––––––––
Ambrosio looks up at us, his face filled with spite.
“My lord is immortal! You cannot do away with him!” Necrus remains lying on the ground. We say nothing; all eyes are on him. “I will avenge his death, I swear to you!”
As the monk runs toward us Necrus slowly opens his eyes.
“He’s alive!” exclaims Anna Karenina, pointing in horror.
“Finally, they’re all dead,” says Necrus, coughing. He gets up and looks scornfully at the flat beings. He nudges one of his characters aside with the toe of his boot. “Why are you looking at me like that, you accursed Sphereans? Do you feel bad for me? Eh? You have nothing—NOTHING—to pity me for. You are the ones who should curse your luck. Trapped here, infinitely repeating the same actions. And you, Eurydice, you should regret your own ending... Or perhaps not. Perhaps there is nothing to regret. It will be just what you always wanted—worthy of a gothic heroine.”
“Quit talking about gothic heroines. What do you know about what I like? You don’t know me!” I shout.
“Gothic heroines, solitary women gazing out to sea, eyes full of melancholy, loves that last beyond death...” Necrus takes my notebook out from one of his pockets. “Some very good drawings, by the way.”
“Give me that!”
“You will remain trapped for all eternity in this world to which you do not belong. The Sphere will be your tomb.” Necrus’s eyes look like they belong to a corpse. They remind me of the filmy look of a fish as it dies staring right at its captor. “What is your last wish, Lord Necrus?” he asks theatrically, to the empty air. “Leave the one who destroyed my dreams trapped here!”
“It wasn’t my fault you couldn’t achieve your dreams.” Necrus looks at me with such hatred that my blood runs cold, but I stand my ground. “I’m going to get out of here, but first I’m going to bring order back to the Sphere.”
“Do you really think you can do it? How naïve!” Necrus starts to walk away backwards, his eyes still on us, the rusty wheels of his now-ruined robot squeaking. He takes a box and climbs on top of it like a podium. “Perfect.” His uneven, yellowed teeth reveal a dark tongue. “I have the ideal audience. I never thought life would offer me this pleasure. I have you, the most important characters of literature, all here before me. Someday, if your roles allow it, you shall tell the tale of how you met the man who brought your little world to its knees. Thank me—you’re about to witness the greatest show of all: my disappearance.”
With those words Necrus lifts his hands to his neck and pulls off the helmet, which falls to the ground and breaks in two. He immediately begins to struggle for breath, but instead of writhing, he stands still, and his figure begins to fade.
“Enjoy the Sphere,” he says to me with an evil smile. His voice is so hoarse I can hardly make out the words.
I’m filled with anguish. I don’t know how to leave the Sphere. I stumble toward Necrus and shake him by the shoulders:
“Come back! Come back! Tell me how to get out of here!”
His shoulders fade quickly, until my fingers are only clutching at air. I pick up the two halves of the helmet and place them on a head that is almost completely gone. Now there’s no neck left to fasten the helmet around. I try over and over again, failing each time. Necrus’s misshapen grin is getting deeper; his mouth is turning into a dark cave. The sallow skin decays and fades before my eyes. I hear beeping, just like before, but much louder, more persistent, and voices shouting my name.
“You can’t go,” I yell and weep at the same time, “you can’t leave me here!”
I wrap my arms around what’s left of Necrus.
“Dissie!” exclaims Beatrice in horror. “You’re disappearing!”
Sherlock and Morgan stretch their arms out to me. I look down and see that my body is erasing itself, just like Necrus. The beeps have become unbearably loud and the voices calling to me ring painfully in my ears. I recognize them now: Axel, my parents, Marion and Laura. Necrus’s legs and my legs are completely gone. Our entwined bodies have become a small crumpled mass, a little circle that begins spinning quickly. Each time we spin, it’s like we’re being sucked down into a vortex. Heathcliff and Cathy watch me, holding each other tightly. Everyone seems hypnotized by the sight.
Dissie!
The voices keep calling me.
Dissie, wake up! Come back!
