by Dima Zales
Two hours later, I was well and truly shaken.
Graham had asked me to report whatever I saw. Then he’d changed from one person into another as I watched — a heavyset middle-aged farmer, a schoolmarmish old lady, a slinky beauty, a broken-down old man. Each time, I had to describe the person I saw in detail.
Seeing Graham change like that reminded me of Williams, with his Blandy-McBlandsville disguise. I didn’t want to be reminded of Williams.
Afterwards, Graham picked up a decorative bowl from Callie’s coffee table, and I watched as it shifted from bowl to football helmet to soccer ball, and finally to a living armadillo, which turned its head and looked right at me. I had to describe each one of those things, too.
Apparently finished with the special effects, Graham sat back with a sigh.
“Well, this has got to be pretty unusual. I haven’t seen anything quite like it.”
“Is something wrong with me?”
My tone seemed to get his attention. He leaned forward and caught one of my hands, giving it a reassuring squeeze.
“Elizabeth, I know this must all be very unsettling. It’s always like that at the beginning. I promise, it’ll start making sense. You’ll adjust, and it’ll get better.”
“Okay,” I said, trying not to sound so quavery.
I reminded myself that I was supposed to be confronting this stuff, not just reacting passively and letting my fear of it rule me.
“I’ll explain what’s going on, as best I can. Remember how I mentioned earlier that Seconds and some humans can sense and manipulate essence?”
I nodded.
“There are two ways to manipulate essence. One is called a ‘working.’ A working changes essence from one state into another. And remember, essence is the substance of everything. That’s why I said we’re capable of reshaping reality itself — if you change the building blocks, you change the building.”
“Right, okay.”
“The other kind of manipulation is called a ‘half-working’ or ‘halfing.’ When you make a half-working, you don’t change essence fully from one state to another. Instead, you let it oscillate really fast between its original state and what you’d like it to be. So long as the essence has the shape you want more than half the time, that’s the shape normal people are going to see.”
“Why would you want to do that?”
“It saves a lot of energy. Essence really wants to stay as it naturally is. It takes power to keep it in an altered state. When you disguise yourself, you might have to keep it up for a long time. Halving your energy use can make all the difference.”
“And that’s what you were doing just now?”
“Some of those were halfings, yeah.”
It was hard to believe. I hadn’t seen any sort of flickering or blurriness. One moment he’d been himself, and the next he’d been someone else.
“So, moving on to how you’re developing,” Graham said, “when people like us come into our abilities, it happens in four stages. First we perceive essence that’s been worked or half-worked. Once you can see halfings, they won’t fool you anymore. You’ll still see the worked shape, but you’ll also see the original. It’s like seeing two things occupying the same space at once.”
That thought made me slightly seasick.
“With full workings,” Graham continued, “there’s no ‘original’ state of things left to see. Sensing them just means being aware that the essence in that spot has been altered. To me, it feels like a strange eddy in the stream of reality.”
“Okay,” I said, trying to commit workings and half-workings to memory.
“Typically, people start perceiving changed essence all at once. It’s an all-or-nothing thing, like throwing a switch. It’s called ‘seeing through.’ If the essence has been disturbed, they’re aware of it. It isn’t happening that way for you. You’re getting little glimpses, but it’s mostly still hidden.”
I shook my head. “I’m not seeing either type of thing you described — workings or half-workings.”
“But you are — partially. Most of the halfings I just showed you, you didn’t see at all. You only perceived the worked shape. But with a couple, you described something that was part of the original, not the halfing. For instance, the young woman I created had black hair, but you said she was a blonde. That means you saw my real hair color instead of the illusion. I bet you’ve gotten glimpses of reality through other halfings too and just not realized it.”
“But I’ve never seen anything unusual, except in that picture I took.”
“Williams led me to believe there was more than one photograph.”
“Well, there were two he seemed interested in, but one of them just showed a regular person. I thought so, at least.”
“Huh. Can I see them?”
“You’ll have to ask Williams. He took them.”
Graham frowned. I guess Williams had neglected to mention that bit of thievery.
Suddenly I remembered Williams’s FBI file. Maybe when the chief had looked at those pages, they hadn’t appeared to describe some other person. Maybe I’d been seeing through a half-working Williams made.
“Okay, never mind.” Graham said. He got up and ducked into Callie’s dining room. When he came back, he was holding a camera — a little point-and-shoot job.
“You want me to try to take some more weird pictures?”
“Yep,” he said. “We’re going to visit your spooky cemetery.”
A spasm of fear clutched at me. I reached down and gave my rubber band a couple hard snaps. Confront the new, I reminded myself. Exploring what was going on with my pictures was a good step forward.
“So you think the weird pictures are part of this seeing-bits-and-pieces thing?”
“Yeah, I do, and I want to see it in action. Let’s wait until dark, though. It’ll be easier to disguise our presence.”
I sat down and ran through the camera’s settings. It was pretty straightforward; using it shouldn’t be a problem. We’d see how much trouble my subject matter posed.
After I’d examined the camera, I thought I might ask Graham some more questions. Unfortunately, he was on the phone again.
