Tagline: The most exclusive club around
Back tagline: The most exclusive club around
Summary: They went to Rotterham Hospital to die. They formed The Midnight Club to try to deal with their pain and anger. They told stories of love, life and the after-life. Then the stories became reality. Terminal illness doesn’t have to mean the end.
They were victims in life.
Victors of death.
First impressions: This cover is boring af and I wish I had an original copy. Unfortunately for me, most of my Pike books are these boring black covers, but oh well; it’s about what’s inside, right? I wanted to read this because it’s Netflix adaption is due out in October this year, and I always prefer to read the book before watching the show/movie whenever I can help it!
From the cover I would assume that the book is about an evil clock, but surely that can’t be right. The blurb isn’t giving too much away either; it doesn’t even sound like horror tbh [Note from future: it’s not…]. I’ve enjoyed all three Pike books I’ve read so far, so I’m hoping this will continue the trend. Let’s read!
Recap
Meet the gang:
Ilonka – Our main character who’s dreaming about past lives.
Anya – Ilonka’s roommate and the star of the book, in my opinion.
Kevin – Ilonka’s crush who she believes she has an extremely deep connection with.
Spence – The joker of the group and Kevin’s roommate.
Sandra – The final Midnight Clubber who’s more of a listener than a storyteller.
Dr. White – The creator of the hospice.
The Master – A prominent figure in Ilonka’s dreams and stories.
The book begins with our protagonist, Ilonka, deciding that today is going to be a happy one. Sure, her long, shiny brown hair is a wig thanks to months of chemotherapy, but she’s determined not to focus on the negatives. She’s a resident at Rotterham Hospice, an old seaside mansion that was transformed into a home for terminally ill teens 10 years ago. We don’t yet know what Ilonka’s illness is, but she’s convinced the six herbal pills she takes daily are helping her to get better. Her roommate, Anya, much prefers direct injections to help her get through the day – the poor girl is constantly in excruciating pain, and her right leg was amputated six months ago to stop the spread of bone cancer, but it proved to be futile.
During a walk through the halls of Rotterham, Ilonka bumps into Spencer ‘Spence’ Haywood, the joker of her friend group here at the hospice. Despite his brain cancer, he’s the healthiest person at the hospice besides Ilonka, but needs heavy drugs to stave off debilitating headaches. He’s also got a girlfriend back home who constantly writes him letters that he likes to read out to his friends, and ‘it was their opinion that Caroline had to be the horniest chick alive.’ [Hubba hubba!] Spencer’s excited because Caroline might be visiting next month, but Ilonka doesn’t share his enthusiasm – ‘A month was a long time at Rotterham Hospice. Most of the patients were there less that a month before they died. But Ilonka thought it would be in bad taste to suggest the girl come earlier.’ [These poor teens :(]
Spence tells her that Kevin, his roommate, wants to see her, and Ilonka’s heart skips a beat because we learned from Anya earlier that Ilonka’s in love with him, although she won’t admit it. Kevin’s got leukemia and has fallen out of remission three times, ‘which was all the doctors said was allowed.’ [As in they won’t help him anymore? Oof] It’s visitors’ day though, and Kevin’s girlfriend, Kathy, is here, so Spence suggests Ilonka wait til later to go see him [It seems all her friends know she’s in love with Kevin except Kevin hahaha]. Ilonka heads to Kevin’s room anyway, but it’s empty, so she goes to the waiting room instead, where she finds Kathy waiting.
Kathy’s a beautiful cheerleader who Ilonka can’t help but feel jealous of, and they engage in some small talk about Ilonka’s accent – her parents were from Poland, and her mother mainly spoke in Polish at home before she’d died. We also learn that father disappeared before they came to the US when Ilonka was eight months old, so she’s never even met him. Kevin soon arrives and Ilonka’s just as captivated by him now as she was when they first met; he’d arrived at Rotterham two days after her, and it was love at first sight for Ilonka when she found him curled up by the fire with a book in the study.
Kevin looks much sicker today than he had last night, which worries Ilonka, and he explains he was looking for her so they could talk about a few things, but it will have to wait for now because it’s Kathy time! Ilonka flees the waiting room as the happy couple hug and kiss, and ends up in an empty room on the other side of the building where the windows look directly out to a grassy lawn that leads to the cliff looking out over the ocean. This gives her a great view of Kevin and Kathy as they take a stroll, and Ilona’s unimpressed that sick, frail Kevin is outside in the cold:
“If you let him get wet he’ll get pneumonia,” she muttered. “Then he’ll die and it will be your fault.” She added, “Bitch.”
[Hahahaha, plz go say that to her face instead of an empty room, Ilonka] Dr. White, Ilonka’s benefactor and the creator of the hospice, appears, and he’s very aptly named because his facial hair is as white as snow. He wants to talk to her about the magnetic resonance scan she’s requested for tomorrow; he’s very polite about it, but it’s clear he thinks it’s a waste of time. Ilonka swears she’s feeling better and her tumours are shrinking thanks to the herbal tablets, which have apparently worked in many cases, especially with cancers like hers. Dr. White agrees that there’s lots of evidence that the pills work, ‘”but in those cases it has almost always been when the disease is in its early stages,”‘ and Ilonka’s cancer had already spread through most of her abdomen before she started taking them.
Ilonka is adamant that she feels much better and insists the tumours have shrunk, so Dr. White asks to examine her abdominal area, right here and right now, to see if he can still feel them like he could when she first arrived [Hmm, I don’t like this…]. Ilonka reluctantly lies back on the bed with her pants unbuttoned and her shirt pulled up while Dr. White probes her stomach [It’s completely innocent but I still feel off about it]. Ilonka’s had three operations so far and the incision from the most recent one hasn’t quite healed yet, so she’s in a bit of pain, despite trying not to show it.
The tumours are clearly still there but Ilonka had only said they were smaller, not that they’d disappeared, and thinks the scan tomorrow will back her up. Dr. White still believes it’s ‘”an unnecessary hardship,”‘ but agrees to take her to the appointment anyway if that’s what she really wants.
Ilonka heads back to her room, collecting six Tylenol 3 tablets from the nurses’ station on the way for her constant abdominal pain, made worse by Dr. White’s poking and prodding. She’s always offered something stronger by the nurses, but Ilonka feels she doesn’t need hard narcotics like the other patients. That doesn’t stop her from gobbling down all six tablets as soon as she’s back in her room, though, despite usually only taking two at a time, and she quickly dozes off to sleep so she can wake up fresh and ready for tonight’s Midnight Club meeting:
Before she passed out she prayed she would dream of the Master.
And he did come to her, later, and told her many things.
But it was only a dream. Maybe.
[Ooooh, who’s the Master? 👀 Also sidenote, these chapters are fkn long. Like, realllllllly long. The first one was 25 pages, and this next one is almost 6o! 🥴] Ilonka’s shaken awake shortly before midnight by Sandra, a Hodgkin’s sufferer and the plumpest one in the hospice, not because she’s overweight but because she’s not emaciated like all the other patients. She’s a pleasant but simple redhead and a member of The Midnight Club purely because she wants to be, rather than for the stories she tells there. In fact, she’s yet to tell one at all, but she constantly assures everyone there’s a masterpiece coming.
Anyway, Ilonka’s disoriented at first because she’d been dreaming about walking along the Nile with the master thousands of years ago. Apparently Anya didn’t want to wake her up because she was in such a deep sleep, but Kevin thought Ilonka would be upset if she missed a Midnight Club meeting, and Ilonka inwardly swoons over his concern.
