The Second Shapeshifter

I like a good prank as well as the next person. And since I can shift skins, my pranks tend to be better than most. But it was only supposed to be a harmless prank. I didn’t know I was the one being tricked.

I should have been suspicious. After all, Ashley had been introduced to me by a mutual friend who’d told me, “She can do the same thing as you! Useful, in her line of work—she’s a con artist.” Ashley told me as much herself, when I finally met her, but it didn’t really bother me. She had a good sense of humor, and though we didn’t became close friends, we always had fun when we hung out.

It was my idea to take each other’s shapes, and Ashley enthusiastically agreed. “And then we have to do something totally outrageous as the other person, and then when people get upset, we can show that we were somewhere else!”

“Like what?”

“We can each decide what the other person does, in our shape. C’mon, Nick, it’ll be fun.”

“I didn’t say I don’t want to do it. I’m just thinking about what “Nick” should do.”

She laughed. “I’m sure you’ll come up with something good.”

We spent some time thinking about it. Finally, Ashley suggested, “We can go over to your girlfriend’s; me as you and you as someone else, and see how long until she realizes I’m not you.”

“That seems kind of unfair to Melissa.”

“C’mon, it’s a joke. It’s not like you won’t be there, and we don’t have to keep it up if it gets uncomfortable.”

I agreed, eventually, because I knew Melissa’s expression when she realized would be priceless. Ashley took my shape, and I took the shape of one of my friends, Jacob. Ashley knocked on the door.

Melissa opened it. Her gaze briefly swept over us before settling on me. “Hi, Nick. And, Nick’s friend who looks just like him.” Her face registered nothing. Ashley, however, was gaping. I am rarely shocked, so it was weird to see the expression on my face.

Melissa invited us in, and Ashley and I returned to our normal shapes. I introduced them, and explained what we’d been doing.

“Obviously,” said Melissa. “So what are you going to do as her?”

“The deal is that I get to chose,” said Ashley.

“So what should I do?”

She considered. “Get arrested. Go to the police station and confess to… murder.”

“Don’t you think that’s going a little too far?” Melissa asked.

I agreed. “How about I confess to something less serious? Theft, or I don’t know, something else.”

“C’mon, it’s not like we’re actually killing anyone! I’ll very clearly be somewhere else, somewhere with lots of people that will recognise me, and cameras, and everything.”

“But Ashley, it’s not when I’m confessing that you’d need an alibi; it’s when the murder actually takes place. And how would we know?”

“Oh.” She thought about it. “We’ll have to stage a murder!”

“Or, I could just do something besides confessing to a crime.”

“No; this’ll be so cool. You could pose as a body, and we could leave all kinds of fake fingerprints, and then you can go in as me and confess!”

“But that’ll waste so many police resources!” Melissa protested.

“Yeah. I can’t say I’ve never done anything like that before, but not without a good reason.”

“Oh, fine. We’ll wait until you have a good reason; then do it.”

I should have been suspicious about how insistent Ashley was, but I thought it was just her stubborn nature. So about two months later, when a girl asked me to help her escape her life, I called Ashley.

The girl’s name was Amy Dellon. She’d ran away from home twice, and had attempted suicide. A friend of mine who was her psychologist said that the problem wasn’t with Amy, it was with the situation that drove her to that point. He asked me to help her escape it. I do that kind of thing all the time.

So I took Amy Dellon’s form and played dead. I can’t take a form that’s not alive, or if I did I wouldn’t be able to shift back. But I can take a form that’s injured, and like Amy with slit wrists, and my psychologist friend called in some favors with a friend in the ME’s office. Amy was declared to have died by exanguination, apparently self-inflicted. Of course, at the time of her death, the real Amy was far away. And, as far as I knew, Ashley was at the mall, asking for help from salesclerks, displaying herself to security cameras, and paying for things with her credit card.

So the next day, I took her shape and went into the police station. “I killed someone,” I said, pretending to be distraught. “I can’t live with the guilt.” I said I’d killed Amy and made it look like a suicide.

