The Summer It Came for Us

by Rix, Dan

  He sighed. “Parallel universes, Remi. The supercollider connected us to a parallel universe.”

  “Par—parallel universes?” I repeated dumbly.

  His gaze softened. “Alright, let’s back up. You ever heard of the Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics?”

  Now he was just being mean. “Maybe we should go back to the twigs.”

  “It says there’s an infinite number of universes that overlap with our own in time and space, each playing out a slightly different version of reality. Every time something can go one of two ways, there is a separate universe for each branch. In other words, there’s a universe where Vincent lived, and there’s a universe where Vincent died . . . and they’re overlapping in space. All you need to do is punch a hole in one to get to the other.”

  “A black hole,” I whispered, finally beginning to understand.

  “Exactly,” he said. “When two black holes connect, they form what’s called a wormhole, allowing you to travel between the two. Without knowing it, when they fired up the collider, the high-energy particle collisions created a wormhole between our universe—where Vincent lived—and a parallel universe where Vincent died.”

  I struggled to keep up. “So the night we crashed . . . the night we crashed, we must have . . .”

  “Yes, Remi,” he said, holding my gaze, “the night we crashed, we drove through a wormhole.”

  We drove through a wormhole.

  I blinked as it registered, as it all clicked into place, as at last I understood. “So that means—does that mean Vincent’s still alive in that other universe?”

  He grinned. “That’s where he’s been calling and texting from. We must be getting a weak signal through the wormhole.”

  “But . . . but how—?”

  Suddenly, Malcolm jerked his head to the side and raised a finger to his lips.

  “What?”

  “Shh!”

  Then I heard it too.

  A shrill hiss, like someone trying and failing to whistle.

  Jace.

  Our eyes widened at the same time.

  “Come on.” Malcolm grabbed my wrist and pulled me back toward the car before I’d even had a chance to process our revelation.

  I figured the DIA people must have found our car, but we found Jace alone, peering off the edge of the road toward a shadowy knot of moss-covered trunks and dense ivy.

  “Guys, we got company.” He pointed toward the trees.

  I followed his finger toward what, at first, just looked like part of the forest.

  Then I saw it.

  Rising out of the dappled shade and draping across tree limbs was a shadow that had no business being there—the shadow of a nine-foot-tall man.

  A terrible chill slid down my spine, as the hairs on my scalp lifted.

  It was here. In broad daylight. Stalking us.

  The Glipper.

  But I wasn’t so scared now, knowing it wasn’t a monster, or a ghost, or an extraterrestrial.

  Was it even alive? Or was it simply the embodiment of a force of nature, like gravity or electricity? A projection onto the surface of something that existed much deeper in the fabric of reality?

  Was it God? A spirit? Or something more primitive than that, something woven into space and time itself?

  Staring at it now, I had the strangest feeling that the Glipper had always been there—standing in dark rooms, hovering at the edge of my periphery, existing for a split-second behind my reflection in mirrors—and that I was only now able to see it.

  It wasn’t evil.

  No, but it wasn’t compassionate or loving, either. Those concepts had no meaning to it.

  It was a being tasked with caring for the universe, as a sort of steward, and it existed for one purpose and one purpose only—to repair the damage.

  But then why was it here for us? Why did it keep following us?

  We still didn’t have an answer.

  And right now, as it stared us down, that small unknown began to grow and thicken into fear.

  What on earth did it want with us?

  The Glipper moved closer.

  It coiled around tree trunks and hopped from branch to branch, moving like a phantom.

  Where there weren’t trees, its shadow advanced across the ground, coiling through the ivy like black smoke.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Tripping over his heels, Jace backed up into Malcolm’s car.

  The Glipper paused in the shade at the edge of the forest, then leapt to the shadows under the convertible, forming a darker shadow against the pavement as it crawled under the chassis toward Jace’s legs.

  “Jesus—fuck—get away!” Jace scrambled over the bumper, and retreated into the sunny street.

