Shift: A Novel

by Tim Kring

  “Oh, um.” BC wasn’t sure how to respond to this. “Sure.” The sun had disappeared behind the dense canopy now, along with the dilapidated mansion, and the early evening had stilled to an ecclesiastical gloaming. The feeling was only emphasized by the thousands of pitch-blackened trunks receding in every direction like the sooty columns of the Mezquita of Córdoba.

  BC pulled up short.

  “Something wrong?” Despite the shadows, the doctor’s blue eyes twinkled, almost as if he was in on a practical joke being perpetrated at BC’s expense.

  “It’s nothing,” BC answered, and, when the doctor continued to stare at him: “A word popped into my head, that’s all.” Still the expectant stare. BC suddenly remembered the man’s degree was in psychology. He disliked headshrinkers almost as much as he disliked Bohemians. “Mez-qui-ta,” he said when Leary still refused to go on. He had to sound out the syllables like a child reading a strange word, because he’d never heard it before, let alone knew what it meant.

  “Spanish for mosque,” the doctor said as if reading BC’s mind. He glanced at the trunks all around them. “The Great Mosque at Córdoba is famous for the hundreds of columns that hold up the prayer hall.”

  “Yes, of course.” BC nodded. Still the doctor stared at him. “It’s just that, well, I don’t remember ever hearing that word before.” It was more than that of course. He’d never heard of the Great Mosque itself, let alone knew what it looked like, and somehow he sensed that the doctor knew this.

  But all the doctor did was nod, then turn and head deeper into the forest. Dark pines stretched farther than the eye could see in every direction, and, with a start, BC realized he had no idea which way the house lay. He swallowed his discomfort and hurried after Leary.

  “For some time now,” the doctor was saying when BC caught up with him, “psychiatrists have theorized the existence of a mental clearinghouse that sorts the information our senses gather into usuable and unusable categories. They refer to this clearinghouse as the Gate of Orpheus. You remember that Orpheus descended into the Underworld to retrieve his wife, Eurydice, who had been killed by a snakebite. After he failed in his task, undone by the same curiosity that killed Lot’s wife, he returned to the surface, where he was promptly torn to pieces by the Maenads. This might seem like harsh treatment for a grieving widower, but the Maenads were servants of Dionysus, who was both dismembered and devoured, only to be reborn as an even greater god—a story that clearly inspired a certain young Jewish man running around the Roman province of Judea half a millennium later. As Dionysus’ high priest, Orpheus was said to possess mysteries culled from his time in the Underworld. Dionysus’ Roman name was Bacchus, of course, and for the better part of a thousand years his followers claimed that the famed Bacchanalian orgies of drinking and sex and violence afforded glimpses into these mysteries.

  “As with mythology, so with modernity: some contemporary psychiatrists have begun to search for what lies beyond the Orphic Gate in the human brain. No doubt you’ve heard the adage that we use a mere five percent of our mental capacity. This measure refers not so much to size as to functionality—mind as opposed to brain. It’s my theory that the remaining ninety-five percent hides behind the gate, and if we can somehow find a way to open it, a universe of possibility will become available to us. Memories would reappear in crystalline detail. The unrepeatable sensation of our first coital orgasm, say, or the ambrosial taste of mother’s milk. Our physical environment would acquire extra dimensions of sight and sound and smell and touch. Who knows, perhaps we might discover an ethereal bond linking all consciousnesses—the mental equivalent of a radio wave, needing only a receiver tuned to the right frequency to allow for instantaneous communication a thousand times clearer than mere words and gestures could ever convey.”

  It took BC a moment to catch up to the end of the doctor’s speech—he stumbled on the term “coital orgasm,” then fell flat on “mother’s milk”—but when he thought he’d figured out what Leary was describing, he said, “Pardon me, Doctor. I was under the impression that your research was geared toward the creation of a—” He couldn’t bring himself to say “Manchurian candidate” out loud. “It sounds to me as though you’re referring to tele—tele—”

  BC’s voice broke off, though his mouth hung open.

  “Telepathy,” the doctor said, staring quizzically at BC’s slack-jawed face. “And yes, Agent, ah, what did you say your name—”

  “Querrey,” BC said, completely forgetting the name he’d used a moment ago. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he swallowed audibly.

