The Exquisite and Immaculate Grace of Carmen Espinoza (11 page)

“But you have an idea. I know you do.”

He nodded his head. “Yes, I have an idea.” He sighed deeply and looked around us, past the trees crowding the path, deep into the dark of the woods that seemed to swallow us more and more with every step we took. It was like he was worried we might be overheard. “I think,” he continued, his voice was low so I moved closer to hear him better. “I think she is trying to escape.”

“Escape?” The thought that these creatures had somewhere else to go was somewhat stunning. “To where?”

“Back into the world,” he breathed.
 

“What…you mean
my
world? The living world?” I pointed in what I thought was the general direction of the way we had come.
 

Ray nodded his head.

“But how?”

Ray reached into his shirt and began pulling out a golden chain until his hand wrapped around something suspended from bright links. When he opened his fist before me, I could see he held a gold key. “I think she is trying to make herself one of these.”

“What is it for?”

“The gate we came though, the gate that leads to the human world. All guides have one, it is how we pass from here to there. It is how we are able to leave here and watch over our souls.”
 

I pulled my eyes from the key and looked into his eyes. “You watch us?”
 

Ray nodded his head. “We watch over your whole life. We move freely from here to there…but she can not.”
 

He started walking again and I followed. “Why can’t she?”

“Because being The Balancer is her penance to bear. Her only path to absolution for actions she took when she was alive.”

“What did she do?”

Ray shook his head, “I don’t know. Some greater sin than the offenses can correct. But I can’t remember a time when she hasn’t been The Great Balancer, she has been here longer than my memory can stretch. I think now, after all this time, she is doing things, things that aren’t right—trying to get out. I think—”

A noise in the trees startled us both and made the skin across my back crawl. Ray grabbed my hands and pulled me behind him while he peered into the darkness. Silent, still, we both stared into that dark space, watching for movements other than the silent faints that always drifted through the trees in the distance.

When nothing did stir, and the sound didn’t happen again, Ray’s shoulders slowly dropped back into place and he released my hand. “I think she has been trapping guides inside her castle,” his voice was a whisper. “There are far more souls lost inside the offenses than there have ever been. I think this is why your brother has been wandering The Between for so long without his guide. I think she took his guide away. She would especially want to have your brother.”

The archway to the next offense was only a hundred feet away. “Why especially Daniel?” I asked.

Ray didn’t look at me, he kept his eyes on the ground. “Daniel was…is, very special.”

I thought about the picture in my bag, I thought about Daniel’s smile. I had only been four years old when he died and didn’t really have any clear memories of my brother.
 

Except for— “What do you mean?” I asked. “Special how?”

Ray glanced at me with a questioning look and then returned his eyes to path before us. “What do you remember about your brother?”

I thought about the question—what did I remember about Daniel? “I remember the way my mother would look at him. The way she would stand over his crib and watch him sleep.” I also remembered the feeling I had,
like a weight pulling at my heart,
watching her from the doorway of his room. His room—across the hall from hers.
 

Ray continued to stare ahead of us. “Souls are all different,” he finally said. “Each one is unique. Most souls don’t last in the The Between as long as Daniel has. Most souls would have burned out years ago and already become a faint. Daniel is special because his soul is older, he’s passed through many more lives, learned many more lessons than most souls. Because of that…well I guess you could say his soul burns brighter than others, it’s harder to extinguish. In the physical world, souls like Daniel often do amazing things. They posses a power, like a magnet, that naturally draws other people to them. Sometimes their saints, or heroes—iconic figures with the strength to command culture, history, the shape of a nation. I think, had he lived, Daniel would have become one of those people. People like that posses a tremendous amount of energy.”

“That’s why she wants him.”

“Yes. With Daniel, The Balancer wouldn’t have to keep collecting, she wouldn’t have to keep waiting. She would probably have all the energy she needs to finish making her key.”

We had reached the next offense.
 

Again beneath a stone archway, I stood beside Ray and watched the souls inside. They hardly moved. Some laid on couches, some sat frozen before illuminated screens that showed nothing but flashing white lights, others slept.
 

All around them were activities waiting to be taken on.

“I got this one,” I said and moved to step into the offense.
 

Ray grabbed my arm and pulled me back. “Wait.”

When I turned to face him, he took a step closer. The nearness of him made me hold my breath. “There’s something else I want to tell you.”

The heat from his hand felt like a fire spreading up my arm to my face. “What?” my voice shook.

He hesitated. I watched the knot on his throat move up and down as he swallowed. “I—” his eyes darted over my shoulder and the color in his face drained out.
 

“What,” I turned and saw what looked like the trailing edge of a shadow disappear behind a thick cluster of trees. My heart raced and sent a surge of adrenaline pumping through my veins, I moved closer to Ray, “What was that?”
 

His arms wrapped around me as we both stared into the darkness. “Nothing,” he said, but his eyes remained fixed on the place in the forest where the shadow had disappeared. “It’s nothing.” He relaxed his arms around me and I stepped away, once again self conscious of this strange intimacy with him. My arm still tingled where his hand had held it.
 

“What were you going to tell me?”
 

He shook his head, “No, nothing. It was nothing.” He nodded towards the offense, “You better get going.”

It wasn’t nothing. Whatever he had seen in the forest had frightened him and made him not tell me—that much I did know. “That’s a lie,” I said. “When I come out, I want you to tell me—everything. You’re keeping something from me and if it’s something to do with me or Daniel, I deserve to know.”

He nodded his head, but his eyes scanned the forest.

Inside the offense, it was impossible to not at least try and save some of them. Even though Ray told me I couldn’t help save anyone—anyone except Daniel I reminded him—I still yelled out to some of them. While I washed a sink full of dishes, I explained to the man staring at the screen that if he would get up and dry, it would probably be his ticket out of here.
 

