[big bang][tsn] call & response / part 2
THE LOWER REALM
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.
-from Paradise Lost, i.254-255, John Milton
-
Nanda says that she will take Eduardo as far as she can, looking apprehensive an apologetic, but Eduardo only smiles gently and nods. He wouldn’t expect anyone to accompany him on a suicide mission - a fool’s errend, which is what the first tracker she found had told her.
“Most trackers only travel through Summerland and some of the bordering realms. Hell is too dangerous even for them.”
“Bordering realms?”
They’re walking toward the common area, the City, as she called it. Eduardo is too young, as she calls it, to travel there the normal way. Fatigue is not an issue here (“That’s good, Eduardo, you’re already accepting the body as unnecessary,”) and distance acts like it doesn’t want to obey the laws of physics. Which also don’t exist, as it turns out, but Nanda explained that as they get closer to the City he’ll feel a pull, and then it will be easier.
“Not everyone likes it here. Some people’s idea of Heaven is a lot different, although all the realms are connected. You could visit, if you like.”
There’s a moment of silence as they both think about how the first realm other than Summerland that Eduardo will be visiting is one that he might not come back from.
Eduardo stops walking suddenly - in the distance, he hears a sound. “Do you hear that?”
Nanda cocks her head, smiling. “Yes! Yes, you hear it too. It’s the City.”
“It sounds like music.”
“It is music. Everyone, every place, gives of a signature. We can hear it - when you’ve shed the body, it’s more like a feeling, or a resonance. I can’t believe you hear it already, that’s exceptional!”
He smiles politely. Eduardo isn’t sure why he seems to be so adept here, but Nanda prattles on as they walk about how he has an aptitude for a job like hers, helping those newcomers to adjust. He doesn’t agree - he doesn’t know he’s learning any of this so quickly, so he doesn’t see how he could explain it to anyone else - but he doesn’t say anything. She’s only trying to help.
He has to focus on her voice though as the music gets louder the closer they get to the City. He stops Nanda with a gentle hand on her arm.
“It’s too loud!” he practically shouts. “I can’t hear you!”
“Then go to it!”
Eduardo hesitates. He thinks about the music, closes his eyes, and reaches for it. The sound lowers dramatically and, after a few moments of readjusting to the quiet, he hears Nanda’s familiar laughter.
“You can open your eyes now. We’re here.”
‘City’ is not the first word that comes to mind when Eduardo opens his eyes. Yes, there are large, bright buildings, but they seem far off and unreachable. There are looming columns around them, surrounded with what Eduardo would call a Market if he didn’t know any better.
“What are all these people doing here?”
It’s a shock, at first, so many bodies milling around. Some of them seem transparent like ghosts, although that idea is ridiculous, and some of them don’t seem to even exist unless he keeps his eyes on them. Even then, he can only focus on one thing at a time: an arm, a hip, the turn of a head, like people in a dream.
“You’re seeing bodies that aren’t there,” Nanda says, catching him blinking heavily at one of them. “Those souls have already shed them, but you aren’t ready to see it yet. You need to see a body.” She goes on to answer his question. “They’re looking for help, usually. Architects, artists, specialists, that kind of thing.”
“But I thought everything was in the mind? If you can dream it, you can do it?”
“Yes, but tell me, what’s your knowledge of the 18th Ming Dynasty?”
“Uh. Nothing.”
“Now imagine trying to recreate it, or learn about it, or find someone there. You’d need help. That’s where these people come in.”
They approach a small, clean building, modern and practical, and Nanda stops, pointing. “I’m going to ask where to find someone who can take us to the Lower Realm, and hopefully a tracker as well. Wait here, okay?”
Eduardo does, watching Nanda approach the building. A man sees her and smiles; Eduardo watches as Nanda talks to him and the smile on his face falls. His gaze wanders to Eduardo, turning sad, and Eduardo has to look away.
There are children running past, weaving through throngs of people and in between stalls. One group is playing with a pile of puppies, which makes Eduardo’s heart leap - there are animals in Summerland - then fall. Puppies. How sad.
Sadness doesn’t last long, however. Even the puppies seem connected to him somehow, like he can feel their exuberance. And the childrens’, and the contentment of the people around him. He tries to think of what it is and the best he can come up with makes him feel a little foolish, but Eduardo’s always been a romantic. It’s love. Acceptance. He feels flooded with sunlight and lulled by music; casting his eyes toward the tall building in the distance, Eduardo wonders what it must feel like there in the City proper.
Then Nanda is back at his side with a light touch to his elbow, saying that they need to step inside, and Eduardo remembers why they’re here. He feels a sudden tug in the center of his chest, not thinking about how he might never make it there - but about Mark, and how much this could mean. Nobody playing around with pretense, no judgment, just existence, comfortable and unencumbered. Wherever he is now, Mark has blocked himself off from the rest of the party, stuck behind a closed door of his own making, unable to realize that he’s wanted here. That he belongs.
He’s always belonged with Eduardo, and he’s never been able to see it.
The man Nanda had been talking to is waiting for them inside the building, but the sadness in his eyes is carefully guarded now.
“Hello, Eduardo,” he says. “I’m Geoffrey.” He looks ethereal, but like those bodiless souls that Eduardo had seen outside; he just seems to glow, the aesthetic contrast of his dark-toned skin and the pale brightness of the building. Eduardo relaxes immediately.
“I’d like you to take Nanda’s hand,” Geoffrey says, and Eduardo complies, “and hold them out. There, like that. Nanda, are you ready?”
Beside him, Nanda nods. She’s slipped her fingers in between Eduardo’s own and turned them so Eduardo’s palm is facing up. Eduardo looks at Geoffrey curiously, but he only smiles and closes his eyes, then, after a moment, places his hand palm-to-palm with Eduardo’s.
