Otherland (4 page)

Chapter 4

There was a knock on the heavy, wooden hatchback door a second before it squealed open.

“You really need to WD-40 that, Lydia. Lydia? Where you at, girl? I saw yo’ car in the driveway and you can’t hide from me in here. There ain’t no place to hide here.”

“Cherise?” Lydia lifted her head from the table, looking as though she’d seen a ghost.

“What? What is it? You just wake up from one o’ yo’ nightmares?”

“Look,” Lydia said, her voice lilted in desperation, as she pushed a few papers toward Cherise.

Cherise breathed, “Wow. I think you jus’ found yo’ calling. Girl, I ain’t know you draw like that? It’s magnificent. I can honestly say I don’t think I ever saw anythin’ so beautiful as that.”

They were both looking at a painting of the stone crown with the emerald tips, a darkened sunrise, colors purer and more vibrant, and the ethereal glow of a sun. The second picture was of a boy with large, expressive green eyes, and thick, floppy, golden-blonde hair.

“Who the boy?”

“I have no idea,” Lydia said.              

“So, what’s the big deal? Why you actin’ like you dying or somethin’?”

“I didn’t do this, Cherise.”

“What you mean you didn’t do it?”

Lydia kicked the empty box of wine. “I was drinking that so I could get a good night’s rest. I passed out. At least, I thought I did. The lights were off, blankets looking like I slept in them, and my glasses were on the night stand next to the bed. I woke up in this chair with these on the table.”

“Maybe you got a secret admirer. Maybe that boy there.”

“No, I know I drew them. I had paint all over my hands and clothes.”

“Girl, you jus’ said you didn’t. You makin’ no sense. Drank too much wine is all. Didn’t yo’ Doctor guy tell you lay off that stuff?”

“Yeah, Cherise, and then you fired me!”

“Now you goin’ throw that at me. I don’t even know why I do anythin’ for you when you act like that. Go on, look in these envelopes and see what I done.” Cherise stood, arms crossed, biting on her lip like she always did when she was trying to hold back a smile.

Lydia gasped.

“Yea, you like that? Got you all yo’ vacation pay. Usually you have to wait months fo’ that. Now open the other one and you know why I did that.”

It was a letter approving the disability insurance through her employment, paying 50% of her average earnings the past 8 weeks. $225 a week for up to 26 weeks. “I know it half of what you was makin’, but –.”

“It’s something. It’ll cover my rent, my utilities. If I cut down on some of my expenses, I can make it work. Cherise, you are too good to me,” Lydia tiredly smiled in obvious relief.

“Yet you always doubt me, fool.”

“Doctor said I have abandonment issues. Cherise, you are truly my best friend.”

“I’m yo’ only friend.”

Lydia chuckled. “Yeah, you are.”

“But I can’t say I know what it like to have the problems you do. Wake up one day and have no memory of 24 years’ worth of yo’ life, no idea where you come from. No family, man, no one else to step up to the plate and tell you who you is. Disability the best thing fo’ you right now. Means you got six months to pick up the pieces and put them back together. I’d say this right here – ,” Cherise picked up the painting of the boy, “- a good start to findin’ who you is on the inside. I’m goin’ take these. I know people. When you get all rich and famous-like, don’t you forget who was there for you when you wasn’t.”

Lydia laughed, “I strongly doubt fame and fortune was written into
my
stars. I’m too busy trying to actually get some sleep. You know what really disturbed me so much about these paintings? A type of inner-knowing that I’ve been there before, like I experienced it with my own eyes. And the boy. I’ve never seen him before, have no idea who he is, but then I do at the same time. You see how the eyes were drawn? It’s like he’s afraid and pleading with me to remember who he is.”

“Maybe cuz he is. You got 24 years of life you don’t remember, and Lydia probably ain’t yo’ original name. Maybe you lived in France or Italy or somethin’ that might have looked like that drawin’. Maybe you did know this boy. If I’m goin’ do somethin’ with these, they need names. Every artist name their work.”

“I’m not an artist, Cherise. I told you. I don’t even remember painting these. I couldn’t paint like that if my life depended on it.”

“Jus’ give it a try. Stop bein’ so pessimistic. Eight months we been friends and you always lookin’ on the underside o’ things. Someone done pissed you off in yo’ past life, that’s fo’ sure.”

“Otherland,” Lydia blurted out.

“The what?”

“Otherland. It just came to me. That’s what I want to name it. I don’t know about the boy. I’ll get back to you on that.”

“Aiight, jus’ put yo’ jane hancock on it, and we be done here.”

“I can’t. It doesn’t belong to me. I can’t explain it. Why are you doing all of this, Cherise? You feel that guilty for firing me? I deserved it. I know that. I’m not reliable. The number one thing employers require is reliability, and I just can’t be that right now.”

