Chapter 20 #3
She stilled as she thought about that. “Now that is something I do remember being told.”
“Yes, but did you ever do it?” he asked, his tone quiet but calm. “Because that really is the trick right there. If you go out into something as active and as hungry as this Origin, and you don’t have your own energy at a frequency it can’t touch, you just became its next meal.”
*
Eric couldn’t believe that Stefan was even saying such things. It was a rough reality for any of them to even think about, yet he made it sound as if this wasn’t commonplace but potentially could be out there in many other areas. “You’re thinking there’s more of these, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” he agreed, “and we’ve already established that. The question is whether we can disarm one.”
“You might be able to, Stefan,” Eden suggested, “but that doesn’t mean anybody else wants to try.”
“Let’s go tackle the beast in our midst,” he stated, a gentle smile in his tone, “and then we’ll go from there.”
She walked out into the hallway and waited, until Eric stepped out.
He looked at her as he pocketed his phone and locked up. “I was half afraid you’d gone on alone.”
“No, I’m not that foolish,” she muttered, with a headshake. “But I have to admit, it felt a bit foolhardy even being out here in the hallway alone for a second or two.”
“Of course,” he agreed. “It’s scary times, and it’s magnified if you’re alone.”
She shrugged. “It’s not even just about the scary times. There just isn’t anybody you can talk to about this stuff.”
“Did you have any friends who you could talk to?”
“No. I didn’t have anybody in my circle to talk to about this stuff,” she muttered. “I mean, who does?”
“What about Debbie?”
Eden shook her head. “Debbie wanted to go to psychics,” she clarified, “but I don’t really see her as somebody who would have gone this far or this deep into that area.”
“And yet she wanted to find her mom and possibly talk to her, so that’s not far off the realm of possibility.”
She pondered that. “Yes, but I don’t know that she was driven to this extent.”
“If somebody promised her that contact with her mother, would Debbie have gone outside the norm and done something with them?”
“Oh, yes, absolutely,” she said immediately, then frowned. “I wonder if that’s what happened to her. I don’t know. I just don’t know. What about the woman who passed away here earlier this weekend? Have you thought about if she had anything to do with it?”
“I’ve thought about it. I don’t know. It’s hard to confirm that either way.”
Eden didn’t know what to say to that.
As they walked down to the lobby of the hotel, Jane, the receptionist, was sitting at her desk.
She gave Eric a bright smile, then looked back at Eden, a bit sheepish. “Oh, good, you’re feeling better.”
Eden wrapped her sweater around her shoulders and nodded.
Jane continued. “It’s almost dinnertime, so I’m glad you’re up and moving around. We were a little worried about you.”
“I’m fine,” Eden replied. “We’re going out for a bit of a walk first.”
Jane just smiled and nodded as they headed outside.
“What if the staff … or the owners of this place did know about Origin?” Eden asked. “Do you think they would close up shop? Or would they willfully … feed it?”
“You do get right to the point with your questions, don’t you?”
“From what we know, this Origin has been operating here for a very long time,” she pointed out. Eric nodded, as a calm expression took over his face. “So, the question really is, has somebody here been feeding it? Or is it getting nutrients from somewhere else in some other way?”
He groaned. “If we get that far in this nightmare, we can always ask someone who’s closer and in the know.”
And, with that, she gave a shout of laughter. The knowledge that, if nothing else, she wasn’t alone in this venture, was worth an awful lot. Looping arms with him, she said, “Come on. Let’s go fight the ghosties.”
And together, the two of them walked out into the waning sun. He led the way to the bench, and, as he sat down there, she shook her head.
“Not here.”
Surprised, he stood back up.
“Over there.” She pointed to where the woman had recently died.
He looked at her for a long moment. “Are you sure? I mean, that’s the place where the woman—”
She nodded but didn’t say more.
“Do you want to explain why?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “All I can tell you is it needs to be there.”
He hesitated but then nodded. “I guess if I’m trusting you this far, then I better trust you the whole way.”
She shrugged. “I could be wrong. If you have a question or disagree, ask away. I may not have the answer, but maybe we’ll get some clarity.”
He smiled. “We could both be wrong about this.” And he chuckled. “Hell, Stefan could be wrong.”
“Oh, that’s a great thought. Thank you for that,” she muttered.
He laughed. “I know. It’s not exactly what any of us wants to think about,” he noted. “But we do have to recognize that whatever this is, things may not always go our way. And nobody’s infallible, not even Stefan.”
