IV
Darkness. Glow of camp fire reflecting off a piano black car body. Quiet music emanating from the car, or rather the speakers of the car, from the radio to which a small black box was wired to. This box was from a far different era than the car or even that brand new radio in it. And at the moment this little box was the source for this timeless and yet out of time music.
The camp fire built at a safe distance from the car was also reflecting off the spotless chrome hubcap. The hubcap also reflected the people who had lit it up. Five figures sitting around it on the ground, one of them wrapped in an old dirty blanket.
This was good. Only her, the fire and music. So wonderfully alone, and also not. He too was here, along with these people. Some of them were connected to her by their past. Others would never be connected to her, not even by their future. She especially meant the person sitting opposite her, being another upper point in this pentagram and to whom she was another upper point. She smiled, this time on the inside, that everywhere she looked, she saw figures like this, like a special case of the tetris phenomenon.
The girl in black gazed at her black fingernails and the fire reflecting off them. This eternal unfathomable dance of the flame which had lasted for thousands and millions of years and probably lasted at least as long a time. And the fire danced only for itself, alone, in many places at once. Somewhere with supple grace, hiding powerful forces underneath like ballet. In other places it let the Latin rhythms fly high in a perfect storm of passion and temperament totally uninterested in who got in its way or what the consequences of that were. Eternal dance in eternal change. The fire cared not whether it had any audience or not. Just like Sisyphos keeps rolling his stone, so does fire keep dancing, without any option for something else.
“They started producing these cars for KGB in the seventies. Altogether maybe a little more than six hundred. Most were destroyed after the collapse of the Soviet Union to avoid them being sold to private citizens. But some survived.”
The young man with a few days worth of beard on his face who had been so bright and animated during daytime was now talking in a serious, almost detached voice. He added wood to the fire, causing a puff of burning embers rise into the night. To the silent pleasure of Mariann.
“The cars were equipped with a 5.53 liter motor off Chaika. With about 200 horsepower, allowing it to travel nearly 250kph. Chaika was much heavier so that also had a slower top speed. But for the Volga this was possible, especially without the concrete slab for ballast in the back. With the ballast 200 was the best it could. The concrete slab had another purpose though. That V8 had a lot of torque and Soviet tire technology was non-existent. Without the slab, the car would light up the rear tires and leave most of the tread on the pavement. Usually this V8 was fitted to 3 ton trucks, not passenger cars.”
“Carl.” A quiet voice opposite Mariann said. “I’m sorry I yelled at you earlier. I still haven’t gotten over it.”
Her voice sounded sad, on the border of tearing up and crying. As if the person she was about to speak of was her unseen conversation partner.
“I could see that.” Carl said.
“Tom hid it from me. His parents knew of it. Both of how far his illness had progressed and also that he was hiding it from me. His sister, his friends. All of them hid it from me, and not even as a request from him. Totally on their own accord.”
“Why?” Aliis suddenly asked.
The girl in black felt it rude. Not towards the speaker but towards the silence to whom too little time was left for it to take effect and seep into people’s emotions.
“Because of this.”
She pulled back her sleeves and stretched out her arms revealing to the light of the campfire injection marks and two darker scars on either wrist.
“Tom picked me up essentially from the outside the door of the asylum. I was once addicted, and then I tried to escape it using the only way I could think of. One of the two succeeded. Not bad, huh?”
Tears started to roll down her face.
“They were all afraid of me killing myself, should I learn of it. Afraid of that in turn shortening his life even further. And Tom also did not want me to kill myself. In either case, whether he was afraid of it or not, he did not trust me.”
Mariann stared at the girl with thin frail forearms who had now fallen silent and repeatedly wiped her tears. The girl hid the lines and permanent scuffs on her arms back under the fabric. More as a deliberate move than a reaction to people’s gazes.
“You know what he did?”
Maris pushed a letter into the fire, then pulled it back and watched the flame travel downwards while eating up the paper.
“He left me, saying that he had to go and visit a friend who just got out of hospital, for two weeks. While he was away, he managed to send me three letters. Like a fairy-tale, right? He died the same night he had mailed the last letter. He even promised to return in three days and customize my bike as well.”
She dropped the burning letter into flames.
Nobody broke the silence this time, nor during the previous pause. This was good. It seemed that people had been quick to learn the importance and magic of silence. It seemed so, she could not say to herself that it indeed was so. She felt she was too optimistic about these people in general. And then there was a voice which pushed all her thought back into the manure they had risen from while sitting by this fire and listening to the music and people.
