The Shimmers in the Night

by Lydia Millet

  So she took off running, between the rows of pods to the wall, away from the fire, from her friends and the crowd around Jax. She ran alongside the big room’s wall, passing a glass-fronted cabinet full of what looked like old tools or weapons—the bright-red canister…where was it? There had to be one…then she saw Jaye, at the far end of the room. Grabbing a red canister off the wall.

  She felt a surge of gratitude. Jaye had thought the same thing she had; they didn’t need ESP for that. She caught up with her friend and they charged back, along the ends of the rows.

  But the fire had quickly grown. And it had reached the pod containing the big man, the big, shaved-bald man with his tattoos—and as they ran up to the end of the row they saw his pod was collapsed on the floor like a husk and he stood there with flames burning around him—though not touching him—and licking out toward the pods on either side.

  And he didn’t look friendly as he stood there. He didn’t look friendly at all.

  Hayley, kneeling a few feet away on the floor, scuttled backwards toward the crowd of teachers, stricken.

  Cara turned to Jaye and was about to yell Now!—yell it aloud—when she stopped herself just in time; Jaye was already raising the canister and pulling a pin on the top. She aimed the hose part at the floor, the base of the fire instead of the flames; then white foam was spraying out, rising in clouds and obscuring the tattooed hollow man. Jaye swept it back and forth, back and forth.

  Off to her right, beyond the clouds of chemical, Cara could see Jax hanging in his pod over the heads of the teachers and her mother, still touching him with her eyes closed. Then the clouds thinned and Cara saw the flames were out; smoke curled from the scorch marks on the floor.

  But the big man wasn’t standing where he had been.

  He had moved. He was standing against the far wall.

  Holding Jaye.

  He had his hands around Jaye’s throat.

  Jaye looked terrified. And he looked—well, he looked right at Cara.

  This was her fault.

  Without thinking she ran toward him.

  “Let go of her,” she cried. “Let go!”

  Then she realized she’d spoken aloud, she’d yelled—had she wrecked things for Jax? Oh no. But if she had it was too late and now she couldn’t stop to look; the big man was shaking his head slowly. He was smiling—that same Pouring Man smile, that knowing smile. He squeezed with his hands, and Jaye made a brief choking noise and then couldn’t make any sound at all.

  “Stop it!” cried Cara. “Stop! Let go of her!”

  She reached out and clutched at his arms, tried to pry them apart, but they were like concrete. Jaye was turning red and tears were streaming from her eyes. Cara grabbed the man’s thick fingers next—grabbed at them and tried to pry them backward and off Jaye’s throat. She couldn’t budge the fingers, either, couldn’t even get a firm hold. She was getting desperate.

  “Stop hurting her! Take me!”

  And just like that, he let go of Jaye’s throat—Jaye fell to the floor, gasping—and reached out for Cara instead.

  The last thing she heard before she left was her mother: her mother calling her name, then the shock of silence.

  She didn’t leave the usual way; she didn’t leave with her body. The big man reached out and in one swift touch made her a hollow. She knew it the moment it happened, knew it with certainty. The way the pen had pricked into Jax’s skin, the big man’s hand infected her. In that brief touch her mind traveled out of her body.

  And just like that she wasn’t her whole self: she was a kind of avatar. Unlike Jax she hardly ever played video games, but the few times she’d humored him she’d had a glimpse of something like it—in a flatter and safer version. She was adrift; it was a three-dimensional place, but it didn’t seem solid, because she couldn’t feel it. She saw, but there was no sound or touch or smell or taste, and because this part of her had no lungs or even a heart, there was no rhythm of breathing.

  “Jax? Anyone?”

  She didn’t speak; she only thought of speaking. She had no mouth, after all. It was a shock to realize how hard it was to mark time passing without a heartbeat, the in and out of breath—hard even to think right; she had to force herself. It was more like a dream than actual life.

