The Unseen

by Brian Harmon

  “Another unseen building?” asked Eric.

  “No. It’s a park. I’ve searched every inch of it, but there’s nothing there. And I can’t make any sense of the rest of the numbers, either. The last five are the same on every symbol. Two, three, one, one and six. I just can’t figure it out.”

  “Maybe they’re coordinates of some sort,” suggested Paul. “Latitude and longitude?”

  Aiden shook his head. “We already thought of that. It doesn’t check out.”

  “Well, it’s obviously no coincidence that the third number points to the park. There must be something over there.”

  “That’s what I keep thinking, but I haven’t found anything over there at all.”

  Eric stared at the map, thinking.

  “There must be some reason why the clues point there,” reasoned Paul.

  Karen’s cell phone sang. Eric glanced at the screen and saw that it was Karen. He let the call go to voice mail. He didn’t want to talk to her right now. He wanted to talk to Isabelle. He wanted to know more about the hidden places he’d seen today. She told him that those places felt strange. How, exactly, were they strange?

  Isabelle didn’t wait for him to ask the question. Her text appeared as soon as the Spice Girls quit singing: IT’S HARD TO EXPLAIN. THEY JUST FELT DIFFERENT

  “Different how? Different because I thought they were weird or…?”

  NO. I FELT YOUR APPREHENSION ABOUT EACH PLACE, BUT THIS WAS SOMETHING DIFFERENT. SOMETHING DISTINCT

  Eric considered this. “So…what? The places gave off some sort of…vibe…or something?”

  SOMETHING LIKE THAT. THERE WAS AN ODD ENERGY ABOUT THEM. I FELT IT THROUGH YOU

  He found this particularly unsettling somehow. “Through me? But I didn’t feel anything. I just thought it was all very weird.”

  Aiden leaned across the table toward Paul and said, “Who’s he talking to?”

  Paul looked back at him, confused. “You talking to me?”

  “Yes, you.”

  “Because it’s kind of hard to tell with your whole “you-he” thing you’ve got going on.”

  Aiden’s brow furrowed. “Fair enough. I’m messed up. I get it. But…” He jerked his head toward Eric.

  “What, that? That’s nothing. You, you’re a crazy hermit kid who talks to himself. He’s talking to the magic little girl who lives in his phone.”

  Aiden stared at him, unsure what to say to that.

  Paul put a finger to his lips and whispered, “It’s rude to interrupt.”

  I EXPERIENCED EVERYTHING YOU DID, explained Isabelle, BUT I FELT THAT ENERGY EVEN THOUGH I COULD TELL YOU COULDN’T

  “What kind of energy?”

  I DON’T KNOW. IT WAS DIFFERENT FROM ANYTHING I’D FELT BEFORE

  “So definitely different from those places last year.”

  DEFINITELY. I DON’T’ KNOW WHAT IT IS, BUT I KNOW IT’S NOT A FISSURE

  “And different from the Hosler lot.”

  THE LOT, ITSELF, FEELS THE SAME. BUT THERE’S SOMETHING ELSE THERE, TOO. AIDEN’S RIGHT. THERE’S A DARK PRESENCE IN THAT PLACE. I THINK THE GHOST IS IN CONTROL THERE

  Eric nodded. “I don’t know much about how you feel things, but if you can feel an energy there, then I’m thinking it’s far more than just an illusion inside our heads.”

  I AGREE

  “So if these unseen places all give off this kind of energy, do you think you could tell if I was near one, even if I couldn’t see it?”

  IT’S POSSIBLE

  Eric stuffed the phone back into his pocket and turned to face Aiden and Paul. “Let’s take a closer look at that park.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Eric and Aiden crowded into the cab of Paul’s truck. After their narrow escape from the motel, it was likely that the cowboy would be looking for the bike.

  “So how long have you been living over the bar?” asked Paul.

  “Few weeks.”

  “Must be noisy.”

  Aiden shrugged. “A little. But not bad, really. The bar I don't mind so much. It’s what goes on upstairs that I can’t stand.”

