by Mark Deloy
“What? What is it? Everything okay?”
“Yes, but look! I spotted it a few minutes ago.”
She was pointing through the trees and the darkness. There was a very faint light. It was impossible to tell how far away it was, or even what it was.
“I thought it was an animal’s eyes, but it hasn’t moved. Could it be someone else’s fire?”
“It could be.”
“Should we go see?
“It probably isn’t a good idea to go out in the dark,” I said. “We’d need torches, so if it is a campfire, whoever it is would see us coming from a long way off.”
“Or maybe they’ve already seen our fire and it doesn’t matter.”
“True,” I said. “But—”
“But what?”
“Shh, I think I heard something,” I whispered.
A branch broke to my left and I stared in that direction, trying to will my eyes to see in near total darkness. Then another branch broke to my right and there was a shuffle of leaves. I’d hunted enough times to know that whatever had made those sounds was something big.
More sounds came out of the darkness and I thought I saw something move behind a tree at the edge of the firelight.
“Oh, I saw it,” Lisa said, pointing straight ahead.
“There’s more than one of them,” I whispered and wished I had been smart enough to fashion some sort of weapon, even if it was just a club. I grabbed one of the longer sticks out of our woodpile. It was better than nothing. We stood up waited.
More leaves rustled from every direction now and I had the feeling whatever was out there was getting in position and getting ready to attack.
The first child came out of the darkness screaming. It was a boy of about seven. He had something in his hand I couldn’t see in the dim light and was holding it above his head. He ran straight for Lisa and threw what was in his hand.
I saw the rock bounce off her shoulder and land in the fire.
“Ow, shit!” she cried, right before the boy was on her, snarling and spitting like some wild animal. They both crashed to the ground.
I tried to pull the boy off of her, but he held tight to Lisa’s shirt. His small mouth was snapping open and shut, and I could hear his teeth click dangerously close to her neck. The boy’s eyes were wild and black in the firelight. He looked to be around Connor’s age, but his hair was so blond it was nearly white.
Then, someone slammed into me, and I fell near the fire. It was a girl a little bigger than the boy. She was covered in grime, her hair was matted. Her hands were balled into fists and she hammered on my chest. I caught a knee in the balls and the air whooshed out of me. The pain was enormous, but I managed to get a hand between us and I pushed as hard as I could. The girl fell back onto the hard ground. She jumped back up and crouched like an animal, growling, waiting to attack. I could see her eyes in the firelight. She meant to kill me.
I ignored her for a second and kicked out at the boy who was still on top of Lisa. I only partially connected, but it was enough to get him off of her. He rolled backwards, but quickly recovered.
Then the girl was on me again, kicking and scratching, going for my eyes now. I kneed her in her stomach. She let out a howl and stayed down this time, rolling on the ground and I almost felt sorry for her.
Three more children came running out of the darkness. More rocks flew. One hit me in the leg and another tore open a gash on my forearm as I tried to block it. Lisa moved toward me and we instinctively put our backs to each other. Four more kids stepped into the light. They were no longer in a hurry. They came at us with caution. One of them, a boy of eleven or twelve held a thick tree branch. He swung it and connected with Lisa’s head. She fell to the ground, unconscious.
“Lisa!”
I knelt to see if she was all right and four of the children were on me. One of them bit me on the hand, drawing blood, another bit my ear and it was the worst pain I think I’d ever felt. I punched one of them, harder than I probably should have, and kicked another boy in the knee as hard as I could. I heard it break as he crumpled to the ground, screaming.
Then I felt something hit the back of my head. I didn’t know it was a rock or a stick, but I saw stars and then everything went black.
43
I was afraid to open my eyes. The first thing I felt was pain. My head felt as if it had split open. It throbbed in time with my heartbeat. Most of the pain was coming from where I’d been hit. I was afraid to put my hand back there and feel around, but I did it anyway. Surely if my head was really split open, I wouldn’t be conscious. I felt wet hair, but it seemed as if the skull underneath was intact. I knew head wounds bled a lot, so I wasn’t too concerned with the sticky wet hair. It felt as if there was a gash large enough to need stitches, though.
I finally opened my eyes into slits. I saw a large fire. Mr. Shift sat cross-legged on the other side of it. I couldn’t tell if he was looking at me. His blank face now had the vague features of two pinprick red eyes and a narrow line where his mouth should be. I knew there were a thousand needle teeth in that mouth, waiting to take arms, legs, or heads.
I tried to see Lisa, but she was nowhere in sight. I didn’t want to move my head, partially because of the pain and partially because I didn’t want Shift to know I was awake.
“Stop playing possum,” he said. His voice sounded surprisingly normal, like a TV commercial announcer.
He raised an arm. The fire roared to life and I had to sit up and move back to avoid getting roasted.
“Where’s Lisa!” I spat.
Shift waved his arm again and the fire went back down. His cloak parted and instead of his body beneath it, there was empty, open space. Then light grew around a huddled object, but I couldn’t see what it was. The light grew brighter and I saw Lisa and Connor both laying inside, like two small sleeping animals in a vast, dark cave. They were seemingly unconscious, but I hoped not dead, curled into the fetal position. Lisa’s arms were wrapped around Connor. Then Shift’s cloak wrapped back around him like raven’s wings and they were gone. I had no idea if Lisa and Connor were really under there, or if he was using his vestiges to show me where he was keeping them... someplace else, far away.
