Otherland (12 page)

And at that, the baby belted out a piercing mewling wail.

“Well I guess we know how he feels about that,” the Light knight chuckled.

He returned the baby to Aliyah’s reaching arms, sat down beside her, and wrapped his arm around her shoulder. There were very few perfect moments in life, but they usually came in the midst of chaos, and this was one of them.

CHAPTER 19

The Light knight was summoned while Aliyah drove the vehicle he’d confiscated. He’d hardly arrived before he was being restrained by the Dark prison guardians in the presence of just one Dark elder, the menacing one with glowing, grey eyes.

“What is this meaning of this?” he demanded.

“You had one mission, Light knight, and that was to return the human girl. You brought her here to the child, the one you stated was not the one she was looking for, and aided and abetted in their escape. You let the child back into the human world against the Bylaws. Then you returned with neither one of the humans, against direct orders to do so. You will be stripped of your knighthood, and are to be imprisoned in the darkness to await your own Ceremony trial.”

“My duty, as provided to me in a unanimous decision of the elders was to first return the AWOL Dark soul criminal who has since done exactly what we feared, and now walks the human world freely in the possession of another body, continuing to pursue Aliyah’s body with the intent of causing harm to her. Since it is she he is targeting, the only way I am to capture him and return him here is by staying by her side and waiting for him to find her. Only after returning the Dark soul criminal am I to bring the humans here to await their own Ceremony trial before the High master, who is all-knowing, something of which, you are not. The only one not abiding by their duty is you, Dark elder, in acting alone. All the elders are supposed to be here when such decisions are made.”

“Sometimes it is in the best interests of all things to act alone when the Light elders continue to disregard the threat of humans in this world. All the years you have served, yet the moment you return to the human world, you begin acting of your own accord and forgetting your duty and loyalty to the High master, out of seeing a pretty face. Do you deny letting the human child back into the human world?”

“I could not leave him there with all the threats of the Lost souls,” the Light knight excused.

“You could have returned him,” the Dark elder yelled.

“So that you could have him imprisoned in the darkness, Dark elder, simply for the fact that he is human and you still believe in the old way of things before peace was made between the Lights and Darks?”

“Blasphemy!” he barked.

“The High master will know of this, Dark elder. You cannot hide the truth of your thoughts from
him,
and the true motivations behind your actions. Five against One, Dark elder. Unanimity isn’t required when there is a betrayal of an elder.”

“Let us be happy, then, that those aren’t the odds,” he said maliciously, as the two other Dark elders came to float beside him.

“Would you so easily destroy the peace that we’ve maintained for all this time? Do you not remember what happened the last time the Darks went against the Lights?” the Light knight cried.

“We are stronger now, stronger than we have ever been before. This time, we won’t be defeated. While you’ve been catering to your pretty human girl, we’ve been busy. Go ahead, call out for the Light elders, call out for your High master. They won’t hear you. We are in the New Darkness now, now allied with the Lost souls, and the Nothing-ness.”

“You – you crossed the Forbidden and brought the Nothingness to Otherland? All our work, everything we’ve been fighting against to keep it from spreading, and you brought it here?” the Light knight shouted.

The Dark elder chuckled. “Not just here. We now have a Dark army working for us in the human world that can let us in. It has taken us human-world-centuries releasing an occasional AWOL Dark soul into Otherworld that the Light elders would just as easily disregard as they would the occasional humans that found their way into this world. That’s the greatest disadvantage of your being Light. All of you believe in the greater good. All of you trust. All of you believe in the best of things, even believing in the best of those who are dark. Only something good would attempt to make peace with all that is dark. You are the last human in this world to be eternally trapped in the Darkness. We’ve found all of you, and of course, knew you would come as summoned, like the devoted dutiful knight you are.

“Now we can finally destroy Aliyah in the way that should have been done long ago, so she can never again run free between our worlds, and she will be the last human threat.”

“If you kill her, she will come here as a Light soul to be reckoned with,” the Light knight warned.

“Not if she becomes lost and never finds her way back here, again. She’s spent her entire human life lost, not knowing where she belongs. It’s only fitting that she spend eternity that way. That is, after all, what happens to lost humans when they die. Why do you think there are so many Lost souls? And there will be many, many more with all we have planned for the human world.”

The Light knight fought needlessly against his restraints. He, like no one else, could break free from them. Except for Aliyah. But as he already knew, the one thing she wasn’t immune to, the magic she did not have, was to resist the Nothingness and the Lost souls from becoming lost herself.

***

Aliyah called Jerome while waiting for the Light knight to return. He’d been out for many hours, but she knew that time was different between the worlds. Sometimes minutes, sometimes days, sometimes months, and occasionally years.

“Did you get her, Jerome?”

