The Night Shifters

by

Emily Devenport

Smashwords
Edition

* * * * *

Published by:

Emily Devenport on
Smashwords

The Night
Shifters

Copyright © 2010 by
Emily Devenport

All rights
reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved
above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or
introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or
by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or
otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the
copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of
fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents
are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used
fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and
trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of
fiction, which have been used without permission. The
publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated
with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

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* * * * *

PROLOG: From The World Of
Day

CHAPTER ONE: My Crystal
Heart

CHAPTER TWO: I Didn’t
Study

CHAPTER THREE: The Wild
Hunt

CHAPTER FOUR: You Can’t Fire Me, I
Quit!

CHAPTER FIVE: Charlie Brown, Lucy, And The
Football Of Doom

CHAPTER SIX: The House Of
Doors

CHAPTER SEVEN: The Hole

CHAPTER EIGHT: Two Cities, No
Waiting

CHAPTER NINE: Bernard’s
Revenge

CHAPTER TEN: Even Girl-killers Get The
Blues

CHAPTER ELEVEN: Gods and Elves and
Choruses

CHAPTER TWELVE: The Endless List of Things I
Didn’t Know

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Back To
School

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Undoing The
Night

* * * * *

One evening, when I
was nine years old, Mom and I sat in lawn chairs under our Faerie
Tree and sipped rootbeer floats. We gazed up at the lights we had
taken two days to string in the tree. They shone like a thousand
stars, making up for the real stars that got burned away by the
lights of town. Music played softly from the radio in the living
room, drifting out the back door like a gentle wind through a whole
forest of Faerie Trees.

“I must say – “ Mom
stirred her ice cream as it melted into the rootbeer. “This is
perfect.”

“The best thing
ever,” I agreed.

That moment was so
perfect, I think it will last until the end of time, long after
suns have burned to cinders and the clockwork of the universe winds
down. Mom had that kind of power, she could take simple things and
turn them into time-twisting, gravity-defying marvels. Or that’s
how it seemed as we sipped those rootbeers under that tree. The
lights really did look like stars, so full of promise that anything
seemed possible. I thought I would remember every thing about that
evening for the rest of my life, and beyond.

But there was one
thing I didn’t recall until seventeen years later. I remembered it
when I was lying in bed, just as I was about to drift off to sleep.
I remembered that Mom took a long drink of her rootbeer float and
then looked at me with an expression that should have been wistful,
under the circumstances. But it wasn’t, she looked totally serious.
“Hazel,” she said, “promise me you won’t give up on your
dreams.”

“I won’t,” I
promised. I assumed she meant that I should try to be whatever I
wanted to be in life, a doctor, or lawyer, or mermaid, or
whatever.

Now I wonder if I
completely misunderstood her.

* * * * *

Don’t give up on your dreams,
Mom advised. I promised I wouldn’t. I really meant
to keep the promise, but I thought I had broken it – or maybe just
failed to fully realize it, because I had
not
become a doctor, or a lawyer, or a mermaid. Or anything much,
really. But on that fateful night, seventeen years later, I
remembered that conversation when I went to bed. I had labored
through a particularly hard day at work, and I wasn’t feeling very
happy about my life. I always felt grateful to fall asleep, but on
that night, something occurred to my almost-sleeping
mind.

In one way,
I
had
kept my promise. I was a Grand
Champion Dreamer. When I was asleep I dreamed a dazzling universe
full of heroes and monsters, princesses and goddesses, cities and
temples and gardens that made the most wonderful places on Earth
seem dull in comparison.

Not that I
had actually
been
to the most
wonderful places on Earth. Though I saw them on TV, sometimes. Yet
I never had much desire to see them in person. Why should I, when
whole, new worlds awaited me every time I shut my eyes?

During the day, I
did what I had to do to pay the bills. At night I ate supper,
watched TV, read books. At bedtime, I turned in, confident that I
would dream, and that the sun would come up in the morning and the
whole thing would start over again. So on the evening of that last
day, as my memory of Mom advised me never to give up on my dreams,
I embraced the night wholeheartedly and drifted into the universe
of my imagination.

I dreamed.
But for the first time in my life, I didn’t
remember
what I dreamed. Perhaps I never will. But I’ll never
forget what happened when the alarm went off.

I opened my
eyes to darkness.
Crap!
I thought. I
grabbed the noisy clock from my bedside table, switched off the
alarm, and glared at its glowing face. It read 6:30 a.m.

The sun
should be up by 6:30. Did I let the year get away from me again?
But it couldn’t have gotten
that
far away
from me, the sun should rise any minute if it really was 6:30 a.m.
I got out of bed, stood by the window in my PJs, and waited for
that familiar glow over the horizon – a glow that, confidentially,
I wasn’t particularly fond of. But the sun did not rise.

