by S. B. Niccum
“I know,” he says as he pats me on the head. “But you’re back, right?” He pulls me away, taking his turn at inspecting me. “You do remember who you are, and where you are, and that you’re not in the right place, right?”
I have to think about this for a while. Who was I? The answer does not come readily, yet slowly, flashes of memory start coming back to me. Dorian and I clinging to each other, on this very spot, and me promising him that I would look after him like a sister. Another flash, not a happy one, of Agatha as a child chasing Dorian all over the house, scaring him, and me kicking her in the chest, then locking Dorian and me in this room. Suddenly, all the memories start pouring out from my unconscious into my conscious mind. I stare mutely at him with amazement, as I relive all these moments, and I’m astonished at how I could have possibly forgotten them to begin with.
“I do know who I am, and we’re…” I look around and see that we were in our old foster home. The place looks dilapidated by time and disuse. This particular room seems to have been shut up for a long time. There’s no furniture and a thick layer of dust covers the wooden floorboards. Large cobwebs hang heavy with dust; nothing has been living here for a long time, not even the spiders that spun those webs. Dorian is sitting in mid-air, as if he were resting comfortably on an easy chair, while I still hover on the spot where he found me. “We’re at Charlotte’s house,” I tell him.
“Yes,” he says approvingly. “We’re in our old room. And I’d never thought I’d say this, but it looked better when we lived here.”
I nod in reply, then slowly glide toward the little window. I try to open it, but my essence does not match the solid mortal realm, so I fly through it instead, and float over the little rooftop where we used to do our homework. Dorian follows me and we sit on the same spots where we used to sit long, long ago. “How long has it been?” I ask.
“We’ve been dead for a long time, Tess. I’m afraid that a few decades have gone by just with you sitting here, staring at the walls. You might have spooked a few mortals in the process.”
“I’ve—I’ve haunted people?” I gasp, horrified. That’s exactly what I wanted to avoid.
“Well, not intentionally. While you were here, some people went through you and felt the chills. Others, the more sensitive ones, could feel a presence. But you never reacted, or encouraged them, so…all in all I think you did okay. Only one little girl might remember you, and I think she likes you.”
“A little girl?”
“Yes, she used to live here as a child. I think she might have seen you, and talked to you. But you never talked back.” He shrugs dismissively.
“How do you know all this?”
“I’ve been tracking you. I was assigned as your…err…guardian of sorts.”
I look at him suspiciously. “What do you mean?”
“Well, all unauthorized spirits from Prison or otherwise,” he says significantly, “have to be caught and sent back. I volunteered to come get you.”
“Like a criminal?”
He nods with a goofy look on his face. Somehow it feels like I should be angry, hurt, or mad, at this, but the fact that I’m talking—TALKING—to Dorian, a whole two-sided conversation with him, makes me so happy that I can’t get mad. While we were alive, Dorian was autistic. He hardly ever talked and didn’t like to be touched. He was also savant, and drew inexplicable and detailed pictures of things and people he couldn’t have known or seen. He was handicapped enough that he needed to live with someone, yet aware enough that without his help I could not have made it through my own mortal life. We had an understanding of sorts; he would let me be near him on occasions, and somehow I could always tell what he needed. No words were ever necessary. It was as if I could read his mind, just by looking at him.
“It’s so good to see you. I mean, it’s really you, the way you were supposed to be.” I say in awe.
“I was who I was supposed to be,” he says, shaking his head. “If I hadn’t been autistic, nothing would have worked out the way it was supposed to. I knew about it too, you know. Coming in, I mean. I agreed to be born with a disability.”
“You knew this while you were alive?”
“No, of course not. I didn’t know then. But I remember it all now. Before our mortal life, I knew that I would be born with a disability of sorts. I didn’t know which one, but I knew I would have one. I also knew that once I crossed the Veil, I would forget all about that previous life. That’s where you come in. You and I were great friends and we made a pact that we would help each other in mortality. I trusted you, and you came through for me!”
