The Second Wave Read online

  So his feet carried him aimlessly around the living room, and his eyelids drooped to shield him from the garish daylight. Nightfall was a relief. But his mind didn’t give him any rest, even when his limbs were already sprawled uselessly on the couch once more. It provided him with an endless cascade of memories. Not just memories of Eugenia. Recollections of his entire existence. The lives he had lived, the lies he had told. The people he had left behind. The stench of the creatures that haunted his dreams, the feeling of frozen toes in the snow and always, always the cupboard the sisters used to lock naughty children in.

  For the first time in his life he understood that however far he had come, he had never really left that cupboard. Somehow, deep inside, he was still a scared twelve-year-old, crouching in the darkness, waiting for someone to open the door. There was no way out.

  That night when John came into Peter’s bedroom, Peter didn’t push him away.

  * * * *

  Chapter 35: Within/Without

  A sound that ripped apart the universe. Flames exploding into life all around.

  It was over in an instant and she was back in the darkness again. Back where she belonged. The headache gone, the colors, as well as the sunlight, out of reach.

  All that was left were her memories of him.

  It was all she would ever need. It started and ended with John, it had always been him. The man with no name, who dreamed of terrible things, and who couldn’t find it in his heart to stop running.

  Reliving every moment they had spent together and every beat his heart had made, she decided it had been worth it; even if he, like everybody else, was going to leave her now. He was all that mattered. He had wanted to take her with him, and that was all she’d ever need to know. It wasn’t important whether her people worshipped her; the only thing that was important was the knowledge of what could have been.

  All the stories he had told her, all, in fact, but one. The stories he thought were nothing but a colorful array of tales, nothing at all alike. When in fact they were all the same; they were always stories about him and her. He just hadn’t acknowledged it, yet.

  She wondered if her people had a word for how she felt. As much as she sought, she couldn’t find any vocabulary strong enough to express how it was between the two of them. She pitied them, briefly, for their loss; but then thought it fitting—the two people who had no name shared a feeling that had none either.

  For a moment she was happy.

  The next it wasn’t enough. She was missing one last story. John’s last tale. And she suddenly found it impossible to go on existing without hearing it. The thought tainted her happiness. She tried to shut out her people’s voices. They told her nothing she wanted to hear. It was John’s mind she needed, his voice that could bring order into the chaos of her feelings. But all she found was hurt. However clear and strong he had been, his mind was dull now, apathetic, it was finally unrecognizable from the rest.

  It was so sinister a realization, it bore deep down into her soul and hurt like nothing else could ever hurt any other living thing. In the darkness she cried out in pain. And in surprise. It choked her. It crushed every thought in her mind, it was far worse than the headache. It wouldn’t stop, and in her heart she knew it would never stop as long as she still remembered him. Tears streamed down her face, hot and bitter, because this time it was all her fault. She was to blame for his destruction. How could she go on existing with so heavy a burden on her soul? The answer was she couldn’t. Without him there was no reason for her heart to resume its beating. If only she could make it all stop. The noise in her head. Her people’s feelings that drowned out her own. Her mother’s pain she felt resonating through her bones. It was far too much for her to bear. She began fighting it. Somewhere in the vastness of the universe surely was a place where she was allowed to feel nothing, hear nothing, remember nothing.

  With a scream that ripped through her body like a tidal wave, she felt everything withdraw. Like a sea retreating to the ocean, her mind was suddenly drained of the white noise that had always been her perpetual companion. It became less and less until there was nothing. With the utmost effort she opened her eyes. If possible, the darkness was even blacker then. And she, severed from everything, sunk on her knees, because nothing held her upright anymore.

  Eugenia fell. The Goddess was mortal again.

  The mountain crumbled into itself after the last explosion and buried the cave inside. The falling rocks carefully avoided the shielded figure that stood in the middle of it, who was under the protection of something so old that even the ancient stones remembered it. They left a void, just big enough for the figure to stand in.

  When the protective field dissolved and Eugenia fell to her knees from the sudden severance, the void had but little air left in it to breathe. Perhaps as a parting gift, rocks began to shuffle to the side as if touched by an invisible hand, so she wouldn’t choke to death so soon after she had regained her freedom. A path cleared for her, one she followed obediently; there was nowhere else to go.

  Her eyes were used to the darkness now. It was difficult to make her way out as she walked, but not impossible. It was cool though, she noticed, and it became colder with every step. Wearing only her light summer dress she shivered. Soon enough the sun’s warm rays would warm her skin, she told herself, and soon would she feel John’s breath on her face again. The thought made her forget her aching body.

  She felt nothing. Heard nothing. Either her people were gone once again, or she couldn’t feel them anymore. She tried to reach out to life itself, but she couldn’t find it either. She was alone. For the first time since she could remember, she was truly alone. She shivered again, out of fright this time. It was her fault. What had she done?

  The stones only cleared the way so far, after that she had to use her hands to dig herself out. It took long, but fresh air was already coming in in harsh gusts. Outside the wind howled. More and more light fell in through the cracks she made, until finally one last rock rolled to the side, and Eugenia climbed out.

