Shifting

Thirty

I exited into the fresh air again and breathed deeply. I gave a shudder that was more from relief than from the cold breeze coming off the lake. I turned north around the building and headed toward the lakeshore. Like most big lakes, Lake Monroe had a thin brown sandy beach that wound around it. I passed the little private jetties and the Marina and walked along the beach itself. A squad of ducks quacked at me in annoyance and swam away.

I thought about going back to the center, but decided against it. Maybe I could get Vance to come with me, but probably not. He had not wanted to go visit the pharmacy, why would he want to drink some foul concoction and attempt to drown himself under the lake while looking for a devilish Hag? I also didn’t want to wait any longer. Arriving an hour or a minute too late to help would worse than useless.

I stopped at a nice little sailboat that had survived the storm. I was a fair sailor in calm weather, and one quick way to check out that strange light in the lake would be to glide over it and have a look. I decided against it, however. How would that be better than swimming down? If something was down there, it would see me as an object floating above, not really the safest position to be in. I sighed, not knowing really what to do. I wasn’t sure what it was that I was going after and the lack of information was critically important. I wasn’t even sure that the potions would work, or where the Preacher was, or if this wasn’t just some elaborate hoax. Maybe these two hags had cut a deal to send each other gullible fools every Tuesday as raw materials.

I drew out my saber and checked my pistol, which was loaded and ready to go. I sensed I might be needing it. When I fished in my pocket for extra bullets, I found the Hag’s stone. I drew it out, and knew it for what it was, a magic rock. Had she left it for me, or had she made it by accident? I decided I might as well use it, and spent a few minutes stroking the edge of my weapon. Orange and white sparks popped as I did so, and when I was done, I knew it was much sharper than before.

My boots kicked up wet sand and I trudged down the beach leaving the sailboat behind. Soon I was leaving Redmoor proper and getting into the rental cabin area where summer people came up to spend a week or two on the lake. I passed one log cabin mock-up that I knew inside had a modern kitchen and central air. Just after I’d passed it, I heard a screen door creak open and then slam shut.

“Hello?” I called.

Nothing.

I stopped on the beach, eyeing the cabins nearby. I saw no one come out. It could have been a backdoor, or it could have been the wind. Some of the windows were broken, perhaps from the recent storm or perhaps from worse things. Thinking about Wilton’s words, I decided against investigating and continued plodding down the beach. I figured I had only about a mile to go.

After another few hundred yards, I chanced a look over my shoulder. I froze in my tracks. A figure was on the beach behind me, following. It looked like a normal man, but he moved with some difficulty, limping. He seemed to be missing a shoe on that foot, although at a distance of a few hundred yards, I was hard to be sure.

“Hey there,” I called out to him. I expected him to halt or wave or shout back. He did none of these things but rather continued to approach with that odd, stumbling gait. I watched him for a few seconds more, and then decided I didn’t really want to get a closer look at him. I hurried on up the beach.

I was gaining ground, I was sure of it, and after another hundred yards I looked back again and there were three of them now. One appeared to be a large woman and the third was a child. The child seemed to be crawling rapidly on all fours like a kid pretending to be a spider. Perhaps, I thought, this kid wasn’t pretending. I hurried on up the beach, sure I had no more than a half mile to go.

In the middle of one long look back at those that followed me, I almost walked into the fourth one. He was dressed in a bathing suit with red flowers on a black nylon background and was dripping wet. Clearly, he’d been in the water a moment before and now had risen up out of the waves. He had his arms up as if to embrace me.

I shoved him back and his cold, bloated, purplish skin ripped open like tissue paper. I could see right off he was dead. I made an odd croaking sound in my throat in shock and disgust. I shoved him back and he made no utterance, but simply reached for me again. I had my saber out in a smooth motion and slashed at his reaching arms. Flesh peeled back to reveal bones and his left hand hung at an odd angle but still he tottered after me.

I ran. More of them came. I don’t know how many, but they were coming out of the summer cabins and floating in the water. By the time I reached the pile of stones I’d built to mark the spot that led down into Elkinville there had to be more than a dozen of them, coming from both directions along the shore and from out of the forest as well. They were slow, but if one of them got a good grip on me and the others piled on… I ripped the top off of one of potions Wilton had given me and tossed it down. I tasted like urine mixed with bathroom cleanser. My stomach hitched and I fought not to sick it up.

