The Medusa Stone

Chapter 20

Purdue’s party of explorers followed him to the vehicle he had hired from a friend of a friend in Romania. The small framed bald man, only known as Alex, brought the crooked looking minivan to them at the airport.

“Keys,” Alex smiled as he passed them to Purdue. “And he told you about the… uh…” His raised his eyebrows to gesture an unspoken feature of the vehicle Purdue would need.

“Yes, he did, Alex. Thank you very much for your help,” he winked and thrust a few hundred Euro’s into Alex’s hand, to which the diminutive Romanian thanked him warmly before leaving with his equally scurvy cousin in an inconspicuous Fiat.

“Right, people, let’s get going. If we bide our time well we can scout the surroundings while we have daylight,” he told the group.

“And then we crawl up on the place tonight?” Nina asked nonchalantly.

“Correct,” Purdue nodded with a smile. He was pleasantly taken by Nina’s enthusiasm, having no idea that she was more taken by Costa Megalos than with him or his excursion. “And Nina, your investigation of whatever Nazi-based relics we find there is as invaluable as Donovan’s analysis of all others ripe in age.”

Don proudly put his arm around Nina’s shoulder, “I got your back, girlfriend.”

Nina laughed out loud. Her addictive chuckle had everyone, even James Heidmann, giggling in unison with her.

In the cool late afternoon sunshine, they climbed into the battered-looking van, calling dibs on seats and remarking on the strong smell of coffee and garlic in parts of the vehicle. Heidmann and Purdue would take up the front and driver’s seat, respectively.

The other three just spilled onto the second and third seats. Needless to say, Nina elected to sit beside Costa in the second seat behind Don. But he could turn comfortably turn sideways to chat with them both. Most of the conversation, as they passed through the picturesque Old World charm of Ostrava, centered on the demeanor of sex workers in the city, and if there was good beer. Naturally, most of these subjects were started by Dr. Graham.

However, Nina and Costa vehemently participated in the joviality while in front Purdue picked Heidmann’s brain as to the best way of approaching without rousing suspicion. After the van had crossed through Ostrava, it deviated from the main road and turned left onto Route 56 northward to what Heidmann learned for the first time, was called a village called Markvartovice.

He knew the place only by memory, having no recollection of names from the previous time he had accompanied Tessa to the seller. Now, although he recognized the roads and surroundings well, he learned the names of the places he traversed. Purdue could see Heidmann’s usual nervousness change into something more melancholy. Seeing that the others were so preoccupied with made-up silly trivia and remarks on the kind of marijuana one could cultivate in the area, Purdue dared ask.

“You alright, old boy?”

Heidmann snapped out of his daze, “Um, yes. I’m fine, thanks. Why?”

“You just seem… sad,” Purdue mentioned, lacking a more suited word.

Heidmann glanced quickly backward to make sure the other people were not listening. Then he shrugged, “I don’t mean to sound all Nancy, but I thought that the last time I travelled through this place on this very road I still had Tessa, you know?”

Purdue nodded. “I get that completely, my friend. Look, I am not a very emotional person. I am a scientist and a logical, free thinker, but I can totally fathom your frame of mind on this. Believe it or not, I have been in that position too many times. Purgatory between what you feel and what fate is dealing. It is a bitch.”

“It certainly is,” Heidmann agreed.

Purdue looked at him, trying to find any trace of treachery or betrayal, yet he was sobered by the realization that Heidmann was perhaps just a lovelorn loser trying to be someone in the scientific community. The things he said to Costa…

“Have you and Professor Megalos met before?” Purdue just asked. Sometimes such brutal and sudden honest questions found a resolution.

Heidmann stared at Purdue for a long while before answering. In return, the playboy billionaire played dumb and just kept his eyes straight ahead, minding the back road he was driving on.

“We have never met before gathering at your house for this project, Mr. Purdue,” Heidmann said plainly.

“Dave.”

“Dave,” Heidmann repeated sheepishly. “But we are familiar with each other’s work and published theories, I suppose, which makes us pre-hate each other.”

Purdue looked at Heidmann and was pleasantly surprised to find the man actually smiling for once.

“I can relate,” Purdue grinned. “It is much the same in the world of explorers and inventors. Everything is a competition and even when two authorities are of the same mind, their theories in that argument may differ, causing unnecessary rifts. I think it is just one big measuring contest when we should be collaborating, sharing the glory, you know?”

“I agree,” Heidmann affirmed, looking out into the distance for anything about the place they were looking for. “But sometimes being ridiculed by another scholar makes it difficult to find that common ground.” He paused for a moment before remarking, “Unless you have more gold than Midas.”

Purdue knew Heidmann was referring to him, insinuating that Purdue had only amassed his popularity by paying for it, or that having money made his academic life somehow easier. Even Purdue’s innate docility and mellow demeanor were challenged by the audacity of the unknown scholar next to him, but being the more mature of the two, Purdue chalked it up to low self-esteem that provoked the condescension and defeatist humor Heidmann forced on all he felt threatened by.

“Are we there yet, Dad?” Don suddenly asked from behind them. The other two roared with laughter.

“Dr. Graham, I made it implicitly clear that will be no drinking on the job,” Purdue reprimanded humorously.

