What the Dead Fear

by Lea Ryan

  Part 10

  Cricket, in human girl form, ran to Juniper and threw her arms around her waist in a hug. She glowered at Gareth.

  "I want Mordecai," he said, "Bring him and you can have your friend back."

  "Letting people go free is against the rules. I don't believe you."

  "She'll break the law again. I have no doubt of that."

  "How am I supposed to get him to come?"

  Juniper could scarcely believe what she heard. Cricket seemed more than ready to give up her master. Perhaps the bug didn’t feel any loyalty after all. Maybe she’d even considered this particular possibility for resolution after she left Voldrin. She chose Juniper’s freedom over the guardian’s.

  Gareth shook his head and smiled, "That’s not my problem, is it? Your old master or your human friend. We’ll wait here."

  Cricket squeezed Juniper's hand, "I'll try."

  She went back to the forest and the path into the trees. She faded back into the gloom.

  Gareth motioned for Juniper to sit under the closest tree. She lay on dark grass and looked up to the branches stretching over her like great arms. He lay next to her to stare into the sky.

  The jackals sat in a circle with their backs to Gareth and Juniper.

  "I'll miss having you as a prisoner."

  "I was only there for a day."

  "Still. No one has ever played checkers with me."

  "Never?" She turned to look at him.

  He smiled at her.

  "Gareth, what are you? You’re not an angel, and not human."

  He scowled, "I am called nothing but guardian." He rose and walked a few steps to gaze out over the flatland from which they'd come. He crossed his arms.

  Juniper sat up on her elbows.

  "I'm sorry if I offended you. I just wanted to understand -"

  "Some things don't need species labels. They are because they exist. I'm a guardian. That is all."

  She thought for a moment.

  "You don't know what you are."

  "This conversation is over."

  Juniper felt sympathy for him, despite his cruelty. Did he even truly comprehend what he did to the souls he kept?

  "Why does she mean so much to you - the living girl?"

  "She’s like a sister to me. She would do the same for me if our situations were reversed."

  "Do you really think she wants you to sacrifice yourself for her? Wouldn't she rather see you move on? Wouldn’t you rather go than stay here?"

  "I don't know how."

  "What do you mean you don't know how? That’s absurd. There's nothing to know."

  "No portal opened for me."

  He snorted, "You must be lying."

  She glared at him. "I have no reason to lie about a portal."

  "I knew there was something different about you." Gareth turned. He tilted his head and scrutinized her. "You look human enough on the surface."

  "I am human!"

  A short knife with a scalpel-like blade appeared in his hand.

  "Maybe we should cut you open and see what's underneath." He stormed back over to grab her wrist and pulled her to her feet. "We can't have a demon running around Limbo."

  She yanked her arm away.

  "I am less demon than you."

  Discordant howls of pain echoed in the forest.

  Juniper and Gareth forgot their argument. She backed toward him as though he might protect her from whatever approached.

  Cricket, in true cricket form, struggled through the forest, running, pulling herself along on two legs and one arm. She fell into trees, breaking branches near the path under her weight. Her eyes shone a vivid orange. She howled again. Under one arm, she carried a large, gilded object - Mordecai’s mirror.

  "Cricket?" Juniper tried to run.

  Gareth's hand on her arm stopped her.

  "Thief! Traitorous devil! Come back." Mordecai’s voice came not far behind his minion.

  Cricket was resisting. Her guardian master was ordering, and she was resisting and suffering, by the look of her. She collapsed at the edge of the trees.

  The mirror flew from her hand. Juniper retrieved it and hugged it to her chest.

  A massive shadow like wings swept along the treetops to shade the forest and the ground around them in night. The shadow condensed to the shape of a man.

  Mordecai landed between Juniper and Cricket. Fear spread across his face when he noticed his nemesis standing with Juniper.

  Gareth stepped forward. He held the manacles.

  "Time to pay your dues, old one."

  Mordecai sneered, "Give back my mirror."

  He stretched his hand out.

  Gareth lunged for Mordecai who leapt straight into the air. He shot after, chains in hand. He wielded the manacles with determined grace, seeking a wrist or ankle.

  The guardians became a blur of black as they tussled in midair. Fists flew. They kicked and grabbed and took turns throwing one another into earth and the edge of the trees.

  The jackals vaulted upward to join their master in his battle. They swarmed the guardians as a smog-ridden cloud with teeth, and the sounds they made, so like desperate shrieking, pierced the fog.

  Juniper rushed to Cricket's side.

  The girl was awake, up on her arms, and catching her breath. Her dark eyes had returned to their normal state.

  "Come on. We have to go."

  Cricket nodded. She stood with Juniper's help.

  As they plunged into the forest, Juniper took one last look at her guardian. He fought Mordecai fearlessly in the air, then on the ground. He would be alright, she assured herself.

  The girls ran, off the path, in a thicket of close, spiny branches. Juniper carried the mirror under one arm.

