Chapter 21 #3
He closed his eyes as he remembered the panic as he was trying to help the little boy out the door. “I don’t understand why I couldn’t get the door open. It wouldn’t open. I tried.”
“Of course you tried, but we all have our own limitations.”
“I’m not human enough, am I?” he asked bitterly. “What’s the point of doing this work if you can’t change something?” When she didn’t say anything, he glared at her.
She smiled. “You’re asking a question I have asked a million times before,” she shared, “and I don’t have any answers for you.
” She sighed, while he sniffled. “I didn’t get any answers myself, and nobody has been able to give me any, so I don’t know why.
I don’t know why I had to see that little girl die too,” she noted.
“Or why you had to see that little boy die and even get caught up in your inability to do anything about it.”
“There must be someone who can save them.”
“Don’t go there. Maybe Stefan can tell us something. I don’t know, but I sure wouldn’t get my hopes up. That’s one of the reasons I absolutely detested the work I was constantly doing with my mother.”
He stared at her for a long moment, and just then the phone rang. He answered it, recognizing Stefan’s number. “I hope you have some answers for me,” he stated bluntly, “because I feel like hell and completely lost.”
“I’m sorry,” Stefan replied, with a sigh. “Answers are a little thin on the ground right now, and, yes, I do understand, so you don’t need to rip me a new one.”
“I wasn’t—”
Stefan cut him off. “I can feel your anger wafting off you, so don’t bother. I understand that it’s been brutal and that you weren’t in any way prepared for those heavy emotions and the heavy losses.”
“It’s the loss of a child, Stefan. Many of them. How on earth does anybody find a way to deal with such memories, such images? I mean, that little boy was burned alive,” he cried out. “How is that okay?”
Stefan, his voice gentle, said, “I know it makes zero difference to you at this point, but the smoke would have taken him before the fire ever did, so he wouldn’t have felt a thing.”
“How could he have not felt a thing? It was a nightmare,” he cried out, clearly in agony. “How is that okay?”
“It’s not okay,” Stefan confirmed, his tone soothing, “and yet we all know that it happened a very long time ago, and there’s nothing any of us can do to change that. I want to hear a little bit more from Eden.”
At that, Eric turned to look at Eden.
“Obviously neither of you have any answers,” Stefan noted.
Eric added, “If I thought there was any way to go back in time and save him, I would.”
“And then what?” she asked him. “If you could save him, then what? For all you know, he’s the one who set the place on fire.” When he stared at her in shock, she shrugged. “I mean, it probably wasn’t him because of his age and size, but …” Then she fell quiet.
“No, no, no, no,” Eric cried out. “You don’t get to just go silent. What is it you are trying so hard not to say?”
She didn’t answer, and Stefan, his voice gentle, as if he already knew, spoke up. “It would help if we could discuss it, Eden.”
“Discuss what?” she asked, her tone hostile.
“Discuss the fact that the doors were all locked from the hallway side? Discuss the fact that the fire was lit on purpose? Discuss the fact that those people, including the children we saw and who knows how many more, all died because somebody wanted them to? Discuss the fact that everything that happened there that day was a man-made disaster, a mass murder?” Her voice broke as she cried out, “None of it makes any sense.”
She was hyperventilating but still going. “How does knowing any of this help anybody?” she wailed, as she turned to Eric. “Is that what you want to hear?”
He took a step toward her, but she held out a hand, keeping him at bay.
“That little boy was murdered. A lock was on his bedroom door from the hallway side, the same as the little girl screaming at the window on the very top floor, whom I saw, whom I was interacting with. I could do nothing for her, and neither of us could do anything for the little boy.”
She cried out, “How does going back in time and seeing that absolutely horrific scene do any good for anyone? I didn’t need to see that.
I didn’t need those memories, and I sure as hell didn’t need that emotional onslaught.
” She turned her attention to look at the phone. “Stefan, how is any of that helpful?”
“I don’t know if it was helpful,” Stefan admitted, “but what I can tell you is, anytime that is shown to people, there’s a reason. It’s up to us to find out just what that reason is and to solve it.”
“Solve what?” Eric repeated, glaring into the phone. “I don’t ever want to go through that again.”
Stefan sighed. “And maybe you won’t ever have to,” he replied. “Not everybody wants to do this work, but maybe if you understand what happened to the little boy afterward, you might want to.”