“How do you know all this?”
“I’m Open!” he says as if that explained it all.
“What’s that?”
“Oh, that’s right,” he nods, berating himself for not seeing something obvious. “You haven’t been to Paradise yet. Well, basically Opening unlocks your mind, so you can remember not just your whole mind, but your whole existence.”
“Why?”
“So you can repent, and fix any unresolved issues. I was an “innocent” in life because of my disability, so I had nothing to fix from my mortal life—innocents are automatically redeemed. When I died, I automatically Opened and got all my memories back. I clearly remember you and me making a pact that we would be there for each other, just like as you and Alex made a pact to find each other and be soul mates.”
“Alex,” I groan, pulling my hands over my face. Alex’s face before I was pulled into the rift will forever be etched in my mind. Remembering that look brings an onslaught of anxiety, regret, and pain so intense that I feel like screaming. I tell Dorian this and he nods solemnly.
“I haven’t been to see him, but—”
“But what?” I demand.
“I don’t know, I think—” he bites his lip and makes a funny gesture. “I think he might have made the wrong assumption.”
“What do you mean?”
“Luz has been keeping me in the loop. She stops by when she has a free moment.”
“Luz? My aunt Luz?”
“Yeah,” he grins and his whole face brightens.
“Are you and she…”
“Yeah,” he smirks that cocky smirk again, such a foreign gesture for him. Maybe foreign is not the right word—new gesture, perhaps describes it better. New to me, who only remembers the mortal Dorian, the “innocent” boy who lived trapped inside an imperfect body. “We are engaged. We’ll get married as soon as we get our bodies back,” he says brightly.
“Oh,” I say, trying to reconcile the image of Luz and Dorian as a couple. In mortality, my aunt Luz was also an “innocent.” When we first met her, she was a fifty year old with the mind of a ten year old, who liked to wear tutus and pigtails. She and Dorian became fast friends, and they were really cute together, but she was about thirty years older!
“Anyway, Luz keeps in touch with Celeste, who keeps in touch with Valerie, who has been trying to get Alex out of Prison. But apparently, he doesn’t want to. It seems he’s lost his willpower or something.”
“That was my job!” I jump up to my feet and inadvertently fly up a little higher than I first intended.
“I know,” Doran admits. “But you didn’t follow the light, and then you opened the rift…”
Ignoring his words, I’m seized with impatience and anxiety. I have to get back there, and fast. “Can you take me back, Dorian? I want to go to him right now.”
He shakes his head. “Sorry, it doesn’t work like that. You are on probation now. You have to follow all the rules if you both want to come out of this one.”
“What rules?” I ask suspiciously.
“You come with me. You face the High Council, you confess, you beg for forgiveness, you work on Opening, and once you do Open, you can go back in there.”
“How long does it take to Open?”
“Now we’re talking,” he smiles, and as suddenly as turning on a light switch, we’re no longer hovering over that rooftop.
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Chapter 5
I try blinking, but it is no use. All I can make out are little white and golden dots. I can only hear muted voices that seem to come from all around me. Fear that I have inadvertently created a bubble grips me again. Having no physical sensation always leaves me with the nagging doubt of what real really is. What if I’ve been in a bubble this whole time? What if nothing has been real and it’s all been an elaborate mental game of my own design?
“Give her time, give her time,” someone whispers.
“Wake up Tess! Wake up! Wake up!” I order my brain, but how am I supposed to distinguish a dream from a reality when nothing is tangible? Everything is mental now that I’m dead. Frustration holds me tightly from within, but I make an effort, and I open my eyes again. Here and there I can now see shapes, human shapes. Everything is still very bright, but the shapes in front of me start coming into focus a little better.
“Dorian?” I ask tentatively.
“Still here. Never left you,” he reassures.
“So…it’s all real?”
“Yep, all is real. You’re back where you belong now.”
