The Library of Forbidden Books

Chapter 35

“Where is Richard?” Nina asked.

“Sleeping. I have never seen anyone so immersed in a log book before, but ultimately I think it took its toll and he clocked out,” Sam said. “He is hoarding your books like a madman, Nina. Maybe you should sell them to him. You’d make a fortune.”

“Ha! Those books are all I have left of my dream house,” Nina replied, but she suddenly realized that her infamous house had now become a crime scene and there was no doubt that it would be off limits to her. Most of the money she had saved up through the years was sunk into that property and apart from the financial catastrophe it had dumped her in, she was now homeless.

“This was going to be my clean start, you know,” she lamented to nobody in particular. Nina almost became utterly melancholy, now that there was time for what happened to really sink in. Maybe she was so used to running for her life that she did not realize the true loss she had suffered until now. “I was going to renovate it, make it mine, and live in my old town. I was going to be insignificant and invisible.” Her voice cracked a little at the sudden flood of emotions. Gretchen hugged her, facing Nina toward Sam.

“You can never be insignificant, Dr. Gould,” he told her firmly in a soft voice that teemed with admiration and affection. Nina forced a smile as Sam winked at her. His body was shaking terribly under the reeking blanket he had around his shoulders.

“Sam, are you all right?” Nina asked. Her expression changed into one of serious concern as the tremors took to Sam and his eyes rolled back in their sockets. “Oh God, Gretch, help me!” she shouted as Sam’s knees gave way under him and he sank to the ground in a quivering heap.

“His fever is sky high, doll! Let’s get him up on the bunk!” Gretchen cried. “Richard! Richard, some help over here, please!”

“Fuck! We’re down to one bottle of water to make everything worse!” Nina seethed as she flew into the space where Richard had just woken. He rushed to help Gretchen with Sam while Nina got the last bottle of water they had.

“He is in shock,” Richard remarked, as he laid Sam’s strained and shaking frame on the bunk almost entirely by himself, alleviating Gretchen’s burden. “Get more blankets, Nina.” The gaunt lecturer looked up at Gretchen. His countenance was unnerving.

“Is he going to be okay?” Gretchen asked Richard, just as Nina returned with blankets stacked in her arms.

“If we don’t get him to a hospital soon, he will die. The infection has not subsided, and the medi-kit has no more ointment or dressings, as if it even helped in the first place. Everything in here is simply too old to be of any use anymore, I fear. Sam might not make it this time,” he bemoaned his helplessness.

“Hey! Hey!” Nina hissed as she briskly wrapped Sam in another layer of smelly blankets. “Fuck that! He will be fine, you hear me? I don’t want to hear any of that shit from anyone!” she shouted defensively at her companions. “Sam just needs some rest,” she uttered softly, stroking his wet hair and his brow gently. “Just needs rest, that’s all.”

The other two exchanged worried looks. Suddenly the U-boat was struck by something massive and immovable, sending Richard and Gretchen sprawling on the floor and Nina fell off the bunk. Sam’s body jerked against the wall beside the bunk, but he was out cold. The electrical current was interrupted, the lights flashing, and it was followed by a bone-chilling sound that reverberated through the very metal of the vessel.

Sam opened his eyes weakly. He listened intently, but only heard the other three people scuffling, gradually getting back up with befuddled looks. Nina held her ankle, Gretchen nursed her shoulder, and Richard ignored his bloody nose to concentrate on the sounds that pulsed about the outer hull, just short of the bilge keels. The four terrified occupants of the HMS Trident sat stunned, listening to the ghastly scratching noises, as if metal hooks of impressive size were challenging the tactile strength of the submarine.

The lights died with the next thump, evoking cries of brute panic from all of them. In the pitch blackness, Gretchen and Nina held on to each other, sobbing softly as an awful wail shook the sheeting of the boat. Rattling ensued so violently throughout the enormous submarine that Sam, Nina, Gretchen, and Richard believed that every bolt and screw was being detached. They all expected the war machine to fall apart at its seams at any moment.

“Did we hit rocks?” Nina asked, hoping that the boat’s double-layered metal sheeting had not been ruptured.

“Could be,” Richard replied. “If our hull is on the rocks, the current could be propelling us into these jolts, changing direction from the velocity.”

“Or it could be a whale,” Gretchen mentioned, slowly letting go of Nina so that she could scamper over to Sam to secure him.

In the dark, Nina slipped into Sam’s embrace, feeling the furious temperature of his body burn against hers. There was not much else they could do. They were probably going to die in the next few minutes, a thought pondered by all aboard in the grasp of unadulterated horror.

Like a keening banshee the whine sent sharp sound waves through the immediate proximity of the boat, shaking it in its course, like a dog shook a toy in its mouth. Nina screamed curses of terror. Gretchen’s arms were shaking around her bent face as the lights flashed with white lightning every now and then, attempting to regain current. Richard sat flat on his ass on the floor against the wall, staring at Sam, who returned his glare with his timid black eyes.

“What was that, Richard?” he asked meekly.

“Probably an orca,” the eloquent American answered, but Sam knew he was bluffing.

“That is no orca, mate,” Sam protested.

