The Night Shifters (7 page)

His hair whipped my
face, so after those first few, glorious moments, I couldn’t see
the fight very well. I should have at least caught a glimpse now
and then, but he let his motorcycle drop behind the others. “What
are you doing?” I demanded.

“It is my
responsibility to keep you safe,” he said.

That sounded
reasonable, so I didn’t say anything more. We dropped farther and
farther behind, until all I could see were faint blue sparks in the
distance.

“I guess I’m pretty
safe now,” I said.

He didn’t
answer.

I felt rather
let down after my daring rescue. I should have been riding off into
the sunset (sun
rise
?) with the Masked
Man, but I began to wonder if he had forgotten me for more
important things.

I tried to move
into a comfortable position and got jabbed by his handlebars. They
had some peculiar features, points and odd twisted places, as if
they were made from animal bones (and horns?) instead of metal.
“What kind of bike is this, anyway?” I asked him. “It’s bigger than
a Harley Davidson.”

It pleased me that
I could remember what a Harley Davidson looked like, but he didn’t
answer me. He kept his eyes on the road, squinting against the
wind.

“Are you ever going
to talk to me again?” I wondered.

No answer.

“Where are we
going?”

No answer. We
slowed even further. I didn’t bother to ask him why, because he
pulled to the side of the road. Whatever was going to happen, was
going to happen soon.

He stopped under
some trees and dumped me off his lap. I managed to land on my feet.
He regarded me for a moment, his eyes shadowed. “You are not for
the Masked Man. Serena is right. You should leave this place as
soon as you can.”

And then he roared
off.

“Wait! What did you
say about Serena? Don’t leave me here!”

But he drove out of
sight before I even finished shouting.

He had left me in
the middle of nowhere. Farmers’ fields stretched for miles around,
and the occasional tree was the only feature I could make out in
the near-darkness. The stars cast a pitiful light on this part of
the world, I could barely see a handful in the sky.

“
So now I get
to walk back to town. Thanks a lot.” I took a step toward the road,
and something fell on me with a sharp little
whack
. It bounced off my head and hit the
ground.

A pink
envelope lay at my feet,
Hazel
looped
across its front.

•

I had to open
it.

“Why don’t you ever
listen?” was the first thing on the page. No “Dear Hazel,” or
anything. And I thought the handwriting looked less neat.

“You’ve gone and
done everything I told you not to do! And now look where you are! I
don’t feel one bit sorry for you. You have only one way out now.
You have to take this road – it doesn’t matter which direction –
and walk out. It will take a long time, but you have no other
choice. If you had believed me in the first place, you wouldn’t be
in this situation. I hope you’re satisfied.

“Now go!”

At the bottom she
had scrawled, “Serena.” Actually, it was more of a “Ser” with a
line at the end. Not very friendly at all.

I gave the
road another good, long stare. It went from nowhere to
nowhere,
through
nowhere. How
long was a long time, especially when the sun never came
up?

One thing I knew: I
definitely didn’t feel inclined to take advice from Serena, she had
steered me wrong too many times. I tore her letter in half and
tossed it into the road.

But a moment later
I picked up the halves and stuffed them into my back pocket. I
still didn’t believe her, I just hated to be a litterbug.

For a while I stood
in the silence, waiting for something to happen that would make it
unnecessary to do what Serena had ordered me to do. But nothing
did, and the longer I stood there, the sillier I felt.

I looked in the
direction the Masked Man and the Car King had gone. That seemed as
good a direction as any, and besides, maybe they would be waiting
somewhere up ahead, attending to a flat tire. A girl could
hope.

I put my foot on
the road, and my crystal heart gave me a nasty jab. I backed up,
fast.

I looked back the
way I had come. Camilla and Nostradamus were back there. But on the
other hand, so was Sir John, and I certainly wouldn’t mind another
fireside chat with him. I put a tentative foot on the road in that
direction – no jab occurred.

