The Fountain of Youth

Chapter 18

Nina was a little concerned about who may be listening, as the small room was missing its door. The narrow stairs ran down from the ground floor and landed right inside the small archive room, leaving no room for a door anyway. She placed her laptop, leather sling bag, and pile of papers on the desk and chair.

Upon her desk the small cooler box stood, stocked with bottled water as she’d requested be delivered every morning. But she had no time for drinks or food, because the incomparable Dr. Gould possessed an innate curiosity that would not be denied. A delicious plethora of information was stacked about her, wall-to-wall records and files others had become too lazy to study. On the other hand, perhaps they put things down here they were afraid might be discovered.

Nina’s hunch was riper than she realized.

She vigorously started going through the masses of documents and old files shoved into the cabinet Gertrud suggested might have what she was looking for. Applications, statements of bursaries, and trivial memos about new price hikes and rules of conduct — that was all Nina could find at first. But eventually the large drawers yielded more interesting files, such a lawsuits pending, transfers of property, and letters addressed to prospective benefactors.

“Ewww, if my lungs weren’t already full of shit they certainly would be by now. Geez, don’t they ever dust down here?” Nina mumbled as her dirty fingertips paged. By now she’d learned not to lick her finger to separate the papers better. The drawers hadn’t been touched for what seemed to be decades. Spots and spills on rusted manuscripts tainted the words upon them, but she could discern some of the dates.

“Whoa,” Nina whispered to herself, ignoring the steady nausea that came with her slowly creeping chest pain. Her lips moved rapidly as she quickly read short excerpts here and there, but her voice was very subdued and her dusty hands were shaking between the excitement of what she might find and the tremors of her condition. “We herewith wish to welcome you…” she breathed as she took the next document up between her two hands, “…and on retainer, but due to unforeseen circumstances…” She tossed it aside for the next sheet of yellowed parchment, typed out by a typewriter, “…please. Professor Gregor Ebner, Honorary 3rd Level Member and owner of the Norman Fortress now known as St. Vincent’s, will be interred this Sunday, 19th of July 1992.”

Nina’s blood ran cold. Some of the words in this particular newspaper obituary hit home in a very bad way for her. The mention of the term, ‘3rd Level Member’, suggested that Ebner, Mrs. Patterson’s adoptive father, was a member of the Order of the Black Sun. There was no report on how he’d died, however, but it disturbed the pained historian that her good, elderly friend and the Dean’s mother, was raised by a member of that sinister organization.

“Oh my God, Mrs. Patterson,” Nina moaned as her dark eyes stared up at the ceiling. She had to take a moment to take it all in. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, Nina set that particular snippet aside on the seat of her chair next to her. With the concerning news fresh in her mind she kept on digging into the last drawer right at the bottom of the old locker cabinet.

“More accounts,” she sighed, “more kissing ass for money, invitations to awards that don’t mean squat, more…” Nina stopped. The next document was far too much of a coincidence for her to dismiss. Her heart went wild as she read it, but to her surprise, her feelings veered towards sadness instead of anger.

“Purdue?” she frowned, keeping the page under direct light from the bulb above her just to make sure she was not reading it wrongly, what with her dwindling eye sight and all. But she would’ve given anything to rather have had a bout of blindness and been mistaken. Unfortunately for her, she’d read correctly. “Purdue was a benefactor of this college right after the death of Ebner, right as Dean Patterson took over from his grandfather? Holy shit, Dean Patterson is part of the Black Sun! And Purdue is funding him!”

“Dr. Gould?” a voice jolted Nina into a near-heart attack.

“Motherfucker!” she exclaimed, her hand on her chest. With an extremely apologetic open hand gesture she panted, “I’m so sorry, Clara. Good God, you’re worse than Gertrud!”

“What?” Clara frowned, but she smiled at the startled historian who looked so childlike where she sat on the floor. She hadn’t make out a word after ‘Motherfucker’, though, since it was the most colorful cry of surprise she’d heard in a long time.

“Nothing,” Nina said.

“What are you doing?” Clara asked, amused by the Scottish academic’s eccentricity. “Finally somebody decided to clean up down here,” she mused as she looked the place over from side to side. “Honestly, Dr. Gould, I don’t know how you can work down here. The place used to be a medieval dungeon, for God’s sake. Who knows what kind of energy is still down here and you sit here all alone? You have more guts than me.

That’s no secret, fruit fly, Nina thought with a mean streak. “Um, can I help you with something down here? I’ll be sure to call you if I find a treasure chest of doubloons, okay?” Nina winked.

“Oh! Yes, um, I was just wondering if you will be coming in tomorrow. Dr. Smith just wants to know which faculty members will be using the office building, because they’re fixing the air-conditioner or something,” she informed the visiting fellow with the high tolerance for creepy atmospheres. Clara shivered visibly, folding her arms tightly across her chest.

“What’s the matter?” Nina asked deliberately. It was her own juvenile way of bullying lesser females of the species, especially snobs with no backbone, like Clara Rutherford.

