The Exquisite and Immaculate Grace of Carmen Espinoza (19 page)

Something slithered between my waist and the inside of my arm. My body jerked and a wave of repulsion rolled though me—what was that? It felt like a snake, or a long worm. I held my sides tight with both my arms while I tried to peer into the gloomy darkness all around me. The water was lighter, but still too dark to see.
 

Something slipped past my neck and sent a shiver down my back, I twisted my body, tried to see, and caught sight of something disappearing into the dark waters. It looked like legs, ghostly human legs. I stared into the now dark blue water, straining to see beyond my eye’s limits, but whatever, or whoever, was gone.

Movement around my leg made me jump, and when I looked down, two wide eyes stared up at me.

I screamed, but the sound was muffled by the water around me and inside me.

The face screamed back.
 

Reflexively, my feet kicked at the thing and tried to get away from it. With a quick undulation of its transparent form, it slipped through the water until it stopped a few feet in front of me and continued to stare from a distance. Then, with an unnaturally severe arch of its back, it shot away into the dark.

My heart pounded loud inside my head. As the water continued to grow lighter and lighter by degree, my head turned first one way and then the other as my eyes caught glimpses of movement, flickers of shadows in the water all around me until, finally, the water was teeming with the rolling movements of—what were they? Like underwater faints.
 

They swished and swam all around and over me, I closed my eyes and tried to force myself to stay calm, but it was impossible. A frantic panic clawed at my chest. Maybe the water was no protection at all, the faints had found me here. I expected the pull to start at any moment, the feel of them sucking my life away.

Past their chaotic swirl, the water was getting brighter and when one of faints somersaulted in front of me, I could see a bright iridescence shining from within it. A moment later, I could see that all these faints had the same glow, a shimmering light that came from within them.
 

I looked up.

Above me, the gaping surface of the water hung there, like a wide mouth waiting for me to crawl through. My body was still moving, drawing through the waters, and now I knew where. I kicked my legs and pushed with my arms, wiggled the way I imagined people who knew how to swim would do, but after several exhaustive minutes I stopped. All my activity did not increase the pace of my ascent at all—it seemed to only excite the faints all around me into an even greater frenzy.

I worried about stirring them up, drawing even more attention to myself. Already they seemed fascinated by me—I didn’t want them to suddenly decide they were hungry.

And why weren’t these faints feeding on me?
 

The surface, like a great white beacon of light, was only feet above me now. A feeling lodged in my chest, a feeling I wished would go away because it hurt, it pressed against my heart and made it difficult to swallow. With the sight of the surface, a large burden of hope had found me, ballooned inside me, and as I rose, the balloon expanded until the pressure of it forced a rising tide of emotion out in front of it.
 

I didn’t want to die.

Not yet, please. I was so sorry. Sorry for everything. Sorry for Daniel, sorry for my mother—I was sorry for myself. For the whole stupid world were sad irreversible things happened. Where people hurt each other, and they meant to, and they meant to hurt themselves. It was an ugly place, full of horrible people, events, and circumstances that seemed almost designed to damage. To set you up for failure.
 

Set you up for pain.
 

And still, I did not want to leave it yet.

I did not want to die.
 

I did not want to become one of these ghosts, a faint destined to cling to the barest breath of a life.

Even though it was so broken. Even though I had so much to fix. Even though I was probably cursed by actions that were unforgivable—I still wanted my life.
 

The hope in my chest expanded so wide, the pain of it was so great, I knew for sure it would burst any second and kill me.

The softest of whispers brushed against my cheek, and when I looked, I saw my mother, floating in the waters beside me. Her hair floated out around her head, a wild dark mane framing her ghostly transparent face. She was staring at me, looking directly at me, into me, the expression on her face was one I had never seen directed at me before.

Her brows bunched between her eyes and her mouth pulled itself into a mournful frown. My mother had often looked sad, but this was something more—she looked sad for me. There was the light of recognition in her eyes and I thought, maybe, she might actually realize who I was. “Mom?”

Surrounded by water, my word echoed inside my head, but she had heard me. Her face looked surprised, then very sad again. “Why are you here Carmen?” she looked around us, as if she were just waking up to this strange world around us. “You should not be here,” she shook her head.
 

“Daniel is here,” I said, my words swimming out on the water in my lungs. “He came to find me, he needed my help.”

She stared at me, her hair undulating in the water that was moving more now that we were getting so close to the surface. “Daniel?” she shook her head. “He’s not here. Not here.” Her expression grew even darker. “Carmen, tell me my children are not in this strange place. Tell me this is some horrible dream.”

The bruise from the rope she had tied around her neck stood out in sharp contrast against her translucent form. “It’s not a dream mama.”

She closed her eyes and arched her neck, as if she were racked with pain. “It’s too much,” she cried. “It is too much to bear.” She returned her gaze to me, “This is my punishment. I see that now. I always thought you were my punishment. God’s punishment for my ways, my choices. My punishment for not listening. I believed you were sent to remind me, always, that I had done wrong things in my life. Disobeyed.”
 

Her face hardened into an expression of deep sadness, of tremendous regret. It was too much, like looking into her soul. My eyes shifted to the waters around us.
 

“It never occurred to me that you were something else altogether. That you were a gift. A light to try and help me see through all the darkness that had happened to me. But I shut my eyes to you. I closed my heart and shaped you into a haunted thing.”

“Stop mama.”

“No. It was your hand that pushed him, but my blindness that drove you to it. It’s my fault he died Carmen, not yours. Not a child. I always blamed you, and I was wrong. I’m sorry Carmen.”

“I’m sorry too,” I tried to say, but my voice had no strength and came out as a soundless rush of water. I kept moving up, but my mother had stopped and I now stared down at her. When the surface slapped against the top of my head, I reached my hand down to her, “Come with me,” I pushed the words harder so she could hear them.
 