Nina listened and spoke from under Sam’s chin, where she had nestled her head.“Whatever that is must be three times the size of a whale. Besides, it doesn’t sound like any whale I have ever heard.”

“Me neither,” Gretchen murmured, while her eyes stretched to see in the frightening flashes of the lights. “Did you know Orcinus orca means ‘bringer of death’?”

“Thank you, Gretchen,” Nina moaned.

“It is not a fucking whale,” Sam grunted laboriously through the fever and fear. “Just ask Richard. He did not look all too surprised about it, just… inconvenienced, eh, Pasty?”

“Don’t be foolish,” Richard dismissed him out of hand.

Sam was pissed. He propped himself up over Nina and with reddened eyes he pinned Philips to the wall, “You and I both know what it is. We both saw that thing in Oban.”

The women perked up instantly, frowning and perplexed.

“Excuse me? That sounds just a little fucking horrible! Care to share your wisdom with us, lads?” Nina gawked with that well-known fire in her dark eyes

“What did you see in Oban?” Gretchen asked, pulling her legs in even closer against her body and tightening her embrace around them even more. Her face was distorted in dread, unlike Nina’s.

The two men remained silent, neither one quite knowing how to describe what they had seen. Nina got up and went over to where Gretchen was clutching at her clothing. She put her arm around her friend and stared the two men down with a hellish glare that would make the devil think twice. “What seems to be the trouble, gentlemen?” she shouted, Gretchen sobbing with fear in her arms.

“You had better tell her, lad,” Sam forced through his impending unconsciousness. “I’m too tired to think anymore.” His big, dark eyes fluttered and he laid his head back down, still awake, but hardly calm. Sam’s chest heaved, and his breathing was shallow as the fever grew through him. Richard cleared his throat and tried to think of how to put it, what they had seen.

“How much weight do you put in this lore of the old gods?” he started.

“Listen, Richard, I am not the kind of bitch you want to test wits with, and I am certainly not the type you keep waiting,” Nina shrieked. “I swear to God I will make you!”

“All right, all right. It’s just going to sound absurd, that is all,” he retorted, his voice firm and loud for a change. It proved that there was after all some marrow in old Pasty’s bones when Nina drove him into a corner. It was a corner he could not escape, here, trapped in a giant tin can in the belly of the North Sea.

“Absurd?” Nina snapped. “Have you seen the electricity in my new house? Oh, and did you see the kind of features my basement boasts? It’s a darling little shack for the avid quantum physicist or every-day lunatic!”

“We saw Argathule,” he said quickly.

Silence came over the cabin where they were gathered. Gretchen swallowed hard. Normally she would not have believed it, but had she not heard the deafening wail of something that made an amplified sound lingering between whale and lion she would have laughed it off. Nina was not amused either, yet she was driven by the same acknowledgment as her friend. They knew what they had heard and encountered was not the actions of a mere sea mammal, no matter what its size. There was something malignant and intentional about the creature they encountered, as if it was a predator of immense intelligence honing in on those who brought it here.

“It happened when we dumped the bodies in the mouth. When Sam stepped onto the submarine, while the police were bursting into the basement, he saw it lying below,” Richard confessed.

The women shared an expression of confounded horror. Nina cocked her head, “saw it lying below, you say. Why did it not try to kill us then? Or climb out—”

“It would not survive on land, first of all, so it was quite content in the well. But it was fed before we stepped off the edge of the well to board the submarine, so it did not feel compelled to hunt yet,” Richard explained nonchalantly.

Gretchen stopped crying, sniffled and wiped her face carelessly. As she started approaching the man she so admired for his insights and unorthodox ideologies, the distant howl of the thing permeated through the near waters again. Waves of whining that drove the occupants of the Trident to terror surrounded the boat, gradually growing louder, announcing its approach.

“It was fed? Richard, did you feed it?” she asked slowly. Nina gasped over where she stood watching. Her slender fingers covered her mouth under a wide-eyed scowl.

“I had to or it would have compromised our only escape, Gretchen,” he explained in a soft tone. It was evident that he understood her repulsion and the way in which she questioned his morals. She knew that he was at fault and that he had no intention of apologizing for something he had construed as a victory in his work.

“Richard, what did you feed it?” she asked in a childlike curiosity that bordered on brute fury. It made Richard Philips very uneasy, but he stood his ground. He had always been afraid of women to some respect, but now he understood why. Now there were two of them onto him, both of consummate intelligence and logic, both on the wrong side of tolerance with him. Nina knew.

“McLaughlin’s sidekick,” she said coldly from behind Gretchen, stopping the stalking woman in her tracks. But Gretchen did not afford Richard his liberty from her wrath, and a moment later she came closer again.

“It had to be done!” he exclaimed. “Your safety was secured by it, and she was there to kill Nina, so how can you not condone her sacrifice?”

Gretchen slapped him hard across the face, leaving a substantial mark on his cheek.

“I used to admire you… God, no, I used to worship you!” she screamed at him. Her body bent forward in an aggressive stance of hatred and disappointment. Nina came to collect her and pull her away from the shocked man who towered over her.