Elisa,
who'd been watching Jacqueline, all at once felt herself begin to
tremble.
"Him,"
she
whispered. For a second, she thought they hadn't heard her, but the
sudden change in their expressions seemed to give her permission to
go on. "Our dreams, the figure ... I call him Mr. White Eyes."
Blanes
and Silberg dropped their jaws in unison. Jacqueline, who had turned
to her, nodded.
"Yes,"
she agreed. "His eyes
are
white."
THAT
sickening
feeling. Of filthiness, Jacqueline had said. You feel it too, don't
you, Elisa? She nodded in recognition. Filth was the right word. The
feeling of being stained, dirty, covered in muck, as if she'd dragged
her body through the scum of a huge swamp. And yet it was more than
just a physical feeling: it was the
idea
of
the feeling. Jacqueline had phrased it well, and Elisa realized that
the paleontologist might have actually been suffering even more than
she herself had.
"It's
like I'm just
waiting
for
something ... And I'm
part
of
it, so I can never get away. I'm alone. And it calls me. It was the
same for Nadja, she told me..."
Elisa
gasped.
It
calls me, and I want to obey.
She
wanted to say it, but it sounded so disgusting she didn't dare voice
it.
A
presence. A presence that wants me.
And
Jacqueline.
Maybe
everyone, but mainly us.
After
a long pause, Blanes looked up. Elisa had never seen him so pale, so
anxious.
"You
don't have to ... "tell me anything ... if you don't want to,"
he stammered. "I'll just tell you what happened to me, and all
I'm asking is that you let me know if it's the same kind of thing."
He seemed mostly to be addressing the two of them, and Elisa wondered
if he'd already spoken to Silberg about whatever it was he was about
to say.
"He
appears
in my dreams, my disconnects... And when he does, I see myself...
doing terrible things." He lowered his voice, his cheeks turned
red. "I have to do them, he makes me. To my sister... to my
mother... awful things. Not for pleasure, though sometimes there is
pleasure." The silence was thick; Elisa knew how hard it was for
Blanes to talk about this. "But there's always ... torture."
"My
wife," said Silberg, "is always the victim in my dreams.
Though 'victim' doesn't really express it." He was a large man,
but suddenly the expression on his face broke like a child, and he
stood and turned his back to them. He cried for a long time, but no
one could console him. Elisa was suddenly hit by another memory that
chilled her to the bone. The day she'd first seen him cry, standing
by the trapdoor that led down to the pantry. When he looked back at
them, Silberg had taken off his glasses and his face was all wet. "We
separated. We haven't gotten divorced ... we still love each other.
In fact, I love her more than ever, but I can't go on living with
her... I'm so scared I'll hurt her... scared
he
will
make me."
Jacqueline
had also stood up, and she walked to the window. The living room was
dark and silent.
"You
can consider yourselves lucky," she said without turning around,
staring through the dirty panes of glass and off into the night. The
thing that horrified Elisa the most about her confession was that her
voice didn't change. She didn't cry, didn't whimper. If Silberg had
sounded like a condemned man, Jacqueline Clissot sounded like she'd
already been executed. "I never talk to anyone about this,
except the Eagle doctors, but I suppose there's no reason to keep
hiding it. For years now, I've thought I was sick. I thought it a
year after returning from New Nelson, when I separated from my
husband and son, and decided to stop teaching and leave my
profession. Now I'm alone. I live in a studio in Paris that
they
pay
for. And all they ask in return is that I tell them about my dreams
... and my behavior." She was standing stock-still, her body
clinging to her ultrashort, outrageous outfit. Elisa was sure she
wasn't wearing anything underneath. "But I don't really live
alone. I live with
him,
if
you know what I mean. He tells me what to do. Threatens me. Makes me
want certain things, and punishes me, using my own hands. I actually
thought I had gone crazy, but they convinced me it was just part of
the Impact. What do they call it? 'Traumatic delirium.' That's not
what I call it. When I dare to call it anything, I call it the
Devil," she whispered. "And I'm scared to death of it."
No
one spoke. Everyone looked at Elisa. She found it hard to speak, even
though Jacqueline's story was far worse than hers.
"I
always thought they were just fantasies," she said, her mouth
running dry. "I imagine him visiting me every night at a certain
time. I have to wait for him, and I have to be scantily dressed. Then
he
comes
and tells me things. Terrible things. Things he'll do to me, or to
the people I love, if I don't obey him ... He terrifies me, too. But
I thought... it was just a fantasy."