The Midnight Club is somewhat of a group counselling session where they tell stories about life, rather than discuss impending death. Ilonka, Anya, Sandra, Spencer and Kevin are the only members, although none of them can pinpoint exactly who was responsible for conjuring it up. They’d all agreed no-one else could join, but it’s not like anyone else has asked to join anyway, because ‘midnight was prohibitive for the deathly ill.’ [Even as a healthy person I doubt I’d want to meet up every night at midnight lol] Dr. White is aware of the club and didn’t argue when they’d refused to let him sit in on the meetings, and he’d offered them the study to use. We also learn everyone’s ages here – they’re all 18 except for Spencer, who’s 19, and Ilonka, who’s 17. She’s been in and out of hospitals since her illness hit at 15, six months after her mother’s death.
Anya isn’t feeling so hot and scabs a few morphine pills from Spence, who always has some handy, and then it’s time for the stories. At the beginning of each meeting, everyone hugs each other individually and says ‘”I belong to you.”‘ This was initiated by Ilonka at the very first meeting, an idea which she believes was given to her [By the Master, I assume…]. Everyone seems to enjoy it, even hard-headed Anya, and it helps them establish a safe space for them all. Tonight, Ilonka hugs Kevin especially hard and even pecks him on the cheek, and in return he he tells her ‘”I’ll always belong to you, Ilonka,”‘ and gives her a little kiss on the forehead [What about Kathy? Is this an emotional affair?].
Submitted for the approval of the Midnight [Society] Club, Spence tells a story about a disfigured war veteran shooting people from atop the Eiffel Tower with a twist ending where the bad guy survives [I’m gonna try keep the summaries of the stories they tell short where I can, but this is probably gonna be a long recap anyway]. Everyone enjoys it, even if it was a bit contrived, and while Anya has no issues interrupting Spence throughout his story to point out things that don’t make sense [Mood], Ilonka never criticises the others’ stories because she doesn’t want them picking hers apart.
Anya suggests Sandra go next, but as usual she’s got nothing, so Anya takes the spotlight. Anya’s story is a lot more interesting, to me and the others, about a sheltered girl with controlling parents who desperately wants to experience sinful things like sex and rock’n’roll [Amen, sister]. She agrees to a deal with the devil, who makes an exact duplicate of her so she can simultaneously continue her sheltered life and live out all her fantasies. She’ll be in both bodies at the same time, experiencing everything the double does [Which sounds kinda awful? Like, two sets of simultaneous thoughts and experiences?] The only catch is she will be staying in this agreement for a year.
At first the girl is loving life and even experiences her first orgasm while watching a Disney movie with her parents as the double loses her virginity [Hahahahahahahaha], but everything goes downhill when the double becomes addicted to cocaine. More issues follow and the situation culminates when both versions decide to kill the other one, but neither can really get the upper hand, of course, because they basically share the same brain and know what each other is thinking. Still, they both end up shooting each other and one dies while the other is bound to a wheelchair for the rest of her life [But Anya doesn’t reveal if it was the OG or the double that died, annoyingly].
The devil ends up appearing again many years later and offers her another deal – all she has to do is kill herself and she’ll never experience hell. The girl is worried about her soul, but the devil tells her only God knows about that, although he’s not even sure if there really is a God. The devil wishes her luck and disappears, and that’s literally the end of Anya’s story [And I’m mad because it was a great story up until this point!!!! What an anticlimactic copout 😡 ].
The others are as annoyed at me that there’s no real ending and we don’t know the girl’s final decision, but everyone was captivated by the story nonetheless. Anya suddenly gets a bit shy and thanks everyone for not interrupting her story because she really wanted them all to hear it – ‘”It seemed to have a lot of things in it that I—I don’t know.”‘ [She doesn’t elaborate further, but I assume her main character was a reflection of her, or something?]
Ilonka’s up next who accidentally blurts out that her’s is a story from one of her past lives. Kevin’s curious that she remembers her past lives, and although Ilonka believes they’re memories, she admits she can’t be sure. She also denies that any of the others are in her past lives, but it’s clear that at the very least, Kevin is [Why are you lying, Ilonka?]
Ilonka then begins her story, set in Egypt 20,650 years ago [She was in Egypt in her dream tonight, so I guess that’s where she learns of her past lives!], which she points out is about 13,000 years before people knew ancient Egypt existed [How does she know this? Smart gal], but this is just how the story came to her so we’re letting it slide I guess. Ilonka tells her story in first person as Delius, a 27-year-old unmarried woman who has a very great man in her life; her Master [Is she a slave? Who is this Master?]. She doesn’t remember his actual name but ‘”he was like Jesus, or Buddha, or Krishna,”‘ and he was on earth to bring people back to God [Ohhhhh].
Delius had a bestie named Shradha who had a 13-year-old daughter, Mage, that Delius was quite close to. One day, Delius invited Mage to spend a few nights at her home, which Shradha was nervous about because they were living through a drought and people would do crazy things, so times were dangerous. Mage had overheard Delius and Shradha arguing about it, and argued with her mother herself after Delius left, and then ran out the door to go to a friend’s house [Delius’ or a different friend’s house?].
Later that afternoon, Delius returned to collect Mage but found no-one home, so she thoughtfully packed up some of Mage’s things so she wouldn’t have to bring over herself later on. Unbeknownst to her, Mage had been ambushed and eaten by two starving men [Oof, poor Mage]. Her body had been found by a local peasant and while Delius was packing up Mage’s things, Shradha was being led to what remained of her daughter, who was only able to be identified by her scarf [Do we have another trademark scarf on our hands?]. Shradha was devastated but her mood improved when she returned home and found Mage’s personal items gone, believing her spirit had come to collect them to take with her to the afterlife:
“You see, they believed the spirit had a use for such things even dead. That’s why personal items were buried with the dead. That was part of the religion of the time, but it was not one of the teachings of the Master. Very few followed Master in those days because he had predicted that the drought would not last, but it went on for seven years. He had made a false prediction on purpose so that only his devoted followers would stay with him. Throughout eternity the Master would first appear as godlike, and then appear fallible. But he would always be the same eternal being inside.”
Eventually, Shradha met with the Master and told him about Mage collecting her things before her spirit left, and the Master explained that it was Delius who took Mage’s things. Even though the Master assured Shradha that Delius hadn’t known of Mage’s death at the time, their friendship never recovered, partly because Shradha also believed Mage wouldn’t have left that day if Delius hadn’t insisted on Mage coming to stay.
Delius then died at 39 from a heart attack, but she’d known death was imminent because the Master had told her how long she would live. So the week before, she met up with Shradha and again insisted she meant no harm by taking Mage’s things, and Shradha finally forgave her ‘”and promised that when we met again, we would never allow misunderstanding to come between us.”‘
Ilonka suddenly stopped talking and lowered her head. Her eyes were wet and she didn’t want the others to see. She especially didn’t want to look at Kevin—at—Shradha—at that moment. If she turned her head in Kevin’s direction Shradha was there.
