Otherland

by Almondie Shampine

  “She said she’d come back for me. She promised. I think this Aliyah may be my mother. It is a memory I had. This stuffed dog was one that was given to me in the human world, I think, when I was there as a baby.”

  The Light knight was nearly on top of him, looking intently into the boy’s face. “You have memories of the human world?”

  “Just one. She said she needed to bring me here to keep me safe, and that when the time was right she’d come back for me. But …” the boy looked down sadly.

  “But what?”

  “The human girl that came here looked far too young and did not look like this Aliyah from my memory.”

  “That’s because your memory of her is from the human world. She would look different there, as do I. Recall, this is a place of past, present, future, and Nothingness. One of Aliyah’s many gifts was a mastery of disguise. I’ve seen her come as a child, I’ve seen her as an aged woman, sometimes looking like a warrior princess, other times a Light innocent. I never knew of a child.”

  “So she never spoke of me?” the human boy said sadly.

  “She never spoke of her reasons for why she continuously returned here, despite all the dangers it presented to her, and why now, she’s come back.”

  “The one who came here didn’t seem to know anything about what this place was. She believed to be dreaming, no matter how many times I tried to tell her she was not dreaming. I urged her to go back, even before she came through, and she just kept talking about how she wasn’t leaving until she could get some sleep because she had a meeting she had to go to.”

  “Then it is worse than I thought,” the Light knight bowed his head.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It is my fault. She wouldn’t know. She wouldn’t remember. She’d be entirely clueless. I – I wiped her of those memories to ensure she could never find her way back here. I was … trying to protect her. I thought -,” his head fell in his hands. “I thought it was the best thing for her, and now, she’s in far more danger, because of me.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Aliyah has no idea she’s Aliyah. Somehow she managed to stumble across this place again, without knowing how she got here, and now she’s going to be hunted, without knowing why, without understanding it, without … being able to protect herself. If you are, in fact, her child, then it all makes sense. I thought perhaps she kept returning here to see me, even though I created a place for her and I to meet, a place I’ve been going to every human night for a long, long time, hoping -,” his voice cracked.

  “Hoping what?”

  “To see her again.”

  “You love her, don’t you?” the child questioned softly.

  The Light knight slowly, painfully nodded.

  “But you’re human. Couldn’t you have stayed with her in the human world?”

  “I could have. But I’d already made my vows to the Father to eternally serve him as a Light knight. I chose duty above all things. When I finally found her in the Nothingness, the Lost souls, who steal from the life and energies of others in the absence of their own, had practically emptied her of all her life energy, leaving her mostly lost, even after she was found and returned. Her heart beat so slow, her eyes staring out at nothingness, lost. I felt responsible for her plight. Again, my duty to protect her overrode my heart.

  “I wanted her to forget about me so that she could lead a normal life, and no longer have to feel that void of nothingness and loss in her heart. I believed her love for me would destroy her, when I had my own duties to abide by. A Light knight comes with many dangers. Here, we are mostly balanced and the Lights and Darks have made peace with the Bylaws. It is not that way in the human world. My duty requires my presence there at times, and there are those who will seek to destroy me. I did not want to bring any more harm to her than had already been done.”

  “And now they are sending the very blackened soul that had hurt her in the human world. She got rid of him once, and now they’re sending him right back out there after her,” the boy said angrily.

  “Yes, because he’s going to lead me to her. Again, young one, you should not question the High master’s rulings. It’s a test of faith that you do not want marked on your soul. He will not be able to hurt her, the soul that he is. Terrify her, sure, but he can’t touch her or hurt her the way he once did and the way he wants to now, but he doesn’t know this. He’s never been a spirit in the human world, and just like humans in Otherland have restrictions the souls do not, so too do the spirits in the Otherworld.”

  “I wish I could go with you,” the boy murmured.

  “Perhaps one day, but you are not ready yet. Search your soul, find your faith, your duty, your honor. It’s up to you and you alone. You are human and you are soul, just as I am. Find your spiritual being. I am being summoned, young one. It is time for me to go. Stay here. Do not wander far. The stream, despite appearances, is the border of my home. I’ll check in with you. It is vital you do not speak of the things you confided to me, as it could put you in grave danger, and I cannot protect you both in both realms at the same time. You understand?”

  “Yes, Light knight, my … friend?”

  “One more thing. The one who came here. Did you happen to notice if she was wearing a necklace?”

  “A necklace?”

  “Yes, a silver chain that goes around the neck with a heart-shaped pendant.”

  “I – I’m sorry. I did not notice. I was too frightened. All I know is her eyes were the color of the water in that stream.”

  “Thank you, friend.” The Light knight winked at him, and was gone.

  CHAPTER 6

  Lydia tapped the white canvas indecisively as she stared at her latest purchases. The first being a brand new box of wine. The second she purchased after receiving the excitable phone call from Cherise, telling her that if she could paint three more works, she’d be able to have an opening show-casing her work, where critics and consumers of fine art would gather to critique, review, appreciate, and/or purchase her paintings.

