Otherland (3 page)

CHAPTER 3

The human boy laid in the bed in his new imprisoned home, hidden beneath the covers, clutching his only toy … and he cried, as he’d been crying, off and on.

She’s not coming back. She’s not coming back.
And he clutched the brown dog with the dark brown fluffy hair and beady brown eyes harder to his chest. The most meaningful possession he’d ever had, but there was a type of profoundness in it, a … something. The tip-of-the-tongue feeling, but instead it was the tip-of-his-brain. He had this odd sense of recognition toward the stuffed animal when she’d first presented it, like it had been his all along.

But when? And how? Only the blackened souls had memories of their time before in the human world. It was their curse to have to hold in their mind that other life, the Otherworld, and all the terrible things they’d done to become a blackened soul to remind them why their eternal fate was sealed in darkness. To remember a world of light and colors, yet have to remain in a place of darkness, was probably the worst punishment one could have.

One’s crossing determined one’s fate. The Lights were cleansed and shed of their memories, to replicate their pureness and goodness in the Otherland. Though he was still human, yet deceased, he’d never had any memories outside this world. If he’d spent any time in these confines in the darkness before, he wouldn’t remember, as once determined innocent, the memories of the dark place would evaporate as though they never were.

Even if the magic-girl did find her way back to Otherland, her memories of the dark place, and where he was currently imprisoned, would be lost. She could spend eternity searching for him, should she, by miracle, actually remember him, without ever finding the darkness.

One thing he had that the others did not was a sense of time that could only be attributed to his time in the human world, which confirmed to him he
had
once been there. He never actually knew what time it was or how much time had passed, but he could
feel
it passing, and it was torture. His own personal burden that he’d never told anyone, as he seemed always to be waiting for something of which he didn’t know.

For the souls in Otherland, eternity could be a day or a hundred or a million, for all they knew. What he knew was that he had been to the human world before, and for some reason, he’d been left here, abandoned, apparently unwanted in the human world. He was never able to find his way back, as he had no memories of how he’d gotten here to begin with.

Suddenly, a Dark soul was standing right above him. “Boy, where’s the girl?” He jumped, and slowly removed the covers from around his head.

“I … I don’t know. I woke up and she was gone,” he said, avoiding looking in its eyes, knowing their obvious capability of evil.

“That’s impossible,” it barked, causing the boy to jump involuntarily again, and cower closer to the wall. “No spirit, let alone human, can get through these walls. We have a traitor.
Someone
must have let her out.”

The boy remained silent.

“You’re hiding something, what is it?” it snapped.

“Nuh-nothing. I’m not hiding anything.”

The Dark soul tilted its head a few degrees and the blanket was whipped away from the boy, almost taking him with it, for as hard as he’d been gripping it. There was a gasp, and suddenly his entire body lifted off the bed and was being crushed against the wall without the thing even touching him.

“What is that abomination? Something from the human world. How did you get it?”

Frightened tears spread down the boy’s cheeks. “She – she gave it to me. She’s got-got magic. That’s how she escaped.”

“Humans don’t
have
magic.”

“She does. She just imagined it in her head and it appeared in her hand, just like she imagined there wasn’t a wall and walked right through it.”

“That’s impossible. The human body has 206 bones in it, and if you don’t tell me what I want to know, I will crush every single one of them,” it threatened while increasing the pressure crushing his body.

“Puh – puh – please, you have to believe me.”

“It’s true,” could be heard from outside his stone prison.

“I saw it too. No one helped her escape. She just walked right through it.”

Abruptly, the boy was dropped. He landed hard on the stone bed. The stuffed animal was ripped away from his hands. He felt a fierce protectiveness overcome him and started after the Dark soul. “Hey, that’s
mine!
Give it back,” he hollered, just to be hurled back onto the bed.

“I’ll be back for you, human.”

The boy listened pitifully to the others being interrogated as to the girl’s whereabouts and how she managed to escape. There was silence for a moment before a blackened elder appeared.

“Five of them are claiming to have observed her walking through the wall,” was explained to the elder.

“Hmm, the witnesses. They all Lights or humans? You know they’ll lie to protect their own, which is why we call it a white lie.”

“One human, two Lights, two Darks.”

“Hmm.”

“It’s impossible, isn’t it Dark elder? Just like the boy’s claims that she let herself into our world?”

