Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Kemp read every scrap of the report and sent his housemaid out to get everyone of the morning papers she could. These also he devoured.

"He is invisible!" he said. "And it reads like rage growing to mania! The things he may do! The things he may do! And he's upstairs free as the air. What on earth ought I to do?"

"For instance, would it be a breach of faith if--? No."

He went to a little untidy desk in the corner, and began a note. He tore this up half written, and wrote another. He read it over and considered it. Then he took an envelope and addressed it to "Colonel Adye, Port Burdock."

Then he ripped both envelope and note up, and stuffed the discarded shreds into his pockets lest Griffin think to go through his wastebasket out of paranoia. From upstairs Kemp heard the sound of running feet, then a sudden crash. He ran up the stairs and rapped on the door.

“Griffin? Are you all right?”

The voice that answered him was thin and weary. “No worse than last night.” There were a few heavy steps and then the door opened halfway. The Invisible Man was still wrapped in Kemp’s dressing gown. A thick blanket hung around the space demarcating his shoulders.

“The devil do you want?”

“I heard a noise.”

“I tripped,” Griffin said haughtily. Kemp wet his lips. One hand slipped onto his pocket, feeling the edges of the shredded paper. How easy it would be for the man to slit his throat in broad daylight and never be caught.

Griffin paused, waiting for Kemp to go on. Kemp fumbled for words like a held-up man fumbling for his wallet.

“Would you like breakfast? There’s some ready.”

The blanket bobbed slightly. “Mm. Yes.” Griffin took a step back, and the next was even less steady, before the dressing gown abruptly crumpled as if caught in a sharp breeze. The Invisible Man toppled against a nearby chair. His arm flung out to catch himself and the washstand tumbler was knocked away to smash on the ground.

Kemp grabbed the swooning man before he could topple to the ground again. In the moment before Griffin shoved him away his left hand’s fingers touched the bare flesh of Griffin’s chest and the right hand brushed the skin of Griffin’s shoulder.

“Get your hands off me,” Griffin grumbled.

“Your skin’s warm to the touch, and you're sweating. You’ve a fever, Griffin.”

“What business is it of yours?” The dressing gown stood up straight again, the blanket now pooled around Griffin’s borrowed slippers. He made a gesture with his arm that indicated dismissal. “Fetch breakfast, then we’ll talk.”

Over the meal Griffin explained the impossible story of how he came to be as he was—the fanaticism at which he worked to grasp the infinite power that invisibility to grant a man with ambitions, his grand success followed by the realization of his situation’s horror, living naked and in constant paranoia to avoid being detected by the men and women around him who he’d set out to dominate, the idiot tramp he’d coerced into becoming his assistant only for the cur to run off with his books and throw himself on the mercy of police protection. Griffin’s first mission was to get his books again and find some way of reversing the process once he chose to do so, as without that resource his other work would swiftly prove pointless.

"The more I thought it over, Kemp, the more I realized what a helpless absurdity an Invisible Man was--in a cold and dirty climate and a crowded civilized city. Before I made this mad experiment I had dreamt of a thousand advantages. That afternoon it seemed all disappointment. I went over the heads of the things a man reckons desirable. No doubt invisibility made it possible to get them, but it made it impossible to enjoy them when they are got. Ambition--what is the good of pride of place when you cannot appear there?”

Kemp left his own plate unmolested as the Invisible Man gorged himself on eggs and toast between paragraphs. The chewed food was partially visible through his cheeks, which was in itself unappetizing. Moreover, the pace at which he ate seemed to indicate a subconscious terror that at any moment it would be snatched from him again, which produced a certain degree of guilt in Kemp. Once Griffin finished his own meal, Kemp gestured for Griffin to take his as well, which Griffin did without so much as a thank you.

“By Heaven, Kemp, you don't know what rage is! ... To have worked for years, to have planned and plotted, and then to get some fumbling purblind idiot messing across your course! ... Every conceivable sort of silly creature that has ever been created has been sent to cross me. If I have much more of it, I shall go wild--I shall start mowing 'em. As it is, they've made things a thousand times more difficult."

“And with the way you’re wobbling in your chair, it’s two thousand. I may not be able to see your face but if I did, I would wager it was nearly pale enough to be invisible on its own.” Again, Kemp felt the presence of the torn papers in his pocket as he shifted against his chair. “You need bedrest, at least a week’s worth of it.”

