Six Crime Stories

by Robert T. Jeschonek

  And my old enemy.

  It was daytime, but the sky was dark with storm clouds. Screaming creatures leaped through the vegetation in all directions, fur soaked with rain. Lightning spiked the tall trees, and fierce winds whipped fruit from the branches. It pelted me as a I ran, trying desperately to escape, heart pounding like the thunder crashing around me.

  And no matter how hard I ran, no matter how loud the racket all around me, I could not get away from the single, terrible sound that drove me onward, mad with panic.

  The whisper of my enemy's body gliding over the ground. Persistent, revolting, familiar...terrifying.

  Crackling over leaves and twigs. Rustling over soft grass. Slithering.

  Hissing.

  I reached the borders of Eden, but as I tried to charge across, I struck an invisible wall. Dazed from the impact, I hurtled backward, plunging into the streaming greenery. I hit the ground hard, stars dancing before my eyes, the taste of blood in my mouth.

  And I couldn't move. I was paralyzed by the fall, unable even to lift a finger.

  Unable to scream as I heard the sound of my enemy draw near and felt the weight of him ripple over my belly and saw his glistening muzzle slide from between my breasts and rear up overhead, the mouth open, fangs gleaming...

  But before he could do one thing more, I awoke from my dream.

  I was in a state of complete panic, and I know I would have been screaming at the top of my lungs, shrieking in that terrible moment before I realized I was free of the nightmare...

  I would have been shrieking if I hadn't had a gag stuffed in my mouth.

  *****

  As soon as I realized something was wrong, I shot to full alertness, instantly casting off all traces of the nightmare except a few lingering images and a feeling of terror. It mixed with the shock and confusion I felt upon awakening to find myself restrained, swiftly escalating my panic.

  In my nightmare, I had been paralyzed. I discovered I was similarly immobilized in the waking world.

  Something that tasted like leather had been forced between my teeth and secured tightly by a strap tied around my head. With the gag in place, I could make noises in my throat but couldn't move my jaws, tongue, or lips to enunciate words.

  When I tried to reach up and remove the gag, I quickly realized that my hands were also bound. I couldn't even lift them up to the gag together, because they were strapped behind my back.

  In the next instant, when I tried to move my feet, I realized that they, too, were tied...and the bonds restraining them were tightening. Twisting on the ground, I stared wide-eyed down the length of my body, wondering in a single frantic moment if I would see Cain, if he had overcome his inhibitions and decided to follow the voice's orders after all and sacrifice his parents.

  The fact that it wasn't Cain didn't make me relax a bit.

  When he noticed me looking, Adam smiled in the gray pre-dawn light. "Good morning, Eve," he said in a hushed voice. "Sorry about this, but it's necessary."

  Angry and frightened, I jolted my bound feet from his grip, hoisting up my knees in preparation for a two-legged kick. Unfortunately, Adam was able to grab my ankles fast and spin me around onto my stomach, preventing the blow.

  "It's just I know you wouldn't come with me any other way," said Adam, cinching the cords tighter around my ankles, then my wrists. "Not where we're going."

  It didn't take a genius to guess what he meant by that. Grunting, I writhed in the dirt, trying to flop myself from my stomach onto my side so at least I could try again to kick him.

  Adam, with his superior strength, hauled me up off the ground like a bundle of straw and slung me over his shoulder. "You should thank me," he said. "I found out who really killed Abel."

  Adam turned and carried me off along the riverbank. I knew the direction we'd be traveling before we started to move.

  Upriver.

  "And it wasn't Cain," said Adam. "You'll see."

  Lifting my head from Adam's back, I saw Cain behind us, sprawled alongside the dead fire at our campsite. The club he'd used to attack us lay on the ground near his head.

  From a distance, it was impossible to tell if he was dead or alive.

  "Cain was just upset and confused over losing his brother," said Adam. "He blamed himself for not saving him, and in Cain's mind, that turned into blaming himself for killing him."

  Helpless, I slumped against Adam's back. I wondered if he had come up with this latest brainstorm himself, or if he'd had help.

  As we walked onward, I got my answer.

  It was the same sound I'd run from in my nightmare. The sound I remembered so well from years ago.

  Something sliding through the tall grass and weeds above the muddy bank. Unseen but whispering like a thought in the back of my mind, like a fragment of a dream come to life. Diaphanous. Beautiful. Malevolent.

  Never leaving my side.

  Once or twice, I might have seen the sun glinting off polished scales through the grass and weeds. A flash of color. The faint ripple of disturbed grass as something moved through it.

  And I knew...if not the details, at least the players in what was to come.

  I felt terrified and exhilarated at the same time. The enemy, the true enemy who had engineered Abel's demise, had revealed himself. He was playing for bigger stakes now, moving us to where he wanted us to be.

  And in so doing, moved himself out of the shadows and within my reach. Which was exactly where I wanted him to be, I realized.

  Because now, more than ever, we had a score to settle.

  *****

  The closer we got to Eden, the sweeter the air smelled. The riot of floral fragrances wafting out of the place made every other garden I'd been to seem as aromatic as a pile of rocks.