I realize that the vortex that has devoured us is transporting us through different dimensions. I think I see the white lights of a hospital. I stretch my arms out and see my own hands—not as they were in the Sphere, but pale and slender, stuck full of needles. I can nearly reach out and touch the familiar voices, but then something yanks me away, something much stronger than the whirlwind from before. I’m in utter darkness. I speed along beside Necrus as our bodies disintegrate and slip in between the layers of human time. There’s a sudden jolt and I open my eyes. Necrus has vanished.
A light, chilly rain is falling. I’m in a graveyard. I wonder if all my hopes have been in vain. Maybe I’ve been dead all along, ever since I arrived in the Sphere. Maybe all this is just proof of what I had refused to believe.
I can hear weeping and the comforting words of a priest. I look slowly around until I see an open hole in the ground. Next to it is a coffin completely covered with flowers. Am I witnessing my own burial? If so, I’m surprised by how calm I am.
I feel another yank; I’m being pulled back in time again. A huge clock in front of me shows that we’ve only gone back one hour. When the movement stops all the cells of my body fall back into place. It takes me a few moments to get my bearings and see where I am: inside a small gothic church. Thick clouds float past on the other side of the tall windows. The stone beneath my feet has been worn down by the centuries. I’m standing next to the entrance to the church like a ghost no one can see. At the altar a priest is giving mass, telling the people gathered here to say their last goodbyes to a man who had been loved by all. The coffin that was covered with flowers before sits at one side of the altar. The wreaths and bouquets of flowers are lying on the floor.
The congregation stands and forms a line to walk past the coffin. Out of all them a little boy of about seven years old grabs my attention. He’s small, with an oversized head, and ears that stick out. He’s accompanied by a woman whose personality seems as withered as her body. She’s wearing a patched black dress and hoping no one notices the holes in her shoes. When mother and son approach the casket, my incorporeal body flies over to their side. The boy gazes at the man lying in the coffin, resting in all his finery on crimson-colored velvet.
“Goodbye, sir,” the boy says with a sigh.
His childlike eyes watch, entranced, as a powerful light glows in the chest of the dead man. The ray of light is so beautiful that he can’t take his eyes away from it. The woman tugs angrily on her son’s ear and drags him back to the pew. The boy turns back to look again and again, and his mother pulls him away again and again. He can’t stop admiring the glowing light as it emerges from the man’s chest and spills over the edge of the casket, illuminating the dome of the church. The mother brings the little boy around to face the front with another rough yank:
“Don’t bring me any more shame,” she whispers. “It’s bad enough being the only servant at this funeral.”
The boy hangs his head. Everyone in the congregation has said their final goodbyes to the deceased; the woman and her son had to wait until last because of their social station. The church, overflowing with people, has been watching the two small figures with interest. The priest urges the parishioners to say one last prayer for the eternal rest of the dead man. The people all kneel, their joints creaking. Soon the boy is the only one with his head raised. His child’s eyes are still fixed on the light shining next to the altar, and he doesn’t realize he’s the only one still standing. A cruel pinch right at his knee brings him down to kneel like the rest. In the little strip of bare skin between his short pants and his socks are red marks from the angry fingers of the embarrassed woman. A single tear rolls down the boy’s puffy cheek.
They close the coffin and the procession leaves the church. The light coming from the dead man’s chest pierces the cover of the casket and shines through the fog, defying the twisted branches of the trees that lean in to cover the short path from the church to the graveyard.
The boy and his mother walk at the end of the procession. I follow them, floating close by. With repeated blows the mother forces the boy to bow his head, to stop looking at the coffin with such curiosity.
We’re standing before the hole in the ground. Once again I see the flower-covered coffin and the people weeping. The ray of light passes through the casket, springs forth from the wreaths of flowers, pierces the fog, and goes up to the sky. The glow persists even after the coffin is lowered into the ground, but when the gravedigger throws a few shovels of dirt in, the light goes out. The boy’s face fills with sorrow when he sees what he thought was a star on earth disappear. Just when it seems like it’s all over, a spark shoots out from beneath the thin layer of dirt and explodes in a canopy of fireworks. The boy’s face lights up. My heart grows warm as I watch the glittering sparks float down through the sky, reflected in the boy’s small, dark eyes. Only the boy and I seem to notice what’s happening; the rest of the people in the procession are too deep in their own sorrow.
