Haunting Eden - Part 2
by Lynn M.
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Jonathan Kent rolled over and reached for his wife. After nearly forty years of marriage, he knew that her side of the bed was empty minutes before his eyes opened and the weight of sleep lifted. By the feel of the cool linen in the depression that perfectly fit her petite form, he could tell she’d been gone for a while.
The sky outside the window glowed a dove gray. He glanced at the alarm clock, confirming what decades of being a farmer told him. Just after five thirty. It wasn’t unusual for Martha to be up at the crack of dawn. In fact, only in the last few years had they taken to sleeping until the luxurious hour of seven. Even so, nothing had been normal for months, so he figured he’d best seek her out. Unbending slowly, the lingering stiffness in his knees drawing forth a moan of protest, he heaved himself out of bed.
Stopping only long enough to pour himself a cup of coffee from the pot and to fill a fresh cup for Martha, he headed down the corridor from the kitchen to the front door. The chill of the mid-November morning stung his nose and lungs. Hard to believe that Thanksgiving was only a week away.
As he’d expected, he found her sitting on one of the two ladder-back rockers on the wide front porch, wrapped in a tattered old quilt that had been hand-sewn by Martha’s grandmother. Impervious to the cold, she didn’t even turn when the door shut firmly behind Jonathan, lost deep in thought or the lightening sky in the east that promised a glorious sunrise.
“Hey,” he called softly, and she startled slightly before giving him a smile.
“Did I wake you?” she apologized.
Jonathan shook his head and handed her the cup of coffee. “Been a long time since I’ve seen a sunrise, at least not from the seat of a tractor. Figured I was due.”
Her smile widened, and Jonathan felt the familiar surge of love that never ceased to amaze him. Even after all of these years, she still had the most beautiful smile, one that sent his heart racing and his mind to wondering that he’d managed to marry such a woman.
It weighed heavily on him that for over half a year now, that smile didn’t quite reach her eyes and contained a sadness that no amount of comfort on his part could erase. She reminded him of a candle at the end of its wick, a steady glow that still offered warmth but only a dim reflection of the light that had once burned so bright it had lit up the room with its single flame.
They sat in companionable silence, watching as the sky lightened to a silky pale blue, slow fingers of peach and crimson reaching over the horizon to grip the earth and pull it into a new day. The harvested fields were coated with frost, glittering like gold diamonds as the sun’s rays escaped the confines of the night.
The sight was awe inspiring, and it humbled Jonathan deeply. Never could he imagine living anywhere else. He loved this land that had been the home of his father and grandfather. The peace and steadiness it offered his soul. The fact that he could see the very curve of the earth, feel it rotating beneath him through the days and seasons. He didn’t own this land. It owned him.
The communion between heaven and earth completed, at last he broke the magic of the moment. “You’ve been watching a lot of sunrises these days,” he remarked as casually as possible, not wanting to press her yet knowing that she would never broach the topic if she thought it might worry him.
Martha glanced sideways then quickly away, but not before he saw that her eyes glittered with unshed tears. He reached for her hand, squeezing it tightly. “Tell me, love.”
“I just wonder…” she murmured, hesitated, then took a deep, shuddering breath. “Do you think…do they have sunrises? I mean, on New Krypton, does he ever watch the sunrise?”
Jonathan remained quiet for a moment, thinking. So that was it. They’d had their ups and downs ever since Clark had left, of course. Those first few weeks had been pure hell, after they’d realized that his mission didn’t involve a quick fix and a short stay. But they’d settled into an uneasy peace of sorts, learning to live with the fact that he was gone. Or worse, that he might never return.
Even so, it took very little to set Martha on edge. Jonathan had learned to roll with it, forcing himself for both their sakes to hold it together during these valleys that threatened to pull them so far under they might never resurface. At least until he reached the safe haven of privacy where he could let his own fears and anguish find release without causing Martha further upset.
“I have a feeling they do,” Jonathan guessed at last, wanting to reassure her but having no idea the answer to her question. “But I imagine he remembers the ones here and it makes him even more determined to come on home.”