“I don’t rightly know, Dr. Gould. But if I can share a secret for a second,” she whispered to Nina, “this place has always given me the creeps.”

“Aw, this little tomb, uh, room?” Nina played.

“The whole college grounds and the main building and even the cottages. You certainly have stones, Nina. But this archive room is far worse than any of the other storage rooms in the rest of this place,” she admitted, revealing a side of her Nina hadn’t seen before.

She didn’t want to admit it to herself, but it appeared that Clara Rutherford was actually just short of pleasant to converse with when she was not around Christa Smith’s asshole radar. Nina got to her feet and dusted off her pants. It dawned on her that this was actually the opportune moment to get some information she couldn’t get anywhere else.

“Listen, Clara, I’ve been meaning to ask you,” she addressed the obviously uncomfortable woman. “Do you know anyone by the name of Cotswald?”

“Oh, that’s the woman that’s made an offer to purchase St. Vincent’s,” Clara revealed, without realizing that she was discussing something Nina was not even supposed to know about. “Why do you ask?”

Nina used a childlike innocence to reel in Clara’s knowledge. As long as Nina seemed dumb and harmless, most psychologies dictated that Clara would divulge all kinds of information to her. She shrugged, “Just heard that I was not as special as I thought I was.”

“Why?” Clara asked sympathetically.

Nina laughed and waved it off. “No, I just mean that I thought I was the only freelance historian ever invited to lecture here, instead of the usual formal teaching graduates or professors of great universities. I read that a Cotswald person was lecturing here long before me and I got jealous of the tenure he got.”

Clara frowned, perplexedly pulling back her head. “No, Dr. Gould. You must be mistaken. He never got tenure.”

That’s it. Hook, line, and sinker. Keep it coming, fruit fly, keep it coming, Nina coaxed in the shelter of her mind. “Funny. That isn’t what I heard.”

“No, he was dismissed. Christa and Daniel cut short his contract. They would never nominate him f-f…,” Clara suddenly noticed what she was giving away. “Who told you about Cotswald?”

“Mrs. Patterson just mentioned that there was a historian much like me teaching here before. That’s all. No big deal. I was just curious,” Nina said in the most naïve tone she could manage.

“Mrs. Patterson,” Clara sighed. “Of course. Anyway, will you be coming in tomorrow?”

“No,” Nina pulled up her nose. “I have a Skype date with a boyfriend and a lot of wine and nicotine on my menu for tomorrow.”

“Ah! I see.” Clara smiled. “Alright then. I’ll let the Dean know.”

She started up the stairs again, straining under the mild physical exertion with her plump body before she stopped and bent down to regard Nina through the bars. “Dr. Gould, I know it’s none of my business, but I’d just like to implore you to stop smoking. You know, for your health.”

“Oh my darling Clara,” Nina replied coldly. “That ship has sailed long ago. Let’s just say stopping now would be too little, too late.”

Clara did not know how to respond to a statement with such hopelessness from an individual who’d already made up her mind about her fate. “I’m sorry you feel that way, but I guess to each his own, huh?” she replied with a twinge of disappointment. “Those things will be the death of you. I was just trying to help.”

“Noted,” Nina said, smiling kindly.

She watched the frumpy administration manager’s feet slowly take on each step and heard Clara mumbling disgruntledly about Nina’s non-compliance and such.

“Looks like you’re the one who direly needs a bloody Stair Master,” Nina muttered, giving her an eyeful of hate until her feet disappeared from view. “My health?” Vexed, she scoffed at the idiot’s audacity to chide her on her smoking before sitting down again to find out how Dave Purdue was fitting into a Black Sun member’s college funding.

However much she wanted to uncover more on Purdue’s involvement, Nina could find nothing more on him in the drawer she was rummaging through. Already annoyed by the nosy administration wench and the growing agony in her chest, Nina felt her anger mounting. One by one she perused the documents she’d found, but the only thing she gained from searching for some proof of Purdue’s involvement was a bunch of painful paper cuts and useless letters and staff folders from the eighties, nineties, and early 2001.

“Look at this,” she whispered when she discovered the contract of the previous historian, Dittmar Cotswald. “The Dean never invited him here. My God, he was invited to lecture here by Dr. Christa Smith?” Nina looked up. “The same person who invited me here, but why not the Dean himself?”

She nicked her finger again, shortly after sustaining another paper cut mere moments before.

“Shit! Fuck!” she growled. Nina had noticed before that her nose bled a lot more since she’d taken ill, but with her rage and frustration she quickly realized that coughing fits held the same baleful courtesy.

As if Clara’s statement had kindled a curse, Nina started coughing profusely. She grabbed a woolen item of clothing she had packed in case of the cold front the weather stations had been predicting and held it in front of her mouth. Nina spewed out globs of blood onto the knitted cardigan as her chest caught fire inside. Her eyes teared up with water as she coughed, her emaciated body convulsing on the floor of the little archive room. On the stairs she swore she could have seen Gertrud watching her, but she did nothing to help. It took little over a minute for Nina to lose consciousness.