Otherland (9 page)

CHAPTER 13

“Cherise, help me … carry him. He’s … heavy,” Lydia said, while dragging the Light knight’s body across the floor. Lydia began to giggle when she accidently dragged his head to thump against the wall. “You think he’ll feel that?”

“Hmm, are you at all lookin’ at this body, Lyd? He is fine, fine, fine. If I wasn’t married … hmm. Look at them abs. They hard as rock.”

“Cherise, stop molesting my – He’s out. He deserves respect. Not to be ogled while he’s completely unware.” Lydia said, but not before she’d taken a gander herself, and noticed the tattoo in the exact same place as the newspaper clipping she’d seen. It was an eternity symbol.

“Your what? Huh? What you almost say, girl? Yo’ man? That what you was goin’ to say?”

“No.”

“Won’t you jus’
look
and take a moment to appreciate this fine specimen of a man? Ha, you crack me up. Talk about respect while you draggin’ him ‘cross dis dirty floor. What we goin’ do?”

“
You
are going to go home, Cherise. This isn’t your battle. I need to get him into the car and get us out of here, because that
thing
could come back at any time, now that he knows where I am.”

“Uh uh, you wrong, girl. Out there, it dark, and after what I be seein’, I ain’t steppin’ in no darkness. It took off when I turnt on the lights, kinda screamed like the light hurt it. As long as we in the light, we safe.”

“I need sleep, Cherise, and so do you. It doesn’t matter how much light there is. As soon as we close our eyes – .”

“I have no intention of closin’ these eyes. Uh-uh, maybe never again. I’m goin’ make some coffee. I’m officially a coffee drinker, like you. I get it now. I get it. Wish I didn’t, but now I do. I told you we shouldn’t’ve drank that wine. We got three hours befo; the sun start comin’ up, and that the only time I’m steppin’ outside this door.”

“Then you better call into work, Cherise. You can’t go to work after a night like this. I feel like I’m responsible,” Lydia sighed.

“You is responsible, for alla this. Now I don’t know what to do with myself, s’pposed to wake up and go ‘bout my life like befo’, workin’ a job, takin’ care of a family, thinkin’ that all there is, and I can’t go back to that now, can I? Not after what I saw.” All the while, Cherise was slamming cupboards and everything else in her attempts at making coffee.

“Now who’s the one being so dramatic? But you are right. You can’t just go about a normal day tomorrow. Call your job, tell them you’re sick so that you won’t wind up with all the no shows-no calls that got me fired in the first place.”

“You right. You right. I do that. As soon as I get some coffee.”

Lydia laughed, “Now you’re sounding like me, Cherise.”

***

The darkened soul wasn’t wasting any time. He’d been the fool one too many times to the Lights. They’d used him to find her, neither telling him that any type of light would burn him, nor telling him that he was incapable of touching her, in anyway, whatsoever.

Once realizing he couldn’t harm her, he’d been trying to figure out how to return her, so that he could get the glory of completing the mission without the Light knight, until he’d been caught and had to instantly evacuate due to the burning lights.

Then he’d floated outside the window, protected in the darkness, and watched the Light knight arrive, like everything had been a complete set up. He watched as they talked. He watched as the human was able to touch her in the way that he could not. And then he’d felt the summons and watched the Light knight go, all the while they’d kept those damnable lights on that kept him from getting in there and getting to them.

Stupid girl. She’d ruined everything. If not for her, he would have figured out a way. If not for her waking up and alerting all of them and turning the lights on, he could have had Aliyah. The girl would pay too. And so would the human from his world. They would all pay. He navigated the night, sensing the person he was trying to find, a person from his human life that he was connected to, a person whose body would accept him, because he was just as dark.

Then, he would no longer be restricted to the darkness, or the inability to touch her. He’d broken the Bylaws, and they could hunt him all they wanted. He had nothing to lose. His eternal fate would remain the same as it had been. At least he’d have satisfying memories to keep eternity a little more pleasant than it otherwise would have been.

Dwayne arrived in the home he’d sensed him, sleeping in his bed. “Hello, Danny, long time no see,” he said aloud, arising him, but Danny hardly had time to scream before the Dark soul entered him and made Danny’s body his own. He could still hear Danny’s screams and yells and words, but they were inside him, not to be heard in the outside world.

“It’s Dwayne, Danny.”

“Dwayne? But you – you died!”

“And now I live … in you. Don’t be afraid, my friend. I just have some unfinished business to take care of, and then I’ll leave and you’ll have your body back. You remember Aliyah? You always liked to watch before. Now you can watch again.”

Danny instantly settled down inside, just like Dwayne had known he would. After all, Danny and he had a long history together.

CHAPTER 14

By the afternoon, the white stranger still hadn’t come around. Cherise had left hours ago, refusing to call into work, because she’d learned what a caffeine-high was.