“Are you sure? Because I really don’t want to consider that.”
As they walked over to where the ill woman had been found—and died later that night in the hospital—Eden stared at the spot and muttered, “It’s depressing, isn’t it?
To think that she died—not here but shortly after being found here—and there’s nothing.
No memorial, no stone, no flowers, no nothing. ”
“But she’s also not buried here,” he noted. “So, no need for a marker. Plus, she didn’t die here, and there is the business aspect and all to consider.”
She shrugged. “I guess. I just don’t want to see this become a killing field,” she shared, as she looked around. “And yet it feels as if something’s crawling all over my skin.” She sat down on the ground, where the terminally ill woman had been found.
Eric winced, but he sat down beside her. She turned her face up to the setting sun, almost as an offering to some God up there. He watched her cautiously. “Is there some system to what you’re doing?”
“Yes, I’m opening up.” Then she frowned as she added, “And then shutting down.”
“Okay, why is that?”
She thought about it and said, “Because that’s what we have to do.” He didn’t say anything more and just watched … and waited.
Finally she turned to him and added, “It’s okay. We can do this now.”
He wasn’t sure what she meant … or if he even wanted to know. Yet he settled in beside her and nodded. “Do you want to tell me what to do?”
“You won’t even ask how I know?” she asked.
“No, I just figured your grandmother taught you something.”
“I’m wondering if it wasn’t my mother,” she suggested, “though I don’t have any memories of that. It’s as if everything got blocked out somehow. That is a terrible thing, but I feel as if I’m not even sure I can remember my mother.”
“How do you feel about her? That can shift your view and can give you some perspective.”
“I have warm feelings about her, yet all those memories are gone or blocked by something. I don’t know why that would be though.”
“We can always take another look at it later,” Eric offered.
“Later, … right,” she muttered, her tone bitter. “Everything’s always later.”
“It doesn’t have to be later,” he conceded.
“I know. I know,” she murmured. “It’s fine.” But it wasn’t fine.
He didn’t know how to help her get through whatever these issues were. He just knew that every time they did something together, it formed a bigger, stronger bond between them, and he wasn’t sure that she was even aware of it.
If she was, he had to wonder if she was even okay with it because, the more they did of this work, that bond would strengthen. And that was something she might not be too happy about.
Finally she turned, opened her eyes, and smiled. “You ready?”
He winced. “And if I say no?”
“I would say, Too bad because it’s the witching hour. Plus, we’re almost out of time.” And, with that, she reached out for him. “You’ll need to hold my hand.”
Frowning, not at all sure he should even be listening to everything she said right now, he slowly held out his hand.
She smiled. “Not a good time to question whether you trust me or not.”
He looked right into her eyes in the fading light. “Do you trust me?” She opened her eyes wider, and he watched as the question zipped through her, noting exactly when an answer came to her.
She smiled and nodded. “Yes, I do. I don’t know how or why, but, for whatever reason, in this moment, we are bonded,” she declared, only her words took on a weird sing-song tone.
He sent out a call for Stefan, only to realize he was already there.
It’s fine, Stefan replied. She’s slipping into the Netherworld. Let her slip. She needs to bond with the energy. Then she will come back. It might feel as if she’s a different person, but she is there and is functioning at a level that I’m not sure we’ve seen before.
“She’s pretty adamant about doing this. And in a sudden turnabout.”
That’s a good thing, Stefan noted in a wry tone. I’ve never really seen anybody who could slip into a portal like this.
“It seems she’s done it before.”
I suspect she has probably done it a lot, but she didn’t know what she was doing, and we can probably blame her grandmother for that.
“Why would a grandmother do this to a child? I can’t even imagine what that would have required.”
“Anything to save the mother presumably,” Stefan said, with a sigh. “But that may be a question we never get an answer to.”
“I think Eden’s even looking for answers from her childhood,” Eric shared. “And that is likely part of her journey.”
“It absolutely is, and it’ll also be part of yours because she’s right in one sense. Whatever you guys are doing now will connect you in a way that you hadn’t expected.”
Just then, the energy around them shifted, while something whistled and roared. Then the wind picked up, and Eric was cast into the center of a maelstrom, with Stefan’s last words ringing in his ears.
Look after her. You look after her, and she will keep you alive.
And, with that, Stefan was gone, and so was everything else in Eric’s world.