Invisibility

by Andrea Cremer

  “So you helped people find the cursecasters?” I ask.

  “It was the most I could do,” she says. Then she waves her hand in the air as if batting away a fly. “But my skills only take us so far. You can do more. Tell me what you saw when you discovered the spells.”

  I rest my forearms on the table, as if I might need the solid wood to steady me. “It’s like I fade out of the real world and into . . . I don’t know what or where it is. I’ve been calling it the background.”

  Millie nods, but when she doesn’t speak, I keep going.

  “When I’m in the background, I can see the spells.”

  “What do they look like?” she asks in a very soft voice that makes me think she’s worried about spooking me.

  “I saw three when I was out walking around with Laurie,” I say. “Each one was kind of the same, but also different.”

  “Tell me about them.” Millie is folding and unfolding her hands, willing herself to be patient.

  “They had specific forms and sometimes a sound,” I say. “The first person I saw was a woman trying to get a cab and she couldn’t.”

  She startles me with a chuckle. “Sorry. That’s a very common petty curse in the city. And they’re usually temporary, set to wear off in a matter of days. What else?”

  “The space around her body was filled with moving pieces, like bits of straw falling around her,” I say.

  “And the sound?” she asks.

  I frown. “There wasn’t a sound. Well, actually, I think there would have been if I’d waited a little longer. Every time I did it, there was more detail.”

  “Then tell me about the next one,” she says.

  “She looked like she was walking through a snow globe that had just been shaken.” I pause long enough to roll my eyes. “And it sounded like fairy bells.”

  “That wasn’t a curse,” Millie says. “That was a fortune spell.”

  “I kind of got that,” I say. “She was making all kinds of good deals. Work stuff.”

  Millie purses her lips. “Some spellcasters make profits by offering their services to the public.”

  “Is that such a bad thing?” I ask. “This woman seemed pretty happy.”

  “So are people who win the lottery—but usually it just sends them back for more,” Millie says. “Magic is tricky, unreliable, and bears unintended consequences. People who rely on it for success are playing a game of Russian roulette. Eventually one of those spells will bring a bullet with it.”

  I shudder. “Even the good spells?”

  “There’s no such thing as a good spell,” Millie says. “There are spellcasters and cursecasters. Spellcasting may seem benign, but it’s still dangerous. People like us guard free will for a purpose; bending nature to your own will carries a price. The more you ask of it, the more it will cost you in the end. Curses are simply the furthest down the spectrum of that danger.”

  “And someone couldn’t just hire a spellcaster to undo a curse?” I’d been keeping that thought in my back pocket.

  “No,” she says. “One caster can’t undo the work of another. Only the originator of the spell or curse can remove it.”

  I swallow hard. We have no choice but to find Maxwell Arbus. Though it seems like the road we’ve been walking on has been leading in this direction, I’d been secretly hoping we’d find another route. Or a bypass.

  I think about the artist with red threads binding his creativity, making him miserable. Who would do such a thing? Who would he have to beg relief from? What would it cost him?

  “I think it’s time you told me about Stephen’s curse.” Millie is looking directly at me. “For me, curses are like silhouettes or shadows, but the details elude me. I need to know what you see.”

  I shudder.

  “I know it’s horrible,” she whispers. “Any curse cast by Arbus is horrible.”

  Keeping my gaze locked with Millie’s, I recall the monstrosity I saw clinging to Stephen in the background. At first she sighs with regret, then as I shiver while describing the tentacles, her breath hitches and she nods.

  “Is something wrong?”

  She looks away and my blood freezes in my veins.

  “I can’t help but wonder how he could do it . . . to his own kin,” she murmurs. Her already paper-white skin has taken on a gray cast.

  “Millie, what did Arbus do to Stephen?” The words feel thick and gummy on my tongue.

  I hate the sorrow I see in her eyes. “Do you remember when I told you I was surprised Arbus would cast such a powerful curse on Stephen?”

  “Yes,” I say. “Because he’d have to give up so much of his own power.”

  “He wagered that the curse would transfer from mother to child,” she says. “But he couldn’t control what would happen in that transfer. A curse like that takes on a life and will of its own. It generates its own power.”

  “What does that mean?” I ask. But I don’t want to. I want to cover my ears and close my eyes and hopefully wake up so this nightmare ends.

  When she looks at me, her eyes are shining with regret. “It means he will probably end up killing his grandson.”

  Chapter 17

  THE WHOLE WAY HOME, Laurie is worried that he’s lost me. Because when we’re silent, there’s no way for him to tell whether I’m next to him or not. He keeps looking over his shoulder, as if that would somehow let him know whether I’ve fallen behind. After a few minutes of this, I tell him, “Just assume I’m here. I’ll let you know if I start to lag.”

  Neither of us knows what to do. Neither of us knows what Millie is doing to Elizabeth, or if it was a mistake to leave her there.

  When we get back to our building, Laurie holds the door open for me, confusing the doorman, who’d been preoccupied with his crossword puzzle. Laurie senses his error but doesn’t say a word. He only speaks to me when we’re safely alone in the elevator.

  “Do you want to go to the roof?” he asks.

