The Quest for Valhalla

Chapter 14

Sam was home alone, worried about Nina. He was more worried about Nina’s obsession with her new friend. After the two women had returned from the restroom at The Tower, the entire atmosphere had changed. Even the way they spoke to one another was more personal, more intimate. The juvenile part of Sam imagined all sorts of bonding between the two very attractive ladies taking place in the restrooms while he was having a healthy helping of Pavlova that was about to introduce him to a life of insulin shots. The manner in which they behaved told him that they had shared something he was excluded from. His intuition and ability to read people from years as an investigative journalist taught him to see such things at a glance.

It was clear that Nina was even more bent on getting to the bottom of Val’s involvement in the museum lootings, while Val appeared a bit more relaxed than she had been after she resurfaced after the robbery. He did not want to ask Nina about it.

Convinced that the priceless gift she was given was stolen from some hoard in one of the robberies, Nina did not want to have it on her person. Her paranoia (or vigilance, as she referred to it) told her that Val may well have given it to her so that she could frame Nina for the theft and would call the police, just to get the suspicious historian out of her way. Therefore, she entrusted the piece to Sam for safekeeping until she could find out what it was and where it came from.

When he got home, he placed it in the drawer with his canteens and the two silver alcohol flasks he inherited from his great uncle Harry, the family alcoholic who died, not surprisingly, of a fall. Harry enjoyed fly fishing and drinking. One day, he went fishing at the gorge after a bottle and a half of Famous Grouse and lost his footing. That is how Sam came into owning the two silver flasks.

Bruich was lying on his favorite chair, grooming. Sam told him about Nina’s new friend, but the cat ignored him.

“Don’t ask me to play chess with you again, Bruich. You suck as a roommate,” Sam moaned and fell on the couch with a lit cigarette. He savored every drag of tar that filled his hungry lungs and stared at the ceiling, trying to decide for himself what he really thought of Val Joutsen. As much as he wanted to believe that she was sincere in her friendship with Nina, as much as he played the Devil’s Advocate in the matter, he could not deny that Nina was right about a lot of things. Inadvertently, the smell of her hair in his hands came to mind and he tasted her lips for a brief moment, sending a jolt of electric exhilaration coursing through his body.

“What?” he asked Bruichladdich, who gave him a fixed stare as if he knew what Sam was thinking. “Mind your own business.”

He got up to shake the reminiscence and concentrate on important things as he walked to the kitchen. From the fridge door, he got a beer and decided to help Nina with her investigation. His laptop screen blinded him in the dusk of his living room and he quickly flicked the switch on the desk study lamp. For over two hours, he searched all the sites on archeology, ancient history, museum collections, artifacts and religious iconography.

Too many beers later, he still could not find the flask anywhere on the Internet. Perhaps Nina just had to accept that this was a legitimate gift from Val’s family and not some stolen artifact. Sam felt nauseous and dizzy. Not eating was his weakness and he had once more forgotten to go grocery shopping. The cat was well taken care of in way of food, but Sam neglected himself. All this drinking had made him curious. Sam Cleave always became dangerously inquisitive when alcohol took him. With a silly grin on his face he walked over to the drawer and looked at Nina’s flask.

“I wonder what the men of old drank to deal with missing the scent of their women,” he asked Bruich, but the feline was fast asleep and never heard Sam’s inebriated thought process take form in words. All of a sudden, it was very funny to inspect the antique vial for traces of alcohol. Feeding his curiosity, he removed the cap of the ornate item with quite a bit of effort. Obviously it was very difficult to pry loose after so many years, but he was adamant to find out what was inside. He could feel the weight of the contents shift when he shook the flask, so he knew it contained something. No thought of how putrid any contents of such an old container would be, passed through Sam’s common sense. He gave it a smell and expected the vilest odor, but to his surprise it smelled remarkably like absinthe.

“Hmm… aniseed. Mint? If it was absinthe, it would have that licorice flavor, right Bruich?” Sam asked the slumbering cat. “I know, I know. It could be poison, right?” An unnatural urge to taste the liquid overcame Sam. It was almost magical, a surge of desperate surrender possessed him and even in his intoxication he felt a twinge of warning for the thrall of the substance. Sam’s fingers shivered and he felt genuinely wary of the power that gripped him. He was not one to believe in ghosts and demons, but if there were such things he guessed that this was what an encounter with their terrifying subjugation felt like and it was deeply unpleasant. For a torturous few minutes that stretched into what seemed like forever, Sam felt truly terrified to the peril of his soul at the hand of the supernatural presence that he inadvertently released from the vial.

A cold sigh fell against his forehead and cheek, provoking an unholy shudder from the base of his skull to the muscles in his buttocks. Hair stood on end over every inch of his skin and he felt his heart begin to slow, but his hands could not let go of the silver hell he played host to.

“Now listen up, Sam. You are just drunk, you silly son of a bitch. Snap out of it,” he said out loud to himself. In this he not only coaxed himself into a good bout of skepticism, but also imagined that whatever breed of thing had him by the psychic balls would think him ignorant enough to ignore and go away. Yet, it only tightened its grip on him, gradually spiriting him away to some otherworldly dimension right here in his own living room.

Everything, including his laptop, his beer bottles and his cat, remained the same and still he felt a world removed from it all, caught in some other time-space continuum while witness to this one. In his ears, a surreal hissing began, luring his lips closer to the mouth of the vial while his hands disobeyed him. The hissing got louder, even though there was no sound at all in his home, occupying the entirety of Sam’s mind as his hands lifted the silver artifact to his mouth, eager to quench his thirst and curiosity alike.

As the rim of the container touched his reluctant lips, Sam tried to scream, but no sound escaped him. It lifted, courtesy of his own hands, tipping to pour, when Sam’s cell phone ring tone split the silence in the room and freed him from the power of the spell. With a grateful cry of relief Sam threw the flask aside with repulsion, only too happy to be able to control his own actions again. On the screen, Nina’s name.

“I am getting rid of this fucking flask, Nina! It is evil!” he cried in a hoarse panting voice that alarmed the already nervous Nina on the other side of the phone.

“Listen Sam, put the flask away. I will deal with it when I get back. I just wanted to check in with you, because I need someone to know where I am, in case this turns bad,” she reported, sounding a little rattled.

“Nina,” he said calmly, “where are you?” It dawned on him that she was out on some fool’s errand, chasing after Val.

“I am tailing Val and she just pulled in at Denton House in Newington. Something’s up, Sam. I don’t know what exactly, but she is seriously shaken about something. I will be back as soon as I have found out what she is really involved in,” she said with a bit more restraint.

“Nina, wait for me to get there — for back-up. You cannot take on these people alone and you know it. My god, do you have a death wish?” he tried to reason with the obstinate beauty, but she replied simply that she was just going to speak to Val and all would be well.

“I am on my way,” Sam said, but Nina had ended the call halfway through his response and he was once more left alone in his quiet living room. He shot a hard glance towards the flask on the couch, a feeling of some intelligence coming from it, as if it were watching him, as if it would counter any precaution he would employ to remove it from its wicked power.