Two hours later, they had entered the province and Nina woke from a dreamless sleep, for once not plagued by nightmares of things she would rather have forgotten.
“Oh thank fuck for that,” she sighed through a half smile when she saw that she was once more alone in her quiet first class compartment. Learning from experience as a young university student, Nina had a habit of sleeping propped up against her baggage on the trains of Europe. It did not matter to her that she was now using proper luxury transport as a professional adult and regarded herself as a snob, no less, she still slept like this on public transport, no matter what extravagance they slapped on their menu’s.
Through the window she could see nothing but the black of night and she wondered what was hiding out there in the cloak of darkness. Staring into the reflective surface of the black square, Nina wondered what Sam was messing with this time. For all his experiences, for all his attempts at being less reckless, he always ended up stepping in dog shit — whether he was lured by money or simply had too much of a sense of adventure. It sounded serious and the fact that Sam was shot had Nina very worried for the degree in which he must have been involved in this one. It made her remember the weapons smuggling ring he exposed years before which cost him the loss of the love of his life, when he barely escaped with his own. This job must have been something similarly big, equally dangerous, for him to once more end up in the sight of a rifle.
“Excuse me, dear,” a woman suddenly said from the doorway, where her thick fingers locked around the door. Nina saw her reflection in the window she was staring at and her heart sank when she turned her head to face the woman and saw that it was the exact same woman she had tolerated in her compartment before.
“Come in,” Nina invited without any enthusiasm, if only to not endure the woman’s whiny voice or indifference to blatant insult. By now Nina had grown so accustomed to the constant repeats of events hitting her at least once a week, so much that she now treated the stubborn time loops as personal psychological flaws she would have to chalk up to some sort of post-traumatic stress bullshit.
The woman was going to speak, but he petite historian interrupted her.
“I know how annoying it must be for you, those men in your section,” she sighed matter-of-factly just to spook the overweight irritation in the ugly jacket. And it worked.
“Are you a physical person?” she asked Nina.
“A physical person? Well, I would think so. I keep in shape, although I’m a smoker, like you…” Nina tried to humor the woman by actually engaging in the conversation as the odd rows of street lamps and occasional yellow security beams started showing outside in the dark, slowly passing from one side of the black square to the other.
“You know I’m a smoker!” the astonished hen exclaimed, slamming her stubby hands together. “So, you must be a physic!”
Nina almost threw her head back and erupted in laughter, but noticing that they were approaching the station lightened her mood and she decided not to be a condescending bitch.
She smiled, “You mean, I’m psychic.”
“Yes, of course. That’s what I said, wasn’t it?” the woman frowned abruptly.
“Oh! Look! Weimar, we have arrived,” Nina smiled suddenly and pointed at the window where the central station came into view. It was almost 10pm, but Nina had made reservations at a hotel near Sam’s hospital. She could not wait to see him again, to look into his soft dark eyes and feel his essence envelope her once more. She always felt so safe around Sam Cleave — not in a survival way, but in an emotional way, as if she could tell him anything and he would never judge her, never hate her, never care about her flaws. Her feelings for Sam compelled her to throw herself into an unknown and potentially dangerous situation again, but she would not have it any other way.
Chapter 11 — Curiosity
Sam looked around so he would not be discovered. It was past lights out in hospital ward C where he shared a room with a junior patient and one other man, older than Scotland, who never opened his eyes. If anyone in the room had farted, Sam would be convinced that the old man was indeed dead and beginning to reek. That was the extent of his inanimate existence, but Sam thought that perhaps the living corpse was awake whenever he was asleep, and vice versa. Nevertheless, it creeped the journalist out and he tried to never really look in the direction of the emaciated old patient.
Instead, the child intrigued him with his dark, exotic looks and his infatuation with the playing card he insisted on keeping with him at all times. Now Sam’s curiosity had gotten the better of him and it was well before his sleep threshold, so he got up and snuck over to Radu’s bed. Sam, always the professional, had cultivated the ability to remember names and therefore knew the boy to be one Radu Costita and something about the child told Sam to memorize his name. Somehow it seemed important. He came out of nowhere, had no relatives and spoke Romanian in his sleep. He was not German and he seemed to be homeless, two things that made Sam curious.
The corner of the large card protruded from under the boy’s pillow. Radu was sleeping soundly, although his breathing was so slight that Sam had trouble telling when he was inhaling and exhaling. In fact, he seemed to have adjusted his sleeping habits to fit in with the old cadaver in the other bed. Sam chuckled when he imagined the look on Radu’s face if he woke and saw the towering journalist standing over him in the dark. His thoughts always drifted to the worst scenarios when he was nervous or found himself in places he was not allowed to be. Sometimes his random ideas were horrific and sinister, other times they were filled with hilarity which provoked him to laugh at the most inappropriate moments.
Once more combing the room for shadows from the corridor, Sam reached out to the corner of the card and pinched it between his fingers. Very gently he pulled it out from under the pillow. It was hard to make out what it depicted in the lack of light, so he tip-toed on the cold floor to the small restroom. He closed and locked the door, before he turned on the light and sat down on the toilet lid.
“Whoah, this is special, laddie. A tarot card?” he whispered in the buzzing white light of the small cubicle. He propped up his arm on the thick silver support handle fixed to the tiling and studied the unique picture. Sam was no expert on the esoteric at all, but he had a basic knowledge of tarot cards. He knew that they were divided into Major Arcana and Minor Arcana. As far as he could remember, their suits were vastly different to ordinary playing cards. They were bigger, made of stronger material and their suits were divided into Swords, Cups, Wands and Pentacles or Discs. But there were no numbers on these types of cards and they were not for playing, they were meant for a more serious type of divination and their trickery a tad more devastating in its repercussions.
Sam frowned, the hard shadow of his dark brows consuming his eyes in its shade as he scrutinized the picture.
There were no wands, or swords, or any of those symbols. The picture did not represent any of the characters normally depicted upon the Tarot. He did not know them all, of course, but this card did not represent the Fool, the Devil, the Hanged Man, the Sun, the Moon and the others he knew of from watching bad horror films. As far as he knew, there was never any such tarot card as one with a maimed young boy wandering around with his eye plucked out.
“What a horrible fucking idea,” he scoffed quietly as the truly nefarious nature of the painting drilled through into his mind. Even his fingers began to tingle inadvertently at the touch of the strange card. He turned it to have a look at the back, but found only an unknown emblem in the center with a lavish purple background in patterns of lambrequin that felt a little bit like suede under the touch of his fingertips. Through his hands he could feel a distinct electrical charge, no more than the tingle of a light battery current, but evident nonetheless.