Dear God… where am I?
This place feels so cold and I can barely see a thing. Why is it so dark? And why do I feel so different?
Something moves around me. It’s a wind that stings like tiny razors, but when they cut me, I bleed a black ooze. Not blood. What’s happened to me? Screams emanate from every direction. Although I can’t tell what’s making them, one thing’s clear.
Wherever am I, I’m not alone.
A presence brushes against me, but I see nothing. I reach out with a hand only to watch my fingers break apart into tiny black granules. Violet lightning ignites a cloudy sky, revealing the rest of my body. I have no flesh. No eyes, no mouth. I am an opaque mist. Then it hits me.
I’m dead.
But if that’s the case… how do I KNOW I’m that way? Where am I? Anguished howls and thunder like laughter tell me I’m in hell, but somehow I know that’s not the case. My immediate fear is that this is something worse. More anguished voices reverberate from all directions. Indigo lightning crackles above, finally revealing the landscape around me. The soil is grey. A black horizon stretches out in all directions. The sky is a vortex, swirling with mauve clouds that resemble corpses. I raise my countenance and look into it, despite the sane mechanizations telling me not to inside what’s left of my head.
The clouds are screaming.
I stare into the eye of the mystic hurricane, recoiling. Humanoid silhouettes with claws spiral outward from its center. Their black mouths are open and the howling that stabs at me? They are the source.
Please… don’t let them see me…
Too late. So I run with feet made of black sand. I’m not fast enough. Those things will be upon me in seconds…
The scream that follows is mine. I won’t let these things take me. I’ll die first. Dying? Bit late for that, isn’t it, Angela? But knowing I can still laugh in a place like this inspires me to take flight.
Literally.
Holy shit, I’m flying! Which would be impossible if I were alive… but wherever this is, ordinary rules clearly don’t apply. Pulled upward by the magenta light of the vortex, I get a look at the rest of my body for the first time. I’m a ghost concerto composed in a minor key, haunting. I’m one of those things. I swoop through the desolation, careful not to let them touch me. I won’t be infected by their madness, but their shrieking makes it difficult to concentrate. My shadowy form separates for a moment and I plummet back to the gray, jagged soil. The phantoms lunge at me like vultures on road kill, only my soul is the carrion.
I have to get out of here. I don’t know how. Or even what this place is. But there’s no way I’m staying here. I have to get back. I have to see him one more time. That’s when I see a pinpoint of silvery light hovering just above me. The rabid banshees dive toward it, their screams intensifying. The glowing essence. Whatever it is, they want it. But how do I know that? That doesn’t matter.
Because I want it, too.
Somehow I can feel life inside the grayness. And old life… and a new one. Waiting for all of us. Waiting for me to take it.
They’re fighting over it now, clawing at each other. They want to move into the essence. To be as one with it. That makes one million and one of us. But why? I hear myself howl like one of those things, and then realize that’s because I am one of them now.
I’m a poltergeist.
Somehow I’ve survived beyond mortal death and I know why. Because I refuse to die. Yes, I’m dead, a being composed of some kind of paranormal energy left behind in an spectral limbo with too much life left undone.
I miss Bodie Taylor. I have to get back to him. These dark phantoms won’t stop me. Death will not stop me.
Jagged shrieks from the apparitions around me intensify to unbearable levels. The gray essence? They’re fighting over it now, clawing at each other. Whatever rules exist in this place, one’s things clear to me now: This essence is the prize. It’s the way out of this ghostly place.
I join the fray, screaming at the others, “It’s mine, dammit!” Then the silvery essence disappears, swallowed whole by one of the dark apparitions. I’ve lost my only chance of escape. Help me, Bodie… I love you so much. I miss you. Will I be trapped here forever? Hell, no. I want to see your face again so badly. I need to. And this I swear. And no God or Devil or howling apparitions are gonna stop me.
Like the rest of the shrieking apparitions that haunt this limbo realm of despair, I’m beginning to realize I have a choice. I can stay here in this dark eternity and go mad… or escape. Time for the ultimate prison break. Stop. I used to be human. Must stop thinking like meat and blood. What am I now? More than human or less? I’m a nightmare. I’m fury and scorn and terror unleashed. And I’m coming back for you Bodie Taylor, I swear to all existence. Nothing will keep us apart again. Not even The Ether.
Breathing in putrid air, I exhale with dark lungs, then float back upward. Here within The Ether I am winged vengeance, searching for knowledge and opportunity. The other apparitions sense that I’ve become self-aware and hiss at me with black mouths. A ghostly presence existing beyond human boundaries, I’m now their enemy in an eternal struggle. The struggle to return. To come back to the life we all remember and cling onto so adamantly. To travel.
