Otherland (7 page)

She placed before him the picture of Otherland and the boy. He touched the tips of the blue emeralds. “You may not think you have any memories, Lydia, but you do.” Then he looked at the boy, the human-child that, at this moment, was at the Light knight’s home in Otherland.

“He was right,” he said in surprise. “That’s why you came back. You were searching for him.”

“You
know
him?” Lydia exclaimed, and cautiously sat down in the chair beside him.

“Yes,” the Light knight said hesitantly. “Do you remember him?”

All of a sudden, Cherise started coughing and making a huge racket, ruining their gentle moment where he’d been about to take her hand. “Girl, don’t you ever go shoppin’? Ugh, yo’ milk is curdled.” She threw the milk and the bowl of cereal she’d been attempting to eat into the garbage.

“That’s what you get for helping yourself to my food, Cherise,” Lydia laughed.

“You call me at dawn, actin’ like someone ‘bout to murder you. I didn’t exactly get time to eat breakfast. I’m goin’ out, get us somethin’ called
real food.
”

“Wait, Cherise,” Lydia hurried after Cherise into the living room.

The Light knight heard their urgent whispers.

“You can’t just leave me alone with him. I don’t even know who he is. He could be a stalker or something. He could be the bad guy.”

“Yeah, cause he look so much the part,” Cherise chuckled. “25 years old and still petrified of bein’ alone with a guy.”

“Shh, shut up, he can hear you.”

“He can hear you too, fool. Ten minutes. I be back. I promise.”

“Cherise,” Lydia whispered harshly.

“You kids have fun, now,” Cherise called as she walked out the door.

Lydia paced nervously in the living room. “Can’t believe she would just up and leave me like that,” she mumbled.

“Aliyah, er, Lydia. I won’t hurt you. I would never hurt you. I’m here to help you. I’m here to protect you.”

“Protect me from what?” She stopped pacing.

“I don’t want to overwhelm you. I want only to tell you what you’re ready to hear.”

“So it’s true then, isn’t it? Something bad is about to happen. Am I in danger?”

Slowly, he nodded his head.

“Who is HE? Who is coming? And how do I know you’re not him?” At that thought, she grabbed a knife and held it toward him.

He smiled at her, “You always looked like the warrior princess with your sword. A steak knife, I’m afraid, does not have the same look.”

“Who is the child?” She continued standing there with the knife pointed at him.

“I don’t think now is a good time to - .”

“Tell me,” she demanded.

“Aliyah, these are all very sensitive subjects. One thing at a time. You need first to grasp your memories or else everything I say to you is going to sound like I’m a lunatic. Otherland, do you believe it as being a real place? Do you remember it?”

“I don’t even remember painting it. I did tell Cherise, though, when I saw it, that it felt like it’s a place I’ve been to before. She said that perhaps I used to live in France or Italy.”

“It is a place you’ve been to before. It’s where we first met. You’ve been there many times, and you’ve been there recently, but it is not in France or Italy.”

“Where is it? Which country? And how could I have been there recently when I’ve been holed up here in my home other than to go to the store?” Lydia questioned rapidly.

“It is not in a different country, and it is not a place you travel on foot or by plane.”

“Another world?”

He sighed in relief. He had feared so much she would have difficulty accepting this information, but so far so good.

He nodded, “Yes, another world.”

“And how do I get to this world?”

“Your soul travels into the sub-conscious and beyond into Otherland. Most humans do not have those abilities. You, Aliyah, do, beginning as a small child. You are able to travel between worlds with ease. A while back, an agreement was made with the elders that you would not return, and in exchange for you not returning, you would stop being hunted. Your recent return has resumed the hunt, and now you are in danger.”

She stared at him intently, and then she belted out in maniacal laughter. “I knew it, you – you’re crazy. Schizophrenic. I’ve met plenty, walking the streets, talking to themselves about fighting the devil, calling people demons, talking about places that are completely out of reality.”

The door opened and Cherise ran in. She hurriedly placed the food down and wrestled the knife out of Lydia’s hand. “Girl, you friggin’ crazy? I leave fo’ ten minutes so you can get to know this fine man, and you threatenin’ him at knife point.”

“He’s crazy, Cherise. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He’s schizophrenic.”

“Now you a doctor, all a sudden? How he know ‘bout the necklace? How he know ‘bout Aliyah? How he know ‘bout the paintings?”

