The Fearing_Book Four_Earth and Ember by John F. D. Taff

Author:John F. D. Taff [Taff, John F. D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grey Matter Press
Published: 2019-11-12T05:00:00+00:00

— 38 —

Jelnik's Big Epiphany.

Srebrenica, 1993.

To the End.

Jelnik awoke in a cold sweat, looked around the hotel room he knew he was in. It was dark, and he wasn't sure if he'd awakened in the middle of the night or if the blackout curtains were closed against the morning. If there'd be a morning. Maybe they'd finally reached the end. Maybe the darkness had caught up with them, engulfed them, slid over everything until there was nothing left of anything.

Something laughed at him then, laughed from the recesses of his own mind. If the darkness had come, there'd be no darkened hotel room to wake up inside. There’d be nothing, not even Jelnik. No, it hadn't reached them here yet, but it would. There was no doubt of that now.

None.

Not until Adam had his moment. Not until what remained of humanity came here, drawn like a moth to a last flame. Not until Adam did whatever it was he was gonna do. Jelnik was still a little fuzzy on that part, mostly because Adam was almost deliberately vague about it.

Get to St. Louis, he'd said.

Done.

Get the rest of them to St. Louis, including—especially—her.

Okay, they're on their way.

Then something, something, something-something, and hey diddly-do, everything is good. Fear is gone. Things can go where? Back to where they were? Hardly. But where? Jelnik couldn't wrestle with that right now because what had awakened him, really awakened him, crowded back into his mind.

Srebrenica. 1993.

As those words swam into his mind like the title cards for some horrible, horrible movie, his body practically erupted in cold sweat, and he shook all over, as in a fit of ague. He ran a shaking hand over his slick forehead, wiped his palm on the clammy sheets.

No.

He threw the bed clothes off, leapt from the bed, yanked the curtains open.

Night.

He could see the deserted St. Louis riverfront twenty stories below him, dark and empty, could see the light of the crescent moon and the stars flickering on the waves of the Mississippi as it flowed south past him. It all seemed so peaceful, so quiet, and maybe it was.

But he knew, oh he knew from intimate, horrible memory that the quiet, peaceful night hid so many things in its darkened folds. Painful things, hideous things, things it had taken Jelnik a lifetime to escape, though had he really ever? Escaped them? No, they were still out there, still hidden. For now, perhaps. He'd thought he'd left them all behind when he'd come to this country more than a decade and a half ago. He'd thought that the darkness here, this American darkness, was more gentle, more innocent, that it didn't hide things like the darkness of his old world.

And maybe that was true, at least until recently. But now, well, now he more than suspected this darkness was the same the world over, it hid the same things, sheltered the same dark secrets, masked the same pains. The darkness that was coming was even worse, for it didn't hide things.

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