Otherland (11 page)

Instead, she returned moments later with her car keys. “Time to go,” she said. She already had the car in reverse by the time he opened the passenger door and jumped in.

CHAPTER 16

“You’re an idiot,” Dwayne said when Danny started coming through. “Now she’s escaped.”

Danny moaned, touching the gash and lump on his head from having been slammed against the wooden hatchback door, and touching the back of his head from having landed on it during the fall. Carefully, he checked all his limbs to ensure nothing was broken. He’d gotten lucky, but his body still hurt all over.

“It’s not my fault. I’m the one that knows that to go through a door, you have to open it first. I’m too old for this crap, Dwayne,” Danny whined. “My life has been good the past few years. Five more years and I can retire and rest this old body. I have a wife, a home. I have a life now. We had fun. We had a lot of good times when we were younger, but I’m paying for it now. All I want to do is live out the rest of my days in peace.

“You’re dead, Dwayne. You have to accept that. You don’t belong here, anymore. I don’t want to wind up like you. You scare the hell out of me, Dwayne, you always have. Find someone else. Someone younger. Or just let it go. She’s suffered enough.”

“After all our history, now you want to redeem yourself, Danny? Is that what this is about?” Dwayne howled. “You want to start going to church and praying to God to forgive you for the crimes you committed? You want to kneel and cry and beg for redemption for what you did? It don’t work like that, Danny. You can’t just do the evil things you did, then turn around in the end and attempt to redeem yourself because you’ve suddenly become afraid of the consequences.

“You’ll still be made to pay, as I have, but it’s not 40-years-to-life until you die, like this world. It’s eternity. In eternity, in the Darkness, the
only
thing you got are your memories from the human life, reminding you why your fate’s been sealed. You can say everything you think the High master wants to hear. You can cry, beg, plead, act so sorry for the things you did, but he sees right through you, right through your words, right through your tears, and there is no mercy. You can’t take back the things you did, Danny. You can’t take back your choices and the consequences of those choices, no matter how much you want to.”

“Then I’ll turn myself in while I’m still alive and live out the consequences here. We did terrible things, Dwayne. Terrible, terrible things. We abducted an innocent child. Took her from those that loved her. Stole her life. We - ,” Danny choked up. “At the time we were just having fun, but maintain-ing it, her silence, not getting caught – that was the majority of our time, and was it really worth it?”

“She had every reason to kill you, Dwayne, just as she has every reason to kill me.”

“Going soft in your old age, aren’t you, Danny,” Dwayne said disgustedly. “Well this is how this works in my world. You’re either going to help me or your time as human ends today. While your body was unconscious, I followed her. I know where she is. All we have to do is find her, destroy her and the Light knight, and then you can live the rest of your human life in peace.”

“Why is this so important? Why can’t she just be left alone?”

“Because you’re the one that messed everything up to begin with. The child still lives.”

“What child?”

“The child you stupidly got her pregnant with. The proof that would have locked you up for life. The mess
you
made that I cleaned up. You remember that, Danny?”

“You said you forced her to get rid of it.”

“I did. She took it to the world I now come from. She figured out some how to navigate both worlds, before I even knew the existence of this place. It still lives. I was right above them in the chambers of imprisonment. She promised the boy she’d be back for him. If she can remember the child, what else do you think she’ll remember? So unless you’re really serious about turning yourself in and spending the rest of your days rotting in a cell, we need to work together to be rid of her.”

“How far is she?”

“About four hours away driving.”

Danny groaned, “How much of our life have we spent chasing her?”

“Wait a second, there might be an easier way. Why chase after her if we can make her come to us?” the Dark soul cackled, as Cherise pulled into the driveway, music blaring.

Dwayne re-possessed Danny’s body and waited.

***

“Did you remember something, Aliyah?”

“Everything,” she said, overly-fixated on what she was doing.

“Talk to me.”

She stopped what she was doing and looked at the Light knight with eyes of pure agony. “Why? There’s nothing you could do before and there’s nothing you can do about it now. You’ve made it very clear where your duty lies. You might as well just take me back there and have me face the consequences of a life of consequences.”

“I’m trying to help you,” he said offended.

