Otherland (23 page)

CHAPTER 38

Dwayne was proud of himself. It had taken him some time to get it all set up, versus his earlier attempts of pursuing her with a one-track mind. She’d hardly even rolled her eyes all the other tactics he’d used. This time he was going to hit her where it all counted, right at home, right where it had all begun.

He knew she was on her way, and could hardly contain his panting in his excitement. He sat in the very chair at the same table in the same run-down doublewide, drinking a beer, and smoking a cigar – just like old times. She arrived with a nonchalant attitude and actually laughed at him.

“Really, Dwayne? This was your big plan? You seem to be forgetting that being here meant far more to you than it ever did to me. When I left, I never looked back. You, on the other hand, never let go.”

“Did you enjoy the reprieve I gave you, Aliyah? 18 perfect hours for you to enjoy yourself and pretend you had some type of life, and I see you spent it with your Light knight. Isn’t it amazing how newfound love can make you forget about the things that seemed so important previously? Take me, for example. I’ve spent my entire life and non-life – first, creating you into what you are now, then wanting nothing more than to get you back, and how did you show your appreciation for my love? You killed me. So then I spent an eternity, imprisoned in the Darkness, biding my time, awaiting the moment I could finally exact my revenge and be rid of you. So you can honestly say I spent 2/3rds of my human life devoted to you.”

“More like obsessed. What’s your point, Dwayne? Do you finally want to call a truce?”

“Perhaps it could be called that, sure. You see, I’ve finally decided to move on,” he stubbed out the smelly cigar.

“And to think it only took you an eternity.”

“Quiet, Aliyah, you’ll want to hear this. I’ve found new love. And she’s perfect. Better than my former daughter, especially better than you ever were. I don’t love you anymore, Aliyah. You’ve been replaced. We’ve spent a delightful 18 hours together and she has been so much fun. You know what I decided to call her? ... Savannah.”

Aliyah went to fly at him, but the dozen Dark souls that had followed her back here combined their dark energies and restrained her. Dwayne began walking, and they dragged her behind him to follow.

“You showed up just in time, Aliyah. I was just about to give her one of my trust exercises. You remember those, don’t you?”

“Dwayne, stop. Your battle is with me and me alone. Leave her out of it.”

“I’m sorry, Aliyah. You just weren’t good enough. So many chances I gave you, but you failed me so many times. It’s almost like you wanted this to happen. You wanted me to find someone else, just so you could act out the normal life you’ve never had.”

He opened the door to the bedroom. It looked exactly the same but for her markings that she’d added to the walls in contribution to the deceased Aliyah. A child laid curled up in fetal, against the wall, completely silent, her gown soaked with blood.

“You see how beautiful she is? She hardly even cried, and didn’t fight me at all. I only had to cut her three times. Unlike you, Aliyah. Your body is now ugly and permanently scarred from all the times you fought me. Come on, Savannah. It’s time to play.”

“What is the point of all this, Dwayne? You won’t be satisfied with just my soul, and unless you have a dozen guards on me at all times, you won’t be able to keep me.”

“But how strong will you be with a broken spirit? There’s a reason you can travel both light and dark, day and night. Oh, baby, I know you’re tired. I’ve got the perfect thing to wake you up,” he said to the unmoving child as he lifted her from the bed.

Aliyah flailed against the Dark souls, but she was overpowered.

Dwayne walked, and she was dragged, toward the lake – the lake his original daughter had drowned in.

“Yes, I can feel your changing energy, Aliyah. You remember this exercise very well. Maybe it feels like it was just yesterday. You would have died if not for me. I saved your life. But, as usual I got no thanks for it.”

“You can’t tell me you Dark souls are possibly as deranged as this one’s,” she stated to the dozen others holding her. “I mean, what’d you do in your lives that was so bad that turned you? Stole a few items? Killed a few people? Maybe assaulted a few women? I bet none of you ever did something this sick. If you allow this, you’ll become just as dark as he, just as twisted,” Aliyah tried.

“That is why he is the Dark master, darker than all of us. We will serve him and he will teach us the ways,” they all said in unison like they’d been brain-washed, or soul-washed, rather.

Dwayne plopped whom-he-called Savannah in the shallow part of the water, and she instantly came to life, her brown-eyes opening wide, terrified. She made frantic hand gestures, but didn’t make a sound.

“Didn’t I tell you she was perfect, Aliyah? She’s mute. The sweet thing is completely mute. Can’t make a sound. We grabbed her right from her front yard, and the poor thing couldn’t even call for help. Savannah, baby, don’t be frightened. Do you know how to swim?”

She shook her head no.

“Do you trust me?”

