Shifting

road. Sure, it had sediment on it and the yellow line was very faded and only visible in patches, but it was a road, just the same. I took the road that had once had a name and followed it to Elkinville. I half expected to find an ancient street sign pointing the way, but was disappointed.

Alongside the road now, I sensed that one of the shift lines was very near. I wasn’t moving into it, but rather paralleled it so that instead of increasing resistance I felt instead the continuous light touch like that of a breaking spider web discovered in a doorway in the morning. It was even lighter than that, much of the time, feeling like a field of static electricity that plucked at each hair in my scalp individually and prickled my skin. The line ran directly to the light that I moved toward.

I tried to ignore the shift line and pressed forward. I knew if I stopped now and I survived to reach the surface, I would never have the guts to come down here again. To turn back now meant failure.

I felt as if I walked in a dream, and the surreal surroundings reinforced the sensation. I came to dead houses in various stages of watery decay and finally, to a church of mortared stones. The light was very close now, just on the other side of the church, it appeared. In the churchyard I found a well that had a bucket, still on its chain, that hung upside down like a kite. I marveled, wondering how many years the bucket had floated there, anchored by that chain, tirelessly working in vain to float up to the surface. While I gazed up at the floating bucket, something new grabbed my shin.

I opened my mouth to scream, but only a few bubbles came out. I looked down and saw something was clawing up out of the well. Something had a hold of me. It was in too close to use my saber, so I grabbed at the gloved wrists and tried to rip those hands away. They held on and now a face was coming up at me, out of the well.

It was the face of Captain James Ryerson. He was lit with a greenish glow. His mouth was open as wide as his eyes. He gaped like a fish on the deck of a rowboat. I understood in a moment that he had drowned down here, and that he had fallen for Wilton’s spell in Redmoor, just as I had. His face worked, and bubbles came out, and I smashed that face. The water pulled my blow, but I gave it a good one, and blood and bubbles frothed up between us.

He was clutching at my pockets. I pulled back my fist again, and something slowed me. Bubbles? I looked at his face again and there was desperation in it, but there was life in it too. He wasn’t dead, and I saw, feeling like a fool, that he had green chemical lights pinned to his jacket that had caused the green glow. My instincts switched over to trying to help. He wanted something, desperately. He was alive, and he wanted something. It only took me a second longer before I reached into my pockets and took out one of the potions. He grabbed at it and then turned and dived headfirst into the well again. I stared down at his retreating boots, outlined in a ghostly green chemical glow. Bubbles floated up to me, and I knew that meant air. I climbed into the well after him, feet first, and let myself sink down like Santa Claus coming down a chimney.

The well stones went by my face for a long time. I felt like I was burying myself, but fought back the panic and kept gently sinking. At the rocky bottom, there was an opening in the side of the well. I crawled inside and up into a large air pocket. The air was very dank and very stale. Doubled over and breathing hard was the Captain.

“Don’t,” he said, “don’t use any of the air. You don’t need it. Not much oxygen left in it.”

I saw then there were tanks down here with him. He’d brought his own oxygen at least. Smarter than I was. I wondered how long I had before I was gasping like a fish.

He choked down the potion and seemed to relax a bit. He slid back against a wall.

“Thanks for bashing my face in,” he gasped. “Moron.”

I nodded and shrugged. I snuck in a gulp of air, figuring he would be okay soon. It felt so good to fill my aching lungs again. Even if they didn’t need the air, they felt like they needed it.

“Okay, okay, you can talk now,” he told me. “I think it’s working. I won’t need oxygen soon.”

“So strange,” I said, stopped, choked, and coughed up some water. I was alarmed. I wondered how much water was in my lungs. I kept coughing and choking for a bit. When I was finished, I said, “So strange not to breathe.”

He nodded, closed his eyes, and leaned back. His sucking breath had slowed down some. “Yeah.”

“Is the Preacher down here?”

He shook his head, “Haven’t seen him. Came down here, looked around, but the things from the graveyard over behind the church found me and chased me back here.”

“Things?” I said.

He nodded.

“Things like back on the beach?”

“Yeah, but with a lot less meat on them. They don’t float. They came out of the local graveyards down here, and they seem to like it down here. After all, this is their hometown.”

“What about the Hag?”

“The witch-thing? She only comes out at night. She does something in the church, something that lights up the town,” he was talking almost normally now, and I figured that neither of us was using up any oxygen anymore. So strange.

“How did you end up in here?”

“I was just checking things out. I had already investigated the well and found this reeking air pocket when I tried out the church and the skeletons came after me, I lost them down here. They aren’t big thinkers.”

He laughed then, and it was a bitter thing.

He caught my eye and reached out a hand.

“Thanks,” he said, sounding as if it was an unnatural word to him. I took his hand and we shook. As far as I knew, that was the only handshake he’d ever given to a man in Redmoor.

“You don’t leave a man behind.”

I shook my head.

“I thought about swimming straight out to the surface, but I knew I’d get the bends. We have to be about a hundred feet or more down. The potion ran out and I’ve been living on these two tanks and on the air pocket. There are two of us now, I say we fight our way out.”

I shook my head. “I came all this way down here to investigate. I’m going to see what that glow is about.”

“You’re crazy,” he said flatly. “It’s swarming with those things. And the Hag, she is out there somewhere.”

I considered telling him about the time distortion that Monika and I had experienced. Maybe he thought he had been down here for only a day, but really it had been a week or two. But this wasn’t inside a changeling dwelling, he wasn’t really their guest, which usually seemed to be the case in the histories of such things. I really didn’t know how long he’d been down here and it didn’t really matter, as long as we could get out.

“How long does the breath potion last?” I asked him.

“A few hours.”

My mouth sagged open. I’d already been down here an hour. Perhaps it had been two.

“Gannon, if you are going out there, I’m not coming,” he told me. “Thanks for the breath potion, but I’m going to make a run for it. I’ll wait half an hour, and then I’m climbing to the shoreline and out of this pit.”

Deciding there was no time like the present, I took out my sharpening stone and ground away the nicks in my saber’s blade. There was a notch where I had cut through some particularly tough bone.

The Captain watched me pensively. His eyes were on the stone and the shine that it emitted. Somehow, down here the glimmer was more noticeable. Finally, he could not keep quiet any longer.

“You are enchanting it. The blade is glowing.”

I smiled grimly at him. “I’m full of surprises.”

“I don’t think a sword will do it, even a magic one.”

“You’re afraid of her.”

He flashed me a look of annoyance. “Yeah. Yes, I am.”

I could tell he did not like admitting it.