[Ohhhhh, no wonder Ilonka’s obsessed with him! Is he in all of her past lives? How romantic] Everyone agrees the story was beautiful, but Spence is curious what religion the Master belonged to. Ilonka can’t really explain it, but admits she got the ‘I belong to you’ idea from this past life, because ‘”the Master always stressed how we were all one.”‘ [Hmm, maybe this story wasn’t from tonight’s dream. Or maybe she has several dreams about the same past life]
Time for Kevin’s story now, set in Paris, about an angel named Herme who spends his days posing as a human in the Louvre copying the famous paintings. Herme had actually inspired much of them, having been the muse of da Vinci, Raphael and Michelangelo, among others. One day, a young polish woman about Ilonka’s age named Teresa [Why not just name her Ilonka? Although we do find out soon that Teresa is Ilonka’s middle name, not that anyone at Rotterham would know that. Are these two soulmates?] visits the Louvre and is captivated by Herme and his incredible copy of a painting.
They soon begin talking and have lunch together, and Teresa returns each day to see him again. He doesn’t tell her much about himself, but Teresa quickly falls in love with him anyway, sensing he is like no other human she’s ever met. The feeling is mutual for Herme, but he can only appear as a human while at the museum thanks to special permission from God for the great work he’d done in the past; if Herme leaves the Louvre, he’s just like any other angel again, and people wouldn’t know he’s there.
Because they only ever see each other at the museum, Teresa begins to doubt Herme’s feelings for her, so one night Herme spends hours praying to God to allow him to leave the Louvre with Teresa, and his wish is granted. But naturally, there’s a catch – if Herme the Louvre, he will become entirely human, but he’s more than willing to make the sacrifice to be with Teresa [Completely changing who you are for love always works out, right?]. The next day, Herme exits the Louvre hand in hand with Teresa, and the tale ends there for now because Kevin wants to spread this story out over several nights [Boooooo].
God, angels and devils have been a common theme tonight, so Anya’s curious if anyone actually believes there’s life after death. Sandra’s a firm believer in heaven and hell, but Spence thinks no opinion is the best opinion to have on the topic. Kevin can’t see why God would create hell to torture people when he’s all about goodness [True lol], so he doesn’t believe in heaven and hell in a traditional sense, but he does believe in souls based on the testimonies of people who’ve had near-death experiences. Ilonka isn’t quite sure about souls, but she does believe that love survives [How romantic lol].
Spence then proposes that whoever is first to die give the remaining teens some kind of sign from the other side, which intrigues everyone expect Sandra:
Sandra shook her head. “I will not agree to this. If I die I’m going straight to heaven, and that’s the end of it.”
“Don’t worry,” Anya said. “If you’re the first one to die none of us will be in a hurry to talk to you.”
[Hahaha Anya and her sarcastic, coarse personality is a whole mood and I love her] Sandra comments on Anya’s bad mood tonight, and Anya sweetly replies it’s just her natural state [Literally me], before Sandra eventually agrees that it can’t hurt to go along with the plan as long as she won’t get in trouble from God. Spence then heads off to bed, quickly followed by the wheelchair-bound Anya, who ropes Sandra into helping her since she’s her bone cancer ha made her too weak to push the chair herself. This was also a strategic move on Anya’s part to enable Ilonka the chance to escort Kevin to his room [What a pal!].
Finally alone, Kevin explains he was looking for her earlier today because he’s curious about the scan she plans on getting tomorrow, and he’s a lot more supportive about it than Dr. White was when Ilonka explains her reasoning. He also asks if she really hasn’t met anyone that reminds her of Shradha, because he felt as if he were there while she was telling her story about Egypt, but Ilonka reiterates that it was just her. Then she helps him back to his room, and he gives her a hug before slipping inside.
The next day, Dr. White and Ilonka arrive at a nearby hospital for the scan. Ilonka’s abdomen has been growing more and more painful, and the Tylenol isn’t helping as much as usual, despite her taking more. During the hour-long scan, Ilonka remembers the first time she had this done – doctors operated on her the next day ‘and when she had awakened they told her she no longer had a uterus or ovaries,’ [Omg, that would be a horrible way to find that out! Surely standard practice would be to tell someone before the operation though, right?] and on top of that, they weren’t sure if they’d even removed all of the cancer [Oof].
Arriving back at the hospice, Ilonka finds Kathy in the waiting room again and offers to get Kevin for her, since she’s apparently been waiting a while. But then Ilonka decides that Kevin is hers, not Kathy’s, and explains to Kathy that people come to hospices to be comfortable before dying, not to get better. She claims that it hurts Kevin every time Kathy comes to visit, because he has to pretend for her sake that he’ll get better – ‘”Let him die in peace without having to pretend for you. Leave him to us.”‘ [I mean, what she’s saying is true but it’s not her place to say it]
Ilonka flatly tells a tearful Kathy that she’ll be by Kevin’s side when he dies so he won’t be alone, since it’s highly unlikely Kathy will be there when that time comes. Kathy then flees the hospice and Kevin arrives shortly after and asks if Ilonka’s seen Kathy. Ilonka looks him right in the eyes and lies to him, then heads to her room to cry about the new low she’s reached.
Anya, who’d been sleeping, wakes up after a while and offers Ilonka a morphine pill as she takes one herself. Ilonka’s never had morphine before but is still in a lot of pain so gobbles one down, then tells Anya all about what happened with Kathy. Anya reckons Ilonka did the girl a favour, but Ilonka still feels pathetic because she only did it so she could have Kevin to herself.
Anya then pulls an unfinished clay sculpture of a girl and boy holding hands from her box of things, which has some great detail for its size, although one of the girl’s legs is missing. Anya then tells the story of an old boyfriend, Bill, who she’d made it for – they met at a bookstore when Anya was 16, and although he was weird looking with hair that was a weird orange colour and an earring ‘”that looked as if it had been stolen from an African native,”‘ [Hmm, not sure about that wording, Pike] they soon began dating. He was the first person she’d ever felt something real for, ‘”like he belonged to me and I belonged to him.”‘ But as the months went by, Anya began to feel like she was too happy with Bill:
“I know that sounds stupid—it is stupid. But it was like he was too nice to me, you know, like I didn’t deserve him. Even when I was in his arms, loving him with every cell in my body, I felt like a part of me was betraying him. And this was before I even did anything. It was like deep in my soul I knew it couldn’t last because of who I was. Does that make sense?”
[Oof, I can also relate to this whole self-sabotage thing lol] Anyway, another guy, Charlie, asked Anya out, and she agreed, despite not actually wanting to. She ended up going out with Charlie on the same night she was supposed to be out with Bill, but didn’t tell Bill she wasn’t available anymore [Well, that was dumb]. Her parents were away for the weekend so she invited Charlie back to her place, knowing full well it would leave to sex. Of course she hated every minute of it and was thinking about Bill the whole time they were rooting, and then Bill walked in!
Part of Anya wasn’t expecting him because he didn’t know her parents were away, and they didn’t like him so he tried to stay out of their way, but at the same time she also wasn’t surprised he’d shown up, especially since she never called him to cancel. In hindsight, she realises that in some perverted way, everything happened exactly how she’d wanted it to. Anyway, Bill was upset and looked at Anya as if he didn’t know her, which hurt because she’d felt like they were kindred spirits or whatever. Then he picked up the unfinished sculpture from her chest of drawers, which would have been her Valentine’s Day present to him the following week, and threw it at the ground before storming out, and Anya never saw him again [OK, I can’t relate to this part lol].
Anya has a little cry in Ilonka’s arms now and confesses that she thinks her cancer was retribution for her behaviour, especially since the only part of the sculpture that broke off was the girl’s right leg. Anya developed cancer the year after and coincidentally, her right leg is the one that’s been amputated. Ilonka assures her this theory is wrong and encourages Anya to call or write to Bill and apologise, but Anya tells her ‘”There isn’t time,”‘ and puts the sculpture away.
