Driving the olive drab military truck, Kadri turned onto the street on which the town radio station building was located and parked on the side of the street opposite the building.

The old military truck which Mariann had given her was as bare-banes as can be. Equipped only with the essentials. Cloth bench seat covered with a poorly-fastened carpet of dark brown. Lap belts hanging down to the floor, side windows with cranks, heating onlyu, no AC. But there was a cassette radio, curiously.

The diesel engine made a terrible noise and on a potholed street the car rode very much like an empty horse cart. It also took some tome to get used to the steering feel of a solid front axle.

She had not expected that into that tall yellow wooden fence on the side of the street, not only was there a foot gate hidden but also a wider gate for vehicles. That too mounted flush with the immovable sections. It had been hard to notice even from inside the yard.

She turned off the engine, but did not exit. Instead, she produced the thin notebook containing the various locations which Mariann had given her and proceeded to look them over. While doing this, a plan started to from in her mind, about the order in which to go about and do things. First the radio building and recording the tracks onto the cassette. Then to do all photography sites inside the town. The to go to the Cottage District and change clothes, if possible. She wanted to find some boots at the very least. And then to continue with the rest of the list. At the Cottage District first and then elsewhere. Seemed like a sensible plan.

She exited the car and locked it. Then headed towards the radio station building and the tall metal-framed doors with large glass panes. The entrance was covered by a protruding overhang of the building, creating a large covered porch. The door was unlocked. She opened it and stepped into the empty foyer. Pleasant cool air immediately assailed her. The walls were covered with orange vertical wooden boards, on the floor there was wood fiberboard covered with thick layers or dark red paint. The path most often walked over the many decades were revealed by the paint that had worn off the flooring. The building was deathly silent, not a soul seemed to be present.

On the right she could see the staircase to the upper floor. But before she even made it that far, a grumpy voice stopped her.

“What are you doing here?”

On the right, opposite the staircase was a small dark corner for which there was no light nor a window. The lights in the foyer were also blocked by the walls. And this was Allan Helde’s break room. An old sofa, a coffee table and a shelf with alcohol bottles.

“Mariann sent me. You owe her a favor.”

Kadri opened the satchel on her hip and produced the blank cassette tape in its case.

“I do indeed.” Allan said, getting up from the couch and walking closer.

He was only slightly taller than the girl, His face was covered in a weeks worth of gray beard and his messy hair had the same silvery gray tone. Around him, a cloud hovered smelling of dried sweat, burnt tobacco and stale alcohol.

He took the cassette from the girl and opened the case to see the track list.

“Honestly, I did not thing Mariann would call in her favor in this manner. But a deal’s a deal. It will take some time for me to collect the tracks and record them onto the tape. Come back in the evening please.”

Kadri said nothing further, she turned to walk way but Allan’s voice stopped her again.

“I thought that girl in black sent you for that other matter. You will be returning to her, right? Take this with you.”

Allan stretched out his hand once more, holding another cassette tape, but in a much older casing of cheap black plastic.

“What is it?” Kadri asked.

“It is possible Mariann has forgotten it. But this tape has all the tracks which the old people who have come to my radio shows have wished to hear. The have said that this music awakens something in them, something they cannot explain.”

“Okay, I will pass it on.” Kadri replied.

“I am not sure this is what that girl in black had in mind.” Allan said. “This not the first such favor Mariann has asked of me. It is also not the first time she has sent somebody instead of herself. She sent you here, to get music onto your tape. But she knew, she had to know that she had already requested that other tape from me. Maybe this other tape was really intended for you to listen.”

Kadri said nothing. She took the tape from him and turned to leave.

“In the evening, correct?” She asked.

“When it is dark outside.” Allan replied.

“Copy.”

Outside, everything was sill bathed by the scorching sun. Despite her not spending too much time inside with Allan, at least by her own measure, the olive drab surface of the car was scalding hot. Same for the chrome door handle and the button on it. She had to wrap the trailing sleeve of her top around her fingers to actually open the door in order to escape with no blisters.

She started the engine and having pondered it for a few seconds, pushed the tape into the car radio. After a few seconds, loud electronic dance music with fast tempo and low bass sounds started. She know what it was. Not something she would listen to or would want to listen to. But she had heard it before.

What she did not know however was why Mariann had sent her for this or why would she want her to listen to it. And connected to it was the question how all these elderly townspeople, the village hags included, could listen to such music and derive any pleasure at all from it. Or experience any other positive effects. If this was indeed true, then there had to be some other secret, Something she could not yet see herself.

Kadri turned the car around. She now had an idea where to go next. This wasn’t the first item on her list nor the closest one but she felt that this one was the best to start with.

The car slowly rolled towards the West along a potholed street. The goal was the Western part of the Circle Road and everything located on the side of it. The place they has performed the ritual before meeting the witch and the overgrown back road leading to the abandoned air field. And of course the accident site which had been the first place in the Nameless Town where they had found themselves after reaching this place. Without the slightest idea how they had even made it.

Kadri had not visited either of these places since. She had had no reason to visit them. There was no connection. Even the alleged accident they had all been a part of was more of a dream than a memory. Thus there was no connection with that as well. Never mind meeting Mariann on the airfield and finding the car. And in some sense, Mariann had been correct: in daylight, everything seemed different. Nothing was the same as it had been in the dark of night.