“While the police tear the countryside apart for me, you want me to lie here vulnerable for their attentions?”

“Why would they come here to look? And if they did, how could they find you?”

“It would be easy enough, if they were forewarned.” Griffin leaned in closer. Kemp’s fingers tensed against the chair’s arm “I need a confederate, to help me along in my affairs. I do not need an Iago.”

“You also don’t need pneumonia.” Kemp leaned forward and waved his hand about in the air, seeking and finding Griffin’s forehead. His skin was damp and heat pulsed from it like a furnace.

This time the man did not jerk away from his grasp. If anything his head was tilting ever so slightly into the hand against him. He was slow to back away when Kemp removed it.

“I would guess at least a 38 degree Celsius fever. Likely dehydration on top of it.”

“Did I ask for a physical?” Griffin grumbled. “Here’s my hand, then, stop groping in the air.”

Kemp could feel the raised welts of numerous scratches across Griffin’s hands and forearm as he felt his way towards Griffin’s wrist to take his pulse. Some were new enough to still have scabbing, Living bare, day after day, on the street or tucked away in the bushes by the side of the road, must have been hellish on the Invisible Man’s body. Griffin’s story had made him out to be no saint, but either living like an animal or wrapped up like a mummy would drive most men to the edge.

The thought of what a gnarled mess his unshod feet must be made Kemp’s toes curl inside his slippers.

“Your pulse is erratic, too,” he said. “Push yourself too far right now and you’ll collapse before any of those great works of yours come to fruition.”

There was a soft sound from across the table. Kemp’s blood pounded nervously in his ears during the moments of silence between them, even harder than the throbbing inside the Invisible Man’s wrist.

“It’s strange,” Griffin said quietly. “You never notice how often people touch each other. Bumping shoulders in a crowd, palms brushing as money changes possession. Such a…small acknowledgement of presence. Of existence.”

Kemp felt the scraped, rough fingers curling into their tips touched his own. “Any hand that touched me put me in danger of discovery,” the Invisible Man said, sounding as weary as he had when he’d stumbled in injured and desperate the previous night. “I had to become not just invisible, but intangible, save for when I needed to put fear into the heart of a useful tool. There were times…times I half-wondered if I was actually a ghost, and that if I reached out for another my hand would pass right through them.”

“Well, you’re solid enough to me,” said Kemp. As he rose Griffin’s hand abruptly darted up to snatched at his own wrist, leading him to cry out in shock—discovery! murder!—before Griffin snapped at him to calm down.

“I only meant—ah, it’s nothing!” A shove and snarled insult sent Kemp stumbling. “Fine, if you insist on being a doddering grandmother. I’ll rest.”

Kemp began to clean up the plates as Griffin tottered towards the bed.

"I made a mistake, Kemp, a huge mistake, in carrying this thing through alone. I have wasted strength, time, opportunities. Alone--it is wonderful how little a man can do alone! To rob a little, to hurt a little, and there is the end. What I want, Kemp, is a goal-keeper, a helper, and a hiding-place, an arrangement whereby I can sleep and eat and rest in peace, and unsuspected. I must have a confederate. With a confederate, with food and rest--a thousand things are possible. Hitherto I have gone on vague lines. We have to consider all that invisibility means, all that it does not mean. It means little advantage for eavesdropping and so forth--one makes sounds. It's of little help--a little help perhaps--in housebreaking and so forth. Once you've caught me you could easily imprison me. But on the other hand I am hard to catch. This invisibility, in fact, is only good in two cases-“

“Griffin, please,” Kemp interrupted, before the rant could continue into anywhere unpleasant.

“Feh!” Griffin crawled back under the covers, dressing gown and all. “Don’t think to take advantage of this to crawl out of the house and inform on me to the police,” he warned as the covers went up to his neck.

“You’ve covered the matter most thoroughly, yes.”

While Griffin slept Kemp paced the floor again, twisting the paper into confetti in his pocket. If he were to write to the police, Griffin might murder him. If he were to stay quiet, Griffin might murder him anyway, and likely murder others. The option for self-preservation seemed to be to take a knife and make the Invisible Man’s sleep permanent. That would guarantee his death if he missed his first stab at an unseen target.