“What do you mean—afterward?” he snapped, his tone ominous as he glared down at the phone. “That little boy already went through hell. He should be left in peace.”
“That would be nice,” Eden muttered, and then she realized what was happening. “Oh God,” she moaned, sagging down to a crouch, staring at the phone. “He’s in that hole, isn’t he? He’s in the Origin.”
After a moment of silence, Stefan replied, “Yes, I think so.”
“He’s a prisoner? He’s one of many who’re in there? We have to help him,” Eric roared, as he bounded to his feet. “We have to help him.”
“I thought you didn’t want to do any of this work,” Stefan reminded Eric, with a note of wry humor. Eric turned and glared at the phone yet again, and Stefan added, “Oh, I get it. Believe me that I get it.”
“Do you?”
“Yes, I do, but it’s not just about one little boy. A lot of other people are in that Origin,” he stated, “and we still have to get to the bottom of it in order to shut it off,” he told them.
“What do we have to do?” Eden asked, her mind thinking through the possibilities. “Everybody who died in that fire is there, aren’t they?”
“Yes, and first things first. I think we need to do some research on what happened,” Stefan suggested. “That would give us something to work with here that we didn’t have before. It would also help to have the names, … the names of the people who perished.”
“We can do that,” she replied, looking over at Eric. “Maybe Eric can get something on it.”
“Most likely,” Stefan suggested, “somebody at the hotel will have the history, the horrible history, a terrible history. Still, we must find the history of whatever happened there.”
“Maybe a few people will still remember,” Eric noted.
“I still don’t understand why it’s feeding, why it needs new souls,” Eden shared. “So much here I just don’t get.”
Eric stared at her. “That you get any of it is beyond me,” he muttered. “It’s all just so horrific.”
“I know,” she agreed, “and I understand that, but I also understand that something here needs to be uncovered, and I’m not exactly sure how or what that’ll be, but we have a huge issue here,” she declared, “and it definitely needs to be stopped.” She frowned.
“I don’t understand Debbie’s involvement either. ”
“Maybe there isn’t any, unless to get you back here to feed Origin,” Eric suggested. “Or maybe … Do you know anything about her history?”
“You mean, long-term history? Only the past fifteen years.”
“So, maybe it would be helpful to get a genealogy,” Stefan suggested. “I do know somebody, so I might reach out.”
“There’s no might about it,” Eric barked. “If it’s important that we do this right now, we need to make use of whatever we have available in terms of resources to get answers. We came here because of her friend Debbie, but that doesn’t mean it’s just connected to Debbie.”
“Maybe not,” Stefan conceded, “but something brought you guys here.”
“And,” she interrupted, “there is still a connection to your rapist and murderer.”
When Eric turned and stared at her, she shrugged and said, “I don’t know how. I don’t know why. I’m just reminding you of that.”
“Christ,” he muttered, staring at her. “I forgot about that one.”
“I know. I know,” she said, “and that’s the last thing you wanted to hear.”
“It absolutely is, especially if I don’t get any more answers than that.”
“Sorry, I’m not trying to be unhelpful.”
He snorted and collapsed back down, but then, after a moment, he reached out a hand and slid his fingers through hers. “I’m not mad at you.”
“Good,” she whispered, a sheen of tears in her eyes, “because it feels as if I’m still dealing with a lifetime of people being mad at me.”
He shook his head. “Maybe it’s time you tell us exactly what your grandmother had you do.”
She frowned at him. “You know what she wanted me to do. I told you that already.”
“Humor me.”
“I sat there in the hospital the whole time, trying to heal my mother of cancer, a cancer that had ravaged her body and had made it almost impossible for her to even smile or to do anything anymore. It’s a terrible disease,” she whispered, “and it’s relentless.”
He nodded and didn’t say a whole lot for a minute. “What was it that you were supposed to do? Like, how were you supposed to help your mother?”
She shrugged. “I was supposed to heal her any way I could, but the instructions I got were strange, but they were something at least.”
“How strange?”
“I was supposed to go to the between, to disappear into the nothingness, into the space wherever people were, and ask them to help, ask them for forgiveness, ask them to save her.”
“Did she specifically tell you to ask people to help?” Stefan asked, his tone sharp.
“Grandmother had me do all kinds of things. I went in there, trying to do what she would tell me, but terrified because of all the things I heard her telling me to do in the background, things that weren’t at all what she told me ahead of time.”
“What do you make of that?” Eric asked.