"The Unseen" - Excerpt

Chapter 1

Perched on top of the elevator, Lucas peered at the woman below and created her elaborate history in his mind.

Elevators and their shafts were easy places to hide. Easier than utility chases. Much easier than ductwork, popularly portrayed in movies as cavernous tunnels through which a man could crawl. Lucas knew better; most ductwork was tight and narrow, and not solid enough to hold 150 pounds.

But elevators. Well, the film depictions were pretty accurate with those. You could indeed crawl through the small access panel in the ceiling, sink a sizable hole with a hand drill, and then watch the unknowing people below as they stepped through the bay doors all day long. Provided you bypassed security, of course. And did your drilling outside of regular office hours.

Most of the time he preferred to work in D.C. proper, but with height restrictions on the buildings, he never got much of a chance to do elevator surfing; for that, he had to move farther away from the city, where skyscrapers were allowed.

He returned his attention to the dark-haired woman who was currently inside the car with four other less interesting people. In his history, she was a widow. True, she was probably in her early thirties, if that, but her stern look, her rigid posture, suggested overwhelming sorrow in her past.

Lucas recognized such sorrow.

So, she was a widow. She had moved to Bethesda from her rural home in Kansas after losing her husband, an auto mechanic who had been crushed by a car in a tragic mishap.
Below Lucas, the dark-haired woman moved to the side for another person entering on the eighth floor. As she did so, the overhead light in the elevator car flickered a moment, then returned to full strength.

Puzzled, the dark-haired woman raised her eyes to the ceiling and looked at the light. It happened. For a moment, she stared directly at him, directly at the secret peephole he’d carefully drilled in the ceiling, directly at the constricting pupil of his own eye.

Then she dropped her gaze back to the other people in the elevator with her, offering a little shrug of the shoulders.

She had looked, but she hadn’t seen. Like so many others.

When she had looked toward the ceiling, his heart had jumped. He had to admit this. Not because he was worried about being discovered, but because the knowing had started—the long, taut band of discovery that stretched between his eyes and the eyes of a dweller, then constricted in a sudden snap of understanding.

The Connection, he liked to call it.

Lucas knew about the Connection, too. He’d seen it happen.

Once he’d spent several weeks holed up in a ten-story office center that stood over Farragut Square; during that time, his favorite target had been the reception area of an attorney’s office. A one-man show named Walt Franklin, the kind of attorney who chased ambulances. And so, Walt Franklin was chased by people with grudges.

Lucas’s observation deck in that office was one of his most brilliant ever: the lobby coat closet, a small cubicle not much bigger than an old telephone booth (something, unfortunately, he didn’t see much of anymore). The closet had an empty space behind its 2x4 framing and gypsum board, leaving enough room for him to stand. An anomaly in the construction, one of many he’d seen over the years.

But what had been so wonderful about this space, this anomaly, was its perfect positioning between the reception desk and the lobby waiting area. By drilling holes on two opposite sides of the small space, he could simply turn and view the woman who usually sat at the front desk—a large, red-haired woman with a genuine smile—or the people in the reception area. No need to change positions; he could simply turn his head and watch whoever seemed most interesting.

Over the several hours he’d spent cramped in that space, he’d seen dozens of intriguing dwellers—people with complex, magic-filled histories, he knew—sit in the lobby’s molded plastic chairs and wait to speak with Walt Franklin. Their savior.

Once, he’d experienced a Connection with the large, red-haired woman who sat at the desk. One minute she was working away, doing some filing. The next moment she simply stiffened, then looked nervously around the room.

“Whatsa matter?” he heard a man’s voice ask from the lobby area. Lucas turned quietly and looked through the peephole at the man. White hair. Too much loose skin under his chin.

Back to the redheaded receptionist. “I . . . don’t know,” she stammered. “I just feel like . . . someone’s watching.”

Jowly man in the reception area half-snorted, half-laughed. “Wouldn’t doubt it, the kind of stuff old Walt’s involved in. Either the mob’s watching him, or the CIA. Or both.” He offered another snort-laugh.

The receptionist didn’t share his humor, obviously, but she smiled at him. Except, Lucas could tell, this wasn’t her usual smile. Her normal smile. Lucas was a student of the smile, and he knew this particular one was forced; it barely turned the corners of her mouth.