His hand isn’t just warm; it’s hot, searingly hot, and Eduardo has to remind himself that he can’t be hurt here, his body is only in his mind, and so is the pain - but he can only hold out for so long before the pain stings through his resolve. He squeezes his eyes shut, teeth clenched, trying not to curl his and Nanda’s fingers downward into his palm. Just as he’s thinking it’s too much, that he might buckle at the knees from the stress of trying to accept the pain, it stops.
Eduardo opens his eyes. He’s met with a dank, dark place, Nanda thankfully beside him. A breeze swims through and it’s cold. Wet. “Nanda?”
She turns on her heel, silt crunching and sliding beneath her heel and echoing around them. She points with her free hand and Eduardo follows her line of sight to a river.
A dark, slowly drifting river, sludge-thick with blackness and a sheen of dull silver.
“Where…?”
“It’s a gateway. Geoffrey says there are many ways to get to the Lower Realm, but there’s always a gateway of your choosing. A place to turn back.”
“I brought us here?” She nods, and Eduardo shivers as another cold, aimless breeze moves through him.
As they approach the slow moving channel, Eduardo realizes the most unsettling thing: that feeling of love from before is nearly gone, dim in the back of his mind, too far away from Summerland and the souls there to feel it. There is only a still atmosphere, a stinging emptiness. There is nothing coming from the other side. No love being sent out of the Lower Realm.
You can only see it if you know what you’re looking for. Like thestrals to those who have seen death, like the fragility of life to those who have been through a war, like the look of wonder in the eyes of those who have experienced what you are yet to see. It’s only possible to see love woven into the fabric of everything that exists or is yet to exist until you experience it for yourself.
“I just want to make sure you know what you’re walking into,” Nanda says from beside Eduardo, where he is watching a boat drift slowly through the channel like Charon chauffeuring souls into the underworld. There’s an easier way to get to Hell, probably. Most likely. But Eduardo is thinking too much of Mark and the paperpack copies of Greek epics that served as beer coasters on his desk back at Harvard, and so the boat wends its way toward him. This is how he’ll go.
“It’s Hell, Nanda. Can I really be prepared?”
He can feel her watching the side of his face, but he doesn’t give in. Eduardo is Orpheus. If he looks back even once, Orpheus thinks, he’ll lose his nerve, and Eurydice will be lost to him forever.
Nanda’s voice is very gentle. “The souls in Hell don’t believe in love, Eduardo. That’s why they’re there. It’s not a punishment, it’s only… unfortunate.”
But that’s not fair. The boat stops in front of them.
The descent into Hell is not actually a descent. It’s a lateral thing: one end of the river to the other. It’s like passing through a veil. In one moment, Eduardo and Nanda are surrounded by serenity and knowledge, and in the next moment there is only chaos.
Eduardo feels it immediately. It isn’t a fist around his heart like he imagined; it isn’t breathlessness or despair. Nanda is correct. There is only the lack of the thing he’s calling love. Hell is Absence.
“Are you all right?” Nanda says, her fingers now clenched in Eduardo’s shirtsleeve. “Please, we can - turn back. We aren’t lost, we aren’t lost,” and she mumbles it to herself like a manifesto.
“Shhhh,” he says, turning to her, cupping her face in his hands like she used to do to him as a child. “Listen, Nanda, you’re wrong. Love is here, it has to be, or how else would I still be able to do this? How could it be comforting you?”
She quiets.
It’s not that love is gone from this place, Eduardo marvels. It’s here, it’s just the same, but dim, far far away. Clap your hands if you believe in Fairies; I do, I do.
The people in Hell aren’t here because they don’t believe in love. They’re here because they just can’t see it. They don’t know what to look for. It doesn’t even occur to them to look at all.
The boat heads toward, from what Eduardo can tell, an empty abyss. It’s just blackness, and arbitrary destination. “Are we headed to our guide?” he asks Nanda gently. She nods from beside him.
“Your guide knows how to navigate the Lower Realms. He’ll help you find Mark, and he’ll help you from losing yourself along the way.”
There’s silence after that, and Nanda’s hand slipping warm and gentle into his own, squeezing it like a lifeline as the boat slides onward.
“I won’t be upset if you need to leave, Nanda. I understand.”
She nods again, and Eduardo closes his eyes, and in the next moment, he’s being wrenched from one reality into the next; it’s like hitting a brick wall, like losing all of the oxygen in the room; it feels like dying itself had felt: alone, alone, alone.
-
When he’s aware again, Eduardo manages to stumble forward just long enough to know that he’s not on the boat anymore before he sways and the world tips and he falls on his knees. Someone grabs his arm, yanking him back upright.
“Woah, hey, Eduardo. I need you here, come on, focus. Focus!”
Eduardo steadies himself, apologizing reflexively. “Sorry, I’m not used to that, I wasn’t given any warning…” He lets his voice trail off, gaping confusedly at the man who had spoken because he looked like, he looked exactly like Chris, but Chris… “Chris Hughes? Did, uh, shit, you’re…?”
Chris is just staring at him like he doesn’t understand the words he’s hearing, or why Eduardo is saying words at all. Embarrassment starts to crowd in on Eduardo and he’s about to backtrack when he sees the light go on in Chris’s head. “Oh! Oh, no no, sorry. This image is just to keep you comfortable, didn’t they explain? Who is Chris, by the way?”
Not dead, not dead. Which is good, because the last Eduardo knew, Chris was off taking over the world -or world-dominance’s equivalence in the form of political justice, anyway. He doesn’t like to think about Chris dying. “No, they didn’t explain anything. Where’s Nanda?”
The man wearing Chris’s image smiles in a polite desk clerk sort of way. “She didn’t want to become a burden. I’m experience in chaperoning souls though these realms, so she he left me with you. You’re still transitioning, Eduardo, it’s best to have a familiar face accompany you. But remember that I’m not your friend, all right? I’m not Chris.”
