An Eternity of Eclipse (42 page)

He nodded. The smoke swam from his lips as he continued to speak. “This is why we’re standing here, reliving everything. This is your memory—your soul’s memory coming alive for us. If we go by the recap of your memories, then my power will not work because I will not be able to call forth your soul’s essence. The process of calling forth a soul’s memories is a very tricky one. One needs the videotape that holds the essence of the soul, one needs to be in the exact location where the recording took place, and one needs to exert the right amount of power to get it to work. Only when these conditions are met can we have a real life interrogation with the memory itself.”

With my eyes still on my six-year-old self, I furrowed my brows at his strange words. “What do you mean ‘a real life interrogation’ with the memory itself?”

“You wanted to know why we had to scour around like rats to find this tape,” he began as a cold draft came into the room. He dabbed his cigarette out and discarded it into the nearby trashcan. “
This
is why.”

As soon as he said this, the eyes of my six-year-old self started to dim. Then, when I heard Eclipse snap his fingers, the scene playing out in front of me paused midway—the characters frozen like statues in their positions. I was already baffled with what was happening, but I felt my bewilderment increase when I blinked and registered that my six-year-old self was no longer sitting in the chair within the interrogation room.

She was gone.

Whish.

Another brush of cold air came over me before I felt the presence of another in the observation room. My blood seemed to have stopped flowing after I spun around and saw her.

Standing before us, with her white dress dancing gently against her legs from the residual wind, was my six-year-old self. Her tied-up pigtails were swaying from side to side before the draft of air dissolved like quicksilver. Her tiny feet had mud and blood caked onto the skin, making her appear so much smaller and more haunting than she already was. What threw me off wasn’t the fact that she was breathing in the same air as me; it was the fact that she was staring back at me.

Her sparkly brown eyes assessed me quietly, her beguiling gaze thoughtful but empty of emotions. Though she said nothing, I knew she found immense interest in my presence—in my existence. She then veered her attention to Eclipse. The vacant expression that clouded her face evaporated when she set her gaze on him. Her already beautiful honey-brown eyes sparkled to life at the sight of him.

“Hi,” she said quietly, her fingers nervously playing with one another. She smiled shyly at him, her eyes lighting up like stars in the night. You could tell six-year-old Grace loved Eclipse, and she made no effort to hide it. If one’s eyes could tell a story then hers said it all: she couldn’t believe she was staring at someone so beautiful and so utterly magnificent.

I would have found this entire scene endearing if I wasn’t still so stunned that my six-year-old self was actually addressing us. She was actually
speaking
to us.

Holy crap, my life is getting stranger and stranger by the minute.

Feeling as if I was falling deeper into the depths of insanity, I could only gape at her in stricken silence.

She bit her lips uneasily, her eyes blinking at me in confusion. She was, no doubt, wondering why I was staring at her so strangely.

“Are you okay?” she asked anxiously, causing me to become more shocked now that she was addressing me personally.

Having a better handle on the situation than me, Eclipse smiled at little Grace. He walked slightly past me and crouched down to speak to her.

“Hi Gracie,” he greeted warmly, giving her one of his most captivating smiles. He easily lured her attention away from me. “How are you?”

She smiled shyly at him again, completely lost in her own adoration. She turned to me, her eyes teeming with elation. Without filter, she asked me a question that nearly had me keeling over in astonishment.

“Is he our boyfriend?”

“
Our?
” I was flabbergasted that she knew that I was her. I was so stunned that I was unable to do anything but continue to gawk at her in amazement.

Little Gracie may have been small in physical stature, but her mind and her way of communicating were so much more advanced than regular six-year-olds. Her high level of intelligence was not only evident in the manner that she spoke, but also in the energy that radiated from her. However logical she was, she was also open-minded. She wasn’t freaked out by me in the least bit while I, the adult, was more than creeped out by her.

It was only in that instant did I fully grasp how powerful a soul was. After fifteen years of being nothing but a “fingerprint” within a video recording, the lingering scent of my soul was still powerful enough to outlive time and exist past its life cycle. If the mere fingerprint of a soul was this powerful, then I couldn’t imagine how powerful an entire soul actually was. I had always treasured my soul, and with this revelation, I couldn’t have treasured it more. How could I ever give up something this powerful?

“Gracie,” Eclipse prompted gently, surprised as well with the deduction skills of my six-year-old self. “You know that she’s you?”

Little Gracie nodded before holding up her left wrist and showcasing her gold bangles as evidence for her conjecture. The bangles were a little bigger on her small wrist than mine, but the resemblance was irrefutable. Afterwards, she pointed her small index finger at the little beauty mark on her—our—left cheek.

“You’re really, really pretty,” she complimented, her doe-like eyes proud that she would one day grow up to be me.

It would be a lie if I said that her assessment didn’t boost my confidence. As we grow older, we rarely compliment ourselves. I took it to heart that my six-year-old self thought I was “pretty.” Our toughest critics were usually ourselves and I was pleased that I was able to impress my own toughest critic.

“So are you,” I told her. Just as she was in awe of my presence, I was also in awe of hers. Not to toot my own horn but, minus the creepy bloodstains on my white dress, I was a really cute kid. I couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity of the situation, feeling a bit more comfortable with the surreal circumstances. We gave a new meaning to the term “self-absorbed.”

Pleased with my reply, she turned back to Eclipse, her adoring eyes growing even more potent. Yes, even in the face of meeting her future self, little Gracie’s main focus was on the gorgeous creature in front of her. She smiled shyly at Eclipse again, her face glowing brighter and brighter with her endearment for him.

She tilted her head at him, her curly pigtails falling to one side of her head. “Are you my boyfriend?”