  Paul looked at him, surprised. “Upstairs? The Rufars? What, do they fight a lot?”

  “They have sex. All the freaking time! God, it’s like trying to sleep under the monkey house at the zoo. I swear I don't know how their furniture handles it.”

  Eric was checking Karen’s cell phone to see if she’d left a message when she called. Now he looked over at Aiden, disgusted. “That was so far beyond too much information that I don't even know what to say to it.”

  TMI OVERLOAD, agreed Isabelle.

  Paul merely laughed.

  Aiden shrugged. “It’s the truth.”

  Eric shook his head and returned his eyes to the cell phone. As far as he could tell, Karen hadn’t bothered to leave a message. He didn’t think she would. She knew him well enough to know that he probably didn’t even know how to check the voicemail on her phone. Chances were good she’d call back in just a few minutes anyway.

  “So are we going to run into your friends again up here?” asked Paul.

  Aiden shrugged. “I wouldn’t be surprised. They keep turning up in all these places. And obviously they’ve gathered all the same clues I have. I’m sure they know about the park. They’re probably several steps ahead of us.”

  Eric recalled the way those two kept turning up everywhere he went. “It seems like they know where we are, like they’re tracking us somehow.”

  This idea made Aiden visibly nervous. His eyes twitched from one side of the road to the other, as if he expected one of them to run right out in front of them as they drove down the street.

  “You guys need to be careful,” said Paul, as if that needed to be said. “Those two are bad news. I can feel it.”

  Eric returned his attention to the phone. “About that energy you described…”

  I MIGHT BE ABLE TO TELL IF YOU’RE CLOSE TO ONE OF THOSE PLACES, BUT I CAN’T BE SURE. I STILL DON’T KNOW WHY I FEEL THESE THINGS AND YOU DON’T, ESPECIALLY WHEN EVERYTHING I FEEL COMES THROUGH YOU

  “I don’t know either, but it might give us an advantage.”

  I’LL DO MY BEST

  “I know you will. And here’s another question. You said you also felt something odd about those two guys we’ve been running into.”

  I DID

  “Did they give off an odd energy, too?”

  I’M NOT SURE. IT’S HARD TO DESCRIBE WHAT THEY FELT LIKE. BUT I’D DEFINITELY FELT IT BEFORE

  “The foggy man?”

  THE FOGGY MAN

  It made sense, if they were from the same organization, they probably had the same kind of feel to them. “Do you think you could tell if one of them was close and I couldn’t see them?”

  I DON’T KNOW. IT’S NOT AS STRONG OR AS CLEAR AS WHAT I FELT FROM THE LOCATIONS THEMSELVES. BUT I’LL TRY TO KEEP AN EYE OUT. OR, YOU KNOW, WHATEVER IT IS I SEE THIS STUFF WITH

  Aiden motioned at the phone. “So what’s the deal?”

  Eric glanced at him. “Oh. Sorry. Isabelle, Aiden. Aiden, Isabelle.”

  HI, AIDEN

  Aiden gawked at the phone. “Um… Hi…”

  “Magic little girl who lives in his phone,” whispered Paul.

  “It’s not magic,” insisted Eric. He looked down at the phone. “I don’t think…” After all he’d seen, there wasn’t much he wasn’t prepared to believe, but magic was a little more than he could swallow. “She’s…psychic. Or something…”

  Paul shook his head. “Same thing, if you ask me.”

  Aiden stared at the phone.

  “Remember when I said this wasn’t my first experience with crazy?”

  He nodded.

  “I met her on my first outing.”

  “So she’s…like…a real person?”

  “Of course. She’s just a girl…” Eric tried to think of how to best describe her, but he simply couldn’t think of an easy way to put it.

  I WAS TRAPPED FOR A LO
NG TIME, explained Isabelle, BUT ERIC RESCUED ME

  Eric always felt a little embarrassed when she said that he’d rescued her. The truth was that she’d rescued him. If it hadn’t been for her, he would’ve been trapped right there with her, probably forever. But she maintained that he was the one who gave her the courage to escape that place.

  “And now he can talk to her through his cell phone?” pressed Aiden.

