The Shattered Genesis (Eternity) (9 page)

“They’re all in Ocean City!”

“Says who? They said they would call when they got there. They never did.”

“Just because they’re too drunk to pick up the phone doesn’t mean that they’re still here,
trying to freak us out, Allie.”

“They probably went to the new Halloween store and got a mask. You know it’s open all year round now.”

“Do you really think that they would sit out there all night? And what about those noises?”

“What noises?”

“The noises i
t was making! I know you heard it! That’s why you covered your ears all night.”

“I don’t remember any noises.”

I looked up at her to find that she was staring out the window, making a point of avoiding my eyes. I had known her long enough to know that mean
t she was lying.

I downed what was left in my coffee mug before pouring myself a fourth cup. I looked at the clock on the canary yellow wall of her kitchen; it was 9:35 and we had been downstairs for an hour. Drinking four cups of coffee during that time
definitely didn’t help settle my nerves.

“Allie, I know you’re freaked out. I am, too. But there is no way that thing was any of our friends pranking us.”

“Maybe it was a neighbor kid, then. There are these stupid kids that live up the street from here tha
t always ding-dong-ditch the house.”

“People still do that?” I asked in disbelief. I shook my head slightly to get my mind back on topic. “It wasn’t anyone playing a prank. It was either a hallucination or…”

“Or what?” She asked, looking at me now. “
Or wha
t,
Quinn?”

We were both quiet, not knowing exactly how to answer the question I had asked. Neither of us wanted to. We didn’t want to face the truth. Who could blame us for that after what we had seen?

“You’ll stay here with me tonight, won’t you? I can’t
stay here alone.” She told me and the fear I had seen in her the night before resurfaced for a quick second.

“Duh.” I replied and I saw the faintest trace of a smile on her face. “All we can do now is just see if it comes back. If it does, we’ll handle it.
”

“How?”

I looked at her and shrugged slightly.

“I don't know. But I'm working on it.”

XXX

             
We sat up with the blinds closed, dreading the moment that night fell, though we never said that out loud. I tried to remain as optimistic as I could when I knew
down to my core that we would be seeing our freakish visitor again. Alice shook her head every time I tried to say that we wouldn’t until finally, I stopped speaking all together, realizing that she didn’t need me or anyone else to lie to her, ever.

             
As we
sat in silence on her bed, my mind traveled back to when we first decided to go from being friends to boyfriend and girlfriend. Immediately, her mother and father objected, saying that it didn’t matter how far we had come as a society, we would still face
the same barriers and prejudice interracial couples had always faced. Alice was young and naïve, they said, if she believed otherwise. But she was stubborn and so sure of the fact that we were meant to be. She didn’t hesitate to tell her parents that she
saw herself ending up with me.

             
Young and naïve, they said again. Even if it weren’t an issue of me being black and her being white, the chances of us staying together for the rest of our lives or even through college were slim to none.

             
My parents were a
little gentler about the whole thing, retelling all the stories they had been told by their friends who had married outside of their own race.

             
“Do you all have any idea what year it is?!” I had exclaimed furiously. “We’re past this! You claim society is g
oing to object but it’s just you! It’s just you and her parents! We don’t even live in the south!”

             
They had tried to say that down in the southern states, we would face the worst of it.

             
“Good thing we’re not planning on moving to Texas, then, right?” I h
ad laughed at the sheer ludicrousness of it all. They were out of touch and they just didn’t like her, for no reason I could pin down in certainty.

             
“Besides, Quinn, you shouldn’t be asking us if we know what year it is. You should be asking the people who
will give you a problem over this.” My dad had reasoned. “It’s not right and it’s not fair, but it is reality. You understand that, don’t you?”

             
“It’s not reality! You two and her parents have no idea what you’re talking about! And it doesn’t matter what
you say, okay? We’re going to be together.”

             
A teenage boy proclaiming his undying love for his girlfriend with all the naivety and idealism in the world is hardly front page news. Our parents projecting a completely ridiculous notion of racial prejudice t
o keep us apart was hardly a new tactic of division. But the situation we found ourselves in that night was so out of the ordinary that to tell anyone about it would surely have guaranteed our swift departure to separate mental hospitals.

             
“I just don’t wa
nt to see it again, okay?” Alice whispered to me and I looked up at her, seeing the darkness reflected on her face now instead of the fading streak of light I had seen before. We both  turned our heads to the window.

             
“I don’t think it’s out there.” I repl
ied after standing up.

             
“Quinn!” She exclaimed, grabbing my arm. “Just keep the blinds closed. Please?”

             
I nodded and we sat back down, waiting for any sign of its presence, be it a scratch, a heavy breath, or its blood-chilling voice.

             
“We’re being so stu
pid.” I told her as I laid on her bed staring up at the ceiling. The sun had gone down two hours earlier.