“There is one recorded case in my history as elder of one whom was able to come and go, and seemed to wield a type of magic that to us was unheard of. She was able to resist all our spiritual restraints. It began when she was a child. Nothing we did could contain her, so the Lights sought to make peace with her. If she went back to her world and never returned again, we’d stop hunting her. We believed, at that time, that she’d taken and returned to her world a piece of the blue emerald. The Lights refused for her to be pursued any further. True to her word, we never saw her again. Her name was Aliyah.”

“You think this human girl and Aliyah might be one and the same?”

“I do. I can help you find her,” a wicked voice said from within one of the cells.

“Shut up, slave. You’ll say anything for your release.”

“So, if I were to tell you that I know what she looks like in the human world, you wouldn’t hear what I have to say?”

“How would
you
possibly know such things?”

“How do you think I wound up in this hell hole to begin with?
She
brought me here to have my spirit locked away for all eternity. I’ve been in here ever since.”

“You are not the first criminal in our world to claim innocence,” the Dark prison guardian accused.

“Her name is Aliyah Destiny Demonica. I know this because I named her, and I’m the only one who can find her, because I know everything about her. I raised her.”

The boy fell back on his bed, something powerful surging within his mind, triggered by the name. Images flaunted themselves in his vision.

He was looking up into an angel’s face with round soft blue eyes, pink cheeks, pink lips, and long blonde hair. She was smiling at him, but there were tears in her eyes and on her cheeks. He could feel himself in her arms. He could see all the love she had for him in her eyes.

“Hi there, little guy. My name is Aliyah Destiny. I am your Mommy. Your name is Jasper Love, and
you
are my destiny.”

Tears poured down his face in seeing the face he knew so well, as now he knew it was the face, this very memory, he’d been dreaming that he could never recall once waking.

“There’s a place I need to bring you to keep you safe,” she cried harder. “It is a beautiful place, and you will know it as home. After all, it was once my home, too, and was once all our home. I’m going to bring you back there, and when the time is right, I will come back to you. I promise!”

“Stop your sniveling, human.” He was woken from his awake-memory. “Elder, with all due respect, he is a prisoner and will say whatever he will to get his release.”

“True, but no one has ever spoken her full name, as that was kept in the strictest of confidence to ensure she could no longer be hunted. Bring him, the four other witnesses, and the boy, to the Ceremony trial.”

They were all rounded up with tight stone shackles around their wrists and hips, attached to one another. The human boy was in the back, so he had to practically run to avoid being dragged, as had already once happened. The Darks had delighted in their torment of him, but the Light in the lead had stopped to allow him to get back on his feet, while all the rest banged against one another. The weights kept the souls from being able to fly and escape.

The boy couldn’t recall ever being at a Ceremony trial before. He couldn’t stop his teeth from chattering in fright, though it was a comfort to finally step into the lightness after so long being in the darkness. His skin instantly warmed, and the soft ground felt comforting on his calloused, blistered feet.

The darkness had a tendency to make you feel as though everything was dark, on the outside to the very inside of your being. It was depressing and miserable, hopeless and helpless. In the light, his mood lightened, and he felt a twinge of hope that he wouldn’t be fated to the darkness forever.

“Step up. Stop,” they were told.

The stairs began moving at an accelerating rate. Up, up, up, up, until they seemed far too close to the sun. He had to close his eyes to the blinding light. When next he opened them, they were inside a huge, white building with prisms at every corner cascading all the colors of the rainbow wall-to-floor-to-ceiling. It was spectacular.

Suddenly, the Light up front cried out in pain, and the Dark soul escort laughed. “Pretty to see, not to touch. They’ll scorch you to microscopic matter just like that.”

“We’re here for the Ceremony trial of the two humans,” he called upward. The colors from the prisms instantly disappeared. Light came through the stained-glass windows instead. One half of the building, the stained-glass depicted beautiful pictures of doves and other animals, symbols of love, peace, hope, faith, goodness.

The other half of the building left the boy shuddering, as they were of serpents, red-eyed demons, fire, and spilled-blood, symbols of hate, greed, envy, destruction, evil, and that was the rounded stairwell that the accused guilty had to take.

They stood in front of huge blood-red double doors. The doors opened into a large area, where they walked to the middle of the dome-shaped room. Hundreds of thousands of Dark and Light, human and soul spectators surrounded them on the ground. Above floated the three Dark elders and the three Light elders.

“Begin.” A powerful voice reverberated through-out the dome, and everyone instantly silenced, which only meant the boy felt sure everyone could hear his bones quaking.