Martha swallowed visibly, then nodded. “I don’t know why I’ve been thinking about that. For some reason, I just couldn’t let it go. Something feels different these days.”
“Different? How do you mean different?” Jonathan asked, turning in his chair to face her.
“I’m not sure. Always, before, I just felt in my heart that he was okay. But over the past few weeks, I don’t feel him like I used to. It’s like there’s a strange uneasiness, right here.” She pointed to the center of her chest, then gave a nervous laugh. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m just crazy.”
Jonathan smiled tenderly. “Not crazy. Just a mother missing her boy. And rightly so.”
She turned to Jonathan, no longer trying to stop the flow of tears. “I keep thinking of all of those mothers who’ve sent their sons off to fight in wars. I don’t know how they managed. I mean, I can’t even send him clean socks or homemade chocolate chip cookies. They’re his favorites - ”
When she choked on a sob, no longer able to go on, he stood and knelt in front of her chair, pulling her into a tight embrace. She buried her face in his shoulder, her body shaking with the force of her grief. “I keep wondering if he’s hurt. If something happens to him and he calls out for me, I won’t be able to be there for him. He’s all alone.”
His own eyes filled as he tried to murmur words of comfort. “He’s a strong boy. He’s going to be fine, and then he’ll come back to us. Sshhh. It’s all right, Martha. It’s all right.”
He could feel her nodding, her need to accept his reassurances. For long minutes they remained that way, wrapped in each other trying desperately to find the way to fill the empty space that resided in the very center of their hearts. Somehow they had to find a way to go on. That’s what Clark would have expected them to do.
“Have you spoken to Lois?” he asked, sensing a slight ease in the tension in her shoulders indicating that her sorrow was spent, at least for a while. It was a common tactic he used, knowing that the sure-fire way to lift Martha from the pit of her own despair was to direct her focus onto someone else’s.
Martha nodded, giving one last sniff before pulling away from him and donning the stiff upper lip that had gotten her that far. “Last night. I’m worried about her, Jonathan.”
“Did she say something was wrong?” he asked, instantly concerned.
“No, but she sounds so tired. Lost. I don’t know.” Martha stood, pulling the quilt tightly around her shoulders. “I’m going to see if she’ll come on out for the holidays. I don’t think she should be alone, and I have a feeling her family doesn’t quite understand what she’s going through.”
“No, I imagine not.” As much as his heart ached for himself and Martha, it shattered for Lois. They, at least, had each other. She had virtually no one to turn to during this horrific time.
“She needs to be around people who understand. Who miss him as much as she does.” Martha voiced his thoughts.
They called her nearly every night, although lately they only spoke to her answering machine. Several times over the past summer she’d come out to Smallville, for long weekends and even a week of vacation. She and Martha had seemed to find solace in each other, each woman holding parts of Clark in her heart that they could share with the other. It was as if by being together they brought Clark back to them somehow, that he wasn’t really gone indefinitely but rather had only left to fetch something at the market and was expected home at any moment.
Twice he and Martha had gone to Metropolis to handle details about Clark’s apartment and other affairs, and they’d spent as much time with her as her job would allow. But somehow, in the city, they couldn’t manage the same level of delusion as they could in the open air of Smallville. Instead, standing in Clark’s empty rooms with furniture coated in dust and plants brown and withered from neglect, the pain that had enveloped them all was nearly palpable, as if the combined sum of their individual sorrow could no longer be contained and became a fourth, invisible person that sat amongst them like a dark shadow. The second time they’d simply met Lois at a restaurant for dinner.
That had been nearly two months ago, and Lois hadn’t come to the farm since. She claimed that work kept her too busy, but Jonathan worried that it was something more. The fact that Martha was so concerned only fueled his own suspicions. Perhaps it was time for her to come out to the farm, to get away from the city and surround herself with things that Clark had touched, with his history.
Jonathan glanced once more at the glorious new day. If nothing else, the fresh air would be good for her. He couldn’t put a price on how much it did for him.
