Before him, he saw the vision reveal its details to him, like a picture embraced by snow white smoke and white noise. It was a massive building with arches and columns made from marble. A low, wide triangle sat atop the linear family of grooved pillars, sculpted within the pediment borders were human figures, but Sam could not see what they were depicted doing. At the base of the white building there were what he thought were overlapping stairways or folding walls.
As he called out what he was seeing, he vaguely sensed more people around his corporal self and Nina’s voice echoed somewhere among them, far off in the real world. He could hear male voices repeating what he was reporting, as if they needed him to venture further into the waking walk of his mind. They reminded him of a band of college guys chanting for him to down an insurmountable amount of alcohol in a ridiculously tall glass.
“Okay, okay,” he said, his eyes stiff in their sockets and staring ahead, blind to the world he was standing in, but guide in another. “It looks like the Parthenon… in Athens,” Sam exclaimed with his arms outstretched before him, his fingers fanning to pry and probe the unseen world before him. He frowned, waited. Then he stepped backward, but Alex and Gunnar simultaneously grabbed him before he could stub his heels and fall through the obscured old glass of the window.
“What is it, Sam?” Nina asked curiously, but her voice was void of its usual beaming zest.
“H-h… horses?” Sam stuttered and blinked hard a few times as if to clarify what he thought he beheld. But there they were, clear as the building they were galloping through. White, brown, and black horses, perhaps a hundred of them, were storming through the seemingly endless hallways which ran stretched with wall to one side and a uniform row of gigantic marble-like columns to the other. Then the horses, like the endless and identical pillars of the temple, formed a single file and became only two. One horse bore a crown on its head, the other not. As the entranced journalist described the vision, while Alex, Nina, and Gunnar took note of where this place could be — where horses crossed majestic white halls unperturbed, where their chaotic clapping of hooves could unite into a steady gallop of only eight legs reverberating through the enormous galleries of busts and plaques.
“Busts and plaques?” Nina gasped laboriously, her face pallid and moist, fringed by wet curls. Her eyes were blacker than usual now, encircled by darkened skin. She looked drained and ill, but her spirit was strong. She looked frail but smiled like a ninth grader know-it-all when she informed them, “It’s the Walhalla Memorial near Regensburg! A memorial site in Bavaria!” With great effort, her dainty hands pressed on the bed to help her rise to her feet and after she composed her stature upon weakened legs Nina announced, “Gentlemen, we are going to Germany.”
Chapter 30
It was two days later.
Under the northern sky, the water was wild, swept by the determination of the storm that rolled in over the North Sea. The darkness of the dying night allowed one more glance at the fading stars as daylight possessed the sky. Captains steered their boats to safer bearings and the horizon promised a thick bank of clouds that approached the vicinity of the Hebrides rapidly.
From a distance, the ancient fortress on Dùn Anlaimh looked like a mere mirage. Like a phantom castle, it shimmered through the sheets of sea spray that leapt from the foamy crests of the rising waves. Upon nearing it, the building became more solid, darker, and it grew considerably in size for those who saw it for the first time. The pale sun that barely managed to penetrate the mist and fog banks surrounding the place, cast a light yellow halo around the edges of the building, almost indiscernible in its frailty.
On the left tower stood a figure, a bodyguard of Lita’s. He lit his cigarette and scanned the great expanse of grassland and rocky hillocks surrounding the loch which enveloped the fortress of the tyrannical woman. It was going to be a very cold day, he figured. Dragging his cigarette, he winced at the icy wind licking his face and throat. He had neglected to bring his scarf up here in a rush to catch a quick gasper in the early morning before the she-beast and her demands woke and rose from her bed.
Something moved to his left and vigilantly, his eyes instantly located the source of the disturbance. But the rocks and grass looked the same, yet, and his suspicions were unfounded. Above him, the clouds devoured the last bit of sunlight that attempted to peer through. Another stirring drew his gaze and he whipped his head to the left, his vision sharp and scrutinizing. The reason for the movement soon presented itself as he tossed the butt of his cigarette downwind from him. At a distance, upon the machair, he discerned a hare of sorts, but he was not sure. It hopped among the leaning grasses as the wind bent them and disappeared promptly just short of the far shore of the loch.
Looking at the edge of the water, the sentinel’s vision caught another odd movement. It appeared that the shallow breakers of the water lifted higher than the edge in places. Such things were impossible by the laws of physics, so he leaned forward to have a better look. On the opposite side of the water, he could have sworn he saw a mermaid, but his mind did not allow him such fanciful delusions. Yet again, a woman’s form reached slightly above the surface of the grey lapping waves. The guard frowned, now convinced that he was playing witness to something supernatural, if not completely ludicrous.
She was not like any normal female he had ever seen, although her shape proved her to be just that. She had no hair, no face and her skin was made of water, for the lack of any other feature. In disbelief, the guard watched her move across the water towards the gritty beach on his side. Effortlessly, she slid through the waves, dipping her body just below the glistening silver of the surface, most of the time being completely invisible to his eager sight. He did not believe in mermaids, of course, but he had to concede that whatever she was, she had the capability to stay submerged for unnatural amounts of time, according to human standards. Her skin seemed to be made of silver, because the color of her body exactly resembled the greyish waves of the loch.
Finally, she reappeared again, alarmingly close to his side.
“How the hell did she swim so fast?” he asked out loud, his heart pounding at the possibilities of her strange species. By his calculations, the water nymph had propelled herself at vaguely the speed of a Dolphin! Astonished, he uttered, “That’s impossible! How the hell could she get here so fast?”
From behind him a female voice answered, “Because it’s not the same woman, you blithering idiot.”
Before he could turn, a thick rope that was holding up the pulleys of the drawbridge-like doors on the first floor dropped over his head, tightened itself around his frigid neck and pulled taut. Its coarseness peeled the skin from his throat as it was rapidly ripped backwards, crushing his windpipe before the small woman behind him shoved him forward so hard that his body tumbled over the wall. His hands were too slow to relieve the pressure as he dropped.
His neck cracked from the velocity of his weight it could not bear, but he did not die immediately. Paralyzed and mute, his dying eyes fluttered as he dangled against the rocky face of the east wall. Before the darkness took him, he witnessed them emerging, one by one, from the melancholic embrace of the squall. No less than 20 in number, the killer mermaids walked out of the water and onto the rocky sand of Dùn Anlaimh. As they moved stealthily toward the slumbering stone structure they wiped the gel from their faces and hair, revealing their unique features. As the wind gradually dried their skintight bodysuits, the gel disintegrated and shed the liquid look of water that had camouflaged them. At the head of the deadly unit was a blond beauty with eyes as cold as a shark’s, adamant to pluck the wings from Lita’s flies and burning her den to the ground.