Charles had already settled into a bus seat in the garage of the Denver International Airport, comfortably breathing in the usual bus smell of stale B.O. and cigarette smoke, when he realized he hadn’t taken off his wristband from the hospital. It rattled around his wrist, leaving little red scratches behind.
Is it weirder to leave it on or just start cutting it off? Wait… Is pulling out scissors on a bus a crime? Charles’s brows furrowed, and he glanced around the mostly empty bus. A lady hunched over her bag, with a whirl of silver in her hair, was glaring from him to Mitzey, who was curled up on the seat next to him.
Ducking his head, Charles decided against scrounging in his bag for scissors and elected to twist at the band instead. Even though the band looked like paper, it refused to tear, gnarling into an ugly plastic bulge over the place where his name was. It eventually broke with a sickly snapping sound, and Charles leaned over to stuff it in the pocket of his backpack.
The bus hissed, wheezed, and abruptly braked, making Mitzey look up from her nap, affronted and jostling sharply into his knees. He yelped as politely as he could when his iPhone slipped out of the side pocket and went careening under the seat.
Slipping out of his seat and scrambling on all fours, he managed to grab it before it slid out from beneath the chair and down the aisle. Charles’s hair flopped in his face as he brushed bus grit off his phone. Mitzey lifted her head, stretching her paws and twitching her nose at him.
“I’m fine, Mitz. No worries.” Charles smiled at her, then blew at loose strands of his sandy hair that had fallen in his face, wobbling back to his seat, clutching his phone.
There was a missed call icon under the time next to the airplane mode icon. The caller ID said ‘Lena :P’.
Charles tried to casually glance back at the Bag Lady. She was now glaring at him more. He frowned and stroked Mitzey’s curly black and brown coat, which was soft and wiry at the same time. Then, he put the phone to his ear and clicked the play button on the voicemail.
“Are you okay?!!” Lena’s voice bubbled out of the phone and socked Charles in the stomach. He cringed down into the bus seat.
“Our RA said that you had been hospitalized for a really bad seizure?! That our professor found you passed out on the floor??” Her voice got that squeaky, stretched-thin quality it always got when she was worried. It was getting progressively squeakier the more she talked. “Why didn’t you say anything? It’s not going to happen again, is it? They let you fly home? Did you get to Colorado okay?!”
There was a pause, the crackling of static that seemed to stretch out for minutes, even though it was only a few seconds. Charles wasn’t sure which was worse, the pain in Lena’s voice or the sudden silence. They both felt like they were digging into him.
“I’m asking too many questions, aren’t I? You’re probably really tired.” Lena had managed to filter some of the anxiety out of her voice. Now she just sounded scared. Lena added, “Well, we’re all really worried about you, ok? Call us back when you can?”
Mitzey blinked up at him, tilting her head at his phone.
He’d meant to tell Lena earlier. Everything had just gone so fast. Waking up in the hospital to the muddled, ever-present beeping of machines and a sickly antiseptic smell that still clung faintly to his clothes had left him in a daze.
The nurse had told him that he’d had another seizure. Charles had nodded groggily along to the prognosis. Something in his stomach twisted at the lie, but there wasn’t much he could do about it without sounding crazy.
He stared down at the voicemail again, then started to click the redial button, but stopped again. He sat there like that for a little while, one finger hovering over the screen.
I want to explain everything. Charles thought, drooping a little in his seat. Tell her all about my little adventures, solving Enigmas, helping people, but she’ll just think I’ve gone insane. So… I can’t.
Charles sighed, straightening, and jabbed his finger towards the redial button.
The bus tried to jolt his seat out from under him again and shuddered to a stop. Charles swore as his finger jostled into the ‘delete message’ button instead. He glared at the bus and muttered, “I guess I’ll just call her later.”
The bus beeped and wheezed in response, wobbling back and forth on its tires. The doors swung open, letting in fresh air that stirred up the old-infused scent of cigarette smoke that clung to the chairs. The Bag Lady collected her bag and rushed to the nearest door in what Charles could only describe as a scuttle.
A guy with short, mousy brown hair, a button-down polo shirt, and a baseball cap perched crookedly on his head popped into sight from the open doors. Not long after, a tall, muscular guy with dark brown hair, the color of enriched dirt, loped onto the bus.
To Charles’s dismay, they settled across from him, the quieter of the two taking the window seat. The shorter guy’s jaw dropped when he saw Mitzey, who was tilting her head at him.