“Yeah, yeah, we got her,” he said, his voice estranged.

“What’s wrong, Jerome?”

“What the
hell
you get us involved in, Lydia? I ain’t never seen – I thought we be dealin’ with flesh and blood. Brought my boys, we brought our guns, all ready to take care of the siti-ation.”

“What happened?”

“We were all ‘bout gettin’ ready to beat the piss out o’ the old guy, when he jus’ drop to the ground, a black thing come outta him like smoke, started tauntin’ us, tellin’ us, ‘Go ahead. Kill the human.’ Sorry ‘bout yo’ house, dog. We shot it all up, bullets went right through it. Tried turnin’ on the lights, all the bulbs shattered. Cherise got somma yo’ hairspray or perfume or somethin’, and lit it right up in there with fire.

“So it screamed, tried gettin’ into one a’ my boy’s body who wasn’t in any light, but my boy good and it didn’t seem to take, so it flew away. The old man begged fo’ us to take him with us, so we did. Got him tied up right now.”

“You did good, Jerome. I knew you’d take care of it. Where are you?”

“What? I ain’t tellin’ you nuttin’. You gone done enough.”

Aliyah heard a slap. “Gimme that phone, fool. Hey girl, don’t listen to him. We at my ma’s. You remember where that at?”

“Cherise, no, she keep bringin’ this shit on us,” Lydia heard Jerome in the background.

“Shut up, Jerome. You do the same thing if it was one a’ yo’ boys. That who we are. We got each other’s back. Take care o’ our own. That’s how it is.”

“Cherise, I don’t want to cause any more problems than I already have,” Lydia said.

“Girl, get yo’ white ass over here. The old fool we got strapped up wants to talk wit’ you.”

“Thank you, Cherise. I didn’t know what else to do or where else to go. Hey, do you got formula and diapers over there?”

“Yuh, why?”

“Just wondering. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

CHAPTER 20

It was nearly midnight when Lydia arrived to a house that had every light lit. She was met at the door, Jerome carrying a lit torch to get her safely out of the darkness and into the bright house.

“What you got?” Cherise asked.

“Cherise, I want you to meet my son, Jasper.”

“I thought yo’ son was 12 or somethin’. This jus’ a newborn babe. You know what? All this crazy. Nothin’ make sense no mo’. Neve’ mind. He do look like you, though. Come on, baby, get you fed and changed,” Cherise took over.

“I need help carrying Jacob in.”

“How long he been out fo’?”

“Almost eight hours,” Aliyah said worriedly. “But he was summoned. Usually those are quick.”

“Jerome,” Cherise snapped her fingers. “Get the body from the car.”

“Buh – body? What the
hell
, Cherise.”

“It ain’t dead, fool. Why I got to be the one always wearin’ the pants ‘round here? Man up, Jerome.”

Lydia bowed her head, hiding her smile, as Jerome and two of his buddies grumbled past her out the door. “Hi, Mama,” she hugged Cherise’s mother.

“You done brought the devil,” she said, holding Lydia’s face and looking at it. “Don’t make sense. You not that pretty, skinny as bones, and white as porcelain.”

“Mama,” Cherise chastised.

“What? Ya think a black demon would want a big black woman, that’s all I’m sayin’. Not some skinny white girl.”

“He’s not a demon, Mama. He died three years ago. I’m his unfinished business,” Lydia said.

“Well, you be safe here, chile. I got more crosses in dis house than china. Nothin’ gonna get you here.”

“Thanks, Mama,” Lydia dropped her head in humility and guilt for having caused all this to begin with. “Where’s Danny, the old man?”

“He in the basement.”

Aliyah inhaled and exhaled, finding her strength to face the man that had ruined her life. He looked pathetic and very, very old. He was breathing hard, holding his chest, his face scrunched in pain.

“Aliyah,” he croaked, when she was ten feet in front of him. “How is it possible? You look 20 years old.”

“25,” she said shortly.

“I was 23 when you were seven, and now I’m 62.”

“I found other ways to escape the things that you and Dwayne did,” she said bitterly. “I spent more years of my life hiding than I did living it. They said you wanted to talk to me.”

He had tears in his eyes. “What we did to you was terrible?” he said.

“I know,” she said coldly.

“Dwayne, he’s intent on destroying you. He won’t let go. He won’t stop. He’s … obsessed. When he died, I thought … I thought I could finally be free of him.”

“Your soul is as black as his because of the things you did. What makes you think you deserve to be free of that,” Lydia raised her voice.

“I know, I know. I messed up. I – I never felt good about it, Aliyah. I regretted ever getting involved. One thing led to another, and because I was a part of it … He used me as much as he used you, Aliyah. The real Aliyah -.”

“What happened to her?”