Still, though. The police would not fault him for stopping a dangerous would-be killer. The police might never know, since there would be no body to be seen.

“No,” he said to himself, pacing another lap around his study. “It would make me as bad as him. Worse, even, for I did give him my word I wouldn’t betray him, and welcomed him into my home.”

Still, every subtle movement out of the corner of his eye seemed to be the Invisible Man ready to spring upon him. Kemp got none of the sleep he’d insisted on for his guest, despite having slept precious little of the past night either.

He took the spare key from the servants, who still remained as ordered below the first floor, and slipped quietly into the spare room. There was a lump in the covers indicating a man-sized presence. Kemp mused that it could be pillows stuffed into the bedclothes to maintain the illusion of a body. He called out Griffin’s name softly, finding no response, and then approached the bed with some trepidation.

As he came close he saw one arm of the dressing gown, filled with an invisible arm, dangling off the edge of the bed. So he was here, good. It didn’t mean he was asleep.

“Griffin?” Kemp whispered again, and this time the blankets shifted slightly.

“I feel horrid,” the Invisible Man said, with the petulance of a child. “Like an elephant’s on me.”

“More reason to stay in bed,” said Kemp. “It’ll pass.”

“At least I’ve trousers on this time. I’ve missed trousers. And shirts. Did you ever think you’d miss shirts?” He let out a sigh, and there was a long span of quiet as Kemp stood over him awkwardly. Kemp abruptly felt fingers grazing his wrist, then sliding up to his forearm and gripping it with impressive strength for a man on his sickbed.

“Am I real?” the man muttered. “Am I alive? It all feels muted, now.”

“Yes,” Kemp whispered back. “You are alive.”

“You don’t see me.”

“I don’t.”

“But I am alive. I’m not some delusional spectre.”

“Yes.”

“Am I a man? No-“ Griffin cut Kemp off before he could speak again. “No. I’m not one of them, you know. I’m something greater. Something alien. Different. Separate.” There was another lengthy pause. “Like a god, maybe. A pagan god long-forgotten but still powerful. Walking among them. Unnoticed. Unacknowledged.”

The clammy fingers squeezed, then changed position on his arm. Kemp made no attempt to remove the hand. Brushing it away felt unsafe…though for which one of them, Kemp was unsure. Griffin clung not like an attacker, but a drowning man holding tight to a buoy.

“It sounds lonely,” Kemp said. The figure under the blanket tilted and tried to sit up, then lay back down again in its nest.

“Not anymore. Not with you. With you, I have a conduit. Food. Shelter. Safety. And from that place of power the Invisible Man can rule as tyrant. He must take some town like your Burdock and terrify and dominate it. He must issue his orders. He can do that in a thousand ways--scraps of paper thrust under doors would suffice. And all who disobey his orders he must kill, and kill all who would defend them."

The blanket shifted slightly under the force of a shallow breath. Even the effort of such a rant seemed to sap the strength from him.

“Then,” Griffin whispered, before Morpheus took him again, “it will be impossible for them to ignore me.”

Kemp waited until the pressure around his wrist went slack and the arm fell back to Griffin’s side. He slipped quietly from the room and sat huddled on the stairs. Checking his own pulse found him surprisingly calm and collected.

“Not a man now, perhaps,” he mused to himself. “But you were a man once, if not much of one, Mr. Griffin. Now you’ve your shirt, your pipe, your bed without need of a deadbolted door. Perhaps before we restore your visibility, we might work on restoring to you what else you’ve lost.”

And if they could do it without Kemp being knifed in the throat during the process, that would be lovely too.

Chapter Text

Kemp had read a number of articles surrounding the supposed rehabilitation of feral children and men left isolated on deserted islands for years without the voice of another being to tie their sanity to. If any of the authors had included a convenient manual with which the reader might do the same from the comfort of his own home, Kemp would have been grateful for it.

The fever took two days to work its way out of Griffin’s system. His ramblings wavered between nearly coherent and ravings bordering on lunacy. At one point he claimed even the moon was scared to death of him when its light breached his window.