“You have a dog!!!” He bounced on the balls of his heels, bobbed his head like a chicken as his friend settled into the window seat. The shorter guy asked, “Can I pet her?”
Charles looked at Mitzey, who was regarding him over her shoulder with fluffy consternation. He shrugged and looked up at the guy, finding himself saying. “Sure, go ahead, Mitzey.”
The terrier bounced off the seat, padding over to the Short Guy as he settled down onto one of the bus seat cushions. She thoroughly sniffed his hand before she finally sat down and accepted her rightful pets.
“What does she do?” Short Guy asked, smiling and scratching behind her ears.
Charles tried to fish the appropriate words out of his tired brain, “She alerts to seizures.”
“You must be a very good girl and a smart dog.” The guy cooed down at her.
Mitzey wagged her tail in acceptance of the new human’s praise.
“She is smart, and she knows it.” Charles laughed a little. “The ‘good’ part is a little questionable when she’s off-duty, though.”
Mitzey shot him a glare over her shoulder, then ignored him altogether for more pets. Both of the two strangers laughed.
One of his bags jostled against his leg again. He winced and grabbed the handle, glaring down at it. Then, out the window, eyebrows drawing together. The bus was ambling at a steady pace, not speeding or stopping. He looked back at the luggage with a frown. There was a glimpse of something.
Time seemed to slow as he turned and met a pair of eyes. Blaring yellow eyes. Ones that seemed to glow slightly and had no pupils. They blinked back at him from his shadow. His mouth went dry, and a jolt of fear flashed through him.
It’s here? How?
They blinked again and vanished. But not quickly enough to be a figment of his imagination. The strange fragmentations distinctive of the Enigma blended slowly into a different shape… his shadow. He glared accusingly at it. The edges were fragmenting lightly, cracking, spinning, dancing, confirming his worst fears:
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The Enigma from California.
It had followed him. It had somehow hitched a ride on his shadow, and it was watching him. And he had absolutely no idea how to solve it.
“What’s your name, man?” The guy petting Mitzey blinked up at him. Charles jumped at the sound of the guy’s voice.
“Uhh…. Mm… Charles. Charles Lightwell.” Charles stated eloquently, moving his suitcase to hide the shadow, even though the guy wouldn’t be able to see it.
The guy raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure about that?”
His friend elbowed him, and he cleared his throat, looking vaguely embarrassed.
“Sorry. My name’s Kaizen Davis, but most people just call me Ollie!” He responded cheerily, scratching Mitzey behind the ears.
Charles scrunched his eyebrows together. “Ollie?”
“You know, after the trick.”
Charles frowned, then shook his head slowly, eyebrows sinking guiltily as if not knowing somehow made him a bad person.
The taller guy with darker hair sitting next to Ollie leaned out, looking at Charles. “He does a lot of skateboarding. Ollies are the only trick he can manage so far.”
“Hey!” Ollie shot the guy a half-hearted glare.
“Okay. That makes sense, I guess.” Charles tried his best to sound knowledgeable instead of relieved. He wasn’t sure if it was working or not. The taller guy nodded his head once, then settled back into his seat.
Either way, Ollie didn’t seem to notice; he was too busy talking. “Oh! And this is my friend, Alex! We’re headed to Liminality.”
“Is it a small town at the base of mountains? I think I’m going there too.” Charles checked his phone, sparing another quick glance at his writhing shadow.
“You think?” Ollie raised an eyebrow.
Charles shrugged. “My mom inherited her mother’s house at some point while I was in college. I guess it was in Liminality.”
Ollie’s eyebrows drew together in confusion.
Before he could ask a question, Charles added. “We don’t talk much. She barely told me she was moving at all.”
“Oh.” Ollie deflated a little like a popped balloon.
Charles shrugged. “It’s fine. It’s been like this for a while.”
Alex tried to subtly elbow his friend, and Charles heard Alex whisper, “You may want to change the subject.”
Charles sank down in his chair again, staring decidedly at the grey, rubbery floor of the bus.
“Well,” Ollie straightened in his chair, much to Mitzey’s chagrin. “You should be more prepared if you’re going there. Everyone knows Liminality is the site for an alien spaceship landing; they were headed for Area 51 to communicate with the government, but crashed early. It must have been a big ship, too, because there are aliens everywhere there.”
Charles stared at Ollie in shock for a few seconds. Then, recovering, he snapped his fingers at Mitzey to come back. Alex looked up from his phone, glanced at Charles with a pointed eye roll in Ollie’s direction. Then, Alex went back to whatever he was doing on his phone as Ollie continued to babble.
