My elbows dug harder into the earth as I held down the desperate panic rising in my chest. I ignored the cuts and stings cutting me with every inch, they were nothing compared to getting out. Forward and out.
The brightness held, a dark blue promise I fixed my eyes on until it was only twenty feet away, fifteen, ten. The pain radiating from the shredded skin on my elbows and knees was excruciating. With five feet left, the panic cut loose and a desperate sob escaped from me as I shoved myself, finally, out of the tunnel and into the night air.
I rolled onto my back and stared up into the star littered night. Tears streamed down past my temples while my chest struggled between taking great deep breaths and the heaving sobs that erupted out of me. The cool relief of the night air washed over me, calmed me, made me believe I would be alright, everything would be fine now, until a singular realization eclipsed it all.
I would need to go back through the tunnel in order to get home.
And where had home gone? Where was I? Where was Daniel? How had I seen Daniel?
Had I seen Daniel?
The air near my right ear crackled, alive with a slow, electric rattle.
I froze.
The rhythm sped up, shaking me from every other thought. I didn’t dare move, couldn’t move. From the corner of my eye, I saw the snake coil and rise up, it’s rattle held high, warning me, threatening me. It was lightening aimed directly at me.
If I moved, if I breathed, I was dead. I closed my eyes, please, please let it go away. The rattle persisted, loomed louder in my ear until it was joined by the snake’s hiss. All I could see in my minds eye was the strike, the explosive burst, the fangs sinking fast and deadly into the soft flesh of my cheek. The release of poison, the slow drip of death quickened by the speed of my own blood rushing through my body, betraying me with my hearts every pump.
The rattling reached its crescendo then shook down into silence.
Was that a good sign? Would it now slither away and leave me to not die here alone in the desert with no hope of ever reaching medical care in time. I knew nothing about snakes. The hissing had stopped as well but I didn’t dare open my eyes, I was too afraid any movement, no matter how slight, would invite the snake to go ahead and take a bite.
“Are you just going to lie there all night?” someone asked me.
Startled, my eyes flew open. Next to me, where the snake had been only a moment before, a guy with dark blond hair and brown eyes stared down at me.
I sat up and he took a step back. We stared at each other while time and space shifted in my confused mind and he grinned, self satisfied, calm—as if he were only waiting for me to catch up.
For the first time since bursting through the end of the cactus tunnel, I examined the space around me, I glanced again at the guy, then examined the space all around us.
Here, on the other side, the desert had sprouted a lush forest that looked hundreds of years old. Ten feet from where I sat, the sand and dirt gave way to a soft, dark earth. A cool breeze rustled the giant trees in front of me, filling my face with the scent of pine and growth, lifting my hair in a wild frenzy around my head. Only when the air lost its breath and the trees settled back into a shushed sway did I look back into his face.
“What is happening?” I asked.
He looked up into the night sky above us, “A simple question,” he said and returned his gaze back to me. “Without a simple answer I’m afraid.”
“Who are you?”
“You can call me Ray.”
The forest stirred again before us. I narrowed my eyes at him, “Where are we?” A thought suddenly occurred to me. “Do I know you?”
He smiled and shrugged. “You do, and you don’t.”
“Who are you?”
“I already answered that one.”
“Then what are you?”
“Another not simple answer.”
“Why do you look so familiar to me?”
“Because the way I looked before seemed to be making you nervous.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, “What are you talking ab…” I watched, stunned into silence as Ray’s face and head contorted into the head of the snake I had seen only minutes before. A cold wave rolled through me as my breath stopped and my heart beat hard in my chest. Every part of me wanted to run, dive back into the suffocation of the tunnel behind me but the terrifying idea of this thing chasing me down kept me still.
“Now see,” the snake mouth spoke. It was Ray’s voice with a forked tongue that slipped between the words. “I can tell you’re really scared right now.” He shook his reptilian head. “Why do humans hate snakes?”
When I didn’t answer he shifted the skin and bones of his head back into the image of Ray and sighed. “Better?” he asked. He felt his cheeks for a moment, as if checking to make sure everything had sifted back into the proper order, and then smoothed his hair back away from his face. “It’s probably best if you think of me as your guide.”
“Guide to what?” My voice was a whisper.
He nodded to the forest before us, “Your guide through The Between.”
Chapter Five
The Between
“What are you talking about?”
“The Between. The space between life and death. The pause, the breath, the not here or there. Not alive and not all the way dead but the journey connecting the two,” he flourished his hand before him like a Shakespearean actor and bowed. “The Between.”
I stared at him. The impossibly lush trees before us swayed back and forth, back and forth, a living metronome marking the passage of time. Marking the seconds that felt stretched into hours. The hours I waited to wake up.
“I assure you,” he said gently. “This is no dream.” He raised one eyebrow into an unnaturally high arch, a feat I felt certain a typical human could not perform. “At least,” he bent down and crouched low so his words traveled directly into my ear, “not the type of dream you’ve ever had.”
