The Exquisite and Immaculate Grace of Carmen Espinoza (6 page)

When I didn’t answer, he continued.

“You have some measure of protection, for your travels during the single day. But once that passes, the faints will begin to feed on you, draining your life energy away until you are so weak, you will not even have the strength to remember you are human, let alone the desire to get back to the world you came from. That is unless, The Great Balancer doesn’t get you first.”

“But I would have the day?”

He nodded.

“And I have to, what? Help Daniel understand what happened to him?
 

He nodded again.

“And then…and then Daniel moves on, and I…I go home?”

Ray seemed to be considering my words, measuring them out. “Yesss,” he finally answered.
 

“So what do I do?” I asked. “Where do I start?”

“By making the choice, of course.”

“But I have—“

“Out loud. You must say the words, out loud.”

“Then…” I hesitated for one last moment. “I choose yes,” I said louder that I had been speaking before. “I choose to help my brother Daniel.”

Ray smiled and inclined his head. “Then,” he said as he extended his hand towards me. “Let us begin.”
 

The damp and mossy forest was a stark contrast to the arid desert behind us. Ray’s hand held mine tightly, as if I were a small child who might bolt at any moment, as we navigated the spongy earth beneath us. I tried to pull my hand away but he squeezed it tighter.

“Not yet,” he said.
 

“Why?”

“Because if I let you go before we are through the gates, you will be lost.”

I looked behind us to the desert landscape and cactus wall that were still clearly visible. It would be nothing to turn around and squeeze back through the tight tunnel. Then, to prove his point, Ray loosened his grip. The image of the desert grew blurry and disappeared, the trees multiplied around me and the light coming from the moon over our head dimmed. When he relaxed his hand even more, the trees shot high up over my head and their trunks doubled in size filling all the empty space. I turned my head every which way and turned around and around—I had no sense of which way I had just come from or where Ray had been leading me.
 

His hand tightened around mine and the forest pulled back all around us until I could again see the desert behind us and the path our feet had made leading away from it.
 

“This is why there are guides,” he said in an
I told you so voice.
“Maybe, when we are all finished with this journey, you will have developed some trust in me.”
 

I said nothing and didn’t try to pull away again.

We continued, with our hands connected and Ray leading half a step ahead, the forest felt deep, wide, and thick all around us. Out of the corner of my eye, there was movement. I turned my head, wondering if it was a small animal or maybe a branch in the breeze. My gaze centered on the fat trunk of a tree the movement had been near. There was nothing. Only the forest reaching far into the dark. I stopped and stared, so Ray stopped too. Before me, in the dark depth of the wood that seemed like it stretched into infinity, the shadows swam. My skin grew cold and fear crawled up my back, the shadows seemed closer.

“What is that?” I clutched Ray’s hand in both of mine, suddenly afraid of the fact that he could just leave me here if he chose to.

“Those are faints,” he whispered near my ear making my skin shiver violently.

I narrowed my eyes and tried to focus on one or two, “I can’t see them clearly,” I said.

“Of course not,” he said. “They are faints after all. And they have not yet ventured close enough for you to see well.” He began walking again and pulled me along when our arms stretched tight between us. “Although even when they do come close, and they will, you will still find it hard to bring them into focus.”

“Closer?” I asked stumbling over an exposed root.

He sighed and didn’t answer. “Ah, see here,” he pointed to something in front of us. “We are almost to the gates now.” I looked up and saw a large tree that looked like a hand reaching up out of the earth. The main trunk was a long slender wrist, and the five main branches were the fingers topped with leafy green nails. The branch that would be the index finger was longer than all the rest and swayed back and forth in the breeze, a gentle beckoning—
come this way
.
 

I stopped walking and held tight so he would stop too. “You said closer. They will come closer?”

I watched as he took a deep breath before he turned to face me. “Yessss. They will come closer. And the moment we cross the gate you will feel it.”

“What do you mean?”

“They will begin to feed off of you.”