“I know dat, but I also know it’s not yo’ fault. No one would want to be in yo’ shoes right now. You got a tough battle that only you and you alone can overcome. And no, I ain’t doin’ this out of guilt. Guilt was keeping you employed there fo’ as long as I could. I’m doin’ this because I care ‘bout you, you my friend, and I sure as hell know you ain’t goin’ do it, cuz you don’t believe in yo’self like I do. Now we goin’ eat or what? I’m starvin’, and you still in yo’ PJ’s.”

Lydia stretched and yawned and grinned, “The perks of not having a job, eh?”

CHAPTER 5

“So this is your place, huh?” The human child looked around him dreamily. Like everything in Otherland, it seemed to stretch on endlessly, and nothing was as it ever appeared. Miles and miles of the plushest green grass. Wild flowers of every type and color in the absence of weeds. A garden and trees growing every fruit and plant imaginable. A flowing stream that was so pure and clean, you could see the fish going about their business, all of them spiritual, as was most everything else here.

Every living thing seen, but not touched, because physical things didn’t exist here. Only those with memories to the human physical world knew the difference. That’s why the stuffed animal from the Otherworld was so important to the human boy. He could touch it, hold it, feel it, as it was solid. Physical.

Jasper had spoken to many souls in this world. He’d been raised and surrounded by them. In a way, it’s all he knew, but he also knew otherwise, and that’s the part he could never speak of. They were completely content here, especially since the peace between the Darks and the Lights. They had no sense of time, no need for the five senses, as they had the sixth sense, and that’s all they needed. The Dark ones, whom did have their memories, spoke of the difference.

The majority of them were glad to no longer be human, contained by something physical, and being required to maintain it with all its physical needs. They claimed it was freedom, being released from the physical restraints, and called their times as humans imprisonment. Those who wanted to go back to a human body were those with memories of things left undone, whether good or evil.

But even they would say that if ever given a chance to take care of their necessary business, they would easily release the confines of the physical human body, now knowing and recognizing how they were never free while designated to a physical body.

Being human in this world, besides the prejudices due to fear of treachery, there was a type of attachment to something this world couldn’t provide, and that was the greatest difference. Being human, there was always a type of void and discontent, where the souls didn’t feel that.

The biggest complaint of the Dark souls was wanting to be free of those memories from the human world that haunted them and kept them from ever being entirely free. The greyer ones had enough light to see what they’d done wrong, feel remorse about it, and accept the fate they’d been given. Once humbled, the High master might give them a chance to correct things for the greater good. But most remained dark.

That’s why the human boy didn’t understand why the High master would agree to send a soul almost as dark as night to the Otherworld to retrieve this girl, that may or may not be the one who came here, and may or may not be his human mother.

“Do you have a home or a family that you need to get back to, human child? Someone or thing you’re attached to?” the Light human asked him.

“Not really, I’ve just kind of been … wandering. I don’t think they’re going to let me go back to the scope.”

“Were you scared in the darkness?”

“More scared than I can ever remember being before,” the boy trembled as an afterthought. “I don’t ever want to go back there. That’s why she was so nice to me. She gave me the stuffed dog to make me less afraid. I felt less alone. Will she be hurt?”

“Not if I have anything to do with it. That’s why I volunteered.”

“I don’t understand why the High master would agree to trust such a blackened soul.”

“We don’t question the High master’s reasons. He is all knowing. We must trust and do our duty by him, no matter what.”

“Are you a knight or something?”

“That’s exactly what I am and what I’ve been for a long time. A Light knight. I swore my duty and loyalty to my Father. I serve him in both this world and the human world.”

“So you’ve been back there since coming here?”

“Many, many times. I’ve been in places you could never even imagine. Places darker than the darkness. I’ve been to the Nothingness, walked the Forbidden, where all you can hear are the cries and moans of the Lost ones. It is the most pitiful, yet most dangerous, place to be. Once there, it never quite leaves you,” the Light knight sighed sadly.

“Why did you have to go there?”

“Some souls and humans accidently wander there and become lost. The Lost souls can be nasty things, wanting to destroy anything and everything they come across. They created the Nothingness and it gets larger and larger through the passing time. If someone or thing wanders too far, they won’t hesitate to snatch them right up and carry them off to become a Lost soul themselves. I went there in search of someone. A human who could freely travel the realms.”

“Aliyah?” the boy whispered.

The Light knight smiled in fondness, “Yes, Aliyah. She was not supposed to have found her way back here; I’d made sure of it.”

“You don’t seem too upset that she might have,” the boy said.

“Aliyah was always stubborn, even as a child. Would not listen to reasoning, or follow orders. Guided not by a sense of duty, but by one of love. I think I know why she has found her way back.”

“It’s me, isn’t it? That’s why you brought me here with you. You know, don’t you?”