I wandered down the hallway, curious about how Callie was doing. I found her and Kara in one of the bedrooms. Kara motioned me in. Callie was still deeply asleep. Her skin looked much better — still pink and inflamed, but no longer blistered. I wondered if Williams had been back to the house for healing as well, maybe while I was sleeping away the morning. The thought made me shudder. I didn’t want him nearby when I was asleep.
I felt awkward standing there gawking.
“Will I wake her up if I talk?” I whispered.
“No, she’s drugged,” Kara answered in a more normal tone.
“Is she going to have scars?”
“No. The burn’s superficial now. Even if I left it this way, it wouldn’t scar. But I won’t leave it — it’s too painful. I’ll do a little more tonight.”
I nodded. “What you can do, it’s really amazing. If I hadn’t seen how bad it was, I would never believe it.”
Kara shrugged. She looked uncomfortable. “So, Graham’s here training you?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
She didn’t follow up, so eventually I took my leave and headed to the room I’d been using, which I thought was Callie’s. I wondered if she’d given it to me because the en-suite bathroom meant I didn’t have to go out into the hallway if I didn’t want to. If so, that was really thoughtful. Maybe she understood about being terrified, even if she wasn’t scared of Williams herself.
By 9:00, Graham and I were sitting in his sedan behind St. Mary’s. It was quite dark — the sun had set more than an hour earlier.
He said, “Stay here a sec,” and got out of the car. He turned on a flashlight and walked into the cemetery. I watched him moving through the gravestones; then the dark claimed him, and I could only see the little ember of his flashlight bobbing along.
Before
long, he came back to the car and gestured me out. I followed him through the dark cemetery. He led me toward a big maple in the back.
“You see that tree?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Do you see anything near it other than grave markers? Look carefully.”
I let my eyes rove around the trunk and the surrounding area. Several stones were close enough to be under the tree’s canopy, but I couldn’t see anything else. There was only the tree and a bunch of gravestones between us and Gil Jensen’s southernmost field, which abutted the church property.
“No, there’s nothing else there. Not that I can see, anyway.”
“Okay. Take a picture of the tree,” he said.
“This little flash isn’t nearly enough to light it.”
“Just get the trunk.”
Feeling a bit silly, I walked to within about ten feet of the trunk, close enough for the flash to do some good, and snapped a picture of it. Then I returned to Graham.
“Here you go. One tree trunk,” I said, holding the camera out to him.
He smiled and didn’t take it. “Look at the image. What do you see?”
I turned on the camera’s LCD screen. The image did show a tree trunk. It also showed a standing figure.
“There was no one there!”
“Oh, but there was,” Graham said, grinning. “That’s Bob.”
In the picture, a large creature was standing in front of the tree. He was furry, had long arms, and was very obviously male. He was smiling toothily and waving.
Goosebumps ran up my arms. My heart rate kicked into high gear, and my lungs seemed to close. An attack was coming. I sat down on the ground and snapped my rubber band. Surprisingly, Graham settled down beside me and put his arm around my shoulders, making soothing noises. That startled me, which actually helped. The oncoming panic paused and hovered, then receded. Thank god.
Once I relaxed, Graham scooted away from me a bit, giving me space. I looked up at him and found him watching me with a little smile. A number of seconds ticked by. I really didn’t know what to say.
“So,” I started, and then cleared my throat. “The abominable snowman lives behind St. Mary’s?”
Graham laughed. “Pretty close, actually. Bob’s a good guy. Never causes any trouble. But some of his people who aren’t so law-abiding do crop up in the Himalayas.”
Yet another thing for which I really had no response. I looked at the photo again. Bob was heavily furred on his torso, but the fur thinned out on his limbs, giving way to leathery skin. That skin was pale blue and marked with gray rings. His fur was white with gray rings. Doyle Shumaker had looked at my photo and joked about a “bagel monster.” Pretty accurate, actually.
I looked into the darkness beyond the flashlight’s glow. Bob the non-abominable snowman might be standing right next to me. He hadn’t just disguised himself as something else; he’d made himself invisible. So what else was out there that I couldn’t see?
“Elizabeth, it’s okay.” Graham was looking at me with sympathy. “It’s a big adjustment, I know, but it’ll be okay.”
“Wait,” I gasped, and put my head between my knees. I cupped my hands over my mouth and breathed into them, trying to head off hyperventilation. Several long minutes passed before the nausea and dizziness passed, and I could speak.
“Why can’t I see it? Why can I take a picture of it but not see it?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never heard of someone photographing Seconds but not being able to see them. I’m guessing it’s another way you’re glimpsing through half-workings, like I was talking about before. But why your development is working this way, I’m frankly not sure.”
He rubbed his face, thinking.
“You know, it might have to do with how late your abilities are manifesting. Most of us see through as little kids. About twenty percent get there as teens. Your abilities are appearing so late that you already have a set view of the world — what’s possible and what isn’t. Maybe your mind is resisting the ‘impossible’ things your eyes are taking in.”
“Okay,” I said, taking a deep breath, “I want to start seeing what’s in front of me. How do I do it?”
