The Hollow City (25 page)

There’s a wide picture window in the front wall, about twelve feet off the ground. It is completely shattered.

I stop the car, staring at the broken window. The bare dirt lawn is covered with footprints; most of the glass is gone, either cleaned up or stolen. I open the car and step out, locking it carefully behind me. The front door is framed by tattered yellow strips, a D
O
N
OT
C
ROSS
police line long ago ripped away and now hanging limply by the sides. I touch the doorknob gingerly, half expecting an electric shock or a painful cell phone buzz, but nothing happens. The knob doesn’t turn but the door opens anyway, and I can see that the latch is broken. The space beyond is a small landing, with stairs leading up to the window or down into darkness.

I step inside, moving around the door and the railings and the stairs by pure muscle memory, completely at home in a place I’ve never been. I climb the stairs and I know that Kelly was right—I did live here. I stare out of the broken window, looking across the vast field of dark and empty houses. This is where they caught up with me—I retreated here to hide, but they found me and I jumped out of this window, knocking myself unconscious. I step back from the soft square of moonlight on the floor. What else is in this house? Did I leave anything here?

I walk through the kitchen, touching each hollow space as I pass: a hole in the counter for a stove, and near it a hole for a dishwasher. The cupboards have no doors. The fridge hookups hang limp and unused.

Each room is empty, but familiar, and as I explore I struggle to piece together not just my memories of the house but my memories of the two weeks I spent here. This is what Dr. Vanek worked so hard to help me remember—or at least this was part of it. I walk through unfinished doorways, desperate to remember more.

There is a dark hole in a bedroom wall, with a jagged, exploded edge, but when I get closer I see it’s not a hole but a smear, old and brown, perhaps two feet wide and three feet tall. Blood, maybe? Whose? I don’t remember if it was here before or not. Did I hurt a cop? Did I hurt someone else?

If I keep looking long enough, will I find more Red Line victims buried in the floor?

I head downstairs to search the basement, finding most of the rooms unfinished—bare Sheetrock in some places, exposed cement in others, lined and fractured by a latticed wooden frame. I comb each room for clues, terrified but finding nothing. The light is too dark, nearly primordial; I’m searching by touch more than anything else. There’s nothing out of place, and the fact that I know that is the most terrifying thing of all. In the final bedroom—my room, I know—I find a damp, ratty blanket and a small cardboard box. Perched on top is an old corded phone, its thin cord trailing into the closet.

I know the phone works; this is not a guess but a fact. I pick it up, hear a dial tone, and set it back down. Why does an empty house have a phone line? It doesn’t have electricity, it doesn’t have water—it doesn’t even have sinks—but the phone line works perfectly, the power safely shielded in wires instead of broadcast through the air. It’s almost too good to be true—the perfect hideout for a homeless man with a crippling physical reaction to electromagnetic fields. Where else in the city could I find a place so sheltered, so familiar, yet so distant from any type of signal? There’s no civilization for thousands of feet in every direction: no cell phones, no radios, no microwaves, no wireless Internet. No people, faced or faceless. Living here I would have been free from everything that terrified me, yet retaining access to basic amenities like shelter and communication. Who set that up? Who installed the phone line?

Who maintained it?

Electricity could be stolen, leeched from an overhead power line, but a phone would be impossible without service; the phone needs a specific ID, known and maintained by the phone company, or it would be impossible to connect any calls. Even the dial tone would be impossible. I move the phone and open the box beneath, hoping for some kind of clue, but it’s empty. I stare at the phone in the dark. It’s my link to the truth—whoever set it up is a part of this, and they set it up for me. Were They using it to watch me? Was I using it to call Them, or someone else? Who would I even call? Not the police, not my job, certainly not my father. I probably called Lucy, but I didn’t need a working phone for that. Maybe I never used the phone at all.

Ring!

I stare at the phone, dull and rounded in the dark room. Who will I hear? What will it mean?

Ring!

It doesn’t matter who it is; this is why I’m here. This is everything I’ve been trying to do. This phone.

Ring!

I pick it up.

“Hello?”

“Michael, thank goodness you’re there. We’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

I stare at the phone in shock, my jaw hanging open, then slowly put it back to my ear. “Dr. Vanek?”

