The Unseen (20 page)

Marnie, the girl who’d first accompanied Reese to the hospital, stood and waved when she saw him.

“Yay, you brought him!” Marnie hurried over, her long breezy skirt billowing, and gave Peyton a hug and a peck on the cheek. “How are you?”

“
Good, good, good,” Peyton said.  His whole body was twitching—maybe he’d snorted just a little too much at once. “So everybody here is from your church?”

“
Peyton thinks everybody’s going to pounce on him and try to change him.” Reese slipped her arm through his. “He doesn’t like religion.”

“
Oh, I’m the same way,” Marnie said. “Mostly.  Come sit with us!  I made pigs in blankets.  They’re so cute.”

The group was friendly to him and nobody talked about their church.  The conversation was normal and light—movies, video games, celebrities—and nobody acted particularly weird.  Peyton noticed a guy and a girl, both of them about fifteen, wander back into the trees to share a cigarette, and nobody hassled them about it.  The music was fantastic, and he was able to relax on the blanket and enjoy it after the brunt of his coke wore off.  Reese lay next to him, and somehow managed to slowly drift up against his side without seeming to move much at all.

Peyton didn’t push her away, but he tried not to enjoy the warmth and closeness of her body, or the sensation of her hips and arms and fingers touching his.  He popped a few more codeine pills throughout the evening.

By the time she brought him home at eleven, he was staggering, a little dizzy from the cocaine and opioids warring in his bloodstream.  His body didn’t know whether it was supposed to be jacked up or mellowed down.

Since he was swaying on his feet, Reese helped him upstairs to the bedroom, his arm around her shoulders.  He lay back on the bed.  The codeine was winning; he was drowsy.

She looked down at him and crossed her arms.

“You’re not well,” she said. “I think I should stay here tonight.  In case you need help.”

“
Stay here?” he asked.  His voice was getting slurred, and so was his brain.  He wasn’t sure he’d heard her right.

“
Don’t get ideas, Peyton!  I’m sleeping on the couch.  I’m here strictly as a friend and as an act of charity.”

“
Whatever.” Peyton closed his eyes.

A loud, wet crash woke him hours later.  It was still very early, before dawn.

Peyton groaned and opened his eyes about a third of the way.  He was exhausted.  He wanted to sleep another hour, or maybe a week or a month, but the sound wouldn’t let him.  It rolled on and on, a cascading thunder.

“
Stop it,” he grumbled at the sound, whatever it was, but it didn’t stop.

He opened his eyes more.  The light was on in his bathroom, the door standing half open.  It was the only interior door in his entire home.

The relentless, hateful sound that had awoken him at a cruel hour was, he finally realized, his own shower, running at full blast.  Who was in there?  He didn’t remember Cassidy coming over.

Gradually, his brain pieced together that it had to be Reese.  He vaguely remembered what she’d said as he passed out on the bed.

The shower went on for a few more minutes, and he couldn’t help but picture the girl standing naked among the pebbled shower tiles, her body steaming in the hot water, her short blond hair dripping.  He wondered what she looked like without her clothes.

When the water stopped, his heart kicked up a notch.  She would be stepping out.  How could he not watch?  He lay where he was and kept his eyes open.

He heard the shower door creak open, heard her bare foot touch the floor.  Then he saw her—she held the towel before her, drying her face as she approached the mirror, but he was seeing her from the side.  From the side, it was as if she were naked, wearing nothing but the black eye patch.  He could see the side of her right breast, the light stripes of her ribs, the tight curve of her butt and the floss-thin tan line on her hip.

He was instantly, fully aroused, the desire already clouding his brain.  He couldn’t help it.

Then she lowered the towel and snapped her head around to see him with her left eye, as though she’d felt his gaze drinking her in.  She screamed and slammed the door.

“
I thought you were asleep!” she shouted from inside the bathroom.

“
Shower woke me up,” he said, but probably too low for her to hear.  He was much too sleepy to yell back to her.

She rummaged around in the bathroom, taking such a long time that his interest began to wane and his desire to go back to sleep reasserted itself.  He was nodding off when she opened the door again half an hour later.

She had transformed into Hot Professional Woman.  She wore chunky black heels, a tight black suit jacket and pants with dust-colored, barely visible pinstripes.  Her white shirt looked starched and ironed.  She wore a brooch with a small golden-spiral logo, probably the seal of whatever dull corporate entity she served by day.