She reached the intersection and turned right, onto the Northern part of the circle road. The diesel engine on the vehicle hit the relatively low rev limiter and after a clunky gear change the car started to slowly accelerate again.

Soon Kadri continued listening to the tape. Even if she had a dislike for the music on it, it was still better than hearing the racket of the old diesel engine. Even better than the music Allan Helde played when he was off the air. Allan did not play everything he had in his music library. During daytime hours, all he aired were the classics of the local popular music from the past both closer and further away. And she had long since grown sick of hearing that kind of music.

She continued driving for a few more minutes. Past the crossing with the railway which did not begin nor end. Past the surface track leading to the dried up Forest Lake which had turned into a mud hole. Visiting and photographing that was also on her list. However slowly inside her, a strange feeling started to rise. Actually not a feeling, instead it was a slow alteration of her consciousness for which she could find no reason nor explanation.

She suddenly depressed the brake pedal fully. All four wheels on the car locked up and the vehicle slid uncontrollably for few more meters on hot soft tarmac. All loose items in the car took flight and ended up under the dashboard in the foot well. She was alone. In the middle of the road. In a summer day under scorching Sun. Her foot still pressed hard on the brake pedal. Head and hands on a thin plastic steering wheel. Music still playing.

She had been hit by a feeling she had never expected. She remembered. She remembered this music. She remembered it as something annoying. But she did remember. And she also remembered that this music originated from a time before she had arrived to the Nameless Town. This was the important part.

Slowly, she raised her head from the steering wheel and took her foot off the brake. The car started to move forward once more.

The story how she, Tiina, Siim, Johannes and Viivika had made it to the Nameless Town was one of the better known urban legends of this place. But she only remembered the second part of it. From driving the car into a ditch and dying, she only remembered waking up in the ditch beside the car. In full health, if one were to disregard that none of them remembered how they drove off the road nor whence they had come from. They knew their own names, the names of the others, but could not remember a single detail from their lives before.

No, even more than that, their life before wasn’t even important any more. All their time here, listening to Mariann’s stories in some stranger’s car and fixing up some stranger’s house in the Cottage District, not a single one of them had raised the question where they had come from nor what they had been doing before arriving here. They had been driving around and looking for the Lake of Forgetfulness. That was undoubtedly a goal and possibly a reason for them to be here. But why. Why was finding the Lake of Forgetfulness this important?

This strange dance music. One one hand, it reminded her that she had had a life before arriving here. And on the other side it made her doubt everything she had held rock solid until this moment of remembrance. Was that the reason these old village folk wished to listen to this music when speaking with Allan Helde about the supernatural events in their lives in one of his radio shows? Because to them too, the music reminded something? Or at the very least, helped to remember?

Continuing onward steadily at about sixty kph, she finally made it to the familiar crossroad where the roads leading to Tontla and Luiga met with the circle road surrounding the Nameless Town. She parked the car on the road to Luiga, on the side of it, approximately the same place the professor had parked on the night of the ritual. She turned the engine off, which also stopped the tape in the radio.

Kadri bent down to get the camera and the satchel which had also flown into the foot well and then noticed that something else had taken flight with her sudden brake. Under the bag, she found a pistol and two magazines. The pistol she immediately recognized as a Russian Makarov. Kadri had no idea how she knew it, but she did. She also probably knew how to handle the pistol, despite being sure she had never before touched any handgun.

This gave rise to another strange feeling inside her. Mariann had given her a two-door off road vehicle. If the front had three seats on a long bench seat, what was in the back? An empty bed? She doubted it.

She jumped out of the car, off the high seat and headed towards the back of it to open the clamshell hatch. There was indeed a bed, but not an empty one. One one side of it there was a spring mattress, about a foot in thickness, stretching the whole length of the bed and half it’s width. On top of it, there was a folded up blanket and also a pillow.

On the other side of the bed there was a low cupboard of unpainted fiberboard, also spanning the entire length of the bed. She was wrong. Only part of it was shelving. Inside it, another car radio with four speakers was built. The last free space between the speaker box and the mattress was filled with firewood, it seemed to be birch.

In conclusion, Mariann had given her a car in which one could spend the night in nature, if need be. This however raised new questions. Had Mariann prepared this car for her exclusively or for somebody else? Was it something she herself had used to spend nights in nature or some secret base? It was difficult to believe that she had used it for such purposes recently, especially considering her giant red convertible.

At the same time, why not? That very same red car was too well-known and eye-catching. It was impossible to use when wanting to take a covert look.

Kadri closed the clamshell and turned around. Now focused on the main reason she had come here.

Having once more browsed the old notebook Mariann had given her, in addition to the list of locations, she also started to notice additional directions. With many of the places, she had not even explicitly mentioned what to take photographs of, instead there was a remark that she herself should find what is important to be photographed.

Even now she clearly remembered what had taken place that night. The place where she had her friends had awoken in the ditch next to a crashed car was further away from here, still. Maybe right behind the next turn in the road. And here too the world looked completely different in broad daylight.

