by Todd Russell
"Tell me."
"I don't know."
Roberts put Everson in a headlock and put the knife to his eyes. He'd teach the one-eyed crazy motherfucker how to see. He'd make him blind and then leave him to his own misery. He had no use any more for someone as far gone as Seth Everson. Kyle had wrongly believed the man was ever of any use to him.
"I. . .can. . .see," Seth said.
Kyle stuck the knife in Seth's remaining eye. Seth screamed. And screamed.
"Tell me what you can see now, blind man. Tell me." Kyle pulled the knife out and shoved Seth to the ground. He said aloud, "Now just you and I, Richie."
Roberts looked up at the sky and saw the sun in its final stages. It was going down, half-way sunk into the ocean already. Nightfall soon. He was tired, hungry and disappointed. How long could Templin evade him?
And what about Sar's secret? Sar had found something on the island and Kyle believed Seth Everson would die before telling him. The most important translation on the island since the day they'd dropped and Seth wouldn't share.
Seth wouldn't share Sar's secret and Templin wouldn't share the woman.
Templin.
"COWWWWWAARRDDDDD."
Kyle Roberts walked away leaving Seth Everson writhing on the ground. Leaving the one man he wanted so badly hiding in the bushes a few feet away.
* * *
Three minutes after Roberts left, Seth decided to remove his blood-covered hands. The pain was not as bad as he'd imagined. Not as bad as the first eye that Walkins had taken but more bloody. It was more of a quick sting, with a slow throbbing ache. It felt as if someone was pressing on his eye with all their force, pressing it layer by fleshy layer through the back of his skull.
It was strangely pleasant.
His eyes were gone, and now he worried about what it meant to be among the blind.
Blackness, all you will see is blackness.
Seth kept his eyes covered, not quite ready to unveil the surprise. His heart raced. His pulse beat at his skin all around his body. Sweat formed and balled down his temples. With one eye gone he could see the wind, but what would he see without both eyes?
Blackness, only the blackness of the blind.
He peeled his left hand away first. His left eye had been Walkins' target and moments after it was poked out he realized the change. The things he could see. The wind, in particular, became visible. Finger by finger, Seth removed his left hand. This was the ultimate. Seth had never felt any race of anticipation such as this, it was better than a build-up to orgasm. He at last removed his hand completely from the left eye.
He kept his left eye closed. He decided it would be best to open them both at once. Once when he was ten, he had come home to a dark house, at first thinking that there was a blown fuse but then all the lights had come on. The momentary blindness of white. Then he realized his parents had held a surprise birthday party for him. He liked that. Turning the lights on at the same time is what he would do with his eyes; open them at the same time. Just like his surprise party, his only vivid, fond childhood memory.
So he began peeling the fingers on his right hand away from his eye.
What will I see? WHAT WILL I SEE?
Pinky finger. . .ring finger. . .middle finger. . .
WHAT WILL I SEE?
. . .index finger. . .
Blackness, only blackness Seth, you are blind.
At last both hands were pulled from his face. He was ready to open his eyes and savor the prize. He was ready to see the world differently. He was ready for the grand moment. He had just entered the house—
(Must be that fuse-thing again! Mom, stop blow-drying your hair and using the toaster at the same time. Dad said that's the reason the breaker keeps tripping. He'll be real mad this time. . .).
WHAT WILL I SEE?
Seth opened both eyes.
Someone in his house flipped a switch. The room came to life. He was blinded by bright white.
(Not the fuse-thing! Not the fuse-thing! NOT THE FUSE-THING!)
Here was his surprise. The white faded and he saw. . .saw. . .saw. . .
Blackness. That's what he saw.
Seth Everson, the man who loved his eyes with infinite depth, started hopelessly screaming. He was blind.
* * *
Still hidden in the bushes, Richard and Jessica watched Seth Everson kicking and clawing at invisible demons. Richard took her hand and turned her from the pitiful sight. He pointed in the direction they'd been travelling and they started away.
She realized five minutes later that Richard was leading her back to the west side of the island again. It was dark when they arrived at the southwest beach where she'd waded out into the water last night and he'd pulled her back from the shore. The moon had found its way into the sky; a quarter-moon tonight. The tides crashed in the distance.
"Who is Sar?" Jessica asked.
"Remember that clearing with the tasty berries? Sar was one of the original cons sent here. A nice Japanese guy that was the first to find that clearing. We think maybe he smuggled in some seeds and he grew some vegetables the first year we were on the island together."
"But they stopped growing?"
"Yeah, something happened in the fall. Sar harvested the first crop and then no more."
"What happened to Sar?"
"That's something Roberts has been obsessed with for years. He believes Sar found another special place on the island. He's been trying to find it for years."
"What happened to Sar? He's not on the island any more?"
"Well, that's something nobody likes talking about. Sar came and saw me in the cave a few times that summer. He brought me some vegetables grown in the clearing. I offered for him to come and live in the cave with me. It was closer to the clearing than the east camp but I don't think he understood my offer."
