Shifting

Thirty-Five

Everyone was in the lobby. The lantern was still on the kid table, uncovered now. Wilton stood next to it, talking like a salesman doing a demo. The rest of the group was strangely silent. They stared at the lantern, and I knew what they were thinking and feeling. They were in its power, or soon would be. Would we fight to the death over it? I felt it tugging at me, even as I approached. A lime-green beam reached out and touched my eyes and my left hand clawed excitedly. I jammed it back into my pocket.

“What is it? What is it, you ask?” said Wilton, her eyes alight and almost as bright as the eye of the lantern itself. “It is the heart of the shifting, the end of any shift-line, like an anchor at the end of a chain. It is an artifact unlike the others you’ve seen. You’ve only seen shadows of the real thing, objects and beings altered from their original form by the creative chaotic power that sometimes glances randomly off of things that come too near. The Eye is a creation from whole cloth, there was nothing before it. With a single grunting thrust of power it came into being.”

No one said anything. I took two more steps forward, not quickly, not threatening, but closing the distance.

Wilton noted my approach, but kept talking to the people gathered around her.

“This is made of the very stuff of creation,” she said. She ran a caressing hand over it, and I saw she wore a glove of her own. Her hand was oddly shaped, and I thought of a beaver’s paw, or a dog’s. Inside that glove, I suspected there were furry pads and curved nails.

“Does everyone recall the old theory of Spontaneous Generation? From history class?”

No one responded. They just looked at her. No, I realized, they were staring at the lantern, not her.

“Centuries ago they noticed that frogs and fish and insects would appear if you created a pond artificially, or if you dried it up and refilled it. Wildlife would soon appear and flourish and thrive in a new pond far from any other water source, seemingly by magic. People took it as proof of the hand of a Creator hundreds of years ago, but it was all disproved by science since.”

She tore her eyes from the lantern to look at me. She smiled at me, and I knew it was the smile the cat gives the bird it’s brought in the house to play with and show off to the Master before killing it.

“But maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t all disproved. Maybe there was a hint of this power left over back then, and in any case, we don’t need any theories here. We are faced now with hard evidence of this creative power. We are living with it, trying to survive it. One might as well develop theories debating the existence of volcanoes during an eruption. The power we face is in truth as destructive as it is creative. Better to call it the power of chaos, the power of heat when applied to candle wax. The wax takes a new, splattered form, but is this the creation of a new form or the destruction of the old? I’d say it is one and the same, but what matters is that we are the candles.”

“What are they then, these forces you speak of?” I asked, stepping closer and playing her game. I didn’t look at the lantern, although I wanted to as much as the rest of them. They stood there, slack-jawed, mostly. Some of them flinched when I spoke, but none of them looked at me. Even Mrs. Hatchell just stared at the brilliant sprays of color that rippled and danced on the walls.

“I believe these forces have lain sleeping in the Earth, in the belly of our world, for all time, undetected by our fledgling sciences. Our only hint of them comes from our myths, our persistent stories of the past which we’ve all chosen to laugh off. The wisdom of those that went before us we consider the ravings of the mad and the ignorant. All superstitious nonsense and children’s fables, fabricated to keep them from straying too far into the forests.”

She had both her hands on it now, and she was gazing deeply into it. She kept talking, seemingly immune to its mesmerizing powers. I wondered if her voice was hypnotic.

“You all realize that magma bubbles and froths just a few miles below our feet, intense, destructive heat that could kill us all in an instant if it chose to? The supernatural forces are like that. They have been in the Earth all along, lying dormant. What makes a volcano happen? Or a rash of them? One finger of lava is sent up through a weak spot in the planet’s thin skin. That finger sprays out like a hose and fills the land with new molten minerals, killing and destroying everything it touches, making new islands in the sea or blowing old ones into history. We don’t question these amazing phenomena. We accept a long history of such events. Just as we accept the falling of chunks of the sky to Earth, wiping out vast areas and causing vast extinctions. Just as we accept the random new tilting of the Earth’s axis, causing ice ages and warming periods, causing life to wilt or bloom all over the globe. These upheavals are known. But this new one, this upheaval of the supernatural, is unknown to us. We’d forgotten about this one. Perhaps humans, as we now think of them, were created in one such upheaval long ago. Perhaps our confused history is full of such hiccups and belches of chaos.”

