The Eternals

by Richard M. Ankers

  “Jean.”

  In the midst of my malaise a sound wafted across my ears like a sigh in the breeze.

  “Jean.”

  I looked about, but the room remained unchanged. I was still very much alone and suspected my exhausted mind played tricks on me.

  If it wasn't for the impending sunrise I should have departed that place of haunted memories. Why I'd chosen to go there in the first place was beyond me. Had I in my desperation sunk so low as to turn back to my sordid past?

  “Jean.”

  There was no mistaking the sound a third time around. It was the tones of a woman, but none I recognised. The sound came from inside and I proceeded to open every downstairs door and cubbyhole that presented itself: nothing!

  “Jean.”

  The voice sounded desperate in a feeble way. Like a child placed in a pit with barely enough food to survive and allowed to grow into something only partially human, the words chafed.

  “Jean.”

  Desperate, I covered my ears. The voice played upon my consciousness, but I knew I had no option except to search for its source.

  “Jean.”

  I took the creaking stairs two at a time hoping to rid myself of the nightmare all the sooner. Sheets of cobwebs enveloped me, but I didn't care. I raced to the landing and tore open every door that didn't already hang ajar from its rotted frame. But no matter how I searched I found nothing. Only when presented with one final doorway, that to Alba and mine's bedchambers, did the voice stop. And in that moment, he who'd terrorised a people, knew fear.

  It was a shaking hand that turned that last doorknob. I stepped into the room with my eyes closed and a hush on my heart. I never wanted to open them again. When I did, I wished I hadn't.

  There, sat in the furthest corner of the furthest room sat a figure more ghost than reality. She was more like a delicate silk that had begun to unravel and rot than a woman. Her skin was sallow and sunk deep into hollow cheeks. The lace clothing she'd once filled to voluptuous effect hung from her like a tent of dust-ridden sheeting. But it was her eyes that hurt the most, unchanged as they were, blue like sapphires, sparkling from a crumbling, limestone cliff face. They stared at me with something that was once malice, but had manifested into far worse: it was pity that shone from those azure orbs, pity for a wretch undeserving.

  “Jean, you have returned,” she whispered, as if from the void. “I knew you wouldn't forget me. I told them all you'd return.”

  “Of course, I should. How could I not, my love?” I lied. A creaking of timbers pierced the silence and I thought somebody else was in the room with us. When I saw Alba's arm lift a little, I realised it her bones.

  I rehearsed a smile and edged closer. And for a second, just an instant in time, she realised how she must look and attempted to turn away. The sound of her neck cracking hurt me far more than her. I took a deep breath of stagnant air and then strode to her side.

  “Do you still love me, Jean?” she murmured from behind a raised hand.

  “Of course I do, my love. I've always loved you. I got lost that's all. But now I'm back to care for you.” I stroked at her once beautiful blonde hair that had long since turned alabaster white. Strands of it came loose in my fingers, but I said nothing.

  “I don't want you to see me like this, Jean.”

  “It matters not, my love. I have blood downstairs, I shall fetch it for you. You'll soon be well again and we shall walk along the Danube's promenades together hand in hand.” I placed an arm about her shattered frame to mollify her.

  “I do not think so. I do not think I want to. It is not as it once was,” she wheezed.

  “It could be again, my love. This crumbling world still has time to be fixed.” Something rough brushed my hand, and I realised Alba cried tears of salt.

  “I've waited so long, Jean. I watched the others leave but I never once strayed from this window. I thought it an illusion when I first saw you stagger up the driveway. But then I realised you'd come back for me. You came to save me, didn't you, Jean?”

  I wanted to answer her but couldn't. I saw that which she clasped in her spare hand. It was my note. The paper was yellowing and crumbling in places, but I knew the eggshell parchment to be that from my private supply. She must have held it through the centuries. It was more part of her now than her own skin.

  The silence between us settled, the air stilled, and I eased myself from her. “I shall be back momentarily, my darling Alba. Let me fetch you something to make you feel better,” I said, unhooking myself from her.

