sounds in the night. Smells that some found pleasant and others nauseating. Strange restlessness and a need to go on a drive with no particular reason. And of course strange recognitions and synchronicities, be they about books being currently read or even thoughts being thought.


    Each and every time all that directed them back at Mariann who had some new tale to tell. A tale which at first turned everything on it¡¯s head and then after giving it some thought, seemed perfectly reasonable and even correct. Unexplainably, intuitively. It all felt intuitive, by gut feeling and also strange because this gut feeling did not lead them into the bog or a dead end. It led them to an understanding. How they had initially gone to find the Lake of Forgetfulness, how they had reached here, how they always met with Mariann. How they never needed to be want of lodging, food or fuel. Intuition and synchronicity.


    And uncountable amount of literature which found it¡¯s way to them either by chance or by suddenly falling off the shelf. Or via Mariann, by some indirect means, which perfectly explained what they needed to know or understand. One could almost think this was some ritual or initiation, it mattered little whether they were performing this ritual for the their own good, or for the good of somebody else. Or maybe they were just the travel partners of Mariann, trying to understand and give meaning to everything going on in this world.


    Kadri sighed. It was still night. It was still damnably hot. She could no more. She had to get up. Get dressed. Go for a walk. Might as well do it on the streets of the cottage district, on those with just enough working streetlights to not let one¡¯s eyes grow used to the darkness. Despite the chance of meeting wild animals being greater than meeting people. Despite the chance of meeting ghosts was greater than meeting the living. Despite the fact that there weren¡¯t many things the locals feared more than walking in the cottage district at night.


    At the same time there was nothing special, nothing scary about it. The cottage district was abandoned. Derelict.


    Some say the cottage district was left empty after the Death Fields incident. Only few lone inhabitants remained. And all of them lived by the major road. A local villager and some strange young man who acted weird when about the village and in search of his loved one. And he was not the only one like that. The was another one, a bit older who kept writing one name again and again on walls yet uncovered. Wilhelmina. There were also a man and a woman, acting like quaint locals, which was the weirdest sting of all. Because who would live in the middle of the abandoned cottage district like there was nothing wrong?


    The cottage district was mostly abandoned. But there was still life going on. Way back when, the cottage district was abandoned suddenly and in a hurry. People had fled leaving their laundry on the lines in their yards, and their food steaming on plates. Chernobyl. Nobody had come stealing, nobody had come raiding. Doors were unlocked, the fabric on beds still ready for use. Closets and wardrobes full of clothes.


    These people had escaped not only from the cottage district but also this region. They would never return for their property and other items. At first this gave all sorts of crooks a chance to steal everything with any value, leaving behind only that which could not be sold quick and for any significant sum of money. This usually meant clothes, dishware, old furniture and other similar items. Which were coincidentally also items most required for one¡¯s daily life. Although the crooks had also removed most of the wiring, it wasn¡¯t really necessary to have much electricity for basic living. Only enough for a few lamps and radios.


    And should the tenants ever start arguing with each other, there were many other houses to move into. But this night heat! There was no place to move into to escape that. Maybe only to some subterranean cellar. But a subterranean cellar had it¡¯s own issues.


    Although the cottage district was abandoned and yet partially inhabited, mostly by people like her and her friends who had nowhere else to go to, it also felt chilling to be here. Lots of old summer cottages and houses fallen into unusable ruins. Some simply collapsed. Some had burned to the ground. Of some, only the chimney and a few walls remained. And at all times, one could hear something crawling in the tall grass by the drainage ditch.


    During her walk, Kadri usually kept to the main streets. Even if the lights atop the concrete poles were not lit, it was still safer to move from pole to pole, rather than away from them. Never mind that recently, the cottage district had grown much more chilling and scary than it had been before.


    It happened one cold and damp morning when the tenants of the cottage district discovered several trails of smoke rising into the air. When they took a closer look, they discovered that these rose from near the old post office in the middle of the cottage district. The post office was still okay, but surrounding it, there were a total of three large helicopter wreckages. Obviously these had fallen from the sky. The night rain had quenched the flames, but the wreckages smoked for several days. No bodies or body parts were ever found, no weapons either, just big piles of metal burnt into empty shells, that had once been helicopters.


    But the strangest thing was that the night had been calm. Nobody had heard anything. Nobody had even woken up. Whatever had brought down these aircraft had done it in a such a way that not a single denizen of the cottage district had had their sleep disturbed. And some of the locals had their homes right next to the pot office, just across the street!


    Kadri stopped. She knew she should not be think about at a time like this. Yes, there were things in the night, but three choppers falling out of the sky without anybody noticing was a frightening thought no matter which way she looked at it. In much the same way somebody¡¯s house might just vanish during the night with none of the neighbors the wiser. And during one¡¯s nighttime walk in the deathly quiet cottage district it was not good to let one¡¯s imagination run wild with all sorts of scary things which lie hidden in the darkness. More so, the idea that all locals to the cottage district slumber in such depths to be totally oblivious to a quick war passing over, took her thoughts back to the Death Fields and to the reasons why the cottage district was abandoned in the first place.


    She turned around the corner and stopped again. But this time not because of fear or some random wandering thought. In the distance, under the next function streetlight, there stood a large car, dark red in color. A car with two doors and no roof. In addition to the streetlight which cast orange high pressure sodium light at the car and everything around it, there was also a smaller light clipped to the metal edge of the windscreen. The light from that was cast onto the red leather interior of the car. As she got closer, she realized that there was not a car just standing there, there was a person inside the car as well.


    With a wary step, she approached the vehicle until a realization dawned. Lying on the back seat, there was the familiar girl in black, focused on reading a thick book with dark red fabric covers. She could also hear quiet music playing from the car¡¯s sound system.


    ¡°What are you doing here!¡± Kadri asked, utterly dumbfounded.


    ¡°I¡¯m reading.¡± Mariann said. ¡°You cannot sleep due to heat, correct?¡±


    ¡°Why do you think that?¡±


    ¡°Because besides me, you are the only awoke person in the whole cottage district. In some ways it is a blessing as it allows you a unique perspective, compared to those still sleeping.¡±


    ¡°What are you reading?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°The horror tales of Ambrose Beirce.¡±


    ¡°Horror tales?! Whatever for?¡±


    ¡°Because they help to think. And this music also helps to think and to keep my thoughts on the right path.¡±


    ¡°Did you know that I would take walks when the heat does not let me sleep? Did you know in advance that we could meet like that?¡±


    ¡°That sounds like something I would know and would be able to arrange, does it not?¡± Mariann gave a smile and set the book aside. ¡°The answer is no. I also could not sleep in this heat. Or rather, I generally cannot get any sleep during these summer nights. And tonight the cottage district seemed to be the place with the right aura to come to.¡±


    Mariann lifted a small carton of wine and two glasses from between the seats.


    ¡°Wine?¡± She asked.


    ¡°But still.¡± Kadri did not stop after having some wine. ¡°Why are you reading horror stories at night in the cottage district?¡±


    ¡°As I said before, to think. Horror no longer has any effect on me. Every day I am right inside it. Tales of ghosts, zombies, all sorts of terrible creatures and even cosmic horror in itself is no longer enough to arouse any chills or to direct thoughts on this topic. Coming to a place a little more special than home helps a little. To read the right thing helps a little more. And Ambrose Beirce wrote some good stories about how our world is tied into a knot, how our senses, thoughts and vision not only experience the world but also actively influence and change it.¡±


    ¡°And that helps?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°It gives a new perspective, how to give meaning and sense to things. And honestly, right now it is too hot to simply contemplate. There¡¯s even no wind. Somehow, one must awaken the mind.¡±


    ¡°The Lake of Forgetfulness.¡± Kadri said.


    ¡°You are still on that topic? I thought it to be long since buried. What about it?¡±


    ¡°You once said that what we found and what we thought to be Lake of Forgetfulness was not the real Lake of Forgetfulness but instead something else. You also said that the real Lake of Forgetfulness lies on the other side of your window.¡±


    ¡°I remember.¡± Mariann agreed.


    ¡°Why do you not want to tell us how we could get to the Lake of Forgetfulness?¡±


    ¡°Because it would have no meaning. It would not help you in any way.¡±


    ¡°How so?¡±


    ¡°Let me ask you instead.¡± The girl in black smiled. ¡°Do you know what the Lake of Forgetfulness even looks like?¡±


    ¡°No...¡±


    ¡°Then how will you recognize it, should you find it? Why are you so sure it in any way differs from a regular lake? That it¡¯s waters differ from regular waters? You and the other carry a great expectation that something will definitely happen when you reach it or return from it. What is it that should happen?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know but...¡±


    ¡°But there is a feeling that something should happen, right?¡± Mariann stopped her. ¡°What if that feeling itself is but an apparition? Maybe you have been to the lake a long time ago and what you are expecting to happen, happened a long time ago, without you being aware enough to notice it?¡±


    ¡°How could that be possible?¡±


    ¡°Every day, hundred and thousands of events take place which we are unable to notice at the time or give sense to at the correct time. We cannot give meaning to them. That¡¯s why hindsight is a precision science.¡±


    ¡°But still. You said that the Lake of Forgetfulness lies beyond your window.¡±


    ¡°Yes, I did. But that is a topic much more complicated.¡±


    Mariann took a deep sigh.


    ¡°Do you believe in winter?¡± She asked.


    ¡°What does that mean?¡± Kadri asked. ¡°What kind of question is that anyway?¡±


    ¡°A simple question. Do you believe in winter? You have been here in the Lost County doing things for some time now. When was the last time you saw snow?¡±


    ¡°Snow, that was...¡±


    Mariann kept staring at here expectantly.


    ¡°I think it was a few weeks ago when it fell and stayed for a few hours.¡±


    ¡°I am not speaking of morning sleet, I am speaking of snow. Biting cold weather, blowing snow, heavy snowfall, snowdrifts at least a meter in height. Of frozen lakes and rivers. When was the last time you saw that around these parts?¡±


    ¡°I cannot remember.¡± Kadri replied. ¡°But I am sure I have seen...¡±


    ¡°Are you though?¡± Mariann continued. ¡°Even if you cannot remember the year. Can you remember at least one winter you have spent here?¡±


    ¡°No.¡± She finally admitted. ¡°No I cannot.¡±


    ¡°Does that not seem strange to you?¡± Mariann asked. ¡°By the way, no other local can. I myself also can¡¯t. Not even from childhood. It seems that summer turns into fall and then back into summer, with the rest of the seasons having disappeared somewhere. I cannot even tell where the summer ends and the fall begins. One day feels like early summer, the next might feel like late fall, the third one like mid-summer.¡±


    The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    ¡°I haven¡¯t noticed that.¡± Kadri said. ¡°What does that have to do with the Lake of Forgetfulness?¡±


    ¡°In a place I sometimes spend my nights, there is a wall. In that wall, there is a small window. Behind that window lies the Lake of Forgetfulness. In wintertime.¡±


    ¡°In wintertime?¡±


    ¡°Yes. Behind the window there is frozen and dried grass under clumps of snow. And thick snow is slowly falling from the sky on a windless day. There is a few dozen meters of grassland until the forest and on top of the grass, water has accumulated and then frozen over.¡±


    ¡°And how do you know that the Lake of Forgetfulness lies there?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°Because it is not a lake in the common sense. It is not a lake, just a depression on a field, the water has gathered and frozen. What I can see from the window is but a small pond nearby, further away I can see a large field and a similar lake on top of it.¡±


    ¡°All that is visible through the window?¡±


    ¡°Yes.¡±


    ¡°But if you go to the same place outside where the window lies?¡±


    ¡°It cannot be gone to.¡± Mariann said. ¡°It cannot be found. There is no wall, there isn¡¯t even a window, never mind the grassland. You will see yourself when you get there.¡±


    ¡°What about opening the window? Or breaking it?¡±


    ¡°I do not want to take that risk.¡± Mariann replied. ¡°Because it may result in consequences more or less undesirable.¡±


    ¡°How so?¡±


    ¡°Option 1. It is not a window but a screen. I break it and I will no longer be able to see what it was showing me or how it was functioning. Option 2. It really is a window to a place that lies beyond the wall. This side of the window, there is plus 15 Celsius, on the other side, minus 15. Thus I would lose a cozy place of lodging until I get it repaired. Option 3. It is a window to somewhere that lies beyond the wall, but what lies beyond is not spatially connected to what lies on this side. There is a topological defect between them. What if breaking the window sets the topological defect into motion? And not towards what lies beyond the window but what lies on this side?¡±


    ¡°I am not getting it.¡± Kadri said.


    ¡°What lies on one side starts to overwrite what lies on the other. It may happen at a speed visible to one¡¯s eye. It may happen at the speed of light. Also, it is not clear what happens if a spatial defect meets with the living. Will it destroy it or will it let it continue existing in some grotesque form? Option 4. It looks like screen but is not. Maybe it really is a captured topological defect, a fold in space-time continuum. If I break it, only a wall will remain. The fold will collapse into regular space-time.¡±


    ¡°Where is that window located?¡± Kadri finally dared to asked.


    ¡°In the Underground Base. Several levels underground.¡±


    ¡°In the Underground Base? This very same one that is located next to the cottage district?¡±


    ¡°Yes.¡± Mariann nodded.


    ¡°And still you recommend that nobody goes there?¡±


    ¡°Because it is dangerous. There are some very specific times it is accessible. Sometimes one must wait days or weeks until one can enter or exit the place.¡±


    ¡°But you go there?¡±


    ¡°Not currently. Earlier I did, yes. The Underground Base is not spatially connected to this world. It is very much like another secretive facility under the cottage district. And the deeper levels of the Underground Base are currently nearing the apoapsis of their period. Meaning the furthest distance from Earth, or rather, our world. It also means there are times when one can enter or exit, but centuries may pass between them, while in periapsis, the duration may only be hours or days.¡±


    ¡°Then when would be a prudent time to go there?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°Maybe in 8 months. But without me it is not a safe thing to do.¡±


    ¡°So at the current time, one cannot get to the Underground Base at all?¡±


    ¡°Yes one can. The first 8 levels are open and accessible by car.¡±


    ¡°And the window you mentioned?¡±


    ¡°The 27<sup>th</sup> secret sublevel.¡±


    Kadri fell into thought. On the one hand, Mariann¡¯s explanation was absurd. But it was also absurd on the other hand. A window looking at the Lake of Forgetfulness 27 floors underground.


    ¡°Wait, you said that there is another secret base under the cottage district? Are these choppers here because of that?¡±


    ¡°They are indeed.¡± Mariann said. ¡°The secret base under the cottage district became accessible quite unexpectedly and the Russians put together a team of special forces operatives to explore it and perhaps even to retake control of it. But somebody got ahead of them. And that somebody did not want the Russians getting back their facility.¡±


    ¡°So a nighttime battle took place?¡± Kadri asked. ¡°And nobody woke up?¡±


    ¡°Not a soul.¡± The girl in black said. ¡°That¡¯s the peculiarity of falling asleep in the cottage district. In here, one can fall into an especially deep slumber.¡±


    ¡°It that because of the Death Fields? Or because of the underground base that lies underneath?¡±


    ¡°Not because of the base. Under here there is only one of the reserve gates into the base, the base itself is not. As you yourself well know, the Death Fields phenomenon only lasted a single year. People were evacuated, all harvest and plants were burned away. And the next year, everything was again fine as usual. It would be hard to believe that something that disperses into the air as the night falls has remained in plants to this day. But it cannot also be ruled out, some plant may indeed have muted back then in such a way that it assimilated some part of the poison and also pollinates as darkness falls.


    Nevertheless, it is a fact that for years now, those who fall asleep in the cottage district have a good but deep sleep, that is generally impossible to awaken from. That¡¯s why it also somewhat spectacular that you are awake.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s the reason you said that I will get a unique perspective?¡±


    ¡°Yes. Mainly due to that. But not exclusively. There are two other reasons. As we are generally used to being active during the day and sleeping during the night, instead being awake in the night nevertheless allows for a new perspective. That is not a feature exclusive to this place.¡±


    ¡°And the third reason?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°The heat. Lack of wind. This fall darkness that spreads all around us, instead of the almost daytime dusk that precedes the Midsummer Eve. That you cannot hear a single bird singing. Because usually dark nights like these are cool. And the wider streets of the cottage district get buried into the fog that is flows from the lake. This to gives a unique perspective. Like looking for midsummer beetles and fern flowers during Midsummer Eve.¡±


    ¡°Ferns have no flowers.¡± Kadri said.


    ¡°Why do you think that?¡± Mariann asked. ¡°Why is the Death Fields incident any more believable than flower of a fern?¡±


    ¡°You said spectacular.¡± Kadri changed the topic. ¡°You did not expect me to be awake? Were you expecting somebody else? I still have not received a clear response on why you are here.¡±


    ¡°You know why I¡¯m here.¡± Mariann said. ¡°I am here to read. I am here in hope of gaining a new understanding. All else is extraneous. Even incidental. Or a bonus. For example hoping that somebody wakes from the nighttime slumber of the cottage district. Or that somebody would come for the choppers that fell all those nights ago.¡±


    ¡°Who do you think would come?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°The Russians of course. Their hardware. The Men in Black and those Boys from the North driving their old cars with fins have no interest in Soviet junk, no matter how ahead of its time it it. No matter how mystical it is. Those Boys from the North are after a legacy far more mysterious and aged.¡±


    ¡°This is not the first night you are reading here, is it?¡± The girl asked.


    ¡°Nope.¡± Mariann said.


    ¡°You know why I awoke, don¡¯t you?¡± Kadri continued.


    ¡°I have an idea. For the most part, it might really be the heat. But there is something else as well. I think.¡±


    ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°It could be called a natural innate talent. Something in this talent finds nurture in this general area. Something in it allows you to stay active in this place, without being too much affected by the local peculiarities. Usually there is a distinction between locals and the foreigners. The local village folk do not find anything particularly strange or dangerous going on, while to strangers, everything is weird and the simplest of things may end up being dangerous. Your being would be some kind of third way of being. By now, you have already become a local, you are as safe as a local would be. But at the same time you are able to take a peek behind and under the surface function of things. To see what lies obscured.¡±


    ¡°Like you are seeing it?¡±


    ¡°Something along those lines. Have you seen the TV series Twin Peaks?¡±


    ¡°Maybe. In the house we are lodging in has stacks of video cassettes with recorded TV-shows. One of these may have been Twin Peaks.¡±


    ¡°Well, watch that. In the show there is a fat military officer working in some strange field. He goes to the forest with other characters and disappears. He reappears several days later, and will tell nobody what happened to him. Quite usual, right? But his superior says that the man has been bless by nature with a navigational hardware others can only dream of.¡±


    ¡°And where does he navigate with that?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°That is not said. But what is implied is the mythology of the series and various spirit worlds. Just like navigating visions caused by psychotropic substances, which may not necessarily be visions. Instead they might be the capacity of the mind to travel to other dimensions which are not necessarily physical.¡±


    ¡°And you think I have the same capacity?¡±


    ¡°Not the same capacity. A similar capacity. A comparable capacity. Because our world is real, at least to us. And as we have seen, despite it being real there are similar forces hidden in this world of ours, similar mysteries. Only that they follow different rules, rules much more complicated than in somebody¡¯s work of fiction. As you woke up in the night, in a situation where most other locals and strangers would stay asleep, there is something in you that is lacking in them. Something in you reacted. Now you must figure out what it was and what it reacted to. And start training this ability.¡±


    ¡°And how would I do it?¡±


    ¡°I cannot tell you that. Follow your intuition and make sense according to that. That¡¯s what piloting and navigating by intuition is all about, doesn¡¯t matter if it happens in phantasmal trips caused by lysergic acid or while clearheaded. I can tell you that the door is already ajar. Maybe your yourself don¡¯t have to make any proactive move for the door to continue opening, slowly but surely. Whether you want it or not, you will start to see and understand. And then you¡¯ll start looking for explanations, building theories, to get answers to.¡±


    ¡°Like you?¡±


    ¡°I am doing my own thing.¡± Mariann smiled. ¡°Knowingly emulating somebody may help you in the beginning. But an unknowing emulation may cause a lot of damage fast. But yes, to somebody looking at it from the sidelines in the future, it may seem that the two of us operate in much the same way.¡±


    Kadri kept silent for several minutes, trying to not only make sense of her conversation with the girl in black in front of her but also to remember everything she had learned thus far. This allowed Mariann to peek at her book again and advance a few paragraphs.


    ¡°But still. How do you know? That the thing beyond the window on that 27<sup>th</sup> secret sublevel is truly the Lake of Forgetfulness?¡±


    ¡°It is not something I know. It it somewhat of an opinion I have arrived to, because it feels correct. There are many things and places which can be seen as the Lake of Forgetfulness. And who said that there is only one singular Lake of Forgetfulness? Also at the same time, who told you that there are a multitude of Lakes of Forgetfulness?¡±


    ¡°There¡¯s again a theory you have about this?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°Yes. And this is a thought I just found on my mind. On an evening not as hot as this I met with you and your friends and told you how the Lake of Forgetfulness is located by the Fourth Route. Because by the Fourth Route there is the bar at the end of the world. And one can get to the Lake through the back door of the bar.¡±


    ¡°I remember.¡± Kadri said.


    ¡°But in a similar way, the lakes of Peipus, Tyoploye and Pskovskoe can be seen as a Lake of Forgetfulness when it gets cold and the lakes freeze over. It is quite possible to go on the endless frozen and foggy lake at nighttime and become lost forever. Or the opposite, to reach the port of Valgepal? by morning, freezing and tired to death. Having started one¡¯s journey from a place completely different, maybe some small town which does not lie on the same maps as our county. As a curious side note, if you look at the map, the Lake Peipus is about the size of a county as well.¡±


    ¡°Meaning¡­?¡±


    ¡°Meaning, if we return to my previous thought. What if the Lake of Forgetfulness is a topological defect in space-time continuum. And not an artificial defect like the space-time here which has been twisted out of it¡¯s proper shape and some bogs and forests are dangerous to body or spirit, but instead a natural one. And it doesn¡¯t exist in our three-dimensional space but instead in a space with more dimensions. Maybe in that higher-dimensional space it is not a defect at all. And the Lakes of Forgetfulness we are familiar with are but surface waves both in time and space.¡±


    ¡°You mean to tell me that the Lake of Forgetfulness is merely an illusion?¡±


    ¡°Not that. Surface wave is not an illusion. Throw a stone into water and you see waves, right? In windy weather you can also see waves, but you cannot see the wind itself. Same with the Lake of Forgetfulness. It is a surface phenomenon, a consequence. The cause of which is very hard if not impossible to guess, especially because we do not have any experience based on which to make conclusions that reach back into these higher dimensions.¡±


    ¡°So that the place we once reached my have really been the Lake of Forgetfulness, or rather the surface waves of it.¡± Kadri mused.


    ¡°It may have.¡± Mariann agreed. ¡°No matter how much I dislike admitting it. But also, do you see the other answer hidden within this?¡±


    ¡°What answer?¡±


    ¡°Why nothing happened. And the answer would be that you only visited the edge of it. You only looked at it. You did not interfere with it, you did not touch it in a way that would cause it to react to you and result in something noticeable or remarkable. And that¡¯s why your thoughts are full of emptiness and regret that something should have happened, something you could assign meaning to or at least sense.¡±


    ¡°But maybe you are wrong.¡± Kadri said. ¡°Maybe something did happen. Maybe we touched it to a sufficient degree. Because we did not start our journey to the Lake from this world. I am pretty sure we started it from a different one, the maps of which have no sign of Nameless Town on them, never mind Valgepal?.¡±


    ¡°That is an interesting way to make sense of things.¡± Mariann said. ¡°And brings us back to the beginning.¡±


    ¡°That making contact with the Lake of Forgetfulness is not necessarily something that can be experienced in the present with one¡¯s five senses. Only to interpret and to attempt to make sense of in hindsight.¡±


    ¡°It would seem the night heat has had a positive effect on you.¡± Mariann smiled.


    Suddenly Kadri heard a strange noise. At first it was barely audible but but slowly grew louder and louder, ending up as almost deafening ruckus in otherwise deathly silent cottage district. A low rotating noise of some machine.


    ¡°What the hell is that?¡± She asked.


    ¡°Sounds like the motor of a diesel engine doing about a 150 revolutions per minute.¡±


    ¡°A train? Where in here could it come to?¡± Kadri felt confused. ¡°There are no rails anywhere near here. Or is it going to the Underground Base?¡±


    ¡°No, it is coming here.¡± Mariann said. ¡°The rail line to the Underground Base runes on the other side. Maybe you haven¡¯t noticed yet, but directly North from the cottage district lie large open fields, right?¡±


    ¡°Right...¡± Kadri agree, still unsure.


    ¡°But before the fields begin, there is a strip of forest maybe two dozen meters wide. The rail line is hidden inside this strip of forest, under dried brush and grass. That¡¯s why the train has to arrive so slow as to not run off the rails. And before getting anywhere near the cottage district and the forest, the rail line is hidden in tall grass. For some reason they needed to hide a functional rail line that runs here, so instead of building a railway dam 4 meters high, they excavated enough earth to hide the dam on the surface level.¡±


    As they spoke, the train came nearer and nearer until finally between the buildings they could see a glimpse of a large yet dim light set into the nose of the train engine. The light emitted by the light seemed to dissipate into the night completely, offering no illumination whatsoever.


    ¡°That¡¯s some kind of signal light, right?¡± Kadri asked. ¡°So this train is so secretive that they don¡¯t even want to illuminate what lies ahead of the engine?¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s the searchlight at full power.¡± Mariann replied. ¡°The engine and the light on it are alien to this region and thus the light is not able to illuminate much. And even if the engine and the light are not alien, as there are always some ready to use engines hidden in the Train Yard, it driving here, on these otherwise disused hidden rails, is something alien to this world.¡±


    Kadri rose her gaze at the orange yet cold Soviet era gas discharge lamp. She then looked at the small incandescent bulb on the small light clipped to the edge of the windscreen, still illuminating the red interior of the car.


    ¡°I know what you¡¯re thinking.¡± Mariann said. ¡°This is the best explanation I can give you. Wanna come see what they¡¯re doing?¡±


    ¡°You know why they are here, don¡¯t you?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°As I said in the beginning. It is a hot and windless night. And almost all inhabitants of the cottage district are slumbering in such depths that they might as well be dead. Meaning this is the best time to come and recover the chopper wreckages. You know that large empty plot opposite the post office, right? Where there is a rectangular mound which looks like a foundation for a tower for high tension lines.¡±


    ¡°I do.¡±


    ¡°In reality, this is not the foundation of a mast but instead a loading ramp hidden in plain sight to deal with one cart at a time.¡±


    Suddenly, the train stopped and stood there for a few minutes. Then the engine pitch rose slightly and several powerful spotlights ignited.


    At the same time, several pairs of yellow headlights started approaching from the opposite direction. These too did not do much to illuminate the dark night, rather they allowed the people in convoy to understand where the next vehicle was positioned ahead. At this distance the only thing Kadri could be certain about was the middle vehicle being really wide compared to the other ones. It only took a few minutes for the convoy to reach them, which allowed Kadri to see that she had been correct, more or less.


    The convoy was made out of five cars. Two UAZ willy¡¯s offroad cars, two black Volgas and a long rectangular ZIL state limo. This one stopped right next to Mariann and her red car. With the quiet hush of compressed air, the window on the rear door rolled down.


    In the car there sat a man in his sixties, with a gray eyebrows and a light beard, wearing a Soviet army officer¡¯s hat with a sharp rigid visor and edges.


    ¡°Mariann.¡± The man said instead of a greeting.


    ¡°Hello-hello, comrade Voronov.¡± Mariann replied. ¡°I think that¡¯s the way you prefer to be referred to?¡±


    ¡°General Voronov.¡± The man said. ¡°But you can address me as you please. You know why I am here, right?¡±


    ¡°You came for your choppers.¡±


    ¡°Exactly. And I hope for your kind permission to do it.¡±


    ¡°Be my guest. Just be gone by morning.¡±


    The general nodded, the window on the car rolled up again and the convoy continued onward.


    All the while this exchange took place Kadri stood silent and dumbfounded. The whole conversation contained so much that was dreamlike in it¡¯s incomprehensibility, that she couldn¡¯t even start anywhere to make sense of it.


    Starting with the fact that a general of the Soviet, or rather the currently Russian army speaks fluent Estonian without any accent. But what made it even more weird was the frivolity with which Mariann replied to him. As if it was no experienced army officer in charge of massive military power but instead a local drunk looking to exchange labor for some vodka. And then that last straw. How the general did not talk to Mariann like normal local nor even as an equal but a superior to oneself, Carefully and respectfully to not aggravate her. As a possessor of an unknown yet most certainly terrible power. As a¡­ demigod. Or a witch.


    ¡°What is it?¡± Mariann asked.


    ¡°Nothing.¡± Kadri said. ¡°I just fell into thoughts for a moment.¡±


    She looked how many more powerful spotlight now lit up and the boom of a crane started to stretch above the roofs of the buildings. Atop of the boom there was another spotlight.


    ¡°Go ahead and see how they are lifting the helicopters onto the train.¡± Mariann said. ¡°Might be interesting.¡±


    ¡°I think they don¡¯t want extraneous people there.¡± Kadri said.


    Mariann shut off the light attached to the windscreen and then threw the light onto the rear seat along with the book. Then sitting on the driver seat. With a low rumble, the engine on that massive car came alive and soon the sweet smell of partially burnt hydrocarbons surrounded the car.


    ¡°You¡¯re leaving?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°Yes. I figured they might come tonight. At the same time they case so much nose with their activity that I¡¯d rather go read somewhere else. Wanna come with?¡±


    ¡°Better not.¡± Kadri said. ¡°It is late. Maybe now I can fall asleep.¡±


    ¡°In that case sweet dreams. I hope.¡± Mariann said and took off.


    Kadri gave a last glance at the boom stretching above the buildings and then turned around to head back to her lodgings.

 XXXIII - Allan Helde II - Interviewing Agent Toomas

    ¡°This place has it own Force. Indeed, Force would be the correct word. It is difficult to use any other word to describe it. It is everywhere. In towns and in the forest. On the fields, in air and land. The locals have been soaked through and through with this Force. They are either given it along as they are born or it seeps into them during childhood. And the locals notice nothing. For them, life is ordinary. Nothing special really. And the greatest danger in the forest is a mother wolf or a mother bear with cubs.


    Of course, one could see all sorts of things in the forest. Things that are weird, unexplainable or even frightening. Even the old folk has collected hundreds and perhaps thousands of tales from every corner of the country, maybe even more from the big wide world. But these errant experiences and apparitions are never truly dangerous. They haven¡¯t been in the past and they aren¡¯t in the present. A whole other matter concerns one actively going to look for or invoking something dangerous, but that¡¯s a story much longer and more complicated.¡±


    Allan Helde had held his show on the radio of the Nameless Town for years now. Even before the local tradesman fixed the phonographs and one could again play music off vinyl records. Hearing this, the locals had even arranged a collection and gathered most surviving vinyl records to populate the record library so Allan could play them on the air as often as possible. And during those years of presenting his show, Allan Helde has come to a vision how best to hold interviews and later put them on the air.


    ¡°However in those not from here, there is none of that Force. And they do see that something is wrong. Something unexplainable. The air is different. The earth is different. Everywhere where there are people, it is safe. Where there are no people it is not safe. Not even during daytime, never mind nights. On abandoned fields people lose their sense of direction. It is possible to get lost in the forest. The roads sometimes lead to places other than those marked onto the maps. In some places, which seem to move in time, there is no fauna. No sounds of birds, no insects, not even ants and beetles between plants. Never mind cottage districts, bases and blocks and blocks of barracks.


    ¡°This is the reason the Russians, all the while they were here, behaved strangely. They had been given orders from up high that they should live in their parallel worlds. Their own base, their own campuses, their own barracks. For safety reasons, contact with the locals was kept to a minimum. Although it was similar everywhere, here there was an insurmountable bay between them and the locals, instead of some small divide. Even if a simple soldiers sitting on a lower rung had no idea at first, they would quickly learn that the locals were somehow different.


    ¡°The superiors knew of course. They most certainly did. The were aware of both the Force as well as that the world here was strange. And that the world had been strange long before they had arrived here and established themselves. Partially this was the reason to come here. In Russia there were also place where the world was strange, but all these places were so far from all civilizations and also each other that alternatives were taken under consideration.


    ¡°However when they finally arrived, they discovered that something was different. Similar regions in their own country did not tolerate humankind. It didn¡¯t matter whether it was a person from some other extent of the Soviet Union or a local Joe who had gone hunting in the forest, both were in equal amount of danger that they would be lost forever, or at the very least for a long period of time. Or they would return scared out of their mind with no memory what had happened. But here things were different. For the Russians it was dangerous here, especially at night. But for the locals all was normal.


    ¡°That¡¯s the strangest. There was an old story I found that during the fifties, some village Joe went into the forest to gather some mushrooms. He happened to get too close to the base area and was detained by two soldiers on a patrol. They started to drag him towards the nearest guard post when suddenly the soldiers were gone. As the villager had learned as a young kid that strange things might happen in the forest, he simply went home. The next morning he was awoken by a militsiya officer accompanied by agents of the local KGB, who wanted to know why and even more how he had given a slip to the base soldiers. According to them, they had been dragging the man towards their sentry post when their attention was directed to something else and then they realized that the villager was gone.


    ¡°This was something that on the one hand they could never understand, and on the other hand the locals could not understand. That for the locals, night was night as usual, darkness was the lack of light. But for the Russians, darkness was like a substance unto its own, like a dark invisible fog, which was able to disperse the light of the most powerful spotlights and make them totally useless. But the locals had no need for powerful searchlights or even ordinary flashlights. A candle or an oil lantern was often enough. A moonlit night was enough. Even cloudy or rainy fall or winter nights were not pitch dark.


    ¡°This reminds me of a story Igor Volke once collected, but which has always felt too unbelievable to publish. Sometime in the eighties, a local guy was employed at Luiga. Usually, locals only came to the hospital for medical tests, but since he had been a combat medic in Afganistan, he was considered valuable. Well, he finished his evening shift and handed it over to his colleague when the latter wanted to go to the restroom. The guy thought that extending his watch fifteen minutes off the clock was not a big deal and agreed. As the colleague was away, he decided to have a smoke. Since it was strictly prohibited to smoke in the building, he closed the office door, shut the light and opened the window. Now, either at that moment he did not remember or he never knew it at all, but opening any windows during the night was prohibited even more more strictly than smoking. But at that moment the young man was not thinking about it. It had just been raining and the after rain freshness was something to be experienced. So that¡¯s what he did.


    ¡°Almost at the same time, one of the night shift doctors passed the hallway. He saw that the door to the sentry room was closed, the light off, and the small window in the door black as coal. Opening the door, they found the room so dark that he could see neither the walls nor the floor. He could only sense cool fresh air and see how, despite the bright lights, the hallway was now getting dim. He tried the light switch by the door, but clicking it made no different. Through the dark substance they could see some distant dim source of light turning on and off but that was all. Naturally the doctor sounded the alarm and in a few months several strong orderlies, head doctor of the night shift and even the soldiers guarding the hospital were present.


    ¡°By that time, the colleague was also back from the head and he was ordered to remain at the door, clicking the light on and off. As the hospital had prepare for such events, the soldiers rolled a huge electric spotlight to the doorway which was so wide as to barely fit in it. This was connected straight to the industrial outlet. The searchlight came on, blinding everybody but within a few seconds, its light output decreased to a level of a small incandescent flashlight. In the hallway, the light blinded everybody, in the room, it illuminated nothing,


    ¡°The witness reports all say the same thing: the head doctor, the orderlies and the soldiers searched the room for fifteen minutes, finding nothing. No smoking young man, no open window, not even way back to leave the office. Never mind that once anybody entered the barely 15 square meter room, they lost all contact with other people. Not even yelling in a loud voice was of any use.¡±


    ¡°And then what happened?¡± Allan Helde asked.


    ¡°The account of the young man who had smoked was even more interesting. He wrote that he had just lit the cigarette when he heard the alarm, but as it was faint and full of echo, he thought it was in some other section and he could continue smoking in peace. All this time the window was open and he did not see no orderlies, soldiers nor the head doctor. He heard nothing but the faint wind outside and the rain dripping from the eaves.


    ¡°When he had finished his cigarette, he closed the window and started towards the doorway to switch on the light. However suddenly somebody did it for him and scared him half to death. Suddenly the light was on, the searchlight made him blind, and the room was full of people, some of whom where directing their assault rifles at him. Despite the interrogations lasting for a few weeks, this was his final account and it did not change even if he was threatened with being shot or when his family members were threatened.¡±


    ¡°That is quite a story.¡± Allan said.


    ¡°Indeed.¡± Toomas agreed. ¡°The other thing that the Russians never understood was how the Force became part of people. Reportedly that was the true reason for building a new wing in Luiga, to research into that under the guise of routine medical checkups. How was it possible for the locals that everything was fine? How was it possible that the Estonians, Latvians and even borderside Russians brought here, at first they were like the military men. The had no Force. But as they lived, worked and acted here among people, the Force was also infused into them. Maybe to a lesser extent than for locals, but it had.


    And that indeed was the crux that the military never realized. The Russians did not interact with the locals much. They had their own barracks, their own bases, their own construction and scientific facilities, their own officer¡¯s village. The only thing they had in common was that their food was sourced from the local kolkhoz. But that was definitely not enough.


    And to be honest, I think we see this kind of infusion or possession by the Force today as well. Just like one of the Village Hags told a few shows ago about the strange young people who have brought along their weird cars and weird music, which seems to originate as if from the childhood dreams of those same old folks.¡±


    ¡°And you as well.¡± Allan said.


    ¡°And me as well.¡± Agent Toomas agreed. ¡°I am not a local, but also I am no longer a stranger. People have accepted the me-me-me, and it would seem the Force as well.¡±


    ¡°Me-me-me? That is a deliberate term, right? And not a some speech impediment?¡±


    ¡°Yes. Me-me-me is a trinity of subjective being. At first it was only a theory of mine, but the longer I have spent looking it to stuff in this place, the more it seems to me that it is also correct in practice.¡±


    Toomas fell silent for a few moments and Allan gave him a nod for him to continue elaborating on it.


    ¡°The first ¡®me¡¯ is an aware me. My thinking, a mental field built on my five senses. We think that our senses feel the world in it¡¯s full entirety, but really we experience only a small section of it. If the force had not accepted this me, my experience would not be dissimilar from the Russian¡¯s experience in that Luiga case.


    ¡°The second me is the physical me. My body, my senses and brain as physical organs.


    ¡°The third me could be considered as something metaphysical. In could be seen as a path or trail left behind onto some metaphysical dimensional field by my existence, being, moving and activities. Influences I leave behind on the world and other people. You and the other villagers experience me as a regular person, right? And not as a dream, a phantasm, an apparition or a witch. My research has shown that this is not universal.


    ¡°Some people who have arrived here from outside are not in the same positions as the others, both locals and the newcomers. They are not able to associate with the locals regularly, and under the same conditions as the rest. They walk the same streets, frequent the same locales, but nobody sees them in real life, nobody remembers them. Their influence upon the world is not permanent but fades before anybody even notices it.¡±


    ¡°That is an unexpected detail.¡± Allan said. ¡°Are you meaning to tell our listeners that there are people in the Nameless Town, whom we do not see as people, because they do not have enough force within them and the world is not letting us see or treat them as people?¡±


    ¡°Yes, exactly. He may stand right beside you. He may visit your radio talk show, the interview may even be aired and in the best of cases even a recording maybe left behind. But you will not remember it. And if that wasn¡¯t enough, the accounts of the listeners who heard the transmission also diverge concerning when he was on the radio, who he was and when the show took place. Maybe radically.¡±


    ¡°May this also be the reason why I recently had a strange occurrence with one of my radio guests?¡±


    ¡°I wanted to get to that. This is the one strange thing I have not yet understood. There is also another scale by which the difference of Force in people may differ. Some people may have much more of it than others, on average. More than other locals. And it seems to be something to be attained knowingly and deliberately.¡±


    ¡°Like that girl in black?¡± Allan asked.


    ¡°Yes. Marianne was her name, I guess.¡± Toomas said.


    You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.


    ¡°But continuing on this Force, have you personally experienced it?¡±


    ¡°I have. I am one of those people who formerly had none of this force within me, but by now it has imbued itself within me. When I came here at first, I was a stranger. I started to feel it long before I even got here, when crossing the county line. Or it may have even been the old parish line.


    ¡°In any case, I felt it already on the road. At one moment, the concrete was replaced with macadam. Dark night without a single source of light grew even darker, it developed a pressure. Headlights which had illuminated the road far ahead, almost to the next turn, were now suddenly useless, showing barely 30 meters ahead on the road. But there was no fog, rather, it felt like the headlights of the car had suddenly become covered with something that had a quality of diffusing the light. Just like in that story I later remembered and finally understood.


    ¡°I even felt the change in the forest around me. It was no longer just a dark nighttime forest. Instead it had become something terrifying, something scary. A place one should never venture into. My apprehensions started to lift only as I finally glimpsed the lights of the Nameless Town and that radio tower.¡±


    ¡°And already the next day after arriving, you went to the Forbidden Forest?¡±


    ¡°Yes. But the Forbidden Forest is much less consternating compared to the other forests surrounding this place. Maybe some kind of turning or an inversion has taken place as time went by.¡±


    ¡°In what sense?¡± Allan asked.


    ¡°Turning in a sense that during the Soviet Era, the forests were full of Russians and their bases. At the same time, the forest and the mysteries within were most dangerous for the Russians themselves. At the same time, the locals did not see it like it. To them, the Forbidden Forest was forbidden mostly because of the occupying force within.¡±


    ¡°But is it also not that the forest also turned dangerous for the locals?¡± Allan asked. ¡°Partly because of the evil which started nesting inside the forest, as if it had taken possession of it. But on the other hand also because to fight evil the forest had to become evil and dangerous?¡±


    ¡°The way Marianne makes sense of things often surprises and captivates me. But I am not able to relate to such an intuitive or even mythological way of sensing the world. Personification of things and phenomena, mixing magic and mythology with para-scientific technology.¡±


    ¡°Are you saying that Mariann is wrong?¡±


    ¡°Not that. But her way of giving meaning is different.¡±


    ¡°But, you too said that the forest is consternating and frightening. Is that also not personification?¡±


    ¡°No. The forest is not a conscious actor here. It just is. And a feeling a rises within me. Maybe a similar feeling has also risen in other people and I am trying to make sense of why that is. But as I said before, the Forbidden Forest was forbidden because of the occupying power within it. And later it continued to be forbidden because although the foreign power had left, all their garbage still remained. But that is all they left behind.


