Endless

by S. B. Niccum

  “What are you waiting for? Do it now! Open the rift!”

  In the distance I can see the bubbles all clustered together. I can safely assume that those hideous spirits are still hovering over Alex and my father, ready to strike and torture them for as long as Agatha wills it.

  “They don’t have much time, Tess. My Hellhounds want to play.”

  I close my eyes and try to focus again, but nothing happens. “I don’t know how,” I protest.

  “Focus!”

  I try again, but to no avail. “Why do you want to go to the other side?” I ask again, trying to buy myself some time—time to think, time to come up with some other options, because I feel like I’m making the biggest mistake of my life—or afterlife.

  “That is my business. Now you do what I ask, and I’ll have Eugenia here lead you back to your precious Alex and your father; she knows the way.” I look back at Eugenia and she looks back at me with a smirk, like she’s finally proud of having one up on me.

  “You’ll never find them alone, Tess, you need my help. You’re done for. I can see it in your eyes, you’re ready for your own mental break, and once you form a bubble of your own, you’ll always prefer it to reality. See?” She points to one of the spirits who was following us in the procession. He had already gone back into his bubble. “When your mind wanders, it reverts back in there by default. It’s like a drug.”

  I hate to admit it, but Agatha is right. I’m done, and I don’t want to live a lie. So I close my eyes and try again. This time, I focus on the only thing that still ties me to mortality—Robyn.

  My weary mind has a hard time of it, but I try to think of her and our last moments together. I think about what she might be doing right now, but it’s hard. I have no idea how much time has elapsed on earth since my death. For all I know, years could have gone by. When I left her she had just gotten married. I didn’t get to know her husband well, for I was ill. The fire had hurt my lungs and I always suffered from it. I was relatively young when I passed, but old enough I suppose. I was ready to go. I had done my duty. I raised Robyn and left her financially and emotionally well off, I thought. So when I think of her, I think of her doing what she loved to do—designing clothes. In my mind, I see her sitting there, next to me in our house in Mexico, sketchbook in hand, sticking her tongue out, just like Dorian used to do. When suddenly, I hear something. Screaming! Loud, ear piercing shrieks that make me wince! I open my eyes and a flash of light rips through the darkness like a lightning strike. Then another scream cuts through the fabric of our realm, and with alarm for Robyn’s safety I try to widen the gap, but it closes up like a clam.

  “Try again!” Agatha insists with wild excitement in her hideous face.

  With renewed focus, I try again, and another gash appears, rending the stillness with yet another ear splitting scream. The gap is bigger this time, and I’m pretty sure that if I try one more time I will be able to make it big enough for me to squeeze through.

  “Look at you,” Agatha says approvingly. “See? I knew you could do it! You’ve always been an impressive little thing. Always playing by the rules. Too bad it was all for nothing. You and your little boy toy over there tried so hard, and now…. Well at least you’ll always be together—in Hell!” She laughs maliciously.

  “I came here to get him, and then get out!” I say in protest, when panic over what I’ve just done starts to seize me.

  “And he came here because…?”

  “To rescue my father,” I snap.

  She laughs loudly. “What good did it do you all to try so hard? Your whole family is here!” She taunts. Her face loses all the laughter and she looks at me with her large deranged eyes. She always looked freaky when she did this in life; now she looks like something out of a horror movie. “Since you died,” she asks with a more serious tone, “have you experienced any other form of existence other than what you see here?”

  “No, but—”

  “But—but—” she stutters mockingly. “Look at me, Tess. I’m taking charge, and I suggest you do too.”

  “It’s wrong,” I say, now sorry for opening the rift, and confused by the whole messed up situation. “If you cross this rift, you’ll regret it, Agatha. You’ll—you’ll be miserable,” I finally admit, because a terrible, uneasy feeling fills my frame, and I feel compelled to warn her, earnestly now, of the dangers of what she’s about to encounter. “Celeste always told me that the spirits of the dead have to train and—”

  A dark shadow zooms past on the mortal side of the realm, I turn, distracted, to see what it is, but it’s gone. “I’m afraid that you’ll do things you shouldn’t, things that you won’t be able to take back,” I continue, stammering my way through a speech that sounds hollow, even to me. I want to sound convincing, but my thoughts are disjointed. I feel dizzy, like I don’t know what is going on too well, and my mind is foggy, like when you’re about to go under anesthesia. Then another shadow zooms past, and another, and another, until it can no longer be disputed. “Something evil this way comes…” is all I can think of to say in my despondent state.

