The Night Shifters (5 page)

“Now do you know
who I am?” asked the voice.

“No.”

I heard a sigh. It
sounded kind of sad.

“You should get off
the path and come into the field,” it said plaintively.

“Right. Sure. I
can’t even see you, but I should trust you.”

“Really!
Honest!”

I was almost
running by that time. The owner of the voice couldn’t be what it
sounded like, or it wouldn’t be afraid to show itself. I had made
it about three quarters of the way to the light at 75th and Indian
School. I was determined to make it all the way.

“You’ll be sorry,”
said the voice. Before I could muster a witty comeback, something
slashed at my ankle, almost tripping me. I looked down and saw some
weird things growing on the path. They looked like plants at first,
but then I noticed the “stems” were fingers, and the fingers had
claws. They caught at my feet, and the claws turned red with my
blood.

“
Ouch!!” I
tried to hop away from them. “Yow! Hey!
Jeez!
”

They snatched at me
as if they could see me, and I hopped a few more yards down the
path before I heard a crackling noise. The pathway began to break
up as more hands bloomed and reached for me.

“Told you,” said
the voice as I leaped off the path and fell into the road, scraping
my hands on the asphalt. By then I felt mad enough to say something
really scathing, but once again I didn’t get the chance, because I
heard another disturbing sound: the growl of an engine.

A pair of
headlights lit up the darkness. They were closely followed by a
second pair, and then a third. I couldn’t see the drivers, but I
felt fairly sure who they were.

I hauled myself to
my feet and ran for all I was worth toward the intersection and the
Super Gulp.

At least I didn’t
get dream lag this time. Quite the opposite, in fact. I could feel
my muscles tensing and stretching, my legs literally pulling at the
roadway and propelling me along at a very impressive rate. This
wasn’t just useful, it was exhilarating. In fact, if it weren’t for
those pesky cars threatening to run me down, I could have dashed
all the way across town.

Behind me, the
engine sounds came nearer, and I pulled harder. The Super Gulp
loomed closer. The crystal heart in my chest began to hurt, but not
from strain. It was more like warning and excitement all rolled up
in one. The pain increased as the engine sounds got louder, and the
lights illuminated the road in front of me, stretching my shadow
out far ahead.

They can see me now,
I
thought.
They
want to catch me!
And I
laughed. The Super Gulp was almost within reach, but it was going
to be close, very close, and in a mad impulse I had to turn my head
and look at the drivers. They were just behind me, their hair
streaming back from their beautiful faces and their mouths frozen
into wild, happy smiles. The three of them converged on me, and
their cars blurred almost into other shapes, things with manes and
hooves.

Let them catch you,
whispered a seductive notion, but their sound and light
propelled me ahead of them, across the parking lot and up to the
double doors where I could see a white brilliance inside, safety. I
burst through the doors and into the real world.

•

“Safe!” I laughed
madly. The florescent lights blinded me, and I could smell stale
cookies and pine cleaner. I was back, I was safe, but no one said
“Welcome to the real world!”

So,
I wondered
irritably,
where
is everybody?
In a moment my
eyes adjusted, and I saw the clerk.

He stood behind the
counter, the essential convenience store clerk, utterly devoid of
expression. He might have been twenty. He was a white guy who stood
medium height, had a medium build, and short, medium brown hair. He
stared at me without saying a word, and he never blinked once.

“Uh,” I said. “Umm
– “

Not a word or a
blink.

I half turned
to indicate the parking lot. “Out there – “ But nothing waited out
there. The drivers were gone. I could see lights in the houses now,
the utterly real lights of the solid, waking world. I had no doubt
of that – I could feel it emanating from the man behind me,
Everything here is
normal and boring, nothing different here, nothing strange, so
don’t come in and tell me your wild stories. I’m not the guy who
can help you.

Is
this it?
I asked myself,
turning in a circle to scan the semi-clean store and its shelves
full of kinda necessary stuff.
My reward for embracing reality?
I looked at him again, and I blanched at the
thought of trying to explain anything to his empty face.

But that’s like a dream too, isn’t it? Where you try to get
help from someone like him and
he doesn’t believe you.

No, not a dream.
That’s a nightmare.

“
I’ll just
look around.” I turned away so I wouldn’t have to see his lack of
expression anymore. I wandered over to a rack that held crossword
puzzles, romance novels, and
Car-Toons
magazine. I moved so a stack of beer cartons stood between me
and the clerk.

Super Gulp was
real, I felt sure of that. I was awake, and I wasn’t crazy. How did
I know all that? I just did. I recognized normal when I felt it, I
don’t know how else to explain it. So I had been right to think
that coming into this store would stop whatever had been happening
to me, it had taken me back to my life.

So how come I
didn’t feel relieved?

Well, for one
thing, in the real world I had to go to work. If I hung around the
Super Gulp long enough, I would remember where that was. It would
be business as usual. That was a normal thing, but it wasn’t a
happy thing. It wasn’t mysterious, it wasn’t exciting, it wasn’t
dazzling, it wasn’t dangerous – it wasn’t very interesting most of
the time. But I would have my memories back, and maybe I could
change all that. Maybe this was my big chance to change my life.
Not to throw puns around, but maybe this was my Wake Up Call.

Mom
materialized in my memory. She stirred her rootbeer float, gave me
that serious look, and said,
Hazel – promise me you’ll never give up on your
dreams...

Not
life
. Not
the real world
.
Dreams
. And she didn’t
look wistful when she said it, she looked totally serious. Suddenly
I had a feeling Mom hadn’t been talking about what I wanted to do
with my life.

Unless she
meant that my dreams should
be
my
life.

