The Fading (10 page)

‘No,’ he managed, barely audible. ‘Please …’

‘What’s wrong?’ Julie said, releasing him. ‘Did I do something wrong?’

‘No.’

Julie followed his eyes to the wall, the bed. ‘What are you staring at?’

The man twigged to the sound of her voice, springing from the bed with a cold sharp laugh. Of course Julie couldn’t see him,
the old Him who kept changing disguises. He floated for a moment, hanging in the air, his battered brown boots above the white
carpet, and then
his heels landed without a sound and he loomed with a hysterical grin right up in Noel’s face.

‘I know, I know, it’s seriiiii-eeee-oooouuusssss,’ he sang, and Noel’s teeth clicked on the edge of his tongue, drawing blood.

Backing away from him, looking over her shoulder, Julie said, ‘Hey, what? What was … where did you go?’

The Smiths man was humming deliriously, and Julie’s words scared him more than if she had started screaming bloody murder.

‘Noel? Seriously, this isn’t funny. You’re scaring me.’

Noel closed his eyes but it did no good. He could see through the lids, through the hands he covered them with, through the
bones and flesh of his windmilling panic, and he had no choice but to witness all that followed.

He didn’t know if it was the sound of his footsteps or his breathing that alerted Julie to the impossible fact that he was
still here but no longer visible. He hadn’t dropped in so long, he forgot the basic commandments.

Don’t speak. Don’t move. Don’t breathe.

As far as anyone with you at the moment of change is concerned, you simply weren’t where they thought you were. They didn’t
see anything because there is nothing to see. A person is either here or not here, but there is no ‘vanishing’ to witness.
They will chalk it up to a mental lapse, a blink or distraction that lasted too long, but only if you let them. If you shatter
the safety of their logic-hungry delusion with the reality of your invisible presence, you will only create chaos and harm,
and the hell will come down on you again.

After her first sharp intake of breath, Julie twirled, confused, half-formed words dying on the lips he had almost kissed.
Trying to reclaim what was already lost, Noel forgot himself and said, ‘I’m sorry.’

Julie yelped, his voice too close, emanating from nowhere. Her face paled and she backed into the wall. He should not have
confessed to her earlier, let himself
get attached to her, for something in the way they had bonded now allowed him to think he could explain. The Smiths man was
grinning at him from her bed, hopping up and down, humming a new disturbing melody.

Noel tried again. ‘It’s okay, don’t be afraid, wait, just listen to me—’

Julie jumped away, his fingers grazing her arm.

She flinched, her eyes wild. ‘What’s going on? How are you doing that? What are you doing to me?’

Above them the house echoed with the slamming of the front door.

Julie began to shake. ‘Oh, my God, my mom’s home …’

Noel’s heart tightened like a fist and then opened with a sharp rush as she bolted for the door. ‘Wait, Julie, don’t do that!’

He threw himself across the room, trapping her just before she collided with him. She screamed and jumped back, twisting and
wheeling her arms as if she were being swarmed by hornets.

‘Julie, stop! Stop!’

Julie screamed again.

Upstairs, muffled, her mother might have said, ‘Julie? Is that you? What’s wrong?’

‘Mommy!’ Julie ran toward the door.

Noel couldn’t help reaching for her. ‘Julie—’

But her screams cut him off, froze him. She spun away, colliding with the door, wrenched it open and slipped into the basement
living room. He sought to minimize the damage before she ran crying into Lisa’s
arms and they shut him in down here. If that happened, he would be trapped and his dad would know and his mom would be in
trouble and they would send him away.

Noel caught her on the run at the foot of the stairs. He gripped her arm and with his free hand cupped her mouth, silencing
her. Julie slipped and they fell together, back and hips banging onto stairs. She fought and he rolled off but did not let
go. Above them Lisa called out, heels clicking across the main floor.

‘It’s okay!’ Noel hissed at Julie. ‘It’s just me, this is what I was trying to expla—’

Julie bit the fingers she felt but could not see, grinding his knuckles. Noel yelled and tore his hand away, opening the way
for her screams. She wrestled from under him and up the stairs, stumbling to her feet. Now there was only escape. The basement
contained no exits. There was no salvaging anything. His entire existence funneled down to a hot bolt of self-preservation.

