Bentley Little - The Ignored

Nothing.

And I became more and more uneasy. Even while walking, I noticed that I was not noticed, and the feeling was eerily reminiscent of those early days when I’d first discovered that I was Ignored. I thought of Paul and the way we’d found him at Yosemite, naked and crazy and yelling obscenities into crowds of people at the top of his lungs. Was that what had happened to the clown? Had he just snapped under the pressure of such unremitting isolation?

Was that what would happen to me?

You’re almost there.

I said nothing of my fears to Jane. I knew that was wrong. I knew I was falling into the same pattern as last time. I should be sharing everything with her. We should be facing all problems together. But for some reason I could not bring myself to confide in her. She would probably be even more frantic than I was. And I didn’t want her to go through the hell I was going through.

But at the same time, I did want to talk to her. Desperately.

I didn’t know what was the matter with me.

I told her I had witnessed the murder and had been the only one to see the murderer. But I did not tell her why. I did not tell her what had really happened.

The creepiest thing that week was my meeting with Steve. He was a full-fledged lieutenant now, and the chief had put him in charge of coordinating security at city hall. On the off chance that the murderer might strike again at the scene of his original crime, the chief was asking for a maximum ten-second response time to a disturbance anywhere in the building. This way he figured the murderer could be caught in the act.

Steve was asked to implement this policy, and he met with me in order to more accurately determine how quickly the murderer had moved from the elevator to Ray’s desk, how distracted he had been by the other people in the office, how quickly he had disappeared after being spotted. He gave me a no-nonsense official phone call on Thursday asking me to meet him in the planning department before lunch, and after spending the morning on neighborhood patrol, I arrived on the second floor at eleven-thirty. Steve was already there.

And he didn’t recognize me.

I knew it instantly, although it took a few moments of by-the-book Q&A for the fact to really sink in.

He did not know who I was.

We had spent all that time together as terrorists, as colleagues, friends, brothers, and now he did not even remember me. He thought he was meeting me for the first time, that I was simply a faceless bureaucrat from city hall, and it was unnerving to speak to him, to know him so intimately when he obviously didn’t know me at all. I was tempted to tell him, to remind him, to prod his memory, but I did not, and he left without realizing who I was.

There were no more murders, no assaults, no sightings, and gradually the police began to lose interest in me. I was transferred back to city hall, told to keep my eyes open and report anything suspicious, and was promptly forgotten about. In the planning department, my return was not noticed or remarked upon.

I had completed my first week of work since returning when I saw the mayor coming toward me across the first-floor lobby on my way out. I waved to him. “How’s the search going?” I asked. “Any leads?”

He said nothing, looked at me, past me, through me, and continued walking.

When I awoke the next morning, there was a new tree outside our bedroom window.

I stood in front of the window, staring, a clenched, tight feeling in my chest. The tree was not a small sapling or a potted palm that someone had placed in our front yard. It was a full-sized sycamore, taller than our house, growing, deep-rooted, in the center of the lawn.

It had purple leaves.

I didn’t know what it was or what it meant, I only knew that it frightened me to the bone. I stood there, unable to take my eyes off the sight, and as I stared I saw the front door of the house open and Jane walk across the lawn to get the newspaper from the front sidewalk.

She walked through the tree, as if it weren’t there.

The clenched feeling grew, spreading within me, and I realized that I was holding my breath. I forced myself to breathe. Jane picked up the paper, walked back through the tree and into the house.

Was it an optical illusion? No, the tree was too clear and definite, too there , for it to be a mere image.

Was I crazy? Maybe. But I didn’t think so.

Oh, the things you’ll see….

I quickly pulled on a pair of jeans and hurried outside. The tree was still there, big as life and twice as colorful, and I walked up to it, reached out to touch it.

And my hand passed through the bark.

I felt nothing, no warmness, no coldness, no displacement of air. It was as if the tree weren’t there at all. I gathered my courage, walked through it. It looked solid, not transparent or translucent, and while walking through I saw only blackness. Like I really was inside a tree. But I felt nothing.

What the hell was it?

I stood there, staring up at the purple leaves.

“What are you doing?” Jane called from the kitchen.

I looked back at her. She was watching me through the open window with a puzzled expression, as though I was behaving incredibly stupidly, which I suppose to her I was. I walked around the tree, then across the grass to the front door. I went into the kitchen, where she was mixing batter for blueberry muffins.

“What were you doing out there?”

“Looking at something.”

“What?”

I shook my head. “Nothing.”

She stopped stirring, glanced at me. “You’ve been behaving strangely ever since that murder. Are you sure you’re all right?”

I nodded. “I’m fine.”

“You know, a lot of people who witness violent acts, even policemen, go to counseling to work through what they’re feeling.”

“I’m fine,” I said.

“Don’t get so worked up. I’m just worried about you.”

“I’m fine.”

“I — ”

“I’m fine.”

She looked at me, looked away, went back to mixing the batter.

The tree was still there after breakfast, still there after I took my shower. Jane wanted to go to the store and pick up some groceries for dinner, and I happily volunteered to go for her. She said fine, she had a lot of work to do around the house anyway, and I took the list she gave me and drove off.

I’d been acting as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred, but I saw other purple trees in the park, red and black bushes growing in the center of Main Street, a silver stream passing through the Montgomery Ward’s parking lot, and it was obvious that overnight something really bizarre had happened.

Had happened to me.

No one else in town seemed to see these manifestations.

Jane had asked me to go to the IGA — she liked their produce better than Von’s of Safeway — and while inside the supermarket I saw another tree, identical to the one in my yard, growing out of the meat counter, its branches passing through the ceiling.

I stood there staring at the tree as other shoppers passed around me. There was no way I could live with this day in and day out, no way I could pretend to live a normal life while fantasy forests were popping up around me in the midst of my ordinary surroundings.

Was this what had happened to the murderer?

I quickly got what I came for and hurried home. I found Jane mopping the kitchen floor, and I put the sack of groceries on the table and came right out and said it: “Something is wrong.”

She looked up, not surprised. “I was hoping you’d tell me what it was.”

I licked my lips. “I… see things,” I said. I looked into her eyes, hoping to see a hint of recognition, but there was nothing. “Do you know what I mean?”