Invaders: 22 Tales From the Outer Limits of Literature

by Jacob Weisman

  He turned off the answering machine and left the apartment.

  V.

  There was a name he had been using, just on the tip of his tongue. He could almost remember it. But, he wondered, was it his name? Even once he remembered it, how would he know for certain it belonged to him?

  He wouldn’t know.

  He made it to the end of the hall and started down the stairs to the next floor. What floor was it? He had kept track, had been keeping track, but was not quite certain. He would go down the stairs and then he’d look for a door leading to the street. If there weren’t one, he would try to find another set of stairs and go down them.

  What had the name been? He had been found, had found himself, he could still trouble himself to dimly remember, lying beside a dead corpse. A woman, he was almost certain. Who, alive, had she been to him? His wife, his lover, a relative, a colleague, a stranger? Who could say?

  Before he had reached the bottom of the stairs he could see a man in the hallway, first only his feet and then, with each step down, a subsequent portion of his body, all the way up to a shaved head. He was standing beside a door, a large crowbar ending in a fan-like flange in one meaty hand. Leaning against the wall behind him was a sheet of plywood, prized off the door. A large duffel bag, empty or nearly so, was swung over the man’s back. He had begun on the door itself, Hapner could see, the door’s frame splintered and gouged.

  Hapner stopped a little way down the hall. The man too had stopped working and was watching him.

  “Hello,” Hapner finally said.

  “Hello,” the man said.

  “What exactly—”

  “This your house?” asked the man. “Your door, I mean? I’m not stepping into a delicate situation, am I?”

  Hapner shook his head. “No,” he said. “It’s not my door. Are you breaking in?”

  “Some neighbor’s?” asked the thief. “Some friend’s, then? Anything to get touchy about?”

  Hapner shook his head.

  “Any objections, then? No? Then I’ll proceed.”

  The man turned partly away, still trying to keep an eye on Hapner out of the corner of his eye, which made his attempts at opening the door awkward, blunted. But the door was slowly giving way.

  “Aren’t you afraid?” asked Hapner.

  “What?” said the thief. “Of catching it? Was at first but then everybody around me went under and I never did. I don’t think I will. What’s the word? Invulnerable?” He worked the flanged end of the crowbar back in, and then one twist of his torso cracked the door open. “No,” he said, “immune.” And then added, “After a while you feel invincible too.”

  He pushed open the door, bights of a brass chain tightening at eye level inside the apartment. The man fed his crowbar into the gap, broke the chain’s latch off the door frame.

  “Well,” he said. “Coming?”

  Hapner took a half step forward, stopped.

  “I don’t think so,” he said.

  “Come on in,” said the man. “Where’s the problem? You didn’t have any objections last I checked. Besides, I haven’t had anyone to talk to for a while. They all keep dying on me. You’re not going to die on me, are you?” The man started through the door. “I’ll let you have some of whatever we find, maybe.”

  Hapner hesitated, followed him in.

  “What about you?” said the man from in front of him.

  The apartment inside was windowless and extremely dark; it was difficult to see anything. The man grew gray and then was reduced to a series of fluttering movements. Then he vanished entirely. Hapner stepped after him.

  “What about me?” Hapner asked.

  “Aren’t you afraid? You’re in a quarantined apartment now. Doesn’t it worry you?”

  The man struck a match and Hapner saw his face spring from the darkness, in a kitchenette area. He had not been where Hapner had thought he would be. He was holding the match in one hand, rapidly opening and closing cupboard and cabinet doors with the other.

  The match guttered and went out and the room was swallowed in the darkness, save for the dull red bead of the match head, and then this was gone too, replaced by the smell of the burnt-up match. A sharp scratch and another match fluttered alight. Hapner watched the man reach into a drawer, come out with a curious silver cylinder that he manipulated, transformed into a flashlight.

  “That’s better,” the man said, and shined the flashlight’s beam into Hapner’s face.

  “Now,” he said, his voice changing in a way Hapner didn’t understand. “What did you say your name was?”