“What is my full name?” Lydia demanded of the Light knight.

“Aliyah Destiny Demonica.”

“That is the stupidest name I have ever heard. Who has a middle name of Destiny and a last name with Demon in it?”

“It was your guardian’s last name. He named you. It’s he that is coming back for you,” the Light knight spoke quickly.

“The child? Who is the child?”

“Lydia, calm yo’ stupid ass down.”

“Aliyah, please,” he pleaded.

“THE CHILD!”

The Light knight dropped his head, then looked into her eyes. “I think he may be your son,” he whispered. “I think he’s the reason you keep coming back.”

“Get … Out!” Lydia said dangerously. “Now!”

“Lydia, hold up a minute. You may have a child that been out there all dis time that you ain’t rememberin’. How you deny that?”

“I can’t have children, Cherise. I was born sterile. I can never, ever have children,” Lydia sobbed once.

Cherise sucked in her teeth. “In that case, You. Out. Now. Before I bust yo’ lyin’ ass, and don’t think I won’t. Hurt my girl like dis. I should’ve known you was up to no good.”

The Light knight put his hands up in surrender, his eyes full of pain. This is what he’d been trying to avoid. He backed slowly toward the door. “I’m leaving,” he said gently. “If you need to find me again –.”

“Uh-uh, you ever come back here, bother my girl, I call the po-lice on you.”

Only once he was gone did Lydia fall into her chair in heart-wrenching sobs.

“Why you ain’t never tell me? All the times I throw in yo’ face I got kids and you don’t. Girl, I am so sorry.”

Lydia shook her head, “No, it’s okay, Cherise. I only just remembered. It was before I was Lydia that I learned this stuff.”

“So you remember who you was befo’ Lydia?”

“Not all of it, not everything, but he was right about one thing. My real name is Aliyah.”

CHAPTER 10

The darkened soul roared furiously. Coming from a place of no time made time in the human world unbearable. In his world, eternity was simple. Here, he felt an eternity until the sky would darken again so he could travel without being burned. He’d attempted even minutes in the light to attempt to get into the subway where it was dark, but the scorching pain was excruciating and he turned back in seconds.

He was stuck in the basement of some house, trapped, in the darkest corners away from the window, feeling worse than his imprisonment in the Darkness, for at least there, he didn’t have to feel every second of torturous time not ticking by fast enough.

His sense of her, so close, he wanted her NOW! When would this day end?! He panted in fierce need, a need stronger than that of his former needs when he had a physical body. Every torturous second that passed, he vowed he would make her pay. He would make her suffer. He would torture her with the seconds as he was being tortured now.

***

As much as Lydia didn’t want to know. As much as she just wanted to lay down and sleep and sleep and sleep, for whatever it was worth. As much as she wanted to get into her still-unopened box of wine and find oblivion and solace, she went to the library instead, and typed in ‘Aliyah Destiny Demonica’ into search.

Other last names for Aliyah showed up, a lot of useless information with the keyword ‘Destiny’. She scrounged through hundreds and hundreds of search results.

“Ah, this is taking forever,” she cried in frustration. She typed in Demonica. Finally, she was getting somewhere. Apparently, it wasn’t a very popular last name.

She opened an obituary on a Dwayne Demonica, dated three years ago. She read through it quickly. “Dependent, and only known relation to Dwayne Demonica, Aliyah Demonica, made the most difficult decision to pull the plug, after a six-month period of Dwayne Demonica being comatose and surviving on life-support alone.

“Dwayne did not show any sign of brain activity throughout the course of that six months, though his condition was labeled as ‘different’ in the medical community, as there were no outward physical signs to determine his comatose state. There were no brain injuries or damages to his brain or skull that would explain his state of being or non-being. His death has been ruled as natural-causes, nonetheless.”

Aliyah recalled her own two-month coma where they told her it had been a ‘different case’, because she too had had nothing physically damaging enough to explain her comatose state. She hadn’t needed life support, though. Her body had worked on its own, her heart, her lungs, and she’d shown brain-wave activity. They’d said her brain-wave patterns had mimicked those of sleep, all the stages, including active dream sleep, like she’d just taken a long nap.

She looked for other phenomenas. Articles popped up of a rare occurrence, similar to narcolepsy, but the periods of sleep lasted a lot longer. They spoke of people that went through periods of comatose states throughout their lives, states that mimicked sleep, where, seeming sudden, they’d just wake up and be fully-functioning again for however long a period of time before turning to this sleep-like comatose state once again.