“I can accept such lofty theories about the age we now face and that there might have been previous such ages,” said a new voice, the Preacher’s voice. He stepped in our makeshift plywood doorway from outside and approached. He stared directly at Wilton, never glancing at the lantern. He avoided looking directly at it, just as I did. He glanced at me and I nodded and took a step toward Wilton. She shuffled her feet and frowned at both of us.

“What I don’t accept,” the Preacher continued, “is the embracing of the destructive powers of the shifting effect. I think a man might wield an instrument touched by the effect, with some peril, but through strength of will, it could be overcome. I’m less convinced that an artifact forged wholly in the fires of the supernatural can ever be controlled by a human. Not if they still planned on remaining human, that is. I’m willing to offer as proof, your sad sore foot, Wilton, and your hound’s paw, which you favor along with a dozen other abominations, I’d wager, beneath that shapeless garment of yours.”

She curled her lip at him, and her eyes flicked between us.

“Can’t you all recall the basic images that have stuck with us for all time?” the Preacher continued. “What shape does a witch bear when she comes to us? She comes in the form of a Hag, an aged and withered thing, both pitiful and terrible. What garments does such a sad creature wear? Why, formless robes to hide the devastation to her body that her depraved congress with the supernatural has wrought upon her!”

“Nonsense!” Wilton bleated. “My abominations, as you call them, are noble sacrifices, made by me in full knowledge of the consequences for the betterment of us all.”

“Nay, I say they have been made for the betterment of just one: yourself,” he told her. On his belt, the axe that rode there moved and poked out its handle suggestively.

I looked at Wilton and the Preacher, their eyes were locked and I knew, with absolute certainty, that something very bad was about to happen. I wanted both of them alive, at least until we rode out this storm, so I took that moment to act. While her attention was diverted, I threw my coat back over the lantern. The beautiful colors died, and the crowd in the lobby sighed disappointedly.

Outside, there was a flash of color from the skies, answering the sudden quiet inside. Somewhere, there was a flash of red lightning. The storm had begun, and evening was falling over Redmoor on Halloween. The windows and doors shuddered with sudden gusts of cold wind. Rain speckled the parking lot and the sun died.

“Don’t uncover that thing again,” I told her with open threat in my voice.

“The Hag will kill us all,” Wilton hissed back. “She wants her source back and we can’t beat her if she gets it.”

“We’re not going to give it to her.”

She grinned, and I thought her teeth looked a bit too long. “In a way, I’m glad to see you can stand up to this pretty bauble. Maybe we can win this fight after all. I had all but lost hope, you see. Now, no matter what you think of me, remember one thing for the battle ahead: she only has one great power. She can make things come to life and move, such as the walking trees. She will make things that cannot move into mobile servants to tear us apart.”

She sagged down into a chair then, looking exhausted and old and empty.

The Preacher, cheek muscles twitching, stared down at her. There was murder in his eye.

I grabbed Mrs. Hatchell and spun her to look at me. “Don’t look at these things directly. They can captivate your mind. Tell the others. You understand, don’t you? Or are you a mindless old fool?”

She blinked at me, but the insult stung her. She stalked around the room, getting into people’s faces and waking them up.

“Let’s go outside,” I said to the Preacher. He continued to stare at the defeated Wilton. He tossed me a glare, and then stomped outside. I followed him.

Outside it was raining now and the wind worked hard to lash the silvery drops down in stinging sheets. I couldn’t recall a Halloween with worse weather. Probably, weather patterns had all changed now, and not for the better.

The Preacher was angry. “I had passed judgment upon her, Gannon. You interfered. You have imperiled us all.”

“You are the one always saying it’s never too late, that lost ones can come back to the fold. Here she is, back in the fold, and we are facing the greatest danger yet. I say let those who survive until morning decide who is guilty and who isn’t.”

“For her, I think it is too late. She’s passed on. Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,” he quoted, “and if I’ve ever set eyes upon a witch, that is one sitting inside our very fortress.”

