Shadow Walkers

by Brent Hartinger

  I also couldn’t blink—I couldn’t even close my eyes. My eyes weren’t my “eyes”—they weren’t my way of seeing. I simply “saw” what was around me, even if the information still seemed to be coming in through my eyes.

  As I kept floating there, I looked over at my body lying in bed. It was still bizarre to see myself, to be outside myself, but now that I was more mentally prepared, it didn’t seem so scary. I was back to liking the way the whole experience made me feel, the sense of oneness and a growing giddiness about the possibility of it all.

  As I looked at myself, I saw a faint line of silver light, like an umbilical cord, flowing out from behind the head of my physical body. About the width of a wrist, it spiraled out through the pillow, rising up and gently winding around to connect with the back of my spiritual head.

  The silver cord. Voyage Beyond the Rainbow hadn’t said anything about this, but I’d heard about it before, even if I couldn’t think where. It was a line of energy that connected the astral body to the physical one.

  I reached over to touch it. It was warm and soft, but pliable, like some kind of gel. I could run my hand all the way through it, and I felt a gentle pulse. It was only after I’d touched it that it occurred to me how strange it was that I could feel it at all. I’d passed my hand through the nightstand, but I hadn’t been able to feel anything.

  I reached over and felt my own astral arm. Sure enough, I could feel it, just as solid as in the real world—and much more solid than the silver cord. So I guess I was able to touch and feel things that were with me in the astral dimension.

  By now, I’d stopped wobbling. Somehow I found my balance and was hanging motionless in the air. Suddenly the feeling of weightlessness didn’t feel so uncontrollable. Suddenly I felt lighter than air, like I could fly.

  I was in a non-physical realm, a world of the mind. That meant I didn’t travel by physical means, but by mental ones: will power, not horsepower.

  I imagined that I was the spot of light that had been hovering above my head. I let that spot float upward, and I began gently rising, too. All I had to do was will myself somewhere, and that’s where I went. It was even easier than walking or riding a bike. Those things still involved the brain sending messages to the body—messages that weren’t necessary in a place where the mind was the body.

  I kept rising, like a human helium balloon with the silver cord for a string. I floated right through the ceiling, through a blackness that must have been the attic, and right out into the night sky.

  It was even darker than it usually was on Hinder Island, so far away from the city lights of Tacoma and Seattle. In the astral dimension, the moon looked different—not just darker, but smudged, like a dirty paper lantern—but I could still see enough to make out up from down, and soon I’d even risen up to the treetops. I barely even noticed the height—what did it matter if you fell in a non-physical dimension anyway? Plus, I was still focused.

  I thought about all that had happened in the last ten minutes: how my spirit had left my physical body and was rising upward like a balloon. But I wasn’t panicking this time. Just like I’d quickly gotten used to the idea of not needing to breathe, I was getting used to the rest of it, too. Maybe all the time I’d spent online, traveling through the disembodied mind-world of cyberspace, had somehow prepared me for being outside myself in the astral world.

  But the astral world was like cyberspace times a million. Here, you didn’t just watch from a chair in your bedroom or the couch in your living room. Here, you were there.

  Whether it was because of the incense or just the experience itself, my mind was still focused. I was experiencing all my emotions—especially the giddiness, the growing sense of possibility—but it was like I was outside those emotions too, like they were clouds overhead, and I could also watch them passing by.

  I kept rising up, until I was far above the trees. At the same time, I was also moving slightly to the east, slowing drifting on some kind of vague ethereal breeze. I could see the mainland in the distance, the humming waterfront development that rimmed almost the entire Puget Sound like lace on a valentine. But it was mostly dark underneath me, just trees and water—a vast shadowy void in the center of a world of light.

  I looked out over the world and thought, From here, I can find Gilbert, no matter where in the world he is.

  And I was going to.

  Celestia Moonglow had written that the astral dimension was a spiritual dimension, not a physical one. Even distances don’t exist in the way that they do in the material world, she’d said.

  I wasn’t sure what this meant exactly, but it reminded me, once again, of the Internet. Distances didn’t matter there, either—everything anywhere in the world was easily accessible with just a few clicks or touches.

  I immediately thought about what I’d done when I was looking for Gilbert online: I’d done a search. I’d started with a text search, gradually narrowing down my parameters, but I’d also done video and photo searches.

  I obviously couldn’t do any of that here. But if distances didn’t really matter, maybe I could hear Gilbert wherever he was. Maybe I could search for the sound of him.

  So I listened.

  I didn’t hear anything at first, just the muffled moan/hiss that I’d heard the first time I’d entered this strange dimension.

  Then a woman coughed.

  Did that mean there was someone else nearby—some other astral traveler doing a little shadow-surfing before bed?

  I heard something else: a cat’s meow, long and plaintive. These noises sounded different than they might in the real world. They sounded hollow, with a slight echo, like they were coming from the bottom of a deep well. They definitely didn’t sound like they were coming from directly around me.

  A little girl squealed.

  A man shouted at the top of his lungs.