“You you all know why I’m on the run?” Carl asked. “I’m on the run, because I’m on the run. I’m on the run because of this radio. Because messing with the drug addicts...”
“You sold them cement.” The girl in black said quietly but decisively.
It felt like an automatic reaction. As if there was some kind of mechanism inside her which could not tolerate lies or incorrect statements so close to her heart. Something which had to respond as soon as soon as possible, without allowing her a chance to alter or control it.
“I’m sorry?”
“You sold them cement.” Mariann repeated in a louder voice.
“Yes. You knew about it?”
The young man who had been a happy go lucky person in sunlight had turned into a misshapen inhuman mass crushed under the weight of conscience and honesty.
“Yes. You may not remember me. My best friend wanted to try on a bet. It was her first time using. And she lost the bet. I did not agree. Not even when I saw that gray powder you were selling. In the end she managed to convince me. She tried more, I tried less. I came back, she did not. While she was being buried, my chances to survive were still below 10 per cent.”
“I’m sorry.” Carl said.
“No, you’re not.” Mariann replied. “I can clearly see that. Whether your actions cause one or two more people to shuffle off this mortal coil does not faze you the slightest. I am too good at observing people to not see that. After her death I gave up on colors. Arianne was my only friend. And after her passing… Well, here I am.”
“Indeed.”
Silence again fell round and above the people sitting by the fire. Cool calm and silence. Rising flames being the only company for people contemplating in the cool of night. Discussing these past events, setting in line all secrets from their pasts. To reveal them when the right moment came, when the order or chance fell to them. One could feel, see and read people’s thoughts from the flames. How the fire burned stronger when people with heavier and deeper secrets revealed them. At least that’s what Arianne’s grandpa had told her and taught her long ago. How he had guided her in secretive knowledge for the correct understanding and utilization of which his blood had strayed way too far from nature.
Aliis, wrapped in a carpet, burnt a dried flower in the flames. She looked around at people who had focused their gazes on the flames. Maybe thinking how pleasantly warm it was there. Under the fiery logs in those gray ashes. Warmer than anybody could think or even imagine. Burning.
“Remember that big building by the gas station, with lots of burnt candles, dried flowers and wreaths? I am here because of that building. My boyfriend had a bike and we rode. He wanted to show me how fast his bike was and how good he was at keeping it under control.”
She sighed, pulling the blanket tighter.
“We rode in circles around the gas station and nearby. At one point he asked me to take his his helmet as I had none and it was becoming really difficult holding on. However this made him lose his focus as he did not notice the car which had turned into the gas station. He managed to dodge it but despite braking he could no longer stop nor avoid the wall of that warehouse. So we hit it flat.”
“When did that happen?”
This time, the question by Carl did not seem at all out of place.
“About a year ago.”
This was all she said, hiding her eyes behind the dirty blanket. She wiped her tears and with her other hand let go of another dried flower as the flames burning it were now reaching her fingers, desiring to involve them too into their fiery dance.
Silence again fell between the figures sitting around the fire. Well, not a complete one, as it was impossible to get rid of the sounds the fire made, the flames rushing, the burning wood crackling, people breathing and other sounds of the forest. Under the cover of night, the weak creatures of the daylight had no ground to go to, only those did which had grown accustomed to the night and were able to let the monsters of the other world not hurt them.
The girl in black was fully aware that while they were sitting here by the fire, in the darkness the night creatures with dozens of eyes and tentacles extended their limbs trying to fight this new power. This very same thing which forced them into their dark crevices in the ground when night ended and did not let them out until a new night begun.
“What’s your secret? Huh?” Carl suddenly asked, turning towards the young man sitting between him and Mariann, the one driving the car. “You’ve been silent until now. We want to know.”
The young man named Marco was still silent. His solemn gaze focused on the fire clearly spoke of his lack of desire to open any drawers in his chest of past.
“Well? Say something!”
“Carl.” Mariann’s quiet voice full of apathy started. “You have no chance nor right to demand him nor anybody else anything. A person will open themselves when they’re ready. You probably have other skeletons in your closet as well. We are not demanding you to knock over this closet of yours.”
“Carl, there was something else you said about this Volga.” Maris said, “How it transfer from person to person.”