  Jax and his friend Kubler liked having avatars because they were little kings in their gaming world, all-powerful—but this was centerless and frightening. She had to make herself remember the people in her life, think Jax and think Kubler, make herself remember concrete names and things she knew…. It was as though she’d been cut off along her waist, or maybe beneath her neck. She was in a place where no one could find her, where she was utterly alone.

  It seemed like a cave, or at least a dark hole shot through with ripples of orange—a formless place whose identity was a mystery. She moved through a tunnel or a liquid; at some remove there were fringes of burning orange and red—tongues of lava pushing through black walls of rock or tar….

  For a fleeting second, it occurred to her that if hell were real, a pit of fire like in angry sermons, it might look just like this. And then she recognized something. Out of place in the swirl of darkness with its bright seams, its curves and waves, there was one sharp, man-made thing: thin, gray vertical lines or posts: pipes. They were pipes, countless pipes—pipes she’d already seen twice before in visions.

  There were pipes rising through the chamber, and as she looked down they disappeared beneath; as she looked up they disappeared above. All she could see was their length and the fact that there were too many of them to count, receding into the distance.

  She pushed past them looking for someone—anyone. For information. If only she had a guide, someone to tell her what this was. Did all the hollows experience this? Or was it only another of her visions?

  Follow the pipes, she thought.

  As she passed them she caught a glimpse of movement up ahead—a white shine in the gloom—and realized it was alive. It was a jellylike, glowing creature that pulsed as it traveled, tentacles rippling. It lit up the dimness, and in its luminescence she saw other creatures, too—creatures she couldn’t identify, many of them also giving off light, in various shades and degrees of brightness. Some were crablike, others resembled giant insects, and a few were the red, tube-shaped beings she’d seen in her vision, which looked like a cross between a worm and a tropical flower.

  Fear pricked her. She must be in water, because the lit-up creatures moved fluidly. But whether it was a vision or a dream, she wasn’t here physically; this wasn’t a place where actual people could exist. If it was deep in the sea—assuming this was the place beneath the ocean, the place Jax had talked about, the source—it should be freezing cold, for one thing, or maybe, near the gouts of lava, if that was what they were, boiling hot. But she had a kind of immunity, she told herself: she was only an avatar

  She was a figment of her own imagination.

  After that she felt less afraid. Think of it as an adventure.

  She wondered what she looked like to these strange luminescent beings, if they could even see. Some might be eyeless, she thought she remembered from biology…. The pipes must be conveying the gas Jax had talked about, the carbon, funneling it up from who knew where—from somewhere even deeper, deep beneath the earth, up through the water and into the air.

  If the minds of all the hollows came here, then it wasn’t just her and the deep-sea creatures. There could be someone else—even many others. She thought of the hollows she’d seen in pods in the nether space, tried to call up their faces. Maybe the motherly black lady in the yellow pantsuit was here somewhere, disembodied, or the younger, white woman with the braids and blue eyeshadow, or the thin girl…maybe even Jax.

  If he was still a hollow.

  Yet if they were here she’d never know: like hers, those other people’s minds would be invisible, hovering in the dark.

  It might have been minutes that went by or it might have been hours or days. Then something
new passed before her. It was like a submarine, lit up from beneath by a carpet of the wormlike forms—curved and flowing and monstrous. Only after it faded away in the dark did she figure out what it was. She remembered a drawing from one of Jax’s encyclopedic books on ocean life.

  A squid. A giant squid.

  In the wake of the squid a dimly lit school of tiny creatures appeared that flowed past her like a river of light. Whether they were following the squid or just going the same way, she decided to go with them; she simply thought about staying alongside them and there she was, beside the faintly glowing cloud.

  Not only her—other creatures were there too, visible on the floor of the ocean and above it, all moving in one direction. Most she didn’t have names for: strange, flat fish the color of mud, spiny, many-legged crawlers that reminded her of centipedes, snaggle-toothed fish with lights dangling in front of their faces.… Some made quick, darting movements; others rippled and undulated. There were fearsome-looking things that went past so fast she barely had time to flinch; eel-like fish snaking and twisting along the bottom; more jellies with their tentacles trailing; and translucent organisms shaped like bells and balloons, which she could only make out when something lit was nearby.