She hesitated, and then nodded slightly.

“Good girl.” And he flung her body out deep into the lake.

“Dwayne, stop!” Aliyah cried.

“You knew how to swim, Aliyah, so it took quite a bit longer. You worked your arms and legs hard for a good 45 minutes and made it back to shore. I had to bring you out to the middle of the lake in the canoe, just to keep you from swimming back to shore. Yet, still you fought to stay alive for another hour, until you just grew too weak and couldn’t stay afloat anymore. You could have made it a lot easier on yourself had you just trusted me, but you didn’t. You never did. You see, the poor thing’s already going under. Hardly even put up a fight. She trusts that I will save her.”

30 seconds went by. A minute. It felt like 15 minutes. For the sake of saving the child, Aliyah didn’t say a word, hoping against all hope that Dwayne would feel satisfied in believing she now trusted him. A minute 30 seconds. Two minutes. The air bubbles were fading.

Dwayne turned away, disappointed. “Stupid girl. She should have tried to swim. Now she’s going to die.”

With all her force, Aliyah tried escaping and going after the child.

“It’s too bad you didn’t bring your human body, Aliyah. Spiritual energy doesn’t work under water. It’s as effective as shooting a bullet into it. Oh, there is one more thing, before I forget.” Dwayne pressed play on a recorder. There was static, a cry, and then a spoken voice. Colton’s. “I’m sorry, Aliyah, they tortured my parents. I’m so sorry.” And the recording stopped.

“Sorry? Sorry for what? What’s he sorry for? What’s he talking about? What’d you do to him?” Aliyah cried.

“Two minutes 30 seconds, Aliyah. You better try to find a way to save her or her death will be on your conscience, forever. If you let her die, then I very much fear for your soul.”

She was released from her holds. Dwayne walked away, and the Dark souls followed. It took her only a second’s decision to go after him or save the child. She went after the child.

“Huh, and she thinks
I’m
the predictable one? Pathetic,” Dwayne said to his followers. “You, possess the body I was in. Six of you stay here. The remaining five can come with me and watch how this finally ends.”

“Yes, Dark master. Should she succeed in saving the child?”

“Highly unlikely, but I guess you’ll just have to finish the job, won’t you? I can’t do
everything
myself. Just don’t fail.”

CHAPTER 39

Even though he’d said her spiritual energies wouldn’t work in water, she tried anyway, until she was panting in exhaustion. She managed only to open six inches, and this part of the lake was approximately 25 feet deep. She tried diving into the water, but the forces of the current were like flying in a tornado, and she couldn’t control the direction.

She looked around frantically for something she
could
control. A tree. She focused her attention on a branch probably 30 feet long. It cracked with the increasing pressure, but was taking far too long.

“Break!” she screamed in helpless rage, and it did. With a power she hadn’t known she’d possessed, fueled by the very anger and mindset Jacob had warned her against, she brought the branch to the place she’d seen the child drown, and submerged it deep into the water. Another 30 seconds passed. “Come on, grab it,” she breathed. “Please, please grab it. Don’t give up. Don’t let him win,” she whispered in agony.

Then she felt the pull. “Yes! Yes!” she cried out in excitement. “Thatta girl.”

She pulled the branch up as fast as she could until hands and arms emerged from the water, then brown hair, and a head that went limp as soon as it was pulled to surface.

“I’ll be darned. She actually did it,” the Dark soul that had possessed Dwayne’s former possession said in almost admiration.

“You heard the Dark master. She’s weak. Don’t let her escape, and don’t let the child live. She has to watch her die for his plans to work.”

Aliyah
felt
them coming – an ability she hadn’t formerly had, but then again, this was the longest she’d ever left her body in this world. It made her wonder what other abilities she might have. She entered the child with no resistance whatsoever, as the child’s life was fading, and swam to shore.

They watched the child, miraculously swimming, and still very much alive. “This isn’t good. Where’d she go? Can any of you feel her? I’m not getting anything.”

“No, I don’t feel her either.”

“Find her! I’ll take care of the child,” the possessed body said.

Once ashore, she went limp and laid there, while Dwayne approached. He leaned over her with raunchy cigar and rotted-teeth breath. “Sorry, little girl, but call this the final cut.”

Just as he was about to slice the child’s throat, Aliyah grabbed his wrist, turned the knife, then pushed his body down on it. The fact that she’d just killed a human that had been dark enough to allow Dark-soul possession didn’t bother her one bit. She ran the child’s dying body to the closest neighbor ¾’s of a mile away. Short legs made it take longer. She knocked on the door and said, once opened, “Save the child.”

“Who?”

“Me. Save me. Then find my parents. I was kidnapped. I need CPR to get the water out of my lungs.”