Remembering won’t be hard; this man has all of Chris’s polite professionalism but none of his long-suffering sighs or hidden smiles.
They seem to be standing on a beach, the two of them. It looks like one of the cold, gray beaches of the northern pacific, or the far corner of a lake where algae accumulates. The sand is gritty and mottled with stones or glass, sharp twigs and dry, dead seaweed. “Where are we?”
Chris puts his hands in his pockets. “We’re at the last chance, Eduardo. A gateway of your own conjuring.”
“Looks pretty bleak.”
“’Bleak’ is mild. ‘Bleak’ is not looking good for me. Most of us conjure something awful. Fire and brimstone; pain and suffering. Most of us are trying to convince ourselves to turn back. If bleakness is the worst you can do, then I don’t see any point in further deliberation.”
“I’m sorry,” Eduardo says gravely, looking over Chris’s face. Nanda said that work is a choice; why anyone would choose to chaperone souls through slums of the damned is beyond him.
Chris lifts his shoulders in a shrug, his gaze steady. “Not everyone is as lucky as your Mark. Not everyone has someone who would go through hell for them. Now, Eduardo, we need to find Mark.”
Eduardo bites his lip, looking out over the water. “How?”
“Follow me.”
-
Funhouse. That’s Eduardo’s first thought. It seems cliché in a way that has him biting the insides of his cheeks. He’s too on guard to laugh. Can’t explain the fear licking gently at his insides.
Eduardo runs a hand along the doorframe - it’s large, more than twice his height, and the room beyond is similarly full of furniture that’s just this side of too big, meticulously clean and then it hits him.
It’s his house, the one in Sao Paolo. This is the living room, kept only to impress guests. Eduardo was never allowed in.
“What is this?” he asks, wandering slowly out into the room. He hears a noise from further on in the house and stops to listen so hard that it doesn’t hit him for a long moment that nobody had answered his question. Chris is nowhere to be seen.
He calls his name, raising his voice a little - maybe that’s what the sound was. He hears a voice call return the call, but it’s not Chris. Eduardo stills completely.
That voice belongs to his father.
He sounds angry, angrier than Eduardo remembers him ever being, and he realizes that he shouldn’t be in here. If his father finds him in here, he’s dead.
Eduardo slinks back to the entranceway, looks up, and realizes that he can’t reach the doorknob. He pushes ineffectually at the door anyway, panic rising when it doesn’t move. His father calls his name again.
He tries to remember this. He thinks wildly that Nanda should be here somewhere, maybe she can calm his father down, but it’s hopeless. He swallows, stomach hollow, and sinks to his knees. The shouting grows louder, where the hell are you, you brat. You’d better not be in there! Where the fuck is your useless nursemaid?
He doesn’t remember this, any of it; not his father’s angered tone or his bitter words, but the fear is still there, alive and real and it crashes down on Eduardo’s head, hands clenched tightly over his ears to drown out the sound. Soon there’s an echoing cry and it takes him too long to realize that it’s his own voice, his own sobs wracking through his body and if he can’t quiet down he’s going to be found.
“Shutupshutupshutup,” he murmers, but the sounds come out loud and wet and his father is going to find him any second - “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, father - father - please -“
His arms are wrenched away from his face and he screams.
“Eduardo! Eduardo, hey, look at me!”
He shakes his head, thrashing - “Eduardo, listen to my voice. Where are you?”
“I’m- I shouldn’t - I can’t be here-“
He opens his eyes, arms sore now from fighting. He’s sure to have bruises where his father’s hands are -
No.
He lifts his eyes. It’s Chris. Chris Hughes. He reaches up and easily fits his hand around the doorknob that had been ludicrously out of reach for Eduardo just moments ago. Or hours. How long had it been?
He doesn’t have much time to worry about it - Chris gets the door open at the exact moment that footsteps come crashing in from the other side of the room, Eduardo’s heart leaping in his chest as his father angrily shouts his name one more time, and then he’s being shoved into the next room.
Chris is gone again. Eduardo catches his breath, leaning his arm against a desk at his side, vision swimming. It’s quiet here and he closes his eyes, letting the silence calm his anxiety.
He stumbles weakly onto a narrow bed, staring across at the desk. His desk. He’s at his room on the Harvard campus, reminding him forcefully of Summerland. It seems like so long ago that he was there with Nanda.
Mark. Mark! Maybe he’s here - maybe this is where Mark is, and Eduardo is out the door in a split second, hoping that he can still follow the route to Kirkland with his eyes closed like he could have back then.
The hallway is empty. So is the Square. Eduardo’s fingers drum restlessly against his thigh as he walks, wondering if that’s just because this is all in his head or if there really should be people here.
Kirkland is empty. Eduardo finds himself standing in front of the dorm room Mark had shared with Chris, Dustin, and even Eduardo - more often than their other roommate had even been there. What was his name? Doesn’t matter.
Something’s strange. He reads the whiteboard on the door over and over again but it doesn’t make sense. Who is Rick, and why is his class schedule written on the door? Madison was here! is written in neat cursive alongside the schedule, and more names are scrawled beneath it: Josh practice 3 pm, Tim Wilker sux.
And then it hits him. Nobody is here. No Mark. No Chris or Dustin. These must be the people who lived here during Eduardo’s senior year, when there had been nobody in this room. Chris had moved to Dunster when none of his roommates returned that year, having dropped out to run a booming internet startup. Facebook.
He touches the whiteboard very lightly, then turns to leave, hands shoved deep into his pockets.
Campus is just as deserted as before, as lonely as that final year had been. Class, dorm, parties at the Phoenix Club. Parties that had felt like an empty win.