    ¡°But if we are talking about the other forests, then that¡¯s a completely different story. The Russians did not just leave behind their garbage, ruins, and a defiled landscape but also some kind of bad energy. Bad aura. Something that has slowly grown and mutated, threatening both the Russians and others. And this is not just some aetherial or spiritual aura. Marianne has repeatedly said that the world is twisted out of shape. That the Russians built not only nuclear missile bases and secret air fields but also research laboratories which tried to research all the unexplainable and unscientific with scientific methods, as well as influence and make use of it. Thus the blackened energy in the forests is not just spiritual and organic but also technological.


    ¡°I cannot make any guesses by which mechanism such a spirit has made it into nature. Did nature record all of it? Did the experiments the Russians carried out on the proper order of the world break something and open a gate for the transference of such energy? Or did their experiments awaken something which had been slumbering all this time? In any case, it is a fact that before their arrival, the forests were relatively mundane.¡±


    ¡°So the Forbidden Forest is somehow special?¡±


    ¡°Undoubtedly. When I think back to my interviews with the village folk, then the Forbidden Forest was not forbidden to the adults. It was forbidden to the children and the strangers. To the new and inexperienced. The old could gather berries and mushrooms with little worry, unafraid of anything. Other than the barbed wire fence of the military base of course.¡±


    ¡°I too have heard it.¡± Allan agreed. ¡°I was also told during childhood that I must never go to the Forbidden Forest. Not during the day, not in the night. But nobody never said why. Now, when I am older, nobody has still explained why. There is clearly some chasm between generations here. Usually the old folks knew the most, but with the war, occupation and deportations the villages were emptied, the oldest and the wisest often had the frailest health and they died without passing on their knowledge. The young of that era only knew disjointed stories from childhood and there is nothing practical left to be passed on to us and to people even younger.¡±


    ¡°I agree that some kind of information has not been handed over from one generation to the next. And maybe it hasn¡¯t even been acquired. Because One can still find people who were middle-aged in the 1930s and managed to survive the deportations because the powers that be considered their families meaningless. Our own village hags, for example. For decades they have told their tales but nobody listens. Maybe only those few who knit these stories into that rock music of theirs.¡±


    ¡°What you are saying is quite interesting, especially considering that more than one of those village hags I have asked to join my show for an interview has asked one of those songs of honestly deafening music to be played. And when they and the audience have finished listening to it, then they start with their tales, as if the music or the lyrics growled has knocked some memories loose.¡±


    ¡°Exactly! But those interviews of mine reveal something else that you and your listeners may not be aware of.¡± Toomas said.


    ¡°The Forbidden Forest is not at all some big or thick forest. Only about 2 kilometers across, diagonally. A field on one side, military bases on two other sides, and a bog on the third. But if one were to believe old village grandmas there are numerous secret places hidden within said forest. And also dozens upon dozens of stories how some villager or an acquaintance of said villager has said something strange in the forest. I think I gathered like 40 such stories. One more surprising than the previous. In addition to that, the things I have seen for myself.¡±


    ¡°I am also familiar with those stories, although I have not focused on them as deeply.¡± Allan said. ¡°However as much as I can remember, everybody who had something strange happen to them also survived the event. No person has died because of such an event. None have also become lost in the forest or frozen off their fingers, toes, hands or feet.¡±


    ¡°That is true. Although some have met their end later. But those few usually brought something they shouldn¡¯t have along from the forest. Be it an unexploded artillery shell, or strange metals vats or cans lying on the forest floor. And I also have a theory why that is.¡±


    ¡°I and all my listeners are waiting expectantly.¡±


    ¡°I think there is a third force hidden in the Forbidden Forest. That force has shown people all those strange things or has at least made it possible for the people to see them. And this force wants no ill to come to people. I think this same force has also protected the forest fro the dark energy the Russians left behind here or brought to life here. It has been a hard and prolonged fight, but this unknown force is winning the war. This force is indeed so powerful that it not only resists that old dark power nesting in other forests but also that newer dark power, carried by those men in those impeccable black cars and suits.¡±


    ¡°You are talking about those strange men in black, right? Those that the locals call the Slick Boys from the North?¡±


    ¡°Yes. And they are not ¡®just like¡¯ the Men in Black. They seem to be the most genuine Men in Black I have ever seen. Stiff and emotionless, with piercing eyes and strange gait, not even mentioning their clumsy moves.¡±


    ¡°And these theories are by Igor Volke?¡± Allan asked. ¡°Because what you are talking about sounds a few degrees more extreme that what he has written about in his books and articles.¡±


    ¡°They are part Volke¡¯s theories, part my own.¡± Toomas admitted. ¡°But the original source interviews have been collected by him. However before I came here, we thought all these stories sounded a little too god to be true, like a really really good artificial mythology. But now...¡±


    ¡°Why isn¡¯t Igor Volke himself coming here to gather and analyze people¡¯s accounts?¡± Allan asked. ¡°And are you here as his replacement?¡±


    ¡°No there is nothing official like this in here. And if you ask why am I here and not him? Because I wanted to come. Me and Volke, we work with the same materials, just that his conclusions are a lot more reserved than mine. On the other hand, he thinks I am too naive, and tend to interpret the facts in such a way as to invent my own story.¡±


    ¡°And is he right?¡± Allan asked.


    ¡°Honestly? Yes. But that¡¯s in the past. That was the right opinion up until I crossed to border into the Lost County.¡±


    ¡°But still. Why isn¡¯t Volke himself coming here? His decades of experience in researching unexplainable atmospheric phenomena could be put to lots of use.¡±


    ¡°It could.¡± Toomas agreed. ¡°But that would not be enough. I am of position that what¡¯s going on here is much more complicated and intricate than just UFOs. This requires a different experience and a different approach. And concerning why Igor Volke himself does not come here¡­ I think he is afraid.¡±


    ¡°He¡¯s afraid?¡± What is there to be afraid in the Nameless Town?¡±


    ¡°That should he come here he will not want to leave. Or he will not be able to leave. Life outside the Lost County is different than within it. People are different. They are always busy, they never have time. There is always something that needs doing. They want to travel and see the world. To go everywhere. But not here. The people here are content with their lives. This could be seen as something that is wrong with people, and lots of places outside also share that vision. But it could also be seen as something that is right with people. And that is something to be fearful of.¡±


    ¡°Then outside, in the so-called Big World, they have such an understanding of our little corner of the world here? A skewed understanding like that?¡± Allan asked.


    ¡°I agree that this is strange. Strange, when looking at it from this side as well as the side over there. But this too has a reason. During the years hundreds of people have gone towards the Lost County. All of them have become lost, none have returned. Where are they then? I refuse to believe that across Tontla, the Nameless Town and Valgepal? there are a total of a thousand people who have immigrated here. Some rare one have returned too, but they have had nothing useful to say. Not about how life goes on in this place not about how they got here or how they left. And that lack of knowledge is scary.¡±


    ¡°So, you say that nobody has left the Lost County?¡± Allan asked.


    ¡°I did not say that.¡± Toomas replied. ¡°Don¡¯t many people drive big old foreign cars? The likes of which neither the kolkhoz premiers nor members of the Politburo had access to. Some of the younger folk have visited the North, usually to bring newer cars for themselves. Sometimes one doesn¡¯t even have to go that far to do it. I think Marianne has often gone outside and come back. However those that visit the outside world don¡¯t usually give notice of themselves. They also do not share with others what they have done or seen in the external world.¡±


    ¡°But tell us, how did you get here?¡± Allan asked.


    ¡°I drove. Along a country route. From the outside, the Lost County looks a little like a black hole. It means that people who come here are considered lost when looking at it from the outside. But there are plenty of those who have come close to the border, slid along it, and then escaped it¡¯s pull and managed to get away. There was a couple like that who remembered what happened to them, where and when it happened. They directed me to a three kilometer section of an old railway dam in the middle of the forests. The rails had long since been removed and the dam had been made into a hiking path. But if one were to drive on that dam at night, at the right time and at the right speed, then it was possible that for a few moments, rails would reappear under the car wheels and then also disappear. And it did not happen on a single night only. It happened on several nights in a row. And when one returned to the same place during daytime, or even when one walked that section during the night, one could not find the smallest sign of the rails or the railroad ties there. Nothing that would have made steering the car impossible.¡±


    ¡°So you drove along the dam and stopped when the rails appeared on the dam?¡± Allan asked.


    ¡°Nope. Because along with the rails, the train also appeared on the dam, and I drove the car off the dam into a swampy forest. When I got out of the car and climbed back onto the dam, the rails were still there. I think my car is still there, stuck in mud beside the dam.¡±


    ¡°And where is such a rail road dam located? If you can reveal this at all.¡±


    ¡°In Valgej?rve bog, near Valga.¡±


    ¡°In our show today you have cast light on many interesting things. Are you not afraid that it could damage you and your efforts in some way? Or bring danger to you from the Men in Black, Mariann or even mr. Volke himself?¡±


    ¡°It is possible, but I do not believe it for some reason. What I do believe is that if I said something people should not hear then that part of the conversation will be lost as noise in the radio signal and it will also not be recorded onto the tapes.¡±


    ¡°Would such a thing also be connected with the Force you mentioned before? When you talked about the trinity of being?¡±


    ¡°No, not with the Force. The Force is something different, something natural. It is possible that nothing happens. But if something does, then that gives right to another errant thought which may even turn out to be true.¡±


    ¡°And that would be?¡± Allan asked.


    ¡°That there exists another force which does not want the information how the Lost County looks from the outside or how the Big World relates to us to propagate. Marianne has most certainly talked about how there are no proper maps which have both our lost county and the external world marked on it. This may be deliberate and not incidental. And Marianne must certainly have her own theories why this is.


    ¡°The ¡°Lost County¡± itself however is also a designation originating from the external world. Because form somewhere, there appeared documents and incomplete maps which pointed to the land of Pechori, but also not quite. But I am not an expert in that, I think Marianne would be a much better a person to invite to the studio.¡±


    ¡°I will take it under consideration. But, Toomas, I thank you for coming to my studio. It was very interesting to hear ideas about our region that are a little closer to science and the common knowledge of the land folk. But also the vision of a person that has come from outside this place and that people there too are seriously looking into what is going on in here. I thank you again, Toomas.¡±


    ¡°And now, my listeners, some music.¡±


    Agent Toomas took of his headphones and the microphone. He then got up.


    ¡°I think we should continue this conversation at some time.¡± Allan Helde said. ¡°After that girl in black, Mariann, has also been to the studio. Maybe also after the Mayor and the rest have revealed what happened at the witch.¡±


    ¡°Certainly.¡± Toomas agreed. ¡°I also have to continue my research. So we would have something to talk about.¡±


    ¡°Very good. Let¡¯s wait for a few months then and discuss it again.¡±


    Toomas left the studio and soon found himself in a cool and cloudless summer night. Only faint wind wandered the derelict streets.


    Then suddenly he heard the words that made him flinch. And not only that. He had been certain that he was alone, but those words and that voice immediately chilled him to the core.


    ¡°Wa-wa-wa-what?!¡± he asked.


    ¡°I said that you should be careful.¡± The girl in black said, as she leaned against a concrete post near the entrance. ¡°With what you say and share in the open.¡±


    ¡°Why?¡±


    ¡°Because I have been where you are. I have known unbelievable things, unable to contain myself with revealing the truth. Believe me, you do not want to be in my place. It is a bit like Cassandra¡¯s Nightmare. You know the truth, but nobody believes your truth. You do not have the language to say it out in it¡¯s complete entirety. You have to skirt it in short sections while speaking in riddles that others would not end up in your position.¡±


    ¡°Are you saying that this is why you have these stories and theories? That¡¯s why you are not telling the straight truth about why and how things have ended up like this?!¡±


    ¡°I do not want to say anything that I am not saying straight up.¡± The girl replied. ¡°That is just a friendly recommendation. You can ignore it. Honestly I would have nothing against having an assistant, to whom I don¡¯t have explain things as if I was a witch. Then maybe we could actually do something about what¡¯s going on, and not just document things in our stories. In the end, the decision is yours. And one other thing. My name is Mariann. Not Marianne. ¡®Night.¡±


    Toomas looked on how the girl in black pushed herself away from the post and then started calmly walking down the street towards the West until he could no longer see her in the dark.

 XXXIV - Before Meeting the WItch III

    ¡°...instead my words are actively creating this world, they are changing it, affecting how things really are. That would be witchery.¡±


    ¡°That would be God.¡± Allan said.


    ¡°God or witchcraft, same difference. As we already know, the country folk has little belief in God.¡±


    ¡°I would like to direct our conversation to another topic. Before I invite each guest to my show, I do a little background check about them. One never knows, maybe there are some interesting past events about them we could talk about. Thus I have done such checking about you too. With regards to that, I have a question I simply cannot put aside.¡±


    ¡°Well then ask. This is one of the reasons I am here, is it not?¡± Mariann said.


    ¡°You are the daughter of Teet Metsla, are you not?¡±


    ¡°Yes, I am. It is not something I try to keep a secret but it is also not the first thing I open up with when introducing myself to somebody.¡±


    ¡°What the fuck.¡± Johannes asked.


    ¡°That must be an earlier recording, right?¡± Siim asked.


    ¡°Allan repeats his recordings during daytime. At nights, all shows are live.¡± Kadri replied.


    ¡°But how can Mariann be there if she was just here?¡±


    ¡°Do you know this girl?¡±


    *


    ¡°Do you know this girl?¡±


    As soon as Mariann had risen and left for some table, a tall man and a significantly shorter woman appeared. Both seemed to be in their 40s.


    ¡°That is a very complicated question to answer.¡± Siim said. ¡°It is quite certain that we cannot say that we know her, but Mariann often comes to us to tell us things.¡±


    ¡°In a strange way, we have a similar opinion on Mariann.¡± The man said. ¡°I am Olavi, this is Laura. We are new here and we¡¯re trying to understand what it going on in the town.¡±


    ¡°For local news, radio is the best. And have you already looked at the hotels in the Nameless Town or Tontla or Valgepal??¡± Tiina asked. ¡°You can learn about the towns from them as well.¡±


    ¡°Been there, done that.¡± Olavi said. ¡°And we are not interested in news or landmarks, but rather in what¡¯s going on.¡±


    ¡°All these landmarks, the old hotel lady in down in the Town...¡±


    ¡°Ah, Village Hag no. 9.¡± Johannes remarked.


    ¡°The old hotel lady.¡± Laura emphasized. ¡°All these landmarks are boring. These are the landmarks of a small and faraway township. The grave of a man who shook the hand of Johannes K?bin¡­ that is not a point of interest. And so many buildings partially collapsed, fully collapsed, locked buildings one cannot enter and nobody knows when was the last time anybody could.¡±


    ¡°To be fair, these are the points of interest. Just that they are the safe ones.¡±


    ¡°We are no strangers to danger.¡± Olavi said. ¡°We came here with Mariann. Without her we might not have made it here.¡±


    ¡°Well, then things are somewhat different.¡± Johannes replied. ¡°How much time do you have? Find a chair and we can give you a wonderful overview what there is to see across the whole county and the three towns. Of course, whether you manage to get back to tell anybody about what you saw is a whole other matter.¡±


    Olavi got up, leaving Mariann¡¯s chair for Laura and went to look for a new one for himself. Luckily, although all tables were filled, there remained plenty of chairs along the walls further away in several rows. He only had to make it there and back through the pub hall tightly packed with tables, chairs and people.


    ¡°So you came here with Mariann?¡± Tiina asked. ¡°Where are you staying at?¡±


    ¡°We dropped our things at the hotel.¡± Laura said. ¡°The old lady would let us stay there as long as we wished, but the money we have will not be going far. We must think of a solution.¡±


    ¡°Yes, you must.¡± Siim agreed. ¡°Most of us have done that. There isn¡¯t any real economy going on in here. It is mostly about bartering. Exchanging sausage for fish, so to say.¡±


    ¡°With regards to which, the hotel is not the best place to live at.¡± Tiina continued.


    ¡°Where would be then?¡± Laura asked.


    ¡°Where ever you want, to be honest.¡± Johannes replied.


    At that moment, Olavi made it back with the other chair.


    ¡°The area is full of abandoned houses. And the locals are not too keen on stealing from the dead and the escapees. Which means that in many cases people have left behind all their furniture, dishware and other items.¡± Johannes continued.


    ¡°Just go and live in somebody else¡¯s home?¡± Olavi asked. ¡°Doesn¡¯t that seem a bit weird?¡±


    ¡°If the house is locked then of course. However if it is not then there is a good chance that nobody lives there.¡± Tiina said. ¡°We also did that when when first arriving here. We went to the cottage district, found an old house that fit us best and had a little bit of wiring left and the first thing we did was sending somebody into town for a new door lock. And now we are slowly working on fixing it up. When we find the time and come across any construction materials.¡±


    ¡°We came here through the Cottage District.¡± Laura said. ¡°Of course, we did not think anybody even lived there days.¡±


    ¡°Oh they do just fine.¡± Johannes mused. ¡°Of course there are some that are frightened about the prospect. The Death Fields incident doomed the old Officer¡¯s village. And the Cottage District is half old farm hearts, half cottage plots handed over to the workers of the Valgepal? fish factory and the Example Sovkhoz, now grown together with the remains of the new Officer¡¯s Village. The latter two are only separated from each other by an old chain-link fence topped with barbed wire and a large gate with sentry boxes. But these few and fearful seem to forget that after the Death Fields incident, the old officer¡¯s village was torn down to the foundations and buried along with the contaminated soil. And the new Officer¡¯s Village was built near what became the Cottage District.¡±


    ¡°I think we would like to hear more about this history and those places...¡± Laura said.


    ¡°I think we need more beer.¡± Olavi said. ¡°For the stories to go down better.¡±


    *


    In the middle of the Fire Tail bar, there was a certain table which stood not far from the semi-circular fireplace. And tonight this was the only table which had the sign reserved standing on it. It was not exactly a common occurrence for somebody to reserve a table here. But today the mayor of the neighboring town and some other bigwigs had come here to discuss something and obviously the barkeep here had nothing against them being here.


    Where else would they go? In Valgepal? it was always dank and cool, even inside buildings, even when sitting right by the fire. And the Nameless Town¡­ if old Leopold had been just a tad more open then Fire Tail would not have been doing half as good as it currently was.


    ¡°You¡¯re late.¡± The Mayor said in displeasure as he looked at Mariann who was the last to sit by the circular table.


    ¡°You could have started without me.¡± She replied. ¡°I had activities I could not postpone.¡±


    ¡°Them over there?¡± the Mayor asked, looking at the table with the youths behind him.


    ¡°Sulev, you¡¯re a bit unfair.¡± Mariann smiled. ¡°If you look around a bit, you will see half the Nameless Town here. Invocating the witch is not a small matter. Even if people are not directly related to it, they still want to be first in line to learn what¡¯s going on, and not hear or read some conclusion a few days later on the radio or in the newspaper. The youths are here, yes. But so is Rops, George, the Village Hags and even Leopold. Eduard and Virve as well.¡±


    The mayor now looked at every direction Mariann pointed at and indeed. There was a bar counter nearby and stools were full of people, as well as the smaller tables near the counter. And it was true, Leopold who usually never took a step outside his bar was now sitting at the counter next to the Mustached Man, while keeping a stoop between him and Rops unoccupied.


    ¡°And if you take a really careful look...¡± Mariann continued. ¡°In that back corner, straight across Jaan. They are not too easy to notice but if you freeze for a moment and stop breathing...¡±


    The mayor focused on the back corner of the bar which did indeed seem dim and without any lights. At first it looked like yet another corner one could source chairs from. But when he stopped moving and even breathing then he noticed three men in impeccable black suits and bowler hats sitting around a table. All men looked the same almost like triplets. All of them with green eyes and clean-shaven faces without a single hair, not even eyebrows.


    Suddenly they too froze and then they started turning their heads towards the Mayor. At that moment somebody hit him across the back of the head.


    ¡°What the fucking¡­?¡±


    He stared at Mariann who was still sitting on her seats and smiling mysteriously. His gaze then moved to his side to notice the nurse in a short white slightly transparent lab coat who constantly shadowed doctor Sare. She had risen from her seat and stepped behind him.


    ¡°You...¡± the Mayor could only utter.


    ¡°I asked her to do it.¡± Mariann said. ¡°Thanks, Anna.¡±


    ¡°I asked you to notice and not stare.¡± The girl in black said. ¡°Believe me, you do not want to have a staring contest with these guys.¡±


    ¡°Amazing!¡± Doctor Sare said. ¡°Anna Toomikum has thus far never ever reacted to the speech or requests of other people!¡±


    ¡°Anna knows.¡± Mariann said. ¡°That¡¯s why she fulfilled my request. Also, she doesn¡¯t like these guys either.¡±


    As soon as Mariann had said those words, the unearthly good looking nurse directed her gaze at Mariann, and the smile on nurse¡¯s face disappeared for a moment.


    ¡°What are they doing here anyway?¡± The Mayor asked, as he leaned across the table and asked in a low voice.


    ¡°Aren¡¯t they here every day?¡± Jaan asked. ¡°I think I have seen them here before.¡±


    ¡°Very interesting.¡± Mariann said, staring at Jaan. ¡°You have worked with them before, haven¡¯t you? They have released you tools you have used and then they have asked them back?¡±


    ¡°Yes, that has happened.¡± Jaan agreed. ¡°Sometimes I write research papers on history for them.¡±


    ¡°Very interesting.¡± Mariann repeated. ¡°That explains why you are wrong. You are remembering wrong. They have never been here before. But they feel the same disharmony as the townsfolk, there is a strange impulse in the local noosphere fields, unusual activities are taking place and they too want to be first in line to know what¡¯s going on and what what will happen next.¡±


    ¡°Okay...¡± the Mayor slowly dragged out, still hesitating.


    ¡°You don¡¯t have to pay any attention to them. It would actually be better if you didn¡¯t. They seek no attentions, they only want to observe.¡± Mariann continued.


    ¡°Can we get back to the matters at hand?¡± Doctor Sare asked. ¡°Although honestly I have no idea why I or Anna need to be here.¡±


    The mayor looked at the people sitting around the table. Everybody he had wanted here were present. There was also one Mariann had requested to involve. He himself, Mariann, Jaan, Sare, Sare¡¯s assistant whose presence Sare demanded, Toomas, and the young man Mariann had brought along.


    ¡°Okay, Mariann. It is time for you to tell us who is that next you.¡±


    ¡°Oh he?¡± Mariann looked at the young man next to him. ¡°He¡¯s Sleepyhead.¡±


    ¡°My name is Mike.¡± the man said in a low voice.


    ¡°And why is he here?¡± The Mayor asked.


    ¡°Because Sleepyhead has seen dreams. Of which I am pretty sure they are not simply dreams but something much more. And to understand what that is, he needs to know how to get to the witch.¡±


    ¡°But then how does one get to the witch?¡± Toomas asked.


    ¡°Just like the stories go. To go on a Thursday night, when the Moon is full, onto crossroads and to bring along a black goose. Or a duck.¡± Mariann said.


    ¡°Why a goose or a duck?¡± Toomas asked.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know.¡± Mariann replied. ¡°Maybe something about webbed feet or swim fins.¡±


    ¡°It is often interpreted that one should bring along a black cat.¡± Mariann explained. ¡°In any case one should exsanguinate the cat, goose or duck they brought along on a crossroad. A goose or a duck would be a positive sacrifice, a cat would be a negative one. Because the devil would be coming to ask why you killed a cat, because cats are cool.¡±


    ¡°So we need a black goose or duck.¡± The Mayor sighed. ¡°And fast, as today is Thursday and the Moon is full.¡±


    ¡°Sulev, did you not listen to Mariann¡¯s story at all?¡± Sare asked.


    ¡°Right now I am the Mayor and not Sulev, do you get it?¡± With his big bushy beard and massive belly the mayor looked really comical when angry. ¡°What did I not hear?¡±


    ¡°When you bleed out a black cat, goose or duck, the devil will come to ask what¡¯s going on. Not the witch.¡±


    ¡°Are those two not the same thing?¡± The Mayor asked.


    Stunned silence fell around the table.


    ¡°What?¡± the Mayor asked, looking at the people around their table. ¡°Aren¡¯t they the same thing?¡±


    ¡°Sulev, I told you before that this is a bad idea!¡± An old voice suddenly sounded out. ¡°She has also told you.¡± She pointed at Mariann while leaning on her cane. ¡°You do not call out the witch for such small matters. Especially if you have no idea who you are about to call out.¡±


    ¡°Village Hag no. 6.¡± The Mayor said. ¡°You know then how to call out the witch?¡±


    ¡°Wanna sit?¡± Mariann asked.


    ¡°No, I¡¯d better stand I won¡¯t be staying long.¡± The old lady with silver hair falling to her neck replied.


    She then turned her attention back to the Mayor.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know exactly but I remember the last time the witch was summoned. I remember it was when some villager ran over some children with his tractor when they were napping in a tall grass. At least that was the story they finally agreed to. And then they had to let the blood of the person summoning the witch and some had to be set aside for the witch as well.¡±


    ¡°Wait-wait. Wait.¡± The Mayor understood. ¡°The blood of him who summons the witch? Meaning that I have to let my blood tonight at the crossroads?¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s the thing I wanted to get to.¡± The girl in black said.


    ¡°How much?¡± The mayor asked.


    ¡°Well, enough.¡± The village hag said. ¡°I remember my dearly departed father said that the man who summoned the witched, had to be carried away from the summoning ritual and two weeks later, when meeting the witch he was still very weak.¡±


    ¡°They usually take about half a liter from donors.¡± Doctor Sare said to nobody in particular. ¡°That¡¯s about 10 to 12 per cent of the of the total blood volume of the average person. Neurological deficits and weakness appear at 20% loss, so about a liter. Deadly blood loss is about 33%, so about 1.3 to 2 liters, depending on person.¡±


    ¡°A doctor¡¯s presence would be quite necessary in this regard.¡± Jaan said.


    ¡°My presence in itself is not going to ensure anything...¡± Sare said quietly.


    ¡°What would happen if the doctor was not present?¡± Toomas asked. ¡°What happens if the one to summon the witch dies while carrying out the blood sacrifice?¡±


    ¡°Blood is a sacrifice to the witch. When the one to give the sacrifice dies, the witch also gets his soul. If the witch does not have to give anything in return, thin it is simply a gift. And since nobody else has made a sacrifice, there is no reason to come and meet anybody else.¡±


    ¡°What if there are several people?¡± Jaan asked. ¡°Does each of them need to give enough to reach the limit of dying or will three people supplying half a liter each suffice?¡±


    ¡°That could work. But magical forces vary from person to person so three people witch each giving half a liter may be worth less than one person giving one liter.¡±


    ¡°But then I, the Mayor, Mike and Sare would make up 2 liters. Sare is a doctor. We can gather it in donor bags and pour it out onsite when still warm. That should work, right?¡±


    This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it


    Village Hag no. 6, sensing she was not needed anymore, went to look for something strong and sweet.


    ¡°No! No! No!¡± Sare said loudly. ¡°I cannot participate, I have little blood going around in me as it is! If I give another half a liter, I might as well give the rest, the end result would be the same.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re a doctor. Surely you can depart with half a liter...¡± Jaan said.


    ¡°No I can¡¯t. I have given plenty in the past couple of days and right now I am almost at my limit.¡±


    ¡°Where is going anyway?¡± Toomas asked.


    Doctor did not reply to it, he didn¡¯t even look at Toomas.


    ¡°Anna knows!¡± Mariann smiled.


    ¡°But luckily Anna won¡¯t tell.¡± Sare replied. ¡°I can be the on-site doctor and along with Anna do everything in my power to make sure nobody dies but I cannot participate. And neither can Anna, before you ask.¡±


    ¡°The other issue is that since Sleepyhead cannot accompany you to the witch, there is no point in him participating.¡±


    ¡°But I have to...¡± Mike started to argue.


    ¡°I know you have to.¡± Mariann replied. ¡°And you will, but by other means, not with them. I need to talk to you separately later.¡±


    ¡°Okay then. Me, the Mayor, Toomas, and you Mariann.¡±


    ¡°Nope, not me.¡± The girl said.


    ¡°Not you?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°I have nothing to ask of the witch. The witch has nothing to tell me. I have no interest in going to see the witch. And secondly, I foresaw this situation. That first, nobody knows how to invoke the witch and then you cannot get together enough of a sacrifice.¡±


    ¡°So we cannot summon the witch today?¡± The Mayor asked dejectedly.


    ¡°So, Sulev, are you sure you want to summon the witch? Are you sure you need to do it?¡± Mariann asked.


    ¡°Yes, I am.¡±


    ¡°And you are filling to be indebted to me?¡± Mariann continued. ¡°if I help you out?¡±


    ¡°What do you want in return?¡± The Mayor asked.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know yet. Most certainly something big and important. But there will be a time for that. Possibly a critical moment. But until that you are to be indebted to me.¡±


    The mayor fell into thought. For a few minutes he weight all options in his mind, all the while using the nail on his index finger to pick at a piece of skin on his thumb.


    ¡°Very well, I am willing to be indebted to you.¡±


    At the same time he agreed, he was relieved of the annoying piece of skin and his thumb stated to bleed.


    ¡°Okay then.¡± Mariann carelessly threw a bag of donor blood on the table. ¡°I said I will not participate, but I did not say I would not help you out.¡±


    ¡°This is your blood?¡± Jaan asked.


    Both the Doctor and Anna grew significantly more alive at that perspective, now focusing on the half a liter of donor blood sitting before them in the middle of the table.


    ¡°I can also give you half a liter, Sare.¡± Mariann said, noticing the man¡¯s gaze. ¡°The condition is the same as with Sulev. You are indebted to me a big and important favor. So, are you willing to be indebted to me?¡±


    Doctor Sare touched his bald head and then exchanged some silent gazes with his assistant Anna. For a few moments they stared at each other. The curious smile usually almost permanently transfixed on her face also disappeared for that time.


    ¡°No.¡± The doctor finally shook his head. ¡°I am not ready to be indebted to you.¡±


    ¡°What I don¡¯t understand is, why are you willing to give us your blood but not together with us?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°You are really asking that?¡± Mariann questioned. ¡°I thought that had been made clear a long time ago.¡± She looked at the people sitting around the table.


    ¡°You are all aware of the stories I tell, correct? You know how people talk about me, how they depict me? This does not come out of nothing. In this ritual, should one part of the sacrifice be stronger than the others, the others will even out the quality of the mix. And, although it is rude of me to say so but you insisted: compared to my blood, yours is shitwater. My blood is the strongest magical material you will have access tonight.¡±


    ¡°This is from today?¡± the Mayor asked.


    ¡°That is why I was late.¡± Mariann said.


    ¡°So now we only need a crossroad...¡± The mayor said, stretching out his hand and laying it on top of the blood bag. ¡°...where to pour it out. There is a quiet street nearby...¡±


    ¡°Not so fast.¡± Mariann laid her hand on top of his. ¡°A crossroad, not a street crossing. It has to be located outside of a settlement. Secondly, this is only a hostess gift. One must our down blood from a wound. The operating word being ¡®wound¡¯. So letting blood from a vein or an artery with syringe does not count as a wound.¡±


    ¡°Okay...¡± Jaan said slowly.


    Mariann retracted her hand and in thought put her thumb in her mouth. The mayor also pulled his hand back, leaving the bag on the table.


    ¡°Thirdly. Magic is not something that a man can directly perceive. Whether the ritual succeeded or not cannot be seen after the ritual like a signal lamp lighting up. It will be revealed in time. It is possible that certain signs will start appearing, which can be interpreted as a success of a ritual, but also as a lack thereof. In the end it will be up to you how and what you interpret and consider meaningful. Who do you trust.¡±


    ¡°Okay.¡± The Mayor said.


    ¡°Fourthly. The witch. When she is ready to meet, she will ask you all to meet her. And this meeting can only take place in the Forbidden Forest. On the night the meeting is supposed to take place you will feel an urge to take a walk in the Forbidden Forest. Do not fight it. Go along with that urge. The feeling will direct you to the right place. This will either be the witch¡¯s cabin or a fire by which she will be waiting for you.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s a bit weird.¡± The mayor said.


    ¡°Let it be weird.¡± Mariann said. ¡°Do you want to meet with the witch or do you not? You can also fight the urge and not go. You will probably never manage to summon the witch a second time during your lifetime. And the witch will also not be too happy about being summoned with no purpose.¡±


    ¡°Okay. I have a question I should have probably asked before but.¡± Toomas started. ¡°Why am I here?¡±


    ¡°Sulev, why is Toomas here?¡± Mariann asked.


    ¡°I don¡¯ t know. I asked everybody who know anything about the matters going on to come together to figure out what and how we do next. But you, Mariann, already have a plan for that.¡±


    ¡°And I also have an idea what Toomas is good for.¡± The girl in black said. ¡°Your part in this, Toomas, is to remember everything you see and write it down. So that in the future we would not have to count on the Village Hags remembering everything.¡±


    ¡°I can do that.¡± Toomas said. ¡°That¡¯s why I am here anyway. I mean in the Nameless Town.¡±


    ¡°You said that a street corner is not the place where to make a sacrifice, that we need a crossroad.¡± Jaan continued. ¡°Do you already know which crossroad?¡±


    ¡°Believe it or not, this is the hardest component. Everything else beside it is almost ridiculously easy and straightforward. But with the choice of the right location, we will need some help with that...¡±


    Without saying anything else, Mariann got up from the table and walked to the table not far where that group of young people were sitting. The last words that the Mayor could make out before the girl sat down were ¡°...with the rhythms...¡±


    *


    Silence fell around the table. After Mariann left, nobody had anything to say. As if everybody was contemplating what had been said thus far. But the plastic bag full of blood was still sitting in the middle of the table.


    ¡°Somebody should take possession of the blood bag to safe guard it from harm.¡± Jaan said. ¡°Sare, you have a doctor¡¯s bag with you, you do it.¡±


    ¡°Oh, no.¡± The doctor immediately refused. ¡°No way in hell do I wish to be indebted to Mariann. I¡¯m not even gonna touch that thing!¡±


    ¡°Okay. I really don¡¯t get you, Sare, but okay. Nobody else brought a hard attach¨¦ case along? I really wouldn¡¯t want to leave this on the desk like this. I have one but I have to go and get it from the car.¡± Jaan said.


    ¡°You go, I¡¯ll watch it.¡± Sare said. ¡°Or rather Anna will watch it.¡±


    With a hesitating gaze, Jaan eyed the his old friend the doctor, his unearthly good-looking assistant, and the blood bag on the table. He then sighed, took the donor bag and headed towards outside. To put it into his attach¨¦ case in his car.


    ¡°Much better a question would be where did that girl hide it when she sat down.¡± The doctor now said.


    ¡°But still, why are you here, Mike.¡± The Mayor could not leave it be. ¡°Why did Marianne call you here?¡±


    ¡°Because I see dreams.¡± Mike replied.


    ¡°What kind of dreams?¡± Toomas now asked.


    ¡°I am not allowed to say.¡±


    ¡°Marianne does not allow?¡± The Mayor asked in a demanding tone.


    ¡°The dreams do not allow.¡± Mike said. ¡°Mariann does not care. The dreams only allow me to tell to Mariann about them. Maybe a few more rare individuals. But these are not normal dreams. These become true.¡±


    ¡°So you are dreaming of things that have not yet happened?¡± Toomas asked.


    ¡°In very general terms, yes.¡±


    Mike fell silent again. Others also stayed quiet, as if indicating for him to continue. Thus he used the opportunity.


    ¡°I can no longer remember when it began. I think no earlier than a few years ago. I had very bright and vivid dreams. I often remembered them several days after seeing them. And then small details in them started to become true. Not all, just small things. A weather forecast on the radio, a leg breaking on my chair. I break a tire on my car and then find I have no tools to change the tire.


    ¡°As time passed, the things becoming true got more significant. Injuries and deaths of friends, colleagues or neighbors. Accidents in general. I started to foresee events leading to certain consequences days ahead. Sometimes I even managed to save somebody. But recently¡­ Recently things have gotten out of hand. And when I could no longer manage it on my own, I turned to Mariann. Which I also foresaw.¡±


    ¡°What happened then?¡± Toomas asked. ¡°What are you seeing?¡±


    ¡°Ends of the world.¡±


    ¡°Ends of the world?¡± Toomas asked incredulously. ¡°You said that in plural, correct? Of this very world? And several different kinds?¡±


    ¡°Yes.¡± Mike nodded. ¡°The witch knows how to avoid these ends. I have also dreamt of that.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s some hard stuff.¡± Toomas said. ¡°Do you not wish for those dreams to come to an end?¡±


    Mike shook his head. ¡°Somebody has to see these things. Better me than somebody else.¡±


    Before anybody could say anything, the two empty chairs between Mike and doctor Sare became occupied by two young men whose demeanor seemed to be the complete opposite of each other.


    ¡°Please! Sit down! You uninvited guests and crashers!¡± Doctor Sare said with an annoyed sarcasm.


    ¡°Crashers you say!¡± Rops asked. ¡°You yourself bought be a glass of vodka at Leopold¡¯s when that village brawler burnt up in the forest. You even called me a friend!¡±


    ¡°Impossible!¡± Sare argued back. ¡°I don¡¯t buy drinks to strangers! Let alone impolite strangers like you are! I don¡¯t remember ever having met you before, not at Leopold¡¯s, not anywhere else.¡±


    ¡°Now listen...¡± Rops tried to defend himself but the doctor tuned away his gaze and rose his hand as to stop the young man from saying anything else. For a few moments he looked at the bottomless eyes of his beautiful assistant and then lowered his hand.


    ¡°What did I say!¡± The professor said victoriously. ¡°I don¡¯t remember and neither does Anna! And Anna accompanies me everywhere I go.¡±


    ¡°But at that time, the woman was not with you...¡± Rops continued.


    ¡°Better tell us what do you want, Rops.¡± the Mayor asked.


    ¡°To the witch.¡± the young man said at once.


    Doctor¡¯s eyebrows rose in interest.


    ¡°I heard that you intend to summon the witch and then go to her to so she would explain what¡¯s going on. I want in.¡±


    ¡°To come with¡­?¡± Toomas asked.


    ¡°To get an explanation.¡± Rops said. ¡°I am tired of those damn anaks! Every time! Every god forsaken time I go to get some vodka! Doesn¡¯t matter if it is a bottle or a crate! It doesn¡¯t even matter that it is not vodka, beer is just fine for them! Every god damn time they stop me and steal everything! I want to ask that witch what I have done wrong. What error have I committed to have earned such punishment and torture!¡±


    ¡°And in your opinion the witch should know something about those anaks of yours? Let¡¯s be straight, of the ufos? You say that the witch must know of the ufos and she must tell you why you are constantly running into them?!¡± The Mayor asked. ¡°Do you not hear how utterly insane you sound?!¡±


    ¡°Not any more insane than all of you who are about to go to the witch only to find out why the Village Brawler suddenly went up in flames in the forest. Why some pond in the forest suddenly disappeared, why some small trail of water is suddenly flowing uphill through the town. I think compared to all of you there is nothing wrong with my mind.¡±


    ¡°Oh yes there is.¡± Doctor Sare retorted. ¡°My preliminary diagnosis is a psychosis caused by an untreated alcoholic delirium. You cannot stop drinking cold turkey! That is life-threatening! You most do it slowly. Allow me to buy you a hundred grams...¡±


    ¡°Leaving medicine beside,¡± the Mayor continued. ¡°Regardless of what the village hags say about the olden times, ufos, witches and the mysteries of the Forbidden Forest are two very different dimensions...¡±


    ¡°Not necessarily!¡± Toomas now enlivened. ¡°There are theoreticians and researchers who think that ufos, witches and the mysteries of the rest of the world may well be connected to one another. Mariann also says that our field of view is limited by our fabric of the world, meaning our dimension. But this does not exclude the existence of other dimensions both parallel but also higher ones. That there could not be portals between different dimensions. Portals which we may not necessarily be able to sense, but which can be sensed by some other kind of creatures who can also move between them. Meaning it is possible that there exist creatures who live on several fabrics of the world simultaneously, who can sense what¡¯s going on on several world fabrics at once and are also able to manage it.¡±


    ¡°This is a very nice flash fiction, but I¡¯m not seeing how it could be connected to the witch and the ufos.¡± The Mayor said.


    He looked towards Jaan who was now back and had also conjured a chair for himself to take a seat between Rops and the doctor.


    ¡°Well, for example there are theories that explain how these portals between dimensions are used by snowmen, shadow creatures, demons. People have seen flying saucers piloted by snowmen. People have seen portals which are invisible to the human eye, but emit ultraviolet light or infrared radiation and from which emerge both snowmen as well as flying saucers.¡±


    ¡°Help me out Jaan, please.¡± The Mayor asked. ¡°It¡¯s pure horseshit he¡¯s spewing, right?¡±


    ¡°It may not necessarily be horseshit.¡± Jaan said. ¡°Even if you leave aside everything Mariann says, there are still many cultures in the world which talk about star folk, gods connected to certain heavenly bodies. Native Americans for example, Egyptians. Gods who once long a go visited this place, walked among people like equals and then left, but with whom one can still make contact via special rites.¡±


    ¡°But that is something completely different.¡± The Mayor said. ¡°That is not a witch conjuring a flying saucer...¡±


    ¡°So can I?¡± Rops asked again.


    ¡°Can you what?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°To come along to the witch? So the witch would explain to me what those anaks want of me and what could I do so they would leave me alone.¡±


    ¡°Anaks?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°The anomalous alkashi. Ufo alchoholics. They fly around their flying saucers while blind dead drunk.¡±


    ¡°As it is in this world, so shall it be in the heavens.¡± Sare grinned.


    ¡°Did Leopold not have a similar case recently?¡± Toomas asked. ¡°That some guys drank away five buckets of beer and then disappeared into thin air without leaving a trace.¡±


    ¡°You see!¡± Rops shouted. ¡°And one of the Village Hags, Fishy George and even Mustache were there as well!¡±


    ¡°I have nothing more to say on this topic.¡± The mayor said, and sighed in defeat.


    ¡°I think you should ask Mariann whether you can come along or what you should do. It is possible that we can summon the witch only thanks to her.¡±


    ¡°From¡­ Mariann¡­?¡± Rops asked with visible trepidation. Evidently the idea of talking of Mariann was did not agree with him. ¡°Do I have to? Really?¡±


    He took a deep sigh.


    ¡°And what are you here about?¡± the Mayor asked the other young man.


    ¡°What am I here about...¡± the other young man asked, not understanding.


    ¡°Hey, you seem familiar to me.¡± Sare said, eyeing the young man sitting straight across from him. ¡°Are you sure we have not met before?¡±


    ¡°No, no we haven¡¯t.¡± The young man said, trying to avoid his gaze and making himself as small as possible. ¡°Maybe you have seen me in town, I have been here for years.¡±


    ¡°No. No I don¡¯t believe so.¡± The doctor said, still trying to make eye contact with the boy. ¡°I could swear you have been a patient of mine.¡±


    ¡°R-r-really...?¡± The young man nervously asked.