“We have a winnah.”
I set myself a comfortable pace and started walking. My Nikes
thudded softly on the asphalt. No other sound broke the stillness,
and nothing moved. It was boring, but also kind of comforting. Now
I had a chance to think. I had time to feel how very disappointing
it was that all the sexy guys had driven off without me. Was that
the way my romantic life usually worked out? That might explain why
I couldn’t remember the names of any lovers.

Not even one. In
twenty-six years, I didn’t have even one big romance? That had to
be wrong. I must have just forgotten my lovers like I had forgotten
almost everything else. But if that was true, then why did I feel
like such a big loser?

You are not for
the Masked Man...

But I was
cute. In fact, I was
very
cute. Rather
pixie-ish, in my humble opinion. Not very big in the bust, but a
pixie with big boobs would look ridiculous. I could engage in
polite conversation as well as the next gal, and I used deodorant
every single day. Admittedly, there weren’t any days here, so maybe
I needed to change my standards.

I kicked a rock
from the middle of the road and listened to it skip away from me.
Up to this point, I had been thinking that the rules of this place
would be very much like the rules in any dream, but the reality was
turning out to be more complicated. Every recovered memory seemed
to be tied up with a cast of characters who had ideas of their own.
They could be very unpredictable. Not to mention annoying.

Going into the Big
Gulp had reassured me I wasn’t crazy. I had only heard voices a few
times since I woke up, and none of them had told me to kill my
family or to fashion a hat out of aluminum foil to protect my brain
from microwaves. But as I walked down the Road To Nowhere, a new
idea occurred to me.

“Am I – in a coma?”
I asked the Night, as if a sympathetic nurse lurked out there in
the darkness, just waiting to give me a shot that would snap me out
of it.

“
You
are
not
in a coma!” said a very young
voice.

I froze. I
recognized that voice. The last time it had spoken, I had been
attacked by blood-sucking plant-finger thingees. I looked at the
ground, prepared to sprint if I had to.

“You’re safe on the
road, for now,” said the voice.

I scanned the
shadowy fields in both directions; I couldn’t see any place that
anyone could be hiding. “What do you do, hang around roads waiting
for people to walk by?”

“Yes. Are you going
to listen to me this time?”

I started walking
again. Whoever was out there, they’d have to move too, to keep up
with me, and maybe I would spot the movement. “Okay, I’m
listening.”

“You’re not in a
coma.”

I couldn’t see
anything moving at all.

“But even if you
were, you’d have to accept that there are rules here. You have to
figure out what they are.”

“Can’t you just
tell me what they are?” I squinted right, then left.

“No,” Voice said,
plaintively. She sounded like an eight-year-old girl. “If I tell
you, others will hear me. They’ll find things out I don’t want them
to know. That’s the problem, you sort of have to learn things the
hard way around here.”

I gave up the
search and kicked another rock. “That’s the way it’s worked out so
far. No one gives me a straight answer.”

“
There’s
someone you haven’t asked, yet,” said Voice. “You haven’t
asked
yourself
.”

I thought
that one over. “Are
you
–
myself?”

“Huh?” Voice
sounded genuinely baffled.

“Are you some
aspect of my personality? Am I hallucinating, hearing a voice
that’s really coming from my own subconscious?”

“For Pete’s sake,
enough with the dime-store psychology! I’m not you, no one is you
but you! Okay?”

“Okay.” I felt both
chastened and relieved.

“You didn’t end up
here just so you wouldn’t have to go to work anymore – stop kidding
yourself about that. Get real! It’s time to ask yourself some
questions. Even if you don’t have the answers, you might learn
something. And don’t do it aloud, okay?”

“Okay,” I
promised.

“Maybe you can’t
avoid bouncing around like a pinball, but at least you can try to
earn double points when you do.”

Right. Now if only
I could remember how to play pinball.