Chris is waiting for him when he gets back to his Eliot dorm. It’s not the real Chris, but the sight of him is such a relief that he has to fight back tears once again. Chris had been there for him that year, but only when he wasn’t in California, eyes tight and strained, trying too hard to mediate the two halves of his life.
He looks not-Chris in the eye. “I’m going to find Mark,” he says. Chris nods.
-
There are many things he doesn’t understand, but Eduardo has learned not to question it. They walk through the most aimless landscape he’s ever seen, and to someone who is used to bustling cities, it’s excruciating. Chris doesn’t seem to mind in the least, which is frustrating, and from time to time Eduardo has to force himself to unclench his fists and calm down.
“I don’t understand what just happened,” he says, voice clipped with anger.
“Eduardo. Breathe. Fear makes you angry.”
“I’m not - ! Okay. Okay, I’m afraid, but I don’t know what any of that was. My father - he was never like that. Never physically angry. What was that?”
“You know by now that your mind conjured that. I can’t tell you what it meant, only you can understand. Often, we exaggerate our memories, and the fear down here feeds off that. However your real father acted in life, what you saw back there was a magnification of the fears you must have harbored. His anger, disappointment, your own shame. They all work together to create a monster.”
Eduardo walks in silence, thinking it over. It’s been years since he let himself worry about his father, or, it had been years, anyway. He didn’t estrange himself, exactly, but when he renounced his American citizenship it had been a relief. He was on his own, with or without his father’s help, and no longer had to answer to the man.
And Harvard. The dorm. That was - well. It had been hard for him but he didn’t deserve any of those things. He didn’t even deserve to have Hell mess with his head, as far as Eduardo was concerned, and he swallowed hard thinking about Mark. Wherever he is, it must be every moment of doubt and anger that Mark had seen in him, magnified to such a degree that he couldn’t see around it.
It made just the slightest more sense now, how Mark could be keeping himself prisoner here. He remembers the way he’d get when he was drunk and insecure, how stubborn he’d been. What happened to the need to prove himself? The kind of righteous anger that had resulted in Facebook?
As they walk, Eduardo begins to see shapes in the distance, to hear sound. It’s like they’re heading towards a city, and he sneaks a look at Chris. His face is set in determination.
The city is perverse in contrast to the one Eduardo had seen in Summerland. It looked as if the world had ended, decay evident in the buildings, no lights, nothing living. It was dead. The people were moving about as if it were a normal weekday morning in any city of the world, but Eduardo knew they were headed nowhere.
“The souls here are more likely to be saved, “ Chris tells him. “They believe that they deserve better, but it’s as if they don’t know how to get there. Day in, day out, it’s all the same, but they think this is just the way it is. They can’t seem to imagine an alternative. But at least they are open to the idea of Summerland. It just seems like a fantasy world to them, unreachable.”
“And why can’t we just take them there? Let them see it - feel it,” he adds, remembering the hum of Summerland, as distant in his mind now as childhood excitement for the summer holidays. He smiles almost wistfully to himself.
Before Chris can answer, a woman breaks free from the crowd, hair a wild tangle and dressed in little more than rags.
The woman recognizes Chris, to Eduardo’s surprise. He flinches back instinctively when she comes nearer, her face wrinkled up in despair. She breathes out heavy sobs when she reaches them, gripping Chris by his forearms. Chris only smiles lightly, lifting a hand to brush her dingy hair away from her face.
“It will happen,” he says kindly. Eduardo wonders what it means, but he doesn’t feel like he should interfere until the woman turns to face him, tears now wandering down her cheeks. “This is Eduardo, he’s here to find a friend.”
She shakes her head. “You can’t,” she says, choking up on a sob. “I’ve tried. Haven’t I tried?”
For some reason, her words make Eduardo freeze up, tuning out the rest of their conversation. His fingers feel like ice, his body far away from himself. He doesn’t realize that the woman has left until Chris is leading him gently away by his elbow, and even after they’ve been walking for five, ten minutes, Eduardo can’t seem to find anything to say.
“I’ve been working with Deirdre for a while now,” Chris says softly. She’s very close to leaving this place. I’ve managed to convince her that she’s a prisoner of her own will, but she can’t seem to visualize a way to help herself. I can only do so much.”
“Is that what will happen with Mark?” he manages to ask.
“Very possibly. Getting someone to believe that they can change their fate is an important step, but most plateau there. They can’t actualize their own reward.”
“Mark can,” Eduardo says firmly. They’re weaving through crowds of people who either don’t seem to have anywhere to go or are determinedly walking straight on, refusing to make eye contact with either the damned souls or Chris and Eduardo. He ignores them all, because none of them are wearing Mark’s face. “When he wanted something, he got it.”
Chris is silent.
-
As they continue on, Eduardo’s body becomes tense. Chris is sticking close to him now, closely enough that their shoulders brush and Eduardo has to fight the urge to take his hand and cling to him like a child. He’s become used to the dead-eyed gazes of the souls passing by, so when a man turns to look at the pair of them with a sneer, Eduardo actually does grip Chris’s wrist and squeeze.
“Don’t think about it,” Chris mutters, which of course sends Eduardo into high alert. Something has obviously changed. Another person bumps into him and he jumps further into Chris’s side as the face turns to snap at him, angry eyes and actually sharp teeth.
“Chris, what -“
“I mean it, Eduardo, don’t think about it. It’s in your head. They won’t turn on you if you don’t let them in. I can only hold out as long as you can, do you understand?”
He nods tightly, although he isn’t quite sure what’s happening. There’s a loud crash in the distance that seems to boom in time with his jumping heart and Chris curses, pulling them out of the main road and through an alleyway between two buildings whose walls seem to shimmer with heat. Like a mirage. Eduardo tries to swallow around a lump in his throat when he thinks about it - a mirage, not really there, hiding the truth.
