Mystery of the Amber Room

Chapter 12

On the flight back to Edinburgh Sam had a hard time keeping Nina calm. She was worried about Purdue, especially since she couldn't use her phone during the long flight. Unable to call his crew to confirm his whereabouts, she was extremely restless for most of the flight.

“There is nothing we can do right now, Nina,” Sam said. “Just take a nap or something until we land. Time flies when you're sleeping,” he winked.

She gave him one of her looks — one of that kind she tossed him when there were too many witnesses for anything more physical.

“Look, we will call the pilot as soon as we are there. Until then you may as well relax,” he suggested. Nina knew he was right, but she just could not help but feel something was amiss.

“You know I will never be able to sleep. When I worry I can't function properly until I have closure,” she grunted, folding her arms and leaning back and closing her eyes so she didn't have to deal with Sam. In turn, he rummaged through his carry-on bag, looking for something to do.

“Peanuts! Shh, don't tell the cabin crew,” he whispered at Nina, but she ignored his attempts at humor, flashing the small packet of peanuts and shaking it. With her eyes shut, he figured it would be best to leave her be. “Yeah, maybe you should get some rest.”

She said nothing. In the dark of the locked-out world, Nina wondered if her ex-lover and friend had just forgotten to contact his assistant, as Sam had suggested. If that were the case, Purdue certainly had a good talking to on the way. She did not like being worried about things that might turn out to be nothing, particularly with her tendency to overanalyze things. Occasionally, the turbulence of the flight would shake her from her light sleep. Nina did not realize how long she had been dozing on and off. It felt like minutes, but it stretched for over an hour.

Sam slammed his hand down on hers where her fingers rested on the edge of her arm rest. Instantly annoyed, Nina's eyes shot open to sneer at her companion, but he was not being silly this time. There was also no turbulence that might have startled him. But then Nina was shocked to see Sam stiffening all over, similar to the seizure she had witnessed back in the village a few days ago.

“Jesus! Sam!” she said under her breath, trying not to draw attention yet. She grabbed his wrist with her other hand, trying to pry it loose, but he was too strong. “Sam!” she ground out. “Sam, wake up!” She tried to keep her voice low, but his convulsions started to draw attention.

“What is wrong with him?” a plump lady on the other side of the isle asked.

“Please, just give us a moment,” Nina snapped as amicably as she could. His eyes shot open, once again milky and absent. “Oh God no!” she moaned a little louder this time as despair gripped her, fearing what might happen. Nina remembered what had happened to the man he had touched during his last seizure.

“Excuse me, ma'am,” the stewardess interrupted Nina's struggle. “Is anything wrong?” But as she asked, the flight attendant saw Sam's eerie eyes staring up to the ceiling “Oh shit,” she muttered in alarm before going to the intercom to ask if there was a doctor among the passengers. Everywhere people turned to see what the commotion was about; some shrieked and others hushed their conversations.

As Nina watched, Sam's mouth opened and closed rhythmically. “Oh, Christ! Don't talk. Please don't talk,” she prayed as she watched him. “Sam! You have to wake up!”

Through the clouds of his consciousness, Sam could hear her voice begging from far away. Once again she had been walking next to him toward the well, but this time, the world was red. The sky was maroon, and the ground was dark orange, like brick dust under his feet. He could not see Nina, even though he knew in his vision that she was present.

When Sam reached the well, he did not ask for a cup, yet there was an empty cup on the crumbling wall. He bent forward again to look down the well. Before him, he saw the deep cylindrical interior, but this time, the water was not deep down in the shadows. Below him was a well full of pristine water.

“Please help! He is choking!” Sam heard Nina scream from somewhere far away.

Below, in the well, Sam saw Purdue reaching up.

“Purdue?” Sam frowned. “What are you doing in the well?”

Purdue was gasping for air as his face barely broke the surface. He was coming up towards Sam as the water rose higher and higher, looking terrified. Ashen and desperate, his face contorted as his hands clawed at the sides of the well. Purdue's lips were blue, and he had dark circles under his eyes. Sam could see that his friend was naked in the churning water, but when he reached in to rescue Purdue, the water level dropped considerably.

“He cannot seem to breathe. Is he asthmatic?” another male voice came from the same place as Nina’s.

Sam looked around, but he was alone in the red wasteland. In the distance, he could see a broken-down old building reminiscent of a power station. Black shadows lived beyond the four or five stories of empty window openings. No smoke rose from the towers, and the walls had sprung large weeds through cracks and crevices brought by years of neglect. From far away, deep in his being, he could hear an incessant hum ensue. It grew louder ever so slightly until he recognized it as a generator of sorts.

“We need to open his airway! Pull his head back for me!” he heard the male voice again, but Sam tried to make out the other sound, the impending hum that was still growing louder, possessing the entire wasteland until the ground began to shake.

