The Unseen (10 page)

As Xandra watched Belinda shake out a long, flowery skirt and then a badly faded tie-dyed T-shirt, she was intrigued for more reasons than one. Intrigued at first because she was remembering the games she and Tory used to play, which involved dressing up in old stuff they found in boxes and trunks in the Hobsons' attic. She became even more interested when she suddenly realized she was looking at the source of Belinda's weird school outfits. But all she said was, “There sure is a lot of it.”

“I know.” Belinda looked pleased. She was carefully folding away the ragged skirt when a sudden sound made her hurry to the cabin's door. Motioning for Xandra to join her, she whispered, “Here he is now. Here's my grandfather.”

A
T FIRST GLANCE
the man who was standing in the doorway of the largest cabin was almost a disappointment. Xandra wasn't sure what she had been expecting, but it did seem that a wizard or even a person who knew about such things as dangerous enchanted gifts ought to look at least a little bit weird. But the man who was standing on the steps of the large cabin was, at first glance, fairly ordinary-looking.

Checking him out carefully as she and Belinda walked toward him, Xandra noticed that he was tall and rather thin, and dressed in a dark sweatshirt and trousers. His hair was gray and his long narrow face didn't look especially old or young. His eyes were not especially scary or threatening, Xandra decided—except that when they looked at you, it was hard to look away and even harder to
remember what you meant to say and exactly how you were planning to say it.

“Hello, Alexandra. I've been expecting you.” The voice went with the eyes, deep and steady. He nodded to Belinda and gestured toward a row of chairs at one end of the front porch. “Belinda, child. Bring our guest up here.”

While they were climbing the steps and finding places to sit, Belinda beside Xandra, and the grandfather facing them, his eyes were turned elsewhere, and Xandra found that she was able to feel more herself. More the frankly outspoken or even, as some people put it, smart-mouthed Xandra Hobson. Trying for her usual supercool smile, she began, “So okay. I'm Xandra, and I guess you're Belinda's grandfather. So should I call you …” She had meant to ask if she should call him Grandpa, but when his eyes met hers again, she was suddenly tongue-tied.

Hushed and silent, she found herself concentrating on what he was saying, feeling in some mysterious way that every word had many important, maybe even secret, meanings. “Tell me about yourself, Alexandra.” He spoke very softly but in a way that made it impossible not to listen closely and think carefully about what he was asking. “What can you tell me about Alexandra Hobson?”

It was the “Alexandra” that did it. That gave her the push toward another last-ditch effort to be herself. To say something like “Well, in the first place don't call me Alexandra. I hate being Alexandra. And as for being a Hobson, that's even worse.” But instead she found herself playing it straight, saying, “About Alexandra Hobson? Yes, my real name is Alexandra but I call myself Xandra and I
am part of the Hobson family. You've probably heard about the Hobsons?”

He shook his head, smiling, making fun of her question maybe, even though it was a perfectly sensible one. After all, lots of people
had
heard of the Hobsons. “I've heard a bit from Belinda,” he said. “She tells me you come from a large family?”

Xandra tried for her usual disgusted grimace and her favorite sarcastic comment about having lost count of how many siblings she had. But the familiar words were somehow out of reach. She nodded. “Yes, a large family,” she mumbled, and then, hanging her head to escape the dark, overpowering eyes, “I guess I don't want to talk about it.” She breathed deeply, clenching her fists, feeling confused and angry, resentful of whatever was keeping her from making her usual sharp-edged comments. Still looking down at her hands, she asked, “Why do you want to know about me? I thought I was going to get to ask you questions.”

The grandfather's deep voice seemed to echo through her head as he said, “Soon. That will be soon. But before I can answer your questions correctly I must know more about you. About you and your family and the people and things that are important to you.”

Xandra didn't get it. Why would knowing about her and her family explain the vicious, sharp-fanged creatures that had appeared out of nowhere in her familiar basement hideout? She took a deep breath and tried again to resist. “Tell you about me and my family?” She said the exact words she'd intended to, but they didn't come out the way
she'd expected. She'd meant it to sound surprised and sarcastic. Like, “Tell
you
about
me
and my family? Why should I do a thing like that?” But instead, with her eyes caught again by his, she only repeated the question and then began to answer it.

“Well, there are my parents. My father is Henry Hobson, the stockbroker, but my mother is the really famous one. She's Helen Hobson.” She gave him a chance to say, “Oh, you mean
the
Helen Hobson?” But he didn't, so she went on. “Well, she's this very important lawyer and she's handled a lot of famous cases. And then there are five kids.” She paused, narrowed her eyes and added, “Six, if you want to count me.”

She was expecting him to ask what most people would have: “Why shouldn't I count you?”

But he didn't, at least not quite. Instead he only nodded slowly and said, “And why do you think you don't count?”

This time her determination to avoid giving a straight answer was even less strong and certain. Instead, after only a second's hesitation, she began, “Well, all of them, all the other Hobsons, are really great at something. At everything, actually. Not just at school but at things like … Well, there's Quincy, for instance, he's the oldest and he's this incredible scientist. Like he's won so many prizes that all the science fairs started giving out two blue ribbons—one for Quincy Hobson and the other for whoever happens to come in second. And the twins are next. They're good at school too, especially in math, but mostly they're practically famous athletes, both of them. And really good-looking. All the girls in six school districts are completely gaga about them. The twins are sixteen and Victoria, the
next one, is fourteen. She's not just good, she's perfect. At everything, especially playing the piano. I came next and I guess after they saw me they decided I would be the last one. And I
was
for almost seven years. But then they had Gussie. Augusta Katherine, that is. And Gussie is …Well, according to Clara, Gussie is the most beautiful thing God ever created. She says so all the time.”

