I took the bottle from her hand and took a pull.
“So what does it all mean?”
Rachael’s pencil tapped the screen again.
“It means I don’t have a clue who you’re dealing with.”
8
Two hours later, nearly midnight. I sat in the comfy chair near my corner of the living room, one leg slung over its upholstered arm. My angled thigh played easel for the sketch pad in my lap. Bliss sat on my other leg, purring, kneading my knee.
It was impossible to sleep.
Rachael and I had double-checked her research an hour ago, coming to the same conclusion: the man in Room 507 hadn’t existed until a decade ago.
I made the connection not long after that.
That’s when the killings began, I’d said. When his “Dark Man” came.
We’d held hands and chuckled about boogeymen, and then Rachael had gone to bed. She wasn’t spooked—far from it. She simply had no expertise in where my mind was wandering. Data was her game. Therapy was mine. She’d left her laptop running, in case I wanted to search Journal-Ledger archives stories about the Grace murders. I’d told her I wouldn’t be up much longer.
Now, sitting in my second-hand chair, I hoped I was right.
I stared up at the glowing chili-pepper lights. So. Ten years ago, a man named Martin Grace had punched a hole into the world… and to hear him tell the tale, had brought a monster with him. It was ridiculous, to be sure; Grace’s Inkstain was a psychological creation, a way to rationalize his supposedly precognitive visions. And those visions, I knew, represented psychological breakdowns in their own right. Delusions of reference, like Grace’s last doctor had supposed? Schizotypal personality disorder?
That was inscrutable—at least, for right now. I’d have to hack-and-slash my way to the cause of Grace’s psychosomatic blindness before I could learn more about the deaths. And I had to learn about the deaths before I could decipher what fueled his visions. To do that, I had to find out who this man was before he was Martin Grace.
I chuckled. It was a bitter sound.
Who is Martin Grace? Who is John Galt?
I gently shooed Bliss from my lap and picked up the wedge of charcoal resting by my sketch pad. I wasn’t feeling the manic artistic urge that I’d experienced this morning under Primoris Maximus, but something was tugging at my hand. I let it flow.
It drew a large question mark on the page.
Ha. Yes. That was today, represented right here, surrounded by a field of white. Questions. Question after question after question.
The coal scratched smaller question marks as I chewed on this. I wrote the emotions I was feeling now, adding more question marks as I did so, quietly absorbed by the swirling motion of my hand.
Exhausted. Scared. Bruised. Determined, alone, invisible.
The doubt and curiosity came now. What if I couldn’t help Grace?
Scritch. Another question mark. Scritch, another word.
What was his history? Scritch.
What if I couldn’t find what he was hiding?
Scritch.
What had he lost?
Scritch.
Why couldn’t he see?
Where, how, when?
Scritch, scritch, scritch.
Ten minutes later, I mentally up-shifted and took a deep breath, examining what I’d created. Yes, question marks, all over the page—I expected that. I didn’t expect, however, to find that the curved lines and dots were arranged in the shape of a man.
And there was more here. Some words were larger than the others. I read them and felt my eyes widen, then water. The coal trembled in my hand.
HIDDEN HELP
FIND LOST INVISIBLE HISTORY
I SEE ALONE
Oh my. This wasn’t about Grace, not at all.
I was telling myself to find lost history… invisible history. From an Invisible Man.
My hand dropped the charcoal. My fingers, numb and stupid, slid to my pants pocket and tugged at the paper inside. I gaped at the crumpled envelope now in my hand, the thing given to me by the stranger. I opened the envelope and read the card.
An uncle who never was. A brother who wanted to hide him. A… a mother who still loved him? It was all here, what he’d said as the East 77th Street traffic had rushed by.
I turned my head slowly, to the end table by our front door. There, beside a flickering scented candle, rested the box of photos Lucas had given me earlier that evening. The world assumed the syrupy slowness of a dream now. I went to it, brought it back to my chair, opened it and gazed into the past.
Most of the photos resting atop the stack were from the past year. These were pictures Lucas and I sent Gram as she’d grown ill, to keep her posted on our lives and loves. I held a photo taken nearly a year ago: My father, Lucas, Rachael and me, posing for a “Gram pic” in Central Park. Lucas was hamming it up for the lens, as always. Rachael and I held each other close, exuberant in our newfound romance. Her laughter at Lucas’ cross-eyed expression had evoked a cheerful rise from Dad. We were all smiling.
It was a beautiful photo. I pulled my wallet from my slacks pocket and placed it inside, knowing Gram would want me to have it.
I dug further then, an archaeologist questing for I knew not what. In the middle of the stack, I found a yellowed sheet of paper, folded in thirds. As I pulled it out of the box, a scrap fell from its folds. I eyed the ragged cursive handwriting that stared back from inside in the box.
Suddenly have lots of time on my hands, it read. Wanted to see how far it—or rather, we—went back. Did research. Hope you appreciate the history lesson, especially in light of recent events. Forever yours—H
I squinted. Henry? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Perhaps Grandpa Taylor. His name was Howard.
I unfolded the paper and gazed at a small masterpiece, done in faded blue felt-tip ink. It was a tree, awesomely rendered in an obviously impressionistic, almost cartoon-like style. Superimposed over the tree were words, boxes and lines written in red felt-tip pen.
It was a family tree. It was my family tree.
I held the paper in my hands (they began to tremble again, I couldn’t stop them) and glanced over the names, sped-read my way through history. There I was, my name boxed at the bottom of the page. Beside my name: Lookie-Luke. Lucas.
I held my breath as my eyes ticked up a generation. William Victor. There was a box beside Dad’s name, but it was empty.
No Henry.
I exhaled. Not there. He wasn’t there.
I gazed up and up, heading further and further back in time, curious to see from whence I hailed. I arrived at the top of the page, and felt my eyes widen as I read the name there, my great-several-times-over grandfather.
Zachary Taylor: 12th President of the United States, 1784-1850.
“No way,” I said. My voice was loud here, in the empty living room.
Of course I knew the president—I’d been named after him, it was my mother’s idea, Gram told me so—and I’d done more than a little reading on the guy in middle and high school. Those were the only American History assignments I’d ever enjoyed, and I’d considered myself a casual expert of sorts on the man. It felt cool to write a report on someone famous with whom you shared a name. It felt special, secret… like you might be destined for great things, too.