             
“Do you think so? Do you think it really was just a stupid kid in the neighborhood?” She asked, her eyes moving between me and the window.

             
“Or it wa
s a group hallucination.” I replied, grinning.

             
“Shut up! It was not a group hallucination!” She laughed as she smacked me with a pillow.

             
“It was. You’re just in denial.”

             
“I am not in denial. Let’s just go to sleep.” She told me, still smiling. “It’s fre
aking hot in here. I’m opening the window.”

             
She grabbed the blinds and pulled them down slightly so that they flung up.

             
We both gasped, her covering her mouth to prevent the scream that rose quickly in her throat.

             
The thing was outside again, staring in
at us with the faintest trace of a smile on its contorted mouth.

             
It was playing with us.

XXX

             
She buckled after that second night. She tried to call her mom and dad. When we’re afraid as children, the only people that can soothe the fear are our parents
. Alice was grasping at that straw, thinking that if they came home, the creature would be frightened away.

             
“My dad will shoot it if it tries to get in, Quinn! They’ll protect us both!”

             
Somehow, I doubted that they would be willing to lay down their
lives for me. My parents liked Alice as a person but did not approve of us as a couple. Her parents felt exactly the same way. That level of affection was minimal, to say the least. They would not protect me.

             
She paced around the kitchen floor with the ph
one pressed to her ear.

             
“They’re far out in the ocean, Allie. There’s no cell service out there.” I explained to her after she slammed the phone down hard on its charger. She pressed her face into her shaking hands before running her fingers through her h
air.

             
“I need them to answer.” She told me uselessly. “I think they can check email on the ship. Come on!”

             
After hurrying into the dining room where the desktop was set up, she began to furiously type out a message.

             
“Are you going to tell them exactly wh
at’s going on?” I asked after sitting down beside her.

             
“Of course not. They won’t believe it. I’m just telling them to call me as soon as they get the message. Then, I’ll tell them everything. I’ll tell them that as soon as they reach the port in Bermuda,
they have to get on a plane and come home.”

             
“I don’t think they’ll believe us either way. They’ll think that we’re messing with them. Then they’re going to be really pissed off.”

             
“When they hear my voice, they’ll know I’m not messing with them. They’ll
know that this is serious. Quinn, we can’t do this by ourselves. I know that if we can just get them here, that thing will leave us alone. Have you talked to your parents?”

             
I had, but I hadn’t mentioned anything about our current issue to them. I knew tha
t they wouldn’t believe me just as I knew that Alice’s parents wouldn’t believe her. My parents were home and could offer help immediately. But there was no way that I would be able to convince them. Imagine the story: Every night, we were being stalked by
a hideous, otherworldly creature that sat outside of our window, watching us until the sun rose. Then, it ran over the roof and disappeared, hiding out until the sun went down again. I certainly wouldn’t believe a word of that story if it was told to me.

             
“They won’t believe me.”

             
“You have to try, Quinn! You have to
make them
believe you!”

             
“Alice, would you believe us? This is something straight out of a horror movie. They’re going to think that we’re here alone every night and letting our imaginations r
un away with us. Either that or they’re going to think we’re smoking a lot of weed! Or taking lots of pills!”

             
“
My
parents will believe me.”

             
“That’s great for you. Really, it is. I have to tell you, though, that I don’t believe that. I don’t think they’ll
believe any of this.”

             
“Well, we’ll see about that. As soon as they hear how afraid I am, they’ll be on the first plane home. And my dad will kill it!”

             
“I think your mom will kill it. She’s way scarier than your dad.”

             
“Maybe so. One of them will show it
how wrong it was to come around here. I know it, Quinn.
I know it.”

             
We waited, both struggling to hold onto the belief that they would believe us and be able to help. We struggled to continue thinking that everything would be alright when they came home.
We prayed that they would be able to save us.

             
The email went unanswered and the phone never rang.

XXX

             
It wasn’t until the third night that Alice finally broke. She cried with her face against my chest from the time the thing appeared (this time, we had
kept the shades open, trying to see how exactly it appeared, only to look up and find it staring down at us from the roof) to the time that the sun came up.

             
“What does it want? We have to try to talk to it. We have to figure out what it’s doing here, Qui
nn!” She exclaimed at me in a perfect show of misguided frustration.

             
We had gone two and a half days without sleep. Every time we dropped off, the thing’s horrific face would pop into our minds and we’d both immediately sit up in bed, regardless of the ho
ur in the day.

             
“No. We need to ignore it. You remember that movie we saw a couple years ago? They said that with anything paranormal, if you address it, it only gets worse. If you feed into it, you give it power. We just have to ignore it.”

             
“
Ignore it?!
”
She screamed at me, “How are we supposed to
ignore it?!
”