“Oh yes.” Carl suddenly looked animated as if the girl’s question had returned him some of his daytime mood.
“There is an old urban legend. That there is an old car, black as the night itself and yet totally unremarkable in the world around it. And it is in constant use. The car moves from person to person, according to it’s own wishes which nobody can influence. The car, the keys to it and the title are all a singular unit. And then a person drives the car. As he must use it for gathering other tired souls in order to restore the will of life to them.”
“The car is driving the person and not the person the car.” Mariann said quietly. “The car picks a person and drives them, regardless of what the person wants to do, it alters the person’s free will. Where ever the person wants to go to, in the end he will reach only one place.”
“Where?” Maris asked, breaking a long silence that fell after Mariann’s words.
However after her question, heavy frightening silence fell again. Perhaps even she did not realize that allowing it to fall also allowed the darker sides of everybody’s fantasy to scare them.
“To the Lake of Forgetfulness.” Mariann continued. “Some refer to it by the Latin definition Lacus Oblivionis. A place where everything dead ends up. It it not Hell nor Heaven in the common sense, it is a world similar to the one in Franz Kafka’s writings. Looking at it from our side, one might call it the Zone, a hell. Because life there is more unbearable than life here. More boring, more dull. In reality it is not even a lake, it is a separate level of existence, which touches our realm in places where bodies of water a located.”
“All dead people go there?”
“All of them.” Mariann repeated. “Regardless of whether they dig their own graves or if somebody says funerary rites over them or not. The end result is the same.”
People fell silent once more, observing the flame rising above the logs. Imagining how pleasantly warm it would have been under there. To be small, to stand in that white ash and look up to see how the flames were flowing and ebbing over the wood. Heading upwards while also sending a warm draft downwards.
“Lake of Forgetfulness allows us to let go of all our doubts we have with death and the dead. In some sense, it allows us to say what has been left unsaid.” She paused for a moment. “I don’t know what will happen once we get there. But I also know that the Volga will also bring us back from there. Deciding on its own where it lets us off and where it finds a new driver.”
“That is a nice addition to the legend.” Carl said. “Did you come up with it yourself?”
“That too is part of the legend.” The girl in black replied. “You may have heard a different version, I have heard this one. The legend and it’s aspects are in constant flux. However, the problem does not lie in the multitude of variations but instead in where reality ends and fiction begins.”
“How do you know all this?” Maris asked.
“From urban legends, like Carl told. But I have spent a lot more time walking on the side of the road. This car is a part of the cultural strata of the road.”
She fell silent once more, remembering why she was here, why she was on the side of the road. The reason for it all. Arianne’s death, that was only an origin. Her main reason was that she wanted to find the right car, with the right people whose destinations was the right one: the Lake of Forgetfulness.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“There are different cars in different countries and their purpose is also different. Old stories told of black stage coaches pulled by blind black horses, in which the devil himself rode to find nighttime travelers he could bring to hell. Later, in the Eastern Block, there stories were replaced by stories of NKVD and KGB agents driving around in black ZILs, ZISs, ZIMs, Chaikas and Volgas who kidnapped people to fill their enemy of the state quotas and practice torture.
“Outside Soviet Union and also after the fall of the Soviet Union, there were legends of satanists riding in black German luxury cars looking for people to sacrifice to Satan and to do all sorts of other depraved things to before.
“In English-speaking countries people were accosted by either Men in Black or phantom social workers. In Britain they rode black Jaguars and on the other side of the ocean they had either black fleet vehicles at least a few decades old or black pursuit vehicles which have only recently fallen out of use. Used primarily by law enforcement and intelligence communities.
“These are the stories and legends people tell at night while long haul trucking. Trying to keep both themselves as well as the hitchhikers awake. Or people end up telling stories like these by campfires just like we are doing here right now. Nobody knows where it started nor where it will end. And nobody needs to know. It just is.”
“So you’re saying there are other vehicles like this?” Maris asked.
“I’m not saying anything. What you believe is up to you, I’m only telling you of the stories I’ve heard. Even about this car, one cannot be sure. What is real and what are only legend are two separate things. They always have been. At the same time the line between what is real and what is legend is almost invisible.”
Silence fell again. If there had not been fire to embrace them with its warmth, then the cold would have also fallen. Dance and embrace at the same time.
“I have heard a different version of this legend. On some birthday party some time ago. In essence it was like the story Carl told, but it also had info about the past and the origin of the Volga.” Marco said.