You belong here. Stop fighting and just
be
here...

I felt eyes on me.
The clerk had moved so he could see me past the beer stack. He was
the ambassador of reality. He symbolized everything I would be
going back to.

Stop fighting or
you’re going to drown...

It was fun to
outrun the drivers. And I had a crystal heart in my chest now. It
hadn’t killed me even though it should have. And Sir John said I
wasn’t an ordinary woman. He said the Night liked me. That was a
heck of a lot more than I could say for the Day.

It’s dangerous out there,
I warned myself.
You can’t be sure what you’re getting into. Everyone else
knows what they’re doing, and you don’t. And it may be really tough
to find a bathroom.

This was a
crossroads, the branching path in the forest. But if I was going to
make a choice, I had to be honest with myself about
what
I was choosing. Insanity wasn’t it, and I
hadn’t been asleep since the first time my alarm went off. This was
a choice between the World of Day and what mom had called my
dreams; the life where I was just going through the motions, or the
life where every move counted. It was a choice between convenience
store clerks and Twinkies, or Sir John and the Masked
Man.

Once I had put it
that way, it was easy to decide.

“Goodnight,” I said
as I left the store, and I didn’t mind when the clerk didn’t
answer.

•

So, boom. I made up
my mind. I walked out into the Night, half hoping Sir John would be
waiting for me, ready to hand me explanations and clear
directions.

But no one waited
there.

Okay, maybe I
should just walk home. But as soon as I set foot outside the store
I thought,
which
home?
The one at 75th Avenue
and Indian School had shifted to another part of town. I didn’t
know the people who lived there now, and anyway, where was the
house with the tower? Or any house? Closed convenience stores and
abandoned gas stations lined the streets. Everything had gone dark
again outside. And the stars shined very, very bright.

Uh
oh
. I peered back through
the glass of the double doors of the Big Gulp, looking for the
clerk.

He was gone.

Darkness filled the
store now, more dark than it was outside, no artificial lights, no
real world, only starlight and pregnant silence.

“What happened?” I
had felt so relieved when I walked out of that store. I didn’t
remember most of the details of my old life, but I remembered sort
of a general crumminess, a pervasive disappointment that I had to
wrestle with, daily. I had rejected that now, I had been so
decisive! Adventure was waiting! Romance! Other stuff!

Or maybe not. Maybe
I still had problems. Maybe I still needed to get some memories
back.

I sat on the front
porch of the store and pondered, my head in my hands. If I had
really stepped back into reality when I walked into that store, why
didn’t I remember all the things I had forgotten?

“
Think,” I
commanded myself. “Remember
.”

The Night seemed to
listen.

Squealing brakes
had me scrambling to my feet as headlights lit up the road in front
of the store. But I relaxed when I saw the vehicle that belonged to
them. A city bus. It pulled up to the curb and opened its door.

“Come on!” said the
perfectly human driver. “You’re gonna be late for school!”

I had asked
for my memories back. Now one of them hit me like a slap in the
face. “School! Oh
no
!”

•

I ran to the bus
and climbed in, my face red with shame. I sat in my usual seat and
stared out the window, trying desperately to remember what my first
class of the day was.

I remembered
enrolling at Glendale Community College. But what had my courses
been? Drawing and Composition, English, Algebra, American History,
Economics – now which classes could I remember having attended
last?

Just English.

“Jeez!” I scolded
myself. “How could I forget to go to class?”

I didn’t even have
my school books with me. I would have to get new ones. And I would
have to meet with my teachers to arrange a make-up schedule.
Assuming I hadn’t already been dropped from those classes! And I
would need tutors for Algebra and Economics. This was going to be a
tough haul, but I would make it. I just had to buckle down.

Other people got on
the bus as we rode up 75th Avenue all the way to Dunlap. I barely
even noticed them. We turned right at Dunlap and headed toward 55th
Avenue. I clenched my teeth and straightened my spine. I was as
ready as I was going to be. The bus pulled into the turn-around in
front of the school, and we all climbed off.

The other students
had books. They hustled off to their classes while I stood on the
sidewalk and looked back and forth from one end of the grounds to
the other.

I couldn’t remember
where my classes were. Not even English.

Think think think!
I
ordered myself.
Remember!
I tried to
picture myself sitting in English class. Who was my teacher? Mister
– Mister – something Greek. Mister Markos!

“Hey,” I asked a
young man who was hurrying past me, “where’s Markos’s class?”

“That way.” He
pointed in the direction he was going, to a row of buildings on the
right. And now I remembered something else. You could see the
parking lot from Mr. Markos’s room. I used to stare out at it when
I was supposed to be paying attention to class, wishing I were
somewhere else. Because I hated school.

But I followed the
young man anyway. Even if I hated school, I had to finish. Mom
would be very disappointed in me if I didn’t. And I would be a
loser, a quitter. Besides, the semester was almost over. There were
only a few weeks left. So I would really have to hustle to pass my
classes.

As I plodded down
the walk toward my doom I recognized two people going in the other
direction: Camilla and Nostradamus.

She wore a
skin-tight, black catsuit and her hair was bobbed short, making her
an impossibly sexy beatnik. He wore high-water polyester pants and
a tight, short-sleeved shirt with one of those pocket protectors
full of pens and pencils – exactly the way Bernard Clifton had
dressed in college.

Bernard had
been in my Economics and Algebra classes. Several times I had
caught him staring at me, often with a sneer on his face. But he
had been a C student – I heard the other people in my class talking
about that.
How
come he thinks he’s so smart? He got a C- on that last
test!

Bernard always
acted like he had the world in his pocket, like he knew something
the rest of us didn’t. Now I wondered if he was right.