She shook her head, “I can not leave here Carmen.” She looked around at what seemed to be her watery cell. “I’m not sure how.”

The air above hit the skin on my forehead and I pushed my face down into the water so I could watch her as long as I could.

“Carmen!” she shouted.

“Yes mama!”

“Save him!”

“I’ll will! I’ll try!”

Her face crumbled into despair.

“Save yourself!” she cried. “Save my daughter!” and she slipped into the depths below.
 

When my body broke the surface, my arms splashed for the land nearby as my lungs began to eject what felt like gallons of water from my insides. Coughing and choking, I struggled to grasp at the sharp edge of land and hang on while my body desperately tried to haul air into lungs still swimming in water.
 

My lungs heaved and burned while my body racked itself trying to vomit out the fluid. My fingers dug into the soft weedy dirt, trying to keep my body from slipping back into the vast ocean beneath me. After what felt like an eternity, my chest settled into a small series of coughs and sputters, as if I had simply swallowed wrong and ended up with my drink in my windpipes.
 

Exhausted, I turned my head and rested it in the damp earth.
 

The image of my mother’s face burned before me, “Save him!” And the words of my promise rang in my ears.

I will.
 

I stood on weak legs and stared out at the familiar landscape around me—I was back, standing at the edge of the suicide pool. I had traveled from the epiphany pool to here underground. This water connected with that water—was the same massive body of water, most of which was hidden beneath the earth.
 

Outside the perfect circle of boulders surrounding the pool, a gap in space was open. The exit from this offense. The strange portal shimmered like a hole ripped in the landscape.
 

I already knew Ray would not be waiting for me on the other side. The Great Balancer would have taken him the moment the moon set below the horizon and imprisoned him with the other guides she kept locked up.
 

I had made my mother a promise, but I had no idea how to save us all.

On the horizon, weaving through the large and small boulders, I could see the faints trapped inside this offense making their way towards me. Like moths to a flame, they could sense my energy—and they were starving.
 

I forced my legs to start moving for the portal. There would be more faints waiting on the other side, all I could hope is that I would at least be able to make it back to Daniel and the book before my energy ran out completely.
 

The faints, as if reading my plans for escape, began swimming more quickly across the rocky landscape. I started to run for the portal, but my body felt sluggish and inept compared to the speed of the faints racing towards me.
 

My arms and legs pumped hard while my still damp lungs strained to make use of air. There was one faint, far out in front of all the rest—it seemed certain to reach me before I could jump though the exit.
 

With what little I had left, I pushed my legs harder. My body passed between two of the large boulders marking the circle around the suicide pool and lunged for the shimmering space.
 

The first faint latched onto my back. I felt it, a pull outside of myself, like a tap connected to my nervous system—I could actually feel my energy leaving my body.

Together we passed though the portal and landed with a painful skid into the dirt on the other side. I crawled and flipped over quickly, my eyes trained on the portal behind me, afraid the rest of the faints would begin streaming through after me. But the hole was already closing fast and was no bigger than my fist by the time the next faints were pressing their desperate faces up against it.
 

They could not come through, and the portal shrank to the size of dime before disappearing entirely.
 

I sat in the dirt and heaved, unable to catch my breath. My heart would not slow down and continued to beat loud and hard in my head. When I dared, I looked over my shoulder, the faint’s gaping mouth was attached deep into my back, it’s hungry insatiable eyes met mine and then rolled back into their sockets with a blissful indulgence.
 

I looked away and forced myself to not vomit. Pushing myself to my feet, I hung on to consciousness as a wave of exhaustion rolled over me and threatened to make me pass out. I stared up at the enormous cliff far in the distance. The Great Balancer was there, high in her iron castle with both Daniel and Ray. How long did Daniel have before he was no different from the creature feeding on me now? Was it already too late?
 

There was no way of knowing but I would not stop trying until I knew for certain. I took a step and fell to the ground.
 

I crawled for several feet before I was able to get back up. My steps were slow and heavy, taking what felt like every ounce of effort I had left. The faint on my back never stopped and I could feel the pulsing pull, like it was sucking me through a straw, draining more and more of my will away with every second.
 

The urge to lie down was overwhelming.

By the time I passed the entrance to the offense where the handsome boy had almost kept me, more faints had arrived. Five clung to me now. There was another on my back that fought for space with the first while two had attached to each of my thighs. One had wound itself around my middle like some strange belt and fed on my stomach.
 

My vision was blurry.
 

It was hard to breathe.

I lifted each leg, over and over, for what felt like an eternity. Uphill, my feet dragged in the dirt, my clothes were drenched in sweat as I staggered and swayed, barely avoiding falls again and again.
 

I no longer looked ahead, if I did, if I considered the impossibility of continuing long enough to make the distance between where I was and the top of the cliff, I would let myself fall. I would have stopped thinking of that balloon of hope in my chest as anything other than
 
a ridiculous fantasy. Besides, everything beyond the next few feet in front of me was a blurred confusion.
 

I had no way of knowing where I was or how far I had left to go.

Until I heard the voices.
 

Their sounds began to fill the space all around me. A collective roar of once human voices, crying out, cursing, sobbing in agony. The infinite agony for the eternally damned. Their sounds made my skin shiver and even the faints feeding on me seemed to slow their pulsing pull.
 

My feet dragged through the dirt and I wondered if my offense against Daniel was this unforgivable. Would the sound of my own voice soon be apart of that horrifying chorus? What was an offense so bad that it could never be balanced? Murdering a small child seemed like it was one—and even though my mother no longer blamed me, I felt certain that didn’t matter here.