The morphine starts kicking in now and soon, Ilonka’s asleep and dreaming of the Master. In this dream/past life, Ilonka hasn’t seen the Master for two years, but has come to see him because she feels lost after her husband has left her, but it’s unclear if that’s because he’s died or he broke up with her [Unless I’m missing something]. Ilonka asks the Master to bring him back, but he refuses because she doesn’t need her husband, encouraging her to learn to enjoy her own company so she doesn’t have to be so emotionally needy. He does reveal Ilonka will see him again though, but remains silent when she questions if it will be in this life…
It’s time for another Midnight Club meeting now, and Ilonka’s in far less pain than she was earlier today and is feeling optimistic that her test results will show her tumours are indeed shrinking. She knows this doesn’t mean she’s all better, but it at least means she can get better, and all she wants is a second chance. Her dream about the Master has also helped lift her spirits, although she f0und it kind of strange because she’s never disagreed with what the Master has told her before. Her guilt about what she did to Kathy is dampening her mood, though – she can barely even look at Kevin, wondering if Kathy had called and told him what Ilonka said. It also doesn’t help that Kevin looks dreadful tonight, the poor guy.
Anyway, Spencer’s somehow ordered wine through the mail and has brought two bottles tonight for a toast to ‘”the first day of the rest of our lives.”‘ Everyone gets a full glass and seems to enjoy it, except Ilonka who’s never had wine before and finds it way too bitter [Yeah, wine isn’t great. The only one I like is cheap moscato hahah]. They finish one bottle before getting into tonight’s stories, and Spence wants Anya to go first so he can follow up with one that’ll blow her away, but Anya doesn’t have a story tonight.
Sandra, however, who’s already drunk and starting on her third glass of wine [Hahaha bless her], would finally like to properly join the club and dives into the story of how she lost her virginity. Basically she met a guy walking his dog at a park and they got to talking for a few hours, then they went into the woods and had sex. Sandra had really enjoyed it, but it was very out of character for her conservative nature and she believes the wine they’d been drinking that day played a part in it [Oooh, is someone else gonna get lucky tonight?].
Spence goes next, and his tale stars a nerdy high school senior named Sidney who’s really good at magic tricks. He’s got a crush on an ex-cheerleader, Mary, who’d been ostracised by her peers after her drink-driving caused the deaths of six guys from the football team. Mary hates the entire student body now and has a secret agenda when she encourages Sidney to put on a magic show in front of the whole school, with her as his assistant. Mary sabotages each of the tricks she’s part of and just as planned, the other students are laughing at Sidney, not with him.
Afterwards, he believes Mary’s claims that the equipment had failed each time, and she’s able to subtly manipulate him into seeking revenge on his classmates for humiliating him. Sidney decides to burn down the school gym while everyone’s inside, so the night of the big game, he breaks into an oil refinery and steals a gasoline truck, then heads on over to the school. He chains the doors to the gym closed and drills a hole into one of them before pumping in the gas from the truck. Of course, everyone inside tries to escape, but the doors won’t budge and the windows are too small and too high up for anyone to fit through.
Sidney starts to feel guilty while listening to everyone panic and turns the gas off, but Mary had anticipated his regret and bops him over the head before introducing the gym to a flaming newspaper [Ugh this would be a horrible way to go]. Sidney warns he’ll tell the police everything, but Mary threatens to kill him right now if that’s his plan, and they eventually agree that she’ll buy his silence by continuing in his magic act.
A year later, Sidney and Mary regularly perform together, but she’s super controlling and loves telling him she could turn him into the police at any time since everyone would believe he was responsible for the fire over a cute ex-cheerleader like her [What a little B!]. Finally fed up with her crap, Sidney rigs one of his tricks and and saws the manipulative cow in half live on stage. He even gets away with it by telling authorities he wasn’t sure what happened since he’d successfully done the trick many times in the past [Come on, Spence, that’s at least a manslaughter sentence!]!
Spence is keen to get Anya’s opinion on the story, but she’s clearly in a lot of pain and she admits that she spaced out and stopped listening. This should be insulting since the one rule of The Midnight Club is to give each storyteller your undivided attention, but Spence just appears nervous [Oh no, is Anya going to die soon? I like her 😢 ]
Ilonka’s up next with another past-life tale as Padma, a young woman in ancient India, but the story begins with her mother, Parvati. At 16, Parvati met a man named Visnu and they immediately fell in love. Unfortunately for them, Parvati is from the highest social class and Visnu from the lowest, so they would never be allowed to marry. Despite their immense love for each other, they decided they couldn’t see each other anymore and Visnu left the area, and an arranged marriage was soon organised for Parvati. Her husband-to-be was fine and all but Parvati knew she would never feel for him anything close to her love for Visnu, so the night before the wedding, she prays to Shiva to just let her die.
After a while, she spots someone in the courtyard through the window and hurries outside, immediately realising it’s a siddha, ‘a perfect being, a saintlike person’ that might even be Shiva himself. The siddha hands her a yellow jewel, explaining it represents Parvati and Visnu’s mutual love, and ‘”while that love lives, you will live in this world.”‘ The siddha then leaves, and Parvati creates a clasp for the jewel and wears it close to her heart.
The next day she’s married to Raja and after some time, she gives birth to Padma. Padma is gifted the yellow jewel on a gold chain on her 10th birthday, and has worn it ever since, although she doesn’t know the significance. History repeats itself when 16-year-old Padma falls in love with Dharma, a man from the lowest social class. Padma refuses to let that get in the way of love and tells her parents that she’d sooner die than let anything stop her from marrying him. Raja is outraged and locks her in her bedroom, and soon after, Parvati’s mother arrives and reveals to Parvati that she knew about Visnu and learned from a dream that they were destined for each other. She never said anything though because she didn’t want the family to be disgraced, and now worries that Padma is in the same situation.
Parvati’s mother tells her where Visnu is and she hurries off to see the love of her life, who is living on the streets at this point. She tells him everything and he asks to see her and Padma, and it’s decided that Visnu will come to the house posing as a labourer looking for work. Parvati then stays with her mother for a few days [Why though? What’s the point?] and when Visnu arrives at Padma’s home, Raja tells him they doesn’t need any workers. Visnu is a pure soul incapable of lying and ends up explaining everything, and understandably, Raja ain’t happy. He sends Visnu away and retrieves the gem from Padma, who has no idea what the hell is going on.
A very short time after that, Raja returns to Padma with bad news – Parvati’s dead, having apparently fallen into a coma around the same time Raja took the gem from Padma. That night he has a dream that makes him aware of the connection between the gem and Parvati’s death, and insists Padma take the gem back. Upon hearing the full story, Padma refuses to take it unless Raja allows Padma to marry Dharma:
” ‘Don’t you see?’ I told my father. ‘It wasn’t the gem that kept my mother alive but the bond of love she had with Visnu. When in your anger you took the gem from me and ordered him away, you tried to break that bond. That is why she died. And I, too, even if I wear the gem constantly, will be as if dead if you don’t let me marry Dharma. The gem’s only magic is the love we bring to it.’ “
[I feel like that doesn’t really make sense, though; it’s not like Parvati and Visnu’s love for each other disappeared because Raja took the gem? Why is this what killed her, when she’d been kept apart from Visnu since she was 16?] Raja relents, and luckily for everyone, Dharma is from a different region and no-one in the town knows him or his family, so Padma and Dharma are able to tell everyone he’s from the same class as her, but it’s not an easy feat because the class Padma and Raja belong to are taught lots of things from birth that someone like Dharma never learns. After the marriage, Raja begins teaching Dharma everything he needs to know, but unfortunately Raja gets sick and suddenly dies around the same time Padma learns she’s pregnant.