“—The government has standardly spaced mind rays designed to keep people from seeing them, but I’m immune,” Ollie announced proudly. “It also turns out you don’t need the tinfoil hat to prevent alien abduction, just an armband.”
“A-abduction?” Charles managed to sputter.
Ollie rolled up his sleeve to reveal crumpled aluminum banded lopsidedly around his bicep. “You want one?”
“Do you have to show those to everyone?” Alex groaned, shaking his head at the same time that Charles said, “I-I think I’m good, thanks.”
“Are you sure? I have extra.” Ollie eagerly unzipped the front flap of his backpack to reveal that it was stuffed almost entirely with despondent tinfoil armbands of various sizes. Several tumbled to the floor, rolling under the seat in front of him.
Mitzey jumped off the seat, catching one midair and celebrating her feat by shaking her head and wagging her tail at the new game.
“See? The dog knows what’s up!”
“Damn it.”
Charles tried to keep a straight face but felt his eyebrows go up as he watched Ollie, holding onto his seat, scramble for the spilled armbands. Alex laughed, and Charles shook his head.
Out of the corner of his eye, Charles watched his shadow spread over the pool of sunlight leaking up from his bags like a black cloud of smoke and sending little fractals of shadow over the seat in front of him.
Ollie yelped, dropping a few armbands. He stared open-mouthed at the back of the seat in front of Charles. The shadow Enigma’s eyes opened in slivers of yellow, burning mockingly.
Then, just as quickly, they vanished. The shadowy fragments of the Enigma folded in on themselves. Ollie abandoned the armbands completely, creeping closer to Charles’s seat as the Enigma vanished back into a normal shadow.
Charles would have been surprised by the unusual behavior from an Enigma, but he was busy gaping at Ollie. Charles swore the short conspiracy theorist was looking directly at the shadow Enigma when it had slithered back down into its normal place.
“Holy shit!” Ollie jumped back, glancing up at Charles. “What the hell was that?”
“What was what?” Alex’s brows furrowed, and he leaned over Ollie’s empty seat to get a better look.
Charles blinked confusedly at Ollie. He saw it. How?
“An alien!” Ollie glanced over his shoulder at his friend. “A really weird-looking one too!”
“An… alien,” Charles repeated numbly to himself. There were too many emotions whizzing around his brain for him to settle on one.
Ollie perked up, a smile bandying across his face. “You can see them too?!”
“Uhh,” Charles answered astutely, searching for an answer.
“HE CAN SEE THEM TOO! I TOLD YOU THERE WERE OTHER PEOPLE OUT THERE!” Ollie gestured wildly at Charles, looking back at Alex, whose lips were pressed into a small line.
Alex was giving Charles a glare that made him want to melt into the seat. Charles would have, but none of his muscles seemed to want to move. Ollie didn’t seem to notice Alex’s or Charles’s reaction at all.
“Damn, man, I’ve never seen anyone try to pack an alien before.” Ollie beamed, shoving the last of the armbands back into his backpack with a chorus of aluminum crinkling.
Charles curled his fingers in Mitzey’s fur. “I— didn’t pack it. It attacked me. I didn’t know it was in my shadow until a few seconds ago.”
“WHAT?!? THAT’S SO COOL!” Ollie bounced in place. “I wish I had an alien in my shadow!”
Charles shifted in place and cleared his throat, wincing a little. He shot his shadow a quick glance, but all of a sudden, it seemed perfectly content to be a normal shadow.
That’s odd; it only revealed itself on this bus ride… after Ollie got on the bus, now that I think about it. Charles thought with a quick breath in. He narrowed his eyes at his blank silhouette. You have some pretty strange timing, shadow Enigma.
Ollie blinked, then shifted in his seat and asked, “So, do you need help getting that thing out of your shadow?”
Charles scratched under Mitzey’s chin as she leaned contentedly against his leg. “Probably not.”
At least I hope not. I don’t like how interested the shadow seems in Ollie. Charles thought to himself.
Ollie pressed his lips together and crinkled his nose. “You should check out my website! I post information I’ve discovered about all the local Liminality aliens.”
That could actually be useful. Charles noted with a growing sense of horror.
Ollie shoved a business card into his hand. It wasn’t what Charles had expected from a conspiracy theory website. It looked professional. The sides were a midnight purple with faded lighter blue and purple dots to imply stars.
