Chapter 21 #2
“She is, but I can’t find her. She’s already leaving, and I can’t stop her. My grandmother will be mad at me.”
There was silence, and then he asked, And what about Debbie?
“No friends are here,” she stated, looking around. And then she frowned because everything around her started to change again and not in a good way. “What is all this?”
What’s happening now? Stefan asked.
“The place is changing, shifting in and out. Changing.”
Tell me, he urged her.
“Images but different. I don’t like them. I don’t know them,” she explained. “It’s not the same anymore.”
No, I’m sure it’s not the same, he agreed. Because you’re moving through events, through time, moving through passages and maybe some memories of your own. Come back to now.
“Right,” she muttered. “We’re supposed to help those people, aren’t we?”
Clear the cobwebs, let go of the past, and don’t confuse the past with the present. Come back to where we need you, where Eric and I are, Stefan reminded her. We can discuss your grandmother and your mother later. Come back over here, he stated, his tone firming up.
“And if I don’t want to?”
He hesitated. People need you here.
“Right, I’m here for a reason,” she declared. “Always for a reason. Always for the same reason. What’s the reason, Stefan?”
There is always an opportunity to help someone, he told her. And, if you’re very good at it, there will always be a need.
“I’m good at it,” she declared. “I’m very good at it.”
And who told you that?
“My mother. … And my grandmother.”
I’m sure she did, he replied. When you didn’t save your mom, she turned, didn’t she?
“Yes, then I became something terrible. Something horrible. And that was hard,” she murmured. “And I was only doing what I was told.”
Right, Stefan sighed. Back to these people, … the people who need you right now.
“Right,” she said. As if returning to a more businesslike response, she looked around, checking to see what she was supposed to do. But she felt a weird disconnect now, as if she looked through multiple sets of eyes. She heard Stefan in the back of her head, talking to her.
You’re looking through the child’s eyes, but you’re also looking through your own adult eyes.
That was weird, but it was also very weird hearing Stefan’s voice in her head as she tried to maneuver through this strange world that she found herself in.
You’re doing fine, he told her, his voice ever soothing and reassuring.
She looked around, the scene changing. Instead of a hospital, instead of seeing her mother as she expected, she now saw a hotel. No, maybe not a hotel, a lodge.
She wasn’t sure exactly what it was, but a huge building appeared in front of her. A building with many people, so maybe a hotel. And then she saw the fire, endless, endless fire ripping through the building.
And people running with buckets. Buckets to put out a fire that had already engulfed the bulk of the hotel. And screams of pain and fury.
“The pain is too much,” she screamed.
She looked around and panicked because she was inside the fire. She felt the heat. She felt everything twisting through her as she fought the flames.
Stefan interrupted, saying, “It’s fine. It’s not your pain. Try to detach from it. You’re just watching it. Stand firm as a witness.”
She heard him, and she understood, yet it wasn’t the same as just walking through it and letting it go.
It was a long time ago. It’s over and well in the past.
She settled down as she watched, almost in a weird hypnotic fashion, seeing how everybody madly dashed about. She saw people up in the windows, screaming for help.
She winced, hearing the horror in their voices, feeling their pain. A little girl was up in the far corner window, up on the top floor.
And suddenly Eden was right there, right beside her. She reared back in shock. The little girl still stood at the window, screaming, and screaming and screaming for somebody to come save her.
And yet, as Eden held out her hands, she realized the truth. Stefan was right.
It wasn’t happening right now. She could watch it all go on around her, like a horrific 3-D movie. As if she’d bought seats to some front-row catastrophe. And yet no hero would step in at the last minute to save all these people.
As Eden looked around, she knew something was here, something important, something that she was supposed to see, to remember, or to do.
She didn’t know. Frantic now, with the same sense of urgency as the little girl, who was screaming out the window, Eden turned and looked toward the wooden door, which was now burning from the other side.
And then she was in that hallway, staring at all the bedrooms down this long hall, and realized exactly what had happened. Even as she did so, she heard another scream and was inside another bedroom.
She raced toward the little girl, trying to help her, knowing it was futile, but having to try anyway.
And just as she got there, a beam in the ceiling fell and hit the little girl.