This is bad timing because the father of a child is required to perform several public ceremonies to celebrate the birth, and Dharma was nowhere near ready for that. The traditions are mostly passed down orally, too, and Padma and Dharma don’t trust anyone enough to ask to teach him. Finally, their son, Bhrigu, is born, and the entire village gathers to watch Dharma’s ceremonies. Of course, the villagers quickly realise Padma and Dharma’s marriage is a sing and they’re from different social backgrounds. They won’t be executed, but Padma’s family will likely be exiled from the village to fend for themselves in the wild, which is basically a death sentence anyway.
A man suddenly strolls into the village, and Padma intuitively recognises him as the siddha her mother had met all those years ago. The siddha strolls right up to Padma and Bhrigu and announces to the village that despite what society says, Padma and Dharma’s love is powerful and divine, and Bhrigu will grow up to be a great seer that will bring people together and reshape their current understanding of social classes – ‘This small child, you will one day call him Master.’ [Wait, so Ilonka basically gave birth to the Master in one of her lives? Was this her first life?]. The siddha then leaves and Padma’s family continues to live in the village, despite the unfriendliness of the residents, and everything the siddha foretold ends up coming true.
It’s Kevin’s turn to continue his tale of Herme and Teresa now, and aftter leaving the Louvre, Herme has nothing but the clothes on his back and his love for Teresa, who has little money and spends her nights sleeping in youth hostels. She has little money, so Herme uses his artistic talents to do people’s portraits on the street, gaining himself a strong reputation for his work. The money he makes allows the couple to buy a studio where he can continue his successes, but he finds himself getting bored of portraits and longs for a change. A change won’t be coming anytime soon, because Teresa’s in charge of the business side of things and him fully booked with portraits for the next few months.
Eventually his work begins to suffer and the studio gets many complaints, so the couple moves to New York for a change of scenery. Their dwindling romance has a brief revival as they spend more time with each other, but it doesn’t last due to Herme’s clinginess. He’s had no previous experience with human relationships, obviously, and assumes the best thing to do when Teresa is pulling away is to give her more love. She wants him to start working again soon [Get your own job????], but Herme isn’t interested in portraits anymore and would rather paint scenery and abstract works. Teresa doesn’t like this and she actually tells him he owes her because ‘she had given him his start when he had had nothing.’ [Fuck this bitch lol. She’s had a great time living off the money he’s made over the last god knows how long and there’s been no mention of her contributing at all 😡 ]
Herme withdraws more and more and spends his nights walking the streets of New York until one day he comes home to find Teresa in bed with another man [Ugh]. And she doesn’t even apologise!!!!!!!! A depressed Herme wanders the more dangerous streets of New York, hoping someone will attack him and put him out of his misery, but when that doesn’t work, he heads to the Brooklyn Bridge to jump off. Just before he’s about to take the leap, he has a thought – if it’s possible to go from an angel to a human, could it possibly be a two-way street, and one could go from human to angel? Herme decides not to kill himself and sets out to find himself again, and this instalment ends here because Kevin is very, very tired. Anya really wants to more, though:
“Does it end happily?” Anya asked, not giving up.
“If I tell you the end you’ll have nothing to look forward to,” Kevin said.
Anya stared at him oddly, almost as if to say I have nothing to look forward to.
[Ugh, this really makes me think Anya’s gonna be the first to die and it’s gonna be very soon :(] Time for bed now, and as Spence wheels Anya out, she bids everyone goodnight and says how great it’s been meeting here. Spence tells her there’ll be another great meeting tomorrow, but Anya seems distant as she agrees [She probably senses she’s about to die, the poor girl].
Ilonka walks Kevin back to his room, where he invites her in for tea. Ilonka would love nothing more, but she’s way too tired and suggests a rain check for tomorrow night. She also begins to tell him that she spoke to Kathy today, but he already knows and tells her it doesn’t matter [Does he even like Kathy? Lol]. Ilonka returns to her room to find Spence sitting on her bed and Anya still in her wheelchair, and it’s clear this is a bad time to interrupt. She’s super exhausted though, so she plops down onto her bed anyway, telling them, ‘”Ignore me, I’m just a blob of protoplasm.”‘ [Hahaha mood] Spence quickly leaves and as Ilonka begins dozing off, Anya tells her she’s never told anyone about Bill before but trusted Ilonka enough to tell her:
When Anya spoke next she sounded a thousand miles away.
“I know Kevin’s in each of your past-life stories. I think he knows it, too. But the past is the past, you know. It’s dead. I hope you two get to live a little before we’re all dead.” Anya paused and Ilonka heard a faint movement. She felt the touch of something warm and moist on her cheek and wondered if Anya had kissed her. “Dream, my darling,” Anya said softly.
“This is all a dream,” Ilonka whispered. Then she was gone.
[Anya’s so sweet, aww] Tonight’s dream involves Ilonka sitting with the Master in a lush forest concluding the long, sad story of her life. The Master basically tells her to stop dwelling on the past and focus on being present in the moment. Whatever past life version of Ilonka this is wants a miracle, but the Master argues as long as she has faith, everything is perfect already. He advises that God gives her hard lessons because she’s a slow learner and keeps making the exact same mistakes. Ilonka urges him to bring her dead partner/husband back [Is this a continuation of the last dream? Or does Ilonka’s partner die in each one or something?], but the Master gravely warns her to be careful what she wishes for – ‘”You might get it.”‘
Ilonka wakes up at 10am and is surprised that Anya, who’s usually awake before Ilonka, is still sound asleep [She’s definitely dead 😫] – ‘If ever there were two sleepyheads, it was [Ilonka and Anya].’ [Hahahahaha why is this line so funny?]. And then my suspicions are confirmed:
Ilonka continued to stare at Anya. She was really sleeping deeply, she was so still. It made Ilonka nervous how still she was.
“Anya?” Ilonka said. “Anya?”
No answer. Ilonka slowly sat up, her eyes ever leaving her friend’s face.
“Anya? It’s ten in the morning. Wake up.”
Still as a mannequin. Anya was hardly breathing.
“Anya?” Ilonka stepped over to her bed and shook the girl. “Anya.”
No, not hardly. Not at all. Anya had stopped breathing.
[Damn you, Pike, now I’m sad] Ilonka tries to shake Anya awake but it’s no use; she’s obviously been dead for hours. Numb with shock, Ilonka fetches Dr. White and after assessing the corpse, he estimates that Anya’s been dead for around seven or eight hours, not long after they’d gone to bed.
Remembering how strange Anya had been acting last night, Ilonka believes Anya purposely overdosed and requests an autopsy be done, but Dr. White doesn’t think the details matter and wants Ilonka to be comforted by the fact that Anya is no longer in terrible pain. A suicide is unlikely here anyway because an overdose takes a while to kill someone, which means Anya would have had to have taken the drugs before The Midnight Club met last night and would have been unconscious at the meeting.
Dr. White heads off to phone what little family Anya and soon, some nurses arrive to collect the body. Ilonka heads into the bathroom to gather up Anya’s toiletries, but nothing is there. Only Dr. White and Ilonka knew she’d died before he went off to phone her family, so her things can’t have already been cleared out – could it be Anya’s sign from the afterlife? Ilonka wonders if Anya moved everything as a little trick inspired by Ilonka’s story about Delius, but there’s no way Anya could have done it in the night when she could barely even move without assistance [Did Spence take them, maybe? Or maybe she’d already removed everything earlier in the day and Ilonka just hadn’t noticed].
