by D. B. Magee
As the four friends became aware of their dismal surroundings, a feeling of melancholy and despondency overtook them. The air was cold and damp as they surveyed the landscape through the visibly nauseating fumes that rose from the stinking swampland.
Having arrived in one of the dark levels of the spirit world, the four friends found, to their revulsion, that within the slough were stagnant pools filled with all manner of repulsive, mucus-emitting, reptiles and misshapen vermin in various stages of decay.
William quickly covered his nose and mouth with both hands. “Ahh! Yuck!” he squawked, while undulating his way toward Ryan.
Williams’s movements and the merging vaporous taper of his legs reminded Ryan of a mermaid, swimming. He shook his head in amusement at William’s approach.
“What is this place?” William said, still covering his nose.
“This is where Captain Blood brought me,” Ryan said, using his cowboy hat to fan away the putrid fumes.
Stacy looked at Ryan in disgust. “So, why did you bring us here?”
“Y’all wanted entrance into the spirit world,” Ryan replied. “This is the only place I knew of.”
William gulped. “This definitely isn’t the same spirit world Mom and Dad told us about!”
“Come on,” Stacy said. “Let’s see if we can find a way out of here.”
Floating over the disgusting swampland, the kids soon realized, with sadness, that below them were pools, putrid green and brown, occupied by living souls floating en masse, some face down, others up. With open eyes, these comatose souls stared blankly. Even though it was a blank stare, one individual’s eyes conveyed sadness, and her motionless, outstretched arm seemed to beckon for help from within her watery prison.
“This is awful!” Lisa cried. “Why are these poor people here?” She bent down closer to the water. “Do you think we should try to help them?”
“Whoa! Hold on there, Missy,” Ryan said, rushing forward and grabbing her shoulder. “They’re probably here for good reason.”
Lisa rights herself and stared sorrowfully at the imprisoned souls. “Oh!” she said. “I didn’t think of that.” And then with a heavy heart, she added, “I sure hope they’re not stuck here for all eternity.”
Ryan suddenly realized that he didn’t remember these foul pools from his previous visit. He stepped back from the water’s edge and took a moment to survey the area. The region looked familiar to him, he thought. He could even see the rocky coastline where Captain Blood’s shipwreck had once stood. However, now, there were no signs that the hidden reef ever had held a vessel at all.
Lying just beyond the swamp, Lisa, Stacy and William noticed a number of dirty, rotten hovels, little more than sticks and mud. They moved in this direction. Ryan, returning to his friends, followed.
Dark, ugly and downtrodden spirits meandered aimlessly about. Featureless and genderless, they appeared as shadows with grayish glowing orbs for eyes. As they shambled about, none of them bothered to confront or even look at the approaching children. Nor did they engage in or care about any activity. Some of the apparitional forms didn’t move at all.
The children, nonetheless, decided to move, they continued on, away from the wetland, to where the landscape eventually became rocky and hilly, forcing them to ascend until finally they reached a chasm.
“Wow,” said Lisa, peering down. “There’s no bottom!”
“There’s got to be,” William contradicted, but had to concede, “Even though you can’t see it—it’s got to be there . . .” Looking down along the walls, the kids were appalled to see subhuman forms sprawled upon various rocks and boulders.
Tattered and filthy rags covered these creatures that were nothing more than skin and bones. They clutched the cliff face for support with misshapen talons for hands. Their monstrous faces were distorted and malformed, with small, penetrating eyes and huge, repulsive, jagged-fanged mouths. They hissed and clawed at the air as the kids arrived overhead.
In the deeper recesses of the abyss, the creatures were even less humanlike. Worse, somewhere in the darkness below, very queer sounds echoed off the walls. The kids listened in horror to sounds that ranged from mad, raucous laughter to shrieks of torment.
Looking down, William watched warily as a hideous, subterranean, demon-like beast stalked up the rocky crevice toward them. “I—don’t think we should stay here!” he said, his voice crackling.
Hearing William’s comment, Lisa looked far and wide, but saw nothing but darkness and despair. “And just where do you suggest we go?” she asked.
