The Unseen

by Brian Harmon

  IS THAT A BUILDING THAT WASN’T THERE BEFORE? asked Isabelle via Karen’s cell screen.

  “I’d swear it wasn’t there before. I think I’d have noticed it.”

  WEIRD

  “That seems to be the word of the day.” He returned the vehicle to park and studied the building. It possessed a distinctly abandoned appearance. No one was parked in the immediate vicinity of its front doors. There were no signs advertising the building’s function. And the small lawn surrounding its foundation was as overgrown with weeds and brush and trees as the lot on Hosler. “What the hell is going on here?”

  I’M NOT SURE

  “So things that were there just vanish and things that weren’t there just appear from thin air? How does that work? Are we dealing with another fissure?”

  THE ONLY FISSURES IN WISCONSIN ARE THE ONES YOU FOUND LAST YEAR

  “Are you sure?”

  PRETTY SURE

  “Could this be a new one, then? From the same singularity?” A fissure, as it was described to him once by a man who turned out to have been dead for more than half a century, was a sort of crack between worlds, running out from a singularity (a single point where two separate worlds actually met). The singularity he visited was actually in Northern Minnesota, but to reach it, he’d had to travel the entire length of one of the fissures that stretched all the way down into Southern Wisconsin.

  I GUESS IT’S POSSIBLE, considered Isabelle. BUT IT’S NOT BEHAVING LIKE A FISSURE

  That was true. Fissures were strange places, but ultimately they behaved predictably from one moment to the next. This building seemed to have appeared while he was sitting here. The more he looked at it, the more he was sure it wasn’t there before.

  It stood out from its surroundings, seemingly impossible to miss.

  Eric shifted the Chrysler into gear again and drove over to this new building. He parked near the doors, then he killed the engine and stepped out into the warm, summer sun. Up close, the building looked even more deserted. The windows were covered in dust. Even the parking lot immediately surrounding it was crumbling. Weeds were slowly overtaking the asphalt.

  “So what kind of feeling are you getting about this place?”

  Isabelle responded before he had finished asking the question: IT’S LIKE THE APARTMENT

  Eric looked down at the phone and nodded.

  I DON’T FEEL ANYTHING LIKE THAT OLD WOMAN FROM HERE

  “That’s good news.”

  STILL BE CAREFUL THOUGH

  “Right.” Eric stuffed the phone in his pocket and walked up to the main doors. Like in the apartment, they were unlocked.

  It seemed that when a building could appear and disappear at random, no one felt the need to lock up.

  He paused and looked back out at the parking lot. Although a mysterious building had just appeared in the south parking lot of the hospital, no one seemed to have noticed anything. No one was paying him any attention.

  Just like on Hosler, when no one responded to his cries for help…

  Bracing himself for more nasty surprises, he opened the door and entered.

  Chapter Five

  The interior of this building was similar to that of the apartment. Dust and cobwebs; faded, stained and peeling paint; sagging ceiling tiles; an old and musty smell. The difference was that this place was obviously much older than the apartment. The decay was considerably more advanced, the damage much more severe. It was obvious that the building hadn’t been cared for in a long time. And yet there were no signs of vandalism, no graffiti, no broken windows, not even any garbage strewn about. There were footprints in the dust on the floor, but far fewer than there had been in the apartment stairwell, and much older, too.

  Eric stepped into a small waiting room of some sort. Any furniture had long ago been removed, but the receptionist’s window remained.

  It had a hospital-like atmosphere, and not in a good kind of way. This room was extremely small, with no windows except the ones set into the doors. The darkness gave it a gloomy feel that made him anxious to be here. And the door leading deeper into the structure seemed unusually large and solid, with only a narrow slit of a window through which he could see nothing more than deeper shadows.

  Why the hell would anyone leave a place like this open? Shouldn’t the doors be chained and padlocked? What prevented nosy kids from wandering in here and wrecking the place? It was amazing that someone hadn’t burned it to the ground.

  Eric pushed open the heavy door. It squealed loudly on old hinges, making him cringe. So much for a quiet look around. He might as well announce his arrival with a bullhorn. Hopefully, he hadn’t drawn the attention of any chainsaw-wielding lunatics on the premises. Or a pack of strange, black creatures. Or a scary old woman with razor claws.

  The corridor was narrow and dark. Besides the one leading into the receptionist’s station, there were two other doors here, one of them opened onto a small restroom, the other an empty room that looked a little large to be a janitor’s closet, but a little small to be anything else.

  Here, many of the ceiling tiles had crumbled onto the floor, revealing the naked, shadowy, spider-infested plenum space above. It was easy to imagine something lurking up there, following him, watching him, and even easier to recall that he’d seen things that made that thought more than a mere product of his active imagination. Given the bizarre circumstances, it was frightfully plausible.

  At the end of the corridor was another heavy door with another narrow window. With the same, loud screech as the last one, he pushed through this door and entered a larger room with a big, circular desk at the center. There was an elevator here, although he doubted there was any power to run it (even if he was stupid enough to get inside an elevator in a creepy, abandoned place like this) and six more of those heavy doors leading back out of the room into more narrow and shadowy hallways.