She hadn’t seen Lucas. But she had sensed something of his presence, and his mind kept returning to that. Returning to all the people, maybe a dozen in all, who had made the Connection and intuited his presence in a closet. Under a floor. Above a ceiling. Hers was all the more special because she hadn’t actually seen any evidence of him. She’d only felt it.

I just feel like someone’s watching.

As Lucas left his daydream and returned his attention to the dark-haired woman in the elevator below, now staring at her feet, he wanted her to make that Connection too. He liked this woman; he wanted to feel something more than the typical subject and observer relationship. He wanted the Connection.
Instead, she lifted her face toward the doors, caught in midyawn, as they chimed and opened on the twenty-third floor. She slipped through and into the offices beyond.

So much for connection.

Still, he would wait. It was early morning, and he’d have another half hour of steady traffic. If no other interesting dwellers stepped on the elevator before then, he’d choose the dark-haired woman. She was, after all, the only one who had inspired a secret history in his head all morning. That had to count for something.

Maybe, just maybe, this dark-haired woman with the full lips and the eyes like bright marbles and the overwhelming grief at the loss of her husband would pull him back to the twenty-third floor. Maybe she would make the Connection after all.

He could wait.

•••

Late that evening, when the dark-haired woman had left the office and returned to her modest home in her Ford Taurus (this is what he imagined she drove), when the entire office building had emptied, Lucas let himself into the company offices where she worked and began to search.

This building didn’t have much security. A few cams, but those were on the building’s exterior. And the janitors here weren’t all that attentive. They often left their industrial vacuums or their carts filled with cleaning supplies sitting alone in the hallways, rings of master keys jangling loosely from them. So really, it was easy to take master keys and make copies—he even knew of a key machine he could use after hours just a few blocks away from the building—then return the keys, safe and sound, to their carts or vacs.

So dark-haired woman’s office space was only a key turn away.

He slipped the key into the front door of the office and turned it. He pushed open the door, listening for the telltale click or buzz of an armed alarm system. Nothing. Alarm systems weren’t common in these kinds of office parks, because the tenants seemed to rely on the buildings’ inept security guards. But he’d run into a few.

Closing the door behind him, he looked for light switches and began to examine the space. His mind took in all the architectural details as he explored, looking for his first target: the break room.

He found it on the far end of a row of cubicles, a smallish office behind a glass wall, with a table, some chairs, and a soda machine. Casually, he strolled the floor to the break room and entered. Just behind the door he found an under-the-counter refrigerator and opened it.

No funky smells. Good. Often, when you opened these refrigerators, you were greeted by the whiff of month-old Chinese food or curdled milk, long forgotten by the office workers who had stashed them there. Usually he ended up cleaning out rotten leftovers from these office refrigerators, performing a crude service in return for the edible food he took.

That was his real reason for seeking out office break rooms and refrigerators: they always held whole lunches packed and brought from home, leftover pizzas from office parties, takeout orders left untouched. Lucas couldn't remember the last time he'd had to buy food for himself. Occasionally he liked to go to a restaurant or get a special treat, but usually he found more than enough in the many offices of the greater D.C. area.

For that matter, Lucas didn't need to spend money on much of anything. He was happy with clothing from Good Will, and his home constantly rotated from office building to office building. No rent, no food, no clothing; without those expenses, Lucas had been able to stash away several thousand dollars over the last few years, all while doing menial cash-under-the-table jobs.
In this particular refrigerator, he found a full wrapped sandwich (turkey and tomato), a couple unopened cartons of milk, and some apples. Dinner. The cupboard held a few bags of chips; he took one of the bags and put it in his backpack for later.

As he sat at the small table and ate, listening to the low rumble of the HVAC system deep within the building, he stared at the small metal refrigerator. He knew all about these office refrigerators, yes. But what about refrigerators in homes? Those had to be different, didn't they? Surely no one just put food in the refrigerator and forgot it, did they? Home refrigerators, well, they were like small gathering spaces. Always near breakfast nooks or dining tables where families congregated over cookies and milk, talking about their days at the office or their projects at school or their meetings at Junior League. Yes, the home refrigerator had to be more like . . . home.