“Anywhere but here!” William croaked.
Lisa spread her hands out in front of her. “Well, we don’t exactly have a guidebook to the spirit world, you know. And none of us knows anywhere else to project to.”
“Maybe we should just head up,” Stacy suggested. “Mom said that the higher a person goes in the spirit realm, the better it becomes.”
The kids looked up into the dull, monochromatic sky. This was not the same type of sky that belonged to the earth, or even outer space. Devoid of any detail, just a gloomy, gray veil, it gave a feeling of hopelessness and despair as one gazed upon it.
William looked over his shoulder, seeing more of the grotesque souls begin creeping out of the dark depths. “I think we should just keep going straight,” he voiced anxiously. “We’re bound to find someone that can help us.”
“Help us do what?” Stacy said, her voice squeaking.
William shrugged. “Maybe give us directions out of here.”
“If they knew the way out,” his sister challenges, “don’t you think they would’ve already left?”
Lisa floated in between the quarreling siblings. “Maybe they can’t,” she said. “Just like those poor souls in the water, this might be their fate.”
“Willy has a point, though,” Ryan said, in defense of his friend. “Just because they’re trapped here it doesn’t mean that they don’t know where the exit is. However,” he added, “it is your rodeo, Stacy. I reckon it’s up to you to make the decision. So, what do ya say, up or straight?”
Stacy moved some way from the group and turned a full circle, scanning the horizon.
The others talked among themselves, while Stacy considered her options. Their heads jerked up wildly at the sound of Stacy’s scream. Looking back, they were mortified to see her being whisked away, down into the black abysm. Her face was caged in the clutches of long, slender, sinewy fingers. Her abductor was dark as night, stealing away stealthily from boulder to boulder, back down from whence it had come.
Stacy screamed again.
“Stacy!” Ryan yelled. “Look away from the computer screen!”
It was no use. She couldn’t think. The experience was too horrific for her mind to handle: the sights, the sounds, the smells, her entrapment. Sitting in her room, she could actually feel the pressure of the creature’s arms around her, and the grip of its fibrous fingers against her face.
Ryan smashed his hat down tight on his head. “I’m coming, Stacy!” he shouted. The creature looked back and hissed.
But before Ryan could make a move . . .
“LET GO OF MY SISTER!” William roared. In a flash he sailed, straight as an arrow, without wobble or waiver, right past Ryan. Streaking down between the craggy cliffs, he disappeared beneath the mountainside.
Mortified, Lisa looked at Ryan, and with gut-wrenching fear for her friends, grabbed his hand tightly.
Ryan stared, momentarily stunned, at the point where he’d last seen William, in utter disbelief of his buddy’s courageous actions. Then, squeezing Lisa’s hand for reassurance, he said, “Stay here! And don’t worry, I’ll get them back.”
Lisa pulled sharply on Ryan’s hand. “No!” she cried. “Don’t leave me here alone.”
Meanwhile, deep beneath the hellish mountain, through benighted tunnels and fetid trenches filled with queer and shadowy spectral forms that drifted like mist, William continued relentlessly in pursuit of his
sister’s captor.
Stealthily onward, the fiendish devil scurried from rock to rock and cliff to cliff, dragging Stacy along by her face. Her lifeless astral body flapped behind the creature like a deflated balloon. Literally frozen with fear, Stacy no longer screamed. With her eyelids fixed open, the demonic images of her surroundings streaked past her vision, tormenting her mind. She couldn’t breathe, and her heart pounded like a jackhammer in her chest.
Directly behind Stacy’s wavering body, William raced as fast as he could, zigzagging back and forth through the endless passageways in desperate pursuit to save his sister. “Stacy, wake up!” he screamed. “Snap out of it! Disconnect from the computer!” He strained with all his might to overtake the evasive beast, to no avail. “Don’t worry, Stacy,” he continued shouting. “I’m coming!”
Far above, Ryan grabbed Lisa by the shoulders. “I need to help Willy!” he said sternly. “Disconnect and wait at the house. We’ll meet up there and regroup.”