  This was beginning to remind him of an old, deserted factory he explored once, except that had mostly been vast, cavernous spaces. The cramped corridors of this place were a vast contrast to those wide passageways and massive production floors, but the closed-in, ominous feel was exactly the same. Something about this building made him very uncomfortable.

  From his front pants pocket, the Spice Girls blurted out “Wannabe” again. It was neither Isabelle nor Karen. No name was given and the number was unfamiliar. Not sure what to expect, he lifted it to his ear and said, “Hello?”

  For a moment there was only silence. Then a firm, female voice echoed him: “Hello?”

  “Yes?”

  Another pause. Then, “Eric?”

  “Yes?”

  The mystery caller laughed. “Sorry. I thought I had the wrong number for a second.”

  Now Eric recognized the voice. It was Lizzy Beedow, a close friend of Karen’s family. She was a very nice older woman with some charming eccentricities. Eric had talked with her on several occasions, but never on the phone.

  He didn’t realize how tense he was until he felt himself relax at the realization that it was not a collect call from hell or any of the other nightmare scenarios his overactive imagination had offered him. (It was turning out to be one of those days, after all.)

  While the girl-power ringtone made it impossible to forget that he was stuck using Karen’s phone, it hadn’t occurred to him that he was also using her number. He was likely to get more than one call from her many social circles today.

  “It’s all right,” he assured her. “I’m borrowing her phone to…” He glanced around the dark room. “…run some errands. I seem to have lost mine.”

  “Oh no. Not again.”

  Eric stood there beside the desk, his mouth half open, unsure what to say. Had Karen told everyone she knew that he lost his cell phone last year? She gave him a lot of grief about it, as he knew she would, but this seemed a little excessive.

  “You’ve got to be more careful.”

  It was only the second phone he’d lost. He knew plenty of people who’d had to rep
lace theirs multiple times and he didn’t hear anyone giving them a hard time. Even Karen had to have one replaced a few years ago. At least he never dropped one in the toilet.

  “I’m sure it’ll turn up,” said Eric. “Karen’s at home getting ready for the shower tomorrow.”

  “That’s what I was calling to ask about. Is there anything I can bring?”

  Eric glanced around impatiently. “I… honestly don’t have a clue. You’ll have to ask her. She tends to take control of these things and I just kind of go and get things for her.”

  Lizzy laughed at this. “That sounds about right. I just wanted to check because I have a new recipe my daughter gave me for these gluten-free peanut butter cookies. You wouldn’t think they’d be very good, but they’re delicious.”

  “Sounds wonderful,” Eric said. He turned and began walking around the room, studying the large, solid desk. “You’ll have to ask her about it.”

  Who used to work at this desk? What purpose did this room serve? What purpose did this building serve?

  “You know my son-in-law’s sister has that…um…what’s it called?”

  Eric rolled his eyes. Seriously?

  “I forget what it’s called. But she’s gluten-free. It’s an allergy.”

  “Celiac disease,” said Eric.

  “Yes. That’s it. She can’t eat wheat.”

  “I’m familiar with it.”

  “So she can’t have anything with flour in it.”

  “I’m… Yes. I know.” He’d known a number of people with the condition. Most of them students. It wasn’t that uncommon.

  “I didn’t think I’d like them at all. I thought, ‘How do you make cookies without flour?’ but I couldn’t believe how good they were. I thought maybe Karen could use a recipe like that.”

  “She might like that.” He ran his fingers through his hair, impatient.

  “You should try them.”

  “I’d like to try them sometime.”

  “Karen might even be able to spruce it up a little. I know how handy she is in that kitchen of hers.”

  “I’ll bet she can.” He strolled over to the elevator and pressed the button to call it. As expected, nothing happened. There probably hadn’t been power to this place in years.

  “She was the first person I thought of when I tasted them.”

  Since she didn’t seem to be planning to end the conversation any time soon, he asked, “Do you have our home number?”

  “I do. It’s right here.”

  “She should be home.”

  “Okay. Thank you.”

  “No problem.”

  “I hope you find your phone.”

  Was she ever going to hang up? He couldn’t very well carry on a polite conversation and listen for monsters. “Me too.”

  “Bye.”

  Eric hung up the phone before she could drag the conversation out any further and shoved it back into his pocket.

  He continued around the room, peering through the narrow windows into one gloomy hallway after another. These were each much longer than the one leading back to the waiting room, and there were a great many more doors leading to more rooms waiting to be explored, any one of which might contain a nasty surprise at least as terrifying as Grandma Krueger over on Hosler Avenue.

  One of the doors opened onto a wide, metal stairwell. Three more stories waited above him and at least one below. A dark and no doubt utterly creepy basement lay beneath his feet.

  He quickly decided not to explore down there next.

  He turned his attention instead to the more brightly lit corridors and something caught his attention. A shadow seemed to pass behind one of the narrow windows, as if someone had walked across the hallway.

  Now his adrenaline was rushing. His heart began pounding.

