The Hollow City (24 page)

“Has anyone gone in after her?” I ask. “Her family, the police, anyone?”

“She had to join the cult, officially, or they wouldn’t let her in,” says Kelly. “She signed a hundred waivers and legal papers and who knows what else, just to get through the door, and now no one can touch her.” She sits back, tired and defeated. “I guess she thought she could handle it, but … she’s been brainwashed, I know it.”

I nod, trying to sort through the facts. It’s just like Agent Leonard said about the other kidnapped children—they went straight to the cult, fully converted, and nothing anyone said could convince them to leave. It sounds like brainwashing, sure, but those kids were brainwashed before they even joined the cult. They did it when we were infants—implants, maybe, though that doesn’t make any sense for an anti-technology cult. Whatever they did, somehow it didn’t work right on me.

I look at Kelly. “Is there any evidence,” I say, speaking slowly, “any sign at all, that the cultists might have something…” I pause, praying that she’ll take me seriously, “… implanted in their heads?”

Kelly peers closer, eyes narrow and focused. “Why do you ask that?”

“I’ve been telling people for months now that I think there’s something implanted in my head, ever since the schizophrenia came on, but now I think it might actually be true.” I look at her closely; her eyes are wider. “This isn’t the first time you’ve heard this, is it? Do you know something?”

She leans back. “It’s just that…” She stops, sighs, and runs her fingers through her hair. “It’s just that it’s weird you would say that, because just today—literally, just a few hours ago—this other writer and I were talking about the case, and about the Red Line Killer, and how the evidence made it look like he was…” She looks up. “See, he doesn’t just bash them in, he doesn’t just break them. Our source in the coroner’s office said that he…” She grimaces. “He pokes the face. He prods it, like he’s studying it. He cracks into the nasal cavity, and into the sinuses, and it’s totally like he’s just … looking for something.”

My heart beats faster. This is the information I’ve been looking for. “Don’t you see what this means? There’s a real link now between the Killer and the Children and the Faceless Men. And me.”

“How does this link anything to you?”

“The Children of the Earth kidnapped pregnant women,” I say, “including my mom, but they didn’t want the women, they wanted us—they wanted the babies. No one has ever figured out why they wanted us, but maybe this is it. Did you know that every one of those kidnapped kids has gone back to join the cult?”

She frowns. “All of them?”

“Every one but me,” I say. “An agent from the FBI came to visit me at Powell, he said they’d been watching me for years to see if I did the same thing.”

“How can you be sure the FBI guy was real?”

“He talked to Dr. Little,” I say. “You talked to Dr. Little, right?” She nods again. “Then either the agent is real or all three of you are fake.”

“And you think that this … implant, whatever it is, brought them all back to the cult when they grew up.”

I nod eagerly, standing and pacing. “It controls their minds somehow; it takes them over so they’re not even themselves anymore. The implant explains everything. It creates some kind of electric field—the same thing that blurs out their faces when I try to look at them, and the same thing that lets me recognize them and see them for who they are when no one else can. I know who they are without even seeing them, and that’s how I must be doing it—I’m … using my field to
feel
their field. And that’s why other electrical fields hurt me, because they’re conflicting with the field that’s already in my head.” I swallow. “And that’s why I have schizophrenia, because my implant is broken, and it’s throwing my whole brain into chaos.”

She watches me. Her eyes are wet with tears. She purses her lips. “I’m so sorry for you,” she whispers. “I don’t know how to help you.”

“You can tell me where I was,” I say.

“What do you mean?”

“Before the police found me, before you and I met in the hospital, I was somewhere else—I don’t know where, or why, because I lost my memory. But if I can go back there, back to where I was, then maybe I can remember. Whatever they have—whatever they’re doing—the answer is there.”

She shakes her head. “That’s crazy.”

“So am I.” I crouch down, meeting her eyes. “You wanted to know their plan?
I
am their plan; me, and the other kids, and that reporter who won’t come out, and God only knows how many other people. They put something in us—they change who we are. I don’t know why, and I don’t know how, and I don’t know how far they’re going to take it, but I know we have to stop them. We have to do something.” I put my hand on the arm of her chair. “You have to help me find them.”

