Otherland (13 page)

CHAPTER 21

Dwayne felt the summons he’d been waiting for while searching for another body to possess. He opened the portal door and felt more purpose and accomplishment than he’d ever felt in his human life, as all the Dark souls filed through.

The night came to be filled with the screams of humans, their normal routine lives disrupted forever. Too many lights would cause a power surge that would put all their homes in darkness. Then they’d all start killing each other, every man unto himself, not knowing what was good or what was possessed, not willing to take the chance to find out, because the greatest skill the Dark had was deceit.

To take the appearance of being good, so that the good would not be trusted.
That’s
how easy it all was. Fear was an active thing that everyone kept at bay. Once triggered, nothing could stop it from taking its own course. Fear, and only fear, made people do things they wouldn’t ordinarily do.

***

Lydia rubbed her groggy eyes. “Something’s happening. Can you hear it?”

“Yuh, scares the bejesus outta me. Why ain’t he come yet? This seem bigger than you,” Cherise said.

“It is. What time is it?”

“Three. We be sittin’ here fo’ hours. Wish we could fast-forward time so it be light out, again. This torture.”

“He should have returned by now,” Lydia said worriedly. “Something’s keeping him from returning. I can feel it. There’s something very wrong. I need to go back there.”

“I’m goin’ wit’ you.”

“You can’t.”

“You ain’t tell me what I can or can’t do. I’m involved in dis now. How am I s’pposed to know what to do if you don’t show me? They expectin’ you. They ain’t expectin’ Cherise.”

“It’s not that simple, Cherise,” Lydia tried explaining. “Only those that have been there before can get there and find their way back. You have to know how to manipulate consciousness and leave the body. I know you’ve got it in your mind that this is the bible’s heaven and hell, but it’s not like that. It’s so far from being that simple. White is Dark and Black is Light. Angels can be demons, and Lost souls are soul suckers, worse than the vultures that feed on the dead.

“You’ll see things – your own worse fears – the worst possible things you
can’t
even imagine, you can’t even prepare for. The moment you feel fear or attempt to turn back, your body will pull you right back in, if
They
don’t get to you first.”

“Girl, you know how many drugs I done growin’ up befo’ I had one too many bad trips? If I hadn’t ended up in the hospital screamin’ ‘bout the walls and everyone’s faces meltin’, I think Mama woulda put me there herself. Cleaned me up fast, girl, caused me hallucinations fo’ years afterward, so there ain’t nothin’ I ain’t already saw.”

“Uh huh, because you were cool as crystal after first seeing Dwayne,” Lydia grinned at her sarcasm.

“Uh-uh, don’t even go there. I was ready to kick some black demon ass, standin’ over you like that, moanin’ like he was gonna …”

Lydia involuntarily shuddered, images flashing before her eyes. She had an idea of what she was going to face on the inside, as the subconscious depths played on one’s present worst fears to keep them from crossing, fears she hadn’t had to face in all the years she’d been absent of memories. Suddenly, she knew that she would not be able to face them without Cherise, as just like then, she would be overpowered.

“We’ll need to lock ourselves in the basement. Leaving the body makes it vulnerable, defenseless and unguarded. Make sure your Mom will be all right with Jasper for a while. Remember, time is different there. My journeys there when I was younger sometimes seemed an eternity that I’d been there, and I’d disappointingly awaken to having only had a half hour go by here. Other times, I’d return at the same time I left, but there was a time that Dwayne told me I’d been out for an entire summer vacation.”

“Can I ask you somethin’?” Cherise looked at her intently, uncharacteristically serious.

“Hmm.”

“All the time I know you, you was like dis scared little thing, can hardly get you to leave yo’ apartment. I tell you a big black spirit be towerin’ over you, and you don’t even flinch. Now you tellin’ me that travelin’ to this place is full o’ nightmares and worst fears, yet you been there a hundred times. Why is that?”

Lydia heavily sighed. “I wasn’t going to talk about it, because I want to move forward from my past, but I have a feeling that going in there, you’re going to see too much anyway. Going together, it’s not just your worst fears you’re going to face, it’s mine as well, so it’s best if I prepare you.”

There was a long silence until Cherise started clicking her long acrylic nails. “What I faced in life was hell on Earth. That’s why I lost my faith. I believed I was already in hell, and that there was nothing worse than what I’d faced here. I did everything I could to escape, and since I couldn’t escape physically, I found another way. I was only a small child when I found Otherland.