Lydia needed to retrieve her records. She’d had hours of soul-searching, but hadn’t come up with another single memory. She left a note and then drove the two hours to the medical facility that had her, or rather, Aliyah Destiny Demonica’s, records. She presented her name awkwardly.

“ID?”

“I was hoping you had a picture or something that could identify me. I brought with me records of an incident that occurred that left me without any memory of my life or who I was, so I was provided a new name and identification, because no one could figure out who I’d been before my coma. I –.”

“Yes, we do have a picture. It’s our policy to take copies of identifications,” the woman at the counter handed her a piece of paper.

It was a copy of a license with the name Aliyah D. Demonica. She looked at it, and yes, it was the same reflection she’d seen when she’d first looked into the hospital mirror, prior to chopping her hair. Long golden-blonde hair, and a face that didn’t seem so pointy as her own. The picture was, admittedly, beautiful, when Lydia had never seen herself as such, with intent eyes full of something, whereas hers were always very dull.

“That’s you,” the staff said easily, and she kept her mouth shut while they handed over the copies of Aliyah’s records, just like that.

Lydia could hardly wait, and so the first coffee-shop she could find, she stopped and parked. Hurriedly, she ordered her coffee, and on second-thought, a bagel, then sat down to open the file. She could remember the correspondence she received like yesterday, yet saw nothing of that sort in these records. They showed she’d only been there once, inquiring about having children. The birth date showed September 9, 1975.

That’s impossible. That would make me almost 40 years old!
she thought.

These records were from eight years ago.

They showed the tests performed, the gynecological exams, and then the x-rays and MRI’s. She skipped to the doctor’s notes.

After a complete examination into Miss Demonica’s issues with child-bearing, I have come to the following conclusions: Miss. Demonica’s cervix and uterus have scars of a type I have never seen. The damage is irreparable. Like someone took a utility knife or a razor blade to her reproductive organs in an attempt to remove and/or destroy them so that she could never again bear children. The scar tissue is conducive to this type of internal trauma.

Miss Demonica is not capable of ever again bearing children with this type of damage to her organs. Her fallopian tubes are so scarred that there is no way an egg could pass through. In the event that one actually did, and became fertilized, her uterus would not be able to nurture it, as damaged as it is, and her cervix would not be able to hold it.

Lydia had her hands to her lips to quiet her devastated sounds. She kept reading the progress notes.

Attempted to contact Miss Demonica to arrange an appointment to speak with her, no response. No call back.

And the last note read:

The number provided to us is now disconnected.

But Lydia’s eyes kept wandering back to the, ‘She can never have
another
child. She can never
again
bear children.’ All saying, she’d had one before she’d come to this medical facility at an age the birthdate said she was 32 years old.

***

Dwayne had located Danny in Florida, and now being the master of Danny’s body, he could not travel in his usual means. So he’d had to book a flight to New York City, pay for it with Danny’s credit cards, which Danny threw a bit of a fit about, and board a plane. When they’d gotten to New York City, after Dwayne had luxuriated in first class seats, food, and a whole lot of alcohol, security had told them to wait, while others were passing through. That was the time when Danny decided to tell him that there was a warrant for his arrest.

“You idiot!” Dwayne had screamed at him, then begged to go to the bathroom for all the things eaten and drank throughout the trip. When the bathroom didn’t have a window large enough for Danny’s lard-ass body to crawl through, Dwayne considered leaving him right then and there and finding another body that was less a liability to occupy.

But, in occupying the same body, Danny heard his thoughts, and pleaded with him to not do that, so instead, they ran, found an instant cab available to take them to Aliyah, but the temptations of the strip club along the way had him salivating. Aliyah could wait. She probably wasn’t home right now anyway, but this … ? Oh, he’d been so long without the human pleasures.

“They’re not going to find us here,” he told Danny, trying to settle him down from his panic of being caught.

“She did this to me. None of this would have happened - I would not have even done these things if not for her,” Danny raged. “Now I’m a wanted criminal.”

“Don’t worry, my friend. We’re about to end what was started a long time ago. Then and only then can we find peace. Her death will ensure that our suffering can end.” Dwayne reassured him.

Then used Danny’s card to pay for drinks and women.

***

The Light knight awoke, and found himself in an empty apartment with a note saying, ‘I’ll be back soon’, a note of which he’d woken to hours ago and she wasn’t back yet. Leave it to Aliyah to not even recognize the threat on her life and just go about her business as though it nothing, while he was left with all the pressure from both Otherland and the Otherworld to uphold his duties while trying to protect her at the same time.

When she finally walked through the door, he’d had so much time to get mad at her that he didn’t even wait for her to step through it.

“What is your problem? I’m trying to protect you and you just go about your business, leave me here, without me having any idea of where you’ve gone. I have a duty to Otherland, which I’m trying to fulfill, at the same time I have my duty to you, and as usual, you are keeping me from being able to do either.”

He’d said all this before she’d even gotten the door fully open.

