David Morrell - The Shimmer

On an August Sunday, Page’s father had made a rare effort to spend time with his family by taking Page and his mother to the famed Tampa aquarium. They wandered from tank to tank, peering through thick glass walls at various exhibits: sharks, manta rays, moray eels- his father enjoyed looking at anything dangerous-and various schools of brilliantly colored exotic species. But the space behind one glass wall appeared empty except for water, sand, rocks, aquatic plants, and part of a replica of a sunken ship.

“I guess the aquarium’s getting ready to stock it with something,” Page said, quickly bored, turning away.

“No, it’s already stocked,” his father replied.

“With what? Nothing’s moving in there. It’s empty.”

“Oh, there’s plenty of life in there.”

“You mean the plants.”

“No. I mean cuttlefish.”

“Cuttlefish?”

“They’re not really fish. They’re in the squid family.”

“Cuttlefish?” Page repeated.

“With tentacles that project forward. They can be as little as one of your fingers or as long as your arm, sometimes bigger.”

“There’s no fish in there as long as my arm,” he scoffed.

“Squid,” his father corrected him.

“Okay, there’s no squid in there as long as my arm.”

“Actually, there are probably a dozen of them.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

His father gestured toward the glass. “Take a look. A real close look.”

Page had long before learned that his father prided himself on an amazing assortment of knowledge about all kinds of unusual subjects. When his father spoke that authoritatively, there was only one way the conversation could end. So Page concentrated on the water in the huge tank.

“Sometimes we see only what we expect to see,” his father explained. “Sometimes we need to learn to see in a new way.”

That made even less sense than the imaginary fish. “I don’t know what you…”

At once one of the rocks seemed to move a little. Hardly enough to be noticed. Barely a fraction of an inch. But he was certain he’d seen it move. He stepped closer to the glass.

“Ah,” Page’s father said, apparently detecting his sudden attention. “I think you’re starting to catch on.”

“That rock. It…”

“But it’s not a rock,” Page’s father emphasized.

The object moved another fraction of an inch, and Page realized that his father was right-it wasn’t a rock.

Page saw a head then, and a tentacle, and another. Not that the object moved any more noticeably than before. But Page’s vision had changed-or else it was his mind that had shifted focus.

His father said, “Sometimes we see only what we expect to see.”

He was beginning to understand. If the only things that were apparent were sand, rocks, underwater plants, and part of a replica of a sunken ship, then the mind took those shapes for granted and didn’t bother to recognize what the eyes were seeing.

Amazingly, another rock moved. A patch of sand shifted slightly as well. A section of the sunken ship turned to the side, and one of the plants started walking across the bottom of the tank. The green spikes on it were actually tentacles. Years later, when Page was being trained at the New Mexico police academy, he thought back to that afternoon when he’d realized that there could be a huge difference between what the eyes saw and what was truly before them, that the world was not always what it seemed. Unfortunately, he later discovered, ugliness too often was the truth of what was before him.

But not that afternoon. Excitedly, he began counting the creatures he suddenly noticed. They were everywhere, it seemed.

“One, two, three.”

“Four, five, six,” his father said.

“Seven, eight, nine,” his mother joined in, laughing. That was the summer before she was diagnosed with the breast cancer that would kill her.

His father predicted that there were a dozen cuttlefish in the tank, but in the end Page counted eighteen, weird, ugly-looking creatures with a strange name for a squid, who’d learned to conceal their ugliness and after a while began to seem beautiful. Within minutes he wasn’t able to see the sand, rocks, underwater plants, or replica of the sunken ship because so many cuttlefish were in the way.

“How do they hide like that?” he asked his father, grinning in astonishment.

“Nobody knows. Chameleon lizards are famous for being able to assume the colors of objects around them. Spiders can do it, too. But nothing’s as good at it-and as quick at it-as cuttlefish.”

“Magic,” Page said.

“Nature,” Page’s father corrected him.

Page remembered that long-ago afternoon as he strained to look at the darkness beyond the fence while the crowd of strangers before him marveled at things he didn’t see. Some complained that they didn’t know what the others were getting so excited about, and Page understood their frustration. Was he witnessing a mass hallucination, some kind of group delusion in which people convinced one another that they were seeing something that wasn’t there?

But Tori hadn’t been with a group when she’d first seen it, and she hadn’t been with a group when she’d come here alone after so many years of remembering and dreaming. If there was a delusion, she’d brought it on herself.

Or maybe I’m the one who’s deluded, Page thought. Hell, all those years and I couldn’t even get my wife to share something so important that it brought her back to the middle of nowhere.

But he had to stay calm.

Remember the cuttlefish, he told himself. Remember what your father told you. “Sometimes we see only what we expect to see. Sometimes we need to learn to see in a new way.”

Lord knows, I need to learn to see in a new way.

The reality Page thought he knew had been turned inside out. The marriage he’d thought he had, the life he’d prized-nothing was what it had seemed to be.

Why? Page shouted inwardly. How could I not have seen this coming?

He rose from the bench and stepped to the edge of the observation platform. Vaguely aware of Costigan leaning against the post near him, he stared over the heads of the people in the excited crowd and concentrated on the darkness.

Again he noticed the specks of distant headlights approaching along the road from Mexico. But that couldn’t be what the people in the crowd were thrilled about. They were pointing in a different direction altogether.

He studied the brilliant array of stars, surprisingly much brighter and more varied than he was accustomed to in Santa Fe, which was renowned for the clearness of its night sky. Maybe they were why the government had built the radio telescopes nearby. But the people in the crowd weren’t pointing toward the stars-their rapt attention was focused entirely on the horizon.

What do they think they’re seeing? Page wanted to know.

Remember the cuttlefish, he urged himself.

He focused on the darkness across the grassland.

And saw an almost imperceptible movement, hardly enough to be noticed…

Except that he was sure he had noticed it. Either his eyes had shifted focus or his mind had. It wasn’t only movement-it was a change in the darkness.

Without warning, there were tiny lights. Some of what he’d thought were stars weren’t in the sky-they were hovering over the grassland. At first he suspected they might be distant fireflies, about a dozen of them, but they were brighter than fireflies, and as he began to notice them, they increased in size.

They could have been miles away, yet they seemed close, as if he could reach out and touch them, which he tried to do. That was when he realized the people in the crowd weren’t just pointing-they, too, were reaching out.