The Souls Between Two Worlds

O.K. Mantz

Henry craned his neck backward, lifting his blurred gaze up towards the glistening sky. Before a bleak backdrop hung a multitude of stars, the frail sliver of the moon leading the charge of hosts across the night.

Tears dripped slowly down his cheeks, as though afraid to part with his body, holding on to hope before catapulting from his chin and perishing on the wispy grass that enveloped his naked feet.

Trees loomed around him—thick, black trunks pressed through the earth and split into long branches near the top. A plethora of leaves covered the charred wood like scales, bristling as the wind ran its spindly fingers through their brittle skin.

“Quickly Henry!” a voice hissed behind him. Sluggishly, Henry spun on the balls of his feet, staring defeated at the ground. “Henry, come with me!”

Between the grass emerged a girl, her light blue dress—caked with green stains and small splatters of mud—waved like a flag in the wind. There was a faint light that glowed from the girl, one that likened the brief shining of a firefly in the dark. The girl snapped her head left and right, her eyes fluttering between the black rows of trees, searching for a ghost.

With eyes devoid of hope, dead, already slain by the oppressor that is night, Henry lifted a finger, pointing towards the distance on his left.

“Look…” he whispered, his voice cracking, breaking in his throat before slipping past his teeth. The girl craned her neck to look up at the swaying branches. From every branch dangled a charcoal rope, two fingers thick, from varied heights, with different lengths. At the ends of those ropes—tied into a knot—there swayed a thousand naked bodies, suspended in the air, their complexions pale and limbs quite long. The corpses looked dirtied and unkempt and—were it not for the moans escaping their lips (a symphony of a hundred crackling tongues) and their eyes that never blinked but stared wide open—they might as well have appeared dead.

“Look…” Henry whispered again, but the girl already moved closer to him, reaching out her hand to grasp his arm. “Don’t you see…?”

“We cannot stay here, Henry,” she snapped and wrenched him towards her, tearing his feet through the fierce little blades of grass.

“But look…”

“Henry!”

“I am already hanging on that tree…”

The girl stopped short and glanced towards the trees—a hundred feet in height—and perceived with a sinking heart a familiar face hanging with a rope around his neck.

“No…” she cried. “It can’t be!”

Henry let his hand fall from hers and turned slowly towards himself. The body swaying from the branches seemed identical to him, as though peering into a mirror and seeing not one’s face, but the reason for the face. Struck by a forceful gust of wind, Henry too opened his mouth and began to moan. He felt his eyes become dry, but his lids would no longer close to keep them moist. His limbs stretched out beneath him and the boy began to resemble the soul behind the leaves. Suddenly he was afraid: his heart began to beat quicker and his breathing became labored, as though every bone within his body knew his time was running out.

And yet, would he not have an eternity to spend amongst the other strangers?

“Henry!” the girl yelled again, but it seemed to him like a faint and distant call, like a forgotten friend—a mere acquaintance—glanced briefly at them from the other side of a window on a train; a train that was leaving for another, brighter city. “Henry! It isn’t you!”

Yanking at his wrist, the girl tugged him to the ground. Henry collapsed face-first into the grass, the blades slicing into his cheeks and poking his eyes until he blinked to keep them out.

“But…I…” Henry stammered, the moan fading from his throat and replaced by words. The words felt strangely new to him, like he was learning to speak for the first time. “I felt it. It was me.”

“There is only one of you, Henry. And he is standing right before me.”

His shoulders sank as he beheld her gentle face. Her chestnut eyes peered up at him with sadness—and with love. The darkness of the night closed in around the two, but for the first time Henry felt lifted up, no longer crushed by his own body. He raised his arm and wiped dry his ragged cheeks.

“Henry,” the girl said, stepping closer to him. “I see into your future. I know what awaits you. I know what you become.”

An echo rang out, bouncing on the leaves and landing like a swarm of insects on Henry’s pale skin.

“A monster…thief…liar…drunkard…murderer…murderer!”

From all around them, a booming sound suddenly tore through the forest, a chasmic snap that forced itself through every ear and every bone. Each one of the thousand ropes ripped and the countless bodies plunged from their unsupported perch down towards the earth. Henry watched with his heart pressing itself through his throat, morphing into vomit that capsized by his feet. As they were falling through the air, the bodies awakened, an eerie green light shooting into their eyes and making their mouths widen like a snake about to feast on pigs.

Before the first corpse crashed into the ground and rose on broken legs, Henry spun around again and pushed the girl forward, away from the forest and towards the edge, in hopes they would arrive before they reached them…

Henry knew that if they did, they would eat them alive.