  “I didn’t say,” said Hapner. “What’s yours?”

  “What’s that in the bag?” the man asked.

  “My bag?” said Hapner. “Not much,” he said.

  “Open it up,” said the thief. “Let’s have a look.”

  Hapner put the bag on the counter between them, unzipped it. He took out the answering machine, put it beside the bag, then the short pry bar, the hammer.

  “That’s it?” asked the thief.

  “That’s it,” said Hapner.

  “You don’t have much,” said the thief.

  “I’m not like you,” said Hapner. “I’m not a thief.”

  “Then what are you doing?”

  “Looking for someone,” he said. “A . . . Mr. Arnaud, I think. Is that you?”

  “What, you just have a name?” said the voice behind the flash beam.

  Hapner nodded.

  The man was silent for a moment. “All right,” he finally said, “you can go.”

  Hapner nodded to himself. He reached out, began to put his possessions back into the bag. The thief’s crowbar cut through the flash beam and struck the counter between his hands.

  “Leave it,” said the man. “It’s mine now.”

  “But—”

  “This is my building,” the man said. “Whatever’s here belongs to me.”

  “But there’s nothing I have that’s worth—”

  “It’s a matter of principle,” the thief said, his voice rising. “Now get out.”

  He kept staring at the answering machine. Arnaud, he thought, Bentham. Hapler. Or no, that wasn’t it exactly, he was already forgetting. He squinted into the light. Where was the flashlight exactly? How far away? He could make it out, mostly. He could see the man behind it, a dim form wavered at the edges.

  He turned as if to leave and took half a step and then whirled and crouched, battered at where he thought the flashlight would be. The thief cried out, Hapner’s hand striking the casing of the flashlight hard. His fingers were instantly numb, the flashlight flicking away end over end and going out.

  The crowbar passed moaning over his head, ruffling his hair, striking the wall hard. The thief cursed. Hapner groped about, touched the man’s shirt but, unable to find the crowbar, dropped to his knees and crouched under the lip of the counter.

  The crowbar crashed into the counter above him, the walls rattling.

  “Where are you?” the man said.

  Hapner said nothing.

  “I’ll find you eventually,” said the thief. “You belong to me.”

  Hapner stayed still, listening to the dim birds of the man’s feet, the clank of the crowbar as it touched floor or wall. He reached carefully up, touching the counter above him, his fingers feeling slowly along it.

  There was a groove the crowbar had dug in the surface, the countertop splintered and cracked to either side of it. His hands felt past it until they found his hammer.

  “But maybe I already killed you?” the thief said.

  The voice was right there, almost beside him. In one motion he swung the hammer up and forward. It struck something firm but not as hard as the wall.

  The thief screamed and swooned toward him, striking the counter, stumbling over Hafner’s legs. Hafner struck him hard and repeatedly with the hammer. Something struck his shoulder and it became suddenly a numb useless thing and he heard the crowbar splintering the wood behind him. He
groped with his good hand for the dropped hammer. He heard the thief stutter-step and then, groaning, fall.

  He moved toward the body, pounding along the floor in front of him until the hammer struck flesh. He fell on the other man and lost his hammer and felt the man’s face into existence and then fumbled up the hammer again and then, as the man still struggled his way out of shock, struck at his skull again and again until the head sounded like a wet sack.

  He felt around the floor one-handed until he found the flashlight. He stood and flicked its switch but no light came from it, so he dropped it again.

  On his way back to the counter, he stepped on what must have been the thief’s hand and then, as he moved quickly off it, into something damp and squishy, perhaps the thief’s gore, perhaps his own, and almost fell. One arm ached badly and swung loose, battering against his side like the trussed body of a shot bird. Moving it created little flashes of light behind his eyes.

  He fumbled around on the counter until he found the answering machine, picked it up. There was something wrong with it, he could tell: its surface was no longer smooth.

  The room seemed at each moment less and less familiar to him.

  He managed to stumble out of the dark and back into the hall. His arm, he saw, in the light, seemed mostly dead, oddly lumped and turning black in two places. He tried again to move it but could not.

