Shift: A Novel

saw.”

BC glanced at the man on the bed. “What does he have to do with this?”

“I told him not to give Chandler any more acid, but he wouldn’t listen! You have to get away.”

Suddenly BC realized: the girl wasn’t afraid of him. She was afraid for him. “You’re trying to protect me?”

“He—” The girl gulped back the word. “It’s out of control. You have to get away. Out of its reach. Until it wears off.”

“But … but how did he—”

The girl screamed in frustration, so loud the man on the bed moaned. “Don’t you see? Don’t you see?”

And now BC did see: saw that the entire room had begun to shimmer like the trees outside. Only this time it wasn’t just a hallucination. He could feel the floorboards warping beneath his feet.

“You have to run! Please. Before it’s too late.”

BC tried to hold the gun on the girl but the seesawing motion beneath his feet made it impossible. He reached for the wall but the wall was rocking too. Splaying his feet, supporting his right arm with his left, he mustered as much authority as he could.

“I’m sorry, miss. I have to ask you to put the knife down and step away from Mr. Forrestal. Until I figure out what’s going on here, you’re going to have to come with me.”

The girl screamed, even as the bureau lifted up and flew across the room at him. He threw himself to the floor just before it hit the wall so hard that it smashed through, hung half in, half out of the melting bedroom in a cloud of plaster dust. A rain of random objects began pelting BC—books, lamps, pictures, little pieces of bric-a-brac that flew at him too quickly to make out. He squeezed himself into the corner behind a tall armoire and shielded his face as best he could. Glass exploded as objects crashed through the window over his head. This isn’t happening, he tried to tell himself. It’s just an illusion. A hallucination. It has to be. But he could feel glass and plaster and wood chips rain down on his hair and knew he was wrong. Somehow the man on the bed was throwing things at him without touching them. Throwing them with his mind.

Suddenly the girl screamed again. BC couldn’t see her but he heard the difference in her voice: this was a scream of pure terror. A moment later there was a gunshot and she fell silent.

“Miss—” BC’s words were choked out as the armoire he was leaning against suddenly tipped over and pinned him into the corner. His gun was knocked from his hands and his body was trapped in a low, painful crouch. His cheek was mashed against the wall so hard that it felt like his skull was going to crack. The little sliver of the room he could see began to blur as spots danced before his eyes.

“Is someone there?” he called, his voice a choked whisper. “Someone, please! Help me!”

There was a second gunshot then, and all at once the armoire fell off him and BC half stumbled, half rolled away from the wall. He wobbled toward his gun, but even as he reached for it he saw a large object hurtling toward him. He turned his head, had time to see that the object was a portable typewriter. A dark shadow filled the doorway, and the faint smell of cigar smoke, and then the typewriter smashed into his skull and the room went black.

Millbrook, NY

November 4, 1963

The first thing he saw when he came to was a tattered lattice of sunset shining through the needles of the pine forest. There was something wrong with this picture, but he couldn’t tell what it was at first. Then it came to him: the pine trees were solid now, their only movement caused by the breeze.

He sat up, wincing in pain. He felt the crust of dried blood on his face, looked down and saw a few drops on the front of his suit. Then he saw the car.

A Lincoln, flat, black, and rectangular, was slotted into the trees like a gigantic domino. He turned toward the cottage, looked first at the second-floor window to the bedroom where he’d confronted the girl and Forrestal. He stared at it a long time before accepting the truth of what his eyes told him: it was unbroken. Light shown through the drawn curtain, and dark shadows moved back and forth inside the room.

He started to stand and immediately felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned to see a stony-faced man sitting on a section of sawn tree trunk.

“I’m going to have to ask you to wait until the ambulance arrives, sir.”

“I’m fine,” BC said, and moved to get up again.

The man’s hand was heavy on his shoulder, and BC sat down hard enough to send daggers of pain through his forehead.

“Sir, please. I’d hate to see you injured further.”

BC squeezed his left arm against his side, confirming what he’d already suspected. His gun was gone.

“Who are you? What are you doing here?”

“The ambulance will be here shortly, sir. You should take it easy. That’s quite a bump on your head.”

BC would’ve shaken his head but it hurt too much. He turned back to the cottage, just in time to see a man back out the front door pulling something long, black, obviously heavy.

A body bag.

He dragged his burden across the lawn and stowed it in the Lincoln’s trunk.

BC would’ve asked where he was taking the body, but he knew it was pointless. The man returned to the house and came out a few minutes later with a second body, then a third, this last one significantly smaller than the first two, and carried in his arms in a gross perversion of the Pieta.