5

Sensing Things

"Can you see now?" Came the gentle voice again. Dan grimaced, he felt bloated and sluggish but not violently ill.
"I can't see anything. I can. . . I sense or feel things."
"Tell me what you sense."
"I hear voices that come unbidden. I don't know where they come from. Like radio waves from far away. I can see outlines on rare occasions of people in red light halos. The people in these halos frighten me for some reason. Don't know why."
"Do these sensations cause you pain?"
"Sometimes. More fatigue than pain. Where am I? Who are you? I was. . .I was in the hospital-"
"You are home now. You were rescued some weeks ago from the river. These sensations, the "sickness" are the start of a power developing inside you, Dan. A power to discern the light from the darkness. You are one of the first ones that I have seen that has this ability out in the wild."
"In the wild?"
"By yourself in the world with no one to guide you. Of the few I've seen with the power of discernment the power itself destroys them or they are destroyed before they are powerful enough to wield it." Dan shifted in alarm. He tried to remove his blindfold but his hands felt numb and weak.
"What do you mean destroyed?"
"Relax. Relax Dan. I will not harm you." The voice soothed. He felt it like a breeze caressing his raw nerves and he settled down. Whoever it was, the Voice they wielded had some sort of power.
"I mean, that there are others who do not want you to see them. The ones in red. Your power was released under stress. That is usually how it happens. By accident. when I look at you Dan I see a halo around you too. A blue light. The light of humans. The Others, they are not. . . .human. They look, act and behave like humans. They are very good at it because they have been here on earth for a very long time. But they are a cancer and that cancer looks like red halo light. You can now see them and you will be able to sense them more often. There are other levels to this ability Dan."
"What levels?"
"Fighting. All will come in time. Just rest your mind and continue sensing and feeling your way through the darkness with the blindfold on. Your eyes are important but I want you to learn how to see with more than just your eyes. The whole world is lost and blind because they ONLY see with their eyes." He heard footsteps falling softly away as whoever it was - his captor or helper - left the room.
Dan did not know what to say or how to proceed. He still wasn't entirely sure he was not dreaming. He obeyed and tried again, sensing. Suddenly a siren blared out of the background noise of the day - he guessed it was day from all the ambient background noise sifting through - and it disrupted his concentration. He put his hands to his ears and blocked it out with difficulty until the siren died away and then tried again. He sensed immediately someone beside him and jumped.
"Good. Good. You knew I was here. I was looking for that. You can take the blindfold off for now." Dan hesitated at first, then tore it off. There was a tall man standing by the bed. His bed. With deep gray eyes, impossibly pale with a wide-set mouth and white hair. He wore a long black coat.
"My bones, they were broken. My back!" Dan grabbed it but there was no pain. "I remember someone. Red-Rag." The man nodded.
"Yes. They tried to break you, those hoodlums. Thralls of the red-shifters. The real danger, believe it or not is not them. It is what has been done to them. They were once men, like you and for all intents and purposes, they still are on the outside. But those fellows have been turned into thralls. That is the intent of the red-shifters for some of humankind. To take over in every way." Dan stared at him intensely until he began to sweat. There was no sense in questioning the strangeness in this situation and the fact that he had no real idea who this man was because life had radically changed when he was thrown into the river. He proceeded on.
"What are red-shifters?"
"The ones who have infiltrated human culture and populations. The Others. The ones who want to change, consume and destroy humanity for their own purposes. The problem is that we do not know what their ultimate purpose is and why they want to do what they want to do. I and others are still discovering this as we go. We only know that they mean you great harm."
"And. . . who are you?" Dan asked, sitting back and watching him closely.
"A helper. I will tell you more later when you meet the others on the team I am putting together."
"Team?"
"The one I told you about?"
"Ah. Right. Other people like me." Dan scanned the man again. He felt no sinister vibe or danger from this man at all and he had scanned and studied his feelings around him for some days now. He looked outside. The day was overcast and cast a pall gray over everything.
"Well, if I am to meet with your team-"
"You are to be the leader of this team. If you wish."
"Oh. Well. I think I can find a way to handle that if I have this great power, as you say. But if I am to meet this team of people you put together and lead them, it seems I need to at least know your name." The man gazed serenely at him before answering.
"I will be meeting with some of the others later this week, to gather them together. Then I must find a safe haven for you all to meet. I think I may have found such a place. And my name is Trillion."

