Free The Shimmer by David Morrell

reason I left."
    The stark acknowledgment of what Page had been dreading made him feel as if a fist had struck his stomach. He remained silent for several long minutes, trying to recover his equilibrium. Trying to think of something he could say that would make things better.
    "If you teach me, I can learn," he said. "Whatever it is I've done wrong, I can correct it."
    "You didn't do anything wrong. There's no blame in being what you are. Or in my being who I am."
    Page turned toward the darkness, desperate to understand what Tori was talking about. Even though many of the people in the crowd pointed, all he saw were the night-shrouded grassland, the brilliant stars in the sky, and the isolated headlights on the road to the right.
    Which of us is crazy? he wondered.
    He strained his eyes, trying to adjust to the night and decipher the darkness. He was reminded of something his father had shown him when he was fifteen. Because of his father's skills as a master mechanic in the Air Force, the family had been relocated to numerous bases over the years, including some in Germany, South Korea, and the Philippines. One of those had been MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida.
    On an August Sunday, Page's father had made a rare effort to spend time with his family by taking Page and his mother to the famed Tampa aquarium. They wandered from tank to tank, peering through thick glass walls at various exhibits: sharks, manta rays, moray eels-his father enjoyed looking at anything dangerous--and various schools of brilliantly colored exotic species. But the space behind one glass wall appeared empty except for water, sand, rocks, aquatic plants, and part of a replica of a sunken ship.
    "I guess the aquarium's getting ready to stock it with something,"
    Page said, quickly bored, turning away.
    "No, it's already stocked," his father replied.
    "With what? Nothing's moving in there. It's empty."
    "Oh, there's plenty of life in there."
    "You mean the plants."
    "No. I mean cuttlefish."
    "Cuttlefish?"
    "They're not really fish. They're in the squid family."
    "Cuttlefish?" Page repeated.
    "With tentacles that project forward. They can be as little as one of your fingers or as long as your arm, sometimes bigger."
    "There's no fish in there as long as my arm," he scoffed.
    "Squid," his father corrected him.
    "Okay, there's no squid in there as long as my arm."
    "Actually, there are probably a dozen of them."
    "You're kidding, right?"
    His father gestured toward the glass. "Take a look. A real close look."
    Page had long before learned that his father prided himself on an amazing assortment of knowledge about all kinds of unusual subjects. When his father spoke that authoritatively, there was only one way the conversation could end. So Page concentrated on the water in the huge tank.
    "Sometimes we see only what we expect to see," his father explained. "Sometimes we need to learn to see in a new way."
    That made even less sense than the imaginary fish. "I don't know what you . . ."
    At once one of the rocks seemed to move a little. Hardly enough to be noticed. Barely a fraction of an inch. But he was certain he'd seen it move. He stepped closer to the glass.
    "Ah," Page's father said, apparently detecting his sudden attention.
    "I think you're starting to catch on."
    "That rock. It . . ."
    "But it's not a rock," Page's father emphasized.
    The object moved another fraction of an inch, and Page realized that his father was right--it wasn't a rock.
    Page saw a head then, and a tentacle, and another. Not that the object moved any more noticeably than before. But Page's vision had changed--or else it was his mind that had shifted focus.
    His father said, "Sometimes we see only what we expect to see."
    He was beginning to understand. If the only things that were apparent were sand, rocks, underwater plants, and part of a replica of a sunken ship, then the mind took those shapes for granted and didn't bother to recognize what the eyes were