  Was someone here? Or was it only a shadow from outside a window? Past experience warned him to be careful. It was just as likely to be a twelve-foot-tall monster with an appetite for English teachers.

  He crossed the room and peered through the window. The hallway stretched out in front of him, illuminated by sunlight that poured through several open doors on the left. More sunlight spilled in through the narrow window of the door at the far end and dead leaves were strewn across the floor among the scattered remains of crumbling tiles.

  He entered this hallway, cringing again at the squeal of the old hinges. Though it was not as loud as the two previous doors, he was sure it was more than loud enough to alert anyone inside the building to his presence.

  This was not an ideal situation. Not by any stretch of imagination. If there was something bad lurking here, it would almost certainly know he was here long before he realized what he was up against. Every door was like a sounding alarm in this eerie silence.

  But no one called out, demanding to know who was here. No one threw open one of the many doors. No face appeared at any of the windows.

  Each room he peered into was utterly empty.

  A tree branch had broken one of the windows in the third room, letting in the leaves on which he was treading. The same broken window had also let in a considerable amount of rain over the years, warping the tiles and covering the floor of the room with a thick layer of grime.

  The last door on the left led to another staircase. It didn’t look any more inviting than the last, and he didn’t change his mind about hurrying down to the basement.

  He reached the end of the hallway and pushed open the door. This one, by some chance, was mercifully silent, allowing him to enter the room with barely a whisper of sound, but the luck was wasted. There was nobody here. He stood all alone in a wide-open room with windows on two sides. There was an emergency exit in the outermost corner and another door like the one by which he’d entered on the right. There was no sign of whatever made the shadow he saw. It was possible the shadow’s maker had exited by one of the other two doors, but his eyes drifted to the windows and the hospital and its parking lot outside. Perhaps it was only a passing truck. Maybe even a passing cloud.

  He turned his attention to the door on the right. He could already see that there was another hallway there.

  He started across the empty room toward this door, but then paused. Something felt wrong here.

  He glanced around the room. There was nothing…and yet…

  A light shiver crept up his spine. It felt as if something were about to happen.

  But nothing did.

  Seconds passed without incident and finally he turned and continued to the next door. It was not silent like the last one. It shrieked as he pushed it open, deafening in the silence.

  Still, no one came to see who was intruding.

  Perhaps there was no one here. After all, it should work both ways. No one else should be able to move through this building without making the same noise. No one could sneak up on him.

  Yet the thought had only just crossed his mind when another shadow passed behind a door ahead of him.

  Eric hurried to the end of the hallway and peered through the window. Another empty room stood before him, smaller than the last. Again, no one was here.

  As he pushed the door open, he caught sight of another shadow moving through the window of the next door, in yet another hallway. No one could have passed through here without him hearing it (these hinges were as loud as any before it) and the lack of fresh footprints on the dusty floors seemed to back this up.

  But something was moving around in here.

  He stood for a moment, listening, but all he could hear was the thundering of his own heart in his ears.

  Whatever had cast that shadow was gone again.

  Was it ever really there?

  Eric had to make himself take a deep breath. This was unnerving. Again, he had that strange feeling that something was off. It felt like he was being watched. Yet every room he peered into was deserted. He even searched for hidden security cameras, but he found nothing to explain this persistent paranoid feeling.

  At the midpoint of the nex
t hallway was an intersection. Another corridor ran to the right. The rooms in this area were slightly larger than the others, with heavier-looking doors. The surfaces in these were not painted, nor were they tiled or paneled. They were completely bare, as if they had been intentionally stripped down to the concrete and cinderblock when the structure was emptied.

  Again, Eric felt uneasy. Something about this place gave him a very bad feeling.

  He hurried onward to the end of the hall and pushed through the door that waited there to again find himself standing in the open room with the round desk and the eight doors.

  This was a nurses’ station, he realized. This entire building was some sort of medical facility. And he was suddenly sure it wasn’t any kind of place he’d ever want to be admitted.

  He was ready to leave.

  He turned his attention to the door leading back the way he came in, but before he could cross the floor, something moved behind the glass in a door to his left. Unlike before, it was more than a mere shadow. A dark shape passed, glimpsed from the corner of his eye and gone before he could turn to see it. And even as he searched this window, he glimpsed more movement from the door through which he’d just entered the room.

  In fact, each time he turned toward one door, something moved behind another, always in his peripheral vision, always just out of sight. He turned around in circles, searching, watching, trying to see what was there, but it eluded him again and again.

  Then, as suddenly as it began, it stopped. The shadows were gone from the windows. He was again alone in the building.

  He continued to turn in a circle, searching, but there was no longer anything to see.

  He hesitated a moment, still curious in spite of his apprehension, and then turned his attention to the door leading out of the building. A little fresh air, perhaps. A break to gather his thoughts.

  But as soon as he began to move toward it, a noise touched his ears. It came from behind him, from the door leading to the stairwell.

  Something was scratching at the door.

  He turned, terrified. Nothing moved behind the glass, but there was something there, something below the window, something, perhaps, that had crawled up from the dark depths of that basement…