    ¡°But that would be impossible!¡± The doctor slapped the table with his hand. ¡°As long as I have been here, I have only worked at Luiga. And nobody has ever escaped Luiga. Or at least escaped successfully.¡±


    ¡°Really?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°Really.¡± Sare nodded. ¡°There may not be many of us there but but we are on par with out assignments and we have capture all the loose ones before they have managed to leave the territory.¡±


    ¡°I think I¡¯ve heard that some patients who have been brought to you have eventually gone missing.¡± Toomas remarked.


    ¡°You mustn¡¯t believe everything you hear behind the liquor store.¡± Sare smiled, he then nodded to wards the young man. ¡°But please continue.¡±


    ¡°I also need to get to the witch. Rheya from the Nurga farm, she is missing. The witch could help.¡±


    ¡°How?¡± Toomas asked.


    ¡°Last year, during the blue moon. A strange segment of sound drew us into the Forbidden Forest to the Forest Lake. I saw the maidens bathing in moonlight. I saw her join them and become moonlight.¡±


    ¡°Really?!¡± Toomas asked. ¡°Now that could have been a portal.¡±


    ¡°And has been missing since?¡±


    ¡°No. Several months ago, I think. I heard that piece of sound again. The moonlight returned her. I brought her home. She was at home for a week without gaining consciousness. And then one day she was gone. But after that I have had a couple of very weird dreams. Maybe. And time has gotten strange. In those dreams I see her, she says she is here, but I cannot see her. And she says the witch could help.¡±


    ¡°Now that is interesting!¡± Toomas said. ¡°We should look into that! That really is something we should take to the witch. That is a much more reasonable thing to do than what we were originally planning on doing.¡±


    ¡°You said that a piece of sound drew you into the forest?¡± Jaan asked. ¡°What kind of piece?¡±


    ¡°I can get you the recording, if necessary.¡± The young man said. ¡°But it sounds like I remained, I mean, it means, I regarded and went there early-early-early-early...¡±


    The air around the table changed as soon as the man finished uttering those words. Toomas was the only one who did not get what was going on.


    ¡°Are you sure?¡± the Mayor asked. ¡°That this is the piece of segment that lured you into the forest? You have to be sure.¡±


    ¡°Yes, I am sure.¡± the young man nodded.


    ¡°What does it mean?¡± Toomas asked.


    ¡°It means that the Nameless Town has secrets which still remain secret only due to people refusing to speak of them.¡± the Village Hag said. ¡°And this is one such secret.¡±


    ¡°And is it a valid reason to go to the witch?¡± Toomas asked.


    ¡°The secret itself probably would be, if anybody would be interested in solving it. But what happened to the Nurga maiden is definitely a better reason that what Sulev originally had in mind.¡± Village Hag no. 4 said. ¡°In the end, all those things are connected to each other by their corner seams. But let that girl in black decide.¡±


    ¡°You village hags are of a pretty good opinion with regards to Mariann.¡± The Mayor said. ¡°Of a much better one than the rest of the locals.¡±


    ¡°Well, she is a fine young woman.¡± Village Hag no. 4 said. ¡°Why should we have anything against her? She also gets worldly things the right way. Both those happening right now, as well as those which are the original causes of the events that are happening now.¡±


    ¡°Do you...¡± The Mayor tried to start, but then stayed silent.


    ¡°What is it?¡± The doctor asked.


    ¡°Shh! Listen!¡±


    The other concentrated on their sense of hearing as well and picked up Mariann¡¯s voice. But the girl was not standing anywhere nearby or even further away, while holding a speech, instead her voice came through the big Estonia brand speakers under the ceiling.


    ¡°...instead my words are actively creating this world, they are changing it, affecting how things really are. That would be witchery.¡±


    ¡°That would be God.¡± Allan said.


    ¡°God or witchcraft, same difference. As we already know, the country folk has little belief in God.¡±


    ¡°I would like to direct our conversation to another topic. Before I invite each guest to my show, I do a little background check about them. One never knows, maybe there are some interesting past events about them we could talk about. Thus I have done such checking about you too. With regards to that, I have a question I simply cannot put aside.¡±


    ¡°Well then ask. This is one of the reasons I am here, is it not?¡± Mariann said.


    ¡°You are the daughter of Teet Metsla, are you not?¡±


    ¡°Yes, I am. It is not something I try to keep a secret but it is also not the first thing I open up with when introducing myself to somebody.¡±


    ¡°The daughter of Teet Metsla?¡± Toomas asked. ¡°Did you know this?¡±


    ¡°I did.¡± Jaan said.


    ¡°So did I.¡± Sare agreed. ¡°Knowing about it is a bit inevitable, considering that Teet Metsla has been surrendered to my treatment.¡±


    ¡°I have a much better thing for you to contemplate.¡± The Village Hag said. ¡°In the evenings, Allan Helde only holds live shows. This means it should be a live show, right? But how can it be a live show in the studio in the Nameless Town if Mariann is sitting at the bar counter between Mustache and Leopold?¡±


    All of them turned to look at the brightly lit bar counter. Indeed Mariann was sitting there with the other locals drinking beer from a tall glass.


    ¡°That is interesting. How can she be here, if she is also there?¡±


    ¡°Because she is also here.¡± Mariann said, standing behind professor Jaan. ¡°And this means it is time.¡±


    All people sitting around the table suddenly flinched. Toomas who was still staring at the bar counter could suddenly no longer understand how he had thought that the person sitting at the counter was Mariann.


    ¡°Time for what?¡± The Mayor asked.


    ¡°The ritual.¡± Mariann replied.


    The girl¡¯s gaze fell on the party crashers sitting between Jaan and Mike.


    ¡°Let me guess. The both of you want to come to the witch?¡±


    Both young men nodded. Rops more eagerly, the other one with much less energy.


    ¡°Unfortunately the witch cannot help you, Rops. The witch has nothing to tell you that could help you. But your case is interesting...¡± her gaze fell on the people sitting around the table.


    ¡°Toomas, you¡¯re looking for strange events to investigate. The case of anaks that Rops has is just the thing to be of interest to you. I am pretty sure there is much more to be discovered that what Rops tells people in bars.¡±


    ¡°Why me?¡± Toomas asked.


    ¡°Just find a time and go along with him, it¡¯ll be worth it.¡± Mariann gave a smile.


    ¡°But you...¡± She turned to the other young man, staring at her for a few moments. ¡°With you the story is much more interesting. You can try to go and see the witch. But the topic you want to ask about may even exceed the witch¡¯s capability. It definitely exceeds your capability of understanding the witch.¡±


    ¡°Still, how can the fact that we mix you up with some other local be a sign that the time is right?¡± Sare asked.


    ¡°Have you ever heard of the Schr?dinger cat?¡± Mariann asked. ¡°It is used to illustrate the common rules of quantum mechanics, which are not in correspondence with our macroscopic world. But there is an idea connected to this theory that in a multiverse, at any give time, countless realities are created and destroyed. Each N-ary choice we make also creates at least one other world, where we chose differently.¡±


    ¡°There is something similar in Indian mythology.¡± Jaan noted.


    ¡°There is.¡± Mariann agreed. ¡°However what there may not be in Indian mythology is that the human mind has a capacity to to experience the pre-choice worlds simultaneously. And the reality which does not come to pass, suddenly seems like a strange dream.¡±


    ¡°And how is that relevant to the matter?¡± The Mayor asked.


    ¡°Some events affect the world fabric differently. Rituals have a greater effect. The ritual of making contact with supernatural is like a stone thrown into water. What we cannot sense are the waves. There waves take place in both space and time. In time, both forward and backward. However if the waves more backwards in time then we see the result before the cause. To be more precise in my words, we see the result before we have caused the cause.


    But by causing the cause we do not create two new realities which stem from the cause as a source, but we cause two realities which both have their own past, just that the past before the cause is identical. On one world line, the cause is like a dip, and on the other one like a bump. Although it is not really the right way to think of it, like an event and a non-event. Together they form a knot tying both fabrics together. However if the occurrence of the event causes waves that travel both into the past as well as the future, then on one world fabric we see the wave from the event taking place, and on the other world fabric, we see the non-wave caused by the event not taking place. However if the event ties those world fabrics together then these waves are connected to each other and fit together. Now the catch is, that there is no means of saying with certainty, on which world line we currently are and when do we slide from one onto the other.


    It is possible that before we have caused or non-caused the cause, we travel simultaneously on both world lines. And as we are so familiar with out counterpart on the other world line, both us and them slip between the world lines without even being aware of it ourselves.


    Slipping from the world of the wave into the world of the non-wave is expressed in strange artifacts or errors in the world where you suddenly sense two or more of me, or you hear a live radio show I have not yet recorded or which I have recorded slightly differently than the way it is heard. I would bet anything that if we could call into the show right now, we would find out that Allan is making his show with a third person altogether, or there is no love show today or at this time.¡±


    ¡°But¡­ what will happen if you do not cause the cause?¡± Toomas asked. ¡°Or if you cause it before or after you should have caused it?¡±


    ¡°Time has no meaning. The event has.¡± Mariann replied. ¡°In the sense that if I know I have to cause an event X at moment T, then causing it at a moment of S or U, would it still be the same event? That would be the strict interpretation. A softer interpretation would be that there not a single moment of T, when I would have to cause the event, but a timespan of T. If I have to perform the ritual tonight, then it is of no use, if I performed it last night or tomorrow night. It is also of no use if I perform it in 4 weeks at night. It would no longer be the same event. But at the same time, whether it is half past midnight or half past 2 in the morning is irrelevant. And an interpretation that¡¯s even more softer would point out that the timespan of T depends on the limits set by the sensory world. And not any kind of other limitations outside of the world or time perceivable to our 5 senses. Meaning that tomorrow night is not tonight and the length of night differs between June and December.¡±


    ¡°But what if you do not cause the event?¡±


    ¡°Then we find ourselves on a collection of world fabrics in which I never caused the event. However that does not mean that our memory would change. Just that we would be remembering a world we ourselves are no longer present in. It is also possible that if there are waves in one world and non-waves in the other, then we who should have caused the event, remember the waves while others remember the non-waves.¡±


    ¡°Honestly, I don not want to agree with this, but I cannot figure out why.¡± Toomas said.


    ¡°If you finally do, please tell me as well.¡± Mariann said, she turned to Jaan. ¡°You took the blood to your car?¡±


    ¡°Yes.¡±


    ¡°Well then, let¡¯s go with your car. It has six seats, we have six people coming.¡±


    ¡°Six?¡±


    ¡°We¡¯re coming with my car.¡± Sare said.


    ¡°Me, you, Sulev, Sleepyhead, Toomas and the young man from the Corner farmstead.¡± Mariann counted on her fingers.


    ¡°And me?¡± Rops asked.


    ¡°I told you that you have no business to see the witch with.¡± Mariann said. ¡°But I cannot stop you from coming along. But you have to come with your own car. Or maybe the Doctor and Anna can offer you a ride?¡±


    ¡°Come with us, son.¡± Sare floated an evil smile. ¡°At Luiga we are very novel in treating both alcoholism as well as mental disorders. Especially disorders which keep people from being productive and valuable members of society.¡±


    But Rops did not look at the doctor. Instead, his gaze was on doctor¡¯s assistant, her bottomless eyes and a secretive smile. Rops and Anna stared each other silently for half a minute at least. All this time, the young man sat frozen. He did not blink nor breathe. In the end, Sare¡¯s assistant turned her eyes away and Rops fell onto the floor coughing and grasping for breath.


    ¡°I¡¯m¡­ coming¡­ my own car.¡± He barely managed to utter.


    ¡°I guess we can go then.¡± Mariann said. ¡°I have already found the proper crossroad.¡±

 XXXV - Girls in Black Dont Have to Pay I

    She opened her eyes. Ceiling of pale white. Morning sunlight. And an immediate sense of heat. To her great surprise, she had managed to fall asleep. In an old house where she had a small corner room with little space besides a single bed. The room was only as long as the bed itself and maybe twice as wide. At most.


    There were five of them who had made it here. She herself, Tiina, Viivika, Johannes and Siim. A black Volga had brought them to the county limit and then returned to whence it came from. Who had been driving? She could no longer remember. Who had driven the car back? She could not remember that either. Maybe it wasn¡¯t that important after all, as it all seemed like part of a very old yet an especially vivid dream. And yet maybe this knowledge was really of priceless value, because the locals had a completely different story with regards to the black Volga and five youths in it: how they had run it off the road killing themselves and turning the car into scrap. But this did not match her memories. Nor the memories of everyone else.


    And yet there was room for claiming both statements to be true, despite being contradictory. Especially when taking into consideration everything else they had experienced. They had come to the county limit in a Volga. On foot had they traversed the sentry point with the lifting barrier boom and on foot had they reached the cottage district and found an abandoned home which suited them the best. And everyone besides her had also found recognition during their travels, maybe even a partner for life. She however felt like a fifth wheel.


    At least on two separate occasions had they found themselves listening to Mariann. In the latter of these cases they had found themselves inside a black factory limousine with opposing seats, a small table and fuel economy so horrendous that it was better to just walk. And to this day, none of them had any recollection how they had found the car. Or rather, the question where they had found it was easy. The answer was ¨C at the airfield. But they had also found themselves in there without a sliver of recollection how had the car made it there or how had they. And on that last time, with the cold and desolate rain, Siim and Johannes had simply decided to drive it off, instead of leaving it there. And now it stood parked on the street in front of their house, the fuel tank almost drained.


    Kadri got up and got dressed. Long black skirt that reached the ground, long-sleeved knitted cotton top over a singlet. And black all-star sneakers. Her usual slightly goth makeup which primarily consisted of black eye shadow, because it brought out her green eyes.


    She shut the door to her small bedroom and locked it.


    The first thing the had done after reaching the Nameless Town was to enter the local bar and find info on possible lodging. It had taken no time at all for the bar crowd to make them understand the only three options they had: either the hotel, to stay in town and pick an unlocked apartment in one of the buildings or one of the few unoccupied private homes. Or to come here, to the cottage district for the same thing. Or to move on to Tontla or Valgepal? where life looked a bit more normal and one could even rent of buy stuff.


    The upside of the Town was that everything was nearby. The downside was that the occupied homes were only occupied because they still had working electricity and running water and were most certainly not haunted. And even if they had found a fitting house or apartment within the town limits, they still would have had to come to the cottage district for all the furniture, linen and other stuff.


    The cottage district however had countless abandoned houses. Homes that people had left behind with all kinds of possessions still in place and untouched. But it also had a bad atmosphere to it, due to the Forbidden Forest right by it. And also the Underground Base and being bordered by both the Southern Forest and the Officers¡¯ Village. In the end, comfort won, meaning they picked the house with the most suitable rooms and the most furniture present. Whatever it did not have could be collected from the nearest 4 or 5 other abandoned homes.


    After a few days of sorting though items and rearranging things, it almost felt like a home. Carpets made of cloth scraps covering the floors, wooden furniture from the 60s and 70s as well as several Republic era and even Czarist era items. A simple sofa on a wooden frame that converted into a bed, two armchairs that converted into beds in a similar way and even a working radio set and a TV. While the radio could be used to listen to the radio at the Nameless Town and Allan Helde¡¯s shows, the TV displayed nothing but static, with or without the antenna. But there was an old Japanese VHS cassette player connected to the old TV. And there were also several boxes of tapes.


    The old mechanical cuckoo clock on the wall was showing the eighth morning hour. This may well have been quite near to the correct time. But it also meant that she had managed to get no more than four hours of sleep. And this wasn¡¯t the first night of little sleep.


    A few night ago she had met Mariann. She had been reading a book in her car a few streets away. Of course Mariann had only been there to watch over the Russians removing the wrecks of their choppers and true to her words, bu morning it looked like nothing had ever happened at all. And this frightened her. The very thought that while she and the others were sleeping, all kinds of things were taking place which not only left no trace of ever happening at all but also took place with them being none the wiser. That a world war could take place during their slumber, the front might move back and forth several times and the next morning there would be no remaining sign of any of it.


    And there was also a sense of regret. Mariann had offered her a chance to go along with her. Or to go and take a look how the Russians were taking their crap away. Se had refused both offerings. She was been tired, maybe that had been the reason. But she did want to know more of all the things they had spoken about. And now it seemed she had lost an all-important chance for a night adventure with Mariann.


    She sighed and stepped outside. The yard too finally started to look like somebody was actually living here. Still, it took time before she could step out of the shadow of the building or even direct her gaze out of it. It was simply too bright for her eyes.


    When they had first reached this place, everything that needed to be done got smoothly assigned. The boys looked for construction materials and did the literal heavy lifting while the girls dealt with the interior decoration and all the other necessities like kitchenware and utensils, pots and pans, curtains, linen and other essentials. Yardwork had had more united effort. Chain-link fence was fastened to the posts once more, hedges trimmed and the trees cut back. And eventually all of them learned to effortlessly mow with a scythe. In an ironic fashion only after all that had happened, had they found an old electric mower. And then later a gasoline-powered one as well, along with plenty of spare parts.


    She finally stepped out of the shadow of the house and immediately felt the sun heat up her black clothing. How was it possible for the locals to complain that the sun only gave light but no warmth, how it shone coldly as if only showing the town the reverse side of it? But the cottage district had both the scorching sun as well as suffocating hot air that refused to move. She walked down the footpath of rectangular tiles towards the street with the long black sedan.


    Factory limousine, reportedly from the early 1970s, if she were to believe the boys. Four doors and three rows of seating. The black clearcoat was full of criss-crossing scratches and shined like a spiderweb against the morning sun. Metal flake in the paint had long since grown dull. She wanted to run her fingers on the paint and feel the scratches but had to immediately pull away in pain. Despite the morning and the scratches, the body of car was hot enough to cause blisters and perhaps even to fry an egg on it.


    She left the car where it was and walked down the street. It was maybe ten kilometers of dusty country road to reach the town. About 90 minutes at a quick pace. She had made the journey several times before. But never in the blaze of the late morning sun. Having turned onto the street running along the strip of forest on the North side, she noticed ahead a greenish-blue sedan with sun-bleached collapsed tires which seemed to have been sitting for years.


    Two young men were busying themselves around it. Siim and Johannes.


    ¡°What are you doing?¡± She asked, having reached the bigger of the two who had a bottle jack in his hands.


    ¡°Remember when we were in the bar with Mariann, right before the ritual to invoke the witch?¡± Siim asked.


    ¡°I remember.¡±


    ¡°Olavi and Laura came to our table. They related how they had arrived here from some other place. This car had also been at that other place. Their backpacks had been in the trunk of this car. And the key set had been in the ignition.¡±


    ¡°I remember.¡± She repeated pensively.


    ¡°This is the very place they reached when they emerged from the other place.¡± Johannes said, walking around the car.


    Johannes was a lot more fit than Siim but also somewhat shorter. With dark blonde hair that often fell into his eyes.


    ¡°From this very same manhole on the street right behind you.¡±


    Kadri took a look at the cast iron Soviet era manhole cover right behind her.


    ¡°From this one?¡± She asked.


    ¡°Yes.¡±


    ¡°You have taken a look under it?¡±


    ¡°Concrete rings which have steel rungs poured right into it. And some sort of rails on either side. And at a depth of around 2 meters there is water.¡±


    ¡°They climbed through the water?¡±


    ¡°Not quite.¡± Siim was faster with his response. ¡°The spoke about walking down an underground tunnel and then climbing up a shaft. They only noticed water after emerging from the manhole and looking down. Which makes me wonder - should I climb down the rungs, will I find a massive tunnel full of water? Or maybe the water will suddenly drain and I find myself soaked but inside a dry tunnel? I should ask Mariann about this.¡±


    ¡°You already know what she would say.¡± Johannes replied. ¡°¡°Why don¡¯t you go and try.¡± You should also remember what she said about gates. There is no guarantee that an exit also functions as an entrance.¡±


    ¡°You mean to tell that traffic can be only unidirectional?¡± Siim asked. ¡°They could exit here but one cannot enter from here into there?¡±


    ¡°Yep.¡±


    ¡°Okay.¡±


    Siim sighed and continued removing the wheel nuts.


    ¡°What are you doing?¡± Kadri asked again.


    ¡°The story those two told us had at least one bit of truth to it.¡± Johannes said. ¡°The car was unlocked. The keys weren¡¯t in the ignition, but in the bin under the center console. And the battery still retained some charge. We even managed to start it up for a moment. It had quite a sweet sound to it.¡±


    ¡°For a moment?¡± She asked.


    ¡°It died as soon as we switched on the headlights. The starter clicks, but it won¡¯t turn the engine.¡±


    ¡°Still.¡± Kadri continued. ¡°What for?¡±


    ¡°That black limousine has an average fuel economy of at least 40 liters per 100. This green one should at most require only half that. Four doors, five seats. And there are five of us. And tan leather interior which won¡¯t get nearly as hot in sunlight.¡±


    ¡°Mm.¡± She said, finally understanding.


    ¡°You¡¯re going into town?¡± Siim asked.


    ¡°I was thinking about it.¡±


    ¡°Are you sure?¡± Johannes asked. ¡°The sun seems pretty sharp today. And I wouldn¡¯t want to walk ten clicks dressed all in black.¡±


    ¡°Do I have a choice?¡± the girl asked.


    ¡°Take the black one.¡±


    ¡°Some other choice.¡±


    ¡°I think Viivika found a green bicycle.¡± Johannes said.


    ¡°A bicycle?¡±


    A bicycle seemed like a much better choice than walking ten k or risking the big vehicle running out of fuel and blocking off a narrow gravel road for days.


    ¡°Indeed.¡± Johannes continued. ¡°But it is a full-size bike with no gears. Also it has road tires, which are about as wide as a thumb.¡±


    She sighed and turned around, starting back towards the house and the big limo standing in front of it.


    ¡°The black 75?¡± Siim asked.


    ¡°The black 75.¡± She replied, defeated.


    Ten k on an ungeared road bike through potholed country roads in a long skirt seemed way worse an option than driving. And Johannes was right. The sun was sharp indeed, even if she had had clothing of lighter colors, walking to town would have still been a challenge. In all black it was even bigger one. And she had no mood for any lighter colors.


    Luckily, compared to the black surfaces, the chrome felt slightly cooler. She opened the unlocked driver door and sat on the hot velour of navy color. The keys were in the ignition and one pedal pump before turning it was enough for the engine to stay running after firing up and rocking the whole front of the car in the process.


    Besides the abysmal fuel economy this big thing had a few other problems. First of all the size of it. For Kadri it was utterly inconceivable that these could be driven on roads originally projected for Sapaks. Comparing these to oil tankers when maneuvering was no exaggeration. And Mariann would drive her red one to just about anywhere. And her red one was not too much shorter than this one, or was it?


    The other problem was much more urgent. The less fuel the car had, the more the fuel gauge lied. Anything below one-eighth and the needle rested on the peg near the E, whether the tank was dry or not. And then there were all other problems with regards to keeping a carbed engine in running order.


    Driving a big vehicle like this immediately allowed one to get a sense of how roads were planned in this area. The usual road from the town to the cottage district was a country road which ended at the base to the West. It jutted down towards the South with the Forbidden Forest on the left and overgrown fields on the right as a narrow one-lane gravel road. With the ditch on the side with the forest and access roads to the old fields on the other side. Between the wheel tracks there ran a strip of grass. Had there not been any old roads leading to the fields or into the forest, there would have been little chances for two opposing drivers to pass one another. A few kilometers nearer to the town, about where the old Death Fields started, the road got wider and also gained a bumpy and potholed pavement.


    But the real road to the bases passed through the cottage district. Along the wide street running along that strip of forest which hid a rail road within. The very same street on the side of which stood that green sedan on which the boys were working. And opposite the forest were the side streets of the cottage district. The lesser importance the road had, the narrower it was. Some were so narrow and so overgrown that turning into them even with a normal-sized car involved uprooting some hedges. And the houses were so close to the streets than one could at most fit half a car in front a house.


    An an interesting coincidence, the house they had decided upon was quite near to the secret railroad. It stood right on this wide street passing through the cottage district, being the first or second in line when coming from the bases. But the wide street itself was as straight as an arrow, passing right through the edge of the cottage district and through the center of the Officers¡¯ Village. Where it ended up or continued on the other side of that, she could not tell. Nobody could. In a strange fashion, all traffic to the cottage district traversed from this side and the Officers¡¯ Village was avoided almost in a subconscious manner. As if it was a home for wandering forest fauna or perhaps altogether more terrible monsters.


    But now, sitting behind the wheel, she could not bring up a single reason for fearing the officers¡¯ village. However she still felt an urge to refrain from going there. As if some unnamable threat was there, lying in wait for her. She did not want to give it any more thought. She only wanted to make it into town. On the one hand, she expected to find fresh fruit or vegetables and on the other hand, a much more urgent problem, to either find a job to fuel this beast or some other useful activity until evening came and the heat receded.


    *


    The whole trip to town was nerve-wracking. The big car rolling from pothole to pothole on the gravel road, the suspension collapsing into each one of them despite her rolling down the road at essentially idle engine speed. And when she finally made it to the pavement, she still had to mind the engine speed. All this allowed her to make it to town before the car ran out of gas, or rather by the very moment it ran out, as the engine died a few meters after turning onto the main street of the Nameless Town.


    Along with the engine she also lost power steering and power brakes so it was quite an effort for her to get it onto the side of the road and stop it. At least the side of the street was not full of cars, and she could pretty much leave it where it stopped. She did her best, but in the end, the car was still slightly askew, rather than perfectly parallel to the street. But this was something she could no longer help. She had turned the steering to the right and the front tire was against the curb, so there was little chance of it rolling anywhere further.


    After making sure she could leave the car like this she locked the doors and¡­ noticed that something was different. Ahead, on the other side of Cemetery Flight street, right past the old main building of the Institute and opposite the Physics park, a market had popped up. At first she could only see a large plywood board with black capital letters painted onto it. However ash she got closer she saw that there were five or six small wooden stalls and a sun yellow LAZ bus, its whole side was opened up like a clam shell which created one big stall.


    Fruit and vegetable, sweet and salty, dried and smoked meat, fish, sausages and even cheese. Also all sorts of other goods and toiletry. Some of this could still be found from the various abandoned homes in town and in the cottage district and for the other kind it was better to drive to Valgepal?. But the most valuable goods were on the metal stalls made of the side of the old bus. All sorts of household batteries, watches both quartz and hand wound. Jewelry, transistor radios and cassette players and all sorts of headphones.


    Behind the stall stood a man with unkempt mustache and a weaselly look to him. His gaze immediately clued in to Kadri as she took a gander of the wares laid out, paying little attention to other customers.


    Her gazed moved across everything until it suddenly stopped on something familiar. A round object, the top caver made of brushed aluminum. Onto it etched MP3-CD.


    ¡°Has the lady found something of interest to her?¡± The gaunt man behind the counter asked.


    Messy hair of straw color, long dirty mustache covering the whole upper lip, short-sleeved linen shirt and bleached once dark cotton pants. Sharp nose, dark eyes, somewhat sunken in cheeks.


    ¡°Does this even work?¡± Kadri asked, pointing at the CD-player.


    ¡°Of course it does.¡± the man said. ¡°The batteries are already in it. The disc as well. Give it a try!¡±


    With much care, she took the CD-player from the table. The first thing she did was to turn it over and check the battery compartment to make sure it was indeed filled. She then opened the cover to see a burnt CD-R disc inside. She started it and put the in-ear headphones on. The device took some time to find the tracks on the disc, but when it finally did¡­ the music she heard¡­ There was no way to describe it.


    She could not. There was something familiar to it and yet she could not remember it. There was something nostalgic about it and yet it was new to her. Something so strange and yet so natural. It hit her like a flash of light, like waking up from a dream. But she was still here, in front of the ripped apart yellow bus. She could feel tears run down her cheeks. She moved her finger to advance to the next track, but before that the device was ripped from her hands. The headphones came out of her ears and the music instantly became a memory of which she could only remember a profound sense of loss.


    ¡°This should be enough to be sure that it works.¡± The man behind the counter said.


    ¡°How much?¡± She asked.


    ¡°For you special price, five hundred kroons. I¡¯ll even add the headphones for no charge at all.¡± He gave an insincere smile.


    ¡°I¡¯ll think about it.¡± Kadri replied.


    ¡°I get it.¡± The weaselly man replied. ¡°Five hundred kroons is a lot. Not many people have this kind of money in their pocket. But I am also willing to take trades, both goods and¡­ services.¡±


    ¡°For a moment Kadri found herself considering whether what the man had meant as ¡®services¡¯ was worth the player, the batteries, the headphones, the disc and the feeling the music evoked in her. But before she could decide one way or another, the man said something else which stopped her thinking.


    This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    ¡°I saw what the lady arrived into town with. I willing to trade the player for that.¡±


    She looked back towards the street, on which she had left the big black limousine. The thought of having that man inside her in exchange for the player quickly turned from a difficult choice into something errant and unthinkable.


    ¡°I¡­ I cannot.¡± She said. ¡°it is not mine.¡±


    ¡°In that case, 500 kroons.¡± The man said with indifference.


    ¡°How long will you be in town?¡± She asked.


    ¡°Until tomorrow. We¡¯ll be moving South after that.¡±


    ¡°Copy.¡±


    For a few moments more, her gaze lingered on the CD-player, but she then managed to tear her mind off of it. She turned around and left, now walking back towards the car. Her urgent problems had suddenly multiplied. Before all this she had had a desire to find something to eat that wasn¡¯t in need of adding time, hot water and salt. But also gasoline to get this big boat moving again. But now she also needed to find 500 kroons. It did not sound like a big sum, but at the same time she had no idea how much work it required to collect this money. Could she even manage it by tomorrow? Before the market packed up and left? How much was fuel on top of that? Was prostitution really the only viable solution to earn anything at all? She refused to believe this.


    There were other people living here, weren¡¯t they? They too went to the store when in need of food. If they had nothing else to do then at the very least they could spend time day drinking. The money had to come from somewhere. Vodka had to come from somewhere. So did gasoline and parts for all those non-Russian cars. Where did it all come from?


    Or did the people wake up every morning as usual, and their wallets, emptied out the previous night, were now once again full bills bearing the image of C. R. Jakobson and freshly minted silver dollars? She could only give a sigh. It did not sound too believable. And at the same time it sounded a lot more believable than a few other options.


    At this very moment, she stumbled upon something. Literally, as her hands stopped her face from planting on a hot steel surface. A big red car with the top down, metal flake under the flawless clearcoat shining in the morning sun. A red leather interior and a white canvas top folded down behind the rear seats. Mariann¡¯s car. Mariann was here.


    She raised her head. She was no longer on the same street. While in her thoughts she had made it down the street of Cemetery Flight onto the Southern street running in parallel to the main street on which most of the rest of the town lived. A street the name of which had long since fallen into obscurity, but on which stood the Medical Corps of the Institute, the city hall, the radio station and also Leopold¡¯s bar. Near which Kadri was now standing.


    The tall glass windows were dirty and covered with heavy drapes on the inside. There was no movement to these whatsoever. Without Mariann¡¯s car right by the door once could have easily reached the conclusion that like most of the town, this place too was just a remnant of some forgotten heydays. It may have still been the case, until she actually tried to door and stepped inside.


    To her surprise, the door opened and she stepped into a small entryway with another door before her. She pushed open the inner door and finally stepped into a shadowy pub full of dark wooden tones. Right ahead was the pub counter while on her right hand there was a large room with tables and chairs and at the far end of it she could even see a small stage with a covered drum set.


    There weren¡¯t too many people in the bar. Most of them were sitting at the smaller tables for two which stood in line at the tall windows facing street side. As for the rest, the tables nearer to the counter seemed to be the ones with more people around them. Behind the counter a portly barkeep was busying himself. By the look of it he was in his late fifties or early sixties. And in this dinghy bar, he was just about the most impeccably dressed man. A white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, a black vest and a white apron covering pleated black pants. As he turned, Kadri noticed that he was wearing glasses, with one of the lens opaque black.


    Only one of the stools at the counter was occupied. And on that one there was an instantly familiar body sitting, or rather lying down. Lower body sitting on the stool while her upper body was comfortably flat on the counter.


    ¡°Mariann?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°She¡¯s asleep.¡± a thin young man from the window-side table said.


    ¡°Asleep?¡±


    ¡°I think since four o¡¯clock.¡± The barkeep said grumpily, trying to keep his voice down.


    ¡°Why hasn¡¯t anybody wakened her?¡±


    ¡°You must be new in town.¡± The thin man from the window-side table said. ¡°To wake a girl in black if you have no business¡­ nobody¡¯s gonna take that risk.¡±


    ¡°What would you like?¡± the barkeep asked Kadri.


    ¡°I don¡¯t have any..,¡±


    ¡°Girls in black don¡¯t have to pay.¡± the Barkeep said, giving a deep sigh. It was obvious how much he hated saying this.


    For a moment Kadri paused and mused over the man¡¯s words, finally giving up on her pointless struggle.


    ¡°A coffee please. With milk.¡±


    She sat onto the stool right beside Mariann and only then saw that the girl next to her was indeed sleeping. Left hand resting in the inner crease of the elbow, right hand stretched straight across the bar counter and head resting on said arm.


    Kadri took another look around the bar, but there was still one question in her mind that did not allow her to focus.


    ¡°Why do girls in black not have to pay?¡± She asked.


    ¡°You¡¯re kidding, right?¡± the young man from the window asked again.


    ¡°I don¡¯t think I am.¡± Kadri replied.


    ¡°Maybe it is better if she explains it to you.¡± the Barkeep said, looking at Mariann.


    Kadri gently pulled the hair off Mariann¡¯s face. Her closed eyes and low breathing indicated that she was still asleep.


    ¡°There are only three options.¡± The man from the table started talking once more. ¡°You are either insane, truly a stranger in town or the girl in black herself.¡±


    ¡°Why?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°Because you ordered coffee while shes sleeping in the bar. You¡¯re the first one who dares to order coffee today.¡±


    ¡°Rops!¡± The barkeep said in a threatening tone.


    Hearing that, the young man fell silent and gave up on any further attempts to talk to Kadri.


    Soon, the Barkeep placed a saucer and a cup of coffee in front of her along with a small pitcher of milk.


    ¡°Hey.¡± Mariann said in a quiet voice, using her right hand to pull hair off her face. ¡°You ordered coffee?¡±


    She stretched out her arm and without even having to look at it, her index finger found the Barkeep.


    ¡°Get me one too. Black. In my usual mug.¡±


    Mariann¡¯s sudden voice made the barkeep flinch.


    Kadri poured in the milk leaving the level only a few millimeters off the crest of the cup and then started to slowly stir it.


    ¡°Why don¡¯t girls in black pay for their drinks?¡± She asked.


    ¡°They do.¡± Mariann replied. ¡°When they feel like it. And in many of the cases they pay with non-monetary means. Some of the thoughts which come to me late at night are more valuable than any amount of money one can produce.¡±


    ¡°Why does nobody order coffee when you¡¯re sleeping in the bar?¡±


    ¡°Because the smell of coffee wakes me up right away.¡± Mariann replied. ¡°Are you out of questions?¡±


    Kadri said nothing, only gave a small shake of her head.


    ¡°Can these wait until I¡¯ve had my coffee as well?¡± She asked. ¡°Otherwise we¡¯re talking from two very unequal positions.¡±


    Kadri gave a small nod before sipping her coffee and milk.


    Mariann was... strange. There was no other word to use for her. She was the very same as the Nameless Town. The vary same as the Lost County. Some kind of geographical area crystallized into a physical humanoid embodiment. A kind of spirit concentrated to a level it could stand for itself. To contemplate on the nature of itself and others. How else would one describe a person who was at home just about everywhere. While sleeping right here in the bar or reading in a car during a hot night. But also when wandering some forgotten military installation or when sitting in a haunted library at night, deciding which tomes were valuable documents and which were scrap paper. Even in the forest at night, if some stories were to be believed.


    One one hand it seemed completely alien to Kadri and on the other hand¡­ perhaps it was even something to aspire towards. To ruminate on whatever is going on, whatever has happened but also history. Something simple and yet insurmountably complicated. A question unto it¡¯s very own was how had Mariann managed to cultivate the aura that was surrounding her. Simultaneously salt of the earth but also a space alien who has not yet revealed her gray skin.


    And then there was that subtle shun that people held towards her.


    Kadri had managed to drink half of her milk coffee by the time Barkeep had finished making a fresh pot. He set a giant saucer and even bigger cup right before Mariann. If Kadri¡¯s cup was of regular size then Mariann¡¯s was at least twice if not thrice at big. But to Mariann it seemed only too normal.


    ¡°You had more questions.¡± She said right after her first sip.


    ¡°Can you spare me five hundred kroons?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°I can.¡± Mariann said. ¡°What for?¡±


    ¡°At the market there is a guy selling a CD-player.¡±


    ¡°The one with the yellow bus?¡± Mariann asked. ¡°About my height, really thin, mustached, looks older than one might think?¡±


    ¡°Yeah, him.¡±


    Mariann gave a knowledgeable smile. ¡°That¡¯s not his first time in this village. Also not his first time to peddle his wares. If I were you I would not get too excited about his goods.¡±


    ¡°Why is that?¡±


    ¡°Because in some sense it could be considered fraud. From his position however it would be merely an omission.¡±


    Mariann fell silent, contemplatively sipping her big cup of black coffee. While Kadri was impatient for her to continue her tale. Mariann only smiled, as if knowing was she was being expected of.


    ¡°He only allowed you to hear the first track, correct? It astonished you, didn¡¯t it?¡±


    A strange feeling came over Kadri as she stared at the girl next to her. But then, intead of a barrage of questions, she only gave a nod.


    ¡°I know why.¡± Mariann said. ¡°How can you ascertain that the device played the file format you expect it to play? That the disc really has a hundred tracks instead of just twelve?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know.¡± Kadri said.


    She wasn¡¯t disappointed, but at the same time she truly had not considered this. But now it seemed to make a great deal of sense, considering that the man had not allowed her to hear more than the first track.


    ¡°The other aspect of the omission is way more interesting though.¡± Mariann continued, having swirled the coffee in her cup for a bit. ¡°Have you ever thought why everything here is so¡­ old? Old cars, old radios, valves more often than transistors and tape drives rather than micro-electronics you are so familiar with. That CD-player the guy is selling is obviously not as old as everything else.¡±


    ¡°Poor country-folk can¡¯t afford to buy new things?¡± Kadri asked. ¡°The old folk have ways they are accustomed to and see no reason for anything novel?¡±


    ¡°These are good offers but not quite it.¡± Mariann replied. ¡°One of them is better though than the other. During the Soviet era, people lived in constant stagnation. Life changed surprisingly little in forty years. It did not change at all in any ten years. In ten years you could finally purchase the same car, your parents started collecting for a decade earlier. It was entirely possible people had no idea they lived in stagnation. It is possible they don¡¯t understand it in here either. Days pass and roll into the night but life never changes. But this is just an errant thought and not the reason.¡±


    ¡°What would be then?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°The world itself.¡± Mariann said. ¡°I cannot explain you what the exact reasons are. Transient electromagnetic anomalies, radiological anomalies. Weather phenomena. Anomalies of the space-time topology. A certain amount on anemoia perhaps? These are all prudent words, but don¡¯t really help us to signify the reason. But a fact remains that from some level fineness, electronics start to fail and may completely cease to function. Some temporarily, others permanently. Data is lost and batteries, even rechargeable ones, get emptied in mysterious ways.


    ¡°If you don¡¯t believe me, go take a lot at Peeter¡¯s scrap yard. There have been quite a few bands arriving from Glass Town in angular cars that look as if torn out of the future. And none can be started. Charged batteries which can easily start older cars, can¡¯t illuminate a single light in the newer ones, never mind turning the engine. And if one starts such a car by pulling it, then the electronics can¡¯t keep them running as if the fuel tables have all been wiped from the memory chips.¡±


    ¡°So why don¡¯t older cars have this problem?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°Because the older ones are all mostly mechanical. Carburetors, engine vacuum, oil pressure and lots of wires for all the lights.¡±


    ¡°I did not mean as old as those.¡± Kadri replied. ¡°I mean the one standing at the side of the road in the cottage district.¡±


    ¡°Oh, those.¡± Mariann gave a small smile. ¡°These do indeed have electronics. But the traces on various PCBs are also wider so they are either less affected or not affected at all.¡±


    ¡°Aren¡¯t optical discs also free of electronics?¡± Kadri asked. ¡°They are burned with a laser and read with a laser. Laser burns holes of different sizes into the plastic which alter reflectivity and thus the data is recorded.¡±


    ¡°That is true.¡± Mariann said. ¡°But electronics are there to turn those reflected laser beams into music. Or some other kind of information.¡±


    Kadri sighed, emptying her cup. ¡°So in your opinion, there is no point in buying that?¡±


    ¡°Nope. Suppose you buy it. Let¡¯s suppose you even manage to find more batteries to fuel it. Even if you use it sparingly, there is a danger that one day it will no longer work. Either because the batteries are empty or there is a transient anomaly interfering with it¡¯s function or some other stronger anomaly has damaged it beyond repair.¡±


    ¡°Okay.¡± Kadri said pensively. ¡°But I still have to hear that music again. And the guy said that he is willing to take trades. And the thing I could give is not up to me and what he wants to get, I don¡¯t want to give.¡±


    ¡°Neither of these is a good option.¡± Said Mariann. ¡°He asked for the factory limo, did he not?¡±


    ¡°Yes.¡±


    ¡°What are you going to do with it?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know yet. It is out of fuel. But at the same tine I don¡¯t have too many choices.¡±


    ¡°Do you need a car that doesn¡¯t drive? Do you want to fill it with fuel?¡±


    ¡°No.¡±


    ¡°Then leave the keys in the ignition or behind the sun visor and the doors unlocked. Maybe somebody else will come who finds a need for it. Or maybe you do at some point and then it is good to have it available.¡±


    ¡°And should somebody steal it?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°Is it yours?¡± Mariann asked.


    Kadri shook her head.


    ¡°Do you know whose it is?¡± Mariann continued. ¡°Why are you worried then? You borrowed it when you needed it, now let somebody else borrow it. Isn¡¯t that the same method you and your friends initially used to get here?¡±


    Kadri did not reply, only stared at her empty cup.


    ¡°Also, the locals don¡¯t know cars too well. Every kind of huge passenger car may belong to the Boys from the North. Or perhaps to those other officials who are even more peculiar. Nobody who does not need it, will touch it. Not even Peter who usually collects unused cars and brings them to his scrap yard, until somebody comes to collect them or to look for parts.¡±


    ¡°You said you could give me the money.¡± Kadri said. ¡°What do I need to do for it?¡±


    Mariann smiled and finished his large cup of coffee.


    ¡°Let¡¯s go.¡±


    Kadri got up from the bar stool and gave one last glace at the counter. Mariann hadn¡¯t indeed left anything on the counter. No bills, no coins. And the barkeep on the other side of the counter was not the least bit bothered by this. He wasn¡¯t also bothered about Mariann waiting for Kadri and holding both doors open, letting bright sunlight into the bar. She finally followed the girl and together they stepped out of the bar.


    ¡°Hey, Leopld...¡± Rops started when the bar door had closed once again.