4

T

Andrew was finally home from a long day at the store with a million things on his mind, the foremost one he was about to re-examine tonight. He threw his coat and keys on the couch and went to the desk and picked up the letter again. He'd been corresponding with a mysterious person off and on for nearly a year now. Andrew owned a tiny bookstore and he sold used science fiction, fantasy books and some horror, though he was not a fan of those and after some of the things revealed to him recently horror now disturbed him. It was a weird "thing" with him, nothing personal against horror. 
He barely kept the book store afloat but one day he had received a mysterious letter from a person named T telling him that his store was a portal to another place and then told him, showed him, exactly how this was so. It had shocked and intrigued Andrew but this was the truth. T had offered a felicitous arrangement. T would help keep the store afloat.
It really was a portal, a wormhole. He was warned that it needed to be protected from the others.
"What others?" He'd asked. He found out, to his fright that these "others" were all over the place, trying to overtake the world and that they had been here for a long time. They looked human. They seemed human but they were not human. He and T were now busy trying to fix the portal and improve it so that it would work reliably, because as of now it did not, and also to make sure it remained hidden from the others. The evil ones. T had seemed to know so much about these things. It was as if this was just out of one of the many books he sold in his store. So many of them had gotten here through portals like it but T had said that he and others he knew long ago had destroyed many of these portals or found a way to close them off but that was why so many others had gotten here in the first place. They were in a dash to hide any other found portals. Dangerous work. He had to admit he got a thrill from it all, even though he had a hard time sleeping now that he knew what he knew. T contacted him the old fashioned way. Through written letters. He rather liked  letters by hand. No one ever did that. Except T. He often wondered if T was a time traveler. Or something else. He had never seen T before. The letter read:

Andrew,

You must take this most seriously. It is not a game. It is real and those of us who are rebelling against this are in danger of execution and all humans are in danger of extermination. Just because we have closed up the portals does not mean that humankind is safe. They cannot act directly because they are not as powerful as they thought they would be, yet, but the day is coming when they will become far more powerful than they are now. Then they will not have to use subterfuge. They are evil, Andrew. Make no mistake about it. They are poisonous and insidious. There were several times in history when they nearly succeeded in wiping humanity out. The World Wars were the most recent examples. They use your own weaknesses and imperfections to try to engineer the destruction of Man and Man has shown that if they only keep trying they may succeed. Evil, unlike Good, needs no one to champion its cause. It triumphs because of a universal truth: everyone has darkness within and it is inherent and its call is seductive. It is so easy to be wicked and men would rather be seduced by it than fight against it. I should know; I have been educated by the ultimate tempter and I have paid dearly for it. Remember this Andrew. Remember it. Do not tarry in your decision too long.

- T

His heart beat quickly. Everything he looked at, smelled, touched could have been put there to seduce and blind him by the "others". Now was as good a time as any to put the monumental plan in motion. Andrew was not sure he was ready but T was pushing him and the things he had seen only begged the question: why did he continue to sit on his hands? The group had to be formed. He got out a piece of paper and a pen and wrote T back:

T,

You were right all along. It is just that I have meager resources and I am nothing but a scared, confused bookseller with a bum leg. You are asking an underachiever who can barely run his own business in the black to help you save the world. Yet, it is my world. Let's do it. Let's get the group together. If you say there are others like me who know what is happening, we must get to know who we all are to stop them. My bookstore can be used as headquarters.

Andrew

He slipped the paper in an envelope and wrote the letter: T on the front and he went to the backyard and stuck it in the little fake mailbox he used to communicate with T and then he made dinner, watched a little TV and drank some beer and went to bed.

. . .

The next morning he got up and went to the box in the back yard. His fingers trembled slightly. Sure enough, there was another letter from T. His letter was gone. He opened the new letter and read it.

Andrew,

I shall get the group of chosen ones together. It will be difficult work but I think I can convince them. One is seriously injured, in the hospital. In any case, in exactly three weeks, on Friday, we shall all meet each other for the first time at the bookstore. 8pm. If this time is inconvenient, let me know and I shall work out a better date and time. Time is of the essence.

T

"Well then. It begins." Andrew looked up at the sky. It was gray, foreboding and ready to drop a river of rain. He felt a few cold drops fall on his arm. "It begins." He sighed and went back into the house.