Then again, he was only Clark’s father. He wasn’t the girl who’d been left behind.
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“I’m Superman.”
Clark didn’t trust Trask at all, the man’s promise to let his parents go meaning nothing to him. But at that point, he had to hope that now that Trask knew the truth, at least his attention would be diverted away from Jonathan and Martha.
Trask stared at him blankly, as if expecting the punch line of some sick joke. Clark waited for the information to sink in, but when Trask made no move to apprehend him, Clark realized that the man actually didn’t believe his claim, and he grew a bit desperate.
“Really, Trask. I’m Superman,” Clark insisted vehemently.
“Are you, now?” Trask said at last, obviously bemused. He reached to his hip and withdrew a pistol, cocking it in preparation before leveling it directly at Clark’s chest.
It took a second to register what Trask was planning to do but even less for Clark to understand what it would mean. His heart pounded painfully in his chest. He had no protection, no super-powers to send a bullet ricocheting away harmlessly. If Trask shot that gun, the bullet would very likely kill him, and for the first time in his life, Clark felt a fear for his own life that went clear to his toes.
Before he could stop himself, he screamed out a plea. “Wait, no Trask! No!”
Trask shifted his aim towards Clark’s feet and pulled the trigger. Clark shut his eyes instinctively, preparing himself for the pain of a bullet ripping through his legs or feet. Instead of a deafening gunshot, however, the gun released only a loud, empty click, revealing that it had contained no bullets.
Clark sighed with relief, his breath coming in short pants. Trask had only been bluffing. A sick, twisted bluff.
“That was fear, Kent,” Trask said, chuckling as he revealed his game. “Real fear. Superman doesn’t fear guns.”
Clark stared at the commander sneering at him from the door of the van, horrified by the depravity by which he operated. Before he could voice his disgust, Trask was shutting the van doors, calling out his dismissal. “Nice try. But I want the real thing.”
The doors closed, once again leaving Clark in complete darkness. The stifling air around him became nearly oppressive, and he felt as if he couldn’t draw a deep enough breath. It took several minutes for his heart rate to return to normal, but the realization that his parents were now in more danger than ever sent it skyrocketing again.
In his panic, his thoughts turned to what might be going on with Lois back at the camp. Trask was completely crazy. He’d tortured Wayne Irig. He was holding two reporters hostage. And now he was using the elderly Kents as bait. He’d stop at nothing to get what he wanted. Who knew what he’d do to Lois, a helpless woman imprisoned in the middle of nowhere, where no one could hear her screams...
With iron control, he forced himself to take several slow, deep breaths. He’d be of no help to either Lois or his parents if he got himself worked into a frenzy. He needed to remain calm and keep his eyes open for a chance to make a break for it.
Besides, that Sherman woman had been left behind to deal with her, and she didn’t seem nearly as viscous as Trask. Perhaps she would simply grill Lois, who could with all honesty say that she knew nothing about any connections Superman had with Smallville. In fact, Lois’s very ignorance would probably be what saved her, Clark mused hopefully, for once actually glad that he hadn’t yet told her about his dual identity.
Feeling a bit better about Lois’s probable present condition, he tried instead to think about the time they’d spent in Smallville. It was unfortunate that their investigation of the supposed EPA clean-up had taken this dismal turn. She’d really seemed to enjoy herself at the Corn Festival earlier that day. And she’d looked so good in that red dress, so soft and feminine. He couldn’t help smiling over her obvious pleasure when he’d first admired her in it. Then, to his utter amazement, she’d joined in the country line dancing and had proven to be quite good at it.
Her attempts to fit in had pleased him in a way that he found surprising. Somehow, seeing all of the people he loved in one place, the place he loved best only second to Metropolis, had sent a warm glow throughout his entire body. It gave him hope for a future that he had only just begin to imagine.
One thing was for sure. When Lois Lane made an effort, she went at a hundred and fifty percent. He might have even suggested that she had actually been relaxing if he hadn’t known how loudly she would have protested such an accusation.