"That was a nice gesture."
"Seth Everson was buddies with Sar and could translate a little. I tried to get Seth to make my offer to Sar and he said he did. I don't think he ever did."
"So this place that Kyle thinks Sar told Seth about, do you think it really exists?"
"Sar sure believed he saw something on the island that scared him. I don't want to freak you out any more about this place but something happened to Sar. Something that maybe only Seth knows about. A group of us spent days searching all over the island trying to find the other place that scared Sar but we couldn't find anything."
"Do you think Sar found some other place?"
"Not sure. Whatever he found, it changed him. The last time I saw Sar there was a look in his eyes that wasn't the Sar I knew. He was afraid of something. Real afraid. And then I never saw him again."
"Was he one of the ones who swam away from the island?"
"No, he's still here."
"Where is he?"
Richard told Jessica where Sar was and her eyes widened.
Not too far in the distance, a blind man cursed the night.
CHAPTER 35
"It's just us and him now, Jessica."
Jessica and Richard had been sitting on the beach for a half-hour of silence. He fired that sentence about Kyle Roberts out of nowhere.
"Roberts won't come looking for us tonight by himself. He'll wait until morning. He's gone back to his side of the island and I don't think we have anything more to fear tonight."
"You think he's giving up because he's the only one left?" she felt strange saying the only one left, because there was still a blind, deranged Seth Everson out there somewhere. She still couldn't get his screaming out of her head.
"No. Roberts will not give up."
"He's crazy."
Richard held out his hands.
"Roberts thinks he knows a lot about you."
"He's got some of me down, I'm afraid." His eyes looked down at the sand.
"You're not a coward, Richard."
"I didn't say I was."
"You implied it."
"I avoided him all this time, Jessica. Sometim
es I have my dream with the birds carrying me off to the dark place and the birds all have Kyle Roberts' face."
Ocean silence. Waves pounding the beaches. Soft winds moving the trees back and forth. Richard reached out and squeezed her hand.
"Don't worry. I will protect you from him. You're safe with me."
Jessica took his arms and put them around her, kissing him once. "Tell me about her."
"Her? Who said anything about. . .? Ok, got me."
He told Jessica about his relationship with Sherry Coolridge.
Toward the end, he said, '"The reason I'm telling you all this is because I want you to understand why I hit you. It wasn't because I was pissed-off at the unfairness of my sentencing, and you finding out where we were. Those things contributed to the anger, I'm sure, but it was Sherry that brought it all on."
Jessica kept silent. She had forgiven him but not forgotten. His display of violence was tame by comparison of the other violence on the island, some of which she had taken part in. She thought of stabbing Bat Jackson and Bobby being stuck with a tree branch spear by Richard.
"Sherry was the first woman to hurt me and I never had the chance—not with the party and everything—to tell her how I felt. But when I got mad at you, I said some things about women. Really, I was talking about Sherry, not all women. She was my first love and when everything went wrong between us I blamed, in my mind all women, not only Sherry as I should have."
Ocean silence again.
"I want to give you something." He reached into his pocket and produced an old, faded high school photograph. "It's the only thing I have left from my past. I want you to have it."
"Thank you," she took the picture and ran her finger over his face. At some point she put the photograph in her blouse pocket.
They kept staring into each other's eyes. Jessica didn't see the man she once thought of as repulsive any more, in fact the opposite. He had changed her. She saw a young man, almost 10 years younger than her staring back at her.
Her pleasant thoughts tried to be invaded by the image of Kyle Roberts violating her last night. She didn't want to break Richard's spirit by telling him what happened. It seemed almost cruel for her to burden the man with further pain.
Their beach moment should have been romantic. Something that if she had first washed here and never known about the other convicts on the east side of the island she could have shared with Richard.
If only for tonight Jessica wanted to live in the lie Richard had initially told her. The one where only wild animals lived on the east side of the island.
She leaned closer and put her head on Richard's shoulder
* * *
On the way back to the east camp, Kyle decided to follow a different path. The light was fading fast and he lit a torch.
Maybe tonight he'd find Sar's secret place at last. The place that Kyle had searched hundreds of times over the years to find. All his supposed great skills in the woods, all those years collecting and yet he couldn't find a place that a Japanese convict farmer could find. Sar had grown up on islands so it's possible he had some advantage but Kyle spent most his adult years in the woods. Why did this place elude him?
"Maybe tonight you'll reveal yourself to me," Kyle called out to the island as he threw brushes out of his way and continued east. Searching, always searching.
* * *
Seth Everson stopped crying. The crying had followed the screaming. He wept himself dry. All he could see now was darkness.
Exactly what they wanted him to see.
The world had not condemned Seth Everson, it had condemned his eyes.
Blackness all around.
