Chapter 1
Erik had hardly slept for a whole week. It was not like he didn’t want to. In fact, he so desperately craved for a peaceful slumber that he even came to the point where one day he busted into Charles’ study at the dead of night, asking him to put him into a dreamless sleep.
‘Come on, Charles. Just do it. Fingering me. Fingering my temple like you always did every time you perform your magic trick. Come on, do it!’ said him under his breath hastily, ‘You can do it, can you?’ he added, looking straight into his eyes imploringly.
Charles simply shook his head, ‘I can, but I won’t.’ said him bluntly, as he sat a bit more upright as though in doing this his words carried more weights. ‘Erik, don’t you realize that the way you beg for it is almost not that much different from what drug addicts sound like when they plead for something stronger?’
Mulling it over, thinking back on his thoughtless behavior, Erik had no stance to utter a retort but to agree that Charles had his point. He heaved a heavy sigh, his towering figure slowly shrunk back and plopped down on the armchair, lapsing into a thoughtful silence.
Fearing that he might be too harsh, Charles proceeded, ‘I’m sorry. Don’t take it to heart. I can help you with it, but that just doesn’t sit right with me cause-‘ he paused, finding Erik’s brooding but intent gaze back on him, clearly eager to know what was going on next, ‘I can help you, for now. But after that, what then? You can’t always count on me being there to help you out whenever the need arises. Hypnosis is no more than a placebo. It’s not medication, and it sure can’t be a final solution.’
Erik allowed himself a wry smile, ‘This is how you make of me? You really think I’m that unsophisticated to not see through this? If there’s another way I won’t come here bothering you at this witching hour.’ He gave vent to a long exhalation, ‘I’m at the end of my tether.’
Charles’ taut face softened a smidgen. He adjusted his position slightly to sit more comfortably and quietly studied his gloomy face before he proceeded, his voice as gentle as the texture of silklike fabrics.
‘Tell me what’s haunting you.’ He asked, though the answer was not even needed. He was gifted with powers to see through people and sometimes a brief hint of hesitance was enough for him to read their minds. However, this time he didn’t need telepathy to tell him what exactly plagued Erik all this time. He just needed to hear it from Erik, from his own very lips.
‘I’m seeing things…’ Erik swallowed, ‘… in my dreams.’
‘Nightmares?’
Erik couldn’t answer in the affirmative. In fact, even he himself had no idea how to define what he saw every night in his dreams. But if he had to, he’d call it flashbacks because everything just seemed familiar. He felt like reliving his past in the dreams — the way he trudged in the slimy wet mud in a seething mass of abject prisoners was the exact same as he remembered; the crows shrilled in the exact same tune as he remembered that day in the deep heart of that secluded forest in Poland, not a note changed. His mind forced him to reexperience it right at the very moment when he was about to let it go.
‘Not nightmares.’ Erik let out a whisper, staring dreamily at the flames blazing friskily in the fireplace.
‘It’s not dreams, right?’ said Charles with certainty, ‘You are reliving your past twenty years in your dreams. Nightmarish, it is. But that’s not a nightmare because you know your mind just played it the way it recorded.’
A bitter smile tugged Erik’s dry lips. If only my mind had played it exactly the way it recorded, he sighed inwardly. He was not afraid of reliving a troubled past. He had survived hell, he was strong enough brace himself for what had already happened. But that didn’t mean he had the courage to face up to what was yet to happen.
He smelled the rusty iron from the raindrops breaking on his face. The smell was familiar. So familiar that he didn’t need to open his eyes to know where he was. People around him tugged and pushed, plodding through the muddy puddles while mumbling under their breath. Opening his eyes, Erik found the familiar rusty-barbed-wired door looming up ahead of him. It was wide open, as though inviting him, in a warmly-welcoming fashion.
This was where he was taken away from his family. His mom died in this notorious camp because of his incapacity to control his powers at his will while his dad, once the door was closed, had never been seen nor heard of ever since.
Erik was pushed forward by the crowds slogging behind and bit by bit, that ominous-looking wired door was only a stone’s throw from him, towering over him like a monster lying prostrate. He remembered the fright it once brought him was horrendous but this time, he was as steely as the iron used to build the door that cut him away from his family. He knew what lay behind, and he was prepared. That was how you outsmarted a nightmare, simple.
If only it had been that simple!
The wired door was close at hand. He was about to walk through it, only one step away when it suddenly started gyrating backwards, closing him out. Taken aback, Erik brought himself to a sudden halt, having no idea why everything took a swerve.