As for himself, he’d been surprisingly upbeat considering that his powers had left him completely and he had absolutely no idea when, or even if, he’d ever get them back. For the first time in his life, he was normal. And as disconcerting as the whole thing was, he had to admit that not having to hide anything from Lois was more than a little liberating.
Of course, that was all before Trask had given him real reason to mourn the loss of his super-strength. And now that his parents had been brought into the picture, his dismay had turned into full blown desperation.
What was going on out there? What was Trask doing? He had to get out of that van.
His hands had been hoisted over his head, the handcuffs tossed over a metal rod across the van’s ceiling before being clasped tightly around his wrists. To add further insult, his ankles had been placed in manacles, rendering him powerless to reach the van doors.
Mustering all of his non-super strength, he pulled against the chain holding his arms aloft. The metal dug painfully into his wrists yet the chain held fast. His anger and frustration gave him the determination to keep at it, but after a few attempts, he sagged limply, his energy depleted. It was no use.
Suddenly, a high-pitched beeping pierced his ears, and Clark winced painfully against the onslaught. Was this some new sort of torture Trask had cooked up? The sound reminded him of a dog whistle, so high pitched that humans couldn’t hear it...
Humans couldn’t hear it...
But he’d heard that sound before. At the Planet.
It was Jimmy’s Superman super-signal watch. And if he could hear it...
“I’m back!” he cried triumphantly.
He pulled downward again, and this time the metal chain snapped like ropes of cooked pasta. Ripping the handcuffs from his wrists and the manacles from his ankles, he scrambled to the van’s doors and shoved, a flicker of elation coursing through him as they flew from their hinges to sail across the air.
Trask stood several yards from the barn, smiling victoriously at something within it’s massive red walls. He started at the crash Clark’s escape had produced, his sneer turning quickly into stunned disbelief.
Ignoring Trask, Clark looked around for his parents, his gaze going immediately to where Trask had been staring only seconds earlier. The air left his lungs in a rush when he saw what had obviously made Trask so smug.
Flames followed a steady trail directly toward the barn, and through the fire he could see his parents and Wayne Irig tied to a towering pile of hay bales. Trask meant to burn them alive. That knowledge fueled a rage in Clark that nearly overwhelmed him.
Running toward the line of fire, he leaned over and prepared to inhale, drawing the heat and flames into his mouth and away from the barn. But as he sucked inward with all of his might, only smoke and heated air filled his lungs.
Choking and sputtering, he turned away from the fire and took in gulps of clean, cool air, trying to clear his lungs. When he had stopped coughing, he turned back toward the flames and tried again, praying that it was just a glitch left over as he got all of his powers back. Again he inhaled, but all that entered his mouth and nose was more of the same smoke that caused him to double over in paroxysms of coughing.
Realizing that he couldn’t inhale the flames, he tried instead to freeze them, sending a blast of cold breath directly at the line of fire. His hope sank when instead of smothering the flames, his efforts seemed only to push them more quickly toward the barn and his parents.
Had he been wrong? Had his powers really not returned? But he’d been able to break out of his restraints and knock out the van doors. Perhaps all he had was super-strength.
He determined he’d have to carry his parents and Wayne out of the barn. Already the fire had reached the doors and spread across its width, creating a barrier. He’d have to be fast if he wanted to get them out without burning them as he returned back over the threshold.
He ran toward the doors, but when he tried to cross through the wall of flames, the heat pushed him back like a hard shove. He felt the skin on his face and hands blistering, his eyebrows and hair singed. To go through the flames would set him on fire, and instinctively his body pulled him back several steps. Undeterred, he forced himself forward, but by then, he could see that the line of fire had reached the first bale of hay to which his mother and father were tied.
The dry straw, aided in no doubt by gasoline, acted as a superior kindling, instantly filling the barn with bright orange light and the acrid smell of burning flesh mingled with burning hay. Clark could only watch in horror as the entire heap became a roaring funeral pyre for his parents and Wayne Irig.
