I'm publishing this unedited. I wrote this over the course of several nights while nursing a fussy baby and it was heavily influenced by the world-building in Aesop Rock's Spirit World Field Guide. By the time I finished it, I couldn't remember how it started.
I'm Bahyil Tehat. Well, that's not my real name, but it's something that humans can pronounce. I'm a Pathfinder, sort of an interdimensional tracker. I chase down spirits and humans that are fucking around between worlds and breaking rules.
It's an easy occupation most of the time. Pop in, hop back through the prism after scaring the shit out of some wannabe warlock messing around with energies. Sometimes those edgy motherfuckers get too close to tearing a big hole in things, and that's where I come in usually.
Dumbasses always trying to open a portal or lift the veil between worlds. Lemme tell you, it doesn't work like that. Think of what separates the Spirit World and the human world as shingles on a roof. Ordinarily the shingles make your roof impermeable. Start doing woo‑woo witchy shit and those shingles start to lift a hair or two here and there and suddenly you've got a leaky roof. We can ooze on through to the world humans are in, but humans don't ooze.
This is a problem because humans don't come through gracefully. They come crashing through. You see, when stuff from the Spirit World goes oozing through to the human world, it doesn't tear anything up. We just seep on through, barely noticed – just a ripple in the wavelength. Humans are too big and energetically solid and immutable to pass through the membrane between our dimensions without breaking shit. It's like trying to push a bowling ball through cheesecloth. Causes all kind of havoc on our side. So, we gotta police that shit.
So like I was saying, I'm a Pathfinder. I'm particularly good at seeping through to the human side and that's how I ended up with this sweet gig. Today I'm working a case where something mighty powerful but inconsistent is mucking around on the human side. I'm talking BIG. Whatever this thing is – it's bending the membrane too much for my boss's liking, and it's just getting stronger and more unpredictable. We haven't been able to pinpoint it. Normally, there's always some low‑level residual energy hanging around after big spikes and we can easily sniff out any interlopers that way. Whatever this thing is, it just shuts off cold. Just disappears.
Efforts to track this thing, this interloper, have been fruitless for other Pathfinders, so my boss put me onto this. I'm the Department's last hope before they need to send it up the ladder — whatever that means.
In the Spirit World, I find a thin spot to seep through, hoping that it dumps me out near where the interloper I'm tracking was last sensed.
Seeping barely registers as a sensory event for me anymore. Taking on a form in the human world instantly overloads you with sensory input. Like mainlining 100,000 sensations all at once. Going from incorporeal to bodied in the blink of the eye can make you puke and shit yourself at the same time, especially if you instantiate in a human body. It's always fun watching apprentices seep into human form for the first time. No one looks cool doing it.
I press up against the membrane and start my seep, still trying to decide what form I'm gonna take. If I pick human, I can grab a bite to eat, and that's always fun. If I go as regular old ether, I don't have to work as hard to hunt – I don't have to act like a human, and I don't have to exhaust myself changing forms on the ground.
I only get a split second to decide before I appear on the other side. I see flashes of brick, a mailbox on a street corner, plate‑glass window, sidewalk. A food truck.
A town. A FOOD TRUCK. Better choose human.
BOOM BOOM
I'm on the sidewalk, fully human. The shock of instantiating feels a lot like the sound of a giant banging two‑mile‑long lead pipes together. BOOM BOOM. Somehow both an explosion and a tinny crack. A wave of nausea rolls from the pit of my stomach up through the back of my throat, the taste of bile riding the crest all the way to the tip of my new tongue.
I take a second, surveying my new body. Wiggle the toes, bend the knees, sway the hips, twist the waist, shrug the shoulders, crack the knuckles, shake the head.
Everything in working order, well done.
Now. First thing's first — I'm gonna check out that food truck. Eating while in a human body is a special treat. It's a full‑existence sensory experience as a human. Physically you get the tastes, the smells, the feel, the hunger and satiety. Mentally and spiritually, it scratches an itch you never knew you had. The Spirit World affords a lot of interesting experiences, but nothing quite like eating human food in a human body.