“How does that one go?” Mariann asked, even surprising herself with this uncontrolled outburst.
“Some youngster said that several years ago he was looking for an experienced man for his very rare car. And while visiting various shops, he heard the story about a some young man and his girlfriend in black who had an old Volga and tons of spare parts they wanted to use for modifying the vehicle. Lights, engine parts, new and used spare parts. According to him, by tracing these stories, one could put together the chain of modifications and perhaps even find the vehicle itself.”
“Did these parts also include Porsche racing brakes?” Carl asked.
“I don’t know. I head this story approximately a year ago. Sometimes the car was added tons of bracing to make the body stronger, sometimes the rust was taken care of and in the end it got an expensive respray. In any case it was considered a solid vehicle whenever it popped up. The youngster could also add that if a car like that would continue to be modified then at one point nobody could tell what it originally was. More of a Western car than an ancient legacy.”
“That could have been any Volga.” Carl said. “There are plenty of ordinary Volgas on the road, especially in Southern parts.”
“That I think was the greatest curiosity that it was in no ways ordinary.” Marco continued. “The engine itself was reportedly not the Soviet original unit but instead something off an American car with similar age, engine weight and dimensions. And it was coupled to a strange-looking automatic transmission.”
Silence flowed again around the people, the fire and that black car nearby. Darkness in sound, accompanied by visuals. Allowing the imagination of every one of them to crawl out and start influencing them. Mariann thought it more than plausible, considering the amount of information they had exchanged, each of them was likely trying to put all the information together, to make connections and create interpretations. In this silence, she could almost imagine the thoughts of other people and the one conclusion everybody would eventually reach: no single story was true, but each of them had aspects to them that were true.
“It is beautiful here.”
It wasn’t even important who said it, probably one of the girls. Mariann knew that it was not her. But she was not certain whether it was one of the other two girls sitting around the fire, or one of the girls sitting in the thoughts of the people sitting around the fire. In the end, nothing else mattered beside this singular moment of thought and silence right here.
V
Marco leaned harder and harder onto the gas pedal, forcing the car move faster and faster. Ordering the engine to give more and more, which it did with playful ease. As a result, under these overcast morning skies, the Volga flew on the empty highway quite a bit faster than the signs recommended by every smaller or even bigger intersecting road. The bricks had been left behind on their last stop. Around a warm pile of smoking ash. Only few broken pieces were still left in the trunk and moved around in there.
The driver focused on the road outside the windscreen covered in road dust. He also noticed a flock of black birds flying high under the clouds in the distance. A glance in the rear view mirror allowed him to see three heads above the rear seat. And also there was a pale arm in a black loose cuff resting on his side. He knew the girl next to him was not sleeping, not now and not during the night by the fire. She just stared in front of her in silence.
“Is there anybody else we need to collect?” Marco asked, trying again to make his voice low and soft.
“No.” Mariann replied. “The car is full, there are no vacant seats. Also, you yourself cannot decide who you give ride to, the car is influencing your free will. Whatever you decide, you cannot be sure it was decided by your own free will. For example, that.” She pointed at the large compass glued on the dashboard. “This needle is pointing towards South. It has been pointing towards South since you got the car, probably. And yet it is almost certain that we have not been traveling directly towards South.”
“Yes, it is all so complicated.” Marco said.
“it depends to whom.” Mariann said, directing her gaze out of the window once again.
“Are we there yet?” Carl’s sleepy voice asked from the back.
“No.” Marco replied quietly.
“Depends on where you want to get to.” The girl in black said.
“To that dream… thing… lake.”
“No, we are not there yet.”
“Well, we have driven for several hours. When will be be there?”
“Before the fuel runs out. It’s like a sacrifice to a god.” Mariann said.
“Volga as a god.” The young man in the back seat mocked. “Does that not sound like adding to the urban legend?”
“How else did the legend came to be other than one person telling to the next and changing something, and after several retellings and many people believing it as fact, it finally became real.” Marco said, this time not so quietly.
“So much for wanting to entertain people when on the road.” Carl continued to grumble. “You tell them a funny tale about road trips and then some satanic comes and turns it into a god damn religion.”
“What are you yelling about? Let me sleep!” Maris said sleepily.
“Satanic is an adjective.” Mariann said quietly.
Marco was unsure whether anybody beside him and the girl saying it felt the hurt tone in her voice.