Her blond hair was pulled back, and she wore gold-rimmed glasses over
two
blue eyes.

“
Hey,” Peyton said.  He was still too thick-brained with sleep to say
Hey, your eye came back
properly, so he just gestured stupidly at his own right eye.

“
It’s glass,” she said.

“
So why the patch?”

“
I like the patch.  Sometimes feeling the fake one in there freaks me out,” Reese said.  She stood near the foot of her bed, carrying a black purse, a different one than she’d had the night before.

“
When did you get clothes?” Peyton asked, waking up a little more.  He pushed himself to a seated position, though his back and abdominal muscles were still weak.  He tried not to let the strain show on his face.

“
I keep an all-occasions suitcase in my trunk,” Reese said. “It helps.  You never know where missionary work will take you.”

“
Because that’s what this is, isn’t it?” Peyton asked. “I’ve got to say, you’re a lot more dedicated than those people who just knock on your door and give you a booklet.”

“
Every moment of my life is missionary work, no matter what I’m doing.” Reese bit her lower lip as though nervous, then she walked briskly to the side of his bed, standing over him. “Some moments are just more pleasant than others.”

She leaned down and kissed him on the mouth, and he was far too surprised to react.  If she had lingered a moment longer than she did, he would either have to push her away or grab her and draw her onto the bed with him.

She pulled back.

“
I’ll see you soon,” she told him. “Maybe I can get off work early.”

“
Maybe,” he said, feeling suddenly overwhelmed.  What was happening here?

“
I’ll call you.” She gave him a warm smile, then walked away down the stairs and out the door.

“
What the fuck?” Peyton asked nobody in particular, and then he lay back and closed his eyes again.  He was aching badly, though, and unable to sleep until he found the few remaining codeine pills.

Cassidy spent her time sketching the transparent creatures that had been everywhere lately, as though the accident had made her brain worse than ever.  Barb had brought her a few clothes and her appointment book from work, and Cassidy had to call clients, apologize for missed appointments, try to reschedule for the following week.  It wasn’t pleasant, but it made her feel productive.

Wednesday night, she fell asleep and slipped out of her body again.  She felt a surge of exuberance at freeing herself from her aching, injured body, and her mood was suddenly playful and curious, like a child exploring a new ability or a new toy.

She floated out of her apartment but resisted the urge to fly up above the city, remembering the large, winged monsters that she’d seen up there.

Cassidy decided to check in on Barb and test to see whether her best friend could see her.  She began flying south toward Little Five Points, but the entire scene around her quickly dissolved and changed.

She floated in front of the two-story yellow house, where the lights were out at this early hour of the morning.

She passed through a front window on the second floor and into Barb’s room.  Barb was asleep in the bed, and Cassidy hovered over her for a moment, trying to decide what to do.

Cassidy lowered herself toward Barb, thinking she would try to tickle the girl’s nose and wake her up.  She didn’t know how she would do that, when her own hand was just a rough pencil-sketch outline, but she tried.

Something stopped her before she reached Barb.  It felt like a taut wire across her midsection, holding Cassidy back.

Cassidy saw it now—a few thread-thin filaments in the air, slightly glowing, drawn in a circle just inside the walls of Barb’s room.  Other dully glowing shapes, lines, and curves floated in the air.

Cassidy was reminded of the handheld sparklers she’d occasionally used at holidays like the Fourth of July and New Year’s Eve.  She could draw circles and letters in the air with the burning sticks, and they would seem to hang there in a space for a moment before fading away.  The glowing lines around Barb’s room were like those ephemeral fire-shapes, only these weren’t fading.

She tried to go around it, but the circle, though essentially two-dimensional, stopped her from getting close to Barb from any direction.  Cassidy remembered how Barb’s little spell had cleared the ugly transparent creatures from Cassidy’s room.  Apparently the same magic created a barrier against Cassidy, too.

Barb!
Cassidy thought as loudly as she could. 
Barb!  Can you hear me?

Barb didn’t even stir in the bed.

Unable to move closer to Barb, Cassidy slipped through the wall, through old wooden studs and tangled wires, and emerged into her own room.  She could move freely here.  Her room appeared just as she’d left it, except for a few open drawers where Barb had searched for clothes to bring her.

