Shifting

Nine

I walked pretty far downhill and had to be getting dammed close to the lakeshore. I couldn’t hear the water yet, but I could smell the lake and the cold, fresh breeze out there. Lake Monroe was big, the biggest body of water in Indiana. It covered more than ten thousand acres and like all big bodies of water it had its own ambience.

But there was something else out here with me besides the lake. I could feel it. Maybe I had been feeling these fissures to god-knew-where all along. Usually, when I had that funny feeling one of the changelings showed up. Maybe all along it had been because I was near their home turf. These thoughts opened up new doors in my mind, but I wasn’t sure where any of it led. I was excited, however, at the very idea of understanding the cataclysm that had stricken my world. How do you deal with events you really didn’t understand? It had been a terrifying ordeal for all of us who had managed to survive this long.

I was drawn out of my thoughts by a sudden wrongness. I halted and peered into the night off to my left, to the west. I felt I was becoming more sensitive to it, and whatever it was, it was too close for comfort. I took out the map and held the flashlight pinned under my arm while I made a tiny fractional change to the Preacher’s green line on the map, extending it closer to the lakeshore than it originally had been. I wished I had one of those geomapping gizmos that used satellites to pinpoint your position. Of course, it wouldn’t have worked.

A light mist was rising up from the lake as I scrutinized the map, and my flashlight grew dimmer, as if the batteries were dying. It wasn’t the mist affecting the flashlight I knew, or the batteries. I had put fresh ones in it before leaving home. Looking at the yellowing light of the dying bulb, I began to sweat. The sensation that something was near grew stronger. I snapped the light off, drew my saber and waited in the dark, listening.

My eyes adjusted to the light of the half-moon that shot silver threads down through the leafless trees. The forest was a gloomy dark purple with overlapping black shapes.

Slowly, I became aware of a deep purple glow in the direction of the shift-line. At first, I thought it was just an effect of the moonlight and the trees. But it persisted, and after a time, it moved. Obeying a feeling I didn’t completely understand, I followed the movement. It headed north toward the lakeshore. I matched it, walking slowly and trying not to stumble in the dark as I took a parallel path.

At times, the mist-like glow died down, at others it brightened. Perhaps this was the effect of intervening tree trunks. At the points where it brightened, it took on the shape of a human figure, I was certain of it. I kept shadowing it, certain that it was as aware of me as I was of it. Whatever it was, unlike the changelings I had met, it showed no signs of launching an attack. Was it hoping I would come closer? Was this dream-like experience what happened to everyone before they turned into a wild monster?

After a while we came into sight of the lakeshore. The figure halted and I halted too. I had hoped it would come out into the open on the shore and let me have a look at it. Apparently, it had no such plans.

I felt scrutiny, and I turned to face the thing that stood perhaps fifty yards to the west. The breeze coming in off the lake was cold and fresh and felt good. I felt an urge to speak to it, but didn’t.

“You trouble me, shadow,” came a voice from the forest. It was a woman’s voice, soft yet clear, despite the distance between us.

“Do you want me to leave?” I asked. I was startled at the idea. All the shifted things I had ever encountered only wanted to attack and destroy, not chat and enjoy the solitude of the woods.

“Would it matter?”

“No,” I admitted. It was all I could do to keep my emotions from coming up in my voice. This was the first conversation I’d ever heard of being struck up with a changeling, which she so obviously was.

“You don’t approach me. Aren’t you curious?”

“Very much so.”

“Are you afraid then?”

I thought about that for a second before saying, “I am patient.”

She paused a second, glimmering. I’d seen some of the changelings glow a bit in the dark before, but usually everyone was trying to put as much light as possible on them when they showed up. I was drawn to her in that moment. I really wanted to see what my eyes were straining toward in the somber night. I kept my feet rooted, however. All I could make out was a vague figure, outlined in a lavender-blue haze.

“Do you know the one who slew your father?”

My jaw tensed. Was the thing taunting me? I decided to taunt it in return. “Yes, the Captain blew its jack-o-lantern head off.”

“And do you wish to know of the one that slew your mother?”

I sucked in a gulp of cold air.

“I know the one who did it,” she said.

She almost had me then. I lifted my right boot and placed it down one step closer to her. Then with a great effort of will, I stopped.

“Was it you?” I hissed. I felt a rage come over me, but I held myself in check.

“Come to me, and you will know the truth.”

My feet wanted to move, but I held them firmly. I reached into my pocket and groped for the pistol the Captain had given me.

“Why don’t you come out on the shore so I can get a better look at you?” I asked, angry now. I pulled the.45 out and thumbed off the safety. I doubted I could thread a slug through all the trees, but then again, maybe it was worth a try.

“The time is not right for you to walk the waters of the lake,” the apparition replied. Perhaps suspecting my murderous thoughts, she turned back into the woods and began that slow processional walk again along same the path we had taken down to the lakeshore. I fell into step again, shadowing her. The gun was in my hand, but I restrained myself. We needed information more than we needed vengeance.

“You are indeed a patient one, my shadow,” she said after a few dozen more steps. “Patience is one of the rarest of virtues.”

I said nothing and concentrated on not tripping over the roots and undergrowth. My eyes had grown accustomed enough to pick out obvious obstacles. It seemed I could see in the gloom where before I could not. My heart quickened in my chest, could it be she had changed my vision somehow? Was I even now shifting into something? Was this how it happened? Imperceptible changes at first, monstrosity to inevitably follow? I looked up at the moon and it still seemed to shine with the same silver-white light. I took a deep breath and calmed myself.

When I looked back for the figure, it was gone. I stopped dead and scanned the forest quietly.

“Changeling? Are you there?”

The breeze stiffened up from the lake and made the highest branches waver and rattle like black fingers beseeching the skies, but there came no answer, no hint of any presence. I had lost her. The natural thing to do was to walk to the spot where she had been, to look about for her, but I held back the urge. Perhaps this was another trick.

I retraced my steps to the lakeshore, and then quietly moved along it to the spot where I thought she might have stood. There, I found a loose pile of stones. My heart accelerated when I noticed that one of the stones was glowing. I reached down and touched it. There was an impression in the stone, like that of a three-pointed hoof.

I gazed at the faintly glimmering stone for a few moments, uncertain. It had a light blue haze about it. The odd thing was that if you looked at it directly, you couldn’t really see anything unusual. Only if you focused your eyes on something else to one side of it did you notice the soft glow.

I took the imprinted stone. It was about as big as my palm. I slid it into my pocket where it felt faintly warm.

Using the rest of the stones, I formed a small pile to mark the spot. When I had finished, I turned and followed the lakeshore eastwards toward Redmoor.

I thought about the thing I’d met in the woods tonight and how in days gone by it would have been described as a succubus, or a ghost, or a siren, or perhaps even a mermaid if found at sea. I wondered about men who’d walked lonely spots like this one in centuries past and encountered such strange things, things I myself would have called a myth or a legend just a few months earlier. It seemed clear to me now that all of those ancient stories and legends were true and full accountings. I felt pity for all those who had been ridiculed and disbelieved throughout time.

Occasionally, my hand strayed to my pocket and I touched the flat, rounded, rough stone. It was still slightly warm.