Sandra, Spence and Kevin have already heard the news by the time Ilonka gets to them, and soon all four of them are trying to console themselves in the boys’ room, but no-one admits to moving Anya’s belongings. Spence seems the hardest hit, having been the closest with Anya despite their bickering.
Later, there’s a big rumour going around the hospital that one of the patients has been misdiagnosed, but it can’t be verified until Dr. White returns from his mission to find someone from Anya’s family. Ilonka is absolutely sure she’s the misdiagnosed patient since she’s the only one in the hospice who’d had tests recently [She doesn’t even know a majority of the patients here so I don’t know why she’d base it on that]. ‘As soon as the words reached her ears, her pain level dropped considerably,’ so she’s super ecstatic that she’s not going to die after all [Does she know misdiagnosed doesn’t necessarily mean she’s not actually stick?].
She also immediately feels bad for the other members of The Midnight Club, especially Kevin [Because of course, especially Kevin], and she makes a vow to herself to remain at the hospice until he dies. She decides to go visit Kevin in his room and brings up the Kathy situation again. Kevin is still unbothered and changes the subject ,suggesting Anya’s stuff going missing might be the sign from the afterlife, especially since it’s related to one of Ilonka’s stories.
Ilonka’s got other things on her mind, though, and tells Kevin that the misdiagnosed patient is her. He warns that she might be jumping to a dangerous conclusion but keeps his fingers crossed for her. They then decide to go for a walk outside and take a seat on a boulder, gazing out onto the churning ocean. Kevin admits that Herme and Teresa remind him of himself and Ilonka, and also reveals he thinks he knows what the Master looks like [That’s nice, I don’t think we’ve gotten a physical description lol]:
“When you tell your stories, I remember them with you. I remember Delius and Padma as if they were sitting beside me in the study next to the fire.”
She chuckled with delight. “You should remember Shradha and Dharma better. You were supposed to—” She caught herself quickly. “I mean, you remind me of them more than the other two.”
[I mean, assuming he was Shradha and Dharma in these past lives, what he said makes more sense, right? He would have been remembering his past-life experiences with Delius and Padma, rather than himself in these lives?] Kevin asks Ilonka for a huge favour now, explaining that as per his wishes, his family will cremate his corpse and give the ashes to Ilonka. He doesn’t want his ashes to be buried or scattered somewhere where his mother can go to mourn because ‘”it won’t be good for her,”‘ and instead a tearful Ilonka agrees to scatter his remains right here, into the breeze above the ocean [I mean, I get he doesn’t want his mother to mourn but it’s gonna happen either way, and this sounds like an awful thing to do to her. Maybe she’ll keep some of his ashes with her or something. Also, are these two just gonna ignore the possibility that Ilonka might die before Kevin?]
Later on her way back to her room, Ilonka passes Sandra’s and pokes her head inside to say hello, but stays silent when she sees that Sandra’s packing a suitcase, a big smile on her face. Realising what this means, Ilonka rushes to Dr. White’s office to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth, and he confirms the type of Hodgkin’s Sandra has is not fatal and she’ll be leaving the hospital today. Upon Ilonka’s insistence, Dr. White also breaks the really, really bad news about her test results – her tumours have actually spread, seriously affecting her liver and spleen, and there’s also spots on her lungs; it’s likely Ilonka only has a couple of weeks to live.
Understandably, Ilonka has a bit of an existential crisis [And I’m having one too because of this book 😢 ], particularly bothered by the fact she’s going to die a virgin [There’s still time!], and flees the room, ending up in the basement where they keep the corpses before disposing them. Anya’s body is in a green plastic bag, tagged and ready to go, and Ilonka holds onto her friend for God knows how long. Eventually, Kevin arrives and silently leads her back to her room, where Dr. White gives her an injection that sends her off to sleep.
In this dream, she asks the Master what it’s like to die, and he explains it’s nothing to fear because although the personality and body changes from life to life, ‘”the real you is never reborn, nor does it ever die.”‘ He urges her to remember that when death comes knocking, ‘”you will have no fear,”‘ reminding her that he’ll be with her when the time comes [Like, physically? Or via her faith?].
She wakes up close to midnight to find Kevin resting on Anya’s bed, dressed in his robe. He tells her there’s no meeting tonight and that Sandra, who’d come to say goodbye earlier when Ilonka was sound asleep, had promised to write [I kinda feel for Sandra too; like yes, she’s not dying, lucky her, but she’s gotta have some sort of survivor’s guilt after being at the hospice and seeing everyone there. Also, it just occurred to me, did Kevin/Sandra/Spence’s families ever visit them?! You’d think they’d want to see their dying kid as much as possible but they’ve never even had a mention].
Kevin asks if she was dreaming of the Master tonight, because he’d dozed off for a bit and is sure he dreamed of him too, but all he remembers is how wonderful it felt to sit with him. Ilonka explains her dream, and Kevin admits that Ilonka’s stories have weakened his fear of dying. Ilonka’s suddenly overwhelmed by pain in her abdomen so Kevin hands her two morphine pills and climbs in bed next to her. He comforts Ilonka as she laments about how foolish she’d been to think the herbal tablets would work and that she wouldn’t succumb to her illness. She was determined to make her mark on the world, but look at her now – only a handful of people know her name and only because she’s dying, and then even those people will forget her once she’s gone.
Kevin won’t forget, though, and Ilonka wonders if maybe he’ll be an angel on the other side. Speaking of angels, after a bit of prodding from Ilonka he decides to finish his story, despite Spence not being here [Rude], and it ain’t a happy ending. After leaving the bridge, Herme decides to get a job unrelated to art. He spends the next few years as a taxi driver in New York, and although not a day goes by that he doesn’t wonder about Teresa, he never bumps into her or even attempts to seek her out, knowing that his love isn’t enough. He also recognises the ways he was bad for her, too – ‘He had made her dependent on him, and likewise, he had become needy.’ [Huh? She made herself dependent on him, living off the money he made for them. If anything, he was dependent on Teresa because he had no idea what mortal life was like].
After five years, Herme moves to the Rocky Mountains and becomes a forest ranger in a national park. He falls in love again but a week before their wedding, he’s injured in a rescue mission that leaves his legs paralysed. His soon-to-be bride is devoted and wants to stay with him no matter what, but Herme refuses to see her and ignores every phone call and letter [Wow, rude].
Once discharged from the hospital, wheelchair-bound Herme studies medicine himself and after nine years, he gets a job at a free clinic in Los Angeles, where he can help the poor and homeless and is content with doing his bit for humanity. The poor guy also develops some kidney issues, and his health deteriorates over time. One night, a homeless, emaciated woman with severe pneumonia is brought in – it’s Teresa! Herme is both delighted to see her again and saddened that she’s in this state, especially when testing shows that she’s got AIDS and doesn’t have long to live.
Teresa doesn’t recognise Herme, which makes him feel like he didn’t matter much to her, but at the same time he’s relieved because he doesn’t know what he would have said to her. Despite this, Herme takes care of her and she begins to open up. We learn that she’s had two failed marriages and one of her two children died in a car crash, sparking a downward spiral she wasn’t able to escape.