I was arrested, of course. I could have gotten out of jail, but as I was being brought there something distracted the guards, so I took advantage of it. I took the shape of a guard, uniform as all, and was gone before they could even realize it.

Once I was home, I called Ashley. She didn’t answer.

The next day, an article in the newspaper told about the murder, confession, and escape. And one more thing. According to the article, Ashley Littlecomb had been arrested again later that day, at her home.

Okay, I thought, maybe she wanted that to happen; she can prove her innocence. But really, who would want to spend months in jail, waiting for a trial?

I went to visit her, in my own form. “Why are you doing this?” I asked.

“What do you mean? I didn’t do any of it! I never killed anyone, or confessed, or ran away! This is all some huge mistake.” There was a desperation to her voice that was not the mischievious Ashley I knew.

I left the prison and went to Ashley’s house. I took the form of a delivery person, and knocked on her door. She opened it.

I put my foot in the door, and shifted to my own shape. “What did you do?” I demanded.

She laughed. “I think you mean, what did you do, framing poor, innocent little Ashley for murder.” She shifted, into a form similar to the one I’d thought was her true form, but clearly not the same person. A relative, probably. “I’m Carliza.”

“So this whole thing was a trick, to get me to set her up?” I didn’t wait for Carliza’s response. “Why couldn’t you do it?”

“I needed to keep her from establishing an alibi. And she knows I can shapeshift, so if I hadn’t been with her, she would have known it was me.”

“What was the point? Why do you want her in prison?”

“She called the police on me. Just because I swindled one lousy millionaire out of his hard-stolen savings, my own sister tried to send me to prison. I’m just returning the favor.”

I’d expected it was something like that. I knew she wanted me to be angry at what she’d done, or at least how she’d used me, so I said politely, “Goodbye. Nice meeting you,” and left before she could respond.

I had to make up for my mistake, of course. I could go to the authorities and tell them what I’d done—if I wanted to be considered crazy or a criminal, or both. I could reveal that Amy wasn’t dead, either by bringing her back or by impersonating her—but the whole point had been for people to think she was dead, and I wasn’t going to call that off.

So I’d have to play Carliza’s own trick back on her.

I let Ashley out first—she shouldn’t be in prison, and her presence would make the rest of my job harder. Once the hue and cry had been raised, I took Carliza’s shape and went into the police station.

I made sure none of the officers involved in “Ashley’s” first arrest were present, then went up and said, “Excuse me, there’s been a mistake. My name’s Carliza Littlecomb; I killed Amy Dellon, and came in here and confessed, but I said I was my sister, and then I escaped.”

They arrested me. I stayed in jail for a few days, so they didn’t get too suspicious about how exactly I’d escaped. They didn’t catch Carliza, of course, but that wasn’t the point. She’s wanted by the police, which isn’t much of a problem for her, except she won’t be able to use her natural shape.

Not that I thought Carliza would leave Ashley alone. So I arranged for her to go stay with Amy. They were about the same age, and I thought they’d get along. I won’t say where—that’s the whole point of faking deaths and hiding people, after all—but they’re safe, and when I talked to them they seemed to be doing fine.

It’s not that I think Carliza will leave me alone, either. And sure, I could go into hiding easily, but I’m not. I have a few extra identities stashed away, of course—anybody who can shift shapes would—and I could always take one if I need to. But I can take care of myself.

Tampering

“Don’t do anything stupid,” my girlfriend warned me.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

“That reassures me ever so much.”

“Sorry, Melissa. It’s just, injustice really pisses me off.”

“I didn’t say not to do anything, Nick, just not to do anything stupid. That does require you to have the ability to be smart, or at least to have some small measure of self preservation.”

I roll my eyes. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m still alive.”

“No thanks to your common sense.”

“I have common sense; I just don’t let it get in the way of—”

“Anything,” she interrupted.

I sighed. “Maybe. But this is easy, really, not dangerous at all. When I was a kid I used to do it as a game—I’d go watch trials and right when the witness was supposed to identify the accused I would look the witness right in the eye and take the defendant’s shape. Nothing ever happened.”

