Shifting

Twenty-Seven

The next morning was the day before All Hallows Eve. I remembered so many grim stories of that day, that I felt a bit of urgency. It seemed to me all too likely that something might happen on that famous festival of the dead. I could only wonder at our celebration of it, all these years since the last age of the supernatural. Like a distant race memory, we had forgotten exactly what it was that we feared, but we could still recall the fear itself.

The weather was definitely colder. In November, I knew, we would probably get our first light dustings of snow. The colder, crisp air and the white frost that lay upon the morning grass gave me pause. Something about the approach of winter when all our technological defenses were gone gave me an odd feeling of unease. This winter there would be no bulbs of light burning with magical brightness. Heat would come from wood-burning stoves that burned fuel chopped with axes and sweat. There would be no central heating automatically blowing warmth on the cold bricks.

The good folk of Redmoor had worked hard as scavengers while Monika and I had slept or dreamt or whatever it was we’d lived through in that chamber beneath the earth. They had set up three wooden stoves and a stockpile of wood in the medical center now.

I felt, oddly, different from them now. Somehow, my adventures had made me into a different kind of person than the others. They were people who stayed huddled inside with eyes peering out into the night. I had become someone who ventured out into the darkness as a matter of habit. I imagined that in the past, there had always been people like me and people like them, and that we were naturally taking up roles that our ancestors had played out centuries ago.

I left after a few quiet good-byes. I could feel their eyes on me as I walked downtown, but I didn’t look back.

Redmoor wasn’t a big town, and I soon reached the forbidden area, bounded by Linwood Drive on one side and Olive Street on another, according to the Preacher’s map. When I reached the boundary, invisible though it was, I felt it. The sensation was similar to what I had felt out in the woods or down in the cave, except perhaps stronger. I realized before I stepped out into the empty strip of patched asphalt we called Linwood Drive that I knew where the line was. The boundary between sanity and insanity, order and chaos, was a few paces away, in the middle of the street. Linwood Drive was wider than most of our streets in our small town, it was a two-laner, but most people still treated it as one lane with slanted parking lines painted on both sides for shoppers.

I stood on the southern side with my toes resting on the red curb. I was in front of the Redmoor video store that old man Marcus used to run before his wife killed him with claws grown from those painted fingernails she’d always worked so hard on. I hesitated there, I’m not sure for how long. A yellow fire hydrant, a relic of a past that seemed distant, stood on the curb next to me like a faithful pet. We waited on the curb together, the yellow fire hydrant and I. The barrier was right there in the street before me, I could feel it, but I did not yet dare step toward it. I had the sensation of being watched, but could not see the watcher. Perhaps the shift line itself watched me, hungrily, already planning what sort of vile twisted thing it might morph me into. I shook my head at these thoughts. They were absurd, but the feeling of dread would not leave.

I knew somewhere in my mind that I could go around this border, this barrier, or fissure, or whatever it was, that led into the unknown. I knew I could just walk another mile or so up into the woods past the city limits or down to the lakeshore and find a way around it, but I didn’t want to give in to this thing that had eaten my town and my life. I hated it, and wanted to beat it. I felt, after weeks of learning about it and brushing up against it that perhaps I was ready to beat it. I felt that I had run from it long enough.

While I thought about it, I spotted some of the flying creatures, roosting upside down like bats in the trees across the street. They were the things that watched me, I knew. They made no move to flutter down and drink my blood. I wondered if somehow they knew I pondered the barrier. Was some other unseen creature directing them? The trees that bore the flying things seemed quiet as well, barely shifting in the breeze as if the trees too, considered me. The whole world seemed to hold its breath.

After a time, I thought to myself that if I was going to do it-and I knew that I was-it might as well be now. So, after having dithered for perhaps a dozen minutes, or perhaps more, I left the yellow fire hydrant and the video store and finally took my first step into Linwood Drive. The things in the trees moved restlessly. They continued to watch me as I walked into… something. Only heaven-or perhaps hell-knew what.