  Eric smiled. “Something like that.”

  “So don’t worry,” Paul assured him. “You’re brand of crazy fits right in around here.”

  Aiden looked back and forth between the two brothers. He wasn’t sure he found that very reassuring.

  Paul turned north on Allendar Avenue and drove slowly toward Lister Park. Eric could tell he was not eager to get there. He didn’t blame him. It felt almost as if they were walking into a trap. But this was the only place left to go. The only other option was to simply go home, and Eric didn’t dare do that for fear that the psychotic cowboy would turn up at his doorstep, dragging Karen and Diane into peril.

  The cell phone sang again. It was yet another of Karen’s friends. Again, he let it go to voicemail. “I never realized how many calls she got on this thing.”

  “Karen knows a lot of people,” agreed Paul. “You’d be amazed how many times someone’ll see my name and ask me if I know her.”

  Eric nodded. He knew the feeling. He’d lost track of all the times that students had asked him the very same thing because they knew her from church functions and weddings and all the other little social gatherings that she catered for.

  “Here we are,” said Paul.

  Lister Park was a sprawling span of neatly mown lawns rising and falling over a long stretch of shallow hills overlooking the slow, murky waters of Vawlin Creek. An impressive playground stood atop the highest hill, overlooking the entire park. Just below it, on the next hill over, was a small volleyball court and a covered pavilion. A sidewalk snaked over the top of the remaining hills, past a simple concrete structure containing the restrooms and the park caretaker’s shed, all the way to the parking lot. Nothing but grass occupied the lower half of these hills because the creek was prone to flooding in wet weather.

  Eric stepped out of the truck and looked around. He could hear children shouting from the playground and the distant roar of the two factories that stood atop the hill and behind a narrow stretch of dense foliage on the far side of the creek.

  There was a middle-aged woman walking two dogs along the bank below them and a lone teenage boy sitting at a picnic table under the pavilion with his nose in a cell phone. He saw no one wearing pink. He saw no one, obese or otherwise, dressed like a cowboy.

  “Well, we’re here,” declared Paul. “Now what?”

  It was a good question. Eric had no idea. If something unseen stood here, then it remained unseen.

  “I told you,” said Aiden, “I’ve been over this entire park. There’s nothing here.”

  “There has to be something here,” Eric reasoned. “You found it on the map. All the clues converged at this point.”

  “I know, but then the clues just stopped making sense.”

  Eric lifted his cell phone. Before he could ask the question, Isabelle replied, I’M NOT FEELING ANYTHING THERE. IT’S JUST A PARK

  It was just a park. Eric and Paul had come here as children, back before they built the expensive playground. They’d probably walked across every inch of these lawns. And yet the mysterious symbols in each of the unseen buildings had contained a number that was exactly equal to the distance between the location it pointed to and this park. It couldn’t be a coincidence. Something had to be here.

  But what?

  “Let’s spread out and look around,” Eric decided. “See if we can find anything unusual.”

  “What about Pinky and the hick?” asked Paul. “Those two are bound to show up again.”

  “Just keep your eyes open. There’s nowhere for them to hide, so they’ll have to be in plain sight. If we have to scatter, we’ll try to meet back at the truck if possible. Otherwise, we’ll meet back up at the library.”

  Paul shrugged. “Whatever you say, boss.”

  Eric turned and walked down the hill toward the creek. Paul set off up the sidewalk toward the playground.

  Aiden looked back and forth between the two of them and then hurried after Eric. “Is he sure we should split up? I mean, his brother can’t even see these places.”

  “It’s less about finding what’s here and more about making it easier to see those two creeps if they show up,” explained Eric. “Paul can see them just fine. And if we’re lucky, they still don’t know that he’s even with us.”

  “That’s a good point. But shouldn’t we at least stick together?”

  “You want to be standing next to each other if that fat psycho turns up with his shotgun again?”

  “I guess not. But like I said before, I’ve tried finding what’s here. I can’t.”

  “Maybe today you will.”

  “I’m not much of an optimist.”

  Eric shrugged and walked on.

