When the Doors Shut

November 11, this year
Upper Priest Lake, Idaho
5:45 pm PST

When the doors shut, there is no light. She cannot see her hand before her eyes. She questions if her eyes are indeed open. She questions if she will ever see light again.

When one sense is removed, the others become more acute. Her feet can feel the gentle vibration of the running engine. She can hear its low hum. The scent in the stifling compartment is similar to most new vehicles. A kind of manufacture’s perfume: new oiled parts, sweet polished leather. She would reach to find a door handle if she could. The plastic zip tie holding her arms behind her back cuts into her wrists. She stoop-stands, turns and lets her fingers search for a latch. There is nothing but smooth, cold metal.

Her mind is seething. Thoughts crowd for space like strobing pictures on a screen. Rearden’s face behind a pistol. Yafarra encased in crystal. A red spiral notebook. Graham Cremo’s pale face. The mystery of Aethur or Loche Newirth… The blackness sucks oxygen from her lungs. Her chest concusses as if a stone bangs against her rib cage. An anxiety attack is coming, she thinks. She suddenly becomes aware that she has been screaming and crying out, “Let me go! Let me go!” She holds her breath. Perhaps for the first time in her life all she can do is weep. The darkness somehow makes it easier. No one can see her crying.

Courage, Astrid.

The thought drapes over her, They are going to kill me—They are going to kill Graham.

As if in answer, she imagines Graham beside her saying, But they need us still. They have questions about the site and Yafarra, and I’m sure, the Itonalya. Things that only we can answer. But we’ve seen too much—and they won’t let us go knowing what we know.

Astrid inhales slowly, and for a moment believes he is with her. I’m sorry I couldn’t get you out earlier, her mind lets him say. I’m afraid we were both trapped by what we love.

Astrid lets the thought sink in. Graham’s warning at the crystal tomb did not deter her. In fact, it spurred her on. She saw a door. A door to her dreams. A door she has longed to open and, come Heaven or Hell, she would open it. She finds it ironic suddenly that the door upon which she gazed when Graham issued his warning in Elliqui, was the lid of a coffin.

The vehicle gently dips as if a driver has climbed in. Instead of the a door slamming, it closes with a quiet, yanking click. It drops into gear. Then, movement. It begins to roll. Menacingly slow.

Again, Astrid wishes that this imagined Graham in her head would quote a movie—but she is afraid he would bring up some vision of a car crossing into the Las Vegas desert with Joe Pesci at the wheel and a body in the trunk. Or fat Peter Clemenza telling his henchman to, leave the gun. take the cannoli. Instead, her Graham is silent. She feels his hand tighten on hers.

The compartment wobbles over uneven roads, and thuds into ruts and holes. The vehicle is still rolling slowly.

Just as Astrid is about to pose the question, why so slow? The van accelerates and the engine pitch winds up in bursts. She is thrown to the side and her body crashes to the floor. She braces her feet and presses back against the wall. The vertigo of speed, breaking, the pressing of hard turns, and the rattle and pounding of the wheels forces every sinew and muscle to anchor. Below is the scrape of gravel and skidding tires. Another turn and the van throttles up. The road smoothes as if they have skidded onto pavement. She notes the transmission gearing up to an even cruising speed. Gut wrenching, blind curves follow. Her temples ache from squeezing her eyes shut. Stomach acid burns the back of her throat. She imagines a view through the windshield and attempts to predict each wind in the road and the double yellow lines snaking just out of the reach of the headlights.

The van brakes hard and she vaults forward to the front of the compartment while the rest of her pulls back for balance. Then a sharp turn to the right. Astrid guesses they have left the pavement and are now hurtling down a dirt road.

“What’s the rush?” she cries.

When her imagined Graham does not answer, she pictures another of those packed-with-meaning, blank expressions from Eastman’s face—one eye hidden by a swoop of grey hair, the other eye winking to the driver, Get rid of her fast. No loose ends.

A faint taste of dust rises. The turns, the whirling motion and rattle of the wheels—what dark clearing is the driver heading for? Will she be able to see the lake before the end? The sky? She did not tell Graham that she felt… something… something electric… when they met… she did not tell him that for the first time in her life, the door to her heart could open.

The van lurches hard to the left, slows and halts. The engine dies. Silence. The Graham in her heart whispers, we’ll find a way out of this. His fingers find her cheek. Ag shivcy. Linna avusht. She tries to believe him.

The driver’s door opens. Shoes crackle on the ground. Footsteps circle around to the back of the vehicle. Keys chime. A key slides into the lock, the latch clicks and indigo light pours through the widening doors.

The driver peers into the dark compartment. His eyes are concerned, curious and familiar. So, too, is the tuft of red hair sprouting from his head, the carved and elegant face, the glowing blue eyes. “Professor Finnley?” he says, straining to see.

“Marcel? Marcel! Oh God, Marcel!”

Framed in the door with the glittering night behind him is Astrid’s assistant, Marcel “Red Hawk” Hruska.

“I stole a van,” he says. “And a professor.”