In Between

Chaz:

Once, centuries ago, we thought the world ended at the horizon, thought the world was flat. Oceans spilled over the tabletop edge and mountain ranges crumbled to dust. The sky burned black; the sun faded away. At the edge of our understanding, the universe ended. All reason converged to a flat plane, became something we could never traverse.

This imaginary vista tormented adventurers, kept them sleepless in cradled beds as they bobbed across surging oceans, as they were propelled into the unknown.

And then once we had crossed the Great Unknown Beyond, we lost all memories of that flat vista, we decided it was imaginary, something made of dreams and visions.

But now I know it was made of nightmares. And it was real.

Because that was where I stood right now.

The battle for life faded away as Neville’s knife plunged deeper, found my heart, stopped me from going forward into Year Number 39. For a moment I flashed back and forth. One second, I was lying on the cement, pain in my back, my chest, my right hand. Then I was standing on a foreign horizon, unable to comprehend, my mind too small to grasp where I was. Another broken breath and I was back in the City of Dead, fighting a dying man to possess the key to immortal life.

I became transparent, invisible, two places at once.

Part of me felt like I was being ripped in half; the other part felt more complete than I had ever been.

Then the flashing stopped. I found myself standing on a flat plane that seemed to stretch forever, shrouded in all directions by a foggy mist. And the battle wasn’t over.

“Lets me go!” Neville growled. “Gives it to me.”

My right hand clasped his left, almost like we were glued together.

Then he cried out in pain and I realized that this place wasn’t what I thought it was. There was a division down the middle. I stood on one side, he on the other. Suddenly the mist cleared, as if a great solar wind surged it away, and I saw flames moving around him. No. People. Or what had once been people. Now engulfed in sulfuric fire, they writhed in torment, an unending holocaust.

Hell. He was standing a foot inside hell.

“Lets me out of here!” he cried. He stumbled, yanked me toward him. I felt the searing breath of hell sweep across my face, the stench of eternal damnation filled my nostrils. I fought and wrenched away, leaned back into a peace that surpassed anything I had ever experienced. Golden light bathed my skin, washed away the horror. I couldn’t see them, but I could sense them behind me.

A heavenly host. More than I could count. I heard the sweet thunder of angel wings, inhaled the incense of ancient prayers.

And he was there, somewhere behind me. I was never allowed to look square into the face of heaven, but I knew that he was there, waiting for me.

My father.

Meanwhile, Neville and I stood, fighting for freedom, each of us looking into the eternity that could have been ours, if we had made different choices along the way.

Curses rolled from his lips as he struggled to break free from my grip, venomous words that fell to his feet like spiders, then scurried away. Overhead the sky hung black and red, scorched and barren of moon or stars; mountains loomed in the nether distance, too great to cross. They stood like a massive prison fence. And on the edge of the mountains I saw it, an orange-red lake of fire, more like an ocean really, with waves and whirlpools. It roared in the distance, like a hungry lion, waiting to be fed.

Waiting to surge, endlessly, dining on the souls that wandered across the hopeless horizon.

I wanted to let Neville go, to turn and enter the land that beckoned behind me, but I couldn’t. We were bonded together, born like Siamese twins into this land of eternity.

Then lightning flashed across the sky. It tore the world in two, and a voice sounded like thunder, speaking words I couldn’t understand. I trembled when it spoke and fell to my knees. When I looked up, I saw that Neville was on his knees too, that every creature near and far had fallen prostrate when the voice spoke.

The hellish vista faded.

We were back in the City of the Dead. Alive, clothed in flesh and blood. On our knees, facing each other, our hands still clasped together. His knife lay on the ground, and behind us Omega crouched over Angelique, as if protecting her.

Neville blinked, wordless, then he pulled his hand from mine. He swept up the knife instinctively, brandished it in my direction, then, as if realizing what could happen if we fought again, he held it low as he staggered to his feet.

I didn’t react. My mind was still scorched with images of hell, a part of me felt as if I had been dead for a thousand years. I struggled to breathe, felt the muscles in my heart still mending, sensed fresh blood flowing through my veins, life returning.

I heard him running away then, footsteps that echoed through dusty temple-lined corridors, and I didn’t care. I knew where he would end up eventually. I lifted my hand, glanced at the scars in my palm, scars that weren’t healed, that would never heal, slashes from the fragments of glass. One shard had pushed all the way through the bones and flesh, left a hole in my right hand.

I stood on shaky legs, stole one complete mouthful of oxygen, sent it plunging on knife-sharp wings through my lungs. Turned toward what really mattered, more than anything, more than the demon that had been set free from hell, more than the thunderous applause of angel wings.

Angelique. My bright piece of heaven on earth.

She lay in a widening pool of blood, Omega, her snarling guardian, at her side. He growled and snapped as I approached, then seemed to sense the sorrow in my heart. He turned back toward her, licked her wound, slid a rough tongue over her neck and then lifted his head to hollow skies and howled.

But it had no effect. She didn’t move, she didn’t breathe.

Whatever power this dog had to bring his own mate back to life didn’t work here.