“By following orders? Do you know how long it took me to be rid of him for once and for all? How much I suffered at his hands? And your world just sends him right back here. It’s like it never ended. It’s the two of them, together again. Terrorizing my life. So, please, I beg of you, I’d be safer in your world. Take me back there.”

“They don’t know you like I know you, Aliyah. They look at you as a threat. I know better. That’s why I’m – .”

“It doesn’t matter. You continue to work for them, for
him
, or whatever he is, so let’s skip an entire lifetime of running. I give up. I can’t keep running. Take me back there to face what I have to face.”

He hesitated.

“If you have any love for me at all in your heart, you will end this for me,” she said desperately, tears in her eyes. “You don’t have to restrain me. I come willingly. All I ask is that I be able to see the child one last time.”

“It’s too dangerous right now. If you and I go back there, our bodies will be exposed. If he did possess a physical body, then he is capable of killing us.”

“Does it look like I care? Perhaps I will have a better life in death than I have ever had here.”

He gritted his teeth. “Get in the closet.”

Within ten minutes, they were walking the path of dolls with no eyes, dead babies with screams on their faces, the screams of women being tortured, the narrow tunnel that suffocated, until they were falling.

She’d been here many times before and could now remember, but it still amazed her the fluffiness of the ground, the immaculate sunrise, the dark-hued colored sky with the globed sun. The absolute peace and silence. She followed him, and abruptly the scenery changed to a log-home set upon miles of untainted ground, covered in wild flowers.

“This is your home here?” she said in surprise.

You’d think a spiritual world would be less … physical, but it mimicked the dream of what he may have wanted in the human world. It was perfection, and that’s why she felt really sorry about what she was about to do.

The boy was the first to appear, a large smile on his face, running toward the Light knight. He stopped abruptly once seeing her.

“You – you brought her? But I thought – you said …?”

The Light knight kept his head bowed. The elders would soon come. He’d be congratulated, and she’d be … at the mercy of the Trial ceremony and the unanimous decision of the elders.

She kneeled before the boy and smiled at him, “I told you I’d come back. Do you remember the rest?” she asked.

He looked at the Light knight, then back to her, and he nodded. They ran.

Just as the elders were arriving, they disappeared beyond the blanket of his home.

“You said you had her,” a Dark elder said furiously.

“I did. She’s escaped again,” the Light knight said simply. “As she always has.” And his voice was filled with admiration and respect.

“Well then, what are you doing just standing there? Go get her!”

“Yes, elder,” he bowed. And took off after her.

CHAPTER 17

“You came back for me,” the boy said as they ran.

“I told you I would, sorry it took so long. It took some time for me to remember,” she said, as she sliced her sword against the Boundary hunters, and talked over their pitiful moans. “Things … still aren’t … safe, but … apparently … neither world is. A merciful … all-knowing … forgiving High master … ha,” she said. “How many innocents … must pay? I’m tired … of choosing good … Tired … of being good. I want only … to care about ... what is mine. … I want to love … and no longer … have to sacrifice what … I love … because of all the things … these worlds … demand. Come on.”

She followed the path she’d come, but whereas she could get through, he could not. “There has to be a way,” she cried, as she tried again and again to bring both of them to the human world, but he was blocked from it and could not come through with her.

“If I’m still human, then that must mean my body is still alive. Maybe that’s the only way I can come through, to a body, like you,” Jasper suggested.

Aliyah continued to try breaking him through. “Can you feel it? Do you know where it is?”

“Yes. Do you? Do you know where to find me?”

She cried, “I – I don’t remember.”

And just like that, Lydia woke up, Jacob’s body sleeping beside her. She knew that she’d gone in to get her son, but couldn’t remember if she’d found him.
Found him.
She had to find him.

She closed her eyes, trying to remember. A hospital, in labor, the pain extraordinary, but her heart pumping with love, willing to do whatever it took to finally look upon her son.

Dwayne standing at the doorway, his guardianship papers in hand, sneering at her, “I told you I’d always find you. You can’t run from me Aliyah. You’d go through all of this, escape me, just to have this child? Betray me and everything I’ve done for you, for a child? Well, you’ve gone this far, and instead of ridding of it, you’ve brought it into this world, but not for long. Get rid of the child and come back to me, Aliyah, or I will raise the child in the way that you were raised.

