Shift Scouts

Exploring interdimensional portals ain't glamorous, but it's honest work.

Photo by Sophie Keen on Unsplash

This was written for Day 9 of Bradley Ramsey’s Halls of Pandemonium.

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Silas hefted the box of paper towels and handed it out to Amy. As usual, she looked intensely bored. “A mop bucket this time? Really?”

“Yeah, suds and all. It’s the reflection of the light on the soap bubbles that keeps the shift open.”

Amy rolled her eyes. “You know I don’t care about that shit, professor.”

That rankled. She knew Silas wished he could still be studying shiftology instead of doing grunt work. “Fine, in Amy-speak, you’ll need to get wet.”

“Ugh. Why are we even bothering then? I know I wouldn’t want to get drenched on my way to work to save five minutes.”

“We have no idea where this will go. That’s our whole job. If it turns out it’s not useful, we close it. But with that shift to Beijing in the bathroom one floor down, I bet the brass will make it work short of it dropping us into a volcano again.”

Amy shuddered and rubbed her left leg, right where her reinforced boots ended. “Don’t remind me.”

They cleared out the rest of the janitor’s closet and put up the orange ‘CAUTION - SHIFT EVALUATION IN PROGRESS’ sign on the door. Then Silas took a breath and stuck his face into the mop bucket. He came back up a moment later. “Forest on the other side, solid ground and all.” Then he stepped in.

As is often the nature of shifts, it shouldn’t have worked. The rest of his body shouldn’t have been able to fit past the rim of the mop bucket. But once his feet were through the rest of him followed. Somehow. Just like how, despite stepping into a bucket, he found himself walking out the other side with no change in perspective.

Silas emerged from under a broken tree, bent like an arch. He was brushing soapy water off of himself when Amy followed, shuddering. “Please tell me we’re near a beacon at least. I have dinner plans.”

He pulled a fresh beacon from his pack and sunk it into the dirt next to the arch, where the shift was visible as a slightly sudsy sheen. He flicked it on and pulled out his tablet. “Nah. Nothing in range.”

“Well, better mark it as unuseable then.”

“No. Protocol is to still scout the area and set a perimeter. Just in case.” Amy was about to walk back into the shift, but turned to glare at him. “Besides. I could really use the bigger bonus this month, got a leak and you know how expensive plumbers are.”

Amy rolled her eyes, but nodded. “Fiiiiine. Lead the way professor.”

Silas put on his goggles and glanced at the sky. “Let’s see . . . Sun’s about a half dozen pigments darker than standard and there’s no day moon, which narrows the list a bit. Still, comparing that to the moss growth, compasses should work just fine. You wanna pick this time?”

Amy shrugged and pointed west. So they went west. It was a pretty standard forest, besides some birdsong neither of the scouts recognized. Every 100 yards, Silas placed a secondary beacon to mark their trail. “Still nothing,” he said, “So once we hit the half mile we can-”

“Shut up. Look.” Silas looked up from his tablet. There, overgrown by vines, was an honest-to-goodness fence.

“Inhabited,” Silas said, frowning as he walked forward to examine it. “And the same type as you’d see back home.”

“But if it were inhabited, there’d be beacons here.”

“Normally, yeah. But that’s real old, so I’m thinking . . . Abandoned? Worth checking out in any case, right?”

Silas watched in real time as Amy’s latent curiousity fought against her laziness. “Yeah all right professor, let’s check it out.” They followed the fence until it broke the tree line, and what they saw there stopped them in their tracks. Massive tents with huge rents in the fabric, a merry go round with rust running like blood down the animal’s backs, and a roller coaster that appeared to be standing by sheer force of will alone.

It took a moment for Amy to speak. “A fucking abandoned carnival. I swear, if this place is haunted-”

“Hauntings are rare,” Silas responded by instinct. Then he reconsidered. “But . . . Well, abandoned places that used to have a lot more people are more prone to them.”

Amy rapped her gloved hand against a rust-pocked “NO TRESSPASSING” sign. “Now do we turn around?”

“Um. Maybe. I don’t know if we’re equipped for proper urbex-”

Then they heard the growling, and slowly turned.

It was a bear. Ish. Maybe a squirrel. Ish. But big fluffy tail aside, whatever it was stood half their height and had some truly massive chompers it seemed pretty eager to test on the two invaders.

Silas and Amy ran for the turnstille, leaping over it as the squirrel-bear-thing charged toward them with a blood-curdling chittering-roar. But when it reached the fence line, it stopped and just . . . Stared at them.

“That can’t be a good sign, right?” Amy asked.