Herme is devastated for her and wonders how different things would be if they had stayed together, especially when she mentions a special someone from her youth. She tells him how everything had been great until they moved to New York and her boyfriend didn’t want to keep doing his amazing art, which had made her nervous because they were running low on money [So why didn’t you get a fkn job, Teresa?]. Then he caught her having an affair and she never saw him again.
It’s a painful memory for Teresa, who regrets not being able to apologise and tell him how wonderful he was. Herme suggests she might meet him again one day and can tell him how she feels, but Teresa doesn’t want to meet him in her current state. Speaking of, Herme had removed the mirror when she’d first come in, not wanting her to see how awful she looked [She couldn’t see her reflection in windows while homeless?], but she insists on seeing herself and he agrees to bring her one tomorrow.
Instead, after his shift he picks up some painting supplies and spends all night painting Teresa as she’d appeared when they first met. The next morning when he arrives at the hospital, Teresa’s in a coma because her condition suddenly worsened overnight. She eventually wakes up and Herme shows her the ‘mirror’ he’s brought, and after one look at the painting she realises who her doctor is. They embrace, and a very short time later she’s slipped back into her coma and dies later that day.
That’s the end, but Kevin isn’t sure what happens to Herme which Ilonka recognises as a reflection of his own uncertain mortality. When she points out the references to the other Midnight Club members and their surroundings in his story, such Anya’s wheelchair and doctors taking, and silently wondering if he knew about Anya and Bill, since that mirrored Teresa and Herme [Yeah, actually, why the hell was Ilonka supposed to be Teresa in that story?], but Kevin denies it was deliberate and was likely subconscious.
Ilonka and Kevin then confess their love for each other and Ilonka expresses her fear of dying unloved, a virgin. Kevin is all for making love, even though neither of them is healthy enough to actually do the deed, and points out they don’t have to have sex to make love – ‘”We can take off our clothes and hold each other and it will be better than in the movies.”‘ [Aww, how cute]
Tonight’s dream is a jumble of glimpses into potential past lives, including as an alien and a mermaid, and eventually Ilonka sees a life where she’s a king of a long-ago land. He meets a woman who possesses something called Rapture, similar to the act of sex, but uses ‘a more cunning sequence of caresses’ that brings the entire nervous system to a climax [Oof, sign me up]. The king is basically given a hall pass by the queen, who warns that everyone the woman sleeps with becomes addicted to her, and although she’ll give the king physical pleasure, it won’t make him forget the queen’s love.
The king goes to the woman anyway, but resists her seductions, wanting to actually get to know her to see what all the fuss is about. After more than a week, though, he decides to return to his wife, missing her greatly and realising he has true love with her, which shocks the Rapture enchantress because he never even tried to sleep with her. He does find her fascinating though, and suggests they might meet again in another time and he’ll know ‘”the full pleasure of your company.”‘ The enchantress agrees, advising that she’ll be the master and he’ll beg to stay with her when that day comes.
The king returns to his wife and they live happily ever after, and then Ilonka dreams of another life, this time as a 16-year-old outcast in the Middle Ages suffering from an illness that made her bald from birth. She’s in love with a young man who treats her kindly and respectfully, but unfortunately the feeling isn’t mutual, so she prays to God to change this.
A wizard comes to her life and teachers her some black magic called Seedling which, much like Rapture, uses the sex drive to manipulate others. But while Rapture is entirely physical, Seedling is mental, and soon she’s able to draw her crush to her whenever she wants. She uses it on other men too, because although she loves the boy, those who use Seedling quickly become promiscuous [Nelly Fertado and Timbaland have entered the chat].
In return, the wizard requires her instant availability whenever he wishes, which she obeys even though it repulses her. Eventually, though, the wizard wants her to use Seedling to seduce an old enemy of his and murder him in his sleep. She agrees out of fear but hurries to the church as soon as she can, where she prays to God to take her powers away. The boy she loves comes by and she tearfully confesses everything, and even though he’d been used by her, the boy is genuinely in love with her now too and suggests they run away together.
She returns home to gather her things but is quickly confronted by the wizard, who stabs her in the stomach [That explains the cancer in this life, I guess] and leaves her for dead because of her betrayal. The boy finds her before she dies and promises they’ll be together in another time:
“I will share your wrongs,” he said. “So that wherever fate places us we can be together. Even if it should mean our future days will be dark and filled with pain. Because even in that darkness our love will be in the light.”
[Cuuuuuute] The girl then dies, and soon Ilonka sees what she thinks is a depiction of the future, with Herme the angel painting a bright, blue star with a heavenly backdrop, while Ilonka stands next to him ‘as if she were his personal muse.’ In the morning, Ilonka and Kevin wake up to the beautiful singing of a bird on the but the happiness doesn’t last long [Prepare yourself for the worst before reading further!]:
He smiled at her. “What a beautiful sight to wake up to.” He closed his eyes and sighed. His face was very thin. “What a beautiful sound.”
She ran her hand through his fine hair. “Did you dream last night?”
“Yes. About you.”
“So did I. It was nice, but I’m glad it’s morning.”
“So am I.”
“I love you, Kevin.”
“I love you, Ilonka.”
He never did open his eyes again, dying a few minutes later in her arms.
Two days later, Ilonka’s on the cliff, throwing Kevin’s ashes into the wind. His parents had had no objection with Ilonka dealing with his remains, and in their brief meeting she gave his mother an apology letter she’d written to Kathy in which she also mentions that Kevin died peacefully [How nice of you, Ilonka!].
Dr. White also got Ilonka in touch with an old friend of Anya’s, who promises to try find Bill so she can talk to him. Sandra calls at one point too, and although she and Ilonka speak for ages, they don’t say much that’s significant, being part of two very different worlds now. Ilonka wonders if the reason Sandra had never been able to tell a story to The Midnight Club was because she’d never really belonged there; perhaps it really only belonged to the dying.
Ilonka has little contact with Spence after Kevin’s death, since both are so ill by this point that they spend all their time in the rooms. He’d also contracted a severe case of pneumonia that could kill him, and although the staff aren’t treating him for it, they’re making his last days as comfortable as possible.
About two weeks after Kevin’s death, Spence is near death and wants to talk to Ilonka [Oh god, I’m not ready for this], and she can’t help but notice the sores all over his face [Poor Spence] when she reaches his room. He asks to hear the final instalment of Kevin’s story and Ilonka retells it as best she can, which brings back memories of the many similarities between Kevin’s characters and The Midnight Club.
This also triggers a memory of how tired Ilonka had felt after the wine, and she quickly realises Spence had drugged her so he could assist Anya with her suicide. Although he admits to putting phenobarbital in Ilonka’s glass, he refuses to directly admit that he helped Anya die, so I guess we’ll save her cause of death for later [He had to have murdered her somehow, right?]
Recognising the common theme of rage against society in all of Spence’s stories, Ilonka questions where all the anger comes from, but he refuses to talk about it. Ilonka gets more nosy, asking why his girlfriend, Caroline, has never shown up and why Spence has sores all over his face. Caroline “couldn’t afford the train fair,”‘ apparently, but there’s more to it than that:
Spence suddenly flared up. “Because I’m dying, dammit! Leave me alone.”
Ilonka nodded. “You are mad about it, aren’t you? I was mad, too.” She leaned over and touched his hand. “I care about you, Spence. I’m not here to torment you.”
He shook off her touch. “Why are you here?”
“You asked me to come. You wanted to talk to me about more than Kevin’s story.” She stopped. “What are you dying of, Spence?”