  “Agent Querrey? Are you all right?”

  “That depends. Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”

  The doctor looked only at BC.

  “Tell me.”

  “The trees,” BC whispered.

  “What about the trees?”

  “They’re … rippling.”

  For the trunks of the pines had begun undulating like strands of seaweed. A small movement, to be sure, only a few inches in either direction, and so lugubrious that BC could almost hear the grain splintering along its fibrous length. A small, slow movement, almost imperceptible. But still. Trees. Rippling.

  The light was completely gone now. Or, rather, the shadows had thickened until the quivering forest was midnight dark. The only light came from—

  Came from—

  BC rubbed his eyes, or thought he did. He wasn’t sure if his arms had moved. At any rate, the building that had materialized in front of him was still there.

  Bulky chimneys bookmarked the tiny structure; jagged fretwork gleamed like broken teeth against the shingles. Railings and balusters appeared to have been constructed from sinuous lengths of grapevine, and they slithered and danced around the porch like bark-covered lightning. In the bright light of day, the little building would have been nothing more than an overgrown dollhouse or gingerbread cottage. But lit only by daggers of moonlight—where had the sun gone?—it was a nightmare vision, full of dark omen.

  A light flickered behind the curtained windows, a match-strike that quickly flared into lantern brightness. It bounced from one end of the house to the other like a goldfish leaping between fishbowls or a burning tennis ball hurtling from racket to racket or barrels of flaming oil launched by a pair of trebuchets from either side of an ancient city wall. The metaphors seemed to bloom in BC’s mind of their own accord (along with words like “trebuchet,” which he was sure he’d never heard before). With each volley the glow gained intensity—insanity—until it was nothing less than the superpowers hurling nuclear annihilation across the vastness of oceans. BC almost expected to hear screams coming from the cottage. He almost wanted to scream himself.

  Suddenly a pillar of light filled the doorway and exploded over the porch. At first it was just fire. Then, impossibly, features came into focus. Arms, legs, a head. Slitted eyes and open mouth, hair flaming like a Klansman’s torch. A witch? No. A boy. A burning boy.

  No: a boy made of fire.

  Like all seraphim, it was terrifying in its beauty and power. Something that didn’t belong in the material world and shouldn’t be seen with mortal eyes. Something that would kill you the way you might kill an ant—thoughtlessly, because it attached no importance to your existence, or heedlessly, because it didn’t even see you.

  BC’s muscles tensed and twitched. He had seconds to decide: should he run, or welcome whatever message the boy brought? But was it attacking him, or merely fleeing the house? Carrying the truth, or carrying his death? A demon, or—please, God let it be or—an angel? He wanted to run, but terror held him rooted to his spot.

  Somewhere far away from him, Timothy Leary was speaking to someone who wasn’t quite there.

  “You see why we thought this one was special.”

  Millbrook, NY

  November 4, 1963

  Amid the rippling forest, the rusticated cottage was completely still. Yet somehow it was all the more frightening for that—a clear indication
that the building wasn’t part of the phenomenon but the source of it. It took all of BC’s self-possession to mount the two steps and walk across the narrow porch. The floorboards thumped solidly beneath his feet, the wrought-iron door handle was firm in his fingers, neither hotter nor colder than the surrounding air; it didn’t vibrate in warning over what lay on the other side of its portal. Even so, BC couldn’t bring himself to open it, and he turned to wait for Leary. The doctor’s eyes were on him, squinting, scrutinizing. The pantsless professor is observing me, BC thought, as though I’m the anomalous one. But any anger he felt was tempered by the trees dancing behind Leary’s back like a Greek chorus emerging from the wings to prophesy the hero’s fall. It was the sight of the trees that caused him to turn back to the house more than Leary’s prying eyes, and, squaring his shoulders, he rapped decisively on the curtained glass.

  The only answer was a chuckle behind him.

  “Agent Querrey? This isn’t Thanksgiving dinner.” And, sliding past BC, Leary pushed the door open. The doctor started to walk into the house, then stopped so suddenly that BC crashed into him.

  “What the hell?”

  For the first time, an element of fear entered the doctor’s voice.