He waves one hand and someone comes to his side. It’s a beautiful silver blond girl, about twenty, with large gray eyes, who happens to bear an uncanny resemblance to—“Luz?” I marvel. My mentally retarded aunt is not only perfectly normal now, but also young again, and beautiful beyond description.
She smiles broadly and embraces me. “Tess, I’m so happy to see you!” Tiny silvery white flowers are attached to several strands of her hair—no more pigtails for her! She’s wearing a white tutu, and butterfly wings poke out behind her shoulders. I look at the wings, puzzled, and she twirls around playfully, making them flutter.
“You can wear whatever you can imagine here, so I thought this up. What do you think?”
“It suits you.”
“Ahem!”
I turn, and to my great surprise I see them—all of them! Celeste is in front, with a look of annoyance on her face and waving an accusatory finger in front of her. However, she quickly gives up on her silent rebuke and throws herself onto my ghostly form, hugging me tightly. “You had us so worried,” she whispers.
Behind her come my two other aunts, who also heap themselves onto me, joining Celeste in a bear hug. I should be feeling short of breath, because of how tightly they’re holding on to me, but I feel absolutely nothing.
Once they release me, the rest of my family and Alex’s family greets me, including Robyn, who kisses my cheek tenderly. Irene, my mother, stands apart looking nervous and anxious, as though she’s worried about coming any closer. Once everyone else has had a chance to greet me, a path is opened for her, and she glides forward. Her simple white dress seems to glow against her dark skin, making her look divine. She’s as beautiful as the few pictures I saw of her depicted. I realize I look a lot like her and a strange feeling that I can’t identify goes through me. It’s a good feeling, like a memory wrapped up in an emotion. I guess it’s only natural to feel this way, when you meet your own mother for the first time.
“I couldn’t bear the thought of losing you too,” she says. Then she too throws her arms around me. It’s like she’s melting onto me; her essence and mine mesh together strangely well. We are both discerners too, so our mutual feelings merge and pool together.
This overwhelms me, so I pull her at arms length. Not because I’m upset, but because it’s just too much right now. I still feel like I’m teetering on some dangerous ledge, and I can barely deal with my own emotions, much less my mother’s.
She backs away looking disappointed, but smiles in spite of it. “We have plenty of time to catch up and—and get to know each other,” she says, trying to hide the fact that she’s disheartened by my cool reaction to her.
I stare at everyone, not sure of what to say or do. Dane, Alex’s father, takes quick command of the situation and makes small talk. “Now that you’re here, we have plenty to show you. There are parts of Paradise that I know for sure you’ll have an interest in.”
“Yes!” Celeste jumps in brightly. “There’s so much to see, and do. You’re home now, you know. There are whole sections of Paradise that are sectioned off to the arts, literature, fashion even!”
I nod and make a feeble attempt at smiling, but I feel unfit to be here and unworthy of their love and kindness. I want to get out of here and hide somewhere again. I wonder how much they know and how they feel about it. I suspect that they’re disappointed in me, maybe even appalled by my actions. No one says anything, though. However, I know that deep inside they must all be thinking the same thing: “She failed us.”
“They weren’t there.” I tell myself. “They don’t know what happened; they don’t know that my back was up against a wall!” my mind argues against their unspoken reproach. I suppose that none of this would have occurred if I had listened to Celeste to begin with, and had come toward the light. Perhaps, if I had done this, I would have already been to Prison and back—safely—with Alex and my father among us.
Seeing my unresponsiveness, my welcoming committee excuse themselves one by one, and fly off in different directions—all but Celeste, my mother, and Dorian—who stand by mutely and look at me like they’re about to perform an intervention.
“What’s wrong with her?” Celeste tilts her head to one side and asks Dorian in a whisper that I pretend I can’t hear.
“She was shut down for so long…” he explains.
“Tess?” my mother ventures to ask directly. She can discern me, so she knows that I’m still here. Broken, but here. “I won’t pretend to know what you’ve been through, but I can assure you that we only want to help.”
