by Sarah Noffke
“You have grown, my son,” she says, taking a step toward me. “I have fondly thought of you during my soul’s reflections.”
“Have you,” I say, but there really isn’t a question in my voice. I don’t really know what to say to the woman before me, the one whom my memory is flooded with images of.
“Why are you here?” she says. And everything is so calm between us, which seems strange. Shouldn’t we be saying more? Doing more? But I don’t know what that would be.
“I’m here for a woman,” I say. “But I don’t really know any more than that.”
She nods, seeming to understand and accept all this at once. Then she points to the bed in the room. “I died in that bed.”
“I remember,” I say, my voice dull.
“Do you remember the regret you had during our last moment together?” she says, and I notice how wise she is in this Land. Like the other soul I met, she is tranquil and at peace.
“I believe people show regret when others die,” I say, constructing the answer using logic.
She nods her pale head of red curls. “Renny, you had a regret in your eyes for other reasons. I was dying and that was unfortunate. But even then I knew something and wouldn’t say it. You weren’t ready to hear it. And I didn’t want our final moment to be marked with guilt,” she says.
My mind traces over the memory I have of right before my mum died. She lay weakly in her bed. Mum told me she loved me. And before that she shared many things with me about my life and what it meant to her. The words she said on her deathbed play in my head now.
“I can’t tell you how many times you’ve given my life meaning because the occasions have been too numerous. As a baby you smiled and that was enough. But then you became a child and your acts of selflessness were incredibly inspiring. And you came into your gifts and I felt like a goddess to have been your mother. You, Reynold Lewis, have been a true joy to raise. Most won’t understand you. Most will be afraid of you. But the ones who embrace you will understand what I saw on the day I stared at you after thirty-six hours of being in labor. You, Renny, are more than exceptional. You are unique. There will never be another Ren Lewis. And that’s why God gave you such impossible talents. Because you were meant to do things humans shouldn’t.”
And I remember I then simply pressed my lips to her forehead and said, “I love you.” Then I left her to die. I blink at my mum before me now, a dawning opening up a place inside me.
“The regret in my eyes, the one you spied. It’s because I was unwilling to open my heart to you in that moment. To tell you how much you always meant to me,” I say, and now my voice is an astonished hush.
She nods, a pained smile on her face. With her hands pressed together in front of her, she takes another step forward.
I was too stubborn to allow my feelings back then. I was too cold inside to do the one thing I wanted. And now the regret billows out of me as a realization so sharp and cutting hits me.
The strangest sensation prickles in my throat. It’s followed by a raw aching that slitters down through my chest and cuts at my being from the inside out. “For all my life, I regretted not telling you that you were the best person I ever knew,” I say, and the words come out of me with a volcano of ache. Tears fill my eyes, making my vision blur. And then they stream down my cheeks one after the other. I, Ren Lewis, am crying. I’m truly feeling. I am allowing the regret to punish me.
“I didn’t know how in that moment, your last, to tell you what you have always deserved to hear,” I say, as the words I longed to tell her before she died unfold in my heart. “You thought I was exceptional. You thought being my mum was a gift. But I have always been the one looking at you with awe. I might be powerful, but I am no one compared to you, Mum. The burdens you shouldered while still smiling and giving are the true feat. My talent is nothing compared to your ability and capacity to love.” And all my words are accompanied by tears and sobs and the heaving of my chest. Each statement releases more emotions. More hurts. More of the person inside me. With the back of my hand, I push tears from my cheeks. The experience of crying is so foreign and yet freeing. It’s as if I didn’t know that my heart had been barricaded in a coffin for all my life. But the door to the casket has now been opened. “What I didn’t say to you and should have is thank you,” I say to my mum, who stands before me still smiling calmly. “Thank you for loving me. Thank you for giving my childhood such beautiful meaning. Thank you for believing in me.”
She reaches out for me, but her hand stops just a few inches from my chest. “Loving someone is not for them. It is for you. We love each other to fulfill our own desires,” my mum says.
And then I reach out and grab my mum’s hand, squeezing it as a giant realization hits me. “Mum, I love her. I love her so completely,” I say, thinking of Dahlia, feeling my undying affection for her. “She was the most important person in my life, so much so that I can’t leave her. I can’t be without her.”
My mum squeezes my hand back. “Then you must go and find her. Finish what you came here to do. You are complete now,” she says, spreading her hands in a presenting manner at me. “You have done it, my son. Your soul has been reconstructed.”
And I’m so accosted by how wise she sounds, even more than when I knew her when she was alive. Then I notice what she means. Not only do I feel, but now my body is glowing a bit, just like hers. I feel lighter and yet, I’m different from her. I’m something else. I didn’t come into the Land of the Souls by dying. I’m something new.
The colors of the room then intensify and I realize I’m seeing my mum more completely. I’m seeing everything more completely. The room is bright and beautiful and I know I’m viewing it the way I feel about it. I’m constructing my world.
“I’ll be back,” I say, because I don’t want to lose her again. Maybe I can live here with her and Dahlia forever.