    ¡°Rops, go fuck yourself!¡± Leopold said in response.


    *


    ¡°Where are we going?¡± Kadri asked as she followed Mariann down the street.


    ¡°Not far.¡±


    It was clear that Mariann was heading towards her red open top machine. But Kadri was wrong. Mariann was walking towards it but she did not get in, she didn¡¯t even stop by it, instead, she passed the rear of it, running her fingers along the sharp crease that ended with a cathedral tail light. She cut diagonally across the street and stopped on a broken sidewalk right next to a tall plank painted earthen yellow.


    She ran her hand on the boards of the fence and finally found a hidden door which opened to the inside. She pushed it open and revealed to Kadri an overgrown shadowy yard around a Soviet era summer cottage. To the left there was a tall shed with dark wooden walls, roof of zinc steel glistening in the sun. To the right, there was a one-story flat-roofed cottage. Some of the walls of the cottage were of pale brick, others were of yellow boards a shade cooler than the fence. The edges of the roof and the eaves overhangs were of the same wooden boards.


    The tall grass was almost to Kadri¡¯s hips and the overgrown fruit trees created a plenty of shadows in which she could feel even some cool streams of air. It also wasn¡¯t nearly as hot as it was on the street in town or in the cottage district. There was a foot path made of huge concrete slabs about a meter in width which led to the shed, the cottage as well as the hidden gate in the tall fence. The yard seemed to be surrounded by tall hedges on several sides, but otherwise it was impossible to understand where the borders of the plot may have been.


    ¡°You live here?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°Not quite.¡± Mariann said.


    With no hesitation in her movements, she found the key under a flower pot on the stoop and unlocked the cottage. It looked like a pretty run of the mill cottage built in the late 70s or early 80s, still retaining the originally allowed area and floor plan. Only the front veranda had two walls with large glass windows added and thus converted into a large sun room.


    And despite the huge built-in cupboard covering the whole living room wall, the cloth armchairs with lacquered wooden armrests and a coffee table true to the era, there were no signs of habitation. It rather looked like nobody had lived here for years and the whole interior was instead being curated. An attempt to take the best care to maintain the signs of somebody else¡¯s past habitation.


    ¡°If you don¡¯t live here then...¡±


    ¡°I can¡¯t really say that I live anywhere.¡± Mariann replied. ¡°I have lots of things spread out everywhere. Some here, some in the underground base, some in the cottage district. Some even in agroprom.¡±


    ¡°So this place here is¡­?¡±


    ¡°My dark room. Make yourself comfortable, I need to go and get a few things.¡±


    Mariann disappeared somewhere right of the kitchen in front of them and Kadri was left alone in the living room. There was a large glass window right in front of her which let in a lot of light and from which the overgrown front yard could be seen. Opposite the window, there was a small bedroom which shared a wall and with the kitchen. Into this wall the kitchen stove and the chimney were built. This bedroom was not too dissimilar to the one she was sleeping in. Minus the heated wall. A room big enough only for the bed and to get in and out of said bed.


    ¡°I have a job for you.¡± Mariann said as she returned to the living room. ¡°Or rather there are two jobs that overlap. Previously, I¡¯ve taken photographs of various interesting locations in this area. And somebody has heard about this. Somebody in Valgepal? want to make an album of such photos. And although there are plenty of people skilled in photography across the three towns, there aren¡¯t too many who would dare to set their foot in some of the required locations. This would be one job.¡±


    ¡°And the other?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°I need various locations photographed as well. For my own purposes. But on one hand, I don¡¯t have the time, and on the other hand, I don¡¯t really feel like doing this any more. Essentially it just doing a lot of driving back and forth within Lost County. To me, this is as boring as death by now. But for you, as the first assignment, this would be perfect, I think.¡±


    ¡°First assignment?¡± Kadri asked in a suspecting tone. ¡°What do you mean by that?¡±


    ¡°Come.¡±


    Mariann guided her through the kitchen and into the side room. This seemed to be a repurposed garage. There seemed to be yet another room behind it and Kadri could only guess it the dark room. But here there was desk in the middle of the room and lots of metal shelving. The metal shelves were full of hardcover binders probably filled with various photos and negatives. On a table sat an old camera made of silvery metal, partially exposed from its leather case. There were also a couple of old thin notebooks, a small nondescript book and boxes full of unused photography film.


    ¡°I mean exactly what I mean. Remember our night time conversation? This here is your best bet to continue in this field. To look into the world and research what is going on while everybody else are merely trying to live in it. Or...¡±


    ¡°Or..?¡± Kadri asked with a wary tone.


    ¡°Or I give you the 500 kroons you wanted, but you will never ever again come to bother me with work.¡±


    ¡°The things you want me to photograph¡­ these aren¡¯t anything dangerous or something like classified state secrets?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°Nothing like it. Totally annoying and bore of an activity. But the locals have been frightened by either history or folklore to such a degree and captured by prejudice that they actively fear these places. Some time ago I had more willingness to deal with this, but right now I have more urgent problems.¡±


    ¡°I only have to take pictures, right? Not develop them? Because I haven¡¯t done my own developing for a long time now and I can¡¯t even remember how to do it properly.¡±


    ¡°You only need to take the pictures. I can handle developing them.¡±


    ¡°Okay then.¡± Kadri took a deep breath and took another look at everything on the table. ¡°I¡¯ll do it. For five hundred kroons.¡±


    ¡°Very good.¡± Mariann gave a smile. ¡°Here¡¯s your equipment. 35mm Canon analog camera, top of the line circa 1960s. Ten rolls of film, a separate light meter and a guide book on metering light, although I don¡¯t think you¡¯ll find much use for it. And these two small notebooks. One of these contains the list of items the customer wants to be photographed and the other one contains the locations I want photographed. I sorted them out based on distance, should I want to deal with it myself. Of course you can go rogue if you want. There are things to be photographed which are not necessarily on either of the two lists.¡±


    Kadri open one of the two notebooks to take a glance. Mariann¡¯s handwriting was a lot more elegant and artistic than she had expected. Perfectly readable with three clear levels and all letters tied to one another. Nothing exaggerated or decadently stretched towards the vertical.


    The first few pages contained locations that mostly resided within the town itself. The Institute, the Town Hall. The school, the church. The radio tower and other such stuff. It was interesting that although she knew about all these locations, at the same time she had never had the interest of visiting any of these places on her own. To just go to these places and look at them like tourism sites. As if her whole presence here only centered around the black factory limo and the cottage district. And this felt weird. Especially now that she could distance herself from it and give it the slightest bit of thought.


    In any case, it was well worth doing it, even if Mariann had not promised her money. Which reminded her something.


    ¡°Hey!¡±


    She heard the Mariann¡¯s voice and turned towards her only to be blinded bu the flash gun. After her eyesight recovered, she could see Mariann hold another camera, as if ready for another photo.


    ¡°What was that!?¡± She asked, annoyed.


    ¡°That was the ¡°before¡± picture.¡± Mariann said with a queer smile.


    ¡°The ¡®before¡¯ picture? When are you going to take the ¡®after¡¯ picture?¡±


    ¡°After you have finished the job.¡±


    ¡°Is this something like those photos of young soldiers before and after their stint on the front?¡± Kadri asked. ¡°How a young soldier ages by fifteen years in just three?¡±


    ¡°Not quite.¡± Mariann said. ¡°This assignment will not take you three years. And the stress level is also not comparable. But still, there will be a clear difference between the ¡®before¡¯ and ¡®after¡¯ photos.¡±


    Kadri sighed, not wanting to continue this avenue of discussion. She tried to recollect where she had been with her thought before Mariann so rudely had derailed that train.


    ¡°Is the reason you¡¯re using analog film the same reason you explained to me in the bar?¡± She asked.


    ¡°Partially yes. Digital single reflex cameras experience similar anomalies here as other devices of fine mechanics. Also, as you explore different locales, you have no real control which kind of energy fields you interact with. Especially considering that the human body is remarkably resilient and insensitive to natural energy fields which can easily destroy a digital camera.¡±


    ¡°And the other reason?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°Dynamic range. The dynamic range of the emulsion on analog film exceeds the dynamic range of a sensor by two full stops, especially when over- and underexposing. On one hand, this allows for a little more leeway when you¡¯re not too precise with your light metering. On the other hand, there are phenomena which can only be captured on photographic film and which the sensor of a digital camera cannot detect. In addition to that, the sharpness of a 35 millimeter film is about ten times better than a digital photo.¡±


    Kadri fell into thought. There was something else she had wanted to ask, but right now it seemed to have disappeared from her consciousness.


    ¡°In the bar.¡± She finally found it. ¡°You said that you know the music that man is selling, right?¡±


    ¡°I did.¡± Mariann nodded. ¡°And that is the reason I am giving you this as well.¡±


    She handed Kadri an audio cassette in a yellowed plastic case.


    ¡°It is a two hour cassette. But I am pretty sure all of the music will fit on one side of the tape. In the case there is also the track list. Take this to Allan and ask him to find the tracks from his database and record a mixtape for you. I would bet anything that a cassette player will outlast a CD-player. And an old cassette player costs next to nothing. Also, all cars are full of cassette radios. I should also have a knapsack for all this junk, somewhere.¡±


    Mariann disappeared again to the depth of the small cottage and left Kadri alone in the photography room. She continued browsing the notebooks with the locations to take photos of and noticed that with every page, the descriptions of tasks grew longer and more detailed. Most of the description of every object was made up of directions on how to get there. Of some she had heard like Luiga or the Officer¡¯s Village, but there were also names she was only now learning of. It was obvious that not all of these places could be visited on foot. At least not within any reasonable amount of time.


    ¡°Do you have gas?¡± Kadri shouted. ¡°At least a canister¡¯s worth?¡±


    ¡°No I don¡¯t.¡± Mariann said, returning. ¡°All I have is in the car. And if I run low I will go to the Village Dude and ask for more.¡±


    ¡°A bicycle then?¡±


    ¡°Why would you need one or the other anyway?¡± Asked Mariann as she stepped into the room with a soft leather knapsack.


    She started collecting the items on the table and putting them into the knapsack.


    ¡°Some of the locations to take photographs of are pretty far away.¡± Kadri replied. ¡°It is going to be bothersome to walk everywhere.¡±


    ¡°It will be.¡± Mariann agreed. ¡°But I never said you would have to walk everywhere. In fact, I would recommend against it. I would also recommend you to ditch the long skirt and instead get a pair of pants. And instead of soft sneakers, some high-lace boots or wellingtons. Because some of the locations are deep in the forest or in wetlands.¡±


    ¡°But then...¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s not like I go everywhere in my red car either. Maybe that is one of the reasons the village folk treats me in such a weird way. They see the red car somewhere and immediately assume that I must be nearby. While at the same time somebody else sees me far away from that place with a completely different car. Come.¡±


    Kadri set belt on the knapsack across her shoulder, leaving the sack hanging on her opposite hip. She then followed Mariann. She was led out of the cottage and right onto the wide footpath leading to the dark shed in the corner of the yard. Before, Kadri had thought it to be only for tools but now it seemed that I may have well been a garage. Strangely it hadn¡¯t even occurred to her before that there might be a car in there. As if the only possible transport in this town had been those massive old passenger cars that everybody seemed to be driving.


    ¡°Why would they think that you are near the red car?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°Because as a rule, I don¡¯t put the roof up. I only do it when it is about to rain or when it is too cold to drive without it.¡±


    Mariann pushed open the wide front doors of the shed which revealed a tall olive drab vehicle. Behind the black bull bar with some surface rust, there sat two rectangular lights on either side. Matte olive drab color, two doors, old-style door handles with faded chrome and a long tail section. The car was tall, obviously off road capable, with big knobby tires. The lower edge of the door was at the height of about half ways between Kadri¡¯s knee and hip, but the steel tubular rail under the body made it slightly easier to get in and out.


    ¡°M1009. Three-speed automatic transmission, a diesel engine without electronics or even a turbo and four wheel drive with low range. The tank is full, keys are behind the sunvisor. There is also a stand for the camera at the back, should you need it.¡±


    ¡°Why this one?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°You don¡¯t have to if you don¡¯t want to.¡± Mariann said. ¡°Just that this does not drink thirty liters per hundred k. More like ten. It is simple to maintain and if need be, you can sleep at the back. If push comes to shove, you can run it on up to 50% waste oil and with a snorkel you can get into deep waters.¡±


    Kadri opened the creaky front door and climbed onto the driver seat. Bare steel floor with the transfer case lever reaching up from it. Transmission lever on the steering column. The interior of the vehicle was full of a smell containing odors of diesel fuel, gasoline solvent and burnt engine oil.


    She found a small set of keys from behind the sun visor and put the key into the ignition. She then turned the metal frame around the key. The glow plug light ignited for a few seconds and then went out. After a few seconds of cranking, the engine noisily came to life and soon the smell of sooty burnt diesel fuel surrounded them.


    ¡°V8 diesel?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°Yeah.¡± Mariann said. ¡°You can use it in the future as well, if you want. But I am pretty sure that as soon as you finish with this assignment, you will find yourself some other vehicle to drive.¡±


    Kadri slowly drove the vehicle out of the shed.


    ¡°One other thing.¡± Mariann said.


    She reached through the side window of the car and handed Kadri five blue bills with an image of a young women with long wavy hair on each of them.


    ¡°What is this for?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°Your agreed-upon payment. Take it as a pre-payment made in good faith.¡±


    ¡°Thanks.¡± Kadri said. ¡°How do I get out of this yard?¡±

 XXXVI - Before Meeting the Witch IV

    ¡°Can you see it? Something¡¯s going on?¡± Siim asked.


    ¡°What exactly?¡± Johannes asked.


    ¡°You see, don¡¯t you?¡± Siim replied. ¡°People are getting ready to leave.¡±


    Fire Tail bar in Tontla was still packed with people. It was much more crowded than usually on a weekday or even a weekend night. There were locals, but most of the people on this special night had arrived here from the surrounding areas. From the Nameless Town, from the Cottage District, one could see even Valgepal? locals, never mind people from smaller farms and nameless forgotten villages which lied between but also surrounded the larger settlements. One could also see the visitors around the rest of Tontla, since every one of these people had found their own transport. Some on foot, some hitchhiking, some on a bicycles.


    But many had come with massive limousines which nobody had imagined would ever drive here and thus for which nobody had designed the streets or parking spaces. And thus the front of the bar as well as the surrounding streets were full of large passenger cars glistening with chrome. The vehicles would have most certainly interfered with traffic if the streets in Tontla had had any traffic.


    The pub being so crowded, it was really difficult to observe what was going on in it. Both for strangers, but for locals as well. Especially when large groups of people suddenly started moving. And right now, this exact thing was taking place. Never mind that today, those that started moving were of great interest to those, who had no place or reason to go. For them though, it was a sign that the significant part of the event was over and the curious onlookers with no direct connection to the event could also return to their homes.


    ¡°True.¡± Said Kadri, looking around.


    She also noticed how people around the most important table in the pub tonight had gotten up and were now pushing the chairs together.


    Kadri was also the last one still to be seated around their own table. However after her friend had spoken to her, she also got up to head towards the door. The five of them were not the only ones to start moving right after Mariann¡¯s group. There were other more or less familiar people from the Nameless Town. Like Rops, Leopold the barkeep, the village hags. But also people she had never expected to see at all.


    She also noticed how in the back corner of the bar, three tall yet unbelievably thin men got up. They all looked the same. With pale, almost gray faces without a single hair on them, not even eyebrows or eyelashes, never mind beard or hair. Their lips had no color, assuming they had any lips at all. All three gentlemen were dressed in identical impeccable black suits, with white shirts and black ties. Each also had identical bowler hats and attache cases of black leather. The men were so emaciated that the clothes on them looked like on clothes hangers and beyond the padded shoulders, their clothes gave no impression of bodily shape under them.


    Suddenly, one of them turned his head towards Kadri. After a second or two, the other two did as well. She felt that they knew that she was seeing them. She could not see their eyes, all of them had identical sunglasses with small circular black lens on wire frames. Then the world around her froze. She herself froze as well. Even her thoughts froze and suddenly she could not think of anything at all, just endure the eye contact. Something had seized her chest and did not allow her to breathe in or out. She felt the lack of air. But in addition to that, there was some other kind of tension rising. This tension in her head rose along with the suffocation in her chest. It deafened her, it even held her up not allowing her to collapse on the floor.


    The tension kept rising until a powerful cough rocked her body and she fell to the ground. The world around her started moving again and she was desperately gasping for air to rid herself of the suffocation still burning inside her like acid. Her hands and legs were shaking from sudden yet extreme weakness. And this jolt which had shaken her, it wasn¡¯t just a cough. On the floor in front of her was a big blob of black blood.


    Slowly, she got back up again. Inhumanely thin tall men in immaculate black suits were gone. With a strong sway in her steps, she found her way towards the exit.


    By the time she made it outside, people were already getting into the cars. Mariann and several people from her table had decided to take a large green sedan with a white vinyl roof. The doctor and her assistant had a long white coupe, which had it¡¯s tail light set into tall fins at the back of the car. Two jet exhaust shaped lights on either fin. And Rops too was already in his dirty black Volga and waiting. The yellow parking lights on it faintly glowing in the dark.


    Unwillingly, her head turned into the opposite direction instead. A bit further away there stood a car that looked very similar to the one the doctor had, but a black one. Perfectly piano black. Perfect chrome and tails lights set into the pods on rear fins in a similar fashion. But while on the doctor¡¯s car these lights were just shaped like jet exhausts, on this one they looked like real flames with shock diamonds. And similar real flames seemed to emerge from the chrome bumper recesses down where the reverse lights were. It was also strange that all windows of said car were black, as if coated on the inside with carbon paper.


    Out of nowhere appeared the three tall and emaciated men she had seen before, each of them carrying a black attache case. Without paying any attention to Kadri, one of them opened the front door of the car and all three of them got onto the front seat along with their briefcases. After that the car started moving, it turned around in the middle of the street and then departed without making a sound.


    There was something though that felt off. She could but had to rub her eyes which had become wet. There were tears in her eyes but there was no water on her fingers. Instead it was blood.


    ¡°Kadri, are you okay?¡± Tiina¡¯s worried voice asked.


    ¡°Yeah, why?¡± She asked, turning around.


    ¡°Because you are standing right in the middle of the street. You are shaking and your face is pale sickly gray. And blood is dripping from your nose. Other have started moving already.¡±


    Only now did Kadri also notice that the street was almost empty. Most of the cars in front of the bar were now gone and the only thing remaining was that huge black factory limo they had brought away from the air field on that rainy day after meeting Mariann.


    Johannes reversed the car, and stopped it right beside Kadri and Tiina.


    ¡°Hey! Let¡¯s go already! Otherwise we¡¯re gonna lose Rops¡¯s tail and then its gonna be impossible to find them!¡±


    ¡°Are you sure, you¡¯re okay?¡± Tiina asked again.


    ¡°Yeah.¡± Said Kadri and wiped her nose with her fingers. ¡°Let¡¯s go.¡±


    She opened the long rear door of the vehicle to land on the navy blue cloth back seat.


    ¡°I think your ear is also bleeding.¡± Tiina said, getting into the car after Kadri.


    All three girls easily fit onto the rear bench seat.


    ¡°That would be seven.¡± Kadri said. ¡°It is possible that all my bodily openings have bled slightly.¡±


    ¡°Eww! Why?¡± Viivika asked. ¡°What happened?!¡±


    ¡°It doesn¡¯t matter. Right now, everything¡¯s fine. I will deal with it afterwards.¡±


    In her mind, Kadri reviewed everything that had just happened to her and she remembered why she had started to rub her eyes in the first place. She had seen something she could not be certain off.


    ¡°Damn it.¡± She said to herself.


    ¡°What?¡± Siim asked from the front passenger seat.


    ¡°The wheels on it weren¡¯t turning.¡±


    *


    ¡°Where are we going?¡± Jaan asked as the car full of people rolled down the night road.


    Usually, Jaan was glad to drive alone. Steering was so light that he could turn it with a pinky finger and the soft suspension ironed away all road imperfections and even smaller potholes. He did not want to say it was like driving on glass but rather it was like driving on a fabric stretch out. Like a boat on waters as still as a mirror. But this was the usual case. When he was alone or maybe with Mariann.


    But right now, the car was full of people. The suspension was almost fully compressed, especially at the back and the only thing to soften the road surface was the tire side wall. This was mostly because on the front seat there were him, Mariann and the silent young man, who had been in a desperate need to meet the witch. While in the back the Mayor was wedged between Toomas and Sleepyhead.


    ¡°That¡¯s some cool set of wheels you have, I must say!¡± The Mayor spoke, getting more and more comfortable on the back seat. ¡°There is almost as much room here as in the Chaika I keep in the courtyard of the Town Hall!¡±


    ¡°Continue driving for now. I will tell you when we are getting near.¡± Mariann said. ¡°Also pay attention that we are being properly followed.¡±


    ¡°Don¡¯t worry. Sare had always been a better driver than me.¡± Jaan replied.


    ¡°In the before-times maybe. But definitely not under the treatment plan he is currently practicing.¡± The girl in black said.


    She lifted her right had across the seat back to better see the people in the back row.


    ¡°Why haven¡¯t you taken that piece of scrap to Peeter¡¯s scrap yard already?¡± She asked. ¡°He would be very glad to have it. Might even fix it up and get it running again.¡±


    ¡°And you think it¡¯d be still mine after that? Chaika is such a special machine that Pete would take ownership of it at once and I would have no longer any pleasure from sitting in it and reminiscing, let alone driving it. No, I¡¯d rather let it sit and rust.¡±


    ¡°But then just let him fix it up. The engine is the smallest problem on it. It the same damn unit that¡¯s in the 53. Just with twin carburetors and a higher compression ratio. And even if you yourself can¡¯t mill the compression higher and also won¡¯t let others to do it, just having a new engine would also suffice. You have no need of driving at 150 anyways, 110 or 120 would work as well.¡± Mariann said.


    ¡°You know! You¡­!¡± The Mayor tried to find a response but could not. ¡°You focus on invoking the witch! That why we¡¯re here, isn¡¯t it? To try and call out the witch according to your instruction!¡±


    ¡°Okay.¡± Mariann said, unfazed. ¡°Keep looking at it rusting away while you still can. As for the witch, you better think carefully about the reasons why you are invoking the witch and what you want of her. Otherwise this will be of no use to not only you but to nobody else as well. At the same time you will lose your only chance to turn towards somebody more knowledgeable when things go truly sour.¡±


    ¡°I know! I know!¡± The Mayor grumbled.


    ¡°Oh you do?¡± Mariann asked. ¡°Doesn¡¯t look like that to me. You keep saying we need to see the witch to understand why a man self-combusted in the forest, what happened to the forest lake and why water flows uphill through the town. But do you know for sure what knowledge you want the witch to impart on you? Have you thought through what is the thing that the witch should tell you? Because this is the aspect on which the way you will be choosing your words will depend. What you will ask, what the witch shall answer and how you make sense of it.¡±


    ¡°If you don¡¯t believe it of being of any use at all, why help me?¡± the Mayor asked.


    ¡°I believe it is of use.¡± The girl in in black said. ¡°But I don¡¯t believe you to be of any use, especially with the attitude you¡¯re holding today. You¡¯re asking what I think. You ask what Toomas thinks. But have you really mulled these opinions over? Have you thought over Karl¡¯s opinion?¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re not meaning Karl Taak, are you?¡± Toomas asked.


    ¡°Him exactly.¡± Mariann smiled. ¡°And, should you ask why. Well, even a blind chicken might catch a worm.¡±


    ¡°Have you ever properly and with thought listened to the village hags? To Allan Helde? Have you asked from the Institute? Of people who are older than you, more experienced than you, braver than you and who have seen more? There are more of them than you could ever imagine. Find them and hear them out. You want answers that are pre-filled with meaning. And not to reach them on your own. But in this field, such answers have no meaning. They are but speaking in riddles or pure nonsense. Understanding can only rise from walking the path and reaching an answer significant for you.¡±


    ¡°Where are we going?¡± Jaan asked again. ¡°It would be better if I know beforehand rather than our convoy passing the right place and then having to negotiate turning around in the middle of the road.


    ¡°The crossroad I have chosen lies on the Circle Road surrounding the Nameless Town, near the airfield. Where the roads to Tontla and to Luiga end. Or start, if looking at it from the Town¡¯s side.¡±


    ¡°But¡­!¡± The Mayor started. ¡°That¡¯s not a crossroad!¡±


    ¡°He¡¯s right. This really isn¡¯t a crossroad.¡± Toomas agreed, furrowing his brow. ¡°The road to Tontla, to Luiga and the Circle Road. It is an intersection of of three roads but it is not in the shape of a cross.¡±


    ¡°Exactly!¡± The Mayor continued with his tirade. ¡°In the bar you were so full of self-importance that it cannot be just any street corner to make the sacrifice, that it must be a crossroad. And now¡­!¡±


    ¡°Sulev, stop complaining!¡± Mariann shouted with an annoyed voice. ¡°I may yet reconsider whether I want to invoke the witch for you. And you complaining does not do any service to your wishes.¡±


    The Mayor fell silent but his demeanor spoke about his disappointment.


    ¡°This is the best crossroad we have this side of the Town.¡± Said Mariann. ¡°Would you like to perform the ritual somewhere near the Train Yard? On the road leading to the Fourth Town? There are plenty of rad places between Tontla and Valgepal? where nobody besides the Russians have gone, simply because nobody dares to. Where you fall down flat on your face as soon as you exit the car because your feet refuse to carry you when you realize where you are. We can also go to one such place. And we can also leave you there.¡±


    ¡°The old folk tales also say that one needs to go to an intersection, rather than crossroads.¡± Toomas said. ¡°The witch or a devil has no need for a crossroad, since they don¡¯t travel along earthly roads. They need an intersection where our world and the place outside our world intersect.¡±


    This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    ¡°Exactly.¡± Mariann said. ¡°And think about the map for a bit. What lies due South from the Tontla road?¡±


    ¡°The Death Fields.¡± Toomas said.


    ¡°You have become pretty knowledgeable around this place!¡± Mariann was surprised. ¡°What lies North of the Circle Road?¡±


    ¡°The Irradiated Woods?¡± The Mayor muttered.


    ¡°Which means that here we have an intersection between the land of the living and land of the dead. The traffic of the world of the living goes along the roads and the traffic of the land of the dead intersects with that.¡±


    ¡°You mean to say that the Witch comes from the land of the dead? From Toonela? From the Death Fields or the Irradiated Woods?¡± The Mayor asked.


    ¡°Not directly. There is no sense for me to explain it at this point. You¡¯ll see when we get there.¡±


    *


    ¡°It didn¡¯t take long for their sparse motorcade to make it to the destination Mariann had set for them. In this regard, the night and the world seemed to be favoring them. Since usually the world, or rather the sense of time of people was not as constant and contiguous. But right now, the trip took no more than 20 minutes, driving on the country road at a leisurely city driving speed.


    Under less favorable conditions it could have taken several times the amount of times while moving several time faster or a fraction of the time moving at a fraction of their speed. As if the speed of traversing space was not identical to the speed at which the space was passing by. Which in turn meant that there had to be a break or disconnectedness. A place where people traversing the space did not sense themselves standing still and conversely also a place where space passed by in such a way that people were not aware of themselves moving. This wasn¡¯t also something that could be consciously and willingly created. It just happened. And afterwards there were no explanation nor anybody to even believe what had taken place.


    The intersection near which Mariann asked Jaan to stop the car was indeed strange. To the West there were the roads leading to Luiga and Tontla. The road to Luiga more towards North-West, while the road to Tontla pointing more towards South-West. The sections of the Circle Road section headed towards North-East and South. Due East was an overgrown airfield and the remains of a concrete landing strip. Between the Tontla and Luiga roads there was a small grassy arc used to turn from Luiga road to Tontla Road and vice versa.


    Sare who was driving after the Professor, did exactly that. He first turned onto the Luiga road and parked his car on the side of the road, nose towards Luiga. He turned the engine off but left the parking lights on, including the jet exhausts on the fins.


    Rops who had come after Sare, drove his car onto the Circle Road towards the South and then turned around in a three-point turn and parked it on the road to Tontla, tail towards the Circle Road. He too left the parking lights on.


    After Rops came the long factory limo, which first turned onto the Northern section of the Circle Road and then skillfully reversed onto a hidden grass road opposite Tontla and Luiga roads. On this car the head lights were left on. The grass road heading towards the air field seemed to be wide enough for the long rear doors of the vehicle to be fully opened so the passengers could all exit.


    ¡°I think there are more of us than expected?¡± Jaan said.


    ¡°There are exactly as many of us as there should be.¡± Mariann said. ¡°Not more and not less. All who want to take part in this, are taking part. All who want to witness, are here to witness.¡±


    Mariann walked across the crossing illuminated by car¡¯s headlights and stopped, looking at the factory limo parked on a grass road.


    ¡°Where exactly did you park it?¡± She asked.


    ¡°It seemed to me like a small road was here.¡± Siim said. ¡°And there was. The car is not stuck, I did not even scrape the bottom backing in here.¡±


    ¡°I think you should mark the spot of this little road right now.¡± Mariann said. ¡°It is completely possible that should you return tomorrow in broad daylight, you will not be able to find the place you have just left the car at.¡±


    ¡°What do you mean we won¡¯t be able to find it?¡± Siim asked.


    ¡°The nature really changes so much between day and night?¡± Tiina asked.


    ¡°The nature does not change but the world does. The light does.¡± Mariann replied. ¡°Light of day reveals much but hides almost as much into the shadows. Dark of the Night shadows much but uncovers almost as much. And artificial light acts in it¡¯s own way, covered by entirely other kind of aspects.¡±


    ¡°So, if we were to shut off the parking lights on all the cars, the road where we have parked the car would disappear as well?¡± Viivika asked.


    ¡°Not only that. The car itself might disappear too, along with the people around it.¡± Toomas said as he came closer. ¡°That¡¯s what happened on my first night here when me and the Mayor went into the Forbidden Forest.¡±


    ¡°That is somewhat scary.¡± Tina said.


    ¡°Have noticed a thing with the placement of the cars?¡± Johannes asked. ¡°We have an intersection with five roads. And we have five cars on five roads. And the placement looks like these five cars are the five tips of a star. While the roads are in the shape of a goat.¡±


    ¡°A pentagram?¡± Tiina asked.


    ¡°Quite so.¡± Johannes replied.


    ¡°How can there be five cars if we came here with four?¡± Rops asked.


    ¡°Our limo, the green one that the Professor, Mariann and the Mayor came with, the doctor¡¯s white coupe, your Volga, Rops and...¡± Johannes pointed at the Northern direction of the Circle Road where under cover of darkness another car stood.


    ¡°Somebody else has come to observe the ritual.¡± Jaan said.


    Now, all the people present were trying to understand what kind of car were they dealing with. The head lights were off, only the incandescent yellow parking lights were on. It was also visible that the tail light were on. But this little light was not enough to ascertain the shape of the vehicle. The whole vehicle seemed to be surrounded in it¡¯s own cloud of peculiar darkness which did not let people see nor it¡¯s true size nor the general shape. Only the borders of it were faintly discernible.


    ¡°Very interesting,¡± Mariann said.


    ¡°Maybe it is Karl Taak, the skeptic?¡± asked Toomas. ¡°He too drives an old black car glistening with chrome, with very distinctive lights front and back.¡±


    ¡°But how did he get so close without making any sound?¡± Rops asked. ¡°Was the road not empty when we arrived?¡±


    Only now had Kadri finally finished wiping away the blood and finally emerged from the car and walked onto the blacktop. She immediately recognized the black vehicle standing on the Northern arc of the Circle Road. For her as well, the night surrounding the car was darker than elsewhere, but despite that, she recognized both the small front parking lights low to the ground as well as the jet exhaust shaped tail lights barely visible at the back of the car.


    ¡°This car belongs to these Men in Black.¡± Kadri said. ¡°To the ones who sat in the back corner of the bar.¡±


    ¡°So you saw them as well!¡± the Mayor exclaimed.


    ¡°I saw them get into the car one by one and then leave from the bar.¡± Kadri continued. ¡°Their vehicle did not make a single sound, but the paint on it was blacker than sky and windows look like they are covered with black paper on the inside.¡±


    ¡°Very interesting.¡± Said Mariann once again. ¡°For once that they are indeed here. On the other hand that the allowed you to see them at all. Usually they just keep to observing and do everything in their power to not be noticed by people. And most people won¡¯t, even as they stare them right in their faces.¡±


    ¡°Why?¡± Toomas asked.


    ¡°Not important right now.¡± Replied Mariann. ¡°And it is actually good for us that they are here. It shows that things are moving in the right direction. And Johannes is right. The five roads and the five cars make up a pentagram. And based on the shape of the intersection, the roads to Luiga and Tontla are the horns of the goat. Rituals need sacrifice, but personal items also have a role. In this situation the cars themselves are standing for our personal items.¡±


    ¡°But what role do they play in this?¡± Jaan asked. ¡°Are they a target? An offering? Or are they balancing the ritual somehow?¡±


    ¡°I did not think you to be this educated in the field!¡± Toomas exclaimed, surprised.


    ¡°More like a balancing and anchoring role.¡± Mariann said. ¡°On this intersection these cars act as our personal items and protect all of us in this ritual. Both the participants as well as the witnesses.¡±


    ¡°And them?¡± Jaan asked, nodding at the shadowed fifth car.


    ¡°Let them be there. Right now their presence is to our benefit rather than detriment.¡± Mariann said. ¡°And should they still be there after we finish the ritual... well, we can deal with them at that point.¡±


    She walked towards the middle of the formation where roads to Luiga and Tontla met the nose of the factory limo.


    ¡°The ritual itself is fairly simple.¡± Said Mariann and revealed a small enameled mug.


    ¡°Where did you get that?¡± Toomas asked.


    ¡°From the pub, off the ledge on the fireplace.¡± The girl replied. ¡°The mug must be filled with blood and then dropped right here on this road. The mug shall be filled with my blood. But the one to drop it must be the Mayor as the person who wants to invoke the witch. Therefore, my dear doctor, which is the best place to cut?¡±


    Mariann pushed the mug to Jaan and produced a small folding knife which she now unfolded.


    ¡°If you are going to spill your blood right now, why did you need that bag of blood?¡± the Mayor asked.


    ¡°Under usual circumstances, the sacrifice and the offering consist of a single blood drain onto the ground. I find it more useful to divide them up into two separate events. The sacrifice is thus no more than a few hundred milliliters and the offering another half a liter - nothing too extreme. But the conditions of the ritual demand two things: that the blood is fresh and of course, that it is the same blood. The blood being the same is solved with the blood being from the same day. Fresh in this context doesn¡¯t mean it is warm or fresh from a wound, only that it is still useful. If it is still useful to be transferred into or back to a person, it is also useful to a vampire as food or to the witch for magic.¡±


    ¡°And why exactly are you in the center of all of it?¡± The Mayor asked.


    ¡°I am not in the center of it. But I am the first one to focus on the details of it. Or, to be more precise, first among all the current ones, or the last among the former ones. The arcane is weird. The same knowledge may lead to different outcomes. Too little and what you don¡¯t know may doom you. Too much at once and it drives you insane. Too much cumulatively and you may well get lost on your travels. The right tempo has to be followed, incrementally digesting new knowledge, experimenting and contemplating.¡±


    ¡°Are then any other questions, or can Sare finally say something?¡± Mariann continued in a completely different tone.


    Doctor Sare and his assistant had now reached within earshot and were still coming closer.


    ¡°What was the question?¡± the Doctor asked.


    ¡°What¡¯s the best place to cut?¡± Mariann said.


    ¡°Ah! That is a good question! There are plenty of people who wouldn¡¯t even ask, they would just get slicing on their wrists. But a wrist is not a good spot. Interior of the forearm is also not a good spot. It is not without reason to say that across the road lies the hospital, but down the road is the cemetery. The best place is the outside of the forearm. The area remaining outside if the hand is horizontal.¡±


    ¡°Very well. Jaan, hold the mug.¡±


    Mariann rolled up her left sleeve and placed the blade of the knife on bony part of the forearm near the elbow.


    ¡°Across or along?¡± She asked.


    ¡°Across. But wait a bit. Doctor Toomikum may be of help here. Her nails are sharper than any blade and fingers much more precise. The wound will be deep enough but with sharp enough edges for the healing to be a matter of hours, rather than days.¡±


    ¡°Fine.¡± Mariann folded the knife closed against her arm.


    Doctor Sare revealed his flask and with a sigh, removed the cap and then poured the contents over Mariann¡¯s arm. After that, Mariann could only feel somebody¡¯s thumb slide over her arm. No pain, not even a sense of anything penetrating the skin. The only sign of a successful cut was dark red blood flowing from the arm and into the earthen mug.


    ¡°Jaan, you got to be ready now.¡± Sare said. ¡°You pull the mug away and Toomikum puts the bandage on. One, two, three!¡±


    As soon as Sare finished the count, Jaan pulled the mug away and with a surprisingly fast and precise movement, the beautiful assistant attached the bandage to her arm and fastened it with a safety pin.


    ¡°The wound will heal by tomorrow morning at the latest.¡± Sare noted.


    Mariann observed the assistant lick her blood off her thumb.


    ¡°How is it?¡± She asked.


    Doctor Toomikum said nothing. Instead she turned around and headed back towards the car.


    Mariann took the mug off Jaan¡¯s fingers and then waved towards the Mayor.


    ¡°Well, Sulev. Your turn to participate.¡±


    ¡°And I only have to drop it?¡± he asked.


    ¡°Come and stand here, where we¡¯re standing. Just hold the mug in your outstretched hand and then drop it so it would fall, bottom first. This is an unfired clay so the blood is already permeating it. It will crumble with a slightly stronger touch, never mind dropping it. Also, very important: do not jump away from the splashing blood. Should it splash on you, let it happen.¡±


    With heavy sway in his steps, the Mayor dragged his huge body closer,, finally standing before Mariann, between Jaan and Sare. Carefully, with both of his hands shaking, he received the mug. After all others had receded at least a few steps, Sulev stretched out his thick shaky arms and then dropped the mug. It fell and with bottom first, hit the cracked macadam blacktop just as Mariann had wished. Bloody pieces of of clay flew quite a bit farther than the blood itself with kept into a singular mass.


    But then something happened. Something nobody expected. Instead of just remaining on the pavement, the blood instead drained into it like water into dry sand. The only mark remaining was a darkened dry spot. The dry sport started evaporating and giving off faint steam and it steamed for a few seconds until completely disappearing and becoming indiscernible in the low light.


    ¡°This was a sign, right?¡± Jaan asked. ¡°That the ritual was successful?¡±


    ¡°It is a sign that the message has been sent correctly. Whether it makes it to the destination and whether it is responded to in a way that suits us is something we only see as time goes by.¡±


    Suddenly the roar of an engine could be heard. All eyes turned towards the mysterious fifth car, but it was immediately clear that this was not the source of the noise. It still stood there, unmoving and with only the parking lights on. But according to the beams of light reflecting around them, it was clear that cars were approaching from both sides.


    ¡°There were five car with us before, right?¡± Johannes asked. ¡°So why are there now seven?¡±


    Now it was clear that at least one car was approaching from either direction on the Circle Road. The high beams on both cars were visible from far away as they reflected off damp macadam. But there was something wrong with that. Something that Jaan immediately made note of.


    ¡°These cars cannot be coming from where they are.¡±


    ¡°It is true, the cannot.¡± Mariann said. ¡°But they still are.¡±


    The four cars of theirs stood on a Circular road running around the town. The Southern road went towards the South to later again turn towards the East. The Northern end also turned towards the East in a gentle curve. But the cars were not coming along the circular road. They seemed to be coming along a straight highway. Along a roadway that was not there. A roadway that could not exist. Along an arrow straight highway, which seemingly traversed the middle of the Irradiated Woods in the North and the Death Fields in the South.


    ¡°Is this the intersection?¡± Toomas asked.


    The cars approaching accelerated suddenly and unexpectedly.


    ¡°Off the road! Quickly!¡± Jaan shouted.


    All people present escaped to the sides of the road. Not even into the shadows of the cars but into the roadside drainage ditches where there was a slightly higher chance of not being hit by either car. All, except Mariann, who was still in the middle of the road and walked towards the car approaching from the North without a care in the world.


    Jaan tried to shout something but it was already too late. The cars approached from either side with breakneck speed along sections of highway nobody has thus far noticed. But instead of running Mariann over or colliding, they passed her and disappeared into the night in either direction. Quickly receding into white glows and ten two small red lights.


    ¡°Mariann!¡± Jaan shouted. ¡°You weren¡¯t run over!?¡±


    ¡°It is very hard to get run over by a ghostly car.¡± Mariann said, smiling.


    ¡°A ghostly car?¡± Toomas now asked. ¡°But¡­ they passed each other? Or¡­ did they pass through each other?¡± He asked pensively. ¡°Without hindrance?¡±


    Mariann did not respond him, only observed him develop his thought.


    ¡°It could not have happened, could it?¡± The Mayor said. ¡°We saw it wrong. From where they came from, there is no road. And they could not pass through each other, they merely passed. One on each side of Mariann.¡±


    ¡°If you all weren¡¯t with me, I would feel profoundly frightened.¡± Sare said. ¡°That contrary to all signs, the alcohol has permanently damaged my brain and I should quit drinking because I am seeing things.¡±


    ¡°So you too saw that?¡± The Mayor asked.


    ¡°Yes.¡± Sare nodded. ¡°These were ghostly cars as true as can be. They did not pass the girl in black. They passed through her at great speed. Like mirages. Or maybe she passed through them. Honestly, although I am not a specialist in this field, I would immediately like to bring this girl to my establishment and perform a medical examination to see whether these ghostly cars passing though her body also left behind any tangible evidence that can be medically documented.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t think you¡¯ll get consent for that.¡± Jaan said.


    ¡°Yeah, I guess not.¡± Sare replied.


    ¡°But what does it mean?¡± The Mayor asked.


    ¡°It means the sacrifice is accepted.¡± Mariann said from the distance.


    Slowly, but with a steady gait she continued walking, towards the mysterious fifth car.


    ¡°What are you doing?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°You¡¯ll see.¡±


    The black car with opaque windows and glistening chrome was still standing on the highway, front and rear parking lights shining in chromed bumpers and rear fins. The engine was off, or at the very least, it could not be heard. Also, the car did not escape as Mariann approached it, unlike what Toomas and many others expected. Either by passing the girl and heading towards the Southern section of the Circle Road or by suddenly reversing and doing a J-turn to disappear towards the Northern section.


    But nothing like it happened. The vehicle stood unmoving, as if there was nobody in it. And it really did stand there. Mariann slid her hand along the cool surface of the front fender. Stopping her hand right by the front door. She gave a faint smile and then raised her hand to knock on the window with the fingers.


