The Unseen

by Brian Harmon

  Confused, he turned and walked away, still carrying the stack of metal trays in case there were more queerly harmless monsters lurking in the building. Instead, he emerged from the kitchen and found himself standing before an obese man in his mid-fifties, dressed in western clothes from his cowboy boots and boot-cut jeans to his button-up shirt. A spiffy, black cowboy hat finished the look completely and added a new level of surrealism to this already exceptionally weird day.

  He was sitting at a table, one boot propped up on another chair, staring casually up at him. Had he been here the whole time? From here, he would have been completely hidden by the partition when Eric first entered the restaurant. And he probably wouldn’t have noticed him in his pointless desperation to escape those monsters.

  Looking up at him now, the stranger said in a clear, Texas drawl, “Now that right there never fails to be embarrassing.”

  Eric stared at the man, confused. “Excuse me?”

  The chubby cowboy shook his head. “I can make them look like anything I want. They can look like kittens if I want them to. Or wolves. Or a big old bear. Or something right out of your nightmares.”

  “You mean those things in there…? You made those things?”

  A proud smile spread across the fat man’s face. “Little trick of mine. It’s pretty cool, actually. They come in real handy. I experimented with a lot of things, but those’re the scariest I’ve found. And believe me, it can be effective. I’ve known people to jump right out of windows trying to get away from them. One time, I sent a dozen of them in after a guy and he just killed himself on the spot. Saw that he didn’t have enough bullets to shoot them all, I guess, and just put one in his own mouth instead.”

  Eric felt his stomach roll over. That was sickening, and yet the stranger sounded genuinely proud of himself.

  “But when people decide to fight…well, you saw what happens. They don’t hold up all that well.”

  “What are they?”

  The stranger shrugged. “Dunno. Some people call them ‘projections.’” He pronounced the word “per-jek-shuns.” “But I don’t really know what they are. They’re just something I can do.” He grinned up at Eric. “Pretty neat, huh?”

  “It’s definitely something,” replied Eric. These projection things sounded like something between a harmless residual and a manifestation of a real monster. He experienced both the previous year. One was little more than a mirage, the other fully capable of ripping a person’s head off.

  Why did he keep meeting people with the freakish ability to create monsters?

  The stranger stared up at Eric, studying him. He had the distinct feeling that he was being sized up.

  “So was I supposed to kill myself back there? Was that why you sent them after me?”

  Again, the stranger grinned. He shook his head, playfully scrunching up one side of his pudgy face as he did so. “Naw.”

  “So you just wanted to scare me, then?”

  “I suppose I just wanted to have some fun.”

  “Right. It was a total riot. A laugh a minute.”

  “Aw, don’t be a sore sport. Sure, they’ll bite if you let them, but if you put up any kind of fight at all, they’ll burst. Hell, all you’ve really got to do is bop them real good on the nose.”

  “Who are you?”

  Again, the cowboy grinned. “Nobody, really.”

  “Okay…” Apparently, no one was sharing names today. Eric found he could live with that. “What are you doing here, then?”

  “Same thing you are, I reckon.”

  “Which is?”

  The cowboy raised a hairy eyebrow. “You don’t know why you’re here?”

  “Not really, no. I just kind of stumbled onto these places this morning. I’m just trying to understand why they’re here. That’s all.”

  The man stared at him for a while, considering him. Finally, he said, “Well, there you go. We’re just trying to understand why these places’re here.”

  “So you’re some kind of detective, then? A scientist? What?”

  The stranger chuckled to himself. “Sure, why not?” He rose from his chair and stood before him. Up close, he possessed an impressive girth, much like the formidable Leon Rufar, although not quite as big around the equator and without the impressive beard. He also wasn’t nearly as muscular. His extra size came entirely from an apparent weakness for southern cuisine.

  His belly sagged over his belt, he had two too many chins, there were sweat stains on his shirt and his cheeks could only be described as jowls.

  Eric didn’t think the stack of pans he’d carried out from the kitchen would turn this monster into goo. He was going to need an industrial sized blender, which he didn’t happen to have on him.

  “Let’s just say, I’m here to find some answers. That’s all.”

  “Well, I’m afraid I don’t have any for you,” Eric said.

  “That so?”

  “Very much so. Like I said, I just stumbled onto the first of these places this morning.”

  “So you say.”

  Eric didn’t care much for where this conversation was going. “I do say.”

  “And yet, you’ve found more than one. How did you manage that?”

  “Well, once you’ve seen one, they all kind of stand out,” Eric lied. He hesitated to mention Aiden or his maps. He still wasn’t sure how all of this fit together. And Aiden, while skittish, hadn’t seemed particularly threatening. Sure, he’d shot at him with a Taser, but it could as easily have been a firearm. When it came down to the facts, Aiden simply didn’t seem dangerous. Unlike this guy. “I mean I did grow up around here. I think I’d notice if a gas station I’d been to a thousand times suddenly had an old deserted restaurant attached to it.” In truth, he still hadn’t seen this place from outside, but that was none of this tub of lard’s business.

  “That so?”

  “It is. Why are we talking in circles? What exactly do you think I’m going to tell you?”