He felt around for his knife. He felt tree branches and leaves and dirt and moss—
(I CAN'T SEE THEM)
—and his knife. His trusty buck knife. He moved his fingers along the cold blade testing the sharpness. He touched the base which he knew was brown and—
(I CAN'T SEE THE BROWN)
—gripped it tightly. Seth was disappointed in himself. He had been through a lot in his life. So much, in fact, that it didn't seem fair to be planning his next action. But his eyes had seen the world like none others, he would always be thankful for that.
His eyes had seen Disneyland and the Grand Canyon and the White House. His eyes had seen the upstairs at San Quentin; the death row where Caryl Chessman and many others had grimly awaited their fates. His eyes had seen the happy and the sad, the smart and the stupid, even the living and the dead. His eyes could never have seen it all, but they had seen enough. His eyes could see where the world had been, where it was now, and where it was going.
But now his eyes could see nothing.
Blackness.
Seth held the knife to his abdomen. He moved his train of thought to a different place, a different time. It was World War II and he was a Japanese soldier. The Japanese people had the highest honor for their country. They would live and die for it in the name of honor. And when a Japanese soldier disgraced his country there was only one option.
He stopped when he heard a voice.
He felt around, "I hear you? Who's there?"
The voice called out to him and he followed the sound.
At some point he stopped thinking about suicide. The voice had saved him. A voice that he thought called him Satan.
CHAPTER 36
While the blind man helped untangle Torque from the tree, he sensed the deliciously dark aura around the man. He asked how he became blind.
"It doesn't matter any more."
"I'm Torque, what's your name?"
"Seth."
"Seth, the voices led me here. I've been waiting a long time—years—for this moment. There must be some reason you were the first person I've met here." Torque's eyes were watery. If only his shotgun Sally could be by his side.
"This place isn't what you think. I've been here since almost the beginning. It will betray your eyes."
"I saw it from above. It's exactly as I imagined."
Torque looked into Seth's dried-blood gouge sockets. He felt something was in there. Something strong and powerful that the human form of the man seemed unable to understand.
"I need to see the special place."
"Special place?"
"You know the place I'm talking about. Or maybe you know a guy who knows about it. I was cellies with a guy at San Quentin who told me that once I got here I should look for Saruwatari Naoki. Do you know him?"
"Yes, Sar, I know him."
"Take me to Sar. Describe how to get there and I'll be your eyes."
* * *
Seth liked this Torque guy. He described Sar's clearing and the directions how to get there by following west until reaching Templin's cave. Although everything remained black, Seth felt useful helping Torque locate the clearing. As Torque walked he described their surroundings. He was a good guide.
"Somebody lives in this cave?"
"Yes, his name is Templin. And a woman shipwrecked here a couple months ago has been staying with him."
"A woman, huh? Which way now?"
"Head due east from the cave. You'll pass an area that Templin uses as a bathroom. You can't—" Seth pinched his nose. "Yeah, we are there. Keep to the right."
"It's getting darker," Torque said. "But I can still see. I love this place!"
They traveled for another ten minutes and Torque told him what he'd done in the states to be sent here. "It was bloody business, Seth, but it had to be done. My destiny is here. This is my home."
Home.
Torque's excitement was contagious. Seth didn't want to die any more. He wanted to live. When Kyle had left him blind he thought his life was over but the more Torque talked, the more he began to appreciate his new situation.
"We should be coming upon Sar's clearing."
"I see it. It's about 75x75. Berries on vines around the edges."
A long silence. Seth could hear the sounds of Torque digging in the dirt.
"I don't see Sar. H
e lives here?"
"No," Seth said and the memory of that fall day returned. The day that changed Sar forever. He told Torque the story.
* * *
Fall 1984.
The storm had moved in, pounding the camp with rain. The cons in the east camp tried to take cover under the trees. Lightning bolts struck in the blackened clouds and loud thunder cracked. Sar left the group, saying he needed to check on his clearing. Seth offered to go with him and Sar nodded.
They headed north from the east camp under heavy tree cover so they wouldn't get as wet. About fifteen minutes from the camp, close to the east island cave area, Sar stopped and turned to Seth.
"Do you hear that?" Sar knelt down in the wet grass and mud and put his ear to the ground. He slapped the ground and said something that loosely translated to "the ground is awake."
"I only hear the storm, Sar, sorry."
"There is another clearing near here. I must come back."
* * *
"Sar was always talking about the dirt," Seth said. "He thought if he found another clearing he could grow even more vegetables for all of us."
"So you came to this clearing that day? What happened?"
"He came here and started crying. He said that this ground had been 'put to sleep.' We would have no more vegetables in this location."
"I don't see any more vegetables," Torque said.
"Yes, Sar was correct. No more vegetables ever grew here again. So we went back to the east side of the camp and the leader of our group, his name is Kyle Roberts, maybe you've heard about him?"
"Yeah, my cellie told me to watch out for him. Said he's a slick bastard."
"Roberts can be bad at times, real bad, yes."
"So what happened to Sar?"
"Sar spent the next two weeks trying to find the other clearing. He told me it was our secret and if I told the others he might never be able to find it. Something about it being a hidden clearing."