“Except for traumatizing witnesses and letting guilty people go free, I bet. You have a weird sense of humor.”

“It wasn’t that bad; I only did it twice, one was a prostitution case and the other one was shoplifting. I wouldn’t have done it in murder cases or anything; even as a kid I wasn’t that bad. And this is different. We both know Corey is innocent.”

“Yeah, but why can’t you just trust that the jury will agree? Why must everyone I know tamper with trials?”

“Who else do you know that tampers with trials?” I asked. I really was curious, because as far as I knew, I was the most outlaw person Melissa knew.

“Meh, she didn’t really, it’s complicated, and you’re changing the subject!”

“I don’t trust the justice system, and it’s easier to tamper with a trial than to break someone out of prison. Corey and I’ve been friends since we were kids, and I’m not going to leave him to rot for something he didn’t have a choice in. But if you ask me to wait for the verdict, I will. But if he’s found guilty, I won’t just let it go.”

“I am asking you. It was obviously self defense, and the jury will see it. I don’t want you to get in trouble trying to help him needlessly. The trial already started, you’ll only have to wait a few days to know.”

“Fine.” So I waited. I watched the trial, in my true identity, to give Corey my moral support. I watched the prosecutor try to paint him as a cold-blooded murderer, and was tempted to break my promise to Melissa. I watched his lawyer explain that he’d had no choice, when the so-called victim was lunging at him with a knife; if Corey hadn’t shot him, he’d be dead, and I had a faint hope that maybe Melissa’s optimism was not unfounded. But when the jury finally came back with the verdict, I knew she was wrong. “We find the defendant, Corey Rausch, guilty,” the foreman read, and I began to make my plans.

I’d gotten someone out of jail before, by taking their form, confessing to the crime, and once imprisoned, shifting to the form of a small child so I’d have to be released. But that wouldn’t work this time. Nobody was claiming it was a case of mistaken identity.

I could’ve broken Cory out pretty easily, just took the form of a guard and walked him right out. But then he’d be a fugitive, and I wanted to get him out free and clear.

The prosecutor had shown a picture of the victim during the trial. William Jones. Big guy, pretty average looking beside for his size. I went over to the police station, the one where Corey had been arrested in the first place, and right outside, shifted into Jones’s shape. Then I went up to the front desk and demanded, “Can I get my knife back now?”

“I’m sorry?” the desk sergeant asked.

“My knife! They took it for the trial, but now that the guy’s been convicted, I want it back!”

“What’s your name, sir?”

“William Jones.”

“And what trial is it you’re talking about?”

“People v. Rausch. He got convicted, and I want my knife back.”

He gave me a funny look, and said, “I’ll get it right away. Just wait here for a moment, sir.”

Of course he didn’t. Rather, two officers came out and asked—though it wasn’t really optional—to have a word with me. They escorted me to an interrogation room. I repeated that I wanted my knife. They asked if I really was William Jones. I said I was. They asked how I wasn’t dead.

“Why would I be?”

“Well, a man was just convicted of your murder.”

I refused to say anything else without a lawyer. They weren’t quite sure what to do with me. Had I committed a crime? Had Corey? They kept me there for a while, but eventually let me go with a stern warning.

I left, returned to my own shape, and went home and told Melissa all about it. “I guess it would’ve been better if you’ tampered with the trial, she said ruefully. “Do you think they'll let him go now?”

“I think so. If not, I’ll do something else.”

But the next day I got a call from Corey, telling me he was home and his conviction had been overturned, and thanking me. “It was you, right? He’s not really alive?”

“Nope, it was me.”

Not Bob

“You are not Bob!” the small, elderly woman accused, shaking her finger in my face.

I thought fast. “No, ma’am, I’m not. My name is George, I’m Bob’s identical twin and-”

She cut me off. “Sir, I have no idea who you are, but I am Bob’s mother and I assure you, they only pulled one baby out of me. Now who are you and where is my son?”