She walked back along the center of the road and stopped in the middle of the wide black macadam circling the Nameless Town. Just across the road, there was the overgrown air field. Oil shale bitumen has grown sufficiently soft in the hot sun to pluck the embedded granite stones out of it.

Kadri got up and looked around. An empty road before her, slowly bending towards right in the distance. An empty road behind her, also with a slight turn. In the same direction, to the left from her point of view. And then two roads terminating with the circle road. And a little gravelly arc between the two roads, to turn from one onto the other. The only connection between the two roads not touching the circular road. The arc curved the same way as the circular road. As if there was no traffic to and from Tontla and Luiga or the Village Dude’s place. Which was just strange. But on this side of the road, the low trees between the two roads were about at the same places she remembered them being in the darkness.

On the other side of the road however, where the air field was, there was something wrong. During the night they had come here with the factory limo driven by Siim and he had parked it on this side of the road, onto a surface road covered in tall grass, running perpendicular to the tall thicket on the side of the road. Mariann had even made a remark about not being able to find the same road in the light.

And now that she was here on her own, during daylight, she saw that it was indeed so. There was the main road. There was the deep overgrown ditch on the side of the road with steep banks. But there was no open area with tall grass. There was no such place on the side of the road. It was all uniform and about three or four meters tall. No road, no possible place for a road nor even a culvert to get over the ditch. There was literally no place one could park a massive sedan in such a way that they could get away later.

Kadri felt that this was something to take a photo of. Direct view from the other side of the road, then on the sector that the arc between the two roads created. A view of the brush and the road towards both the South and the North. Also a photo of the crossroad itself. Of the two ends of the road, the section of the circle road, the small trees and even the car itself standing there. She didn’t even count how many photos she snapped. Seven or eight, definitely ten or less.

Not a single thing to disturb her. Just her and the sounds of the mechanical camera working. She stopped and lowered the camera.

Only her and the sounds of the camera? Something was wrong. Something was very wrong. The birds made no sound, the bugs made no sound. Not even the tree canopies made any sound although she could clearly see them moving in the hot wind. As if the world has stopped and transformed into a theater stage. And she was just silently walking on it.

The next moment fear assailed her. Maddening fear and a desire to escape. To get away from this soundless world. Also suddenly she had a thousand ideas all connected to what Mariann had said about the ritual. She too was connected to it. For her as well, this crossroad was no longer just a crossroad but something else. Did this mean that right now was the moment that something was coming through? Whether living or mechanical.

She rushed towards the car, opened the driver side door and even managed to raised her foot on the thick metal railing under the door when she finally managed to take control of her fear. She had no idea fem where, but a new thought emerged: whatever it was that had frightened her, was that not something she should be photographing?

She turned around and raised her camera, taking a new series of images in all directions. While doing it, she noticed something in her camera that she could not explain, not through the lens nor with her own eyes. In the distance, partly above the road, partly still in the forest and between the trees there was a big ball of fog white as snow.

At least she thought it was a ball of fog. It was clearly white and it seems to have an internal source of light. At the same time it could not have been a ball of light, because although white and bright, it did not blind her. The edges of it were slightly transparent so the forest behind it was visible through them. Kadri set the focus to infinity and adjusted the aperture and exposure to the last limit of taking a photo freehand and then released the shutter.

As if understanding that it had ben photographed, the ball started moving suddenly and while still hovering above the road, it flew towards Kadri at great speed. While it moved she managed to take a few more photos and then had to throw herself on the ground to not have it collide with her. Where the ball of fog flew as it went past her, she could not see. But as she looked around, still lying on the ground, she could not see it anywhere.

She checked that the camera was still intact and then turned herself on her side towards the car to get up. But what she saw then was again enough to freeze her in terror. She could see from under the car, somebody’s thin legs of rust red color. That somebody or something was standing on the other side of the car, at the passenger side door. Both legs had three clawed toes on each foot. It was one thing to describe it, it was whole another to believe what she was seeing. It was the same as to contemplate at night whether that tall shadow being by the corner is really what she is seeing or just a coat hanged up in an unfortunate manner. But here, there was no question. These were somebody’s legs. Somebody two-legged who was not a creature of this earth.

For a moment she thought of raising her camera and taking a picture but she immediately reconsidered. The camera function was loud enough to notify the owner of the legs where she was and what she was doing. She noticed that her focus had faded and during that brief moment the legs managed to disappear. She again looked around her in panic, but could find neither the legs nor their owner anywhere around her.

This offered her enough piece of mind so she could stand up and make these few steps to reach the car.

She opened the front door and climbed onto the seat. She placed the camera on the seat next to her. She did look at the right side of the car nor even the right corner of the windscreen. She started the ignition and she cassette radio continued playing the bass-heavy dance music.

She still hated that music, but right now it was a fresh breath of normality. As if the music was dissolving this strange feeling that had come over her. This weird state of consciousness she had sunken into, in which the world no longer made any sounds. It calmed her. It protected her from all this strangeness unlike any music made on real instruments and with a real soul could.

She turned the key further and the eight cylinder diesel engine started right up. She started driving, still ignoring the right side windows. She did not want to think anything of those long legs nor the tracks they may have left. She did not want to think about the right side of the vehicle nor what could be seen from the right side windows, at least not until she was safely back in the Nameless Town.