  She’d fought with Cherise for a good 45 minutes, trying to explain to her that she didn’t know how she’d painted those pictures, or even where the images had come from, and she couldn’t, at will, just do it again.

  “They didn’t come from outside you, Lydia. They come from within, where all art and creativity come from. How long you go on whinin’, cryin’ ‘bout not sleepin’, never feelin’ rested even when you do sleep, cuz of dreams and adventures you say go on with you that you ain’t rememberin’ when you wake up? What you painted says there a part of you that’s rememberin’ somethin’. You ain’t got no job to go to now, so you don’t got to fight and resist the things that go on when you sleepin’. Now you can allow yo’self to explore, without worryin’ so much about wakin’ up on time. Find yourself, Lydia, cuz I know they a lot more to you than this life you been livin’.”

  So on an impulse, she’d spent a quarter of her paycheck on art supplies. Now the question was, ‘To drink or not to drink’. The paintings had been done following a night of heavy drinking, so she must have been intoxicated and blacked out while they were being done. But nothing like this had ever happened previously when she’d been drinking on a nightly basis. When she woke up after a night passed out from drinking, she wouldn’t recall anything from sleep, her mind a complete blank.

  The reason she had so much difficulty without the alcohol was because her conscious mind was more aware of the things around and inside her, and it would keep her constantly waking. Waking to a knowing that whatever she’d been dreaming had not only woken her, but had completely exhausted her.

  The month she’d spent abstinent had left her waking to an exhaustion so severe, it was as if she’d run a marathon in her dreams. She’d tried to explain this to the sleep specialist when he was telling her that alcohol limited REM sleep, or dream sleep, which was a necessary step of the sleep-cycle.

  His belief was just as the body rejuvenated itself in
deep sleep, the mind did the same in dream-sleep, and was necessary for processing. She’d told him that was the problem, and she must have overactive REM, because that’s all she did was dream, and she could never feel, in the absence of alcohol, like she was ever reaching the deep stages of sleep meant to wake a person to a feeling of restfulness and rejuvenation.

  He’d turned it around and said that she had overactive REM because the alcohol was keeping her from it, and her mind was doing everything it could to make up for it, overworking itself during the time-frame that her body sobered itself from the alcohol throughout the night.

  This was the argument that had convinced her to following his advice in being abstinent, and allowing her body and mind to recover from the sleep disturbances caused by the alcohol’s effects.

  Week after week that she’d return to him, so exhausted that she was emotionally distraught, crying, begging, pleading to sleep, he kept saying the same thing. “It takes time. It takes time. It takes time. Think of how long your body has had to become accustomed to your nightly consumption. Almost a year. You think that kind of devastation to your system is something that will be undone in a few weeks?”

  He’d never directly come out and told her she was an alcoholic, but he as much as implied it. “I’m not going out every night drinking with my friends, closing the bar down, not getting enough sleep because I stayed up all night drinking. This is not fun for me. It’s not a good time that I’m using it for. I’m using it so I can sleep so that I can function.”

  “And that’s what concerns me the most. I’d be less concerned if you were using it recreationally to enjoy some social time with your friends, because that would be a more productive use than what you’re using it for now,” he’d said, which totally made no sense to her, until he said, “You’re seeking oblivion so that you can sleep, then waking up to the world not knowing your place in it, not having any memories, not knowing who you are, then asking why you don’t know. You’re your own worst enemy right now because you’re fighting against yourself, maintaining the very oblivion that you want to escape.”

  But then again, a month’s worth of not seeking oblivion through alcohol had not led her any closer to figuring things out. It had caused her to lose the only anchor that she had that gave her a place and meaning in this world. Working that job had provided her stability. She could look at herself in the mirror while readying for work in the morning and say to herself, “Who am I? I’m an assistant at NCOS. What is my purpose? To work this job. What do I have in my life that is meaningful? Cherise, a job, a paycheck that allows me to buy the things that are meaningful to me and make me feel happy for a little while.”

  Now what did she have? A blank white canvas with absolutely nothing to fill it with.

  She sighed heavily and closed her eyes, “I have to at least try.”

  This time, instead of walking back into the darkness, she saw the white canvas and imagined herself taking the steps forward, so that it would no longer be empty. The white was just as blinding, if not more so, as the black, surrounded by it all around her, like a white fog so thick it appeared solid.

  Then she began to see the images that would fade as quickly into the white as they had appeared, due to her continued movements. A palette with a hundred different paints. A dove with the large green eyes of a human, green eyes she was oddly familiar with. A halo attached to the bowed head of a person kneeling forward, perhaps in prayer. Was she crying or laughing, Lydia couldn’t tell, but she wanted to find out. She wanted to speak to this angel of light, as she may be able to help her find her way.

  “Hello?” Lydia said cautiously.

  There was an audible gasp, but the figure didn’t turn. “You can see me?”

  She hesitated before saying yes. “I thought you might have been crying, and wondered if there may be something I can do. Are you – are you an angel?” Lydia asked, slowly walking closer to the kneeled shape.