“High honor, we are convening today on a matter involving two humans. One an eternal part of this world and one who made her way into our world from earth.”

There were gasps from the spectators.

“As we’re all aware, a human from that world cannot get in unless they’re let in. The human boy was on watch, at that time, and controlling the switch. When we received the alert, he was found talking to her. There was no other in the control space at the time of the Otherworld human’s entrance, besides the boy. We believed the boy guilty for ignoring the Bylaws and allowing the human to penetrate Otherland.”

Everyone was staring at him as though he’d committed the worst of all atrocities. He could only bow his head down and cry.

“So where is this human girl?” a Light elder asked.

“We believed the boy guilty until we came to retrieve the both of them, and the human girl was gone, escaped.”

“Did you find the one responsible for her escape?”

“There are five witnesses here that attest to observing her resist our spiritual restraints. They observed her walk right through the wall of her imprisonment and escape. We sent thousands out in search of her and sent the alert to everyone in our realm. Two spirits at the borders claim to have seen something passing through from our side. They attempted to stop it, but said it broke through, past the Forbidden. The boy claims she may have some type of magic.”

“Do you have any proof to these attestations?”

The stuffed dog was floated upward and presented before all the elders.

“An object from the human world. She did not have this on her person when she arrived, and the human boy has been confined since this incident of her unbidden arrival. He states she did a kind of magic, the same magic that allowed her to walk through our prison, and it just appeared in her hand.”

“Her name’s Aliyah, and, in exchange for my release, I can find her,” the Dark soul criminal blurted out.

“Silence while the elders are convening,” was bellowed out with no seen source.

“Aliyah? Could it be, after all this time, that she has broken her word?” an older elder questioned. “Oh, I’d hoped to never have to hear that name again.”

“A human’s word from that world means nothing,” the dark Elder with grey-eyes said.

“Do we have any proof, though, that it is her?”

“Only our history that presents her as being the only one to have these abilities.”

“So the hunt resumes,” he murmured sadly. “We’ll take as many volunteers as we can to make the unbreakable vows to be placed on the borders of the Forbidden. We know what she looks like here. We’ll wait.”

“We tried that before and she always escaped. She is a very powerful resister, as far as I can recall. That was during the time when I was a Boundary hunter. She alluded all of us. When we did capture her here, she escaped every spiritual enchantment and hold we tried placing on her. How many souls do we have to lose to the Nothingness because of one human?” an older Dark elder said.

“Then what do you suggest?”

The Dark elder pointed toward the Dark criminal. “He claims to have known her during his time in the human world. In fact, he claims to have given her her name and raised her. He has volunteered to go to the human world, find her, and bring her back to us. She will not be able to use her magic, or whatever it is she has, there. We will use human world constraints on her to keep her eternally imprisoned in Otherland.”

“You are her father?” was directed at the Dark prisoner.

“Er, let’s just say I was her guardian of sorts.” Followed by a laugh that could mean nothing but cruelty.

“Why, as her guardian in the human world, would you want her imprisoned here? Did you have no love for her? No desire to protect her?” a Light elder questioned.

“She’s the reason I’m here. She killed me, then brought me here to have me eternally imprisoned in the darkness. I wish to be free of my imprisonment and slavery so that I may serve a better eternal fate. I want to redeem myself. She didn’t just ruin my life, she has ruined the lives of many, and I know her better than anyone else, the way she thinks, the places she runs and those she hides, as I know her greatest weakness.”

“I hear your thoughts, and they are less than virtuous, Dark soul, and don’t seem to be of the redeeming sort. We’ve had peace between the Darks and Lights and have maintained balance for a very long time. You wish to kill her, and
that
we do not allow.”

“Dark elder, forgive my thoughts, but please know, they are just my thoughts, none that I will carry out against the High ruler’s bidding. I will do exactly as I am instructed. I have been in the darkness for a long time, having only hatred and vengefulness to ease my tortures. I will find her and I will bring her back here as promised. I’m the only chance at ending this for once and for all.”

“Think your human name. Do not say it aloud, and we will confirm with our records.”

The boy felt awful, and genuinely frightened for her. The Dark souls and spirits always frightened him, but this one claiming to be her guardian scared him more than anything else ever had. He had to find a way to warn her. If she did remember him, she would come back, and she’d be taken.

