Chapter 14
The group was excused for a coffee break a couple hours later, and Eden walked over there to stretch her legs. She was all too aware that her last meditation had been deep but very disturbed.
It had been hard for her to let go of the thoughts in her mind. Just way too much was happening, and all of it was disturbing. As she stepped closer to the nearby coffee bar, someone called her name, and she turned to see Richard walking toward her.
He smiled. “Hey, I thought maybe we could visit during the break. It might be nice to get to know each other.”
She slowly nodded. “Sure. Sounds good.”
Not exactly sure why he’d picked her, she knew for a fact that Eric would not allow her to do so alone.
As she walked over to the coffee bar with Richard, she saw Eric heading toward her.
She smiled, calling him over. As he reached them, she motioned for him to join them.
“Richard suggested we have coffee together.”
Eric nodded. “Sure, sounds great.”
Richard was obviously not expecting that, but he smiled, recovering quickly. “I wanted to ask if your friend who had passed on was Deborah Kingston.”
Eden nodded. “Yeah, we called her Debbie. She died without any obvious signs of … anything at all.” Her voice choked at the memory.
He nodded, his voice gentle as he added, “She was a very special person.”
“Indeed, and she is sorely missed. Unfortunately she tended to get into trouble sometimes, and it wasn’t always easy to get herself out of it.”
“What kind of trouble?” he asked. “She seemed to be someone who was trouble-free.”
“No, not trouble-free at all,” Eden corrected, with a shake of her head.
“She had a habit of diving into relationships quickly, then, one way or another, she tended to dive right back out again.” She sighed.
“I’ve had to bail her out of the consequences of a couple of them, and it was always depressing and difficult for her. ”
“Define a couple,” he asked, his face slightly pale.
“It happened a few times. She tended to jump in feet first,” Eden explained, with a smile. “That was so Debbie.”
He didn’t say anything for a long moment and then added, “I guess that’s quite true, isn’t it? She was a very happy-go-lucky soul.”
“Very,” she agreed, looking at him. “She did say that she had fallen head over heels in love with somebody during the weekend workshop.”
“Oh,” he replied, looking at her sideways.
“Yeah, do you have any idea who it was?” she asked, staring at him directly.
He shrugged and shook his head. “No, sorry, I don’t.”
She nodded, not sure what she had expected him to say, but, in a way, she was disappointed that he didn’t come clean about it.
It just made his involvement even more suspicious.
“I know that she enjoyed the weekend that she spent here very much,” she shared.
“It was a highlight for her, so I’m glad that her last few hours were filled with joy and happiness. ”
He nodded. “I’m really happy to know that. It makes it a lot easier on me.”
“You didn’t know her that well, since I’m sure she was just one of many students.”
“No, of course not,” he replied, almost in a lecturing tone of voice.
“However, for me, she was a very special friend,” Eden added. “We’d known each for almost two decades.”
He then lapsed into teacher mode, probably to tell her all about the facts of life, but she forestalled him with her next comment. “It would be nice if I knew who she had fallen so deeply in love with. I know the police want to talk to him too.”
“Oh, why is that?” he asked, looking from one to the other, his frown instant, as if realizing that Eric hadn’t spoken to him.
“That’s simple enough. He was somebody she was interested in and was involved with in her last few hours,” she explained. “I think it’s pretty standard in most cases.”
“That could be,” Richard conceded. “I don’t have any experience in that.”
“No, neither do I, and unfortunately neither did my absolutely beautiful friend Debbie. She really had a lovely personality.”
“She seemed to, indeed,” he agreed. When his phone rang, a look of relief came over his face as he picked it up, answered, then looked over at her and said, “I’m sorry. I have to go.”
She just nodded and watched as he scurried away.
Eric turned to her. “You were having way too much fun with that. Was it wise?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted, “but it certainly felt good.”
He snorted at that. “Do you still think he had nothing to do with Debbie’s death?”
“I wouldn’t say that, but then why not admit that he was the one she was involved with? It’s not such a bad thing, but he’s hiding it like a dirty secret.”
“And, as you said, the police do want to talk to him, but he’s not willing to offer that information. That’s also interesting,” he murmured. “I have spoken to him and his brother but over the phone, not face-to-face.”
She shot him a look and then shrugged. “It does feel as if something odd is going on here that we can’t see, at least not right now.”
“Are you kidding?” He laughed as he stared at her. “Something odd? Ya think? Look at everything that’s gone on since we arrived. I would say more than something odd is going on.” He picked up her hand, patting it gently for all the world to see, showing everybody that they were together.
She knew why he was doing it, yet it brought back images of that kiss she’d shared with him. Any kiss would have done the trick in terms of getting rid of the people headed their way, but she had kissed him back with a fervor that had surprised them both.
Unfortunately for her, it continued to resurface in her memories as something that she wanted to try all over again.
*
Eric watched as Richard scurried away, obviously relieved to let the phone call end his discussion with Eden and Eric, allowing Richard to escape.
And it was definitely an escape, no question about that at all, which was interesting, and a little disconcerting that it would be so easy to send him off running.