  * * *

  I’m not expecting this.

  “Sean showed me the way,” he goes on. “I’m sure you’re up there all the time, right?”

  I shake my head, but he doesn’t see it.

  “If we’re at your place or my place, we’ll just be waiting for her, you know?”

  I know. So I tell him, sure, we can go to the roof.

  * * *

  The door to the roof is heavy, but there isn’t an alarm.

  Laurie can shove it open easily, but for me it always took a lot of effort.

  I only went to the roof when I really needed to.

  It’s a different kind of daytime on the roof—different from that on the street, different from what comes through a window. We are in the strange borderland between ground and sky—nine stories up, we hover over pedestrians, over cars, over smaller buildings. But there are still-taller buildings hovering over us.

  These taller buildings stand quiet, windows closed, expressions glazed. We are in a pocket of city silence, the traffic reduced to a hum, the voices never lifting this high.

  Laurie walks over to the railing, looks below. I hesitate. He starts talking, thinking I am there.

  “One second,” I call out.

  It feels like years since I’ve been up here, even though I know it hasn’t been years. I wish there was some personal marker of time, so we didn’t have to rely upon days and weeks and months and years. Because each of us has our own unit of measurement, our own relativity. Spaces between loves. Spaces between destinations. Spaces between deaths.

  Or just one death. The quickness of time before. The eternity of time after.

  “You there?” Laurie asks.

  “Yeah,” I answer, pulling up by his side, not touching the railing.

  He looks out at the park. “Do you come up here a lot? Sean says he hides away here sometimes. I figured it was possible you were up here too. I mean, he thinks he’s alone when he does it. But he’d never know, right?”

  “I don’t really come up here,” I murmur.


  “Why not? It’s beautiful. And it’s not like they’re going to catch you.”

  “It’s not that,” I say.

  “Afraid the door will swing shut and you’ll get trapped? Sean says there’s a way around that.”

  “No. It’s just . . . I don’t really like it up here. I never have.”

  This is a lie, and I know it. I think, Why can’t I tell him?

  “We can go back down,” he offers.

  I think about everything he’s gone through. Not just in the past two days with me and Elizabeth. But before.

  “I came up here at a bad time,” I tell him. “A really bad time. So it’s hard to come back without remembering.”

  He nods, but doesn’t ask anything further. He’s leaving it up to me.

  I think he might know.

  “It was right after my mother died,” I say. “I spent about a month in a fog, completely paralyzed. I couldn’t believe I was alone. Everything seemed impossible. I knew enough to eat, but that was about it. Dad emailed, offered to come out. But I told him no. I felt that would have been worse, especially because there was no way he was going to stay. I’d just be postponing the abandonment.

  “So one night I came up here. I found the strength and pushed open that door.

  “For the first time since she died, I felt certainty. It was a flash of certainty: I was going to die. And the reason I was going to die was that I was going to throw myself right over the edge. It was the only solution. It was like all the other options had fallen away and all the walls had closed in, and the only thing that was left in the narrowness was the one exit, the one escape.

  “I walked down there.” I point to a spot on the railing, even though Laurie can’t see me pointing. “I didn’t even have to leave a note—I figured eventually my father would notice I was gone. But he’d never really know, would he? I could be anywhere.

  “I got one foot on the wall. The certainty was there . . . and then the flash was over. Because I thought to myself that, yeah, there was one person I would have to write a note for, and that was my mother. I know it sounds crazy, but I felt that I still owed her that. And as soon as I thought about her, I thought about how sad she would be to see me do this. I imagined my body lying down there, broken on the pavement, and no one would even know I was bleeding. The idea of everyone stepping over me, for days or months or years . . . it was the saddest thing I’d ever thought, and I knew my mother would never, ever want me to do that. It’s not like I saw her or heard her speaking to me. I just knew.

  “So I guess I learned there’s no such thing as a flash of certainty. It’s a flash, for sure, but it isn’t certainty, even if it feels like certainty. And I haven’t been up here since then because I guess it reminds me how close I came. How dark it was. You know?”

  Laurie reaches his hand out to me. I move my arm, concentrate there, so he can touch it. So he can give me that comfort, in the way that human beings do.

  “I never wanted to die,” he tells me. “But I was always aware that it was an option. I felt the other people wanting me to do it, so I worked against it. I never even considered it. That would be my big defiance—I wouldn’t go away. Even when I was in the hospital, even when it was pretty dire—I guess I had the opposite of your flash of certainty. The certainty I felt was this foundation, the thing that all of my other thoughts were built on. I would get through it. I would heal. I would get the hell out of that town. They ruined my body, but I wouldn’t let them touch my life. I was certain of that. And I still am. Except in the moments when I’m not. But those are the exceptions.”

  “I guess when it comes down to it,” I say, “I don’t really understand life.”

  “You haven’t had much practice,” Laurie says. “But I don’t know that practice makes it easier.”

  “Who needs cursecasters?” I ask. “The amateurs do just as much damage.”

  Laurie laughs at that—a laugh of recognition, not humor.

  “It appears that we’ve each had a lot of time to contemplate human nature,” he says.