  The Glipper slinked around under the car, confined to the shade.

  Jace continued to back away.

  “Jace, stay where you are,” Malcolm ordered, running forward. “It can’t get you in the sun.”

  But Jace was still backing up, looking terrified. “It’s—it’s after me—it’s after me because I died.”

  He crossed the double yellow line, backing toward the shade on the other side.

  “Whatever you do, stay out of the shadows,” Malcolm warned.

  “Jace, stop moving!” I called, realizing the danger.

  His heel skimmed the blurry shadows of the highest branches, which swayed in the wind. Still under the car, the Glipper slithered around like an eel, impatient to strike.

  “Jace, don’t move,” Malcolm yelled. “Don’t go into the shadows!”

  “It’s coming for me next,” he mumbled, not listening.

  “Jace, please stop,” I begged.

  Shaking his head, he stepped into the dark mud on the opposite shoulder, sinking ankle-deep in shade.

  The rest happened in an instant.

  The Glipper vanished from under the car and reappeared under him. In what looked like an optical illusion, its long shadowy arm peeled off the dirt and latched around his foot.

  “Jace!” I cried, as it began pulling him into the ground.

  As if being sucked into quicksand, he sank up to his calf, then his knee, then his thigh.

  He screamed and scratched at the road. “Help me . . . help me!”

  Malcolm and I rushed forward, grabbed him under the arms, and heaved. We regained an inch, two inches—“That’s it, that’s it!” Malcolm whooped—before Jace’s body was jerked from our grasp, sending us sprawling.

  Buried up to his hips, Jace yelled and reached for nearby shrubs, which snapped off in his hands as he was yanked deeper—up to his chest, then his neck.

  Again, we grabbed him by the armpits, but it was too late. I couldn’t hold him, and slowly, agonizingly, his sweaty arm slipped through mine.

  His scream was choked off by the dirt, leaving only his wide eyes, silently pleading for help.

  His hand, still groping for something to hold onto, slid through Malcolm’s grasp, and then, with a hideous slurp, he was sucked down into the dirt.

  A ringing silence fell over the forest.

  “Jace, hold on!” In desperation, I knelt and raked at the ground, clawing out fistfuls of dirt to dig him out. My frantic breaths scratched at my lungs.

  But where he should have been, there was only sand and clay and roots.

  He wasn’t under the ground.

  Gone.

  He was gone.

  “Remi . . . Remi . . . REMI.” Malcolm’s voice finally brought me back to the present, to the frightful buzzing in my ears. “Look—”

  He pointed to the shadow of the Glipper, crawling back into the woods over vines and roots . . . now dragging behind it Jace’s struggling shadow.

  Chapter 23

  It had dragged Jace down into whatever sub-dimension it came from, and now, like the Glipper, he was only a shadow.

  I was still watching in horror when I heard Jace’s distant, echoey voice.

  “Remi, help me . . . help meeee . . .”

 
Somehow, he sounded like he was inside my head and miles away at the same time.

  He must still be here somewhere!

  “Jace where are you?” I ran after his shadow, tripping over the roots. “Can you hear me?”

  “Remi . . .”

  His shadow vanished in a thicket, came out the other side, and climbed a nearby oak.

  “Jace, hold on.” I lunged at the trunk and tried to grab him, but it was just bark.

  I couldn’t touch his shadow.

  I backed up, eyes darting after the Glipper’s jerky movements. “Jace, where are you? What do you see?”

  “. . . all flat . . . you’re all flat,” came his reply, now barely a whisper on the wind, “. . . getting farther and farther away . . . into darkness . . .”

  His words made me frantic. We were losing him.

  “Remi, stand back.” Malcolm stepped up next to me, his pistol raised toward the Glipper.

  I just had time to slap my ears before he opened fire.

  The shots were still like firecrackers exploding in my skull. The gun bucked in his hand, ejecting puffs of smoke.