“Well,” Graham said, “let’s go have a chat with Bob.”
I followed Graham back under the maple. It was nerve-wracking to think that a creature like the snowman was out there, and I was blind to it. I kept expecting something to take a bite out of me.
Graham positioned me about ten feet from the tree’s trunk and suggested I sit. Then he sat down right next to the tree and proceeded to have half a conversation with nothing. It was bizarre to watch.
“How’s it going, Bob? … Really? Well, I’m sorry to hear that. When did you last hear from her? … Ah. No, that doesn’t sound promising. … I don’t think that would be the best approach, no.”
This went on for some time. Apparently Bob was having troubles in the love department. It added new meaning to the word “incongruous.” It seemed so absurd, it was hard not to get the giggles. I bit the inside of my lip and tried to sit still.
“Maybe she’d appreciate a small present,” Graham was saying. And then, after a pause, “No, that’d be too big. It’d make you seem desperate.”
“It makes you look needy instead of confident,” I said. “That’s sort of a turn-off.”
Graham stopped and looked at me. The weird thing was, I could sort of feel someone else looking at me, too. Someone big and sad.
Graham said, “Can you see him? Or hear him?”
I shook my head.
“Then why did you answer his question?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think I actually heard anything.”
“You must’ve on some level. Before you spoke, Bob had just said, ‘What’s wrong with seeming desperate if you are?’”
It was such a plaintive, naked question that hearing it took some of the absurdity out of the situation. Poor Bob. I could identify.
But I still couldn’t see him.
“You getting anything?” Graham asked.
“I have this vague feeling that someone else is here, but that’s it. I can’t see or hear him.”
“Huh. Any ideas, Bob?”
Graham listened.
“He says you won’t see him unless you really want to.”
“I do want to!”
“Some part of you doesn’t, he says.”
Great. I was being psychoanalyzed by a walking piece of invisible deep shag.
“Well, it’s not a part that’s listening to the rest of me. I don’t know how to want to see him more than I already do.”
Graham looked pensive. “Hey, let me go make a call, okay? Someone who’s been around longer than I have might have more ideas.”
“Wait! You’re not leaving me here, are you?”
“I’ll just be a few feet away. Don’t worry — Bob wouldn’t hurt a fly. A stray cat, maybe, but not a fly.”
Graham grinned at me, then got up and walked toward the car, sliding his cell phone out of his pocket. He faded into the night.
I started to feel very afraid. I couldn’t see Bob, but Bob could see me, and he was huge. I reminded myself that Bob seemed more like a schlemiel than a monster. Sure, a schlemiel with big teeth, some other part of me answered. I shivered. I swear I felt him looming over me, reaching for me with ragged claws, breathing dead-cat breath on me.
I sensed another attack coming on and scrambled up.
“Graham? Graham!”
Graham didn’t come.
I felt sick and dizzy. I tried to run, but my legs wouldn’t hold me up, and I flopped back down to the ground.
Just as my vision started to tunnel, I glimpsed a face, more like a remembered image than the face itself. Then an impression of color — a silvery white. Then a sense that someone was speaking just a bit too softly for me to hear.
Clutching my chest, I stared at the place Bob had seemed to be when Graham was talking to him. It was like looking at that duck-rabbi
t illusion. I always saw the rabbit and had to force myself to see the duck.
Finally, I saw the duck.
It’s not that he shimmered into view. He was just suddenly there. All eight furry feet of him. I sat there staring at him until I could get enough air in my lungs to speak.
“Wow. Um. Hi, Bob.”
I could also see his not-thereness, which was bizarre. As I thought about him being invisible, he started being more not-there than there. I quickly focused on his thereness, and he came surging back.
He was smiling strangely. I realized he was probably trying to keep his teeth covered.
“Hello, Elizabeth Ryder. You have nothing to fear from me,” he said.
Bob’s face was definitely humanoid — a somewhat flattened nose, red lips, and large, dark eyes. But the whole thing was covered with short, white fur. He didn’t have eyebrows, exactly, but there were large tufts of curly fur above his eyes. Starting on the top and the sides of his head, the hair got longer, blending with the fur on his body to form a thick, shaggy coat. His mouth looked a bit too large for his face. It probably had to be to fit all those teeth inside. Short, sharp horns stuck straight out from the sides of his head. I could imagine him disemboweling a horse with them.
Graham emerged from the dark, grinning broadly.
“Excellent! Great idea, Bob!”
I turned on him. “You guys did that on purpose?”
“Yup,” Graham said. “Bob wondered if needing to see a danger might overcome whatever part of your mind was blocking your sight.”
Graham looked pretty pleased with himself.
“Great. That’s great. Thanks a lot. You can take me home now.”
I stalked back toward the car.
Graham trailed after me. “Hey, don’t be that way. You really did want to see, right?”
I didn’t say anything.
“Elizabeth,” he said, catching my arm.
“Get off me!”
I think my anger surprised both of us. We just stood there, me seething at him, him looking at me with a mystified expression.
“I don’t understand why that upset you so much,” he finally said.
I suppressed the urge to just let fly with something nasty and instead let the silence stretch until I calmed down a little.