  BC peered over Leary’s shoulder. The first thing he saw was a red handprint on the opposite wall. The print centered BC the way a track on the forest floor centers a hunter. The rippling forest disappeared from his mind as his eyes zeroed in on the bloodstain. The color was dry but still bright, probably only an hour or two old, and thick, suggesting it was the hand itself that was bleeding—possibly from hitting the wall—as opposed to the print of someone who’d touched a mortal wound, then flailed around.

  Leary was still frozen in the doorway and BC had to push past him to see the rest of the room. It had been torn to pieces. Tables, lamps, picture frames, all smashed to bits. Upholstery had been shredded, holes kicked in the walls, shelves broken in two, pages ripped from books. Almost all of the debris was stained with blood.

  A strange whining noise came out of the doctor’s throat.

  “Wh-what happened here?”

  BC ignored him. This kind of carnage was the work of a single disturbed mind, not a fight: not the haphazard destruction of bodies crashing into things, but the willful annihilation of a tormenting environment. The thousands of fragments of pottery were so pulverized they seemed to have been ground into the carpet by someone jumping up and down on them. BC was so sure of this last assessment that when he saw the ceramic shards embedded in the soles of a pair of shoes sticking out from behind the overturned sofa, his first thought was, I was right! Then he noticed the ankles sticking out of the other side of the shoes and, blushing slightly, rushed across the room. He didn’t bother to draw his gun. There was something about the stillness of the shoes that told BC their wearer wasn’t a threat to anyone.

  He drew up short when he saw the blood on the man’s chest. It wasn’t the wound that surprised him—it was hard to see this kind of violence heading anywhere other than suicide—but, rather, the fact that the inch-wide slit was empty. A knife wound, not a gunshot. But if the man had killed himself, where was the knife?

  “Is it—” Leary’s voice caught in his throat. “Morganthau?”

  BC wondered that himself, but he couldn’t ask Leary. Still, the reversal in the two men’s roles was complete. The blond doctor was quivering in fear, whereas BC felt focused and purposeful.

  “I need you to call the local police. Ask them to send a car and an ambulance.”

  “There’s no phone out here. I’d need to run back to the Big House.”

  “Then run.”

  Leary thudded off the porch and BC turned back to the man on the floor. He checked his pulse to confirm that he was dead, then grabbed a shredded cushion and placed it atop the pool of blood next to the body so he could kneel beside it. The chest wound was the only serious injury. The only other trauma was to the man’s hands, which were swollen and scraped, covered in blood, paint, plaster. All of this reinforced the idea that he’d punched in the walls, but if he’d driven a knife into his own chest, there was no sign of the blade anywhere.

  For the first time, BC turned his attention to the man’s face. The victim was young, only twenty-two or twenty-three, with strong cheekbones and a jawline dusted with dark brown stubble. Even drenched in blood, however, his suit fit him perfectly, so well tailored that it hadn’t ripped once during all his thrashing. It was even buttoned. There were faint bloodstains on his temples, but his freshly cut hair was still relatively neat, meaning that despite his distress the man had run his fingers through it to smooth it. Clearly, he was a man who took pride in his appearance. So why hadn’t he shaved this morning?

  All at once BC understood. The man had been here all night. He was guarding something. And even as BC remembered the name Chandler Forrestal—remembered Orpheus and the shimmering trees outside the cottage and the doctor’s comment about “the girl”—he heard a thump above him, and realized he wasn’t alone in the house.

  He bit back a curse as he reached for his gun, ascended the stairs as quietly as he could. Someone must have heard him though, because a female voice screamed:

  “Get away!”

  BC made his way to the edge of the open door frame. There was a picture on the opposite wall, and its glass reflected most of the room. BC saw a bed with a male figure writhing on it, a girl leaning on the floor. Something gleamed in her stained hands.

  “My name is Special Agent BC Querrey with the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” he called loudly. “I want you to put down the knife and step away from Mr. Forrestal.”

  “Get away! Please! I beg you!”

  BC didn’t ask a second time. He stepped quickly into the doorway, his weapon leveled at the girl.

  “Drop it!”

