The life raft rocked and nearly tipped as the wave crashed against it. Sam grabbed hold of the side and felt his fingers fail to grip the wet, slippery rubber. He forced his eyes to stay open despite the stinging salt. The destroyer was getting closer by the second, churning the water so that the raft and its occupants were tossed about helplessly. He saw Purdue leaning over the edge, yelling at the destroyer. Sam could not make out the words, but he could see that Purdue was about to lose his footing. He opened his mouth to scream a warning, but then the next wave crested. It broke over them and the water choked the words out of him, so all he could do was lunge across the raft and hope to pull Purdue back to safety. But as he reached out, he felt nothing in his hands.
As he heard Purdue's voice in a watery hell of beckoning, he turned to see that he was standing on the oil rig, Deep Sea One. From all sides came Aryan giants, stalking toward him, each of them armed with replicas of the Spear of Longinus, the battering waves rising behind them. He called out to Nina, but she only wept somewhere in his mind, her whimpers echoing like peals of demon laughter while the tidal wave swallowed the platform. From the sea arose the face of the shrine that sheltered the Godwomb, and it lazily stretched its stone mouth to suck him in.
"Sam?"
Sam opened his eyes. Slowly he again became aware of his surroundings — the overstuffed, low-slung chair in which he sat, the gently clinical scent of the therapy room, the late afternoon sunshine streaming in through the window. A soft-spoken young man sat opposite him, watching Sam with professional concern.
"Would you like a glass of water?" he asked. It was not really a question. He was already filling the glass even as he asked, and he pressed it into Sam's hand without waiting for a response. "Before we finish, I just wanted to check — how are you getting on with the drinking?"
It wasn't an unexpected question. In fact, sitting in the waiting room before the appointment began, Sam had debated how honest he ought to be. He felt sure that his unshaven face and bags under his eyes told the true story. It could not, he was sure, be that difficult to figure out that he had lulled himself to sleep in the arms of mistress usquebaugh last night. His plan was to be straightforward about it. This young man had not seen half the things that Sam had. He could not possibly understand that sometimes drink was the only thing that would soothe his aching mind. Well, Sam intended to make him understand. He would be clear and concise, and let the therapist know that he did not require any help managing his drinking.
"Yeah, not bad," Sam cringed inside, as he heard the words leave his mouth. He felt his head bob involuntarily in an enthusiastic nod, which made him acutely aware of the tender, underslept feeling plaguing the backs of his eyeballs. "The odd dram now and then, you know. Nothing to worry about."
The therapist smiled. "Good. Now, I'd like you to take it easy for the rest of the day, Sam. Don't worry if you feel a bit shaky during the next couple of days, it's perfectly normal when you've been working through this kind of trauma. You might feel a bit sick or have a headache. If that happens, just check in with what's making you feel that way, drink plenty of water, and let yourself rest. If there's anything you're not sure about, you've got my number. Now just take your time."
Sam sipped the water, feeling idiotic. He had no idea how he was supposed to take his time drinking it when there was someone watching him. The hypnotherapist was a nice enough lad, but there was something about his bland smile and relentless caring that made Sam uneasy. How are you supposed to take your time drinking your water when you know there's another appointment right after you, and this guy probably just wants you to get out so he can have a quick smoke before the next person's due in to cry about his problems, Sam wondered. Losing his nerve, he knocked back the rest of the water in one gulp and handed the glass to the therapist. He muttered a brief word of thanks and then fled.
The elegant streets of the New Town were bustling with tourists, shoppers, and the first office workers to make their escape for the day. Sam wandered along George Street, trying to stave off the moment when he would have to head home and get back to work on the latest local interest story assigned to him by the Post. After a couple of trucks plowed into a low bridge up at Cameron Toll, the Edinburgh Post had begun a campaign to have the bridge rebuilt. Sam had conducted the usual weary round of interviews with concerned residents eager to have their say. His next task would be to weave those words into an article that struck the right balance between tolerable journalism and the kind of righteous indignation that would sell the paper. It was not the kind of work he relished.
After returning from the nerve-wrecking experience on the platform of Deep Sea One, he had elected to hold on to his records of the expedition until Purdue contacted him. This profound discovery had to be carefully exhibited at the risk of luring the wrong attention toward the owner of such a relic. After all, he thought, this was Purdue's expedition, Purdue's money, and, ultimately, Purdue's relic. After he had disappeared with it a few months before, there was no knowing of what had become of him or the artifact. Releasing any sort of report on it would be futile, as he did not have the actual item as proof. For now he had to maintain his run-of-the-mill routine.
As he strolled toward Princes Street and began the steep walk up the Mound, which separated New Town and Old Town, Sam glanced up at the distinctive skyline of Old Town. This had been an eventful city, he knew. Battles had been fought here. Edinburgh Castle had been besieged and conquered and besieged again. Bloody murders and all sorts of sinister misdeeds had been carried out in the densely packed closes. But now there's nothing more interesting going on than a couple of idiots driving their trucks into a bridge, Sam thought. This city's come down in the world.
Still, at least his therapist assured him, his dissatisfaction with the lack of interesting events in his hometown was a good thing. It was a step in the right direction, apparently a sign that he was no longer feeling quite so apathetic and depressed as he had in the previous years. Whether his most recent experiences in Antarctica and Tibet had helped to restore him to his old self or whether it was just the passage of time making his grief less acute, neither Sam nor his therapist could tell. All they knew was that he seemed to be taking a little more interest in life these days, and this was considered to be a good thing.
Sam knew full well what most of his dreams conveyed, what their recurring purpose was. He knew what they were based on and that the images he suffered during his clawing nightmares were indeed not entirely fantastical, but he dared not reveal this to anyone in the real world, let alone a mind-probing, know-it-all, like his therapist. Imagine such a thing, telling your shrink that you had your hands on the only true Spear of Destiny and that the object had powers that controlled the ocean, among other things. And that under the North Sea a sinister organization was actively hatching plans to take over the world now, after failing in the 1940s.