07
1 Piseckého, Prague, Czech Republic
November 27
“Hold on a second,” Eva called to Mrs Novacek, and walked into the apartment with careful, silent feet.
It was cold inside, and dry, like the inverse of Mrs Novacek’s place. The walls were stark and bare; the glass-topped coffee table had a solid layer of dust to it. At the division between the living room and the kitchen, Eva noticed the glistening remnants of a pair of wine glasses, the white carpet stained burgundy, next to a dried pool on the tile floor.
A knife lay on its side on a cutting board, a rotting carrot half-chopped, alone on the counter. Eva rounded it without breathing, her eyes locked on the blood sprayed on the far wall, dripping down along the baseboards into an area she couldn’t — and didn’t want to — see.
After a last, hesitant step, she saw a thick pool of blood, glassy almost, rubbed about on the clean tile floor. But no body. Nothing at all, as if someone had bled all that, standing up, and left only a fading set of footprints to the front door and beyond.
Eva touched the toe of her shoe to the pool of blood. It stuck slightly, but not much. She rubbed it off on the ground next to her, looked around anxiously.
“Mama?” she called out into the flat. A sharp echo repeated it.
She carefully padded down the hallway to her mother’s bedroom on the right, peered in cautiously. She held her breath and listened for a sound for any sign of life. She reached in, flipped on the lights, and saw nothing but more of the same sterile blankness as the rest of the place. The bed was made up the way it always was.
Further down in the bathroom, Eva instinctively switched on the heat as she entered the room. The thermostat clicked quietly as the baseboard heaters woke from a yearlong slumber, sending the smell of hot metal into the air.
Aside from the medicine cabinet being half-open, there was nothing of note. The expired prescription bottles were still neatly arranged, labels out. The shower mat drooped neatly from the edge of the bathtub.
The last room at the end of the hall had been Eva’s, briefly. But when she opened it, she found none of her old things. Instead, there was a heavy oak desk, covered with piles upon piles of papers, folders and random stationery. A laptop screen peered through the mess, its base buried beneath a sea of physical things. A pair of hulking bookshelves overflowed with medical journals, binders of reports and university textbooks Eva had never seen.
The floor, too, was littered with crumpled papers, notes and sketches. Molecules, DNA strands without notation, coded scribblings in her mother’s handwriting. A red pen cracked under her foot as she made her way across the room, to the small end-table that held a thick cardboard box. There was a smear of blood on the side, the bottom corner badly bashed in, crumpled.
Inside, she found a dozen smaller boxes, about the size of a can of soda, with blue-and-white labels in Finnish, French and Russian. Eva turned one and read the Russian:
Genesis Incubator
Refill Capsule
220mg (55mg x 4)
She put the package down and stepped back, looking around. She dashed back to the kitchen, grabbed the phone off the wall, and turned it on.
Her finger hovering over the keypad, Eva listened to the dial tone. She looked at the drying blood on the ground, saw her passport peeking out of her jacket pocket, stained with mud. The empty room sucked the warmth out of her.
She turned off the phone and left it on the counter.
Just then, a knock at the door sent Eva back into the wall. She stayed there, quiet, listening. After a short pause, there was another knock, quick and agitated, and Eva carefully slid towards the door, her thumping heart making it hard to concentrate on whatever sounds she could discern from out in the hall.
She found her voice, squeaky with fear.
“Hello?” she called to the locked-and-chained door.
“Eva?” asked Mrs Novacek anxiously, and Eva exhaled so deeply she nearly fainted. She undid the chain, threw the lock and opened the door enough to peek out.
“Hi, Mrs Novacek,” she said, trying to sound as calm and nonchalant as she could.
“Oh, you made it! I was worried! You sounded as if something was wrong!”
Eva bit her lip.
“Oh, I… I just thought the oven was left on. Optical illusion. My eyeballs are probably frozen.”
She faked a smile, but the half-blind old woman didn’t notice. She just rubbed Eva’s arm kindly, patted her gently.
“You look frozen, too. Go take a warm bath, dear, and stay here until your mama gets home. She’ll be so happy to see you.”
As Eva shut the door, she looked around the desolate room, cold and empty and alien, and shivered again.
“Until she gets home,” she repeated.
* * *
Lean arms wrapped round Eva, warmer than the bath water, and she turned her head back and kissed a rough, unshaven chin, eyes closed. Past the scented oils, she smelled him. Familiar. She felt breath on her neck, so at peace, and slowly drifted lower in the water, but he held her tight, and she smiled.
“Rhodri,” she moaned.
Then she choked on cold water.
She sat up suddenly, her arms locking tightly on the edges for support. She was alone in the room, in the bath especially. The water was frigid. She sat there a moment, not moving, till things stopped rippling around her.
She glanced to the side, out into the empty hallway.
“Stay out of my head,” she said to no one present.
* * *
She awoke some time in the night feeling winded, like she’d been running for hours, but unable to sleep any more. It took all her willpower to down a foil-wrapped package of ‘Safe Food’ she’d found stashed in the closet. The wrapper boasted ‘Czech Government Certified’, which made Eva smile.
She spent half an hour on her mother’s sofa, wrapped in two fleece blankets, staring away from the TV at the empty fireplace. There was wood to the side, a lighter too, but she just watched the dark hole instead. The baseboard heaters went click click click click as they came back to life, trying to keep the November air at bay.
She was peripherally aware of the programme guide appearing on the screen, informing her of all the great classics that would be coming up on Prague’s #1 station. The easy-listening music made her eyelids heavy, and she swayed a bit, but stayed awake.
The news came on, and she found herself watching, though her head didn’t turn.
“We are following a developing story at this hour,” said the newscaster, a pristine blonde whose cheeks still had the marks from the edge of a filter mask. “A six-year-old boy thought to be lost in the east-end housing projects last week has been found, and re-united with his grandparents following an exhaustive search by local police. The boy, who cannot be named due to patient confidentiality laws, was last seen by neighbours nearly eight days ago. According to sources, he has survived on breakfast cereal in the attic of a neighbouring building since disappearing.”
Eva reluctantly turned her head to the screen as the boy’s grandfather carried a blanket-wrapped child past the news camera.
“It’s a miracle we have him back,” said the old man, tears in his eyes. “It must have been so hard for him, alone, out in this weather, especially after his mother—”
“That’s all for questions,” interrupted a police spokesman, hand across the lens, pushing the cameraman away. “Give them some privacy. Go on.”
Eva turned off the TV, threw the remote across the room. She took a long, slow breath. The air was still cold.
She rummaged through her mother’s drawers until she came out with another layer of sweaters, long underwear and socks, and found the biggest, heaviest boots she could to throw on her icy feet. She stomped around the living room a bit to get her blood flowing again, and turned all the thermostats up as high as they’d go.
A knock at the door gave her a start, but also something to do. She sprinted over, undid the chain and the lock.
“Thank god you’re here, Mrs Novacek, I was…”
But it wasn’t Mrs Novacek at the door. A heavy gloved hand grabbed the front of her shirt and yanked her off balance.
“There you are, Ms Kolikov,” said a woman in a heavy winter coat, holding a police badge over her thickset partner’s shoulder. “We were wondering when you’d show up.”