  Cricket picked up speed and then slowed down. She stretched, ran a few steps ahead. She returned to Juniper's side.

  Her insect face grinned, "Hang on."

  She took Juniper by the waist and lit into the air. They broke through the tops of trees in a long leap. After coming down on the opposite side of the forest, Cricket jumped again and then again.

  Cracked lowlands passed beneath them, a river too. There were misty hills and gorges.

  Juniper saw people.

  Four of them congregated in a ring of stones.

  The sight of them filled her with joy. She repressed the urge to beg Cricket to stop. She ached to know what they were talking about, who they were, why they remained in Limbo.

  Cricket stopped to rest at the edge of a canyon, far from the fight between the guardians. Land around them was open and barren of any plant life.

  "I think we're far enough." she said.

  They sat on the ground. Juniper laid the mirror flat on its back.

  She asked, "What if she's dead?"

  "You're dead." Cricket reminded her. "Even if she didn't make it, she exists somewhere."

  A roar of anger from Mordecai sliced across the land.

  "How could we possibly hear that? We're miles away."

  Cricket stared into the distance behind them with an expression of concern.

  "He lost." She cared about what happened to her guardian.

  Juniper put a hand on her friend's shoulder.

  "I'm sorry."

  "Don’t apologize. His plight is his own doing for ordering me to turn you in. He didn't have to do that. He lost his temper." She paused. "I never thought Gareth would actually capture him."

  For some inexplicable reason, Juniper was relieved that Gareth won. She was coming to think of him as her own guardian, even though he had never really protected her from much of anything but the punishment he inflicted on other souls who broke the rules.

  "Now, save your friend."

  It was daytime. She would need to use the mirror to cross onto the mortal plane.

  A still very pregnant Nikki faded into view. She stuffed clothes into a suitcase on the bed.

  Greg wasn't in sight.

  Juniper leaned forward into th
e mirror and that familiar sensation of falling into water. She entered the bedroom through a piece of the dresser mirror still clinging to the frame.

  A sound like muttering came from the direction of the living room.

  Juniper found the boyfriend pacing from living room to dining room and back again. He carried the pistol in one hand and slapped the heel of his palm against his temple with the other.

  He appeared to practice a conversation he intended to have with Nikki.

  "No one leaves me. I seen that devil. You tell it to be gone. You and that baby are mine. Make it understand."

  Nikki was leaving him...officially and there was nothing he could say to make her stay. He could kill her and her unborn child though. That's what this rehearsal was about. He would make this short speech as Nikki walked out, and when she didn't listen, he would have all the personal justification he needed to pull the trigger.

  Greg stopped pacing, "No one takes my family from me."

  "I do." Juniper told him.

  He couldn't hear her, but that didn't matter.

  She would ensure Nikki had a clear path to the door. She would be Nikki's guardian angel.

  There was a jingle of keys from the bedroom.

  Juniper moved to stand in front of Greg.

  Nikki's footsteps in the hall.

  "I'm leaving, Greg. Don't try to find me or I'll call the police."

  The man tightened his grip on the pistol, cocked the hammer. Maybe he'd decided against the speech after all.

  Juniper felt the tingle that told her she could push through the veil between the living and the dead. She gathered her energy, fed it with both love and anger, and used it to knock the gun from his hand. The gun skidded across the floor in the kitchen to hit the wall.

  Greg watched in disbelief.

  "Go to Hell. Take your devil with you." He lunged for Nikki, hands outreached.

  Juniper kicked the back of his legs, then threw him the rest of the way to the floor by the back of his sweat-stained work shirt.

  He scrambled away on hands and feet, searching the room for some indication of her location. He locked eyes on Nikki as he tried to stand.

  Juniper punched him in the chest.

  “Stay down!” Her voice rang against the apartment walls.

  “Juniper?” Recognition crossed Nikki’s face. “Is that you?”

  Juniper, afraid of losing concentration, didn’t answer. She kept her focus on the pathetic sleaze at her feet.

  Nikki watched Greg struggle for a couple of seconds before saying a quick, “Thanks, Jun.” and bolting for the door.

  Her foot on the brute's throat, Juniper smiled as she listened to the footsteps on the stairs, the swing of the front door, the squeal of car tires.

  What do the dead fear? They fear for the fates of the living, despite their witness to the hereafter. They fear retribution, but perhaps even more, they fear helplessness and insignificance.

  "Get off." Greg tried to push her foot away, but his hand passed through her.

  She put more weight on.

  "I want you to swear never to touch her again." Her voice sounded strangely hollow.

  He heard her that time.

  "I won’t touch them." he choked.

  She pressed harder.

  "I’ll leave them be. I won’t even look for them."

  "I will always be watching."

  That, of course, was a lie. She would spend the rest of eternity rotting in a cage, enduring torture, or running for her life.

  The world around her went crimson.

  Gareth was coming.

  Juniper ran to the bedroom. She climbed onto the dresser and back through the mirror the way she came.