All the while Kemp remained powerfully aware that the only thing standing between him and Griffin’s downfall was Kemp’s own will. The Invisible Man was in no state to chase him down and strangle him. If Kemp tied him to the bed he’d hardly notice. Yet, Kemp stayed nursemaid rather than captor. A betrayal would tip him fully over the edge into misanthropy. Kemp instead brought him tea with toast and pulled the curtains closed against the intrusions of moonlight.

Griffin’s strength began to return to him, as did his lucidity. He still talked constantly, sometimes of his plans and sometimes of simple matters of science and art. Kemp tried to keep up.

It made sense, Kemp reasoned. He’d spent so long bereft of company that he now glutted himself on conversation as he’d glutted himself on food his first night at Kemp’s home. To converse with him was an act of charity. That did not make it any less draining to listen to him ramble on for hours on end.

“We’ll worry select targets, great men and small, just to show we make no distinction,” the Invisible Man was saying. “They must not think prestige will save them.” A pair of scissors hovered six inches above the neck of Griffin’s dressing gown. They opened and closed slowly, moving around the circumference of Griffin’s head.

“What are you doing with those scissors?”

“Cutting my hair and beard. Shaving is too risky; should I cut myself and the blood clot, it will be visible.”

Kemp sat and opened his paper. “The rain’s ended but I wager it will still be foggy today until it’s at least midmorning.”

“Then we’ll leave once it’s all burnt off.”

“The mud will still show your footsteps.”

“Not if I walk close to you. They will mistake my footsteps for yours, until they look closely, and should they do so I trust you’ll provide a suitable distraction for me.”

“They will know you are here, if we seize on the thief of your books so soon.”

“Good. I want them to know that nowhere in this town is safe from me.”

“The chill will still remain in the air. In your state I feel- “

Kemp found himself wrenched from the chair and thrown to the floor. A thin form pinned him down, putting the weight of one hand on his throat as the other brought the sharp scissor-tips close to his jugular.

“Do not try to control my comings and goings, Kemp,” the Invisible Man hissed. His face sounded inches from Kemp’s. “You have restricted me for days and I will tolerate it no longer. I can slice you and you will be choking on blood in moments. They will never catch me – they will not even hear your screams. You have told the servants to remain downstairs, so they will not even find your body until I am long gone. I might even put the scissors in your hands, to make them think you have gone mad, or simply write ‘The Invisible Man’s regards’ in your blood upon the walls to reveal my presence here.

Kemp drew in a painful breath against the pressure on his throat. “A visible corpse is much less useful than a visible live man.”

“I can feel your pulse, Kemp. I know you are frightened.”

“Would you like me not to be?” Kemp said. His hand rose from the carpet and came to rest on where he estimated Griffin’s wrist to be. Griffin’s muscles tensed, ready to push back against resistance. Kemp put no further pressure on him. He simply let his fingers rest firm against Griffin’s skin. No struggle, no force. Only a touch of one human’s skin to another.

A dog, chained and beaten daily. snarls at the slightest provocation, Kemp reminded himself. It is the only way it knows to make itself safe. Yet, in its heart it still cries out to be petted by a kind master.

Griffin stayed frozen above him. It was as if his rage were an electrical charge, and Kemp’s hand the grounding rod. The room went silent enough to make their breathing audible. Finally, Griffin climbed off him again. He pointed the scissors at Kemp. “We’re going out today. I will tolerate no more interruptions.”

“Then I’ll leave you to your haircut and allow me to be left to keep my blood in the places blood should be.”

“Don’t forget your place. You are my colleague, not my commander.”

“Of course, Griffin.”

“Good.”

“Yes.”

The conversation trailed off. Griffin abruptly turned and stomped off into the bathroom again, and Kemp sat down with his newspaper.

NO SIGHT OF INVISIBLE MAN! VANISHED WITHOUT A TRACE! the headlines announced. Kemp shot the paper a dismissive glare.

“This is why no one takes the press seriously.”

--

Kemp couldn’t entirely call up Griffin’s face in his memory. He recalled the man from their school days as pale, nearly albino with pinkish eyes, but he remembered the man at twenty-three and healthy. Now he imagined Griffin’s figure as far more gaunt, eyes sunken and skin left reddened and raw by the wind. The brief inspections he had made during Griffin’s illness found a constant network of abrasions on every square inch of him. There were likely open sores and scars that had yet to heal properly.