  “I don't want you to come back,” she said.

  “I will be a mere fraction of a second, my dear. No longer, I promise you.”

  “I don't want you to make me better.”

  “You don't mean that, Alba,” I said, as I cupped her chin in my palm.

  “Things have not changed, Jean. I know they haven't. This world is dying. It does not have long left.”

  “Shhh, little one,” I whispered, doing my best to reassure her. “We can't be sure of that, can we?”

  “I have seen the sun, Jean. I have seen it as I sought you,” she wheezed.

  My head was shaking before I realised it did so. Alba saw it too and knew I thought her mad. I did think her mad, but I still intended to save her.

  I eased myself from her frail form and paced from the room. Her choking sobs filled the space between us and I hurried all the faster for them. I threw open the coffin lid, snatched up what remained of the blood bag and rushed back.

  I will never forget the sight of she who was once the most beautiful creature God had ever chosen to grace his world with. She sat where I'd left her, a smile playing across her broken face, a gaping hole in her chest from where she'd torn out her own heart. The thing beat a last bloodless note in her open palm before it and she crumbled to dust.

  Dazed and confused, I stumbled back down the staircase. The sun's slow-rising presence signalled the return to my coffin. That hollowed out carcass provided no sanctuary from my grief, only a place to weep echoing tears, as I never had, and suspected, never would again.

  Chapter Twelve

  -

  Merryweather

  I'd had no intention of ever seeing Alba again until necessity foisted it upon me, but the effects of my visit reverberated through my very being. Eternals had always been soulless, shell-like creatures, but Alba's belief I would return had proven that, perhaps, there was more to our kind than I'd have credited. My actions had crushed what little remained of the real Alba, my once beloved, yet she'd clung to hope like a leaf to a tree. When that hope was torn from said branch, she'd taken her own existence rather than live a lie. I couldn't blame her; I wouldn't want to live with me either.

  * * *

  I woke from the enforced oblivion only the dead knew wishing I hadn't. I'd never desired to remain within my wooden prison so much in my whole centuries spanning non-life. Somehow, I dragged myself up and out into another stagnant evening.

  My mind, and any thoughts of revenge, whirled in torment, but they were all I had. However, they would be postponed until I'd disposed of Alba's ashes with the dignity they deserved.

  I returned upstairs to one of three bathrooms amazed to find something still resembling water still flowed from the faucets. I cleaned myself as best I could then set about finding a drinking vessel. One crystal glass remained untarnished. It was this glass that soon held my pitiful blood supply and found me toasting she who I had ruined.

  “My darling Alba,” I began. “Whoever claimed our race neither has, nor shows heart, is now proven wrong. I can never apologise enough for your mistreatment, nor forgive myself. And though you might doubt it, I shall always love you in my own peculiar way and hope that somewhere in purgatory you are sat by a window waiting for me still. I shall not make the mistake of leaving you there a second time. Goodbye, my love. Goodbye, dear heart.”

  I swirled the blood beneath my nose as something plopped into my drink. I downed the contents in one
, but the additional saline whatever-it-was left a bitter aftertaste.

  Once finished, I scraped as much of Alba's ashes into the glass as I could discern from the surrounding dust and was about to take her to eternal rest, when a sudden shame struck. Although clean, my tattered appearance dishonoured my dear departed wife's memory. Decorum demanded I correct the matter and prayed Alba hadn't shredded all my former finery. Who could have blamed her if she had?

  So, I headed to my once majestic, mahogany wardrobe, now so secreted with dust as to be almost unrecognisable, and threw open its doors to a sight that humbled me further. There, hung up and ordered in neat rows, were lines of my best clothes. Everything was immaculate. There wasn't so much as a dust mite in sight. Alba had kept those faint hopes of my return alive through my outerwear. I ran my hands through the well ordered garments and for a second thought her still in her chair. She wasn't of course, but how I wished she was.