His breath was a cold stream against my ear that sent a ripple of fear cascading though my body. I shivered while panic closed my throat.
He grinned and stood back up, “My, my…we are ssssensitve, aren’t we?” He threw his head back and laughed, “SSSorry, ssslip of the forked tongue.” Then his long forked tongue did slip way past his lips, the end flicking wildly in the air between us and sending him into a fit of hysterical laughter that made him clutch at his sides and double over.
I watched his hysterics—stunned, disbelieving, wishing this would all end and I would just wake up in Graciana’s spare room. Still doubled over and incapacitated by the repetitive, “Sis-Sis-Sis. Sis-Sis-Sis,” he held up his hand indicating to me to wait, please wait just a moment. He almost had himself together, “Sis-Sis-Sis,” he shook his head.
“I’m sorry,” he stood up and forced a serious expression that broke almost immediately. “Sis-Sis. No,” he command himself. “Okay, seriously,” he smiled. “I really am your guide through The Between.” He nodded his head. “And this really isn’t a dream,” he now shook his head.
A pressure was bursting in my head and chest and I realized I had been holding my breath. I opened my nose and mouth and pulled the rich pine and earth flavored air deep inside me again and again before swallowing down the large knot in my throat. “I don’t understand what’s happening.”
“No,” he said managing a hint of sympathy. “Of course not. That is why there are guides,” he gestured to himself, “in the first place.”
“How did I get here?”
“Well it seems to me you got here the same way as I, by slithering on your belly,” he glanced at the tight hole I had just come through.
“Why would I need a guide?”
“Oh,” his expression turned grave. “you’d never make it through The Between without me,” he shook his head.
“I don’t want to go through The Between, I don’t want to go through anything. And certainly not somewhere that is between life and death,” I said not believing
my own words.
“But you will.”
It sounded like a threat I sensed he could make good on. “Why?” I asked, not really wanting to know.
He looked to the forest and straightened his spine, the breeze blew his blond hair back. “Because Daniel is trapped there.” His eyes swung back to me and held. “Your brother has been trapped in The Between for the last thirteen years. He has called to you, led you here on the one day of the year it is possible for him to do so—he’s hoping you will help him.”
“Help him what?” I breathed.
“Leave The Between and cross over to The Beyond.”
“What are you saying. Daniel is dead. Daniel has been dead.”
“In your world, in the flesh and the physical…yes. But that is hardly the only place for existence. His soul didn’t magically vanish when his physical body died. It transformed. Most die and move through The Between and onto The Beyond,” he shrugged. “No problem. And some,” a gravity pulled at his features, severity wrinkled his brow. “Some become trapped there. Some never escape there.” He looked into my eyes. “If too much time passes, they never leave, and they forget that there was ever anything else except The Between. Their energy atrophies…and that’s the way she likes it.”
“She?”
“The Great Balancer,” he whispered. “It’s her job to watch over the souls and the accounts of the past lives. She records it in The Book. All the energy coming from one life and trying to move to the next must balance.”
My mind spun around his words, trying to make sense of the impossible. “So why is Daniel stuck?”
“He can’t remember how he died.”
“You said she liked it, liked it when the energy…” I didn’t remember the word.
“Atrophies,” he helped. “Yes, she likes that a great deal.”
“Why?”
“Because she gets to keep it for herself.”
“She takes his soul? And what happens to Daniel?”
He looked at the ground then, avoided my eyes, “He will become a faint.”
“What is that?”
“A blur, a thin almost…a faint is one breath away from nothing. Only it is far worse than actually being nothing because the only thing left of you is the memory of having once been a something. It is a torturous existence from which there is no end.”
I stood up now. All I could envision was our family picture, Daniel’s happy smiling face. His bright blonde hair, his chubby baby cheeks. He had been so much—it wasn’t possible, the thought of him becoming the way this Ray described, it wasn’t possible. I looked into his face, he watched me in silence.
My hands clasped over my head and I walked away. I needed to think—didn’t I? What was he asking of me exactly? Did it even matter? Daniel was a little boy, he was my baby brother. Trapped for thirteen years. A thought flew to me, a sudden awareness like a cold shower from the sky.
I spun around and faced Ray. I knew why Daniel was stuck.
Ray watched me closely. He narrowed his eyes, licked his lips, “Go on,” he prompted.
“You said…you said that the soul gets stuck when it can’t make an accounting for its past life.”
He nodded.
“Or explain their death.”
“Yesss,” his tongue slipped again.
“I know why Daniel can’t explain his death.”
His eyes deadlocked with mine, held me like prey. I saw the bones beneath his face shift.
“He can’t explain it,” I started. Ray took a step closer to me. His breath was coming quicker, seething his chest faster. “He can’t explain it because he doesn’t understand that his own mother killed him.”
Ray stared at me. His breath, which was very excited, began to slow. “Isss that so?” he asked.
“Yes. My mother, she is very sick. It’s why our father left us,” I finished.