I hit an invisible barrier two steps from the curb. I could feel it, but could not see it, not yet. At first, it was very gentle, like a thick spider web breaking over my body. I paused, and the sensation strengthened. Somehow, I knew that if I stopped, it would grow stronger, so I took another slow step, then two more. The sensation of walking into some resistant force increased. It was like moving into a pool of water now, it dragged against my feet and sought to push me back. I swung my boots forward and my breathing became labored, more with fear than with physical effort. I glanced back toward the sidewalk where I’d started and that was a mistake.

The air between me and the sidewalk I’d come from seemed to waver, just for a moment, and then it steadied. I felt vertigo rush up from my belly, like a thrill that hits you when you stare down into a deadly fall. Looking back was like looking down when scaling a cliff face: it was a bad idea. I lost my balance and stumbled, but managed to steady myself with an effort. I snapped my eyes forward and stared with determination at the far side of Linwood, absurdly close yet so far away. I felt like a tight ropewalker who had forgone the net and the safety belts for the very first time. The breeze gusted up now and it ruffled my hair and the sweat that had popped out upon my brow dried and turned cold.

I took another step.

It was fighting me openly now. A barrier I could truly feel rose up against me and pressed against my legs. I could only think that a thousand others had felt this very thing and had failed somehow in this test, and had lost their way. They had fallen prey to this force from another age and had been melted by it into a twisted caricature of themselves. What was this force? My mind demanded an answer when there was none. It was like hot magma from the center of the Earth, a force that could destroy and create all in one violent process. I thought perhaps it was an echo left over from the wild violent act of creation of the cosmos. Or perhaps it was a natural ripple from some physical law that we had yet to discover with our arrogant science, still perhaps as primitive and infantile as we imagined the alchemists of centuries past to be.

Soon, as I took step by step, all my thoughts fell away from my mind, as all my focus was needed to quell my fears and force myself to take yet another step into the unknown.

Then, suddenly, I felt something give way and I was through it, I had passed a test of some kind. I almost pitched forward, something I knew would be bad thing. I took another step and felt the resistance grow again. But I felt more confident, I had broken through the first barrier and I would break through them all until the last. I realized now, too, why we had not seen many animals transformed. They knew enough to keep away from such a terrifying thing. Their senses were more acute and their reaction to the unknown was simple and effective: flee. Humans had to make it more complex, had to resist changes in their environment not of their making. This was our street, and I could imagine others like me forcing their way across where any beast would have simply turned and fled with the wisdom of a thousand generations of knowing that anything unknown was deadly. Humanity had forgotten their old deep-seated fears and had bulled their way into trouble much as I was doing now, I felt sure of it. One of the Preacher’s favorite quotes rang in my ears: Pride goeth before the fall.

I put another foot forward, and another, and now it was much worse than water, worse than a tidal surge, I was trying to walk through the Earth itself. I took another step, and the barrier broke, just as the first had. The last barrier was different, however. It didn’t form a wall against me, but rather tried to drag me backward. Like a fly caught in the web of a cunning spider, I struggled to be free of this unnatural thing that held me. It wasn’t just my feet and legs that felt the effect, now it was my entire body. Tiny red sparks had come up from somewhere and ran in little bursts and shivers over me. I ignored them and pressed on, head down, body hunched and leaning now like a man walking into a hurricane, like a fool fighting an incredible force of nature. Which, I suppose, was exactly what I was doing.

It let go all at once, and when it did I stumbled and pitched forward over the far curb. I laid there gasping, and dared turn my head and look back across the street. The yellow fire hydrant still sat there, unimpressed and unmoved. The only thing I could detect now as a slight ripple in the air, like the wavering air on a hot summer day over a distant ribbon of black highway. Had it been only thirty steps? I calculated the distance and nodded my head. The hardest thirty paces I had ever taken.