Zig Zag

  "Thank you," Elisa murmured.

  "Well in any case, we should wait for Reinhard and find out what he thinks," Jacqueline Clissot insisted. Blanes shook his head.

  "Victor's already here. We may as well tell him the rest." He glanced at Elisa. "You want to be the one?"

  Now came the hard part, and she knew it. It would be awful later, finding out who had betrayed them. But for now, the idea of recounting everything she'd been hiding over the past several years (the most terrible years) seemed like an insurmountable test. Still, she knew that she was the best person to do it.

  She didn't look at Victor, or at anyone. Instead she cast her gaze toward the reading lamp's dim beam of light.

  "As I said, Victor, we accepted their explanation of what happened on New Nelson and went back to our lives, after swearing we'd follow their orders: no contact with each other, and no talking to anyone about what happened. The supposed accident in Zurich caused a little stir, but in time everything just went back to normal... at least on the surface." She stopped and took a deep breath. "Then, four years ago, it was Christmas 2011."

  She spoke in hushed tones, as if trying to send a child off to sleep.

  In a way, that was exactly what she was trying to do. Cradle her own fear.

  PART SIX

  The Terror

  Scientists are not after the truth; it is the truth that is after scientists.

  KARL SCHLECTA

  22

  Madrid December 21, 2011 8:32 P.M.

  IT was a bitterly cold night, but the thermostat was always set at seventy-six degrees. She was in the kitchen making dinner, barefoot. Her nails (fingers and toes) were painted bright red, her makeup was perfect, and her silky black hair glimmered with new salon highlights. A lilac robe hung to her knees, barely covering the sexy black lace lingerie underneath. No stockings. From the cell phone (on speakerphone) resting on an electronic pedestal came her mother's voice, prattling on. She was spending Christmas with Eduardo (her current beau) in the Valencia house and wanted to know if Elisa was coming to spend Christmas Eve with them.

  "I'm not trying to pressure you, Eli, believe me. You do what you want. Though I suppose you've always done what you wanted. And I know you're not into holidays, but—"

  "I'd love to, Mother, really. I just can't commit for sure yet."

  "Well when will you know?"

  "I'll call you Friday."

  She was making escalivada, a dish of roasted peppers, eggplant, and onions, and turned on the extractor fan as she poured the contents of her mortar into a hot pan. Angry sizzling made her step back. She had to turn up the speaker volume to hear.

  "I don't want to ruin your plans, Eli, but I just thought if you don't have any ... I mean, it would be nice if you made the effort. And I'm not just saying that for my sake." She sounded hesitant. "You could use some company, you know, honey. I know you've always been a loner, but it's different now. A mother picks up on these things."

  She pulled the pan off the burner and sprinkled its contents over the vegetables.

  "You've been withdrawn for months, maybe years. You seem so ... distant, so off in your own world. The last time you came home, when you were here for Sunday lunch, I swear you weren't the same."

  "The same as who, Mother?"

  She grabbed a bottle of mineral water from the fridge and a glass from the cupboard and walked into the living room, toes curling into the springy carpet. She could still hear her mother's voice perfectly from there.

  "The same way you used to be, Elisa."

  There was no need to turn on the lights: they were all already on, even those in the bathroom and bedroom that she wasn't using. She always flipped them all on the moment the sunlight began to fade. It cost a small fortune, especially in the winter, but she couldn't stand the dark. She even slept with a couple of lamps on.

  "Well, don't listen to me," her mother said. "I didn't call just to get on your case. Sure seems like it, Elisa thought. "And I really don't want you to feel forced into it. If you have plans with anyone ... like that man you told me about... Rentero ... just let me know. I won't be upset. I'll be delighted, in fact."

  Oh, Mother, aren't you sneaky. She placed her glass and the bottle of water on the table, in front of the flat-screen TV that was on mute, and walked back into the kitchen.