My eyes searched the forest again and found the dark movements again. “Feed?” A cold clawed at my back and raced up my spine, the shadows surged and moved closer to us.

“Fear,” Ray advised. “will bring them faster. Fear is a very strong energy…they love it.” He pulled me past the hand tree. “It’s an emotion I would try my best to control if I were you.”

“How can they feed on me? Why?” I asked. “I thought you said I would be protected? I have this day of protection.”

“I said you have some measure of protection. If you didn’t you would’t last one second past the gates. But you will still feel them, like a slow drain. The imbalance is too great between a live human and a faint, it is only natural that there would be some energy transference. And they will be sssso very hungry for you. Imagine, if you will, a dog that has not eaten in months, it is weak, frail, emaciated from starvation,” he stopped walking and fanned his hand in front of his vision, “then, out of nowhere, like a gift from the Gods, you appear. A fat juicy rabbit.” He started walking again. “Now imagine it’s not one starving dog but a million, you of course are still just one little rabbit.”
 

Ahead of us, I could see something shining through the darkness. It must be the gate. A nervous uncertainty settled into my core and I wondered about how I had gotten here, about the rush and momentum towards something I didn’t really understand. I glanced behind me and saw that the desert was entirely gone now, only forest and the shadows loomed behind us.
 

With every step, the gate became more clear. An enormous barricade made of intricate scroll work shaped from a metal unlike anything I had ever seen. When we were only a few steps away I could tell that it didn’t reflect the moonlight from above, it glowed from within. The two large gates stood guard against us, but they were not connected to anything else.

“Why not just go around them?” I asked.

“You can try if you like,” he smirked. “But you would not end up there,” he pointed to the forest on the other side of the gates. “You would find yourself transported to some other remote location in the forest, wandering, lost…and without your guide of course.”

He led me the last few feet, right up to the towering gates, right in front of a golden gargoyle head. Its eyes bugged out beneath a low hanging brow and short horns arched towards me from its misshapen head. The mouth gaped wide and revealed the creatures sharp pointed teeth and protruding tongue that reminded me of apes at the zoo making loud angry noises through their bars. I stood a moment longer studying the monster’s eyes, they were so carefully crafted I expected them to shift and meet mine.

“How do you open it? Do you have a key?”

“Yes,” Ray said. “You.”

I pulled my eyes from the gargoyle and looked at him, “I’m sorry?”

“You are the key,” he took my hand, the one he had been holding ever since we left the desert and began moving it towards the gargoyle’s mouth.

Instinctively, I snatched my hand from his grasp and immediately regretted it. Like before, the forest grew and swelled all around me only this time, because Ray was completely separated from me, the speed and intensity of the change brought me to my knees. All over and around me the forest pushed in and the faints, no longer just shadows in the distance, began moving quickly towards me. Long, pale creatures with emaciated limbs and yawning mouths, their eyes were black holes swimming in desperation and locked on me.

I fell backwards and began pushing and scrambling, trying to escape until I backed into the enormous trunk of a tree blocking my path. “Ray!” I screamed. The closest creatures were only seconds away from me now. “Ray!”

Inches from me, the nearest of the faints reached out its spindly hand towards my face. I turned my head and strained my neck as far away from it as possible, “Ray!” my scream pierced the air and I felt the creature’s finger brush my cheek.

Then, just as my panic pushed my brain past reason and I flailed my arms at the emaciated demon, I felt it disappear from my side.
 

I dared a look from the corner of my eyes and saw the faint receding quickly, as if dragged from behind, back into the forest which was also shrinking. The creature struggled, a fractured scream echoed from its core and the spiny fingers left a trail of resistance dug deep into the rich forest earth until the faint was nothing more than the shadows I had seen before, lurking in the forest’s depths.

In my hand I felt Ray’s.
 

“How about you
not
do that again?” he said.
 

Still breathless, with my heart pounding in my head and chest, I looked up into his strange eyes and nodded my head.

