The Night Shifters (2 page)

“ – you’ll get it
all back in due time,” the note continued. “Until then you’d better
pretend nothing’s wrong. Bernard will be along soon to collect you.
Please go with him, and do as he says. Everything will be
fine.”

At the bottom
of the note the author signed her name,
Serena
, in lovely, looping letters. I had no idea who she
was.

“
P.S.,” she
had written under the signature. “If anyone calls you
Serena
, play along with them. It could be very
unhealthy to tell them your real name.”

I read the note a
few more times, but it didn’t make any more sense, and I didn’t get
any more of my memory back. So I nibbled the bland food and
wondered if this meant I really didn’t have to go to work anymore.
I hoped it did. I didn’t remember what I did for a living, but I
knew I hated it. I hated my boss, too. Mr. – Quail? – or Queed? –
something like that.

I heard the
sound of engines outside, rising and falling in the Doppler Effect
as the white-haired men came and went. By then I had decided I
really had to be crazy. I could remember just enough to know that
memory loss and hallucinations were signs of mental illness. But
that didn’t mean Serena could feel free to tell me what to do.
After all, this was
my
delusion, I should
have
some
say in things. Maybe I would go
with this Bernard person, and maybe I wouldn’t.

BLAM! came a sound
at my front door, followed by BLAM BLAM BOOM!! As if someone were
pounding with an oversized fist. I went to see who it was, feeling
like a stage actor responding to a cue.

I opened the front
door, and there he stood. I remembered him immediately, though I
hadn’t seen him since my college days. It’s hard to forget someone
who smells that bad. He was still obese, and his teeth looked worse
than ever.

“Bernard? Bernard
Clifton?” How come I remembered his last name and not mine? That
hardly seemed fair.

“Serena, where have
you been?” he demanded. “It’s almost time! We’ve been waiting for
hours!”

“
Serena
? My name is
–”

If
anyone calls you Serena, play along with them...

“Don’t be coy with
me,” he said. “If this is your idea of a joke, I’m not amused.”

“I’m sorry. I must
have overslept.”

“Well, come on
then. It’s not too late.” And he hurried away.

•

I suppose I
could have just gone back inside and shut the door, but my
curiosity stopped me. Why did he think I was Serena? Where was he
going? Would it really hurt to find out? I didn’t
want
to sit at my kitchen table all night – waiting
to wake up, or to stop being crazy. And the moment I had laid eyes
on Bernard, a piece of my memory came back. Maybe I could remember
more. So I locked up the house and went after him.

I got an odd
feeling as soon as I moved away from my house, almost like going
from awake to asleep. The world outside didn’t seem as clearly –
outlined? But somehow the night felt familiar, the touch of it
against my face as I followed Bernard down my front walk. It was
neither warm nor cold, at least not in temperature. The starlight
was cold. The shadows were warm.
You’re walking inside one of your own dreams,
I told myself, reverting back to
Theory No. 1. It felt wonderful – but it didn’t totally rule out
the insanity theory, either.

My house, now
situated on a corner, sat across from his house, on another corner
of a huge intersection that had seven corners altogether. One of
the white-haired drivers honked at me as we navigated the
complicated crosswalk, and I waved at him. He looked like a Fey elf
from the cover of a Fantasy novel: mean and sexy. “Can I give you a
lift?” he called to me.

“Get lost!” Bernard
snarled.

The driver laughed
and grinned at me. “The boss will want to meet you.” He looked me
up and down like a wolf inspecting a lamb. “Yes, he certainly
will.”

He would have been
more charming if his teeth hadn’t been so sharp. He peeled rubber
as he drove off.

“Ignore the mess,”
Bernard ordered when I followed him into his ranch-style house. The
furnishings did not speak well for his taste. He didn’t pause to
give me a complete tour, but led me through to the back yard, which
featured a large swimming pool. A dark-haired lady paddled around
in the pool with an inflatable duck around her slim waist. She wore
a black, one-piece swimsuit with a plunging neckline that partially
revealed her impressive assets.

“She’s finally
here, Camilla,” said Bernard.

