The Unnoticeables (15 page)

The policeman fidgeted and began to close the file.

“That's impossible,” I finally said. “I only met him two nights ago. At a party.”

“We have several witnesses that confirm you have shown up on Mr. Luis's property, uninvited, on many occasions. That you have … let's see…” The cop flipped my folder out again on the table. He shuffled back a few pages and read: “… that you have ‘stolen his mail and other personal belongings, have vandalized his vehicle, have made personal threats to his wife and child—'”

Jesus Christ. He has a wife? A kid?

“‘… have, on more than one occasion, tried to blackmail him with rape charges if he did not agree to impregnate you—'”

“What the fuck?” I moved to snatch the folder away from the officer, but he slammed his hand down atop mine and stood.

“Ma'am, I understand that you may be mentally imbalanced and not entirely aware of reality as it stands—”

“No!” I stood now, too, and yanked my hand back. “He's a psycho! He's deranged! He threatened to hollow me out; he tried to poison me; he can get into my house no matter how many locks I have! You have to help me! He must have paid somebody here, falsified the report—”

“Ma'am.” The officer held up a finger to silence me.

He collected the files and composed himself carefully. When he spoke again, it was calm, even, and angry: “I took that report personally. I remember Mr. Luis. My granddaughter loves his work. I asked him for his autograph. Nice guy. He took a picture with me, for her. So I'm only going to tell you this once: Do not come in here again. Do not waste the time of this city's police force. And do not, under any circumstances, attempt to violate the order of restraint filed against you. Confused folks, people like you and Mr. Fennsen here—”

“Hey,” Fennsen protested, trying to wiggle his genitals free of his still-belted but otherwise undone jeans, “don't involve
me
with this. That bitch is crazy.”

The cop actually laughed, just once, before opening the door and waddling out of the interrogation room.

No. I will not accept this.

I stormed out after the policeman, ready to grab him, scream in his face if I had to; I didn't care what they thought of me. But if Marco had Jackie …

He wasn't there.

The man had left the room not one step ahead of me, but I looked around the office and saw only strangers in crisp blue uniforms. He had to be standing right in front of me. There was nowhere else to go. He was one of these cops here, leaning on their desks or hunched over their papers. He was …

He was a big guy. Old. Maybe a mustache. Right? I tried to picture him but could only think of that bald guy from
NYPD Blue.

I was just looking at him. Why couldn't I remember his face?

*   *   *

Wednesday night, 6:30
P.M.

I was sitting on the edge of my couch, holding my blinds apart with one hand, while the other nervously flicked a Cobra open and closed. I watched the recycling cans.

I couldn't believe it had only been two days since I first talked to Carey. He swore he knew what was happening to me, and I have no idea why I believed him. I'm not entirely sure I did, actually—but I couldn't think of anybody else that would even listen to me right now, much less offer any kind of explanation.

And if the old guy turned out to be crazy, well, that's what the Cobra was for: a telescoping baton comprised of seven inches of dense, hardened steel that, with the flick of a wrist, fluidly extends out to a sixteen-inch hybrid of a blackjack and a spring-coil whip.

It slides out like wet soap. To close it, you flex the shaft while pushing in and down. I don't know what psychological mechanism the repeated opening and closing of it was exploiting inside of me, but the action was intensely satisfying.

With the right permits, you can carry a gun pretty much anywhere in California. But Cobras are straight-up illegal.

I felt much better holding it than the misogynistic devil-girl Mace. I had to dig through my spider-infested outdoor storage for half an hour to find the Cobra. My ex-boyfriend Dean gave it to me after I had a bad scare while out on a jog one night. Some guy with cracked lips and bloodshot eyes tried to drag me into the bushes on one of my laps around the hospital by my apartment. I broke free, ran half a block, then turned around and stormed back. I stomped on his balls until he passed out.

It was a very stupid thing to do, in retrospect.

But it felt
amazing.

I nervously flicked the Cobra out. Tapped it on my running shoe. Pressed it against the wall and slid it closed. Flick, tap, close.

Every time a homeless person wandered down the alley beside my apartment, my heart skipped a beat. I've never noticed it before, but there are a surprising amount of homeless people milling about my neighborhood on garbage-day eve. It was like watching a migration on one of those
National Geographic
shows.