Cassidy decided it might be fun to spy on her other housemates.  She sank through the floor and instantly regretted the decision.

She floated near the ceiling of Stray’s room.  He snored below her, the curls of his heavy beard puffing out with each snore.  There was something cartoonish about that, and Cassidy felt laughter bubbling inside her, though she had no way to let it out—the laughter was like the fizz inside an unopened can of Coke or LaCroix water, churning around but unable to escape.

Unfortunately, it turned out that Stray slept naked without any covers, so she also saw his chest and large beer belly, both shaggy with dark body hair.  His pubic hair was a mountain of dark curls as large as the overgrown beard on his face.  This saved Cassidy from seeing too much, but she was still afraid the image would be seared into her mind forever.

She fled through the wall and found herself in Allie’s room.  Allie slept below, nestled between her two boyfriends.  Fortunately, a striped sheet covered all three of them.

Cassidy moved through the dark and quiet house and out onto the wraparound porch.  She liked to sit out here in the shade on lazy days, drawing on her big bristol pad, sometimes watching people in the park across the street for inspiration.

She felt restless.  Nothing was happening here.  Cassidy thought about checking in on Peyton, and she pictured him in his loft, trying to determine the most direct way to fly there.  It would be slightly west and south of her house.

As she focused on him, the scene around her again dissolved, and Cassidy was transported instantly to Peyton’s dim bedroom.

Peyton lay across his bed, zonked out, his shirt and pants loosened.  She felt a sting of pity at the sight of his rib brace.  He looked beautiful and helpless.

Cassidy drifted down to the bed beside him and reached out her pencil-sketch hand to touch him, but her fingers passed through his shoulder.  She wished she had her body with her so she could snuggle up against him and they could lie together, two broken people with nowhere to go.  She felt how much she’d been missing him, and not just physically.  A psychological and emotional distance seemed to be opening between them, and she didn’t understand why.

She heard a creak, and a rectangle of light reflected in the thick squares of glass on Peyton’s wall of windows.  It was shining from somewhere below, on the first floor, as though somebody had opened a door and let a stream of light into the dark loft.

Worried and a little afraid for Peyton, Cassidy dropped through the floor down to the spacious first level, which had no interior walls, just some support columns for the second story.  Peyton had strung a hammock between two of them.  The only way in or out was the front door to the common hallway, but it was closed.

Cassidy saw the light glowing from a second door, though—the refrigerator door, standing wide open in the far corner.

The light from the fridge outlined a bob of blond hair and a slender, shapely body.  A girl rummaged through Peyton’s refrigerator, wearing a clingy pink tank top and black-string panties that certainly didn’t hide much from behind, especially when she bent over to check the produce drawer.

Cassidy froze where she was, stunned.  She let it gradually sink in that some girl was walking around her boyfriend’s home in her underwear at three in the morning.

You won’t find much to eat in there, honey,
Cassidy thought.  She moved closer and was surprised to see a colorful assortment of fresh fruit in the drawer, from which the girl took an apple.  It wasn’t like Peyton to fill up his fridge with so much produce.

Did you buy him groceries?
Cassidy thought, feeling hot anger rushing out from her in all directions.  Without a body to contain her emotions, her fury swelled to fill the room, like the scorching heat of the sun, flowing outward from her core.
Did you buy him fucking groceries?  Who the hell are you?

She roared toward the girl, her anger rocketing her forward.  The girl spun around and looked right at Cassidy, her single blue eye going wide.  Cassidy froze where she was, about two feet from the girl’s face.

“
Who’s there?” the girl asked, staring at where Cassidy floated.

The girl appeared to know Cassidy was there, but that wasn’t the reason Cassidy had stopped cold.  In fact, part of her mind had thought,
Let the bitch see me, I hope I look like an angry ghost
.

She’d stopped because she recognized the girl—Reese.  Confusion instantly displaced her anger.  Why was Reese back in town after all these years?  Why was she at Peyton’s loft?   Why was she in her underwear?

“Come out where I can see you.” Reese advanced on her, scowling now under her black eyepatch. “I’m not scared of you.  Show yourself.”

Reese stopped when she reached Cassidy, her eye fixated on the point in the air where Cassidy seemed to hover.  A wicked smile played on Reese’s lips.