  “Was it my halo that gave me away?” it laughed lightly. “If you can see me, then that means you have come to seek some answers. Forgive me for your having to come across me like this. I try to save them all, and I can’t. There is too much darkness. Tell me, what is your name and what are you searching for, dear one?”

  “My name is Lydia. I don’t know what I’m searching for, really. Who I am, perhaps? The path I’m supposed to follow? I just can’t seem to find my way.”

  “Unfortunately that happens to many of your kind. Please, come closer. Perhaps I can guide you and help you find your way. Closer, dear, closer. I must be able to look into your eyes to see where your soul belongs. Don’t be afraid. I am an angel, bound eternally to love, protect, nurture, and to guide as best I can. Go ahead, kneel before me as I kneel.”

  Trustingly, Lydia did, the bright glow of the halo blinding her from being able to see the angel before her. Suddenly, she shuddered in a fierce chill. Something was wrong. She should feel warm, comforted in the presence of such light. How she knew this, she didn’t know, but it was an almost involuntary reflex to jump forward a hundredth of a second before the thing turned toward her and attempted to snatch her, its face as black as coal with red piercing eyes that she closed her eyes to.

  Its scream was shrill as she managed to evade its grasp. She ran toward the black spot, no bigger than a pencil dot, seeming miles away, as it was the only thing in all this white that she could see.

  “Keep running, Aliyah. Keep hiding, but it won’t save your life forever. He is coming, and you can neither run or hide from him. He will find you again as he always found you before. You cannot stop him, and this time, you won’t be able to fight him. In the end, your kind will fall, as will your world. It’s only a matter of time, yours of which is so little, and ours that is eternal.” The wicked laughter followed her, echoing all around her.

  “Aliyah,” something sang right at her ear. She dove toward the black pencil dot with a determined cry.

  Lydia woke to that cry, her head and body snapping upward, her eyes opening fast to the blindness she was accustomed to. She was breathless, her heart pounding so hard against her chest, it was physically painful, thrumming in her ears so loud she could hear nothing else. Her body covered in sweat, yet freezing once again.

  “Where the hell are my glasses?” she yelled, while frantically searching the table with her hands, knocking things onto the floor. Her panic only increased, until she was hyperventilating and crying. She emptied the contents of the table while still no glasses. Hurriedly, she moved into the living room/bedroom, and searched the night stand, choking on her panicked sobs. “Please, please, please,” she gasped.

  She ripped the blankets away from the bed and heard the clatter of something on the hard plank floors, fortunately white. She saw the foggy mahogany in the center of the floor, and slammed her knees hard as she scrambled toward it. Finally, her hand gripped her glasses. She threw them on her face at the same time as standing. She turned her body toward the bed, opening her eyes to blessed eyesight, and screamed, reflexively covering her face and crouching her body.

  It took her a few seconds for her mind to process the square canvas, previously blank and white. Now it was painted different shades of black, but for the figure wearing white with the appearance of an angel; however, it’s face was black, with blood-red eyes, looking directly at her.

  “Oh my God,” she cried, instantly grabbing her phone and dialing Cherise’s number.

  CHAPTER 7

  The Light knight and the blackened criminal were escorted by one Light elder and one Dark elder to a spot that looked, in all appearances, to have no significance. Everything looked the same in every direction. Instead of sunrise, however, it was sunset, a distant crescent moon at the exact same angle as the crescent sun falling below the horizon.

  The Light knight had been here many times before, always escorted, as only the elders carried the knowing of how to find this place. It would look different for him than to the Dark soul. Being human caused him to contin
ue to have those associations with the physical appearances of things, so that is what he would see - the physical manifestation of things that weren’t really there. To know what the souls saw, though, and what their experiences were, was impossible.

  They did not see. There were no attachments or associations to physical things, leaving them incapable of even describing it. Even those maintaining the curse of their human-world memories could not describe it, as the seeing of shapes, colors, pictures, anything of solidity or physical existence couldn’t be had when one was fully spirit. There was no way to compare things in the absence of these associations. Even the seeing of light and dark was a physical manifestation, as a human could be surrounded in light and only need close their eyes to create darkness.

  Did the closing of their eyes and seeing dark while surrounded in light cause their reality to be of darkness or of lightness? The only thing the souls could explain was the illusion of things and that humans were restricted in their five senses that caused illusions of physical things all based on the personal perception of such illusions that turned it into a physical reality for the human, and that same reality would change with the change of perception.

  They’d say, “There is only one ‘reality’ here, not created of illusion, and that reality is spiritual, not physical.” The only way a human could understand such things was by no longer being human, as human referred only to the physical body owned by a soul on earth, and that self-concept of being an I, being a some one. Souls were all connected to each other, to the entire realm, and they were the only existence of this place.

  That was the difference from the Lost souls, as well. The Lost souls still felt individual, still thought in the I-me way. They existed and connected with nothing else, which is why they lived in the Nothingness. They’d created it. Here, in human terminology, as best as the Light knight could understand it, the souls were the energy that kept this place going; they were the ground, the sky, the sun, the moon, the light, the dark, the warmth, the cold, the buildings, the plants, the water, and everything that a human would see as physical.