TWENTY-FOUR

DR. VANEK’S VOICE IS URGENT
and agitated. “I didn’t know if you’d find the house or not; I didn’t think your memory had come back yet. Stay hidden, I’ll be right there.”

“Wait, wait,” I say quickly, my mind still trying to catch up. “What house is this? How did you know I’d be here?”

“I told you to go there.”

“No, I mean you: how did
you
know I’d be in this house? How do you even know the phone number?”

“Michael,” he says, then stops. “Are you saying…” He stops again. “Are you saying you still don’t remember?”

“Remember what?”

“Remember everything!” he shouts. “The house, the signals, the Faceless Men. How did you find the house if you don’t remember?”

“I got it from the reporter.”

“I thought she wouldn’t talk to you. I need you to figure this out on your own, Michael, that’s why I wouldn’t help you.”

“I convinced her,” I say, trying to think—trying to force myself to figure this out. “What are you talking about? What’s going on?”

“You really don’t remember anything, do you?” He grunts. “No wonder you attacked Nikolai.”

“Nikolai?” I frown, then nod as recognition dawns. “You mean Nick the night janitor?”

“He was trying to help you!”

“He was one of Them, Vanek! He didn’t have a face!”

“And in your idiot paranoia you assumed that meant he was evil. He was trying to help you!”

“He attacked me.”

“Did he?” asks Vanek. “Did he pull out a gun, or a knife, or a vicious, killer cell phone? Did he punch you or kick you?”

“He ran straight at me.”

“At you or toward you? There’s a big difference.”

“I…” My mouth moves mechanically, searching for words. “I…” I clench my teeth, determined not to let him cloud the facts. “He was trying to kill me.”

“He was trying to rescue you,” says Vanek, “though he was apparently too much of an idiot to pull it off.”

“Nobody rescued me,” I say. “I escaped—I saw him with no face and I ran.”

“And I suppose you think you did it all on your own.”

“Nobody else was there!”

“Exactly,” he says. “That didn’t seem odd to you? How long were you there, moving his body and stealing his clothes, and nobody walked in on you? Where was the guard? Where were the security cameras? Even the night nurse was unconscious!”

“That was…” I don’t know what it was.

“Nikolai and the others prepared the way to help you escape the hospital,” says Vanek, “but you escaped from everyone and now you’re loose. And apparently very dangerous.”

“He didn’t help me,” I say firmly. “I don’t know where the guard was, but there were still people there—the nurse was still there.”

“Which is probably why Nick ran toward you—to keep you from shouting and attracting her attention. How were we supposed to know you’d kill him first? We thought you’d remembered!”

“But … why would the Faceless Men be trying to help me?”

“Think, Michael! Why can you see the Faceless Men and no one else can? Why did the FBI try to interrogate you?”

“He wasn’t interrogating me, he was … asking me questions. It’s different.”

“Why did the doctor give you so many pills?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why did they try to give you an MRI every time you got too close to the truth?”

“I don’t know!”

“Come on, Michael, put it all together! The Faceless Men are helping you because you’re one of them.”

I stagger back, stumbling over the base of the phone. “That’s not true.”

“Dammit, Michael, you have to remember this!”

It can’t be true—it can’t be true. I look around, as if the walls hold some kind of answer or escape, but there’s nothing; just walls, closing me in, trapping me. I feel like I can’t breathe, like my lungs are being squeezed to nothing inside my chest. I back up again, pulling the phone farther, and it drags the cord out of the dark hole of the closet.

It’s not connected to anything.

“Michael,” says Vanek calmly, “stay where you are—I’m coming right over. I’m sorry you had to hear it this way, but we thought you already knew—we thought you’d remembered. How did you find the house if you couldn’t remember?”

I pull on the cord, pulling and pulling until I hold the plug in my hand. It’s right there, just hanging in the air.

“If you see anyone else without a face, Michael, please show some restraint. Don’t kill anyone!”

“You’re not real.”

“Of course I’m real.”