  Aiden turned and angled back toward the far corner, his eyes open for unwanted guests.

  Eric reached the creek bank and turned with it, following it along the lower edge of the creek. It had been dry lately and the water was low. Even at normal stages, it wasn’t deep enough for boats. Today, he could wade across it if he wanted and barely get his pants legs wet.

  He looked down at his cell phone again.

  STILL NOTHING

  Aiden had insisted that the park itself contained nothing unseen. But he also couldn’t seem to find the unseen schoolhouse, even though he’d seen it from six different locations. This told Eric that at least some of these unseen things still eluded even the practiced eye of a seasoned seer. Whatever was here was likely no different.

  Unless, of course, there really was nothing here. Perhaps there was another reason the clues led them to this park. Perhaps the park itself was a clue of some sort. But what? There was nothing here but the creek, a playground, a couple of ordinary park structures and a volleyball court.

  He walked along the bank of the creek, his eyes scanning the top of the hill, watching for the two mysterious men who kept crossing his path today.

  Why did the man in the pink shirt help them escape the cowboy at the motel? His every instinct told him the man couldn’t be trusted and yet if not for him…

  But then again, maybe they hadn’t really needed him. After all, the cowboy hadn’t entered the motel with stealth. He’d kicked in the damn door, likely expecting to take them by surprise. That commotion surely would’ve sent them fleeing the motel just as quickly as Pink Shirt’s warning.

  There was just something about that man…

  Nobody pulled into the parking lot. Nobody walked onto the neatly mown grass. They remained alone.

  For now.

  Eric turned his attention back to the creek.

  Something about this park was significant. He could feel it. The clues Aiden had gathered were more than convincing. And he’d found that he trusted Aiden at least as much as he distrusted Pink Shirt. Something was here. He just had to find it.

  The cell phone sang in his hand. It was Karen.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “I’m with Paul and Aiden now.”

  “You found Aiden?” She sounded surprised. He didn’t blame her.

  In the background, he heard Diane echo her. “They found him?”

  “I did.”

  “That’s… Wow. What’s he like?”

  Eric glanced over at him. Wandering across the rolling lawn of the wide park, he looked lost. “He’s a little…um… He’s been on his own a long time.”

  “I see…”

  “I guess he’s okay. I mean he’s not dangerous. If anything I think he’s doing better than I would if I’d been deprived of human contact for half a decade, but he’s not exactly…right…either…”

&
nbsp; “Where’s he been all this time?”

  “Traveling the country. It’s a long story.”

  “I see. Well what’s he doing back now?”

  “It’s about these hidden places I keep finding. He believes something is hidden in them, some kind of secret. And he thinks the answers he’s been looking for might be here in Creek Bend.”

  “Why would they be here of all places?”

  “I have no idea,” confessed Eric. “But apparently he’s found several messages leading him back here. And he thinks there’s an unusual number of unseen places in this city.”

  “So every city doesn’t have a bunch of invisible buildings scattered around it.”

  “Apparently not.”

  “I see. Well now I feel special.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  “So where are you now?”

  “Lister Park.”

  “Oh. So you boys stopped for a play date?”

  “Well, you know how much Paul likes to be pushed on the swing.”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  As he approached the trees at the far end of the park, Eric glanced around again, searching for unwanted visitors and checking on Paul and Aiden. Both of them were up by the playground now, circling it, looking for anything that might lead them to the next clue in this bizarre mystery.

  He turned back again and looked out over the creek, past the brushy hillside that rose on the other side, to the smoking stacks of the factories that stood over there.

  Something caught his eye to his left and he turned.

  There, where the creek entered the trees, a sleek, black creature was standing in the middle of the stream, staring back at him.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Eric’s heart was pounding.

  “Are you still there?” asked Karen.

  “Yeah… I’ve got to go.”

  She said something about calling her back, but Eric disconnected the call without listening. His eyes were locked on the creature. It was only a short distance away. If it charged him, he wouldn’t get far before it sank its teeth into him.

  But the creature did not attack.

  It didn’t even bare its enormous teeth.