Shifting

by B. V. Larson

  “I don’t want to go through the cave!” blurted Vance.

  “No problem,” said the Captain with a grin. “I think we have a replacement for you right here.”

  “I’ll go,” said Monika. She had been listening in the hallway and came out now. Her hair was tousled and she still wore that dark coat she had come to me in last night. In her hand, casually, she held that .32 pistol I’d given her. “I want to go with you, Gannon.”

  Twenty-Three

  It was nearly noon by the time we found the cave mouth. During the trip, I kept noticing the Captain’s eyes crawling over Monika. It was more than just a few appreciative glances—I would have expected that from any guy. I recalled a bearded vagrant I’d seen on a subway in Chicago, his eyes had worked over every woman on the train. They’d been hungry eyes, and he’d ridden the subway for hours, like he lived on it. The Captain’s eyes were like that.

  His stubble had been coming in further every day, few of us bothered to shave anymore, and there was plenty of white in his beard. I bet it had been a long time since he had been with a young sweet girl like Monika. Maybe he never had, not in his whole life. I bet he’d been frequenting backstreet whores for years up in Bloomington or down in Louisville on the weekends. That was more his speed.

  I shook my head, trying to clear away such thoughts. I reminded myself that he’d killed the thing that had killed my dad and half the town along with him, and then there had been the matter of removing a thirty-foot tree-monster’s arm just yesterday. I owed him for that, we all did. But he did give off a strange feeling to us more homey types. I imagined vague suspicion had always been the reward others gave to real warriors, real killers. Everyone needed them when the chips were down, but we had a hard time trusting them completely. Especially the spooky ones like the Captain.

  “Okay, I guess we split up here,” I said.

  The Captain glanced at me, and then his eyes swung back to latch onto Monika. He stood there staring, leering really. I guessed he was waiting for us to enter the cave. I almost turned my back on him, but I had a dark thought, just then. He had that rifle. What if he just blew me away, had his way with Monika, and then headed back after dark with some story about us turning into werewolves? Maybe he figured we were crazy and doomed by going down there anyway. Maybe in his thoughts he was figuring he might as well finish us now, instead of waiting for us to come back and stalk him in the woods after we had changed. Who would ever know the difference? What policeman would come out and dig up the truth? There weren’t any police anymore. We were our own law.

  For an awkward moment I stood there, all of us watching each other, and I didn’t know how to move things forward. Monika had big eyes. I wondered if she knew what I was thinking. She was pretty perceptive. If she was tracking my thoughts, she was playing it cool. Her hands were in her coat pockets, and I knew she had her pistol there. Maybe she had her hand on it with a white-knuckled grip, or maybe she didn’t. I didn’t think an American girl could have kept quiet at a moment like that, if she was having those thoughts. But this girl was different, more serious.

  I opened my mouth, and then closed it again. I thought hard for one more second, and then I had it.

  “Hey, I wanted to thank you.”

  He startled and looked vaguely surprised.

  “For yesterday, and for back when you got that meter man, the one that got my dad.” I said, speaking honestly. “I’ve always wanted to thank you for that. I owe you one, James.”

  He looked at me for a moment, and I saw a change come over his face. “You’re welcome,” he said evenly.

  I nodded and we parted ways. Monika and I went into the cave, while the Captain took his overland path. I wasn’t sure if had any reason to be, but I felt relieved to get into that cool, dark cave mouth.

  When Monika and I were down in the dark hole I lifted the lantern and turned it up. She looked up into my face seriously. I opened her pocket and gently pulled her hand out of her coat. It was wrapped around the pistol grip, just as I had suspected.

  “You were worried?” I asked in a whisper.

  She nodded. Her lower lip quivered, and I thought for a second she might break down, but she didn’t.

  “I had strange thoughts from him,” she said. I had noticed that her English became a little worse in stressful moments.

  “He often gives people that feeling. He’s not a completely normal man. He fought in many wars. Bad wars.”