Yes, Kaitlyn. They're just like animals. Jesus Christ, what kind of thinking is that?

A hunched shape approached.

Flick.

It glanced at the recycling, started to move toward it.

Tap.

It looked around nervously, and I got a glimpse: younger woman, bundled up in a parka. She seemed to reconsider.

Close.

I waited through three more false positives before I finally caught the silhouetted spiked shoulders of Carey's jacket. He sauntered up confidently, a kind of old-school Mick Jagger cockiness in his walk. With equal arrogance, he bent and started rummaging through my garbage.

Am I really going to go out there? Talk to an old, drunk, almost certainly crazy homeless dude because he pinky-swore to believe my own insanity?

The argument was apparently moot. My body was already making the decision. Hand on the knob, deep breath, and out into the surf-and-trash-scented L.A. night. Carey was gently humming to himself as he tossed cans and bottles into a garbage bag.

“Hey,” I said.

I wished I had a more appropriate opener.

Hey, so you wanna chat about the inhuman monsters stalking me now, or what? Totally! Let's keep it casual.

Carey grunted and looked up, then spotted the Cobra in my right hand. When closed, the baton just looks like the broken handle of a jump rope, or maybe a light dumbbell. Most people wouldn't have a clue it was a weapon. Carey knew it immediately.

He held his hands up in the air, dropping a bottle of Mountain Dew in feigned terror.

“Take whatever you want,” he said shakily, “I've got a few empty beers, a half rack of Coke Zero, and I think there's even a Faygo in there somewhere. Just don't ruin my pretty face!”

I forced a laugh, but the more I looked at his sideways nose, squinty eyes, and cracked skin, the funnier it got. I managed a genuine chuckle; it was the first time I'd laughed since Jackie went missing.

“You look like you've been wearing shit glasses,” Carey said, spotting my eye.

“Thanks, just what a girl likes to hear. Burst a blood vessel.”

“So, this probably means you want to hear more,” he said, and let the lid of the can swing shut. He stashed his recycling bag between it and the wall of my apartment building.

“Yeah, I guess. It's—”

“It's gotten worse,” he finished for me.

“Yes. I think my—”

“Friend went missing. Gotcha.”

“Is this like your shtick? You're the psychic punk-rock hobo?”

Carey laughed.

“No, there's just a pattern to this. Always seems to go down the same way. Do you want to talk out here or…?”

He surveyed my apartment like a lonely old mutt. My heart tightened a little bit, to see somebody that desperate for shelter … then I remembered it was about seventy-three degrees outside and I'd given him free whiskey the last time I invited him in.

Ah, well, not like I'm drinking much of it myself these days.

I motioned to my door with my free hand and followed him a few steps back. I wasn't being as subtle as I hoped—remember, I'm a terrible actress—but Carey didn't seem to mind that I was wary.

I locked the door behind us, never taking my eyes off of him. He may have looked the part in his duct-tape-patched leather jacket, torn and faded T-shirt, oil-stained jeans, and combat boots—but he didn't carry himself like a potential murderer. He stood in the dead center of my living room, hands politely in his pockets, looking like an excited kid waiting for permission to go play.

“Do you want a drink?” I asked.

His eyes lit up like Christmas.

I waved him over to the dining room table and grabbed a dull green bottle from atop the fridge. I poured myself a glass of water. I didn't bother with a mug for Carey; there was only about a third of a bottle left. He was probably going to enjoy it more than me, anyway.

I was right: He took a long swig of the Jameson, swished it about like mouthwash, and then swallowed it slowly and with an exaggerated “Ahh!”

“So…” I prompted him, seeing him about to go back in for another gulp.

“Right.” He set the bottle aside with some noticeable difficulty and put on his serious face. “Where should I start?”

“What the hell is Marco?” I blurted out.

I meant to play it cool and skeptical, but I was gripping the sides of the table with both hands, and my feet were frantically tapping of their own accord. The Cobra was jammed between my thighs. Even if he did turn out to be a nut job, I doubted Carey would try to hurt me—but I was done making assumptions.

“Marco? That the guy in the car?”

I bit my lip and nodded quickly.

“He's an Empty One.” Carey answered the question and took a slug from the bottle as his reward.

