The Hollower (12 page)

She looked up as he reached the floor and Sean breathed a sigh of relief. No, it was her, definitely—her face, her eyes, her smile. “Clumsy me. I went to turn it on and I don’t know, the sleeve of my robe must’ve caught something and . . . crash!”

Sean crossed the room to where his mother stood. “What do you want me to do?”

“Well, I figure at least if I get the big pieces off the floor, we can Dust-Buster the rest tomorrow morning. I’m going to hand the big ones to you—but be very careful, okay? Don’t cut yourself.”

“I know, I know. I’m always careful.” He cupped his hands in front of him as his mother collected five or six big pieces and some medium-sized ones. “Hey, Mom, what were you doing down here so late, anyway?”

His mother dropped the ceramic pieces into his hand so they landed heavily in his palm.

And she laughed with someone else’s voice.

Sean felt a tickle on his palm and looked down. The pieces were wiggling around—writhing, actually, and changing. The shine of the porcelain took
on a sickly pale cast, like blind newborn things spawned by the lamp that had held them, and the grinding movement of fired clay against itself took on a new tone entirely as the pieces raised themselves up from his palm on hairy, spindly white legs.

Bugs, oh my God, they’re bugs, but . . . but Mom
knows
, she knows I
. . .

Sean shook his hand like he’d been burned, and the pieces of lamp fell, skittered across the floor, and disappeared into the dining room across the hall. He looked up at the thing pretending to be his mother.

The faceless head hovered above the neckline of his mother’s robe, just beneath her hair. The Hollower.

He ducked past it and ran up the stairs. Behind him, the front door opened and closed, but the light laughter of the Hollower followed him all the way to his mother’s room. She lay sleeping in bed. How hadn’t he noticed when he’d passed her room on the way down? It was like his mom’s bedroom hadn’t even been there.

He shuddered, then crept quietly to the window by her bed and peered out. The Hollower waved at him from the street.

And if it was out there, then the sleeping figure—the figure with his mother’s face, his mother’s scent, his mother’s heat and solid
realness
in this world—was really his mom. He climbed into bed next to her and pulled the covers over him. In her sleep, she stroked his head and mumbled something he didn’t quite catch.

He shut his eyes. It was a long time before he fell asleep.

Everything about the newspaper office where Dave worked was a study in “organized clutter.” That’s what his boss, Crinchek, said of business: the most efficient ones ran on the fuel of organized clutter. Along the eggshell-white walls of the office hung random articles clipped and framed, collages of the paper’s biggest news stories, and an award or two, generally hanging in a prominent spot above the cubicle of the recipient. The cubes themselves, a static-colored gray, were chest-high and afforded the casual observer a glimpse of computers and printers, the tops of stacked paper, half-eaten working-lunches, the occasional houseplant or picture frame crowded by file folders and binders, and telephones. The phones added their own irregular rhythm to the din of the office, and the excited murmur of journalists following leads filled the remaining space.

All this was in the background of Dave’s mind, the way strangers in crowded elevators or on the
subway remained in the periphery of thought. His primary concern was elsewhere.

Dave wanted to write off seeing that god-awful figure as a hallucination—work stress, a bad enchilada, whatever. Sally seeing it . . . well, that was just her nerves, her disorder talking there. But Erik and Cheryl seeing it—that was almost beyond comprehension. Maybe it meant he wasn’t crazy, thank you very much, no gears slipping in his future, but then what
did
it mean?

It means you’ve screwed them all
.

“No, it doesn’t,” he said. His own words, spoken out loud with a volume that inner voice didn’t have, gave him back some control of himself.

He remembered Cheryl’s face, her beautiful brown eyes, the outline of her pleading lips, and he wanted to protect her. But his only thought had been to get away, to distance himself from her, and by doing so, distance her from the Hollower.

I don’t know. I don’t know what it is
. That, at least, had been the truth. He didn’t know what it was, or where it came from, or why it was stalking him or anyone else.

Maybe
, the internal voice broke in,
it’s time to find out
.

Dave thought about what Erik had said about being alone and considered going back to the bar to talk to Cheryl. He also entertained the possibility of getting a CAT scan and ruling out tumors or whatever else might be causing visits from strange beings who clearly wanted him de—

“Dave?” Georgia’s voice made him flinch.