Noel shoved himself off the floor and stormed the stairs, passing Julie on the landing, pulling himself up and dancing past
her with the handrail.

Three steps from the top, the doorknob retreated from Noel’s falling hand. The door flew wide and the kitchen’s brightness
hit him a moment before Lisa filled the doorway. He saw Lisa, a terrified mother, seeing through him the commotion of her
daughter scrambling up the stairs, and she gasped in confusion.

‘Mommy! Help!’ Julie wailed, and Lisa lunged forward.

Noel dodged to her right and it would have been so much better if he had simply collided with her, knocking her to the kitchen
floor, even giving her a concussion. But he slipped between her and the doorway and dove. Something heavy struck his ankle
with a thud. Julie screamed again and breath was knocked from one of them as he hit the kitchen floor, tripping as he had
tripped Lisa. A chaotic rumble shook the stairs, followed by a sickening silence, then a final slam into the wall. A strained
moan issued from one of them, rising in pitch to a gulping, desperate choke. And died.

The house fell quiet but for Julie’s sobbing.

Noel got to his feet. He went toward the front door, but when no one chased after him he stopped. He turned and stared at
the orange digits of the stove clock, the clean counters, the red leather purse Lisa had set next to the toaster. There was
a mother and daughter here. Julie was her daughter and Lisa was her mother and they were a family with or without his dad.
Happy John loved them and somehow the duo that they were, not even his family yet, made it all unbearable. He wanted again
to burn the house down, not out of anger but to erase the whole stage where this had happened. And if they weren’t here, he
could do that and sit inside, letting the flames turn his invisible bones to ash.

A minute passed. Julie didn’t come to the top of the stairs. Lisa didn’t come to the top of the stairs.

He was the only one who could help them. He walked to the top of the stairs.

Julie was crouched two steps above her mother, looking down, huddled in a ball, knees at her chin. She gave no indication
she knew he was here.

Lisa lay on her back. One of her brown leather heels was standing on the third from bottom stair, upright as if on display.
The other shoe hung by the toe of her left foot. Beside it, the right foot seemed more naked than naked in its brown stocking
with the white toe pad. Her legs were extended in a straight slide down to the landing where the upper half of her body rested
flat. Her chin was dug into her chest from the wall that stopped her descent at the back of her head. Blood threaded from
one ear down to her chin where it was pushing a stain into her blouse. She could not see him because of who he was and what
he had become. She could not see him because she was knocked unconscious or dead.

Her eyes saw him, though. The shiny black rings of them between strands of her messed black hair were watching him and seeing
everything he had done, everything he had become.

He turned and ran.

The drivers in the cars on 88th, the people walking out of the bank and the kids at the bus stop could not see him because
he did not exist to them. He was glass. He was air. He was a phantom with no place to rest. He had run from his father’s house
until he could run no more. Now he was numb, walking aimlessly, beyond tired. He was hungry inside, but not for food. He needed
something to make him feel the body he could not see, to
take away this emptiness, to mark him in the nothingness of his own life.

Dusk settled over Westminster as he crossed the parking lot to the mall. There was another fall day not so long ago his mother
had brought him here to pick out school clothes, but he did not remember that now. He stood in the corner of the lot and watched
as a long black sedan parked in a vacant space far away from the rest of the cars. The door opened and a man stretched his
way up and out of it, his black suit and stovepipe pant legs unfurling on a warm autumn breeze. The man’s back was to Noel
as he faced the mall, but Noel knew who it was. The set of the shoulders and the glossy black shoes, maybe. The unhurried
alley cat stride, for sure.

Noel followed.

On their way to the bank of doors, the stylish man paused and looked over his shoulder, offering a sad smile. He cocked his
chin –
this way, my little bloke, we have to go this way and make the best of it.
Noel moved on instinct. This guy. This man. This confident dude would show him the way.

Noel felt no stress at all as he approached the doors and the other shoppers filed past him, unaware. He moved into the bright
lights and food court smells, the shopping center warm and alive with the splashing of the coin fountain and the voices everywhere,
the filtered music playing loud enough to mask his footsteps. The man from Julie’s poster, who Noel had come to think of simply
as Smith, was only about a hundred feet ahead and disappearing around a corner.