But this Aliyah they spoke of, and the person he’d seen, sounded like two different people. The person he’d seen enter didn’t seem to have a clue as to her whereabouts, calling it a dream wonderland, believing she asleep versus in Otherland. She certainly hadn’t acted like she’d been here before, let alone caused the types of disturbances they were claiming she’d caused in the past. She’d seemed so … innocent.

“The account of his human life and the records are a match. He’s telling the truth. Are we all in mutual agreement to all that was proposed?” the Light older elder spoke to the others.

“Father, I wish to volunteer to go as well,” someone shouted from the spectators’ section. They parted and he ran into the center of the room, only feet away from the boy. Another human?

“On what grounds should that be allowed?”

“I have several. First and foremost,
he
is a blackened criminal that has already shown his propensity for breaking the Bylaws and uprooting the peace here.”

The Dark soul snarled at him.

“I can ensure he stays true to his task. Two, we must maintain balance as much as possible, so we need to have both a Dark and a Light enter the Otherworld.”

“I disagree. He is human and may have ulterior motives to wanting to be in the human world,” a Dark elder said.

“That’s my third reason. He is a Dark soul and I am a Light human knight, so therefore can operate both night and day without being caught or arousing suspicion.”

“He is correct Dark elders. His position can be just as useful as the Dark soul who knew her in his human life.”

“I don’t
need
his help. This is my mission and my mission alone,” the Dark soul criminal growled.

“Silence, once more and we’ll change our minds. You must always stay in darkness. Should you be seen and recognized as you are, it will destroy the balance we’ve so carefully woven. Humans cannot know that we can exist in their world. It will create the very catastrophes they’ve been forewarned about.

“Should you not abide by this, you will be cast into the Nothingness and eternally be lost. The human will go with you. He may be human, but he is one of our own, and long-ago vowed his eternal duty, and has proven it time and time again. You, on the other hand, are being given a gift of one chance. One chance to prove your loyalty and redeem yourself from your former eternal fate,” the eldest Elder decreed.

“Then the ruling has been made,” the powerful voice echoed that could not be seen. “Boundary hunters will be increased at the borders, and these two, one Dark soul criminal and one Light human knight will journey to the human world, find this Aliyah, and bring her back here in her world’s restraints. She is not to be killed or needlessly harmed. At which time we will convene a Ceremony trial on her.”

“And what of the little human boy, High master?” the Dark prison guardian asked.

“If this Aliyah was able to come and go without the required permission, was able to resist our spiritual restraints, and conjure magic that could bring her world objects to Otherland, then the boy is innocent,” a Light elder said.

“I request respectfully that we hold him until we know for sure that everything he has told us is true. We cannot risk any other humans permitted into this world. He is guilty of not alerting us the moment that she escaped, and was found hiding this Other-world object, versus bringing it to our attention. According to the Bylaws – .”

“What do you have to say for yourself, boy?” a Light elder stared at him, or, more like, through him.

“I – I … I –,” he cried.

“He’s obviously petrified, Father. He’s been in the darkness long enough to suitably scold him. He’s just a child,” the other human said.

“Very well. The boy is to be released, but he will not be cleansed of the memories of the darkness to serve as a lesson to the upholding of the Bylaws. He will therefore remember that being witness to a crime and not telling is just as bad as being a part of it. He shall be escorted through the Light wing. The Trial ceremony has concluded.”

With one swipe of the Dark prison guardian’s arm, he was released from his holds.

“Boy, come,” the human that had stuck up for him beckoned to him. “Quickly, I don’t have all day.”

The human moved fast, stood tall and proud, and looked like a soldier, instantly gaining the small boy’s respect. Plus, he was human, which was about one in a million in Otherland. The boy had only encountered a couple in all his time here. “Come on, come on,” he said, seeming irritated. “Follow me. Over here.”

“Your legs … are a … lot longer … than mine,” the boy said breathlessly. “Where are we going?”

“To my home. You can help me prepare for my journey.” When their entire environment changed, the building, the endless stairs, everything and everyone else gone, the human stopped running and looked at the boy with a grin, “Oh, and I swiped something for you.”

The human child’s face lit up brighter than the sun. “My dog! I thought I’d never see him again. But won’t you get in trouble?”

“Some of the Bylaws are kind of petty, don’t you think? Just don’t let any soul see you have it. They don’t understand such human attachments. We’re more grounded, let’s say, what with both our feet planted on the ground and all.” He winked and grinned at the child, causing the boy laughter he hadn’t felt for however long it had been.