The other side of the alley empties onto a street that looks like it’s been through a bomb raid. There are even sirens wailing eerily in the distance, as if whatever crashed through here is taking out city after city - or maybe like it’s about to come back. People are clinging with dirty hands to the sides of ruined buildings, crumbling at their touch, eyes wild and angry. Some are crying, heavy wailing sobs that cease to sound human as they wander down the road, Eduardo no plastered to Chris’s side without reserve.
“It’s okay, it’s fine, stick by me and calm down. Think about where we’re going, not where we are.”
“Is Mark here?” Eduardo says in a panic, sweeping his eyes through the streets. They pass a body that lurches from the ground after it - it barely looks human, watching them through eyes that are clouded over like cataracts. But cataracts don’t squirm, Eduardo thinks, recoiling from the sharp fingers that grab for his ankles, the swarm of insects that cover the body like a second skin.
“He could be. I don’t know. You will know when you see him, Eduardo, please don’t look for him. You’ll feel it, understand? Like you can feel me. Can you focus on that?”
On what?. But as soon as he thinks it, he recognizes it - like background noise that you’ve come so accustomed to that it might as well be silence. It’s Chris’s soul, like his own, brighter and sweeter than the rankled aura of those around them. He focuses on that to the exclusion of all else, only breaking back into his senses when his feet step into cool, shallow water.
The city is behind them. Ahead is a boat. A ship. A proper vessel, Eduardo thinks, feeling a bit silly about it; he knows nothing about boats, just that this one looks solid and reassuring.
“Will that take us to it?”
“It might. Do you think it will? You have to know. You have to reach out for him. It’s… difficult. I wish you had been in Summerland longer.”
Eduardo doesn’t know what that means. He doesn’t quite listen either, because his eyes are wandering around the throngs of people at the dock, slowly making their way up the gangway onto the ship. He should be there. Maybe that’s what Chris is trying to say; maybe he needs to go with his gut.
He doesn’t realize that he’s wandered away from Chris until he’s being reeled back in by the back of his shirt. He turns just slightly, looking at Chris from over his shoulder to see the guide staring up at the ship as well, a little bit in disbelief. “There? Do you think you can feel him?”
Eduardo looks away from Chris to scan the crowd again, and then his gut seizes up. There, wandering slowly up the gangway with backpack slung over his shoulder is a man with tight, short curls and a slim build, shoulders slightly hunched and shuffling his sandaled feet. “Mark,” he says, startled. “There, he’s! Do you see him?”
He points wildly, but Chris just gives a vague shake of his head. “I don’t think so. I don’t see anyone.”
Eduardo laughs. “You don’t even know what he looks like.”
“Neither do you, not really. He could look like anyone down here. Anything. You need to listen to what I’ve been saying; we can’t look with our eyes. You have to want him. You have to reach out to him. And in any case, there isn’t anyone here, you need to focus.”
What? “Chris, there are hundreds. There, heading up to the ship, that’s -“
He cuts himself off, watching as another person approaches Mark - he can’t see much from this angle, but he’s got Mark square in his vision so he can see him shake his head at the other person and pull back. He stumbles, tripping a little over his flip-flops, and then the other person has a hold of his backpack and they’re playing tug-of-war with it. Mark is losing. Eduardo bounces on his heels, anger welling up - Mark is his, he needs to be taking care of him because he can’t win this fight on his own.
Mark lets go of the bag after a short struggle and then takes off, weaving through the others on the gangway as the person he grappled with gives chase. And so does Eduardo.
He can hear Chris shouting at him, but it’s muffled by the rush of blood in his ears. He has to pull forcefully out of the grip that Chris still has on the hem of his shirt, clothes ripping loose as Eduardo darts forward, eyes on Mark.
And that’s when all hell breaks loose.
It’s as if a veil has fallen the moment he gets too far from Chris. He halts, darkness crashing down and a wave of the scent of decay and dead fish hits him, rainwater torrential enough to block his vision even further. The wind whips through Eduardo’s body and sends a chill so deep that his bones ache. He looks behind him but can’t see Chris at all, can’t hear him, tries to feel for him but is met only with screams echoing back - the people that were there before are no longer what they seem. Mouths opening with nothing behind their teeth, people crying out with scarves wrapped so tightly around their eyes it’s as if the skin has grown over the seam. Eduardo closes his own eyes and feels the rising panic; turns away and know there’s no hope of finding Mark anymore. He probably wasn’t ever here, but Eduardo has nowhere else to go - he sprints for the boat.
Immediately after his feet touch the gangway he slips and falls; it’s covered with wet grime that sticks to his hands and clothes. He scrambles up and grips the rail, but as soon as his hand touches the chilled metal there are bodies trying to climb over the side, up out of the water below.
He runs; body crouched low as he concentrates on making it to the ship - safety. As if safety was ever an option. It had been Chris all along, shielding him from the kind of horror that Eduardo is unprepared to close his mind from. A loud, empty rattling sound begins echoing the faster he runs, like a train, like the rattle of empty railcars or the shaking of a subway, crowded and claustrophobic; it disorients him, but his feet hit the deck of the boat anyway, wood splintering away beneath them as the once sturdy-looking ship groans under his weight.
It heaves sideways. Eduardo manages to keep his balance just long enough to reach the side, chains tied to unsturdy masts and mildewed sails clanging in his ears. He looks down. There are so many bodies in the water that it seems like a sea of people, and all of them are forcing themselves against the ship’s hull as if to overturn it.
Eduardo lurches sideways, reaching up to wind an arm around one of the clanging metal chains as the ship rocks again with the force of the bodies pushing them away. He tries to remember that he’s not in danger as long as he keeps his mind, but it’s hard - he shuts his eyes tightly and tries to think of Summerland, but it’s a dull memory. He breathes in and out harshly, willing away the panic.