I was about to say that I was actually Bob’s illegitimate half-brother who happened to look exactly like him, but after a second look at the woman I knew that wouldn’t fly. The form I was currently in was the splitting image of his mother, if younger and more masculine. No, I’d have to tell her the truth. “Why don’t you come inside and sit down, and I’ll explain,” I offered.

“Nuh-uh. I’m not letting you get me alone. You’ll kill me, just like you must’ve killed my son. POLICE! MURDER! HELP!” she screamed.

I sighed. “I haven’t killed anyone,” I told her calmly. “Bob’s in Hawaii. If you don’t want to come inside, you can call him from out here if you have a cell phone.”

She eyed me suspiciously and took a large step back, but pulled a cell phone out of her tiny flowered purse and made a call. I assumed it was to Bob, it was too many numbers to be 911, and the side of the conversation I could hear confirmed it.

“Bob? This is your mother. Where are you? Don’t lie to me. Robert Caspian Jones, I am at your house, and that man is not you. How could I tell??? You’re asking me how I could tell? I am your mother! Now where are you? Hawaii? What are you doing in Hawaii? You’re snorkeling with your new girlfriend. You just take off in the middle of a work week to go snorkeling with some girl you just met, without telling anyone. You can explain? Fine, I’ve got to hear this.” Up until this point her voice and expression ranged from infuriated to exasperated and back again. But with whatever she was hearing now, her eyes widened, then darted around nervously.

“But you’re sure you’re safe there?” she asked him finally. “You promise? Do you want me to come out there? Are you sure? I’d feel so much better if I was there with you. Promise you’ll call me if anything happens? Okay. I love you, sweetie. Bye. Don’t forget to call me.”

Finally, she turned back to me. “So what’s your role in all this?”

“How much did Bob tell you?”

“Just that someone’s trying to kill him and you’re a friend who’s helping him out.”

I nodded. “That’s true, as far as it goes. Come inside and I’ll explain the rest.”

She didn’t argue this time, just followed me inside and sat down on Bob’s couch.

“I’m sorry, but I didn’t catch your name?” I asked her.

“Ethel.”

“I’m Nick.” As I introduced myself and while I was shaking her hand, I shifted into my true form.

She blinked, twice, but to my surprise that was her only reaction. I’d have expected her to shriek and run out of the house. Most people who actually see me shift without knowing what I can do beforehand get pretty upset. It’s not like there’s some disgusting morphing thing either, like I go all squishy and mush into another shape. I just suddenly look different. It’s just the shock of it that can upset people. But I guess Ethel’d had enough shock in one day to be immune for the moment.

“Ah. That explains it,” she commented. “Now, who is trying to kill my son, and what are you doing about it?”

“I wish I knew,” I confessed. “To both questions. Right now, I’m pretty much acting as a decoy and hoping someone’ll show up and try to kill me, thinking I’m Bob.”

“That’s obvious,” Ethel said. “But surely you know more than that. What makes you think he’s in danger in the first place.”

I shook my head. “I have a friend who’s a psychic, or a prophet, she’s not exactly sure yet. But she knew that someone is trying to kill Bob, and she told me that I could stop it... Basically, I guess she sees thousands of different possible futures, depending on the course of events, and the ones where I step in… turn out better than the ones where I don’t.”

She sat staring at me. “A psychic said that someone wants to kill my son, so a shapeshifter is sitting in his house pretending to be him.”

I grinned at her. “Yep. Sounds crazy when you put it like that.” I shifted back into Bob’s shape. “Anyway, you should probably go, in case anything does happen.”

She agreed, and I walked her out to her car. I’d just turned to go back inside when I heard her scream.

I spun around in time to see a masked man with a gun pulling Ethel into a van, which was beginning to drive away. I shifted my legs to those of an Olympic runner and began to run after her. The van was moving fairly slowly; I could have caught up with it. Even running like a normal person I probably could have caught up with it.

That’s why I stopped.