  “It’s you!” Agatha exclaims with both apprehension and elation, and looks past me at something on the mortal realm behind me. Turning, I try to focus my attention on what or who she’s talking about, and all I can see is a man, an average looking man. Nothing about him makes him stand out, or seem particularly important or impressive—except—his aura. It’s a black hole. It sucks, and sucks like a vacuum, from everything and everyone that surrounds him, myself included. He only seems interested in extracting, or feeding on my aura and anything else that might possibly have goodness in it. He doesn’t seem much interested in Agatha’s own dark and murky one.

  This ordinary looking wraith is swallowing whatever reserve I have of hope, and is leaving me completely and utterly helpless, cold, and discarded, like an empty shell. Death has never felt nearer or more real than it does now. Not even while running through those networks of hellish bubbles did I feel this desolate and afraid.

  “Don’t, Agatha,” I plead hoarsely with one last desperate attempt. “Don’t go with him. There’s nothing good for you there.”

  “That’s also where you’re wrong, Tessy,” she sounds both excited and anxious.

  “You’re dead Agatha, you don’t belong in the realm of the living.” I remind her, as if she doesn’t know this already, but I’m out of ideas, and my reasoning is not working properly.

  “That’s where you’re wrong, Tess. The mortal realm is exactly where I’ll finally live up to my true potential.”

  “Tess!” The husky groan comes from somewhere behind me, and I recognize it at once.

  “Alex?” I turn, perplexed, feeling even more disoriented than before. Alex is out of his bubble, hovering some distance away. He is far enough that I can barely make him out, but I know it’s him. Behind him, I see the four Hellhounds, but Alex doesn’t seem to know they’re there, only I see them. As they get closer to Alex, I can make out one of them clearly shaking his head, “No.” He’s warning me not to do anything silly, or Alex might get it.

  “You left me?” Alex asks through our link. I can hear accusation and disappointment in his voice. He doesn’t know, he doesn’t understand! I want to explain it all to him, but my mind is processing things slowly and all I can think in reply is how he shouldn’t be here.

  “Stay as far from me and this soul-sucking wraith as possible,” I start to warn him through the link. However, in the middle of formulating this admonition, he disappears from my view, and suddenly, I find myself surrounded by light.

  Brightness floods my eyes and I’m totally blinded. Like a bat, I instinctively I cover my face with my arm, and slowly my new surroundings start to take shape. Voices start becoming distinct, and my eyes adjust to the glare. I’m hovering in the middle of an operating room. Nurses are cleaning up blood-soaked rags and other gory stuff. On a table lies a woman. She’s out, but the monitors say she’s alive. Nurses and aids bustle arou
nd the room, and in one corner, a baby’s wail assaults my hearing.

  The numbness I felt seconds ago starts to disappear and it’s replaced with a wave of horror, as I realize where I am, and what I’ve done. Alex, the accusation in his mind and his eyes, the shadowy, soul sucking man, the numbness, Agatha, everything starts to fall into place, and make sense. I’ve opened a rift. I’ve let Agatha through and somehow got sucked in myself! I’ve abandoned Alex, and now…now I’m stuck here!

  Cradling my face with my hands, I scream, and scream, and scream, both in anger and frustration. “If I hadn’t done it, those spirits would have tortured you, Alex!” I yell inside my head, using all my strength, hoping that he can hear me. “I didn’t leave you, I swear!” I sob, then wait and listen, hoping to get some response from him. But all I can hear are the baby’s wails and all I can see is that last look on Alex’s face. It was a look of shock at my betrayal. All he had heard through the link before I disappeared was, “stay as away from me…”

  Ignoring the baby’s relentless cries, I try to focus on Alex instead. “I’ve opened this rift once, I can do it again,” I tell myself. So I try to imagine that if I can reach through the veil that separates these worlds, I will find him on the other side. But no—nothing happens. I scream again, this time I don’t muffle my voice. I scream as loud as I can like a hysterical ghost, but all I accomplish is to upset the baby, who cries even harder in response.

