by B. V. Larson
They both blinked at me. I looked from one face to the next.
“What’s with your hand?” asked Mrs. Hatchell. She looked pointedly at the abomination I kept jammed in my pocket.
“I injured it,” I said smoothly. I had practiced the lie, and it came out sounding very natural. I wondered how long I could keep it concealed. Perhaps, just long enough for me to prove myself to the rest of them.
“Gannon,” said Monika. Her face had that scared-kid look I found most endearing. “What if he decides that we aren’t good enough?”
I looked back at her for a moment. Her eyes flicked down to my hidden hand, and then back to my face. She knew. Mrs. H. was only starting to suspect, but Monika knew. I had noticed hints before, but now I was sure. She knew my hand had gone bad, and she knew the Preacher wouldn’t like it, and now she didn’t like him, because he was a threat to me.
“You two are so sappy,” Hatchell said suddenly, misinterpreting our close, wordless exchange. She shook her head and tsked. “This office romance would be enjoyable, if we weren’t all about to get butchered. Promise me that if you have a spat, neither of you tries to leave until we survive this storm and the trick-or-treaters I’m expecting to see tonight.”
“There aren’t going to be any trick-or-treaters,” said Holly, walking in our conversation. Her eyes were hard, but there was a touch of a lost look on her too-young face. I felt bad for her. “Not ever again.”
“We’ll see about that,” I said.
She came closer and I saw she had a Bowie knife in her hands. She thunked it tip-first into the table that still had a few cold sausages on it. “Tonight, I’m going to stand by you, whatever happens.”
I nodded and smiled. I knew she meant it. She couldn’t have weighed eighty pounds yet, but I knew she would fight, no matter what happened. She wasn’t a kid anymore. Others might freeze up or run, but not her. She would fight, and that made her valuable.
“I’ll be glad to have you there,” I told her, and I meant it.
Wilton came in then, followed by the rest of them. The Preacher came in last. Wilton set the lantern, with my coat still over it, on the big, low kids’ coloring table that occupied one corner of the lobby. I had always liked that corner as a child. It had bead-puzzles and blocks and the fish tank in it, along with some heavily-eared magazines and books. I’d played there, what now seemed like a century ago.
The lantern was heavy, and I was amazed Wilton had carried it so far. She half slumped over it now, and even though she had put it down, she kept at least one hand resting on top of it. It’s got her fixated, I thought to myself. I knew that power it had very well.
Vance came over to me and handed me a shotgun, or at least he tried to. I thought it must have been the one from the police cruiser, but I refused it with a wave. “I’ll stick to my sword.”
He shook his head, “Brother, if these guys are right about what is coming tonight, you’ll need it. This is one of our last shotguns, most of the rest burned up over at Billson’s ages ago.”
Our one hunting shop in town had died an early death. Someone followed by two loping monsters had run in there, no doubt seeking some personal protection. Somehow, in the following battle, everyone inside had died, including the changelings. But the place had caught fire and burned, removing most of our ammunition and weapons from the town.
Just the same, I knew I could never work a shotgun with one hand, and I didn’t want to even try to work it with my warped hand.
“Have you got a pistol?” I asked.
He nodded and handed me a semi-automatic. I looked a bit plain, but serviceable.
“What is it?” I asked him.
“I don’t know,” he shrugged. “It’s Russian or German I guess. It takes 9mm standard ammo. Found it in one of the houses down the block. We went on some scavenging missions. I think we’ve got plenty of guns for everyone in the center. But ammo is going to be low, and we don’t have enough of any one type to match up all the guns.”
I found the stamp on it, made in Jordan, it said. I hoped the sucker wouldn’t jam on me. “Just one clip?” I asked.
He tossed me a back up, and, right there, I almost blew it. My right hand had the pistol, so I automatically yanked my left out to catch the clip. I stopped myself just in time. The clip bounced off my gut and clattered to the ground. Monika dove for it, snatched up the clip and shoved it into my right coat pocket. I put the pistol in there with it. I wondered how the hell I was going to reload.
“You asleep?” asked Vance. We had often tossed balls back and forth in the living room for years, tennis balls, footballs, even while watching TV. Especially while watching TV. It used to drive our mom nuts. He knew I rarely dropped anything.
“You were aiming for my balls, weren’t you?” I accused and faked a smile.
He smiled back, but looked a bit confused. Still, it got him off the topic. He could be like a birddog if you let him get onto a scent.
Monika grabbed my arm then, the bad one, and tugged at me. “I’ve got something for you,” she said in a near-whisper. It was noisy enough in the room that no one else noticed her. Everyone was bustling about. We had lived through a storm before, and we would do it again. The center had walls now, and we were prepared. Or at least, we thought we were, I wasn’t so sure, but I wasn’t going to say anything about my doubts. I hadn’t told people about the things on the beach or the things at the bottom of the sea. They would see horrors enough on their own soon.
I let Monika drag me down a hallway and into a room with an X-ray machine in it. I wondered if I would ever get another X-ray during the rest of my life.
“Here,” she said, and she had a large, black leather glove. It was a left-handed glove. She had a strange look on her face, as if she were involved in a crime. It was the furtive expression people in her country must have worn when they hid contraband from the communists a generation before.
I looked at the glove. I blinked at it not knowing what to say, her trust in me was sweet—she was so sweet. She didn’t care if I was part monster, she just wanted to protect me from the others. I took the glove with my good hand and then I hugged her tightly. I jerked my head, indicating that she should leave while a put it on.
“Put it on,” she said, looking me in the eye. Her look told me that she wouldn’t retch, that she wouldn’t run screaming, that she wouldn’t tell on me, or leave me. But I knew that having lizard fingers, even in a glove, would be a turn off for any girl. I moved behind the X-ray shield, with its tiny window of leaded glass, to put it on. There was a sink back there, and I felt the dry chaffing of my leathery new hand when it came out of my pocket. I wondered if it was part sea turtle, it felt so dry and chapped. It was not at all happy to be away from the watery world it was created in. I turned on the tap water, wanting to wet my curled thick fingers just a moment before I cruelly shoved them into a rabbit skin glove. The sink stuttered and thumped. I’d forgotten, the power was out and the pumps hadn’t been on for days. Still, the faucet pissed out a dribble of cool water on my hand. I rubbed it over the whole thing, as far as it would go. It was like a teaspoon of butter spread over a mile of thirsty bread, but it felt good anyway.
“Do you need help?” called Monika delicately.
I shook my head and tried to jam my strange hand into the glove. The fingers were too thick, especially the knuckles. It was like putting on clothes two sizes too small. When I finally had it on, one of the glove fingers sagged and flopped emptily, of course. I only had three fingers and a short thumb now. Still, it looked pretty good if I kept it relaxed. If I clenched a fist, that one missing finger was obvious, but if I was careful, the whole thing would pass a lax inspection.
I managed to get a fake grin on my face when I turned back to face my faithful girlfriend. I held up the glove and wriggled my fingers a bit inside it. She smiled at first, but the wriggling was a mistake. The fingers move in an unnatural, clutching motion. I ignored her expression and kept the grin pasted on. I put
the hand back down at my side.
“Thanks, Monika,” I told her.
In answer, she kissed me. We kept kissing for a bit, and then I noticed that it had grown quiet out in the hallway. I glanced at the door, and underneath, a faint kaleidoscope of lights flickered, as if there was a rainbow out there or maybe one of those disco balls doing a slow spin.
Someone had uncovered the lantern, I knew it in an instant.
I released Monika and strode to the door, throwing it open.
“Don’t look at it,” I told her over my shoulder.
She nodded in confusion.
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 t
he 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.”