Shadowline Drift: A Metaphysical Thriller (14 page)

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Authors: Alexes Razevich

Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Genre Fiction, #Metaphysical, #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Thrillers & Suspense, #Suspense, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Fantasy, #Metaphysical & Visionary, #Science Fiction

BOOK: Shadowline Drift: A Metaphysical Thriller
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“
Yes,” Mawgis said. “Every bit of it was to get you to this spot.”

Too much was being tossed his way at once. Jake wanted time to think
, to find an advantage. “So many talents, Mawgis. Seems like you wouldn’t need help for anything.”

Mawgis
rolled his shoulders. “Yes. Annoying, but there is this one thing.”

Jake
’s ears pricked up. Here was something. “What is it—this one thing you can’t do?”

He hadn
’t noticed how tense Mawgis’s shoulders were, drawn up close to his ears. He saw now how they relaxed. That worried Jake. Why would that question ease Mawgis’s tension?

“
You need to know that the shadowline is like a door,” Mawgis said. “Like the door in your house, it is simple to open in one direction, but difficult to push in the other. You must force it.”

“
Maybe break the hinges?”

“
Opening the portal won’t destroy your world, if that is your worry. It is a matter of will. Nothing to it, really.”

Nothing to it
. Probably all sorts of things to it, Jake thought.

“
If it’s simple, why do you need my help?”

“
As I said, I fell over. Accident. Never should have happened. Think what it would be like if my kind could come and go as we pleased, slipping
back and forth between our world and yours. You know the things I can do—we are gods to your kind. You would be at our mercy, and Jake, not all are as nice as I.

“Lucky for
you, I only want to go home. What if I wanted to rule your sort? It would be easy. And I’ll tell you something, there are worlds where your kind would be like gods. And worlds with beings who would be like gods to us. So the someone or something that set this all up made it so none of us can control the shadowline ourselves. We need help from a sentient being of that world if we want to get back. Keeps things under control, you see.”

Birdcall
s pierced the still air. Jake listened, feeling the size of the forest, the weight of it all. Would he have helped if Mawgis had simply knocked on his door at home, explained himself, and asked? He wanted to think yes, of course, but maybe not.

Mawgis pushed his hair away from his face with both hands. “Shall I tell you something more? Not just any sentient being can move the shadowline. It takes someone with will. Someone a bit stubborn in the face of logic; the kind who will do whatever it takes to get what he wants. The sort of person capable of stopping their own growth, for example.”

Jake crossed his arms over his chest. “Someone like me.”

“Hmmm,” Mawgis noised. “Yes. You would seem the perfect choice. Quite possibly the only
choice, not that you should get big-headed about that. A man should keep his humility, don’t you think?”

“
What will you give in return for my help?”

“
The antidote for benesha. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

“
I want benesha not to leave the forest.”

“
Too late for that. Quite honestly, if not for you, there would be a good chance benesha never would have left the forest. The Tabna and benesha simply would have disappeared, leaving World United and the other do-gooders pining for the vanished dream. But you, Jake, require a different motivation.”

His stomach clenched, but Jake shook his head.
“I don’t believe you. For all I know, the Brits and Joaquin Machado were as much an illusion as the other members of the Tabna tribe were, and benesha having left the forest is as much a lie as everything else I’ve heard from you. Maybe it isn’t even poisonous. All of this is nothing but a scheme you cooked up. A crazy bullshit soup designed to get me here to do what you want.”

Mawgis leaned forward and cocked his head.
“Is that a chance you’re willing to take?”

Jake stood up.
“I think so, yes.” He looked around to get his bearings—pretty sure he knew in what direction the compound lay. If Mawgis didn’t stop him, didn’t prove somehow that benesha was a poison and was already loose in the world, he’d
walk away now a happier man than he’d been in a while.

“
I can show you.” Mawgis slipped the backpack off his shoulder and set it on the ground beside the stump.

Jake watched as the older man opened the kit, fished around inside, and pu
lled out a large stainless steel thermos. Mawgis unscrewed the cap, pulled out the plug, and poured a sludgy green mud into the cap.

“
Benesha,” he said. “Already prepared for travel.” He peered at Jake. “Are you ready for a bit of a journey? To see the truth with your own eyes?”

To see with his own eyes—
he wasn’t sure he wanted that. Wasn’t sure if he wanted a definite answer. Mawgis would just as soon lie as anything else, but benesha travel, what he saw—that always felt true. He nodded almost imperceptibly.

Mawgis smiled, dipped his finger into the thermos cap
, and rubbed a thin line of mud across Jake’s forehead.

“
This is really all it takes,” he said. “I overdid it last time in show for you. I do love a bit of theatrics.” He dipped his finger again and rubbed a line across his own forehead.

