An Eternity of Eclipse (41 page)

"And Heaven's mighty walls will begin its collapse."
28:
Grace Hwang

Growing up, there were few things in life that fazed me.

I had always been a self-sufficient child. I did not require pampering, nor did I require supervision of any kind. Apart from a fear of heights, I was never afraid of spiders, ghosts, monsters, or any of the typical things that children usually feared when they closed their eyes and attempted to fall asleep at night. I wasn’t fazed by much growing up, but that didn’t mean I was completely fearless. 

The attack that took place at Seoul’s Police Station a little over fifteen years ago had done its job in traumatizing me indefinitely. You never forget the night where a police officer wrapped his hands around your neck—the night when your six-year-old self thought she was going to die. I still remember the terror I experienced and that trauma translated well into my adult years. It goes without saying that I was more than scared for my life the following night after we broke into the police station . . .

I had just finished up school earlier in the evening, and though I had been dreading our visit to the police station the whole day, I knew this place was unavoidable for me. If I really wanted my soul back, then I was going to have to suck it up. And that was exactly what I did when Eclipse picked me up from school to begin our exploration.

Just like me, he was dressed in all black to blend in with the night. He resembled a thief in the darkness and sadly, with my all black attire, so did I. Cold sweat formed on my forehead as we inched closer to the intimidating and brightly lit police station. All my muscles were tense with anxiety. I was tempted to make a run for it and call it a night, but Eclipse caught me in time and dragged me into the police station with him, assuring me that he would handle everything.

True to his words, he did handle everything.

Utilizing his demonic powers, Eclipse hypnotized the guards up front. He told them that we were only figments of their imagination and that once we left, they would never remember us again. After he did this, he also deactivated the surveillance cameras so that we would be completely invisible to anyone monitoring the station.

Admittedly, I was very freaked out to see Eclipse use his powers of mind-control. It made me think of all the possible things he could mind-control me into doing. It already took monumental effort to resist him when he was just using his natural persuasion skills. I didn’t think I would have the mental capacity to resist if he ever chose to use his powers on me.

“You don’t have to worry, Gracie,” he assured me once he saw me inching away from him in apprehension. He gave out an amused chuckle while the smoke flowed from his cigarette. “This power is something I rarely use because it takes up too much energy to mess with someone’s memories. It only works on weak-willed individuals so it’s not always a guarantee that it would work. We just got lucky tonight, but because it took so much power out of me, we’re going to have to do everything manually from this point on.”

“Y-you’ve never mind-controlled me, have you?” I stammered, gaping at him wide-eyed.

A quirk of a smile graced his lips as we walked down the corridor of the brightly lit station.

“It’s no fun to mind-control a girl,” he murmured, his eyes teasing before he kicked open the door to a backroom with ease. He smirked darkly, inclining his head for me to go in first. “It’s more fun to see them lose control on their own accord,” was all that he whispered into my ear as I made a move to get past him.

My eyes expanded exponentially at what was being insinuated. Attempting to ignore the sexual innuendo behind his statement, I vigilantly backed away from the sexy Demon and dashed down the stairs like a spooked little mouse. After I ordered an amused Eclipse to stop hitting on me and to concentrate on the task at hand, we began our search in the dark room.

According to Eclipse, we were only looking for one thing: the video recording of my interrogation from that night.

“You know, you could just ask me what took place that night. I may not remember much about my entire past, but I have a surprisingly good memory of what happened in that interrogation room,” I told him moments later, my nose getting stuffy from all the dust. We had been rifling through the video archives for what felt like hours and hadn’t found anything. I was beginning to get restless. I was already afraid of simply being here. I didn’t appreciate elongating my time here because of a damn videotape.

“I appreciate the offer, Gracie,” Eclipse declined, his eyes inspecting the labels of every dusty videotape that he came across. His cigarette hung from his mouth while he spoke to me. “But it is crucial that we find the videotape. Once we find it, you’ll understand why we need the physical recording of the tape.”

“You can’t just use your demonic powers to make the tape appear?”

“I can only use my powers sparingly,” he replied distractedly, now rifling through the upper shelves. “I’ve already wasted a lot of energy these past couple of days as it is. There’s no point in wasting what’s left of my powers. If we can cut the loss and manually search for the tape ourselves, then we’ll do it.”

I was kneeling on the floor, searching through the bottom shelves when I looked up to respond to him. All coherent thoughts evaporated from my mind the moment I caught sight of his perfectly sculpted behind.

Oh my flying pigs . . .

Eclipse was still innocently searching through the tapes, unaware of my eyes growing wide on his delectable butt. All of a sudden, I felt like one of the many perverted girls at my school taking advantage of him and looking at him like he was a piece of meat.

Damn it, Grace! Look away!
my inner self shouted in a fit of hysteria.
Stop staring at his cute butt!

Unfortunately for me, my short-lived flirtation with depravity was made public not only by the blood that was starting to come out of my nose, but also by Eclipse himself.

“If you give me your soul, then it’s all yours, Teacup,” he said briskly, his back still turned to me. The cigarette smoke hovered around aimlessly as though to mock me.

“Who says I want it?” was my swift and self-incriminating reply.

Eclipse turned, smiling devilishly at me. With the grace of a tiger, he strolled over to me and sat down beside me. His enticing eyes lured mine in.

“So you weren’t admiring my backside a second ago?” he said casually, that sexy lilt dancing in his voice again.