The ship rocks again and he can’t hold back a sob, wrapping his arm around the chain to keep him from sliding over the edge and into the dark, infested waters.
“Eduardo,” says a voice, half-panic and half-relief. He glares up at Chris, unconcerned with how he got here, just angry that it took him so long.
“Why did you take us here?”
“I didn’t,” Chris says, his face streaked with rainwater, blonde hair plastered to his head. He looks as cold and miserable as Eduardo feels. “You brought us here. You need to get us out of here, you’re lost!”
“I’m lost?! Me? You’re supposed to be the guide!”
Chris shakes his head, but he’s wearing a guilty expression as he grips the edge of the rail and it makes something in Eduardo’s chest burn.
“Why are you here?” Eduardo shouts, pushing the clinging wet hair out of his face and steadfastly ignoring the shaking of his hands. “Why are you doing this? What is the point! They can’t be saved! You said it yourself, whoever the fuck you are, so why now! Where were you when Mark died, huh? Why wasn’t anyone there to save him then!”
“There was!” Chris shouts back, and Eduardo stills abruptly, like all of his strings have been cut. His hold loosens as he slumps back against the chain, shaking hands struggling to hold on out of weakness, not because of the slippery sheen of green algae and black mold grown unchecked across the steel links. He gasps for breath. His voice comes out small.
“Then why? Why is he here?”
Chris comes to crouch in front of him, calmer. “Because Mark couldn’t convince himself that he deserved what we have. I’m sorry, I am so sorry, but that’s just the way it is. My job is not to pull souls out of hell, Eduardo. I’m here for you. I’m here so that you can see him for yourself, and so you can say goodbye.”
Eduardo shakes his head. “I don’t believe it. He wouldn’t choose this. He worked so hard to prove that he was worthy, he wouldn’t choose to be nothing.”
“I’m sorry,” is all Chris says, leaning forward to gently press a kiss to Eduardo’s forehead. Eduardo closes his eyes. “You’re lucky. You’re tenacious, but you’re lucky. I’ve brought soulmates through here before, you know that? Soulmates, and I’ve lost every one of them. You can still say goodbye, okay? Tell him that you love him. It’s the best you can do. You can make sure nobody forgets about Mark, but only if you make it back to Summerland.”
He tried to think of Summerland, but it’s a far-off memory. His mind is saturated with the darkness of Hell, the gasping fear and hopelessness. He sobs. “Where is he?” Eduardo asks, meek as a child. “Why can’t I find him, Chris. Why can’t I feel him?”
He hears a shuffling sound and Chris is suddenly closer still, knees bumping into Eduardo’s legs as he sits on the gritty, splintered wood of the deck. He’s blurry, like Eduardo’s sight is failing him, a fruitless attempt to block out his reality.
“I told you before that I’m not used to taking new souls down here, but let me try to help,” he says, and presses his hand over Eduardo’s eyes. “You don’t need this. Nanda told about your body, right? It’s not real. None of this is real. So let it go, okay? Don’t look through your eyes. Shhh, now. Don’t listen.” He presses his other hand to Eduardo’s shuddering chest. “You don’t need to breathe. Can’t have shortness of breath without lungs, right? Quiet.” He waits a moment. “Okay?” Eduardo nods. “No. No, you’re still listening to me, aren’t you? You don’t need it. Don’t nod, you don’t need your body. Your fingers. There’s no boat to toss you into a sea that doesn’t exist. Your heart. It’s nothing, it’s nothing, it’s all in your mind. Your mind is the truth.”
For a moment, there is nothing. Then there’s a lurch, Eduardo instinctively trying to connect to that essence that he had thought of as a unique air quality, then as a fabric of love. That’s not quite right, he knows that now, but there isn’t any need to explain it like this, anyway, and still - he doesn’t connect. It’s too far away, it’s blocked by, by… what is that?
And then he recoils. It’s despair. Souls just like his was, too attached to their bodies. Souls too self- absorbed to see anything outside of that, or perhaps unable to see it at all. Eduardo rails against their helpless, clogging, teeming hopelessness; for them this is all that exists, and he wants to wrench himself out of this stateless being, but there’s Chris - or someone else, someone brighter, and when Eduardo reaches out to touch that light he is consumed with the message: Where is Mark? Eduardo, find Mark. Where is he?”
Mark. One of these souls is Mark. Eduardo knows the state of himself when he is with Mark, so he casts out for that, blocks out all else to the best of his ability. When he reaches it, finally, a part of himself sings.
Then he lets himself fall crashingly back into the shield of his body - the more comforting, more closed-off part of himself - and when his heavy useless body comes back to him, he finds himself crying.
“You did it,” Chris says. He sounds surprised. He grips one of Eduardo’s hands and stands, Eduardo still slumped on the ground, attached to Chris’s hand but unable to regain use of his legs. He needs to breathe.
“What is this, anyway? We’re in… suburbia,” continues Chris with a hollow laugh.
Eduardo looks. He’s sitting in the middle of a road. With the help of Chris’s hold on his hand, he pulls himself up with one arm and pushes off with the other, hand coming away with bits of tarmac clinging to his skin. He brushes it off absently, staring ahead of himself. It’s a house.
“A house?”
Chris shrugs. “You have a better chance of understanding than I do.”
And he does. Palo Alto. It’s the rental house in Palo Alto, the sinkhole of his investment money; Eduardo is facing the very front stoop that he stood on getting drenched with rain while Sean Parker and his underage girls sat warmly, smugly, uninvitingly on the inside.
“Woah, there. Guess you recognize this after all?” Chris is prying Eduardo’s fingers out of the shape of the fist he had formed. “Don’t let it get to you. You’re past all that. You’ve been past it for a while, remember that. You’re here for Mark.”