  She wondered where they were going. Until she realized they weren’t going toward anything; they were moving away from it. They were fleeing—they were in full flight.

  Something was chasing them.

  She turned her attention backward, against the oncoming stream of strange, deep-ocean life.

  At first there were only more creatures, more and more of them moving past, flowing, scrabbling, tumbling over and over each other. Then after waves of them had passed it loomed up: a dark, hulking shape, the thing that was pushing the multitudes out of its way.

  It scraped the bottom as it approached, pushing up clouds of debris—sand, rocks, and probably some of the deep-sea life—she couldn’t tell, because it churned up the ocean floor and made the water so murky that nothing could be distinguished in the chaos. It had to be some kind of immense vehicle with a wide base like a fan—as though it meant to scrape the bottom, as though it was scouring the bottom on purpose. A submarine? But submarines didn’t move along the ocean floor, did they?

  It rose so high she couldn’t see to the top; all she could see from within was a dull reddish light. And it took so long to pass that it reminded her of a train, though it was far larger than that.

  When it was gone the ocean floor was dark. Devoid of life. Nothing but swirling particles, slowly settling again.

  All the living things gone.

  She should follow it. Shouldn’t she? She could still see its redness, in the distance.

  Then something changed and she couldn’t follow it; she wasn’t free anymore. Around her darkness was giving way to a pale, sickly light. She wanted to shy away from it, but she couldn’t resist. She heard the pounding of her own heartbeat, duh-duh, duh-duh. She felt the thin separations of her fingers at the end of her arms, of her feet at the ends of her legs. Around her was a membrane that prickled and tingled and touched against a cold exterior—her skin. It had to be her skin.

  She felt her lungs expanding and contracting, and coursing through her was the warmth of blood.

  Eight

  When she opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was Jax’s face.

  It was his own face: animated and curious, with standard-issue blue eyes. She felt a rush of relief to see him back to himself—she hadn’t ruined things when she called out. At the same time she was so jarred by her own return that she could barely take it in: her head spun. Jax was very close to her, and as she blinked in the light she realized his hands were on the sides of her head.

  He took them away and straightened.

  “She’s back!” he crowed, and turned to the other faces coming into focus behind him: Hayley and Jaye.

  Cara’s body felt heavy as she struggled to sit up, but the moment passed and she was settled in herself again. The palms of her hands still ached faintly; she’d forgotten about that.

  She looked around. She was in an armchair in a small room. She could see a row of pods through an open door.

  “I did it!” continued Jax.

  Her own Jax. She felt like hugging him, but found she was just grinning dumbly.

  “You did!” congratulated Jaye, and clapped him on the back. “Cara! How do you feel?”

  Hayley leaned in close.

  “You didn’t actually look that bad with black eyes,” she mused. “They kind of set off your hair.”

  “Hayley!” protested Jaye.

  Cara remembered, then, the sight of Jaye being throttled by the big man, and felt a start of fear after the fact.

  “Jaye—your throat—are you OK?”

  Jaye nodded, pulling down her collar to show a couple of bruises on her neck.

  “I am OK,” she said. “Thanks to you.”

  “That was—that was great what you did, putting out the fire,” said Cara, and smiled at her friend.

  “Great,” said Hayley. “Jaye’s the hero. And you’re the hero. And Jax is the hero, too. I’m the only one who’s not. I messed everything up by having that stuff in my backpack.”

  “It wasn’t your fault, Hay,” said Cara.

  “Not at all,” said Jaye.

  Hayley nodded slightly, but she looked distant and a little sad.

  “Where’s—where’s Mom?” asked Cara, stretching out her arms and then rising unsteadily to her feet as her friends and her brother stepped back to give her room. She was conflicted. She was hugely relieved by Jax’s return and her own, but part of her—once she got used to it—had almost begun to like being bodiless in that deep, dark place, seeing the flashes of mysterious life.