The shrill cries, the hoarse ranting of the soldiers and the pitter-patter knocking on the roofs were mixed into an unpleasant cacophony. But all failed to reach him as he stood stock-still in the rains, lost in thoughts.
People around him slowly dispersed. On the other side, however, it was a complete shambles. Kids held on to the barbed wire for dear life, putting up quite a good fight against the soldiers; parents tried to break free from their firm grasps to have a last look of their children who were separated from them. It was the same as he remembered. The cries of despair found echoes in his head. For a split second Erik wondered if this was what his dad had experienced before he was taken to terra incognita.
A swell of melancholy welled up within him. Glancing around, he searched the people swarming on the other side, half expecting to find his younger self among them. The search ended fruitless, however, an unforeseen turn made it all pointless — a wisp of silver suddenly appeared out of nowhere, making its way out of the jumble. Etched against the dull, steely grey, it looked almost as bright and glaring as the sunlight of high noon.
First it was only a strand of silver, then it proceeded to the whole of his no longer glossy hair, and in the end revealed from behind those seething mass of arms and hands was his face, the face of whom he had in no way expected to see.
‘Peter?’
Erik’s voice died in his throat. He gaped at his son, who was struggling to squirm free from the soldier that was holding him. The reason why Peter was here was beyond him; but that didn’t matter anymore. His body acted faster than his head. Before he realized what he was doing, he already flung himself to the barbed-wired door, his arm inching its way through the narrow crack between the wired bars, all five fingers stretching to their extents, fighting to get hold of his son.
‘Peter!’ he yelled.
The boy mouthed at him. He was screaming, but not a single syllable to be heard. The word that he repeatedly screamed was inaudible to the ears, nonetheless Erik managed to read it by means of the movement of his lips. The weight it carried was profound, thus provoking a greater fight. The protruding barbs grazed his skin, where deep lacerations started to arise. Trickles of blood were diluted into faint salmon-pink with the mixture of rain cascading in broad streams. But Erik felt no pain. His mind was reigned by blazing rage and a surge of fear.
The metal started screeching as anger bested fear, taking full control. The rusty wired door moaned, tottered in despair, and at last crumbled at his will. Erik lunged for his son, in a desperate attempt to grab him, but his fingers closed on nothing.
He felt his legs went limp under the impact of this shock and gave way, ended up falling on his shaky knees, petrified. Bewildered, he stared blankly at his blood-stained hands, as though he was trying to decode some cryptic hieroglyphs.
A wretched, piercing shriek pulled him out of his thoughts. Looking around, he found the jostling crowds and soldiers all disappeared. Where dwelled a rundown block of buildings and nasty barbed-wires arose full-grown trees standing in legions. Above him a murder of crows were wailing as they hovered around. Their bloodcurdling squeaks were forever etched in his memories that even after a year, they were still as clear and vivid to him as they once had been on that sweltering summer night.
He felt the weight in his arms. His deceased family. Erik didn’t have the courage to look at their dead bodies once more so he just quietly held them the same way as he had done back then, slowly running his calloused fingers through the soft hair, feeling the warmth of the body lost in between his fingers.
Tears blurred his vision, but he still managed to make out everything through a watery mist. The dense scrubs in the far distance, the shimmering moonlight stealthily creeping up the back of his hand and the hair between his fingers — ruffled, lifeless, and——
Silver.
Erik felt his heart missed a beat. And did the name that he was about to utter. He swallowed twice before breathing it out in a whisper of shock.
‘Peter?’
There was suddenly a real nip in the air as he felt his blood curdled. The body was cold to the touch but he was numb to it as his skin was nearly as icy cold as it was. All of a sudden everything around him became hard to process. His son was bouncy and full of energy just a couple of minutes ago; how could he end up lying here, pulseless and deathly pale?
Is this what my family destined to be? Cold, dead, dying in my arms? Is this what I’m doomed to suffer?
The dark crimson smeared all over his hands stung his eyes. Before he thought it was his own blood, but at a second glance he saw no cuts or grazes on his hands so that ruled every other possibility out except for one——
I killed him?
The sudden realization brought chill to the bone and stirred him from sleep. Panting in a cold sweat, Erik stared blankly at the ceiling in wide-eyed fright, gasping several times to right his breath. After finding back his breathing rhythm, he swiveled to have a look at the alarm clock on the nightstand, which read 3:13. There was still a long time till sunrise, but he couldn’t sleep any more.
He just couldn’t.