  “Mostly I found that it gets boring after a while. Contemplation never really accomplishes anything.”

  Laurie nods. “I just wanted to be back on my feet.”

  “And I decided I wanted to stay on my feet. It’s the difference between jumping and leaping, isn’t it?”

  “What is?”

  “When you jump, all you’re going to do is fall. But leaping? Leaping is when you think there’s something on the other side.”

  “And you have a sense that we’re about to leap?”

  “I have a sense that we already have.” I pause. “You know you don’t have to be a part of it, right? I was born into this. And maybe Elizabeth was too. But this isn’t your fight. I can’t speak for Elizabeth, but I would completely understand if you didn’t want to leap.”

  “What? And watch the two of you on the other side, not being able to do anything about it? Forget that.”

  He turns to look over the railings again.

  * * *

  I know my mother wanted to have another child. I heard them talking about it, but I never really understood what the true terms of the argument were. Would the curse have still applied? Did it matter?

  I like to think she didn’t want me to be alone. That she wanted me to feel like this, like I had someone else on my side.

  * * *

  “I have a question,” Laurie says after a minute. “You don’t have to answer it if you don’t want to.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “I’m just wondering about the end result of this. It’s to break the curse, right? And that means you becoming visible. Do you think you’re ready for that? Because being visible makes you really vulnerable.”

  “I don’t know if I’m ready,” I say. “But I think I’d like to try.”

  * * *

  A noise wedges itself into the silence—the door opening. For a moment I actually think I have to hide. It’s as if Laurie has made me forget what I am.

  Laurie also looks around for a place to hide, expecting someone from building security. There isn’t really anyplace to go, unless he wants to climb the water tower.

  But it’s not building security. It’s Sean, looking bashful and happy.

  “I was hoping to find you,” he says to Laurie.

  “Pretend I’m not here,” I whisper. “I’ll leave.”

  Laurie can’t say anything back. I wait for Sean to clear the doorway, so I can go back down. But instead he stands there.

  “I texted you three times,” he says. “And the last two, I felt really stupid doing it.”

  “I’m sorry,” Laurie apologizes. “I’ve just been busy.”

  “With what?”

  “My sister’s been dragging me around.”

  “And I can’t come with?”

  “It’s just—she has to go to—um—counseling.”

  Sean’s not going to let it go. “What for?”

  “You know—adjusting to a new place. She needs a new therapist. So we’ve been, like, shopping around.”

  Sean is a New Yorker—this should not sound implausible to him. And, indeed, he buys it.

  “My father sent me to a therapist once, when he thought I was spending too much time staring at Aquaman. Like, too late, Dad.”

  “That must’ve sucked,” Laurie says, and leaves it at that. I realize: Sean doesn’t know what happened to him. Sean is part of his new start.

  Sean moves closer, clears the door. I know this is my cue to leave.

  “Easy things are worthless,” Laurie says, and I realize he’s talking to both Sean and me. “It’s the hard things that matter. Those are the things worth leaping for.”

  “Like Aquaman?” Sean asks, a little confused.

  “Like Aquaman. Or the Wolfman, if you’re into that. Or the Invisible Boy. If we don’t fight other people’s curses, what are we left with? Just a swift fall to the earth, and where’s the meaning in that?”

&
nbsp; I know I can’t answer, not with Sean right there. So I have to rely on silence to send my message. I have to rely on Laurie to know that I wish he had been with me the last time I was on the roof. I have to trust that he knows I’m glad that I stayed.

  Chapter 18

  I AM FROZEN IN my chair.

  Killing him. The curse is killing him.

  Millie dabs at the corners of her eyes with a lace-trimmed handkerchief. She looks at me as though she expects she’ll need to rummage another hankie up for me too. But I don’t have tears. My horror is slowly melting into anger, being pushed aside like an iceberg carried on a warm ocean current.

  “What do you mean, probably?” I ask.

  My tone makes Millie jump in her seat. “Excuse me?”

  “How can it probably be killing him?”

  Millie shifts uncomfortably in her chair. “I’m just trying to warn you. To prepare you for the worst. It’s impossible to know for certain . . .”

  Her hesitation tells me she’s holding something back. “But?”

  “Curses have a certain morbid logic to them,” she tells me. “A natural course to run. Stephen’s curse wasn’t a punishment for him, it was a cruel blow to his mother, Arbus’s daughter.”

  “I don’t understand.” I am frustrated, fidgeting. I want to bolt from Millie’s hexatorium so I can find Stephen. It’s as if each moment I sit here, waiting for her explanation, it’s another moment he’s slipping away. He is no longer simply invisible. He’s going to disappear forever.

  Millie purses her lips. “Arbus designed the curse to render a child invisible, taking his existence—along with all the joy and exuberance that should accompany the arrival of an infant—and keeping him hidden from most of the world, even from his own parents. Arbus is nothing if not careful in his casting—he made sure that Stephen would stay alive, to always haunt his mother. Arbus wouldn’t have left anything to chance.”

  “That’s why his clothes disappear. That’s why he was solid as a baby. That’s why he made it this far.”