“Hello darling.”
Camilla’s voice purred about two octaves lower than Bernard’s. She
ran her tongue over her red lips and smiled at me. Looking into her
eyes made me feel a little dizzy.

“Sit down.” Bernard
made the invitation sound like an order. He indicated three rickety
lawn chairs next to the pool, so I plopped myself into one and
accepted the Pepsi Bernard thrust into my hand. Camilla pulled her
gorgeous self out of the water (and out of the inflatable duck) and
slinked like a panther toward the lawn chair next to mine. Bernard
sat in the last chair, straining the weave almost to the point of
destruction. He passed around a bowl of Cheetos.

“
Well.”
Camilla nibbled delicately on the orange snack. “Isn’t this lovely?
What a perfect Night.” I swear, I could hear the capital letter
in
Night
.

“I’m enjoying it so
far,” I volunteered. This was true, oddly enough. This was a
strange situation (though not actually much stranger than one of my
usual dreams), and Camilla and Bernard were not the sort of people
I associated with (when awake), but that was actually a good thing.
My waking life usually disappoints me, sometimes a little,
sometimes a lot. So far, this Night had been refreshingly
different.

“
I would
change a few things,” Bernard said. “Starting with these
wretched
tract
houses. The
Others have such perverse senses of humor. We should all be living
in mansions – we should be surrounded by the great art and
sculpture of the ages. But will they listen to me?” He snorted, his
body shaking like an earthquake.

His attitude
annoyed me. I probably should have kept my mouth shut, but I
answered before I could think better of it. “Nature is always more
beautiful than art. If we could surround ourselves with
real
beauty, it would be mountains, streams,
forests, desert canyons...”

His glare silenced
me. But Camilla put her hand on my knee. “What a lovely thought,
Serena.” The warmth of her touch spread like waves. (If she wasn’t
a massage therapist, she ought to consider it as a second
career.)

Bernard jabbed a
finger toward his house. “Trash! Don’t try to deny it. Most of the
denizens of the Night are rabble. We should not be catering to
their lowly tastes! We should set a finer example. And we will,
Camilla, now that Serena is here.”

“Of course,
darling,” purred Camilla.

Hoh boy. The
letter had just said,
Go with Bernard
, It
hadn’t said why. I was taking my cues from the two of them as well
as I could, but this water was getting too deep.

Camilla removed her
hand from my knee, but the warmth lingered. I made the mistake of
glancing at her, and got trapped in the dark pools of her eyes. I
blinked furiously.

She flashed a
knowing smile. “You look adorable, Serena. So deliciously innocent!
With
freckles
yet! And that
little-boy haircut. Where ever did you find that sweet
body?”

“I woke up in it.”
I grinned in what I hoped was a wicked fashion. They laughed, and
ate more Cheetos.

“Really,” Bernard
insisted, “I must shift a more suitable home for myself. Normally I
wouldn’t have time, what with all the bother and nuisance from the
Others, but now the cards are stacked on our side of the table.
I’ve been thinking about what should go where. I think the Mona
Lisa would look lovely over my fireplace, don’t you? And
Caravaggio, how I adore his work!”

Bernard droned on
in that vein for several minutes, while Camilla gazed at him with a
rapt expression and the stars blazed down on us. I tried to avoid
the conversation by pretending to study the constellations. But
soon, I didn’t have to pretend, because I realized something was
missing. “Where’s the Big Dipper?”

Bernard tried to
conceal a sneer. “Why would you care about such a common
constellation?”

“I’ve always rather
liked it.”

“Well, dear.” This
time, Camilla’s smile revealed a pair of sharp fangs. “If you like
it so much, why don’t you shift the Night and put it – oh, there’s
a nice spot, next to the Crab Nebula.”

As if
arranging your own constellations were an everyday occurrence. And
I thought
I
was
crazy.

“Maybe later,” I
mumbled.

They exchanged
sharp glances over that. Bernard scowled. “She’s right, now is not
the time for trivial pursuits. We mustn’t tie our energies up with
Play until we’ve done the Work.”