  When I drew a breath, I grew dizzy from the thick, unearthly perfume. It unlocked memories that hadn't seen the light of day since I'd left paradise, memories of unicorn rides and singing fish and heatless flame and sun showers in which every raindrop had a different color and flavor and musical note.

  As we approached our destination, the sky grew brighter, too. It had been a dreary day downriver, but as we gained on Eden, gray clouds filed away, exposing bright blue perfection and a sun of steady white radiance. Watching our shadows on the ground as Adam hauled me upriver, I noticed that their angle didn't change, as if the sun wasn't moving. Though I was certain that enough time had passed for morning to shift to afternoon and afternoon to evening, the day actually became brighter, as if time was working differently as we neared our old home.

  Other things worked differently, too. I had a period of disorientation--and more than a little nausea--as I adjusted to the changes in the world...or maybe they were changes in my mind or some of both. I remembered that sounds had taste, and smells had rhythm, and everything, living or dead, glowed with energy of varying hue and texture and pitch. My sixth, seventh, and eighth senses reawakened, which spooked me because I'd forgotten they existed. I saw colors and creatures and impossible physical phenomena that shocked me, even seen upside-down as I hung over my husband's shoulder, and brought back flashes of another world more intense than I had ever remembered in exile, in waking or dreaming moments or the wildest flights of fancy in-between.

  And all this was just the drainage of Eden, the dimmest echo of a power too great to be contained from seeping into the world. All this flowed around and through us, and we hadn't even taken a step into the forbidden land.

  The one thing that didn't change, though, was the sound of the enemy sliding through the grass and weeds alongside us. It accompanied us all the way to the borders of glittering Eden...mysterious, expectant, lethal, inevitable.

  And doomed, if I had anything to do with it.

  *****

  When we got to Eden, Adam slid me from his shoulder. As my feet touched the ground, I could see that his eyes were already fixed on the Garden, his mouth gaping in thoughtless awe.

  I had to shove my bound hands in his face to get
him to untie them, and even then, he hardly watched what he was doing. As I rubbed my aching wrists, I twisted around and shoved the back of my head in front of him; he undid the strap holding the gag in place, but I was left on my own to untie my ankles. Still gazing raptly at his beloved Eden, Adam simply dropped the straps and gag on the ground and slipped away from me before I could demand he do the rest.

  I undid the cords hastily, afraid that my husband would be so caught up in Eden's spell that he would forget the death sentence promised to both of us if we ever returned inside.

  "Adam!" I shouted, flinging the cords aside and whirling around to make sure he was still with me. "Don't go in there!"

  It was then that I saw Eden close-up for the first time in eighteen winters.

  *****

  There was no fence around Eden to mark its borders. It didn't need one.

  The boundary between Eden and the rest of the world was very clear. On one side, there were green trees and bushes and grasses and dusty red earth...all of it enlivened somewhat by Eden's runoff, thriving under Eden's perfect climate...perhaps the choicest real estate in all the world because of its proximity to paradise.

  But unmistakably drab compared to what was on the other side. Like a drawing in the sand compared to an oasis.

  Where the outside world left off, in a perfect, curving line, trees entwined with leaves of gleaming gold and limbs of silver. Fruits of every size and shape and texture exploded from every branch, spotted and striped and glowing and jumping, some flowing with moving images of nature, like windows on the beauty of creation.

  Birds of every description flitted among the branches, singing intricate harmonies unlike those heard from any bird in the world outside. There were parrots and canaries and toucans and macaws, cardinals and bluebirds and doves...every one of them amplified, every one of them with plumage more colorful and elaborate than their cousins beyond the boundary. Hummingbirds of rainbow crystal. Silken purple parakeets with tiny peacock fan-tails.

  Below, butterflies and bumblebees threaded among a blanket of flowers...blooms of every shade and combination of orange and blue and red and yellow and violet. Flowers like open hands or fragile cups or pillowy clouds. Flowers that twinkled like fireflies and glowed like the moon. Streaked and swirled and speckled and glossy...lacy and velvety, tall and short. Flowers within flowers, some singing like birds. Some twining stems and stamens in a delicate, deliberate dance.

  Among them, a lion cub purred, curled alongside a sleeping fawn. A squirrel leaped up from a bobbing patch of sunflowers and spiraled its way up the trunk of a tree. Tiny monkeys swung between branches, chattering gaily, cries mingling with those of what sounded like a million different creatures in the unseen depths of the Garden.

  The Garden of which this was the tiniest sliver, the surface, the outermost fringe.

  The Garden of Eden.

  *****

  I stood there for what must have been a long time, for what could have been forever for all I knew on the outskirts of timeless Eden. I gazed at the wonders before me, breathless, helpless, hands folded over my chest as if to keep my heart from bursting.

  Everything shimmered like a dream or a desert mirage: the trees, the flowers, the birds, the creatures, the birdsong, the flowers' perfume. Sometimes, it wavered and blurred like a reflection on water, or the memory of a dead loved one's face. Like a half-remembered tune.

  More than anything, I wanted to step inside. I hadn't expected that.

  I had forgotten how it was. Maybe time had dulled the memory...or maybe I had forgotten by choice, because it was lost to us. Because of me.