  The planet’s surface had changed radically. Where there once had been trees covered in moss, now stood black skeletons, clawing at a blue, spotless sky. The earth was covered in something white that was soft but cold to the touch. Snow, she recalled. It was what her people used to call snow. It covered the ground, the rocks, the passageway to the sea. So the explosion had indeed been successful in a way. There were jetties reaching into the deeper waters. Abandoned-looking boats were tied to them, covered up to protect them from the snow. No one was about. It looked like a foreign place completely.

  Had one whole season passed? It had felt like forever to her.

  Tentatively she called out, but her voice was swallowed by the wind and her words fell uselessly into the snow. Concentrating on climbing down, she refused to listen to a nagging doubt that hissed inside her mind, a voice she wouldn’t listen to, a thought she would never acknowledge: that perhaps she had been in the darkness forever; perhaps John was long gone; perhaps she was indeed all alone now.

  Somehow she made it to the village through the forest and the snow. It was a relief to see it was still there. It seemed bigger to her—the fence that surrounded it was oddly shaped, as if it had been moved or grown. The stables she remembered were now inside the enclosure and they, too, were larger than she recalled them. But the houses were still there, although nobody was about. People kept indoors because of the blizzard, but Eugenia couldn’t know that. As far as she could tell from the boarded up buildings the village was deserted.

  The cold cut her skin. It ripped effortlessly through the scarce protection the dress provided. Her teeth chattered against one another. The snowflakes which landed on her bare arms and legs melted from her body’s temperature and immediately froze over in the biting wind, effectively covering her in a tiny layer of ice.

  When she finally reached house number twenty-three, she couldn’t feel herself anymore. In a last outburst of strength she hammered against th
e wooden door. Then she sagged against the frame, seeking what little protection she found under the canopy. Maybe she heard footsteps over the storm, but she wasn’t even sure of that.

  The door opened and she found herself face to face with someone familiar at last. Peter looked different from how she remembered him, more serious, sterner, with wide, surprised eyes; but it might just be the shock and the surprise that deformed his features to her eyes.

  He swore by way of a greeting. He immediately wrapped an arm around her cold waist and led her inside, where it was suddenly warm and bright. She found the strength to ask for him, but when Peter replied all vigour fled her bones and she collapsed.

  * * * *

  Chapter 36: John Doesn’t Live Here Anymore

  It was a harsh winter and it seemed to go on forever. The villagers were prepared, but it was still a dark and trying time that consisted mostly of chopping fire wood, knitting more blankets, and seeing to it that the animals in their pens were taken care of anyway. The children, who usually loved snow in the first weeks, were almost tired of it now. They wished for Spring every time their parents wrapped them up in yet another layer of clothing before they let them play outside.

  Things had changed on Alternearth. For one thing, the wormhole never reopened since the day Elizabeth Burke came to visit, leaving the colonists completely by themselves. After a time, they even gave up preparing a second colony, as it became clear that nobody was coming anytime soon.

  Another thing was that they never built the temple the workmen had insisted on. John forbade it, and somewhere along the line, the man nobody trusted in the beginning became the one person everybody turned to for a while. Things had changed indeed.

  And John didn’t live in number twenty-three anymore.

  The blizzard had been raging for almost three days without interruption. Finally today was the day Peter refused to even get dressed. He wasn’t going to leave the house, there wasn’t any wood to be chopped for now; he was going to spend a quiet day in with a book and a bowl of soup.

  In the middle of chapter seventeen he heard the faintest of knocks on the door. It sounded more like fingers brushing gently over wood than an actual knock, but Peter got up to check nonetheless. And there she was. He recognized her at first sight, she hadn’t changed a bit. She was even wearing the same dress she wore that horrible day that had changed everything. Shivering in the frost, snow on her shoulders, icicles in her hair, teeth chattering so loudly it was breaking his heart.

  “Sweet Ceres!” was all he managed. And because they were both about to get snowed in, he carefully nudged her inside the house and closed the door against the storm. Her body felt like it was made out of rime. It wasn’t easy to distinguish words in between her teeth chattering, but he thought she asked for John.

  He said, “John doesn’t live here anymore.”

  It was probably the cold rather than his words that drained all energy from her. He caught her before she could hit the floor, then carried her into the living room and laid her down on the sofa.

  “What happened? Who is it?”

  Wearing nothing but his pyjamas, Luke stood in the door to their bedroom, rubbing his eyes. Infected with the staying-indoors bug, he had dozed off half an hour ago.

  “I am sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you. Would you be so kind as to help me move the couch, please?!”

  Together they moved the sofa as close to the open fireplace than they thought was safe. It was only then that Luke took a good long look at the woman lying on it, while Peter went to fetch all the blankets he could find.

  “She looks familiar,” he stated on Peter’s return.

  “She might just, yes. You see, this,” answered Peter, carefully spreading the blankets on top of her, “is our very own Eugenia.”

  Luke was too bewildered to help Peter spread the covers. “The crazy woman?”

