My lungs heaved and burned while my body racked itself trying to vomit out the fluid. My fingers dug into the soft weedy dirt, trying to keep my body from slipping back into the vast ocean beneath me. After what felt like an eternity, my chest settled into a small series of coughs and sputters, as if I had simply swallowed wrong and ended up with my drink in my windpipes.
Exhausted, I turned my head and rested it in the damp earth.
The image of my mother’s face burned before me, “Save him!” And the words of my promise rang in my ears.
I will.
Part Four:
Chapter Twenty-One
Caught
I stood on weak legs and stared out at the familiar landscape around me—I was back, standing at the edge of the suicide pool. I had traveled from the epiphany pool to here underground. This water connected with that water—was the same massive body of water, most of which was hidden beneath the earth.
Outside the perfect circle of boulders surrounding the pool, a gap in space was open. The exit from this offense. The strange portal shimmered like a hole ripped in the landscape.
I already knew Ray would not be waiting for me on the other side. The Great Balancer would have taken him the moment the moon set below the horizon and imprisoned him with the other guides she kept locked up.
I had made my mother a promise, but I had no idea how to save us all.
On the horizon, weaving through the large and small boulders, I could see the faints trapped inside this offense making their way towards me. Like moths to a flame, they could sense my energy—and they were starving.
I forced my legs to start moving for the portal. There would be more faints waiting on the other side, all I could hope is that I would at least be able to make it back to Daniel and the book before my energy ran out completely.
The faints, as if reading my plans for escape, began swimming more quickly across the rocky landscape. I started to run for the portal, but my body felt sluggish and inept compared to the speed of the faints racing towards me.
My arms and legs pumped hard while my still damp lungs strained to make use of air. There was one faint, far out in front of all the rest—it seemed certain to reach me before I could jump though the exit.
With what little I had left, I pushed my legs harder. My body passed between two of the large boulders marking the circle around the suicide pool and lunged for the shimmering space.
The first faint latched onto my back. I felt it, a pull outside of myself, like a tap connected to my nervous system—I could actually feel my energy leaving my body.
Together we passed though the portal and landed with a painful skid into the dirt on the other side. I crawled and flipped over quickly, my eyes trained on the portal behind me, afraid the rest of the faints would begin streaming through after me. But the hole was already closing fast and was no bigger than my fist by the time the next faints were pressing their desperate faces up against it.
They could not come through, and the portal shrank to the size of dime before disappearing entirely.
I sat in the dirt and heaved, unable to catch my breath. My heart would not slow down and continued to beat loud and hard in my head. When I dared, I looked over my shoulder, the faint’s gaping mouth was attached deep into my back, it’s hungry insatiable eyes met mine and then rolled back into their sockets with a blissful indulgence.
I looked away and forced myself to not vomit. Pushing myself to my feet, I hung on to consciousness as a wave of exhaustion rolled over me and threatened to make me pass out. I stared up at the enormous cliff far in the distance. The Great Balancer was there, high in her iron castle with both Daniel and Ray. How long did Daniel have before he was no different from the creature feeding on me now? Was it already too late?
There was no way of knowing but I would not stop trying until I knew for certain. I took a step and fell to the ground.
I crawled for several feet before I was able to get back up. My steps were slow and heavy, taking what felt like every ounce of effort I had left. The faint on my back never stopped and I could feel the pulsing pull, like it was sucking me through a straw, draining more and more of my will away with every second.
The urge to lie down was overwhelming.
By the time I passed the entrance to the offense where the handsome boy had almost kept me, more faints had arrived. Five clung to me now. There was another on my back that fought for space with the first while two had attached to each of my thighs. One had wound itself around my middle like some strange belt and fed on my stomach.
My vision was blurry.
It was hard to breathe.
I lifted each leg, over and over, for what felt like an eternity. Uphill, my feet dragged in the dirt, my clothes were drenched in sweat as I staggered and swayed, barely avoiding falls again and again.
I no longer looked ahead, if I did, if I considered the impossibility of continuing long enough to make the distance between where I was and the top of the cliff, I would let myself fall. I would have stopped thinking of that balloon of hope in my chest as anything other than a ridiculous fantasy. Besides, everything beyond the next few feet in front of me was a blurred confusion.
I had no way of knowing where I was or how far I had left to go.
Until I heard the voices.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Death
Their sounds began to fill the space all around me. A collective roar of once human voices, crying out, cursing, sobbing in agony. The infinite agony for the eternally damned. Their sounds made my skin shiver and even the faints feeding on me seemed to slow their pulsing pull.
My feet dragged through the dirt and I wondered if my offense against Daniel was this unforgivable. Would the sound of my own voice soon be apart of that horrifying chorus? What was an offense so bad that it could never be balanced? Murdering a small child seemed like it was one—and even though my mother no longer blamed me, I felt certain that didn’t matter here.
The ground beneath my feet suddenly inclined so sharply, I tripped and fell into the hard packed gravel. The voices were everywhere now. I had reached the base of the cliff.