  The answering machine was shattered in the back, the slatted casing covering the speaker destroyed, the speaker itself and the transformer beside it mangled. Why had he wanted to keep it anyway? He couldn’t remember.

  He dropped the machine and crouching beside it worked the cassette free with one hand. One of the cassette’s corners was crushed but the tape itself was still intact, could be listened to on another machine. Where had he seen another one?

  The hallway, he saw, was slowly going out around him, flattening out, the door he had come through an odd square of black, a vertical panel, two-dimensional, rather than an entrance. The whole world, he thought fleetingly, was like that for him, there was nothing he could hold on to but this hall and perhaps a few other halls above that and an answering machine he may or may not have seen, somewhere above him. But what did above mean? What’s wrong with it? he wondered of the hall. It all struck him as vaguely familiar as if he had lived through it before, in another life.

  He turned and looked where he was almost certain stairs had been and found that too had gone strange, a black flat rectangle scored with lighter lines. He stumbled toward it and, closing his eyes, pushed into it. The pain in his shoulder too he realized seemed to be fading, was all but gone. He hit against something and pulled himself up, kept moving forward, kept stumbling, and when he opened his eyes saw that the stairs were stairs again, more or less, and that he could navigate them. He pushed through the yellow wall at their end and found himself in a hall, or what seemed like a movie set for a hall, everything slightly false. He reached up to touch his face and when his hand came away saw it was not a hand exactly, though a reasonable facsimile. There, floating above it, was a strange crimson cloud, the color of blood.

  An anxiety began rising in him that he had a hard time placing.

  By strength of will he managed to transform a brown rectangle into a door and push his way through. Inside, the cardboard cutout of a tiny man, hardly bigger than a child, was lying prone on what stood in for a couch, a crimson cloud hovering over his face. He took a deep breath and tried to relax and, there, momentarily, saw a real flesh-and-blood man on an actual couch, his face stained from blood that had seeped from his eyes. He felt, almost, that he recognized him. But then, suddenly, he was only a child in a crimson cloud again.

  There was a blinking light near him, not far away, very quick, not blinking so much as strobing. He moved toward it slowly and stood near it and in a little while began to imagine that it was an actual human object, an answering machine. He found a button and pressed it.

  A voice came out, speaking too rapidly. It sounded familiar to him, perhaps a voice he had heard before, but where?

  Your name is Roeg, the voice said. You are a small man. This is your home. I’m very sorry for all that’s happened to you. My name is—

  And then it stopped. Roeg, he thought. Is that my name?

  What is my name? he wondered.

  My name? he wondered. Why do I want to know?

  There was, he managed to trouble himself to remember, something in his hand, something important, but why or what he couldn’t remember. He tried to raise his hand but it wouldn’t move. What was wrong with it? The other hand he tried to move and it came and there, clutched in it, he saw a small black rectangle that just for a moment he found himself mistaking for an open doorway. But no, it was not that, it was smaller than his hand and pierced through with two teethed circles: a cassette.

  He shook his head to clear it. It did not clear. He managed, after some effort, to raise the lid of the answering machine and pop the cassette out and get his own cassette in. He pressed the play button and then stumbled away toward where he hoped a chair would find him.

  There was a crackle and a beep and the voice began to speak.

  Hello, it said. Mr. Hapner? Is that in fact the correct name? My name is Arnaud . . .

  Did it all come flooding back to him? Not exactly, no. It went on from there but he was no longer listening. Hapner, his mind was saying, Arnaud. He tried to sit down, crashed to the floor. He lay there, staring at the ceiling, trying to hold on to the two names, to keep that at least. But they were already slipping away.

  VI.

  He awoke to find himself lying on a couch, prone. Across from him, collapsed on the floor, an abnormally large man with his shirt and hands smeared with blood, blood crusted around his eyes as well. The man’s arm was clearly broken, turned out from the body at a senseless angle, a velvety pinkish lump of bone protruding just above the wrist.

