B. Larson - Shifting

I put my hand up to my chest, and it took a long second, but I felt my heart there, still thumping away. It wasn’t conclusive, but I took it as a very good sign. I continued down the slope. I looked up at the silvery-blue surface and, although it was hard to be sure, I figured I was at least fifty feet down.

I looked back, and my heart skipped and began pounding harder. The things, some of them at least, were coming down after me. Those that had little flesh on them, that were mostly white bones with scraps of clothing left, were still coming. They were just walking down. I supposed that their bones were dense enough not to float without their flesh. They weren’t coming fast, but they would never stop, I knew. They would not grow tired or bored. I knew somehow too, that even when darkness came tonight, if I still lived, they would still be coming.

The deeper I went the darker it became. I reached a flat plateau that ran out at least fifty yards, and then I found a low stone wall. It looked very strange down there, overgrown with waterweeds and with a few perch floating around it lazily. It had to be part of the town, I felt sure. I followed the wall for a while and found the foundations of building. I stepped into it and figured it would have been a barn. The timbers had rotted away for the most part, but there were still concrete anchors holding the bottom of the posts down. I imagined how it must have looked that day, more than half a century ago, when the waters of the river had risen up after they’d built the dam and consumed this whole area.

I noticed there were drowned trees here, on the bottom. They were festooned with growths and fish now, but there they were, with their dead branches reaching upward as if begging the impossibly distant sun.

I looked back and saw the things chasing me, there were four of them. I had left them far behind. Feeling relatively safe, I looked around and wondered at this drowned world and I had a new thought then, one I didn’t appreciate at all. What if the dam broke? Soon, heavy rains and snows were coming, and I’m sure that back in the summer when the world had gone mad and died, the engineers running it had left it in the normal summer configuration. It had been a dry summer, meaning the gates were set to only allow enough water to escape to keep the river alive. When the weather really came in, I’m sure the level would rise and the dam would overflow. Part of Redmoor might even flood. Worse, I had no idea how long the dam could overflow without giving way. Maybe years, or maybe just one season.

It was while I pondered such things that something grabbed my ankle. I jerked, and it gave somewhat, but flexed back again. I struggled out my saber and realized that a hand was wrapped around my foot. I hadn’t noticed the body laying in the weeds and rocks. The corpse was wearing a fisherman’s gear, right down to the hat with the lures stuck in it. He appeared to have ropes around his body. Bewildered, I struggled to keep my foot from his mouth, where he seemed determined to drag it. A second hand latched onto my ankle now, and was pulling hard. I struggled and managed to get some distance, but the thing held tightly to my foot. I realized after a time that ropes across its back meant the thing was tied down to something. Stabbing the body was doing no good, the struggles didn’t even register any pain, so I sawed instead at the ropes that wound around the midsection.

Before long, I had one of the ropes apart, then another. The creature began to float, just a bit, and now it had a harder time in its struggles with no firm anchor against which to push or pull. Without leverage, its grip weakened.

My face was a grimace of mixed disgust and triumph when I finally cut it free completely. It flailed in the water, making primitive, awkward flailing motions to reach me. It floated higher, and I finally saw what it had been tied to: a large metal tackle box. It painted a picture of the owner’s last hours, perhaps caught out on the Lake with monsters on the shore. Possibly, he’d spent days out on the water, but had been unable to return to his cabin for fear of a horrid death. Clearly, he’d decided to tie himself to his tackle box and throw himself into the lake, better to drown cleanly than to be torn apart.

Soon, the thing had floated up too high to reach me. It continued to struggle in awkward silence.

Before I could celebrate or mourn, however, I noticed the things that had followed me down from the surface had caught up and were very close now. I could see fresh white bone gleaming.

I turned toward the bluish flame and half-walked, half-swam toward it, scooping water with my hands to speed me along. I left the sunken barn behind and followed the stone wall, trying to hurry, which was really not possible when walking on the bottom of a lake. Then I found something odd: a road. It was a normal, asphalt road. Sure, it had sediment on it and the yellow line was very faded and only visible in patches, but it was a road, just the same. I took the road that had once had a name and followed it to Elkinville. I half expected to find an ancient street sign pointing the way, but was disappointed.

Alongside the road now, I sensed that one of the shift lines was very near. I wasn’t moving into it, but rather paralleled it so that instead of increasing resistance I felt instead the continuous light touch like that of a breaking spider web discovered in a doorway in the morning. It was even lighter than that, much of the time, feeling like a field of static electricity that plucked at each hair in my scalp individually and prickled my skin. The line ran directly to the light that I moved toward.

I tried to ignore the shift line and pressed forward. I knew if I stopped now and I survived to reach the surface, I would never have the guts to come down here again. To turn back now meant failure.

I felt as if I walked in a dream, and the surreal surroundings reinforced the sensation. I came to dead houses in various stages of watery decay and finally, to a church of mortared stones. The light was very close now, just on the other side of the church, it appeared. In the churchyard I found a well that had a bucket, still on its chain, that hung upside down like a kite. I marveled, wondering how many years the bucket had floated there, anchored by that chain, tirelessly working in vain to float up to the surface. While I gazed up at the floating bucket, something new grabbed my shin.

I opened my mouth to scream, but only a few bubbles came out. I looked down and saw something was clawing up out of the well. Something had a hold of me. It was in too close to use my saber, so I grabbed at the gloved wrists and tried to rip those hands away. They held on and now a face was coming up at me, out of the well.

It was the face of Captain James Ryerson. He was lit with a greenish glow. His mouth was open as wide as his eyes. He gaped like a fish on the deck of a rowboat. I understood in a moment that he had drowned down here, and that he had fallen for Wilton’s spell in Redmoor, just as I had. His face worked, and bubbles came out, and I smashed that face. The water pulled my blow, but I gave it a good one, and blood and bubbles frothed up between us.

He was clutching at my pockets. I pulled back my fist again, and something slowed me. Bubbles? I looked at his face again and there was desperation in it, but there was life in it too. He wasn’t dead, and I saw, feeling like a fool, that he had green chemical lights pinned to his jacket that had caused the green glow. My instincts switched over to trying to help. He wanted something, desperately. He was alive, and he wanted something. It only took me a second longer before I reached into my pockets and took out one of the potions. He grabbed at it and then turned and dived headfirst into the well again. I stared down at his retreating boots, outlined in a ghostly green chemical glow. Bubbles floated up to me, and I knew that meant air. I climbed into the well after him, feet first, and let myself sink down like Santa Claus coming down a chimney.