The Library of Forbidden Books

Chapter 4

On Monday Nina picked Gretchen up just before noon to go and sign for her “new” old house. She had only seen it briefly twice before, the first time with an agent who took her to five showings in one day, and the second time when she had asked to view it again to make sure she wanted it. The plumbing and electrical seemed perfectly functional, and apart from some dry rot in the sunroom and parts of the en suite laundry room, Nina had very little to really fix on the place.

Gretchen was chewing on a cinnamon bun as they traveled through the picturesque little town with its horseshoe bay, where boats bobbed on the smooth ocean like buttons on a big, blue-velvet jacket. The German woman marveled at the plain brown St. Columba Cathedral walls as the car glided by on the narrow road. Ahead of them on the horizon Nina saw the clouds gathering. It was not unusual to have unexpected cloud cover throughout the days there, but these gray skies looked persistent.

“We have to hurry. I don’t want to run through a rainstorm from door to door,” Nina noted as she accelerated slightly.

“The clouds are still far off,” Gretchen replied with a mouthful.

“Don’t trust the skies over Scotland. You know this wisdom well,” Nina jested, imitating an old wise woman. Through their light-hearted chuckles they pointed out various sites that were new even to Nina. She felt good about this. Home was home, but it had been reborn in a way. Like reacquainting herself with an old friend, like she did with Gretchen, she basked in the memories of Oban.

“Tell me about that lecture you wanted me to attend, Gretch. I was still going to ask you why you referred me there. You know how tedious I find long ramblings of old academic farts,” Nina told her friend.

“Oh, well, he is not that old, as old farts go,” she informed Nina. “Did you not see him on the poster in the lobby?”

“No, I was a bit late. What exactly was it about? All I read on the note you sent was ‘Misdirected Religion and the Proof in Metaphysics,’” Nina said.

“Yes, that’s right. Isn’t that fascinating?” Gretchen asked eagerly. “This man has so many ideas that make sense to me. He believes that gods were actually aliens that put humans here to work the earth. And I have found so many instances that have corroborated this, but the sound of the theory is just too ludicrous for people to swallow, or even to give it a moment’s pondering.”

Nina looked at her friend with her forehead twisted in frown. “And I would be into this because?”

Gretchen was as surprised at Nina’s reaction, as Nina was to Gretchen’s assumption about her.

“Nina, history has proven this over and over. Not just in how organized religion has twisted the true origins of ancient teachings, but in the relics you have handled. You surely found some truth to their power?” Gretchen explained.

Nina gave her the benefit of the doubt. “Look, I’d be the first to admit that I had previously handled some religious artifacts that had exhibited potential beyond the realm of our known physics, even biology, but that does not mean I firmly believe that metaphysics could be explained by resolute scientific laws.”

“I’m not asking you to believe it, Nina. I just want you to listen. This man has something that is so far out of the comfort zone of the normal scientific community that he has to be onto something. And your knowledge of history would be invaluable to recognize where these principles had been discovered or used before. That is all I wanted. I just wanted you to listen and take what you know, mix it into his dish, and tell me what you think has been going on under the power of many false prophets and organized religions throughout the biggest wars of our time. Even now, wars are fought, Nina. Not wars with ammunition and armadas, but biochemical warfare on us, the human populace!”

“By whom?” Nina asked.

“By those who are trying to subjugate the human race for the power of gods!” Gretchen almost shrieked, desperate to have her old friend understand.

Nina looked concerned. It was that same look Gretchen and her peers always evoked in so-called logical minds.

“This is not esoteric, you see? It is political,” Gretchen reiterated her stance, trying to compose her fanaticism before Nina blocked her out completely.

“Why are you telling me this?” Nina asked again. It was both profound and curious that her very well-educated and highly intelligent friend would embrace such fantastical notions. It was also disturbing to an extent, because Gretchen was not a fool and far from gullible. If she saw truth in a hypothesis, then something within it held true merit… at least somewhere.

“Leave it. Forget I said anything. I’m grasping at straws because I have a crush on Dr. Phillips, I’m sure,” she smiled at Nina. But it was too sudden a change, too easily abandoned.

Nina decided to oblige Gretchen for now, since they had arrived at the estate agent’s office.

“Dr. Gould!” the secretary exclaimed from the front door. “Good morning, madam. Mrs. McLaughlin already went to the house to meet you there. She left about ten minutes ago.”

“Thank you!” Nina called at the young lady and skipped to the car just as the first drops fell. Big and sparse the rain began to fall over Oban.

“We have to meet her at the house, Gretch,” Nina panted as she hopped into the driver’s seat.

“Just in time too,” Gretchen smiled, “you almost got wet. Then again,” she said as she scrutinized the sky, “we are definitely getting wet once we get there.”

“Aye, the blessings of Scotland abounds!” Nina chuckled as she spurred the vehicle forward toward Dunuaran Road.

