Shifting

My next sucked in a breath, ready to shout WILTON! again with such power that the good Doctor would have awakened from the very dead to answer, died into a hiss that passed my teeth quietly. The door behind the register creaked open a bit further, letting out more of that yellow, oily light and a hunched figure eased out of it.

Wilton was not herself. She had what looked like a pillow case pulled over her head. It was a hood, I realized, and a long cloak hung down from it. I thought it looked like a cannibalized blanket or perhaps even a dark curtain. The hood raised up and a single, baleful eye regarded me. That eye would have looked human, but I saw now that it glowed, just slightly, just enough to make you think that it glowed, but not enough to make you certain. It was an effect that on any other day I would consider odd, and tell myself was impossible, but here, now, anything was possible and I knew it. I wondered what further monstrosities were hidden beneath her makeshift cloak and decided I didn’t want to know.

“You rang?” she said, showing she still had a sense of humor.

I snorted and demanded, “What are you up to out here?”

“Nice of you to come check on me,” said Wilton. As she spoke she slid open the display case under the register and dug something out. It was a chocolate bar. She pushed it across the table.

“Your favorite, if memory serves me rightly.”

I looked at it, then took it and was about to slide it into my pocket. Then I relented and tore it open and took a bite. It was my favorite, after all. It was a bit stale, but still tasted good. She still had not answered my question so I didn’t repeat it.

“I’ll show you what I’m up to,” she said, “but we’ll talk a bit first.”

After staring at her for a minute while chewing on the chocolate bar, I nodded in agreement. A part of me still liked her, still wanted to like her. That organic stink was stronger here and I realized it had to either be Wilton herself, or it was coming from that door behind her. It smelled like someone was cooking bacon in a pot of chlorine.

She looked at me over the counter appraisingly. “You crossed the shift line, didn’t you?”

I nodded. “How did you know?”

She shrugged and I noted, without wanting to, that she seemed to have a fleshy hump on her left side now. “You look normal enough, but you don’t sound quite like the Gannon I left behind. It’s not just the body that is changed by the shifting, you know.”

I stopped chewing for a moment, thinking about this. I had to admit her words made sense. It wasn’t a pleasant thought, wondering if your personality had changed. “I don’t feel very different. It was an ordeal, that’s all.”

“Trust me,” she said waggling a finger in my direction. The finger had a warped, calloused look to it. I tried not to focus on it. “When you cross that line you come out changed. Perhaps it is only a tiny, hidden change, but it is there.”

“You’ve crossed it, then,” I said. It was a statement, not a question.

“Yes. That line in the middle of town and several others. I’ve done more than cross them, I’ve explored them, Gannon. They are as full of wonders as they are of terrors, if you know where to look.”

I nodded again and crunched up the chocolate wrapper. The candy was gone. I believed she had done it, probably far more than was wise, if even a single trip could be said to be wise.

“Most of the lines are like that one, but some are very different, more like portals to other places,” she told me.

“I think I’ve been in one of those different places,” I said, and then I gave her a quick version of our adventures in Malkin’s cave.

“Yes, time distortion,” she said, “I’ve experienced it, but nothing as strong as you describe. I’ll have to make a note of that cave and that interesting cave-dweller. The barrier in town is strong, but not the strongest around. I think they tend to get stronger when more people try to cross them, but that is only a theory of mine.”

“Do you know why I’m here, Doc?” I asked finally.

“Honestly, I expected to see the Captain or perhaps the Preacher. I’ve sent them both off on missions some time ago, and neither has returned. Perhaps they are caught in a time distortion as you were. Like you, however, I expect them to survive.”

“You sent them off? Where?”

“To Elkinsville, of course.”

“So you know that something is going on out there?” I demanded. “How did they get there and what did you expect them to do with a sunken town? Did they take diving equipment? And why does this place and Elkinsville glow with an evil light in the darkness? What are you up to?”

“Better than diving equipment,” said the Wilton, waggling that unpleasant finger again. “I’ll tell you about it, but you must be patient.”

I felt anything but patient. In fact, I realized I was tempted to kill Wilton now. Something told me I should do it. My hand crept of its own accord to my sword, but I did not draw it.

“You see, Gannon,” began Wilton, oblivious to my thoughts and lecturing me now. “The world has changed. It has progressed to a new era. History shows us that those who survive are those who adapt to change. So I have chosen to embrace the shift lines and the odd things they produce, rather than to fight them. Much like the technological magics that we produced in our time as a civilization, those who embraced them and used them best prospered the most. I’m simply a woman who is trying to get ahead of the curve.”

I shook my head in bewilderment. “The shift just makes monsters and warps the mind and body. What possible use is there for that? You might as well embrace a rash of earthquakes.”

“You’re wrong!” she declared. “What it does is change things. Why should it only work random changes upon us? Why can’t we use it to change things to our liking?”

I considered the idea.

“The shift is like fire, Gannon. Flame can destroy a forest or a town when it is wild and unchecked, but if controlled, it gives us light, heat, transportation and weaponry.”

I looked at her in sudden understanding. “You’re talking about sorcery.”

She stared at me and that one wild eye gleamed now, rather than glowed. “Yes! Yes, exactly. I’m Redmoor’s first sorceress. I’m sure there are others out there in the world, certain of it, in fact. But perhaps I’m the first of the new age in this place once known as Indiana.”

“So, what have you come up with?”

I saw her teeth then, for the first time, as she showed them beneath her cowl in what I took for a yellow grin.

“I thought you’d never ask,” she said.

Twenty-Nine

She hobbled back through the door behind the register and vanished into the oily yellow light. I followed her with trepidation. At first, we entered a small office festooned with catalogues and strewn with paper prescriptions and shipping orders that had fallen like leaves, forgotten and useless now.

The yellowy light came from a door to the far side of the office. We went to this and she pushed it open, biding me to follow with a gesture. As I approached the source of light I realized it was also the source of the odd stink that permeated the place. We entered and a very strange sight met my eyes.

In the center of the laboratory, which is what it had to be, was a very large steel sink of industrial size and capacity. It stood over a brazier full of burning charcoal. The coals were searing orange covered in a frost of white ash. In the sink boiled a foul and vicious liquid and it was this liquid, mixed with the glowing of the coals, that made the yellow light. It shined like sunshine.

All of this was far from being the oddest thing in the room, however. That distinction belonged to the sewn sack of pink skins that hung suspended by cords from the ceiling. The sack shivered and dripped. The drippings fell into small catch basins which were cunningly placed beneath it. V-shaped metal channels ran down from these catch-basins to run the dribblings down into the industrial sink, which I realized was serving as a bubbling