Cassie (yes, my prophet/psychic friend’s name is Cassandra, how ironic, prophetic, weird, whatever, ha ha ha, now get over it) had said that the futures where I was here were better than the ones where Bob was, and now I realized why. It wasn’t just because I had more experience with this sort of thing, or even because I can shift shapes. It was because I didn’t have the emotional attachment to Ethel that Bob did. Sure, I’d liked the woman, but she wasn’t my mother. If it had been the real Bob here, he would have run after the car, and he would have been killed.

So I glanced at the van’s plates, watched it drive out of sight, and shifted into Ethel’s shape. I took the cell phone out of my little flowered purse and called 911.

I didn’t have any particular reason to take Ethel’s shape, except for the vague hope it would confuse the kidnappers, but it felt like the right thing to do. I spent the time waiting for the police to get there trying to decide what to tell them.

When they finally arrived, I told them, “My sister was kidnapped!” I explained that I’d been house sitting for my son while he’s on vacation, and my sister Mildred had been over to hang out, and she’d been leaving when a van pulled up and a man dragged her inside and drove away, and the license plate was….

When the police left, I went back inside the house and waited. Sure enough, about fifteen minutes later the phone rang, and when I picked it up a technologically blurred voice told me, “That was stupid, calling the police. If you ever want to see your mother again, you won’t make a second stupid mistake.”

“I’m sorry?” I said, filling Ethel’s voice with confusion. “I think you must have the wrong number. This is Ethel Jones. My mother’s been dead for nearly forty years.”

There was silence on the other end of the line. Then I heard in the background, “He must be faking it!”

I grinned. Despite using a machine to make his voice unidentifiable, my caller didn’t know how to use a mute button.

“Naw, it sounds like her. Hey Jimmy, go to the house and pick up whoever’s there. Once we got ‘em both here, we’ll sort it out.”

“Damn waste of an exploding van,” someone commented, and I shuddered. Then the muffled voice came back on the line. “Mrs. Jones? I don’t know if you’re you or this is you, but I can tell you this—do anything stupid and the other you will die.”

“I won’t do anything stupid,” I said, then made it a lie by waiting quietly for them to come kidnap me.

There were three of them, all wearing masks. I went with them willingly, struggled feebly a bit for show, but let them bind and gag me and shove me into the van.

They brought me to a warehouse. There were a couple more of them, also in ski masks, and Ethel. Her eyes widened when she saw me, but she said nothing—probably because of the duct tape over her mouth, but I thought she had enough sense not to give me away when they took it off.

Almost as soon as they’d shoved me on the ground next to her, they ungagged both of us. “Where’s your son?” one of them demanded. I didn’t know which of us he was talking to, and I don’t think he did either.

“Florida,” I said. “What’s this about? What did he do?” Sure, I didn’t really think they’d tell me that easily, but I really did want to know.

“What did he do??” one of my captors repeated angrily. “He hacked into our accounts and stole $50 billion from us.”

The explanation actually made sense—stealing money from mobsters from behind the safety of a computer screen was exactly the kind of thing Bob could, and would, do.

“Now where the hell is he? And don’t give me any of that ‘Florida’ crap!” He took out a gun and aimed it at me.

It wasn’t until that very moment that I had a plan. I shifted into Bob’s shape, which startled them for long enough for me to maneuver so the gun was pointing at my stomach. I know, some plan, right? I’m stupid and foolhardy and all that. As soon as the guy realized what had happened, or at least that the man they’d been looking for was standing in front of him, he pulled the trigger. Which is what I’d been counting on, of course, but that didn’t make it hurt any less. I writhed in agony. It was real, but I managed to make it seem just a little more fatal than it actually was.

“Distract them,” I somehow managed to whisper to Ethel. I think I managed to whisper it. Actually, I probably just thought it really hard. Anyway, whether it was through my intervention or not, when I let my head fall to the ground, eyes rolled wide open, a pool of blood all around me, Ethel began to wail. “My baby!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You killed him!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuuuuuuughhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You killed him!”