He drew in a shaky breath and nervously rubbed his hands together. When he looked at her there was so much pain in his eyes it almost broke her heart.
“Why do you ask when it’s clear you know?” he said. “I have AIDS.”
“Did you catch it from Caroline?”
He swallowed. “His name was Carl.”
“It’s all right. You don’t have to be ashamed.”
[Oh my god, poor Spence. Poor all of these teens 🙁 Why did I read this?!?!] Ilonka encourages Spence to get his story off his chest before it’s too late, he opens up about his shame over his sexuality – ‘”In my school fags were fags, they were not people. And I wanted to be a person, Ilonka. I am a person.”‘ Spence met the love of his life, Carl, at 15, and after dating for a while, Spence decided to go for an AIDS test because he’d had one previous sexual partner. It came back positive, but he was scared he’d lose Carl if he told him, so he remained quiet and Carl succumbed to the disease himself. So it turns out Spence had been writing and mailing the letters from “Caroline” himself, I guess to keep up the facade of his sexuality? Not sure why it’d matter to the hospice people though.
Ilonka points out the possibility that Carl had actually given it to Spence, but Carl had never been promiscuous so Spence is sure that’s not the case. Carl never blamed him, even his final days, and this guilt has been eating away at Spence ever since. Ilonka urges him to let it go so he doesn’t die tormenting himself, but Spence can’t see how anyone could forgive him for what he did and thinks he deserves to die [God damn it, Pike, I was not mentally prepared for all this sadness! I was expecting a tale of horror!].
Ilonka then brings up her dream last night and how the boy she was in love with, who she believes was a past-life Kevin, had promised to share the consequences of whatever bad things she’d done so that wherever they went, they would go together. She realises the lesson the Master had been trying to teach her all this time, through all her lives, is that everyone is here on earth to discover divine love; ‘”To love the way God loves us.”‘ She then offers Spence the same deal; she’ll share his sins with him. Spence is doubtful that it’s even a possibility but is super grateful anyway and accepts her offer.
Anya knew Carl, too, which is why she’d tasked Spence with fulfilling her death wish when the morphine could no longer stop her agony – ‘”She told me that I was the only one who could kill her because of what I felt I had done to Carl.”‘ [True, I guess if you already feel guilty about being responsible for someone else’s death, regardless if it’s true or not, what’s one more notch on the belt?]:
“I took her pillow and pressed it down over her face and I could hear her smothering—with you sleeping peacefully only three feet away. I had to keep telling myself that I was just giving back to her the thing I had stolen from Carl. I know that doesn’t make a lot of sense, but even more than his life I felt I had taken Carl’s dignity from him. He did not die easily. Anya told me that she wanted to go out with a little dignity. I could give her that much.”
[I would rather overdose lol fuck that] Spence also reckons it was Kevin who took Anya’s personal items because when Spence returned to their room after suffocating Anya, Kevin left, saying there was something he had to do. He knew Ilonka had been drugged and Anya had just been killed, but it’s unclear to me if it’s because Kevin was just very preceptive or Spence had told him the pan at some point.
Anyway, Spence theorises that Kevin took Anya’s stuff as a means to comfort Ilonka, who would then eventually die herself believing there’s something on the other side [What a sweetie], much like how Shradha’s pain was easier to bear when she believed Mage had taken her things to the afterlife. This all makes sense to Ilonka, since Kevin did think he was Delius and Ilonka was Shradha [I have no idea why he’d come to that conclusion considering Delius was the central character… why would Ilonka be the side character in a story about her past life?].
A few days later, a bedridden Ilonka gets a visitor and although they’ve never met, she instantly recognises him as Bill – ‘He was a handsome guy, his hair color not withstanding.’ [Omg, not the gingerism hahahaha]. She tells him how sorry Anya was for what happened between them and offers him a box of her things she’d left behind [Didn’t Kevin take them? Or did he only take things from the bathroom?]. Inside the box is the clay statue Anya had been making for him, and Ilonka can’t believe her eyes because female in the figure has both legs now. There’s no sign of repair work, as if the leg had always been there [Ooky spooky!] and, realising this is a sign, Ilonka is satisfied that love really can conquer death.
After Bill leaves, Ilonka tries to call Spence to tell him what happened, but he’s in a coma by this point and dies two days later. More days pass as Ilonka’s health steadily declines, until one day she wakes up to the sound of a bird singing:
The white dove sat on her windowsill and stared at her, and as Ilonka looked over, the bird turned its head toward the sun. Ilonka followed its gaze and was surprised to see a bright blue star in the sky, even with the sun’s rays burning down. The star shone like a jewel of incomparable worth. For a long time Ilonka stared at it and as she did so, one by one, more stars appeared in the sky, until soon the whole of heaven was lit with points of light that did not twinkle, even as her eyes began to tire and blink. The entire galaxy shone in all its glory, even as the sun grew brighter and brighter, and her eyes slowly closed for the last time.
Time for an epilogue now, with Ilonka, now a being named Eisokna, standing on the observation deck of a starliner, Space Beagle III, which will be departing for Sirus in an hour. She’s gazing down at Earth; it had been her home for all the days of her life, and leaving it for good is both sad and exciting. Along with her Karlen, who she’d recently wed, she’s set to be one of the first settlers to colonize Treta, ‘the sixth planet in the Sirus star system.’ It’s been a long, hard journey for Eisokna and Karlen to get to this point, and she’s excited for this journey of a lifetime.
All of a sudden, Eisokna can hear a bird singing as if directly into her ear, and she’s hit with a wave of nostalgia as she wonders where it’s coming from. Then Karlen appears and the book ends on a positive note:
“Ready to leave?” he asked.
She sniffed. “I don’t know. I was standing here looking at the earth and I felt as if I were saying goodbye to my best friend. But I also felt as if everything was finally settled between us, and now I can move on. Do you know what I mean?”
Karlen moved to her side and hugged her close. “No,” he said, but he smiled.
“She laughed; he always made her laugh. “I don’t either. You’re supposed to be my best friend.” Wiping away her tears, she leaned over and kissed him. She was happy; it felt as if it had been a long time coming and she was determined to enjoy it. The sound of the singing bird faded into the distance and was gone. “Yes. I’m ready to leave.”
Final thoughts
OK so this was no at all what I was expecting, but I really enjoyed it anyway and best way to describe it would be that it’s a beautiful book. Sometimes, doing these recaps can feel like more of a chore than something fun, but I found myself looking forward to picking it back up the next chance I got, which was surprising because it’s such a departure from what I’m used to for the blog. As always, Pike has a particularly impactful way of writing that I love, although I was nowhere near prepared for all the sadness and existential horror. It’s a really deep, thought-provoking book that prompts you to question your own belief about soulmates, life and death. My Point Horror/Fear Street-rotted brain can’t even comprehend a lot of the underlying concepts and themes enough to do this book justice in a recap (I genuinely struggled to find the words to summarise it a lot of the time lol), so I implore you to get your hands on a copy of the book and read it yourself!
Although I loved it a lot, I don’t see myself wanting to reread it for a very long time, if it all, because it really did make me sad hahaha. I don’t even have much to say here because I’m just kind of speechless about it. But I can’t stress enough – find a copy and read it for yourself, you won’t regret it!
I’m interested to see how the TV adaption turns out, but I feel like this story wouldn’t work on the big screen. I expect it’ll be pretty different, but maybe I’ll be wrong!
Anyway, 109 blobs of protoplasm out of 136!
