18. The False Reflection

There were two of everything, but very few knew about it. Tim knew. He had known for as long as he could remember. As soon as the first puddle formed at his roots, he saw the other place.

Tim was an oak tree. A tall majestic vision that towered over the maples and birches around him. There was another oak close by. He could see it over the canopy of the smaller trees, but they rarely spoke. There was nothing he had to say to it.

Tim was seventy years old, young for an oak, but much older than most of the trees around him. He expected he would live another thousand years. He often wondered what the world would be like then. Last year they had built a parking lot nearby. Ugly metal cars moved in and out, sputtering and spewing clouds of smoke into the air. He hoped that in a thousand years the humans would be gone.

A breeze kicked up, rattling Tim’s leaves. He enjoyed the sensation. The stirring of air brushed his bark, blowing away the dust and dirt left by the squirrels who ran up and down his trunk. It had rained last night. A good soaking rain that slid down through the earth to his roots. He drank the water in, filling his veins with its sustenance.

At the base of his trunk was a large puddle, leftover from last night’s storm. The morning sun reflected off the surface. Some would have said that Tim’s reflection was in the puddle, showing off his impressive spread of branches. He knew it wasn’t his reflection at all. The puddle was a window into another world. The other world that existed beneath the dirt and below Tim’s roots.

The tree in the other world, the one that looked like Tim was called Jim. Jim was ten years older and quite wise. When the puddles were there, he and Tim would often talk in the ways that trees did, through the quiver and shake of their leaves.

Jim had led a remarkable life in the other world. A fire had nearly taken him out when he was just a young sapling. A few years before, there had been a threat of the land being cleared and Jim being chopped down, but a young man had come along and chained himself to Jim’s trunk in protest. The forest had been saved. Now Jim lived in serene woods filled with birds and insects and scores of young oaks.

Tim was often jealous of Jim’s idyllic life. He wished he lived in such circumstances, instead of staring at a parking lot all day. He was glad when the rain came and he could see into that other place, and for a moment imagine a different existence.

“Hello Jim!” Tim shouted by shaking his leaves.

“Good day.” replied Jim, in his dignified way.

“How goes it?” asked Tim.

“It’s a splendid day here, as usual.”

Tim felt a pang of envy radiate through his rings. Nearby, cars guzzled and chugged in the parking lot. “I wish I was there.”

“There’s no sense in wishing for things that can’t come true.” Jim said stoically.

“Yes, I suppose.” Tim shook his limbs in the wind. As he did an acorn came free and fell into the puddle.

“Well now you’re here.” Jim said.

“What do you mean?”

“Your little acorn is here. It will grow into a tall son.”

“What?” Tim cried. “How did it get there?”

“It fell through the water.”

“How? I’ve dropped acorns before.”

“You made a wish to be here.” Jim explained. “Now part of you is. If you make a wish, it opens a door between our worlds.”

“How?”

“It’s a mystery of the universe. Just accept it.” Jim said. “You ask too many questions.”

Tim didn’t believe that last statement. He needed to know if what Jim was saying was true. For all he knew his acorn was at the bottom of the puddle. He had to try with something larger.

An hour later something larger came along. Two young men barreled into the parking lot in a red truck. They got out laughing.

“I gotta piss.” shouted one of them.

The second man looked around and then trained his eyes on Tim. He looked over his shoulder. “Go ahead, there’s no one else around.”

The first man shrugged. “I guess.” He strode towards Tim, unzipping his jeans.

Tim felt his anger rise. No one was peeing on him again. He glanced at the puddle. Much of the water had soaked into the ground, but he thought there was still enough left. The man moved closer. Tim had to be patient.

It wasn’t until the man’s toes were dipping into the water, and a stream of urine was pouring into the puddle that he dared to have the thought. “I wish this guy would go away.”

As soon as Tim had the thought the man began to tip forward, a second later he tumbled into the puddle and vanished without so much as a splash.

“Joe!” the second man came rushing forward.

Tim wondered if he should. Was he really that kind of tree?

The other man skidded to a stop in front of the puddle. He stared into the muddy water, blinking.

“I wish to be alone.” Tim thought. He felt a wicked thrill run down his trunk.

The man teetered on the edge of the puddle. For a second Tim thought he might not fall through, but after a few moments of trying to right himself, he slipped into the water.

“You shouldn’t have done that.” Jim said angrily.

“Don’t send them back.” Tim replied. “Or I’ll do it again.”

“Don’t threaten me.”

They bickered back and forth for another hour until the puddle dried up and the sun came out. Tim shook his leaves and stretched his limbs as the warm sunlight gave him nourishment. He wondered when it would rain again.

17. Darklight Obscured

Do you ever look over your shoulder, thinking someone is there? Do you ever walk in the woods late at night and for an instant, out of the corner of your eye, think you see someone, or something?