When I was alive, I would have balked at this train of thought. I never believed in reincarnation or life eternal. And now…? I’m not sure what I believe. I know that I still exist, but only as pure consciousness, and in a place outside of what passes for normal human existence. I feel like a hollow soul, lost in a hollow place. Waiting only to be filled again. But with what? My need is to be free of this dark, timeless realm. This Ether.
There is one thing I still believe in, one thing that drives me back to the Other. Love. Nothing can keep us apart, Bodie Taylor. I have to find you again. I’ll claw my way back to your side from this lonely place, devouring my way through anything that stands in my path. The paranormal entities that exist here won’t stop me. They can’t. They haven’t the power. I have it within me. And how many other spirits like me are here inside this nether realm? Thousands? No… millions. Those I can’t see I sense just outside the periphery of some paranormal vision I now possess. What would happen if I touched one of them? Two ethereal beings connecting? Somehow I don’t think I want to find out.
The shrieking resumes again, only louder, more focused this time. Something’s coming. There it is again… the shiny patch of soft gray light. Only there are two of them this time. Two windows of opportunity. Two chances to get out of this hellish place.
Another scream reverberates, furious and insistent. Frenzied. It’s so close. It’s coming from me, the psychic shape that was once a woman, now howling for its freedom like a child trapped forever in the hungriest closet imaginable. I’m one of a million screaming phantoms desperate to escape this place, a supernatural wraith caught between death and rebirth, internment and escape, dead ends and second chances. But I won’t lose this opportunity to trick mortal death. I am determination and intent mixed with desperation.
Those Who Wait converge on the silver orbs of soul essence. There are millions of ghostly things and only two vessels passing through. One of them will be mine. It has to be. Bodie’s counting on me. I concentrate, directing all the energy inside me and focus on the two glowing entities. I have to reach out, take hold of one of them. Possess it. One of the specters swoops towards its prize, the first gray soul, but another apparition intercepts it, tearing through his opponent with phantomesque talons. Other specters join the fray in a mad scramble to gain the ultimate prize. I glide towards the second gray mass, desperate to outrace thousands of others. Only I keep my talons closed and my mouth open. The others seek to grab one of the gray souls passing through this Ether realm. But I have a more direct plan.
To ingest it.
Horror descends upon the essence with dark wings. I am that horror. A nightmare reborn as a hungry monstrosity. With a gaping maw I scream then eat the grayness in one swift movement. A million dead souls wail in torment, another chance at freedom denied. By me. The thing that was once Angela Taylor.
I am victorious.
The feeling starts deep within me. Something warm, yet disorienting. Can a dead thing from beyond the grave get high? Because that’s how I feel. Wasted on the freshly consumed consciousness I’ve absorbed within me. I’m drunk now on the sweetest nectar, the most intoxicating aroma, and the grandest of tastes. This is life and what it feels to be alive. I’m coming, Bodie… This entity is becoming human again.
What will happen to me now? A blinding tornado pummeling me from behind provides the answer. It’s a swirling mass of color too bright to comprehend, let alone understand. I’m being drawn into it, this opposing vortex of rebirth. The hurricane womb sucks at the dark matter of which I’m composed, tearing me apart and shattering my insides. I’m both frightened and excited. Plummeting through the center of my own dark genesis, I am recreated at an atomic level. As for a spiritual one, only time will tell.
I’m flung through this tornado of luminescence and aural wonder, and can only guess what this transition—this resurrection—will bring. Another life? Eternal death? Madness? Ecstasy? Maybe none of them. Or all of them. The shadows that comprise my body dissipate, falling away to reveal something inside. A radiance. The gray sadness within me has begun to brighten and soar brightly, my true self beginning to unveil itself. What was I?
Angela Taylor was a woman who loved a man named Bodie. Am I still her? Yes… and no. She is me. My original soul. I will always be her. She is my foundation. But now I’m merging into a new place, a new home for my spirit. This is a new beginning, yet it has ancient names. Ones that sound strange on my tongue, yet comfortable in fit. Dionysis. Osiris. Kyrios. Adon.
MaIsawehs!
The vortex gives way to a horizon. A plateau of stars that stretch endlessly. And something else. Something solid. Is this my destination? No. Something deep within me says this is only the beginning of my journey. Then it strikes, smashing into me with the force of a quantum accelerator, a deafening roar that initiates an implosion of my consciousness. Eternity’s breath touches my face and for just a moment I see a body appearing before me through the light. It’s a woman with dark hair and eyes of jade. She floats towards me. I move into her. Into her. She was. I am. Welcome? What’s happening to us? Agony rips my afterlife apart with an agonizing pleasure that ignites every nerve, burns every cell and consciousness departs as whatever I am, whatever I’ve become, blacks out.
END OF CHAPTER ONE