“Clara?” the deep voice asked.

Xandra meant to simply shrug and say, “Oh, Clara isn't part of the family. She's just a kind of full-time baby-sitter.” But somehow she found herself saying, “She's a nurse who's been living at our house most of the time since …well, since I was born, at least.” She swallowed against a tightness in her throat. “Yeah, since right after I was born and my mother went back to work and opened her own office.” She grinned, and repeating an old family joke, she said, “There's a family joke that I thought Clara was my mother until I was six years old.”

“I see,” the grandfather said. “Yes, I see.” And then for what seemed like a long time he didn't say anything more. Instead he just sat there staring at Xandra, making her feel more and more uncomfortable and impatient.

She looked down at her feet, protecting her eyes from the old man's magnetic stare, and took a deep breath. “Okay,” she said. “Isn't that enough? Is it my turn now?” No answer. She looked up and said it again more loudly and insistently. “When is it going to be my turn to ask some questions?”

At last he nodded. “Yes,” he said. “You wanted to ask what it was that attacked you in the basement of your home?”

“Yeah, that's it,” Xandra said. “That's what I thought I was coming here to find out about. What those things were and where they came from. They weren't just a dream, were they? Like some special kind of nightmare that goes on seeming absolutely real even after it's all over?”

He shook his head. “No, not a dream.”

“Then what were they? Are you going to tell me or not?”

The grandfather's eyes caught and held hers again and he spoke slowly and distinctly.

“The creatures that appeared to you have been called many things by those of us who …” He paused and began again. “People who have been aware of them have given them many names. Some have known them only as shadows, or shades or even chimeras, but at other times they have been called
reflejos
or
spiegels
. I myself have called them unseen entities, or simply the Unseen.”

“The Unseen,” Xandra repeated. “What does that mean?” There was no answer. The grandfather had gone back to staring at Xandra as if she were some kind of scientific exhibit. She turned to Belinda and demanded, “Do you know what he's talking about?”

Belinda nodded. “Yes, I think so. He'll tell you if you listen. Just listen and don't …”

“Don't what?”

Belinda's voice had sunk to a whisper. “Don't get angry.”

“Why not? Why shouldn't I get angry?”

“Because that's what makes it so dangerous for …” Glancing at her grandfather, Belinda stopped in midsentence.
And then went on, “He'll tell you why it happened the way it did.”

“All right. Tell me. Where did those horrible things come from? I mean, they must have come from somewhere, because they were never there in the basement before. I know that. I mean, the basement, at least the part that's back behind the furnace, is my own special place. I've been there a million times. So I want to know where those things came from, and why.” A disturbing thought intruded. “Was it the Key? Was it the Key that brought them?”

“No, it didn't bring them. And they didn't come from anywhere. They were just there. They're just there—everywhere—all the time.”

Xandra stared at Belinda. “No,” she said. “You're lying. If they're all around us all the time, why don't we know about them? Why can't we see them or hear them, or feel them like I felt those things in the basement?”

Belinda glanced at the grandfather, who nodded as if telling her to go on. “People can't see them or hear them because they don't have the right kind of senses. You know, senses, like seeing and hearing and feeling and smelling. But that doesn't mean they aren't there.”

Beginning to get it, to understand what Belinda meant, Xandra gasped. “You mean that's what happened with the feather when you …” Pretending to hold something in her hands, she pressed them to her forehead the way Belinda had done with the feather. And as she did, she remembered very clearly the strange sensations she had felt, as if her eyes and ears and even her skin were stretching and growing. “You mean I changed my senses when I did that with the feather?”

Belinda nodded, and when Xandra turned to the grandfather, he nodded too. Xandra was quiet then, thinking and wondering, thinking of something entirely unacceptable. Something that just couldn't be true. Finally she burst out, “Do you mean that they couldn't have bitten me if I hadn't used the Key?”

Belinda was starting to answer, slowly and uncertainly, when the grandfather interrupted. “Yes,” he said. “Without the use of the Key you wouldn't have been able to experience the Unseen in the way that you did.”

Xandra's mind was spinning, turning into a whirlpool of disappointment and then anger. She had been so sure that the feather was some sort of wonderful magical gift given to her by an enchanted creature as a reward for saving its life. “What's the good of it, then? What's the good of having a magical gift if it just lets a bunch of monsters chew on you?”

“Such creatures of the Unseen can have many forms, I'm afraid. Their shapes can change constantly. Some people find them to be harmless, even comforting, as I thought they might be for you. Or, as you discovered, they can be violent and painful.” The grandfather paused and his lips twitched on the edge of a smile. “Or there can be situations in which they can, as you say, chew on one.”

If he was making a joke of it, Xandra didn't think it was funny. “Well, I just don't believe it. Any of it. I don't believe there are these evil …” She stopped, trying to remember. “These evil, whatever you called them …”

“Creatures of the Unseen,” Belinda whispered.

“You mean these evil creatures are all around, all the time? I don't know why you're lying to me, but you are.”
Xandra jumped to her feet. “I'm going now. I'm leaving and you better not try to stop me.”

As she started to move toward the stairs that led down from the porch, the grandfather's eyes met hers and she felt quieted and stilled, but only for a moment. “We won't stop you,” he was saying, “but I do think you had better leave your Key here.” He put out his hand, and for a moment Xandra's hand went to the string around her neck.

“Why?” she whispered. “It's mine.”

“Yes, it is yours,” he said, “but no one owns a Key for long. It is a power that is given rarely and then only briefly, and its use can be dangerous. It is possible to find oneself lost in the Unseen.”