    The next moment something completely unexpected happened. That big car, almost six meters in length and two meters wide, dissipated into air like a thick cloud of dark stone dust. Part of it¡¯s form fell to the ground while other parts were blown into the roadside ditch, grass and trees carried by unseen wind. Bus unlike road dust or gravel dust, it left no residue neither onto the surface of the road but also not on the roadside trees or other plants. Nothing physical to collect or analyze.


    ¡°What the hell was that?¡± Jaan asked as he ran closer.


    ¡°You all saw that, right?¡± He asked, turning around.


    ¡°We did.¡± Toomas said. ¡°It was difficult not to see. And equally difficult to believe what we saw.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re not surprised?¡± Jaan asked, as he observed Mariann.


    ¡°I am, just a bit.¡± She replied. ¡°But I would be more surprised if nothing at all had happened.¡±


    ¡°Why? Did you know it would happen?¡±


    ¡°I was hoping.¡± She said. ¡°Had they been the ordinary Boys from the North, then this would not have happened. But they weren¡¯t. They only wanted to leave an impression that they were.¡±


    ¡°Hey, you! That other girl in black.¡± Toomas asked Kadri. ¡°You said that this is the car of the very same guys who were in the pub?¡±


    ¡°I am no longer sure.¡± Kadri replied. ¡°I saw a real car. I think.¡±


    ¡°This was a real car as well.¡± Siim said. ¡°Until is wasn¡¯t. Mariann touched it, didn¡¯t she? And she knocked on the glass. We all heard it.¡±


    ¡°But still. Was it or wasn¡¯t it? Fuck, I should have brought my tools along! By the time I make it back to the hotel and return there will be nothing left to analyze!¡±


    ¡°Is this the end?¡± Sare asked.


    ¡°Yes, this is the end.¡± Mariann said.


    ¡°And what do we do now?¡± the Mayor asked.


    ¡°We go back to the bar and continue drinking.¡± The girl replied. ¡°When there is less blood in the system, the drink will hit you faster.¡±


    ¡°If it is okay with you, we wont be joining you.¡± Doctor Sare said. ¡°It is late and we¡¯ve been away from Luiga for too long. In addition to that, the events of tonight, if they indeed took place, are something that medical science can give no explanation for. And if they did not take place then I have to seriously reconsider my fitness for my profession.¡±


    ¡°Back to Tontla?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°Why not?¡± Mariann replied.


    ¡°I¡¯m not coming!¡± Tommas said at once. ¡°At least not right now. I¡¯d rather return to the hotel on foot, get my equipment and the Willy¡¯s and return here to take a closer look at the evidence.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m going home as well.¡± The Mayor said. ¡°I have to give it some thought before we speak again.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m coming too.¡± Mihkel said.


    ¡°I left my bike in Tontla.¡± The quiet young man said. ¡°I would rather prefer not to walk back to the cottage district without it.¡±


    ¡°I can offer a ride to everybody who need it.¡± Siim said. ¡°both to the Nameless Town and to the Cottage District.¡±


    ¡°But then let¡¯s go and make some noise at Leopold¡¯s place.¡± Mariann said. ¡°It will be a lot more quiet in there to discuss things and all who want to come, will also manage to make it faster there than to Tontla.¡±


    ¡°Not a bad idea.¡± Rops said.


    ¡°We will drop off some people, but we¡¯ll head there as soon as we can.¡± Siim said. ¡°So¡­ don¡¯t start anything important before we arrive!¡±

 XXXVII - Before Meeting the Witch V

    Leopold¡¯s bar was dark, quiet and almost empty. There was nobody at the counter, only a straight row of stools. The tables were cleaned off and the chairs pushed together around the tables. The drapes were still covering the windows. Large floor clock was still, frozen at the eleventh hour. There was only enough of the faintly gray light in the bar for people to not stumble on each other or the furniture. But it was impossible to read any text smaller than an alphabet book.


    But despite all the signs that the life in the bar had stopped for this time, it wasn¡¯t completely empty. In the middle of the hall there was a large circular table. The outer segments of the table were of darker wood and the inner ones of brighter grain. Out of some secret place, Leopold had conjured one of those expandable tables with hidden mechanism that allowed to increase the diameter of the table by at least twofold. There were chairs placed around the table. Some were occupied, others were still empty. There were beer and wine glasses on the table, bottles and a large plate of home made salted French fries.


    And one of the people sitting at the table was Leopold himself. To be honest, with this, Leopold had finally achieved what he desired. And now, sitting at this table, he was wondering to himself why hadn¡¯t he done this earlier. The Fire Tail bar at Tontla had long been a thorn in his remaining good eye. How was it that his bar was home to only drunkards either starting or finishing their workdays or jobless freeloaders but anybody with the least capacity for intelligent thought traveled to Tontla instead? Was it him doing something wrong? Was there something wrong with the bar? Did he have to get a harder stick to beat the undesirable crowd out of his bar? Not even letting live music into his bar, those young musicians coming form outside, had not made the situation better.


    But now suddenly he had found himself the formula for success. He only had to close his bar at night for an hour or two and then re-open it past midnight. Those that had come to drink had little other options but to head home. Constantly downing news drinks at the limit of the liver to handle ruined one¡¯s sleep which meant that if one could no longer get a drink, sleep was soon upon him. But those that had come to the bar for the people and the company, could also enjoy that company in the park or elsewhere for a few hours. Even when the nights started growing cold.


    And although nobody would have ever expected this of Leopold and his bar, and Leopold certainly would have never admitted this to anybody, he did indeed want to see less drunkards in his bar and more people discussing mysterious phenomena and visions. Whether these had taken place awake or asleep. These had been his favorite moments thus far as a barkeep and he wanted for these events to be more frequent. Today, at the Fire Tail pub in Tontla, he had seen the thing he wanted to work towards. Not a bar full of people with a comfortably warm atmosphere but full of intelligent discussion. If one of the participants had to be a witch in black, and the Boys from the North were required to quietly sit in the corner, so be it.


    Suddenly, the door to the bar flew open and a group of people that everybody were waiting for, entered. The group who had at first returned to Tontla and then to the Cottage District. Siim, Tiina, Johannes, Viivika and Kadri.


    ¡°Are everybody finally present?¡± Leopold now asked in his best non-grumbling voice. ¡°Can we begin?¡±


    ¡°All who wished to come are here.¡± Rops noted.


    ¡°Robert, you be...¡± Leopold started to tell him to shut it but then gave up.


    ¡°We have a whole lot of questions about the ritual that took place, but Mariann refused to start before you guys arrive.¡± Said Toomas.


    ¡°What for?¡± Siim asked. ¡°We¡¯re not that important. And it¡¯s not my fault the girls wanted to change their clothes.¡±


    ¡°Because you asked.¡± Mariann reminded him.


    ¡°So what have you been discussing up until now?¡± Tiina asked.


    ¡°We described what took place at the ritual to those people that were not present at the time.¡± Toomas said.


    Only now did Siim really pay attention that there were other people in the bar, people who had not participated in the ritual. Leopold himself, village hags no 4 and 5, and another man of average height. Thin, roughly in his 50s, with small gray eyes, gray beard growth of few days and dirty messy gray hair which looked like a rook¡¯s nest.


    ¡°That¡¯s Allan.¡± Mariann said.


    ¡°Allan?¡± Siim asked. ¡°The radio voice Allan Helde who runs the Nether Lighthouse show!?¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s me.¡± Allan said.


    ¡°Did you already go and get the samples?¡± Johannes asked, looking at Toomas.


    ¡°I did.¡± Toomas sighed. ¡°I was right. There was nothing left to collect.¡±


    ¡°Hey, we¡¯re starting.¡± Jaan said.


    People sat down around the table. Mariann, Jaan, Toomas, Rops, Leopold, Allan, the village hags and they youths with the black factory limo. A total of 13 people.


    ¡°This isn¡¯t quite what we thought we¡¯d find when we arrive.¡± Johannes said.


    ¡°This also isn¡¯t what I thought I would be doing tonight.¡± Mariann replied. ¡°This was Leopold¡¯s idea. And partly also Allan¡¯s.¡±


    ¡°Allan¡¯s?¡±


    ¡°Well, Leopold¡¯s idea was to do this around one big table.¡± The radio man started. ¡°My idea was to do it as a single night of discussion. Up until now, I¡¯ve invited people into my studio to talk on various subjects, but it would be pretty interesting to do this discussion as a live show several hours long. But for that, the right people are needed, who have something to say and to think. Therefore, if today¡¯s discussion is interesting, the next time maybe there will be a show.¡±


    ¡°But today, no show?¡± Leopold asked.


    ¡°No, today¡­ let¡¯s say this is the final dry run.¡± Allan said.


    ¡°I will start then.¡± Toomas said. ¡°Onsite, when the car dissipated into dust, it looked to me like the dust settled onto the ground and into the ditch on the leaves and grass on the roadside. And although the Professor brought me to the hotel quite quickly, and I sped back there with my equipment as fast as I could, there was no longer anything there to be analyzed or collected. No dust, no fluids, nothing! As if nothing had ever been there!¡±


    ¡°That probably was the point of the matter.¡± Allan said. ¡°You were never meant to find anything. Ghosts also leave nothing tangible behind of themselves.¡±


    ¡°A ghost is a slightly different thing, now isn¡¯t it?¡± Toomas replied. ¡°I will never believe that it could have been a ghost. We all saw it! Mariann slid her hand along the steel body! You even knocked on the glass!¡±


    ¡°I did slide and I did knock.¡± Mariann nodded. ¡°It wasn¡¯t a ghost. Although ghosts too can seem like people made of flesh and bone who have mass and who are capable of interacting with physical objects just like people. And you may not figure out that they are ghosts until they fade into thin air right before your eyes.¡±


    ¡°But this wasn¡¯t a ghost?¡± Toomas asked.


    ¡°No, it wasn¡¯t.¡± Said Mariann.


    ¡°What was it then?¡±


    ¡°A ufo.¡± She replied. ¡°Masked as a car.¡±


    ¡°A ufo masked as a car.¡± Toomas repeated her words.


    ¡°It not quite the correct answer, but it is the simplest way to explain it.¡± Mariann continued. ¡°We have no concept for what it may be. It is pretty interesting though that what we saw would be best described with the idea of an Evil Eye. We saw how we were released from the effects of an Evil Eye.¡±


    ¡°So like witchery?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°Not quite. This has some ancient Estonian wordplay to it. ¡®kaema¡¯ means ¡®to see¡¯ or ¡®to watch.¡¯ ¡®kae¡¯ or cataract is an illness of an eye, hindering vision. ¡®kaetama¡¯ is ¡®to cause harm with Evil Eye¡¯. All these similar word have something to do with vision.¡±


    ¡°Yes, they are.¡± Toomas agreed. ¡°But I can¡¯t see the connection here.¡±


    ¡°The connection is that something interfered with how our senses experience the world. Or how our brains interpret what our senses experience. Or in other words, it might have been a screen projection or a shadow projection.¡±


    ¡°Is that the same thing those three men in black suits sitting in the corner of the bar used to not be noticed?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°In essence, yes.¡± Said Mariann. ¡°That¡¯s why this is so hard to explain. We saw an old luxury car in perfectly restored condition, but in reality it may well have been three gray aliens sitting on a log. But to our senses, a car was projected. Or to our brain. The difference is whether we were projected some sort of force fields which caused in us sensations like painted steel or glass or even incandescent light. Or by mechanism indiscernible to us, the movement and sensations of our bodies were controlled to simulate metal or glass.¡±


    ¡°That is quite a science fiction of a theory.¡± Said Allan.


    ¡°Indeed.¡± Agreed Mariann.


    ¡°But then, how is it possible to look past it?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°People are different. Environment may vary. The projection may resist a million different influences but sometimes there might exist some combination of environmental fields and physical peculiarities of a person or some transient neuro-chemical or neuro-electrical states which allow one to look past the projection.¡± Explained Mariann.


    ¡°Does this mean that the Boys from the North guarding the border and the Men in Black we saw at the bar are the same people?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t believe it means that or that they indeed are the same.¡± Mariann replied. ¡°I also have no idea who the former or the latter are. But they do have commonalities. Both use the same mythology, and for the same reasons. But that is nothing special, Karl Taak for example is doing the same. If we loosen the list of requirements a bit, it would see we¡¯re all doing that very same thing.¡±


    ¡°You probably a bit more than the others.¡± Rops said.


    ¡°Even you, Rops.¡± Mariann replied. ¡°With your dark Volga and stories about meeting anaks.¡±


    ¡°But they really are coming¡­!¡± Rops raised his voice.


    ¡°I don¡¯t doubt it.¡± She replied.


    ¡°But what were they doing there?¡± Allan asked. ¡°Not just at the ritual site but also at the pub?¡±


    ¡°Pretty much the same thing everybody else was doing who had come to Fire Tail or to the ritual site later.¡±


    ¡°They were curious?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°Exactly.¡± Mariann nodded. ¡°They were curious. Something they could not foresee was taking place and they got interested. Didn¡¯t you too? To be honest, I could have given Sulev just a cup with my blood, told him in so many words what to do and sent him alone to the crossroads.¡±


    ¡°And the ritual would have succeeded?¡± Toomas asked. ¡°Would the ghostly cars have appeared all the same?¡±


    ¡°The ritual would have succeeded, but maybe the response to that would not have been quite what we experienced.¡± Mariann replied.


    ¡°But then why¡­ why five cars in the shape of a pentagram?¡± Toomas continued.


    ¡°In simple terms, there are two ways to perform this ritual. There is a simple way which requires lots of items and participants. Or the complicated way which requires few items and participants but a strictly followed and multi-step ritual. With strict modes of movement, smoking ritual plants as offerings and sacrifices, psychoactive substances and lots of other stuff.¡±


    ¡°Can other rituals performed in the same way?¡± Toomas asked.


    ¡°Many of them can.¡± Village Hag no 5 replied. ¡°Either many participants and items and a big formation and a short procedure or little people, items, a small formation and a long procedure. These are inversely proportional. In the end, they achieve the same result.¡±


    ¡°How do you know that?¡± Leopold asked.


    ¡°Number 6 probably told her.¡± Village Hag no 4 said.


    ¡°Number 6 knows a ton of these affairs.¡± No 5 said.


    ¡°So all of us present at the time were participating in the ritual?¡± Jaan asked. ¡°Even those folks in that car that faded into thin air?¡±


    ¡°Yeah.¡± Said Mariann. ¡°I made Sulev lead the ritual but we all participated.¡±


    ¡°Does this mean that we are all invited to meet the Witch?¡± Rops asked. ¡°Does this mean all of us can go?¡±


    ¡°Because Sulev led the ritual, right?¡± Village Hag no5 asked. ¡°So Sulev was the one to invoke the Witch and Sulev is invited and can go. Other can go, but they are not invited. If few of you go then that is still all good. But if all of you go, then that is the same as nobody going.¡±


    ¡°Why?¡± Asked Allan.


    ¡°Because meeting the Witch is not a night of discussion such as the one we¡¯re having right now. Where 12 are asking and one is responding. The Witch has limited time. It may be ten minutes, it may be fifteen, it may be five. Or rather, it is not the time that is limited but her tolerance for listening to the bullshit of simple mortals understanding simple matter the wrong way. Or not understanding them at all.¡± Explained Mariann.


    ¡°But then, who are going to meet the Witch?¡± Jaan asked. ¡°I get that Sulev is going but who else?¡± He directed his gaze at the five youths. ¡°Some of you?¡±


    ¡°No not us.¡± Johannes replied. ¡°We have been recommended to do something else at that time.¡±


    ¡°I can come.¡± Toomas said. ¡°But as I have no real cause, there really is no point.¡±


    ¡°I want to go.¡± Rops said. ¡°I have cause, thus I have a point.¡±


    ¡°You have no cause!¡± Leopold replied. ¡°Your anaks are definitely not the thing to go to the Witch with!¡±


    ¡°But I need to!¡± The young man argued. ¡°I don¡¯t want them robbing me blind any more!¡±


    ¡°Rops, do you know that the Witch knows witchcraft?¡± Asked Mariann. ¡°I think you have no good cause to go see the Witch. Your problem has a different solution. But I cannot stop you. Just know that should you anger the Witch, she may conjure an even greater misfortune upon you. For her this as simple as whispering into the wind.¡±


    ¡°Who else then?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°I think there is but one person you have not asked this, but who is for certain going.¡± Mariann said.


    ¡°Who? You?¡±


    ¡°No. Unfortunately I have other stuff to do. I can¡¯t.¡±


    ¡°Who then?¡± Jaan looked at the people sitting around the table, then his face grew serious. ¡°Wait, you mean me?¡±


    ¡°You.¡± Repeated Mariann. ¡°You and Sulev. Somebody has to keep a leash on Sulev so he would not call misfortune upon himself. And as I cannot participate, you are the next logical choice.¡±


    ¡°I have no control over him.¡± Jaan argued.


    ¡°It is not as much about control as it is about balancing out. Sulev may wander pretty far into the bog if he doesn¡¯t understand matters. Somebody who is just skeptical enough and with steady thinking could keep him from running blind into the forest. Toomas is not as skeptical. Karl Taak is too skeptical, he will certainly descend into arguing witch the Witch. Village Hags don¡¯t care the least bit about keeping Sulev in check, with them accompanying him we would only have three witches arguing with him as a result. And the Witch is not too keen on arguing with people. Rops¡­ is Rops. And other have no real cause to go.¡±


    ¡°And I do?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°You do.¡± Mariann said. ¡°You don¡¯t know it yet, but you do.¡±


    The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.


    ¡°Okay then.¡± Jaan sighed. ¡°Me and Sulev. Although I¡¯m not too sure how much use will we get out of that.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯d much rather hear more about the ritual.¡± Allan said. ¡°Of these ghostly cars and ghostly roads.¡±


    ¡°With pleasure.¡± Mariann said. ¡°Remember how in Fire Tail we discussed what a crossroads is and what an intersection is, and why we could just not do it on any nearest street corner? How even as we arrived it was still a source of argument? All who participated in the ritual got to experience for themselves what ¡®intersection¡¯ really meant. Now the 64 thousand dollar question: how should I have explained it in Fire Tail in order for you to understand it in the same way it ended up transpiring?¡±


    Silence fell around the table for several minutes.


    ¡°I cannot put it into clear words, but there is no doubt a way to describe it in such a way.¡±


    ¡°Okay, I agree, there certainly exists a way to describe it as it happened.¡± Said Mariann. ¡°But. How should I have explained it for all of you to understand it as it took place. Which words, which language should I have used for it to have been understandable in a simple and singular way and not as speaking in riddles or as a word salad?¡±


    ¡°...crossroad between two worlds...¡± Siim started in thought.


    ¡°More than two.¡± Kadri added.


    ¡°Crossroad between worlds which is not crossroad in the usual sense but intersection...¡±


    ¡°You don¡¯t have to try and put it into words at this point.¡± Mariann said. ¡°I have no doubt that you will succeed in it in the end and fiend the right words. But it is also clear that to understand it in a certain and common way, one must tell a whole tale to give enough context for the understanding to be born. How much time and how many words would it have required?¡±


    ¡°Mariann, in the pub you said that you would go and look into where the intersection might be. And then you joined their table.¡± Jaan nodded at the youths. ¡°When you returned, you had a place in mind.¡±


    ¡°Did you notice something?¡± Mariann asked, giving a secretive smile. ¡°Did you remember something?¡±


    ¡°Was it the very same section of the road where the ghostly car swerved to avoid you?!¡±


    ¡°That ghostly car swerved me about a hundred meters to the South. But yes, this would be the section it originated from.¡± Mariann said.


    ¡°What ghostly car?¡± Allan asked.


    ¡°There is a legend that five youths were driving towards the Nameless Town with a black Volga, that newer slab-sided model. But before they managed to reach here, there was an accident. They swerved to avoid hitting something, ran off the road into the ditch and died, all of them.¡± Mariann spoke.


    ¡°You guys came in a Volga, right?¡± Toomas asked, looking at the youths.


    ¡°We did.¡± Siim said. ¡°We did come with a black Volga. We may have driven it off the road, but obviously we did not die.¡±


    ¡°Maybe this legend isn¡¯t at all from this world?¡± Toomas asked. ¡°Meaning from our world. It may originate from a parallel reality were you did die.¡±


    ¡°Mariann, you were saying that what they tried to avoid and what caused the accident was you?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°It was me.¡± The girl in black said.


    ¡°Thus in some other side-world, these people were driving their Volga on the Circle Road. They then saw a ghost, a shadow image of Mariann from another world and they swerved, lost control, drove into the ditch and perished.¡± Toomas spoke.


    ¡°But what did you see then? What did you swerve?¡± Toomas continued, now looking a the five youths.


    ¡°Honestly, I cannot remember.¡± Kadri said. ¡°None of us can, really. There are two conflicting memories I have. One is us crossing the Border to Lost County on foot and somebody drove the Volga back. And the other is waking up in the ditch, next to the crushed car without a single injury.¡±


    ¡°Doesn¡¯t that sound suspect?¡± Allan asked. ¡°Sounds suspect to me.¡±


    ¡°Let¡¯s say the accident happened, in this world or somewhere else.¡± Jaan said. ¡°What¡¯s the significance of it?¡±


    ¡°That section of road has always been an intersection between worlds. Both the worlds of the living and the dead, but also between various side-worlds.¡± Mariann spoke. ¡°But the way the intersection usually exists as, was in no way conducive to performing the ritual. So, in layman¡¯s terms, in the course of the ritual, we temporarily replaced the worlds between which it acts as an intersection. As a result of the ritual and until we left the place, it was temporarily acting as an intersection between different lands of the living and the dead and side-worlds.¡±


    ¡°It that something like we saw in that underground base?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°Something similar, but without spatially defined gates and the breaks in space created by these gates. Again, in layman¡¯s terms, we had two gates and as a temporary measure we reconnected them to different destinations that they originally were connected to. And after we left and the effects of the ritual subsided, the temporary connections ceased and the originals were returned back to.¡±


    ¡°Is that the reason I had nothing to analyze when I returned to the place?¡± Toomas asked. ¡°Because all that happened took place in some other world which was temporarily opened, and set atop our usual one?¡±


    ¡°No. There was never anything to be analyzed in the first place. You sensing that there was, was nothing more than a trick of the mind or a trick of the eye I spoke of earlier. Even if you had had a sample container with you at the time and you managed to fill it with some sort of tangible matter, later you would have still discovered an empty container.¡±


    ¡°Oh.¡± Toomas said, defeated.


    ¡°Why are the worlds the intersection for which that place usually is, not conducive to invoking the Witch?¡± Allan asked. ¡°The world of the Dead is supposedly a single common one, isn¡¯t it?¡±


    ¡°What makes you think that?¡± Mariann asked. ¡°It wasn¡¯t conducive because the Witch we were trying to invoke did not live in any of the worlds which that place usually acts an intersection for.¡±


    ¡°So there are several kinds of witches?¡± Allan asked.


    ¡°There are many different kinds of witches!¡± Village Ha no5 loudly said. ¡°Not all originate from this world, not all are creatures of flesh and bone and not all are borne from humankind.¡±


    Silence again settled around the table.


    ¡°But what..? Who¡­?¡± Toomas tried to come up with a question, but was unsuccessful.


    ¡°You said that the night the others are going to meet the witch, we should go back to the crossroads, to the location of the ritual.¡± Tiina started, ¡°Would that mean that¡­?¡±


    ¡°The worlds will replace themselves for the Witch to come here?¡± Mariann asked. ¡°The answer is yes. In most other cases, there would be a chance to slip from this place into these other worlds and become lost, but now by ways of this ritual, you have been tied to this world and the ritual site for the duration, so you can experience these other worlds. With relative safety. If you want to.¡±


    ¡°I thought that the ritual to invoke the Witch is not some mechanical function but primarily a means to change our predisposition and interact with a witch as a witch, as if a password that starts the stage play.¡± Jaan spoke in a quiet voice. ¡°I would have never thought it to be¡­ this.¡±


    ¡°All rituals are ¡®this.¡¯¡± Mariann replied. ¡°Just that when you have no belief or when you are alien to the culture, you are not able to make correct sense of neither the process nor the result. You interpret it as incidental, whether positive or negative.¡±


    ¡°So at the time of the ritual we were in connection with a world where both the Death Fields and the Irradiated Woods were bisected by an arrow straight highway?¡± Viivika asked.


    ¡°Yeah.¡± Mariann said. ¡°And I am not too sure in that world Death Fields and the Irradiated Woods exist.¡±


    ¡°And that world is the Land of the Dead?¡± Allan asked.


    ¡°No, but it is closer to the Land of the Dead. The Irradiated Woods and the Death Fields themselves are even closer than that, but these do not allow accessing the Land of the Dead without dying. The world where these roads were, does, so to say. It allows you to simultaneously be in two different worlds, or halfway in two different ones. Just like ghosts who are halfway here and halfway somewhere else.¡±


    ¡°What kind of witch are we seeing then?¡± Rops asked. ¡°Village Hag no 5 said before that the witch may not be from this world, or human or of flesh and bone. Do you already know who it is?¡±


    ¡°No, I don¡¯t.¡± Mariann said, ¡°And honestly, it is irrelevant. The witch also uses a shadow projection. The way she presents herself to us my have nothing to do with what she really looks like.¡±


    ¡°Do you remember what you spoke on the airfield in the limousine? About worlds set on top of one another and the 4<sup>th</sup> road?¡± Johannes asked.


    ¡°What exactly?¡±


    ¡°At the moment of the ritual taking place, when these ghostly cars appeared from either direction. Had we been driving the car at that point, would it have been possible to drive onto either of these roads?¡±


    ¡°Yes. But you would have had to leave something behind.¡± Mariann said. ¡°It is possible that part of your consciousness or being would have made it to that ghostly highway by which these ghostly vehicles traveled, and the other part would have driven into the trees or into the ditch to your deaths.¡±


    ¡°Maybe this has already happened once...¡± Kadri said in a pensive voice.


    ¡°Maybe.¡± Mariann replied.


    ¡°Come on!¡± Siim replied. ¡°You mean to say that this is the land of the dead!? That we are dead?!¡±


    ¡°Something happened at that night.¡± Kadri said. ¡°It would not have to be the land of the dead for us not to be dead. Ghosts still capable of conversing with the living or interacting with physical objects. Maybe we don¡¯t know we are dead and that why we cannot dissipate into thin air. Maybe outside this county we can no longer exist on the same world fabric or the same layers as the living. But here we can.¡±


    ¡°You¡¯ve been dressing like Mariann for far too long. The black color has gone into your head!¡± Johannes said.


    ¡°It is an interesting theory though.¡± Toomas said. ¡°Maybe you should look into this on your own?¡±


    ¡°Didn¡¯t Mariann already say something like this?¡± Tiina asked. ¡°That it is quite possible for all of us to be on different layers of the world fabric. And we¡¯re just shining through for one another. But we will not become aware of it before we get further away from here. To a place where there is no mass or anchor pushing the world fabrics against one another. Or at least nearer to one another.¡±


    ¡°When did she say that?¡± Siim asked.


    ¡°I think when meeting in the limo.¡±


    ¡°I cannot remember.¡± Siim said. ¡°Mariann, do you?¡±


    ¡°I think it matters little if or what I remember.¡± She replied. ¡°The are a multitude of mechanisms. Taking that story of the 4<sup>th</sup> Road as an example, one way to travel to other world fabrics is a mechanical system, just like at Mir-8 facility. There are physical gates in place and they open to worlds either nearer or farther away. The other way is to do it with a ritual like we did tonight. We suppressed a natural intersection between worlds for another one to surface. Or, we temporarily switched the intersection over. If you want to see it this way. It it is also possible to manage without a ritual, using natural window areas where such transference is possible either permanently or periodically. And then there is one other possibility.¡±


    ¡°What possibility?¡± Allan asked.


    ¡°Altered brain chemistry or electrical activity. Psychoactive substances allow one to perceive the world differently. We often call these perspectives hallucinations. Some of them definitely are that. But what if some are not? It is also possible to affect brain chemistry and electrical activity with meditation. Project Stargate. The Gateway project. Both used these means to travel as an astral body. But that is only the beginning. It is possible that our physical bodies themselves are anchors, pressing together an uncountable number of world fabrics at locations where we physically reside, but our consciousness only resides on a certain number of these. However with certain mental practices it is possible to turn our consciousness towards certain world fabrics or to widen its grasp.¡±


    ¡°And if it also possible that the grasp of our consciousness differs by physical location. In a metropolis it is narrower, in nature it is wider. In light it is narrower, in darkness, wider. And then there are special areas like the Lost County.¡± Toomas spoke.


    ¡°That too is possible.¡± Mariann said.


    ¡°Allan, I wanted to ask, when exactly did you record a show with Mariann?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°I don¡¯t remember having thus far invited Mariann to my show.¡± Allan replied. ¡°But I have thought about it for a long time.¡±


    ¡°So you did not have a live show today?¡±


    ¡°Nope.¡±


    ¡°And you have never recorded a show with Mariann so you also did not have a recording to put on air?¡±


    ¡°No. Why all these questions?¡± Allan asked.


    ¡°Because the whole bar crowd in Fire Tail had a chance of hearing your live show with Mariann, which by your own account you are yet to record.¡± Toomas said.


    ¡°That is not possible!¡± Exclaimed Allan. ¡°I have not made a show with Mariann! I have no recollection of having! I don¡¯t even have any such recording!¡±


    Allan looked at the faces sitting around the table, but instead of understanding, all he saw was doubt.


    ¡°Mariann?¡± he asked.


    ¡°I think it doesn¡¯t matter what I do or do not remember.¡± Mariann said. ¡°Especially since I heard the show as well.¡±


    ¡°And it was a live show? Off the radio? Are you sure?¡±


    ¡°If we take into account everything we have talked about today both here and also in Fire Tail then there are two options.¡± Toomas said. ¡°Either this interview has not yet taken place and the successful completion of the ritual is causing paradoxes in both our sense of time but also in the wider world. Or...¡±


    ¡°Or¡­?¡± Asked Allan in a somewhat apprehensive voice.


    ¡°The interview did indeed take place, but none of the people involved remember it. During the interviews something was revealed that was not supposed to be revealed and some kind of higher power deleted it off the magnetic tapes but also from the memories of the participants. Maybe even had it cut out of time itself.¡±


    ¡°How could we have heard it if it was cut out of time itself?¡± Rops asked.


    ¡°Because cutting it out of the airwaves post fact is much more difficult, perhaps. Thus at that time it existed as a one-time sourceless anomalous radio emission. For example, I cannot recall hearing the whole interview, only a segment maybe a couple of sentences long.¡± Toomas explained.


    ¡°Or maybe the radio signal originated from some side-world from which it leaked into our world by some coincidence or due to the ritual.¡± Siim added.


    ¡°Or that.¡± Agreed Toomas.


    ¡°I still prefer to think that such an interview has never been recorded and you are mistaking it for some other interview. Whether it is something Mariann has participated in but not me, or there has been somebody whose voice is very similar to Mariann.¡±


    ¡°You are free to believe whatever you want to believe.¡± The girl in black replied.


    ¡°But still.¡± Jaan refused to give up. ¡°Were you or were you not in Allan¡¯s show?¡±


    ¡°It doesn¡¯t matter, Jaan.¡± She said. ¡°If you recall our conversation in Valgepal? after Mir-8, then you¡¯ll understand why it doesn¡¯t matter and ho both options can be true at the same time.¡±


    ¡°Ow.¡± Jaan said, in thought. ¡°I do.¡±


    ¡°What did you notice?¡± Toomas asked, interested.


    ¡°It doesn¡¯t matter.¡± Jaan replied. ¡°At least not now.¡±


    ¡°It is not polite to have secrets you keep from the rest of the group.¡±


    ¡°It may not be.¡± Mariann agreed. ¡°But some things must remain secret. Some things can be understood in their proper context only by experiencing them on your own. They cannot be revealed to others in mere words. What I can say is that in this matter, the contents of the secret are secondary and the mechanism how it is possible for me to have given the radio interview I have not given is much more complex.¡±


    ¡°I have to go.¡± Allan said, getting up. ¡°I have to look through all my tapes. If this interview took place, there must be some sort of record of it. If it made it into the airwaves then of that there must also be a recording!¡±


    ¡°I understand.¡± Mariann said. ¡°Good night and have fun digging!¡±


    ¡°I think it is time for a small break.¡± Jaan said. ¡°We¡¯ll discuss after that whether we continue or break up.¡±


    ¡°I agree.¡±


    Mariann too got up from the table and stretching her legs, walked towards the bar counter. She leaned her back against the edge of it and rested her elbows on top of it. She kept observing people. Some kept walking around in the bar, some went outside for a smoke and there were other bodily needs to deal with as well.


    ¡°Mariann.¡±


    Kadri leaned against the bar counter right next to her.


    ¡°Those strange men in black¡­ You said before that people would not notice them even if they stared right at them. Because they do not allow themselves to be noticed.¡± Kadri said. ¡°Could you elaborate on that?¡±


    ¡°You didn¡¯t want to ask about that at the table, did you?¡± Mariann gave a smile. ¡°You noticed them, didn¡¯t you? Without anybody directing your attention towards them. You experienced their gaze, didn¡¯t you?¡±


    Kadri gave a small nod.


    ¡°You are in luck. You are conscious, you can stand. That is a rare exception. Maybe your luck was not just a one time thing? Maybe you have some sort of disposition or adaption you yourself are not even aware of. The ability to see past the shadow projection may be a part of this. What did you experience?¡±


    ¡°My breath got stuck in my chest. I could not look away.¡±


    ¡°You coughed blood, right? All ten of your bodily openings bled a little, did they not?¡± Continued Mariann. ¡°You made it pretty far. This is the experience that would kill three out of ten people. Six out of ten would fall into coma. You are the tenth. Now there are two possibilities for how to continue. Unless...¡±


    ¡°Unless what?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°Unless it happens again.¡± Mariann said.


    Kadri said nothing more. She pushed herself away from the counter and then opened the bar door to disappear into the cool night. Mariann pushed herself away from the counter as well and walked back to the table, sitting back down on her wooden chair. It took several more minutes for people to start returning to the bar and surrounding the table. Kadri was among them.


    ¡°Did you manage to gather some thoughts?¡± Mariann asked.


    ¡°We did...¡± Johannes sighed.


    ¡°Shall we continue?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°What¡¯s Mir-8?¡± Toomas started.


    ¡°Mir-8?¡± Mariann smiled for a moment. ¡°Mir-8 is a military facility of indeterminate location. It was originally created to research into creating wormholes. Later it¡¯s scope widened to research time travel, traveling between worlds and opportunities for creating artificial pocket dimensions. It is located in a pocket dimension that borders the whole facility. One way to access this facility is located right under the post office in the Cottage District.¡±


    ¡°That would be the easiest way to describe it.¡± She added after silence fell around the table again.


    ¡°You¡¯ve been there?¡± Toomas asked.


    ¡°I have.¡± The girl in black answered. ¡°It is accessible between certain periods just like the lower levels of the Subterranean Base. Without this information it is impossible to access and even harder to escape from.¡±


    ¡°Those men in black in Fire Tail bar, are they here was well, right now?¡± Toomas continued.


    ¡°No, they are not.¡± Mariann said, then glanced at Kadri. ¡°Or do you have a different opinion, Kadri?¡±


    ¡°No, they are not here.¡± Kadri said, looking around.


    True, she did not see any of them in the bar. But she also was not to pleased with everybody¡¯s attention suddenly focusing on her.


    ¡°Do you have a club for girls in black?¡± Johannes asked. ¡°Where you learn such things?¡±


    ¡°Or does wearing black clothing have some sort of pronounced effect on the sensitivity of the sensory organs?¡± Toomas asked.


    ¡°Or is it a sign of some kind of predisposition?¡± Mariann added in turn. ¡°I don¡¯t know. I haven¡¯t experimented with it in such a way. Would be interesting to find out, though.¡±


    ¡°What the catch then?¡± Siim asked.


    ¡°Kadri saw them sitting in the bar among people all on her own.¡± Mariann said. ¡°Whether one can draw any conclusions from is or not, is a separate matter.¡±


    Toomas and the rest seemed to be satisfied with this answer.


    ¡°Then why aren¡¯t they here right now? These men in black?¡± Rops asked.


    ¡°Because they don¡¯t know to be here. Nobody told them.¡± Mariann said. ¡°They usually manage to notice when a big group of people suddenly start moving in one direction. Just like with that false Forest Lake. Or us gathering in Tontla. But now there is nothing like it. On one hand, our group is not that big and on the other hand were are exactly where we are supposed to be ¨C here.¡±


    ¡°And they also don¡¯t know what¡¯s going on?¡± Toomas asked.


    ¡°They may know a little more than we do, but certainly not as much as we think they know. If they knew as much as we think they did, then we would not see their activities as overtly.¡±


    ¡°Does that not mean that radio host Allan Helde¡¯s idea on turning this kind of round table discussion into a radio show is destined to fail?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°It may well mean that.¡± Mariann smiled. ¡°Maybe we can have one show, but the rest are in danger of not being recorded or not reaching the airwaves.¡±


    ¡°Or nobody will ever remember them.¡± Toomas said.


    ¡°Yeah. Although I do have a gnawing feeling that there might be some other model behind that.¡±


    Silence again fell around the table.


    ¡°Shall we break?¡± Mariann asked.


    ¡°Yeah.¡± Toomas said almost immediately. ¡°We¡¯ve had quite a long night. And although I have many questions, I am not sure I can posit them clearly at this point in time or understand the answers to a sufficient degree.¡±


    ¡°Other are in agreement?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°Yeah. I think that¡¯s it for today.¡± Siim said.


    ¡°I¡¯ve been sleepy for a long time now.¡± Leopold said. ¡°And the Village Hags have fallen asleep.¡±


    ¡°Let them.¡± Mariann said.


    She got up and walked into the cold night outside.


    Dark and cool, yet cloudless black sky. There was no Moon. But also no stars. And cars on the street had a layer of white frost on them. By all signs one could surmise that winter was approaching. That even if it was impossible to tell which day, week or month it was, the nighttime cold and the black clear sky still allowed one to assume that it was either October or March.


    But that was correct only for that very night. Tomorrow could have been yet another scorching summer day, without a single sign that tonight had ever taken place. Except of course the subjective memories that people had.


    She observed people exiting the bar. How the red tail lights on various huge passenger cars ignited and how they finally drove off, puffing out massive amounts of white smoke.


    ¡°You¡¯re not going?¡± Jaan asked.


    ¡°Soon.¡± Mariann replied. ¡°I was just thinking about the weather. We should try and access the Weather Station. I¡¯m slowly getting fed up with summer. Fall and Winter should come already.¡±


    ¡°You think it is possible?¡± Jaan asked. ¡°Up until now, we have simply been going and looking into stuff. You have never wanted to interfere. I wouldn¡¯t even know how to interfere.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know yet. But we should try. And to interfere with the function of the Weather Station, I don¡¯t consider it too major an interference. But first we should find out if it is at all possible to interfere with it. And whether or not there are any other mechanisms dependent on it. At the moment it seems there is too much of that which we do not know.¡±


    ¡°Well, let me know if you manage to figure something out.¡± Jaan said. ¡°Both what we need to do as well as what needs to be learned.¡±


    ¡°Very well. ¡®Night.¡±


    ¡°¡¯Night.¡± Jaan replied and then walked down the street, disappearing into darkness.

 XXXVIII - Girls in Black Dont Have to Pay II

    Driving the olive drab military truck, Kadri turned onto the street on which the town radio station building was located and parked on the side of the street opposite the building.


    The old military truck which Mariann had given her was as bare-banes as can be. Equipped only with the essentials. Cloth bench seat covered with a poorly-fastened carpet of dark brown. Lap belts hanging down to the floor, side windows with cranks, heating onlyu, no AC. But there was a cassette radio, curiously.


    The diesel engine made a terrible noise and on a potholed street the car rode very much like an empty horse cart. It also took some tome to get used to the steering feel of a solid front axle.


    She had not expected that into that tall yellow wooden fence on the side of the street, not only was there a foot gate hidden but also a wider gate for vehicles. That too mounted flush with the immovable sections. It had been hard to notice even from inside the yard.


    She turned off the engine, but did not exit. Instead, she produced the thin notebook containing the various locations which Mariann had given her and proceeded to look them over. While doing this, a plan started to from in her mind, about the order in which to go about and do things. First the radio building and recording the tracks onto the cassette. Then to do all photography sites inside the town. The to go to the Cottage District and change clothes, if possible. She wanted to find some boots at the very least. And then to continue with the rest of the list. At the Cottage District first and then elsewhere. Seemed like a sensible plan.


    She exited the car and locked it. Then headed towards the radio station building and the tall metal-framed doors with large glass panes. The entrance was covered by a protruding overhang of the building, creating a large covered porch. The door was unlocked. She opened it and stepped into the empty foyer. Pleasant cool air immediately assailed her. The walls were covered with orange vertical wooden boards, on the floor there was wood fiberboard covered with thick layers or dark red paint. The path most often walked over the many decades were revealed by the paint that had worn off the flooring. The building was deathly silent, not a soul seemed to be present.


    On the right she could see the staircase to the upper floor. But before she even made it that far, a grumpy voice stopped her.


    ¡°What are you doing here?¡±


    On the right, opposite the staircase was a small dark corner for which there was no light nor a window. The lights in the foyer were also blocked by the walls. And this was Allan Helde¡¯s break room. An old sofa, a coffee table and a shelf with alcohol bottles.


    ¡°Mariann sent me. You owe her a favor.¡±


    Kadri opened the satchel on her hip and produced the blank cassette tape in its case.


    ¡°I do indeed.¡± Allan said, getting up from the couch and walking closer.


    He was only slightly taller than the girl, His face was covered in a weeks worth of gray beard and his messy hair had the same silvery gray tone. Around him, a cloud hovered smelling of dried sweat, burnt tobacco and stale alcohol.


    He took the cassette from the girl and opened the case to see the track list.


    ¡°Honestly, I did not thing Mariann would call in her favor in this manner. But a deal¡¯s a deal. It will take some time for me to collect the tracks and record them onto the tape. Come back in the evening please.¡±


    Kadri said nothing further, she turned to walk way but Allan¡¯s voice stopped her again.


    ¡°I thought that girl in black sent you for that other matter. You will be returning to her, right? Take this with you.¡±


    Allan stretched out his hand once more, holding another cassette tape, but in a much older casing of cheap black plastic.


    ¡°What is it?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°It is possible Mariann has forgotten it. But this tape has all the tracks which the old people who have come to my radio shows have wished to hear. The have said that this music awakens something in them, something they cannot explain.¡±


    ¡°Okay, I will pass it on.¡± Kadri replied.


    ¡°I am not sure this is what that girl in black had in mind.¡± Allan said. ¡°This not the first such favor Mariann has asked of me. It is also not the first time she has sent somebody instead of herself. She sent you here, to get music onto your tape. But she knew, she had to know that she had already requested that other tape from me. Maybe this other tape was really intended for you to listen.¡±


    Kadri said nothing. She took the tape from him and turned to leave.


    ¡°In the evening, correct?¡± She asked.