“It knows better than to come in here,” Silas agreed. The bearrel began to pace outside the gate, keeping an eye on them at all times. “But . . . If we’re lucky, a place like this could have another shift. Maybe we look around, avoid fighting that thing if we can help it?”

Amy planted another beacon. “Damned if we do I guess. Haunted carnival it is.”

The paint was peeling and the wood was rotted, but most of the buildings still stood, more or less. The games were recognizable, with small differences, (pin the tail on the donkey became pin the tail on the weird oblong penguin-thing for instance). Even the posters advertized the same sorts of shows. Tri-cycling, dagger jugglers, contortionists, the incredible mustachioed man . . . Well, same wheelhouse, in any case.

“So professor, where do you think we find a shift?”

Silas gestured at the big top. “Trapeeze hoops, grand entryways, maybe even one of the rings themselves, assuming that carries over.”

As Silas hoped, it was indeed a three-ring circus. The bleachers had rats scurrying beneath them and several rows draped in fungus, one of the trapeeze towers had fallen and torn a rent through the side of the tent, and the whole place stank more than a tar pit, but still. Silas placed another beacon. “All right, let’s split up and-”

Two massive spotlights suddenly illuminated the center stage. Standing there, (where the scouts were certain no one had been standing before), was a jester. A ten-foot tall jester with torn clothes and bells that cried out in rusty protest whenever he moved his head. His makeup was smudged with mud and blood, but he still smiled when he turned towards them. “Oh goody,” he said with a whisper that pierced their ears. “It’s been so long since we’ve had guests.”

Amy grabbed Silas’ arm and ran right back the way they’d come. “I fucking told you it would be haunted!”

“Yeah, yeah, find a shift first, ‘I told you so’s’ later.”

“No way we’re facing that creep. Any other smart ideas professor?”

The Jester appeared in front of them, smile extending in ghastly blues beyond the boundaries of his face. And he was taller too. “Going so soon? You wouldn’t want to miss the show . . .” The two scouts turned into an alley between two tents, dodging around crates and barrels to keep running. Behind them, they heard squeaking smashes as the Jester crushed each in his pursuit. “Sorry for the mess,” he said, “My staff has been slacking. I’ll have to punish them. Severely.”

Silas racked his brains, thinking of anywhere else there might be a shift. Technically any enclosed shape could hold a shift, but it was more likely with water, a change of lighting, or —

“Reflections! House of Mirrors, 8 ‘o’ clock!”

They ran, but the Jester was closing in. Amy pulled a smoke bomb out of her pack and threw it behind her as they sprinted into the dilapidated building. The two scouts’ flashlights turned on automatically in the darkness, reflecting off of dozens of dingy mirrors and dozens more shattered on the ground. “Move quick!” Amy said, “I doubt that’ll do much!”

“Don’t have to tell me twice,” Silas said, and began to run through the hall, running his fingers across the surface of each mirror.

“It’s been so long.” The Jester’s voice filled the whole building. “So long since we had new guests. I do believe the last family is still riding the roller coaster.” As he said it, they heard screams and the rattling of wooden boards. “Though you may prefer to watch the animal show.” Roars, more screams, tearing flesh. “So many wonderful things to show you . . .” His face filled every reflective surface at once, and an insect with an impossible number of legs crawled out of one eye as he cackled.

“Here!” Amy yelled, and Silas ran towards her. He could feel the weight of the Jester right behind him as he ran toward Amy and the Shift, one of those distored mirrors that turned the light of their flaslights into a cascade of colors and made even the Jester appear average height. Without waiting another moment, they jumped through. But Silas felt a single finger tear through his pack and send supplies spilling among the shattered glass.

A moment later they were climbing out of an old well. “Fucking close it!” Amy yelled, but Silas held up a hand.

“Ghosts can’t use shifts.”

Amy stared at him, panting. “Seriously?”

“Yeah. It’s been studied.”

Amy leaned against the well and put her hands over her eyes. “Small blessings I guess. Still. I know I don’t want to go back there. I still vote we close it.”

Silas put down a beacon and his eyes grew wide as he checked his tablet. “Ummmm. No. About 200 yards that way there’s a shift to the Arches Interchange.”

Amy put her hands down. “Then that means . . .”

Silas smiled. “Yeah. We call in the big guns to set up the road. We absolutely get a bonus for scouting it.”

“And someone else gets to deal with the clown and the squears.” Amy finally smiled, just a little. “Well then, let’s get to that shift and spread the good news.”

“And if I never visit a carnival again, it’ll still be too soon.”

“Amen to that.”

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I was absolutely picturing Coffee Land from Alan Wake 2 in my head the entire time I wrote this. Do with that what you will.