Almost there, William thought, as his hand, mere inches from the wraithlike assailant, stretched forward. His fingers, open and aching, aimed for the demon’s shoulder. Now! his mind screamed. And with that, he lunged forward.
SMOOSH—William’s aery form smashed into the wall at the end of the tunnel. Even his physical body, in front of the computer screen, felt the shock of impact.
Focused on his target, William hadn’t seen that the tunnel had turned abruptly. He recovered quickly and resumed the chase, though looking far ahead at the rapidly diminishing figures, Stacy’s rescue seemed hopeless.
At that moment, an idea came to him. He focused intently on his escaping enemy. Burning the image into his mind, he instantly transprojected himself onto the creature’s back.
The creature shrieked, and using one of his clawed appendages reached back, trying to free himself from his attacker. With a mighty effort, he sprang hard off of a wall and into a long, downward free-fall.
Holding on tightly, William pulled back frantically at the creature’s head. He wrapped an arm around its neck, trying to strangle it. He didn’t see, until it was too late, the boiling-hot tar pit below them: a doorway to a lower, darker, more evil dimension, yet.
William screamed, as he, the creature, and Stacy plunged deep into the burning sludge.
“All right,” Lisa agreed. “I’ll break connection and see if I can help Stacy do the same.”
“Great,” Ryan said. “I’ll see you soon.”
Just as Ryan turned to face the direction of William’s disappearance, and before Lisa could bring herself out of her astral trance, William suddenly emerged from the great gulf with Stacy in tow.
“Yee! Haw!” Ryan hollered, waving his hat. “Way to go, Willy!”
“Time to go!” William shouted, streaking past Ryan once again, this time straight up toward the gray, gloomy sky.
Lisa watched the twins diminish into the atmosphere. “Stacy, William, wait! Where are you going?”
Ryan glanced back at the chasm—to see about a dozen grotesque mutant souls spewing out and coming their way. Without warning, he grabbed Lisa’s hand. “Come on! Willy said it’s time to go!”
With that, he took off after the siblings, pulling Lisa right along with him.
Lisa looked back to see what the fuss was. Her expression quickly turned to horror as she cried, “Hurry! Quick! Faster! Faster!!”
No Children Here
With the girls in tow, William and Ryan raced upward, away from the pursuing demons into the grim, forbidding sky. Their aery torsos and legs tapered out and wafted behind them like streamers in the wind.
Faster and farther they ascended, until finally, one by one, the shadowy wraiths ceased their pursuit and dropped off, back into the hellish void from which they had come.
“Okay!” Lisa shouted. “You can stop now. They’re no longer chasing us.”
Ryan hastened to a stop and scanned the area below. Seeing no more danger, he shouted far ahead to William, still streaking on at full speed. It took Ryan two more attempts before William finally halted.
“Come on,” Ryan said, “Let’s catch up to them and see if Stacy is all right.”
“Hey,” Lisa said, as the two of them resumed their ascension, “does the sky look like it’s getting brighter to you?”
Ryan squinted into the distance and shrugged. “Maybe,” he said, “I can’t rightly say for sure.”
Upon reaching their friends, Ryan and Lisa found Stacy recovering from her terrifying ordeal, thanks to William’s gentle coaxing and persuasion.
“Stacy, look,” Lisa said, pointing upward. “Your mom was right. It does get brighter, the higher we go. In fact,” she added, “it looks to me like the sky is becoming a rainbow.”
Sure enough, as Stacy peered far ahead, she could see a faint, variegated atmosphere. “You’re right!” she shrieked. “Hurry, let’s go see what lies beyond.”
In a flash she was off, and assuming her rightful place once again as leader of the expedition.
Lisa quickly joined Stacy, followed by the boys, and in a short span of time, almost without realizing it, the four emerged from the gray veil that marked the boundary for dark spirits.
The feelings of desperation and gloom begin to fade from the children, replaced by warmth and elation. Plunging deeper into the living rainbow, the kids now found themselves enveloped in a wonderfully dense fog, emblazoned with soft pastel colors. Zooming back and forth, they laughed and played in the magnificent, ever-changing, multicolored mist.