    ¡°When it is dark outside.¡± Allan replied.


    ¡°Copy.¡±


    Outside, everything was sill bathed by the scorching sun. Despite her not spending too much time inside with Allan, at least by her own measure, the olive drab surface of the car was scalding hot. Same for the chrome door handle and the button on it. She had to wrap the trailing sleeve of her top around her fingers to actually open the door in order to escape with no blisters.


    She started the engine and having pondered it for a few seconds, pushed the tape into the car radio. After a few seconds, loud electronic dance music with fast tempo and low bass sounds started. She know what it was. Not something she would listen to or would want to listen to. But she had heard it before.


    What she did not know however was why Mariann had sent her for this or why would she want her to listen to it. And connected to it was the question how all these elderly townspeople, the village hags included, could listen to such music and derive any pleasure at all from it. Or experience any other positive effects. If this was indeed true, then there had to be some other secret, Something she could not yet see herself.


    Kadri turned the car around. She now had an idea where to go next. This wasn¡¯t the first item on her list nor the closest one but she felt that this one was the best to start with.


    The car slowly rolled towards the West along a potholed street. The goal was the Western part of the Circle Road and everything located on the side of it. The place they has performed the ritual before meeting the witch and the overgrown back road leading to the abandoned air field. And of course the accident site which had been the first place in the Nameless Town where they had found themselves after reaching this place. Without the slightest idea how they had even made it.


    Kadri had not visited either of these places since. She had had no reason to visit them. There was no connection. Even the alleged accident they had all been a part of was more of a dream than a memory. Thus there was no connection with that as well. Never mind meeting Mariann on the airfield and finding the car. And in some sense, Mariann had been correct: in daylight, everything seemed different. Nothing was the same as it had been in the dark of night.


    She reached the intersection and turned right, onto the Northern part of the circle road. The diesel engine on the vehicle hit the relatively low rev limiter and after a clunky gear change the car started to slowly accelerate again.


    Soon Kadri continued listening to the tape. Even if she had a dislike for the music on it, it was still better than hearing the racket of the old diesel engine. Even better than the music Allan Helde played when he was off the air. Allan did not play everything he had in his music library. During daytime hours, all he aired were the classics of the local popular music from the past both closer and further away. And she had long since grown sick of hearing that kind of music.


    She continued driving for a few more minutes. Past the crossing with the railway which did not begin nor end. Past the surface track leading to the dried up Forest Lake which had turned into a mud hole. Visiting and photographing that was also on her list. However slowly inside her, a strange feeling started to rise. Actually not a feeling, instead it was a slow alteration of her consciousness for which she could find no reason nor explanation.


    She suddenly depressed the brake pedal fully. All four wheels on the car locked up and the vehicle slid uncontrollably for few more meters on hot soft tarmac. All loose items in the car took flight and ended up under the dashboard in the foot well. She was alone. In the middle of the road. In a summer day under scorching Sun. Her foot still pressed hard on the brake pedal. Head and hands on a thin plastic steering wheel. Music still playing.


    She had been hit by a feeling she had never expected. She remembered. She remembered this music. She remembered it as something annoying. But she did remember. And she also remembered that this music originated from a time before she had arrived to the Nameless Town. This was the important part.


    Slowly, she raised her head from the steering wheel and took her foot off the brake. The car started to move forward once more.


    The story how she, Tiina, Siim, Johannes and Viivika had made it to the Nameless Town was one of the better known urban legends of this place. But she only remembered the second part of it. From driving the car into a ditch and dying, she only remembered waking up in the ditch beside the car. In full health, if one were to disregard that none of them remembered how they drove off the road nor whence they had come from. They knew their own names, the names of the others, but could not remember a single detail from their lives before.


    No, even more than that, their life before wasn¡¯t even important any more. All their time here, listening to Mariann¡¯s stories in some stranger¡¯s car and fixing up some stranger¡¯s house in the Cottage District, not a single one of them had raised the question where they had come from nor what they had been doing before arriving here. They had been driving around and looking for the Lake of Forgetfulness. That was undoubtedly a goal and possibly a reason for them to be here. But why. Why was finding the Lake of Forgetfulness this important?


    This strange dance music. One one hand, it reminded her that she had had a life before arriving here. And on the other side it made her doubt everything she had held rock solid until this moment of remembrance. Was that the reason these old village folk wished to listen to this music when speaking with Allan Helde about the supernatural events in their lives in one of his radio shows? Because to them too, the music reminded something? Or at the very least, helped to remember?


    Continuing onward steadily at about sixty kph, she finally made it to the familiar crossroad where the roads leading to Tontla and Luiga met with the circle road surrounding the Nameless Town. She parked the car on the road to Luiga, on the side of it, approximately the same place the professor had parked on the night of the ritual. She turned the engine off, which also stopped the tape in the radio.


    Kadri bent down to get the camera and the satchel which had also flown into the foot well and then noticed that something else had taken flight with her sudden brake. Under the bag, she found a pistol and two magazines. The pistol she immediately recognized as a Russian Makarov. Kadri had no idea how she knew it, but she did. She also probably knew how to handle the pistol, despite being sure she had never before touched any handgun.


    This gave rise to another strange feeling inside her. Mariann had given her a two-door off road vehicle. If the front had three seats on a long bench seat, what was in the back? An empty bed? She doubted it.


    She jumped out of the car, off the high seat and headed towards the back of it to open the clamshell hatch. There was indeed a bed, but not an empty one. One one side of it there was a spring mattress, about a foot in thickness, stretching the whole length of the bed and half it¡¯s width. On top of it, there was a folded up blanket and also a pillow.


    On the other side of the bed there was a low cupboard of unpainted fiberboard, also spanning the entire length of the bed. She was wrong. Only part of it was shelving. Inside it, another car radio with four speakers was built. The last free space between the speaker box and the mattress was filled with firewood, it seemed to be birch.


    In conclusion, Mariann had given her a car in which one could spend the night in nature, if need be. This however raised new questions. Had Mariann prepared this car for her exclusively or for somebody else? Was it something she herself had used to spend nights in nature or some secret base? It was difficult to believe that she had used it for such purposes recently, especially considering her giant red convertible.


    At the same time, why not? That very same red car was too well-known and eye-catching. It was impossible to use when wanting to take a covert look.


    Kadri closed the clamshell and turned around. Now focused on the main reason she had come here.


    Having once more browsed the old notebook Mariann had given her, in addition to the list of locations, she also started to notice additional directions. With many of the places, she had not even explicitly mentioned what to take photographs of, instead there was a remark that she herself should find what is important to be photographed.


    Even now she clearly remembered what had taken place that night. The place where she had her friends had awoken in the ditch next to a crashed car was further away from here, still. Maybe right behind the next turn in the road. And here too the world looked completely different in broad daylight.


    She walked back along the center of the road and stopped in the middle of the wide black macadam circling the Nameless Town. Just across the road, there was the overgrown air field. Oil shale bitumen has grown sufficiently soft in the hot sun to pluck the embedded granite stones out of it.


    Kadri got up and looked around. An empty road before her, slowly bending towards right in the distance. An empty road behind her, also with a slight turn. In the same direction, to the left from her point of view. And then two roads terminating with the circle road. And a little gravelly arc between the two roads, to turn from one onto the other. The only connection between the two roads not touching the circular road. The arc curved the same way as the circular road. As if there was no traffic to and from Tontla and Luiga or the Village Dude¡¯s place. Which was just strange. But on this side of the road, the low trees between the two roads were about at the same places she remembered them being in the darkness.


    On the other side of the road however, where the air field was, there was something wrong. During the night they had come here with the factory limo driven by Siim and he had parked it on this side of the road, onto a surface road covered in tall grass, running perpendicular to the tall thicket on the side of the road. Mariann had even made a remark about not being able to find the same road in the light.


    And now that she was here on her own, during daylight, she saw that it was indeed so. There was the main road. There was the deep overgrown ditch on the side of the road with steep banks. But there was no open area with tall grass. There was no such place on the side of the road. It was all uniform and about three or four meters tall. No road, no possible place for a road nor even a culvert to get over the ditch. There was literally no place one could park a massive sedan in such a way that they could get away later.


    Kadri felt that this was something to take a photo of. Direct view from the other side of the road, then on the sector that the arc between the two roads created. A view of the brush and the road towards both the South and the North. Also a photo of the crossroad itself. Of the two ends of the road, the section of the circle road, the small trees and even the car itself standing there. She didn¡¯t even count how many photos she snapped. Seven or eight, definitely ten or less.


    Not a single thing to disturb her. Just her and the sounds of the mechanical camera working. She stopped and lowered the camera.


    Only her and the sounds of the camera? Something was wrong. Something was very wrong. The birds made no sound, the bugs made no sound. Not even the tree canopies made any sound although she could clearly see them moving in the hot wind. As if the world has stopped and transformed into a theater stage. And she was just silently walking on it.


    The next moment fear assailed her. Maddening fear and a desire to escape. To get away from this soundless world. Also suddenly she had a thousand ideas all connected to what Mariann had said about the ritual. She too was connected to it. For her as well, this crossroad was no longer just a crossroad but something else. Did this mean that right now was the moment that something was coming through? Whether living or mechanical.


    She rushed towards the car, opened the driver side door and even managed to raised her foot on the thick metal railing under the door when she finally managed to take control of her fear. She had no idea fem where, but a new thought emerged: whatever it was that had frightened her, was that not something she should be photographing?


    She turned around and raised her camera, taking a new series of images in all directions. While doing it, she noticed something in her camera that she could not explain, not through the lens nor with her own eyes. In the distance, partly above the road, partly still in the forest and between the trees there was a big ball of fog white as snow.


    At least she thought it was a ball of fog. It was clearly white and it seems to have an internal source of light. At the same time it could not have been a ball of light, because although white and bright, it did not blind her. The edges of it were slightly transparent so the forest behind it was visible through them. Kadri set the focus to infinity and adjusted the aperture and exposure to the last limit of taking a photo freehand and then released the shutter.


    As if understanding that it had ben photographed, the ball started moving suddenly and while still hovering above the road, it flew towards Kadri at great speed. While it moved she managed to take a few more photos and then had to throw herself on the ground to not have it collide with her. Where the ball of fog flew as it went past her, she could not see. But as she looked around, still lying on the ground, she could not see it anywhere.


    She checked that the camera was still intact and then turned herself on her side towards the car to get up. But what she saw then was again enough to freeze her in terror. She could see from under the car, somebody¡¯s thin legs of rust red color. That somebody or something was standing on the other side of the car, at the passenger side door. Both legs had three clawed toes on each foot. It was one thing to describe it, it was whole another to believe what she was seeing. It was the same as to contemplate at night whether that tall shadow being by the corner is really what she is seeing or just a coat hanged up in an unfortunate manner. But here, there was no question. These were somebody¡¯s legs. Somebody two-legged who was not a creature of this earth.


    For a moment she thought of raising her camera and taking a picture but she immediately reconsidered. The camera function was loud enough to notify the owner of the legs where she was and what she was doing. She noticed that her focus had faded and during that brief moment the legs managed to disappear. She again looked around her in panic, but could find neither the legs nor their owner anywhere around her.


    This offered her enough piece of mind so she could stand up and make these few steps to reach the car.


    She opened the front door and climbed onto the seat. She placed the camera on the seat next to her. She did look at the right side of the car nor even the right corner of the windscreen. She started the ignition and she cassette radio continued playing the bass-heavy dance music.


    She still hated that music, but right now it was a fresh breath of normality. As if the music was dissolving this strange feeling that had come over her. This weird state of consciousness she had sunken into, in which the world no longer made any sounds. It calmed her. It protected her from all this strangeness unlike any music made on real instruments and with a real soul could.


    She turned the key further and the eight cylinder diesel engine started right up. She started driving, still ignoring the right side windows. She did not want to think anything of those long legs nor the tracks they may have left. She did not want to think about the right side of the vehicle nor what could be seen from the right side windows, at least not until she was safely back in the Nameless Town.


    She had almost taken a full roll of images. Which meant that she had to change the camera roll. And as she planned to go take photographs of the air field next, and the best way to access the air field was the street of Nether Flight, going back to the Nameless Town was the sensible thing to do.


    *


    The sun was still blazing hot when Kadri parked her car at the end of the Nether Flight street. The street itself ended quite abruptly with the overgrown wildness of the airfield. On the Northern parallel street, on the side of the airfield there weren¡¯t even any houses nearby this crossroad, only about a hundred meters of roadside brush before the cottage parcels towards the West. There was only a short stretch of street with sidewalks on either side which seemed to dive under the tall grass a little further along into the airfield.


    If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    Beyond that spread a uniform field of bleached pale golden grass. There may have been once a concrete wall, barbed wire fence or even a chain link fence separating the airfield from the town, but now none of it remained. Only the fences and hedges of the houses and yards bordering the airfield. Also by now there was no mark of the gates which had once most certainly been right here.


    The airfield itself was also quite strange, to put it politely. Considering the age and size of the Nameless Town, it would have been reasonable to assume that the whole airfield was covered in grass, even the strip itself. Smaller planes from World Wars One and Two, especially the Russian made, had no need for paved runways. But the whole airfield was not only a field of grass, instead, a major part of it was a wide and long strip of concrete. The tarmac had almost all been worn away from the surface, leaving only large thick rectangular concrete slabs between the seams of which various plants grew.


    According to the drawings she had seen, there was one in Leopold¡¯s bar as well, the air strip extended far beyond the Western arc of the Circle Road, onto the clearly visible grassland beyond the road. North of the crossroads to Luiga and Tontla, a place she had just been to. And the other end of the airstrip should have been where the park and the buildings of the Institute stood. Some of it even when the houses on the air field side of the street in the East stood. Even if the strip itself was not there, part of the whole area should have been.


    But in reality there was nothing like it. Or at least nothing like this was visible in the first glance. Both the drawings and the airfield itself supposedly originated from the last World War, when even some of the bombers could manage with unpaved air strips and two and half kilometers of pavement was a wholly unnecessary feature.


    Kadri¡¯s fingers moved to turn the engine off but she stopped herself. There was something else. That cassette which Allan had given her and of which she had presumed that it should make it into Mariann¡¯s hand. But by now she wasn¡¯t as sure of it as before. Instead it felt like this was meant for her as well. Whether it made it to her by way of Mariann or Allan, was of no importance.


    The Nameless Town and the area surrounding it had some strange aura, This was also present in Tontla, even in the cottage district. On the one hand it felt refreshing and natural and on the other, heavy enough to force a person into slumber. As if the air itself carried at least twice the density as anywhere else. And the locals, even though they did not sense nor even try to make sense of it, had each found himself means to make life bearable in this soup.


    And the music recorded onto the audio cassette¡­ she hated it but she could also not give it up. She had listened to it during her trip from the crossroad here, and now, sitting in the car with the engine running and thinking, she was still listening to it. This music was alien. Alien to the heavy air here, not the world itself. Not alien to the time, if she could even put it in this way. As if all other local music was tainted with this strange force, as if it had become possessed just like those bands from outside, just as Mariann had once pondered. But in this dance music with fast beats and low bassline, no such possession was present. And that¡¯s why it felt cleansing, even sobering.


    Continuing this train of thought, she reached a fascinating question: what was the goal of this tape? Or of the music the salesman in the market had allowed her to barely listen to. The same one Allan Helde was supposed to record for her by evening. If the dance music pulled her away from becoming one with the world around her, then did the other tape and the other music allow her to fade into the world faster and stronger? Because both aspects had their own clear roles, especially if she wanted to continue in this direction.


    She slid onto the passenger side of the front seat and opened the glovebox. Here she had placed the pistol she had found as well as the case for the cassette tape. She opened the case and for the first time took a closer lock at the track list written on the sleeve in rough handwriting. Several names repeating many times. Names that told her nothing but nevertheless sounded ominous. BSE, Concord Dawn, Teebee and some stuff she could not make out, but about which she most definitely wanted to ask later. She put the case back in the glovebox and closed it.


    Kadri finally turned the engine off, this also stopped the tape in the radio. She had honed her thought enough and now it was time to get back to work. In Mariann¡¯s notebook, there was an assignment to take a photo of the airfield. However now she felt that this assignment was much more multi-faceted than that. The photo was for Mariann. But for herself there were other things she wanted to find out. Where did the air strip begin? Where did it end? Where did it border or cross the Circular Road? Where were the access roads? Which had come before, the airfield or the buildings standing on the side of it? Where were the airfield buildings? All these questions were something a lone photo from the end of the Nether Flight street would not answer.


    She exited the car, locked the door and then headed towards the field of tall pale golden grass. The sun was still the only thing in a cloudless sky and still scorched relentlessly. This is why she decided to continue in the shadow of the trees on the side of the air field, rather than crossing the grassy field in a straight path. Because in reality, she had no idea whether there indeed was a concrete strip in the grass or not. This was something she could not see when behind the steering wheel nor now when she was back on her own two feet.


    In the shadow of the trees there was another problem, though. The sun no longer shone directly on her, but the air under the canopy was still. The warm moist atmosphere felt suffocating, like a sauna. Despite this, she continued to make way for herself, heading vaguely towards the crossroad to Tontla and Luiga she had just been to. When standing on the crossroads, she had not found the road onto which Johannes had parked the limo. Maybe she managed to find it when approaching it from this side. No matter how overgrown it was.


    Having continued in the strip of forest for another half an hour or so, it started to feel like the forest was growing more and more dense. Also dimmer and cooler. A lot less of the sunlight was making it to the ground. Kadri headed close to the tree line next to the airfield and noticed that something had changed. There was also less of the sun above the air field. When she finally made it out of the strip of forest, she found a whole other kind of weather before her.


    An overcast sky, soft diffused daylight with no shadows. Pale tones everywhere. Although there was no fog, the air was full of mist and the grass was dewy. It was surprising how quickly the weather could change.


    She glanced back towards the Nether Flight street but could not see Mariann¡¯s tall vehicle. Nothing strange about it, it was obviously hidden behind the strip of forest in which she had come here. She turned her eyes back towards the airfield and now saw a large area in the tall grass where nothing grew. A wide area in the distance straight as an arrow cutting right across the field of grass. Disappearing into the trees on the left, and on the right disappearing into the grass of behind the curvature of the earth.


    She decided to head straight into the tall grass. In the end her skirt and legs would probably get wet up to her mid-thigh, but this was a small price to pay for making it to the concrete landing strip and getting answers to her questions. And of course the photos Mariann wanted, and herself as well.


    As she approached the air strip walking in the tall grass, she started to notice something unexpected in the corner of her eye. At first she thought it a mirage, then wishful thinking. In the end she was standing in the tall grass of an overgrown air field on a cool overcast day, which could turn rainy in the evening. The same kind of day as the two times they had found themselves listening to Mariann, unable to remember how they or the car had made it to the air field. Or whose car it was anyway.


    The feeling that what she saw was rooted in herself, rather than anything physically being in the distance was reinforced even more by the fact that it was only visible in the corner of her eye when she moved. When she stopped and moved her body and eyes to look, she saw nothing.


    Until at one moment, after getting closer to what she had seen, she did see. Near the concrete landing strip of the airfield there stood a long factory limo and also people could be seen standing around it. The distance to it could have been approximately 150 meters. But despite that, Kadri could not say who were the people standing around the car or whether it was the same car she had left on the side of the street in the Nameless Town a few hours ago. The camera did also not allow her to see any better, a 50mm prime lens did not bring the image any closer to her. Despite that, she decided to take one photo from where she stood.


    She took half a step forward and froze. Within this half a step she had taken, the car and the people around it dissipated into thin air. As if they had never been there in the first place. As if the world in front of her had been an oil painting and the artist had just painted over the people and the car with a single brush stroke.


    Very carefully, with the same leg, she took a step back and the car and the people around it reappeared in the distance. Was this the only place she could see them clearly? Or was there a journey, a maze she could not see unless she made a correct or an incorrect step?


    Kadri decided to bet on the last option. Trying with small steps, she found a path in the hay, on which when she approached the car, she no longer lost sight of it. It felt like fighting against a plastic sheet that diffused or bent the light rays, only with every step the sheet altered the way it bent the light.


    When she had passed a little over half the way, a change occurred. Suddenly all people around the car turned towards her, as if they had seen her. This forced her to freeze once again and an unending fear came over her. The way those human shapes moved and then froze again, there was nothing human about it, there was nothing machine about it. It was just wrong. And still she could not tell who those people were or whether it was the same car.


    Kadri took yet another step and then took a breath of relief. This was a step in the right direction, she felt. The car remained but the people from around it disappeared. As if they had never been there. She continued her step by step trek until she made it pretty close to the car. So close that she could tell that it was not the same car she had left on the side of the street. But was of the same type. The same make, the same kind of factory limo, with a lengthened side door and the last pillar. As much as she could tell from moving forward, it had the round lights in the front but there was a smaller vertical rectangular light between them which maybe could have had amber bulbs. In the rear there were red tail lights, each looking like stretched out and rounded off rhombus.


    But on this strange journey closer and closer to the car, what she saw only grew in its absurdity. How with every step the car still disappeared right before her or reappeared. As if with every step she was crossing a border between two worlds, one of which had the car in this place and the other did not. It was both exciting and horror-inducing at the same time.


    Her trek to the car had not nearly been as long as she had feared. It was slow, dull and took a lot of time. But it was nothing like walking seven circles around the car step by step in a spiral to reach it. No, looking behind her, at the trampled grass, her path looked more like clumsy and confusing track of sharp turns with no discernible pattern. Those frightening human figures she had seen did also not reappear.


    The distance at which the car no longer disappeared from her view no matter the direction she stepped, was about five meters. And now she could clearly see that somebody else had already stepped on the tall grass surrounding the car. At the same time she could not see tracks in the grass caused by having been driven over it. Meaning it was impossible to tell from which direction or how the car had ended up here at all. The concrete landing strip of the air field was not far, maybe twenty meters but in that direction as well, the grass was untouched. As she looked at the car some more, she finally figured out why she could not see tracks in the grass: the tires on the car were flat. All four of them. The wheels were covered in deep rust and the car essentially sat on the wheels and probably on the bottom. It had obviously been here for some time.


    Here too the weather was different from what it had been when she started her trek. True, she had spent nearly two hours to walk maybe a hundred meters in a straight line, but still. The sky was a bit darker, the grass was more wet. There was more moisture in the air. The car¡¯s vinyl roof and the glass surface was full of small condensed water droplets. Her skirt was also wet, but only up to the knees.


    She tried the buttons on the car¡¯s door handles. All four doors were locked. She could also not see the condition of the interior due to the heavily tinted side glass. She got closer to the window, even trying to shade the daylight from her eyes when she suddenly felt her heart stop and chest grow cold. There was movement behind the tinted glass! At once she pulled away from the car and fell on her bottom into the tall grass. There was somebody in the car! More than one ¡®somebody¡¯!


    Without any further thought she sprung up and started running through the tall grass. But not towards the strip of trees but along side it, towards the Nether Flight street that exited the air field. Across the untouched field of grass almost diagonally. She did not care. Not about the path she had taken to reach the car nor about the flattened grass she was no leaving behind her. Something so alien and contrary to humanity had been in that movement inside that car, something so horrific that she had to get away from it both physically and mentally.


    With ten minutes of running at full tilt, she finally made it nearby the Nether Flight street. And there she saw something new to give her a fright. Her car, Mariann¡¯s car she had left at the end of the street, was gone. As if it had never been there at all.


    She turned around once more to make sure that there was nothing running right after her and only then did she trust herself to slow down and attempt to catch he breath. This was something that Mariann had not warned her about and she herself had not even thought to consider. A novice adventurer would often be saved by quick feet.


    Although the car was gone, she still had the camera as well as several unused rolls of film. Also the satchel with everything else including the keys to the car. And she was sure she had locked the car. Who could have taken it? Only Mariann herself. Or was this the first case of a stolen car in Nameless Town across many a year? And this car carried none of the meaning that Mariann¡¯s red one did. So the people would not necessarily know not to touch it.


    Having managed to get back control over her breathing, she continued down the street. In addition to the car being gone, something else was different. Yes, the weather was darker, cooler and cloudier, but this was not the only difference. The air itself felt different. The shadows seemed stronger, the buildings taller and older. They even looked more ominous which prompted her to take pictures of several of them. This included the main building of the Balto-German Esoteric Institute, but also many others. Including some buildings she felt she had never seen before.


    This may have been yet another thing that was wrong. Although she had not paid any attention to the facades of the buildings in the Nameless Town in the past, the Nether Flight street she was currently walking on was not the street she had been familiar with thus far. The buildings were different. On the left, instead of a park, there was an old ornate building, on the right, instead of the ruins of an apartment building, there was the building itself, looking run down but still perfectly usable. She even noticed electric lights burning in the windows.


    She finally made it to the Southern main street of the town and here, a new surprise was waiting her. Or several, to be fair. The street was emptier than she had thought it would be. There were far fewer cars and instead of them being massive land yachts, they were mostly old Russian cars from the seventies and eighties. Mariann¡¯s red open top car was nowhere to be seen. But what was even more surprising - she could not see the black factory limo she had driven into town.


    She turned around only to see an even greater and more fundamental change in the town. Something that not only made her question what had happened in the mean time but also posed whether she had not fainted and slipped into wandering her own dreamlands. Something so natural to the Nameless Town, something visible beyond several kilometers, the two hundred meter tall three-legged radio tower was gone. Only the legs remained, large steel beams reaching maybe three or four meters into the air.


    Also gone was the small substation building next to the tower. Instead there was a massive building of red brick, seemingly at the height of a four story building. Covering the area of tens of those small buildings. There was a pool next to the big building and the missing tower but instead of the coolant water giving off steam day and night, the pool was filled with dirt.


    Suddenly, she heard the laughter and other sounds of children playing. Yet another thing to scare her. Sounds she had never before heard in the Nameless Town. As she had never before encountered anybody younger than her. Kadri turned around but saw nobody. Only a heavy overcast sky above her and an empty gray small town street before her. Despite that, her first thought was not about ghosts, instead it was possible that the wind was carrying the sounds to her from somewhere else. The children were probably playing in one of the yards behind the tall fences and hedges.


    She started heading down the street towards West. The whole time it took to get back to the North-South street connecting the air field with the cemetery, she did not see a single person nor a moving vehicle. It seemed as if on some overcast day with a slight cool wind, the time had simple stopped. It either happened at a very specific time when there was nobody on the streets or when the time stopped, only that remained visible, which had any permanence in space. Movement of people and machines was not that.


    For a moment she detoured into the inner courtyard of the city hall building. Blackened limestone walls and dirty windows in dark wooden frames all seemed familiar. Also the single lamp post in the middle of the court yard. What was missing however was the mayor¡¯s Chaika.


    Leopold¡¯s bar was also something not in its place. The building itself was there, with tall windows made of thin glass sheets facing the street. With thick curtains covering the windows on the inside. But the door itself¡­ there was no door. The doorway was nailed shut with a huge black slab of plywood.


    This here was yet another fitting place for her to take a photo. First of the street itself and the plank fence on the side of it, by which she had thought she had left the black factory limo. Then, standing on the other side of the street, of Leopold¡¯s bar and the street before it. Having finished that, she continued alongside the wooden fence. With every step she leaned on the fence to try and find the hidden door to Mariann¡¯s yard. But the wooden wall did not yield. She could not find it. It wasn¡¯t there. The tall wooden fence of vertical boards stood firmly throughout its whole length and it was obvious that there could not be any secret door or gate in it. It was also tall enough for Kadri not to be able to see above it. Her fingers could not even reach the top of it.


    Having taken a photo of the street behind her, she noticed something new on the opposite side of the street ahead of her. Yes, there were some cars parked there but no the old and tired Soviet cars which had not moved from their places in years.


    In a separate one-story building the village grocery store was located. In front of it stood three vehicles which immediately pulled her attention and in her eyes outright demanded to be photographed. First among these was a clean black GAZ-24 with fully inflated tires. With an interior of red vinyl trying to look like leather.


    Right next to it stood a long black sedan. The very same vehicle those Boys from the North drove around in. Impeccable piano black lacquer paint and chrome details which looked brand new. But as a major difference, this one did not have opaque greenhouse seemingly covered on the inside with carbon paper. Instead the glass was clear without a hint of tint in it and she could clearly see the gray interior. Dashboard of well-preserved artificial materials with chrome detailing and simple cloth seats.


    The third one was a relatively small and boxy-looking four door off road vehicle also originating from the United States. Forest green in color and on the rear hatch there was a faded golden plastic lettering for the marque logo and the engine size. In this case V8 and 5.2 liters. The honeycomb wheels carried a similar faded golden hue.


    This last one was a vehicle most familiar to Kadri, although she could not explain why or how. The Volga was also familiar, both due to confusing memories as well as because Rops drove one just like it. But with this green off road vehicle she felt like she had forgotten something very important. Something she would certainly not be able to figure out right now, no matter how hard she worked on it.


    Suddenly, she again heard children laughing and shouting. Turning towards these sounds, she now saw about half a dozen children playing in the street. Both boys and girls kicking back and forth two old basket balls. Going by their clothing it seemed that for them the weather was much the same as it was for Kadri - an overcast yet pleasantly cool day early in the summer.. There could be rain later, but also may not be.


    She raised the camera to take a photo of the children. Only after she had taken the picture did the children notice her. They approached her and finally stopped at about five meters away from her. Nobody got closer than that, but they did look at her with curiosity. This surprised her.


    ¡°Hello. I thought I would never see anybody in here.¡± Kadri said.


    ¡°Are you an angel?¡± One of the boys asked.


    Kadrl lowered her eyes for a moment. Her clothing was still the same as it had been when she left home. Long black skirt reaching the ground and a black knitted top with long sleeves.


    ¡°No. No I¡¯m not.¡± She replied. ¡°Can I take a photo of you?¡±


    ¡°But you look like an angel.¡± One of the girls now said.


    ¡°Yeah, but in church nor in school nobody said that the angel would have a camera.¡± The children discussed among themselves.


    ¡°Where are you coming anyway?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°From school.¡± One of the boys said. ¡°Karl is sick and we thought we would bring him some chocolate from the store. He lives there.¡± One of the boys explained and pointed towards South, at the tall buildings of concrete slabs which towered over the cottages. ¡°On the seventh floor. You can see the whole town from there.¡±


    ¡°If you are an angel, could you perhaps help Karl and make him well?¡± One of the girls asked. ¡°He has been sick for a long time now and without him it is quite boring to play four square.¡±


    ¡°All of you are int eh same class?¡±


    ¡°Yeah, in the third.¡±


    ¡°Can we take a photo of you as well?¡± One of the boys asked.


    ¡°Do you have your own camera?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°With your camera.¡± He replied. ¡°You don¡¯t have a photo of yourself, do you?¡±


    ¡°Indeed I do not.¡± Kadri said.


    She took another photo of the children and then walked a few steps closer, reaching out her hand with the camera towards the boy who had asked to take a picture of her. Other children immediately took a few steps back, only the boy who had asked for the camera remained. However he too looked like he would rather flee than stand his ground. Carefully and with both hands, he took the camera from her, being careful not to touch her fingers. Kadri retreated a few steps and looked at the boy directing the camera towards her. He pushed the button to release the shutter. After that, he took care to hand the camera back to her.


    ¡°Do I really look like an angel?¡± Kadri asked.


    All of the children nodded vigorously.


    ¡°Do I have wings or a halo above my head?¡±


    ¡°No.¡±


    ¡°Neither of those. But you still look like an angel.¡±


    ¡°That is not an angel!¡± An aged female voice suddenly said.


    Kadri raised her eyes to see an old lady standing behind the children, with a long black coat reaching the ground and long gray hair flowing above it. By her looks she seemed to be more than eighty years old. Deep creases in her face and piercing green eyes which seemed to outright glow. In a different clothing Kadri would have taken her a witch with no hesitation.


    The old woman eyed her with clear disdain.


    ¡°Can I take a...¡± Kadri started before the woman¡¯s voice and tone stopped her.


    ¡°You should not be here! Go away!¡±


    ¡°Children, come here! Get behind me!¡± She ushered the children, pulling them behind her.


    ¡°But she is an angel...¡± one of the children argued. ¡°She did not do anything bad...¡±


    ¡°Right now!¡± The old lady sternly demanded. ¡°That thing is not an angel. I am afraid she is wearing an angel...¡±


    For Kadri, the last words, the woman had said were a complete puzzle. What did it mean to ¡®wear a person?¡¯


    However she did not have long to contemplate the words that old woman had said because behind her, to the right, she could hear car doors opening. The doors to the empty black sedan with gray interior were now open and out of it stepped two young men in spotless black suits, both wearing fedoras. Both started approaching Kadri with measured steps.


    Suddenly, she again felt her heart freeze. She remembered what happened in Tontla before the ritual to invoke the witch. Fear gripped her and before the two men reached her, she started to run. She dodged them and ran down the street towards the crossroads as quickly as she could. She did not think. Not about what would happen if she was captured nor about the fact that the men in black were very likely much faster to run than she was.


    Only after she reached the corner of the street crossing and could spend precious few seconds to catch her breath did these thoughts catch up to her. Kadri glanced behind her and saw that the men in black were still approaching her in steady unhurried steps. As if she had nowhere to run nor escape to. But she did. And she would not wait for them.


    Kadri continued running along the street towards North, back towards the air field. The track in the grass which she had created when coming from the limousine was still there. She could also see the limo in the distance, still sitting in the tall grass. She raised her skirt up to not get caught up in it and now ran along the trail of bent grass towards the car.


    She had to concede once more that Mariann had been right. Soft-soled tennis shoes and a long skirt reaching the ground were most uncomfortable for adventuring and running for her life. The minutes it took her to run towards the car in the tall grass seemed to pass at snail¡¯s pace. As if with every step she took, the journey stretched longer than it was. She could not even conceive how long it took her until she finally reached the car. This time she would not allow herself time to catch her breath. Carefully but still hyperventilating and with an unsteady gait she approached the rear of the car and then found the trail to get back to the forest strip. The kind of trail on which the car suddenly dissipated into thin air right before her, as if somebody had wiped it out of the world with his hand.


    Turning around after the car had disappeared, she again saw the tall radio tower hanging down from the sky. She retreated a step and the radio mast disappeared into nothingness. But when turning around, the car behind her was again visible.


    Unfortunately she could not allow herself any time for thought or experiment. Not now. Her assignment was to escape.


    Despite not seeing anybody behind her, she still headed towards the strip of forest. It took far less time to reach it than it had taken the other way to reach the car. Only when reaching the first trees of the forest did she allow herself some rest. But only as much as was necessary to glance back at the car and the field of grass surrounding it. There was somebody else there. By the shapes of the bodies she could recognize them as those very same Men in Black she had run away from. But now, instead of two, there were three of them.


    One of the suddenly looked towards the forest. The next moment all of them stood straight up, looking towards the forest. Kadri had no idea how it was possible, but she knew that just like she was seeing them, they were also seeing her.


    She stepped into the trees and hiding in the strip of forest, she headed back towards East, towards the street ending in airfield, along the barely noticeable trail she had created when coming here. As fast as she managed without stumbling. She was tired, sweat poured down and mixed with tears. Her feet hurt and her fingers were cramping up from holding the skirt up. Despite that she continued running, not really knowing when her pursuers would lose sight of her or gave up chasing her. Would they give up at all? Had they given up with Mariann? Or had they not?


    Running along the forest trail grew more and more difficult. There was less air to breathe. The weather grew hotter. The air under the canopy was full of different smells and various sounds of nature. Kadri stopped as soon as the first rays of sun penetrated the canopy and hit her. She was hyperventilating but still managed to take a few more steps. Never before had the scorching sun and suffocating air in the undergrowth been so pleasant.


    She glanced behind her and now noticed a clear line a few meters ahead, where the forest was darker and grayer and where the sunshine strangely did not reach. Despite the canopies above her head not being as dense as she thought. She even raised the camera to take a photo of it, but through the lens it was much harder to understand where the border of light and darkness was and why it was important at all.


    At once, fear gripped her once again. In the distance, in the shadowed part of the forest she saw something move between the trees. More than a lone something. This made her run once more. Despite the sun, the heat and the suffocating air. Despite the pain and the cramps. She could not tell how long it took her but being on the verge of giving up, she finally broke out of the forest and found herself along the rear hedges and fences of the private homes and cottages along the Northern main street.


    Not far ahead, the wooden fence of of an overgrown backyard had nearly tumbled over and without a thought Kadri used it to climb over the thick hedge to then run through the yard and break out into the street where it was much easier to make it to the car. Only when her hands touched the scorching olive drab metal could she breathe a little easier. And despite the heat, she still had to grip the metal parts to not fall flat on the ground like an empty sack. All reserves of strength were gone. Her legs would no longer carry her. She did not even have any water to turn into sweat.


    She turned around and then saw with rising horror that along the street, three men in black suits steadily approached. Those same suits, identical featureless faces and fedoras. That measured calm gait. Kadri turned around. Her fingers were shaking so bad that it took forever for her to find the car keys from her satchel and then open the door. With great effort, she managed to get into the car and then shut the door right before the men got to her.


    This elicited no change on their faces. One of them stepped in front of the car, the second tried the handle on the driver door and the third headed towards the other front door. With her hands still shaking, it took another eternity for her to insert the key into the ignition while the featureless men in black with mechanically rigid movements tried to open the locked front doors of the car.


    She finally managed to get the key in and turn the cylinder. The starter worked but the car would not start. Not in three, not in eight seconds. A moment later, the locks on both front doors clicked open. At the very moment that both of the front doors were pulled open and only the briefest blink before she was pulled from the car, she let go of the ignition cylinder and the auxiliary power came on. This started the playback of the tape in the car radio with drum and bass music.


    It took several seconds for Kadri to realize that she would not be pulled out of the car. She opened her eyes again and looked around. Both side doors of the car were wide open. But she was alone. The men in black were gone.

 XXXIX - Girls in Black Dont Have to Pay III

    She turned the ignition key and the engine woke up at once.


    She climbed out of the car.


    She was indeed alone at the end of the Nether flight street. Scorching sun shined right down at her head. There was nobody around the car. There was nobody under the car.


    She collapsed on hot cracked pavement. Her legs no longer carried her. Her fingers refused her commands. The music that she detested was blaring loudly. She no longer had any strength to think or worry. The only thing she still could do was to stay in the shadow of the car, to avoid the sun hitting her straight in the head. Heat stroke was the last thing she needed right now and the closest thing about to happen.


    At least half an hour passed while she sat in the shadow of the truck under an opened front door while the music played at a loud volume and the diesel engine idled.


    With some effort, she got back on her feet. She could feel her legs carry her just enough to climb into the car and turn down the volume. Only after that did she think to check that the camera was all right and the rest of the necessary equipment also in place and intact.


    Kadri shut the driver side door, crawled across the bench seat and then also shut the passenger side door. She turned the vehicle around and then drove back down the street, finally parking it right behind Mariann¡¯s red convertible in front of the bar. Further away on the opposite side of the street still stood the black factory limo, as crooked as Kadri had parked it. It was pure relief to see that.


    She got out of the car and then as a next source of relief noticed that Leopold¡¯s bar again had a door. With some force, she pushed opened the door and then the inner door as well. She stepped into a dark and refreshingly cool bar. Leopold raised his eyes towards the person entering to complain about letting in outside light and heat, but noticing who it was, he gave up.


    Mariann was back at the bar counter. Or was she still there?


    ¡°It seems you¡¯ve had quite an adventure?¡± Mariann asked, looking at the girl. She smiled as if knowing exactly what Kadri had just experienced.


    Kadri did not reply to her.


    ¡°Cool water, please.¡± She said. ¡°And a whiskey.¡±


    Without saying a thing, Leopold placed in front of her a crystal whiskey glass, a one liter bottle of golden nectar and a pale white porcelain pitcher.


    Kadri first emptied the porcelain pitcher into her mouth and then filled the whiskey glass half way, emptying that as well.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know if you noticed, but next to the cottage, there is a sauna as well.¡± Mariann said. ¡°The water should be hot by now.¡±


    Without saying a word, Kadri placed the camera and two black cans of film in front of Mariann.


    ¡°The third¡¯s in the camera.¡±


    She grabbed the whiskey bottle and ignoring Leopold¡¯s protests, stepped out of the bar.


    ¡°Don¡¯t worry.¡± Mariann said. ¡°She¡¯ll return it. Afterwards.¡±


    ¡°And if she doesn¡¯t?¡± Leopold asked, displeased.


    ¡°Then you have a reason to ask what she did today. And she has a reason to talk. That¡¯s what you really want, isn¡¯t it?¡±


    ¡°In that bottle is not something you can distill in the village.¡± Leopold grumbled. ¡°Money would be better.¡±


    ¡°Are you sure?¡± Mariann asked, now sharply eyeing the barkeep. ¡°Are you really sure you¡¯d rather have the money?¡±


    *


    Kadri, having left the bar, headed straight across the street towards the tall yellow fence. She easily found the foot gate into the yard of the cottage that Mariann used. Before, when she had left it driving the car, she had not really noticed it but on the side of the garage there was indeed low flat-roofed building of white brick and two chimneys on top of it. Out one of them faint white smoke was rising.


    Inside it was a simple sauna where the stove also heated water in a big copper pot. Before the hot room, there was a washroom with a crudely poured concrete floor and before that a long yet somewhat narrow changing room with a small stove.


    She placed the whiskey bottle on a small table by the wall. Despite how it looked, she had not brought the bottle to drink it while in the sauna. Well, maybe a little. She raised the bottle for a sip. The real reason was because she was almost sure that running through the field and through the overgrown forest ground in soft tennis shoes had cut something or blistered something on her feet. Whiskey was better for cleaning than water and worse than even higher content alcohol or iodine or brilliant green.


    She only needed enough of the sauna to wash herself and any wounds. Dry her hair and wash and dry her underwear. And then find some of Mariann¡¯s clothes that fit her. Having hot water for that was merely a pleasant bonus.


    That last one was a much simpler assignment than she had originally thought. A bit less than an hour later she again pushed open the doors to the bar where it was so dark that her eyes needed a few minutes to get adjusted.


    ¡°What did I say?¡± asked Mariann as soon as Kadri stepped into the bar once again.


    ¡°Well, fine.¡± Leopold grumbled, seeing that the bottle of whiskey was still more than half-full. ¡°But this will remain only for the use of you two.¡± He gave a deep sigh.


    Kadri placed a bottle with the golden faintly smoke-flavored liquid on the counter. Mariann grabbed it right away to fill two two crystal glasses.


    ¡°So you found something from my wardrobe?¡±


    Kadri said nothing, only lifted her now long green skirt to show black leather boots laced up to the knee. She pushed some of her black hair over her shoulders and got up on the bar stool by the counter.


    ¡°Were you mistaken or lying?¡± Kadri asked. ¡°You said that taking part in the ritual would bind us to the ritual site and would not let us slip away.¡±


    ¡°I did say that.¡± Mariann nodded. ¡°You went there, didn¡¯t you? And something happened.¡±


    ¡°Something.¡± Kadri stressed and drank her whiskey.


