The Gift of Sights, Ch 7: Aurora
In chapter 6, we delved deeper into Petru’s mind, wandering the dark corridors of his psyche. But when he awakens, it is to the panic of discovery, as the Securitate ascend the stairs and open the attic door.
In ch 7, we follow Petru in the moments immediately after his escape from the Securitate. Yet, as he gets closer to his truth, it feels further than ever from his grasp.
By now, the astute reader will begin to see holes in Petru’s reliability as a narrator and the perceived nature of Aurora's role, the Metro-Rex agent and the subject of some of Petru’s stray visions.
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Ch 7: Aurora
As Petru burst out onto Strata Italiana and ran for his life, he’d wept for his brother. He had always known that they could not hide forever. The chronic monotony of the attic was numbing and tense, yet this acute torment of adrenaline, panic, and terror was worse. He’d had no time to look back to see if Vasil had escaped the attic, and after the gunshots, he’d known the streets would soon be crawling with Securitate. And so he ran, until his lungs felt about to burst.
When about ten blocks from Italiana, he saw and park and vanished into its shadows. All that night, he lay hidden beneath bushes until the wail of the Securitate response moved on. He slept fitfully and had dreamed of his childhood. Eventually, dawn arrived, and the streets began to fill again with a dead-eyed and compliant workforce. Once he felt the crowds were dense enough to provide cover, he pulled his hood over his head and slipped into the rivers of pedestrians, headed to… he did not know where.
He was hungry. He was used to that. And he was tired. He was used to that, too. However, he was not used to being outside, not without Vasil, and he kept a nervous eye on doorways, passing cars, and café windows, just as Vasil had taught him, watching for those who might be hunting him. He watched for signs of MetroRex agents and Securitate activity, and he watched for Vasil.
He saw countless faces eying him. He felt others touch his shoulder, or grab his arm, or call his name. But at each turn, they slipped unseen back into the crowds. He saw ravens high upon the rooftops—hell’s messengers—scanning and squawking their code, detailing his movements and reading his intentions. And he heard MetroRex agents guiding his way, speaking to him through doorways or whispering behind him as he rode the Bucharest trams.
“Head for București Nord,” they advised. Their message was always the same. “Take the night train to Sighet.”
And so, doorway by secret doorway, tram by exposed tram, hour by nervous hour, Petru made his way to București Nord, and by late evening, he stood outside the grand arches of the rail hub looking for a way to jump the tracks and smuggle his way north.
The station was quiet, winding down for the day, yet the Securitate were active, vigilant, and ever-present. Even if he could get to the platforms, what then? They were exposed, and he’d be seen. Around the side of the station, he saw fencing topped with razor wire and decided this was a quieter, safer option.
As he scanned the fencing, looking for gaps or ways to scale the razor wire, he drew the attention of a Securitate agent patrolling the side streets. Petru quickly turned and walked away but was immediately grabbed by the elbow by another agent who had emerged unseen from a darkened doorway behind him.
Petru stopped, frozen in fear, as he felt the hand slide between his arm and his ribs. Aurora moved close to his side and instructed him to follow, pulling him assertively forward as she spoke.
“Come with me,” she ordered.
“Where are you taking me?” Petru protested.
Aurora said nothing.
Arm in arm, she led him to the front entrance of București Nord, where she presented her ID to security. They nodded and directed her to her platform, where they then waited in silence alongside other Securitate agents with their arrested travel companions. The awaiting overnight train to Sighet breathed, seethed, and brooded in anticipation of its fresh haul and at exactly midnight, a whistle sounded, and they boarded. Once seated, Petru pulled his arm from hers, and the two sat in silence.
Aurora looked out of the window as the train began to pull away, leaving the station and entering the dark suburbs of Northern Bucharest. The metallic clanks of wheels on train tracks beat a hypnotic rhythm of fours—clackety-clack… clackety-clack … clackety-clack —and the passing lights from a sleeping city sent shadows sweeping throughout the carriage and within Petru’s mind.
He found himself sitting in Valesco’s chair, staring at a bright light before him. Valesco’s face was close to his own, his eyes studying Petru’s. He held a small medical flashlight to his eyes, moving it left and right, watching his pupils dilate and constrict in response. Then Valesco reached over to the electric distribution box, and Petru watched as he pressed the power switch with a click and a drone.
Clackety-clack … clackety-clack…
Petru woke with a start. He was back on the train, and Aurora was still sitting next to him, still gazing out of the window. They were now deep in the countryside, lost in the depths of hypnosis.
Clackety-clack … clackety-clack…
“Where are you taking me?” Petru asked again, this time resigned to his fate.
“Sighet,” she nodded.
