The Eidolon by Libby McGugan

in here.” He holds a fist against my chest. “And when you run you take it with you. Sometimes you have to let go the life you planned, to make room for the life that is waiting for you.”
    “Is that a Tibetan saying?”
    “No. But it is the words of a wise man.”
    We sit in companionable silence for a while longer, before the monk says, “Do you remember the lake?”
    “The lake?”
    “We found you by the Crescent Lake. Do you remember this?”
    “I remember seeing a lake when we came down the mountain.” Mirror smooth, black. Not a ripple or reflection on its surface. And that feeling...
    The old man’s eyes narrow. “You remember nothing else?”
    “No.”
    “Hmm.” He leans closer, peering into my face; a small, curious creature. “What did you feel?”
    I wipe away the beads of sweat that have gathered on my forehead, feeling my lips dry again. “I felt, eh... kind of uneasy.” I shake my head as I think of it. “I thought the sun had gone black, and the sound, it was...”
    But he’s frowning at me in a way that’s making me nervous. “You heard it?”
    “It was like voices, whispering. It felt almost... dark.”
    The old monk sags, his face crumpling even further. He stares at me for a long moment as if I’ve disappointed him somehow.
    “Listen, I was dry and cold and hallucinating. That’s all.”
    “No.”
    “Well, what was it, then?”
    He takes a long, slow breath. “There are two lakes on the mountain. One, Lake Manasarovar, is shaped like the sun; it is called the Lake of Consciousness. The other, the one shaped like the crescent moon, we call Rakshastal, the Lake of Demons. These two lakes are joined by a thin channel of water. When waters flow from the Lake of Consciousness to the Lake of Demons, all is well. But the signs that came to you tell us the waters are flowing the other way, and this is very bad.”
    “So, what does that mean?”
    “It means the energies are changing – they are shifting between the worlds.”
    I hear a soft scuttling and a shiny black cockroach appears from under the bench. I think about stepping on it, but remember where I am. It scuttles past the monk’s foot, claiming sanctuary.
    “You believe that there are other worlds? Like other dimensions?” I don’t know much about Buddhism, only what I’ve picked up from Cora, but I didn’t think this was part of it.
    “They are here, right next to us, only a breath away. Very few can sense them, and even fewer understand it when they manifest. You are one of those people, and you believe they are there, I think.”
    Don’t drag me into your superstitious folklore. “No,” I say, shaking my head. “That’s not what I believe.”
    “Then what do you look for, in your work?”
    “Dark matter? No, that’s completely different.”
    He snorts.
    “It’s nothing to do with other worlds.”
    “You seem very certain.”
    Well, old man, I am. But right now, I don’t have it in me to explain. I just smile.
    He nods. “Perhaps one day you will see for yourself. But I hope you do not see the World you sensed here. I would not wish that on you, or anyone.”
    I hear the whispering in my head again and feel a sickening clamminess on my skin as I catch a flash of a black sphere. My mind playing tricks. “So, what’s supposed to happen when these energies shift?”
    “The world you sensed will leak into ours; what you felt will become our world, until that is all there is to feel. Unless people like you choose to stop it.”
    “What?”
    He gets up, slowly. There’s something else in his eyes. Is it fear? “Tell no one, until you listen to it and understand.” He lowers his eyes to the floor. “I am sorry, but you must leave at sunrise.” He bows and turns, then shuffles away and doesn’t look back.
     
     
    “Y OU ALRIGHT ?” SAYS Danny when I find him waiting in the empty corridor. “You don’t look well.”
    “I’m still recovering, remember?” But there’s something inside me that