  Under the Glipper’s shadow, the wood splintered and blew off in slivers, raining down through the shafts of sunlight.

  Just then, two soldiers from the roadblock crashed through the brush to join us—a man and a woman.

  I thought for sure they’d arrest us. Instead, they radioed in, “Glipper in sight south of checkpoint . . . will attempt to engage, over.”

  They flanked Malcolm and added their firepower to his, their semi-automatic machineguns blazing, spewing out smoking shells.

  Under the onslaught of bullets, trunks blew open, bushes ripped into shreds, branches cracked and ricocheted away.

  I dropped to the ground and curled into a fetal position against a tree, hands clamped over my ears.

  Malcolm emptied his clip, swiped it out for another, racked the slide and continued firing.

  BANG–BANG–BANG . . .

  He never missed.

  But the Glipper moved from one chewed-up tree to another, unharmed.

  Because, of course, you couldn’t kill something by shooting at its shadow.

  Malcolm lowered the gun.

  “It’s no use, you can’t hit it,” he said, and then he bellowed, “JACE!”

  The two soldiers stopped shooting. Except for their crackling radios and the wind rustling through leaves, all was quiet in the forest.

  The creature was still alive.

  Dragging Jace’s still-struggling shadow, the Glipper stepped out through the haze of smoke and sawdust, stared at us for a moment, and faded into nothing.

  When the smoke cleared, it was gone.

  A moment later we heard Jace’s distant, bloodcurdling scream.

  And that was the last we saw of him.

  Chapter 24

  And then there were two.

  Malcolm drove. His convertible dragged us around turn after turn, driving nowhere. Into the mountains. Away.

  Just away.

  I couldn’t believe it.

  Jace had been taken by the Glipper right before our eyes, and it was horrible. It was worse than horrible.

  The way he’d sunk into the ground like that, right into the dirt, like it was quicksand—just picturing it, I broke out in shivers, despite the summer heat. Malcolm took his hand off the stick to squeeze my hand. My cold, sweaty hand.

  Then back to shifting.

  We were dead.

  We were so dead. Malcolm knew it. I knew it. Zoe had known it. And in those last few moments, Jace had known it.

  “We’ll stay in the sunlight,” he said. “We’ll keep the lights on. This isn’t over.”

  “Forever? We’ll keep the lights on, forever?”

  “This isn’t over, Remi.”

  “But what does it want with us?” My voice barely came out a whimper.

  Already, the sun was dipping below the trees, casting longer and longer shadows. Soon it would be dusk.

  Soon, the Glipper would come for us.

  We would never be safe. Even in sunlight, even with all the lights on. The Glipper had come for Jace in the heat of the afternoon, in broad daylight. All it needed was a hint of shadow, and there were always shadows.

  “We’ll find a way to kill it,” he growled. “We’ll figure out what it wants.”

  “What does it matter?” I mumbled. “It’s just going to take us, just like it took Jace.”

  He clamped his jaw, said nothing.

  His silence was scariest of all.

  I hung my head in my hands and moaned, “What did we do to it? Why does it hate us so much?”

  “I don’t know, when it attacked Vincent ten years ago, it was defending a wormhole, right? Like a white blood cell protects a cut while it heals. So maybe it’s because we used a wormhole, and now we’re tainted or something.” He shook his head, no closer to an answer then I was.

  But something about what he said made me hesitate, and I felt my eyebrows pull together.

  A white blood cell . . . a cut . . . while it heals . . .

  My eyes widened. “I know why.”

  “Why what?”

  I sat up in my seat and grabbed his arm, suddenly breathless. “Malcolm, I know why! I know why it’s after us!”

  But it was more than just that, it was everything. Every strange clue, every bizarre coincidence, every oddity of the car crash. It all made perfect sense to me now. You just had to think about it the right way.

  “A cut . . . a wormhole is like a cut in space-time, right?” I said.

  “Right,” he said slowly.

