Visitors

We've had visitors. Well, we've been having a visitor every night for weeks now. I can almost feel him peeking in our window, but Louis swears he never notices anything. That is alright. Most nights we sleep in the living room together, an interior room. To say that we sleep is a bit misleading, rather we both sit up in front of the radio until whatever it is that keeps us awake loses its grip and sleep regains its own.

There were three of them. The first two were disconcerting, but not in the way that the last one was. They wore dark, pressed suits.

Not in the way the last one did.

The first two came in the early hours of the morning. I thought perhaps I was about to get news that they knew who Louis was and all of this oddness would be explained if not ended. We were still listening to a Kayani soap opera (it's all we can find on at that hour, Louis is starting to understand the language too, perhaps out of sheer necessity) when they knocked. Of course, at three in the morning we were both rather on edge and talked to them through the door until we were satisfied they weren't would-be thieves.

I wish they had been.

It was innocent at first. The men, normal looking and nondescript sat down and accepted tea, they nursed their drinks almost gratefully for a minute and then they asked questions. We informed them that, no, Louis really didn't remember anything else. That was because everything he told me he remembered made absolutely no sense, it all smacked of madness. We had long since agreed not to be forthcoming on this point. What really began to worry us was when they started to ask very leading questions.

“Why have you stopped going into work?”

“Are you finding yourself with any new or unusual hobbies?”

“Have you been the target of any crimes lately?”

Though there were others very disturbing, perhaps the one that I found the least comforting was, “Have you been sleeping well?”

Then again, one look at us would tell them that we lied.

They promised to keep in contact, neglected to tell us their names or precisely who sent them and they left. The conversation felt like it might have taken an hour but when I checked the time, it seems they were in and out in all of five minutes.

A couple of hours later I heard a noise from roughly the direction of my bedroom. Louis did not, he simply stared at the floor as he often does while trying to concentrate on the Kayani language. I don't know why he didn't hear it, why he never notices any of the oddness going on but since I can't offer an explanation I try not to dwell on it.

That, at least, was my stance until I got up and went to my bedroom.

I stopped in the hallway leading up to it, cold bare feet on tile floor and all.

I've never seen a man so tall in my life.

Then again, I've never seen a man without eyes, a nose or a mouth, either.

Louis didn't hear me scream.  

It's been almost a full day since I was left standing in the hall way, feeling like an imbecile, but I still don't believe what I saw was fake or imagined. Mostly because of the reaction Louis gave when I described him. 

Perhaps that's a story for another time. I need to see if I can convince him to eat.