  Darting frantically around the room like a possessed ball in a pinball machine, I notice something odd. The woman that lies on the bed is no stranger. I know her! Slowing down, I float above her, like a mirror image on the ceiling. “Robyn,” I breathe out. I then look back and forth between her and the baby and everything starts to make sense—her screams—she was in labor! An emergency C-section by the looks of it. The wrinkly baby boy is beautiful, and I’m filled with emotion over the fact that my little Robyn is now a mother, yet something seems to be off. Where’s her husband, and why is she passed out? Nurses wheel the baby out of the room, no doubt to the nursery. I feel torn between following the baby or staying with Robyn. If I were alive, she would want me to follow the baby, so I do.

  At the nursery, a couple dressed in loaned hospital gowns and masks jump for joy at the sight of him and to my complete shock, they take Robyn’s baby from the basinet and hold him tenderly.

  “Duncan?” the woman says with a high-pitched voice. “Hello Duncan, nice to meet you. I’m your mommy,” she coos. The man beams at the baby as well, and gently brushes his cheek with the back of one finger.

  “No,” I shake my head, as I look around, looking for clues as to this terrible misunderstanding. “This can’t be!”

  I fly through the hospital, checking every room, trying to avoid other spirits who are watching their loved ones. They look at me oddly, like they know that I’m not supposed to be here. But I ignore their displeased stares and their mumbled objections to my presence. I just keep moving like the disembodied soul that I am, until I find Robyn again.

  She’s still totally out, and her face doesn’t have that glow of happiness that should be there. She looks tired and careworn. That empty feeling that I’ve been carrying around for a while, gets even emptier now. Am I really here or did I make a bubble? Part of me hopes that I made a bubble; that I’m still in Spirit Prison, that none of this is true, that I’m close to Alex. Yet my instincts tell me that I’m on earth, that I’ve opened the rift, that I got pulled in, and that Alex is probably being tortured by those dark spirits this very minute.

  Alex…The thought of him brings on another wave of agony. I want to leave here so badly and go straight to him and explain myself. He saw me leave when Agatha showed me his bubble. His made-up world had gone blank, and he saw me. Then when he came to find me, all he heard me say was to stay away from him! “Oh,” I groan. “What are you thinking right now, Alex?” If I’m really in the mortal realm, and not trapped in some nightmarish bubble back in prison, then Alex must think that I’ve turned my back on him and abandoned him there to rot! The thought brings on a stabbing pain in my middle. It’s not a physical pain, but a soul-wrenching ache that’s even worse than any bodily sensation, because physical pain eventually fades, and this does not. This stays rooted to the spot and festers.

  “Tess, what are you doing here?”

  “Jase?” I turn and see Robyn’s father hovering in the doorway. He and Katie had been watching over their daughter since they died in a plane crash when she was a little girl. They had begged me to take care and raise Robyn as my own child while I was still alive, and I’ve always felt like we shared custody of her with them. I did raise her as my own, and I did love her as my own, so his implication that I wasn’t welcome at her bedside was offensive. “What do you think?” I bark back, suddenly on guard and ready to strike.

  Jase tilts his head to one side and looks at me like I’m off my rocker. “You…are dead.”

  “Thanks, I hadn’t noticed.”

  “But,” he pauses, trying to put together a thought. “You are not where you’re supposed to be.”

  I stare at him blankly. Yes, it’s true, but beside the point right now. “She gave up her own child, why?” I demand.

  “It doesn’t concern you, Tess,” he says delicately, not wanting to offend me, but stating the obvious.

