The Unseen

by Brian Harmon

  Eric was shocked. He remembered those first few days after Aiden’s disappearance well. The news story broke that evening and the story ran continuously. He remembered sitting on the couch and watching it all. They searched everywhere for him.

  Was he really sitting there that whole time, watching it all happen? How could he do that? He understood the frustrations of being a teenager, but was he really so embittered that he felt nothing for all the people who were worried about him?

  “Then Glen showed up.”

  “Glen?”

  Aiden opened the plastic bag and started rifling through the papers inside. “Scared the hell out of me. I was sitting there in that doorway, watching all the people who walked by. It was amazing how many turned up just out of morbid curiosity. I must’ve seen half the people I went to school with, all of them looking around with these creeped-out looks on their faces, like they really thought my ghost was going to jump out and say boo at any minute. I hated them…” Again, he trailed off, distracted. Then he snapped out of it and said, “Anyway, I looked up and he was just standing there, looking down at me. Scared the shit out of me.”

  Each time he’d spoken of his mother, Aiden’s expression darkened, but as he spoke of this man, Eric noticed that his features softened a little.

  “Glen told me he saw me on the national news and that he knew immediately what I’d done. He knew because he could see those places, too. He called them ‘the unseen.’ He’d spent his life researching them, trying to figure out why they were there. I thought he was going to make me go back, that he’d turn me in and force me to go home…back to that awful house… But he told me that wasn’t possible. He said that if he knew where I’d gone, then so did other people, people who wouldn’t tolerate me walking around with that kind of knowledge.”

  Eric wondered if these people included a disturbingly intimidating man in a pink shirt and a psychotic, overweight cowboy.

  “He took me away from there and out into the world. He spent his entire life trying to understand the unseen, and he made me his student. He was my mentor. And for the better part of the next year, we traveled the country, searching for answers.”

  “Did you find any?”

  “A few. These places exist all over the world. No one knows exactly why or how. A lot of them are extremely old. Some are fairly new, like the places around here. It’s not just that they can’t be seen. People ignore them. I have no idea why, but people go out of their way to do it. It’s not just that they don’t see them standing there. They’re oblivious to the extra time it takes to walk around them, to the extra work it takes to shovel the sidewalks in front of them or mow around them. They don’t hear any noises that come out of them. Even in pictures and movies and on maps, people everywhere utterly ignore them.”

  Eric recalled shouting for help from the apple tree on Hosler and wondering why no one came to see what was going on. He also recalled Paul not being able to hear him when he spoke to him from the doorway of the empty store. And he remembered dragging his fingers along the brick walls of the tavern and the pet grooming place. He felt his way all along that wall and never found a single crack. Did he really simply ignore the alley when his fingers passed through the empty air between the two buildings? How did something like that even work?

  “Sometimes these places attract things. Like, there are these strange, black creatures—”

  “Black creatures?”

  Aiden blinked up at him. “He’s seen them already?”

  Ignoring the odd, third-person thing again, he explained, “At the asylum by the hospital. And at that empty lot on Hosler.”

  Aiden looked surprised. “You went to the Hosler place?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “It was on your map.”

  Aiden looked utterly perplexed. “Well…yeah… It was crossed off on my map.”

  “That’s why it was the first place I remembered after I left the apartment.”

  “Dude, you’re crazy!”

  “Hey, I didn’t know what was over there. It didn’t say anything on the map.”

  “It wasn’t for him. It was my map.”

  “Well, you didn’t stick around to talk to me. What’s the deal with that place? Who was that old woman?”

  “If there was one thing Glen knew for sure, it was that sometimes really malicious spirits can turn a place unseen. That’s one of the reasons such spirits are so rare. No one bothers them, do they?”

  Eric considered this. A malicious spirit? That woman was a ghost? She hadn’t seemed anything like the ghosts he met the previous year. Those seemed to be perfect representations of who they were when they were alive. The old woman he met that morning… What would a person have to suffer to become something like that?

  “You have to be really careful when dealing with the unseen. Sometimes there’s a good reason to ignore them.”

  “Okay. Noted.”

  Aiden looked down at the plastic bag for a moment, as if he couldn’t remember how he came to be holding it. Then he snapped out of it and closed it up again. “Glen was always moving around. We never stayed in one place very long. He knew they’d find us if he did.”

  “Who’s ‘they?’”

  Aiden shrugged. “Don’t know. These people. They never had a name. He used to tell me all the time that they’d kill us if they found us. I don’t know if they were G-men or men-in-black or what, but they were bad news.”

  Eric felt a shiver run up his back. That sounded familiar. He met a man the previous year who claimed to have worked for just such an organization. They were beyond bad news. “Did you ever see any of these people?”

  “Just once.”

  “What happened?”

  Aiden glanced up at Eric again. “They murdered him.”

  That shiver became an icy lump in his gut. “They killed Glen?”

  “Shot him. Execution style. Right here in this building.” His eyes drifted to the wall. Another room waited silently on the other side. “He’s still in there, as far as I know.”

  Eric felt stunned. “I’m sorry.”

  Aiden shrugged.

  “Why did you come back?”

