Beyond the Western Sun

by Kristina Circelli

  She didn’t care that she was overreacting, that she was letting her fear and desperation cloud her judgment. Julia just wanted her son back in her arms, and blamed herself for his disappearance. She never should have let him out of her sight.

  Just as the first bubble rose to the surface of the lake, Ian Daivya burst through the water, leaping up from the suffocating bottoms and sucking in a desperate breath of air. Instantly he began choking, stumbling and splashing his way to the shore as though in a drunken daze. When he reached dry land, he collapsed and lay on his back, swallowing hard in between coughing fits and spitting out water. His blue eyes stared up at the gray sky in a confused and disbelieving stare of breathless life.

  The world that Smoke Speaker sent Ian to was a pit of darkness, a decaying abyss of emptiness. A truly vague impression of the living world, every tree, every rock, every blade of grass, was a varying shade of black and gray, but to Ian, who was confused and disoriented from the attack, it only seemed like the mysterious fog had thickened.

  After a few moments, he caught his breath and slowly crawled to his feet, dripping and shivering. The old man was nowhere to be found, which Ian thought was lucky for him, for he had plenty of ideas for revenge.

  He knew exactly what happened. He remembered everything, remembered agreeing to the ceremony and to taking the journey, remembered being held underwater and blacking out. But he couldn’t figure out how it happened. Elder Smoke Speaker was a frail old man who couldn’t weigh more than one-fifteen soaking wet, and Ian was a healthy man of forty-two who exercised regularly. How could he be overpowered? Even more humiliating was the fact that the old man had the time to get away before Ian could drag himself out of the water and to his feet.

  Completely embarrassed and ashamed by his own stupidity, Ian stood on the shore, gentle waves lapping over his shoes. He gathered his wits and stifled his rage long enough to find the trail that would lead him back to his campsite. All he wanted to do now was get back to his wife and tell the police to go after those scheming, murdering Indians, and get them to release Cole’s location using whatever method necessary.

  His chest still throbbing and his lungs on fire, Ian shoved his way into the trees. At his back was the sun, which barely lit the way as he entered the shadowy forest. The light around him was strange, a hazy, surreal kind of atmosphere that, if his eyes weren’t stinging from the lake water and his mind wasn’t fogged with his apparent murder, he might have found suspicious. But right now he didn’t care about the fog. He just wanted to find Sheriff Ray Forbe.

  In no time at all, it seemed, Ian was standing on the outskirts of his campsite. He wasn’t sure how he got there, didn’t quite recall making the long trip, but supposed it didn’t matter. He was tired, angry, and brain-muddled, so he didn’t bother worrying about it.

  He saw his in-laws’ pop-up trailer in the distance, his eyes unable to make out the distinct shape. Instead, the trailer looked like it was swallowed in the fog, and, in a strange way, decaying, as though rotting away from the inside out. At the next site over stood Julia with her sister and the sheriff, and judging by his wife’s body language, she obviously hated the man. Something had happened Ian’s absence, and he was going to find out what it was.

  Ian started for his wife, wondering why she seemed so far away, why he couldn’t quite make out her face. Her lips were moving as she spoke harsh words to Ray Forbe, but he couldn’t hear her. In fact, he couldn’t hear anything. The realization struck him and he spun around in a complete circle, searching for a noise, any noise.

  But there was nothing, no birds chirping, no wind howling, no talking voices, only the sound of his own shoes crunching over fallen leaves, his own breath heaving in frightened gasps. Panic creeping up into his stomach, Ian ran for Julia, feet pounding the earth like rolls of thunder across the gray sky.

  “Julia!” he shouted just before he reached his wife. “Julia, I know how to find Cole!” No one acknowledged his presence. They didn’t even appear to have heard him. He waved a hand in front her face. “Julia?”

  Maybe she’s ignoring me, he guessed. He turned to the sheriff. “Forbe! It’s that Whisper woman! She knows where Cole is! Forbe! Go after her! Hey!” Annoyed by the display of disrespect, he raised an arm and attempted to slap the man on the shoulder, only his hand never connected with skin. In fact, it never reached him at all. The more he tried to touch the officer, the harder it was to even see him, let alone feel the sensation of fabric against his fingertips.