  And one other.

  It was this--the memory of him, of what had happened between us--that finally enabled me to look away. That broke the spell of Eden and reminded me of the dangerous brink on which we now stood.

  *****

  Adam was three steps closer to the boundary than I, staring into the perfect vision that had haunted him every day since our exile. As I turned to him, he was raising a hand toward a sparkling golden pear that dangled over the Garden's edge, just within reach.

  Hastily, I grabbed hold of his arm and pulled it back just in time. His fingertips had been inches away from the skin of the fruit.

  And certain death.

  "Adam," I said, and then I shook him by the shoulder. "Adam!"

  Slowly, he turned his face to me. His eyes were heavy-lidded and unfocused, as if he'd been drunk or asleep.

  "Why did you bring me here, Adam?" I said, giving his shoulder a harder shake.

  He blinked and shook his head, emerging from the trance. "To go back in," he said, sounding groggy. "To stay."

  "But we can't," I said. "We'll be killed."

  Adam smiled. "Last night, when I went for my walk, God spoke to me. He said we can go back in. On one condition."

  I looked around, perfectly aware of who must have spoken to my husband in the night...aware also that the enemy's eyes must be upon us even now. "What condition?" I said.

  "Abel's killers are in there," said Adam, pointing into the Garden. "If we destroy them, we'll redeem ourselves and win the right to return to Eden forever."

  *****

  Usually, it didn't bother me that Adam was a little slow. I liked being the brains of the outfit, quite frankly; it gave me an advantage to counterbalance his greater physical strength and enabled me to manipulate the outcomes of situations in my favor.

  Sometimes, though, his mental limitations could be frustrating. This was one of those times.

  From the beginning of Adam's story, I knew exactly who had instigated this action and what his objective was. Adam, on the other hand, seemed to be completely in the dark.

  If he had managed to see through the scheme as easily as I had, we wouldn't have gone to so much trouble. We wouldn't have come all the way to Eden for this potentially disastrous showdown.

  Then again, I wouldn't have been in a position to taste the sweet revenge that could be mine if only I were cunning enough to trick the trickster.

  *****

  "What do you mean, Abel's killers are in there?" I said to Adam. "Cain already admitted he killed his brother."

  "But I knew he couldn't have," Adam said intently, as if describing the process by which he'd solved a mystery. "He didn't have it in him. When he confessed, he didn't know what he was saying."

  "And you know this because God told you last night," I said.

  Adam nodded vigorously. "It was the New People," he said. "The New People murdered Abel."

  It was clear to me that Adam's head had been popped open and filled with pure, steaming crap, but my curiosity was piqued by the specifics his informant had dreamed up. "Who are the New People?" I said.

  "God tried again," said Adam. "We'd failed, so He created new people to replace us. He made them better than us so they wouldn't let him down. He gave them the ability to come and go as they pleased, to move between Eden and the outside world at will. He thought maybe one of the reasons we'd rebelled was that we'd felt trapped and needed our freedom."

  "Sounds like they had it made," I said evenly. "So why kill Abel?"

  "Jealousy," said Adam. "God had a soft spot for Abel. He was going to let him come live in Eden, and the New People couldn't stand the thought of him horning in."

  "Abel wouldn't have bothered them," I said, playing along for the benefit of the enemy. Though I could neither see nor hear him, I knew he had to be listening nearby as the drama he'd designed unfolded.

  Adam shrugged. "They wanted him out of the way," he said. "So they killed him and ran back to Eden, thinking they'd be safe from us because we're not allowed in. Only God cancelled our exile.

  "He knows what the New People did. He feels terrible about what happened to Abel and that Cain blames himself for it.

  "The New People are a bigger failure than we ever were, and they're getting more uncontrollable by the day. God has decided to get rid of them, but He's left the job for us. He said we can take care of
His problem for Him and get revenge at the same time, which is supposed to make us feel better."

  "He's right about that," I said, though I was thinking of revenge against someone other than the supposed "New People."

  Smiling, Adam gazed into the shimmering Garden spread out before him. He rubbed his hands together as if he were about to devour a banquet. "The cherubim will not swoop down and attack us," he said. "God promised. Nor will the revolving sword drop through our necks. We are free to enter.

  "And once our work is done, Eve," said Adam, "we are free to stay. We won't be allowed to eat of the Tree of Life, so we won't live forever, but we can raise a family here, and they can raise their children here, and on and on."

  Adam was so thrilled, he walked over and kissed me on the lips. "We can go home, Eve," he said, pulling back to gaze serenely into my eyes. "What we've longed for all these years is finally coming true."

  As I looked at him, I was strangely affected by his recitation of false hopes. A tear ran down my cheek, and he brushed it away.

  I was sad because I saw how badly he wanted the lies to be true. How he craved them more than anything in the world...more than his own children, though he would deny it...and more than me. More than life itself.

  And because I loved him, I wanted him to have his heart's desire...but I knew that he would not get what he wanted. Not now and not ever. He was doomed to unending hope and disappointment; in time, I feared, it would ruin him. Ruin us.

  He kissed me again, and I was overcome with love and pity. As long as he lived, he would never break away from Eden's orbit.