“Son, you can’t stay here,” she says, her face taking on a shade of disappointment. Then she lifts her arm and extends it to the wall. “Out there, the world is changing. I feel it. This is the gift of being a pure soul. We are connected to everything and feel that connection. The world, ours and the others, are being destroyed.”
I nod, remembering the earthquakes. How many more have happened since I’ve been here? How many more natural disasters have occurred due to me invading this realm?
“Will you go with me?” I say. “I plan to take Dahlia out of here. Maybe you can go too.” Since now I know that all souls in this Land can dream travel, maybe my mum can access the dreamscape.
She shakes her head, the movement full of confidence. “Oh no. I must move on. My soul has a journey and I’m almost ready to go on to my next life.” Then she smiles fondly. “Maybe I was waiting for you. It’s hard to know how the instinct of the soul works.”
I nod, thinking I might cry again. It’s such a strange part of my new reality. Such a peculiar vulnerability.
“So this is it?” I say.
“Renny, I think what we’ve learned is you never know. Who knows, maybe we will meet again,” she says.
And any tears I have disappear when the smile takes over my lips. This world is a stunning place and the woman before me is so much a part of that exquisiteness. The room grows brighter, like a window was just opened and sunlight invited into the space. Then I step forward and wrap my arms around my mum, the single most loving soul in my life.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The turbulent wind is the first detail my senses notice upon landing in our house in Malibu. The gusts seem to almost be pulling at the house and I can feel them threatening to burst open the front door behind me. Air slips through the tight seal along the frame, tickling the back of my neck. Through the bank of windows I notice the hurricane storm ripping at the palm trees and turning the topiaries over. It isn’t common for hurricanes to tear across the California coast. However, it’s also uncommon for someone alive to invade the Land of the Souls. God isn’t happy about my presence here,
and he’s taking out his awful temper on the earth. And even though I’m certain my body is dead in the physical world, I’m still here unnaturally and this isn’t going to stop until I leave. I’ve done what no one has ever done. I’ve broken all the rules. I’m certain God doesn’t even know what to do with me at this point. I can’t really die because I’m not alive. And I can’t really live because I’m technically dead. However, I didn’t die until after I entered this realm and now I’m something completely new.
I ignore the crash against the backside of the house. The fucking limo probably got picked up and thrown at the mansion in an attempt to make me leave. I throw my eyes at the ceiling. “I’m almost done here. I’ll be gone in jiffy,” I say to the big guy in the sky who is on a real fucking power trip right now. “What if I couldn’t leave? What would you do then? Keep up this damn tantrum until you destroyed your bloody earth?”
A jolt rocks the house, making me lose my footing. The banister is slippery but I grab it in time to catch my fall. “Okay, I get it. You know I can leave here and you want me out. So sorry for disrupting your fucking system,” I say, my voice condescending. God won’t be happy until I’m in the dreamscape, which is the in-between, which is technically what I am now. “I just have to fetch someone and then I’ll be out of your hair. I fucking promise,” I say to God and then climb the stairs.
Years ago, I climbed these same stairs on my way to find Dahlia. I’d abandoned her after my mum’s death, so afraid of losing her. The irony isn’t lost on me. I remember standing outside Dahlia’s room hoping she’d forgive me, take me back. And she did and it’s because of that that I’m here now. But I’m uncertain if I’ll find her this time or if she’ll want me. My mum was so different in soul form. So wise. I’m still a human in so many ways. Dahlia has died. Maybe she won’t want me anymore. Maybe she’ll have outgrown me. These worries race through my head and my heart as I finish my trek.
On the far side of the upstairs sits the double doors to our bedroom. I don’t know that this is where I’ll find Dahlia. Actually, I don’t even know if I’ll find Dahlia. She has to have had many other lives and they may be dictating where she’s lingering. Dahlia may be more tied to one of her other lives; she may prefer it. And if that is the case then this will all have been worthless because I can’t take a personality away from here who isn’t Dahlia. I won’t. I want the woman who saved my soul when I was living, made me realize I have one.
I open both doors and stand looking into the dark bedroom. The storm has brought darkness to the house and even my feelings on it don’t seem to change the light. Or maybe it’s that my feelings are crowded with doubt and the dark house is how I feel about it. Maybe that’s why the space grows a smidge blacker when I realize there isn’t a light, a soul buzzing around the room. She’s not here and if she’s not here, I don’t know where she’d be. The bed was her favorite place to be. It was our favorite place together.
This was a risk. I knew it all along. And I can search this realm for Dahlia’s soul, but I have to realize I may never find it. There are millions of souls.
Glass suddenly shatters, spraying me in the face. I shield my head with my arm. And I look up when I only feel cold wind and the light shower of water. One of the lawn chairs lies in the middle of the bedroom. It entered via the second-story window. I’m running out of time. I turn and race for the door just as it slams shut in front of me. When I try to force it open, it doesn’t give way. Something has fucking jammed it shut on the other side. Probably one of the dumb statues Dahlia loved so much. I dream travel out of the room and land in the study. It’s not a place I expect to find Dahlia, I’m just trying to escape the wrath of God. He’s such a fucking jerk when he doesn’t get his way.
