“That could take some time and I don’t have time.”
“You have the time to tell me I’m pregnant!” I said, raising my gloved finger at him. “Now you’re going to finish telling me why I’m special, why I’m at risk. Why does it matter if I’m pregnant? It’s what I’ve always wanted.”
Jakob placed his hand at my stomach and a blanched at his touch. “The baby is not safe.”
My heart sank. Could this all be over before it has even begun?
“What do you mean?”
“You need to get rid of it.”
I was dumbstruck by his cruel words and searched his face for some sort of answer. He was not joking with me, his grey eyes were glinting like steel and his face was robbed of all its color.
“I will do no such thing,” I said quietly and made my gaze match the intensity of his.
“Please,” he said and his eyes darted quickly over to the Thin Veil and back. “I don’t wish to show you so you just have to believe me.”
“If you think I will give up this child growing newly inside me because you said so, you must be as crazy as you are dead.”
“You’re the one who will end up crazy,” he hissed at me. “Or dead!”
He let out a sigh, his breath failing to create steam in the frigid air and grabbed my arm. “Come on.”
He began to lead me toward the shimmering air. Panic bubbled up in my throat and I stopped my legs, keeping them locked to the ground. Jakob tugged again.
“You told me it wasn’t safe to go there,” I said. I started to shake all over, from the cold, from the fear, from the unknown.
“It isn’t,” he said, his grip tightening. “But you aren’t giving me much choice. I can explain things better over there than I can here. The ones that are looking for you are already on this side.”
For the second time that night, I was speechless. And scared out of my wits. But Jakob pulled at my arm again and I let him lead me toward the air.
It was fantastic up close. I felt like I was looking through a cool pond and instead of seeing the bottom, I saw the rest of the street, the snowy sheen of Stockholm, albeit filtered as if it were tinted with grey gauze. The air was constantly moving, rippling back and forth, and it sparkled too.
“What will happen to me?” I whispered, my eyes hypnotized by the sight that danced before me.
“Hopefully, nothing,” Jackob said. “But if you want the whole truth, you have to come with me.”
Then he walked forward into the air, which shimmied and stretched around him. He looked faded now, half transparent, as if he was close to disappearing completely. His hand reached through toward me, into my world again, and became solid. The snow fell and collected on his sleeve as he went for my hand. I took it gingerly in mine and then I was yanked forward into a shimmering wall of pressure.
The first things I noticed were a distinct lack of sound and smell and sight, like everything around me ceased. Then my eyes adjusted and sound filtered back in and my nostrils flinched with a vague scent of burning. It looked like I was back where I was, on the street, except it was completely empty, the snow had stopped falling and lay undisturbed at my feet. Colors were dull and de-saturated.
Jakob cleared his throat and I whirled around to see him standing behind me. His red hair was now a very dull shade of grey. His eyes remained the same.
“What do you think?” he asked and I saw that flash of little boy hopefulness in him. He wanted me to like this place, his home.
“It’s different,” I said simply and looked around. It was different. It was like an unpopulated version of my world.
“We are in another layer,” he said and walked toward a bunch of crates that were stacked up at the entrance of the alley. He sat on one and patted the other.
“Sit down and I will tell you what you need to know. And many things you’ll wish I didn’t.”
I did as he said, noticing that my feet made no marks in the snow as I walked, feeling no chill in the air at all.
“All right,” I said. I adjusted my position on the crate so I was facing him and waited patiently for him to continue.
“This place, the Thin Veil, the Otherside, the Black Sunshine, is a parallel world for the dead. It is a place of transition, the world where souls first step into before they travel above or below or to the other places I have not seen yet. My name is Jakob but it wasn’t always Jakob, that is just my name when I am here. All us guides are called Jakob. We help souls cross over to where they need to go and some of us, some of us are guardians. We keep this place free from monsters and special people such as yourself.”
That was an awful lot for my uneducated brain to take in.
“You keep this place…free from…people like me? Monsters? How…”
His voice dropped to a lower register. “Monsters are real, Pippa. I know you’ve seen them when they cross over. Sometimes they look like ordinary people. At other times, they look like the demons they are. Or faceless shadows. They come from the underworld, a place of blood and sorrow. The Thin Veil is the closest point for them to break through. They look for souls to possess, for bodies to have, for lives to devour. They are very, very dangerous. And they tend to go after people like you. That is one reason why people like you are a threat to this place.”
“Well, my goodness. You know I would have never come here had you not dragged me here. It’s not like I can step into this place anytime I want.”
“Oh, but dear Miss Lindstrom, you can. You can come here anytime you want, now that you know. And if you’re really powerful, which I suspect you are, you can create doors whenever you wish.”
I was powerful enough to create doors to another world? It was too unbelievable for my ears, despite the fact I was sitting with a spirit guide in what appeared to be another dimension.
“So they want me…”
“They want you because you possess this power. It is very attractive to them. You also attract other beings, not just monsters and demons. You attract ghosts, spirits who remain here because they are unable to move on. They can see the world they left behind and roam among it but others do not see them. Except for you. Can you imagine an eternity of loneliness, of being ignored, and then finally being seen, being listened to?”
Oh, I didn’t have to imagine that feeling. I had experienced it many times before.