The Library of Forbidden Books

Chapter 14

Nina walked in her socks, stealing down the broad, flat steps of the short flight of stairs that led from the corridor to the lobby where the knocking had ceased for a bit. Still, under the door she could hear scuffling. Whoever was calling was still on the porch, waiting. Behind her trailed Gretchen, wine bottle in hand and barefoot. The two women were both wary, but not afraid as they approached the door. Nina cast one more glance to her friend and took a deep breath before flexing her feet to raise her body to the peephole.

Under the flimsy, flickering, porch light (Nina meant to have it rewired against the wet climate) stood a tall, lean man in a suit. He wore a fedora and a scarf, but he was faced away, spying the surroundings out in the night so she could not see his face. Under the brim of his hat his hair was shaved painfully neatly on his neck and over his large ears. All the aspects of his image together gave him a vintage look that Nina found intriguing.

Gretchen’s finger poked at Nina’s back and she whispered, “Who is it?” making Nina jump with fright at the sudden sensation.

“God, you gave me a fright,” Nina whispered in reprimand, frowning at her friend.

“Sorry. So? Who is it?” Gretchen asked.

As Nina turned to see, the door shuddered under another spell of raucous knocks that startled her all over again, provoking a yelp of fright from the petite brunette. Gretchen also jolted backward.

“Just a minute!” Nina called through the door. She looked at her friend and shook her head, shrugging and gesturing at the unfamiliarity of the caller. Gretchen was innately curious and could not resist. Propelled by her need to snoop, Gretchen pushed Nina aside and stretched her eye in front of the small circle of glass in the door. And she stood just so for a while, until Nina was prompted to inquire.

“So? What do you see?” Nina asked.

“It’s the academic I asked you to go and listen to the other night,” Gretchen gasped, completely taken aback.

“Dr. Gould!” a woman’s voice penetrated the silence behind the door.

Nina and Gretchen exchanged perplexed expressions from the out-of-placeness of the female voice to what they saw through the peephole.

“Dr. Gould, it is Mrs. McLaughlin, the Realtor,” the female clarified to the relief of the two women inside.

Nina opened the door, ready with an excuse, “Hello. I’m so sorry, Mrs. McLaughlin, we were exploring the house and could not hear you until just now.” She threw in a silly smile with her white lie and all was well. The odd man was gaunt and pale, and stood behind Mrs. McLaughlin, still surveying the exterior of the house as if he was looking for some justification.

“No worries, dear,” the estate agent smiled, “I’m sorry to bother you at this hour, but I wanted to introduce you to a friend of mine, Dr. Richard Philips from Stanford University in the United States.”

The timid man’s mouth twitched into an attempted smile, which lingered for but a second as he shook Nina’s hand during the introductions.

“I’m sorry, I can’t recall your name, madam,” Mrs. McLaughlin addressed Gretchen in her perfect eloquence, neatly placed as the seams in her suit.

“Professor Gretchen Mueller,” Gretchen smiled confidently, mostly because she could use her title to look less like an intoxicated deadbeat among the academics in her company.

“Oh, I had no idea. That is wonderful, isn’t it, Dr. Philips?” she asked the quiet man who removed his hat to shake hands with Gretchen.

“It is quite, yes,” he spoke at last, his voice like a whispering pan flute in the tempest of the orchestra that was the unquiet weather over Oban.

Nina realized that she had abandoned basic etiquette.

“Oh! How rude of me! Would you like to come in?” she invited, stepping aside as her guests accepted. She shot Gretch a quick look that was begging her to get rid of the empty bottles that would betray their tipsy state, if nothing else would.

“Please sit down. I have, as you know, just moved in and I am still waiting for the dreaded movers to show up with all my junk,” Nina excused politely, but the estate agent only chuckled with the wave of her hand.

“More than anyone I am acquainted with the procedure, dear Dr. Gould,” she smiled through her perfect lipstick, revealing her flawless teeth. The immaculately groomed woman was a stark contrast in vitality to her companion, who merely looked at the ceiling with his mouth pursed shut, his elongated fingers feeling at the brim of his fedora.

“Can I offer you some wine? Or tea?” Nina asked as her manners dictated, while secretly she wished they would piss off and leave her to the grotesque treasures of her attic.

“I would like some tea, thank you,” Dr. Philips answered to Nina’s surprise.

“Nothing for me, thank you,” Mrs. McLaughlin said. “In fact, I just came to check if everything is to your liking, if you have anything to ask or report—”

“Well, there is one thing,” Nina rapped without waiting for the estate agent to finish. “Who lived in this house before me?”

There was an uncomfortable silence among all of them in the rumble of the temperamental Scottish weather. Dr. Philips exhibited no reaction as yet, but it seemed to Nina as if McLaughlin expected him to say something while she prepared her response.

