Free Keepers by Gary A. Braunbeck Page A

from outside the barrier, another one howled in response, then the song of an unseen nightbird was answered by the yowls of a stray neighborhood cat.
    The mist was playing with me; whenever I moved forward, it retreated, expanding the boundaries; if I moved back, it would advance, swallowing more of the yard. I did this three times, moving backward and forward to make sure I wasn’t imagining it, and I wasn’t—the mist moved in the opposite of my direction each time. Finally, I remained still, as did it.
    Flexing the fingers of my left hand, I reached up; a small area of the barrier pulled away from the tips of my fingers. I folded my fingers into my palm and watched the area begin to fill in, and that’s when I came up with my right hand still fisted around the shotgun’s handle-grip and punched at it.
    I heard the bones break well before the pain had a chance to register, but by then I was down on one knee and whimpering, my right hand cradled against my chest. As far as I could tell, I had broken my fourth and fifth metacarpals. A jagged, bloody scrape lay across the width of my hand, made thin and black in places by my swollen knuckles. Jesus ! It had been like pummeling my fist against a slab of granite. I could still feel the vibration of the impact all the way up my shoulder and neck.
    Struggling to my feet, I grabbed the Mossberg with my left hand because my right was useless for the moment. The mist remained strong, churning, forming surreal shapes.
    I wondered if my neighbors had noticed what was surrounding my house. Were any of them watching right now, their curiosity piqued, or was this mist engulfing the entire block? It had to have occurred to at least one person that this wasn’t normal, right? And in Cedar Hill if anything not normal or even mildly interesting happens, well, then, you call the police or the trusty news team at Channel 9 and get a mobile unit right over. If they’d dispatch a crew to cover the opening of a new electronics store one county away, they’d sure as hell send someone to a local neighborhood to cover the appearance of an intensely localized weather anomaly.
    Never count on the help of others when you most need it. Take my word on this. I wasn’t about to assume that any of my neighbors had called or were going to call anyone to report this, so I did the only thing I knew for a fact would get someone on the phone to the news or police; I rose to my feet, lifted the Mossberg over my head using only my left hand, pointed it into the air, and fired.
    The force of the blast wrenched my left arm backward and tore the handle-grip from my grasp. The shotgun flew back and landed in the grass about five feet away. I half-spun around, my shoulder screaming, nearly losing my balance. Almost none of this had to do with the physical effects of firing the weapon—some of it, yes, you can’t fire a scattergun with only one hand and not get jolted down to your marrow—but more than anything, it was the sound of the shot.
    Under the best and most controlled of circumstances a gunshot is deafening, but it seemed as if this one had gone off in the center of my skull; it hadn’t just been a noise or an explosion—it was a pulverizing force that ripped the air from inside me and jammed an invisible icepick into each side of my head. I stumbled around in half-circles pressing my hands against my ears (I had done this before, I knew that I had held my ears like this before, that there had been pain and panic then, as well...but where and when and why ?) while stomping my feet and working my jaw in order to create some kind of pressure and pleaseGod make one or both of my ears pop but nothing helped; at one point the pain and weight became so great I thought I was going to pass out, then a softhiss began to issue from the base of my brainpan, someone letting the air out of a bicycle tire, and I pulled my hands away and feltthe cool air enter my ears with a soft whoosh . I shook my head once,