  Both disgusted and shocked, Ian started to back away, shaking his head in disbelief. “What…what the hell did they do to me?” he asked himself quietly, determined to find a way out of this mess. “Julia!” He cupped his hands around his mouth. “Julia! Forbe! I’m here! Jul—hey!”

  He spun around when a firm hand grabbed hold of his shoulder, and found himself face-to-face with Whisper.

  “Are you insane, or just stupid?” she spat out, releasing her tight grip. “You walk towards the Western Sun upon surfacing, not away from it.”

  “You.” Ian’s tone matched Whisper’s as he took a threatening step in her direction. “You! What have you done! And why are you here?”

  “I am doing what I promised, what Smoke Speaker promised. I am your guide.”

  “He said someone named Kanegv was my guide.”

  Whisper glared at him, and Ian got the feeling she thought he was the least intelligent man she had ever met. “I am Kanegv. It is my native name. It means ‘Speak,’ but in English I am known as Whisper. It is how the Elder decided it.”

  The thought of the woman being his guide repulsed him. He had nothing but contempt for the deceitful Indian woman. “I want nothing to do with you,” Ian replied spitefully. She didn’t react, but merely watched Julia when she burst into a fit of tears, shoving Lisa away. Ian followed her eyes, his anger fading into sorrow, longing to hold his wife. “Why can’t they hear me?”

  Whisper’s blank stare answered his question as he pieced together the recent past, what he had prayed was just a dream, an illusion. “Because…because I’m…dead. The old man…killed me. He drowned me.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why? Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you both lie to me?”

  Whisper shrugged indifferently. “He did what was necessary. A man who takes his own life cannot return to the living world. Your death had to be at another’s hands. Now, we must go.” She tossed a bag at him, indicating that he was meant to carry it, as she had her own. “We do not have a lot of time.”

  Not knowing what else to do, Ian fell into place behind Whisper after casting a final glance over his shoulder at his wife, who was heading back for the trailer with slumped shoulders. He wished he could have taken the time to tell her good-bye. More, he wished he had taken the time to consider what he was doing before the witch doctor drowned him.

  As he followed, he noticed that, unlike everything and everyone else, he could see Whisper in a faint hue of color. She was wearing the same torn, tanned pants but had changed from a black shirt to white tank top held together at the front by a thin strand of leather that wound its way up from a ripped hem to a low, blood-sprinkled collar. If she hadn’t been wearing a deer-skin cloak that ended just below her waist, he would have seen that the thick shoulder straps crisscrossed her back. She was wearing shoes this time, a pair of sturdily-made but old boots, and a beautiful three-layer beaded necklace circled her throat.

  What worried him slightly was that she seemed well equipped for their journey. The belt around her waist held two knives, a pouch with unknown contents, and what looked to Ian like bandages rolled at her hip. Strapped across her back was a bow and quiver, full of arrows, and two pouches of water. The wound on her right hand that she had made herself earlier in the day was secured with a bloodstained wrap, and she still wore the leather strap around her left wrist, which to Ian looked incredibly uncomfortable. Along with all her gear she also managed to carry her pack, which looked identical to the one she’
d tossed his way earlier. Briefly he wondered what was in them.

  “Where are we going?”

  Whisper stopped and waited for Ian to catch up. Her face was stoic, and her dark eyes seemed to be on a constant watch for unseen enemies. She placed a hand on Ian’s arm. “You must keep up. We have a long walk ahead of us.”

  “Walk? Where are we going?”

  The woman sighed. “To the Bridge of the Dead, Mr. Daivya, just beyond the mountains. Now, we must go, and remember, you must keep your eyes forward.”

  “Why?”

  “This is a place of waiting, Mr. Daivya, a place the old people call Agatiyv. When a person dies, he comes here, and it is up to him to find his way to the Bridge of the Dead. Many never make it, and so their souls become lost, wandering farther and farther away from the Bridge. The longer they are lost, the more bitter they become, and when acknowledged, they will attack, attempting to drag you off your path as well.”