A beautiful chuckle escaped from his lips. Eclipse’s eyes beamed in amusement. “Do you want me to be?”

Before little Gracie could make my thoughts transparent, I moved forward and interrupted them. “Okay, let’s get back to the point of why we’re here, shall we?”

There was no way in hell I was going to give Eclipse the opportunity to get a confirmation from me, even from my younger counterpart, that I was superficial enough to want him as a boyfriend.

Eclipse chuckled at me, smiling devilishly before turning back to little Gracie. He took in her overall appearance. In a relaxed tone, he asked, “What’s all this on your pretty dress, Gracie?”

“Blood,” she answered indifferently, blinking innocently at him.

“Whose blood is it?”

She uncaringly looked down. “My mommy’s. My daddy’s. My brother’s. My sister’s.”

Eclipse nodded casually. He continued to fish for more tangible information. “How did their blood get onto your dress?”

Little Gracie shrugged, her eyes truly void of emotions and void of knowledge about how all the blood got onto her dress. “I woke up like this.”

Eclipse cocked his head in curiosity. “You don’t remember what happened?”

She bounced her head in concurrence. “I just remember waking up like this. I don’t remember anything else.”

This was when I started to become disturbed by her and her careless answers. I was stunned that she was so indifferent when there was so much blood on her dress. When I was her, I had always viewed myself to be normal—that it was everyone else around me who was abnormal. Now that I was staring at my six-year-old self from an armchair point of view, I couldn’t deny how inhuman she appeared. I wouldn’t exactly say that I was a model citizen on morality, but I had
some
semblance of humanity. And as it would be shown, little Gracie lacked more humanity than I did, which was saying a lot.

Eclipse nodded understandably, using his charms to get her to keep talking to him. “Do you remember what you did before you went to sleep then?”

Her eyes went upwards as she thought back. “I drank milk. I brushed my teeth and then I read the Bible with Mommy, Daddy, and my brother and sister.” She laughed, her face illuming at the memory. “Then we opened our Christmas presents. After that, I asked Mommy and Daddy if I could open my birthday presents, but they told me I had to wait until my birthday.”

“The 26
th
,” Eclipse provided for her.

She nodded proudly, pleased that he knew when her birthday was.

“Today’s my birthday,” she said to him, happily playing with her gold bangles. “I’m six today.”

Eclipse grinned with endearment. “Happy birthday, Gracie.”

She beamed at him, and he went back to the topic at hand. “I know that you probably don’t want to talk about this so you don’t have to if you don’t want to, but when you woke up, you only stayed in your parents’ room right? You didn’t go outside to your sister’s or brother’s room?”

She nodded. “I was with Mommy and Daddy and then”—she pointed at the frozen Officer Joo behind the two-way mirror—“that nice police officer came in, picked me up, and took me away.”

I felt my stomach churn in uneasiness when she labeled Officer Joo as “nice.” Of course little Gracie would give him that label. She hadn’t been nearly choked to death by him yet.

“And how did you get here?” Eclipse went on to ask, doing a wonderful job at getting my younger self to sing like a little baby bird to him.

Confusion filled her gaze. She looked like she was having trouble finding the right name for the mode of transportation she took. “It’s not a plane. It’s smaller . . .”

“A helicopter?” I supplied.

Her eyes grew excited. She nodded earnestly as confirmation.

“Why did they take you in a helicopter?” I asked, crouching beside them. I may have recalled every single thing that took place in that interrogation room, but for the most part, the other aspects of the night were nothing but blurred visions to me. I understood now why Eclipse needed to see the physical manifestation of my memory. Nothing could be more accurate than speaking to the soul’s memory. Everything was fresher for her and a thousand times more accurate. “Why not just a car?”

“It was dark everywhere,” she whispered quietly.

Her response caused Eclipse to furrow his brows quizzically. Getting up, he left me with her while he went to the office table and consulted through the manila folder on it.

While he did this, I continued to ask her questions.

“Was it dark at your house too?”

She blinked in confirmation. “Everywhere. Everywhere was dark. It was dark in my house, it was dark outside my house, and it was dark in the sky.” She smiled restlessly. Though she still appeared sweet, I knew the look in her eyes. She didn’t want to answer any more redundant questions. She liked us, but she was also getting tired of us asking such tedious questions.

“I’m bored and it’s my birthday today,” she announced, confirming my suspicions. She held my hands with her own, our gold bangles making soft clinking sounds. I could feel the dried blood on her hands transfer onto mine. She smiled sheepishly at me, looking just like a picture of innocence. “Can you take me home so I can have my cake? I’m hungry and I want to open my presents.”

“I—”

“They will take you home, Gracie,” Eclipse told her, placing the file back on the table. He stepped closer to us, placing his hands in his pockets with regret in his eyes. Whatever it was that he found in the folder was enough for him. From the expression on his face, I knew that we were done with little Gracie. It was time to send her back. “As much as we’d like to, we can’t take you home.”

Little Gracie’s face fell as sadness brimmed in her eyes. I stood up as she peered at Eclipse with disappointment. “Why can’t you guys take me home?”

“Because we have to go soon,” Eclipse said in a low voice, standing close to me. He smiled expectantly at her, appeasing her disappointment with his charisma. “You understand that, don’t you?”

Gracie smiled, more than affected by his charms. She looked at both of us, her eyes approving. She abruptly frowned when she noticed how stiff I appeared next to him. She stared at him quizzically. It seemed that she had finally put everything together and realized that perhaps Eclipse and I weren’t as romantically involved as she initially thought.

“Why aren’t you my boyfriend?”

Eclipse laughed while I turned a million shades of red.

He crouched down in front of her. “Because that Gracie doesn’t like me,” he told her in an entertained voice.