Chapter Twenty-Eight

The Journal of Jay O’Connor:

Epilogue

I’m sitting on the edge of the Chasm, not so far from the place we called the Rendezvous. It was the place that in due course we all called home after the ’quake hit; the place where we clung together, and planned together, and defied the Vorla together. It’s burned out now courtesy of the Caffneys, and we’ve spent some time wondering whether we should rebuild it, make it habitable again. There are lots of other places we could find to repair; other places with only minimum structural damage—but the Rendezvous is so special to us, despite the horrors we endured, we’re reluctant to abandon it. Alex seems keen to give it a try. I don’t know. Maybe we will, maybe we won’t. Time will tell.

Time.

That’s what we have lots of here.

All the time in the world.

I’m dictating on to the last of a dozen tapes or so, putting these last thoughts down. There’s so much to be done.

I’m looking down into the Chasm, and still can’t believe that I was down there and that I was able to climb out. Maybe in another reality I didn’t. But I won’t go into all that, because it can do your head in the more you think about it. All I know is that once the Chasm was a thing to be feared. All of mankind’s evil, its hatred, its insanity, was down there. Thousands and thousands of years’ worth of pure Evil, generated by mankind; the pure evil energy of it somehow transported here and dumped into that pit. The sum total of all our Evil, all brewed into that great black sea. It tried to destroy us, and we denied it. More than anything, it wanted us to fear it.

But for now, we needn’t fear it. Not for a long, long time anyway.

Because it’s gone.

Lisa felt it first.

She brought us to the edge, just here, shortly after we returned. We stood in a line, holding hands—and we knew, just knew, that the Vorla had been destroyed. Her parents had drummed religious education into her head when she was a kid; managed to put her off for life. But she still remembers a lot of those verses; knew what the Vorla was trying to do when it made us see its false Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. She used one of the verses then, as we looked down into the abyss and knew that the Vorla had been destroyed. From Revelations.

“Then I saw what seemed to be a sea of glass mixed with fire. I also saw those who had won victory over the beast and its image. And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.”

Hundreds, maybe thousands of tons of burning fuel spewed out from that petrol plant and down into the Chasm. We saw great waves of the Vorla screaming and burning like tar. The liquid fire that gushed down there must have ignited the Black Stuff, burned it out, scoured it from the Chasm. It can’t rise out of the abyss again to attack us; can’t further its plans to create its obscene New Society; can’t torture or maim or inflict agonies on the survivors here.

But that doesn’t mean we’re free of it for ever.

It took thousands, maybe millions of years for the Vorla to grow to that size; took it all that time to form what Lisa calls a hideous “collective consciousness”. And the process won’t stop now. Somewhere deep down in the Chasm, maybe the first glistening-black pools of it are forming again. With each murder, each rape, each violent crime, another thin trickle of Black Stuff will be dripping in the darkness. With each act of malice, each act of greed, or envy, or ill-will, perhaps those thin streams will be reaching out for each other in the cracks of the cliff-face. How many hundreds of years before it begins its task again? How many thousands of years before it regains its first glimmerings of “collective consciousness” once more?

Maybe everyone will have a change of heart in the “real world”?

Maybe they’ll all start being kind to each other; maybe there’ll be a spiritual revolution and they’ll be able to eradicate all evil acts for ever; maybe that evil energy will just stop coming over here, and won’t be dumped down there in the Chasm any more?

Big maybe.

Or maybe we’ll be the new caretakers of the Vorla. Maybe we’ll find a way to stop it growing down there. Maybe…just maybe…we’ll even find a way to send it back where it comes from.

In the meantime, we’ve got the chance of a new beginning here. No threat from the Chasm, and no Caffneys trying to build a new society for the Vorla. The first task is a big one. There are other survivors out there somewhere on the peaks and crags of New Edmonville. If the Caffneys could build bridges between those plateaus, then we can do it as well. I’m hoping that those kids managed to survive the petrol-plant fire. I’ve a feeling that most of them did, and they’re still out there. We’ve got to find them, show them how wrong the Vorla was; help them make a new start. There’s one kid in particular who I’ve just got to find.

I have to find Paulie, the Crying Kid.

He’s been on my mind a lot, from the very beginning. He saved my life when the Caffneys threw me into the Chasm, and I can still see his face up there on the wooden platform as I fell into the pit; that face getting smaller and smaller as the darkness swallowed me up. I can’t get rid of the feeling that he’s so like me when I was a kid. Some secret part of me still wonders if the Crying Kid is me, when I was younger. I know that doesn’t make sense, but I can’t get rid of the feeling. I need to find him again; need to make sure he’s okay. Just how he ended up on the other side of the city, with the Caffneys, is anybody’s guess. Lots of mysteries out there, all waiting to be tied up. It’s up to us now; all down to us to create that new society, our way.

