The Exquisite and Immaculate Grace of Carmen Espinoza (5 page)

The hole was getting smaller all around me.
 

But, in the distance, I thought I saw light. I lowered myself to the ground until my belly slithered across the dirt and my elbows now experienced the hard edged bite from the tiny rocks as I continued to drag myself forward. After my initial joy,
finally the end
, I began to worry that the light wasn’t real, that it was only a illusion generated by my brain. The dark seemed to swallow it back up so that only when I stopped and strained my eyes towards it was I able to focus on the watery features of less dark.
 

Not a beacon of light, only brighter darkness which meant the promise of the open night and escape from this shrinking tunnel of dirt and thorns. Ahead of me, the way out was there. I knew it and the idea of suffering the dark and the tight for the time it would take to journey back the direction I had come only increased the tide of hysteria urging my body to stand and run. I needed out.
 

My elbows dug harder into the earth as I held down the desperate panic rising in my chest. I ignored the cuts and stings cutting me with every inch, they were nothing compared to getting out. Forward and out.
 

The brightness held, a dark blue promise I fixed my eyes on until it was only twenty feet away, fifteen, ten. The pain radiating from the shredded skin on my elbows and knees was excruciating. With five feet left, the panic cut loose and a desperate sob escaped from me as I shoved myself, finally, out of the tunnel and into the night air.
 

I rolled onto my back and stared up into the star littered night. Tears streamed down past my temples while my chest struggled between taking great deep breaths and the heaving sobs that erupted out of me. The cool relief of the night air washed over me, calmed me, made me believe I would be alright, everything would be fine now, until a singular realization eclipsed it all.

I would need to go back through the tunnel in order to get home.
 

And where had home gone? Where was I? Where was Daniel? How had I seen Daniel?
 

Had I seen Daniel?

The air near my right ear crackled, alive with a slow, electric rattle.
 

I froze.

The rhythm sped up, shaking me from every other thought. I didn’t dare move, couldn’t move. From the corner of my eye, I saw the snake coil and rise up, it’s rattle held high, warning me, threatening me. It was lightening aimed directly at me.

If I moved, if I breathed, I was dead. I closed my eyes,
please, please let it go away.
The rattle persisted, loomed louder in my ear until it was joined by the snake’s hiss. All I could see in my minds eye was the strike, the explosive burst, the fangs sinking fast and deadly into the soft flesh of my cheek. The release of poison, the slow drip of death quickened by the speed of my own blood rushing through my body, betraying me with my hearts every pump.
 

The rattling reached its crescendo then shook down into silence.
 

Was that a good sign? Would it now slither away and leave me to not die here alone in the desert with no hope of ever reaching medical care in time. I knew nothing about snakes. The hissing had stopped as well but I didn’t dare open my eyes, I was too afraid any movement, no matter how slight, would invite the snake to go ahead and take a bite.

“Are you just going to lie there all night?” someone asked me.

Startled, my eyes flew open. Next to me, where the snake had been only a moment before, a guy with dark blond hair and brown eyes stared down at me.
 

I sat up and he took a step back. We stared at each other while time and space shifted in my confused mind and he grinned, self satisfied, calm—as if he were only waiting for me to catch up.

For the first time since bursting through the end of the cactus tunnel, I examined the space around me, I glanced again at the guy, then examined the space all around us.

Here, on the other side, the desert had sprouted a lush forest that looked hundreds of years old. Ten feet from where I sat, the sand and dirt gave way to a soft, dark earth. A cool breeze rustled the giant trees in front of me, filling my face with the scent of pine and growth, lifting my hair in a wild frenzy around my head. Only when the air lost its breath and the trees settled back into a shushed sway did I look back into his face.

“What is happening?” I asked.
 

He looked up into the night sky above us, “A simple question,” he said and returned his gaze back to me. “Without a simple answer I’m afraid.”
 

“Who are you?”
 

“You can call me Ray.”