  Ian had to consciously keep himself from looking around. Out of the corners of his eyes he saw shadows moving amongst the trees, and being told that he couldn’t look at them only made him all the more curious. “How do we know that Cole found this so-called bridge, and isn’t lost somewhere out here?”

  “He has made it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I have already asked.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Exasperated, Whisper stalked over to Ian. “I have been here a long time waiting for you, and because you did not follow Smoke Speaker’s directions by heading straight for the sun,” she pointed behind her at the blazing orange fire in the distance, the only source of color in the otherwise monochromatic world, “we have lost time. We only have a short window until your son forgets who he is, forgets you, and can never return. I am doing my job, Mr. Daivya, and your questions only make this more difficult. Either you trust me, or you fail.”

  With that, she turned on her heel and headed for the mountain. Taken aback by the verbal lashing that was both humiliating and sexy when spoken through an accented tongue, Ian trailed behind, silently fuming at the woman’s insolence. She would not talk to him like that much longer. Once he had his son, she would be nothing to him, and he could smack that glare of smugness right off her face.

  Chapter 7

  The longer they walked, pushing past dead branches and sneaking past lost souls that grasped for their arms and legs as they continued on their way, the more Whisper told him about their journey. He wasn't sure if she was telling him so much because she was bored and wanted to talk, or because it was valuable information, but he listened nonetheless.

  “Our beliefs are based on the cardinal directions,” Whisper explained as they began the hike up the mountain. “Life and death come from the east and the west.” Squinting in the growing light, she pointed out the directions. “Kalvgv, the East, and Wudeligv, the West.” She frowned as she turned her haunting eyes to the sky, her hands elegantly crisscrossing in the air as she illustrated her point. “Our beliefs say that when a person is born, the soul walks out of the rising Eastern Sun, into a new world of life, birth. When a person passed away into death, the soul walks beyond the Western Sun, to the Spirit World, or to the Land of the Dead.”

  He didn’t like the direction the story was taking them into. “So…are you saying we’re going into…the Western Sun?”

  “Yes.”

  “But how…how is that possible?”

  “How is anything possible, Mr. Daivya?” Whisper asked while continuing the walk, stumbling ever so slightly on a loose rock but catching herself gracefully. “Some things simply are.”

  He pondered over that as they walked the rest of the way in silence. Before long, the tree and brush-ridden landscape began to fade into a barren, flat surface with deep craters and loose rock beneath a dark sky. Looking behind him, Ian saw that they had crossed through to the other side of the mountains, and he longed to be back in the shelter of the trees. There was something about this new place that chilled him to the bone.

  Ian jumped when a figure brushed past him, and out of instinct he faced the stranger. Despite Whisper’s warning, he made eye contact, and almost instantly the dead soul took advantage of the invitation and lunged for his next victim.

  Surprised by the attack, Ian stumbled and tripped over his own feet, his back hitting the ground hard. The figure, a young man with black eyes and rotting gray flesh that hung off his bones in a grotesque display of death, snarled and landed on top of him, clawing at Ian’s face. Ian grabbed the man’s wrists, amazed by the spirit’s strength, grimacing when a long trail of saliva dripped from his mouth to Ian’s chin. The man could only make growling noises as he fought to maim and destroy.

  “Get…off…you son-of-a-bitch!” Ian shouted, kicking him in the gut and forcing him back. Ian leapt to his feet in time to block the dead soul when he reared back his deformed head and released a disturbing guttural scream, then charged. “What is wrong with you?” Ian yelled, throwing the man to the ground and barely registering the fact that flakes of skin burst from his body like a cloud of dust.

  The soul jumped to his feet, his clothes in tatters, revealing a gaunt figure with ribs and collarbone sticking out among sunken skin. His mouth seemed two sizes too big, and when his lips parted again, black teeth barely hung from rotted gums. He released another scream and Ian prepared himself for an assault, but before the soul could attack he faltered, freezing in place for a moment before sinking to his knees, And then Ian saw Whisper. She stood behind the ghoul, a look of both anger and regret crossing her face as she leaned over and retrieved the knife she had plunged into his back.

  “I told you not to look into their eyes,” she said forcefully, as though reprimanding a child, wiping the black blood off the blade with a piece of buckskin. “When will you listen?”

