The Hollow City

by Dan Wells

  “It’s not mental,” I say, “it’s a real, physical reaction. That signal is screwing with something in my head, the same way it screws with the speakers—it’s a microchip or a transmitter or one of those damn alien bugs!”

  “Of course it’s a physical reaction,” he says, walking toward me. “Your brain is a physical thing—even your hallucinations are physical reactions, produced by real, physical impulses and chemicals. There’s no implant in your head, just regular ears; they hear a sound and tell your brain, which consults your delusion and creates a psychosomatic pain response.”

  “But you can’t be sure!” I shout. “You’re just guessing now—you’re brushing this off like you ignore everything else I say!” I step closer and the orderly reaches for me, but suddenly Dr. Little pulls his phone back out of his pocket and I shy back, cringing at the memory of pain. He holds it up like a cross and I step back again.

  The doctor stands silent, watching me. “It’s nothing,” he says at last. “Nothing at all. I’m ignoring your ideas because they are patently ridiculous: you do not have an electrical signal or some kind of alien being locked inside your head.” He looks around at the gathered patients. “Back to your … We’re done here.” He turns and walks away, the massive orderly flanking him protectively.

  * * *

  I HAVE A TRACKING DEVICE. It’s the only explanation. In one of my episodes of lost time I was abducted, by who or what I do not know, and they planted something in my brain that reacts to electronic fields—that’s how they track me, that’s how they control me, that’s how they do everything. Dr. Little either doesn’t believe it, or he’s deliberately lying. But is he lying to me or to himself? Is he ignoring the ramifications, or covering them up?

  “Hey Mike.”

  I look up; Devon is standing in my doorway. He grins.

  “Someone’s here to see you, man.”

  Lucy! I stand up quickly and step to the door. “Finally!”

  “It’s your father.”

  I stop short. My father. We’ve been apart so long—nearly a month in here, plus the two weeks before that I still can’t remember. My father. My face falls, and I step back. “What does he want?”

  “Well he wants to see you, man,” says Devon. “He’s your dad, of course he wants to see you.” I don’t move, and he reaches for my shoulder. “Come on, Mike, you’ve been in here five weeks and this is only your third visit. Come say ‘hi’ to the guy. Come on.”

  I hesitate a moment, but Devon grabs my shoulder and pulls me to the door, and I let him lead me through the hall and into the commons room. My father is there, standing stiffly by the wall, his hat in his hands. He wears a wool hat every time he goes anywhere.

  He straightens when he sees me, but his face is hard. I keep my face impassive and walk toward him. I stop a few feet away.

  “Dr. Little told me to come,” he says brusquely. I wait for more, but he says nothing.

  I look at the floor. “He probably thinks it will help me.”

  My father grunts. “Doesn’t know us very well, then.”

  “Do you want to sit down?”

  “I won’t be here that long.”

  I nod. It figures. I don’t want to spend much time with him anyway. I stare at the wall, not sure what else to say. “Was the traffic bad getting here?”

  “Bad as ever.”

  “Ah.” I nod again. Am I nodding too much? Is it the … the tar-something? Dyskinetics? I worry a lot these days, maybe too much. I fix my eyes on the wall and try to hold still.

  “Doctor’s been asking about your mother,” he says, a hint of anger entering his voice. It’s subtle, but I’ve learned to identify it before it gets out of hand. “Medical history and such; wants to know if she was crazy like you. What are you telling these people about your mother?”

  “Nothing,” I say quickly. “They’ve never asked me about her.”

  “I didn’t ask what they asked about her, I asked what you told them.” His voice is rising now. I feel like a child again, standing in a corner, listening to him yell about breaking something or playing too far away. He never liked me to go far. I think he was scared they’d come after me again.

  I shake my head, looking at the floor. “I haven’t said anything, sir. Not about Mom. She has nothing to do with this.”

  “You’re damn right she has nothing to do with this,” he says. “I don’t like you running around crazy and stupid, but I like you making your mom look crazy and stupid even less. You hear me, boy? She doesn’t deserve this.”