I take a few unsteady shuffling steps toward the food truck before I gain full control of my feet. Screaming yellow and draped with strings twinkling Christmas lights, the food truck garishly stands out against the backdrop of brick and glass storefronts in what looks to be the downtown area of some small town.
I take a long drag of air through my nose, trying to drink in the scent. The air smells of potatoes in hot oil and burgers grilling.
I'm salivating, and my tongue unconsciously roots round in my mouth, looking for the source of the aroma, almost begging. I am famished. I lurch toward the food truck, like an untrained dog lunges for an unattended dinner plate.
Slow down there, you're a human today, move like a human.
I get ahold of myself and take a few measured and reasonably‑paced steps toward the food truck, my stomach tumbling over itself, expressing its needs.
Womwomwomwomwom snap womwomwomwom snap womwom snap
The noise, more felt than heard, comes from behind me. It sounds like a wet flag flapping in a heavy wind — a wet, wobbly, buffeting boom‑snap. The unmistakable sound of a human trying to seep.
Only entities from the Spirit World and animals can perceive seeping. Little kids can too, but usually by the time a human hits adulthood, they've stonewalled any kind of aberration they can't explain, and become blind to it.
The sound gets louder as I spin around, looking for its source. A shimmering sphere of neon haze glides slowly down the block and disappears around the corner of a drug store.
It's moving!? Impossible.
The sphere is the biggest and steadiest I've ever seen. Usually they sort of pulse in and out of existence because they take so much energy to sustain, and humans don't really have the capacity for it. They certainly don't move.
Stunned, it takes a few seconds for me to realize I need to follow the sphere and find the source. Whatever is doing this is powerful.
I start off down the street after the interloper. I can still feel the oscillating boom‑snap, but it's getting weaker. I pick up my pace, heading into a light jog.
I can't lose this thing.
I round the corner, and see only a woman with a stroller stopped in front of a shop. The sphere is gone, the noise is gone. Nothing. It's like I imagined the whole thing. Usually there's an energy trace left, lingering in the air following the source like a fart cloud.
The woman looks at me, discomfort obvious on her face, and I remember I'm in human form and staring in her direction.
"Sorry, I thought you were someone I know" I mumble at the woman and her sleeping baby.
I need to phase into ether so I can move faster next time the energy picks up. I duck back around the corner and walk, looking for some place I can disappear in. About halfway down the block, I slip into a narrow alleyway, dotted with dumpsters and piles of cardboard boxes.
Perfect.
I stoop behind a squatty green dumpster, glancing over my shoulders to make sure no one can see me. Satisfied that I'm alone, I start shifting to my ether form. It's a hassle to shapeshift from visible to invisible and vice versa, which is why most Pathfinders don't even bother with human forms unless it's absolutely necessary.
I focus on making my feet dissolve, then my shins, then my thighs. I have to picture myself turning to sand and blowing away, but when observed, this process just looks like my opacity is hemorrhaging.
I'm disappeared up to my waist when I hear the noise again.
WOMWOMWOMWOMWOM SNAP
It's so close. I look up from behind the dumpster, to see that the shimmering has filled the alleyway. It's a cloud made from what looks like a million crystalline cubes of glass, shifting from magenta to an electrified teal, the colors roiling.
The cloud begins retreating, and a mild panic sets in because I'm still not ether. I'm only disappeared up to my neck, and the head is the hardest part.
C'mon c'mon.
I focus as hard as I can on imagining my head is turning to sand while I glide after the interloper.
I burst out of the alley, and turn right to follow the sphere, the sound‑feel deafening. I phase through pedestrians standing in my way, they probably experience me as a sudden feeling of unease and cold.
I'm closing in on the interloper, the sphere becoming more opaque the closer I get. I don't even have a plan for how I'm going to deal with them. Maybe a run‑of‑the‑mill poltergeist approach. Maybe I'll whisper things at them while they sleep. I don't know yet, because I've never met anyone who could try to seep while moving. This has got to be some sort of high‑level being or something. Maybe I'll just observe for a little while. I don't know, I just have to catch it.
I get to the edge of the sphere and dive into it, ready to face its source.
No fuckin way.
A fat bald infant smiles up at me from his stroller. Drool pooling on his little chin while he grins stupidly at me.
A fuckin baby.