On hearing her voice, I turn to look at her, and her dark beauty suddenly takes me back again. She has high cheekbones that glow, even in her ghostly form, slightly pink under her olive skin. Her eyes are the color of rich dark soil, and her hair is shiny as a raven’s wing.
“Okay,” I reply somewhat despondently. She smiles in return and keeps looking at me, as if she’s never seen me before.
Awkwardly, I move my eyes away from her intense scrutiny and take a moment to take in my surroundings. Behind me there’s a thick wall of what looks like a cloud, and tendrils of whiteness ripple on out from the top and the bottom, filling the space in front of it with a hazy fog. In front of me, there’s a massive gate that emanates an ethereal pink and yellow glow. There are clusters of people standing around; some stand in front of the fog, waiting it seems, for someone to emerge from the mortal realm. Others are greeting and rejoicing over the arrival of a new family member. Some spirits arrive and have no one but a single angel waiting for them. I see that those are led to the gate and after some discussion, are given the choice, like I had been given long ago, to go back to life or stay here. Most go back, some stay.
“Those are the Gate Keepers. They are angels that get assigned to guard the gate. You’ve met one before, do you remember?” my mother asks, sounding like an elementary school teacher.
“Yes,” I respond. “I do.”
I move toward the gate with Dorian, Celeste, and my mother in tow. This time the gate automatically swings open for me, and we pass through it without much fanfare. Celeste and Dorian are talking animatedly about something that I can’t understand. My mother glides mutely by them with something on her mind, something that I can’t seem to discern. Slowly, once I cross the threshold of the gate, the fog from the veil dissipates and a whole other world, busy and bustling with people and animals appears before me. It looks like earth, but like no part of earth that I’ve ever been to. Buildings of all kinds are mixed together—tall, short, stores, homes, skyscrapers, and huts—all from different time periods, cultures, and architectural design. The streets are paved in golden cobblestones and there are trees, bushes, potted plants, and flowers with rich, bright colors all around. On one side of the street there’s a huge park with a pond, framed by luscious green grass and dotted with massive lily pads that laz
ily float on its surface. There are spirits all over the place. Some fly above, some lie on the grass, others stand around chatting, while others read from scrolls, books, or electronic pads. Time periods and cultures are meshed perfectly here. Everyone is dressed in white, but the styles vary according to their personal taste, culture, and era. Some are wearing a simple attire—standard issued, I suppose—while others are dressed to the nines, with what looks like lavish dresses that came straight out of Marie Antoinette’s court at Versailles. You can pretty much tell when spirits lived by what they are wearing. This to me is of particular interest, and I find myself paying close attention to everyone’s attire.
“I thought you’d like the dresses,” my mother says quietly.
I turn and look at her dress. It’s a simple Mexican dress with a scoop neck and short puffy sleeves. Every edge is embroidered with flowers, all white and long enough to cover her ankles. I loved those dresses while I was alive. I bought myself one every time I went to Mexico. It was my thing; each trip I would make a point to get a new Mexican homemade dress. It didn’t take long to have a colorful collection of them, and I wore them often with other accessories like belts, and scarfs.
Looking down at my own dress, I see that I’m wearing a simple white tunic—the standard issued kind. “How do I change it?” I ask my mother.
“It’s a combination of thinking about who you are, and how you want others to see you.”
Luz had looked like a fairy. In life she had wore a tutu every day and she often reminded me of a grown garden fairy. So it wasn’t a shock to see her with wings. They did actually look rather natural on her. Celeste’s dress is strapless, long and gauzy, with a bunched up empire waist that wraps around her chest horizontally, flowing vertically down from there in massive amounts of thin, fluid, material, that ripples around her like an angelic Greek goddess. Dorian is wearing a simple linen shirt with a round neck and a slit down the middle that goes down to his chest. His pants are simple too, like something he would wear when he was alive.