Looking both ways at the approaching swarm of dead things, I realized that if she had meant to trap me, she’d done a good job after all. I grabbed up the rocks from my marking pile and shoved them in my pockets for ballast. I found my pistol there and took aim at the closest group of silent shambling monsters and emptied the only clip I had into them. I saw them rock back, I saw bones shatter in their legs and I watch the side of one woman’s skull pop, but they still kept coming. All of them.

I waded out into the waters of the Lake and put the empty pistol into my pocket for more weight. It takes a few minutes to work, I heard Wilton’s words in my head and they sounded to me like an epitaph.

I was ten feet from shore and the cold waters of the lake had filled my boots and begun to sting my legs. I gasped when the shocking cold reached up to my waist. About then, the things on the beach finally reached the shoreline. The first ones there were the crawling kid and the very first one I’d seen. I realized now that he had no foot on the end of one leg. He’d been walking on a shard of shinbone and had made pretty good time for all that. He wore a nice shirt and a tie and, incredibly, still had sunglasses on. I could only imagine what kind of vacation he’d been enjoying when some ghastly fate had befallen him in the beach house he’d paid good money for had turned into an abattoir.

The crawling kid came out in sort of a dog-paddling motion and I laid into him with my saber. He never complained, but simply took the strokes. I grabbed his hair, finally, to keep his snapping teeth away from the meat of my thighs while I took his head and his limbs off. After that, the limbs kept thrashing but with less purpose. I pushed him off and he floated way harmlessly. I backed further into the water, chest deep now, and realized I could not retreat much further or I would be unable to move freely due to the water, but there was nothing for it. Already, my toes were going numb from the cold.

I threw the kid’s head at the guy with the sunglasses and knocked him off kilter. He recovered and reached for me with gray fingernails which I sliced off with one wild swipe. His other hand I took off at the wrist, I grunted with the force of that swing and was shocked to see the saber cut right through bone. The sharpening stone had indeed worked some magic on my blade, I realized. Five stubs and one stump still reached for me, and then I tripped.

I went over backwards into the water and sank down. I had stepped off a shelf or into a hole and was underwater. I blasted bubbles from my nose and thrashed about. I put the point of my sword out blindly and felt it sink into something. It was the chest of the man with the sunglasses and he kept coming, forcing the blade into his ribs.

I struggled, the rocks in my pocket were doing their job, pulling me down. I thought I was about to run out of air and felt that bubbling, squeezing panic that comes with being down too long, like when you are a racing a friend underwater and start to feel you aren’t going to make it. I expected any second to see red flashes and feel my lungs bursting in open panic. I heaved up and took in a gulp of air. I sank back down with Mr. Sunglasses on top of me, his finger stubs massaging my scalp, my sword lodged into his ribcage.

With a great heave, I threw him off me and nearly lost my sword in the process. His body had deteriorated enough over the summer, however, that it released my blade and I swam backward with great kicks. I sank as I swam and I felt tired and heavy. I wondered if I would ever taste another lungful of sweet air.

More or less standing on the bottom, at least ten feet down, I gazed upward and ignored the stinging in my open eyes the cloudy water brought. There above me was a splashing company of things. They churned at the water and flopped up there. Some had sunk a bit, but most seemed to be floating, as bodies will do when they are dead. They lacked the coordination and self-control necessary to swim downward deliberately. I wondered if the Preacher or the Captain was among their number.

It was just about this moment that I realized I had been holding my breath for a remarkably long time. In fact, I felt no need to breathe at all. This set off a moment of panic, but I fought it down. I concentrated on the idea that I was holding my breath, and that I was simply holding it for a very long time and didn’t need to worry about it. This worked pretty well. My lungs felt strangely empty and deflated, however, as I had released a lot of air in my struggles. I worried that if I kept releasing it, in little bits, I might collapse a lung eventually with no air to replace it. Still, for the moment, I wasn’t drowning.

I turned and headed toward the bottom of the Lake. I walked downhill with slow-motion strides into the green-black unknown.

I saw the light down there, and it was entirely different underwater. From the surface, you might only notice it at night, but when you were underneath the silvery-blue line that made up the border between air and light and the depths of the lake, it shimmered with bluish radiance. Just looking at it, you could tell it wasn’t a normal light; it wasn’t a huge sunken light bulb. It looked more like a flame, a dancing, wavering blue flame that glowed in the murky distance.

I walked slowly toward it, feeling like a moth drawn by fascination to burn my wings upon a magical candle. As I descended, I ran into huge water weeds that stood at least a dozen feet high. I slashed and cleared a path. If nothing else, the path might help me find my way back to shore. But I felt doubtful that I would ever be making that return trip.