The sparks drift gently down, light as feathers, and land in the chests of all the people there—all except mine, and the boy’s, and his mother’s. A tiny spark floats close to the boy and he reaches his hands out to catch it. The small child’s hands close tightly, carefully guarding the treasure. The boy saw how some of the light went into everyone else’s chests, so he brings his hands carefully to his own chest. Then his mother slaps him on the back of the neck:
“Stop embarrassing me!”
The spark slips out of his hands, falls to the ground, and vanishes, taking with it the boy’s last hope. The rest of the mourners slowly leave the cemetery, embracing, leaning on one another’s arms. Some of them instinctively bring their hands up to their chests to the place where the light went in. The boy’s eyes grow cloudy with tears as he watches the others touch, without even knowing it, the love they shared in life with the dead man.
I feel the heat in my chest growing. I close my eyes and see the Count’s finger, pointing to show me where I should search. I hear the words that Axel said to me so many times:
“I don’t understand why you won’t let yourself be loved. To love and be loved, that’s the hardest thing to learn in life. And the only thing worth learning.”
Eurydice.
I hear the voices calling me over and over again. The ear-splitting beeps have stopped, and a relative calm has returned. I feel lucky, so lucky for everything I’ve lived. I open my eyes and find myself still in the graveyard. The boy has noticed my presence and is staring at me. His eyes ask why silently—why doesn’t he have the right to the light that everyone else has? I look at the small face. I want to hug him, stroke his face, but my incorporeal self won’t let me. I recognize those cow-eyes, the gaze of a fish, cloudy, without love.
“Necrus,” I whisper.
“I just wanted to be immortal,” the boy says. “The supreme work... If I could have created it... If I could have gotten the essences of the best characters from history, then I could have made the ultimate character, one that would pass from generation to generation. Then everyone would have loved me, and I would have had a little bit of light, too... If only I had been able to create something that reached other people, I would be like the man in the coffin. I would never die. I would always remain, even after I’d gone.”
I feel a tug, much gentler than the other ones. I wave goodbye to the child Necrus. I want to tell him that we all have some wound, that he too has the right to a little spark of love. There are so many things I want to tell him, but I can’t see him any longer, and I’m being pulled back through the fabric of space and time. I cross dimensions; everything that is and is not possible passes before my eyes. I cross places where color cannot live, and in them the light in my chest shines brightly, so brightly that I finally have to shut my eyes. I feel the flow of light running outside and inside me. The journey is over. I open my eyes. Necrus is gone. The clouds and sun of the Sphere have been replaced by a white neon light. I can hear the beeping again, but now it’s quiet, completely tolerable. I know I’m in a hospital. I blink and see the waiting eyes of my parents, of the twins, of Laura, Marion, and Axel. The eyes of all those people who have always shared my light.
––––––––
Your Review and Word-of-Mouth Recommendations Will Make a Difference
––––––––
Reviews and word-of-mouth recommendations are crucial for any author to succeed. If you enjoyed this book, please leave a review, even if it is only a line or two, and tell your friends about it. It will help the author bring you new books and allow others to also enjoy the book.
––––––––
Your support is greatly appreciated!
––––––––
Are You Looking For Other Great Reads?
––––––––
––––––––
Your Books, Your Language
––––––––
Babelcube Books helps readers find great reads. It plays matchmaker, bringing you and your next book together.
Our collection is powered by books produced at Babelcube, a marketplace that brings independent book authors and translators together and distributes their books in multiple languages globally. The books you will find have been translated so that you can discover terrific reads in your language.
We are proud to bring you the world’s books.
If you want to learn more about our books, browse our catalog and join our newsletter to learn about our latest releases, visit us at our website:
––––––––
[1] At the University of St Andrews first-year students have a mother or father; students in upper years who serve as guides both in practical matters and leisure activities.
[2] What shall I do without Eurydice?