She had almost taken a full roll of images. Which meant that she had to change the camera roll. And as she planned to go take photographs of the air field next, and the best way to access the air field was the street of Nether Flight, going back to the Nameless Town was the sensible thing to do.

*

The sun was still blazing hot when Kadri parked her car at the end of the Nether Flight street. The street itself ended quite abruptly with the overgrown wildness of the airfield. On the Northern parallel street, on the side of the airfield there weren’t even any houses nearby this crossroad, only about a hundred meters of roadside brush before the cottage parcels towards the West. There was only a short stretch of street with sidewalks on either side which seemed to dive under the tall grass a little further along into the airfield.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Beyond that spread a uniform field of bleached pale golden grass. There may have been once a concrete wall, barbed wire fence or even a chain link fence separating the airfield from the town, but now none of it remained. Only the fences and hedges of the houses and yards bordering the airfield. Also by now there was no mark of the gates which had once most certainly been right here.

The airfield itself was also quite strange, to put it politely. Considering the age and size of the Nameless Town, it would have been reasonable to assume that the whole airfield was covered in grass, even the strip itself. Smaller planes from World Wars One and Two, especially the Russian made, had no need for paved runways. But the whole airfield was not only a field of grass, instead, a major part of it was a wide and long strip of concrete. The tarmac had almost all been worn away from the surface, leaving only large thick rectangular concrete slabs between the seams of which various plants grew.

According to the drawings she had seen, there was one in Leopold’s bar as well, the air strip extended far beyond the Western arc of the Circle Road, onto the clearly visible grassland beyond the road. North of the crossroads to Luiga and Tontla, a place she had just been to. And the other end of the airstrip should have been where the park and the buildings of the Institute stood. Some of it even when the houses on the air field side of the street in the East stood. Even if the strip itself was not there, part of the whole area should have been.

But in reality there was nothing like it. Or at least nothing like this was visible in the first glance. Both the drawings and the airfield itself supposedly originated from the last World War, when even some of the bombers could manage with unpaved air strips and two and half kilometers of pavement was a wholly unnecessary feature.

Kadri’s fingers moved to turn the engine off but she stopped herself. There was something else. That cassette which Allan had given her and of which she had presumed that it should make it into Mariann’s hand. But by now she wasn’t as sure of it as before. Instead it felt like this was meant for her as well. Whether it made it to her by way of Mariann or Allan, was of no importance.

The Nameless Town and the area surrounding it had some strange aura, This was also present in Tontla, even in the cottage district. On the one hand it felt refreshing and natural and on the other, heavy enough to force a person into slumber. As if the air itself carried at least twice the density as anywhere else. And the locals, even though they did not sense nor even try to make sense of it, had each found himself means to make life bearable in this soup.

And the music recorded onto the audio cassette… she hated it but she could also not give it up. She had listened to it during her trip from the crossroad here, and now, sitting in the car with the engine running and thinking, she was still listening to it. This music was alien. Alien to the heavy air here, not the world itself. Not alien to the time, if she could even put it in this way. As if all other local music was tainted with this strange force, as if it had become possessed just like those bands from outside, just as Mariann had once pondered. But in this dance music with fast beats and low bassline, no such possession was present. And that’s why it felt cleansing, even sobering.

Continuing this train of thought, she reached a fascinating question: what was the goal of this tape? Or of the music the salesman in the market had allowed her to barely listen to. The same one Allan Helde was supposed to record for her by evening. If the dance music pulled her away from becoming one with the world around her, then did the other tape and the other music allow her to fade into the world faster and stronger? Because both aspects had their own clear roles, especially if she wanted to continue in this direction.

She slid onto the passenger side of the front seat and opened the glovebox. Here she had placed the pistol she had found as well as the case for the cassette tape. She opened the case and for the first time took a closer lock at the track list written on the sleeve in rough handwriting. Several names repeating many times. Names that told her nothing but nevertheless sounded ominous. BSE, Concord Dawn, Teebee and some stuff she could not make out, but about which she most definitely wanted to ask later. She put the case back in the glovebox and closed it.

Kadri finally turned the engine off, this also stopped the tape in the radio. She had honed her thought enough and now it was time to get back to work. In Mariann’s notebook, there was an assignment to take a photo of the airfield. However now she felt that this assignment was much more multi-faceted than that. The photo was for Mariann. But for herself there were other things she wanted to find out. Where did the air strip begin? Where did it end? Where did it border or cross the Circular Road? Where were the access roads? Which had come before, the airfield or the buildings standing on the side of it? Where were the airfield buildings? All these questions were something a lone photo from the end of the Nether Flight street would not answer.

She exited the car, locked the door and then headed towards the field of tall pale golden grass. The sun was still the only thing in a cloudless sky and still scorched relentlessly. This is why she decided to continue in the shadow of the trees on the side of the air field, rather than crossing the grassy field in a straight path. Because in reality, she had no idea whether there indeed was a concrete strip in the grass or not. This was something she could not see when behind the steering wheel nor now when she was back on her own two feet.

In the shadow of the trees there was another problem, though. The sun no longer shone directly on her, but the air under the canopy was still. The warm moist atmosphere felt suffocating, like a sauna. Despite this, she continued to make way for herself, heading vaguely towards the crossroad to Tontla and Luiga she had just been to. When standing on the crossroads, she had not found the road onto which Johannes had parked the limo. Maybe she managed to find it when approaching it from this side. No matter how overgrown it was.