“Are you sure that
body is bulky enough, Nostradamus?” Camilla asked Bernard. “I don’t
want any of the black manna to leak out and spoil our plans.”

Nostradamus?!
I almost
choked on my Cheetos. This guy wasn’t even Bernard (though he could
certainly be his twin)! And I had followed him, like a
dope.

“More than bulky
enough, my angel,” he said. “I can hardly move in it. We’ll have to
get into the pool to finish the job.”

I felt
paralyzed. I didn’t belong there, but I didn’t know how to get out
of it. Sooner or later, they would realize I wasn’t Serena, and
that would be really awkward. It would be like that scene in
Invasion Of The Body
Snatchers
when the Pod
People realize there’s someone in their midst who hasn’t been
converted yet.

Then a clock tower
bonged in the distance, and they leaped to their feet.

“Let’s do it!”
Nostradamus cried, and he began to dance in a surprisingly
energetic fashion. Camilla did the same, though much more
gracefully. I, not wanting to look suspicious, did the pony. Each
bounce took me a little closer to the back door.

The clock bonged
thirteen times. When it finished, Nostradamus tore off his clothes
and jumped into the pool. Camilla gave her swimsuit a tug, and it
went flying across the yard like a shot rubber band. She leaped
into the water with him. I was so stunned, I stopped dancing and
just gaped at them.

“Yes, my love,”
Nostradamus panted, “receive the black manna!” And they began to do
some shocking things.

“Serena, hurry
sweetheart,” Camilla cried. “I can’t take it all!”

“You’ve got to be
kidding,” I said.

They didn’t stop
what they were doing, but they did turn their heads to look at me.
I watched understanding dawn on their faces as they realized who I
wasn’t.

“Imposter!”
bellowed Bernard.

“Excuse me – I have
to go to the bathroom.” And I ran into the house.

•

I didn’t really
have to go to the bathroom, but when I hurried back into the front
room, the doors and windows had vanished, so I decided to look in
the bathroom anyway, in case it might have a forgotten window. I
was happy to see that it did.

I locked the
bathroom door. No sounds of pursuit dogged me. It might take
Bernard some time to haul himself out of that pool, but Camilla
ought to have already caught me. Maybe she was too tangled up with
him to disengage easily. I certainly hoped so.

As I crawled out
the window, I noticed that the seven-sided intersection had
disappeared. My home had vanished, and the streets lay in an
ordinary grid pattern around the plain houses Bernard seemed to
hate so much. I had no idea where to go, but I knew I had to get
away from there. So I jumped down to the lawn, picked a direction,
and ran.

Or tried to,
anyway. My muscles worked at a flat-out mad dash, but my feet were
taking a casual stroll. If that wasn’t a symptom of being in a
dream, I didn’t know what was. Not that knowing it helped me to
wake up. I glanced over my shoulder to see if Camilla and
Nostradamus pursued me. I didn’t see them, but I knew they would
show up soon if I didn’t get going.

So I strolled
around the corner as fast as I could and went down an alley, hoping
to get out of sight of the road. I listened for sounds of pursuit,
but it was absolutely quiet outside. I didn’t even get that ringing
in the ears that you always get when there’s no sound. That silence
was nerve-wracking, it forced me to listen harder. If I ever did
detect a sound, I would probably jump ten feet in alarm.

I hurried through a
back gate and across a lawn, around to the garage side of a house.
I found a narrow wooden door, yanked it open, forced my feet
inside, and pulled it closed again. As soon as the latch clicked, I
felt released from the drag on my muscles. I leaned against the
door and sighed with relief.

“
There you
are!” said someone with an English accent, and I jumped every inch
as high as I thought I would. Standing at the far end of the hall
that led to the house was Sir John Gielgud, British star of stage
and screen. I had seen him in movies on the Classics channel,
like
Sebastian
(1968)
and
The Charge Of
The Light Brigade
(also
1968), he was one of my favorites. He had played countless roles,
but this was the first time I had ever seen him in Egyptian robes.
They made him look like a wizard.