The familiar
light-headedness of benesha travel slipped over Jake, the same lack of concern he’d experienced in Mawgis’s hut. He let his mind wander, wondering about benesha, how it had been transported, where the majority of it was now.

The room was huge—windowless, with unpainted
cinder block walls. A large roll-up metal door took up most of one side. Jake guessed that the small wood door on the opposite end led to office space beyond. A yellow payloader sat idle, waiting to scoop up its next batch from a small mountain of ground green stone. He glanced around the building. The signs on the walls—Safety First; Warning: Authorized Entrance Only; Potluck Sign-up Sheet—were all in English, and he thought he might be seeing a place in Ohio, near where a benesha feedlot had been planned. He heard voices from beyond the smaller door, and the creak as the door opened. He didn’t know if the people coming would be able to see him. If they could, how would he explain why he was there? How he’d come to be in the warehouse? He didn’t know how to think or wish himself out of the place.

The door swung open. Not the same door. A door that was metal,
a dull pewter color, and opened onto a long, narrow building with stacked cages filled with rabbits of various colors against one long wall and cages full of white chickens against the wall opposite. The scratching and clucking of the chickens and the noisy, wheezing whir of the air system filled the room. The smell of fur and feathers and excrement, of animals packed together too tightly, made him gag. Each cage held two bowls—one filled with water and one filled with small brown pellets and green dust.

Rabbit
s and chickens. Maybe the scientists were still puzzling out which was best. Maybe no people had actually eaten benesha-fed animals yet, or only a few. There was no one else in the barn. He walked down the wide dirt path between the cages toward a scarred wood door at the back.

Beyond the door lay
a dirt road in a small village. He knew this place. He’d been here before—working out a truce between Congolese warlords. His heart sank. Ramshackle buildings, broken-down carts, their wheels canted to the side. Emaciated dogs, every rib visible beneath their fur, grouped in the dismal shade of a nearly leafless tree. No people, but loud voices around a corner—not arguing, but shouting, insistent, wanting. It was hot in Congo, but cold sweat trickled down the center of his chest. He followed the road, and saw what he feared most.

The air was sour with shouts and cries from the people—a language Jake didn
’t understand, but the meaning was clear. Skinny brown men and women were clamoring for the paper-wrapped packages that well-fed brown men wearing yellow shirts bearing the blue logo of World United were handing out from the back of a rickety old truck. There were more people than packages. Many more. Loosely strung men shoved each other to get close to the truck, shouldering their neighbors out of the way, kicking those who fell, bare feet to bare ribs, eyes that never looked down to see who the victim was.

Two women near where he stood fought over one paper-wrapped parcel, pulling and tugging back and forth, their voices loud and mean, until one pulled harder, yank
ing the package from the other’s hand. The winner clutched the package to her bony chest, her thin shoulders hunched, building a wall around her prize. Jake half expected her to throw back her head and howl her victory. The loser sat where she’d fallen, her long skirt hiked up over her knees, stick legs splayed out, headwrap knocked askew.

Naked
or half-dressed children with distended bellies ran everywhere, excited—thinking about the meal promised, maybe, or just wound up by the adults, by the desperate brutality.

He wanted to step in, to warn them, to sweep up the naked child sitting alone and crying. But he was a phantom here, no more a
solid presence than he’d been in President Delacort’s bedroom—as useless as dust.

Mawgis tapped his shoulder.
“Now you know. Now you must decide.”

 

Fourteen

 

Jake swiped his hand hard across his forehead. Flecks of dried mud fell to the ground
, green shards against the reddish soil. He bent forward to wipe his forehead again, wanting all of it gone, wanting none of the flakes to fall on his shoulders or chest, even to touch him. Wanting the sights in the village gone, the view of what benesha would do—not just poison the body, but poison the soul.

A
dull ache spread in the center of his chest, a burn behind his eyes. When people started dying, panic would set in. Scientists and humanitarians would scramble, searching for a way to stop it. Maybe they’d figure out the cause. Maybe find a cure. Maybe not. And if not—then what? Nonchalance from those who weren’t affected? As long as it wasn’t them, or their family, or their friends, would the non-hungry agree with Mawgis that the world was better off? Would he, in some dark and honest hole in his heart, agree?

“
The antidote,” he said, leaning toward Mawgis on the stump they shared. Frogs croaked from the trees beyond their view. Flies buzzed and flitted through the small clearing. Sweat beaded on Jake’s forehead and slid almost imperceptibly down his
face. He straightened his spine and made his voice matter of fact. “When I see it works, I’ll help you.”

“
Too late for that, too.” Mawgis shrugged. “Shadowlines drift among worlds like the phases of the moon. Very long phases. It’s been here awhile, but that wretched shaman kept you drugged and asleep through this tail end of its stay. If I miss this chance, we will both be dead before the opportunity comes again. It must be now.” His lips bent in a small smile. “I tease you, Jake, but I have never lied to you. If I tell you the antidote, it will be true.”