From all sides the rain pattered down on the buildings, wetting the road, and the weeping clouds drowned the bird baths and gutters with a force of water the town had long not seen. Like a rapid storm, the wind started to blow wildly and the two lady friends leered at each other at the violent rocking of the car in the gusts.

“What the hell is this?” Gretchen asked wide-eyed.

Nina just shook her head and bore forward, keeping her eyes sharply on what parts of the road were still in view. It was a nightmare to navigate through the normally quiet traffic flow that was exacerbated by the weather’s punishment, but Nina took it slowly because she was not as familiar with the roads as she once was. Gretchen, a nervous passenger by nature, watched the veiled road and cast a worried eye toward the petite driver every now and then. The windshield fogged over, and Nina had to crack open her window for some cooler air to combat it.

“Vents?” Gretchen asked.

“The defogger hasn’t worked since I had that minor collision in front of Edinburgh Castle a month back. I really didn’t think I’d need it this soon. Murphy’s Law,” Nina sighed as Gretchen also wound down her window just enough not to drown in the onslaught of the hard rain that wet the side of her head and left her hair in tangled wet locks.

“Fucking freezing,” she mentioned dryly, and Nina placed her hand apologetically on her friend’s arm in attempted solace. It was odd indeed that it was this cold. Not only had the morning started off very mild and maintained its temperature thus far, but Oban was not known to easily slip into freezing numbers.

In a few minutes, like magic, the wind calmed. It turned into a mild breeze at most while the rain became a subsistent drizzle, turning the landscape of the pretty port into nothing but a ghostly image beyond the street.

“Are you staying in the car?” Nina asked Gretchen.

“Hell no! I want to see your house, Dr. Gould,” her friend answered with zest, unbuckling her seat belt.

Mrs. McLaughlin was nowhere to be seen, but her car was parked in the street in front of the large stately old house that Nina would soon call home. The front door was slightly ajar and the ladies jogged up the porch steps to find shelter under the decorative porch roof.

“She is probably inside,” Gretchen remarked. Once they were under the corrugated iron roof that dripped crystal water from the edges, they took a moment to shake out the excess water from their hair and coats.

On the left side of the yard, the neighbor glared though the second-story window. She looked most peculiar with her protruding eyes and a mouth that drooped slightly to the one side, about fifty-five years old with black bop hair. Nina forced a quick smile to be polite, but she wished the nosy cow would mind her own business and disappear into her own house.

“Looks like they are not used to strangers here,” Gretchen said from behind Nina.

“Aye, that is precisely what I was just thinking,” Nina muttered as the woman kept looking as if Nina was not even there.

“I wonder what he thinks is so fucking interesting?” Gretchen moaned, her voice fraught with irritation.

“You mean she. What does she… ” Nina started, but when she looked behind her, her friend was talking about the other neighbor. A younger man in his twenties stared at Nina and Gretchen from under the ledge of the garage roof, a concrete outcropping that hung over his head like an unsteady cliff of chipped paint and ferns. A fairly athletic young man, he bounced a basketball repeatedly where he stood with his dead, dark eyes gawking at the strangers.

“Creepy people you have as neighbors, doll,” Gretchen mentioned through unmoving lips, should their audience have an aptitude for reading lips.

“Uh, yah, thanks, Gretch. It makes me feel all welcome knowing that,” Nina said in hardly a voice. “Shall we go in?”

In the street two joggers who were caught unaware by the sudden shower walked briskly by. They too passed with a hostile stare.

“Jesus, what?” Nina said out loud, facing her palms upward. “Don’t look at me like I took a shit on your carpet!”

Gretchen bit her lip anxiously, “Go ahead, alienate your neighbors, lassie.”

“Man, I don’t give a shit. That schoolyard-eyeing-me bullshit won’t work on me,” Nina frowned. When she turned, she bumped into the static stare of another face, startling her and Gretchen out of their wits.

“Jeeesusss,” Nina exclaimed again, holding her hand to her chest.

Mrs. McLaughlin chuckled heartily to Nina’s embarrassment and surprise.

“Oh, I’m not that good just yet. I still have to buy my wine,” the estate agent joked back.

Gretchen burst out laughing, but Nina was still reeling from her inappropriate exclamation right in the stately dame’s face. And a dame she was, Mrs. Laughlin. Even to an astute academic, billionaire’s ex, like Nina, the Oban native who sold her the house held a regal air. She reminded Nina of the late actress Grace Kelly.

“I’m so sorry! You scared the life out of me!” Nina apologized while her friend was still lame in the legs from laughter.

“No worries, Dr. Gould. I’m a refreshing variety of atheist, contrary to the locals here,” she smiled and ushered the two ladies from the sweeping wetness that sprayed lightly onto the porch. “Come claim your abode, Dr. Nina Gould. This house was built just for you!” Mrs. McLaughlin threw her sales-pitch voice like a game-show host as the two women entered the house through the creaking main door. Impeccably dressed in her red, tapered suit and not even one make-up smudge in this weather, McLaughlin looked back one more time at the gathering outside growing to a small crowd. She narrowed her green eyes at them.

“Sold.”