“We need her to counter the other witch. You haven’t met her yet, she makes Wilton seem harmless.”

He sighed. “You’ve endangered us all. Evil can’t be used to combat evil, Gannon, it doesn’t work that way. But very well, you’ve stayed my hand for now.”

That was all I wanted to hear. We went back inside.

This time the world did not fill up with fog. This time, the storm came on like a thousand giants beating furiously on the roof and the pavement. The red flashes were back, but with odd whooshing sounds rather than thunder. It was unnerving, and everyone knew that things would be changed outside after it had passed. We even invented a name for this kind of odd storm.

“A shiftstorm,” said Vance next to me. “Sounds a lot like shit-storm, doesn’t it?” he chuckled at his own joke and I smiled.

We looked outside. It was dark now, just after six in the evening, as closely as I could figure in this age without clocks.

“About this time last year,” I said wistfully, “a hundred kids would have come out in costumes and begun working the doorbells.”

“Yeah,” sighed Vance. “I miss the little bastards. Even the night they hammered my pickup with eggs. I even miss that.”

I squinted out into the storm and watched the chain link fence creak and sway in the growing winds. When lightning flashed, the wet links formed a brilliant pattern of squares for a brief moment. The chains that secured the gate clinked and rattled and shook.

The lightning flashed again, and outside, past the gate, I thought I saw a shape move. Probably, it was just branch, or a bit of debris from a house roof that had been caught up in a gust of wind. Probably.

“Who has the shotgun?” I asked sharply.

“I gave it to Nick Hackler. Don’t know if he has a clue how to use it. Everyone is armed now, even Holly has that pig-sticker of hers.”

“Where’s the Captain?”

“He went off, would you believe, back to his place to get some more ammo. Crazy bastard.”

“In this storm?” I shook my head. I didn’t think he was out to get ammo at this late date. I knew him now and understood his thinking. He didn’t want to be trapped in our little cage when things hit the fan. He wanted be outside, flanking the enemy. But telling Vance this would make him think we had been abandoned, so I just said, “I hope he gets back before things get-wild.”

“Where’s the Preacher?” ask Vance.

“He’s got Nick and a few others at the back door. You, me and Jimmy are covering this one. The rest are in the command post.”

Vance chuckled at the lofty term command post. The dentist’s offices were in the center of the three sections of the center, and we had fortified that inner area with blockaded doors and supplies, in case things went bad.

“You think she’s coming after us tonight, this Hag of yours?”

In answer to his question I pointed out into the lashing rain. The window had fogged up a bit, and the rain had turned into silver-white streaks, where you could see it at all, catching the light from the lanterns that burned in the center.

“What?” asked Vance, craning his neck and smearing a hole in the misted-up glass.

“The gate,” I told him.

He stared out into the storm for perhaps ten seconds. He could tell something was wrong. Then he realized the gates hung open. “Where are the locks? Where are those chains? I put them on myself.”

“Look down,” I said quietly.

“Ah I see them. Hey, they’re moving!” this last he shouted and several nervous sets of eyes came to rest on backs.

I didn’t shush him. I did not try to hide it from the others. Everyone would have to know soon enough. Something had changed our rusty chains into a writhing lump of chain-shaped snakes that even now were struggling not to drown in the vicious rains. They twisted and slithered free of the last of the chain link diamonds that ensnared their bodies. The sagging, homemade gate they had held tightly together hung open about a foot or so.

“It could just be the storm, right Gannon?”

I shook my head, I didn’t think so. Armed silent people moved up behind us and peered out the windows. Carlene took her baby into the back, her kid over one shoulder and a revolver in the other hand.

I pulled the Hag’s gift from my pocket, the sharpening stone stamped by her hoof, and I began sharpening my saber with long strokes. Orange sparks leapt from the blade and the bluish glow intensified. Vance looked at the stone, my gloved, misshapen hand and the sword. He licked his lips, breathing hard, and for once said nothing.

Outside, the gates burst open and dark shapes, moving fast and low to the ground, poured through into the parking lot.

It had begun.