Not that Lucas knew. Or would ever know, for that matter. He'd grown up in an orphanage, never known his parents, never known anything about the traditional ideas of a home. A real home. It was all so foreign to him, so other. That's why he preferred the institutionalized feel of offices and commercial buildings. They felt more comfortable. His forays into the dark, hidden spaces were always in public buildings, never private residences. He wasn't a peeping tom, or a stalker, or anyone sick and demented like that.

He was an artist.

An artist who worked in concrete and glass and fiberboard, creating menageries out of the colorful existences lived by the dwellers inside his monitored offices. Yes, they had existences outside of those walls, but Lucas wouldn't cross that threshold; his imagined existences for dwellers were always more interesting anyway. He didn't, couldn't, understand their private lives in private homes. His own sense of ethics told him it would be wrong, and so he didn't question it.
After finishing his last bite of turkey and tomato, he cleaned the table and threw everything in the garbage, noticing that the janitorial staff hadn't emptied the office cans yet. That meant he'd have to be on guard as he worked.

He wiped his hands on the front of his jeans, adjusted the pack he wore on his back, and went outside the break room, scanning the middle cubicles and looking for the space where the dark-haired woman sat. Was she a receptionist? He didn’t think so. She didn’t have quite that disaffected air, and she’d been entering the building later; most receptionists were among the first to arrive.
He stood motionless, studying and considering as he scanned the offices. If they could be called offices. They were small cubicles, partitioned by cloth dividers, filling a large, open space. The place had a boiler room feel to it. Lucas hadn’t bothered to check the name of the business at the front, but he was guessing this was a telemarketing facility of some kind. Maybe a phone support center.

He began to work his way through the cubicles, a minotaur winding his way through a maze, looking at individual desks.

Eventually he found her. Even in places such as this, especially in places such as this, people tried to bring a bit of themselves to their workspace. Photos were common. Knickknacks and trinkets. Comics and cartoons clipped from newspapers.

It was a photo that identified the dark-haired woman, and when he saw it, he knew he had been drawn to a very special dweller indeed.

The framed photo that sat next to her computer terminal proved it. In it, she had her arms wrapped around two preteen kids—one boy, one girl—and a look of pure joy on her face, matched, amazingly enough, by the joy in the children’s faces.

As he stared at this photo, Lucas imagined the family camping on the Kansas prairie, enjoying a long weekend together. This would be when the father was still alive, he decided. Just before snapping the photo, the father had made a particularly funny comment, an inside family joke they all loved—everybody say ‘NUBBINS’!—and then clicked the shutter.

He went to the desk, opened her top drawer. A time sheet for the next day lay neatly inside, the name NOEL HARKINS printed neatly at the top. Noel liked to be organized, he decided.

Of course, she would have to be organized, to bring her family through the tragedy of her husband’s death. She would have to be strong, and steady, and an inspiration to her two beautiful children.

And that was why she kept this photo on her desk: it was a reminder of happier times, of together times. The photo was a totem for her, a bit of magic that could transport her to her Happy Place with one glance.

(Humpty Dumpty had some great falls.)

Lucas closed his eyes for a moment.

These words were his own personal totem, of sorts, but an incomplete one. They were brief whispers of a past he couldn’t remember, memories he couldn’t bring to the surface. Haunted whispers of the Great Before, which was pretty much anything before the orphanage, anything before his sixth year. These words were, in fact, the only thing he had from the Great Before, and they were mere shadows of whispers, maddeningly brief.

(Humpty Dumpty had some great falls.)

The orphanage. A cliché, really, the loner kid who never had close relationships with anyone because his parents had been killed when he was young and he’d been raised in an orphanage on the outskirts of D.C.

Except he’d never known his parents. He knew they were dead—that’s what the people at the orphanage had told him—but he’d never been told anything about his past, and so he remembered nothing of it.

Nothing about the Great Before except . . .

(Humpty Dumpty had some great falls.)

Yes, except that, a nonsense line that came back to him at the strangest times, meaning nothing, doing nothing, representing nothing. And yet it leaked from the cracks of his memories even now, more than two decades later.

His memories, what fragile shells of them existed, began at about age six. Before that, there was nothing. Just a solid expanse of white, stretching from horizon to horizon. He had existed in that time, he knew, and yet he had not existed.

