The Exquisite and Immaculate Grace of Carmen Espinoza (21 page)

The pull to do what she asked drew me closer to her. I didn’t know what it was, what power she had, but I felt compelled to listen to her. It felt like I had to do what she said.

Behind me, a low rattle ignited the air and I stopped. The sound grew louder, more intense, and the vibrations of it sent waves through my being.

I knew that sound.
 

From before. From way before everything, I had heard that sound. In a sparse landscape where sand and rock stretched on and on like an ocean of death. In a desert that existed between two worlds, I had met a snake.
 

I turned towards the book.

“SNAKE!” the girl screamed.

He body was coiled, but his head and tail stretched high into the air. The sound of his rattle was hypnotic, the movement swift and vibrant. His eyes met mine, held me, pulled me to him while the sound echoed through my mind and tried to shake a memory loose.
 

I knew him.
 

The girl behind me screamed out, demanded that I listen to her, but I moved faster towards him. Something was beginning to form, an image, a memory, like a curtain pulling away slowly from a large painting, a picture started to swim around in my mind.
 

This snake was also a boy. A boy who had looked into my human eyes and confessed his love for me.
 

I remembered that. The feel of it. The warmth of those words.
 

When I reached him, I bent down and collected his scaled body in my hands. Immediately, he began to wrap himself around and around my arm until his head rested in my palm. When I brought his face to mine, he slid his head up against my cheek then stretched himself out towards the book.
 

“IT WILL DO NOTHING!” the girl shrieked behind us. “THE BOY IS ALREADY MINE! I HAVE ALREADY SPENT HIM! She can not save him now,” she finished with barely a whisper.
 

Save him? There was someone I was supposed to save. This I remembered too. I looked back over my shoulder and saw the wisp of soft gray spreading even further out across the floor. That mist had been someone, someone important—she had already taken him, and I was supposed to stop that.

I turned my eyes back to the book. I was supposed to stop her with this book.
 

The snake stretched out and away from my arm until his head reached the open pages of the book.
 

When I moved closer, the pages before me illuminated, is was like my presence had turned it on—but when I looked, the pages were blank.

“I don’t understand,” I whispered. Before me, the words I spoke appeared on the page in a deep, scrolling brown ink. A moment later they disappeared.
 

“Because they’re not the right words,” I breathed, watching those words now appear only to disappear a moment later.
 

I looked to the snake and wished he could speak, but then, something occurred to me. I turned and faced the girl.

“What am I supposed to do with the book?”

Her eyes grew wide as her fists rose and clenched the sides of her head. Her head shook wildly from side to side and her scream this time was so horrible it made the walls shake, “NOOOOOOO, I WON’T, IT ISN’T FAIR! I’VE BEEN HERE TOO LONG!” Her body doubled over and her hands clamped over her mouth, as if she were trying to hold herself down.

Suddenly, she was thrown onto her back and her arms and legs were pinned to the floor like a human star. Tears ran from her eyes as she continued to shake her head. This time, when her mouth opened, a voice from within her spoke.
 

“Account for yourself. Speak for your death, the how, the why. If your words balance, you may leave this place.”

She screamed and cried and beat her head against the floor. Whatever was holding her, would not release her until it had finished.
 

“The book records the truth of your words for all time.”

I turned towards the book and stared down at its blank page while the sounds of her thrashing and screaming continued behind me. I took a step closer, lowered my head towards the book, and tried to remember.

I had died, but how.
 

“I failed,” I said. The words formed on the page and did not disappear. Over my shoulder, I looked past the wild, rage filled girl, to the thin slip of ghostly air beneath the golden key.
 

“Daniel,” I whispered.

When I looked back to the book, I saw all three of my words there and read them aloud, “I failed Daniel.”
 

My head swam with images. A dark haired woman, a small blonde boy. A staircase, and a pool of blood.
 

My hands grasping a doll, a small and precious gift.

The images moved together and connected for me with the words that remained on the page. I remembered.
 

“I was supposed to save Daniel,” I shook my head. “But I was too late.” A strange sensation filled my body, like a surge that left me feeling more whole. “I learned the truth about Daniel’s death, and I tried to return here, to balance the book for him. But my time had run out, and the faints…” my voice caught on a sob that I had to swallow down. “The faints fed on me until I had nothing left.” I remembered that my body was still lying at the base of the vast cliff just beyond the giant doors. “The last time I fell, I could not get back up.”

I gestured to the doors. “I’m dead, out there, next to where Daniel’s father is trapped in the cliff.”
 

My lips pursed as I tried to keep back the tears that where pushing at my throat. “I died because I failed,” I whispered.
 

I stared at the words in the book, every one of them remained as the pages began to dim, like lights turning down, until it looked just like any other book.
 

My mind was clear again and I could remember everything in agonizing perfection. I lifted my hands before me and saw that, while not made of the flesh and bone of life, they appeared more human again.
 

I was more like the recently dead than the faints that where unable to ever balance their offense.
 

The snake—it was Ray I realized—had been coiled on the pedestal next to the book, he writhed until his body hung over the edge and could wrap itself around the base of the glass pillar and wind his way to the floor.
 

“I WILL FIND ANOTHER!” the girl cried.
 

“What happens now?” I asked.
 

“YOU GET TO LEAVE!” she threw her head back and screamed. “YOU LEAVE,” tears streamed down the sides of her porcelain face. “And I’m still a prisoner.”

I stared at the book before me, my words etched into the page. I had accounted for my death, “I’m leaving?”
 

“GO!” she shouted at me.
 

My eyes flew to the ghostly remains of Daniel. He would not be leaving. I thought of my mother, forever swimming in the bottomless pool of her own grief. My step father, trapped in the rocky cliff of his own loathing.