“These two here believe that the car is here only because there are enough people who know and believe in the urban legend and whose spirit power gave birth to it.”
“I did not mean it like that.” Marco replied, by now he was pretty indifferent what people thought of his voice or ideas.
“I meant that it became a truth in their heads. They started to see that car in every pair of bright lights speeding down the road at night, in every pair of bright tail lights.”
“Although the other option may be true as well, there is no reason for getting agitated.” The girl in black said. “If it is not true, then we only have a rare car, especially talented storytellers and imaginations too powerful for out own good. We have it good here, better than in the room we came from. However should it be true, that there exists some sort of critical mass of thought power, a collective unconsciousness able to create an artifact such as this Volga, then… the real world is unbelievably more complicated and mysterious than we had known until know.”
“Reality does not work this way.” Carl replied.
“You doubt.” A small smile floated on Mariann’s lips. “Your consciousness believes one thing and subconscious believes another.”
“Psychoanalysis is not much of an empirical science, especially if one tries to do it in a moving Volga.” Maris muttered.
“The fact that something cannot be scientifically proven, does not mean it is not real.” Mariann said. “A psychoanalyst would require the patient’s permission to find the childhood conflict from which all originates. However we do not have such a permission, not on this trip.”
“Whatever.” Carl muttered. “I might as well argue with a true believer.”
“True. At the same time, we are all believers, just that we believe in different things. And I am pretty sure that due to me believing, my world is way richer than yours.”
“Has anybody even understood, why we have to go there, to that lake? We have a free will to ride where we want to, wherever Marco is taking us.”
“There is heavy rain ahead.” Marco said.
“So what?” Maris asked.
“Nothing, just that… I have never before noticed how beautiful a cloud from which rain is falling looks from a distance.”
He glanced at his side, to see that the girl in black had noticed the same thing he had and was still mesmerized by it.
On this highway between the grasslands, the traffic seemed much denser than elsewhere. They could see at least a few other cars which were definitely traveling slower than they were. The oncoming traffic was something that did not let them forget that they were still driving in the real world. That somewhere out there, there still was the life each of them had left behind, their former friends, former acquaintances. Former relatives, their former world.
The road slowly curved away from the rain. Marco however slowed down and turned right, onto a gravel road in the forest, picking up speed on the bad road.
“What is this then?” Carl asked, looking at the surrounding trees and a wide arrow straight gravel road cut straight through the forest. The rain had just fallen on it.
“A shortcut.” Marco said. “A shortcut where we need to get to.”
“A shortcut? Okay.”
“Looks like an access road into some military base.” Aliis muttered in a sleepy voice.
“True.” The girl in black said.
“You know this place?” Carl asked from the girl to his right.
“No, but I know the general layout, my boyfriend...” She stopped, but her gaze spoke volumes.
“...Was interested in them.” Mariann said.
“Yes.” The girl in the back seat nodded with tears in her eyes.
“Meaning we’re going to a military base?” Carl asked.
“Why is it even important where were going?” Marco asked suddenly. “We’re just going, just as we have been doing since the day before yesterday. We’re just going.”
“Yes.” Carl repeated. “We’re just going.”
VI
Volga with a non-existent suspension kept riding on a potholed gravel road. Each time it hit a new pothole, it displaced the water in it and threw it into the plants and bushes on the sides of the road, some also ended up on the sides of the vehicle. Just like the car, so shook the people inside the car, but this did not mean that the vehicle would slow down before the pot holes. The noise of the approaching 8 cylinder engine scared several rooks off the lower firs first into the skies above and then escaping in the same direction as the moving car.
At least that’s how it seemed in the thoughts of the girl with the long dark skirt, at least in those moments when one singular mental image was no replaying in her mind’s eye again and again. And now that she thought of it, it came up again. Her feeling how a sharp change in the angle of the bike wants to force the sandwich she had in the morning out of her system. How she feels nauseous, how she wants to dig her nails into the stomach of the person sitting in front of him to force him to stop.
And the next moment ecstasy from speed and fear of death have removed all earthly troubles from her mind and again she is traveling nearly a hundred kilometers an hour 20 centimeters above pavement, knowing that if her partner makes one stupid mistake then the both of them will pay dearly for that. And yet at the same time there is the feeling that the chance for such a mistake does not exist. There is nobody to stop them, nobody to suddenly come and they will continue to forever drive circles around the gas station and that old car wash.