“Purdue!” he shouted, trying one more time to save his friend. When he looked back into the well, it was empty, save for the sigil that was painted on the bottom's wet, muddy floor. He knew it all too well. The black circle with the precise rays that looked like lightning streaks lay in silence at the bottom of the cylinder like a spider in wait. Sam gasped. “The Order of the Black Sun.”

“Sam! Sam, can you hear me?” Nina persisted, her voice drawing closer from the dusty air of the deserted place. The industrial hum escalated to a deafening level and then the same pulse he had seen under hypnosis clapped through the atmosphere. This time, nobody else was there who could have been burned to ashes. Sam screamed as the waves of the pulse came toward him, forcing its blistering hot air into his nose and mouth. As it made contact with him, he was spirited away in the nick of time.

“There he is!” the male voice cheered as Sam woke up on the floor of the aisle where they had put him to perform emergency resuscitation. His face was cold and damp under Nina's gentle hand, and a middle-aged Indian man stood over him, smiling.

“Thank you so much, doctor!” Nina smiled up at the Indian man. She looked down at Sam. “Honey, how are you feeling?”

“Like I’m drowning,” Sam managed to wheeze as he felt the heat dissipate from his eyeballs. “What happened?”

“Don't worry about that now, okay?” she soothed him, looking very relieved and happy to see him. He propped himself up to sit, annoyed about the gawking audience, but he could not lash out at them for pointing their attention to such a spectacle, could he?

“My God, I feel like I have swallowed a gallon of water in one go,” he whined as Nina helped him to his seat.

“That might be my fault, Sam,” Nina admitted. “I kind of… threw water in your face again. It seems to work for waking you up.”

Wiping his face, Sam stared at her. “Not if it drowns me!”

“It was nowhere near your mouth,” she scoffed. “I’m not stupid.”

Sam took a deep breath and decided not to argue for now. Nina's big dark eyes stayed on him as if she was trying to figure out what he was thinking. And she was, in fact, wondering just that, but she allowed him a few minutes to recover from his seizure. What the other passengers had heard him mutter had been only the unintelligible gibberish of a man in the throes of a seizure for them, but Nina had understood the words all too well. It unsettled her immensely, yet she had to give Sam a moment before she started prying — if he even would remember what he had seen while under.

“Do you remember what you saw?” she asked inadvertently, the victim of her own impatience. Sam looked at her, looking surprised at first. After some thought, he opened his mouth to speak but remained mute until he could articulate. In truth, he recalled every detail of the revelation this time, far better than when Dr. Helberg had hypnotized him. Not wanting to cause Nina any more worry, he toned down his response a bit.

“I saw that well again. And this time the sky and ground was not yellow, but red. Oh, and this time, there were no people crowding me either “ he reported in his most nonchalant tone.

“That’s it?” she asked, knowing that he was omitting most of it.

“Aye, basically,” he answered. After a long pause, he casually told Nina, “I think we should follow your hunch about Purdue.”

“Why?” she asked. Nina knew that Sam had seen something because he had said Purdue's name when he had been unconscious, but for now, she was playing dumb.

“I just think you have a valid reason to probe into his whereabouts. The whole thing smells like trouble to me,” he said.

“Good. I'm glad you finally understand the urgency. Maybe now you will stop telling me to relax,” she delivered her short sermon from the Gospel of I-told-you-so. Nina shifted in her seat just as the announcement sounded through the aircraft intercom that they were about to land. It had been an unpleasant and long flight, and Sam hoped that Purdue was still alive.

Outside the airport building, they decided to get some early dinner before returning to Sam's apartment on the Southside.

“I need to call Purdue's pilot. Just give me a minute before you get a taxi, alright?” Nina told Sam. He nodded and proceeded to place two of his cigarettes between his lips to light. Sam did a splendid job of hiding his apprehension from Nina. She was walking in circles around him while speaking to the pilot, and he casually handed her one of the fags when she passed in front of him.

While sucking on his cigarette and appearing to stare into the setting sun just above the skyline of Edinburgh, Sam went over the events in his vision in his memory, trying to find clues where Purdue could be held. In the background, he heard Nina's voice ebb and flow in emotion with every morsel of information she received over the phone. Depending on what they would get from Purdue's pilot, Sam intended to start at the very spot Purdue had last been seen.

It felt good to have a smoke again after hours of abstaining. Even the horrible sensation of drowning he had endured earlier was not enough to deter him from inhaling the therapeutic poison. Nina slipped her phone into her bag, her cigarette pursed between her lips. She looked completely flustered as she walked briskly toward him.

“Get us a taxi,” she said. “We need to get to the German Consulate before they close.”