  Martin Rentero had been an IT professor at Alighieri until that year, when he'd gotten a job at the University of Barcelona and moved. But he'd come to Madrid the week before for a conference, and Elisa had seen him again. He had thick, black hair and a mustache, and he knew he was good looking. Over the years at Alighieri, he'd invited Elisa out to dinner a few times and confessed how much he liked her (it wasn't the first time she'd heard that type of confession). She had no doubt that when they met up again he'd make another play. And, indeed, he did. As soon as he saw her, he suggested that they have a weekend getaway together, but she had to go to the physics party with her colleagues at Alighieri. So he tried again, telling her that he'd planned to rent a house in the Pyrenees and would love to spend the holidays with her. What did she think?

  It sounded too intense, that was what she thought. She liked Martin, and she knew the company would do her good. But she was scared, too.

  Not scared of Martin, but for him. Scared of what might happen with him if she broke down, if she lost her cool, if her obsessive behavior gave her away.

  I'll make up an excuse, for him and Mother. I don't want to get involved with anyone. She turned off the stove and grabbed the escalivada.

  "You know, if you have plans, it wouldn't hurt to tell me."

  "Well, I don't."

  Just then, the living-room phone rang. She wondered who it could be. She wasn't expecting any other calls that night and really didn't want to talk to anybody; she'd been planning to spend a few hours "playing" before bed. She glanced at the digital clock in the kitchen and felt relieved. It was still early.

  "Sorry, Mother, I have to go. I've got a call coming in on my land line."

  "Don't forget, Eli..."

  She hung up her cell and walked into the dining room, thinking it was probably Rentero, the source of her mother's third degree. She picked up just before the machine kicked in.

  There was a pause. A soft buzzing noise.

  "Elisa?" It was a young woman with a foreign accent. "Elisa Robledo?" Her voice trembled, as if coming from a place much colder than her apartment. "It's Nadja Petrova."

  Somehow, across the miles of cable and the ocean of wavelengths, the chill in her voice reached Elisa's half-naked body and made her shiver.

  "HOW are you this month?"

  "Same as last."

  "Does that mean 'good'?"

  "That means 'alive.'"

  THE truth was, she never forgot about any of it; it was always with her. But time was like a wool lining, something that protected her numb, naked body. Time didn't heal wounds; that was crap. What it did was hide them. The memories were all still there, intact, inside her, neither more nor less intense, but time masked them, at least to other people. It was like a blanket of autumn leaves covering a grave, or like the grave itself, hiding a mass of wriggling worms.

  But she really didn't care about that. Six years had passed; she was twenty-nine and had a permanent post as professor at a decent university and taught what she loved. She lived alone, true, but she was independent, had her own place, didn't owe anybody anything. She earned enough to be able to buy whatever she wanted, and she could have traveled if she'd wanted (she didn't) or had more friends (no thanks). And as for the rest... what else was there?

  Her nights.

  "ARE you still having nightmares?"

  "Yes."

  "Every night?"

  "No. Once or twice a week."

  "Could you tell us about them?"

  Silence.

  "Elisa? Could you tell us about your nightmares?"

  "They're pretty fuzzy."

  "Well, tell us what you can remember."

>   Silence.

  "Elisa?"

  "Darkness. It's always dark.

  WHAT else? She had to leave the lights on all the time, of course, but some people couldn't stand being in elevators or walking through crowds. She'd had reinforced doors and security blinds installed, and electronic alarms with motion sensors. But hey, times were tough. Who could blame her?

  "What about your 'disconnects'? Do you remember that term? Those episodes where you have waking dreams?"

  "Yes, I still have them. But not as often."

  "When was your last one?"

  "About a week ago, when I was watching TV."

  Once a month, a group of specialists from Eagle came to Madrid to give her a secret checkup: blood tests, urine tests, X-rays, psychological tests, and an interminable interview. She just let them do their thing. The place she went for all this wasn't a clinic, it was a nondescript apartment in Principe de Vergara. The blood and urine tests and X-rays they did a week earlier at a doctor's office, so the specialists already had the results by the time she saw them. Those visits were a trial: they took almost all day (psych tests in the morning, interview in the afternoon), which meant she had to skip classes, but she'd gotten used to it. In fact, on some level, she'd grown to need it. At least she could talk to those people.