  “Excuse me, sir,” says Devon, stepping forward, but my father cuts him off fiercely.

  “You keep your nose out of our business, you got that?”

  Devon pauses a moment, then walks around us, headed for the gate.

  Something about this doesn’t make sense. Dr. Little got a full medical history on me and my parents last time I was in here, years ago; there’s no reason to be asking more questions now. Dead medical histories don’t change.

  “What kinds of questions was he asking?”

  “What do you care what kinds of questions he was asking?”

  I shift my feet, trying to summon more courage. I keep my eyes on the floor. “I just want to know what they’re asking,” I say calmly. “I need to figure out what they … what they think is wrong with me.”

  “What’s wrong with you is you’re weak,” he says. “You always have been. I don’t have time to come running down to the loony bin every time you can’t deal with whatever stupid thing sends you over the edge. Your mother deserves better.”

  My mother. It always comes back to her.

  Dr. Little steps up behind my father; Devon is a few paces behind him, looking stern. “Excuse me, sir,” the doctor says, taking my father by the shoulder. “If you don’t mind, I have a few more questions for you.”

  “Of course,” my father says gruffly. He turns and walks with Dr. Little to the gate, never saying good-bye or even giving me a final glance. I watch him go, relieved.

  My mother deserved better than him.

  TWELVE

  “VERY GOOD,” SAYS LINDA, smiling, “that’s excellent, Gordon.”

  Gordon looks up with a grin, his hands still moving the broom: back and forth, back and forth, a full six inches off the commons room floor.

  “Remember to keep it on the ground,” says Linda, and Gordon’s eyes grow wide with despair. The broom slows, but doesn’t lower, and Linda steps in looking as gentle and loving as she can. “It’s okay, Gordon, you’re doing a great job!” She guides his hands down, lowering the broom until it touches the floor. “There you go—you did it! Now keep going back and forth, just like that.”

  Gordon smiles again.

  “This is stupid,” says Steve. “We shouldn’t have to sweep the floor—they have janitors who do that for us. This is like a hotel. I need to order room service.”

  “This is your home,” says Linda. “Don’t you think you should help to take care of your home?”

  “They have janitors for that,” says Steve. “I’ve seen them. There’s one who comes at night.”

  “They do have janitors,” says Linda, “but it’s important to learn how to do it for yourself. Are you going to live here forever?”

  “I’m leaving soon. Jerry and I are leaving next week.”

  “I don’t think you’re leaving us that soon,” says Linda, “but you will be leaving eventually. Our job is to make sure you know how to act when you go.”

  “I already know how to sweep,” says Steve. “See? Gimme that broom, Gordon, gimme that broom so I can show them.” He wrestles with Gordon for a moment, Gordon still struggling mutely to move the broom back and forth across the floor. Linda steps in and separates them.

  “You don’t need to show me, Steve, I believe you. Would you like to try something else? Job skills?”

  “I worked in a bookstore.”

  “We have a cash register right over here,” she says, leading him over to a lunch
table. “You come too, Michael, you can be the customer.” I follow her a few steps, then stop. The register squats like a dull metal toad on the table. “We have a bag of plastic groceries right here,” says Linda, pointing to a pile on the table. “All you have to do is…” She turns and sees that I didn’t follow. “It’s okay, Michael, it’s fun. You can help Steve.”

  I don’t say anything.

  “He’s afraid of the register,” says Steve. “He thinks it’s going to kill him.”

  “It’s not going to kill me,” I say.

  “He thinks it’s going to read his mind, or write on it, or do something else like that. He’s kind of crazy.”

  I don’t say anything. What’s the point?

  “We have some kind of weird people in here,” says Steve, leaning close to Linda and whispering, “but I think there’s something wrong with Michael. He should probably see a psychiatrist.”