  The girl screamed. The terror in her voice was so palpable that BC felt it wash over him like a wave. At the same time, he caught a glimpse of something flying at him from the right. He ducked, and a vase smashed against the door frame, spraying him with bits of pottery. He whirled but there was nothing there save a bureau pressed firmly against the wall. No one could have been hiding behind it.

  “It wasn’t me!” the girl screamed now, and BC whirled back to her. Her screams were unnerving—he felt almost as frightened as she was. He fought to steady the gun in his hands even as she waved the knife in hers. There was blood on the blade and handle, on her hands and clothes, too. Not a lot, though. BC knew how much blood spurted from a chest puncture. There should have been more.

  “You have to believe me,” she pleaded. “He killed himself.”

  BC glanced at the man on the bed. He was drenched in sweat and writhing around, but appeared uninjured. He lowered his voice but kept his gun pointed at the girl.

  “Is Mr. Forrestal injured?”

  The girl’s eyes went wide with fear and confusion. “I told him we’d taken too much, but he gave him more anyway.”

  “Who—Leary?”

  “Logan. He came in last night when we were asleep. Used an eyedropper. He got Chandler first, and the coughing woke me up.”

  “Logan? The man downstairs?”

  The girl nodded her head convulsively. “I don’t know how much he gave him. Thousands of times the normal dose.”

  BC wasn’t sure how one got thousands of doses of a drug into an eyedropper, but talking seemed to be calming the girl down.

  “LSD?” he asked, and when the girl nodded again, he said, “Everyone who comes here does so to take the drug. Why would you refuse?”

  The girl shook her head. “We’d already taken it, and—” She broke off, shook her head. “We didn’t understand what happened to us. Agent Logan thought Leary might be able to help.”

  “You knew Logan before?”

  The girl suddenly snapped back into a panic. “He made me! He said he would go to the police otherwise! I had no choice!”

  BC took a step closer. “I don’t have any idea what you
’re talking about. But what you’re describing sounds a lot like motive.”

  “Stay away!” The girl brandished the bloody knife in both shaking hands, but what BC noticed was the ring on her finger. A large ruby, its color deeper and richer than the blood that spotted her hands. He didn’t know why, but it seemed to him that you would take off a ring like that if you were going to commit murder, or at the very least afterward.

  “You have to believe me,” the girl implored. “He stabbed himself. He couldn’t take it.”

  “Take what?”

  “I don’t know. Whatever Chandler—whatever he saw.”

  BC glanced at the man on the bed. “What does he have to do with this?”

  “I told him not to give Chandler any more acid, but he wouldn’t listen! You have to get away.”

  Suddenly BC realized: the girl wasn’t afraid of him. She was afraid for him. “You’re trying to protect me?”

  “He—” The girl gulped back the word. “It’s out of control. You have to get away. Out of its reach. Until it wears off.”

  “But … but how did he—”

  The girl screamed in frustration, so loud the man on the bed moaned. “Don’t you see? Don’t you see?”

  And now BC did see: saw that the entire room had begun to shimmer like the trees outside. Only this time it wasn’t just a hallucination. He could feel the floorboards warping beneath his feet.

  “You have to run! Please. Before it’s too late.”

  BC tried to hold the gun on the girl but the seesawing motion beneath his feet made it impossible. He reached for the wall but the wall was rocking too. Splaying his feet, supporting his right arm with his left, he mustered as much authority as he could.

  “I’m sorry, miss. I have to ask you to put the knife down and step away from Mr. Forrestal. Until I figure out what’s going on here, you’re going to have to come with me.”

  The girl screamed, even as the bureau lifted up and flew across the room at him. He threw himself to the floor just before it hit the wall so hard that it smashed through, hung half in, half out of the melting bedroom in a cloud of plaster dust. A rain of random objects began pelting BC—books, lamps, pictures, little pieces of bric-a-brac that flew at him too quickly to make out. He squeezed himself into the corner behind a tall armoire and shielded his face as best he could. Glass exploded as objects crashed through the window over his head. This isn’t happening, he tried to tell himself. It’s just an illusion. A hallucination. It has to be. But he could feel glass and plaster and wood chips rain down on his hair and knew he was wrong. Somehow the man on the bed was throwing things at him without touching them. Throwing them with his mind.