Having continued in the strip of forest for another half an hour or so, it started to feel like the forest was growing more and more dense. Also dimmer and cooler. A lot less of the sunlight was making it to the ground. Kadri headed close to the tree line next to the airfield and noticed that something had changed. There was also less of the sun above the air field. When she finally made it out of the strip of forest, she found a whole other kind of weather before her.

An overcast sky, soft diffused daylight with no shadows. Pale tones everywhere. Although there was no fog, the air was full of mist and the grass was dewy. It was surprising how quickly the weather could change.

She glanced back towards the Nether Flight street but could not see Mariann’s tall vehicle. Nothing strange about it, it was obviously hidden behind the strip of forest in which she had come here. She turned her eyes back towards the airfield and now saw a large area in the tall grass where nothing grew. A wide area in the distance straight as an arrow cutting right across the field of grass. Disappearing into the trees on the left, and on the right disappearing into the grass of behind the curvature of the earth.

She decided to head straight into the tall grass. In the end her skirt and legs would probably get wet up to her mid-thigh, but this was a small price to pay for making it to the concrete landing strip and getting answers to her questions. And of course the photos Mariann wanted, and herself as well.

As she approached the air strip walking in the tall grass, she started to notice something unexpected in the corner of her eye. At first she thought it a mirage, then wishful thinking. In the end she was standing in the tall grass of an overgrown air field on a cool overcast day, which could turn rainy in the evening. The same kind of day as the two times they had found themselves listening to Mariann, unable to remember how they or the car had made it to the air field. Or whose car it was anyway.

The feeling that what she saw was rooted in herself, rather than anything physically being in the distance was reinforced even more by the fact that it was only visible in the corner of her eye when she moved. When she stopped and moved her body and eyes to look, she saw nothing.

Until at one moment, after getting closer to what she had seen, she did see. Near the concrete landing strip of the airfield there stood a long factory limo and also people could be seen standing around it. The distance to it could have been approximately 150 meters. But despite that, Kadri could not say who were the people standing around the car or whether it was the same car she had left on the side of the street in the Nameless Town a few hours ago. The camera did also not allow her to see any better, a 50mm prime lens did not bring the image any closer to her. Despite that, she decided to take one photo from where she stood.

She took half a step forward and froze. Within this half a step she had taken, the car and the people around it dissipated into thin air. As if they had never been there in the first place. As if the world in front of her had been an oil painting and the artist had just painted over the people and the car with a single brush stroke.

Very carefully, with the same leg, she took a step back and the car and the people around it reappeared in the distance. Was this the only place she could see them clearly? Or was there a journey, a maze she could not see unless she made a correct or an incorrect step?

Kadri decided to bet on the last option. Trying with small steps, she found a path in the hay, on which when she approached the car, she no longer lost sight of it. It felt like fighting against a plastic sheet that diffused or bent the light rays, only with every step the sheet altered the way it bent the light.

When she had passed a little over half the way, a change occurred. Suddenly all people around the car turned towards her, as if they had seen her. This forced her to freeze once again and an unending fear came over her. The way those human shapes moved and then froze again, there was nothing human about it, there was nothing machine about it. It was just wrong. And still she could not tell who those people were or whether it was the same car.

Kadri took yet another step and then took a breath of relief. This was a step in the right direction, she felt. The car remained but the people from around it disappeared. As if they had never been there. She continued her step by step trek until she made it pretty close to the car. So close that she could tell that it was not the same car she had left on the side of the street. But was of the same type. The same make, the same kind of factory limo, with a lengthened side door and the last pillar. As much as she could tell from moving forward, it had the round lights in the front but there was a smaller vertical rectangular light between them which maybe could have had amber bulbs. In the rear there were red tail lights, each looking like stretched out and rounded off rhombus.

But on this strange journey closer and closer to the car, what she saw only grew in its absurdity. How with every step the car still disappeared right before her or reappeared. As if with every step she was crossing a border between two worlds, one of which had the car in this place and the other did not. It was both exciting and horror-inducing at the same time.

Her trek to the car had not nearly been as long as she had feared. It was slow, dull and took a lot of time. But it was nothing like walking seven circles around the car step by step in a spiral to reach it. No, looking behind her, at the trampled grass, her path looked more like clumsy and confusing track of sharp turns with no discernible pattern. Those frightening human figures she had seen did also not reappear.

The distance at which the car no longer disappeared from her view no matter the direction she stepped, was about five meters. And now she could clearly see that somebody else had already stepped on the tall grass surrounding the car. At the same time she could not see tracks in the grass caused by having been driven over it. Meaning it was impossible to tell from which direction or how the car had ended up here at all. The concrete landing strip of the air field was not far, maybe twenty meters but in that direction as well, the grass was untouched. As she looked at the car some more, she finally figured out why she could not see tracks in the grass: the tires on the car were flat. All four of them. The wheels were covered in deep rust and the car essentially sat on the wheels and probably on the bottom. It had obviously been here for some time.