  “What the hell just happened?” Ian asked in response, touching his face and wincing when his fingers connected with exposed flesh. “Why did he attack?”

  Whisper sprinkled a handful of sage over the twice-dead corpse, whispering a prayer into his ears, tenderly touching the creature’s brittle hair. “This is what happens when dead souls fail to cross the Bridge of the Dead. They become lost,” she told Ian, her thick Cherokee accent making everything she said sound plausible, “and forget that we are human, as they are. They begin to feel only hate and despair, and they know nothing but death. They have forgotten what it means to be human.”

  Ian watched as the dead soul melted into the earth, a few bits of ash-like material floating away. In seconds the young man was gone. He swallowed hard. “What…what happens when a soul is killed…when it’s already dead?”

  Straightening and adjusting her bow across her back, Whisper cast a sidelong glance at Ian before lifting a shoulder. “Some say their lives exist as though never having been born at all. They are erased from memory, from stories, from existence. Others say the soul goes to a world beneath the Land of the Dead, a horrible place of endless pain, torture, and fear. I do not wish to find out. Keep your eyes forward, and follow my orders. They will keep you from learning what world lies beneath this land.”

  To keep her own eyes forward, Whisper reached back and pulled the long buckskin hood lined with plush rabbit fur over her head, wrapping her young face in shadows.

  Together, the two continued their journey across the blackened earth, sidestepping potholes and collapsed souls. Whisper didn’t appear to notice the fallen, or care for that matter, while Ian couldn’t help but peek down and feel a tug of sadness for each one. Despite the sun in the distance, a sun at least two hundred sizes bigger than the one Ian was accustomed to seeing in the sky back home, there was little light. The sun cast a dim orange glow across the sky, but shadows of the souls created an aura of blackness that flowed across the rough terrain. How something so enormous and bright could create such a small amount of light baffled the man.

  “So…what is this Bridge of the Dead you keep talking about?” Ian asked, a bit
out of breath and wondering how that could be since he was no longer alive. It was a strange sensation, not feeling the beating of his heart, not having the urge to eat or go to the bathroom, but instead being completely empty inside. And yet, after so much walking he was winded, and a little tired.

  Up ahead of him, Whisper remembered all the old stories, all the different elders and storytellers that had ever spoken of the place. As atrocious as the Bridge was, it would be the easiest of their obstacles. “The Bridge of the Dead spans a gorge that separates the worthy from the sinned…the damned,” she corrected herself, hoping Ian didn’t catch her error. She worked hard at perfecting her English, but at times the wrong word slipped through. “On the Bridge is every animal that the person ever mistreated by intentionally harming, killing for food without a prayer of thanks, murdered for sheer pleasure. Those animals try to knock the person off the bridge and into the gorge, so that their soul is forced to wander the earth eternally.”

  “What about animals you were close to? Like family pets?”

  “Those come to your side to help you across.”

  “Oh…and where is this Bridge of the Dead?”

  Whisper stopped, turned slightly to her right, and pointed. Ian followed her finger, and the discouraging sight nearly forced him backwards a few steps. He did not want to go anywhere near that menacing contraption.

  A gorge twice the size of the Grand Canyon cut the earth in half, sharp jagged edges slicing into the foul air. A visible blackness rose up from the depths of the chasm, a tangible dark that threatened to swallow whole any who got too close. From somewhere deep and eternal, a scream echoed off the craggy walls, the scream of a soul who failed to make her way across the gorge.

  But it wasn’t the gorge that took Ian’s breath away. It was the Bridge, the Bridge of the Dead, that caused his hands to curl into tight fists and his mouth to press into a thin line of trepidation. Thick ropes lined with the grime of dead hands and spilled blood spanned the gorge, wrapped around even thicker wooden posts at either end. Dead branches and sticks of countless lengths and sizes crisscrossed one another along the sides of the passage, hanging from the rope railing carelessly. Splintered, wooden slats served as the base for the four-foot wide bridge, and from those slats rose cracked timber that twisted its way up towards the looming black sky. Torn and tattered pieces of buckskin were sewn together with sturdy vines stripped into dozens of sinewy strings. The loose strips of leather flapped in the wind that rose from the gorge and circulated the bridge.