A delicate hand flew to the silk valley between her breasts, and she let out a low whistle. “Tense?”

He grinned—tried to, at least, though it fell short.
“Sorry, Georgia. Rough night last night. You looking for my write-up on the Bobcats versus Ramblers home game?”

She nodded, and glanced at the clock on the wall across from him. “Crinchek wants the features bundled up and ready to go by eleven.”

“I’ve got it right here somewhere. . . .” He shuffled through some papers without a clue as to where he’d put the article, or, in that moment, if he’d even written it at all. He discovered it beneath some scribbled notes, smoothed out the crinkled corner, and handed it to her.

She nodded. “You know, if you need to pass off your notes to someone else—”

“No, I’m fine. Really.”

“Because Crinch, death, and taxes wait for no man.”

“You’re right, and—”

“And,” she added with a small smile, “he’ll kill you if you’re late on another piece.”

Dave regarded her with an even look. “I suppose he’ll have to take a number and get in line.”

Georgia offered him a weird smile but said nothing. She turned on her tiny pinpoint heels and clicked away. Dave watched her retreating form, swore at the inner voice under his breath, and then turned to his computer screen.

It was close to deadline, and he had an article to proofread and another on a different local college sporting event that he still needed to translate from his chicken-scratched notes to legible, press-ready inches of copy. He didn’t want to do anything but go home and sleep off the remaining tequila in his system from the bottle he’d bought last night on the way home from the bar.

The monitor stared back at him mutely, its blank white Microsoft Word face awaiting his commands. He had nothing to tell it.

Dave jumped again as the bleating ring of the phone on his desk yanked him from his thoughts. He stared at it and it rang again, then a third time, before he clutched the receiver and brought it to his ear.

“Yeah, hello,
Bloomwood Ledger
. This is Dave Kohlar.”

“Mr. Kohlar?”

“That would be me.” He switched the receiver to the other ear with an impatient sweep.

“This is Dr. Stevens. I’m at Sisters of the Holy Rosary Hospital. We need you to come down here right away.”

Dave sat up in the chair. “What’s wrong? What’s the matter?”

“Please come right away, Mr. Kohlar.”

“God, is she hurt? What happened?”

Dr. Stevens cleared his throat. “She’s missing.”

Dave sank back into his chair, the air deflating from his lungs. “She’s . . . gone? Like, gone from the hospital, gone?”

“I’m afraid so.”

Gone. The idea gripped him that somehow, some way, the six-foot trench-coated tumor had broken into the hospital and done something awful to her.

“How could that have happened? Don’t people watch them? How could she have gotten out without anyone seeing her?”

“We don’t know. Believe me, I wish I could tell you. The last nurse to check said she looked in on Sally and her roommate right before the end of her shift, and saw them both asleep. When the night
nurse made her rounds later that night, Sally was gone. Now, rest assured, this has the full attention of the psychiatric staff here at Sisters of Mercy, and the police arrived a while ago and are looking into everything. But they would like to ask you a few questions, so if you’ll just—”

“But no one saw her go?”

A weighted pause hung across the phone line.

“Did someone see her leave the hospital?”

“It’s nothing to concern yourself with at this—”

“Who saw her go? What aren’t you telling me?” Dave was aware that the volume of his voice was rising steadily, threatening to crack. He glanced up and several curious pairs of eyes returned to their work as he met them.

A sigh came from the other end of the phone. “One of the patients, Mrs. Saltzman.”

“What did she see, exactly?”

“Maybe the police—”

“Damn it, Stevens,
what did she see?
” The fringe of his hearing caught polite shuffling of papers from a desk nearby.

Dr. Stevens cleared his throat. “Mrs. Saltzman said that she awoke to see Sally sitting up in bed, free of restraints, talking to someone.”

“Who was she talking to?”

“Mrs. Saltzman couldn’t see anyone else in the room.”

“And?”

“And she said Sally got up and walked out into the hallway. But, Mr. Kohlar—”

“That’s all she saw?”

“It would be better if you came down here and let the police explain.”

Dave waited out the pause that followed.