It gave me the time I needed. It was harder than I expected. Normally, shifting shapes is nearly as easy for me as breathing. All I need to do is concentrate on the shape and just… shift into it. But since I was using most of my powers of concentration on just staying alive and conscious, it took every ounce of will I had to shift.

But I did it. I shifted into my own shape first, since I knew it best and couldn’t have managed another. I can’t describe how wonderful it was to shift into my own, unwounded form. I had been dying from a gunshot wound to the stomach, and suddenly there was no gunshot wound no pain, no bullet lodged inside me.

Before they could notice anything, I shifted back into Bob’s shape, but a healthy Bob. The puddle of blood was still there, and I lay in it with my eyes wide open, unmoving. I steeled myself to stay as still when they dragged me out of there, but they didn’t. They completely ignored me as they gagged Ethel again, and then ignored us both as they cleared out of the warehouse.

I waited and waited, just in case. Finally, I whispered, “Are they gone?”

“Mmmmrumph.”

I sat up and pulled the duct tape from her mouth.

“You’re…” she stared at me.

“I’m fine. I can shift my physical shape in any way I want, so I can shift injuries away. Of course, if I’d died I wouldn’t have been able to.”

“What’ll happen now?”

“Well, they think they killed Bob, so they’ll be leaving you alone now. It might be a good idea if he stays in Hawaii for a while. Hopefully the police’ll pick them up soon.”

“And if they don’t? Will Bob have to hide for the rest of his life?”

“No. If the police don’t get them, I’ll track them down and make sure they get put away. And I doubt Bob will mind staying in Hawaii for another month or two.”

The police did get them though, the next day. I testified as three different people in that trial, and I guess the jury believed all three of me.

You Can Run, But You Can't Hide

I’m pretty good at reading people. You know how they say if you kind of subtly mimic a person’s body language or attitude you can sense what they’re feeling? Well, when I actually shift into someone else’s shape, that’s even stronger. I don’t even need to take their shape to have that kind of intuition anymore- just visualizing being in that skin- which I do pretty instinctively with everyone I see, in case I ever do want to be in that shape- is enough.

So when I saw the girl sitting at the bus stop, I could tell she was… more than upset. Traumatized, maybe. Like she was just barely holding onto her soul, though I didn’t know then just how true that was. It wasn’t that her expression was a mask of grief or anything obvious like that. It was just something in the way she sat, head bent slightly, carefully trying to avoid all eye contact. And, when she finally did meet my gaze for an instant, the weird, kind of haunted look in her eyes.

“Hey, are you okay?” I asked her. I don’t know what I expected. I mean, she’d never seen me before in her life; she’s not going to pour out all her troubles to me. The most normal thing for her to do would have been to just say, “Yeah, I’m fine,” and continue ignoring me.

But her response wasn’t normal. She jumped up and screamed, “Get away from me, you bastard! I hate you! You evil, sick, twisted, evil… You’re worse than them! I hope they do kill you, you stupid horrible asshole!” Her eyes blazed with anger and hatred and behind that, terror.

Like I said, she didn’t know me. For an instant it crossed my mind that she knew someone who I’d based my current shape on, but that wouldn’t fly because I was wearing my own skin at the moment. So I backed away, thinking, Okay, maybe I’m not so good at reading people. That look in her eyes was insanity. So I left her be, went home, and put the whole incident out of my mind.

I really didn’t think about it much more. It’s not like I had nothing better to do than worry over crazy people who scream at me for no reason. After all, I was in the middle of a little job I’d taken up to help a friend, trying to frame a guy for murder, which sounds bad when I say it like that but trust me, he deserved it. And then I started to feel like I was being followed. You know the prickling on the back of your neck when someone’s watching you? It was like that, but twenty times over. And malevolent. And it happened when I was all alone, in my own shape, at home or out in the open, at times and in places where there was no possible way that there was someone else there.

You’d think I’d know better than to say something’s impossible, wouldn’t you, seeing as how most people would say that about what I do?