The greatest phenomena they’d observed about it, the case-studies that they’d followed, was that the body did not seem to age as a regular human body did, and even years spent comatose, they’d wake up and look the same exact age as when they’d gone in. Of course, the scientific community called it impossible.

Lydia opened one article questioning the truth or myth of a person named Jacob Knight, followed for almost a century, but the documented case-study by a Doctor Alan Lolitt died with him at 103 years old, nearly 50 years ago, claiming to have followed a man, aged 22 at the time commencing the case study, noting frequent occurrences of comatose and active states.

It was this Doctor’s life’s work following this person, and the doctor claimed that, whereas, the person should have been over a 100 years old, his body was only 28 after the passage of a century. She tried to pull up a picture, but it was black and white, and the resolution was very poor. The picture was of this Jacob Knight comatose, lying there in a seemingly very peaceful state. There was something on his lower abdomen on the right side, but she couldn’t quite make out the image.

The sun was setting. She’d been here for hours. She stretched, and her stomach growled. She searched up one additional thing and made a phone call. In her memory, she could see the letterhead of the place that had sent her the correspondence that had told her she had a type of medical condition she’d been born with that made her completely sterile, unable to ever have children. This is the place she called.

“Name?”

“Lydia – uh – Aliyah Destiny Demonica.”

A lengthy time passed. “Yes, we still have your records. Come by tomorrow around 3:00 with identification and we’ll release them to you.”

Identification?
“Yes, all right, tomorrow at 3:00. Thank you.”

Where the hell was she supposed to get identification?

20 minutes later, she was home, Cherise standing impatiently at her door with an overnight bag.

“You owe me, Lydia. I still ain’t understandin’ why you can’t just stay at my place.”

“Got you covered. I bought Chinese. Besides, call it girls’ night. You really want to spend it with your husband and kids?” Lydia jested.

“He ain’t happy ‘bout dis. He ain’t know how to get them kids to bed.”

“It’s time he learn. I’m sure he can handle one night of you being away.”

Cherise chuckled good-naturedly. “You right. Let him know what I got to do every single night. I know this supposed to be a keep-Lydia-from-getting-haunted-in-the-night, but damn girl, dis my freedom. You ain’t know what it like. … Sorry, I don’t mean it like that.”

“It’s okay, Cherise,” Lydia tried to laugh. “You offend me so much on a daily basis, it doesn’t even bother me anymore.”

“But you my girl. Don’t you ever forget that.”

“I don’t think you give me a choice,” Lydia remarked.

Cherise, with far too much energy, laid out the plates and poured both of them a glass of wine.

“I don’t think I should be drinking tonight, Cherise.”

“Girl, shut up. This my night, and I’m goin’ enjoy it. Eight months we been friends, we ever do this? And I can’t ever get yo’ hermit ass to go out with me. This what we got right now, so this what we doin’.”

Cherise’s good mood was contagious. Lydia tried to think about the kind of life it must take to have a husband, kids, a family. She’d been devastated when no one had come to claim her and tell her who she was. No family. No anybody. She’d mourned that off and on for the past 14 months, feeling so completely alone in the world.

She’d felt betrayed by whatever family she didn’t remember for not searching for her, trying to find her. She’d envied Cherise for having that, having a home, a place of belonging, people that loved her, a devoted husband and kids. But she’d failed to recognize the responsibility of such as well.

Cherise, always so full of energy, always having a smile and her blunt attitude, waking up every day, taking care of her kids, her husband, going to work, returning home to again care for her husband and children, the responsibilities endless, while Lydia maintained a completely different life of having nothing, no one, having no idea who she was, what her purpose was, where she’d come from, nothing, but not having any responsibility to anyone else, either. As if Cherise didn’t have enough on her plate, she was also taking responsibility for Lydia.

And with flare, as she poured herself a second glass of wine.

“Girl, dis so excitin’. As crazy as you are, I gotta thank you. I needed this bad. Hmm, hmm, hmm, this the life. Free food I ain’t have to cook, crazy company, good wine, freedom. Right now, my kids be like, ‘So Mom, what we goin’ do?’, after I work all day, cook, and I got dishes stacked this high. They be lookin’ at me to entertain them, like I ain’t got nothin’ else I’m doin’. So, what you do today?”