  In true Jean style, I felt much better once I'd donned my most dapper black ensemble. I stood at the door to our home, coat collar turned up, glass of dust in hand, renewed and determined to make good of Alba's ashes. Down the gravelled driveway I strode, head held high, shoulders back, and walked out into the avenues that made up New Washington. Along tree-lined streets I strolled, once the grandest in the land, now a poor excuse for their former selves. The silver birches I'd helped select to mark my then passage through society's splendour, stood rotten and infested. The curlicued lampposts, once such a decorative extravagance, slumped at unseemly angles, rusting and unlit. New Washington looked like Death had dragged it through hell and then deposited it in place of the world's largest cemetery. Yet, whether it was the cut of the once tended verges, or the sight of buildings I knew to have once been so magnificent, I felt a swelling of something close to pleasure at their former familiarity. The exterior facades may have been decrepit but the lay of the land was the same and I'd loved it, once. Well, almost.

  I snaked my way through the side-streets, until I reached the promenade that abutted the Danube's sluggish waters. Alba and I took perambulations there at one time with smiles on our faces. She would have liked it to have been her final resting place. At least, I hoped so.

  So, it was there I scattered her remains into what once were crystal clean waters and not the hellish soup that roiled there instead. Alba's ashes laid like snow upon the bloodied waters before incorporating into the festering, crimson mass and disappearing from sight. I shed no tears for the second female I'd condemned to a Danube grave. I had none left to grieve.

  Standing there watching the river gloop past consumed me so as I quite lost track of the time. Frankly, I did not care. But I cared for the sound of oncoming hooves clattering over concrete streets. I toyed with hiding in case it one of my now numerous enemies, but in the end thought sod them and stood my ground, back ramrod straight, nose in the air, the Jean that others knew and feared.

  It was the blond hair that hung like a mop over the rider's eyes that revealed the person's identity long before his ironic hail from his gigantic horse's back.

  “Fancy meeting you here!” Merryweather called, as his mount came to a thunderous stop. The momentum threw him forward then back so hard that he almost rolled off its rump and onto a second horse he had in tow.

  “Something tells me you knew I'd be here.”

  “Always so observant, my friend.”

  “One tries. It's what keeps me alive, you know.”

  “Only just, from what I've heard.”

  “And where did you hear that?” I bristled.

  “Oh, here and there.” Merryweather waved one gloved hand about in typically foppish fashion.

  “I could insist on you telling me.”

  “And I'm sure you would, but it's quite unnecessary I assure you.” Merryweather pointed to the closest of the crooked streetlights.

  I wasn't sure what I was supposed to be looking at until my companion blew kisses in its direction, and the streetlight responded with a clicking as of miniature cogs whirring into action. “What is it?” I asked my beaming companion.

  “Cameras, dear boy, thousands of tiny cameras. You've been well observed since you staggered into the city, and in so doing doubled the population.”

  Merryweather looked aghast to find my hand at his throat, so quick did I move. “I should choose your next witticism with considerable care.”

  “I'm sorry, Jean, I meant no harm. You know what I'm like. My mouth goes into gear before I know what I'm saying.”

  “I doubt you ever don't know what you're saying.”

  “Well, we all have our ways.”

  “We do,” I responded with a sneer. “This is mine.”

  “If you're not going to rip my throat out would you mind letting go?”

  “I don't mind at all,” I said, keeping a firm grip upon him. “But I must insist on knowing what you're doing here.”

  “Well, it seems I owe you an apology.”

  I released Merryweather that instant, so shocked was I by his words. Walter had always struck me as the sort of person least likely to offer an apology.

  “Yes, I know, it's most unusual.” He rolled his eyes and flicked a dislodged lock from his face.

  “Speak then,” I growled.

  “It appears you are of the hook.”

  “Off whose hook?”

  “Rudolph's.”

  “How so?” I frowned.

  “You have an alibi for Chantelle's death.”

  “I do?”

  “Apparently.”

  I could see Merryweather enjoyed toying with me but was too shocked to reprimand him. Such unexpected news threw further complications into my current dilemma. I wasn't even sure who I was or wasn't supposed to kill anymore. Merryweather's name remained high on the list though.