  A group of people recited the Pledge of Allegiance.

  The more I listened, the more I heard. It was like doing an Internet search in the sense that I was getting an almost infinite number of results.

  It was also a little like listening to the sounds of Hinder Island, each of them coming at you one by one. The difference was that I couldn’t tell where they were coming from. I could tell the direction of each one, but not the distance. That’s when I realized that they were all coming from the astral roar—like it was made up of lots and lots of individual sounds and, when I listened closely, I was somehow able to distinguish them. But unlike on the island, I was only hearing the sounds of living things, not the sound of the wind blowing through the leaves or the jingling of the wind chimes.

  A woman read a bedtime story.

  A dog howled at the moon.

  A girl sang “Amazing Grace” in German.

  In German? I thought.

  As I listened, I heard even more sounds. And just like an Internet search, most of it had nothing to do with what I was looking for.

  I decided to expand my search parameters. I opened myself up wider, like a sail catching the wind, and the sounds kept coming. There were definitely other languages—Chinese, Spanish, and others I didn’t recognize. Soon the voices were hardly recognizable as individual sounds, only a rising rumble of noise.

  It continued to swell, even as it kept blending together. This wasn’t like the sounds of the island at all—these were the sounds of a crowd. Soon it was overwhelming, and still it grew. I suddenly felt very small, not like I was one with the universe, but like I was standing in the middle of a vast ocean—in the hollow way things sounded, but also in the way everything felt around me. It was as if the trees and houses of Hinder Island didn’t even exist. Voyage Beyond the Rainbow said the astral dimension was a separate plane of existence from the material dimension, and it was clearly true. But it was also a really big dimension, and it was like I could suddenly feel it stretching int
o eternity. So much for having a grip on my emotions. Suddenly, I wished this was a dream, so that I could wake up.

  I clamped my hands over my ears. “Stop!” I said to the universe.

  And even though I wasn’t hearing the sounds through my ears, it worked: the noises stopped—all except for the distant, barren moan.

  Gilbert. I needed to find my brother. But I couldn’t just jump recklessly into the river of sound—that was too overwhelming. I had to deconstruct the roar, sorting through the noises like jelly beans, red and green and yellow and black and purple, looking for the elusive blue one.

  So that’s what I did, cautiously at first, being careful not to let them build, not to let it all overwhelm me.

  But I still didn’t hear Gilbert.

  This is taking too long! I thought. If I had to sort through every noise in the astral dimension, I’d be there forever.

  I needed to focus. I needed to listen for Gilbert, and Gilbert alone. What did he sound like? What noise would he be making right now?

  That’s when I heard it: the sniffle of a little boy.

  Gilbert’s sniffle. I was sure it was him. I’d recognize the sound of him anywhere. He was alive, at least.

  But if I could hear him, maybe that meant he could also hear me.

  “Gilbert!” I said to the breeze. “I’m here! Stay where you are—I’m coming to get you.”

  But how? Celestia Moonglow had said distances didn’t exist in the astral dimension, but she hadn’t said anything more about it. Most of the book had been about getting into the astral dimension—not what to do once you got there.

  I could tell which direction the sound was coming from, just like in the physical world, so I started moving myself toward it.

  It was slow at first, but soon I was flying across the sky like a wobbly Peter Pan. I flew south, past the lighthouse at Trumble Point, faintly glowing even in the astral dimension. Then I headed southeast right over Puget Sound.

  Looking down, I realized there must have been a wind that night, because there were whitecaps in the water down below—choppy little peaks that glowed in the moonlight—rising, then collapsing again. But while there was a breeze in the astral dimension, it was that ethereal one, blowing in a different direction. I couldn’t feel the real wind at all.

  When I reached the mainland, I listened again. The city of Tacoma was on my left, up to the north, stretched out in a smoky glow. But I could hear that Gilbert was somewhere to the south—somewhere in the vast swath of darkness out past the lights of the city. That’s the direction I turned.

  I started moving horizontally across the sky, still unsteady, but less so. Because there was no friction in the astral dimension, the faster I flew, the faster I continued to fly. The windows of houses glowed below me, along with streetlights and headlights. But then I crossed over a freeway, and the glowing lights finally gave way to fields and forests, and I found myself mostly passing over the tips of dark, shaggy trees.

  Before I knew it, I was many miles south of the urban area. By car, it would have taken me at least an hour to get here, but it had only been ten minutes as the crow—er, spirit—flies.

  Gilbert’s crying wasn’t louder exactly, but somehow I knew it was closer. I slowed myself down.

  Something flat and grey stretched out irregularly in the darkness up ahead—a lake, I realized. And nestled down below me along the shore of the lake, partially hidden by the dark spires of the forest, was a row of cabins. The lights were off in most of them, but not all of them.

  Gilbert was inside one of the cabins with its lights on. I knew exactly which one. There was a white SUV parked out front.

  I didn’t think, just swooped down to the cabin, then through the roof, right inside.

  ———

  It was only a little lighter inside than it had been outside. A fixture hung above a round dinner table, burning dimly.