It took her down, killing her instantly.
Eden stood here in horror, as she watched the flames sneak toward the little girl’s dress, before catching hold.
Then, just like a torch, it moved quickly over the small body, engulfing her in the deadly heat.
And, with that, Eden slammed back into her body on the grassy knoll. She opened her eyes, shudders quaking through her. She was alone again.
No, you aren’t alone. Eric’s right here.
She remembered that she entered Origin with him.
He was here beside her now, and yet he didn’t appear to be here.
She frowned as she stared at Eric, curled into a ball.
She put a hand on his shoulder, turning him to face her.
“Eric, look at me. Wake up,” she said, but he didn’t respond.
He was in an odd, altered state, but she had no idea where he was or what he was doing.
Panicked, she gave him a hard shake, and then a slap, but she got no response from him. He wasn’t reacting in any way. Images from the fire and the hotel collided and merged.
Her mind wasn’t putting the pieces together, but she knew without hesitation that Eric was in danger, a danger that neither one of them had even considered. What had she done?
She had dashed off into the fire. Had he tried to follow? She dimly remembered even feeling his presence in a way, and yet she wasn’t getting any sense of knowing he was there.
Nothing else felt like him, at least not the same as him. She called out, “Stefan.” Almost immediately a strange shimmer appeared in the air around her. She wasn’t sure what she was seeing, and it didn’t matter. She snapped, “What’s happening? What’s wrong with him?”
He’s back in the energy that you left, he explained. You came back, but you left him behind.
She stared at him in shock and muttered, “Oh no, no, no. That can’t happen. It’s very dangerous back there. He can’t be there.”
Stefan appeared to nod. Agreed, but that’s where he is.
She immediately closed her eyes.
This time, the memories were all there. The pain, the fear, the constant terror of what she had to do and what she was doing, as she moved slowly through the hospital, only to get called out by Stefan.
Forget the hospital, he warned, and she realized that, once again, everything she did was being directed, and she quickly moved through to the burning hotel, and there, as she watched, looking for any sign of Eric, she saw somebody trying to help a little boy in the far side of the huge building.
They were on a small balcony, off to the one side. She turned, realizing that Eric was caught up in the same scenario that she was, with him trying to save a little boy. She reached over and touched him.
He looked at her, relief on his face. “Help him,” he said. “Help me save him. He’ll die if we can’t get him out of here,” he cried out.
She nodded. “I will help.” She wrapped her arms around Eric, and, with a blink of an eye, brought him back home again. As she opened her eyes, he stared at her, wide-eyed, looking down at his hands, even with the smell of smoke still on them. He stared in shock at her.
She nodded. “That was the fire that consumed whatever building had been here at least one hundred years ago and had killed many people,” she told him, “and, yes, I brought you back.”
Tears welled up in his eyes, and he cried, tears spilling down his cheeks. “Why didn’t you help me save him? We could have saved him,” Eric roared, the fury and the pain of loss ripping through him at the same time.
She held out a hand. “I couldn’t save him,” she said. “No one could, Eric. He died well over a century ago.”
He stopped his tirade when the words finally filtered through. “What?”
She nodded. “That fire was a long time ago.”
And, with that understanding, Eric burst into tears and sobbed for a little boy who had been dead for decades.
*
It was a while later before Eric finally shifted all the heavy, ugly emotions off to the side and looked at Eden with some calm.
“For the longest time, even when I came back, … I couldn’t separate from the idea that you couldn’t save him.
I don’t know why I even expected you to,” he admitted in bewilderment. “That fire was extreme.”
“About that fire, you also saw the lack of firefighting equipment, right?” she asked.
“Yes, not a single truck in sight.”
“That’s because it was so long ago. They didn’t have fire trucks or hydrants. A bucket brigade maybe, but so few people,” she noted. She had been quiet for the most part, as he had ranted and raved.
He hadn’t conducted himself in a way that he was proud of, but she seemed to be completely unfazed by it, as if accepting that the blame was hers, and that was another thing that got him. He turned and looked at her and said, “You were just accepting everything I was yelling at you. How come?”
She shrugged. “I knew where you were coming from. It was your grief talking. You couldn’t help the little boy, and it was tearing you apart.”