Maybe you saw a shadow man. Aerz Cross was a shadow man, or rather an umbraer, which was the proper term. He came from a long line of shadow men living in the woods of Maine.

Well, they used to live in the woods. Now they lived in houses, talked on new-fangled telephones, and existed almost as people in the light, those who were not shadow men. It was ridiculous, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. He was a servant to the greatest umbraer family there was, the Blacks. Which meant he went where they did.

Just because Aerz was their servant, and duty bound to serve the Blacks, it didn’t mean he didn’t know more than them. Although they were the most powerful and gifted umbraers, for shadow people could do more than just turn into shadows at will, they weren’t exactly the smartest, at least he didn’t think so.

He reasoned he was brighter than three or four of them put together. None of them had any common sense. They stayed shut up all day in Black Manor, their grandiose home on the sea, chasing follies like playing the piano, needlework, and looking at maps of places they would never visit.

But Aerz didn’t mind their stupidity. He knew enough to keep them and their lives pleasant. What they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them anyway. There were threats to shadow men everywhere. People in the light were frightened of what they didn’t understand. And shadow men could die by a bullet as easily as anyone else. It was up to Aerz and his family to make sure that didn’t happen.

Aerz had taken over his post at Black Manor from his father, Raze. All the men in the Cross family were named using a variation of four letters. Aerz wasn’t sure of the origin of the naming tradition, but he saw no reason to change it.

He saw no reason to change anything, but the world around him was changing anyhow, and very quickly. The old ways were dying out. For many centuries umbraers had lived in seclusion, but that wouldn’t last forever. Messages and news travelled quickly now. People knew of things that their grandparents would have been ignorant of, blissfully ignorant. It was all rather depressing for someone like Aerz who preferred to continue with the status quo.

But if things were to change then they needed an umbraer who was different than the bumbling lot that came before them, especially for the Black family. It would have to be someone who wasn’t afraid of the future, or people in the light, or anything for that matter. It had to be someone who could bring umbraers kicking and screaming into the modern world.

As Aerz bustled about Black Manor, doing all the chores no one else wanted to, he hoped that person would come soon. If life was going to change, he wanted it to happen now.

“Better to just get it over with.” he grumbled to himself. The clock in the parlor struck twelve. Aerz stopped sweeping. He leaned on his broom handle as he listened to the ornate chimes ring off the hour. “That bloody clock.”

"Aerz!” John Black came running into the back hall. He was the current master of Black Manor. He was a year older than Aerz.

“What do you want?”

If John was alarmed by his servant’s surly tone, he didn’t show it. “Virginia is expecting.”

“Expecting what?” Aerz asked. Virginia was John’s wife. She was the smartest person in the manor besides himself.

John laughed. “A child.”

“Oh.” John and Virginia already had a boring son named Owen.

“Isn’t it grand?” John said excitedly.

“Children are a lot of work.” Aerz said plainly. “And when you have more than one it’s even harder.” Aerz had a son called Ezra. He was a good boy, but he certainly had no interest in having another.

John’s smile vanished. “I know, but we want more.”

“There’s a difference between want and need.” Aerz resumed his sweeping.

John backed out of the way of the broom. “I’m sure it will be a fine child.”

“Uh huh.”

“The child will be here in May. Maybe he’ll come on your birthday.”

“Perhaps.”

“Well, I’ll be in the library if you need me.” John scurried away.

“Another Black.” Aerz mumbled as he continued his work.

Eight months later the newest Black family member came. It was another boy. John and Virginia named him Malachai. He was born on Aerz’s birthday, May twenty sixth.

Aerz stared into the cradle at the blue-eyed boy with a wisp of blonde hair. The child stared back at Aerz as though sizing him up.

“He’s beautiful, isn’t he?” John said as they stood side by side.

“I suppose.” Aerz had never found babies to be anything more than wrinkly looking.

John chuckled. “We think he’s beautiful.” He nudged Aerz’s elbow. “Happy birthday.”

“Thanks.” he mumbled.

“We’re so lucky.”

“Why?” Aerz asked.

John pointed at the baby. “Because we have him. And Owen.”

“Right.” Aerz muttered.

“You must feel the same way about Ezra.”

Aerz nodded. He cared for Ezra, he even loved him, but he didn’t raise him in the rose-colored world of the Blacks. Life was harsh and cruel and most of the time it was terrible. That’s what these boys would face. And that wasn’t even taking into account that they were umbraers. “It’s not going to be easy.”

“It will be fine.” John said breezily.

“Fine?” Aerz cried. “The world is a bloody mess.” He pointed at the window. “That lot out there, they are going to find out what we are. What are you going to do then?”

“That won’t happen.”

“The bloody hell it won’t!”

In the cradle, Malachai watched Aerz with what could only be called a look of amusement.

“Calm down.”

“You don’t understand anything.” Aerz told his employer.