"That's
the worst thing," Jacqueline agreed. "We
wanted
to
think it was just us, even though we knew it wasn't."
"There
has to be some sort of explanation." Blanes was massaging his
temples. "I don't mean a rational explanation. We're physicists,
mostly, and we know reality doesn't have to be rational. But there
has
to
be an explanation. Something we can
prove.
A
theory. We have to come up with a theory in order to make sense of
what's happening to us."
"There
are several possibilities." Silberg's voice was unrecognizable.
There was something about it that seemed silent, like the house, like
the countryside at night. "Let's see if we can rule them out,
narrow it down. First: Eagle Group is solely responsible. They
drugged us and did this to us."
"No,"
Blanes said. "It's true they've been hiding information from us,
but they're as lost as we are."
And
as scared,
Elisa
thought.
"OK,
then. Two: the Impact. I know for a fact that the Lake of the Sun and
the Jerusalem Woman had some sort of effect on all of us. And Eagle
is right when they say the effects are completely unknown. Maybe it's
the Impact that's making us so obsessed with ... that
thing.
Maybe
it's a product of our disturbed unconscious ... Let's say Valente
went crazy and found a way to kill Rosalyn and Ross ... I'm not
talking about
how
he
did it, just the act itself. And suppose the same thing is happening
now, to one of us. Maybe Sergio, or maybe one of the people in this
room right now. I know it sounds insane, but just suppose that
one
of us
...
is behind Colin's and Nadja's deaths." Silberg's idea had sown
panic.
"Regardless,"
Blanes remarked, "the Impact could explain the similarities
between our visions and the changes in our lives. Are there any other
possibilities?"
"One
more," Silberg replied, nodding. "A mystery. Like faith.
Something incomprehensible. The unknown factor."
"In
mathematics, we tend to find the value of the unknown," Blanes
said. "And we'll have to find this one if we want to survive."
Jacqueline's
voice got their attention abruptly.
"I
can tell you one thing. Whatever it is, I'm sure that it's wicked.
And it's real. Very real. It's evil. And it's stalking us."
PART
SEVEN
On
the Run
…
it
sometimes requires courage to fly from danger.
MARIA
EDGEWORTH
25
Madrid
March 12, 2015 1:30 A.M.
"AND
that
was it," Elisa said. "We ended the meeting, agreeing that
if something happened, David or Reinhard would call the rest of us
and use a code word to signal that we should meet here again, and
that the house was still safe. 'Zig Zag' was our code, since that was
the name of the project. We decided the meeting would be at twelve
thirty on the same night as the call. Meanwhile, David and Reinhard
would try to get more information, and Jacqueline and I would wait.
And that was what we did. Or what I did, anyway. Wait."
She
ran a hand through her wavy black hair and sighed deeply. She'd told
the worst of it and felt a little calmer now.
"Of
course, it wasn't easy, living like that. We knew we couldn't trust
Eagle or their specialists when they interviewed us, but luckily
those sessions became more sporadic. And they gradually left us
alone, as if we no longer mattered. From time to time I got messages
from David; he'd send me textbooks with notes hidden in the
binding—'conclusions,' he called them. They were just brief
memos about whether their investigation was getting anywhere ... but
I never knew exactly what kind of investigation they were conducting.
I'm assuming he'll tell us now..." She cocked an inquiring
eyebrow at Blanes, who nodded. "Anyway, time went by, and I just
tried to carry on with my life. The dreams, the nightmares, they were
always there. But David insisted we try to act as if we didn't know
anything. I bought that huge butcher knife, not to attack anyone or
to defend myself, I now know, but to quickly end my suffering when
the time came. But slowly, years went by, and in the end I really
believed I was safe, that the worst of it was over..." She
stifled a sob. "And then this morning in class, I saw the
article about Marini in the paper. I spent all day waiting for the
call. And finally the phone rang and I heard David's voice say, 'Zig
Zag,' and I knew it had started all over again ... That's it, Victor.
Or at least that's as much as I know."
She
paused, but it was as if she hadn't stopped speaking. No one dared
interrupt. No one moved. The four of them sat at the table, gathered
around the lamp's weak glow. Elisa turned to Blanes, and then toward
Jacqueline Clissot.
"And
now what I want to know is, which one of you betrayed us?" she
said in a different tone entirely.
Blanes
and Jacqueline exchanged glances.
"No
one betrayed anyone, Elisa," Blanes said. "Eagle found out
about the meeting, that's all."