So on top of being busy taking all kinds of shapes and pretending to be dead, to be a cop, to be a witness, to be the guy I was working on putting away, in my free moments I was distracted by whoever or whatever was or wasn’t following me. So, I really didn’t think about that girl much at all, till a couple days later, when I was having a few beers with a friend of mine who happens to work in a mental institution. He started telling me stories about his patients, and I remembered, “I had an encounter with a sanity-challenged individual the other day,” and told him about it. He made some comment in reply, I can’t remember what, and I said, “I’m starting to feel like I’m going crazy.”

“What, multiple personality disorder?”

I laughed. “No, seriously, I keep getting this strong feeling I’m being watched or stalked or something… it’s pretty freaky. It’s only been happening for a couple of days, and I’m already starting to feel paranoid.”

And that’s when it clicks. I first felt whatever was watching me right after meeting her. She’d been paranoid and terrified and had said I was worse than “them.” Therefore… Um, I wasn’t sure what it meant. She’d called down a curse on me? The “them” that were after her had moved on to me? But I knew in my gut that something big was going on, and it was because of her.

I didn’t know how to find her again. I went back to the bus stop, but she wasn’t there. I sat down on the bench and waited. She didn’t show up, but after a little bit I felt the air grow heavy with evil and a presence behind me. I didn’t see anyone there, of course. But I felt them.

“I know you’re there!” I called, aware that if anyone was watching I would seem as crazy as the girl had to me. “Show yourself!” There was no response. “What do you want with me?” Still nothing. “What do you want with her?”

And then they appeared. Appeared is the wrong word. They were still invisible, but they were revealing themselves to me. I couldn’t see them, not really, but I could sense their presence with my eyes. It’s like how looking through a completely clear window with no spots or streaks isn’t the same as looking through an open window, how things that are completely clear are still visible. So I could see them. There were seven of them, whatever they were, floating a few feet above the ground. I’m not sure how to describe what they looked like. They were kind of humanoid and kind of not, like how a djinni has a human head and torso that trails off into smoke at the legs- but their whole bodies were like that, halfway between being solid and not.
They were terrifying. It wasn’t their appearance but the mood they created. I said I could feel their malevolence when they were watching me, but that was nothing compared to this. The girl was right to be terrified. These…beings were pure evil.

“We want her soul,” one of them said, in a voice that matched everything else about them.

“She owes us,” another added.

“We will make her pay.” They began to advance towards me. I shifted my legs to those of an Olympic runner, and ran.

I managed to stay ahead of them for long enough to be in the middle of a crowd of people, and then I shifted. I sensed confusion over the beings’ hatred and anger as they drifted back towards the bus stop.

Maybe the smart thing to do would have been to stay away from them, but it was too late for that. And I have to admit, my curiosity tends to overrule my common sense. So I took on a really inconspicuous form, and followed them.

A couple blocks away from the bus stop, the girl appeared out of an alley. The things surrounded her. I wanted to do something, but I kept back, watching. I do have some sense.

“I didn’t even know him!” she was saying to them. “Haven’t you realized by now? I won’t do it, no matter how many people you kill. Go find someone else to haunt!”

“She is close to despair. We will have her soon,” one of the things leered, and they were gone.

I put on my own shape and stepped forward. Her eyes widened and she asked in surprise, “They didn’t kill you?”

“No, but I think they want to.”

“I was hoping they wouldn’t. That they’d think I wanted you dead, so they’d let you live. I should’ve known they’re not so easily tricked.”

“I think it worked, at least for a while,” I told her. “They’ve been following me, and I’m still alive.”

“They’ve killed every single person I’ve interacted with in the last six months. My family, my friends, a cashier who rang up my groceries, complete strangers who happen to make a passing remark to me…”

I was horrified. “Why?”

“I… I made a deal with them. But I didn’t understand what I was agreeing to, and I just couldn’t do what they asked, so I went back on the bargain. Now they’re trying to drive me to despair so they can turn me into one of them.”

I thought about that, then told her, “You need to just end it, once and for all.”

“I can’t give in. They’re killing people now, but if I become one of them I’ll be killing people, for thousands of years.”