It was a horrid feeling, being down there. It wasn’t pleasant or funny. It was terrifying. I had no idea when the potion would wear off and I would be left choking at the bottom of the lake, or when I would find some underwater horror waiting for me. Or, possibly worst of all, the sun would go down and I would be left on the bottom of the lake, lost in blackness and bitter cold. A tiny part of my mind even wondered if I was already one of them, one of the things back on the beach. Perhaps, a tiny, evil monkey in my mind whispered, I no longer breathe because I am no longer alive.

I put my hand up to my chest, and it took a long second, but I felt my heart there, still thumping away. It wasn’t conclusive, but I took it as a very good sign. I continued down the slope. I looked up at the silvery-blue surface and, although it was hard to be sure, I figured I was at least fifty feet down.

I looked back, and my heart skipped and began pounding harder. The things, some of them at least, were coming down after me. Those that had little flesh on them, that were mostly white bones with scraps of clothing left, were still coming. They were just walking down. I supposed that their bones were dense enough not to float without their flesh. They weren’t coming fast, but they would never stop, I knew. They would not grow tired or bored. I knew somehow too, that even when darkness came tonight, if I still lived, they would still be coming.

The deeper I went the darker it became. I reached a flat plateau that ran out at least fifty yards, and then I found a low stone wall. It looked very strange down there, overgrown with waterweeds and with a few perch floating around it lazily. It had to be part of the town, I felt sure. I followed the wall for a while and found the foundations of building. I stepped into it and figured it would have been a barn. The timbers had rotted away for the most part, but there were still concrete anchors holding the bottom of the posts down. I imagined how it must have looked that day, more than half a century ago, when the waters of the river had risen up after they’d built the dam and consumed this whole area.

I noticed there were drowned trees here, on the bottom. They were festooned with growths and fish now, but there they were, with their dead branches reaching upward as if begging the impossibly distant sun.

I looked back and saw the things chasing me, there were four of them. I had left them far behind. Feeling relatively safe, I looked around and wondered at this drowned world and I had a new thought then, one I didn’t appreciate at all. What if the dam broke? Soon, heavy rains and snows were coming, and I’m sure that back in the summer when the world had gone mad and died, the engineers running it had left it in the normal summer configuration. It had been a dry summer, meaning the gates were set to only allow enough water to escape to keep the river alive. When the weather really came in, I’m sure the level would rise and the dam would overflow. Part of Redmoor might even flood. Worse, I had no idea how long the dam could overflow without giving way. Maybe years, or maybe just one season.

It was while I pondered such things that something grabbed my ankle. I jerked, and it gave somewhat, but flexed back again. I struggled out my saber and realized that a hand was wrapped around my foot. I hadn’t noticed the body laying in the weeds and rocks. The corpse was wearing a fisherman’s gear, right down to the hat with the lures stuck in it. He appeared to have ropes around his body. Bewildered, I struggled to keep my foot from his mouth, where he seemed determined to drag it. A second hand latched onto my ankle now, and was pulling hard. I struggled and managed to get some distance, but the thing held tightly to my foot. I realized after a time that ropes across its back meant the thing was tied down to something. Stabbing the body was doing no good, the struggles didn’t even register any pain, so I sawed instead at the ropes that wound around the midsection.

Before long, I had one of the ropes apart, then another. The creature began to float, just a bit, and now it had a harder time in its struggles with no firm anchor against which to push or pull. Without leverage, its grip weakened.

My face was a grimace of mixed disgust and triumph when I finally cut it free completely. It flailed in the water, making primitive, awkward flailing motions to reach me. It floated higher, and I finally saw what it had been tied to: a large metal tackle box. It painted a picture of the owner’s last hours, perhaps caught out on the Lake with monsters on the shore. Possibly, he’d spent days out on the water, but had been unable to return to his cabin for fear of a horrid death. Clearly, he’d decided to tie himself to his tackle box and throw himself into the lake, better to drown cleanly than to be torn apart.

Soon, the thing had floated up too high to reach me. It continued to struggle in awkward silence.

Before I could celebrate or mourn, however, I noticed the things that had followed me down from the surface had caught up and were very close now. I could see fresh white bone gleaming.

I turned toward the bluish flame and half-walked, half-swam toward it, scooping water with my hands to speed me along. I left the sunken barn behind and followed the stone wall, trying to hurry, which was really not possible when walking on the bottom of a lake. Then I found something odd: a road. It was a normal, asphalt 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.