The forest stirred again before us. I narrowed my eyes at him, “Where are we?” A thought suddenly occurred to me. “Do I know you?”

He smiled and shrugged. “You do, and you don’t.”

“Who are you?”

“I already answered that one.”

“Then
what
are you?”
 

“Another not simple answer.”

“Why do you look so familiar to me?”

“Because the way I looked before seemed to be making you nervous.”

I narrowed my eyes at him, “What are you talking ab…” I watched, stunned into silence as Ray’s face and head contorted into the head of the snake I had seen only minutes before. A cold wave rolled through me as my breath stopped and my heart beat hard in my chest. Every part of me wanted to run, dive back into the suffocation of the tunnel behind me but the terrifying idea of this thing chasing me down kept me still.
 

“Now see,” the snake mouth spoke. It was Ray’s voice with a forked tongue that slipped between the words. “I can tell you’re really scared right now.” He shook his reptilian head. “Why do humans hate snakes?”
 

When I didn’t answer he shifted the skin and bones of his head back into the image of Ray and sighed. “Better?” he asked. He felt his cheeks for a moment, as if checking to make sure everything had sifted back into the proper order, and then smoothed his hair back away from his face. “It’s probably best if you think of me as your guide.”

“Guide to what?” My voice was a whisper.
 

He nodded to the forest before us, “Your guide through The Between.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The Between. The space between life and death. The pause, the breath, the not here or there. Not alive and not all the way dead but the journey connecting the two,” he flourished his hand before him like a Shakespearean actor and bowed. “The Between.”
 

I stared at him. The impossibly lush trees before us swayed back and forth, back and forth, a living metronome marking the passage of time. Marking the seconds that felt stretched into hours. The hours I waited to wake up.

“I assure you,” he said gently. “This is no dream.” He raised one eyebrow into an unnaturally high arch, a feat I felt certain a typical human could not perform. “At least,” he bent down and crouched low so his words traveled directly into my ear, “not the type of dream you’ve ever had.”

His breath was a cold stream against my ear that sent a ripple of fear cascading though my body. I shivered while panic closed my throat.
 

He grinned and stood back up, “My, my…we are ssssensitve, aren’t we?” He threw his head back and laughed, “SSSorry, ssslip of the forked tongue.” Then his long forked tongue did slip way past his lips, the end flicking wildly in the air between us and sending him into a fit of hysterical laughter that made him clutch at his sides and double over.
 

I watched his hysterics—stunned, disbelieving, wishing this would all end and I would just wake up in Graciana’s spare room. Still doubled over and incapacitated by the repetitive, “Sis-Sis-Sis. Sis-Sis-Sis,” he held up his hand indicating to me to wait, please wait just a moment. He almost had himself together, “Sis-Sis-Sis,” he shook his head.

“I’m sorry,” he stood up and forced a serious expression that broke almost immediately. “Sis-Sis. No,” he command himself. “Okay, seriously,” he smiled. “I really am your guide through The Between.” He nodded his head. “And this really isn’t a dream,” he now shook his head.
 

A pressure was bursting in my head and chest and I realized I had been holding my breath. I opened my nose and mouth and pulled the rich pine and earth flavored air deep inside me again and again before swallowing down the large knot in my throat. “I don’t understand what’s happening.”

“No,” he said managing a hint of sympathy. “Of course not. That is why there are guides,” he gestured to himself, “in the first place.”

“How did I get here?”

“Well it seems to me you got here the same way as I, by slithering on your belly,” he glanced at the tight hole I had just come through.

“Why would I need a guide?”

“Oh,” his expression turned grave. “you’d never make it through The Between without me,” he shook his head.

“I don’t want to go through The Between, I don’t want to go through anything. And certainly not somewhere that is between life and death,” I said not believing my own words.

“But you will.”
 

It sounded like a threat I sensed he could make good on. “Why?” I asked, not really wanting to know.

