The Tesla Experiment

Chapter 19

Nina sat in the dead silence of her guest room. Now and then she could see the flashing light of the lightning manifest through the tiny linear chasms in the iron sheeting where it did not quite come together when fixed to the windows. The whole house was soundproof and though fascinating, she found it decidedly morbid not to be able to hear the thunder or the rain, the howl of the wind, traffic or even just crickets on a quiet night. That was, assuming there were any bugs alive in the dead misery of the abandoned garden. Opting not to try and open a window on this stormy night, she surrendered to the fatigue of travelling she still had not shaken and retired to bed with earphones plugged into her iPod for some sanity from the massive tomb that enveloped her this night.

Everyone had turned in, apart from Sam who took the first watch at the chamber, should Purdue make contact. They had three days — probably less — to make contact with Purdue, ascertain his situation and location, direct him to Helmut Kämpfe to obtain the schematics for Tesla’s death ray by any means necessary and to pulse him back to the chamber in Jenner Manor before the time is up. He checked his watch, finger at the ready on his recording device and he realized a chilling fact.

Day one had just passed.

They had two days left or else they would be arranging a nice secret ceremony, just Nina and him, to mourn their friend and occasional employer. Since Sam had completed his task for the Cornwall Institute he removed the battery from his phone soon after he was picked up by Purdue and Healy. It was better that way, not to be bothered until he had sorted out the conundrum with Lydia and Purdue’s subsequent unintended trip that only escalated the problem. In the dense silence Sam sat wondering if Lydia’s routine experiment really was an accident. She was far too much of a control freak to allow accidents, he figured.

That need slowly crept over him as he watched the minutes passed and his hand sank into his pants pocket, rummaging for his pack of smokes.

“Thank God she lets me smoke in here,” he said to himself as he lit the first of only six left for the night, a most disconcerting feeling. He guessed that Lydia knew exactly what she was doing up until the power cut came. That kind of reaction was not one of a woman in control, but as soon as Purdue had gone up in flames she was calm as a drugged up college girl.

In his boredom he reckoned it would do no harm to reassemble his cell phone, if only to entertain him through what was probably the longest night of the world. He wished Nina could join him down here, but she needed to be fresh and rested in the morning to help Lydia pin Purdue’s likely advancement according to historical incidents. Once he slipped in the phone battery he waited for the device to boot. The small light of the screen was a welcome sight here in the uniform lighting of the basement area that made him feel like a hostage in some desert bomb shelter.

“Of course. Fucking plated to keep the big bad world out,” he scoffed.

The smoke snaked upward, unperturbed thanks to the lack of moving air. Against Lydia’s rules for the night, he stepped out onto the back porch briefly to get a signal. With his back to the yard he could keep his eye on the small window he had forced open. If Purdue showed up in any form of light, the crack in the basement window would reveal it. His phone picked up a signal of three bars. “Good enough.”

Sam’s fag hung loosely between his lips as he pinched one eye shut to shield it from the smoke and he punched in his password.

He retrieved the voicemail, but he hoped that he would be able to hear it with the shattering sound of hail and thunder around him. The first part was a bit hard to hear —

‘This is Albert Tägtgren, the idiot who foolishly trusted you yesterday.’

“What?” Sam winced.

‘You are a coward, Cleave! You don’t even have the balls to pick up the phone, you bastard! I know what you did!’

Sam could not believe what he heard. Why the hell was the Swedish nerd so pissed at him? ‘And you knew I could not implicate you, because then my employers would know that I told you about the storage container and what I saw there. I am going to track you down and we will sort this out, you and I. You can count on that!’

“Holy shit! What are you on about, mate? Jesus!” Sam frowned, dodging the angry lightning before cowering into the kitchen and closing the back door as if he was never there. He closed the small basement window also, recovering the glass with the sheeting he had removed. But there was a bad taste in his mouth about the Tägtgren tirade. His first thought was to call the engineer back, but he was pressed for time to get back inside the manor and it would be rude to wake the man in the wee hours.

With a ripping propensity to sort out problematic things immediately after catching wind of them, Sam was trapped in a soundless, lonely purgatory. He kept mulling around the awful words he was almost sure he heard correctly given the static of the original call and the cacophony of his own environment while listening. But one thing was for sure; Tägtgren was out to get him and it would be wise of Sam to either stay underground until Purdue’s two days had passed. Whether these days passed well or end in tragedy did not change the fact that the engineer had a grudge against him, for what, he did not know.

It prompted Sam to activate his paranoia a little bit more, but he was not about to tell the others about it. They had enough to focus their absolute attention on for the next forty eight hour fame. But adding to Sam’s personal concern was the fact that Lydia did not trust him enough to allow him to leave, unless she sent her guard dog with him. By the looks of her procedures he and Nina had become no more than glorified, well fed hostages until Purdue could return. Only he could absolve them of the possible glory hounding they apparently would perpetrate through the eyes of Lydia Jenner if she let them out without a leash.