  She looked at me in sudden understanding and nodded. I wondered what kind of soldiers she might have met in Eastern Europe. Russian veterans of Chechnya, perhaps?

  “I think he is okay, he just worries people, especially now that the world is so different.”

  “Okay,” she said, I could see her pulling herself together. “Let’s find the way out.”

  “Do you like caves?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. This is my first cave.”

  I grunted as I got down on my hands and knees. “It opens up further down. There are some big rooms below us.”

  She followed me as we wormed our way down into the earth. The cave had all the familiar smells I recalled from my teen years when I’d spent quite a bit of time in them. It smelled like fresh dirt and a dozen hinted-at flavors of old dung. The air was very cool and still. I’d only been in this cave a few times, but I remembered it had several exits. To get to them you had to work your way down a few twisting shafts, one that was steep, like a chimney, and then you would be in the big rooms. There were water pools down there and big rock formations, one of which looked like a petrified pipe organ.

  Getting down the chimney was the hardest part. It seemed smaller than it had years ago, and I had a lantern instead of a strap-on headlight this time. The lantern clanked and scraped on the walls as I toted it down. I wondered what the hell I would do if I broke it down here. We’d brought flashlights, but of course they didn’t work. They were just dead weights in our pockets now, relics from a forgotten era.

  “I wonder how long it will be before we forget about flashlights,” I mused aloud, straining as I lowered Monika down to the floor of the first big chamber.

  “What do you mean?”

  “If they never work again, years from now people might even forget their original purpose. They might think things like that were some kind of bizarre religious icon.”

  Monika looked up at me when she had her feet planted firmly. She wore an expression of bewilderment mixed with a touch of fear. I worked at getting myself out of the chimney and down to the floor of the cave.

  I shook my head, “Never mind, a silly thought.”

  “No, no,” said a strange voice in the darkness of the cave. It wasn’t Monika, it wasn’t anyone we knew. In fact, the voice wasn’t even human. “Pray thee continue, it is a good question, a deep question, one the earth can answer.”

  The voice was high-pitched and querulous, and upon hearing it, my mind conjured an image of a shirtless, skinny old man with every one of his stacked ribs showing between his sunken belly and knobby shoulders.

  I fell out of the chimney and almost broke the lantern.

  Twenty-Four

  “Come out!” Monika demanded, while I struggled to get to my feet. Monika had her pistol out, and her face was all stretched white skin and gray streaks of dirt.

  We saw no one. The chamber was big and still. There was a large black pool in the middle of it and at the far end of the pool was the formation that looked like a pipe organ. The room was perhaps a hundred feet in length and our ring of lantern light didn’t reach that far into the gloom.

  “Come on, speak up, we mean you no harm,” I called out.

  At that, we got a dusty chuckle. “So good of you to worry about my well-being, child.”

  I took a step forward, holding up the lantern and peering. Was there something at the far end of the cave, or was that just a shadow? I thought about pulling out my saber, but this sort of encounter was why we had come here, to find out more about these line
s on the map where the shifting occurred.

  “Do you have a moment to speak?” I asked. I was sure now that I spoke with some kind of changeling, as I had that time on the lakeshore.

  “A moment?” cried the voice. “Nay, no one has a moment to spare! But a century, yes, that I have.”

  “That sounds a bit long for me, changeling. I only want to ask a few questions and we’ll be on our way. Reveal yourself.”

  “Questions?” it all but screamed the word. “Have the fates placed me here in this dank hole only to educate wanderling mooncalves?”

  Monika and I eyed one another. This thing, whatever it was, seemed less than sane.

  “You’ve only been down here a few weeks, or months at the most,” I said, trying to keep it talking while I strained to pick it out in the dark abyss. “The shifting changed you from human to whatever you are now. Perhaps you didn’t know that. The Preacher calls your kind shadows, humans who’ve lost their humanity, but he still holds out hope for you to return to us, to return to our kind.”