Spreading her arms out to her sides, Stacy zipped past her friends, zigzagging and barrel rolling in the richly hued haze. Gazing back at her handiwork, she shrieked in delight, realizing that the colors and patterns she had just created remained fixed in space amidst the otherwise dynamic atmosphere.
Impressed by the results of Stacy’s artistic acrobatics, the others followed her example; soon the area was turned into a spectacular piece of three-dimensional space art.
Emerging later from the spectral border, the four friends found themselves in a fairly bright and industriously active land. All about them under the shimmering, deep-blue sky, many colorful beings flew. Some of them appeared and disappeared right before their eyes. One materialized a short distance away and, spotting Stacy and the others, paused momentarily.
Stacy stared inquisitively at the celestial being. He had a thin, small frame, covered by a bluish silver official-looking tunic. From within his body emanated a light that shone through his colored gossamer clothing, framing him in a blue tinted aura. In contrast, his short-spiked hair glowed yellow.
After briefly studying the children, the glowing blue spirit hurried off.
Not giving the incident any further attention, Ryan, Lisa, Stacy, and William proceeded to traverse this new landscape from high above, noticing many things. This new place resembled a simpler, cleaner and more ethereal version of Earth, with a friendly, sociable atmosphere. Spirits were busy with manual and menial chores. Some of them seemed to be building, much the same way as on Earth, with various types of hand tools. In some regards this world looked as modern as present day Earth, and in other respects it appeared more primitive.
“Look at that!” said Lisa. “Most everyone here seems to get around on foot, or by horse and cart! It’s like seeing the olden times . . .”
There were those who moved through the air as well, but these spirits seemed to be of a different class from those on the ground. For one thing, their clothes were different. Instead of wearing ordinary earthly clothing, these aerial beings wore robes, togas, and tunics. They also seemed to radiate light from within their bodies, whereas those on land did not—or very dimly at best.
William said, as if in sudden realization, “Nothing here is old, worn-out, or decayed! No dead trees, no trash or litter . . .” The trees and plants below were lush and verdant, the houses and buildings in pristine condition.
Glancing about the area from high above, the kids could see, in one direction, grou
ps of beautiful houses and low buildings organized into what looked like a city. In another direction they saw small villages, set close to lakes and streams. Looking behind them produced a view of immaculately landscaped hills and dales, adorned with various types of domiciles. These structures were designed and constructed, it seemed, to blend with the landscape.
“Excuse me,” a pleasant voice said from behind them.
Stacy turned to see the blue-uniformed being from earlier floating effortlessly in front of her.
“Are you and your friends lost?” he asked, warmly.
“Yes, actually,” Stacy replied. “We are trying to find the land of children.”
“With that,” said the blue-uniformed spirit, “I can help. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Auris, an inhabitant of the higher spheres, and currently a messenger with the Sphere to Sphere Messaging Service, SSMS for short.” He bowed. “And, you are?”
“I’m Stacy, and this,” Stacy said, indicating William who was just approaching, “is my brother, William. And these,” she turned slightly to face the others, “are our friends, Lisa and Ryan. We are . . .” she paused to consider the proper terminology.
“Astral travelers,” William submitted.
“Ah! Splendid! I don’t see too many of your type in my travels,” Auris remarked. “That explains how you ended up here in Twilight Zone, instead of Summerland, where normally, spirit guides would have escorted you.”
“Twilight Zone? Summerland?” Lisa said, moving in closer to the conversation.
“The twilight zone,” Auris said, spreading his hands out to indicate the whole area, “is where most spirits, children excluded, begin their spiritual journey. It is the lowest light level, in the first of the progressive spheres here in the spirit world. Below this,” he continued, “is the dark realm, with its many levels.”
Stacy shuddered. “We’ve already experienced that nightmarish place,” she admitted.
“Oh, my!” Auris said. “Do try and stay away from that realm. It is dangerous for anyone not trained or prepared to enter any of those levels, and even more so for children.”