Free The Cauldron by Jean Rabe, Gene DeWeese Page B

aloud, putting the car into gear and pulling out onto Main. Only then did he begin to relax and not be afraid that at any second the man would appear next to him and grab his shoulder. Only then did he start to wonder, logically, what was going on. He retraced his route past the courthouse and turned toward the Adler. How could Charlie Marshall be in his sixties? How could Marshall’s father be dead twenty-some years? Carl remembered the father, a man in his forties at the most, joking with his customers. That was Carl’s senior year in high school. 1966. Thirteen years ago this past June.
    No matter what logic he tried to use, nothing made sense. Unless someone was deliberately trying to fool him, to play some impossible elaborate practical joke, there was no way to explain a sixty-some-year-old Charlie Marshall, whose father had been dead for—what?—twenty years or so. It was as if someone had taken a chunk of his past, twisted it almost—but not quite—out of all recognition, and shoved it back at him.
    He’d found a piece of his past, the first real piece older than the job with Harry, and it had dissolved into something else, something surrealistic and unrecognizable.
    Like Shelly’s face in the nightmares …
    Then, as he closed the motel room door behind him and slumped down into the flimsily-made cushioned chair facing the room’s TV set, he remembered why he had come to Morgantown in the first place. He remembered the lecture in Harry’s office about his substandard work, and about reviewing employee records … Harry’s comment about him not existing …
    Within minutes he’d fallen asleep.
    O O O
    Looking north along the Nickel Plate tracks, the flames were visible, turning the early morning sky an eerie, bitter orange. The blaze had started near the blacksmith shop and quickly spread, so much for it to eat … hay, canvas, wood. A bear—the Divine Bear—reared back on its haunches and roared in anger at the conflagration.
    Carl ran through the smoke, which was as thick and choking as the fog that wrapped around his nightmares. He caught images in the smoke: animals and people running frantically, clothes and fur catching fire. His heart pounded in time with his feet as his hands tried to peel back the plumes. What was he looking for?
    Sarah?
    Ellen?
    Shelly?
    Tina?
    An elephant trumpeted in panic. Lions and tigers roared. The Divine Bear raged at the flames. Monkeys screamed and dogs barked, and all the while the smoke grew thicker like the fog. And despite the heat that rose through the bottoms of his feet, he felt chilled.
    Sirens intruded, sounding mournful and soft amid the cacophony that played out around him. Soot clogged his throat and his eyes burned. He fought for breath and sat bolt upright.
    Carl awakened to hear someone pounding the wall near his head, yelling at him to keep it down.
    “I’ll call the manager!” a muffled voice barked. “Shut up!”
    Carl stared at the dim ceiling, seeing it glow and fade, glow and fade as headlights passing on the highway filtered through the closed curtains.
    Had he been snoring? That loud?
    All he knew was that he was cold, cold, cold, and could remember only the terror and the fog and the faces that were not Shelly’s.
    ***

Chapter 10
    Melusine
    This time, finally, the body she inhabited seemed unaware of her presence. Whether that was due solely to her own increased delicacy of touch or was partly because of the distractions of the chaotic surroundings, Melusine was not certain. But whatever the reason, the links were becoming easier to achieve, each more complete than the last so that the world became more vivid. She could concentrate now on smaller and smaller land areas in her quest for accessible hosts, of which she had already merged with several. Or perhaps she would continue to use this one.
    From the moment the navigator had told her they were at the edge of the planet’s startlingly intense otherspace halo, she had known how to