“I thought you said we were doing this for my sake, not his.”
“You’ll do none of us any good if you regress.”
Eduardo nods vaguely. Mark is inside that house. He’s suddenly nervous; he doesn’t know what to expect when he goes inside.
Chris puts his hands on Eduardo’s shoulders, turning them to face him squarely. “This is it. This is your final chance. You can still go back.”
“He’s right there, Chris. I’m not going anywhere until I see him.”
“Of course, of course. They all say that.” Chris smiles at him as if he’s just let Eduardo in on a joke, but Eduardo doesn’t return the sentiment. “Okay. Listen. If you’re not back in thirty minutes, then I have to assume you’re not coming back at all.”
There’s no trace of amusement, and Eduardo appreciates it. He claps Chris on the shoulder and pretends for a moment that it’s really him, Chris Hughes who was there to pick up the pieces of Eduardo that were broken along with Mark’s laptop that day in May, Chris Hughes who never picked sides because he never believed that Mark and Eduardo’s relationship was terminated for good. That must be why he picked this face. The strange soul who went through hell with Eduardo. “Thank you,” he says and draws him into a hug.
He crosses the street.
-
The front door looks shut from the outside, but when Eduardo draws closer he sees that it’s only resting in the frame - there’s no lock, and the handle twists loosely in his palm. It isn’t even screwed into the door.
Eduardo knocks, but doesn’t actually wait for an answer. He pushes the door open and steps into the same foyer that Sean had taunted him in, dripping rainwater onto the carpet. He raps a little on the wall, calling out.
“Excuse me? Is anyone home? I’m sorry to intrude but your door is unlocked and -"
“Please tell me you’re here to fix the fucking internet.”
Eduardo nearly swallows his own tongue. Mark steps out of the hallway, arm hooked around the doorframe. Stain is peeling from the wood and it flakes off under his fingertips, the cuticles around his nails visibly swollen even from the foyer where Eduardo is still standing, frozen. Mark, at his age - back when he really was 19 and living in the relative squalor of a group of teenage geniuses living on their own for the first time in their lives - always looked rundown. His three day coding binges at the Harvard dorms were worse, but at least he showered when he was done. Eduardo is used to Mark’s general disregard for basic hygiene.
He’s unprepared for this. Mark’s clothes are pretty bad, frayed and dirty, shirts threadbare enough that Eduardo can tell he’s layered on three of them, but that’s not what concerns him. Mark has always been thin, naturally so, and compounded by the fact that he could go days on end eating not much more than tuna and candy, but this is nothing like that. It’s emaciation. The hollows of his cheeks are shockingly deep, each bone of his body clearly delineated beneath skin that looks so fragile, Eduardo is sure it would crumble to ash if he were to touch it. Mark’s entire being has a blue pallor to it from veins showing through his skin’s transparency, and his hair is matted and wild - it makes the gauntness of his face stand out all the more. Eduardo’s stomach roils not out disgust, but from a wave of sorrow that nearly dizzies him. This is how Mark sees himself. This is how he has measured his own worth.
And still there’s an intense anger in his stare that has Eduardo stuttering. “Wh-what? I’m -“ he looks behind himself, as if expecting to see someone else there. “I don’t know anything about the internet, I’m sorry.”
“Then get out,” Mark says. He disappears, but not before Eduardo sees his shoulders drop in defeat.
Eduardo looks around the house. The walls are all in a similar state to the doorframe of the hallway: peeling paint, molding baseboards. The floor is littered with junk, leaves and dirt blown in through the jaggedly broken glass of the sliding door that leads to the back. Eduardo catches a glimpse of the kitchen as he passes it and the smell alone stops him from even going in to look. There are still computer desks set up here and there, equipment unused and gathering dust amid piles of dirty dishes and beer cans with the labels faded as if they’ve been sitting in the sun. The entire house feels like it’s been sitting in a weathered, rotting state for decades. Eduardo peeks out back, but it’s as if the landscape disappears beyond the pool, whose water is a garish shade of green and clogged with detritus and scum.
He goes to find Mark. There isn’t much light in his room, and what little that filters through the curtains is pale and weak. Mark is standing hunched over this computer, which is running a DOS screen while Mark stabs angrily at the keyboard.
“You shouldn’t work in the dark,” Eduardo says. “You’ll ruin your eyesight.”
“I thought I told you to leave,” Mark spits back, not bothering to look over his shoulder.
“I know. I thought I could help.”
“You CAN’T,” Mark shouts, punctuating it with a particularly hard open-palmed slam on the keyboard, rattling the desk and causing Eduardo to jump. Mark grits his teeth and repositions the keyboard, pecking at it lightly as if in apology. “There’s no electricity anyway.”
“Then how is your keyboard running?” Maybe, maybe, if he can convince Mark that he’s living in a place that defies all logic and accountability, he can wake him up a little. Nanda had said that in this state, he isn’t aware that he has even died. Mark blinks, pulling back a little, hesitates - then he shakes his head.
“Battery. You really don’t know anything about computers, do you.”
The way he says it has Eduardo’s heartbeat picking up speed; it’s like he might recognize him. The same teasing tone he’d always get when it came to Eduardo’s not so great relationship with technology, jokes about the irony at him being a cofounder of something a technologically dependent as a goddamned website, the same jokes that became barbs during the deposition - how could Eduardo understand, how could he be an effective CFO if he doesn’t even know how to change his relationship status?
“I know enough. What’s wrong?”
“Everything is wrong,” Mark mumbles, and when Eduardo moves to lean against the desk alongside him and peer at the unintelligible code running across the screen, he adds, “the internet went down. It’s been down for two weeks and I’ve been calling three times a day every day and they always say they’ll send someone out but they never do. And everyone’s gone. I can’t run Facebook without access to the servers. I can’t even check to see how many users we’ve lost and every user is - “ he pauses to suck in a breath. “We can’t go down. Not for even an hour. We can’t go down ever and it’s already been two fucking weeks.”