  The specialists thought her nightmares were lingering side effects from the Impact. They said that other members of her team reported the same thing, which, for some reason, relieved her.

  She hadn't spoken to any of her colleagues, not only because she'd sworn she wouldn't, but also because by now, she'd stopped bothering to keep track of them. But she'd collected news clippings over the years. She knew, for example, that Blanes had disappeared from the scientific scene. His old, now-retired mentor, Albert Grossmann, had cancer, and some people said that Blanes was so traumatized by it that he could no longer work. Marini and Craig might have been swallowed up by the earth for all she knew, though she'd heard Marini no longer taught. And the last news she had about Jacqueline Clissot and Reinhard Silberg was that they'd retired from academia. Clissot, she heard, was "ill" (though no one knew what kind of "illness" she had). And Nadja, she'd lost track of her entirely. As for herself...

  "You're getting Setter and better, Elisa. We're going to give you some good news. Starting next year, our sessions will be only once every two months. Does that make you happy?"

  "Yes."

  "Merry Christmas, Elisa. May 2012 bring you much happiness."

  Well, there she was, that December night, dressed in Victoria's Secret lingerie and a slinky robe, ready to have her escalivada and then spend the rest of the night playing her Mr. White Eyes game. And then, suddenly, came this voice from the past. Nadja.

  THERE was a photograph. It showed a young but haggard man with a wispy beard and wire-rimmed glasses, standing beside a pretty woman (though her face was too round) holding a blond, messy-haired boy of about five in her arms. The boy, unfortunately, had inherited his mother's too-round face. Mother and son grinned widely (the boy was missing teeth), but the man looked serious, as though forced to pose in order to avoid a tiff. The picture had been taken on a lawn, and there was a house in the background.

  She imagined other, similar scenes. Needless to say, the article didn't give any details and she knew that they were just a product of her fantasy, as were Mr. White Eyes' wicked words, but still... Those images flashed up in her mind like a slide show.

  They ripped his eyes out. Tore off his genitals. Cut off his arms and legs. The boy probably saw the whole thing. They probably made him watch. "Look what we're doing to Daddy ... Do you still recognize Daddy?"

  She sat on the carpet in front of the TV, legs crossed and only half-covered by her robe, as if about to adopt the lotus position. But she wasn't watching TV; she was using the attached keyboard to surf the net. She was on a British news channel, checking the breaking stories. This was the only place the story had been covered, Nadja said, maybe because it had just happened.

  "My God, how awful, poor Colin ... But..." She stopped herself before she could add, Why are you telling me this three days before Christmas?

  "They told Jacqueline a few things that the story doesn't mention," Nadja said through the speakerphone on Elisa's cordless. "Colin's wife was found in the middle of the night, running down the road screaming. That was how they knew something was wrong. The boy was found in the backyard. He'd spent the whole night outside and had frostbite. That's what I don't understand, Elisa. Why would she leave her son at home without even calling the police, or anyone? What must have happened, for her to do that?"

  "It says here that some men broke in and threatened them. Dangerous criminals, ex-cons. They were on drugs and needed money. Maybe she got away."

  "And abandoned her young son?"

  "The men who attacked Colin must have forced her to. Or she just panicked. Or went crazy. Some experiences can ... can make people..."

  Blood everywhere. On the ceiling, the walls, the floor. The boy in the yard, left all alone. The mother running down the street, hysterical. "Help! Please help me! A shadow came into my house! A shadow! It's trying to devour us, and I can't see its face! Only its mouth. Its mouth is gigantic!"

  "They told Jacqueline the house was surrounded by soldiers."

  "What!?"