The rest of the card was a crisp white with dark ink that only had a hint of purple to it. He gave Ollie a strained smile, and tucked it into his pocket.
“Oo! This is our stop: Main Street, Liminality!” Ollie popped up out of his seat, somehow staying on his feet even though the bus was still moving. “I hope your move-in goes well! Alex and I live around here, too, so we’ll probably see you around town!”
Charles blinked dazedly at Ollie bouncing towards the front of the bus, then down at the abandoned tinfoil armbands that Mitzey was still eyeing eagerly.
Alex was still sitting in his seat, watching Ollie talk to the bus driver. He sighed, then glanced back at Charles. “Sorry about that. Next time, please don’t go along with the alien thing. Lying will hurt him more in the long run.”
Charles’s jaw dropped, and he could feel the tips of his ears getting hot. “Oh, uhh…”
He couldn’t decide whether to admit to being ‘crazy’ or just go along with Alex’s assumption. He tried to agree, but his mouth betrayed him and said absolutely nothing.
“He’s been through a lot.” Alex’s frown softened, glancing at the bus doors. “I think the ‘aliens’ are mostly an excuse to help people.”
“Oh.” Charles winced. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine.” Alex shrugged with a smile, heading towards the bus door. “He’s still a great person, aliens and all.”
Charles watched Alex tap Ollie on the shoulder. Ollie said one last cheerful thing to the driver, then skipped out, Alex trudging not too far behind him. Charles followed, dragging his luggage behind him. After struggling with the stubborn wheels that insisted on finding every snag in the bus, he stared dazedly at the bus stop bench.
He glanced at the retreating figures of Ollie and Alex, farther down the sidewalk. Alex couldn’t see Enigmas and he didn’t believe Ollie, even though they were clearly close friends.
He glanced down at his phone, where ‘Missed call from Lena :P’ still waited in his notifications. How can you build a relationship off of someone thinking you're crazy? I couldn't lie to Lena, that would only be worse, especially since this has affected so much of my life.
Charles swallowed. He’d call her back when he got home, but it would be better to just be friends. That way, neither of them would get hurt. It was a good choice. And yet, it felt like something was slicing through him at that decision.
His phone screen got dark, then after a few long seconds, it went black. Charles was still staring it, trying to will himself to put it back in his pocket. There was a reflection of something overhead.
Charles blinked and looked up. A large flock of jigsaw piece butterflies was sailing merrily overhead, maybe seventeen of them with colorful puzzle wings. They paused to flit over him in dizzying movements, before just as quickly zipping off.
Charles' jaw dropped. Seventeen Enigmas was more than he’d seen in the last four years put together, which was roughly two to three a year. He vaguely remembered Ollie’s ‘alien infestation’ comment, and finally looked around and got a look at Liminality.
The buildings were very typical of small storefronts in Colorado. Cutesy old brick buildings with lots of wrought iron decorative fences, flowerbeds, and cheery cloth overhangs over the restaurants… and they were crawling with Enigmas. Charles stood next to the bus stop bench, gawking around at the town as the bus shuddered behind him and took off.
A bunch of small lights danced around the flowerbed in front of the post office across the way, and. Down the street, a huge Structural Enigma emerged from behind the top of a building, looking like a mass of metal and pipes. Large copper colored cogs twirled on the outside; he could hear them whirring from down the street. A long, reptilian Enigma slithered up into an oak near the park to his right so fast he barely got a glimpse of it. An Enigma with six long, many-jointed legs tottered over him with a massive step.
There were so many more: a strange mass of blue rings two blocks down, three fluttering feather-like creatures that seemed unable to fly, bouncing rocks, and even a wooden sliding-puzzle Enigma cat that darted up a fence, peering at him from around the side of a building.
Staring out at the mess of puzzles, he suddenly missed California, with its rare scattered Enigmas, and his friends and all the familiar places that he used to go to. And… and Lena. He missed her, too. More than he’d expected, but he was doing his best to block that feeling out.
Adjusting his backpack more firmly on his shoulder and tightening his grip on his luggage, he rushed past the town’s local Enigma infestation.
“Come on Mitz,” Charles murmured, refusing to look down at her just in case he saw his shadow doing something odd. He waded through the Enigma-infested town, luggage in tow, to try to find his new house.
I know you’re out there listening. I have another story for you, one entrusted to me a long time ago. You can read it if you’re clever enough. I’ll label the story as a journal fragment so you know it’s me.
And don’t say its rude to hide puzzles here. This is my story after all.
What background characters would you like to see more of in future chapters?