“Research.”

“You know who you is now?”

“I found out I killed the only relation I could find out about,” Lydia casually said.

Cherise choked on her honey chicken, “You say you did what?”

“Yeah, they said he was my guardian, not my parent or anything, and I was his dependent, and I made the decision to pull the plug on his life support after he’d been in a coma for six months. Dwayne Demonica, it said his name was. Over three years ago.”

“Girl, that ain’t mean you kilt him. Hospital probably tried pressurin’ you. His insurance probably run out. You know how those things work. You actually remember it?”

“No. Someone who is supposed to have been my guardian, but I can’t see any of it. If he was my guardian, that means something must have happened to my parents, and if I have his last name, it must have been when I was very young, less I would have kept my parents’ last name. Maybe Aliyah wasn’t even the name I was born with. Go figure, the only person that might be able to tell me who I am is dead.”

“That fine man know somethin’. He knew yo’ name. Led you to learnin’ mo’ about yo’self.”

Lydia rolled her eyes.“He also told me that the picture I drew is a real place in another world that one leaves their body and travels to when they’re sleeping. And told me I had a son, when that is impossible.”

“He say he
might
be yo’ son. He didn’t say fo’ sure.”

“I’m going to the facility tomorrow to check out my records. Well, Aliyah Destiny Demonica’s records.”

“How you can know details like that and not know anythin’ else?”

“Perhaps I’ll remember more tomorrow when I see the records. They need ID, though, and my ID says Lydia Smith, so I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“Just tell them the truth. Maybe they have a picture or somethin’ o’ dis Aliyah, and you be able to know if it’s you or not.”

“Well, there’s no denying the signature of Aliyah written on the back of the creepy fallen angel canvas.”

“You regrettin’ gettin’ rid of him so easy, you are. Now you don’t know where to find him if they a chance he can give you mo’ info’mation.”

“You kicked him out, Cherise,” Lydia accused.

“I was only doin’ what my girl wanted. My opinion, I thought the two a’ you might be good together. You both a little odd, you believin’ yo’ paintings real and he sayin’ the same thing. Is it really that difficult to believe when we believe in God and Satan and heaven and hell?”

“
You
believe in that stuff, Cherise. Not me.”

“Where you think we go when we die? How you think we got here to begin with? All I’m sayin’ is it’s really not all that far-fetched.”

“The same place a plant goes when it dies. It decomposes into the soil, and another plant is born,” Lydia said.

“We ain’t got seeds like flowers. We can’t just decompose in the soil, and voila, another human born.”

“What I’m saying is when our time is up, it’s up. We don’t move on into an afterlife, as much as a plant doesn’t. It dies, and due to the reproductive properties of all things, the species continues.”

“So how the very first people get here?” Cherise inquired.

“How did the dinosaurs? I don’t know. A baby begins as a single cell. Obviously, that’s how we started.”

“So you saying back after the dinosaur days, a human egg just happen to be relaxin’ by the lake where a sperm just happen to be swimmin’ along, and he say, ‘Hey baby, how
you
doin’? I gotta proposition. You – me – we goin’ create the first human.’ You see how stupid that sound?”

Lydia laughed. “Not anymore stupid than the idea that there’s this spiritual God and creator of all things that used magic to create a world, create life, and everything else, and he just sits up there on his throne in heaven, watching all his little creations suffer at the hands of a supposed fallen angel, Satan, that houses all the evil things in the world, and instead of the all-powerful God getting rid of Satan and all those evil things, he allows them to prosper. Where did God come from? Who or what created him? Or did he just magically appear? Your belief and my belief are equally stupid.”

“Drink yo’ wine, bitch. You thinkin’ too much. No wonder you can’t never sleep.”

When Cherise was on the phone telling her kids goodnight, Lydia had another memory. The memory was of her always having the memory of constantly having the same dream of carrying a baby. A baby boy.

The adventures changed. The environment changed. What didn’t change was the bundled baby boy in her arms. Now that she remembered these memories, she remembered always questioning why she kept having those dreams with that same baby boy. Now she remembered she used to think that it was her mind playing tricks on her, forever reminding her of the child she could never have, and so in her dreams, and her dreams only, could she have that son that she could never have in life.

She told Cherise about it.

“Lift yo’ shirt,” Cherise said suddenly. She was three-quarters to intoxicated after inhaling more of Lydia’s wine than Lydia had.