“I see,” he broke his gaze. “Well this is very interesting,” he nodded. “Yes,” he turned towards the forest. “Well then, it is your decision, to help him or not. It is your decision and you must make it. You should know that, while The Between is infinite and eternal, the time available to you for travel there is not. One day. That is all.” He gestured to the hole in the cacti, “The veil between the world you know and The Between is open for one day.”
“The Day of the Dead,” I said.
Ray shook his head, “Yes, it has been called that. But the important thing is that once that day is over, your chance to leave The Between goes with it.”
“I would be stuck there for a whole year,” I said to myself.
“Oh no,” he corrected. “You would be stuck there forever. After a year in The Between, as a physical form still rightly belonging in your world,” he shook his head. “You would never survive. Even if you managed to stay hidden from The Great Balancer, the faints would suck you dry within minutes.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, “What do you mean?”
“Just how much energy do you suppose a living human possesses?”
When I didn’t answer, he continued.
“You have some measure of protection, for your travels during the single day. But once that passes, the faints will begin to feed on you, draining your life energy away until you are so weak, you will not even have the strength to remember you are human, let alone the desire to get back to the world you came from. That is unless, The Great Balancer doesn’t get you first.”
“But I would have the day?”
He nodded.
“And I have to, what? Help Daniel understand what happened to him?
He nodded again.
“And then…and then Daniel moves on, and I…I go home?”
Ray seemed to be considering my words, measuring them out. “Yesss,” he finally answered.
“So what do I do?” I asked. “Where do I start?”
“By making the choice, of course.”
“But I have—“
“Out loud. You must say the words, out loud.”
“Then…” I hesitated for one last moment. “I choose yes,” I said louder that I had been speaking before. “I choose to help my brother Daniel.”
Ray smiled and inclined his head. “Then,” he said as he extended his hand towards me. “Let us begin.”
Part Two:
Chapter Six
The Forest
The damp and mossy forest was a stark contrast to the arid desert behind us. Ray’s hand held mine tightly, as if I were a small child who might bolt at any moment, as we navigated the spongy earth beneath us. I tried to pull my hand away but he squeezed it tighter.
“Not yet,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because if I let you go before we are through the gates, you will be lost.”
I looked behind us to the desert landscape and cactus wall that were still clearly visible. It would be nothing to turn around and squeeze back through the tight tunnel. Then, to prove his point, Ray loosened his grip. The image of the desert grew blurry and disappeared, the trees multiplied around me and the light coming from the moon over our head dimmed. When he relaxed his hand even more, the trees shot high up over my head and their trunks doubled in size filling all the empty space. I turned my head every which way and turned around and around—I had no sense of which way I had just come from or where Ray had been leading me.
His hand tightened around mine and the forest pulled back all around us until I could again see the desert behind us and the path our feet had made leading away from it.
“This is why there are guides,” he said in an I told you so voice. “Maybe, when we are all finished with this journey, you will have developed some trust in me.”
I said nothing and didn’t try to pull away again.
We continued, with our hands connected and Ray leading half a step ahead, the forest felt deep, wide, and thick all around us. Out of the corner of my eye, there was movement. I turned my head, wondering if it was a small animal or maybe a branch in the breeze. My ga
ze centered on the fat trunk of a tree the movement had been near. There was nothing. Only the forest reaching far into the dark. I stopped and stared, so Ray stopped too. Before me, in the dark depth of the wood that seemed like it stretched into infinity, the shadows swam. My skin grew cold and fear crawled up my back, the shadows seemed closer.
“What is that?” I clutched Ray’s hand in both of mine, suddenly afraid of the fact that he could just leave me here if he chose to.
“Those are faints,” he whispered near my ear making my skin shiver violently.
I narrowed my eyes and tried to focus on one or two, “I can’t see them clearly,” I said.
“Of course not,” he said. “They are faints after all. And they have not yet ventured close enough for you to see well.” He began walking again and pulled me along when our arms stretched tight between us. “Although even when they do come close, and they will, you will still find it hard to bring them into focus.”
“Closer?” I asked stumbling over an exposed root.
He sighed and didn’t answer. “Ah, see here,” he pointed to something in front of us. “We are almost to the gates now.” I looked up and saw a large tree that looked like a hand reaching up out of the earth. The main trunk was a long slender wrist, and the five main branches were the fingers topped with leafy green nails. The branch that would be the index finger was longer than all the rest and swayed back and forth in the breeze, a gentle beckoning—come this way.
I stopped walking and held tight so he would stop too. “You said closer. They will come closer?”
I watched as he took a deep breath before he turned to face me. “Yessss. They will come closer. And the moment we cross the gate you will feel it.”
“What do you mean?”
“They will begin to feed off of you.”
My eyes searched the forest again and found the dark movements again. “Feed?” A cold clawed at my back and raced up my spine, the shadows surged and moved closer to us.
The Exquisite and Immaculate Grace of Carmen Espinoza Page 4