The
sights of the benesha travel played in his mind, turning up the heat on his skin, heat he kept from showing in his eyes or tone. “You’ve lied to me more than once. You told me it was no longer true that I stopped growing when I was five, and you told me that my new height is an illusion. You can’t say one thing and then another and have it all be true.”

“
As to your height,” Mawgis said, “both are true. There are an infinite number of planes, dimensions, and worlds, and on some of them right now, Jake and Mawgis sit having this same conversation. On some of them, Tall Jake has undone what he did as a child. On others, Small Jake believes he has grown, but it’s a trick.”

Jake smiled
thinly. “In this world, Mawgis. This world, right here, right now—which is true?”

The older man shrugged again.

Frustration blew through
Jake like broken glass. All his life, he’d succeeded through wits and
brains, his innate understanding of what others really wanted—not what they said they wanted, but the desires of their secret hearts. Mawgis, though—he had no idea if Mawgis wanted what he said, or something else, or simply liked the game so much that playing it was a part of him, as automatic as a heartbeat.

“
The antidote to benesha—is that only true in some worlds but not in others?”

“
The cure is the cure everywhere,” Mawgis said. “Help me get home and I will give it to you.”

Training—it was training and years of experience that kept Jake from pummeling Mawgis, kept his face calm, his hands from shaking while Mawgis jabbered on, dangl
ing his tales and bits of promises. All the while, the sights of Congo played behind his eyes.

“
Tell me first.”

“
Oh, no. I tell you now and you’ll leave me here.”

“
That’s you you’re talking about, Mawgis. You’d do that. I keep
my
word.”

A pair of toucans swooped through the trees, their orange beaks and black-and-white bodies a sudden splash of color against the oppressive wall of green.

“You would help, Jake, yes, but not with the same enthusiasm. You need to be driven. If you were more willing, I would not have needed to bring the Salesians to me, or to whisper in certain ears about the mineral’s special abilities.”

Jake
’s breath caught in his throat. It wasn’t an accident, then, that scientists had discovered benesha’s protein-enhancing abilities—it was Mawgis’s doing. Or Mawgis had just followed him around with his benesha travel and learned of the discovery that way. God, he was getting tired of this.

“
Even now,” Mawgis was saying, “the only reason you’ll help me is to save the people—people you don’t know, who mean nothing to you. You never would have turned your great will toward the shadowline just for me.”

Jake stared at
the man who wasn’t a man—the
other
. All of this, the possible death of thousands, maybe millions, for what? So he would help Mawgis return to whatever place he’d come from? It was insane.

“
Give me the antidote,” he said.

“
I’ll tell you as soon as you bring the shadowline to me. Use your will, that amazing will that stopped your growth when you were five years old. If I don’t tell you, all you need do is let it go and I’ll be stuck here, a place I do not wish to be.”

Jake focused
his sight on a big leafy tree he didn’t know the name of, staring hard at a patch of sun falling on a clump of fat, lobed leaves, and thought. His head ached. His pulse throbbed at his temples. There was only one answer. He nodded, his eyes still on the sunlit leaves, then turned back to Mawgis.

Mawgis grinned.
“The shadowline is close now. Can you see it?”

Trees and fallen leaves
, small clods of mud, and the skittering of something—a lizard maybe—through the debris. Jake saw nothing else. His hands clenched.

“
You’ll never see it by looking,” Mawgis said. “Relax. Catch it from the tail of your eye. See it, there to your left.” He tilted his head. “Beyond the trees, just out of sight?”

Jake palmed his
watch and blew out a breath. He’d let his emotions get riled. He knew better. In any trade, it was nearly always the man who stayed calm who won the better deal. He glanced in the direction Mawgis had indicated, but didn’t focus on any one thing, letting his view be lazy.

And saw it, just out of reach, near the trees, a shimmery silver trace
, a hint of blue at the edges.

Not
curtains wafting in a gentle breeze, but a glowing line. Sparks flew from the line—red, green, silver, blue, gold, bouncing away in all directions, frightening him. A thin electrical hum buzzed in his ears. A dim but sharp smell, slightly metallic, hurt his nose.

A ball of
sparks flew toward them. Jake yelled, pulled in on himself, and rolled off the stump. He huddled in the leafy mud, throwing his arms up to protect his head and face, peeking out to see if anything was falling toward him. Sparks glittered overhead, holding in a ball shape, like shimmering snow compacted by human hands.

“
Don’t be frightened,” Mawgis said, and Jake felt the man’s hand clamp his shoulder. “It won’t hurt you. Can’t, really. Too much my world and not enough yours to even affect you.”

The
spark-ball had flown by, into the trees, disappeared. Maybe gone, maybe on some boomerang track. Jake stood, his heart still thudding. “I’d believe that more if I didn’t already know you for a liar.”