Here too the weather was different from what it had been when she started her trek. True, she had spent nearly two hours to walk maybe a hundred meters in a straight line, but still. The sky was a bit darker, the grass was more wet. There was more moisture in the air. The car’s vinyl roof and the glass surface was full of small condensed water droplets. Her skirt was also wet, but only up to the knees.

She tried the buttons on the car’s door handles. All four doors were locked. She could also not see the condition of the interior due to the heavily tinted side glass. She got closer to the window, even trying to shade the daylight from her eyes when she suddenly felt her heart stop and chest grow cold. There was movement behind the tinted glass! At once she pulled away from the car and fell on her bottom into the tall grass. There was somebody in the car! More than one ‘somebody’!

Without any further thought she sprung up and started running through the tall grass. But not towards the strip of trees but along side it, towards the Nether Flight street that exited the air field. Across the untouched field of grass almost diagonally. She did not care. Not about the path she had taken to reach the car nor about the flattened grass she was no leaving behind her. Something so alien and contrary to humanity had been in that movement inside that car, something so horrific that she had to get away from it both physically and mentally.

With ten minutes of running at full tilt, she finally made it nearby the Nether Flight street. And there she saw something new to give her a fright. Her car, Mariann’s car she had left at the end of the street, was gone. As if it had never been there at all.

She turned around once more to make sure that there was nothing running right after her and only then did she trust herself to slow down and attempt to catch he breath. This was something that Mariann had not warned her about and she herself had not even thought to consider. A novice adventurer would often be saved by quick feet.

Although the car was gone, she still had the camera as well as several unused rolls of film. Also the satchel with everything else including the keys to the car. And she was sure she had locked the car. Who could have taken it? Only Mariann herself. Or was this the first case of a stolen car in Nameless Town across many a year? And this car carried none of the meaning that Mariann’s red one did. So the people would not necessarily know not to touch it.

Having managed to get back control over her breathing, she continued down the street. In addition to the car being gone, something else was different. Yes, the weather was darker, cooler and cloudier, but this was not the only difference. The air itself felt different. The shadows seemed stronger, the buildings taller and older. They even looked more ominous which prompted her to take pictures of several of them. This included the main building of the Balto-German Esoteric Institute, but also many others. Including some buildings she felt she had never seen before.

This may have been yet another thing that was wrong. Although she had not paid any attention to the facades of the buildings in the Nameless Town in the past, the Nether Flight street she was currently walking on was not the street she had been familiar with thus far. The buildings were different. On the left, instead of a park, there was an old ornate building, on the right, instead of the ruins of an apartment building, there was the building itself, looking run down but still perfectly usable. She even noticed electric lights burning in the windows.

She finally made it to the Southern main street of the town and here, a new surprise was waiting her. Or several, to be fair. The street was emptier than she had thought it would be. There were far fewer cars and instead of them being massive land yachts, they were mostly old Russian cars from the seventies and eighties. Mariann’s red open top car was nowhere to be seen. But what was even more surprising - she could not see the black factory limo she had driven into town.

She turned around only to see an even greater and more fundamental change in the town. Something that not only made her question what had happened in the mean time but also posed whether she had not fainted and slipped into wandering her own dreamlands. Something so natural to the Nameless Town, something visible beyond several kilometers, the two hundred meter tall three-legged radio tower was gone. Only the legs remained, large steel beams reaching maybe three or four meters into the air.

Also gone was the small substation building next to the tower. Instead there was a massive building of red brick, seemingly at the height of a four story building. Covering the area of tens of those small buildings. There was a pool next to the big building and the missing tower but instead of the coolant water giving off steam day and night, the pool was filled with dirt.

Suddenly, she heard the laughter and other sounds of children playing. Yet another thing to scare her. Sounds she had never before heard in the Nameless Town. As she had never before encountered anybody younger than her. Kadri turned around but saw nobody. Only a heavy overcast sky above her and an empty gray small town street before her. Despite that, her first thought was not about ghosts, instead it was possible that the wind was carrying the sounds to her from somewhere else. The children were probably playing in one of the yards behind the tall fences and hedges.

She started heading down the street towards West. The whole time it took to get back to the North-South street connecting the air field with the cemetery, she did not see a single person nor a moving vehicle. It seemed as if on some overcast day with a slight cool wind, the time had simple stopped. It either happened at a very specific time when there was nobody on the streets or when the time stopped, only that remained visible, which had any permanence in space. Movement of people and machines was not that.

For a moment she detoured into the inner courtyard of the city hall building. Blackened limestone walls and dirty windows in dark wooden frames all seemed familiar. Also the single lamp post in the middle of the court yard. What was missing however was the mayor’s Chaika.

Leopold’s bar was also something not in its place. The building itself was there, with tall windows made of thin glass sheets facing the street. With thick curtains covering the windows on the inside. But the door itself… there was no door. The doorway was nailed shut with a huge black slab of plywood.

This here was yet another fitting place for her to take a photo. First of the street itself and the plank fence on the side of it, by which she had thought she had left the black factory limo. Then, standing on the other side of the street, of Leopold’s bar and the street before it. Having finished that, she continued alongside the wooden fence. With every step she leaned on the fence to try and find the hidden door to Mariann’s yard. But the wooden wall did not yield. She could not find it. It wasn’t there. The tall wooden fence of vertical boards stood firmly throughout its whole length and it was obvious that there could not be any secret door or gate in it. It was also tall enough for Kadri not to be able to see above it. Her fingers could not even reach the top of it.

