Shifting

“Look,” I said, turning to him. “I’m going to go check it out. This is pretty close to where that shift line is on the map. Right where the Preacher said it was. He wanted me to check this one out.”

“Okay, so we just checked it out,” said Vance slowly, sounding like someone who was trying to talk a stubborn, rather thick-brained child out of something foolish. “The line is right where he said it would be. You saw a glowing critter, you have confirmed it. Now, we can go back and tell him he was right, something really is out here, hallelujah.”

“All right,” I said and turned on the ignition. It didn’t start, the Durango was dead.

“Oh, come on,” complained Vance. “Are you faking?”

“No, I think we should check this thing out now, though.”

“The engine won’t start? Let me try.” Vance climbed across and got into the driver seat. I got out of the way and stood outside in the road.

He worked at it and cursed.

“Come on, you are going to wreck the starter or something,” I told him.

After six or seven more grinding tries, he gave up. He glared at me in defeat.

“We need to check it out,” I said earnestly. “We need to learn from it. We can’t just run from everything forever.”

Vance leaned his head back against the headrest, rolled up his eyes and sighed hugely. “Okay, okay, I give the hell up. I’m giving you five minutes.”

We got out of the Durango and headed into the woods.

We found nothing right away, and he demanded to see the map. I showed him the unconfirmed green line that ran down to the lakeshore.

“So where is it?” he asked.

“Right here, as close as I can tell.”

“What?” he choked, stopping dead. He looked around as if expecting to see a shimmering haze nearby.

“You can’t see the line. At least I don’t think you can. Don’t worry, we’ll be okay, just keep going.”

“Look the whole point of those lines is to avoid them,” he said in exasperation. “What is the bloody point of mapping these lines if we go messing with them?”

I sighed. I checked the map again and this time I had to use one of the flashlights we had brought from the truck. It was getting dark. “See, here’s the line, we won’t have to cross it, and we are on a parallel path.”

“It’s a green line, man,” he complained. “Don’t you get it? Green means the old man wasn’t sure if it’s really there, or where it is, or what the hell direction it goes. It’s a guess and I’m not betting my balls on a guess!”

“Well, what do you want to do?”

“I’m heading back to the road, getting in the truck and I’m leaving your butt out here if you don’t come with me.”

I nodded. “All right.”

“That’s it then?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I need to go closer and see if I can figure anything out about this line. That’s the whole point of my scouting job anyway. This is an opportunity to do some of that scouting.”

Vance looked at me in dead silence for a few long seconds. “You crazy bastard, you are as bad as the Preacher himself. What’s the point of putting down warning lines if you are going to go play around with them?”

“Someone has to figure this all out or we are all dead in the long run, Vance.”

“You said that already,” he looked troubled. “Okay, so we split up. Do you have a gun at least?”

I nodded.

His eyes slid to the bulge in my coat pocket. “Good, good.”

“I’ll see you at the center in an hour.”

“Sure thing,” he said in an odd voice. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

And we split up. The world seemed much darker after his flashlight vanished into the trees.

Nine

I walked pretty far downhill and had to be getting dammed close to the lakeshore. I couldn’t hear the water yet, but I could smell the lake and the cold, fresh breeze out there. Lake Monroe was big, the biggest body of water in Indiana. It covered more than ten thousand acres and like all big bodies of water it had its own ambience.

But there was something else out here with me besides the lake. I could feel it. Maybe I had been feeling these fissures to god-knew-where all along. Usually, when I had that funny feeling one of the changelings showed up. Maybe all along it had been because I was near their home turf. These thoughts opened up new doors in my mind, but I wasn’t sure where any of it led. I was excited, however, at the very idea of understanding the cataclysm that had stricken my world. How do you deal with events you really didn’t understand? It had been a terrifying ordeal for all of us who had managed to survive this long.

I was drawn out of my thoughts by a sudden wrongness. I halted and peered into the night off to my left, to the west. I felt I was becoming more sensitive to it, and whatever it was, it was too close for comfort. I took out the map and held the flashlight pinned under my arm while I made a tiny fractional change to the Preacher’s green line on the map, extending it closer to the lakeshore than it originally had been. I wished I had one of those geomapping gizmos that used satellites to pinpoint your position. Of course, it wouldn’t have worked.

A light mist was rising up from the lake as I scrutinized the map, and my flashlight grew dimmer, as if the batteries were dying. It wasn’t the mist affecting the flashlight I knew, or the batteries. I had put fresh ones in it before leaving home. Looking at the yellowing light of the dying bulb, I began to sweat. The sensation that something was near grew stronger. I snapped the light off, drew my saber and waited in the dark, listening.

My eyes adjusted to the light of the half-moon that shot silver threads down through the leafless trees. The forest was a gloomy dark purple with overlapping black shapes.

Slowly, I became aware of a deep purple glow in the direction of the shift-line. At first, I thought it was just an effect of the moonlight and the trees. But it persisted, and after a time, it moved. Obeying a feeling I didn’t completely understand, I followed the movement. It headed north toward the lakeshore. I matched it, walking slowly and trying not to stumble in the dark as I took a parallel path.

At times, the mist-like glow died down, at others it brightened. Perhaps this was the effect of intervening tree trunks. At the points where it brightened, it took on the shape of a human figure, I was certain of it. I kept shadowing it, certain that it was as aware of me as I was of it. Whatever it was, unlike the changelings I had met, it showed no signs of launching an attack. Was it hoping I would come closer? Was this dream-like experience what happened to everyone before they turned into a wild monster?

After a while we came into sight of the lakeshore. The figure halted and I halted too. I had hoped it would come out into the open on the shore and let me have a look at it. Apparently, it had no such plans.

I felt scrutiny, and I turned to face the thing that stood perhaps fifty yards to the west. The breeze coming in off the lake was cold and fresh and felt good. I felt an urge to speak to it, but didn’t.

“You trouble me, shadow,” came a voice from the forest. It was a woman’s voice, soft yet clear, despite the distance between us.

“Do you want me to leave?” I asked. I was startled at the idea. All the shifted things I had ever encountered only wanted to attack and destroy, not chat and enjoy the solitude of the woods.

“Would it matter?”

“No,” I admitted. It was all I could do to keep my emotions from coming up in my voice. This was the first conversation I’d ever heard of being struck up with a changeling, which she so obviously was.

“You don’t approach me. Aren’t you curious?”

“Very much so.”

“Are you afraid then?”