Dark Eden (19 page)

Marisa awoke briefly just now, and we played Berzerk on my Atari 2600 for a half hour. Then we each put one earbud in an ear and listened to our song—
I Wanna Be Adored
—and she drifted back to sleep as we held hands.

If we’re lucky and we stay together to the end, she’ll sleep twenty hours a day and I’ll stumble around the house, unable to hear a word she’s saying. But it’ll still be heaven. We won’t be afraid, and my memory of these events will have faded. One day we’ll find each other on the other side, healed and whole again. Keith and Marisa’s dad will be there, and our friends and the rest of our families. Mrs. Goring will be waiting for us, and so will Avery Varone.

There is, of course, one person we won’t find no matter how long we wait.

One day Avery Varone will sit on the dock at the pond alone. Her companion will be young again, but she will be old; and she, too, will be made to forget. She will perform the task that lies before her because he’ll ask her to. And then she will be alone, and Rainsford will go on as he always does, as he always will.

The old Eden is no more, if it ever was at all.

Only a dark Eden remains.

OBSERVATIONS

R
ECORDED SOME TIME LATER,
AFTER FURTHER CONSIDERATION
F
EARS AND
A
FFLICTIONS

I’ll never know for sure why the seven were chosen or if the things we feared mattered. We probably could have been afraid of anything at all, so long as the fears were irrational. Whatever the answer, I think Rainsford had special knowledge of our situations. And although I can’t prove it, I think he may have even caused some of our fears for his own purpose. In some cases he might have watched us for a long time, studying our personalities and our pasts with Dr. Stevens’s help. But in other situations I think he instilled the fears in us from the start.

Do I believe Rainsford had something to do with Kate Hollander’s car crash or Ben Dugan’s discovery in the sandbox? Yes, I do. Connor’s fear of heights, Alex and the dogs—it’s easy enough to imagine how Rainsford might have manipulated those conditions over a period of years. I don’t think he had anything to do with Keith’s death or the death of Marisa’s dad; but then again, I will never really know for sure. Whether or not he was involved, I have little doubt he was capable of setting these things in motion.

That leaves Avery, for whom there are many unanswered questions. I don’t know why she feared death. I don’t even know if she was ever cured. Was she killed during her treatment, then brought back to life? Maybe she had one of those fleeting moments at death’s door, only to be pulled back from the brink at the last second. I believe she loves Davis; and oddly enough, I believe Davis loves her. I even think it might be part of the process—the power of love—which is at its most dangerous at fifteen or sixteen.

T
HE COLORS AND
The Masque of the Red Death

B
LUE

P
URPLE

G
REEN

O
RANGE

W
HITE

V
IOLET

B
LACK

For weeks and weeks I mulled over the colors of the rooms. Rainsford had a reason for everything, and I was convinced he had a reason for this, too. Putting them into a bunch of different search engines eventually gave me the answer.

Edgar Allan Poe had written a short story, like five pages long, called “The Masque of the Red Death.” In it, a prince or a rich young ruler—it’s hard to say which—closes himself off inside a castle with all of his privileged friends. Outside, a plague is ravaging the city, killing just about everyone; but inside, constant revelry permeates the castle. It’s almost as if the prince in the story is daring the plague to try and find him. In the story there are seven rooms, each with its own brand of wicked fun. The seven rooms have the same colors as ours did; and in the story, the colored rooms appear in the same order.

Oddly enough, at the end of “The Masque of the Red Death,” the prince chases an uninvited masked guest. When the prince finally catches the intruder, the uninvited guest turns, and the prince falls dead on the spot. The guest, of course, turns out to be death itself.

The message of the story seems to be that no amount of money or privilege will stay the hand of death. But I believe Rainsford sees himself as not just privileged and rich, but as truly untouchable. Using the same colors as those in the story is Rainsford’s way of thumbing his nose at death. The setup is the same, but the result? Rainsford keeps winning. He keeps cheating death over and over again. I have to wonder though: does he worry? He must. He has to know that death can only be put off for so long. It will catch even him, and maybe that’s why he chose the story of “The Masque of the Red Death,” to remind himself that the end is coming whether he likes it or not.

The Pearl
,
The Woman in the Dunes
,
AND
R
AINSFORD

I’m curious about when Rainsford first entered the world, but regardless of when it was, the use of
The Pearl
tells me a lot about his world view. It also makes me think Rainsford has been around for a long time, maybe as far back as the Dark Ages, when the caste system was still deeply embedded throughout the world.

In
The Pearl
, Kino goes underwater to find something that will change his life. My journey was like that, too. I went under
ground
to find something that would take away my fear. We all did.  In Kino’s case, what he found destroyed his family and his way of life. Though it seemed like a blessing, the pearl was a curse.  For me and my friends, we discovered a place where fears are destroyed forever—but at what cost?

I think Rainsford believes in the idea that whatever station someone is born into is exactly where the person should remain. Kino found a pearl of great price and tried to use it in order to rise to a higher class. He only wanted a better life for his family and a slightly easier go of things. But soon enough Kino’s life was in ruins.

I haven’t spoken to Marisa about these things, but I think she’s more like Kino than the rest of us. She tries to speak perfect English, and she doesn’t want to talk about the past. I don’t know, maybe for Marisa, language is like Kino’s canoe, a symbol of leaving her heritage behind in pursuit of something that seems somehow better or safer.

The Woman in the Dunes
, which I have now finished reading, has a slightly different take on things. In it a man is trying to find a rare insect, but what he’s really looking for is a sort of immortality. If he can find the insect, he’ll be remembered forever for having made the discovery (a paper-thin sort of immortality, but immortality just the same). His quest leads to ruin, and eventually he has to rethink what life and death mean. How strange that Rainsford has a similar problem: he is always here, and yet never remembered. What he does, he does in secret. No one knows who he is. He’s like a ghost in that sense: ever-present, leaving no trace.

And lastly, his name, which I’m sure is a fairly new invention. He has had, I would imagine, many names. But Rainsford suits him pretty well in a totally ironic manner of speaking. In another story I discovered, “The Most Dangerous Game,” there is a character named Rainsford. He’s a big-game hunter, and he complains to his companion that he is always the hunter, never the hunted. He gets his wish when his boat lands on a strange island, where Rainsford becomes the game for a crazy hunter who is set on tracking him down and killing him. The funny thing?
I
was Rainsford at Fort Eden. We all were. The man doling out the cures was the hunter. This is one of the more curious things about the entire experience. Why did Rainsford use a name that makes him out to be the one being hunted? I think it goes back to the colors. I think Rainsford is being hunted by the most efficient killer of them all, and he knows it—a hunter who never, in the end, ever misses.

He’s being hunted by death. And death has a 100 percent accuracy rating.

A F
INAL
N
OTE

Rainsford could have done without all of these flourishes. He could have simply done the work and moved on, but he chooses to build his own bizarre narrative over time. It makes me wonder if he’s not only a very bad man, but also an insane one, losing his mind in bits and pieces down through the ages.

I’m looking ahead now, sixty years to be exact, and I’m wondering what he will call himself when he returns to Fort Eden to repeat the trick. I wonder if Kino will still be floating down the floor to the elevator, or if someone else will be painted there. I wonder what Rainsford’s name will be then.

Actually, there’s only one thing I know for sure about that day. It’s the thing I’m most certain about.

If I live another sixty years, I’ll be waiting for him in the seventh room.

And if I have it my way, he won’t get out alive.