“I was never afraid there, but neither was I wanted, because I was human. It’s like I was trapped between two worlds, and not able to belong in either one of them. I just kept winding up in one trying to escape from the other. That’s been my entire existence as far back as I can remember. Escaping. Running. Hiding. Neither worlds would give up hunting me, so finally I found a way. I knocked Dwayne out with some heavy medication one night, and I dragged him to Otherland. This was after they’d changed the Bylaws that any humans that found their way there could no longer leave. I was the only one they couldn’t contain.

“I returned here and ended his human existence, believing that finally I could live my life and stop running, but Otherland would not stop hunting me. Everywhere I went, they’d find me. Dwayne’s black spirit standing over me isn’t anything new to me, Cherise. Sadly, it’s normal to me. It’s been my way of life. People fear losing their jobs, or their car breaking down, or not having enough money to pay the bills. I feared going to sleep; that a spirit would find me vulnerable and imprison me inside the Darkness right next to the very one I’d spent my life escaping from.

“I gave up. I surrendered. I couldn’t stand it anymore. I returned there voluntarily, and even though I could escape their spiritual restraints, I remained imprisoned in the Darkness and awaited the Ceremony trial. That is where I pleaded with the elders and the High master.

“Well,” Lydia chuckled. “I wasn’t really one for pleading then. I more demanded the High master to prove himself. Told him if he was so all-knowing, then he should know what brought me there to begin with, and if he had one single merciful ion in his soul, he would call off his spiritual dogs and finally allow me to live a life of my own free will.”

Cherise smacked her – hard enough to sting. “You get a chance that no one else gets ‘round here to stand befo’ our Lord, our Heavenly Father. To see him -.”

“I didn’t see him. He doesn’t make appearances, I guess you could say, and he’s not
God, the Spirit, the Holy Ghost
,” Lydia said mockingly. “He’s just the High ruler in Otherland that they worship like you worship your God.”

“- and you act like that? What wrong wit’ you?”

“It worked, didn’t it? The Dark elders were fighting for my imprisonment. All decisions have to be unanimous, but if
he
speaks, then that’s that. I was released and it was promised that I would no longer be hunted as long as I never returned there. I thought I had victory, until, apparently, since my return, I became Lydia Smith with absolutely no memories of anything. Finally get my chance to live my life, and Lydia
was
pretty pathetic, wasn’t she? Doing everything to keep from having a life.”

“Memories can easily be erased and forgotten, but the body don’t forget,” Cherise said. “You might go by Aliyah, now, but to me, you still my girl, Lydia, and because you my girl, it’s my job to watch out fo’ you. Are we doin’ this or we goin’ sit here jibber-jabberin’ while your Light knight need our help?”

“He’s not mine.”

“Whatever.”

“Hold my hand. Do
not
forget that you are holding my hand. Keep it in the forefront of your mind all the while. Oh, and Cherise?”

“What?”

“If there’s ever a certain kind of look you ever wanted to have, other than nude, remember it.”

CHAPTER 22

Humans were easy, too easy, pathetically easy. Dwayne remembered his life as human, all the fears, the anxieties, the disbelief in the unknown, and neither caring about it, really. Human life seemed intolerable, time being your worst enemy.

For disadvantaged people like him, who could rarely find a job, or keep one, for that matter, because he refused to be owned or controlled by anyone after his father, 24 hours a day was spent wondering where the money would come from to buy enough food to satisfy the body, to get warm enough shelter and clothes to keep the body from freezing to death, let alone all those other needs of the human body.

In his human life, he thought he’d hit a jackpot with his former wife. She’d loved him for the way he was, didn’t seem to care that he couldn’t hold a job, provided him those three meals, those vital needs of the human body, as well as some comfort, too.

Things changed once they’d married. She began complaining about him not bringing in enough income, not doing enough around the house, not being the kind of man she wanted in her life, and that old insecurity that his old man had always encouraged returned to him. Not good enough. So he’d gotten her pregnant. The first one she was able to, with good conscience up until, get rid of, saying they weren’t ready, but it had haunted her, so when she ‘accidently’ got pregnant again, she couldn’t go through with another termination procedure.

Throughout the pregnancy, he’d gotten a job and had become that ‘better man’ she wanted. She thought he’d changed and was doing it for her. Humans, so ignorant, so self-centered. He’d just needed her to need him, because that would ensure that she wouldn’t leave, so he waited for the baby, let her struggle with trying to find childcare and paying for it for the first three months, before he presented to her his usefulness again. He’d stay home and take care of the child, because his employment was only seasonal to begin with.

No more transporting the child to and from sitters. No more sitters calling last minute to say they couldn’t babysit that day, earning her write-ups at work and threatening her job. No more waking up an hour earlier to get the baby fed, dressed, the diaper bag filled, with no time for coffee or pre-work preparation. Nope, he’d take care of it all.