“Do you get sunburnt?” he asked as he pulled on his boots.

“No. I feel its heat, but it does not burn my skin. I imagine the harmful aspects of sunlight are affected as the visible light. When we have reached Spain’s warmer climate I must remember to drink frequently to avoid heat stroke, of course.”

Kemp had thought the sight of a dressing gown floating about on its own, with cigarette smoke pouring from an unseen mouth, was unsettling. How much worse it was to have the voice coming from absolutely nowhere.

“Now, you’ll walk just ahead of me,” Griffin said. “I will touch your arm or the back of your neck on occasion to let you know I remain with you, but behave as if you were alone. As you enter doors always tend to the left and enter alone, I will use the space to slip by you on the right. “

“Understood.”

“If at any point you imply, through word or gesture, that I am there to the police, I will kill you in a moment.”

“I don’t know why you feel the need to keep threatening me. Fear will only lead me to clumsier speech, more likely to give you away.”

The Invisible Man made no rebuttal, but Kemp was utterly certain that he was getting glared at. A shove sent Kemp reeling.

“Get walking.”

Fear wasn’t the main issue in Kemp’s mind as he strode out into the late morning light. To his annoyance, it was a constant iteration of ‘The man with me is walking down the street completely naked’. It paired with imagery of what might occur should Griffin abruptly, inexplicably, turn visible without realizing it, and what the cold must be doing to his unclad nethers.

Griffin’s hand kept flitting over his wrist. As they entered the town square, where people stood chatting with joyful abandon, it lingered further.

“Look at them,” Griffin whispered in his ear. “Innocent fools. They have no idea what walks among them. How easily I might incite a panic simply by knocking over a few baskets and calling out to them. We could begin our reign of terror right now.”

“Why?” Kemp said back. His lips barely moved as he spoke.

“Why? What do you mean, why? Because we can! Sow chaos, revel in their rioting! Don’t tell me you wouldn’t do the same.”

Kemp gave a tiny shrug. “I suppose our tastes must differ. Like wine, perhaps. I’d take no joy in it.”

Griffin snorted. “Then you have a small mind.”

“Perhaps that was why I never went to such lengths to become invisible without concerning myself with a way back into society afterward.”

Griffin made a small noise of frustration. His fingers left Kemp’s wrist and returned only as a slap to his arm. Kemp bit down on his betraying tongue.

“Small mind,” Griffin hissed, and said nothing further until they’d reached the police station.

--

“Of course, I’m hardly saying that this Invisible Man doesn’t exist. Science can cause strange things. But the mind can cause even stranger, and I would like to evaluate him to see if he has some psychosis triggered by the local panic. The papers make it clear that this Invisible Man strikes without warning and without a mind to who he targets. Why would he pursue this man specifically?”

It was amazing what you could convince people of when you looked the part of an academic and spoke in their tongue. The head of the town police stared at Kemp with furrowed brow. His thick mustache contorted with his thoughtfully pursed lips.

“If you can get Mr. Marvel to talk at all we’ll be impressed. He’s been near to swooning with fear since he arrived here. Refuses to leave the cell, or to have it opened for more than a moment.” He bent over to scribble something in a large ledger. His handwriting was so appalling that Kemp couldn’t read it.

As the man’s eyes looked to his book Kemp looked to the side, where a pressure on his arm told him his comrade lurked. Next to his own shoes hovered a thin veneer of mud.

Kemp tilted his head and made a great show of flickering his gaze downward. A moment later he felt the sensation of Griffin wiping his feet on the end of Kemp’s pantleg. Kemp forced his face back into a pleasant smile as the policeman looked up at him again.

Better than being arrested, he supposed.

--

There was nothing about the pitiful man in the cell that was particularly hideous. After the last few days Kemp would have been satisfied with anyone’s face as long as they had one. But the Invisible Man’s former accomplice, beneath his bristling beard, had an ineffable air of what the Germans called backpfeifengesicht – a face that seemed to demand a slapping for an unclear offense.

“I’m no lunatic!” he insisted. “I am his favored victim! He chose me as his lackey, and when my conscience finally found its courage he swore to hunt me down with the greatest of brutality!”