Ray bent down, reached under my arm and lifted me from the ground with one hand, as if I were nothing more than a forgotten play thing. With no effort, he set me right on my feet and pulled me back to the gate’s entrance.
 

“Okay,” he said, a hint of annoyance made his eyes wide. “Let’s try this again,” and he moved my hand towards the gargoyle’s gaping mouth.
 

“Wait,” I said placing my free hand on top of our clasped ones instead of yanking away like last time.

Ray took a deep breath. “Yes?”

“What is going to happen when you put my hand in there?”

His mouth set into a hard line while he considered my question. After a moment, he replied, “It will taste you.”

“Taste?”

“Yes. For a living mortal, to unlock the gates to The Between, the gate must taste you. Only then will it know where your hands have been, what your hands have done, and it will also know what your hands intend to do…even when you do not.”

I stared at the monstrous golden mouth in front of me. “Does it hurt?”

Again, Ray did not answer me right away. He seemed to always take these moments to measure his words. “It will be…uncomfortable, perhaps. But not physically painful…usually.”

“Usually?”

“Yes, not usually,” he smiled as if this half promise should reassure me. When he began guiding my hand back to the mouth, I didn’t resist and when my fingers were resting on the beast’s golden tongue, Ray started to let go. “Now, as long as you are connected with the gate, it is like being connected to me. The forest and it’s occupants will stay back. But if you break contact…” he trailed off. “Well, you know.” Slowly, he removed his hand from mine and then nodded for me to go ahead. “Put it in.”

The pads of my fingers barely rested on the rough surface, like golden sandpaper, I could feel the abrasive tongue catching my skin as I slid my hand slowly past the rows of ferocious teeth. The tongue began to curve away, down into the beast’s throat and my fingers involuntarily curled themselves into a fist, each wanting to protect itself from being the first to enter into the dark hole where my eyes could not help them. I wished Ray would pick up my other hand, hold it and stand a little closer to me but he didn’t move and I didn’t ask.
   

My forearm grazed one of the monster’s canine teeth. I pushed further, the golden lips were almost to my elbow. Nothing happened. Nothing seemed like it might happen.
 

A centimeter more, and I felt it. The backs of my fingers, deep within the throat, were wet. There was something soft, fleshy—I snatched my hand back.

The mouth shut tight and trapped my hand and arm behind its fat, greedy lips that rolled up and started to suckle near my elbow. I yanked and pulled as hard as I could, and when sharp pains radiated up through my arm and down my spine—I screamed.

Ray moved behind me, cradled my body against his chest and pushed me closer to the gate, “Stop pulling,” his lips breathed near my ear. “Don’t pull and it won’t hurt.”
 

Pressed hard against him, I turned away from the sight of my arm in the creatures mouth. It sucked and chewed and every second brought on wave after wave of nausea, but the sharp pains stopped. Something, like loose and shifting meat, rolled over my hand and between my fingers again and again, “Yes,” Ray said still near my ear. His right hand held my elbow near the gargoyle’s mouth, as if feeding it, while his left had settled onto my stomach. “It won’t be much longer now. It can really taste you.”

Whatever was rolling across and between my fingers began to slow down and it seemed like the mouth loosened its grip. The gargoyle’s eyes shifted quick and looked into mine. Transfixed by his stare, my head began to burn. It felt like a bright hot flame inside my forehead and then, the image of Daniel, standing at the top of our stairs at home, smiling down at our mother. Her face was angry, her mouth opened and began to move in a silent rage as she ran towards the stairs. The image faded and the beast released my hand and arm taking all my strength to stand with it. I fell backwards into Ray’s arms.
 

My mind blurred with the memory of my mother advancing on Daniel, I blinked and tried to focus with my eyes on the face hovering before me. Ray was holding me cradled in his arms, like a small child, my legs dangled across one of his arms while he held my upper body and head in the other.
 

“Put me down,” I said trying to struggle from his grasp.
 

Immediately, my feet were on the ground and he had me upright. Only his hands remained on my arms, steadying my still weak frame.