“I didn’t say anything about giving in,” I said, as a plan began to form in my mind. “What you need to do is make another deal with them- or not a deal, more like a bet. If you win they leave you and everyone around you alone, if they win you become one of them.”

“What kind of bet? How can I get them to agree? What if I lose?”

“Bet them that they can’t kill me within twenty four hours, by noon tomorrow. I think they’ll go for that. And I’ll make sure you don’t lose.”

“I couldn’t do that to you!”

“I’m volunteering. They’re going to try to kill me anyway, aren’t they?”

She nodded. “You’re sure about this.”

“Absolutely.” And I was. Scared, but sure. I started to leave, then turned back. “Wait, what’s your name?”

“Laurel.”

“I’m Nick.”

I shifted to another shape and backed off a bit, and she called them and made the deal. She added that if they lost they leave her and everyone else alone, and leave the earth for a hundred years. They agreed and left to start looking for me, so I was off.

I took on the shape of a woman, to make it confusing for them, and kept to crowded areas. For a while I could see them sniffing around, but not realizing I could shift skins, they were looking for the man they’d seen before. But after a couple of hours, they did figure it out. That was when things got difficult.

I was at a crowded park, sitting on a bench watching the beings out of the corner of my eye when all of a sudden they swooped towards me. I ducked into a crowd of people and shifted, becoming a little boy. People never seem to notice when I shift, even if it’s right in front of them, and while the thing must have known I’d shifted, they didn’t know what form I was in. So they were inspecting all the people around me, and being small, I managed to slip away unnoticed.
After awhile they found me again, and again I managed to shift shapes and get away. This pattern repeated itself for a while.

Then it started to get dark. People were leaving the park, so I left with them. It was a bit harder to find a crowd once it got dark, but I finally slipped into a nightclub. It took a while for them to find me that time. It was past midnight when they showed up, and I managed to evade them for another couple of hours before the place closed. I couldn’t think of anywhere else that would have enough people that time of night, so I spent a while in the emergency room, shifting from injured-seeming form to injured seeming form as they chased me.

Finally, morning came and I left. I meant to go back to the park I’d been at, but somehow they found me and managed to chase me down a deserted alley. They split up and managed to corner me, with half of them at one end of the alley and half on the other. I knew there was no way I could go, no shape I could take, that would save me.

But then, just before they approached, I had an idea. I ducked behind a dumpster and shifted into an exact copy of Laurel. There was no way it would work. They’d seen me come into the alley, they’d know it had to be me.

But it did work. They surrounded me, demanding of “Laurel” where “he” was. I cowered from them, pretending not to know. Three of them went off to search for me, while the other four circled me, demanding an answer, telling me in gruesome detail how they would kill “him”, and how they had killed each of the so many others. They tormented me for hours, and I understood why the real Laurel was so close to the brink of despair, admired her for having the strength not to give in. I almost shifted, to get away from it, but that would have meant my death, and her transformation to one of these things.

A few minutes before noon, the other three returned. “We haven’t found him,” one of them told the others.

“Should we kill her? We can at least get something out of this,” another suggested.

“We have a deal, and my death isn’t part of it!” I objected.

They looked at me suspiciously. “There’s something different about her,” one of them commented. I snuck a look at my watch. It was 11:59. If it took them another minute to figure it out or if I could stall that long, I’d be home clear.

But just then, the real Laurel began to walk down the alley towards me.

I began to run, away from her, so that they would follow me without noticing that there were two of us. They were almost on me when Laurel screamed, “Laurel!” They thought she was me, so they all turned and rushed towards her.

“No, it’s me!” I cried. The beings looked around in confusion. They would have rushed towards one of us, or more likely both of us, but at that moment the clock struck twelve.

They stood still in the air. “Don’t think this is over,” one of them said. “We’ll be back in a hundred years, and if you’re still alive, we’ll kill both of you.” Then they vanished, not just turned invisible but were gone.

“If I somehow live to be a hundred and twenty five, remind me to kill myself first,” Laurel said, and we both laughed.