She looks at me, staring intently, studying my face like she’s looking for something—some visible sign of whatever the Faceless Men have stashed inside my head. She says nothing, simply watching. What is she thinking?

She takes a deep breath and nods. “It’s on my computer. I’ll go look it up.”

I nod, backing away, and she stands up and rubs her smashed fingers. She goes into the back room and I collapse into a chair, exhausted and drained. I need to sleep. I need more food. I drag myself back to my feet and go around the counter into the kitchen, opening the fridge. A soft musical trill wafts out of the back room, a computer loading up, and soon I hear typing. I’ve never liked computers, and I’ve rarely ever used one, even before the schizophrenia. If I have something in my head that reacts to them, I guess it makes sense that it would have been there my whole life. She has a Styrofoam box in the fridge—half a smothered burrito and some refried beans. I pull it out and start eating it cold; I’ve never liked microwaves either.

More typing. What does she need to type? If she’s searching for information that’s already on her computer, couldn’t she just do it with a mouse? It sounds like she’s typing a whole novel—

Or an email. I drop the box and sprint down the hall, charging into the room to see an open email program lighting up the screen. She curses and grabs the mouse, and I barrel into her at full speed, knocking her from the chair. She clutches at the mouse and keyboard, yanking them off the desk as she falls. I look at the screen. The email’s already been sent.

“You lied to me!”

“You need help,” she says, crouching on the floor. “You are sick, and delusional, and you’re going to get yourself hurt.”

I shout again, an angry roar. “You lied to me! Get out of the way.” I rip the keyboard from her hands, setting it back on the desk, then reach for the mouse. “Give it to me.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to find where I was.”

“You need help.”

“Give me the mouse!”

She hands it over and I set it gently on the desk, untangling the cords. I pull the chair upright and sit down, still an arm’s length away from the computer. I can use it, but I know it’s going to hurt. I don’t have a choice. I grit my teeth and slide the chair forward, feeling my head press into the electrical field like a pool of charged water. It buzzes like a raw current.

The speakers chirp—a short, syncopated rhythm.

I scoot back instantly, breathing heavily. “What was that?”

“It was the speakers.”

I remember that sound from Powell, from Dr. Little’s experiments with the speakers and the cell phone. “Do you have another cell phone?”

“You broke my phone, that’s why I had to send an email.”

“That sound—audio speakers make that sound when a cell phone signal passes through them. What do you have here that’s sending a signal?”

“Nothing.”

“Then you’ve been bugged,” I say, “or tapped or something, because it has to be coming from somewhere. That sound only happens when one field disrupts another—” I stop. The thing in my head—if my theory is right, it creates a field of its own. I lean forward, bracing myself for the static prickling. My head enters the field around the speakers; it dances through me, sick and painful.

The speakers chirp again.

“Listen,” I whisper.

“I can hear it.”

“No,” I say, “inside it. Can you hear it?” I stare, gritting my teeth at the pain, listening as hard as I can to a soft something in the white noise. “Buried in the signal there’s a … something. I swear I’ve heard it somewhere before.”

We listen, the electric fields crossing and blending, the speaker chirping and buzzing, and for one brief moment the white noise coalesces into a single word.

“Michael.”

We stagger back in unison, gasping for breath.

“Did you hear that?”

She nods. “What the hell is going on?”

“It was talking to me.”

“The thing in your head?”

I nod, swallowing. I almost don’t dare to say it. “It’s intelligent.”

She steps away, watching me closely, her face a mask of terror. “Get out of here.”

“Do you believe me now?”

“I don’t want to be a part of this, just get out of here now.”

“Give me the address and I’ll go.”

“I don’t know how much time you have,” she says, pressing back against the wall. “I emailed a friend of mine, told her to call the police—I don’t know if she’s even read it yet.”

The speakers beep again, startling us, but it’s only a small chime. An email alert. She crouches in front of the desk and points at the corner of the screen. “She just responded. Police are on their way.”

“Give me the address.”

“You don’t have time—”

“I have to know where I’m going. Give me the address where I was found, and the address for ChemCom.”

