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voice was a whisper.  
    He nodded to the forest before us, “Your guide through The Between.”

Chapter Five
The Between

    “What are you talking about?”
    “The Between. The space between life and death. The pause, the breath, the not here or there. Not alive and not all the way dead but the journey connecting the two,” he flourished his hand before him like a Shakespearean actor and bowed. “The Between.”  
    I stared at him. The impossibly lush trees before us swayed back and forth, back and forth, a living metronome marking the passage of time. Marking the seconds that felt stretched into hours. The hours I waited to wake up.
    “I assure you,” he said gently. “This is no dream.” He raised one eyebrow into an unnaturally high arch, a feat I felt certain a typical human could not perform. “At least,” he bent down and crouched low so his words traveled directly into my ear, “not the type of dream you’ve ever had.”
    His breath was a cold stream against my ear that sent a ripple of fear cascading though my body. I shivered while panic closed my throat.  
    He grinned and stood back up, “My, my…we are ssssensitve, aren’t we?” He threw his head back and laughed, “SSSorry, ssslip of the forked tongue.” Then his long forked tongue did slip way past his lips, the end flicking wildly in the air between us and sending him into a fit of hysterical laughter that made him clutch at his sides and double over.  
    I watched his hysterics—stunned, disbelieving, wishing this would all end and I would just wake up in Graciana’s spare room. Still doubled over and incapacitated by the repetitive, “Sis-Sis-Sis. Sis-Sis-Sis,” he held up his hand indicating to me to wait, please wait just a moment. He almost had himself together, “Sis-Sis-Sis,” he shook his head.
    “I’m sorry,” he stood up and forced a serious expression that broke almost immediately. “Sis-Sis. No,” he command himself. “Okay, seriously,” he smiled. “I really am your guide through The Between.” He nodded his head. “And this really isn’t a dream,” he now shook his head.  
    A pressure was bursting in my head and chest and I realized I had been holding my breath. I opened my nose and mouth and pulled the rich pine and earth flavored air deep inside me again and again before swallowing down the large knot in my throat. “I don’t understand what’s happening.”
    “No,” he said managing a hint of sympathy. “Of course not. That is why there are guides,” he gestured to himself, “in the first place.”
    “How did I get here?”
    “Well it seems to me you got here the same way as I, by slithering on your belly,” he glanced at the tight hole I had just come through.
    “Why would I need a guide?”
    “Oh,” his expression turned grave. “you’d never make it through The Between without me,” he shook his head.
    “I don’t want to go through The Between, I don’t want to go through anything. And certainly not somewhere that is between life and death,” I said not believing my own words.
    “But you will.”  
    It sounded like a threat I sensed he could make good on. “Why?” I asked, not really wanting to know.
    He looked to the forest and straightened his spine, the breeze blew his blond hair back. “Because Daniel is trapped there.” His eyes swung back to me and held. “Your brother has been trapped in The Between for the last thirteen years. He has called to you, led you here on the one day of the year it is possible for him to do so—he’s hoping you will help him.”
    “Help him what?” I breathed.
    “Leave The Between and cross over to The Beyond.”  
    “What are you saying. Daniel is dead. Daniel has been dead.”
    “In your world, in the flesh and the physical…yes. But that is hardly the only place for existence. His soul didn’t magically vanish when his physical body died. It transformed. Most die and move through The Between and onto The Beyond,” he shrugged.