Noel hurried, afraid of losing his guide, passing a hair salon, a toy store, racks of shoes, a record store, Orange Julius
with its ferris wheel of oil-beaded hot dogs and whirring blenders. Voices like radio waves, garbled and pushing into his
ears one moment, retreating in a wash of white noise the next. There he was. Smith was waiting at the base of the escalator.
Seeing Noel, he stepped on and up.

Noel eased into the foot traffic and rode in a soothing glide until the steel stairs delivered him at the top. There was no
sign of Smith, only a wooden oval booth with a security sign and two husky men standing together, badges and gold buttons
on their white shirts. Noel caught a glimpse of a black jacket entering The Gap. He moved faster, crossing the mezzanine and
flowing into the circle mazes of sweaters and dress shirts, veering away from the dressing-room cages with the legs below
kicking into jeans, clacking plastic hangers, and, just as quickly out, back onto the polished wooden promenade. Smith wasn’t
in The Gap. It was beneath him.

Where did he go? Noel scanned the promenade and walked on, searching. Cookie booth. Watch store. Stationery. Candles. He reached
the far end of the mall and stopped outside the last department store, gazing up at the lifeless alabaster mannequins posed
in purple and green dresses, raincoats, rainbow leggings. A white glow snagged at the corner of his right eye, a twinkle slightly
behind him. He turned.

Smith was leaning against an onyx pillar, smoking,
even though smoking was not allowed in the mall. He nodded
that way
.
ZALES JEWELERS
, the sign announced, with a neon-tubed diamond beside it. Smith put the cigarette out on the back of his
hand, flicked it away and ambled inside.

The terror and numbness vented from him in seconds. Noel’s mind thrummed with an electric buzz that spread in all directions
like lightning, dimming him before the world, securing him in its blinding eye. A nearly sexual hunger welling up inside him,
confident and demanding to be fed, Noel felt like a boy who has located the X on the treasure map and has just been handed
the shovel.

The store was small and cut diagonally with the corners cut again, like the face of a gem, with rows of glass cabinets filled
with bright light that bounced off the precious things. A tall woman with straight white-blonde hair falling to the waist
of her red dress was standing behind a display. Between attempts to lure pedestrians with her promising eyes, she fussed with
a T-stand looped with necklaces. She had a huge smile with horse teeth and her hands seemed large enough to grind the necklace
stones to powder. She looked directly at Noel from less than six paces and her gaze passed through him like a warm wind.

There were only three customers in the entire store. Two employees. The tall blonde and a shorter, older woman, who reminded
Noel of Weezy on
The Jeffersons
, if the matriarch of the titular family had been white instead of black. Her posture kept her leaning forward and her butt
followed her like parade balloons. Weezy whispered something in the tall blonde’s ear, patted her shoulder and went into the
back room.

Smith sat on one of the glass cases, his smile gone, his
eyes darker, serious.
Be patient
, the nasal British voice came to him again, even though Smith didn’t so much as open his mouth.
Observe. Be smart, but not afraid. They can’t touch us in here. Use the people, young chap. They, not the bubble, are your
real camouflage.

Noel walked to the far end of the front counter, away from the others, and gazed into a cabinet filled with thick watches
of gold and silver. Massive polished dials for men, slimmer ones for women. Then bracelets made of silver and gold, with gems
of red and blue and green, displayed in clusters according to color. After the necklaces, rings. Everything from tiny bands
with diamonds the size of sand grains to thick, zig-zagging bands that interlocked and held rectangular blocks of diamond
thrust up in their metal teeth. Noel became dizzy, but it was not an unpleasant feeling.

He watched the tall blonde. She wore a lot of jewelry and he guessed she made a lot of money working here. She came forward
to greet a young couple who had entered the store. They were dressed in jean jackets and cowboy boots and were laughing, holding
hands, practically falling into each other as they pointed at different rings. Noel suspected they were drunk, but not too
drunk, just enough to make a little party of their shopping. He was happy for them, and knew he could use them.