No sign of Gordon since our return.

He must still be in that in-between place, with the Cherubim. Maybe he doesn’t know that we’re back. Or perhaps he’s just biding his time; getting more answers to the great mysteries that are all around us in the Realm of the Chasm. Who knows? Maybe he’s finding out the Meaning of Life. One day soon, he’ll be back. I know it. When he does, we’ll…

 

“Jay?”

“Oh…Juliet.” “

“What are you doing?”

“You mean this? It’s a dictating machine. I’ve been using it these past few weeks, talking to it, getting my head around everything that we’ve been through.”

“Have you got any of the answers?”

“One big answer to my problems. She’s standing here with me now, right on the edge of the Chasm. How are the others?”

“They’re good. Better than good. I’ve got great good news.”

“There’s a fleet of rescue helicopters on the way, after all?”

“Better than that. Candy’s pregnant.”

“God…she’s sure?”

“Definite.”

“Damon’s, or Alex’s?”

“She doesn’t know.”

“How is Alex taking it?”

“He says he doesn’t care. I’ve never seen them like this before, Jay. They look so…so damned happy.”

“So we’re going to have a first-born in New Edmonville? The first real new citizen of our new society.”

“We should change the name. This isn’t Edmonville, or New Edmonville.”

“So what should we call it?”

“Eden.”

“Eden? You mean like in the Bible?”

“Yes, except we’ve already thrown the serpent out of this garden.”

“And maybe we can keep it out.”

“I’m sorry…I interrupted you. With the tape, I mean.”

“No you didn’t. You’re just in time.”

“For what?”

“Come here, love. Sit beside me. This is nearly done…”

 

So I’m nearly at the end of this last tape; the batteries are running down.

Since the ’quake, we’ve all had our fair share of death and horror and nightmarish things that should have sent us mad. But we’ve made it through and, as a group, we’re closer than family now. We’ve got a huge task ahead of us. Find the other survivors, find those kids. Begin again, create a new society. Keep a watchful eye on the Chasm. Funny thing. I started out as a caretaker cleaning up other people’s mess. Now I’m doing the same sort of thing here. Me and the others; caretaking the Chasm, watching to make sure that mankind’s mess doesn’t start acting up again. But like I say, we—or whoever comes after us—should worry about that in a thousand years’ time or so.

But do you want to know something? I’m glad I’m here. I’m glad that we didn’t get back. I’m glad that we’ve got a chance for this New Beginning, glad for the chance to start again and avoid all the old ways that have been screwing people up ever since we came out of the trees and started living in caves. We don’t have to make the same old mistakes here. We’ve got the chance to make it so much better.

There’s another reason why I’m glad we’re here.

I had a dream last night.

In the dream, I was back in Edmonville. The earthquake had never happened, and I was on my way to work. I was walking down Wady Street, steeling myself for another day under Stafford the head teacher’s lash; not much else to look forward to but another night of drunken oblivion with Fritzy and the others in The Fallen Oak. There was a woman on the other side of the street, heading in the opposite direction. Long blond hair, dark suit. She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. It was Juliet.

She looked at me as we passed, and looked away.

I looked at her, and moved on.

In the sky overhead there was a rumble of thunder.

A little further on, I looked back to watch her figure vanish in the distance. Maybe she had an appointment with Trevor Blake.

I knew then that in that existence we never met and we never fell in love.

We both went on with our lives, following them through to whatever end fate might have in store for us. Something tells me that they wouldn’t be happy-ever-afters.

Want to know something else? I don’t think that was a dream at all. I think I was seeing something that was really happening in the Edmonville we’d come from.

And that’s why I’m glad I’m here.

Because Juliet and I are together.

Because of it, I know I’m a better man than the other Jay O’Connor in that other existence. I’ve found something here with Juliet that I never could have believed possible in my other life. And each day that passes, I thank my lucky stars for it.

I’m standing now, ready to finish.

Once, I thought I’d keep these tapes as a reminder of how it all began. But we don’t need this record to remind ourselves of the pain and the death and the blood that’s been spilled here in…in Eden. We don’t need to remember the old ways. We just need to go on. Find the survivors, heal the wounds, and make our New Beginning. That’s why, when I’ve finished dictating, I’m going to throw this tape machine and my half-dozen tapes into the Chasm.

Juliet’s pulling at my sleeve…and there’s a look of joy on her face. She’s pointing, and I’m looking and…Christ!

It’s Gordon!

He’s walking across the grass towards us, that guitar over his shoulder. Playing the harmonica and with a smile on his face that says he’s got an awful lot to tell us. There are birds overhead. Birds! No…not birds…they’ve got wings, but they’re not birds. God, I can hardly believe it.

So much to do.

But lots of time to do it.

And by God, this time we’ll try and get it right.