  “Why don’t you see if you can figure out the register,” says Linda, “and I’ll have a talk with Michael alone.” She leaves him by the table and comes to me, smiling faintly. “Are you okay today, Michael?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Why not?”

  I shake my head. “I’m never getting out of here. Not alive.”

  “Do you think your life is in danger?”

  I look away. I don’t want to tell her what a waste I am; she’ll just give me a pep talk about sunshine or happiness or some dumb thing.

  “Come with me, Michael, I need to show you something.”

  I follow her; we walk through the commons room, past patients wiping down tables and reading books to each other and playing all kinds of weird little games. I’ve been in here two months now. What’s the point? I’m never getting out alive.

  How much longer can I last?

  “I have a treat for you today,” says Linda, stopping by the couches. “This is the best therapy session you’ve ever had.” She pauses, waiting for me to talk, but I say nothing. After a moment she continues. “We’re doing social therapy today, like I was telling Steve. We’re helping to give you the skills you need to live out in the real world again. For most of these guys that means cleaning up, but everyone’s different. Steve’s getting pretty good at cleaning, so he’s moved on to job skills. It seems simple, I know, but playing with an old cash register and some toy food is going to help him get ready to move back outside and have a real job. He’s probably pretty close.”

  I stay silent, staring at the floor, listening to a train whistle howling in the distance. There are other voices, whispering angrily, but I ignore them. They never say anything good.

  “What would you like to do?” asks Linda.

  I shake my head. “I don’t want to clean anything.”

  “That’s good; I wasn’t going to ask you to. Sometimes social therapy is even simpler than that. Sometimes social therapy is just learning how to fit in. How to stop being scared.”

  I look up, wary, but it doesn’t matter what she asks me to do. Nothing matters anymore.

  “I want you to sit right here,” she says, leading me around to the front of the couch, “and watch TV.”

  I step back firmly, yanking my hand away. “I can’t.”

  “All you have to do is sit here,” she says, smiling. “For everyone else TV is leisure time—it’s like a reward. I’m giving it to you for therapy, how lucky is that?”

  “I can’t do it.” I’m shaking my head. “I can’t sit here, and I can’t turn it on, I can’t watch it—”

  “I thought you said nothing mattered?”

  “This does!”

  “Listen,” says Linda, planting herself between me and the TV. “This is important. Nothing is going to happen.”

  “You don’t understand—”

  “I do understand,” she says calmly, “that’s why I’m doing this. TVs and cell phones and computers and everything else—they’re not out to get you. No one is reading your mind. No one is altering it.”

  “I can’t do it,” I pant, “I can’t do it…”

  “You’re going to get out of here,” she says. “You don’t believe me right now, but you will—one day you’ll be happy, and healthy, and free. You’ll have a home and a job and friends. Do you want to spend that time terrified of TVs?”

  My eyes are closed; my head is shaking.

  “Look at me,” she says. She holds my head with her hands, holding it still. “Look at me, Michael.” I open my eyes slowly. “There we go. Now listen. You’ve been scared of electronics for too long, and even when the drugs kick in and the hallucinations go away, you’ll still be scared of them out of pure habit. But there is nothing wrong. Can you say that?”

  “No,” I whisper.

  “Let’s start simple,” she says. She pushes me down into the couch, and I try to move but she holds me in place and I’m sitting on the couch and I can see the TV behind her, black and silent and staring. “We’re going to start very simply,” she says, “as simple as possible. We’re going to sit here, together, and just look at it, okay? We won’t turn it on, we can even unplug it if you want, but we’re going to sit here and get used to it. We’re going to pretend like there’s nothing wrong in the whole world.”

  My voice is a quiet rasp. “Why do you want me to be here? What is it going to do to me?”

  “It’s not going to do anything,” she says. “That’s why we’re here—so you can see that it’s not going to do anything. Alright?”

  I look at the TV. It looks back. I grit my teeth.

  I don’t want to be scared.

  “Alright.” There are tears in my eyes. “Let’s do it.”

