Chapter 3 Invisible
Invisible
My tears are hiding from the blood
My blood is hiding from my fears
They’re …indivisible
And through the flames I walk
And flames consume my soul
It’s…invisible
Liam had just saved the little cats from the burning house and was leaving in his shiny yellow fire-truck when it started. He heard screams first and looked up. Jasmine’s door was making creaking noises, she always forgot to close it properly, but he had been sure he heard someone scream.
He decided to wait a little more; Jasmine would be back with her toys and something tasty soon. It was probably her annoying brother that had made her scream.
Suddenly Liam heard a barking laugh and his head snapped up. The truck was thrown to its side and he stared at the emptiness before him. His eyes just wouldn’t leave that one spot, the empty spot that the laugh had come from. They began to focus and blur and play tricks on him – again, but then he saw them. Many men wearing long black clothes and masks.
Jumping to his feet Liam dashed across the street and into his house. He closed the door behind him and rested his back on the wood. For a few seconds the only thing he could hear was his own breathing. And then the screams came, and crashing, banging noises. He ran into the kitchen and froze just a few steps past the door.
He was cold, freezing cold, but something in his chest burned like- like hell. He knew that he wasn’t dreaming now. This was real. Hell.
He stood frozen and watched mummy writhe on the ground and he couldn’t move. He heard someone else laugh as he stared at her pretty hair flying around her, and he couldn’t move. The fire in his chest grew bigger and bigger because he still couldn’t move and she was screaming.
Suddenly there was real fire all around him. It was green and purple and mummy stopped thrashing around on the floor. He forced his legs to start moving as he heard someone swear and curse. Before he reached her he was sure he heard the words Abra Cadabra and a green beam of light hit her in the chest.
She was frozen when he got there. And this time, as he clutched her shirt and stared into her hollow eyes, Liam was in hell on the outside and freezing cold on the inside.
***
She had taken it out five times. The first time Hannah only wanted to drink a little water. But she put it back in her pocket and kept running because a twig cracked behind her and she wasn’t far enough away yet.
The second time she thought she was lost. So, of course, it wouldn’t hurt to use a pointing spell. But Hannah didn’t like the feel of the wand grasped in her hand, because she hadn’t used it then - when it mattered- so why should she use it now? So she put it back and kept running, her feet beginning to blister and her throat parched.
She was much further away when she found herself standing once more with her wand held up before her. There was no water, no trees or twigs that could break and disturb her decision-making process, and she had absolutely no idea where she was. So she stood in the frightening brightness of the Muggle town in this dark night and she tried to decide which spell would be the most useful right now. But she couldn’t choose, so she stowed it back in her pocket and kept running.
Then she remembered that if she could only Apparate somewhere all her problems would be solved with only one simple show of magic. But she couldn’t think of anywhere to Apparate to, so she stowed her wand and kept going and this time something in Hannah’s mind stirred and she began to think for the first time of going back. To Hogwarts. Where it was safe and warm and familiar. And she realized then how stupid she had been to run like that. On impulse almost; like a Gryffindor. Her mother had always said that one of the best traits of Hufflepuff was that they thought things out properly first.
And suddenly her mind was filled with a clear, sweet voice:
“When darkness wraps the world in shade
And all is sleeping in the glade
When owls do hunt and sing their song
And shadows are forever long
When baby’s eyes are tired out
And Muggles close the darkness out
She stopped and closed her eyes and she tried to go back, if only for a few seconds, to that warm colorful bed where the small six year old witch was being sent off to the land of dreams by her mother. But it was too far now, too far even for dreams. So she stowed her wand back in her pocket and walked on with a set face.
Because there was no magic to bring back the dead, only to kill.
***
It was a punishment, he knew it was. Because he hadn’t been able to help mummy, because he hadn’t been able to stop the masked men before they came. Liam stood there, in the middle of the kitchen and he watched them take his mummy and daddy away in the fire-trucks and the ambulances.
He was supposed to save them. He was supposed to watch out for them and always keep them safe.
They noticed that the fire was green and purple. They noticed that they’d died before the fire started. But no one noticed little Liam when he pulled on the big fireman’s coat. No one noticed little Liam when he banged his fists on the doors of the ambulance.
No one saw little Liam standing wide-eyed in the middle of the street. Because he was invisible and he deserved it.
***
She collapsed by a tree in the cold. That was all Hannah knew for a while until she woke up and found her mind thinking without asking permission. It went back again and again to the what-ifs. It went back, especially, to that night.
And she wanted to weep and wail, but Hannah Abbot couldn’t cry. She had cried in fifth year when she was studying for OWLs, and in first year when someone had stolen Aunt Mildred’s gift, and almost every other day since she was born. So how could she possibly cry now, after all this, as if it was a stupid doll or a silly, inconsequential test?
And then her eyes began to blur again and she could feel herself losing grip. She could feel everything slipping away into blackness. And she was glad because you couldn’t think “what now?” or “what next?” if you were dead.
***
The artist saw everything. He noticed everything and he knew all about colors. He could tell him why the fire was purple and what he was supposed to do. So Liam was glad when he saw him walking down the road. School. It seemed so silly now, and far away, like a dream. But the artist was coming back from school.
Liam closed his eyes and walked slowly across the street. Maybe he should warn him. The thought didn’t stay in his mind for long, though, because he knew he would die twice if someone told him Jasmine was dead and then he went in and saw her dead.
He couldn’t stay out of the house though. He couldn’t let the tall, broad-shouldered boy leave his sight. Not now.
So Liam trailed the boy around the house and he drank sadness and swallowed bitterness with the artist’s every move because he knew that one day when he actually allowed his mind to understand what had happened, his heart would come thumping out of his chest and he would die.
The bigger boy didn’t seem to notice him, but then again, who would notice a little invisible boy who wasn’t supposed to be there when they had just come into a house of the dead.
Just the thought of having someone else that shared his scary emptiness was comforting. And Liam knew he would one day be punished for being so selfish. He followed the artist around the house and saw the boot-print on the cushion, and the bloodstain on the floor and the broken doll that he had given Jasmine when she came home from the long summer vacation.
His eyes clouded over as Liam walked into the kitchen behind the bigger boy.
He still saw the beautiful glass painting falling to the floor and breaking to a million pieces - like his life. Like his dream; he would never be a firefighter now. He was too scared even to go and put a little hand in the artist’s big one and cry with him. He was a coward.
So he sat there and he watched the older boy’s tears falling into the bowl of dough and the white film over Liam’s eyes got thicker and thicker.
He heard the sirens and the reporter telling the story of his little neighborhood in a cheery voice. He even watched the artist run out of the house and disappear into the darkness.
And suddenly, as Liam realized he was alone once more, he decided that he didn’t want to see the police again, or even the fireman, so he ran after Mat. But the older boy was too far ahead.