  “We would wish you to come back to us,” said Monika.

  There was another raspy sound of grim amusement. “You know so little of what you speak, children. But I’ll answer three questions, two of which you’ve already asked.”

  “What—” I began, but Monika put her hand on my arm, I glanced at her and followed her pointing finger. There it was, the thing that spoke to us, sitting on a knobby formation that looked like a brown beehive made of stone. It sat in the middle of the pool. I couldn’t make out much more than its generally humanoid shape, but it was small, much smaller than a man.

  “Firstly, mortal fools will of course forget the meaning of your torch-of-the-hand. It will no longer function, and so its purpose will be forgotten and turn into a vague legend, as did the true purpose of witch-hazel and belladonna and a cross hammered from single chunk of iron.”

  I took a few quiet steps forward along the lip of the black pool. I could see the elf now, and yes, my mind told me, that’s what it was. It was sitting but could not have been more than two feet tall if it stood.

  “Secondly,” the creature continued, ticking off my questions on its fingers. “You asked if I have a moment to spare. I will tell you that some of us—changelings as you say—have always been here, but we’ve slept for centuries, as the leaves sleep within the trees waiting for spring. One of your kind has provided me the flesh needed to take my ancient form, but I was here long before your grandfather was whelped out of a screaming farmer’s wife and long before his grandfather did the same.”

  I stopped now, about twenty feet from it. The thing watched us and I thought I could see a glitter in its tiny eyes reflected in the lantern light. “You’re saying I get one more question then—”

  I sensed its glee and hurried, “—No, wait, don’t answer that, it was a statement, not a question.”

  It made a hissing, sucking sound of disappointment. “Ask then, child.”

  “What was the thing I met on the lakeshore?” I blurted. It wasn’t the smartest thing to ask, I’m sure, but it was what I wanted to know most at that moment.

  “Ahhh,” it said, somehow sighing out the sound in a long single syllable, the way a snake might sigh in contentment when the rat is finally a twitching lump within its swollen belly. “Something useful has not been gotten out of Malkin of the Elfkin in a very long time. As a fitting reward, I’ll reveal myself, as you have previously requested.”

  Malkin of the Elfkin. I filed away this bit of information. I imagine in other times Malkin might have been called a troll, or a goblin or a pixie or any of a thousand other names in a thousand other places. I supposed it had only been a matter of time until one of his type showed up. He got up from his perch then, and hopped toward us across the water. He seemed to splash only lightly into the inky pool with each step. I wondered if there were stones down there just below the surface or if this creature was so impossibly weightless as to be able to run over the water like a skittering insect.

  He paused only five feet from us. I lifted the lantern a bit, bent forward and peered at him curiously. Monika knelt beside me, putting one knee on the lip of the rocky pool. Malkin had a thin face with sharp features; the nose was like a blade and the chin tapered to a point. Across his face stretched an overly large mouth, which flashed us with a leering, humorless grin. Monika and I examined his clothing in wonder. His pointed boots and his russet-brown coat seemed to be made of a light leather. All the clothing seemed sewn with impossibly fine workmanship, each stitch smaller than any human tailor could produce. The elf leered at us and rested his overlarge hands on his bent knees. He stood in the pool, but was clearly perched upon a stone or something just below the water.

  He gazed back at us with as much curiosity as we had about him. “Strong is your will and your luck to resist this time of upheaval! But don’t trust to luck forever, younglings.”

  “How can you stand on the water?” asked Monika.

  Malkin clucked his tongue at her. “Such a crude attempt! One would normally secure the third cake before stealing another.”

  Monika blinked at him. I snorted in amusement, but between her English skills and his odd approach to speech she didn’t comprehend him.

  “You asked about the Hag,” said Malkin, leaning forward with his hands on his knees. He watched us, and I thought he displayed almost as much curiosity as we had for him. “For that is what she was. The creature that you met on the lakeshore. She resides in the lake now, and she is the thing that summons others into her new home, which your people have all but forgotten already. She summons and guides a new people in the name of the hoofed ones.”