Having taken a photo of the street behind her, she noticed something new on the opposite side of the street ahead of her. Yes, there were some cars parked there but no the old and tired Soviet cars which had not moved from their places in years.

In a separate one-story building the village grocery store was located. In front of it stood three vehicles which immediately pulled her attention and in her eyes outright demanded to be photographed. First among these was a clean black GAZ-24 with fully inflated tires. With an interior of red vinyl trying to look like leather.

Right next to it stood a long black sedan. The very same vehicle those Boys from the North drove around in. Impeccable piano black lacquer paint and chrome details which looked brand new. But as a major difference, this one did not have opaque greenhouse seemingly covered on the inside with carbon paper. Instead the glass was clear without a hint of tint in it and she could clearly see the gray interior. Dashboard of well-preserved artificial materials with chrome detailing and simple cloth seats.

The third one was a relatively small and boxy-looking four door off road vehicle also originating from the United States. Forest green in color and on the rear hatch there was a faded golden plastic lettering for the marque logo and the engine size. In this case V8 and 5.2 liters. The honeycomb wheels carried a similar faded golden hue.

This last one was a vehicle most familiar to Kadri, although she could not explain why or how. The Volga was also familiar, both due to confusing memories as well as because Rops drove one just like it. But with this green off road vehicle she felt like she had forgotten something very important. Something she would certainly not be able to figure out right now, no matter how hard she worked on it.

Suddenly, she again heard children laughing and shouting. Turning towards these sounds, she now saw about half a dozen children playing in the street. Both boys and girls kicking back and forth two old basket balls. Going by their clothing it seemed that for them the weather was much the same as it was for Kadri - an overcast yet pleasantly cool day early in the summer.. There could be rain later, but also may not be.

She raised the camera to take a photo of the children. Only after she had taken the picture did the children notice her. They approached her and finally stopped at about five meters away from her. Nobody got closer than that, but they did look at her with curiosity. This surprised her.

“Hello. I thought I would never see anybody in here.” Kadri said.

“Are you an angel?” One of the boys asked.

Kadrl lowered her eyes for a moment. Her clothing was still the same as it had been when she left home. Long black skirt reaching the ground and a black knitted top with long sleeves.

“No. No I’m not.” She replied. “Can I take a photo of you?”

“But you look like an angel.” One of the girls now said.

“Yeah, but in church nor in school nobody said that the angel would have a camera.” The children discussed among themselves.

“Where are you coming anyway?” Kadri asked.

“From school.” One of the boys said. “Karl is sick and we thought we would bring him some chocolate from the store. He lives there.” One of the boys explained and pointed towards South, at the tall buildings of concrete slabs which towered over the cottages. “On the seventh floor. You can see the whole town from there.”

“If you are an angel, could you perhaps help Karl and make him well?” One of the girls asked. “He has been sick for a long time now and without him it is quite boring to play four square.”

“All of you are int eh same class?”

“Yeah, in the third.”

“Can we take a photo of you as well?” One of the boys asked.

“Do you have your own camera?” Kadri asked.

“With your camera.” He replied. “You don’t have a photo of yourself, do you?”

“Indeed I do not.” Kadri said.

She took another photo of the children and then walked a few steps closer, reaching out her hand with the camera towards the boy who had asked to take a picture of her. Other children immediately took a few steps back, only the boy who had asked for the camera remained. However he too looked like he would rather flee than stand his ground. Carefully and with both hands, he took the camera from her, being careful not to touch her fingers. Kadri retreated a few steps and looked at the boy directing the camera towards her. He pushed the button to release the shutter. After that, he took care to hand the camera back to her.

“Do I really look like an angel?” Kadri asked.

All of the children nodded vigorously.

“Do I have wings or a halo above my head?”

“No.”

“Neither of those. But you still look like an angel.”

“That is not an angel!” An aged female voice suddenly said.

Kadri raised her eyes to see an old lady standing behind the children, with a long black coat reaching the ground and long gray hair flowing above it. By her looks she seemed to be more than eighty years old. Deep creases in her face and piercing green eyes which seemed to outright glow. In a different clothing Kadri would have taken her a witch with no hesitation.

The old woman eyed her with clear disdain.

“Can I take a...” Kadri started before the woman’s voice and tone stopped her.

“You should not be here! Go away!”

“Children, come here! Get behind me!” She ushered the children, pulling them behind her.

“But she is an angel...” one of the children argued. “She did not do anything bad...”

“Right now!” The old lady sternly demanded. “That thing is not an angel. I am afraid she is wearing an angel...”

For Kadri, the last words, the woman had said were a complete puzzle. What did it mean to ‘wear a person?’

However she did not have long to contemplate the words that old woman had said because behind her, to the right, she could hear car doors opening. The doors to the empty black sedan with gray interior were now open and out of it stepped two young men in spotless black suits, both wearing fedoras. Both started approaching Kadri with measured steps.