“I don't know what that is!”

“He's … Shit, this is going to get complicated, scary, and crazier than a bag of wet cats in a big fuckin' hurry. So if we're going to do this, I want you to hold off on calling bullshit until we're finished, okay? When we're done talking, if you think I'm a wacko, I'll leave and you're only out part of a bottle of fine liquor and a half hour of your time. Deal?”

I closed my eyes for a second. Tried to push the logical part of my brain aside.

Fat lot of good it had been doing me lately, anyway.

I took a sip of my water. I nodded.

“Marco … Well, things like Marco, they started out human, but something got a hold of them. It emptied out all the parts you and I think of as making a person—nerves, emotions, empathy—hell, I think even their actual insides. The Empty Ones bleed like you or me, but you can stab 'em where the heart should be with a broken mic stand and they won't go down. That one's from personal experience: I've impaled the bastards with fence posts, hit them with Gokarts, thrown them into trash compactors, and drowned them in gasoline then lit it on fire and burned 'em from the inside. I've never killed one.”

I exhaled a little. I wasn't sure if I believed it, but it sure as hell wasn't what I wanted to hear.

“Jesus Christ…” I started, but he held up a hand to stop me.

Carey swallowed another bulging mouthful of liquor and continued.

“The Empty Ones aren't the only things you have to worry about. Marco is just one half of the shit tornado. The other half is something we call the ‘tar men.' I don't know if you've seen them yet, but they're exactly what they sound like: giants sculpted out of used motor oil. Like the sludge that congeals in sewer gutters next to the highway. Only they smell worse. It burns like crazy when they touch you.” Carey turned and showed me a vicious, cigar-shaped scar on the back of his neck. “It's like being grabbed by pure acid. They've melted some good friends of mine down to a nasty pink fluid. And near as I can tell? There's no reason for it. They don't eat you, or drink you, or do anything with any part of you. They just wander around dissolving your friends into puddles because they're giant supernatural assholes with nothing better to do.”

“That's fucking crazy,” I snapped.

I couldn't help myself. I was in too high of a gear. I was laying so much of my hope on this guy making sense of things for me, and to find out he was just off his meds would be too much of a disappointment.

“Hold it until the end—”

“No, god damn it! This is serious. This is my life—my
friend
's life! I know something weird is going on, but oil monsters? Invincible hollow people? No, dude. No way. Marco's on some kind of drug. Or he's a science experiment gone wrong. Or maybe he's an alien or something, I don't know. But—”

Carey slammed his bottle down, shaking the table. I stood quickly, knocking my chair over, and flicked the Cobra out. A quiet shunt and a short click as it locked into place.

“You started this,” he said softly, “and you're going to finish it. You got a real nice toy there. You're not going to have to use it. I am not going to hurt you. But I'm not leaving here until we're finished talking. Unless you want to spend the next week cleaning me out of the floorboards, sit back down and listen.”

His face was impassive.

I didn't think I could have hit him anyway. He reminded me of a dad. Not my dad—my dad was great—but
somebody
's crazy deadbeat alcoholic father, surely.

I tipped my chair upright with my foot. I tapped the Cobra on the ground and slid it closed. I sat down and sipped at my water like nothing happened.

“There's something else,” Carey said, picking up where he was before; “something bigger than Marco and the tar men. They have bosses, kind of. Or maybe gods, I guess. Fucked if I know: I've only seen the things a handful of times. All I know is that they reduce people. They do something to our brains, show them stuff they shouldn't see, and most just up and vanish after seeing it. There's a bang like fireworks, and the floor rumbles like a garbage truck passing by, then boom—a human being is gone into thin fucking air. But some people, they don't disappear entirely. They stand there and scream light instead. They puke black sludge and glow like a bonfire's going on in their skull, then whatever it is slowly hollows them out. When it's all said and done, you end up with two things: first, a smoking, empty husk that looks a lot like a guy you used to know; that's how you get things like Marco. And, second, a puddle of cancer at their feet that gets up and moves; that's how you get the tar men. These bosses or gods or whatever they are—they're using us for something. I don't know what, but when it goes right, we just up and go away. When it goes wrong, they end up with a person split in two, and neither half is anything like human anymore.”