He wasn’t the same Richard whom Eric had spoken to on the phone.
It made no sense to him. So, why did Richard want to talk to Eden on her own?
Eric looked over at her and asked, “Did you get any sense of why he wanted to speak to you?”
“No.” She shook her head. “I did wonder, which is why I said yes right off the bat. Then once he brought up Debbie, I thought maybe I could question him somewhat,” she shared, with a wry look. “But that seems to have backfired, since he ran away at the very first opportunity.”
Eric smiled and nodded. “He was definitely making his escape. I don’t know what horrible punishment you had in mind, but he was clearly not willing to give you the truth.
Maybe it was a case of differing perspectives,” he suggested, “meaning that perhaps Debbie made more out of it than he did, which is definitely quite possible.”
“I would hope not for her sake, but it is a definite possibility,” she conceded. “Still, why wouldn’t he at least say something?”
“Because he didn’t want anybody to know, didn’t want Debbie to be associated with his company,” Eric offered. “Still, I’m not sure Richard had anything to do with her death.”
“It wasn’t like that though. He had her up front where everyone could see them. Still … I’m not sure either,” she murmured, “but, when he runs away like that, it sure makes him look guilty.”
“A part of you wants Richard to look guilty too,” he pointed out.
“True. This whole thing today has been incredibly unnerving. I just want to go home with some answers as to Debbie’s death, yet I don’t want to leave anybody in Origin, or whatever it’s called.
Why does it even exist?” She looked around to confirm that no one was listening or paying them any attention.
“How is it even a thing?” she asked softly.
He grasped her hand gently and whispered, “Shh.”
“I know. I need to keep it quiet, but that’s not easy.
Not when you’ve seen something so shocking, so horrifying, hearing about a concept that just leaves you cringing at the thought that it might be true,” she whispered.
“The last thing I want is to even think about that, yet now I can’t get it out of my head.
” He squeezed her fingers again, then his thumb stroked the top of her hand, gently soothing her.
She stared down at their joined hands and asked, “How the hell did we even get to this place?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I felt compelled to check out that corner,” he murmured, “and apparently that was not the right thing to do.”
“And yet how can we say that?” she asked. “We know somebody was suffering. Trapped, alone—”
He nodded. “I don’t have an answer for you. I don’t know what to say.”
They sat here for a few more minutes, hands touching, almost as if the physical contact was helpful in a literal sense. Finally he suggested, “Maybe we should go upstairs for a few minutes and give ourselves a chance to regroup. Are you okay with that?”
“Sure,” she murmured, “anything to get out of here for a while.”
“Unless you want to go back outside?”
“No,” she snapped. “I don’t.”
He nodded. “Okay, then let’s go up to our rooms for a rest. It’ll be another twenty minutes before the next afternoon session begins, so we can assess them as to what we want to do.”
“You know what everybody else will think we’re doing, don’t you?”
He looked over at her and shrugged. “It doesn’t matter what they think,” he stated, with a smile. “The only thing that matters is that we stay safe, right? Maybe also consider why you aren’t panicked, why you’re not all that bothered by this whole situation.”
“But I am bothered,” she said absentmindedly as they walked to the stairs.
“Yet not in a big way.”
She pondered that and then nodded. “You’re right. I’m not as bothered as I could be. I’m not sure why.”
“Which just leads me to think that you’ve had more than a little experience with something like this.”
She looked at him sideways for a moment. “I told you about feeling as if Debbie was talking to me, so there’s that.”
“Yes,” he noted, his penetrating gaze locked on hers. “Are you sure it isn’t more than that?”
She shrugged. “Maybe, I don’t know. What if it’s more than that?
” He didn’t say anything, just stared. “Maybe it’s a little more than that,” she conceded.
“I’ve always been the curious sort, and I’ve always thought there was more to these things than anybody was ever willing to state.
I just never really experienced it until Debbie. ”
She stepped onto the landing and walked to the window nearby. “I mean, this Origin,” she added, as she waved to the space outside, to the side garden, “is not normal.”
“I would say that Stefan would agree with you there,” he agreed, as they continued up the stairs. Even if somebody was listening in on their conversation, it was too ambiguous for anybody to sort out. “I don’t think he’s ever seen anything like this.”
“I think he’s literally struggling to figure out how to handle this—recovering and sorting things out through his peers, whoever that ends up being. And who would have thought there were peers for something like this,” she noted, with half a laugh. “Do you think he’ll get back to us today?”
“I don’t know. Today? Tomorrow? I just don’t know.”
She nodded. “And, of course, we can’t expect him to spend all his time on this.”
“I think he’ll spend as much time as he possibly can, if for no other reason than the fact that this portal is—” He stopped.
“Oh, don’t stop now,” she said. “It’s just getting interesting.”
He hesitated. “I feel like it’s feeding.”
She stared at him, the color draining from her face.
He winced and then nodded. “It’s hungry. It’s opened the portal to feed. And, in the process, it managed to lose one soul because of me, which has likely made its situation worse.”
“And now it’s not only hungry, but also angry as well,” she pointed out. “Right?”
“Yes, and either one of us,” he noted, “would make a great next meal.”