    ¡°Okay, but you have to be precise in your words. Did you slip away or did something slip towards you? Usually we could argue about how much you slipped away and how much whatever you experienced slipped towards you. But not in this case.¡±


    Mariann looked at Kadri rolling a drop of whiskey in her glass.


    ¡°So. Did you slip away or did something slip to you?¡±


    ¡°On the air field...¡±


    ¡°We did not perform the ritual on the air field.¡± Mariann replied. ¡°The air field does not fall into my purview this time.¡±


    Kadri had no mood to ask what she meant by ¡°this time.¡± Repeating everything that had taken place in her mind¡¯s eye, she could not find any perspective for arguing against Mariann. She had not slipped away, not like she had on the air field. All she had seen could have been connected to that white ball of fog. The deafening silence, inexplicable fear, the red legs. Kadri remembered the film cans she had given to Mariann. It was quite possible that the images revealed something that she herself was unable to see. At this very moment she did not even want to think of what the film negatives could depict.


    ¡°You mentioned the air field¡­?¡±


    ¡°Yes.¡± Kadri replied and took a small sip of whiskey. ¡°The world fabrics¡­, the Nameless Towns that can be placed on top of one another¡­ one with the tower, the other without.¡± She said, more to herself than to Mariann.


    ¡°Quite a shock, isn¡¯t it?¡± Mariann asked. ¡°When all the pipe stories, bar and radio tales suddenly turn from bullshit into reality?¡±


    ¡°Did you know this would happen? Am I following in your footsteps right now?¡±


    ¡°In some sense you do.¡± The girl in black replied. ¡°But definitely not down the same trails.¡±


    Kadri pushed herself off the bar stool and headed toward the wall to the right of the bar counter. On the wall there were several photos from the past glory days of the bar but also some artistic hand-drawn maps of the Nameless Town and the surrounding area. She knocked a whiskey glass against one of the drawings in a crude wooden frame.


    ¡°These maps do not depict this Nameless Town, but the other one.¡± She said, drinking her whiskey.


    ¡°Are you finally understanding why girls in black don¡¯t pay?¡± Mariann asked. ¡°Because of remarks like that. Because of the experience that allows making such remarks. Because of the activities that allows gathering such experiences.¡±


    Kadri gave Mariann a venomous glace and walked back to the counter.


    ¡°I have something for you.¡± Mariann said. ¡°If put your drink down first.¡±


    Kadri placed the empty glass back on the counter and then followed Mariann who was holding open the doors outside, waiting for her. They stepped out onto the street and Kadri raised her hand to shield her eyes from the sun.


    Mariann stepped to her red car and opened the trunk, revealing three red steel fuel canisters.


    ¡°What¡¯s that?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°Gasoline. A little over fifty liters. For the three full film rolls.¡±


    ¡°Did you foresee this happening?¡±


    Kadri no longer had any idea how many times in different forms she had asked Mariann that question.


    ¡°I kept that possibility in mind.¡± Mariann replied. ¡°If you had done your job in a manner of driving to a location, taking a single image and then driving away, well, that would have been fine too. But I would have kept the gasoline. But since you get at least one roll out of each location, it is obvious that you¡¯re not just snapping pictures but instead doing your job with with some fullness to it.¡±


    With surprising ease, Mariann lifted the canisters out of the trunk.


    ¡°Fifty liters of gasoline should be enough to get your black limo¡­ home! Just barely.¡± Mariann smiled.


    She pushed the trunk lid down until the soft-close motor caught it and closed it. Kadri tried one of the canisters. It was most certainly full and not nearly as light as the impression Mariann had given her.


    ¡°I have some other thoughts for you as well.¡± Mariann continued, easily lifting two canisters off the ground. ¡°First, you should find a third notebook and write down the situations and circumstances under which you have taken the images. Not just the camera settings but also the weather the time, how and where you went and other stuff.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s the other idea?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°One of your current goals is to take photos for the client¡¯s picture book. Maybe you want to make your own picture book?¡±


    ¡°My own picture book?¡±


    ¡°As you have already managed to see, the people in this place are not too interested in the world around them. They live in it and for them it a gray and dull day-to-day. Just like during the Soviet era. But back then when only few people managed to travel abroad and even traveling within the country took a lot of time, all sorts of day journals and travel journals were quite popular. As were picture books full of photos and drawings. One might think they only depicted faraway places, but no. There were also such books of closer places, hidden away in the countryside, of places one could walk or even drive to, made during a season, weather or an era that has already become far too distant.¡±


    ¡°You think there would be a point?¡±


    ¡°There most certainly would be. People in this place interact and make sense of the world through things exactly like that. The accent of subjective vision and experience brings the world closer than just dry documentary writing and photography. And it would also allow you a real opportunity to finance your activity.¡±


    ¡°Is that the source of your freedom?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°No. I moved too fast. I wasn¡¯t interested in documenting things. I was interested in learning. By the time opportunities like that started reaching me, I had already moved onward to¡­ let¡¯s just say to more interesting solutions.¡±


    With both hands, Kadri barely managed to lift a single canister off the ground and step by step head for the black factory limo. At the same time, Mariann was seemingly carrying two empty canisters. It took her maybe a dozen seconds to make it to the limo while for Kadri with single canister it took far longer than a minute and it ended with hip pain on the side on which she was carrying the canister.


    ¡°I have one other thought.¡± Mariann continued when Kadri finally made it to the car. ¡°Of the two thoughts I gave you springs a third one. You could write down not only details on the photos you take but also your own experiences. Those too could be something interesting that the locals would enjoy reading.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t feel like I could write any good literature.¡± Kadri replied.


    ¡°You don¡¯t have to.¡± Mariann said. ¡°Because it would not be literature. It would be a diary. I myself cannot do that. Not in the place I currently am. There are so many things that can be conceived in the mind but cannot be said out at once and in their absolute completeness. It is easier for me to talk about what I am thinking of at any given time. Which seems to be true only at the time I am saying it out loud.¡±


    ¡°I might be able to keep a diary...¡± Kadri said, leaning on the rear door of the limo.


    What she was actually thinking though was a lot stronger a conviction. The ritual site on the road and what transpired at the air field. At the moment all she had experienced were just a knotted mess in her mind. While she did not write it down, it remained as a knotted mess. Until she forgot it all. And until she had written it down, it could not be anything linear and clearly communicable, only a knotted mess. Which meant that she needed more notebooks.


    ¡°Just know that should you embark down that trail, do it on a typewriter or a computer. In this way you can be more sure that whatever you write down won¡¯t disappear so completely that you yourself won¡¯t remember writing anything down at all.¡±


    Kadri finally remembered why they were here with the canisters. She produced the keys to the limo from her satchel and handed them to Mariann.


    ¡°Things like that happen?¡±


    ¡°I think they happen far more often than people notice.¡± Mariann replied. ¡°If one is to believe the most recent stories from the bar.¡±


    ¡°When I went to the radio station, Allan Helde gave me a tape with some electronic dance music...¡± Kadri continued.


    ¡°Oh yeah. I asked him to compile a tape. It would seem I forgot. Allan had a series of radio shows on which the various village hags came to his studio to talk about interesting and weird stories about the history of the Nameless Town and the area that surrounds it. Allan Helde often gives the guests on his show the option to choose their own music. Can you imagine Allan¡¯s surprise when the village hags named the tracks I later asked him to put onto the tape and Allan, absolutely certain that nothing like that exists in his music library, nevertheless found all the music on vinyl? From there on I got interested in it. In a way it is music that should not exist.¡± Mariann said.


    ¡°I listened to that tape.¡± Kadri said.


    Mariann opened the trunk of the limo and with an experienced move found the hidden fueling nozzle that attaches to the mouth on the canister. She shut the trunk lid and flipped the license plate down exposing the fueling filler cap.


    ¡°Wasn¡¯t your taste, was it?¡± Mariann asked.


    ¡°No it was not. But there is something in it. It reminds me of something.¡±


    ¡°Believe it or not, the village hags on the radio show said something similar. That it allows them to remember.¡±


    ¡°There is something else there. I think it anchors the human mind in some way. It disallows it from slipping away.¡± Kadri took a long pause after finally saying out what had been on her mind. As ridiculous as it sounded to her.


    ¡°It is interesting to hear you have had such an experience.¡±


    ¡°Some time ago you spoke of bands whose music is possessed by a spirit guiding the writing of the music. Old people on the radio speaking of strange yet familiar music created more than half a century after their childhood. Isn¡¯t there something similar here?¡±


    ¡°I have never thought about it in that way.¡± Mariann said. ¡°And that idea of yours has some other shortcomings as well.¡±


    ¡°Like what?¡±


    ¡°Empty out the canisters and we¡¯ll talk.¡±


    Kadri opened the fuel cap, attached the fueling nozzle to the canister, and making use of every drop of strength she had, she managed to lift the canister just enough to get the fuel flowing from canister and into the filler neck. The canister too got lighter but much slower than her reserves of back and arm strength.


    ¡°Will you do the next one yourself?¡± She asked.


    ¡°I can.¡± Mariann said. ¡°It seems I should not have helped you.¡±


    The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    Kadri did not bother to reply to it.


    ¡°You haven¡¯t lived until you¡¯ve dragged a filled up gas canister three kilometers in a dark and stormy summer night.¡± Mariann smiled.


    ¡°Is that something I have to do in the future?¡± Kadri asked, having finished her rest and started on the second half of the canister.


    ¡°You will have to do that far more often than you might think right now.¡± Mariann replied. ¡°And I¡¯m not only speaking of pouring gas. But you could also suck until it starts flowing.¡±


    ¡°Ugh. No thanks.¡± Kadri replied.


    Half a mouthful of gasoline for not having to lift the canister seemed like too high a price to pay right now.


    ¡°Look at the positive side.¡± Mariann said. ¡°To fill up the passenger car you need to lift the canister to a much lesser height than to fill up anything offroad-worthy.¡±


    Kadri emptied the last liquid drops from the canister into the filler neck and then placed the canister in front of her. Without a word, Mariann detached the fueling nozzle and attached it to the next canister, which she started to empty into the gas tank.


    ¡°Maybe you will instead take the third one with you?¡± She asked.


    ¡°Why not?¡±


    Kadri raised her right hand in front of her and watched it tremble. She was undoubtedly able to empty the remaining canister as well if really need be but it would have been much better to let Siim or Johannes do it. She opened the trunk once more, then checked that the hatch on the canister was really shut tight and then lifted it into the trunk and set in lying down on its side.


    Mariann emptied the other canister into the trunk seemingly without any effort at all. She then set it down, removed the fueling nozzle and put it into the trunk, then closing it. The two empty canisters she picked up and moved around the back of the car to the yellow fence.


    Let us sit then.¡± She said.


    Kadri unlocked the driver door to reach in and unlock the rear door by pulling the knob. She opened the wide rear door and sat down on the navy blue cloth interior and slid on the other side to the still locked door. The interior of the car was pleasantly cool. A bit like a huge refrigerator.


    ¡°This alone should tell you something.¡± Mariann said.


    ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°A black car with dark interior which has been sitting in direct sun since morning. There¡¯s no way it can still be be cool a few hours after midday. That should make you think that maybe your car is not exactly ordinary.¡±


    ¡°My car?¡± Kadri asked. ¡°Is it indeed my car?¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s an important question, isn¡¯t it?¡± Mariann replied.


    ¡°That music on the tape that Allan gave me...¡± Kadri changed the topic.


    ¡°You said it acts like an anchor...¡±


    ¡°Those are not the right words.¡± Kadri replied. ¡°It creates a field of some sort which repels all this anomalous stuff...¡±


    ¡°And you thought that this could be connected to some soul in the music?¡± Mariann asked. ¡°Are you meaning to say to me that electronic dance music has no soul? The energy of its creator? That it cannot be possessed, that it is somehow less real than music created on physical instruments?¡±


    Kadri did not say anything in response. It was hard to argue Mariann¡¯s point. Both types of music had the imagination and the will of the people who created it. The music itself was really reducible to literal sonic waves in the air. Which in turn meant that making any difference between the two was purely arbitrary. But this did not mean¡­


    ¡°But this does not mean that there is no effect at all.¡± Mariann said. ¡°To you. Only to you.¡±


    ¡°My presence is invoking this effect?¡±


    ¡°You have given meaning and made sense of this effect. Maybe subconsciously, maybe even in memories you cannot recall.¡±


    For Kadri, Mariann¡¯s response also meant that she could not infer anything of the tape she had not yet received from Allan. She could infer nothing from herself or her own consciousness. And at the same time she could not accept anything at face value.


    ¡°As with all mind-altering substances, the best place to try them is somewhere you feel safe.¡± Mariann said.


    ¡°Does a place like that even exist in this area?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°Aren¡¯t we completely by chance in a place like that already?¡± Mariann asked in return.


    ¡°Are we?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°Is it your car?¡± Mariann continued. ¡°If you admit that this is your car then this may also be your safe space. For music but also for anything else. Perhaps that was my mistake. The M1009 has not yet become your car, not in that sense. Not in such a sense as this one here may well be.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s absurd.¡± Kadri said.


    ¡°It is, but it doesn¡¯t necessarily mean that I¡¯m wrong.¡±


    Kadri did not say anything in reply. There was too many different ideas, too little solid ground to stand on and to trust.


    ¡°There was once an American writer. Lovecraft. Don¡¯t let the name fool you. He wrote a short story about a scientist who discovered that by affecting human pineal gland with electromagnetic radiation, he could expand human consciousness into dimensions otherwise considered extrasensory. But at the same time the things living in those extrasensory dimensions could also access his senses and through these senses his physical presence and this world.¡±


    ¡°Our senses are the limit of our world...¡± Kadri mused¡­ ¡°And at the same time they are our bridges to everything outside our being.¡±


    ¡°Yes. And consciousness can indeed be affected with music.¡±


    ¡°But that would still be connected to an affinity only peculiar to me?¡± Kadri asked. ¡°Because that¡¯s not what I¡¯ve experienced.¡±


    ¡°Your experience is not wrong. And it is indeed possible to affect human consciousness with music. But right now you have too little information to tell whether the effect lies in the music or within yourself. You should continue down this trail. Try to experience more of it and make sense of more of it.¡±


    ¡°Doesn¡¯t the short story you mentioned caution me to not do that?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°I never said that understanding new things does not bring consequences.¡± Mariann smiled.


    ¡°I¡¯m keeping the drum and bass tape.¡±


    It didn¡¯t even matter whether she was right and the power was hidden in the music or Mariann was right and the force was within herself and the music only helped to bring it forth. In both cases her belief and her conviction were important components.


    ¡°Be my guest.¡±


    This brought new questions about the second tape. But only after a few seconds she reached a conclusion that those questions were irrelevant. She already knew what Mariann would answer. She had already answered. If she had any doubts or fears, the best place to experiment was somewhere she considered safe. And right now it was difficult to find a safer place than the navy blue ceiling before her eyes.


    ¡°Is your red car your safe place?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°It was. Once in the beginning.¡±


    ¡°And now.¡±


    ¡°Now?¡± Mariann smiled again. ¡°The entirety of the Lost County.¡±


    Experience. Experience was the thing separating her from Mariann. Experience was the thing that allowed Mariann to say that.


    ¡°Damn it.¡± Kadri said. ¡°I have to return to the air field. I did not learn anything. But at the same, I don¡¯t want to re-experience what happened today.¡±


    ¡°So take your safe place with you.¡± Mariann said. ¡°There is one other facet to this which, honestly, I¡¯m surprised you have not yet noticed.¡±


    ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°When we sat into the car right now, it was cool on the inside. Considering the weather right now, it should not have been cool.¡±


    ¡°True.¡± Kadri agreed to that. It was weird.


    ¡°And when we spoke on the air field that time, when we parted, your friends brought the car away from there. And none of you know how this car ended up on the air field nor how any of you got to the car or inside it.¡±


    That was also true.


    ¡°Thus¡­ it is possible that this car is not at all from here. It is from somewhere else. Thrown out or away into this place. And it still carrying energy from that other place within.¡±


    Kadri wanted to say once more that this was an absurd statement but she decided to stay silent. It was something too obvious to say.


    ¡°It is not necessarily a bad thing, should it indeed be so.¡± Mariann continued. ¡°It would be afford another layer of protection. It would protect you should you end up somewhere else with the car. Or to put it better way, it would legitimize your presence there.¡±


    ¡°I have to keep the car.¡± Kadri sighed.


    ¡°I would go even further.¡± Mariann replied. ¡°You should use it as much as possible. Maybe even sleep in it. The more it is ¡®your car¡¯ the more it is your ¡®safe space¡¯. This does not prohibit you from driving other cars nor that other cars or places can not become your safe spaces in the future. But the situation now is that this is the closest option.¡±


    Kadri sighed again.


    Daily driving this black vehicle seemed completely pointless. The thought alone was as repulsive as the dance music on the tape she had received from Allan. And yet there was a growing feeling that she could not do without one or the other. At least not now.


    ¡°I left my clothes into the dressing room of your sauna.¡± Kadri suddenly said, still eyeing the ceiling. ¡°And I need more clothes.¡±


    ¡°Right now? Or can you wait for some time?¡± Mariann asked.


    ¡°What¡¯s the difference?¡±


    ¡°In Tontla, there is a store that sells used clothes. And in Valgepal? there is a tailor.¡±


    Kadri took the satchel from around her neck and dropped in on the car floor.


    ¡°Have you decided?¡±


    ¡°Yes. I will go and gather my clothes. Haven¡¯t decided yet what comes after that.


    *


    She indeed did not know. Even now, lying down on the cloth rear seat of the factory limo. The seat was wide enough for her to stretch out. The seat bottom could have been a bit longer, making her bed wider, but the situation right now was fine as well. The car was still sitting in the same place she had left it in the morning. The only difference being that now on the car floor, in addition to the satchel and the camera, there were also her sweaty clothes, packed into an old plastic shopping bag that carried the image of a Zhiguli.


    Inside the car, it wasn¡¯t much warmer than before. Which was perfectly fine for Kadri. And at the same time it wasn¡¯t. Due to the scorching summer heat both days and nights, Kadri had not managed to get proper sleep for days now. But here it was cool. And the glass on the car was heavily tinted. And she was tired. Perfect coincidence of circumstances for her to remain here and sleep until it got dark. Maybe even longer, considering her debt of sleep.


    And indeed, what should have been a short rest to think what and in which order to do next, turned into sudden awaking in the dark as soon as she no longer wanted to get off the seat. No blanket, no pillow, no nothing. Only refreshing cool air that cut her down at once.


    Kadri opened her eyes. It was dark inside the car. Not quite pitch black darkness but dim enough for her to barely see her fingers raised above her face. She got up, pulled on the locking knob on the door and opened it into the night.


    It was still hot outside. Slightly cooler than during the day, and there was no sun, but for her, still hot. She had no idea what the time was. Whether it was late evening or past midnight. And maybe it didn¡¯t even matter. Kadri exited the car and pushed down on the locking knob before shutting the door. She slid the ring with the car keys on her ring finger and then locked the other doors as well.


    On the streets of the Nameless Town, only a few lone pale orange street lights were on. But this was enough to notice that Mariann¡¯s huge diesel powered military vehicle was gone. Probably back in the very same shed that Kadri had seen it in the beginning. Also, Mariann¡¯s red car now had a white cloth top on it. As for other stuff, everything seems to be the same as during the day. She headed back towards the Nether flight street. Or the Cemetery flight street. Some used one name, some the other.


    However her first destination was not Leopold¡¯s bar but instead the Radio station. And the tape Allan was supposed to record for her. Right now, this tape was of primary importance and overshadowed all other necessities, even hunger and thirst. Listening to the tape however¡­ She could not say. Despite what Mariann had told her, the contents of the tape now scared her a little. Maybe it was really true that she could not just listen to it while driving back to the Cottage District or to Tontla, but instead had to stop the car in some safe spot and only then could she push ¡®play¡¯. Which reminded her that she had left the drum and bass tape into the cassette radio on the military truck.


    The nighttime streets were empty. Not a soul on them. But surprisingly, many windows on building shorter and taller were illuminated. Also, as she passed Leopold¡¯s bar, she could hear the usual bar noises leaking out onto the street. This also meant that it could not be too late into the night. But probably late enough for Allan to be on the air with his show.


    The town radio was the next building on the street. One building before the Town Hall and a few three and four story buildings apart from Leopold¡¯s bar. From a covered passage on one such building she could see into the courtyard and there stood an old mossy green sedan with a white vinyl roof in some diffused pale light.


    Kadri continued on her way. Toward the large metal-framed doors with large glass panes acting as the entrance to the radio station building. She pulled on one of the doors to open it and stepped into the foyer. This too looked no different from the morning. Worn floor and to the right a dark resting room. But right before her was a counter and the secretary desk. On the counter there were two audio cassettes in plastic cases. On top of them was a folded up piece of paper which read ¡°To the other girl in black¡± in careless scribbled handwriting.


    Had she not introduced herself in the morning? Had Allan not remembered her name during their conversation night after the ritual? The very night that should have been a test run for a possible new radio show format? Or maybe he simply did not care? It didn¡¯t matter. Kadri got her tapes and she headed right back towards the car, to drop the tapes into the driver door pocket. On that short walk back towards the car, these two tapes were the most precious treasure she had. Only after putting away the tapes and locking the car could she take some easier breaths.


    She leaned against the car. Everybody knew Mariann¡¯s red car. According to Mariann, nobody dared to touch it because everybody knew it was her car. Even if it had no roof on and stuff was carelessly strewn about the interior. Was there any hope that in time, her connection with the black factory limo became the same? Kadri couldn¡¯t even say, whether connection like that felt something positive or negative. It was hard to imagine that she would park the car for a week or several along the busiest of main streets with unlocked doors and when returning would discover that not a single item in the car is missing nor has even changed places.


    She was hungry. That¡¯s what had awakened her. She pushed away from the car and walked back down the street towards the bar. Mariann had a habit or parking her car right before the entrance so approaching from the street, instead of the footpath, one inevitably had to get around Mariann¡¯s car. She stepped into the doorway and then pushed open the door. Then the interior door as well.


    The majority of the bar folk had gathered around the large circular table in the middle of the hall. On top of the table was a late Soviet era transistor radio from which emanated a conversation one party of which seemed to be Allan Helde. However at the moment she could not focus on it. She could not even interest herself in it. The other part of the bar crowd was either at the counter or sitting at the line of small tables next to the windows. Some drinking and maybe listening to the radio, others perhaps even having dozed off.


    ¡°Can I get something to eat?¡± Kadri asked, as she stepped to the counter.


    ¡°We¡¯re out.¡± Leopold said.


    ¡°Out?¡± She asked.


    ¡°Everything¡¯s out for today. Meat, nuts, bread. Even fish and potatoes. The only thing there is enough of, is the drink.¡±


    Kadri looked at the man with a questioning gaze.


    ¡°I can offer you liquid bread.¡±


    ¡°No thanks.¡± She pushed off the bar counter and turned around.


    One bottle of heavy dark beer was not enough to fill her up and she wasn¡¯t too sure about being able to drive home in the dark after two or more.


    ¡°Go to the market, that¡¯s still open.¡± Said Leopold right before the door closed after her.


    Only now did Kadri remember the market. And indeed, in the morning all sorts of good things had been sold there, dried, cured and smoked. She glanced back at the black factory limo. The market was on the next street towards the air field, almost at the Eastern end of the town. In short, not far away enough to start the car.


    Before when she had gone to the Radio station to pick up the tapes, she had not smelled this, but now she did as soon as she hit the intersection with the Northern parallel street. From somewhere, the smell of food being smoked reached her. And the market was one of the few places this smell could originate at this time of night.


    In warm yellow light of the single gas mantle lamp, the little market looked completely different. The one lamp in the middle of the market area gave off uniform warm white light. The post itself was maybe four meters high. Above the lamp was an aluminum helmet which diffused the light and reflected it downwards.


    The bus which had been open like a clam shell during the day was now back in its usual shape. In this dim light it was difficult to say where the seams even were or how it could have been open during the day at all. Right across the bus, there was a crude market stall made of unfinished wooden planks, on, behind and around of which hung all sorts of smoked and cured foodstuffs more and less familiar to her. Sausages and ham, pork fat, fish of every kind and of course poultry. Even cheeses. Next to the stall two wood fired steel smokers were going at full burn.


    ¡°Can I offer you something?¡± An older bald man asked, having stepped out from behind the stall.


    The man seemed to be slightly over sixty years old. With a bare head and a gray ring of hair at about ear-level. His face was shaven clean. The man was only slightly taller than her and of average build. He was wearing a blue tee with dark linen pants and wellingtons.


    ¡°To eat. Here.¡± Kadri said.


    ¡°We have hot fish right off the smoker.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯ll do.¡±


    ¡°For drink I can unfortunately only offer water from the well, or this.¡±


    The man handed Kadri an antique glass beer bottle. Made of thick dark brown glass and sealed with black wax. The label on the bottle was in Russian and Kadri¡¯s understanding of the language was barely enough to tell that it was dark beer.


    ¡°What¡¯s that?¡± She asked.


    ¡°Dark beer. With a royal warrant of import and manufacture from the Russian Imperial court. About 10% by volume it is. This is just about the only thing that does not spoil on its way here.¡±


    ¡°Where is it made?¡±


    The man¡¯s fingers pointed at an additional smaller label on the neck of the bottle which mentioned a place called Dorpat.


    ¡°Of course sometimes it needs to be shipped in from afar on boats.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m driving.¡± Kadri said. ¡°And I would like to make it home with it.¡±


    ¡°Very well.¡± The man said.


    Kadri took a seat at a small wooden table nearest to the stall and soon enough, a large porcelain platter was set before her with half of a hot-smoked red fish wrapped in aluminum foil along with a silver fork and knife.


    In the end it seemed that she had indeed been hungry, since it did not take her much time to eat everything that had been placed in front of her.


    She got up and in the pocket of Mariann¡¯s green skirt, next to the car keys, she found the only bill of money she had. Of lilac color and carrying a portrait of a bearded middle-aged man with glasses. She dropped the bill onto a coin tray at the counter of the stall.


    The old man behind the stall took a long look at the bill and then scratched the back of his head.


    ¡°I have a small problem with this bill of yours.¡± He said. ¡°First, I don¡¯t have enough change to give you. Second, I don¡¯t want to give you all my change. Don¡¯t you have anything smaller?¡±


    ¡°Not right now.¡± Kadri said.


    ¡°I have an idea. I can give you three hundred in cash. And the rest in food.¡±


    ¡°How much would that rest be?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°One case of beer, fifteen bars of sausage, a kilo of each cheese and the rest would be fish, ham and other stuff.¡±


    ¡°That is fine.¡± Kadri said.


    To be truthful, she did not feel like haggling. She picked her bill off the coin tray.


    ¡°I¡¯m gonna go get the car.¡±


    She did not feel like haggling. But if she was left with enough money to buy clothes and she also managed to take at least a week¡¯s worth of food to the others, then all in all, it did not look like a bad choice.


    The walk from the market back to the car seemed to ta a lot more time than the walk to the Radio station before or from the car to the market. She unlocked the car front door, sat in the car, and having fought with the fuel pump and getting it started, she drove the car straight to the Northern parallel street, stopping the car right at the entrance to the market, halfway on the sidewalk.


    She stepped out of the car and opened the long rear side door and then stood next to the door.


    ¡°You don¡¯t want to put all this in the trunk?¡± The man asked.


    ¡°I have a canister of gasoline there and I don¡¯t know if the seal on it holds.¡±


    ¡°Right, right.¡±


    He started on loading everything he had promised onto the floor of the rear seat. A case of beer, bars of sausages, bars of braided cheese. Ham, pork fat and cheeses in nets. Smoked whole chickens and ducks and even some more fish in foil.


    After he finished, Kadri handed him the one bill she had and the man handed her one blue bill, two bills in aquamarine shades, tons of red ones with an oak tree on the oblique and the rest was in coins.


    ¡°Come again tomorrow and bring back my coinage.¡± The man smiled.


    ¡°Good night.¡± Kadri replied.


    ¡°¡¯Night.¡± The old man replied.


    He observed Kadri getting back in the car and driving towards East.


    *


    Maybe having a very late supper at market with no other customers in the Nameless Town was a mistake. It was harder to stay awake on a full stomach. Harder to make important decisions. For example, instead of finding a place where she could turn the limo around, she decided to drive towards the Eastern gate of the town, where the radio tower was located. And then to use the circular road to reach the road to the Cottage District.


    The Southern part of the circular road passed what people called the town cemetery and the Unknown Lands and because of that she was not going to pass through there at night. But there should not have been any problems with the Northern section. At least nothing that would stop her from driving. Especially if she drove slow with high beams on.


    And indeed there wasn¡¯t. The tarmac blacktop was surprisingly smooth, no cold swell-ups, no tram-lining, potholes or other damage that would make the ride uncomfortable. As if the road had seen hardly any use. As if all traffic to Valgepal? and other places used some other roads unbeknownst to her.


    Also the whole way was a long and steady turn to the left. On either side of the road there were deep ditches and forest beyond those. Therefore there was no hope of seeing the air field from this side either. Also she saw no cars traveling along her or coming from the opposite direction. She could also not see any other unknown or unexplainable lights. Not even fog.


    What happened during the day still played in her mind. Also the thought that she might have seen something she was not supposed to. Despite having discussed what she saw with Mariann, a slight fear still lingered that suddenly a black old-time passenger car would appear, with tall tail fins and glass as black as carbon paper. Or maybe she will be followed by a bright sphere of light in the sky, which ends up stalling the engine at an opportune time.


    She reached fog only on that old and familiar section of the road North of the Tontla-Luiga crossroad. It seemed like this stretch of road was always in fog. And slowly but surely the fog was flowing in a North-Westerly direction. As if it all originated from the air field or the town.


    Kadri slowed the car down significantly. The fog was so dense that neither low nor high beams were of any use. Eventually she had to move at walking pace to be sure that she would not hit anything, drive off the road or something altogether more horrific would not take place.


    Having exited yet another fog of wall, she decided to stop the car on the near side curb. The next fog wall was about a 30-40 meters ahead. But between the two walls of fog, visibility was pretty good. Suddenly, recognition hit her. This was the place. This was the place when one strange night their accident had taken place. The accident she could not recall.


    She left the lights on and the engine running and exited the car. The fog was pleasantly cool. Pleasantly misty and damp. There was no sign of the heat which had taken over the Nameless Town or the Cottage District. Kadri took deep breaths to get as much of the cool damp freshness inside her as possible. Had she had a bed and a blanket anywhere near here, she would have probably fallen asleep at a moment¡¯s notice.


    She walked to the center line of the road and towards the next fog wall. Arms raised to her sides, taking deep breaths. Thinner and thicker ebbs of fog still flowed past her towards North-West, not considering her of any obstruction.


    Kadri turned around and before she could react nor even notice that she could no longer see her limo on the side of the road, a pair of lights rushed out of the wall of fog with the driver relentlessly sounding the horn. She immediately froze in the beams of the car headlights. At the last moment the car managed to swerve her and lost control as it entered the next wall of fog. She could not see what happened, but she could hear how the car ran off the road into the ditch and then into the trees maybe only a few dozen meters ahead.


    Without any further thought she raised her skirt and started running in the direction the car had disappeared to. Right into the fog wall. It was only about five meters thick and soon she could see more than just a few steps ahead of her. The fog was dense but she could still see about three or four meters in either direction. She also saw the ditch and the forest beyond it. But what she could not see was the car which had run off the road.


    She ran even further but could not see anything. No car that had run of the road. No injured people. No fresh signs of accident in the ditch, on the other side of it or the trees. But she heard sounds. Sounds of the accident. Sounds that the injured would make. Sounds of the car, the trees and the brush burning. And then she heard it again. Somebody frantically sounding the horn, tires wailing and a traffic accident happening. But she heard it from behind her. At that very moment, she remembered the factory limo and she started running again, now back towards the car.


    When she finally made it out of the fog, she saw the factory limo still standing on the side of the road. Both low and high beams were still on. The huge eight-cylinder engine was still running at an idle og slightly over six hundred revolutions. The car stood at the same place Kadri had stopped it. It had not moved an inch in either direction. Also nothing had hit it. Whatever it was that she had heard before, it did not happen to this car.


    Kadri got into the car and started to take off when she again saw brights in the rear-view mirror. This time the black Volga swerved the factory limo with the horn blaring, flew towards the wall of fog ahead with the side first and before disappearing into the fog, it instead ran off the road and into the ditch. No, not into the ditch. But also not into the fog. It looked as if the car which was still made of metal at the time of passing the limo, lost control and drove into darkness in the ditch and on the side of the road. Into the kind of darkness that could not be illuminated by car headlights. As if on the other side of the ditch, under the dark trees ruled this mysterious darkness which Mariann had spoken off. The one that acted like a separate force of nature, which swallowed strong light until even the most powerful lantern was reduced to the level of a single candle.


    She finally took off and put on speed. She had no idea what she had just seen. And she did not want to know. Not tonight. She did not even want to give it a name. But still it did not leave her in peace. Did the car which she saw swerving but not running off the road react to to her? Or to the factory limousine? Would the swerving and running off the road have taken place had she not been there on the road? Would the car have emerged from the fog at all? Was this the kind of memory of the land which Mariann and Toomas had spoken of on separate occasions? How under the randomly correct conditions, the minerals recorded some events and later upon a happenstance of other such conditions played these events back again and again?


    The fog in which all of this had taken place disappeared as fast as it had appeared. By the time she made it to Tontla-Luiga crossroad, there was no more fog to be seen. Even the air here was different. Hotter, dryer. And although she had just exited the dense fog, she could not see the fog wall or any fog at all from her rear view mirror. As if it had never been there in the first place.


    Kadri had heard stories how this region played tricks with peoples perception. Travels from the same starting points and to the same destinations were not necessarily equal in travel time nor distance. Sometimes people could see weird things taking place. Was this sudden fog at the accident site one such phenomenon?


    Soon, she made it to the turnoff to the Cottage District, where smooth macadam was replaced with potholed gravel road full of granite pebbles which ran between forests and fields. This made her slow down. Was there really no better road to the Cottage District? The cottage district itself was fully paved, wasn¡¯t it? She was sure there was. On the other side, through the Officers¡¯ Village. Beyond that, the road that passed through the Cottage District and eventually reached the Underground Base should have met the road heading to Valgepal?. She had to find it. Heading into town every day along the gravel road with the long limo hitting every pothole along the way was not something she was willing to put up with.


    She felt relief to finally pass the section running between the forests and to reach the section running between the fields north of the Cottage District. Only a bit more to go now. On one of the roads on the left from which one could access the fields sitting slightly below the road, that same blue-green four door sedan Siim and Johannes had been tinkering with during the day suddenly appeared into the headlights of the car.


    Kadri slowed down and even stopped to better see into the darkness around her. There was nobody around the derelict car. Neither could she see any lights on the fields below or on the grasslands and the forests on the other side. Whatever had happened here, the boys had probably left the car here and walked back to the Cottage District.


    Soon the car headlights fell on a sharp yet wide paved turned to the right which headed towards the Underground Base. To the left and slightly before that was the main street of the Cottage District. As she pulled up to the first house on the left and turned the engine off, the lights in the windows were still on.


    She was back in the Cottage District. Her long day in town was finally over.

 XXXX - Night in the Forbidden Forest

    ¡°What the fuck¡­!?¡±


    Kadri woke up. It was dark. She was not sure whether the scream had bean in her dreams or had come from her lips.


    ¡°That¡¯s the reason, I remained because I thought I would go there early-early-early-early...¡±


    This clip of of a sentence had awakened her. Clip of a sentence which had become part of the music on the tape she had received from Allan. She had turned on the ignition, pushed the tape to play and then fallen asleep on the back seat of the factory limo. It had been so easy at that time. But now, getting up from the seat, crawling over the front seat and reaching over to stop the music was an almost insurmountable task.


    Still, she did it. Mechanically linked button on the tape radio jumped out.


    Only when the echo of the heavy mechanical click had dissipated from her ears did she realize that the music did not stop. It became quieter but did not stop. It grew quieter but she still heard that clip of that sentence repeating again and again. She could also faintly hear the music accompanying it. Was this a dream?


    Once more did Kadri reach over the seatback and pushed another button which ejected the tape from the tape player and let it fall on the floor before the front seat. She even turned off the ignition but this too did not change anything.


    ¡°That¡¯s the reason, I remained because I thought I would go there early-early-early-early...¡±


    Where did this segment of a sentence originate from? Maybe she was still in deep sleep and the music reached her through her dreams, altering them? For Kadri, this was an old and familiar motif of nightmares. A situation, where she needs to switch the music off but everything she does to stop it is in vain. Right now had become the right time for waking up. When she had realized there was no means of stopping the music. When she had realized that the music originated from somewhere outside. When she had realized she was sleeping.


    But nothing happened. Was this one of these waking dreams where she could control what was happening? Didn¡¯t seem like it.


    That segment of a sentence repeated again but it did not repeat alone. She was still sure she was hearing fast dance music and deep bass tones accompanying it. Was it playing in her head? In her senses? Had it become a compulsive thought she could no longer keep under control?


    How was it at all possible that an utterance said right here in the Nameless Town into the telephone line signal designed to sample the range of human speech burns into the air and finally reaches electronic dance music produced in some faraway land? It wasn¡¯t. It had to be pareidolia. But why then was it so significant? Why then this synchronicity?


    Kadri pulled back over the front seat backrest. Indeed a seat back and not a dividing wall. The front seat was freely moving and therefore there was no privacy window between the front and the back seats. But there were two auxiliary seats one could raise from the floor and the front seat back. The two seats did not move with the front seat but set a limit how much back the front bench could be moved.


    There was something else she was noticing only now as well. It felt cool. Cooler than on the evening she had made it back to the house after returning from town. She opened the rear side door and as soon as she had, the cool fresh of a recent rain intruded into the vehicle. It had rained during the night. A lot. And perhaps quickly. Because it was still dark. Some time between when she had reached the house with the car and now.


    All of nature around here was still soaked and dripping. When she finally got out of the car, she noticed that something was wrong. The car had not been parked on the main street of the cottage district. It was on the side of a wide and overgrown cracked concrete road. By the Forbidden Forest. Opposite the last two homesteads and far from the ninety degree turn from which the road to the Base started.


    Yet again did a thought arise that she was still sleeping. She could not remember how she or the car had made their way here. A moment later, another shard of memory hit her. Something that made her deeply disturbed ¨C it was not the same car. The factory limo here was not the same car as the one she, her friends and Mariann had sheltered in when there was a sudden downpour at the old airfield. In that car there were no back-facing collapsible seats. Instead there were two opposing bench seats and out of the hump on the floor rose small table on a metal leg.


    This was a problem however. Despite all her struggles to remember, she could not say what the car from the airfield had looked like on the outside. How were the side doors positioned on the inside. And having grown quite familiar with this factory limo, she was quite sure that the seating arrangement she was remembering would have made the interior of this one so cramped that it would have been a struggle to fit a table, let alone for all six people to stretch out their legs. However in the car they had first met Mariann, there were two full-size bench seats and still as much room between them as there was between the front and back rows in this one.


    Therefore¡­ was it a remembrance of a dream or something that actually took place? Was it still real if she woke up from her current dream? The car which had stood on the air field on that rainy day, was it perhaps a door to a separate spatial dimension? And of course, the question that burned brightest of all - considering that what she was experiencing right now was not a dream then... where did this car originate from? Whence had Siim and Johannes found it!? Where from had they brought it along?


    Kadri suddenly noticed that although it was dark outside, it wasn¡¯t dark enough to not let her see. With the time she had stood by the open side door, her eyes had adjusted to the pale twilight world around her. And of course, the Moon was out.


    ¡°That¡¯s the reason, I remained, because I thought I would go there early-early-early-early...¡±


    The fragment of an utterance repeating again brought her thoughts back to the music and everything else connected to it. She closed the rear door and opened the front door, sliding herself onto the navy leather seat.


    She turned the frame around the ignition key but the car did not start. The starter didn¡¯t even click. As if the battery was empty or not even present. But if the battery was empty, how had she stopped the tape? Had she stopped the tape at all? Perhaps the music that had awakened her did not originate from the tape off the radio? Perhaps it was but a coincidence that she had developed the notion that it had. Perhaps it originated from somewhere outside? Or maybe from her own memory and dreams? Or perhaps she was still asleep on the back seat of the limo and the music was reaching her through her dreams?


    Was she really hearing music of which only her, Mariann and Allan had copies of, from somewhere outside? Or were her senses playing tricks on her and this was just another pareidolia or¡­


    If the car¡¯s battery was empty then this also meant that the analog clock face on the dash was useless and still.


    A conversation with Mariann on that hot night popped in her head. The story about the denizens of the Cottage District sleeping such a deep sleep that a war could pass over them and for those awake, time could stop. Had she now come across such circumstances? This was certainly one way to explain how she had made it back to the house in the Cottage District in the dark, then driven to the side of the road by the Forbidden Forest and slept through a few hours of rain and it was still dark outside and not the pale twilight of the following morning.


    She again got out of the car and closed the door.


    It seemed like everything even slightly brighter reflected moonlight much better than daylight. For example, the concrete road leading to the Underground Base was visible surprisingly far into the darkness. The same could be said for the white silicate brick faces of houses and cottages in the Cottage District. Even through the dark yards and tree canopies on the side of the road.


    Kadri walked back to the crossing where the main street of the Cottage District started, bordering the fields to the North. Here on there was a sight much more spectacular to see. The fields of grasslands stood illuminated in the moonlight like pale white reflector strips. As if she had suddenly acquired the ability to see near infra-red light in grayscale.


    This was something she wanted to photograph. Even if it had no value for Mariann. This had value for Kadri herself. And on their first meeting, Mariann has provided her with something that made possible for her to take pictures of it. Some 34 degree film.


    She headed back to the car and sat into the back seat. Why had she not made use of the film on that misty night with that ghostly car? She knew the answer, the answer was right here before her, as she was about to open up the camera, to switch a half-filled less sensitive roll of film for a fresh one that was more sensitive. If she had to bother with film cameras, she needed more of them. At least three or four, each set up for film of different sensitivity and using lenses of differing F-stop ranges. There was no other option for doing full day/night photography, from direct sunlight to cloudy skies to nights with and without moon.


    The last thing she needed was stored in the trunk of the car. Mariann had moved that one too when she emptied her military vehicle of all the stuff Kadri had put in there. A tripod for the camera.


    A few minutes later Kadri was again walking back towards the line where the gravel road between the forest and the fields ended and a wide concrete road to the base and the Cottage District started. She mounted the camera onto the tripod and pointed it towards the fields and forests running up to the Northerly horizon. She set the aperture and exposure and took a few photos with different settings.


    She then walked back with the camera and also photographed the factory limo from the front and also behind, with both the Cottage District and the Base road on the background.


    ¡°That¡¯s the reason, I remained because I thought I would go there early-early-early-early...¡±


    The sentence she had forgotten in the mean time again rang in her ears. Or was it in her head?