“There, Dave!” Heidmann exclaimed suddenly as they came to the site of three high heaps of debris the outskirts of Markvartovice.

“The junkyard?” Purdue asked.

“It is not a junkyard as much as a fence fashioned to obscure the warehouse on the other side,” Heidmann assured him. “The whole enclosure is made to look like an industrial graveyard to fool outsiders.”

Nina sat forward to get a better look at the high walls of rusted metal, old car wrecks and the underlying mess of twisted pipes, fence wiring, and old Cold War fuselage relics piled into macabre skeletons. She recollected scenes from old Nazi death camp footage she had used as a study tool when she did her final paper on War Criminals and the Influence of Occultism on Brutality, whereby she implicated rather the dogma of a distorted social structure forced upon the psychology of youth. Nina had always seen the convenient blame on the occult for cruelty or moral disorder as the lazy man’s argument.

“Fuck this place,” she heard Costa say to no-one in particular as Purdue slowed the vehicle, almost halting. “I don’t like it. Do you feel that?”

“Feel what?” Don asked sincerely. Nina listened but heard nothing but the idling of the van. It gave her the creeps. The vicinity was desolate and flat. A few bushes and trees had been saved, but something in the emptiness was alive… and watching.

“You don’t feel that distinct sinister vibe?” Costa asked Don and Nina.

Don looked like he sniffed the air in short blasts, but actually, he was just trying to abandon his skepticism and take in the atmosphere. Nina did nothing. She did not have to. Already when she thought the area resembled the concentration camp clips, she could feel the unease creep up on her. Something suddenly struck Nina as bizarre coincidence she had not even realized.

“Sinister vibe?” she asked Costa rhetorically and just continued with her presumption. “Kind of like the same sinister vibe one would get from say… Auschwitz? Maybe Płaszów?”

Purdue, who had been sitting serenely thus far, swung around to look at Nina with an intrigued expression. She raised an eyebrow in response to him and said casually, “Aye, we are a stone’s throw away from Auschwitz and its various satellite camps are situated all over the region just past the Polish border.”

Costa shivered visibly at her words as he combed the piles of metal outside, trying to peer beyond for movement.

“Now you know where it is. Can we go?” Heidmann asked Purdue.

“I’m with James, old cock,” Don chimed in with his famous ‘fuck this’-face and a protesting wave of his beer hand. “My fucking hair is standing on end.”

“But we have to return tonight anyway,” Purdue retorted. “What would be the point of leaving now?”

“It is still four hours to the time you planned to come back, Dave,” Costa reminded him. “We cannot sit here for four hours. I am sure I am not the only one who is starving right now.”

“Oh, hell yes,” Nina nodded. “I could eat a horse!”

Don and Heidmann also backed up the idea of a hot meal to still the hunger and the nerves alike before embarking on what could be a very perilous venture. Purdue had to concur that it was ludicrous to remain for such a long wait.

Heidmann substantiated the idea even more. “After all, if we stand here for that amount of hours we are bound to arouse suspicion and lure unwanted attention, whether it is from the maniacs who run their business here or…”

Don helped him finish his scary proposition, “…or from locals who want to give us a quasi-sexual Eastern European welcome while offering us accommodation at their mothers’ houses?”

Heidmann cracked a smile in amusement. “Yes. I suppose.”

Purdue yielded to the logically inclined wishes of his team and slid the stick into reverse, to everyone’s relief. Behind the vehicle, he half expected to see a swarm of third world young crowd to buffer them from leaving the flat gravel wasteland. However, all he saw anywhere was derelict barrenness with not a living soul present. It did pose the thought in his mind, though, if any un-alive souls were perhaps witnessing his party’s transgression.

“Let’s just set the coordinates, Don,” Purdue suggested as he reversed the vehicle. “We’ll get here much quicker tonight just by following the GPS. Here.”

“On it,” his friend answered and reached for Purdue’s ever present and trusty tablet. Don was in awe of the seemingly magical technological device that could change size at the sweep of a thumb, from the scale of a match box to a proper tablet screen.

Not only did it consist of the interchangeable size ability, but it possessed an incredible assortment of technical miracles. Invented by Purdue himself, utilizing his mathematical genius to develop the device into a laser cutter, IR camera, and sonar scanner was just the beginning. There were so many small things the tablet was capable of that Purdue had forgotten about many of them through the years as he kept upgrading the thing with more memory and hardware.

Purdue was a man of logic, of scientific efficacy and plausibility, yet he could not help but get a deep feeling of foreboding from the barren landscape they drove through. He could not allow himself to believe such nonsense as ESP and gut feelings, but he had seen many times before that such perceived fallacies had some merit in his own experiences. He wished that he did not rationalize the presence of such senses, and that was perhaps why he kept it to himself.

From all around, the slowly traveling vehicle he could not help but get the distinct sense that they were being watched, even there was clearly nobody in the abandoned yard. As their minivan bounced and swerved over the dusty gravel road, the bending weeds in the light wind were the only movement.

That, and the blink-less eyes following their course from the vantage of the decrepit furnace chute of the warehouse where dead faces beckoned, forever imprisoned in rock.