Then, to their utmost confusion, the child’s body dropped unconscious on their front porch.

***

The Light knight felt them coming and knew it was time. He prayed that Aliyah’s soul was all right. He believed in her. He trusted her. So he stood, tall and firm, in front of her body, looking all of the Light knight that he was, and waited for them to get there.

“Where is she?” the Light knight demanded when seven of them arrived.

“Aliyah? Oh, she’s currently having a change of heart, or more-fittingly, a change of soul. By far, my greatest accomplishment. I’m quite pleased. I could
feel
her hatred,
feel
her darkening, finally giving in to what she’s had inside her all along.”

“Then why are you here, instead of enjoying your victory? You cannot get to her body with me here, so don’t waste your time.”

“No? Not even when at the moment her family is being tortured and her son’s life is in danger? How much darker do you think she’d become if she finally took a chance on trust, and you all failed to keep her son alive and safe?” Dwayne threatened.

“My duty is to Aliyah, and only Aliyah. Those are my orders, and those are the orders I follow. The entire world can fall, but it would change nothing. I will continue to abide by my duty.”

“You may very well get your way – the world falling into eternal Darkness, that is, as Aliyah will never forgive you if her child dies. In fact, she’d hate you and never again believe in goodness or the High master. She may very well destroy him,
herself, in her vengeance.”

“It’s not Aliyah’s soul I’m worried about, Dwayne. It’s yours. We will win, and your punishment for your treachery will be severe. You won’t ever be let out of imprisonment, ever again, and you will have to live with that for all of eternity.”

“Not with my new possession, I won’t.”

Aliyah’s knife made of stone imprisonment, white light, and the blue emerald, emerged from her body’s pants pocket and floated out of the Light knight’s reach, but still he refused to move away from her body.

“Ha ha,” Dwayne chuckled. “If you could only see your face. What? You didn’t think I knew what she was going to use to try to kill me?” Dwayne rapidly maneuvered the knife, threatening different parts of her body. “Where is it, Light knight? From which direction will it strike? How can you possibly save her now?”

At that, the Light knight jumped over her body, completely covering hers with his own. He felt the ice-cold blade penetrate his back. Once, twice, three times, and he cried out each time it entered him.

“Idiot. Apparently it didn’t occur to you that you can’t protect her if you’re dead. Enjoy your Orientation ritual. Perhaps you’ll be cleansed of your memory before you realize that you failed!”

Dwayne flicked the Light knight’s dying body a good fifteen feet away from Aliyah’s own.

***

Aliyah was moving as fast as she could to return to New Jersey, to the Light knight, to her body, when severe pain flared in her back, her gut, her chest.

“Oh no,” she cried.

Her only regret was her son. That she wouldn’t be around to raise him. The entire world probably heard her grieving, angry, tortured shriek.

Only then did she realize what Colton had been apologizing for. He must have told Dwayne about the blade from Otherland. But he would have only been able to tell Dwayne what Aliyah had confided, not what she hadn’t told him.

She landed fifty feet away and saw his Dark soul towering over her body, with the blade floating, glimmering, over her lifeless-looking body.

Dwayne felt her spiritual presence and looked up. “Right on time, Aliyah. I thought you’d have to be returned here in restraints to observe this moment, but you came of your free will. I guess you weren’t able to save the child. That sucks. Don’t be too hard on yourself. You’re not the only one who failed. So did your Light knight.”

Only then did she see his sprawled body, his white shirt entirely covered in red.

She pushed her hands forward, and knocked Dwayne over from his kneeling position.

“We didn’t fail, Dwayne,” she said shakily. She continued toward him. “You did exactly everything we wanted you to do. It was all a set-up. I’m surprised you didn’t suspect, what with me coming to you so willingly, but you’ve always been too trusting, Dwayne. You never stopped carrying that futile hope that I’d finally give in to you.”

“What’re you talking about? What. Does. She. Mean?” he yelled to the other Dark souls.

The winds picked up, and parts of him began being pulled in by the knife handle. “What’s happening?” he said with alarm, trying to pull himself away.

“You thought you beat me, but you didn’t. You’re coming with me,” she continued walking forward, raising her voice louder and louder over the whipping winds and his angry, fearful shouts. “Any last words?”

“I don’t understand! I don’t know what’s happening? What did you do?” he cried, no longer the Dark master in control and all-powerful. He was actually quite pathetic in his fear, as she’d always known he was. That’s why he’d spent his entire life trying to compensate for it.

More and more of his soul was being entrapped in the stone handle.

“No. No! NOOOO!” he screamed.

“Dwayne, I win.” she said simply.