“Is that what you want? Your own innocent child? Is that the kind of suffering you’d choose for it? Do you know easy it was to take you away from your home, your parents, the people that loved and wanted to protect you, and have them not be able to do a thing about it? To never be caught. Do you really want that same life for your child?

“We could raise him as our own, show him his place in the world, and there wouldn’t be a thing you could do about it, just like your parents, and not a thing he could do about it, a helpless innocent child, just like you were all those years. Is that what you want?”

“No,” she’d covered the baby child in her arms.

“Then you best be rid of it. You’re now a mother, you should know these things. The only way to protect your child from suffering is by keeping it from being in this world to begin with. Other than that, it’ll just spend its life being a victim to all the bad things out there.” He’d laughed cruelly.

So she’d taken the child in sleep one night to Otherland, and presented his seeming lifeless body to Dwayne and Danny, satisfying them, but it wasn’t enough. They’d wanted to watch her bury it before she humbly returned to them.

Woodrow Cemetery. Ohio.

With only slight guilt, Lydia locked the closet door with Jacob still inside. She raced toward her vehicle and pulled up the directions on her phone. That’s when she noticed that Cherise had attempted to call her almost a dozen times without leaving a voicemail. Alarmed, she called her.

CHAPTER 18

“It’s her. Answer it,” they demanded of Cherise. As of yet, she had not cooperated with anything they’d demanded of her. She had one job to do, which was to tell Aliyah that they had her, but she refused to comply. Every time they’d called, she’d remained silent. No matter how much they hurt her, she wouldn’t do as told.

“She really means a lot to you, doesn’t she?”

“She my girl. I’ll protect her with my life. You wastin’ yo’ time with me. Obviously you ain’t know black.”

“And what of your precious kids? You willing to sacrifice them for her?” Dwayne threatened.

“Jerome pop a cap in yo’ ass you go after my kids. That how we work. You messin’ with the wrong color, fool. Aiight, give me the phone.”

They smiled. There were only so many threats a person could take before their fear broke them.

“Hey, girl, what you doin’?” Cherise said happily.

“I’m driving to Ohio, trying to locate my son. You got me worried. Why’d you call so many times?”

“You called me,” Cherise pointed out.

“Everything okay, Cherise?”

“I’m just chillin’ at yo’ apartment. Jerome goin’ be pissed I ain’t home. Jus’ wanted to make sure everythin’ was cool with my girl.”

Lydia had a moment of understanding, “I’m so sorry, Cherise.”

“I got you girl, I got you.”

While Cherise was being slapped in the face for her defiance, Lydia was calling Jerome.

“No time to explain. Get your kids out of there. Cherise is being held captive at my place. And Jerome? Bring your boys … and your faith. You’re going to need it.”

***

Hours later, Aliyah barreled past the “Welcome to Ohio” sign, her dashboard lighting up with the icon alerting her that she was about to run out of gas. She didn’t have any cash, had no idea what was in her bank account at the moment, and was reluctant to use her card. Danny was a police officer, or at least he had been. It’s how he’d gotten her into the car to begin with.

She’d been seven years old, standing at the curb of a school, awaiting her Mom to pick her up, as there had been something they were going to do that day. Instead of her Mom, however, a police cruiser had pulled up alongside her.

“Hey, sweetie, do you know who I am?”

“A police officer,” she’d responded.

“Do you know what police officers do?”

“They protect people and get the bad men and put them in jail.”

“That’s correct. That means you can trust me. I’m friends with your parents. They had a family emergency while you were in school and needed to leave. They asked that I pick you up from school and hold onto you for a few hours until they get back.”

“What kind of emergency? Did Grandma fall down the stairs again?”

“They had to take her to the hospital. It should only be a few hours. Why don’t you get in and get buckled up and we’ll stop at your favorite place to eat? Does that sound nice?”

“Is Grandma going to die? Last time she went to the hospital, she stayed there a long time.”

“I don’t think it’s that serious. Your parents didn’t really have time to explain it to me, because they needed to leave as quickly as they could. Come on, we can talk more about it while I’m driving. I still have to patrol the streets and make sure all the bad guys are gone.”