He looked to the forest and straightened his spine, the breeze blew his blond hair back. “Because Daniel is trapped there.” His eyes swung back to me and held. “Your brother has been trapped in The Between for the last thirteen years. He has called to you, led you here on the one day of the year it is possible for him to do so—he’s hoping you will help him.”

“Help him what?” I breathed.

“Leave The Between and cross over to The Beyond.”
 

“What are you saying. Daniel is dead. Daniel has been dead.”

“In your world, in the flesh and the physical…yes. But that is hardly the only place for existence. His soul didn’t magically vanish when his physical body died. It transformed. Most die and move through The Between and onto The Beyond,” he shrugged. “No problem. And some,” a gravity pulled at his features, severity wrinkled his brow. “Some become trapped there. Some never escape there.” He looked into my eyes. “If too much time passes, they never leave, and they forget that there was ever anything else except The Between. Their energy atrophies…and that’s the way she likes it.”

“She?”

“The Great Balancer,” he whispered. “It’s her job to watch over the souls and the accounts of the past lives. She records it in The Book. All the energy coming from one life and trying to move to the next must balance.”
 

My mind spun around his words, trying to make sense of the impossible. “So why is Daniel stuck?”

“He can’t remember how he died.”
 

“You said she liked it, liked it when the energy…” I didn’t remember the word.

“Atrophies,” he helped. “Yes, she likes that a great deal.”

“Why?”

“Because she gets to keep it for herself.”
 

“She takes his soul? And what happens to Daniel?”

He looked at the ground then, avoided my eyes, “He will become a faint.”

“What is that?”

“A blur, a thin almost…a faint is one breath away from nothing. Only it is far worse than actually being nothing because the only thing left of you is the memory of having once been a something. It is a torturous existence from which there is no end.”

I stood up now. All I could envision was our family picture, Daniel’s happy smiling face. His bright blonde hair, his chubby baby cheeks. He had been so much—it wasn’t possible, the thought of him becoming the way this Ray described, it wasn’t possible. I looked into his face, he watched me in silence.
 

My hands clasped over my head and I walked away. I needed to think—didn’t I? What was he asking of me exactly? Did it even matter? Daniel was a little boy, he was my baby brother. Trapped for thirteen years. A thought flew to me, a sudden awareness like a cold shower from the sky.

I spun around and faced Ray. I knew why Daniel was stuck.

Ray watched me closely. He narrowed his eyes, licked his lips, “Go on,” he prompted.

“You said…you said that the soul gets stuck when it can’t make an accounting for its past life.”

He nodded.

“Or explain their death.”

“Yesss,” his tongue slipped again.
 

“I know why Daniel can’t explain his death.”

His eyes deadlocked with mine, held me like prey. I saw the bones beneath his face shift.

“He can’t explain it,” I started. Ray took a step closer to me. His breath was coming quicker, seething his chest faster. “He can’t explain it because he doesn’t understand that his own mother killed him.”

Ray stared at me. His breath, which was very excited, began to slow. “Isss that so?” he asked.
 

“Yes. My mother, she is very sick. It’s why our father left us,” I finished.
 

“I see,” he broke his gaze. “Well this is very interesting,” he nodded. “Yes,” he turned towards the forest. “Well then, it is your decision, to help him or not. It is your decision and you must make it. You should know that, while The Between is infinite and eternal, the time available to you for travel there is not. One day. That is all.” He gestured to the hole in the cacti, “The veil between the world you know and The Between is open for one day.”

“The Day of the Dead,” I said.

Ray shook his head, “Yes, it has been called that. But the important thing is that once that day is over, your chance to leave The Between goes with it.”

“I would be stuck there for a whole year,” I said to myself.

“Oh no,” he corrected. “You would be stuck there forever. After a year in The Between, as a physical form still rightly belonging in your world,” he shook his head. “You would never survive. Even if you managed to stay hidden from The Great Balancer, the faints would suck you dry within minutes.”

I narrowed my eyes at him, “What do you mean?”

“Just how much energy do you suppose a living human possesses?”