  “It sure does. I’m her godmother. I raised her! I—I love her!” Suddenly my own words bring something else to mind, the vague memory of hearing those same stubborn words coming from Alex, after he had passed. He had come back to be with me, and we had quickly developed a very unhealthy relationship. So my own previous words stick to my throat like stale bread.

  “You know better than anyone what happens when spirits from the other side come here unassigned,” Jase edges.

  I stare at him for a minute, then nod and glide away from her bedside. “I’ll leave, but please tell me what happened to her.”

  He hesitates, then looks around to see if there are any other angels checking on him. “She got married, but her husband was a total jerk. He finally left her for another woman, and took all her money to boot. Her business too.”

  “What? Where—?”

  “That’s why I didn’t want to tell you!” he says cutting me short, and holding me by the shoulders. “You can’t go after him! You can’t! Promise me you won’t! If you do anything to him you’ll be responsible and you, of all people, know too well what happens when spirits go around the mortal realm with a vendetta.”

  Right again. I do know all about this, and only now do I understand fully what Alex and my father must have felt like. They had this power, this ability to move about unrestrained in the mortal realm, and right at the height of their ire, they were told not to do anything about it. They were told to let things go and let events unfold on their own. But the temptation to get involved was—and is—too great.

  “Okay, I promise,” I say, still fuming. But my promise to not involve myself was mostly done for Robyn’s sake, not my own. I had messed up big time already, what would one little haunt do to me now?

  Once Jase looks satisfied with my promise that I won’t just fly off to torture that man, he resumes the story. “Soon after he left her, Robyn found out that she was pregnant. She told him, but he didn’t believe her. He said that it was a ploy to get him back.” He shook his head, obviously irate himself at the man. “He told her that he would never want anything to do with her or her child.” Jase paced the length of the room, pressing his lips into a thin, tight line of displeasure. “He took everything from her! Even her self-esteem,” Jase accuses, looking at me with that same look of barely restrained anger that I mirrored in my face. “She sank into a deep depression, as you could imagine. It was hard to see her suffer like that. She wanted a family so badly, but not like this. She had taken a back seat in her company to start a family with this guy, and she gave him most of the reins as he suggested and then…” He sighs, and shakes his head. “Adoption seemed like a good option to her. S
he really is in no state to raise a child. That jerk has messed her up, big time. I swear, Tess, when I’m given the okay, that man will pay!”

  “You may be spared the trouble,” I say dryly. “When he dies, he’ll be in his own special Hell. Trust me, that place is punishment enough.”

  Jase looks at me with those big blue eyes that Katie had found irresistible, I can see why. They are deep like an ocean and peaceful like the sky. “Are you going to tell me what happened to you?”

  I shake my head. I’m too ashamed. “I still don’t understand,” I say, changing the subject. “She could have raised him all on her own.”

  He shakes his head, no. “Robyn’s broken. She’s not well.”

  “Like, crazy or something?”

  “More like depressed, angry, and damaged. She’s not acting like herself.”

  “But the child!”

  “I too wish that she would keep him. But at the same time, if she’s not fit to be a parent…” He presses his lips into a thin line. “She found a good family for him. I think that in her mind she believes that they will give him what she can’t—the ideal family.”

  I look back at Robyn, lying there on her bed, and my essence weeps for her. There are no actual tears, just waves of sadness. She looks like she’s in her late thirties. She has plenty of time to pull herself together, and she has to! If she waits until after death, it will be so much harder. “Tell her…” I say to Jase, while looking at Robyn’s resting form. “Tell her that she has to get better in this life. Tell her that she can’t die with guilt and remorse. Tell her it’s worse on the other side if you don’t take care of your issues now.”

  Chapter 4

  I feel so hopeless and so aimless. I want to help with Robyn, but I can’t. I want to help Alex and my father, but I’m stuck in the mortal realm—again—only this time, I’m dead! And all my attempts at getting back to the other side are proving unsuccessful. So I wander. I float about with no particular destination, noticing nothing, trying hard not to interfere with anyone’s life and avoiding those dark shadows that zoom by me now and then with what looks like a clear purpose.