“I didn’t know about it at the time. Dwayne and my friendship went way back. We grew up together. He was, well, he had been, a very good friend to me. He got married and had a daughter, who was named Aliyah. He doted on her. He loved her so much, but his wife wanted a divorce. She took the child, ran. I’d just graduated from the academy at that time, so he asked for my help in locating them. I did.

“Then he asked for a ride, said he was going to talk to his wife to try to make arrangements. Instead, he came running out of the house, carrying the child, told me I was as much a part of the abduction as him, and needed me to drive. I didn’t know what to do. I never should have - He was my friend, I trusted him.”

“I had no idea what he was getting me involved in, but once involved, he owned me. Told me he’d ruin my life if I didn’t help him, so I figured if I just helped him that once, it would all be over.

“Then he called me one day, frantic, hysterical, telling me she’d died, and if I didn’t help him, he’d turn me in for abducting her to begin with. He said we needed to find another child that looked like her to take her place, so that no one would suspect what had happened to her. He said it’d been an accident, that she’d drowned, but she’d already been registered in school, and so if he reported her death, they’d run the DNA, learn that she was the abducted child, and both of us would go down for it.

“I knew, at that point, I was already in too deep, but I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to spend my life in prison for a simple act of helping out a friend that I’d trusted. So I did what he wanted. I found you, you took Aliyah’s place, no one knew anything. I stayed away as much as I could. I spent my life dreading his phone call, that he would ask me for another favor and threaten my life.

“I didn’t know for many years what he was doing to you. If you could know what I knew, when he was married, and having his daughter, he was the best father there was. Losing that had made him insane, like I’d never seen him before. I thought that once he could feel like he had his daughter back, all would be good. He’d be happy. He’d be good to you. He’d love you like he’d loved his real daughter.”

Aliyah clenched her fists. “I had to pay for the fact that I
wasn’t
his real daughter, that I hadn’t been born to him, that I’d had seven years’ prior of a life with my actual parents before they died. I mourned my parents. I’d loved them. He wanted me to call him Dad when I knew that he wasn’t,” she said harshly, having difficulty with her breath for all the pain she was feeling.

“The more he demanded my love, the more I knew I wasn’t his daughter, the more I mourned my family that had been stolen from me. You don’t have to go into the details of your participation, Danny. I remember, and I’ve spent my life trying to forget. He used you to hurt me. He used you to try to show me that he was the only one that truly loved me and wouldn’t hurt me. And you played right along, Danny. You did exactly what he wanted you to do.”

“I’m sorry, I told you, I was in too deep. I didn’t know how to get out. I was just as much a victim to him as you.”

Lydia laughed bitterly, “No, Danny, you weren’t. At any time, you could have gotten out. You could have turned him in. You could have refused. There are so, so many other things you could have done other than what you chose to do. That’s why your soul is as black as his, which is why it was so easy for his soul to possess your body. If you’re looking for my forgiveness, you’re not going to get it.”

“I know, I know. I was a coward, and I’ve spent my life running from the consequences. You’re right that I could have made different choices, but I didn’t make those choices, because I was too afraid. And now I know that there is no getting away from the consequences of those choices, but I am willing to offer an exchange with you.”

“What kind of exchange?”

“I want you to kill me so that he can’t take possession of me again. Kill me, and I will face the consequences. I don’t want to be controlled by him any longer, and I’m now prepared to face whatever consequences I have to. In exchange, I will tell you your real name so that you can find your family.”

“My parents are dead.”

There was silence as he bowed his head, then slowly shook it side to side. “Those were lies. All lies. Your parents never died. We told you that so that you would … forget them.”

Lydia, or Aliyah, or whoever she was, dropped to the ground in tears. “All these years my parents have been alive?”

“Do we have an agreement? In exchange for this information, you will kill me?”

“Yes, yes,” she cried.

“Your name is Savannah Somersteen, from New Jersey.”

“Heightsfield” she whispered.

“You remember?”

“Heightsfield Central School. I lived on Durham Ave.”

“Now it’s your turn,” he said.

She stood, looking down on him with so much hatred. She could easily,
easily
kill him without remorse. It’d be too easy, so she turned away and shut the lights off instead.

“I know about our son!” he cried out as she ascended the basement stairs.

“You aiight?” Cherise said in concern as Lydia moved into the kitchen.

“Release him,” she said simply. “Keep his hands bound, but leave him out there in the darkness. It’s where he belongs.”

“What happen? What he say?”

Lydia just shook her head, keeping her lips tightly closed, but showing all that needed to be known in her eyes.

They went to Cherise’s bedroom with the sounds of Danny’s desperate pleas of terror, out there, alone in the darkness, while they were surrounded by light.

Yet still, the Light knight hadn’t returned.