“Come out and play,” Reese whispered. “Unless you’re scared of me.”

Cassidy turned cold and dropped slowly toward the floor, her fear dragging her down.  Reese watched her fall.  Cassidy felt confused and suddenly lost—she’d assumed she was invisible, but Reese could see her somehow.  What truly frightened her, though, was the wicked smile on Reese’s face, her attitude that said she expected a fight and expected to win.

Questions surrounded Cassidy, spinning her like a gust of high wind.

“
Running away now?” Reese smirked. “I can feel you leaving.  Did I scare you, poor thing?”

The layers of weirdness were piling up too fast, so Cassidy took off, shooting across the living room, over the couch—barely noticing it had been made up with a pillow and blanket—and out through the square panes of thick glass, out into the loft complex’s community garden area, where she sank and felt herself shivering.

I want to go home
, she thought, and she felt again the sensation of a rubber band snapping, pulling her back across town to where her body lay waiting.

She awoke and reached for her phone to call Peyton.  It rang a few times, then she heard his voice:

“You’ve got my voice mail,” he said. “Leave a message.”

After the beep, she hesitated, her mouth hanging open. What was she going to say?  That she was calling to yell at him about something she’d seen in a dream?

She hung up without saying a word.

Barb came to visit early Thursday morning, about ten-thirty, with more clothes and pills.  It was a sunny day, and they sat out on the balcony together.  Cassidy had a great deal to talk about.

She started by showing Barb the latest drawings in her sketchbook.

“
It’s not just the occasional hallucination anymore,” Cassidy said. “A worm floating aimlessly in the air, a transparent bug....These things are everywhere now.  More kinds than I’ve ever seen.  In my dreams, I see these huge rotten vulture things.” Cassidy pointed to a sketch of the Atlanta skyline, the skyscrapers like the soaring trees of a primordial forest crawling with half-visible monsters.

“
Are you still astral projecting, too?” Barb asked.

“
That’s what I dream about.  I’m flying without my body, and this is what I see.  But I’m starting to see them everywhere when I’m awake, until my pills kick in.”

“
Really?”

“
Yes.  So tell me what they are.  If they’re real, I mean.  What would they be?”

“
I’m not sure.” Barb leafed through the sketchbook. “Maybe unquiet spirits?”

“
They don’t look human.  They don’t feel human, either.”

“
What do they feel like?”

“
Parasites.  I see them feeding on people, only I can’t tell what they’re eating.”

“
Feeding on people.” Barb nodded, as though it made any sense. “They must be sucking out energy.  Spiritual energy, if they’re supernatural.”

“
Like psychic mosquitoes?”

“
Or vampire bats, if you want them to sound cooler,” Barb said.

“
You’ve heard of things like this?”

“
Maybe.  Little creatures of the astral plane.  They’re supposed to be harmless.”

“
They’re not all little.”

“
I’m so jealous.” Barb shook her head. “Do you know how many times I’ve meditated and tried to travel out of body?  It’s never worked.”

“
I’m probably just dreaming.”

“
We should test it out!” Barb sat up, excited. “Oh, yeah, let’s do that!”

“
How?”

“
Easy.  We go into separate rooms, then I pick something and hold it up.  You project into my room and see what I’m holding.  If you see the right thing, we’ll know it’s real and not just a dream.  This is so exciting!” Barb was already on her feet, pushing on the door to Kieran’s room, which was locked from the inside.

“
That’s not my room anymore,” Cassidy reminded her.

“
Oops.  Come on, let’s go!”

Cassidy sighed and followed on her crutches, almost reluctant to find out the truth.  She wasn’t sure whether she preferred to be crazy or to live in a world where invisible creatures were secretly feeding on everyone...and where Peyton had truly had a certain panty-clad house guest the previous night.

“I’m not sure if I can do it when I want,” Cassidy said. “I usually just pop out without trying.”

“
Just pop out, then.”

“
I’ll go to my room.  It might work better if I’m in bed.”

Cassidy closed the door firmly behind her, then locked it for good measure.  She eased her way down to the bed, leaning her crutches against the wall.  She lay back and closed her eyes.

Nothing happened.  She concentrated, willing herself to get up and out there, but that didn’t work.  Then she tried imagining what it had felt like to be out of her body, floating and peeking in wherever she liked.  She remembered the feeling of freedom and exhilaration.