  * * *

  IT’S NOT LIKE A SWITCH in my head; it’s not like the drugs just pulled a magic lever and suddenly all the crazy is gone. But the drugs are working. Slowly but surely, the Seroquel is changing the way I see the world.

  Imagine that you’re looking through a pane of glass, thick with dirt, and someone’s washing it clean. It’s still smudged and dirty, covered with smears and grime and residue, but it’s better than it was. Light is peeking through, and certain images are coming clear. I’m getting better.

  And that means I was sick.

  I’m pretty sure the maggot was a hallucination. I mean, how could it be real? Things like that don’t exist, and if they did I definitely wouldn’t be the only one who knew about it. It would have left some tracks—a slime trail, or spoor, or bite marks, or something to show that it had been here. Someone would have seen something, and questions would have been asked, and the whole hospital would have gone into high alert. You can’t hide something like that. It can’t have been real.

  I spend my days watching things—watching everything. There’s a patient in the commons room that no one ever talks to: is he real? He sits in the corner, talking to himself, and people pass by without saying anything. He might exist solely inside my head. At dinner one of the nurses talks to him, puts a hand on his shoulder; does that mean he’s real, or that she’s imaginary too? I watch her as she moves on, talking to other patients, asking about their day or their food or their anything. Maybe I’m imagining it all, making the patients move and respond in my head while in real life they sit still and say nothing because the nurse isn’t there. Can I do that? How real are my dreams? How deeply is my false reality blended with the real one? If Dr. Vanek is right, I have no way of knowing.

  One thing I know for sure—the footsteps at night, the soft ones I thought were Shauna’s, are completely gone. There is no nurse who checks on us at night, only the night guard who wanders the halls and peeks in our windows. I think Shauna must be imaginary too, like the maggot: a hallucination created by a desperate mind. My subconscious mind created the quiet nurse, soft and beautiful and kind, because I’m lonely.

  Why did my mind create the maggot?

  I shudder again, seized by the fleeting thought of it shrunk down and burrowing through my head.

  Dr. Little, I’m fairly sure, is real, and so ar
e Devon and Linda and Vanek. Too many people have seen them, talked to them, reacted to them. They’re either all hallucinations or all real, and if my hallucinations can be that widespread then nothing’s real at all. What about my father? It almost makes sense that he’s fake—that my schizophrenic mind, left to raise itself as a young orphan, would create a father and, not knowing how a father should behave, pattern his behavior after the cruel realities of the world around me. The voice of the Earth, telling me I was no good and nobody loved me. As a child I fed myself, bathed myself, walked myself to school; is that because my father was negligent, or because he didn’t exist?

  But he came in, he talked to me, he yelled at me and he yelled at Devon, and then Devon and Dr. Little both talked to him, both touched him. I don’t know where the real world begins and ends.

  It’s wishful thinking, I guess, to hope that my father isn’t real. I’m not that lucky.

  What about the reporter, Kelly Fischer? She made me promise not to tell anyone she existed; she made me swear it. When she hid in the bathroom so the nurse didn’t see her—was she really in there, was she really hiding, or was it just my mind making excuses for why the nurse couldn’t see her? When she came in that day to the commons room she sat with me, right over there, but she didn’t talk to Linda, and Linda didn’t say anything to her.

  There’s a knock on the door, but I don’t look up. I never do anymore. It’s never anyone I want to talk to. The handle turns and the door cracks open, and I smell her before she even speaks: the soft scent of flowers. Lucy.

  “Michael?”

  I look up and there she is, back again, back at last, peeking through the door. She sees my face and recognition lights up her eyes, and suddenly she’s running in again, holding me in her arms, crying into my neck. I hold her too, a long, warm bear hug. We sit that way for a minute, for two minutes, just holding each other. It’s been over a month since she was here, and I never want to let her go again.

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispers. “I tried everything I could do, but I couldn’t get you out.”

  “How did you get in here?”

  “I bribed the night janitor,” she says. “He’s not part of it—you can trust him.”