The doctor sighed. With reluctance, he added, “She said Sally saw something that must have frightened her, because she ran toward the fire stairs. Moments later, according to Mrs. Saltzman, ‘the black doctor,’ as she called him, glided past the doorway. But the nurses at the station not more than fifty feet away didn’t see anyone in the hallway at all—including your sister.”

Dave’s arm began to ache from the trembling of his hand, and the effort of holding the receiver to his ear. “The black doctor?”

“It is under investigation. Currently, the staff at Sisters of Mercy is being interviewed.”

Dave felt a wave of nausea and sat up again in his chair. A dull throbbing against his eyeballs made him squeeze his lids shut and pinch the bridge of his nose. “Maybe she meant his clothes. You know, doctors wear white coats. Maybe this man that took Sally—or scared Sally, or whatever—wore a black coat, black hat, maybe. Black gloves.”

“I suppose that’s possible, and something for the police to follow up on. Please come right away. The detective here may be able to give you more details.”

“Right. Right, I’m—I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Dave answered, pulling up the document that needed proofreading on his computer. He clicked on the Print icon. “Dr. Stevens?”

“Yes?”

“Did Mrs. Saltzman say anything about the black doctor’s . . . uh, face?”

“No. No, she didn’t.”

“Okay, thanks. I’ll be there soon.” Swiping his car keys off his desk, he also grabbed the legal pad of
notes on the article that needed writing and practically yanked the drafted one out of the printer.

He found Georgia redlining an article, her glasses perched on the tip of her upturned nose. She looked up at his approach and, seeing the papers in his hand, frowned.

“Please, Georgia.” He had always suspected Georgia was attracted to him—nothing serious, just enough of a crush that he could talk her into shoehorning him out of tight jams. He tilted his head and offered her a pleading puppy look. “Please, it’s my sister. The hospital called and—”

“I can’t keep doing this for you, Dave.” She sounded annoyed but not quite angry—not yet.

“I wouldn’t ask you if it wasn’t an emergency.”

She sighed, putting down her notes. “Fine. Tell me what needs to be done.” Before he could speak, she pointed a long, red-painted acrylic nail at him accusingly. “Don’t you dare blame me if Crinch throws your ass to the curb with your legal pad and pen behind you.”

He let go of his breath. “You know I appreciate this, right?”

She let go of a small smile. “Yeah, yeah, I do. Now talk to me.”

The entrance to the psych ward was, for all intents and purposes, blocked off. Turning the wheel, Dave cut a sharp right and maneuvered the car around several hospital and utility personnel. Some type of truck—heating and cooling, maybe, or electronics—was parked beneath the cement overhang. Several jumpsuited workers, some atop ladders, busied themselves with cables that ran along the inner
tracks of the automatic doors. Interspersed among the workers, a couple of police officers stood by the blue-red-blue-red of their patrol car lights and gestured to each other and at other cars. An older policeman with bushy gray eyebrows sewn over the bridge of his nose waved him back toward the main entrance.

Dave rolled down his window. “I’m here to see Dr. Stevens. He called me.”

An uninterested nod. “Visiting hours are temporarily suspended, sir. If your visit is regarding a patient, you’ll have to speak to the officer at the front desk. Go around front.”

“Officer, I’m Dave Kohlar. I was told the police wanted to question me about my sister’s disappearance.”

The cop strolled to the window, a don’t-question-me expression settled deep into the lines of his face. Dave suspected it was an expression he practiced in front of the mirror, and reveled in its very copness. The tag on the policeman’s uniform read
OFFICER M. L. JENKINS
. Smacking a weighty hand on the cab of the car, he loomed closer to the window and cast a glance around the interior, his gaze coming to rest on Dave’s face.

Another meaty smack to the cab’s roof made Dave flinch. “Okay, then,” Jenkins said as if coming to a decision, “go in through that side entrance there, Mr. Kohlar, and follow the signs. Ask for Detective DeMarco.”

“Thanks.” Dave put the car in reverse. Backing carefully around the workers, he parked in the nearest lot, then sprinted across the roadway to the side entrance of Sisters of the Holy Rosary Hospital.

Inside, the antiseptic smell of the hospital tickled something unpleasant in his nose and in his mind. It was a smell that had always been with him, in his clothes, his hair, his skin, and it reminded him of childhood trips to see Sally when she had one of her “episodes.”