They’d driven for hours, and while she’d been staring out the window, worrying about Grandma, dozing in and out of sleep after having filled up on a chocolate milkshake and a Happy Meal, she saw the sign.

“Hey, I know Ohio. It’s a different state,” she’d commented. “We learned about that in school.”

“That’s right, little girl, it
is
a different state. One far, far away from your home.”

“Then how will my parents find me? You said they’d come and get me in a few hours.”

“You see this?” he held up a police scanner. “When they’re ready, the call will come through here. Would you like to hold onto to it and listen to it?”

She nodded her head and listened to all the bad things happening in the world. A robbery. People breaking the law. A heart attack. Domestic disturbance. And the reports just kept rolling in as she listened intently for her parents.

“It’s time to come inside now, sweety,” she was told after they pulled into a driveway with a yellow doublewide and overgrown grass.

“But what if we miss their call?”

“I’ve got another one of those inside the house. It’s past your bedtime. I’m sure they’ll call soon. Right now they need to focus their attention on your Grandma and they can’t have you getting in the way.”

Once inside the house, she’d met Dwayne. He had an afro of black hair all around his head and his face. The house was smoky and stinky from the cigar he was smoking. There were food dishes, to-go containers, pizza boxes, and beer cans sprawled all over the place.

“This her?” he’d belched.

“I told you she was coming. Couldn’t you have picked up a little bit? Jesus, this place is a mess,” Danny had commented.

“That’s what she’s for,” he’d laughed. From the moment she heard that laugh, she hadn’t liked him.

“You said you had another one of those phones?” she had asked of the police officer.

“Yep, let’s get you tucked into bed. I know you’re tired. I’ll put it in the room with you.” She’d followed him into the small bedroom, the only room in the house that was clean. It was a child’s room with an old bunk bed, crayons marking the walls, and a few toys.”

“You have another child?”

“We did, but she’s gone now.”

“What was her name?”

“Aliyah.”

“Where did she go to?”

“She died. Broke my and Dwayne’s heart. That’s why he acts a little strange and why the house is so messy. He’s still grieving.”

“That’s so sad,” she had said. “Maybe he will have another little girl.”

“Sooner than you think, little girl, and it’ll make him the happiest man in the world.”

He’d turned the lights off, but for leaving the door cracked open to the dark hallway. She’d always had a night light at her home, so she laid there, eyes wide open, listening to the steady stream of all the bad things in the world.

It was the next morning when she was eating dried cereal, because the milk was stale, when the call had come through talking about a five-car pileup, eight dead, three in critical condition. Danny looked at her, she looked at Danny. He immediately shut the scanner off and left the room, where she could hear him speaking on his phone.

Time had seemed suspended while she waited for him to come back. When he did, there were tears in his eyes. “They must have been rushing back to come get you. They probably didn’t even sleep. They shouldn’t have been driving. I’m so sorry, honey.”

“They’re – they’re …,” she’d begun to cry, huge droplets of tears welling in her eyes.

“You heard it yourself on the scanner. Eight dead. Two of them were your parents.”

And Dwayne, with his funny hair, and his weird smell, just kept smiling at her.

Aliyah continued driving through Woodrow Ohio, recognizing the streets, the homes, the school where she’d grown up. She could not remember where she’d lived prior to that, the names or faces of her parents, or her original name.

Dwayne became her guardian and began calling her Aliyah, and that’s what all the teachers and everyone else called her as well, so that’s who she’d become. During the day, a little girl who’d had the misfortune of losing both her parents, who went to school, made friends, did her schoolwork, came home, and did chores. At night, Aliyah, the warrior princess.

When she’d first stumbled upon Otherland and learned of its non-human habitants, she’d thought she might be able to find her parents. So every night, she’d gone in search of them. The Light knight had been the first human, like herself, that she’d found.

She became quickly attached to him. First, like that of an older brother, as she’d never had a sibling before. As she grew older and older, it turned into more. She’d fallen in love with him.