Kemp, his back against the bars of the cell, heard the tiniest of snorts. The police had been too careful in ensuring only Kemp entered the cell and took the key with them when they left. Griffin was stuck outside. Good. Let him not be tempted into damnation.

“What would an invisible man possibly need from a visible one?” Kemp asked. He folded his hands in front of him as a simple townsperson might assume a doctor would.

“Pockets!” screeched Mr. Marvel. “Pockets and bags! He has no way to transport his belongings without being seen. And he kept going on about his damned books. He needs his books.”

Kemp made a show of writing in his notebook.

“And for what does he need books?”

“They have his formulas for invisibility. They are the only way he can become visible again and walk among the living.”

Flair for the dramatic, Kemp wrote.

“Do you know where the books are?”

“Of course I do, but I won’t tell him.” Mr. Marvel puffed out his chest. “They are the only leverage I have, if he should find me. A corpse offers no testimony.”

“Indeed, a corpse is useful for very little but feeding the worms.” More scribbling. Kemp looked at him over the edge of the notebook. “But it does occur to me, that if the Invisible Man is as devilish as you say, that he might try to wring testimony from you by cruelty.”

Lord, but he hoped he wasn’t giving Griffin ideas. Mr. Marvel’s pride at his cleverness withered. “What do you mean?”

“That he might torment you until you talk. Cut out an eye here, an ear there, one cut per day over a series of weeks. Steal every morsel of food from your hand and knock over every cup that you might drink from. A man who can turn himself invisible is likely a clever one, and would think of many clever torments.”

Mr. Marvel was starting to shrink into himself. “But he would have to find me, first!” he insisted. “The police have made this place most secure.”

“Have they, Mr. Marvel?” said Griffin from just outside the bars. Mr. Marvel leapt from his chair and fell to the floor, cowering at the back of his cell. “Or have I been your companion all along?”

“He is here!” Mr. Marvel shrieked. “The Invisible Man is here! Save me! I repent, I repent, they are hidden beneath the floorboards under my bed!”

With a crash, a horde of policeman poured into the room.

“Where is he?” shouted the head of police, mustache quivering with enough vigor to nearly lift off his face entirely. “He is within our clutches at last!”

“He’s in the cell! I heard him!”

The policemen wrenched the door open and rushed in. Kemp formed his features into a mask of calm. “I fear your Mr. Marvel may indeed be suffering from delusions,” he said in a light voice. “I have heard nothing.”

“The floor! Beneath my bed! I repent, I repent!” Mr. Marvel continued.

“The Invisible Man is under your bed?” One policeman scratched his head. The others spread out and searched the walls of the cell, arms out as if blind. The head of police took his nightstick and waved it around under Mr. Marvel’s cot.

“No Invisible Man down here, Mr. Marvel.”

“He began to scream for no reason.” Kemp made a final note in his book and closed it. “I fear he may benefit more from a sanitarium than an armed guard.”

The head of police’s mustache tilted downward with his frown. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Kemp,” he grumbled. “We’ll find what to do with him.”

“And I must go to meet with my colleague. Good day.”

--

As he exited the police station Kemp found himself dragged into a nearby alleyway and thrown behind a row of crates. The muck on the ground was trampled here and there by feet that seemed almost to be dancing. Griffin abruptly threw his arms around Kemp.

“Salvation!” Griffin said in a joyful whisper. “His house will have no guard, and his testimony is now worthless! We shall have my books for no trouble at all, and then my work can begin anew!”

Kemp offered an awkward pat to Griffin’s shoulder. There was no joy in his face, merely a deep relief and an exhalation of a breath he’d been holding since they’d walked inside.

“From your notes, could you now create the mechanism to render something invisible again, even if you have no way to reverse it?”

The Invisible Man finally released him. “What, do you wish to be invisible too? You’re no use to me invisible.” Griffin sounded horrified at the notion.

“Not me, no. There is nothing I wish for less. But you mentioned you could turn cloth invisible as easily as yourself?”

“Easier, actually. It was the result of my first attempt.”

“Then if I may make a suggestion?”

“You may.”

Kemp made a show of looking up and down the body of the man he knew stood before him with goose-pimpled skin chill as ice from the waist up and likely worse from the waist down.

“Consider, as your first step, creating some invisible trousers.”