“She is safe for now,” he communicated. “They both are. She has her son back.” His voice reverberated and echoed at the same time. It was as if he was in my head and speaking aloud at the same time. “You are still alive because I was curious. I wondered what would make you come here. Surely you knew you would die.”
“You had her son,” I answered, more calmly than I would have thought possible in the situation.
“Well, yes. I did it to teach you both a lesson. To keep you away. To scare you, and to teach you a lesson. But it has done the opposite. You are strange. Your line will slaughter each other by the millions without a second thought, but when one you love is in danger, you will go to the ends of your world, literally this time, to save them. This family bond, this love, is something that is useless to me. It causes irrational behavior that is quite unpredictable, but it’s also what makes the children of your line special.”
“Why do you take them, the children? I know you’ve been doing it for a long time. So why?”
“I took children from under bear skins, out of caves when your line huddled in the dirt. I’ve taken children from many, many different worlds. They in turn find other places for me, thin places between this world and others. Children are dousing rods of a sort, uncorrupted by the blinders of adulthood. At present, my doorway is open just on your world and has been for what is a short time in my when, but a long time, nearly a lifetime in yours. That is what’s preventing me passage into any other. The children can find the thin places and I mark the doors, but for now I am limited to traveling to your world alone. Some children I keep, and they die here, others, I send back to cause havoc.”
“Why? Why not just keep all of them here?”
“Because chaos amuses me. It is my entertainment.”
He expected me to ask the question, even though I already knew the answer. I just prayed he couldn’t read my mind.
“Why can’t you open any of the other doors?”
“I lost a key, somewhere in your world. It allows me to close one door and open another. Even though the children find the doorways, I cannot open them to see if they are the right one. The children I send back are also looking for that key. So far none have found it.”
Two of his “children” he sent back, Beth and Leslie had been right down the hall from the key for years. Obviously Shift wasn’t as all-powerful as he was letting on.
“You’re trying to get home, aren’t you? This isn’t your home. Is it?”
He laughed. It was a guttural phlegmy sound that put a chill into my bones.
“This place, no, this place is a prison. There are other thin places, other doorways that are open, but they all lead to other places in your world since my lock is turned on your world. Those places are getting thinner. Your legends, myths, about creatures seen rarely here and there in your world, those are creatures from here who have slipped through thin places. Some wandered through unknowingly. The creatures are seen by hunters and given amusing nicknames like Bigfoot, the Jersey Devil, werewolves, thunderbirds, chupacabra, The Loch Ness Monster, minotaur, unicorn, dragons. You wonder why there were only brief sightings? There is no linage, only lost wanderers who fell through a crack between worlds.
“Then, there are others that made it a point to come through and interact with your kind. Sentient beings such as myself, with powers you cannot begin to understand. You know the others by many other names: ghosts, demons, aliens, men in black, the Mothman, the Bell Witch. We are all the same. Your world is our playground now. We come through in various places and amuse ourselves with your suffering, or sometimes by waving a hand, performing a trick, simple to us, but a wonder to you. In truth, we are bored.”
I sat stunned, not quite able to comprehend the gravity of what I was hearing. Every strange creature, legend, oddity of our world was really either something which had fallen through an inter-dimensional crack, or was some thinking being like Shift, who got bored and decided to mess with the human race.
“What about dinosaurs?” I asked.
He shrugged.
“I was not alive then. Even my lifespan has a beginning and an end.”
“So now what?”
“Now we strike the same bargain I had with your grandfather and the holy man. I let you live, let your woman and her child live and go back. For this favor, you protect the house and the doorway and I continue to take what I need. Perhaps there is a special child somewhere who can open a thin place all the way without that cursed key. Perhaps I will find that child and go home. Or perhaps not.”
“No,” I said, and couldn’t believe I was saying the words even as they were leaving my mouth.
“Very well,” he said, rising to his full height. “There are others who would do this for me for much less in return. Shall I kill the woman first, or make her watch me devour her litter?”
“You don’t have to do that,” I said. “I know where the key is. Let us go and I’ll get it for you.”
Shift’s face contorted, changed, until it was very nearly human. Surprise showed on it. He couldn’t hide it. There was something else that showed in his expression. Hope.
“You have it? How? This had better not be some sort of trick, or I swear to you I will wipe your world clean.”
“You dropped it a long time ago. A child named Talbot Simms picked it up. He is an old man now, but he has held onto it all these years. Lisa and I went to see him and he gave it to us. I hid it. Let us go and promise to leave our world alone in your travels, and I’ll give it to you.”
What I didn’t tell shift was that the key was tucked in my boot, inches away from my right hand. I thanked God once again that Shift could not read my mind.
“What if I torture you, or better yet, your woman and her child until you tell me, then go where I please?”
I could tell Shift was a being who was used to getting his own way. He was like a child in that respect. I knew I had to be careful. There was no doubt in my mind he was capable of doing whatever he wanted to us.