  Part of her had grown to savor floating there, after the fear had waned. In the abyss near the source—if that was what it was—and in her avatar state there’d been a thrilling sense of freedom.

  “She left with Mr. Sabin and the rest of the teachers,” said Jax, his face collapsing into worry. “They—”

  “They were fighting the bad guys,” interrupted Hayley. “Your mom was like, the leader. She busted out some total martial-arts moves.”

  “Not martial arts,” protested Jax.

  “It was too,” said Hayley. “Like in those Chinese movies where they fly through the air. Supernatural kung fu.”

  “Point being,” said Jaye, “she brought down the hollow who had you—and just in time, because it looked like he was going to take off with you somewhere. I mean your body. But then all hell broke loose….”

  Cara walked past them to the doorway.

  The row of pods she’d seen from her armchair was more or less orderly—except the pods were empty. They were swaying slightly, but on both sides of that one row of pods, the room had been obliterated.

  She stood there speechless, staring at the destruction. It was tornado style.

  The others came up beside her.

  “The whole—the fight to get him away from you? It hit some of the pods, and then before we knew it there were more Burners, coming out of other hollows,” said Jaye.

  “But the teachers had a protocol for that,” said Jax. “These fireproof screens or walls—”

  “Cages” said Jaye.

  “—slid down between the pods and sealed them off into compartments. See?”

  Cara could see the crumpled remains of some of these, thin sheets of mesh that were twisted and torn, sticking down from the ceiling and lying jagged in the wreckage on the floor.

  “So then there were some hollows raging around in there, like trapped animals, and a couple were still on the loose, you know, with Burners coming through, and Mom and the others—”

  “While you were lying there—”

  “They had to fight the Burners—”

  “We had to carry you,” said Hayley. “You were a hollow, too, but Jax was with us by then, he was normal, he climbed out of his pod and the three of us had you and w
e pulled you in here and Jax did something amazing.”

  “Mom showed me how, is all,” said Jax modestly. “She showed me how while she was doing it to me. She gave me a model so I was able to stop them from using you—the Burners I mean—as a conduit. And then I brought you back, the way she did with me.”

  “Your brother,” said Hayley, “has serious mental skills. Dude’s like a guru. He could have his own show.”

  “But so we were in here by then, see?” said Jaye.

  “And by the time we weren’t totally focused on you, we realized it had gone quiet out there,” said Hayley.

  “And everyone was gone,” said Jaye, and shrugged her shoulders, bewildered. “Just—gone.”

  Cara took it in. She felt sluggish, still half-captured by the deep place and let down to be back in the world only to find her mother had gone away. Again.

  “Jax,” she said. “I have to tell you something. Mom is—see, she can—”

  “Turn into things,” finished Jax. “I know.”

  “It was wild,” Hayley told him. “I didn’t see her when she was, like, a fish, but I did see these big old claws she had on for a while. Instead of feet.”

  “Jax,” went on Cara, “did you—do you remember what it was like? While you were a hollow?”

  “It was like I was just someplace else,” said Jax.

  “Was it—”

  “The source,” said Jax. “Or one of them. ‘Cause there are more.”

  “Under the ocean, right?”

  “Deep,” nodded Jax.

  So he had been there, too. She felt a surge of joy: she wasn’t alone.

  Impulsively she did hug him, finally. There would be time later for them to talk about what they’d seen. She looked at him to say so, and he looked back. Even when he wasn’t pinging her, they understood each other.

  “Aw,” said Hayley. “Group hug! No one’s a mindless robot anymore. Score!”

  The four of them hugged till it felt weird. Which didn’t take long.

  Hayley pulled back and ruffled Jax’s blond hair.

  “But there’s something I don’t get,” Cara said to him. “Since Roger’s a bad guy—who poisoned you—why did he tell Dad, back in August, about the break-in with Mom’s computer? About her data being stolen? If it was him who did it, or people working with him, why’d he even tell Dad in the first place? Because Dad would never have known otherwise, and we wouldn’t have known. Right?”