Greywalker

Chapter 5

As I walked toward my office the next morning, I saw the rude man in the hat who had bumped into me the night before. He paid me no attention this time and strode away toward First. Despite the sunlight diluted by a high, thin cloud cover, the day seemed shadowy and dark. I was inclined to write off the vaguely human shapes where no humans stood as an insufficiency of caffeine in my morning-shocked system. I hustled upstairs and wrapped myself in still more paperwork and phone calls, sending Cameron's picture out to be copied.

I detected no watchers in alleys or elsewhere, but couldn't banish the unease itching at the back of my neck. Even in my office, I felt observed.

I was interrupted when an express service messenger knocked and entered my office. She shoved a clipboard at me and I asked what it was for.

"Letter pak from a G. Sergeyev," she answered. It was a large express envelope. Tearing it open, I found a few sheets of cheap, typed paper, and a cashier's check drawn on a foreign bank. I looked that over carefully, but never having seen a European check before, I couldn't tell if it was legitimate or not. The express routing slip gave a London origin, far from the origin of the check. I figured my bank would know what to do with the check, and I took a break to walk it over.

Coming out of the bank, I pulled my jacket close against a sudden bluster of wind. The air seemed to be getting darker and thicker, misting up despite the thinness of the cloud cover, and my ears were ringing a little. The wind between the buildings whispered, and my hair blew into my face, flickering in the edges of my vision. I hunched a little deeper into my jacket, tucking my chin down into the collar.

As I strode along with my head down, something smacked into my chest. The impact made me catch my breath, stumbling back a step. I stared down, trying to figure out what had hit me. There was nothing lying nearby, but the object, whatever it was, had struck with the force of a thrown ball and left a cold ache in my chest. This was no hallucination; hallucinations don't hurt. I raised my head and felt queasy.

The cold steam-mist was back, rendering the world into pale colors and soft focus. Workers on their lunch hour bustled obliviously through the cloud-stuff, like projections on a deteriorated screen. A shadow with no object moved along the sidewalk away from me. I shook my head, but nothing changed.

A few of the passersby glanced at me, moving out of sync, as if the projectionist had several films going at different speeds. My legs went shaky and I stumbled toward a pink splash in the mist. It was a gigantic metal tulip I knew was painted bright red and green. Public art. I sat down on the granite base and stared.

Stray shapes swarmed among the passing humans. I wanted to jump up and run from the shadow-shapes. The dimmed world of my normal Seattle seemed as oblivious to the shadows as they were to it, plunging through each other without regard. The thin sunlight did not penetrate the mist, but still touched buildings and people, somehow. The other things felt it not at all, moving to a constant thrumming cut with clangings and distant voices.

Even as ice crawled over my skin, I berated myself. I took a deep breath, then another. That seemed to help. What was I afraid of?

Nothing was coming for me, this time. The shadows were just going about their business, whatever it was. I shook my head and glanced around A dark columnar form seemed to be watching me. I stood up and started to walk away. It turned to track me. I ran for my office.

But the historic district enclosing Pioneer Square was thronged with shadow-things. I squeezed back against a building and vertigo shook me as I looked out at the street. Real and past traffic mingled in the misted road. Ghostly horses and motorcars moved heedlessly across the center of the Square about a foot lower than the modern pedestrians strolling there. Spectral shapes rose and sank along the sidewalks, and the shade of a giant tree that hadn't existed in a hundred years whipped its branches a foot from the bust of Chief Sealth.

I felt ill. I needed to negotiate this maze of the solid and the incorporeal and make it to some safety—someplace they couldn't come. Shuffling my feet along the concrete and asphalt of the real world, I crossed the street with a crowd of visitors and their tour guide. I flinched as a horse and rider passed right through the crowd with no discernible effect, then staggered as I refocused on a lamppost menacing my path. Concentrating on objects of the present helped hold the past back for a moment. I thought of lampposts and bus benches and fought my way through the insistent mist-world toward my old Rover. I scrambled into it.

Nothing touched me in the old olive green truck. I sat until I caught my breath; then I started the engine and drove. Once I was up on the freeway, the real present was in complete control.

The Bellevue Hilton was modern and bland. I approached the building with all my concentration on the normal, determined not to be swept up again by anything weird. In the lobby, a signboard directed visitors to the chamber of commerce luncheon, and small clutches of business people drifted toward the lobby doors.

I heard footsteps on the carpet, and someone called my name.

I turned and saw Colleen Shadley walking across the lobby, carrying her attaché case. She moved with a smooth grace, even on her rather tall heels. Without them she would barely break five five. Somehow I had carried away the impression that we were close to the same height. But even wearing flat-soled boots, I overtopped her by more than two inches.

"Harper," she greeted me, extending her hand. "I'm so glad you made it. I have those papers for you." She opened the flap on the case and offered me a plain manila envelope. "Have you been able to get started yet?"

"I've got a little information, but now that I have this, I should be able to get along faster." I offered her an envelope containing the pictures of Cameron that she had lent me. "I'll let you know as soon as something comes up."

She gave me a cool, professional smile and wished me well, then turned away. I got out of there before someone asked her who I was.

I had almost two hours to kill. I craved a cup of coffee or anything mundane and anchoring: comfort food, bad TV, something like that. I decided to try a little shopping. Coffee and lunch and department stores in suburban Bellevue. Not a shadow-thing in sight. I was done and on my way back to Seattle by three fifteen. If I was fast enough, perhaps the strangeness couldn't catch up to me.

I was even feeling a bit smug when I parked near the Danzigers' house. I was ten minutes early. I locked up the Rover and walked toward the pale blue house.

It was one of those square, half-brick, half-clapboard houses from about 1900. It had a deep, railed front porch overhung by the second floor. A favorite-grandma house. A pleasant, if slightly wild, garden overran the yard above a short flight of stone steps and a vine-grown wooden arch.

Closer to, the house glowed, golden and beckoning as a cheery fire. It should have made me feel welcome, but the hair on my neck prickled.