Suddenly, she again felt her heart freeze. She remembered what happened in Tontla before the ritual to invoke the witch. Fear gripped her and before the two men reached her, she started to run. She dodged them and ran down the street towards the crossroads as quickly as she could. She did not think. Not about what would happen if she was captured nor about the fact that the men in black were very likely much faster to run than she was.

Only after she reached the corner of the street crossing and could spend precious few seconds to catch her breath did these thoughts catch up to her. Kadri glanced behind her and saw that the men in black were still approaching her in steady unhurried steps. As if she had nowhere to run nor escape to. But she did. And she would not wait for them.

Kadri continued running along the street towards North, back towards the air field. The track in the grass which she had created when coming from the limousine was still there. She could also see the limo in the distance, still sitting in the tall grass. She raised her skirt up to not get caught up in it and now ran along the trail of bent grass towards the car.

She had to concede once more that Mariann had been right. Soft-soled tennis shoes and a long skirt reaching the ground were most uncomfortable for adventuring and running for her life. The minutes it took her to run towards the car in the tall grass seemed to pass at snail’s pace. As if with every step she took, the journey stretched longer than it was. She could not even conceive how long it took her until she finally reached the car. This time she would not allow herself time to catch her breath. Carefully but still hyperventilating and with an unsteady gait she approached the rear of the car and then found the trail to get back to the forest strip. The kind of trail on which the car suddenly dissipated into thin air right before her, as if somebody had wiped it out of the world with his hand.

Turning around after the car had disappeared, she again saw the tall radio tower hanging down from the sky. She retreated a step and the radio mast disappeared into nothingness. But when turning around, the car behind her was again visible.

Unfortunately she could not allow herself any time for thought or experiment. Not now. Her assignment was to escape.

Despite not seeing anybody behind her, she still headed towards the strip of forest. It took far less time to reach it than it had taken the other way to reach the car. Only when reaching the first trees of the forest did she allow herself some rest. But only as much as was necessary to glance back at the car and the field of grass surrounding it. There was somebody else there. By the shapes of the bodies she could recognize them as those very same Men in Black she had run away from. But now, instead of two, there were three of them.

One of the suddenly looked towards the forest. The next moment all of them stood straight up, looking towards the forest. Kadri had no idea how it was possible, but she knew that just like she was seeing them, they were also seeing her.

She stepped into the trees and hiding in the strip of forest, she headed back towards East, towards the street ending in airfield, along the barely noticeable trail she had created when coming here. As fast as she managed without stumbling. She was tired, sweat poured down and mixed with tears. Her feet hurt and her fingers were cramping up from holding the skirt up. Despite that she continued running, not really knowing when her pursuers would lose sight of her or gave up chasing her. Would they give up at all? Had they given up with Mariann? Or had they not?

Running along the forest trail grew more and more difficult. There was less air to breathe. The weather grew hotter. The air under the canopy was full of different smells and various sounds of nature. Kadri stopped as soon as the first rays of sun penetrated the canopy and hit her. She was hyperventilating but still managed to take a few more steps. Never before had the scorching sun and suffocating air in the undergrowth been so pleasant.

She glanced behind her and now noticed a clear line a few meters ahead, where the forest was darker and grayer and where the sunshine strangely did not reach. Despite the canopies above her head not being as dense as she thought. She even raised the camera to take a photo of it, but through the lens it was much harder to understand where the border of light and darkness was and why it was important at all.

At once, fear gripped her once again. In the distance, in the shadowed part of the forest she saw something move between the trees. More than a lone something. This made her run once more. Despite the sun, the heat and the suffocating air. Despite the pain and the cramps. She could not tell how long it took her but being on the verge of giving up, she finally broke out of the forest and found herself along the rear hedges and fences of the private homes and cottages along the Northern main street.

Not far ahead, the wooden fence of of an overgrown backyard had nearly tumbled over and without a thought Kadri used it to climb over the thick hedge to then run through the yard and break out into the street where it was much easier to make it to the car. Only when her hands touched the scorching olive drab metal could she breathe a little easier. And despite the heat, she still had to grip the metal parts to not fall flat on the ground like an empty sack. All reserves of strength were gone. Her legs would no longer carry her. She did not even have any water to turn into sweat.

She turned around and then saw with rising horror that along the street, three men in black suits steadily approached. Those same suits, identical featureless faces and fedoras. That measured calm gait. Kadri turned around. Her fingers were shaking so bad that it took forever for her to find the car keys from her satchel and then open the door. With great effort, she managed to get into the car and then shut the door right before the men got to her.

This elicited no change on their faces. One of them stepped in front of the car, the second tried the handle on the driver door and the third headed towards the other front door. With her hands still shaking, it took another eternity for her to insert the key into the ignition while the featureless men in black with mechanically rigid movements tried to open the locked front doors of the car.

She finally managed to get the key in and turn the cylinder. The starter worked but the car would not start. Not in three, not in eight seconds. A moment later, the locks on both front doors clicked open. At the very moment that both of the front doors were pulled open and only the briefest blink before she was pulled from the car, she let go of the ignition cylinder and the auxiliary power came on. This started the playback of the tape in the car radio with drum and bass music.

It took several seconds for Kadri to realize that she would not be pulled out of the car. She opened her eyes again and looked around. Both side doors of the car were wide open. But she was alone. The men in black were gone.