  “Glen was really interested in Creek Bend. He’d never seen so many unseen places in such a small area.”

  “It’s not normal?”

  “Not by a long shot. Most of the time, you’ll find one in every three or four small cities like this. Occasionally you’ll find a few in a metropolis, but to see so many in an area with such a small population… It’s pretty rare.”

  “So why is Creek Bend different?”

  “We don’t know. Glen had a theory, but he could never prove it.”

  “What theory?”

  “He thought that sometimes a special kind of unseen location can spawn more like it.”

  Eric considered this. These places were difficult enough to comprehend on their own, but an unseen place that creates other unseen places?

  “He was convinced that these buildings were hiding some sort of secret. So convinced that he risked coming back here several times. One too many times, obviously.”

  “And you believe this too?”

  “I don’t have much choice. Glen was the only person who ever really looked out for me. He saved my life. I have to believe he died for something besides some stupid runaway with no clue what he was getting himself into.”

  “So why are you back here now?”

  Aiden opened the bag again and pulled out a photograph. He handed it to Eric. “A few weeks before he died, Glen found this.”

  Eric picked it up and examined it.

  “That was carved into a wall inside an unseen church in St. Paul.”

  It was the same symbol that Eric had been finding inside all the unseen buildings around Creek Bend, except that instead of numbers, it was made up of words. “‘Six stand guard where the water turns, seen by few, each points the way home.’” He looked up at Aiden. “Where water tu
rns…”

  “Creek Bend, with its six unseen landmarks.”

  “Each points…” Eric recalled the primitive viewing devices that was each aimed at that unfamiliar tower. “The way home…? Whose home?”

  “This was the reason Glen came back to Creek Bend,” continued Aiden. “And since then, I’ve found this same message dozens of times, in unseen buildings all over the country. The last one was in Ohio, just a couple months ago. That’s why I’m here. Obviously, the answer to all of this is right here in Creek Bend. I owe it to Glen to find it.”

  Before they could discuss it any further, they were distracted by the sound of a clearing throat from the bathroom doorway.

  Eric and Aiden both turned to find the man in the pink shirt standing there, staring at them through his dark glasses.

  Aiden snatched the Taser out of his backpack and aimed it at the stranger.

  “I hate to interrupt, but you might want to take this conversation elsewhere.”

  “You…” breathed Eric.

  “Yes, me.”

  “Friend of yours?” asked Aiden.

  “Not so much,” replied Eric. “What are you doing here?”

  “We could discuss that, if you’d like. Or the two of you could get back on your motorcycle and get out of here. There’s a very cranky Texan pulling into the parking lot right now.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Eric hurried to the window and peered out through the moldy curtains. Sure enough, there was a big, red pickup truck parked out there. The door was open and the cowboy was climbing down from the cab. His bald head was exposed. His shirt was still bloody. Considerably more bandages had been applied to his face since last time he saw the man. And even from this distance he looked murderous.

  Having lost the handgun along with his hat, he was now armed with a far less discreet shotgun.

  Clearly, the stunt at the tavern hadn’t bought them nearly as much time as he thought it would.

  “How did he find us so fast?”

  “Maybe you should go somewhere a little less…special,” suggested Pink Shirt.

  Eric turned and looked at him. “Who are you?” he demanded.

  Pink Shirt gave him another of those curious smirks. “Just a concerned bystander.”

  “Right. And I’m high priestess of the munchkins.”

  The stranger looked amused. “Well, Your Highness, I’d take Toto and skedaddle down that yellow brick road if I were you. Now.”

  From elsewhere in the building, Eric heard a loud crash as one of the doors was violently kicked in.

  Aiden jumped at the sound. His eyes were wide with fear. His knuckles were white on the grip of the Taser.

  “I wouldn’t go back the way you came,” suggested Pink Shirt.

  Eric hesitated a moment longer. He still didn’t trust this guy. He had no idea what his role in all this was. But he was right. It wouldn’t take long for that angry cowboy to find the gaping hole in the bathroom wall and come bursting into one room after the other, ready to shoot anything that moved.

  He glanced out the window again, and then eased the door open. It was clear. He gave Pink Shirt one more suspicious glance and received a peppy thumbs-up in return. He motioned for Aiden to follow and slipped outside.

  Ducking low to avoid being glimpsed passing in front of the windows like easy targets in a shooting gallery, the two of them hurried back past the previous two rooms. The next door was the one they used when they first entered the motel. Aiden had locked it upon entering but now it hung open, the jamb splintered.

  Eric peered inside, half expecting to have his head blown off, but it was empty. The cowboy was already making his way through the motel, meticulously hunting them.

  It was clearly a good thing that they hadn’t remained in this room. Aiden’s motorcycle parked right outside the door must’ve seemed like a dead giveaway. But they weren’t safe yet. They still had to get out of range of that shotgun. At any second, the psycho could throw back a curtain and find that he had a clear shot at the back of their heads.

  Aiden lifted the kickstand and hurriedly pushed the bike around the big truck and out of sight of the motel windows before straddling it and donning the helmet.

  Eric mounted the bike behind him and braced himself for what was coming.