It was even harder, climbing the steep and narrow path, I had to bend forward and use my hands to keep myself moving. Three more faints had attached to me and were helping the others rob me of life. The urge to lie down dragged at me, begged me to stop and rest my body in the dirt. It would be so easy, so much easier than this continued push and strain against something that was always inevitable.
I was going to die alone in this strange and scary place and it was no less than I deserved.
What right did I have to keep on living? To keep on feeling? What right had I ever had when Daniel had been deprived of experiencing everything in life?
What right did I have to be loved?
My foot caught against something hard and I fell to my knees.
My arms, weak and exhausted, were too slow and my face landed on a flat stone buried like an island in the earth. The weight of my body collapsed onto the ground and the will to get back up completely left me.
I closed my eyes, confused by the pain the hard stone had caused my cheekbone and its soothing cool surface against my skin. No part of my body moved, every muscle surrendered into a sweet relief.
Only a small corner of my brain continued to protest, insist that I keep trying, keep moving. My eyes, blurry and unfocused, stared at the stone beneath my face—even this small act was too much and I let them close.
I had never felt so tired, as if my body struggled with even the most basic functions of life support, my heart felt slow and sluggish, my breath shallow and gasping. The faints attached to me still continued to feed but it seemed like their sucking had diminished. One that had been attached to my back released its vise like grip. I forced the eye not pressed against the ground to open and try to figure out why—the ghostly figure floated over my head, in front of my line of sight and off into the world.
I was running
on empty, my life energy was now so low, even the faints were beginning to lose interest in me. I felt another release its hold on my neck.
I was close now, almost done.
“Carmen.”
My brain tried to grasp at something, a sound, a voice.
“Carmen, is that you?”
My eyes struggled to open only to find that the world had turned into a hazy gray blur, but something, someone was calling me.
“It is you,” the person sobbed. “At last, you’ve come for me.”
I knew the voice but my mind must be delirious, playing tricks. Either that or I was already dead. I tried to form his name in my throat, but nothing worked.
Two more faints gave up on me and even though I couldn’t see them, I imagined their spindly arms and legs dragging through the air behind them as they disappeared into the night sky.
“Carmen, I’ve waited so long.”
It was that voice again, a haunting from my past, a hope I had hung onto for so long—why was I hearing him now?
“Dad,” I tried to whisper, but there was no sound.
“I thought I saw you before, traveling the path, but then you were gone and I told myself it was only more of my torture. It is you though. I don’t know how but you’ve come.”
Another faint pulled away from me and not a second later, two more released me from there grips. I could hardly breath now, only short, shallow clips of air that hardly touched my lungs. My head swam in confusion and I could tell that I would pass out at any second. Pass out, or die Carmen—because there would be no waking up from this.
The voice I had recognized continued to talk and talk, but I could no longer hear him. I knew him, or had known him—he was important, but nothing made sense anymore. Nothing but the darkness.
It was like sliding down a slick dark tunnel. The world and everything in it evaporated into a veil of nothing until there was only the dark, the dark and me. Actually, only the idea of me because I had no form, I occupied no space.
My heart stopped beating.
My lungs quit dragging breath.
I felt nothing and I realized this was because I was nothing, I had joined the dark.
I opened my eyes, and saw a body lying in the dirt below me. Her black hair fanned in a tangled mess around head, her fingers were dirty and scratched, her clothes tattered and torn. Ghostly forms unwrapped themselves from her body and floated up and away until they disappeared into the scarred and jagged world around us.
From where I was, I could not see her face so I moved around to her front. It felt like shifting on a breeze, so easy, so effortless. Her face was pressed hard against a round stone, her features were slack, lifeless—the girl was dead.
I was dead.
My hands rose before my face, not the flesh and blood of my body lying broken against the rocks and dirt, two gray shadows, remnants of life, with bony clawed fingers that I did not recognize as my own. They reached to grasps my face, feel what was there—but it was nothing. My hands passed through myself, I was nothing. A swirling collection of what little leftover energy I still had.
If I had been near a mirror, I knew what I would see.
I was a faint, or very near to becoming one. How many conscious thoughts did I have left? How long till I turned into one of the mindless suckling ghosts that drifted, starving and emaciated through this world?
“Say you’ll forgive me!” The man stuck in the wall was still talking to my dead body. I could see him now, mostly buried in the rock except for the tips of his fingers on one hand, his mouth, and his left eye. From this angle, he could not see my body lying dead on the ground beneath him.
It was my step father. The man I had waited for, the man I had hoped would come for me, save me. Trapped in this rock, he was sobbing now, tears ran down from his one visible eye and landed on his lips as he begged. “Please Carmen, please forgive me.”
“Forgive you for what?” I didn’t know if I could still speak and was surprised when my words moved on the air and startled him.