“Are you just going to sit there and yell at me or are you going to help me?” she said in response to all he’d said. She was carrying a bunch of bags.

He felt so frustrated. All this time without memories, Lydia had been a scared, jumpy, anxious little mouse. But Aliyah was as stubborn and unafraid as before. She drove him crazy.

He grabbed some of the bags from her hands, all the while lecturing her, “You are in danger. You can’t just go wherever you want and do whatever you please and leave me here, helpless, having no idea where you are, and driving myself mad wondering if bad things have befallen you?”

“Befallen? Really?” she smirked at him. Color had returned to Lydia’s former pale features, and Aliyah now looked vibrant, so much so he found it impossible to stay mad at her. Besides, strong emotions were common in Otherworld, whereas Otherland such things weren’t felt as powerfully. He was still getting accustomed to the differences. Like how much his heart hurt every time he looked too long into her eyes.

“Where’s your friend? … Uh, Cherise?”

“She went to work.”

“You humans have no sense of anything, not even when you’re in danger, do you?” he said frustrated.

“You humans?” she laughed. “I don’t know if you checked lately, but you’re human too.”

“Yeah, but I’ve spent the majority of my life serving my Father in Otherland.”

“Your Father? What are you, some kind of angel or something?”

“I’m a Light knight. You still don’t remember anything, do you?”

“Do you know anything about my reproductive organs being sliced to pieces, which is why I can’t bear children?” she suddenly turned on him bitterly.

Darn, the smiles and laughter had been a cover-up. Humans were tricky with their emotions. Something else he had to try to remember, as she was now staring him down and walking toward him while he was hurriedly stepping back with his arms splayed in front of him, as though as to ward her off.

“He was very bad to you, that’s all I know. That’s how we found one another to begin with, but you never told me your human life. You just kept showing up in Otherland. Most humans come there by mistake, but once they do, our Bylaws, they can never return again, because we can’t risk their exposing things. We keep them there, eventually their human body dies, and they become a soul.

“But you, Aliyah, escaped time and time again. You’d return, escape, return, escape, risking everything, so I created a place, another place, not the Otherland, a place inbetween, that you could go and we could meet. I risked everything then to keep you protected, and now I’m risking all those same things again. They want me to bring you back there to attend a Ceremony trial, where of course, their sentencing would be to contain you and keep you from returning to this world, because you know too much, and here you’re spending your day shopping.”

“Well, apparently your world must be very stupid if it thinks I, or anyone else, is showing up on purpose. I can’t control what I do, or where I go in my sleep. You say they want you to bring me back there to stand trial when I haven’t done anything wrong, and I don’t even have any memory of it, so it sounds like your world isn’t much different than my own. People constantly being punished for the things they can’t control,” Lydia ranted.

“Do you know, I just lost my fifth job in 14 months, because of sleep issues? All I’m trying to do is move forward in my life, work a job, and do what other people do, and I can’t do that, because I can’t fall asleep when I’m supposed to, and when I do fall asleep, I lose a complete sense of reality, so that I can’t wake up to do and be responsible for what every other person in this world does. Do you know what that’s like? All I care about is working a job so I can make a paycheck, and my issues won’t allow me to have that.”

Now she was just slamming cupboards.

“Yeah, I can say I do know what that’s like,” he said, referring to his responsibility to her.

“Now you’re trying to tell me that the very world that I go to in my sleep that keeps me from waking up on time for work is now wanting to punish me for going there? It’s like, I can’t win! Nothing I do. I’m pissing people off on all fronts, all the while having no idea why it’s like this to begin with, when
all
I want to do is live a normal life.”

“So you don’t have any idea, not a clue, why you’ve been traveling to Otherland since you were a small child?”

“I hardly think that I’ve been going through this since childhood,” she said. “All of this is very new to me. I don’t understand it, but I’m trying to.”

“Yet you understand you’re in danger?”

“I understand that
he’s
coming for me, and it terrifies me to the core of my being, but I don’t know why, just as I accept that we’ve known each other for a long time, and we’re connected in some way, but that doesn’t mean that I remember a god damn thing. And I look at you, and I have no idea who you are or why you’re here.”

“That’s always as it was every time I met you. You always seemed so innocent, without memories. You could never tell me why you were there, or why you didn’t want to go back, but every time my world tried to keep you, you always went back,” he murmured.

“Like I said, your world is apparently as stupid as my own. It sounds like I just went back and forth, trying to escape this world, then trying to escape yours. It’s like no one and nothing could ever understand,” she said with pain filling her voice.

“Understand what, Aliyah?”

“I have no idea. It’s just something I know without knowing, and is obviously something you can’t help me with,” she said, sounding like she wanted to give up on all things.

“You don’t remember me at all?” he asked sadly, as he had never forgotten her.

“No. All I know is you can’t help me. No one can. If you come from another world, you’d be best to return there and leave me be, and tell your people I don’t mean no harm. Again, I can’t help what I do when I’m sleeping.”