Petru took a moment to allow this worst of all nightmares to settle in his awareness. Vasil had often talked of Sighet, and for as long as Petru could remember, their lives were dedicated to keeping him out of that black pit of suffering.
“I’m not in the resistance, you know,” Petru muttered.
“I know,” she acknowledged calmly, as if that information was beside the point.
“I’ve done nothing wrong,” he insisted.
“I know.” Again, Aurora’s response suggested that it was irrelevant.
Clackety-clack … clackety-clack…
“I’m not who you think I am?”
That’s when Aurora turned and looked at him, paused in thought for a moment, then took breath to answer.
“How would you know that?” she began. “Perhaps you are exactly who I see you to be. Perhaps it is you who does not know. Don’t be so quick to judge.”
Petru quickly saw this conversation, or negotiation, or plea bargain, or whatever it was, was going nowhere, so he changed course.
“Why are you taking me to Sighet?” he pressed.
Aurora smiled and returned her gaze to the dark hills and sleeping towns that peppered Northern Romania as they passed slowly in the distance.
Clackety-clack … clackety-clack…
“What is it you want from me?” Petru pressed further.
“We want the truth, Petru.” Aurora turned to look at him again. “The truth. That’s all. Don’t you want that? Wouldn’t you feel better if you just told us the truth?”
Petru studied Aurora’s face, her features, her cool, pale blue eyes. And he looked at her necklace. He looked at her hands. And he looked at her lips as she spoke.
“All we want is the truth. We will be getting off soon. Gather your things.”
The train slowed and eventually came to a complete stop, and Petru held his hand to the glass to block reflections and strained his eyes to see where they were. But there was no town here, no village, no station, no platform.
Aurora stood, put on her coat, and gestured for Petru to do the same. He stood and looked around the dark carriage. He was reminded that it was filled with other odd couples—captor and captive pairs—silent, soulless, watching. But they made no move. This was Petru’s stop alone. He walked the central aisle, guilty and helpless, and through the door at the end of the carriage, followed by Aurora. There, they descended metal steps between carriages until they reached the stony bed upon which the rail tracks had been laid, and they continued further until their footsteps fell silent upon dirt banks that led up to dark woods. They turned briefly to watch the train pull away and listened until its lonely energy faded into the night, and as it did, Petru reflected on how alone he felt.
Seen from a train, its tracks project a sense of purpose and direction. But as Petru stood beside them here, now, in the cold night, from the banks and trees that lined their path, they felt abandoned. This whole place felt abandoned but for the harsh rasps of crows in the woods and the reliably stoic cadence of his captor’s voice.
“Lead the way,” she said, gesturing towards the trees.
“To where?” Petru asked.
“Lead the way,” she repeated.
Petru began to walk into the blackness of the wood, slowly at first as his eyes adjusted to the night, and quickening his pace as his awareness sharpened. The ground was cold, and the trees were skeletal. He’d seen this place before.
And sure enough, slowly emerging through the trees, he saw the black silhouette of the place of his darkest memories.
“No,” he muttered, stopping as soon as he recognised the orphanage. “I don’t want to go there.”
“I know,” Aurora replied. “Take me on a tour. Show me around. If you are not who I think you are, then show me who you think you are. Lead the way.”
Petru looked ahead and took in a lungful of the clean, cold wood air before starting again towards the main entrance of the orphanage.
There hung its cynical sign, still rotten and filthy, still hanging above the door, still obscured and defiled by disease and delusion.
“The Gift of Sighet,” Petru read it as best he could as he tried to clean the letters. “A Kind Care.”
But Aurora saw it differently. She reached up and rubbed the sign with her sleeve, clearing more dirt and revealing its true message.
“The Gift of Sights,” Petru re-read it, confused by its altered reality. “A Mind Cage.”
“This place is a mind cage, Petru.” Aurora’s voice softened. “You are trapped in there. Your mind is caged in there. Your gift is a delusion. But there are ways out. If you are willing to let me in, if you are willing to work with me, perhaps, together, we can find a way out.”
Petru looked through the orphanage doors into the black abyss beyond its rotted frame, listening to the distant echoes that howled and reverberated deep within its labyrinth of corridors. He could feel its torture rooms and its nauseating suffering, its vacant inhabitants and its cruel master—Valesco. And then he stepped forward, into the dark, until the blackness of his mind swallowed him.
And in that dark place, Petru felt Aurora’s hand take his. He felt her fingers entwine with his, and he heard her calm breath and steady steps beside him, with him. For the first time in many years, Petru did not feel alone, and together, they walked into the ink-black shadow, looking for Petru’s truth, looking for the way out.
End of Ch 7