He never even blinked.
 

I picked up a basketball and tried to get a few of the kids to shoot hoops with me, but their eyes were glazed with a thick white void. When I looked closer, I could see that their bodies were actually growing into their surroundings—anchoring them into permanent spots while what little life energy they had left drained away from them.
 

By the time I finished folding a basket of laundry, the space before me opened up and I saw Ray again waiting for me to return to him. I glanced at the people around me, “Just get up, do something…anything at all.” No one moved. I waited a second longer, hoped for some sign of life.

“Carmen,” Ray held out his hand to me. “Come out…they can’t hear you.”
 

I sighed, stepped through the portal, and took Ray’s hand.
 

Between where we stood at the end of the path, and where The Great Balancer resided with her book, there rose out of the ground a vicious, iron colored mountain. The wind whipped my hair around my face. With my neck craned back, I stared up at the sharp shale that looked like flat slabs of razor just waiting to slice a falling body clean in half. “How are we supposed to get up,” I asked, but almost immediately I spotted a very narrow trail chiseled into the jutted rock and pointed. “That will take us forever,” I said as my eyes traced the narrow dirt ribbon around and around the mountain. The moon was already halfway across its arched trajectory high over our heads. “How will we ever get up this and then back down to the gates in time?”
 

Ray stood silent. When I turned my head to him, I saw that his eyes were closed, his chest rose and fell in a rhythmic cycle of breaths. “Hello?” I asked. “Sleepy?” I snapped my fingers impatiently. “You’re the one always going on about wasting time.”

He opened his eyes and stared up at the rock looming above us. “We won’t have to walk. No one ever has to walk up.” His expression was flat, emotionless. Like he was reading off a script of some kind.
 

“Well that’s good news.” I began scanning the mountain and the trail again, “Is there an elevator or something?” Just then, an unnatural cry split the air.
 

“Or something,” Ray answered and pointed to the sky above our heads.
     

I felt them first. A wave of warm wind blew my hair back and made me blink. In the sky, descending before us, two enormous gray bats beat their wings against the sky and another uncomfortable gust of air surrounded me like a blanket. I sidestepped closer to Ray until I was watching the beasts come closer from behind his shoulder. “What are they?” I asked.
 

“The Pups.”

Their forms became more clear as they spread their wings wide, like enormous black leather sails, to slow their descent. “Pups?” I asked incredulous. Their bodies and faces were covering in a thick, smoke colored fur that rippled from the force of their flight. The platter sized red eyes were like lasers targeted directly for us. Without thinking, my hands reached up and grabbed Ray’s arm for support and I shrank even further behind his back. “What are they doing?”

Ray took a deep breath that he exhaled loudly through his nose, “Picking up the package.”

“What package?” I watched two elephant sized bats flare their wings and land close enough to catch me in their pointed, snap like mouths.
 

“You,” he answered.

One of the pups opened its mouth, as if stretching its jaw, and revealed many needle sharp teeth that looked especially designed to pierce flesh.
 

Ray took two long steps towards the beasts and my hands, still grasping him, stretched out before me until his arm slipped out of my fingers. My body was frozen and had no intention of moving any closer to
The Pups
.
 

He stood next to the closest one and when it bowed its head, Ray reached up and ran his hand up the long nose and over a protruding hump on its head. Ray began scratching it behind the ears and the animal cocked its head sideways and its eyelids drooped in dreamy contentment. Like this, it actually did look a little like a pup.
 

Suddenly the other animal lumbered over to Ray. My heart jumped, ready to run, here was the beast getting ready to attack him. “Ray,” I whispered, trying to warm him, terrified of drawing attention to myself. The animal was right next to him, I covered my nose and mouth with my hands.
 

The pup lowered its head, then nudged Ray’s free hand with its nose.
 

“Hey there,” he said turning towards the giant bat head.
 

The animal began snuffling around Ray’s torso, shoving him with his head.
 

Ray laughed, “Alright, alright.” He began petting this one too. “I didn’t mean to make you jealous.”
 

My hands slid from my face and I stood up straight. Both animals shoved up against him, neither one wanting to be left out of his attentions. They really were just pups.
 

But when I took a step forward, one of the pups stood up and swung its large head to face me. Its eyes were like deep red pools and I could see myself squarely reflected in their centers.
 

They seemed friendly with Ray, but now that it was staring me down, my fear again turned my insides to jelly.
 

“Don’t worry Carmen,” the other bat licked Ray’s neck and head and he pushed it away. “It won’t hurt you.”

“Does it know that?” I asked.

At the sound of my voice, the animal reared back and lifted its gigantic ears, like enormous sails designed to catch sound instead of wind, high into the air. “Ray?”
 

“He’s just curious.”

The animal took a careful step towards me, then another. I willed myself to stay calm but my heart hammered hard against my chest, my body was begging me to please run, or hide, or scream, anything to make this terrifying creature disappear.
 

When it took another step, I sucked my breath and fell back. Startled, the animal spread it’s huge gray wings and the sound whipped though the air like a giant tarp come loose in the wind. He stood before me, tall, posturing, aiming his fierce red eyes right at me. My entire body trembled uncontrollably.

“You scared him,” Ray chastised.

I couldn’t even argue with him, my body was panicked and would not allow me to point out the fact that it was, in fact,
me
that was scared. Actually, I was terrified, and when the pup kept coming at me, making sure to shimmer its wings so I was sure to understand just how large he actually was, my shakes began to rack my body to the point of pain. With my eyes closed, my legs gave way beneath me until I curled on top of them and wrapped my head in my arms.
 

“Of all the things to be afraid of…I can’t believe you’re scared of these kittens.”