It wasn’t bad, as orphanages go, he supposed. Certainly not like the fanciful orphanages of literature, where young children were whipped into silence by angry and sadistic nuns wielding leather strops. No nuns at all in his orphanage; in fact, Lucas hadn’t even seen a nun until he left the confines of the orphanage at age eighteen.

Still, even his most vivid memories of the orphanage were painted in broad strokes. He hadn’t formed any close friendships with anyone there, couldn’t even really say the names of any other kids, now that he thought about it. He saw their faces in his memories, of course, but that’s all they were: faces. Even the teachers and staff were little more than that.

Instead, he remembered the roof. From his room, shared with so many other children, he had a clear view of the window. And through that window, when he ventured to it, he saw a far-off land of light and magic. He would find out later that those lights were the Metro DC area, but in his six-year-old mind, they were simply a promise. A promise of something he didn’t fully understand, but wanted to find.

He spent many hours in the dead of night admiring the far-off lights, imagining himself in that mystical place. Later, when he was older, he would open the window, crawl through its narrow space to the asphalt-shingled roof, lie on his back staring at the lights, reaching out now and then and imagining himself grasping those lights in his hands.

That’s what had started his creeping. Staying outside on the roof for a few hours invariably led to searches from the staff, and Lucas would catch glimpses of them inside the house, looking for him. After watching them for a while, he would pick a time to climb back through the window, wander down the hallway with the wood-slat flooring, and innocently ask, “Were you looking for me?”
Why the other kids never said anything, he did not know. Maybe it was the bond of a shared secret. But it continued for several years, without his increasingly-longer sojourns being discovered.

This, he knew, is what had awakened the Dark Vibration inside. And for the many years since, he had been feeding that Dark Vibration.

(Humpty Dumpty had some great falls.)

These words weren’t a totem that transported him to his Happy Place. They were cruel reminders that he had no Happy Place.
He slammed a hand against Noel’s desktop, jarring the framed photo out of its place a fraction of an inch. He bit his tongue, kept his eyes tightly closed, blocked the uninvited words from his mind.

(Humpty Dumpty had some)

(Humpty Dumpty had)

(Humpty Dumpty)

When he opened his eyes again, he was in control. The door to uninvited whispers of his past had been shut, and he was firmly in the present. Here in Noel’s cubicle.

To watch Noel, to see her at work, he would have to build an observation deck. And in the open like this, there was really only one place to do it.

He looked above him at the acoustic tiles of the ceiling, calculating what he would need to do. Then, he moved. Even though he’d spent several hours today lying motionless on top of the elevator car, when Lucas decided to move, it was smooth. Effortless. Liquid. He boosted himself up onto Noel’s desk, reached overhead, and pushed one of the ceiling tiles out of the way. He smiled at what he saw. Just as he’d hoped, the poured concrete floor of the next story was hidden a few feet above the tile.

More than enough room.

He unshouldered the dusty blue nylon backpack—his constant companion—and unzipped the main compartment. Inside were all his tools of the trade: a flashlight, a utility knife, some climbing rope, a few sets of webbed rigging he’d built himself, and several other items. He selected a small hand drill and set down the pack for a moment. He tested the divider between Noel’s space and the adjoining cubicle, then stepped on the thin edge and balanced himself there effortlessly. His head was now in the space left by the empty tile, and he held up the hand drill just in front of his face as he began drilling into the concrete. It wasn’t easy, and he knew he’d burn through a couple of bits, but he didn’t mind the work. He enjoyed it. He had the whole night if he needed it.

Later, when he’d completed drilling three holes, he tapped anchors into them and turned the screws inside; they expanded to fit the holes and wedged themselves in place. Then it was just a simple matter of affixing his small hammock, handmade of several sections of climbing rope, to the anchors.

Finished, he stepped down from the top of the divider and admired his work. With the hammock in place up above the tiles, he could hang comfortably, facedown, to peer into Noel’s world below. Not so much different from the elevator, really. But more intimate. And therefore more exciting.

He put all the acoustic tiles he’d pushed aside back into the track, save for the one that was directly over Noel’s head and computer terminal. In this one, he drilled a small hole—so small it looked like the simple pattern of the tile—and then put it in its place as well. Now he had an observation deck, complete with a peephole.

