Free The Shimmer by David Morrell Page B

saw an almost imperceptible movement, hardly enough to be noticed. . . .
    Except that he was sure he had noticed it. Either his eyes had shifted focus or his mind had. It wasn't only movement--it was a change in the darkness.
    Without warning, there were tiny lights. Some of what he'd thought were stars weren't in the sky--they were hovering over the grassland.
    At first he suspected they might be distant fireflies, about a dozen of them, but they were brighter than fireflies, and as he began to notice them, they increased in size.
    They could have been miles away, yet they seemed close, as if he could reach out and touch them, which he tried to do. That was when he realized the people in the crowd weren't just pointing--they, too, were reaching out.
    As he gazed, the distant lights acquired colors--red, green, blue, yellow, and more--all the tints he'd seen on houses and stores in town. Pairs of them merged, becoming larger and brighter. They rose and fell. At the same time, they drifted back and forth across the horizon, as if they floated in a gentle current. They bobbed and pivoted hypnotically.
    What am I seeing?
    Confused, Page turned toward Costigan, looking for confirmation that his eyes weren't tricking him, but all the police chief did was spread his hands again.
    Page turned back, redirecting his attention to what he saw--or thought he saw--on the horizon. Some of the lights drifted apart, while others continued to merge. They shimmered, gentle and soothing, almost seeming to beckon.
    I've never seen anything like them, he thought. What are they?
    Without warning, doubt surged through him. Why didn't I see them a minute ago? They've got to be an optical illusion.
    Or maybe I'm so eager to see something out there that I strained my eyes until I saw spots before them. Or else I concentrated until I imagined them. How do I know they're what Tori sees--or thinks she does?
    What do the others think they're seeing?
    Not only seeing, he realized. There was something else associated with the lights, something he couldn't quite identify. It was just on the edge of his perceptions, a sound that hovered at the limit of his ability to hear it.
    As Page stepped off the platform, intending to approach and question a teenaged girl who pointed in delight at the grassland beyond the fence, he became aware of a commotion somewhere in the crowd.
    A single voice rose above the others.
    "Don't you see how evil they are?" someone demanded.
    Page stopped and tried to determine the direction of the voice. It was deep, strong, and angry. It belonged to a man.
    "Don't you realize what they're doing to you?"
    To his right, Page saw sudden movement, people being jostled aside, a tall, heavy man sweeping through them.
    "Stop pushing!" someone complained.
    "Get your hand off me!" someone else objected.
    The voice just sounded angrier. "Don't you understand that you're all going to hell?"
    "A gun!" a woman wailed. "My God, he has a gun!"
    As the word sent a wave of alarm through the crowd, Page responded instantly and crouched. Reaching for the pistol that he almost always carried, he realized with dismay that he'd let Costigan talk him into leaving it in his suitcase back in the rental car, which was parked outside the courthouse.
    His palms became sweaty.
    Crouching lower, feeling his pulse race, he scanned the panicking crowd and flinched at the loud, ear-torturing crack of a rifle. He saw the muzzle flash among fleeing men and women, revealing what looked like the barrel of an assault weapon.
    Crack. The man fired again, aiming beyond the fence. The muzzle flash projected toward the horizon, toward whatever was out there, toward whatever Page had thought he'd seen.
    "Go back to hell where you came from!" the man shouted into the distance, and he kept firing.
    Page saw enough of the rifle's silhouette to identify a curved ammunition magazine projecting from the bottom. The profile was that of an AK-47.
    Urgently he glanced behind him, toward