  “I thought they didn't believe I was with you?” I offered.

  “They didn't, old friend. But who wouldn't believe a Princess of The New Europa Alliance?” I must have looked a little puzzled by this as Merryweather's eyes narrowed. He looked down at me in a most condescending manner and then shook his head. “It was Princess Linka, Jean.”

  I might have fallen into the river if it hadn't been for the promenade railings. I hadn't even met Linka until the next night. We had enjoyed each other's company, but I didn't believe even I could affect a woman in so short a time as to make her defend me against her own sister's death.

  Merryweather just sat shaking his head through my cavalcade of emotions.

  “Pulled that one out of the bag, didn't you?” he quipped. “I wasn't even sure if you'd done it myself, not until now, anyway.”

  I did not answer the smirking buffoon, for I gripped the railing so tight it buckled and snapped. The resulting crack startled Merryweather's horse so much that it bucked and threw him to the ground in a heap.

  I couldn't help but laugh, and even offered the dust covered fop my hand, so elated was I at his news.

  “Thank you,” he said. Merryweather brushed the grime from his velveteen trousers and tut-tutted when one piece failed to comply.

  “So, why did they send you to give me the good news?” I asked.

  “They told me to or, and let me get this straight, I would have my treacherous head shoved on a pike and stuffed full of grapes at the next ball. I thought that quite a humorous death for King Rudolph to have concocted. I wouldn't care, but it was me that provided your first alibi. It's not my fault they presumed it a lie.” Merryweather leaned in conspiratorially to whisper the latter remark. “You never know if there's microphones about, too,” he added.

  “What next then?”

  “Well, I presumed I'd have a hard time dragging you away from Alba now you've found her again.”

  “You won't,” I replied.

  “Are you sure, Jean? That Santini girl always had quite a hold on you and you've spent so many desperate years avoiding her.”

  “I won't need to avoid her anymore.”

  Merryweather paused and I could
see the grey matter churning in his head. “You haven't? You didn't? Not your own wife, Jean? What the hell's wrong with you!”

  I gave my enforced companion one of my most withering looks and replied, “She took her own life.”

  “Oh. In that case, I'm truly sorry. I liked her, everybody did. May I ask where she is now?”

  I nodded toward the unctuous Danube.

  “Oh,” was all Merryweather could muster.

  “Should we get going? I see you've come prepared.”

  “Well, the last thing I wanted was you sat behind me. You are a very attractive man after all.”

  I shook my head in despair, and then leaped onto the second horse, immediately regretted doing so.

  Merryweather just rolled his eyes, shook his floppy haired head, and said, “Cyborg.”

  “I realise that now,” I wheezed.

  * * *

  We set off at a lick through the deserted streets, I following my enforced messenger so as to keep a better eye on him. My only thought was to hold on for dear life, the augmented horses were uncomfortable but their speed staggered. We flashed through New Washington at such a velocity we'd exited the far side of the city before I'd even had chance to remember the place. Onwards we sped towards the foot of the Alps, which seemed to have moved suspiciously closer to the city thanks to the last of the scientists' Himalayan amalgamation experiments. The thunderous echoes of the horses' hooves deafened as they roared across the Rhineland's decaying pastures. It almost set my heart beating, almost, but not quite.

  I clung to my mount with a vigour I'd have thought lost after the week's endeavours, but was not about to let myself fall behind a man I still regarded as an idiot. The fact his inadvertent help had caused so much aggravation to my usual tedious routine would not be forgiven. I believed Merryweather knew it too and rode so fast to remain at arm's-length. Also from not knowing how to slow down, but that was to be expected from the fool. On the plus side, I was leaving another sorry chapter in my life behind and rode with the faint hope of falling into Princess Linka's arms. However, I had my doubts about that. Regardless of my being cleared of that which I had in fact perpetrated, I suspected the taint to my person would remain. There was every chance I'd be stained with it forever, which for an Eternal, was a very long time indeed.