  “Like I said, I’m just looking for some answers.”

  “Like I said, I don’t have any. And I have to be getting back. People are going to be wondering where I am.” Eric started to walk away, but the fat stranger blocked his path.

  “One more thing, before you go.” The man made a show of turning to the side with his thumbs hooked into the sides of his belt. Eric didn’t understand at first why he was doing this, but then he saw the glint of metal protruding from the back of his jeans.

  He had a gun. A big one.

  And he was making sure that Eric knew it was there.

  Thrusting one meaty hand out toward one of the nearby booths, he said, “What do you make of that over there?”

  Cautiously, Eric glanced in that direction. He didn’t see anything at first. But then he spotted it. It was another of those odd, circular symbols.

  “You ever seen one of those before?”

  Eric glanced back at the man. Instinctively, he felt that it was a bad idea to lie about it. “I have,” he admitted. “At the other places. I don’t know what they mean, though.”

  Turning around and gesturing in the other direction, the cowboy added, “There’s another one on the far wall, too.”

  Eric looked back that way. He was right. He hadn’t seen it in his rush to escape the mysterious creatures, but it was there, carved right into the wood paneling.

  Before he could think of anything else to say, Paul’s phone began to ring. More like his own phone, it blurted out a mechanical jingling noise, which was much better in his opinion than a Spice Girls song.

  “Who’s that?” the cowboy demanded.

  Eric withdrew the phone from his pocket and glanced at it. “It’s my brother,” he said, turning it so he could see.

  “Your brother,” repeated the cowboy as he looked at the screen. “It says ‘Karen.’”

  Eric looked at the screen again. “My sister?”

  The fat man scowled at him.

  “He used to be Kenny. Before the operati
on.”

  This seemed to catch the hefty stranger off guard. He cocked his chubby head, his jowls and chins jiggling as he did so. He seemed to be trying to decide if Eric was making fun of him or not.

  “It’s kind of a touchy subject, actually. I usually don’t discuss it with strangers.”

  “Are you trying to be funny?”

  “Nothing funny about it, I don’t think. It was actually quite sad. His first girlfriend was a store manikin named Rose.”

  The cowboy stared back at him, perplexed.

  “In hindsight, that was probably when we should have sat down and had a talk with him.”

  “You’re a strange one. You know that?”

  “Yeah. I get that a lot.”

  The phone stopped ringing and Eric lowered it, but did not return it to his pocket. If he had the chance, he wanted to get a picture of those symbols.

  But right now, he needed to remain cool.

  If you’re still here, Isabelle, he thought, let Paul know where I am. But don’t let him come looking for me. And definitely don’t try contacting me right now. He was sure she was there—she almost always was—and that she already knew these things without being told, but he liked to be safe.

  Just in case.

  “So you don’t know what these mean?” said the cowboy.

  “I don’t,” Eric assured him. He turned and walked to the nearest of the two symbols and examined it. Numbers spiraling inward, just like the others.

  1160087310023116.

  He lifted the phone and snapped a picture of it. “Let’s see if it’s the same as the one across the room.”

  Together, they turned and walked across the restaurant floor. As they did, Eric looked around. The symbols were here, but there was still something missing. Nothing here pointed to that mysterious tower.

  He wondered why that was…

  The second symbol was different from the first, just like in each of the other buildings, except for the last five digits. Eric snapped another picture and glanced at his fat companion. He didn’t seem to be concerned about the camera phone. “I don’t know what these numbers are. I don’t even know where to start guessing.”

  The stranger was quiet for a while, as if contemplating.

  “So what about you?” Eric asked. “Do you know anything about any of this stuff?”

  The cowboy turned and looked at him. “Nope. Afraid not.”

  Eric had the distinct feeling that this man was lying to him, but he didn’t dare tell him that. Instead, he said, “Well then, I guess that’s it. Dead end. Might as well go home.”

  The stranger continued to stare at him. He was suspicious. Eric could tell. But he really didn’t know anything. The symbols were still a mystery. He still didn’t know why these hidden buildings were here.

  He was in a very vulnerable position right now. If he was right about these places, no one could see or hear them while they were inside. This man could shoot him in the head and just walk out without anyone ever knowing what happened.

  And he was becoming more and more concerned that this was exactly what this man intended to do.

  He had to get out of here. And he had to do it now.

  His eyes drifted to the far wall. Squinting to see better in the gloom, he craned his neck forward and said, “What the hell is that over there?”

  The cowboy turned and looked. He scanned the room, but found nothing odd. “What?” he asked. He turned back and Eric caught him in the face with the edge of the stack of trays, staggering him backward and off his feet.

  He didn’t try to hit the man again. He didn’t dare go for the gun. He was no fighter. This man outweighed him by a considerable amount. He simply thanked God that such a stupid trick worked, threw the trays at him and ran.

  He had a few short seconds to worry about whether the doors would prove to be locked like the one in the kitchen, but it was a pointless concern. As he approached it, a gunshot boomed behind him and the glass disintegrated from his path.

  He raced through the shattered door and ran as fast as he could go toward the front of the building.

