The Invisible Man
When H.G. Wells published The Invisible Man in 1897, he created a monster. A murderer. A madman driven to his insanity by science. The perfect and offensive combination of horrors that gripped and assaulted prim Victorian sensibilities. In 1933 when Universal Studios looked for a fresh monster to follow the highly successful “Dracula” they adapted Wells’ Invisible Man as a character who launches a reign of murder and terror. Both of these horror creatures cross moral lines, distribute mayhem, and perhaps worst of all…run around naked.
DIVISIBLE MAN has none of that. Will Stewart does not go mad, does not terrorize or commit mass murderer, and only once, thanks to circumstances beyond his control, does he run around naked in public. Will’s moral compass guides him through high concept suspense thrillers spiced with aviation authenticity, a cast of quirky but realistic characters, and a genre-defying love story in each installment of this long-running mystery series. At its heart, this unique thriller series is not about a superpower, but about how bad people meet justice meted out by ordinary people who are pushed a little too far.
Author’s note (for the lawyers): Nowhere in more than a million words written for this long-running thriller series does the word “invisible” appear. Will’s gift or affliction, depending on your point of view, is unique and best described by Will Stewart himself. Read on:
The Other Thing (as described by Will Stewart)
It’s like this: I wake up nearly every morning in the bed I share with my wife. After devoting a religious moment to appreciating the stunning, loving woman beside me, I ease off the mattress and pick my way across the minefield of creaks and groans in the old farmhouse’s wooden floor. I slip into the hall and head for the guest bathroom two doors down—the one with the quietest toilet flush in the house. I take care of essential business, then pull up to the mirror. The face offers no surprises. I give it a moment, then picture a set of levers in my head—part of the throttle-prop-mixture quadrant on a twin-engine Piper Navajo. The levers I imagine are to the right, a fourth set not found on any airplane, topped with classic round balls. I see them fully retracted, pulled toward me, the pilot. My eyes are open—it makes no difference—I can see the levers either way. I close my hand on them. I push. They move smoothly and swiftly to the forward stops. Balls to the wall.
For a split second I wonder, as I did the day before, and the day before that, if this trick will work again. Then—
Fwooomp!
—I hear it. A deep and breathy sound—like the air being sucked out of a room. I’ve learned that the sound is audible only in my head.
A cool sensation flashes over my skin. The first dip in a farm pond after a hot, dusty day. The shift of an evening breeze after sunset.
I vanish.
I see myself disappear in the mirror. Bleary eyes and tossed hair wink out and the shower curtain behind me—the one with the frogs on it— fills in where my head had been. As soon as I see those frogs, my feet leave the cold tile floor. My body remains solid, but gravity and I are no longer on speaking terms. I begin to float. A stiff breeze will send me on my way if I don’t hang on to something.
The routine never varies. I’ve tested it nearly every morning since I piloted an air charter flight down the RNAV 31 Approach to Essex County Airport but never made the field. I have no memory of the crash. The running theory is that I collided with something in midair. I have dreams of hitting something, but I’m not sure if the dreams come from the event or were suggested afterward. In the dreams, everything is peachy until something—it’s just a hole in the sky—tears the airplane apart under me. Evidence suggests I fell more than five hundred feet and landed in a marsh, sitting in the pilot’s seat. That’s where the Essex Volunteer Fire Department found me.
Since the night of the crash, whenever I picture that set of levers in my mind and I push them fully forward, I vanish. Pull them back, and I reappear.
It may kill me.
That doesn’t scare me.
Far darker things greet the dawn every day.
Propulsion
From DIVISIBLE MAN - THE SIXTH PAWN