“Thank God, thank God, Carmen!” His eye rolled wildly in its socket as he tried to locate me, my voice did not come from the body he expected. “Where are you?”
I slid on the air until my form was in front of his eye. He stared at me a long while, as if trying to piece together what was happening.
“I’ve died,” I said. “Right there,” I nodded at my body feeling strangely detached, like I was commenting on an animal dead on the side of a road.
His mouth hung open like fish, then crumbled into open despair. “Nooooo,” he moaned while his tears spilled over his one eye and dripped from his chin to the rock wall around him. “Noooooooo,” he sobbed.
He was trapped in this place and, for some reason, he had believed I would, or could, save him. “Why are you even here?” I asked.
“I never forgave.”
“Forgave who?” but I knew the answer before the words were even finished.
His eye stared through me. “I never forgave you…for taking my Daniel away.”
“But why…how does that leave you here? Why is that offense so unforgivable…why shouldn’t you hate me after killing your son?”
His eye looked at the ground, “Not that. It’s not that.”
“Then what?”
“I cursed life,” he breathed. “I cursed existence. I cursed the very power that breathes us into being,” he cried. “And I never relented. I never stopped cursing a life that would take my son away from me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I cursed the breath of life…and so it will no longer breathe life into me.” His eye looked up and around him, “All of us, trapped in our last life, with every regret.”
I shook my head, “But how am I,” I looked down at my lifeless body, “was I, supposed to help you?”
“I don’t know,” he sobbed again. “In my dreams, before I died, a great white spirit would come to me. When it did, it warned me to open my heart, to believe in life…and to forgive you.” His last words broke into pieces. “But I never did. And now, now I know. And I do, I do forgive you Carmen. You were only a baby yourself. I’m so sorry.” He cried some more, his face broken in anguish. “So sorry, but so late. Please, help me Carmen. Please don’t leave me here any longer.”
It was too late, for everyone. “I don’t know how to help you,” I whispered. “I think it’s too late for me to help anyone.” My eyes rose up the enormous cliff face, past all the writhing bodies locked in stone for eternity, trapped in their own grief. At the very top, I could just see the pinnacle of the white castle, home of The Great Balancer and her great book. Daniel would be there, and Ray.
What would Ray be thinking now? About my failure? About my death? Did he know?
“Carmen!” my father called. “Don’t leave me here!”
I had not realized I was leaving, but when I looked, I saw that I was drifting up the cliff’s steep path. Something was drawing me upwards, pushing me on. That something was my wish to see Ray one last time. One last time before I turned completely into a ghostly white faint and forgot him altogether.
When I looked back, I could see my father weeping, the tips of his fingers, held in rock, reaching for me the best he could. I wished I could reassure him. I wished I could tell him I’d be back for him, that I would and could help him, but very soon I was not likely to remember myself, let alone anyone else. It felt cruel to offer him any kind of hope.
I turned back towards the castle with the sound of his desperate scream joining the chorus of agony all around me.
On my way up the cliff, the wailing trapped souls did not try to grasp and grab at me the way they had on my way down. Now that I was dead, I floated past them. Closer to being one of them the allure of my vibrant life energy didn’t attract their shouts and reaching hands. I was just another ghost of a soul, trapped in The Between with them.
I kept moving, up and up, listening to the shouts and cursing and threats that echoed off the
walls. Where was I going again? Up. Yes I was moving up, but to where, and why? A face echoed in my mind, a young man, with beautiful eyes and blonde hair. He loved me, his mouth moved with the words—I love you Carmen.
Was I this Carmen? My mind felt like a spool of unwinding thread. I stopped and looked down the path behind me. Where had I come from? Everywhere people screamed and cried and moaned. A man, buried in rock up to his waist, hung from the jagged wall, shook his fist and spat obscenities at the sky. What was I doing here?
In front of me, a path wove around and around the face of a shear cliff—where was I going?
I moved. Floated. Like in a dream. People screamed and cried out from everywhere. Nothing made any sense to me. Who was I?
Before me, there is a path.
I am following a path.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Saving Yourself
A great gray castle loomed before me. I knew this place. Maybe. It was like a half remembered dream that slipped around in my mind. I couldn’t catch it.
Still, I was drawn to it, even if I didn’t know why.
There were giant doors that extend from the ground to high above my head and as I moved closer, I wondered about them, imagined that they would be very heavy, difficult to open. When I reached out my hand to touch their harsh iron surface, I was surprised by the spindly vapor of my arm, the bone like finger that expected to touch hard surface but instead, passed through the door like it wasn’t even there.
I am nothing.
When I pushed forward, my entire being moved through the door as if it were only air and on the other side, a great bright hall stretched before me. Like pure light, it expanded up and out in every direction, the room seemed to have no end.
It was only a trick of the light, and after a moment of staring, I could see that there were walls that met at a pinnacle high above my head. In the center of the room, on top of a glass pillar, an enormous book was open.
The Exquisite and Immaculate Grace of Carmen Espinoza Page 15