Mawgis sighed
. “Jake. Fun is fun, and that’s all my little falsehoods to you have ever been—a bit of fun. This is serious. Do I seem fool enough to trick you now, when I need you?”

He didn
’t know the answer to that. He did know he wanted the antidote and would do what it took to get it. Whatever it took.

“
See if you can find the shadowline again,” Mawgis said. “Just relax. Almost like letting it come to you. Don’t make any sudden moves or you’ll frighten it. It wouldn’t have sparked if you hadn’t scared it.”

Jake
pushed his hair away from his forehead. He’d been in this spot before, nervous and unsure, and he knew how to shove the feelings into a tiny room in his mind and lock them up so they didn’t get in his way. He let his focus go slack. The sparking seemed to be dying down; he didn’t see the colored cinders flying around anymore. He stood breathing slowly, letting his mind drift, letting thoughts wander in and wander out without paying
them close attention. At the edge of his view, the silvery trace undulated slowly.

“
I’ve got it,” he said. “Now what?”

“
Draw it to you,” Mawgis said softly, the voice one he might use to coax a shy animal.

A haze of gnats buzzed
near Jake’s eyes. He didn’t dare bat at them, for fear of spooking the shadowline again. He laughed silently at himself. Mawgis had gotten him to think of it as a living thing—poor, frightened shadowline, needing to be willed into the clearing and captured. Maybe he should whistle to it, or cluck his tongue. He pictured the slow drift of the line toward them. He couldn’t see movement, but sensed its motion, the way one feels a gentle swell moving under a small boat. It was coming closer.

How could
he hold it once it reached him? Did he need to hold it open like a door? Did he just need to draw it close enough for Mawgis grab it or jump through?

“
How does this work?” He felt the trace move away as he worried, and saw how he might use that. He forced his mind back to calmness.

“Bring it closer.” Mawgis kept his voice gentle. “The line will grow wider the nearer it comes. When it is wide enough for me to step in, I’ll tell you the cure for benesha, and then I’ll be gone.”

“
Why not tell me now? I’ll focus better if I’m not splitting my thoughts—wondering what the cure is. Wondering if you’ll tell me or trick me again.”

He let his thoughts wander then, and felt the shadowline float away
. He shot a quick glance at Mawgis and was glad to see worry in the older man’s eyes.

“
Bring it back,” Mawgis said sharply, all gentleness lost in the snap of a moment.

A small tremor rippled across his shoulders—a worry of his own, that he was making a mistake, that he trusted himself too much. Worry tasted like ash in his mouth.

In for a penny; in for a pound. Something Jake’s mother used to say. She thought he could do anything he set his mind and heart to. And he could. He’d proved it his whole life.

“
Can’t,” Jake said. “I’m too worried you’ll cheat me. It hurts my head. I’m going to have to let it go.” He felt the shadowline drifting, a swell receding from the shore.

“
No need for that,” Mawgis said. “You want your antidote, you shall have it.”

Jake
let the line float further away, and worried he wouldn’t be able to bring it back. And thought, if he had the antidote, the shadowline didn’t matter. Except that it did—he wanted Mawgis out of his world.

He watched
the man reach into the backpack and pull out a thick black pen and a small pad of paper. Mawgis wrote something down, ripped off the top page, and jammed it into Jake’s hand.

The words were gobbl
edygook. They looked scientific and chemical, but he didn’t know if they
were the antidote or simply made up on the spot, one last joke Mawgis was playing. The only term Jake recognized was activated charcoal, which he knew was used in poison remedies. He rubbed his palm over the face of his watch again—thinking, feeling, wondering where the truth lay.

“
Okay,” he said. “I’ll bring it back.”

Mawgis zipped the backpack shut with a hard pull.

Jake closed his eyes. He drew in a slow breath and let it out. He willed the shadowline toward the center of the tiny clearing, wanting it to come to him, wanting it as much as he’d ever wanted anything—as much as he’d wanted to never grow too big to sit in his mother’s lap. His eyelids opened, but he didn’t focus his sight, seeing only from the corner. The trace came slowly, the movement so incremental he could barely track it, but he felt it, a buildup of air pressure.

“
What about me?” Jake asked softly. “Is my height really an illusion? If I can do this, Mawgis, why couldn’t you and I together have made me tall?”

“
Tall or small, you are what you are. You’ll see it in the women’s eyes the moment you return to the compound.”

Pilar.

The shadowline wobbled and skittered back toward the trees. Pilar, Naheyo and the Helpers staring at him, a small man again. Stupid of Mawgis to make him think of that.

“
Focus,” Mawgis said, his voice sharp and impatient.

The burning smell was gone now,
Jake realized, but the hum was still there, low frequency, vibrating in his bones.

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