“That’s true, you could make me tell you, but you said you were curious about us. There has to be something interesting about us you wanted to discover. I think we have both been gentlemen. The polite thing would be to part ways on good terms.”
I saw his face change again as he considered it. My perception of him as a spoiled child was dead on. He was looking to me to determine how he should act. Was I reasoning with a child? Even though he was over seven feet tall, I thought that was exactly what I was dealing with.
“You are right. I apologize if I was rude. Where is the key? I will go and get it, and then you may go.”
“No!” I said a little louder than I intended. “That wasn’t the deal. Take us out of here, back to our world. I’ll get the key while you wait at the vortex. You can even keep Lisa and Connor back, in case you think it’s a trick.”
“Your terms are acceptable,” he said. Then he parted his cloak once again and stepped aside. Lisa and Connor lay in the dirt, not moving at first, but then the fire’s light and heat woke her. Lisa sat up and looked around, clutching Connor to her tightly.
“Hick? Is that you? Where are…?”
Then she saw Shift and started screaming, waking up Connor, who began crying. Lisa must have gotten his soul back onto him because he seemed like a normal kid who just woke up in an alien world. He looked terrified. I quickly went to them and wrapped them both up in my arms.
“It’s okay,” I said. “We’re getting out of here. Don’t look at him. Look at me.”
Lisa was hyperventilating, but I was able to calm her down. I kissed her forehead told her it would be okay. Everything would be okay.
Shift stepped toward us and Lisa began whimpering. Then he swung his robes around us in one graceful motion, enveloping us. Everything went dark. It was the blackest place I had ever been. I could feel Lisa and Connor in my arms, but as close as they were, I couldn’t even see their faces. Luckily that only lasted for a few seconds before Shift opened his cloak once again. We were back at his world’s version of the house.
“We will wait here,” he said. “Go and get the key.”
“Bring us through to our side,” I said. “Wait there instead, so we are in our world instead of this one.”
“You don’t trust me to let you go once I have the key?” Shift said. “Now who is being rude?”
“You killed a good friend of mine and took another friend’s hand. You can’t blame me for being cautious. Besides, if you wanted to, you could just kill us over there as easily as you could here. If we have to die, I want to die in my own world,” I said, praying this little speech sounded believable.
“Very well. Proceed,” he said, making a little waving motion for us to go ahead of him into the house.
We entered the dining room and slid through the invisible wall. Connor looked terrified, but I could tell he was amazed when we walked through what should have been wood and plaster as if it were nothing but fog.
The ladder creaked under my weight and I wondered how it would support Shift, who must weigh twice or three times what I did. But after Lisa, Connor and I were through the opening, he simply floated up through and into the colorful vortex room.
Connor stood with his eyes wide, watching the Mandelbrot patterns swirl endlessly above his head. He must have been unconscious when Shift had taken him through the first time, or too terrified to notice.
“How do we get up there?” I asked, hoping Shift wouldn’t have to touch us.
Instead, he waved his hand and the spiraling ceiling began to lower itself toward us. Connor shrunk next to his mother and began to cry again.
“It’s all right, baby,” Lisa said, sounding unsure. “We’re going home.”
The vortex enveloped us head first. I hoped th
e colored parts of the design didn’t rotate onto us as we were going through and decapitate us, but I could see just the black paisleys swirling toward us, maintaining the opening.
When we were all through, Shift made a small clicking sound and the pattern stopped swirling for a moment. We were able to step on the colored parts of the design until we were safely back on the wood floor which lined the vortex. I could see our guns, which had probably been spinning around on top of the portal since we’d gone through. I had the urge to make a diving grab and come up shooting, but I had no idea if bullets would even be effective on Shift, not to mention, I might either hit Lisa or Connor, or even worse, Shift could rip them apart in retaliation.
“Is this acceptable?” Shift said, shaking me out of my action hero daydream.
“Yes. I’ll be right back with the key.” I hoped Lisa followed my lead and didn’t slip up about the key actually being in my boot. But then she made eye contact with me, and I could tell she understood what I was doing.
I took Lisa’s face in my hands, kissed her and told her not to worry. Then I quickly climbed down the ladder.
I ran outside and was greeted by Girl who nearly knocked me over jumping on me from excitement.
“It’s good to see you, too, Girl.” Her front paws rested on my shoulders and she gave me a big, sloppy kiss. “Ugh, dog germs.”
She responded by giving me another.
“Okay, come on. We need to go get something.”
I was glad the house hadn’t moved like it had before. We ran from it and toward the fields. Shift would be thinking I was going to get the key, but since I already had it, I had time to get something else.
We reached Jensen’s car a short time later and I popped the trunk. The two road flares weren’t where I saw them earlier. I had a moment of panic as I frantically moved other items and felt around for them. Finally my hand bumped one of the cardboard tubes. They had rolled into one of the narrow gaps at the very front.
I lifted my shirt and shoved one of them down between my belt and my briefs. One would have to do. It was uncomfortable, but nearly invisible from what I could tell. Then I put Girl in the car, rolled the windows down enough for her head to get through and then scratched behind her ear.