He jumped down from Noel’s desk, noticing the thick layer of concrete dust he’d let filter down. Sloppy, yes. He usually wasn’t so. But no matter. He brushed the dust off the desk and chair, sweeping it to the floor. He left, found the janitor’s closet on the floor (unlocked, of course, but no janitor around) and returned with some towels, cleaner, and a small hand vac.

Five minutes later, all evidence of his being there was gone. And Noel’s cubicle was probably cleaner than it ever had been with the regular janitorial staff working. He'd worked up a bit of a sweat and could use a good cleaning himself, so he'd probably have to shower soon. The Y and the homeless shelters were always options, but Lucas knew more than a few offices in the area that provided workout areas and locker rooms with showers for their workers. Mostly high-tech companies, pouring on benefits to keep workers healthy and happy. And in those places, the hot water never ran out in the middle of your shower.

Finished with the immediate work, Lucas readjusted his backpack and found himself staring at the photo of Noel and her kids again.

A beautiful photo, really.

He took it and added it to the items already in his pack.

•••

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"The Unseen" Reading Guide

If you're reading The Unseen as part of a book group or discussion, thanks. Download a list of discussion questions, or browse the questions below. And if you'd like to schedule a call or visit for your group, please feel free to contact me.

{DISCUSSION QUESTIONS}

1. Compare your feelings about Lucas at the beginning of the book with your feelings about him at the end of the book. Did your opinion of him change? Did you identify with him? Why or why not?

2. If you asked Lucas what he most wants at the beginning of the book, what would he say? Would he be truthful with you? Would he be truthful with himself?

3. The members of Creep Club live vicariously through the people they monitor and record. In light of recent trends such as YouTube and “reality” television, do you think our society mirrors this odd fascination? What are the implications—bad and good—of our more transparent world?

4. Lucas feels a connection to his co-worker Sarea, and even though he’s entertained thoughts of spying on her life, he never has. Why do you think this is?

5. At the end of the book, Sarea willingly goes with Lucas—first to escape her apartment, then to travel with him across the country. What does this willingness say about her as a character? About her relationship with Lucas?

6. Lucas has an odd habit of collecting photos and other souvenirs from the people he observes, calling them “totems.” Why do you think he does this? What do the totems represent for him?

7. Throughout the book, Lucas tells us: “People look, but they don’t see.” Mad Billy Weevil, the blues musician, says: “People hear, but they don’t feel.” What do you think they mean by this? Do you agree most people go through life looking but not seeing, and hearing but not feeling?

8. At the end of the book, the character Swarm says he sees himself in Lucas. How is he like Lucas? How is he different?

9. Lucas repeats the mantra “Humpty Dumpty had some great falls” throughout the book, which leads to some obvious connections with his past. But do you think there’s also some symbolic significance in this phrase? Can Lucas himself be seen as a “Humpty Dumpty” kind of character? For that matter, can we all be seen as “Humpty Dumpty” characters in our own lives?

10. At a key point in the story, we find out the person Lucas is most afraid of is...himself. Why would he be afraid of himself? Do you think other people may be afraid of themselves? Do you think Lucas is still afraid at the end of the story?

11. Toward the end of the book, Sarea recounts the famous tale of the crossroads and the musician Robert Johnson, then suggests Lucas is in the same position. What’s the main “crossroads” moment Lucas faces? What is his decision? Do the effects of his choice begin to show by the time the story has ended?

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"The Unseen": The Story

Lucas is an urban explorer: he lives in steam tunnels under universities, explores abandoned warehouses, and freely travels the underground passages of the city. Dishwasher by day, explorer by night, Lucas works alone, watching the lives of others from his secret hiding places.

But when he meets another explorer, he discovers he's not alone after all. A group calling itself the Creep Club breaks into private homes to spy on the people living inside...and they want Lucas as their newest member. For Lucas, the Creep Club steps way over the line; he never spies on people in their homes, only watching them in public spaces. He wants no part of their activities.

But he may not have a choice. Lucas finds himself pursued by secret agents from home and abroad, mafia thugs intent on murder, and gunmen who look just like…him. And it looks like the only way to get out, is to get in the Creep Club.

Lucas, the man who has always been invisible, finds himself drawn into a high-profile race against time as Creep Club members are murdered and he is pegged as the killer. Now he's on the run, and he must find out who is behind all the chaos--before they find him.

"The Unseen": Trailer

{Music by Kevin Macleod}