This filled me with
both anxiety and joy. I was accustomed to having day at least once
every twenty-four hours; that’s my excuse for being anxious. But if
the sun didn’t come up, there would be no reason to go to work –
hence the joy.

My clock alarm went
off again, making me jump. I’ve always hated it, so I usually wake
up just before that obnoxious noise can ruin my whole day. I
thought I had switched it off the first time, but the button was
still in the ON position. So how had I turned it off? Something was
totally screwy. I switched it off (maybe for the first time, maybe
not) and made sure it really said OFF this time.

I stared at it for
a long time, daring it to do something that would provoke me into
yanking its cord out of the wall. I watched the numbers on its face
flick over to 6:31, 6:32, 6:33... As a digital clock, it should
have been blinking on and off after a malfunction. At least I
thought it should. But just to be sure, I picked up the phone to
call Time.

The phone was
dead.

“Hurray!” I said,
and went back to bed.

By now you
may have noticed I’m not one of those
Hi-ho, hi-ho, it’s off to work I go
kinda gals. Any excuse for not
going to work, no matter how lame, works just fine for me.
Oops! Broken clock,
broken phone, can’t go to work.
I’ve been told I lack ambition. In my opinion, I simply lack
ambition to work. Sleep, on the other hand, is something at which I
excel.

It’s always
been easy for me to fall asleep. Even my dullest dreams are
way
more interesting than my real life. That’s why
I’m not very happy to see the sun, to start a day that can never
live up to my dreams. This second time, I dreamed I was running
through a fabulous city. Someone was chasing me. And not just one
someone – several. Some of these someones, I didn’t want to catch
me. But others, I rather did. I ran anyway, until the alarm woke me
again – even though I hadn’t set it.

I jumped out of bed
and went to the window. This was just a formality, because I could
already tell the sun hadn’t come up. Again. Did the world come to
an end while I was asleep? If the sun wasn’t going to come up
anymore, shouldn’t it be really cold? The temperature felt perfect.
In fact, strange as the situation was, somehow it seemed more like
a beginning than an end.

Once I had
reassured myself that doom hadn’t descended upon the world anymore
than sunlight had, I pointed my eyes at the street instead of the
sunless sky, and I finally noticed just how drastically my
neighborhood had changed.

“This isn’t
normal!” I called out the window to nobody in particular.
Apparently I was the only one who thought so. Despite the fact that
it was dark outside, everyone still went about their business – but
not the usual sort of business, the kind conducted by stock
brokers, construction workers, secretaries, and nuclear physicists.
And these were not my usual neighbors.

I didn’t recognize
the handsome men with long white hair and red eyes who drove up and
down the streets in black cars. Or the red and green lights that
throbbed in second story windows of houses that hadn’t had a second
story when I went to bed the night before. Or the streets that kept
appearing and disappearing, changing direction and curving or
straightening like restless snakes – but only when my back was
turned. And throughout it all I gained the impression that
important things were happening, if only I could figure out what
they were.

Not what I
expected. I racked my brain for an explanation and came up with two
possibilities. One: I was still asleep, having the most convincing
dream I’d ever had. It felt too real to be a dream, but I’d thought
that before, then awakened (sometimes quite disappointed) into the
real world again. I liked that explanation.

Or Two: I had
finally gone completely crazy. I didn’t like that explanation half
as much. But it wouldn’t totally surprise me, either. And anyway,
if I had really gone crazy, so far the experience wasn’t too bad.
Maybe I could even get to like it.

The only thing I
was sure of was that I didn’t know what was going on. But I’m used
to that condition, so I didn’t panic. Instead, I took a quick
shower, got dressed in my favorite jeans, my Nikes, and my lilac
sweater, ran a comb through my short, brown hair, then went into my
kitchen to eat animal crackers and cheddar cheese (I hadn’t had
time to go to the market before the night came to stay). That’s
when I found the letter.

Propped against my
moo creamer, a pink envelope declared HAZEL. The pretty handwriting
made me a little envious. Mine is an undisciplined scrawl. I opened
the envelope and found more pretty writing inside. It said:

“Dear Hazel, by now
you’re probably wondering what’s up. Well, it certainly isn’t the
sun! Don’t worry about that, though. It’s nothing dangerous. I’ll
explain it later.

“And don’t worry
about your memory loss. It’s only temporary – “

My memory
loss? I didn’t remember having a memory loss. But when I thought
about it, only a few things became clear. Like for instance, my
name: Hazel –
Something
. And I was
twenty-six, one glance in my hall mirror reassured me of that. I
didn’t expect anyone else to come into the kitchen, because I had
lived alone since Mom passed away and left me the house. Those were
the major points. A few minor ones popped up spontaneously as I
thought about things, like my favorite jeans and the trip I
couldn’t take to the market.