  The cowboy fired another round. Then another. The window to his left exploded. He crossed his hands over his face to shield himself from the flying glass and continued running.

  He realized he was cursing, but couldn’t quite remember when he started.

  When he was past the windows, he glanced back, but the cowboy hadn’t emerged yet. He had to get as far from here as he could.

  He turned forward again, and skidded to a halt as a truck squealed to a stop in front of him.

  “Shit!” shouted Paul as he leaned out the window. “Where the hell did you come from?”

  His heart thundering, Eric ran around to the passenger side door and jumped in. “Go!” he cried. “Get out of here!”

  “Why?”

  “Just do it!”

  But Paul was already doing it. With a roar of the engine and a squeal of spinning tires, the truck raced past the ruined doors of the restaurant and out of the parking lot.

  Eric kept his head down, half-expecting to be shot dead as they fled, but the cowboy did not follow him out into the parking lot.

  “What the hell happened back there?”

  Eric shook his head. “You’re going to have to let me catch my breath first.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Jesus, Eric,” said Paul when he’d finished telling him about what he found in the gas station. “The guy actually shot at you?”

  “Well, I did hit him in the face with some metal trays.”

  “That’s probably the only reason he missed.”

  Eric thought that was probably true. Between the surprise attack and at least enough pain to bring tears to his eyes, it must have played hell on the cowboy’s marksmanship.

  Paul shook his head. “I mean, shit… The man actually shot at you. That’s… That’s scary, is what it is.”

  “I know it is.” He’d had guns pointed at him before, but he’d never actually been shot at.

  “I’d have been crapping my pants if it was me.”

  “Not so much, really. You’re too busy running away. Didn’t really hit me until we were out of that parking lot.”

  “I guess I can see that.”

  “Considering how that all went down, I’m kind of glad I lost you back there.”

  Paul shrugged. “I grabbed the sodas and turned around and you were gone. I never saw where you went. I looked all over that place. The lady at the counter was starting to give me strange looks, so I bought what I had and left. That’s when I tried to call you.”

  “Sorry about that. It wasn’t a good time to talk.”

  “Right. That reminds me, here’s Karen’s phone.”

  “It’s already charged?”

  “Sort of. Kevin pulled up just as your—my—phone went to voice mail. He had a better idea. He just swapped the batteries with his.”

  “You can do that?”

  “Apparently.”

  “Huh.”

  “Yeah. I guess him and Karen had the same model or something. This one’s almost fully charged. You can have your Spice Girls ring tone back.”

  “Joy.”

  Paul chuckled.

  Eric examined the phone. He’d missed a call from Karen. She’d call back soon enough. She always did.

  “So the guy made those monsters?”

  Eric nodded. “He says he did. No reason to doubt him.”

  “So they are golems.”

  “I don’t know about that. The golems I encountered were deadly dangerous. I have the scars to prove it. They were also mindlessly relentless. These things… Well, they were intimidating…but in the end they were basically harmless. And when I found that out, the one that was left looked like it was afraid. Also, the golems were… What’s the word? Imperceptible. You could see them, but you couldn’t really understand what it was you were seeing.”

  “Maybe they’re just a different kind of golem.”

&nb
sp; “Maybe. But I think they’re a completely different kind of thing. He called them ‘projections.’”

  “Still sounds like a golem to me.”

  Eric shook his head. He didn’t know. But it was curious that this was the second person he’d met who could conjure monsters. Maybe the third. It was still possible that Pink Shirt was responsible for those black creatures he saw at the asylum.

  “Also, doesn’t that mean that this guy was at the hospital?”

  Eric nodded. “I was thinking that, too. That one came out of the stairwell, so he might’ve been down in the basement. Or maybe it came down from the second or third floor. I don’t know. I never saw him.”

  “I never saw anybody. But then again, I still haven’t seen most of these buildings.”

  “That reminds me, how did you know where to find me if you couldn’t see the restaurant?”

  “Isabelle called me right after Kevin swapped in the charged battery. She said to circle around the left side of the building, so I did.”

  “Of course. Thanks, Isabelle.”

  YOU’RE WELCOME, immediately appeared on Karen’s phone.

  “Any idea what was up with Billy-Bob back there?”

  NO IDEA

  “Didn’t figure so.”

  SOMETHING WAS FISHY ABOUT HIM

  “Yeah, No kidding.”

  I’M SORRY, ERIC. I’M NOT MUCH HELP TODAY

  “You’re plenty of help. There’s just nothing to help with. We still don’t know anything.”

  “So what are we going to do?” asked Paul.

  Eric sighed and stared out through the windshield. “I can’t put it off any longer. We need to head back to the apartment. I need to find out what Aiden is up to.”

  The Spice Girls began singing from Karen’s phone again and Eric answered it, shooting Paul a threatening look.

  Paul turned his hands up on either side of the wheel as if to say, “What?”

  The call was from home, but it wasn’t Karen’s voice that spoke to him from the phone. It was Diane’s. “Does Isabelle sleep?”

  Eric chuckled. “No. She doesn’t sleep.”

  “How does she not sleep?”

  “She isn’t sleepy.”

  “So she’s been awake for all those years?”