How was it possible that I should get to leave this place?
 

“GOOOOOO!” she screamed in anguish.
 

On the floor in front of me, Ray undulated towards the great doors that led to the front of the castle, back to the beginning of The Between. He had guided me, successfully I guessed, to understanding my own life—did that mean he was free to leave the castle as well?

As if to answer my unspoken question, slowly before my eyes, he began to change back. The center of his snake body arched high into the air and expanded with every breath, larger and larger, until his scales gave way to flesh. His head at first grew only larger, then began to morph, his forehead growing while his diamond shaped nose molded into the nose and mouth I knew. His tail split in two while his arms sprouted from his sides. When he could stand, he bent down and picked his clothes from the floor and put them on.

In only a few moments, he had transferred back into the boy I knew. He stood before me, his face in his hands while his skin shifted and made the final adjustments into his human form. When he finally looked up, his eyes met mine and I could see the anguish he felt. Tears filled his eyes and fell across his cheeks.
 

When he opened his arms to me, I ran to him, but when I reached him, his arms dropped defeated to his sides and I stopped just out of reach.

“What’s wrong?” I asked and reached to touch his cheek. When my hand passed right through him, I understood.
 

His eyes held mine, “You’re gone,” he whispered, a sad smile pressed his lips. “I had hoped to hold you one last time.”

I moved closer to him, tried reaching up to his face with both my hands, they moved through his flesh as easily as air. “No,” I whispered, a fresh sob catching in my throat.
 

His eyes moved to the top of my head, my cheek, back to my eyes—like he was trying to take all of me in and make a map of my face. “I love you Carmen,” he breathed. “I have always loved you. I will always love you.” His eyes shifted to the floor. “But I have to guide you home now.”

He held up his hand and the large doors moved for him. Behind us, The Great Balancer let out a final scream of frustration that rode up my back and made my whole body shiver from the intensity of it. As we passed through the doors, and they swung closed behind us, an urgent panic settled in my chest.
 

Something broke inside me, “No, Ray…” I shook my head, the waves of guilt and despair were too much to bear. “I can’t go,” I pleaded. “I failed! I don’t deserve to go!”

“You tried, and you have been forgiven. It is what every soul hopes for Carmen.”

The pain of it ripped at my heart. “Will I ever see you again?”

The space between his eyes pushed together, “Yes, after this coming life, and the life after that.” He bent his head back and stared up at the sky. “You have seen me time and time again,” he smiled and tears ran down his temples.
 

“But I never remember,” I said.

He shook his head and closed his eyes, “No. You never remember. It is the way of it. The nature of the universe. Every guide is bound to their soul for eternity, we love you unconditionally.”

“And all you get in return is this brief time in The Between?”

He leveled his eyes at me, “It’s worth it. I would rather have a day with you between lifetimes then to lose you forever.” He turned away from me and cupped his hand to his mouth before letting out a low whistle to call the giant pups. “This time,” he said over his shoulder. “That almost happened.”

A huge gust of wind pressed on me from above and when I looked up, I could see both pups flaring their huge wings as they prepared to land, and carry me away.

The wind on my face stung my eyes and dried my tears almost as soon as they fell. From high above, sailing through the sky on the back of my pup’s neck, the landscape of The Between spread out before me and I could see the path that wove from one offense to the next, the lessons souls came here to finish.
 

Ahead of me, Ray’s pup dipped its wing and banked left and I grasped my pup’s bristly brown fur in my hands and prepared for my creature to follow. Its body flexed and shifted beneath me and I felt the force of our deep turn, we were rounding the tip of the Great Balancer’s mountain, coming around to the back side where the cliff plunged down into the greater offenses.
 

The pup’s wings beat the air several times and I crouched low to its back as we climbed higher and higher. The wind rushed past us and my grip on its back tightened. As we continued the steep climb, I dared to peek past the creature’s shoulder to the land below. The huge castle that was so enormous and intimidating when I had stood before it, now looked like a child’s doll house below me. The steep and jagged cliff face that imprisoned the souls of the eternally dammed, now looked to me like a scratch in the dirt, a handful of earth removed from a sandbox.
 

At the base, there was a path I could no longer see.
 

My body was there.
 

I looked up and saw the horizon spreading open. Far past The Between I could see that the landscape all around it was much greater than I had realized. A thin strip of vibrant light began to grow in the distance where the dark sky met the earth, and the longer we soared the thicker it grew. It reminded me of dawn in the desert and I realized, I knew that place.
 

Home. This was the home Ray meant. The beginning and the end of everything.
 

The light on the horizon exploded into a glittering spectrum of colors and the skin on my hands and arms began to sparkle, then radiate. I held my hands up and turned my palms to face me—they were separating. Fragmenting into tiny particles of light. A low vibration was rattling at my core and spreading out like an electric current though my whole body. My whole being was pulling into the expanse of light and energy that was now pulsing on the horizon.

I was going home.
 

My life, the one I remembered, was gone. It was over. I hadn’t thought about that clearly—I hadn’t thought about it at all. Instinctually, I had believed Ray meant I was going back to the life I had. The house I shared with my mother, my existence in the basement, my small bed where seventeen crucifixes hung, where
The Flagellation of Our Lord Jesus Christ
loomed over the entrance, back to my mother’s protections, not for me, but against me.
 

Back to her attempts to keep the demon down. Her need to guard against me, guard the fear, ever present in her heart, of her eternal punishment. She had always believed that punishment was me.
 

I looked over my shoulder and saw The Between evaporating into the distance along with everyone I had loved. I turned back to the circus of light ahead of me, they would never know this again. Never have the chance to do it all again. My mother, father, and Daniel would never know this home again.