I feigned offense while attempting to hide my embarrassing nosebleed. “Of course not, what kind of girl do you think I am?”

He caught my gaze and held it, almost coaxing me into drowning in the soft pools that were his brilliant brown eyes. After several beats of silence, he softly said, “If I was in my original state of power, and if you could handle what I want to give you, then it would be my pleasure to assuage any desires you may have. You may feel pathetic with your nosebleeds, but know that you can never feel more pathetic than me. The great Demon of Lust has to resort to merely using juvenile flirting and teasing tactics as opposed to throwing you into bed and giving you the time of your life.”

He shook his head self-mockingly.

“You have no idea how far I’ve fallen,” he said quietly before turning to me and giving me one of the most breathtaking smiles I had ever seen. There was hope in his eyes, trust that when the right time arose, I’d make the right decision that would save him from his pitiful state. “You better be worth it, Teacup.”

Something in the way he said those words touched a sensitive chord within me. Before I could even think, I asked something that seemed out of place, but made every bit of sense to me.

“How did you fall so far from your throne, Eclipse?”

He gave me a look that was a hybrid between being surprised that I would pose such a question and a look of irony that said he should’ve known I would be astute enough to ask something like this.

“For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction,” was all the concession he gave me before he raised his hand up. My focus swiveled to the dark rectangular object he held. My eyes blossomed at the sight. I mentally pushed thoughts about my question aside and focused on more important matters.

“You found the tape?” I breathed out, staring unblinkingly at the videotape.

He grinned coolly in confirmation. “You ready?”

I assessed him and then the tape. “You’ll show me why we had to scour around like rats to find this in the first place?”

He nodded, carefully pulling me up with him. “We had to use manual labor to find this tape, but I plan on shelling out a portion of my powers to actually watch it.”

Curiosity piqued in my eyes. “What do you mean?”

He tipped his head sideways towards the TV-VCR combo television in the back corner of the room. “You’ll see in a bit.”

My nerves felt frayed when I followed him. With bated breath, I watched him stick the tape into the VCR outlet. The machine made soft, mechanical whirring noises while it adjusted the tape within it. The TV screen stayed blue for the longest time as it waited for its predecessor to prepare itself. Once the tape settled in, the screen flickered into an intelligible video recording.

Instantaneously, the memory that had replayed itself in my mind for as long as I could remember—one of the most important memories of my life—came to life for me within the confines of a television screen.

How surreal it felt to be watching the very thing that had been haunting me for so many years . . .

Disorientation assaulted my mind at the mere sight of this video recording. Even physically, just reliving something as horrid as this memory was taxing for me.

Wonderful.

My body was giving itself vertigo—that was how much I dreaded everything that was happening. The wooziness was exacerbating within me when Eclipse turned to me and extended his hand out, his eyes motioning for me to take his hold. It took me a second to register what he was doing. I stared at his outthrust hand for a few moments.

As a response, he smiled, raising his hand a bit higher as if to silently say, “You’ll see.”

Exhaling past the anxiety in my chest, I mindlessly did as I was gestured to do. Despite my own apprehension, I knew that he was going to show me exactly why he insisted on the physical tape. It was an invitation I couldn’t deny, no matter how much I feared finding out the answer.

Whish.

As soon as I touched his hand, a wave of air swam around me. Next thing I knew, instead of standing in the backroom of the police station, we were standing behind the two-way glass that sealed the police observation room from the interrogation room. The only source of light in the room was a battery-powered lamp sitting atop a black desk. Its flickering glow barely illuminated the room, only giving us enough light to see our own front hands.

I gasped when I registered what was happening.

We were actually
in
the scene of the video.

This can’t be happening.

Familiar chills overcame me as my astounded eyes peered through the two-way mirror. I could vaguely see Officer Joo’s back, I could barely make out my lawyer sitting beside me, and I could scarcely see anything else in that faintly lit room. The only thing that caught my undivided attention was the six-year-old girl sitting in the chair, completely oblivious to my presence.

My six-year-old counterpart.

In spite of all the unnatural things that I had seen as of late, it was incredibly unnerving to stand there, staring at the younger version of myself and watching as she lived and breathed like she was any other living being.

“How . . .” I managed to begin, feeling a mixture of awe and chills. My eyes were still firmly solidified on her. “How is this possible?”

“Have you heard the saying that when you take a picture, it steals a part of your soul?”

“Isn’t that a Native American superstition?”

“Among others,” he replied sagely, staring at six-year-old Grace as well. “Regardless of where that superstition originated from, you should know that they have valid reasons for believing it.”

I turned to him, another bout of curiosity making a home within me.

“I thought souls, for the most part, were unbreakable?”

“They are. But they do leave markings behind—fingerprints, so-to-speak. When something captures your reflection, it captures a mirror image of your soul as well. Though I would have to debunk the belief that a soul can be trapped within a photo, you should know that a soul is a very powerful thing. However much it doesn’t break apart, it does leave a lingering scent of itself behind. In pictures alone, you seal a memory, a moment in time for someone’s soul. But in a video recording, you don’t merely seal a moment in time, you seal several moments in time. This in turn means that you seal more of the soul’s residual power within it.”

“Like a cartoon drawing,” I supplied, catching onto what he was explaining to me. “You may have one picture, but when you flip through the cartoon strips, these individual pictures come alive. They begin to live for you.”