  "Soldiers," Nadja repeated. "No one knows what they're doing there. Plain-clothed cops, of course, but soldiers, too. And sanitary personnel, wearing masks... The windows have been sealed and you can't get within a mile of the place. And with the blackout, it's worse. Last night, there was a blackout all around Oxford and the electricity is still out.

  They said there was a short circuit at the plant that powers the city. Sound familiar, Elisa?"

  Darkness descended. The Christmas tree burned out. The lights by the boy's stocking burned out. Father Christmas was going to leave presents for him there. The Craig family was all at home when darkness blew in like a cyclone.

  He was still alive when they ripped his face off. His son saw the whole thing.

  "With Rosalyn Reiter, the station lights went out... and when Cheryl Ross was in the cellar, too. And there's something else, too, Elisa. Rosalyn's bathroom light, and yours, and mine ... Remember? All three of us had that dream... and we all had the lights burn out in our bathrooms."

  Coincidences. Let me tell you another coincidence.

  "We can't draw any conclusions based on that, Nadja. Physics shows no relation between dreams and electric energy."

  "I know! But fear is not logical. You always reason your way out of everything, and your logic does make me feel better, but when Jacqueline called to tell me about Colin,... I thought... it's not over yet." Sniffles.

  "Nadja..."

  "It was Colin this time... like it was Rosalyn, Cheryl, and Ric last time. But it's happening again. And you know it."

  "Nadja, honey ... Did you forget? Ric Valente was the one who did it! And he's dead now."

  Silence. And then Nadja's voice whimpered.

  "You really think it was Ric, Elisa? I mean, do you really think Ric killed them?"

  No. I don't. She decided not to answer and ran her hands down her bare thighs. The clock flashing on the TV screen told her there was only an hour until he came. Her "game" was a ritual, a habit she couldn't break, like biting her nails, and she couldn't put it off. All she had to do was take off her robe and wait. Hang up.

  "Jacqueline and I talked about something else." The change in her old friend's tone of voice alarmed her. "Tell me this. Honestly. Tell me the truth. Don't you... get ready ... for him?" She froze, there on the carpet. "Elisa, please tell me, please. For my sake, for the friendship we once had. Are you embarrassed? I am, too. But you know what? I'm so scared, Elisa, that right now my fear outweighs my shame." She was listening. She couldn't move, couldn't even think, all she could do was listen. "Special underwear ... you know, sexy lingerie. And it's always black. Maybe you used to wear it already and maybe not, but now you wear
it almost all the time, right? And sometimes you don't wear any at all. Isn't that true? Don't you go out sometimes with no panties on, even though you never used to? And at night, don't you dream..."

  No. What Nadja was saying wasn't true. Her "games" were just fantasies. They might be influenced by certain unpleasant things that happened six years ago, sure, but they were still just fantasies. And the fact that Nadja might play similar games, or that Craig was murdered last night, had nothing to do with it. Nothing whatsoever.

  "Do you know... do you know what Jacqueline's life is like now?" Nadja continued. "Did you know she left her family four years ago, Elisa? Her husband and son ... even her job ... Do you want to know what her life's been like since then? Or mine?" Nadja was now openly sobbing. "Should I tell you what I do? Do you want to know how I live? What I do when I'm alone?"

  "We're not even supposed to be talking, Nadja," Elisa interrupted. "We have monthly sessions. You can tell them..."

  "They're lying to us, Elisa! They've been lying to us for years! You know that!"

  If he gets here and you're not ready... If you're not waiting for him the way you should be...

  She cast a glance at her screen saver, which showed the phases of an eerily white moon. White, like his eyes. A chill ran down her spine, making her shiver. She thought of her expensive hairdo, carefully applied makeup, sexy robe. This is absurd. It's just a game! I can do whatever I feel like.

  "Elisa, I'm scared!"

  In a flash, she made up her mind.

  "Nadja, you said you're in Madrid, right?"

  "Yes ... but I'm leaving on Friday to spend Christmas with my parents in St. Petersburg."