The windows in my study have all been blown out and now violent wind rushes through them, tearing the drapes back and forth. I race for the den, shielding my head from the objects raining down from overhead. A large painting flies off the wall as I round the corner, nearly knocking me out. This isn’t just a hurricane anymore. It’s the storm from fucking hell and I can only imagine what it is doing in the physical realm.
The den is flooded when I arrive, drenching me up to the ankle. I’m about to dream travel when a bright flash streaks across my vision, nearly blinding me. Then it’s followed by a deafening crack of thunder. Lightning has struck in the backyard, which should be impossible but God doesn’t appear to be playing by the fucking rules anymore. I’m disoriented from the blinding flash of light and being assaulted by the loudest sound of my life. Then the house moves. The ten-thousand-square-foot house fucking moves. God’s winds are seeking to pick it up from its foundation and toss it in the air. I’m not waiting around to find out if it touches down in Munchkin Land.
“Fine!” I yell at no one. I stand with my feet apart, all my fears crowding me now. Tears crack in my throat. “Fucking fine then, God. You fucking win! I lose! I get that I broke the rules, but I did it for her! I did it for a good reason!”
Again a ferocious clap of thunder rips through the air.
I did this all for bloody nothing. I tore my soul into pieces. I made Dahlia into a Dream Traveler. I left everyone in the physical realm. And for nothing. Of course God was never going to allow me to succeed. I’m the most powerful man in the world, the only one to enter the Land of the Souls while alive, and still I can’t beat God. How did I ever fucking think I could?
The water in the den is now up past my ankles and the storm sounds like a train is going through the house. “You took so many from me. My mum, Jimmy, Jane, and my Dahlia. You just couldn’t fucking let me have her. You couldn’t grant me that one bloody thing. Fine. I fucking get it,” I say, realizing my punishment will be eternity alone in the dreamscape. It’s probably what I deserve. I close my eyes, readying myself to dream travel to one of the coordinates for the wormholes. I’ll have to use the opener to get out of here and then God can stop throwing his fucking tantrum.
My consciousness latches onto the location, my focus waning due to the storm winds tearing at my face. And then the tickling sensation runs over the backs of my hands, my arms, and then my torso. I open my eyes to catch the blue light racing around me. It zooms away and then reappears in front of me. It is the most beautiful sapphire light I’ve ever seen. And then it springs into the form of the only person I ever needed to see again.
Dahlia stands before me in soul form, her beauty comparative to nothing in any world.
Chapter Thirty
“You’re here,” we both say at the same time. Then we laugh in unison. I’m leaping inside that this moment happened. That I didn’t lose her. That I didn’t miss this chance.
Then she flickers into the blue light and morphs through six different images, all of varying races and ages. To my relief she does settle when she’s Dahlia again.
The storm continues to batter the house, but I dismiss it for a moment and step forward, tracing my hand across her cheek.
“I didn’t know if it would work. If you’d find me,” she says, glowing brighter for a moment.
“Not even God can keep me from you, dear Dahlia,” I say.
She flickers again. Morphs through her different lives. She stalls on a monk dressed in robes.
“Dahlia, what life is your soul most connected to? I have to know because—”
The flickering through the lives interrupts me. She pauses again when she takes the form of an elderly lady with white hair. I push down the disappointment with a gulp. “I have to go,” I say, my eyes moving to the storm that’s unrelenting and all around us.
Then she flickers again and to my relief she lands on the image of Dahlia. The one I know so well. With a grace that has always stolen my focus she extends a hand to me. “I’ve learned so much since returning to the Land of the Souls. I’ve been enlightened on my purpose. And now I know something that I never thought I’d come to know,” she says.
I take her hand and press it to my mouth with a chaste kiss. “And that is?” I
say, my eyes expectant on her mouth, desperate to know what she’ll say next.
“I learned that you’re my soul mate and if I’m not with you, then I’m alone,” she says, with a tender smile. “Take me wherever you go.”
I unleash a smile I feel in my heart, in my entire being. I pull the opener from my pocket so I’ll have it for when we arrive in the next location. Overhead there’s a creaking. Then a crashing sound and then something fucking tears through the roof of the mansion. I grab Dahlia’s hand and yank her to the side, away from the destruction dominating all around us. Realizing this assault on the den is only going to get worse, I yank her down the hallway and to a place that will be safe enough to give us a chance to dream travel. I’m almost dragging Dahlia through the halls when I hear her yell behind me.
Frantically I whip my head over my shoulder. “What?” I say, still running and unable to easily make out her words over the winds and rain.
“The blue light!” she says, pointing at me.
My eyes jerk down at my hand and I realize she’s pointing at the opener, which is bright blue. There’s a wormhole in our house. I halt and shield my head from the rain pouring in through the roof. Without a moment to consider my decision, I push the opener into the space before me and find that it sticks in the air at once. Then I tap the button and pull the chain in one swift movement. A bright circle illuminates immediately, showing us the door.