“Well, you have to be more specific, Dr. Gould. This house is well past a century old, if you know what I mean. Many residents made their life here,” the estate agent explained with a careful brush past the specific.

“Let’s say, around the Second World War,” Nina clarified, as Gretchen brought in the tea she had prepared for Nina, herself, and the academic she had been so fascinated by since she had attended his lecture on metaphysics and religious history two years before in Hamburg.

“The Second World War?” Mrs. McLaughlin asked nervously, but it was clear that Dr. Philips had perked up at the mention of it. “Well, I’m certain I would not know offhand, being so long ago, but I could of course find out for you.”

“Heinrich Manfred Schaub,” Dr. Philips said plainly, as if he answered a trivia question on a television show. All three ladies stared at him, waiting for more elaboration, but the esteemed lecturer merely sipped his tea without meeting their eyes with his.

Eventually Nina’s urge got the better of her, “And… how would you know this, doctor?”

He looked up serenely at Nina, “Because he was my grandfather. He never married my grandmother, because their families had… differences.” His tone was solemn, but sincere.

The uncomfortable silence after this revelation was so intense that Mrs. McLaughlin jumped in with her true reasons for calling this time of night.

“Actually, ladies, I brought Dr. Philips to see the house because of this very reason,” she said with an apologetic wince. “He showed up this afternoon, having no idea that someone had recently purchased the place, so I thought the least I could do was to ask you if he could just see the house his grandfather lived in.”

“But, of course,” Nina replied. Inside her a feeling of weird warning sprouted roots. Gretchen was equally uneasy, but both composed themselves for the purpose of sating their curiosity.

“I would have to go soon, so could we perhaps take a tour of the house now?” Mrs. McLaughlin suggested.

“Certainly,” Nina said sharply, annoyed by the estate agent’s dictation. “Let’s get it over with.”

The party of four started on their brief excursion through the old Scottish house, with Nina pointing out the basics. She was definitely not planning on revealing the delicious secrets of the residence that she had discovered.

“I am fascinated by your work, Dr. Philips,” Gretchen told the tall, forty-year-old man. He raised an eyebrow as she continued, “I am especially interested in your theory of the old gods in fact being an ambiguity of extraterrestrial civilizations and how several so-called ludicrous speculations are correctly interpreted, but discarded for the absurdity of name association.”

He stopped in his tracks and cocked his head at Gretchen’s relation of the subject matter of his lectures. “I must say, Professor Mueller, this is the last place I expected to discover a like-minded, or even fathomable specimen.”

Gretchen could burst at his reply. Nina listened closely to their conversation while blandly pointing out the features of the old place to her visitor, but she watched Mrs. McLaughlin’s permanently fixed smile vanish every time Richard Philips passed a room without attention. Nina wondered if this was a show of disapproval for her troubles, or perhaps a disappointment of sorts, not that she could argue a point to such an assumption anyway. Yet she could not help but find something amiss with the fact that the estate agent, who knew the premises very well, would still be curious as to the opinion of the well-informed visitor.

“Are there any places you specifically wish to see, Dr. Philips?” Mrs. McLaughlin snapped suddenly. The gaunt guest replied in his gentle way, “My apologies, madam. I am sure I can find my own way back to my motel, if you need to depart. I do not intend to keep you at all.”

“No! Oh, no, that is not what I meant,” she smiled quickly, alarmed by his response. It was clear that she wanted to stay to see what he pointed out, if anything.

Nina knew something was up with Mrs. McLaughlin.

“Mrs. McLaughlin, I’d be happy to drive Dr. Philips back to his motel after his visit here,” Nina offered resolutely, testing the weight of her suspicion. McLaughlin protested politely, but finally Nina subdued her intentions with a definite decision to kindly expel her presence and take on the responsibility of her guest.

Not happy at all, Mrs. McLaughlin wore a sour smile as she made her way to the front door a few minutes later with an equally corrosive Nina Gould accompanying her.

“Thank you so much for bringing him, Mrs. McLaughlin,” Nina grinned kindly, although her spite was delicious. Mc Laughlin was after something and that something was in Nina’s house. The estate agent had planned to use Philips, like a bloodhound, to find it. It was a pleasure to show McLaughlin out and let the academic genius with the penchant for the esoteric keep her and Gretchen company. No doubt it would be a queer, but fascinating conversation among the three of them about the oddities hidden in the house. And the last thing Nina wanted was an audience with someone who clearly had hidden agendas. What concerned the historian most, though, was not knowing what McLaughlin wanted with the house, and why she insisted on Dr. Philips exploring it.

As she closed the front door behind the estate agent’s back, Nina felt that same fearsome, unsafe feeling wash over her — the one she felt when the locals gathered in front of her house like a silent lynch mob earlier. Something important was hidden in Nina’s new house and from the types of people who left it here, it was nothing good.