John sighed. “No, I probably don’t.” He smiled down at Malachai. “But looking at him gives me hope.”

Aerz took another look at the baby. Malachai stared back at him. That one was going to be trouble.

16. The Blur

There it was again. The world blurred into an unclear fuzziness for a split second, then it was back to normal. I stood, frozen in my tracks, waiting for it to happen again, but just like the many times before, it didn’t.

“Next time.” I muttered.

“Pardon?” some lady asked me.

“Nothing. I’m talking to myself.”

“You probably shouldn’t tell people that.”

“Why not?” I asked. “I’m looking for a way out of this reality. Doors open up sometimes, you have to be ready when they do.”

The woman chuckled. “You’re crazy.”

“You’ll think that until you see if for yourself. Everything goes blurry for just a second. When it does, you have to make a run for it.”

“I guess it takes all kinds.” She walked away, shaking her head.

What did she know anyway? She hadn’t seen the things I had. I walked down the sidewalk, looking around, waiting for it to happen again, but it didn’t. When I got home the nightly newspaper was on my doorstep. I scoured the pages to see if there were any reports of unexplained disappearances, but there was nothing.

Through the wall I heard my neighbor’s television blaring. What a fool. Didn’t he know that the television screen went both ways? It could see and hear everything that he was doing. Maybe he didn’t care. Maybe he was in on it. You could never tell nowadays.

I wasn’t always so paranoid. This had once been a nice place to live, then the revolution had come and everything changed. The world was going off a cliff, and I was getting out. Other people had done it, I knew it for a fact. I had seen it happen.

In the middle of the war, when everything was going to hell, my boss Lester went into the blur. We were having a meeting in his office. He was talking to me about my job performance, which was never very good, when it happened. His office and everything in it had gone fuzzy.

Lester leapt to his feet. “That’s it! I’m getting out of here.” He looked down at me. “Do you want to come?”

I wasn’t sure. I had leftover pizza in the refrigerator at home that I was looking forward to having for dinner. “No.”

“Are you certain?”

“Yes.”

“You’ll regret it.” Lester declared before walking into the blur and vanishing. As soon as he was gone the office returned to normal.

The door opened. Lester’s secretary looked inside. “I heard something.” Her eyes went to Lester’s chair. “Where is he?”

“Gone.”

She frowned. “Gone where?”

“He went into the blur.” I told her.

The police were called. They asked me a bunch of questions. They tried to say I had something to do with Lester’s disappearance, which was ridiculous. They fired me a few days later for poor job performance, which was true, but I always suspected it was really because they thought I had done something to Lester.

It didn’t matter anyway. A few days later the office was bombed and everyone who worked there was killed. Lester and I were lucky. Ever since then I had been looking for the blur to get out. The blur was the doorway to another world, a world just like this, but better. At least I hoped it was better. It might be worse, there was no way to know, but I was willing to take a chance.

I returned home. I lived in what once had been a high-rise office building. It had been converted into a shelter for displaced people who had lost everything in the war. For some, myself included, it had become our permanent home. I had been there seven years. My room had once housed a photocopier. Now it had a cot and small dresser. It wasn’t much, but I didn’t mind. It was better than being dead, which most of my friends and family were.

Once inside my room I took a pencil and made a mark of where I had seen the blur on the city map I had hanging on my wall. I had been plotting their occurrences for many years. I had been hoping to see a pattern, but the only thing I had concluded so far was that they never happened in the same place twice.

I stretched out on my cot and took a nap. When I woke up the room was cold. I got up and switched on the little heater mounted on the wall by the door. It began to click as the cold metal warmed. I opened my door, intending to walk down the hall to the bathroom, when my map caught the corner of my eye.

I walked over to the wall and stood in front of it. My pencil marks on the map, the places the blur had happened weren’t random. There was a pattern. It was there. How had I missed it before?

“I got it! I got it!” I shouted. I ran out of my room and down the hall, my need to pee forgotten. “I got it!”

A woman stepped out of her room, frowning. “Got what?”

I stopped in front of her, breathless. “I’m getting out of here. Do you want to come?”

She shook her head as she backed into her room. She shut the door in my face.

“Your loss!” I shouted at her now closed door. I hurried out of the building and down the block to what had once been a park. Now it was overgrown and resembled a forest. I skidded to a stop and waited. In the trees birds chirped. Did they know what was about to happen? Time passed. It was hard to tell how much. My heart raced.

“It shouldn’t be long now.” someone said.

I spun around. An old man was standing behind me.

“I just figured it out.” I told him.

He nodded. “It’s taken me a long time to get here.” He stared into the forest. “I think it’s beginning.”

I returned my gaze to the trees, which were mostly birch. As I did, they began to blur, the same way the wall had in Lester’s office. The old man pushed past me and rushed into the swirl of light and color. He vanished. I took a last look around and hurried after him, into a new world.