He’d told her one day that she could no longer travel to Otherland, as the Bylaws had been changed to forbid humans from freely coming and going, due to causing some type of disruption, so he’d found a place in between for them to meet, a place that gradually, over the years, over time, began crumbling into the Nothingness, because the Lost souls could sense those living and full of life and energy.

This is where he’d told her that they could no longer meet there, denying both her wishes for him to come with her or for she to go with him.

So she’d jumped into the Nothingness to keep them from further destroying the only place remaining where she might find the Light knight again. She had known she would become lost, but the Light knight had left her no choice. If he ever wanted to find her again, he’d be the only one to be able to recover all that had already been lost.

But still, their pasts and presents intertwined, he chose his duty. She now knew only she could recover all that had been lost, and there was but one other that would choose love. She’d known it the first moment she felt him move inside her womb.

She’d been young, far too young, but it was a motivation to escape her situation more powerful than anything she’d ever had. For herself, she couldn’t do it alone, but for her child, she could do anything. So she ran.

… and ran … and hid … and ran again.

Danny’s work as a police officer had enabled him to track her easily. It’s how they must have found her when she’d gone to the hospital to give birth. So short-lived was the moment, holding her dearest treasure in her arms, staring into his beautiful green eyes and pink face with the small patch of blonde hair on his head, feeling the most profound love she’d ever felt before.

Aliyah’s car ran out of gas a couple miles before she got to the cemetery. She’d need a new car anyway if Danny was still a police officer. He’d easily be able to track her license plates. All things she’d had to learn the hard way throughout decades of being on the run.

She knew exactly where to go, like it’d been just yesterday she’d had to bury her only son. She hadn’t buried him six feet under, only just enough to cover the box that she’d made sure had plenty of tiny holes in it, no bigger than a needle point. Hurriedly, she removed the dirt, cutting her hands on stone and tearing her nails. She removed the box frantically and attempted to open it, but it would not open.

“No,” she cried. “No, no, no.” She pressed her ear to the box to listen for life and heard nothing. She could only hold the box curled in her arms, rocking, and crying.

“Aliyah,” she suddenly heard called out to her.

“Jacob? How did you - ?” There was a shimmering beside him, hardly seen in the day light. “Is that - ?”

“Yes, I went after you, found him trying to get through. He apparently doesn’t have your abilities. He needed to be let in. He led me here.”

“I didn’t hear any sounds,” she cried. “I thought he was – he was – I couldn’t bear the thought of losing him again. I can’t open the box, Jacob.”

He put his hand on her arm. “Are you sure this is the best time for this, Aliyah, what with you being hunted, the darkened soul having gone AWOL and refusing to return? His body has been preserved at the age he was brought to Otherland. Can you care for and keep a baby safe right now?”

“What choice do I have? You said it yourself, I kept returning to Otherland in search of him. Now that I have him, I will no longer need to return there until it’s my natural time. They’ll stop hunting me. They’ll eventually capture Dwayne and return him to imprisonment, and then I can finally, finally have my life the way it should have been all this time.”

The Light knight looked at her with a pained look and opened his mouth to say something, but didn’t. Instead, he reached around his neck, and pulled off a necklace with a heart-shaped pendant, the exact replica of her own. “Let me see yours.”

She gave it to him. They weren’t exactly alike, as the back of her hers had the small hole, and his had a bump that fit perfectly into the hole, breaking the seal. It opened to a small key made of stone, which fit into the lock on the box.

There lay her beautiful baby, lying as peacefully as though he resting, 13 human years later. They heard the soft cries of the shimmering Light soul peering into the box.

“Are you ready for this, Jasper?” Aliyah said softly. “Is this what you want? The choice is ultimately yours,” but her voice pitched in desperation.

“It’s all I’ve ever wanted,” he whispered tearfully. “To live in the place I belong with the mother I’ve never forgotten.”

Seconds later, the newborn baby’s eyes opened, and his mouth began making suckling noises and little grunts, as the most innocent of all creatures stared up at her.

“Oh, Jacob, he’s beautiful,” she crooned.

“He is an adorable little squirt as a baby, isn’t he? I wonder how much he remembers.” Jacob held him up in front of him and said, “And to think, Jasper, those baby lips won’t be able to ask any more questions for a few years now.”