Clearly the professor was afraid that Sam would use the footage to claim his own credit on her design, her mastery. Now Nina knew of it too, which Sam felt amply guilty about. Lydia would also do everything to keep Nina close, lest she wrote a book on it or use the schematics Sam recorded to steal Lydia’s fame.

On the other hand, Sam figured, the bitch would die soon and she was frail enough to perish for the slightest reasons. “Oh my God, Sam, you are John Christie and this is 10 Rillington Place!”

“It is?” Nina asked from a few feet away, giving Sam a tremendous start.

“Thank you, Nina. Healy would have to chuck these trousers now,” Sam gasped.

Nina had a good giggle at the simile and bummed a smoke from Sam.

“I can’t sleep,” she sighed, blowing out the wonderful poisonous vapor. “This place creeps me out. It is as if the building cannot decide if it wasn’t to be a home or a hospital. Did you see all those drips and medical boxes on the first floor?” Nina shuddered visibly.

“Aye, I must say I agree that this house feels like a giant experiment and we are the mice,” Sam agreed, having another smoke. Nina’s big dark eyes pierced his with a look of frustration Sam knew all too well.

“Thank you, Sam. That fright I gave you just then? I’d say we’re even now.”

“I’m just stating the obvious,” he shrugged.

“But again, you brought me here. Don’t start with shit like how we are mice in a maze bound to get hunted by some fucking cancerous Minotaur and her pet butler, after you promised my life was not going to be in danger,” she whispered frantically in reprimand of him.

“I believe I said this is not a treasure hunt. We’d not be on expeditions with U-boats and caverns and huge Ubermensch bastards chasing us,” he explained.

Suddenly they heard a tremendous clap. Both Nina and Sam jumped. By reflex Sam clicked on his video camera as they both sat spellbound, trying to see or hear the cause of the sound again.

“Was that… Purdue?” she whispered.

“Don’t know. Listen. Do you hear that?” Sam asked. Nina nodded. They both heard a soft hum that fluctuated almost imperceptibly in tone every two or three seconds. Gradually, in the eternity it felt like to Sam and Nina, it grew louder into a deafening shudder of electrical current.

“Purdue?” Nina cried out.

“No use. I think we can only hear him, right?” Sam told her.

A crackle enveloped a faint sound that did not resemble the overlaying buzz. T came softly, grew exceedingly loud for about a second, and waned instantly afterward, yet the hum remained as if still in contact.

“—am, Lyd… Wilhelmstra— no Helmut…” and then came the last words that devastated Sam and Nina.

“So — hungry…”

The hum fizzled into a mere sporadic sputter and then the silence smothered them, feeling a hundred fold deader than before. Nina wept.

“Was that him? Was that a message? Did we successfully make contact?” they heard Lydia’s thick voice approaching among the squeak of her wheelchair. “I heard that clap up in my room. By God, it takes forever to get down here without Healy!”

“Where is Healy?” Sam asked.

“Gone out for a few hours to meet a friend. I rather don’t ask. He is probably gay,” she shrugged nonchalantly. “Sam! Did you get that on video?”

“I did, aye.”

“Please let me see. Let me hear him,” she smiled. Nina was sobbing. Lydia put her stick-like arm protectively around the small slouching historian. “I don’t mean to sound cold, Nina. I am very worried about our friend. But he is resourceful and nothing short of brilliant. He will get back to us. I know it.”

“Lydia,” Nina snapped, “he had better come back or I am pushing your skinny ass into that precious fucking chamber of yours and sending you straight to hell!”

Sam winced at the expected chick fight he would have to break up, but to his surprise Lydia accepted Nina’s threat and just removed her arm from the furious woman. Black smudges stained Nina’s lower lids and her angry eyes were reddened with upset. Lydia did not want to push Sam for the footage, giving Nina a minute. She hoped the historian could appreciate that the professor did not hasten to see the testament to her genius for her sensitivity to Purdue’s plight.

“I love him too, Nina. This is not half as selfish as you might think. But I am too fatigued to lock horns with you right now. Do not mistake my equable demeanor as acceptance of your hostility,” she warned with gritty confidence, “even less as recoil.”

Nina ignored the reprimand for now. She was too distraught.

“Now, Sam, please let me see the footage,” Lydia asked politely, wheeling her way to the journalist’s side. Nina grabbed another of Sam’s cigarettes, but he did not mind this once, given how dismayed she was.

As he replayed the transmission to Lydia, Nina could not bear hearing Purdue’s voice again. To her he sounded like an EVP from a ghost hunting show. Her former lover, her close friend and protector, Dave Purdue, was now reduced to a distant electronic voice phenomenon.

“Nina, do you not understand what we have achieved here?” she asked sincerely.

“I get it, Lydia. I fucking get it! But do you understand that Purdue might be trapped in a violent world alone, without any help, while you sing hymns to your precious fucking Tesla?” Nina shrieked, gesturing with her cigarette between her fingers.

Lydia had no retort. Dr. Gould was right. Lydia’s efforts were all in honor of Nikola Tesla and his legacy, as well as her own. Nina could see this fact in the professor’s formless eyes and with a flick of the cigarette she stormed off.