  He sat up, feeling weak. His mouth was dry. When he tried to stand he grew weak and quickly sat down again. He sat there on the couch, gathering his breath, waiting, staring at the man on the floor.

  Did he know him? Surely he must know him or why else would they both be there?

  “Hello?” he said to the man. He didn’t move, dead probably.

  But where was here? he wondered. Was this his apartment? It didn’t look familiar exactly, but he couldn’t bring another apartment to mind either. But if this was his, why wouldn’t he know it?

  He stood and stumbled across the room and toward the kitchen, passing the man on the way. Up close he could see he was clearly dead, his face the color of scraped bone, a smell coming off him.

  In the kitchen he looked into the fridge, found it empty. The pantry was full of cans. He couldn’t read any of the labels. What’s wrong with me? he wondered. He opened one and drank it cold—some kind of soup, glassy with oil on the top. After a while, he felt a little better.

  When he went back into the living room he saw the blinking light. It took him a moment to figure out what it meant, what it belonged to.

  He had to stand on a foot ladder to reach it. The machine’s casing, he saw, was streaked with blood. He depressed the button.

  Hello, a voice said. Mr. Hapner? Is that in fact the correct name?

  Hapner, he thought, the name sizzling vaguely in his head and then beginning to fade. Unless it was not his house, unless the name belonged to the man dead on the floor. But no, it must be his name, it sounded right enough, and the foot ladder, the dead man wouldn’t have needed a foot ladder to step on. Ergo, his house. Ergo, Hapner. If that is in fact the correct name?

  There had been, the voice told him, Mr. Arnaud told him, a misunderstanding. Everyone’s heart was in the right place. But he, Hapner, was being asked to contact Arnaud’s wife, to pass on information, to find out what had become of him.

  I must be a private detective, thought the small man, thought Hapner.

  He went into the bathroom and looked at his face. He too, like the dead man, was weari
ng a mask of blood, the blood thickest around his eyes. They shared that at least. The face—small, pudgy—was unfamiliar. But it must be my own face, he thought. Nevertheless he couldn’t help but reach out and touch the mirror, assure himself that it was solid, flat glass.

  In the bedroom, he changed his clothes. The clothes fit. Thus, this was his house. Ergo. Thus, he was Bentham. Or not Bentham exactly, Bentham was who he was looking for. What had the name been exactly? It started with an H, he thought, or some similar letter. Similar in what way? He went back into the living room, skirting a dead body—had he seen it before? yes, he had, but who was it?—and depressed the answering machine button again. Ah, yes. Hapner. That was him. And it was Arnaud he was looking for, not Bentham.

  He got out a pen and a piece of paper and wrote it down, but found he could make no sense of the marks on the paper. What’s wrong? he wondered, what’s wrong? He would, he supposed, somehow just have to remember.

  He started out the door—Arnaud, he was saying in his head, Hapner, I’m Hapner, I’m looking for Arnaud—and stopped dead. The other doors around his own had been barricaded over with sheets of plywood. But why? he wondered, and then wondered, Why not my door?

  He went down the stairs and then down a hall whose walls were smeared with blood, then down another set of stairs that opened onto a lobby, two shattered glass doors leading out into the street. He pushed one open, felt a pricking on his hands and looked to see them glittery with powdered glass, minute cuts all over them. He used his shoe to open the door the rest of the way, stepped out into the street.

  The street was deserted, a car overturned and burnt to a husk a dozen feet from where he stood, another car in the middle of the road, both doors open, clumps of paper eddying about it, garbage, a fine rain of ash. The building across the street from him, a large complex of some sort, was surrounded by a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire, another similar fence a half dozen feet inside it and parallel to it, the gates of both fences twisted off their hinges. The building was set off from the road and between him and it were scores of abnormally large men in white protective suits, sprawled about, no marks on them, suits intact, all probably dead. Good Christ, he thought. For just an instant, the scene wavered, flattening out in front of him, everything fading away or coming all too close. But then he blinked, and blinked again, and it all seemed all right again, though somehow the sun had moved and the sky had gone darker.