  But there was enough light to see I’d been right: Gilbert sat sniffling at the dinner table. His feet and hands were tied, and the chest of his T-shirt was wet with snot and tears.

  “Gilbert!” I said, literally flying to his side. He really had been kidnapped, but at least now I knew what had happened to him. “It’s okay. I’m here now.”

  But when I bent down to untie my brother, my hands passed right through his legs exactly the way my body had passed through buildings. I still wasn’t completely used to the astral dimension.

  “Damn it,” I said. I knew what had happened to Gilbert, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it. I saw now that the astral dimension wasn’t better than cyberspace in every respect. There you had at least some influence in the real world. Here you were in a completely separate place, unable to affect things at all.

  My brother kept sniffling.

  “Gilbert!” I said. “It’s me—Zach. I found you!”

  He didn’t react. He didn’t even know I was there.

  “Gilbert, listen to me! Everything’s going to be all right. Just hold tight.” I didn’t want to leave my brother alone again, but I knew I needed to go get help.

  Right then, someone stepped into the front room of the cabin from a room separated by swinging doors—the kitchen. It was an older woman in a dark coat—one of those former-model types with a too-taut face and hair that was too blond for her age. She was the kind of person who might be seen on Hinder Island for a weekend or so, staying in one of the high-end bed-and-breakfasts, but she’d never live there. She carried a glass of water that she placed on the table in front of Gilbert.

  The kidnapper.

  “There you go,” she said to Gilbert. “I’m sorry I can’t untie you, but I think you can still hold it, can’t you?”

  Gilbert just started crying harder.

  “What are you doing with my little brother?” I shouted at her.

  But of course she didn’t respond, just kept looking sadly at Gilbert. She couldn’t hear me either.

  “Everything’s going to be okay,” she said to him gently. “I promise.”

  “It’s not going to be okay!” I said. “Not unless you take him back home!”

  She hesitated.

  Suddenly a second person stuck his head into the front room from the kitchen, a man talking on a cell phone. He was older than the woman, probably in his sixties. His teeth were almost blindingly white, and his hair just as unnaturally dark as the woman’s was blond.

  “Evelyn!” he snapped at the woman. “Would you please shut him the hell up for just one minute?”

  “I’m trying,” the woman—Evelyn—said. “But your shouting isn’t helping any.”

  “Yes, I’m still here,” the man said into the cell phone. “No, he’s fine. He just won’t stop crying.”

  “How about a cookie?” Evelyn said to Gilbert. “I bet you’d like a cookie. No, wait, we don’t have any. How about some Melba toast?”

  Gilbert just kept crying.

  “I don’t understand!” I said, even though I knew no one could hear me. “Why did you kidnap Gilbert?” I’d never seen either of these people before.

  Evelyn hesitated again. She glanced over in my direction.

  What was this? I’d just assumed that no one could hear me in the real world, but maybe I was wrong.

  “Can you hear me?” I said.

  She didn’t seem to. Instead, she tried another approach with Gilbert. Spotting the crystal centerpiece in the middle of the table, she pushed it closer to Gilbert. “Look at this,” she said in a softer voice. “Isn’t it pretty? It’s Waterford.”

  “I know what you did!” I shouted at Evelyn. “I know you kidnapped my little brother, and I’m going to tell the police! What do you think about that?”

  Meanwhile, the crystal centerpiece actually seemed to get Gilbert’s attention. He was still crying, but it was back t
o a sniffle now. Even though his hands were still tied, he reached for the crystal.

  “Stop!” Evelyn said, suddenly horrified. “I didn’t say you could touch it, did I?”

  Gilbert burst out bawling.

  I floated closer to Evelyn so I could talk right in her ear.

  “I know you can hear me,” I said, my voice rising. “When I turn you in, you’re going to rot in jail. Did you hear that? Rot in jail.”

  Evelyn turned toward me. I think she was scowling, but it was hard to tell given all the work she’d had done on her face. Still, it seemed like she was about to say something.

  Instead, she stepped forward, walking right through me.

  I felt a tingle up and down my whole body. It wasn’t strong, like that scene in the movie Ghost where the wife walks through the ghost of her dead husband, and he’s overcome by her essence. It felt more like I’d walked through a spider’s web. Still, I felt something. What did that mean—that you could impact the physical world from the astral one? Of course Celestia Moonglow hadn’t said anything about any of this.

  “Uh huh,” the man was saying into the phone, having returned from the kitchen. “Uh huh. Yes, definitely—we’ll meet you there.” He cut off the call and looked over at Evelyn, glaring at her. “Do you think you could have been a little louder?”

  Evelyn ignored him. She was pacing back and forth in the front room. “My God, Conrad. What have we done?”

  “You kidnapped my little brother!” I said. “That’s what you did! And when the police find you, you’re both going to fry!”

  “We did what we had to do,” Conrad said to her. “We didn’t have any choice.”

  “No choice?” I shouted. “Of course you had a choice! And you still have a choice—you can take Gilbert home right now.”