  “Well, why do white blood cells need to be around when a cut heals? They fight infection, right? They protect the body against foreign invaders—bacteria, germs, viruses, parasites—all the things that don’t belong in a body.”

  “Go on,” he said, chewing the inside of his lip.

  “We don’t belong in this universe—you said so yourself—which means we’re invaders . . . we’re like foreign cells in the human body . . . and that’s exactly what an immune system does, it attacks foreign cells.”

  Malcolm narrowed his eyes. “You think it’s attacking us because this isn’t our native universe?”

  “No, listen,” I said. “There’s more. So the Glipper’s sole purpose is to fight infection, right? That’s why it’s always hanging around wormholes, and that’s why you saw it standing by the road the night of the crash—it was there in case something went through.”

  I took a big breath and continued, gathering momentum, “The wormhole was at the bottom of the hill. When we crashed, the entire car went through it, totally by chance, and ended up in this parallel universe. But in this universe, we hadn’t gone out that night—because Vincent didn’t exist to give us the idea—so Jace’s car was still in his garage. And I think I know what happened to us.”

  Malcolm was nodding along, looking impressed. “We were still in the car.”

  “Right,” I said, “but now there were two versions of us. I think because humans are self-aware or they have souls or something, there can only be one of them in each universe. So we vanished from the car and became our doubles, who were sleeping at the time. It’s like they got overwritten. At some point inside the wormhole, the Glipper must have tried to grab me, and that’s where I got the scratches.”

  “What about Jace?” said Malcolm. “There were two of him.”

  I paused to think about it, and then had the answer. “Jace died. He died in the car crash before he could fully transfer over. That’s why we found his body. The Jace we’ve been interacting with is the Jace from this universe. I think that’s why he thought the whole thing was a dream, and why he didn’t remember Vincent at homecoming. But he did get some of the other one’s memories, which is probably why the Glipper went after him. Remember that story he told? How he died and was in that other place, but then woke up? That was it.”

  Malcolm continued to nod, lips pursed. “What about Vincent?” />
  “That’s the thing—Vincent’s dead in this universe, he doesn’t exist, so there was no one for him to replace, so after the crash he would have still been in the car. He got out of the car and tried to run back up the hill, and without realizing it, he ran right back through the wormhole. That’s why his footsteps just end. And your cell phone—” now that I’d pieced it together, the realizations came faster and faster, “—your cell phone was in your hand, because you were giving Jace directions. You were touching it. Your cell phone must have gotten transferred over, too, which was why it still had Vincent’s number and the homecoming photo on it, but none of ours did. And there must be some overlap between the universes, like that article my mom found—which was from our universe—and the fact that we sensed Vincent that one day, and how calls sometimes go through, although the signal might just be going through the wormhole. And maybe this universe is rejecting us, kind of like the body’s immune system starts to reject a transplanted organ, and that’s why Zoe got sick . . .”

  But I was digressing.

  “The point is,” I said breathlessly, getting back to my original point, “the Glipper’s only after us because we don’t belong here, so all we have to do is get back to our universe, and it’ll stop attacking us.”

  After I finished, he took his gaze off the road long enough to look me in the eye. “That sounds about right.”

  I’d hoped for him to go wide-eyed and slam on the brakes and hug me, maybe kiss me—since I’d just figured out the entire mystery—but coming from Malcolm, that tiny acknowledgment made me just as proud.

  “There’s a way back,” he said. “The wormhole in the clearing, remember? We just have to sneak past the guards and slip through it.”

  I nodded. “Won’t they shoot us?”

  “We’ll go tonight. At dusk. Before it gets too dark.”

  And just like that, we had a plan.

  We had hope.

  Getting impatient, I got up on my knees and kissed Malcolm’s lips, then sat back down, blushing.

  Because this very well could be our last day alive.

  “What was that for?” he said, though the corner of his mouth quirked into a smile.

  “In case you die,” I said. “Or I die.”