I kicked
another rock in the road, listened to it skitter. I wondered, if
you’ve lost your memory, what do you ask yourself? Other
than
where am I?
who am I?

I’m Hazel. I’m in
the middle of Nowhere.

Great, good
work. I was making as much progress with my self-probing as I was
on the road. The landscape hadn’t changed one bit, I might as well
have been 100 miles out of town instead of one or two.
Where
and
who
hadn’t
been questions I could answer since I woke up.

Or were they? Mr
Markos called me Hazel AAA. I figured it was just so I would have
to give my report first. In fact, I was sure of it. I had to go
first, so I couldn’t put off quitting school. I had put that off
way longer than I should have.

Ah-hah! That was
true, I really quit college, because I really hated it. Colleges
were full of guys like Bernard Clifton. His biggest ambition in
life was to gain enough power to jerk people around. That was how
he measured success. But I never took a class that fit what I
really wanted to do. College was for getting jobs, and jobs were
all about scrambling for money. You sat in front of a computer
terminal all day, or stood behind a counter hustling retail, or a
thousand other things that made me feel like my soul was being
sucked right out of my body. So I quit school, and Mom had
been...

I didn’t know
what Mom had been. I wanted to say
disappointed
, but that wasn’t right. I tried to picture her face. I
couldn’t see anything more than a smile, and it was really more
like half a smile, kind of sad, kind of distracted. I couldn’t
picture
Dad
either, and
suddenly I felt certain I didn’t know who he was because I
had
never
known who he was. In fact, in the
brief time I had known him, Sir John seemed more real as a father
figure than the one I had presumably forgotten.

I quit school. I
hadn’t received any standing ovations for that, and I supposed I
didn’t deserve them. After that, I must have drifted around,
working minimum-wage jobs to get by. Some time later, Mom died. I
didn’t really want to remember how. She left me the house, which
had made survival a lot easier. I lived in that house by myself,
got another job I hated.And now...

“Now do you know
who I am?” pleaded Voice.

I sighed.
“I’m still trying to figure out who
I
am.
I’m sorry.”

“Stop walking.”

“What? Why?”

“Sometimes you have
to break the rules to get things to change. Stop walking.”

“Then how will I
get anywhere?”

Voice sighed with
frustration. “Okay, I’ll tell you a secret you were supposed to
learn on your own. Sometimes you can make things happen here if you
deliberately break the rules. I have to go now. Stop walking!” her
voice faded, as if she were flying away instead of running.

I slowed my pace. I
looked behind me, then ahead. Nowhere to nowhere. Serena was the
one who said I should walk. Voice seemed a lot more reliable.

I stepped off the
road, onto the dirt, just under some trees. Pulling the two halves
of Serena’s letter out of my back pocket, I dropped them on the
road. A small wind came and blew them out of sight.

“
Bravo,
darling,” said a silky voice from the trees. “
Now
you’re making progress.”

•

I looked among the
branches, and thought I saw a pale face there. Was it smiling? I
went closer to investigate.

A man sat in the
branches. In fact, two men. I could only see their faces. They must
have been dressed all in black, just like Camilla had been the last
time I saw her – in catsuits. Their hair must have been black, too.
They smiled gently at me.

“Come up here with
us,” said one fellow. “It’s lovely in the trees. See all the pretty
lights?”

Little blue stars
blossomed in the higher branches.

“How tall are these
trees, anyway?” I asked.

“As tall as you
want,” said the other fellow. “Take my hand. I’ll help you up.”

The first fellow
reached his pale, slender hand to me. The other fellow did the
same. I touched them and felt a slight chill. No jabs, though. That
was encouraging. So I grasped their hands and let them pull me up
into the branches.

Now that I sat next
to them, I recognized them. They were the two men from the house of
the Girl-killer.

“It’s you!” I
said.

“Yes, it’s us,”
said one, and I decided to name him One. “We’ve been looking for
you all Night.”