  Monika and I opened our mouths simultaneously, bubbling with more questions. Hag? I thought, chewing over the term. I thought the Doctor or the Preacher had mentioned such a thing. A type of powerful witch, as I recalled.

  Malkin stilled our further questions with a wave of his tiny hands. He peered up at us with eyes like black beads.

  “You don’t have to answer more questions,” I said. “But maybe we could call you a friend?”

  Malkin’s face grew sad then, and I saw hair-thin lines there in his face that revealed his fantastic age. I wondered how long he had truly been in this cave, or perhaps others like it. He shook his head slowly.

  “Ever it is so with your folk,” he sighed. “Ever would you mistake the slightest aid for friendship. True friendship is something which must be earned and which is never given. So big your kind grows, yet still you bear the minds of children.”

  He turned directly to Monika and almost whispered to her, bending forward as you might when speaking to a child. “Your question will be answered, but perhaps not in a manner to your liking. Gaze at my feet, child.”

  He made a little shuffling motion with his feet. Something dark swirled there, over his wet boots. I realized he was standing on something that moved and rolled a bit in the water and I lifted up the lantern and craned out to see what it was.

  Monika realized what we were looking at first. She gasped and pulled back in horror. I squinted, and then I saw it. The dark substance moving over Malkin’s feet was someone’s hair, and the stone he was standing upon was a face—a head, to be more exact. I thought I recognized the head of Mrs. Krenzer. After we’d slain the three spiders her daughters had turned into I’d wondered what had become of her. The whole cave seemed to brighten up then, and I watched the elf raise his arms up slowly over his head, chasing the gloom somehow from the cave, or perhaps from our eyes.

  The black pool was black no longer, and in it must have lolled a dozen human heads. Dead eyes like boiled eggs sat in fish-nibbled skulls. Dark hair wafted over slack jaws and silver or gold hoops glinted in the pale rubbery ears of some of the women.

  I stared in disbelief at Malkin for a moment. He wore a very strange, intense expression. Not triumph, exactly, but something like it. I had the feeling he was as curious about us as we were about him. He wanted to see and feel what
we did, to live through our shock and grief by observing our reactions.

  “I would grieve with thee, but grief is not in my mix. It would not work, just as spreading sugar upon a stone would not make it taste sweet.”

  I drew my saber and slashed at him in one smooth motion. He seemed only mildly surprised and bounded away to splash down upon another head. As I stumbled into the pool after him, I found it was less than a foot deep. I slashed and cut the air where he had just been. He leapt about like a maddened frog and long before I could catch up he had bounded to the spot where we had first entered the cavern.

  “My trophies are not of those I’ve slain myself, but merely collected. Elfkin are neither your friends nor you foes, children. But beware the Hag.”

  Monika squeezed off a shot at him, missing by a foot or two. The booming report was deafening in the enclosed space. He waggled a finger at her, then leapt up the chimney we’d come down in a single great bound. He was gone.

  I looked at the heads in the black pool. I wondered how they had gotten here, and how we had avoided their fate. Perhaps it was as the Doctor said: perhaps we were the last and the strongest, most resistant ones. I thought of gathering the heads and taking them back up for a proper burial and a service. Instead, I mumbled a few words over the dead, and prayed they would not be forgotten, even though I knew they would be.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said to Monika in a husky voice.

  We worked our way deeper into the cave and an odd feeling came over me. It was as if something pressed against my face and hands, and entire body. I leaned into it, like a stiff wind. But there was no wind, there was nothing you could see. Still the barrier was there.

  “I feel something, Gannon,” said Monika behind me. She was frightened.

  The tunnel narrowed as it went upward. Soon we were reduced to crawling. Side passages went off in every direction, but I kept heading in the direction of a faint puff of fresh air I could feel. It was cold moist air, and I could tell it was from the surface.