Air Shift
by Sarah Guidry

It was hot. Maybe that’s all there is to the story. I doubt it. It’s always hot in Louisiana, so that can’t be it. If that was the case, it would’ve happened all the time.

It was raining, too. But that’s not it, either. For the same reasons it wasn’t the heat.

It was dusk, which might account for something, being as dusk is a strange time, with the world all covered in gray and blue. But it’s dusk at some point or other every day, so that can’t be all either.

Maybe it was due to it being hot, raining, and dusk all together. But that don’t stand up to reason so well. Think on it a minute. If it’s hot all the time and it’s raining all the time, and there’s dusk every day, it stands up logic-like that some of the time it’s going to be hot, raining and dusk at the same time.

So you see my point. Had to be another explanation.

Now, they don’t have no one to call in these situations. Leastways, no one that someone like me would know to call, or even be able to get a hold to. So, the first time it happened, I did what anyone would’ve done. I called the sheriff.

They sent out Bobby Trahan. Nice kid, used to go fishing with his daddy out to Toledo Bend. Of course, since he knew me, he was real nice about it, but I knew he thought I was crazy.

“Well, Mr. Williams,” Bobby said, writing things real slow in his book. “Let me see if I’ve got this down right. You say you were out on the levee cat fishing?”

“Yep.”

“And around about 7 or 8, it started to drizzle, and the air moved.”

“Yep.”

“Uh-huh,” Bobby consulted his notes. I thought he looked real grown-up in his uniform. “So, the air moved, but not like it was windy or nothing?”

“Yep. Just like that. The air over here,” I put my hand out to my right, to illustrate, “Just sort of said what the hell, and shifted on over here. Whole world seemed to ripple, like water when you throw a pebble in.”

Bobby folded his notebook up and stuck his pencil behind one ear. “Mr. Williams, you weren’t drinking were you?”

“Yep. Iced tea. Fresh brewed.”

He smiled. “I meant liquor.”

“I know what you meant,” I said. “I wasn’t drinking nothing more harmful than some tea.”

He nodded. “Well, sir, I’ll sure put a report in. But I wouldn’t worry about it none. Probably just the heat playing tricks on you. You know how it makes things look odd.”

Yep. That’s what he said. The heat. Of course, I already come to the logical conclusion that it wasn’t the heat.

That Sunday, I got to talking to Eunice in church, and told her about it. She said it was probably the rain. Something about prisms and light in the raindrops (Ole’ Eunice is a science teacher down at one of the middle schools). Likened it to a rainbow. Of course, I done seen me a lot of rainbows, and only one time up until then did I ever see the air move.

While I was talking with Eunice, the pastor came over and dropped an ear. I expected him to go on about how it could have been God, since that seemed like something a pastor might say.

“How have you been, John?” he asked.

“Just fine,” I said.

“Real sorry to hear about your cousin.”

“It was her time.”

He nodded. “Yes. Not too much of your family left. Good people, the Lord’s been calling them home.”

I snorted. “They’s some good ones, some bad ones. Wouldn’t be surprised to hear some done made themselves at home with the Devil.”

That shut him up. I knew what he was getting at, so I didn’t need him to keep going anyway. My family’s mostly gone. My wife’s been dead three years now, my son two. Drunk driver got my son. That was tough. But life’s tough, always has been. Never made me see things before. And if I was going senile, I sure wouldn’t have been thinking it all out logic-like.

Now, I ain’t the most educated man in the world, by far. But I ain’t stupid, either. I shut my mouth up good, before someone did accuse me of being senile. Seeing as I ain’t got no family around, that’d get me locked up in one of them nursing homes for sure.

I had an old video-camera from back when my boy was into making homemade movies. It was sort of chunky, nothing like them little ones they got now, with the screens and all, but it worked. You could record stuff with it. That’s all I wanted to do. Didn’t even have to be any sound.

I set it up on the levee Wednesday evening. Set it up on the tripod with a four hour tape, then settled down with a big ole’ glass of iced tea and my fishing line.

Then, I waited. Around six-o’clock, the sky rumbled around, but I didn’t move. I was going to catch me that air moving.

Around seven, it started to drizzle. And then it happened. The air from over to the right just up and moved over to the left. Almost like it jumped.

I threw my pole down and stood up, making sure the camera was still going. It was. I did a little jig on the gravel. I didn’t know what the air was doing, but it had to be worth something. Maybe it was some new weather phenomenon that could be named after me. Weathermen would be talking about the John Williams Shift or something.

I put my hand out to turn off the camera, but stopped. Out of the corner of my eye, the air shifted again and great big arms came out.

I must be a healthy ole’ coon, ‘cause I thought my heart would give out. It didn’t. Them great big arms snaked out of thin air, grabbed me, and drug me into somewhere else. Then something gave, and I passed out.

I woke up with stuff in my head. Voices, mostly, and fuzzy stuff that just felt wrong. Of course, I thought I was dead. You always think you’re dead with things like this.

“That’s not water,” a voice was saying, inside my head, I think.

“Has a lot of water in it,” another voice said, whining. Sounded like a kid.

“But it’s not water. We can’t do anything with it!”

“We could squeeze it. That’d probably make some water or something.”

The older voice said a lot of things that don’t bear repeating, and called the younger one some nasty names. I was sort of thinking I wished I could see what was happening.

“Look, that is some sort of animal life. Send it back. We only deal with water here. You don’t have to haul water up bodily, either. You entice it up with heat. Don’t you know that? What kind of weather spirit are you?”

The other one mumbled. “Well, maybe we could try it? Something new?”

“PUT IT BACK.”

The voice roared, and I thought I heard thunder in the background. Then I passed out again.

When I came to, I was laying on the levee in a full-out thunderstorm. A few scratches, and a dull ache on my side, but nothing else. After I figured out I wasn’t dead, I looked around for the camera. I mean, if air moving was something, big ole’ arms coming out of nowhere had to be something!

The camera wasn’t anywhere. I checked to make sure the wind didn’t knock it down to the side, or even in the lake. It was gone. Gone, with my pictures.

I saw some lights comin’ down the levee and then heard Bobby Trahan’s voice.

“Mr. Williams, are you okay? Sir?”

“I’m fine. If I could just find my camera. Bobby, you should see. Big ole’ arms comin’ out of no where.”

He climbed out of the golf cart and stood next to me. “Mr. Leblanc, you’re soaking wet. C’mon. Ms. Martin seen you come down here, and when that little twister touched down across the lake, she got worried ‘cause she didn’t see you come back up.”

I shook my head. “Bobby, you have to help me find my camera. You have to see what’s on it. We gonna be famous. Air moving, arms, weather ghosts or some such!”

Bobby nodded and pulled me into the cart next to the levee keeper. “Not right now, Mr. Williams,” he said. “There’s some little twisters touching down. We were worried you got sucked up, yourself!”

We started back toward the gates, and I looked out over the lake.

Thunder sounded in the sky, and something dark and metallic dropped into the lake. It had a tripod attached, but the body was mangled.

“What the hell was that?” Bobby said, shining his light across the water.

The levee keeper shrugged. “Some turtle or something.”

I didn’t say what it was. Even if they believed me and we dredged it up, it wouldn’t matter. Even if the tape could be salvaged, now there was a reason not to believe anything on it. It was water damaged. There was always a reason not to believe these things, and having the story from a senile old man sure as hell sounded like one.

The End

Story copyright Air Shift, published by the Fortean Bureau
http://www.forteanbureau.com