And then suddenly, in the middle of an ecstasy bordering on fainting, a helmet appears in her field of view which the young man is handing her. She puts it on and fastens the strap. Then, just as she has managed to put her hands around the young man, she sees a black Volga in the corner of her eye. Too late they manage to dodge it, heading back towards the main road. A feeling of something pulling her out of some imaginary circle, centrifugal force. And then the bike slips and the both of them are sliding fast towards the wall. Darkness. And then a black Volga rises from it.
Suddenly she opened her eyes, in her vision there still lingered the black vehicle shining in sunlight, she felt the heavy bandages on her left leg running down from her hip to the ankle. She pushed herself away from the side window and glanced out the windscreen. From behind the glass constantly being wiped she saw the gray sky and a road turning right in the distance. The shaking of the car now also entered her consciousness, as he head gently hit the side glass which in turn made her focus on hearing, which brought to her the rain hitting the metal roof of the car.
“How far are we?” She asked, still groggy.
“Can’t remember anymore.” Maris sitting on the other side of the young man said. “Concrete posts some of which still carried strips of barbed wire disappeared into the trees some time ago.”
“The outer perimeter.” Aliis sighed quietly, she thought quietly enough to not be heard by others.
“See that?” Mariann asked, pointing at the black metal tower rising above the trees.
“Yes. What is it?” The young man at the back asked. “Something that can be climbed?”
“Something that could be climbed.” Aliis muttered quietly.
She was again resting her head against the side glass, this felt better. The cold cool of it and crisp strikes of the rain landing on glass.
“It’ll collapse, it’s probably all rust.” Marco said, trying to keep the car under control.
“We once tried to climb a tower like that.” Aliis said barely audibly. “Half of the rungs on the access ladder came loose. Rust.”
“So you came down pretty fast from there?” Carl asked.
“And not at all voluntarily.”
Marco smiled for a second, imagining two people fall from a rusting steel watchtower under a gray sky.
“It would be nice to climb up there.” The girl sitting next to Marco mused, eyes still fixed on the tower standing under the rainy sky.
“Getting down might be difficult.” Macro said, immediately earning a displeased look, obviously because he interrupted her dreamscape.
“How far is it?” Maris asked. “I’m getting tired of this shaking.”
“We’re still in the security zone.” Aliis said. “this is followed by a clearing with another security post. And then we will reach the core area of the base.”
“Can you give some more information? Just to distract us from this shaking and rocking.”
“There are no silos here. Only one base had silos and that’s located in the Southern forests. Four silos, most of them filled with water.”
“Silos? This is a missile base?” Carl asked.
“A nuclear missile base.” The girl behind Mariann said. “The missiles here were aimed at London and other Western and Central Europe. They had a range up to 2200 kilometers. This road here is pretty deteriorated, be it from frequent use or problems with the subsurface. All Russian military bases had the same build quality. Five meters wide and depending on location two to three kilometers long. Designed to be strong enough to carry the weight of those massive transporter-erectors.
“We’ve reached the second checkpoint.” Marco interrupted the uncomfortable silence.
“We’ll reach it soon. There should be another open field here, paved with large thick concrete slabs, formerly used to park trucks, choppers and other equipment.”
Aliis fell silent, feeling herself deviate from what she wanted to be here, a small and quiet girl.
As if to validate the words of the girl in a long dark skirt, the car covered in yellowish gray mud rolled onto a large lot paved in concrete slab. It stopped, still idling with a low rumble. Rain was still falling, heavy downpour sounded like steel nails when it fell on the roof and the car glass. The sound was especially prominent on the roof, as if instead of rain, hail was falling. However inside the car, silence had found a place for itself.
“We can go no further than this. At least with this car.” Aliis said. “We could continue with an off roader, on a bicycle or on foot. The tower is a few hundred meters from here, near the buried control station. And all other structures should also remain.”
“How do you know all this?” Maris asked.
“I said I’m familiar with the general layout.” Aliis said, but there was also another feeling gnawing inside her. “Also I have a feeling that I’ve been here before. Maybe I have not approached this place from this side, but still, I may have been here.”
“Shall we wait until the rain ends?” Carl asked.
“You can try that.” Mariann said. “But I think the Man will first reach the Law before this rain ends.”
“I don’t know what this means, but I’d rather wait it out in here.”
“I won’t.” Aliis opened the door and stepped out. Others followed her.