Through the roar of the flames he could hear his mother’s screams until they were drowned out by his own.
“NO!! Mom! Dad!! NO!!”
Nooooo...
The scream echoed off the stainless steel walls and back into his ears. His mind shattered, he couldn’t decipher if the sound of anguish was his own or hers as the fire devoured her. The smell of burning hay nearly choked him. He couldn’t remember her face. The gentle smile that had chased away all the nightmares and soothed all the hurts of his childhood was nothing more than a beckoning finger of red flame.
Unable to move his arms, he couldn’t swipe away the tears before they ran down his temples, making a soft, metallic plink as they hit the slab beneath his head.
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Zara looked up from the tablet she studied when she heard the door open and then hiss shut. Lieutenant Ching approached, his face grim. She felt her heart sinking with a sickening lurch.
“No luck?” she asked, although she knew the answer already.
“Zara, it’s been over a full moon-cycle,” he said as gently as she knew he was capable of being.
Still, she wasn’t appeased by his excuse. “I don’t care! I want to know what you're doing to find him!”
Ching sighed loudly. “The men combed the field thrice over after the battle. We’ve searched the neighboring countryside, questioning all whom we’ve come across. No one has seen anyone at all who fits his description. No sign of Lord Kal-El remains.”
“If you didn’t find his body, then it’s possible he managed to escape,” she insisted in a hoarse whisper. “That even now he’s trying to make his way back to Kail’asa?”
The battle had been the bloodiest of the war so far. Since his arrival in Kail’asa, the capital city of New Krypton, Kal-El had led the imperial army - the Veda Rishi - into progressively aggressive attacks against Lord Nor, an attempt to quell the random raids on civilians Nor used to strike terror into the inhabitants of New Krypton.
During the last effort, they’d managed to push Lord Nor’s army of Nagas guards nearly all the way back to the Alton Ranges, the barren mountains that concealed Nor’s stronghold at Tai Shan. But the cost had been high. The final casualty count was still being calculated, and reports from the field indicated Kal-El himself had suffered injury. And then he had disappeared without a trace.
Zara blamed herself. She’d tried to persuade him to remain behind, to allow his colonels and lieutenants to lead the Veda Rishi while he remained in Kail’asa where he could issue orders in safety from the Imperial Palace. But he’d proven more than a little headstrong, insisting that if he were going to send men to their possible deaths, he owed it to them to face the same danger himself. A noble gesture, to be sure, but irrational to Zara’s Kryptonian logic.
Then again, a lot of what Lord Kal-El had done since his arrival made little sense to Zara or the members of the Council of Elders. He’d refused to fall in line, to give himself completely over to becoming the Kryptonian he had been born to be. She’d admired his determination to hold on to his Earth ways and indeed, they had all benefited from his unique perspective. The admiration she had always held for him had swiftly grown into deep respect and then true friendship. If not for the hold Ching held on her heart, Zara knew it would be little difficulty to fall in love with Kal-El.
“I would like to offer you hope,” Ching was saying. “If his injury wasn’t mortal, perhaps he could have crawled off the field. But our men should have found him near by. Certainly someone would have seen him, or he would have arrived in Kail’asa by now.”
“Perhaps a family took him in, is even now tending to his wounds...”Zara suggested, grasping against the heaviness that pulled her down.
Ching placed a hand on her arm, stopping her. She lifted her gaze to his face, blinking when she saw an uncharacteristic softness in his dark eyes. “Zara, it won’t do to keep alive false hopes.”
She sniffed loudly, trying to force the tears that stung the back of her throat to remain inside. Finally, she nodded slightly. “Do you suppose they...took his body?”
At that, Ching turned away. What he said next sent an icy cold tremor of fear through Zara’s veins. “I hope it’s his body they took. If Nor captured him...alive...”
He didn’t finish the thought. He didn’t need to. Zara shuddered. What Nor would do to a captive Kal-El, she couldn’t think on. What would remain of Kal-El when he was finished sent a wave of nausea up her throat.
May the gods help them all.
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To be continued...