Did her appreciation last long? Nope. Humans. Never satisfied. She’d come home from work after a long day of his taking care of the baby, and she’d be mad about the house being a mess, nothing being done, about having to make dinner, about giving him a break after all day spent taking care of a baby’s needs. She’d started throwing it in his face about how she worked all day and the least he could do was this, and the least he could do was that, and once again, he wasn’t good enough. Any type of passion he attempted to take care of his other human needs were met with a cold shoulder. She would want him again when he was a better man.

He’d endured this treatment for years, constantly being reminded that he wasn’t good enough, constantly threatened that she would leave him the moment she found someone else. But when they’d fight … when they’d
really
fight … he’d show her who was boss and put her back in her place.

It was life, but it wasn’t happiness. As his daughter, Aliyah, grew, he began to find those moments of happiness. The way that she smiled at him when he held her, or didn’t hold her. The way that she smiled at him no matter what. Her big twinkling eyes that loved him. It didn’t matter if he didn’t dress her right, or if it took him a few hours to change her diaper, or if he left everything a mess – she loved him, anyway.

The moment he would hold her. The moment he would look at her. She’d smile.

He entertained a life of constantly not being good enough, yet, in his daughter’s eyes, there were no conditions. She loved him no matter what. It became his only source of happiness.

Instead of getting Most-Devoted-Dad-Of-The-Year award, however, it just became something more unpleasant from his wife. She’d become jealous of his attention toward the child. She’d made it very clear that he wasn’t good enough for her, so he’d focused his attentions and energies on the child, instead. He’d stopped even remotely attempting to please his wife. She couldn’t be pleased.

But then school inevitably started for his daughter – his usefulness to his wife to continue to support him ended. He’d kept her out of school as long as he could, but almost six years old, he’d had to let her go. His wife began threatening to leave him, so he’d given in, picked up another inconsistent job, did some other things on the side to provide her with the money she wanted, while also pretending to pay more attention to her and be romantic and provide for her love needs, even though she was the one that cut them off to begin with.

He’d gone from having his happiness throughout the day with the child while she was working, to having to work, and by the time he got home, he had to act like he didn’t care for the child. It was torture doing all those things, being controlled by another person, just to keep the one thing that made him happy, day after day, second after minute after hour and hour, waiting for his wife to fall asleep so that he could finally have those few moments of unconditional love with his child.

All his human body had ever wanted was unconditional love – to be loved as he was. His mother only knew her duty to her husband, even if that husband was a bastard. His father was an ‘upstanding’ man that put over 40 years into his factory job, but would come home and not be an upstanding father or husband. He’d been a brute. Cruel. Horrible. He hated children. Hated everything outside his job. His expectations were to be like him without ever dishing out a piece of love or pride, rather force, fear, punishment.

Dwayne being the middle child – he was fat, ugly, unmotivated, disrespectful. He’d always been found wanting, especially in comparison to his older brother that maintained the same ideals as their father. Dwayne had had to suffer the consequences of his father’s ‘upstanding’ work and job all throughout his upbringing, and he’d wanted nothing to do with that. He’d wanted to be better than to have his entire existence ruled by a boss that would expect so much, give so little, and not care about the consequences at the home front.

His human body had endured so much and so many conditions that it had become obsessed with the feeling of finally being good enough, finally not being judged, finally being loved the way he was without conditions. Being able to do whatever he wanted, yet still be loved. Someone in the world that finally understood him, his need, but continued to love him nonetheless.

By the time his child was seven, his wife had taught her how to clean, take care of the house, be by herself for a few hours while they were both working, and how to feed herself. He should have known what was happening, but he’d been so focused on pleasing her on all fronts in order to have his satisfaction, he hadn’t seen it, until it was too late. The child became old enough to take care of herself and serve her mother’s purposes, so he was no longer needed. She’d left him, just like that. No backwards glance, nothing. Taking the child, his only source of love, with her.

No matter, he knew how much his daughter loved him. He’d practically raised her after all, while the mother spent her days working and not having enough time to ever play with her. Her mother didn’t love her like he did; she was merely using her as she’d used him. So he’d set up everything to get her out of there so that it could just be him and her, forever. But when he’d gotten her, what he hadn’t counted on, was the mother’s manipulation that would brainwash her into wanting to be with her mother instead of him.