  “Woman, yes. Crazy, I was never quite sure.”

  “But she’s dead.”

  “It would appear, my love, she isn’t. Although how she could have survived out there all this time all by herself is rather a mystery to me.”

  When Eugenia had positively vanished underneath the woollen quilts, Peter stepped back, a pensive look in his eyes. “She came here for John.”

  Luke didn’t reply. He had never got used to John. The initial jealousy had lessened, but hadn’t gone away completely. Peter was over Duncan’s death, but parts of him would never get over John. It was the con man’s fault that Peter was never going to be entirely his; Luke reserved himself the right to hate him for that.

  Number forty-two, where John, now a regular fisherman, lived, was close to the stables. The march on foot through the blizzard, carrying the tightly wrapped bundle that was the still unconscious Eugenia, almost took Peter twenty minutes. He sincerely hoped John was home and not outside somewhere tending to the animals whose company he kept these days.

  John was the one who found out it was relatively easy to catch and tame the gigantic hounds who lived in the subway tunnel system and the forest, so he was mostly in charge of them. They were, once domesticated, loyal creatures and generally mild-mannered servants, despite their terror inducing appearance.

  Peter was in luck: before he could even knock, the door opened and he practically marched into John, who was just about to go to the stables and see after the hounds. They were restless that day.

  * * * *

  The first thing she noticed was a warmth around her. A comfortable, almost hot cocoon made from blankets. She was lying in a bed; the storm and the snow nothing more than a memory. The second thing she noticed was the soft crackling of fire close to her. But when she opened her eyes, alarmed by the proximity of the flames, she saw it was a small, tame fire in a hearth. She sat upright to view her surroundings.

  “Hello, love.”

  Peter, sitting in a chair by the bed, watched Eugenia regain consciousness. Some color crept back into her cheeks. Her hair, having dried completely, stood out in all directions, a ridiculous garland around her face. As soon as she recognized him, she fell back into the pillows to stare numbly at the ceiling, as if there were no point in speaking to him.

  “I have so many questions right now, young Eugenia,” Peter told her, keeping his voice as soft as he could. “But I understand you came to see John.”

  Her head snapped around so she could fix him with a hopeful glance. “You know where he is.” It was more of a question, although she said it like a statement.

  “He is in the other room. He couldn’t bear to see you.”

  “And I cannot bear to not see him!” She struggled free from the blanket and swiftly jumped to her feet. Swayed for a second, then steadied herself and wanted to rush out of the small bedroom. He held her back. “Let me explain to you something before you speak to him.”

  The house was unfamiliar to her, but even though she wasn’t able to tap into her peoples’ minds anymore, she was painfully aware that John would be in the room farthest from hers.

  He was. He stood at a window with his back to her, staring out into the storm that was beginning to calm. Another hearth was flickering. Its flames casting shadows that danced over his back, giving the illusion of movement, though he stood absolutely still. Not even a reaction when she spoke his name. If possible, he froze even more when he heard her.

  At a loss of what to say, she walked up to him and wrapped her arms around his chest, pressing herself against his back as tightly as she had the strength to hold on to.

  “It wasn’t my fault,” she whispered. “I promise, I would never have left you.”

  “There is no fault,” he replied automatically. His voice was thick with unspoken words. “Only fate.”

  It was not their fate to live like this, to experience the pain that had almost destroyed her when they were away from each other. No fate, she told him, should be as cruel as that. His hands went up to cover hers while she talked, while she ranted on about the suffering and the darkness. Garbled sentence
s that made little or no sense to him, because although she knew the words, she mixed them up in her haste to get it off her soul.

  “Be quiet, woman,” he chided her affectionately. “Or must I kiss you into silence again?”

  Eugenia felt her heart stop for a beat and his fasten its pace under her fingertips.

  “Yes, please.”

  Finally he turned around, without breaking their embrace, and before she could prepare herself, he was kissing her like he had that night so many eternities ago.

  He looked different, but not much. A beard adorned both cheek and chin now and his hair had grown out. His face showed small, hard lines where it had once been smooth. Only the eyes were the same—they had always seemed older than he was.

  It was beyond Eugenia to understand what had happened. How five years could have passed here, when, although it had felt like forever, she knew that only a few minutes had gone by in her darkness.

  * * * *

  Chapter 37: Infinitesimal

  Tom deLuca returned from his trip to the cafeteria with a mouthful of peanut chocolate and a handful of vanilla wafers. When he spoke, the chocolate tried to leave its calcium cage by any means necessary, “Bobby says hello.”

  “What took you so long?” his brother asked, a hint of impatience in his demeanour. Phil was sitting on the table that took up the middle of their chamber, his feet on a chair. A stack of print-outs rested in his lap.

  “Sorry. Bobby spread the word immediately. They’re planning a party at the cafeteria.”

  “I hate to be the bearer of unfortunate news, man, but there won’t be any party. Tony’s online again.”

  “That was quick! How did you do that?” Tom, dropping the wafers on the table, rushed to the monitors to check. His fingers flew over two keyboards simultaneously to access all the data at once.