She stood in the rain, looking at the water which had made many shallow puddles in the minute recesses on the concrete slabs. Small ponds, for some maybe even small seas, grass and shrubs growing out from the cracks between the slabs,
Aliis started walking to a small rocky footpath leading into the forest. She cared not for the rain, the only thing she now cared for was whether she was right, whether she had really been here before. As she got closer to the area where the concrete lot ended and the forest began, she saw that the it wasn’t really a footpath but instead an old vehicle path, of which only one side of the track was still in use. She stopped and lowered herself down at the start of the footpath, running her hand across the shrubs and grass growing out of the middle of between the tracks. She could still see patches of dry concrete and pavement under the grasses. She got up again and continued along the path. On her right side an overgrown ditch full of small trees, on the other side young trees one could have broken down with the Volga probably. Thus she hadn’t been correct thinking that one could not pass with a car.
She continued walking, somebody else could come and tell her if she was right about the small trees. If Carl was right, then breaking through with a car should not have been a problem. At least the trees sheltered her from most of the rain, although considering she was already soaked through from stepping into a downpour this was of little consolation. However this would soon end, as she started to once again see gray sky from between the trees. She could also see the layers of rain in the distance, which shaded the whole world in blue-gray colors.
In the end, she got out of the patch of forest and reached another much larger field. This place had a much darker concrete with more marks of it having been in heavy use. There were broken up pieces, shards missing, rebar showing. She decided to stop and wait for the others.
She had been correct. As she saw three people and a black Volga emerging from the woods.
She continued onward from some distance finally stopping again in the middle of a circle made of metal plates of different sizes which extended out from the middle like a halo of the Sun.
“What is that?” Maris asked, keeling to take a closer look at the plates.
“Launch anchor for the SS4 ballistic missile. And that thing over there.” She pointed at a hill not far from them. “Is a pantsir. Warhead storage building.”
“So where’s the lake?” Carl asked, having reached them and now pushed rainwater out of his hair.
Aliis said nothing, only gazed at the young man who had asked the question. There was nobody to answer his question, at least she thought so, as Aliis was now heading towards the warhead storage.
Mariann looked at the forest in the distance, which due to the rain was no behind that same gray shear curtain which partly melted together the forest and the sky. Marco however whose job was to bring the car along still looked longingly back towards it. Outside it the rain falling on metal was barely audible, but this was mostly due to the heavy gray noise the downpour was making all around them. He did not like the rain, rain was wet, and cold. He felt like getting back in the car and waiting it out. But for some reason, others did not mind the rain so he also tried his best to follow suit.
“The lake?” Mariann asked, as a complete surprise to Aliis. “The lake is within yourself, we only came on the bank of it..”
She closed her eyes, still standing facing the derelict lands and the fields beyond it. She then started to look around, as if looking for something, finally noticing the metal tower above the trees.
Aliis was also looking at it, almost knowing the thoughts in the head of that girl in black. Those same thoughts she had expressed previously in the car. Despite that, she felt that there was no point in repeating the story about trying to climb it being a bad idea. But one thing was certain: she had been here before. This tower made her remember everything that had happened here. And that long pillar stretching out of the tower horizontally about a fourth of the way down from the top was an especially painful reminder. She started walking after Maris towards shelter from the rain.
“I’m sorry, but now, even I’m not understanding you.” Marco said.
“You’ll see.” Mariann did not turn herself towards the people. “We need that emotionally frail girl...”
“Aliis?”
The girl named stopped and turned towards people, focusing again on their conversation.
“Yes. She’s the only one who can lead us underground.”
She retreated a couple of steps as if she was standing before an invisible wall and then turned to stand with her side towards the other people.
“But you must excuse me now, as the tower is calling out to me.”
Aliis started walking again, trying to make sense of what Mariann meant by her words. Was that merely finding a physical entrance, or did it include something else as well. Like navigating the tunnels and then finally exiting into some other place. Sure, she knew the place one could access the underground parts. But that was all. And that also reminded her of her boyfriend, that cherry red bike and their unbelievable night in that shelter that she had still not gotten to. Despite the rain, she could still sort of hear the conversation.
“This is quite a stupid activity.” Carl muttered, “chasing ghosts.”
However since there was nobody who could or even wanted to reply to him, he too started walking after Aliis, although his attention was grabbed by Marco running after Mariann who has heading towards the black steel tower.