“This phone’s not plugged in,” I say, walking to the open closet and feeling in the dark for a phone jack. There’s nothing there—it’s not connected to anything, and it never was. “This phone doesn’t work, which means this entire thing is all in my head.” I stand up. “You’re a hallucination.”

“Just because I’m in your head doesn’t mean I’m not real—”

I drop the phone and run outside; the night is clear and cold, the stars shining faintly through a choking haze of city light. I race to my car, unlocking it in a rush, running in a blind panic. I shove the key into the ignition; the engine roars to life, crackling my feet with its magnetics. My father’s cell phone rings and I shout, startled. I hold up my hands to ward off the pain but there’s none; the signal doesn’t hurt. The phone has no batteries.

Vanek’s calling me back.

The phone rings again, loud and strident, and I throw it out the window. I don’t care if Vanek still wants to talk: I’m not listening.

I get lost on the way out of the empty neigborhood, just for a minute, but soon I find the exit and pull out onto the street, following the signs for Highway 34. I need to get out of here—I need to go and never come back. I take another Klonopin, just in case. I need something stronger—something to get rid of the hallucinations forever. The freeway ramp curves up and away from the street and I follow it, the city spreading out below me like a sky full of shadows, the stars below brighter than the ones above.

“I don’t have to use the phone, you know,” says Vanek. He’s sitting in the passenger seat, right next to me, and I almost lose control of the car. I swerve back into the slow lane, my hands gripping the wheel in terror.

“Go away! You’re not real!”

“As I was trying to tell you, Michael, just because I’m in your head doesn’t mean I’m not real.”

“Lucy said the same thing.”

His voice is hard. “Lucy can fend for herself: she’s a pure delusion, and a flimsy, sophomoric one at that. I’m real.”

“You’re not real.”

“Stop saying that!” he roars. “I’ve been in your imbecile head for years, for your entire life, and as useless as that life is I’m not going to let you throw it away. I’m going to make something out of you if it kills us both.”

“Make something? Make what?”

“Make what?” He throws up his hands. “What do you think? I’m going to make me, of course. You’re a pathetic waste, Michael: a perfect, healthy body wrapped around a mind too broken to make any worthwhile use of it. I, on the other hand, am a brilliant mind with no body at all. Think what I could do with yours.”

“That’s…” I can feel myself trembling, my chest and my arms vibrating so strongly it’s like the tardive dyskinesia all over again. Displaced by my own mind. “That’s not possible.”

“The greatest obstacle to any invading force is the outer wall,” says Vanek lowly. “You either batter it down or you wait it out in an endless siege, but I’m already inside; I’m already past the wall and running through the streets, burning and slaughtering as I go. The only thing standing between me and you is your mind, Michael, and quite frankly it’s not up to the task. It’s weak and it’s helpless—it can’t even tell the difference between the truth and its own lies. There will be no reinforcements, Michael. There will be no cavalry to save the day. It’s just you and me.”

“Don’t listen to him, Michael.” It’s Lucy’s voice, from the backseat, and once again I’m so startled I almost swerve into the side wall of the freeway.

“Oh, please,” says Vanek, grumbling low in his throat.

I wrestle the car back under control and glance over my shoulder; Lucy is sitting in the backseat, smiling kindly.

“I’ll always be here for you, Michael. We can fight him together.”

“I don’t have time for this,” says Vanek. “You’re a vapid Hollywood fantasy of the worst kind—you’re the most implausible delusion he has, and he thinks his water heater’s trying to kill him!”

“Don’t listen to him, Michael—I love you!”

“You’re an adolescent pipe dream,” Vanek snarls, then he points at me: “And you’re a narcissistic idiot, proclaiming love to yourself through your own hallucination. It’s embarrassing.”

“And what about you?” I say, trying to think of something—anything—to counter him. “What does your existence say about me? That I hate myself? That I’m a fat, tactless jerk like you?”

He smiles; his teeth gleam wickedly, flashing in and out of view as we speed past giant freeway streetlights. “What do I signify? I’m here because you have potential, Michael. You created Lucy because you wanted to escape your life, but I’m here because you want to change it. I’m a psychiatrist determined to cure you; I’m the unflagging voice of improvement, always urging you to aim higher than you are. I exist because you know you can be more than yourself.”