Mark’s hands shakes over the keyboard. From this close Eduardo can tell that he’s even worn down the skin on his fingertips, nails limned with infection. “I don’t know what to do,” he says lowly, and Eduardo knows exactly how hard that is for Mark to admit. “I need - I need Eduardo here. He’d know what to do.”
Eduardo stares at the side of his face, swallowing hard. He’s known since the moment he walked in, but it still hurts to know for sure that Mark doesn’t recognize him. I’m right here. Why can’t you see that?
He never did. Mark sinks his teeth into his bottom lip and Eduardo only notices the flush of blood that rises to the surface because it’s the brightest thing in the room.
“Maybe I can help,” he repeats. Mark stares blankly at the monitor, hands hovering but still over the keyboard.
“Why should you help?” he says and turns to look at Eduardo for the first time since he walked in the door. “No one wants to help. The internet company says they’ll help but they don’t care; the interns all left because Facebook is done. We’re done. There’s nothing left, they all - Sean left, Eduardo left, it’s fucking -!” Mark pushes himself violently away from the desk, turning his back so that Eduardo can see his shoulderblades thin and poking out of his back like pinions without feathers. “It’s so fucking cold in here, they shut off the fucking heat.
“Mark, listen to me,” Eduardo says, trying to get Mark’s attention back on him, but he’s rooting through the tiny dresser for more clothes.
“I thought it was supposed to be fucking warm in fucking California.”
The bed is bare, the drawers are empty, and Eduardo’s heart is in his throat; “You are not alone. I’m right here, okay? It’s me. It’s Eduardo. We can fix this, I promi-“
Mark slams a drawer shut.“Shut up.”
Eduardo shakes his head. “No.”
“Get OUT.”
“Can’t you see -“
“You’re not! You’re not Eduardo, you can’t be Eduardo, he’s not coming back.” Mark’s covering his ears now as if he can stop the words from being true if he can’t hear them, backing up until he bumps into the wall beside the door. “I kicked him out. He told me - he said - “
“Mark, I’m not upset, I -!” The door slams in his face. Everything is quiet for a second, and for that second - that one second, Eduardo thinks he should just say his goodbyes. But that’s as long as the thought lasts, and then he’s opening the door and Mark is turning to him there in the hallway, shaking and no longer angry.
“Can you just leave. Just go. You’re not him, I don’t appreciate the reminders so just get the fuck out of here.”
“Okay.” Eduardo holds his hands in front of him, palms out in a show of surrender. “All right, I’ll go, but I want to tell you something first.”
“No.”
“You said you kicked Eduardo out. When? When did you?”
“When - at the. He signed the contract.”
“The contract that was written in the new offices? Not now. Not here. That came later. So how do you know?”
Mark swallows visibly, jaw open as if he wants to answer but can’t find the words. “You’re just trying to confuse me. You just want me for Facebook, so you can. But it’s mine, Facebook is mine.”
“Nobody is denying that. But listen, Mark, I just want you to know something. I don’t care about Facebook. I know you do, but I didn’t. I didn’t understand that, and I fucked up, but I forgave myself. I didn’t want to be angry every time I thought about you, and it was hard to admit it but I was young and stupid and I didn’t see why you needed Facebook. You were worth - you are worth so much more than an idea. I regretted that I couldn’t make you happy, Mark, but I loved you before you were a name on a website, and so did many others. Chris and Dustin, your family, we all loved you. So please, please don’t assume that Eduardo is never coming back. Please don’t accept loneliness. Can you promise me that?”
Mark looks at him and Eduardo thinks they can do it. He’ll reach out and Mark won’t flinch, and Mark will follow him from this house. But it isn’t that easy. It never was, and Eduardo’s downfall was always the assumption that he understood what was going on in Mark’s head.
“Then where are they now? Facebook is gone and so everyone left. Look around you, there’s nothing! With no website, there’s no money, and no one else cared enough about what I was trying to build. About me. So please leave, because there’s nothing here for you either. Eduardo wouldn’t even come. I asked him to, I wanted him here but he never came.”
There are sobs piling themselves up in Eduardo’s throat, so he can barely understand himself when he speaks. “I’m here now. I’ve come now, Mark,” but Mark doesn’t hear. “And I’m not leaving. Okay?”
He takes in a shuddering breath, fills his lungs with it so that what he says next comes across loud and clear. “I came out, Mark, just like you wanted. And I’m not going to leave. Not like this. Not with you like this. I know you think you deserve it, but I don’t agree with you. I’m here now, and I promise you that I am not going anywhere.”
“…Wardo?”
A draft hits and he shivers. “You’re right, it is cold in here,” Eduardo mutters, hunching over himself. It’s so cold, how can Mark stand it? They could light something on fire, there’s all these dead leaves; they’ll be fine if they just - no, but there aren’t any matches.
“Wardo, no.”
Mark comes forward, pressing Eduardo back into the wall of the hallway; keeps moving until his arms are around him, up under the fabric of Eduardo’s shirt like a brace. “Wardo, Wardo, please.” Mark is so warm that his arms feel scalding against Eduardo’s bare skin and he hisses through his teeth; he’s so cold that the heat of Mark’s body stings like needles.
“Why are you crying?” he manages to ask, recoiling against the wall, but Mark presses further still, sobbing.
“Wardo! Goddamn it, WARDO,” Mark is still saying, and it’s so loud.
“Yeah. Yeah, Mark, I’m here.”
“No, don’t. Wardo!”
Dying is exactly like falling asleep. One moment, you’re aware, and then you’re just… gone. But sometimes, you’re not alone.
-
part 3: a chance