“ChemCom?”

“They’re a part of this too.”

She shakes her head. “They had a victim there, but I don’t think the company’s involved—they were being robbed.”

“Robbed?”

“On a pretty regular basis; I’ve got it in my notes.” She clicks on a file and scans down the document. “Formamide and potassium hydroxide. The company’s beside the point—you need to find whoever was stealing those chemicals.”

“Why are those chemicals important?”

“Because you can combine them to make cyanide.”

“No.” I shake my head, pacing the small office. “This is too much. It’s the Children of the Earth, it’s got to be. We’ve got to stop them.”

She clicks open another document, scrolling through page after page of notes. “Here it is.” She fumbles on the desk for a pen, writing on the back of an envelope. “The police found you in an overpass, under I-34, but you ran and they chased you to an abandoned house at this address. Maybe you can hide out there again.”

“Wait.” My heart seems to stop, my senses tunneled in on a single phrase. “What do you mean, an abandoned house?”

“It’s a whole abandoned development.” She hands me the paper: S
TONEBRIDGE
C
OURT.
“The owner went bankrupt in the recession, and the houses were never finished.”

I feel pale and weak. “It’s empty?”

“Yeah,” she says, staring at me in worry, “just … rows and rows of empty houses. Why, does that mean something?”

Siren’s wail in the distance, and our heads snap up to listen.

“I need to get there
now
.”

“They’re almost here,” she says. “I don’t know if you can get away.”

“Does this window open?”

She rushes to the blinds, turning off the light before pulling them open. “It’s a long drop; this is the second floor.” She wrenches open the window. “Be careful.”

“Don’t tell them where I’m going.”

“I won’t.”

I climb through the window and leap out into the darkness.

TWENTY-THREE

THE HOLLOW CITY.

There’s a chain-link fence along the outside and a sign: W
ELCOME TO
S
TONEBRIDGE
C
OURT
. A suburban development, half-finished and abandoned. I ease the car slowly down the fence, watching the empty houses slip past me in the dark. There’s a way in—somehow I don’t just assume this, I
know
it, as clearly as if I’d been here before. I have been here before. Did I live here? Did I hide here? What will I find?

I remember a deep pit. Did I fall into it? But the policemen said I fell out of a window.…

There’s a break in the fence, a wide, empty street that leads into the vacant neighborhood beyond. I stare at it, irrationally terrified, but I summon my courage and turn in, moving without thinking. I belong here. Don’t I? A roll of chain link, once stretched across the road, is now rolled back, and I ease past it carefully; My headlights catch the first house in brilliant beams of light, a hollow shell covered in graffiti, a malevolent shroud of jagged, screaming words. The lights move past it and the house disappears again in darkness.

I drive slowly, noting each empty house as I pass it. Two. Four. Ten. Twenty. Empty mailboxes stand like soldiers; empty windows stare like cadaverous eyes, black and dead until, here and there, my headlights catch one in the distance and shine back a bright flash of reflection. Most of the homes are finished, at least on the outside, but the lawns are bare dirt and the driveways are dotted with extra lumber or bags of cement. Branded labels mark each window like a pupil, giving each house a sly, sidelong gaze. They’re spying on each other.

A furtive shadow appears and disappears around a corner. I’m not alone.

I come to a cross street and pause, studying the house on the far corner—identical to the others, but different. This is where I turn right. It’s not a message but a memory, and when I turn I feel a sense of familiarity: this is the way. The next street sparks another memory—turn left—but each new moment of insight increases my unease. I shift in my seat, namelessly anxious. My path is accurate, but it isn’t
right.
I follow it anyway. The next intersection is a T, and I know with perfect clarity that I must go forward, off the street and between the houses. When I followed this path before, I was on foot. I pause, headlights shining on the hollow houses, then shake my head and turn. I’m safe in the car—I don’t know what’s out there, or what I’m going to find. I follow the streets around and behind, twisting and turning until I catch the path again, seizing on it like a psychic scent. This way. I follow it down another row of empty shells until my mind says stop, and the house beside me feels powerfully familiar. I’ve been here before. I used to live here.