The In Between

Chapter 21

Chapter 21

Justin

It’s like all the color has been drained from the world.

The road is missing. Tara and the car are gone. I must have gotten lost looking for help.

It must be dawn. Everything’s gray. I must be concussed. I rub the back of my head.

Maybe I’m unconscious. Maybe paramedics are working on me right now and my mind has created this black and white alternate universe as a coping mechanism. But if that’s the case, I’m honestly a little disturbed that this is all my subconscious could come up with. I thought there might be, I don’t know, David Beckham coaching me or something? You know, Scarlett Johansson wearing a sexy outfit—not some gray world where a weird lady named who introduced herself as Damaris is trying to explain the nature of death.

I’m sure I’m still with Tara. We’re probably in an ambulance getting treated right now. This must be my brain on drugs. This lady is insisting I take a tour of what she is calling the “In Between”—death, or whatever that means. I get the feeling I should follow her? Oh, and I’ll be sure to stay away from the white light.

Damaris walks ahead of me.

“Okay, so, like, if this is death,” I say to her, humoring her for a sec, “You ever get any famous people in here? Like what about John Lennon? Or Pele?”

Damaris blinks at me like she’s never heard of them. Pele was only the best soccer player ever. John Lennon is a musical god.

“What about Hendrix or Morrison or …” I stop myself. This is clearly hopeless. I’m wondering if I should just stop following her now. I’m already so disoriented. If I’m awake, I need to call for help. I need to get myself checked out.

I do a quick inventory. Legs. Shoulders. Chest.

Nothing. I feel nothing.

I look down. I’m standing, but I can’t feel my feet. I run my hands over my thighs where my quads usually ache after long soccer games. There seem to be no muscles in my legs, no tendons. I touch my chest. I remember something hard and sharp slamming down on it—the car—a thousand pounds of steel crashing into me, cutting off my breath. I test my lungs. I breathe easily. But the air that comes in feels like nothing.

I look around; everywhere I turn is the cold gloom of a Midwestern winter’s day at five PM. There is no light. There is no sky above me, no ground beneath me. The grayness is inside my head, too, clouding my brain. I shut my eyes, reopen them, but nothing changes. I’m stuck in a dream I can’t get out of.

What came before this? The car. I remember that. The car crashing, flipping over, landing upside down at the bottom of the ravine. The absolute stillness. Then the cries. 

Tara. I have to find Tara. I have to make sure she’s okay. But my phone is gone and I don’t know where I am. I look at Damaris.

“Does the name Tara Jenkins ring a bell?” I ask. “Tara Jenkins?” I say it a little louder, hoping to gauge a reaction from her. Nothing. I call out Tara’s name again and listen to it echo through the barren trees looming above me. 

There’s a shriek, loud and inhuman, coming from somewhere above me. I look up to see a flock of enormous gray birds taking flight. Their wingspan is a good 15-feet and there must be thirty or forty of them, blocking all else from view. I duck as they swoop dangerously close, their beaks inches from my head, squawking loudly as they go. I wait until they are long out of sight before I risk standing up.

The ground is covered in foot-deep white pine needles; petrified, dead. They don’t make a sound as I kick at them.

I turn 360 degrees. There is no horizon, there is no end, just miles and miles of gray mist. Everything is blurry. I’m navigating around a tree, its papery white trunk thinner than my wrist, when Damaris stops and turns toward me. She is wearing a flowing robe the color of slate, held in at the waist with a silver cord, a single large key dangling from its knotted tassel. Her long hair is a brilliant flame red, the only color visible in this entire desolate landscape.