    She looked at the black forest not too far away and then noticed a footpath jutting towards the forest in otherwise undisturbed tall grass. How had she not noticed it sooner? She was also sure she saw somebody standing right by the first trees of the forest. Somebody who could not have been there. But maybe they could?


    ¡°Mariann?¡± Kadri asked.


    It was somewhat unexpected to see Mariann standing on the border between the forest and the grass as if waiting for her. Mariann suddenly appearing in her blind spot and startling her would have been much less unexpected of an event. Kadri still remembered what people said about the Forbidden Forest. What Toomas had said had happened to him. That was why she hadn¡¯t even entertained the thought of entering it, neither day or night. However, if it was really Mariann asking her to go to the forest, it was a slightly different matter.


    She locked the car and then headed along the footpath towards the dark forest looming not too far away. The footpath continued into the forest. A footpath which was surprisingly wide, smooth and clean of broken branches. It was pure joy to walk here, not at all like the thin forest by the airfield. It also was not nearly as dark as she had thought initially. Moonlight easily penetrated the tree canopies and even between the tall conifers and it only took a few more minutes for her eyes to completely adjust to the light levels of a nighttime forest.


    When her eyes finally adjusted, she could not see Mariann anywhere around her. Which, honestly, was exactly the behavior she had expected of her. In all likelihood she was waiting for her deeper inside the forest, having advanced down the footpath as Kadri had approached. Despite being alone in a nighttime forest after a rain, she had no fear. Instead something more akin to peacefulness had come over her. There was no way for her to explain it, but she felt that in this forest tonight, there was nothing that could endanger her.


    She continued down the footpath deeper into the forest, feeling the ground bounce back a little with every step. Under the layer of dried fir and pine needles, the ground was thick with intertwined roots of various sizes and mycelia.


    Even though the stories said that nobody dared to step into the Forbidden Forest neither day or night, from the path she was on it seemed that there was a lot of human traffic going on here. There was no other way trails like this could develop. It was highly doubtful that all of it was created by patrolling soldiers, people gathering berries and mushrooms or teens looking for adventure and adrenaline.


    ¡°Hey.¡±


    Kadri stopped, having heard a voice. At least she thought she had heard it. The twilight forest was still all around her. The footpath still looked like it carried a lot of traffic and thus there were not too many smaller trees and bushes around it. In a radius of five meters or so, everything around her was pretty clearly visible. And she could not see anybody else. Nothing shaped like a human nor even anything shaped unlike a human. And Mariann would also probably not attempt to do something as impolite as this was.


    ¡°Hey.¡±


    There was something wrong with this utterance but she could not say what. However this now reminded her something else that made her heart grow cold. When Johannes and Siim had looked for furniture to furnish the house they had settled into in the Cottage District, they also discovered a substantial amount of books. But either due to a some strange selection or sheer coincidence, all these books were either horror fiction or non-fiction about the myths and strange phenomena from all around the world. And now all those things she had read about were cycling in her mind.


    And a certain type of such phenomena was a voice of a familiar person using short utterances to lure somebody deeper into the woods. And if a person ever head something like that in a dark forest, they were to turn around right away and escape the forest as to not give the thing mocking a familiar voice the chance to feast on them.


    ¡°Kadri.¡±


    Her insides grew cold as soon as she had heard it. This was no longer just a voice without an audience. This was her name. And now she also realized what was wrong with the utterance. She was pretty sure it did not originate from her surroundings. It rang out in her mind, but she was no longer completely sure that she was hearing it with her ears. It was in her thoughts but she was pretty sure she had not thought it. And she had not imagined it in her ¡°mind¡¯s ear.¡± Not consciously nor unconsciously. Images like this would usually rather be faint and barely noticeable, but the volume with which these utterances were screaming in her thoughts was at least tenfold higher.


    Also the music which had drawn her here initially was now silent. She could not hear it in her ears nor in her mind. And by now she could clearly make the distinction between imagining it and remembering it.


    ¡°Yes?¡± She responded carefully in her mind.


    ¡°Kadri.¡± The alien thought replied. ¡°You can hear me?¡±


    Now she was sure. She was not talking to herself. She was experiencing thoughts in the shape of a language, thoughts she had not actively or voluntarily contemplated. This was nor a ghost or a delusion. This was nothing like the stories Mariann told in which one can not tell a ghost from a real person until the latter does something supernatural right before the unsuspecting witness. Whether it is stepping through a solid wall or dissipating into thin air. These thoughts she was experiencing were direct and deliberate.


    ¡°Yes.¡± She replied again.


    ¡°Finally!¡± The Thought said with relief. ¡°I have no idea how long I have attempted to communicate and there is finally somebody that can hear me!¡±


    With a suspecting gaze, Kadri still looked about her in the dark of the forest. She was standing alone on a wide and it seemed oft-traveled footpath heading deeper into the forest. Behind her she could see a bit more light which for her marked the edge of the forest.


    ¡°What are you?¡±


    It seemed like she now saw a bit better in the darkness than before.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know. Right now I am a discarnate soul. But I think at one point I also possessed a body. A human body.¡±


    ¡°Discarnate soul¡± was a familiar word to Kadri. But also not so familiar. Was it Toomas who had spoken of it in Allan¡¯s show? Or was it Mariann? Or perhaps somebody else?


    ¡°Is this what you call telepathy?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know.¡± The Thought replied. ¡°You are special. You can hear me. This is not the usual state of things.¡±


    ¡°What is the usual state?¡±


    ¡°The field of consciousness of a person is too strong. Most of them cannot hear anything, however much I scream. A few rare ones can hear the thoughts I whisper but not my voice. They do not sense my existence. They become completely convinced that they are going insane. And when a person sleeps, their conscious mind sleeps as well, and everything that reaches the subconscious becomes a jumbled mess.¡±


    ¡°Why are you talking to me?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°I talk to everybody. And everybody answers me. But not everybody¡¯s answers sound as deliberate as yours.¡±


    ¡°What is your name?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know. I cannot remember. I must have had a name, right? You can give me one, if you want to.¡±


    Kadri had no idea what name to give it. She didn¡¯t know whether she even wanted to give it a name. But there was something even more important to make clear.


    ¡°Are you reading my thoughts?¡±


    ¡°Only those you say out in your mind with intensity matching mine. My sight cannot penetrate the field of consciousness.¡±


    ¡°Are you Mariann?¡±


    ¡°Who is Mariann?¡±


    ¡°Mariann is the girl in black.¡±


    ¡°You are a girl in black. Are you Mariann?¡±


    ¡°No. I am not Mariann. I am also not the girl in black.¡±


    ¡°But you are wearing black. And you are a girl. A young woman.¡±


    ¡°I came into the forest because I saw Mariann standing on the side of it beckoning towards me.¡± Kadri explained.


    It felt strange to finish thinking of sentence in it¡¯s complete form before uttering it. And it felt even stranger to utter it in her mind and not doing it on her lips.


    ¡°That was not me.¡± The Thought replied. ¡°I do not possess the power to conjure shapes of other people in front of your eyes. Something else is going on.¡±


    Kadri grew tired of standing on the forest trail. She decided to turn around and head back towards the grassy field and the car. To sit somewhere or to lean against something was much more comfortable for intense thinking than just standing on a forest trail in the dark of night.


    ¡°Where are you going?¡± the thought in her head asked.


    ¡°I am leaving the forest. Back to the car.¡± Kadri replied.


    ¡°Don¡¯t go! If you leave, I can no longer talk to you!¡±


    Kadri stopped.


    ¡°Why?¡±


    ¡°Further into the direction you want to go, there exists a massive black hole. It swallows all the thoughts I am sending you. I think it would also swallow me.¡±


    ¡°I will only go to the edge of the forest.¡± Kadri replied. ¡°There is something I want to be sure of.¡±


    She did indeed head back towards where it seemed brighter between the trees and soon she made it to the final tall trees before the field of tall grass.


    ¡°Are you still there?¡± Kadri asked.


    With her voice out loud, not just in her thoughts.


    ¡°I am.¡± The Thought replied.


    ¡°Do I see that black hole?¡±


    ¡°A long black object not far that swallows everything around it. Even now, it is tearing me and my energy towards it. I cannot stay here for long.¡±


    Kadri turned around and walked back into the shadow of the trees, away from the car.


    ¡°I cannot remember things and yet I know things.¡± The Thought continued. ¡°I know that my thoughts reach their target better when the Moon is out and the air is wet. Or when there is mist in the air. I know that in the case of all those things coincidentally aligning, one can easily pass through the eye of a needle. I have no idea how I know this. I know I have most certainly talked about this with somebody else, but I cannot remember with whom or when.¡±


    ¡°Are you trying to lead me somewhere?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°Yes.¡± The voice replied. ¡°Continue walking down the trail. I will tell you when it time to turn off the main path.¡±


    Kadri continued down the dark forest path. The ground was still dry and a bit springy. She could still see about ten meters ahead into the trees. And she still could not feel any fear or apprehension.


    ¡°So many things have changed over time.¡± The Thought in her head spoke. ¡°It is so much more noticeable if things change due to human action than when they change due to the movement of the spirits of nature itself. The old Devil¡¯s Bog, being drained to build the base, the New Devil¡¯s Bog which grew wet as a result. Heavenmire, which is essentially what was left of the old Devil¡¯s Bog and the missile base standing in between all of them. And then of course the Forbidden Forest bordering the two bases and the New Devil¡¯s Bog.


    ¡°But the Forbidden Forest was not always forbidden. And it hasn¡¯t always been a forest. Some time long ago, and yet not so long ago, because there are still people alive who remember, instead of the forest, there lay the center of Western Village. The fields of the Western Village were where now lies the New Devil¡¯s Bog, being encircled by lower and wetter areas of the old Devil¡¯s Bog.¡±


    Toomas had also spoken of something like it in Allan Helde¡¯s show. How the bogs were drained to build the base and Heavenmire came to be as well as how the Devil¡¯s Bog moved. The name of the Western Village was also not unfamiliar to her. There existed old maps on which the name did indeed appear. But these maps had no correspondence with nature or landmarks of today. As if any and all maps had nothing to do with nature and the land as they stood today. And thus there was no way of understanding where on today¡¯s lands stood the old villages which surrounded the Nameless Town.


    ¡°Left from here.¡± The Thought suddenly said.


    Looking left and continuing in that direction Kadri did indeed see a disconnection in nature and a much narrower a footpath heading to an altogether older and hillier landscape.


    ¡°Where are we going?¡± She asked.


    ¡°To a place you have probably heard of.¡± The Thought replied. ¡°To the Border.¡±


    Kadri knew what ¡°the Border¡± meant in this context. A small campsite at the external border of the base where the youths often gathered to party. And sometimes to do stupid things. Because on the other side of the barbed wire fence of the base there was a minefield, which had been a life changer for quite a number of the local youths.


    ¡°Why are we going there?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°Because I know something of that place. And I want to show you.¡±Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    Kadri stayed silent and continued down the trail, only changing the hand with which she carried the camera and the tripod hanging off of it.


    ¡°The Border as it is generally known, is not really the Bases external limit. At least it wasn¡¯t like it in the beginning. But during the planning stages, this one corner was also drawn within the limit of the Base. And the youths did also not choose this place as their campsite randomly.¡±


    ¡°Somebody guided them here?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°The old folks still remembered the times before the bases. On the one hand they did not want the youngsters to go to those areas and on the other hand they could not stop telling stories about how the whole village turned into forest almost overnight.¡±


    Kadri walked past the last bend and a few taller bushes and found herself on a slightly clearer area of the forest. On the ground there were much less trees in her immediate vicinity, but high above the canopies of the trees reached above her head so there was no chance of noticing this clearing from above.


    Kadri could immediately see a low rim not far in the left, disappearing into the darkness in either direction. At the center of the rim at the same line with the fire pit there was a small depression in the mound. Along the top of the rim there was a row of concrete pillars which still probably carried the rusty barbed wire which she could not discern in the pale moonlit twilight.


    The fire pit itself looked like it had seen a lot of use. It surrounded by an external circle of huge concrete blocks, a rusty metal pipe about a meter in diameter and a length of six meters and benches of roughly hewn logs all of which could have been used for seating. As she got closer to the campsite there was one other thing she could notice. The ground here was not springy forest floor. It wasn¡¯t even hard-packed dirt with no flora. Under her feet was pavement of strangely familiar stone. She used her foot to scrape away some of the dirt and then, under a thin layer of dirt, she discovered cobblestone. The fire pit too was built right on top of the cobblestone pavement.


    Kadri turned her eyes back towards the rim. Was it here to conceal the cobblestone pavement, or was it easier to set the concrete posts into the dirt of the rim rather than setting them into the paved ground? As she had not uttered the question into her mind space, the thought in her head did not respond her.


    ¡°Originally, this place here was not the exterior border of the base.¡± The Thought spoke. ¡°But when the Russians discovered what lies here, this corner of was also drawn into the area of the base and the inner side of the fence was also mined.¡±


    ¡°Over there lies the heart of the Western Village?¡±


    ¡°Yes. About a dozen of the oldest buildings of the village and the main street which connected them. According to the stories, the local farm owners got tired of the mud pit that was the main street and they pooled their resources to cover the whole center of the village in cobblestone. It took a few weeks of hard work, but in the end, it was worth it. But now, the whole center of the village lies on the other side of the Border and the mine field.


    ¡°So that¡¯s why the kids partying here have stepped onto the mines.¡± Kadri mused. ¡°Sneaking across the minefields to seek adventure in the old village center.¡±


    ¡°And not only children. The adults as well have tried to excavate the old village center in secret. That¡¯s the reason for this gap in the rim.¡±


    ¡°Do you know what happened to the Western Village?¡±


    ¡°I cannot see that. I can see events on either side of our current meeting. But there are things I cannot see. There are events which themselves act like black holes.¡±


    ¡°Are you the only one?¡± Kadri realized to ask.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know.¡± the Thought replied. ¡°I haven¡¯t met anybody else like me. It is possible I am not capable of seeing them. Let¡¯s be on our way.¡±


    ¡°Wait.¡± Kadri said.


    This place here was exactly something to take photos of in the Forbidden Forest at night. The campsite, the seating, some really long exposure to also capture the cobblestone paving. And the border rim with the concrete posts and the gap in the rim.


    She walked into the gap in the rim which was full of overturned concrete posts, some had the barbed wire torn off them, others were still held half suspended by the tension if the wire. She directed the lens of the camera also towards the side beyond the fence, despite not seeing much and having nothing to set the focus on.


    ¡°Where are we headed next?¡± She asked.


    ¡°Into the childhood playground.¡± The Thought replied. ¡°The most direct way into that place is not to follow the trail but rather to head across the wild forest terrain while keeping the border fence of the base to our left.¡±


    ¡°Was this again something the older people told their children in between their bans of forbiddings?¡±


    ¡°No. This is something children discovered on their own. The parents never came to learn of it. The only adults to ever know about had discovered it as children. And many children, after becoming adults, could no longer find it in the forest.¡±


    ¡°And you can?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not an adult.¡± The Thought replied. ¡°I am not sure though I was a child when I attained this form.¡±


    ¡°Do you know how you came to attain this form?¡±


    ¡°No. I don¡¯t know how I became a discarnate soul. I am not capable of finding and viewing that moment.¡±


    ¡°Do you not want to get your physical body back?¡± Kadri continued.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know.¡± The Thought replied after a long pause. ¡°I do not feel myself capable desiring anything carnal. I am no longer able to relate to anything like it. Now I only relate with various consciousnesses and energies.¡±


    Kadri continued down the wide trail running along the Border. As she paid some attention to the nature, she realized that this was not a lone footpath but two parallel trails. At a distance of about two meters from each other. Essentially a vehicle track. And here too the ground was not normal, here too under a thin layer of turf there was something solid.


    ¡°Cobblestone?¡± She asked in her head.


    ¡°Concrete.¡± The Thought replied. ¡°The soldiers needed a smooth ground for rapid patrols along the Border.¡±


    ¡°And this leads directly to the next location?¡±


    ¡°Yes.¡±


    Kadri did not ask anything else. But she did stop to take photos of the vehicle track and the border fence it ran along. Somewhere this trail had to make its way out of the forest. She suspected that one such place was the main gate of the Underground Base. This meant that anybody who had the least bit of courage could drive their vehicle into the Forbidden Forest. And perhaps visit all the notable locations within with ease.


    She suddenly came upon a realization. The campsite by the Border was built right on top of the vehicle track by the fence. An also right on top of the cobblestone street leading into the center of the Western Village. Therefore a question ¨C were there any maps for the village or the base which outlined all paved roads in the forest? A map would have helped her a lot more than simply wandering the dark forest in the night.


    She stopped, noticing a footpath disappearing between low shrubs to the right.


    ¡°Here?¡± She asked.


    ¡°Yes. The Childhood Playground is right near hear.¡±


    ¡°What is it?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know. I don¡¯t know what could have been here in the beginning. Root cellars. Foundations of a burnt down building or buildings. Or maybe something completely different. I don¡¯t know if it were the children who built wooden walls and fiber cement roofs atop the limestone walls or youths or some adults. But I do know that this turned into a playground for children. A village of play hidden from both the adults as well as the soldiers.¡±


    Soon Kadri understood what the Thought in her head had meant. She found herself standing in the middle of a field of low wooden huts. Some had fiber cement roofing, others has sheet metal, still others had shingles and even some wide wide wooden boards partially overlaying from one side. None of them taller than maybe a meter. Most of them even lower than that, perhaps half a meter. The first twenty or so centimeters being limestone and wood all the way up from that. The huts were also of different lengths. There were small square-shaped huts with enough room for maybe one child but also other longer one where several children could discuss secrets together.


    Kadri again set up the camera and took a photo onto which she tried to get as many of the low huts as she could. All of which rose to about the height of her hips approximately. Thus she took photos of several different angles.


    ¡°Inside they are a lot bigger than on the outside.¡± The Thought said. ¡°You should crawl into one.¡±


    This was indeed something Kadri had had in mind and the Thought in her head had given her even more confidence to do it. She stepped closer to a taller hut nearby and knelt down by the side of it. At first she thought climbing in feet first but thinking about her skirt she soon perished the thought and decided to enter back first. First grabbing the walls with her hands and then pulling her lower body in. The doorway to enter the hut was low even for a child, but luckily wide enough for both her shoulders and hips.


    The voice had been right. As much as she could see in the darkness of a summer night and feel under her feet, it was much taller on the inside than on the outside. At least a quarter of the huts height had been dug into the ground. As Kadri had picked one of the bigger and taller ones, she could almost stand up inside it.


    ¡°To the right, on top of the foundation, there is a box of matches, To your left, there is a storm lamp.¡± The Thought spoke.


    Kadri found both the matchbox on top of the limestone foundation as well as the lamp hanging under the ceiling. She easily lit a match which to her darkness-adjusted eyes gave off an astounding amount of light. During these short moments she glanced around in the glow of the burning match, she could see yellowed limestone walls half a meter in height and muddy limestone floors. But also wooden pieces which made up the walls and the structure holding the roof up, having grown gray and black with age and decay.


    She ignited the oil lamp and only then realized that it only had enough oil for maybe few minutes of light. But that was enough to take a few photos of inside of the hut. On the floor she also found notebooks full of children¡¯s drawings but also large print children¡¯s books and even old Soviet era children¡¯s magazines. She took photos of these as well.


    ¡°This is a place I too would have wanted to escape to as a child.¡± Kadri mused in her mind.


    ¡°Without my guidance you may never find this place again.¡± the Thought replied.


    ¡°We¡¯ll see.¡± Said Kadri and killed the light. ¡°Where next?¡±


    Exiting the hut with her back first, she found herself thinking that the darkness inside the hut did not frighten her. Quite the opposite actually. Her eyes grew even more accustomed to the darkness and now she saw far more in the moonlight diffused by the tree than before. Strangely, the flame of the match and the lantern had had no effect on her ability to see in the dark. And now she could see how big the area of this Childhood Playground really was.


    She could also see lower and seemingly older and more primitive structures made up of plywood boards covered in moss and lichen, ridged fiber cement boards and even sheet metal simply placed over stones creating low shelters fit to lay down under at best. Kadri saw no point in taking photos of these. Even now they were hardly noticeable and she was afraid that on the photos, without the third dimension there would be nothing visible at all.


    ¡°Are these what I think these are?¡± She asked.


    ¡°The Playground had to start from somewhere.¡± The alien voice in her mind said. ¡°The first huts were just like that, offering little protection from wind and rain.¡±


    What rain? What wind? They were in the middle of the forest. It was hard for Kadri to be content with that reply.


    ¡°And the forest creatures?¡± She asked. ¡°Shelters like this would be just about the best places for their hideouts.¡±


    ¡°The smell of human keeps them away.¡± The Thought replied. ¡°At least that¡¯s what I think.¡±


    Kadri had spent enough time with Mariann to know what that reply really stood for. The Thought having this idea did not exclude any other explanations. And the smell of man could not linger that long. Maybe it was indeed true that all larger forest creatures had been scared away from the Forbidden Forest forever and that¡¯s why there were no burrows or caves for them here. At the same time it was possible that Kadri happened to come across this place at a time when it wasn¡¯t somebody¡¯s place of sleep.


    She stopped and listened, even ceased breathing. The forest was silent. Almost dead silent. But there was something she could hear. That very same music which had waken her up in the car. That same clip of a sentence and those same words. Somewhere in this forest, something was playing back this music. This was much more likely than it originating from her imagination.


    ¡°Kadri.¡± The Thought said to her.


    ¡°I thought I heard something.¡± She replied. ¡°Where are we going next?¡±


    ¡°To the church.¡± The Thought replied. ¡°If you can see it.. ahead is a bush with moonlight reflecting off it leaves. If you head towards it, you¡¯ll find the trail again.¡±


    ¡°There was a church in the Western Village?¡± Kadri asked.


    This statement too had something wrong with it. That a town would have several churches was somewhat believable, but a single parish having several churches of equal standing definitely was not. If the Nameless Town had the main church then the Western Village could only have an assisting church. Unless it was the other way around and the Western Village had the main church. It felt like Mariann had told them something about this exact thing once. Which also meant that the villages surrounding the town could have been older than the town itself. Or the Western village belonged to some other parish and manor than the Nameless Town and the von Schwann family.


    This also lead to another question Kadri was sure nobody had posited yet. Everybody knew the surname of von Schwann, but what was the name of the local parish or subdistrict? The parish as an area was larger of the two, so it could have well carried the name of the largest settlement in the area, meaning Valgepal?. But the subdistrict? The manor?


    ¡°Western Village once had a church grander than anything. They say much bigger and grander than the one in Nameless Town. The spire reached high above the woods and it was visible from several miles away. The church at the Western Village was the largest church in this area, so that the East, North and South villages had small chapels or assisting churches.¡±


    Kadri was almost sure she heard the Thought give a sad sigh.


    ¡°However, the church of the Western Village could not escape the fate of the rest of the village. As the village became a forest, so did the church. There is one thing about this though, which I must warn you about.¡±


    ¡°What?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°For me, the church is also a black hole. But it does not attract anything, it just sits there. And the borders on it are also much clearer. But I cannot see what¡¯s inside it. Not through the doorways nor the windows. Not even through the collapsed ceiling. Something happened there. Not too far into the past from now. I remember that once the ruins of the church were merely ruins. But now this is no longer the case.


    ¡°You want me to take a look and try and see what you are not able to?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°Maybe you can see it.¡± The Thought replied.


    This was not a plan Kadri liked. Calling the car a black hole was one thing, even though she was pretty sure that she would now look at the factory limo in a whole different light, but abandoned and overgrown church ruins into which a discarnate soul could not see? That sounded suspicious. Never mind that she could not make up her mind whether the inability of the voice in her head to see inside the church was due to the ruins still retaining some sanctity or, quite the opposite, due to some evil abject to the world having taken the place over.


    And then there was the music. That same music she had heard in the car. Now it seemed to be slightly louder. And it also seemed like the discarnate soul which had attached itself to her could not hear it. Kadri had not mentioned it to the Thought in her head and it also had not made any reference to the music. It was possible the voice had never heard it to begin with, even at the start when Kadri first stepped into the forest. It was also possible it had not seen Mariann. Which created questions about both the nature and intent of the discarnate soul as well as the nature and intentions of the shadow figure of Mariann.


    Besides all that, the voice had been correct yet again. As soon as she made it to the leafy bush glistening brightly in the moonlight, she could immediately see a well-traveled footpath, bending left in the distance. When she thought back to when and where she had first stepped into the forest and where the Borderside was located, then it seemed that the footpath was heading North-East. Away from the Underground Base and towards the Death Fields. Or perhaps in the direction of that place which had attracted the whole town to come and see a dried-up forest lake.


    ¡°What do you know about the Death Fields?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°Why are you asking about them?¡± The Thought replied. ¡°We aren¡¯t even near them. You need not worry about them now.¡±


    That was a strange response. Kadri had expected an answer like that though, a rejection, as the question had little to do with the place they were currently at or headed towards. Again a thing she has already experienced during her past meetings with Mariann. Although she had not expected such a forced denial. As if the Thought had something to hide.


    ¡°You said you did not know your name. That you had forgotten it.¡± Kadri said. ¡°You also said I could give you a name. I don¡¯t want to give you a name. But I have two names with which I want to know whether they mean anything to you.¡±


    ¡°Which names?¡± The Thought asked.


    ¡°Reia.¡± Kadri said.


    ¡°No.¡± the Thought said. ¡°It doesn¡¯t mean anything.¡±


    ¡°Wilhelmina.¡±


    ¡°Neither does that one.¡±


    ¡°That is all.¡±


    She continued down the twisted footpath. The nature was quiet, there weren¡¯t even any droplets falling off leaves. As if there had been no rain here. The voice in her head also stayed silent, which was kind of strange, especially compared to just a few hours ago when it had incessantly talked to her in her mind about the Forbidden Forest and the places which could be found within, and which she could be guided to. But there was something which was not silent. Kadri could swear that slowly but steadily that one track of dance music which had invoked that utterance burnt into the air or the pareidolia stemming from it, was becoming louder and more discernible. But only to her, and not the Thought. And still she too had not told the Thought about it.


    ¡°No, no, no, no.¡± The Thought suddenly said.


    ¡°What is it?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°No, no, no.¡± The Thought repeated. ¡°Everything¡¯s wrong. We¡¯re moving in the wrong direction. We should be heading in a different direction.¡±


    ¡°Which direction.¡± Kadri asked.


    The Thought fell silent for quite a long time.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know. I know where we have to get to, but I cannot tell in which direction we must continue. I don¡¯t know where we are. I have no sense of direction. The forest has become wrong all of a sudden.¡±


    ¡°Don¡¯t you hear the music?¡± Kadri asked in her mind.


    ¡°The music?¡± The voice asked.


    ¡°That same music which led me into the forest.¡±


    ¡°I think only you can hear it. From which direction it is coming?¡±


    ¡°I think the music is leading me down this footpath.¡± Kadri said.


    ¡°This music may have attached itself to you the same way I have. That may be the reason I cannot hear it.¡± The Voice said.


    ¡°What should I do?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°Follow it. You have no other option for getting out of the forest.¡±


    Kadri took a big breath of air to calm herself and then continued walking down the twisted footpath. The voice in her head no longer said anything. With every turn in the path, she was more and more sure that the music was getting louder. But as sound supposedly moved in a direct path, and not like a ladybird following the twisty path of a pen, it brought about a question why would she need to walk down the twisting paths instead of breaking right through the wild forest. Even a bicycle would have been of great help.


    Only a few more minutes and a few more turns in the path after she had complained in her thought, did she find the source of the music. And much more. The path ended with a small campsite and a lit fire pit. The fire was strong and surround it was a circle of granite stones which seemed like she could lift with both hands if needed. The fire pit was surrounded from two side by two large concrete pillars, lying on the ground. About half a meter in height and a meter in width each. Along the top side of the pillar ran a depression about 70 centimeters in width. On top of one there was portable stereo set which was playing the music.


    Suddenly Kadri realized what she was looking at. These were not concrete pillars, these were stairs. About a floor¡¯s height worth of broken and overturned sections of staircases. Some unimaginable force had ripped these sections from their original place, brought them here and overturned them so that the stairs were now facing the ground like teeth.


    ¡°Can you here the music now?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°No.¡±


    ¡°Can you see the fire?¡±


    ¡°No.¡±


    Kadri suddenly froze.


    It was moonlit night. And something had lured her into the forest. Was tonight the night others had gone to meet the witch? She could not recall. She had no sense of time to orient herself. All this seemed so dreamlike. But she did know she had no business to meet the witch with. Thus there was no reason for her to meet the witch or to be in the forest in the first place. And despite all that she was here. At the campsite. And the stereo was still playing the music.


    She bent down to take a closer look. The music was not coming from a cassette. It was coming from the CD. And the stereo was repeating a single track off the CD. According to the little green screen on the device, it would seem the disc held another thirteen tracks. She stopped the playback and then bent down to see where the stereo got it¡¯s power. At first she had thought it was battery-powered, but as she lifted the stereo, she saw the black power cord hanging down. The power cord was plugged into an extension cord which ran under the bottom of the overturned staircase.


    ¡°I told you in the beginning that I was not the one to lure you into the forest with the music or to take the shape of Mariann.¡± The Thought in her head spoke. ¡°I was also not the one to lead you here, instead of leading you to the placed I wanted to lead you. But there is somebody capable of all that.¡±


    ¡°Who?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°The witch.¡±


    ¡°But I have no business with the witch. I did not invoke the witch.¡±


    ¡°There is more than one witch.¡±


    More than one witch? Understanding this struck her as a lightning bolt. Somebody else than the one the Mayor had invoked had lured her in here. This changed things. Although she did not know in which direction.


    ¡°In olden times, each place had it¡¯s own witch. Every forest and bog, river, lake and sea. Every mountain. I¡¯m sure you have heard of the witch of the Tontla bog.¡±


    ¡°I have.¡± Kadri said.


    ¡°Same with this place here. Whether tonight they are a witch of the Devil¡¯s Bog or the Forbidden Forest, I however cannot tell.¡±


    ¡°But why lure me into the forest?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°To meet with me. Maybe the witch knew you would be receptive to me. Maybe she knew I could help you. And maybe you are not yet ready to go see the church of the Western Village.¡±


    ¡°There is one thing you have not yet told me.¡± Kadri said. ¡°You are in my head. You hear my thoughts which I think out loud. But you do not share my senses. You probably don¡¯t even have your own senses to experience what¡¯s around you. You cannot hear that which my ears hear, you cannot see that which my eyes see.¡±


    The voice in her head was silent.


    Kadri sat down on the overturned concrete stairs and pressed play on the stereo. The fire was warm but strangely pale. It wasn¡¯t yellow or even orange by any shade, instead it was pale white with a greenish hue. As if the moon light had cast it¡¯s color on that too as it had cast it on everything else.


    The voice being silent told Kadri everything she needed to hear. It meant she was right. And at the same time, the voice knew the Forbidden Forest this well to be able to guide her to places it could not experience directly or¡­ it experienced some places as black holes. Considering that for the entire Forbidden Forest there was a least a couple of such black holes¡­ What kind of coordinate system and sensitivity did it require to navigate between them? To know the location of everything in this forest without directly sensing it?


    ¡°You are correct.¡± The Thought said. ¡°As long as I converse with you, I cannot interact with what lies external to you. When I am no longer attached to you, I will again be free to roam the Forbidden Forest.¡±


    ¡°What next?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°There is one other place I wanted to show you. The real Forest Lake. But I can no longer do that. The witch of the Forbidden Forest has interfered with how you experience the forest and move in it. Trails and landmarks that I know of no longer lay in the same locations relative to each other. The distances and directions are no longer the same. That which I remember, is no longer useful, you are going to have to follow the witch¡¯s signs from now on.¡±


    Kadri took a sigh and directed her gaze back at the fire.


    She had no idea how long she had been looking at the flame in contemplation when she noticed that somebody was using a fire poker to adjust the logs on the other side of the pale fire. She raised her eyes and almost jumped backwards from her sitting position. It was not Mariann she saw poking the fire. It was her. Somebody who looked exactly like herself. Same clothing, same hair dyed black, same makeup. Everything was exactly the same.


    ¡°Me¡­, of me...¡± Kadri quietly said.


    The other Kadri noticed her but did not say anything. But she did smile. She pulled the poker from the fire and carefully placed it beside her onto the overturned staircase. She then raised her left hand to place a finger on her lips indicating her to remain quiet. With her other hand, she pointed somewhere behind Kadri, towards the depths of the forest.


    She was sure that this was the place the other Kadri, or rather the witch wanted her to go.


    She got up and grabbed the tripod with the camera. For a moment, her eyes froze on the stereo, still playing the music beside her. She stopped the music and ejected the CD, placing it into the satchel on her hip. If she managed to not fall over then there was a chance for the disc to remain in one piece until she made her way back to the car. At the very least it would be a physical proof that her wandering the Forbidden Forest was something that indeed took place.


    There was one other thing for her to do. She walked a few steps away from the concrete segment, then placed the camera on the ground and made the viewfinder frame cover both the broken staircase bits as well as the other Kadri. The fire overexposed everything, which forced her to turn the aperture way down and the exposure as well to photograph anything at all. Keeping that in mind, she took four or five images with different settings.


    During all this time, the other Kadri kept standing still on the other side of the fire, being lit by it. The index finger of one hand raised to her lips and the other hand pointed to somewhere behind Kadri and to the left,


    She grabbed the camera and finally started heading towards the indicated direction. Having taken less than tens steps, she suddenly turned around. It was dark. Dark all around her. She could not see the flame any more. Nor the campsite. Not even a footpath. Behind her, there was a uniform forest of conifers. A small amount of moonlight was still reaching the ground highlighting some lower shrubs and young trees with scarcely any leaves. But before her was a trail. And she decided to continue walking on it.


    ¡°I don¡¯t believe it.¡± The Voice in her thoughts suddenly said. ¡°I know where we are. Right by the Forest Lake. The real forest like is right behind the next turn in the trail. But be careful. When the witch met you she almost certainly told you something.¡±


    Kadri stopped. The other Kadri had pointed at this direction and indicated to her to keep quiet. Maybe it meant instead that she should keep quiet and not make any noise when she made it to the Forest Lake?


    She started walking again, but now much slower while also being careful where she placed her feet. Straining her eyes she looked in front of her and tried to avoid stepping on dried branches as much as possible. Soon, a wide clearing opened up before her. It took a few moments for her to realize that it was not a clearing but a lake. A lake full of black water. And despite the moon and the bare sky, the surface of the water reflected no moonlight. Quite the opposite, it looked as if it absorbed any and all light.


    It was very hard to grasp in the dark how big the lake was. But to her, in this darkness, it seemed to have an oblong shape. About 30 to 40 meters wide at the narrowest side and maybe twice that in longitude. Rather than a full-fledged lake, by it¡¯s size it was more of a large bog pond.


    The actions of that other Kadri were still in her mind. Therefore she took the utmost care when she slowly crouched closer and took cover in the bushes by the water. But doing that, she noticed something. When she stood up, the lake was just one enormous black mirror which reflected nothing. But when she got lower, she started to see. First the sky, the stars and the barely visible Bird¡¯s Path. That already was a completely unearthly sight to see, considering that the whole forest around her was still lit by the moonlight, which has now become as bright as daylight for her, only in pale blue tones. Still she felt that with the correct amount of exposure she could capture that strange reflection on film.


    When she got even lower, the lake also reflected the moonlight and the Moon. And that was not all, Even lower, there appeared two maidens and the interior features of a sauna, all made of moonlight.


    Kadri was so surprised by this that momentarily she rose a few dozen centimeters and the sight immediately disappeared like shadowed moonlight. Getting back down the spectacle appeared in front of her once more. It looked like moon- or sunlight reflecting off fine dust or water droplets in the air. But there could never have been that much water vapor above the lake and the Moon was not nearly luminous enough. Never mind the clarity and definition with which she saw the action. As if the surface of the water was amplifying the light and everything else.


    With careful movements, she set up the camera and found the correct angle and height, so that which was transpiring on the other side of the lake was also visible through the viewfinder and the prism. Through the lens she could tell that there were sauna benches at three different heights and at the end of the benches there was an old style sauna stove with boiling water in a large copper cauldron sunken into the stonework. There was also a staircase leading down to the surface of the lake or even below that.


    Truthfully, Kadri could not even tell whether what she was seeing took place on the other side of the lake and above the water¡¯s surface or much closer and below the surface. Both options were inconceivable. Either something real with no reflection or reflection without the real.


    She decided to do the same thing she had done by the fire ¨C to take several shots with several settings, focusing on the quality of the image. She could however take far fewer pictures than she wanted to, before discovering that she could not turn the roll forwards any more. She had spent all 24 frames of the super-sensitive 34 degree film. Four or five frames were clearly too little. Too few images, too few settings.


    Kadri started rummaging in her satchel, trying to find more rolls. Maybe she did have something else that could be used for photographing this rarity. While doing that she bumped the camera stand and it tumbled over into the bushes. Kadri did not think it made that much noise, but she was wrong.


    Everything changed at once. Moonlit maidens and the sauna disappeared at once and the surface of the lake changed as well. It was no longer a mirror of deep black color, reflecting only certain things at certain angles. It was a perfectly normal surface of a forest lake, reflecting the moon and the moonlight. Imperfection also appeared on the surface of the water, caused by various water bugs and critters living above and below the surface. Kadri could now also feel the fresh moisture that the lake put into the air.


    Before she managed to put her hand out to upright the fallen camera, a bright beam of blinding electric incandescent light found her. She also heard something that made her insides grow cold. A solid metal sliding and something being cocked. It took a few moments for her to finally be able to see two muzzle ends coming out of that bright light. Metal and wooden parts behind the muzzles left no doubt. These were two Kalashnikov assault rifles.


    ¡°Hands up, you imperialist lackey!¡± She head a man speaking Estonian with a Russian accent.


    ¡°Base, this is patrol 35. Patrol 35.¡± The other voice spoke. ¡°We caught a spy. With a camera and everything.¡±


    Kadri could hear the radio airwaves filled with noise but no reply followed.


    ¡°Base, this is patrol 35! Can you hear me?¡±


    The shortwave radio somewhere behind Kadri continued to buzz with no reply.


    ¡°This god damn ass end of hell! Nothing propagates here!¡± One of the men cursed. ¡°We¡¯ll take her with us then. The gate is not that far to walk.¡±


    Kadri felt somebody grip her upper arm tightly and she was violently pulled up. So violently that arm and shoulder hurt like hell. She was handcuffed and, dragged by her upper arm she was led deeper into the forest. She also saw the other man taking her camera and the stand still attached to it.


    She said nothing. She had nothing to say. The situation was just too absurd. Was the Underground Base still in use by the Russians for them to patrol in the forests? Or were these the phantom soldiers people reported seeing? Going by how hard one of them was grabbing her arm, these were no phantoms.


    There was a variant of the last explanation which she liked the least. That she had again found some sort of a gate and slid either into a parallel world or even worse, a past of some kind. The last time, near the air field, she had had to find the place where the gate between the two worlds was. But here she had no idea where it could be. It was event possible for the gate to be moving around which would have made finding it again a hopeless endeavor. It was possible that she was trapped here, not only in this base but also in this time, in this world.


    The pain of being dragged through the forest did not allow her to continue further with her thought. Although for her, the forest was one big maze, the soldiers escorting her seemed to be possess an almost supernatural sense of direction and knowledge where to go. Soon, Kadri could see a familiar row of concrete posts carrying rusty barbed wire and a wide overgrown paved road running along side it. The soldiers followed it.


    A few dozen minutes later, she could see a turn towards the right. Blacktop which had thus far followed along the row of pillars, now turned right and headed between the posts towards the Base. But the soldiers did not go that way, instead they continued to drag he forwards, onto a small footpath.


    It did not take long for the trail to exit the forest. Right by the tall gates of the Underground Base clad in sheet metal. Between the gate and the forest there was a strip of tall grass maybe twenty meters wide.


    Kadri was instantly surprised as she was dragged through the grass. The grass was dry.


    ¡°Gate! This is patrol 35. We¡¯ve captured a spy.¡± The soldier carrying the camera barked towards the gate. ¡°Look, she even had a camera! Call the base. Let them send a car.¡±


    Kadri looked at the halves of the tall gate bathed in the light of mercury vapor discharge slowly opening up. She was then dragged through the open gate doors. Right as she had cleared the path of the gate¡¯s movement, she was stopped by tightened grasp.


    ¡°Can you let go of me?¡± Kadri asked.


    ¡°So you could give us the slip, right?¡± The soldier asked.


    Kadri could still not turn around to see his face or even the uniform.


    ¡°Spies caught this close to the base are taken to Moscow with a special flight first thing tomorrow. They will be working on you from then on.¡±


    ¡°Gate?¡± The other soldier repeated. ¡°Gate! This is patrol 35!¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s going on?¡± The soldier still hanging on to Kadri asked.


    ¡°The gate team is gone!¡± The other one said. ¡°Maybe this girl is a diversion!¡±


    In the distance, Kadri saw two sources of light move about, in a few moments they started moving towards her.


    ¡°Hey Tolya! Look into forest on the other side! Something has happened to the gate!¡±


    ¡°But the spy...¡±


    ¡°She¡¯s not going anywhere! She¡¯s cuffed!¡±


    The soldier answering to the name Tolya let go of Kadri and then took a few steps away. He then sensed that something was wrong. He turned around. The girl in black they had captured along with the camera was gone. Only a pair of handcuffs was laying on the ground. A moment later, a Russian Willy¡¯s with a camper top stopped behind him.


    ¡°Where¡¯s the spy!?¡±


    *


    Kadri also sensed that something was wrong. Something was weird. One moment she was bathed in bright white electric light and the next, she was in complete darkness. This was not a hyperbole. She had blinked her eyes for just a moment. The hand cuffs around her wrists were gone but her right shoulder and upper arms still hurt.


    It also was not a complete darkness. The Moon was still bright in the sky. And in the moonlight, her eyes slowly started to again discern her surroundings. She was standing between the wide open gates of the Underground Base. The sentry post next to the gate had no roof. It¡¯s windows had been bashed in and the wooden frames from the window holes were gone. The same for any interior furnishings and the wiring.


    Next to the gate, leaning against the exterior wall of the post, she discovered the camera with the tripod attached. Although her eyes were not completely adjusted to the moonlight, it seemed the camera had not suffered any damage and the film, still stopped at the last frame, was still inside.


    With careful steps, she stepped through the gates of the base once again, but now in the other direction away from the base.


    ¡°Hey?¡± She asked in her mind.


    Nothing. Silence. She received no reply, not in her mind, not in her ears. This calmed her.


    Her calm was even further increased by a big black object on the side of the road in the distance. Right before the silhouettes of the gabled roofs blackened in the light of the Moon in the sky. It was quite clear that right now, she would not be able to figure out what happened to her during the night. She didn¡¯t even want to think about it. The only thing she wanted was to sleep and to push everything else into the morning.