“Huh? I brought you here to keep you protected. One of the blackened guards seemed intent on finding a way to keep you in the darkness. Regardless of the peace, there are some that maintain old perspectives and prejudices toward humans being here, believing they don’t belong in this world.”

“She said she’d come back for me. She promised. I think this Aliyah may be my mother. It is a memory I had. This stuffed dog was one that was given to me in the human world, I think, when I was there as a baby.”

The Light knight was nearly on top of him, looking intently into the boy’s face. “You have memories of the human world?”

“Just one. She said she needed to bring me here to keep me safe, and that when the time was right she’d come back for me. But …” the boy looked down sadly.

“But what?”

“The human girl that came here looked far too young and did not look like this Aliyah from my memory.”

“That’s because your memory of her is from the human world. She would look different there, as do I. Recall, this is a place of past, present, future, and Nothingness. One of Aliyah’s many gifts was a mastery of disguise. I’ve seen her come as a child, I’ve seen her as an aged woman, sometimes looking like a warrior princess, other times a Light innocent. I never knew of a child.”

“So she never spoke of me?” the human boy said sadly.

“She never spoke of her reasons for why she continuously returned here, despite all the dangers it presented to her, and why now, she’s come back.”

“The one who came here didn’t seem to know anything about what this place was. She believed to be dreaming, no matter how many times I tried to tell her she was not dreaming. I urged her to go back, even before she came through, and she just kept talking about how she wasn’t leaving until she could get some sleep because she had a meeting she had to go to.”

“Then it is worse than I thought,” the Light knight bowed his head.

“What do you mean?”

“It is my fault. She wouldn’t know. She wouldn’t remember. She’d be entirely clueless. I – I wiped her of those memories to ensure she could never find her way back here. I was … trying to protect her. I thought -,” his head fell in his hands. “I thought it was the best thing for her, and now, she’s in far more danger, because of me.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Aliyah has no idea she’s Aliyah. Somehow she managed to stumble across this place again, without knowing how she got here, and now she’s going to be hunted, without knowing why, without understanding it, without … being able to protect herself. If you are, in fact, her child, then it all makes sense. I thought perhaps she kept returning here to see me, even though I created a place for her and I to meet, a place I’ve been going to every human night for a long, long time, hoping -,” his voice cracked.

“Hoping what?”

“To see her again.”

“You love her, don’t you?” the child questioned softly.

The Light knight slowly, painfully nodded.

“But you’re human. Couldn’t you have stayed with her in the human world?”

“I could have. But I’d already made my vows to the Father to eternally serve him as a Light knight. I chose duty above all things. When I finally found her in the Nothingness, the Lost souls, who steal from the life and energies of others in the absence of their own, had practically emptied her of all her life energy, leaving her mostly lost, even after she was found and returned. Her heart beat so slow, her eyes staring out at nothingness, lost. I felt responsible for her plight. Again, my duty to protect her overrode my heart.

“I wanted her to forget about me so that she could lead a normal life, and no longer have to feel that void of nothingness and loss in her heart. I believed her love for me would destroy her, when I had my own duties to abide by. A Light knight comes with many dangers. Here, we are mostly balanced and the Lights and Darks have made peace with the Bylaws. It is not that way in the human world. My duty requires my presence there at times, and there are those who will seek to destroy me. I did not want to bring any more harm to her than had already been done.”

“And now they are sending the very blackened soul that had hurt her in the human world. She got rid of him once, and now they’re sending him right back out there after her,” the boy said angrily.

“Yes, because he’s going to lead me to her. Again, young one, you should not question the High master’s rulings. It’s a test of faith that you do not want marked on your soul. He will not be able to hurt her, the soul that he is. Terrify her, sure, but he can’t touch her or hurt her the way he once did and the way he wants to now, but
he
doesn’t know this. He’s never been a spirit in the human world, and just like humans in Otherland have restrictions the souls do not, so too do the spirits in the Otherworld.”

“I wish I could go with you,” the boy murmured.

“Perhaps one day, but you are not ready yet. Search your soul, find your faith, your duty, your honor. It’s up to you and you alone. You are human and you are soul, just as I am. Find your spiritual being. I am being summoned, young one. It is time for me to go. Stay here. Do not wander far. The stream, despite appearances, is the border of my home. I’ll check in with you. It is vital you do not speak of the things you confided to me, as it could put you in grave danger, and I cannot protect you both in both realms at the same time. You understand?”

“Yes, Light knight, my … friend?”

“One more thing. The one who came here. Did you happen to notice if she was wearing a necklace?”

“A necklace?”

“Yes, a silver chain that goes around the neck with a heart-shaped pendant.”

“I – I’m sorry. I did not notice. I was too frightened. All I know is her eyes were the color of the water in that stream.”

“Thank you, friend.” The Light knight winked at him, and was gone.