As much as he’d become obsessed with his child, she’d acted just as obsessed over returning to her mother, hurting him extraordinarily. He’d tried so many things to get her to forget about her mother, and recognize that he was the one that loved her most in the world. Then he tried to show her that he needed her more than her mother did. And when that didn’t work, he decided he needed to show her how
much
she needed him. He needed her to remember that he was the only one that loved her.

But instead of calling out for him, crying for his help, she’d screamed for her mother to save her. Only then did he realize that all those times the mother was forcing him to work and everything else, she’d been turning his child against him. It was no longer his child. Her mother had turned her into her mother. Even before she was dead. Even while she was still crying and fighting to stay afloat, he mourned the loss of his daughter. The one person who had ever unconditionally loved him. To him, his daughter had already died, and he’d grieved more than ever before.

Only after his grieving did he come to understand his new situation. She’d been floating atop the water, the shore taking her away for quite a while. Dead. Once he’d had a moment away from his grief did he recognize the problem. He was the child’s guardian. They’d come after him for her death, figure out who she was – that she’d been abducted – and he’d have to take the fall for everything his ex-wife did, when he was the innocent one. All he wanted was love. She was the one that used everyone and everything for her purposes, turning and manipulating so many, including his own beloved child, for her own purposes.

Knowing the justice system, at that point, after so many court battles when he’d tried to do things the right way, he knew what he had to do. Find a replacement, another child, that wouldn’t cause suspect for anything. Eventually she’d love him like his own child had, but he had to ensure that there was no wife, no mother, not anything that would taint her love.

Savannah just so happened to be the same age, and just so happened to look like Aliyah. It was all too easy. But something had changed inside himself the day Aliyah, his true daughter, betrayed him. He’d known that he would never again feel that deep contentment from unconditional love, or believe in it. His thrills, from there, became control. His father after all, why fight it any longer?

He came to love his new Aliyah even more than he loved his old one. His old one had been entirely complacent, doing everything he wanted without voice or complaint, and quite passive. Something he had entirely loved until she began choosing above him the very woman that had ruined everything, because his child was complacent to everyone.

The new Aliyah had not been so easy, and still wasn’t. She’d fought every step of the way … every … step. Yet, in the end, just like it had been in his years growing up with his father, she didn’t have a choice. He saw more of her in him than he’d ever seen in his true child. He’d shared with her ‘the knowing’, so she was more like him than anyone he’d ever known. He’d given her a gift.

To understand suffering, so that she could love those that suffer when no one else in the world could understand.

But she’d lost sight of the game, the way they played. She’d wanted a normal life without recognizing that once you’re in, you can never get out. She’d tried eliminating him and everything else to have that, but in the process, she’d done him a favor. She’d freed him. After all, she was but human, as all the rest of them were, oblivious, close-minded, and easy.

It didn’t take the Dark souls long at all to find bodies to possess. Humans just working their jobs to make a paycheck to support their home would throw up their hands the moment there was a threat, so just like that, prisoners were released – the worst of the worst – the serial killers, the mutilators, the pedophiles, the anti-socials, willingly possessed to gain their freedom. The terrified guards practically handed the prisoners the keys to their escape.

Dwayne, an eternally imprisoned Dark-souled criminal in Otherland, was now the leader in the creation of the new world here, because his soul had shown to be the blackest of the black, as dark and as evil as they come. All his life’s work had meant something after all. For him, this
was
heaven.

“Possessing a human body, you will have all forgotten its requirements. You’ll get accustomed to hearing the owner of the body’s voice behind the scenes, though only you will hear it, so don’t act like a lunatic. Before we leave, does anyone have to go to the bathroom? Does anyone need food or drink?” Dwayne directed his words toward the newly-possessed prisoners.

They all, as huge and dangerous-looking as they were, looked at one another. “Once we get started, we are not stopping for any breaks, so it is important the human body needs are taken care of now. Believe me, I possessed a 60-year-old previously, and learned all of this the hard way. He had a bladder the size of a pea.”

One man, probably 5’9”, but 250 lbs of raw muscle, tattoos covering more of his body than not, raised his hand.

“What’re we in kindergarten? What?”

“Um, my guy, Bones, here, says he’s been locked up for nearly two decades, and he would love to have some drinks and a woman or two or three,” he chuckled.

The rest of them boisterously agreed on that front, wanting the same thing.

“Idiots,” Dwayne mumbled. “Once we take care of the business that needs to be taken care of right now – the girl, Aliyah – then you can have all the drinks and women that you want. She’ll be on the move shortly. We need to get her while I still know where she is. Let’s move.”

The prison guard could be heard on the phone, calling for as much backup as he could get. Dwayne, irritated, lifted his hand quickly, and the phone flung across the room and shattered against the bars.