  The bike roared to life and Aiden spun the tires as they raced across the parking lot toward the road. Eric was sure the sound of the motor would alert the cowboy and that any second now he was going to be shot in the back. But if any shots were fired, they didn’t find him.

  Aiden didn’t bother with the driveway. He cut across the overgrown grass and darted out into traffic, narrowly missing a Volkswagen Beetle, and then sped off into the city.

  Looking back over his shoulder, Eric didn’t see the red pickup racing after them, but he knew the cowboy wouldn’t give up that easily.

  “Where do we go now?” shouted Aiden.

  “Nowhere unseen,” Eric shouted back, recalling what Pink Shirt told them about going somewhere less “special.” Clearly, those hidden places were not safe. He thought about returning home. They could hide the bike in the garage and stay out of sight for a while. But he still didn’t know how it was that these two kept finding them. And the last thing he wanted to do was lead them back to Karen and Diane. “Somewhere public,” he decided. “The library.”

  Surely the lunatic wouldn’t come after them in a place potentially crawling with witnesses.

  Aiden nodded and turned down a side road that would take them back toward that side of town.

  Eric glanced back again. Still no red pickup. “Have Paul meet us there,” he said, not bothering to raise his voice. He felt the slight vibration of the iPhone in his pocket and knew that Isabelle had received the message.

  They reached the library in just a few short minutes. It wasn’t busy, but neither was it deserted. Eric instructed Aiden to park in back, where the bike wouldn’t be too obvious from the street, and then led him upstairs to the private reading rooms.

  “So who’s the guy in the pink shirt?” Aiden asked as he placed his backpack on the table and began pacing around the room. He looked like a caged animal. His eyes kept drifting to the doorway.

  “I don’t know,” Eric replied as he withdrew Karen’s phone from his pocket. “I ran into him at the asylum. Then I saw him entering the store a little while after you ran out.”

  “He was at both of those places?”

  “Both of those guys keep showing up today. I don’t understand how they keep finding us.”

  Isabelle sent him a text message: THEY MIGHT BE MONITORING THE UNSEEN BUILDINGS SOMEHOW

  Eric nodded. It certainly seemed likely.

  Aiden stepped into the doorway and looked around. Not finding anyone out there to concern him, he sat down in the nearest chair and rubbed tiredly at his face.

  “Do you have any idea who they could be?”

  “I don’t. I just assumed that redneck guy was like the people who murdered Glen.”

  Eric considered this. “Who were they? Do you know?”

  He shook his head and glanced at the doorway again. It wasn’t just the cowboy he was worried about. Anybody who walked past that door and glanced in might catch a peek at his face and bring down a world of trouble for him. “All I know is they’d been trying to hunt down Glen for years before I even met him. He said they wanted to kill him because he was a seer.”

  “A seer?”

  “Yeah. That’s what he said they called people like us, people who can see the unseen. Seers.”

  NOT OVERLY CREATIVE, ARE THEY? remarked Isabelle.

  “You don’t know where they come from? Who gives them their orders?”

  Aiden shook his head again and shifted uncomfortably in the seat. It was clear he wasn’t comfortable being out in the open like this. “This fat guy, though. He doesn’t seem very much like the guys who killed Glen. He’s…sloppy.”

  Eric knew exactly what he was talking about. The cowboy was
scary. He was purposeful. He was determined. He was undeniably dangerous. But in the end, he hadn’t seemed very smart.

  “The guy in the pink shirt, though… He reminded me of them.”

  Eric nodded. That man had done nothing to threaten him, and yet he somehow seemed more dangerous than the cowboy. In a very different and much darker kind of way. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but he was sure of it nonetheless.

  Aiden stood up and walked to the table. “But he helped us escape. Why?”

  It was a damn good question. Eric didn’t have an answer.

  Aiden opened the bag, stared into it for a moment, then closed it again.

  “You okay?”

  “Just… You know. Jumpy.”

  “Understandable.” After all that had happened, anyone would be jumpy. And now he’d been dragged out of the shadows he’d been forced to become comfortable with over the years. Each time a voice drifted in from the hallway outside, he flinched, as if terrified that someone was going to glance in and recognize him.

  Aiden stopped fidgeting and looked back at him for a moment. “What about you? You seem remarkably comfortable dealing with all this craziness.”

  Eric shrugged. “It’s not my first taste of crazy.”

  “Really?”

  “I had a few experiences last year. I saw some things. Not quite like this, but it opened my eyes. I’m a lot more open-minded than I used to be.”

  “I see.”

  Eric wondered again if this was the same organization that he encountered on his last outing into the Twilight Zone.

  Another text message arrived and he glanced down at the screen. FATHER BILLY?

  “Yeah. Probably.” He met Father Billy while trying to escape a pack of corn creeps somewhere in Wisconsin’s rural farmlands. He lived in a decrepit church deep in a vast forest of massive trees somewhere between this world and another. He claimed to have once worked for a ruthless organization with a special interest in crazy things like fissures between realities and supernatural phenomenon. Unseen buildings and people with an unnatural talent to see them would be just the sort of business they’d be into. As would a man with the ability to create fearsome projections capable of frightening people into committing suicide.