Noctuidae by Scott Nicolay Page A

slower and slightly louder than before, as if to give his words more gravity. And wasn’t the point of that trick to make her turn around? Had Pete messed up his scheme or was there really something. . .
    She turned. And saw the new thing approaching. Was it a thing , or an effect? An event? She could not be sure. It didn’t help she’d turned from the wrong shoulder so she had to twist further at the hips to see it better. Now she was sideways to Pete, facing away, an alarm bell ringing in the back of her brain so long as he was out of sight.
    Drifting in the air behind her came a . . . ripple. A blur. She lacked the words. Approximately twice the span of her torso, the whatever it was had no distinct outline or shape. Or color. It hovered and twisted up the limited light like the air over heated pavement, the view through fountain glass. Not that there was much to see beyond the distortions themselves. It was as if a translucent flag drifted on its own, free of any pole, flapping in a nonexistent breeze.
    Then as if she’d made eye contact or somehow caught its attention, it locked on a course and approached. She thought to scuttle backward but her muscles refused to respond. In seconds the region of ripples reached her . . . and passed right through her, so far as she could tell. She felt nothing as it struck, but immediately after she was convinced her flesh bore a coat of flat waxy scales, even beneath her clothes. She glanced at her bare forearms, saw nothing, ran her hands down them, felt nothing. By then the impression was gone.
    She spun and saw the ripple or disturbance hovering some two meters past her, advancing no farther. Pete was huddled as far back in the cave as he could manage.
    —Pete. Hey, Pete.
    He did not respond.
    —Pete, it’s safe. It went right through me and I barely felt a thing. Don’t worry.
    He didn’t answer, didn’t move. She could see his face but couldn’t tell if he was watching her or the drifting ripple. It hung a bit to the north, didn’t seem interested in Pete at all—at least not yet. As she watched he raised his left hand just a few inches slowly and pointed toward her again. Then he hissed out one word —Others.
    Sue-Min spun again and this time had to throw her left hand down to keep from losing her balance. It slid a few inches through the little cobbles till it found purchase then held.
    Now she glimpsed a scatter of pinkish hovering blobs, varying in size but all smaller than her head. A dozen, maybe two dozen. They advanced slowly, swirling about each other, swelling and distending, dumbbell to sphere to sausage and back. Flattening into discs. Other shapes. Flashing pink to gray. When they reached the entrance they passed all around her on either side. None of them struck her or even came close.
    Pete continued staring in what she presumed was terror— at the ripple, at the oncoming blobs, at her—she could no way tell. Once inside the little cave the blobs wandered about while the ripple came to rest above the graveyard of moth wings. One blob drifted toward Pete and he contorted to avoid it, slouched backward to his elbows, almost to the ground. It exhibited no interest in him, stretching to a cylinder before reaching the wall above him instead and blinking out as it struck. But not quite all at once—it seemed to suck into the stone like a sloppy eater’s spaghetti noodle. As she watched, the blobs all met the walls or floor or ceiling and disappeared one by one. One of the last wandered back, and before she could dodge, it struck her left shoulder. This time she felt a faint dampness, and the feeling lingered longer than the waxy sensation she experienced earlier.
    The second the last blob was gone the ripple blinked out as well, sudden and complete, like a flat screen TV blinking off for the night.
    The feeling of damp in her shoulder remained, though fading. She ran her hand over her shirt but it felt dry.
    She found herself shaking. Maybe it was the