The Hollow Man

by Dan Simmons

  Bremen knew that there were no windows and only the one door to the cold house. He was near the rear of the room now, moving to the left of the door since there were more carcasses there, but he could hear the scrabble of the dogs’ claws on the icy floor as they strained to get away and Miz Morgan moved left with him, staying near the front wall.

  Bremen still held the chain, but could devise no scenario where he could use it against her unless she came into the forest of hanging carcasses. Near the back wall, the frozen, softly swaying bodies were mostly small—an entire row of children and infants, Bremen realized—and there was little cover for him there.

  For a second there was silence, and then, through the rush and roar of the white noise of her insanity, Bremen caught the image of her bending over and shared her view of his own legs thirty feet away under a row of white-and-red carcasses.

  He leaped just as the shotgun roared. Something kicked at his left heel as he hung, dangling by his right hand, from an iron hook that ran through what looked like the corpse of a middle-aged black man. The man’s eyes were closed. The slash in his throat was so wide and so rough-edged that the frozen edges of it looked like a broad shark’s smile. Bremen struggled not to drop the chain in his left hand.

  Miz Morgan yelled something unintelligible and released one of the dogs.

  Bremen climbed higher onto the swaying corpse as the dogs bounded down the slippery aisle and Miz Morgan raised her shotgun.

  EYES

  At this same moment, more than a thousand miles to the east, the thirteen-year-old blind, deaf, retarded boy named Robby Bustamante is being beaten by an “uncle” who has lived with his mother for the last four months. The “uncle” sleeps with his mother and provides her crack and heroin for various services rendered.

  Robby’s crime is that he is still not toilet trained at age thirteen and has soiled his pants at a time when “Uncle” is home alone with the boy. Uncle, coming down from some bad Colombian, flies into a rage at the sight and smell of Robby, jerks him up from the pillowed corner of the small room where the boy has been rocking with his teddy bear and nodding silently to himself in the night, and begins striking him in the face with a fist that Robby cannot see coming.

  Robby begins crooning a weird falsetto cry and throws palsied hands to his face to ward off the invisible blows.

  This enrages Uncle further and the big man begins pounding Robby in earnest, slapping away the ineffectual, splayed-wrist hands, and punching the boy in the mouth, pulverizing the blubbery lips, smashing in the carious front teeth, breaking the boy’s broad nose, smashing cheekbones and closing eyes.

  Robby goes down with a spray of blood on mildewed wallpaper, but continues the falsetto crooning and begins slapping the torn linoleum with his palms. Uncle does not know it, but the child is trying to find his teddy bear.

  The nonhuman noises push Uncle the last millimeter across the killing line and he begins kicking the boy with his steel-capped Redwing boots, first in the ribs, then the neck, and then, when Robby is huddled in the corner, no longer crooning, in the face.

  Uncle comes out of the red place he has gone and looks down at the blind and deaf boy, still huddled in the corner but at impossible angles now—wrists and knees splayed the wrong directions, one finger rising vertically backward, the bruised and mottled neck twisted wrong on the fat pulpy body in its urine-soaked Mutant Ninja Turtle pajamas—and Uncle pauses. He has killed men before.

  Uncle grabs Robby by his tuft of coarse black hair and drags him across the linoleum, down the hall, and through the small living room where MTV still blares from the black thirty-two-inch television.

  There is no falsetto crooning now. Robby’s pulped lips leave a trail of saliva and blood on the tile. One of his blind eyes is wide open, the other swollen shut under his scarred brow. His loose fingers flop across the floor moldings at the doorways and make pale lines in the red smears his face leaves.

  Uncle opens the back door, steps out, glances around, steps back in, and uses his foot to shove Robby down the porch steps. It is like listening to a gunnysack filled with two hundred pounds of Jell-O and loose rocks fold itself down the six wooden steps.

  Uncle grabs Robby by the front of his too-small pajamas and drags him across the moist grass of the yard. Buttons pop and flannel tears, Uncle curses, gets a grip on Robby’s uncut hair, and commences dragging him again.

  Behind the rotting garage, beyond the fallen-down fence and the abandoned lot behind it, back under the rain-dripping elms in the dark, out beyond the edge of light where a shack once had sat in the high grass not far from the river, leans the outhouse. No one uses it. A faded sheet of cardboard nailed on the door reads: KE P O T. A length of rotting rope has been tied around the door handles to keep kids out.

  Uncle tears off the rope, steps into the foul-smelling darkness, rips the boards off the one-hole seat, drags Robby in, levers the boy’s body into a sitting position, and then grunts and heaves to tilt the seemingly boneless mass up and over the sill where the seat had been. Robby’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle-patterned pajama top tears off on a nail and remains behind as his body slides into the dark pit. His bare feet seem to wave as they disappear into the hole. The noise from ten feet below is liquid and yielding.

  Uncle steps out into the darkness, obviously relieved to be breathing fresh air, looks around, sees nothing, hears only a distant dog barking, finds a large rock underfoot, and then steps back into the outhouse to wipe his hands and shirt with the pajama top. Finished, he drops the rag into the reeking, rectangular hole and uses the rock to bang the seat boards back into place as best he can in the darkness.

  There is no sound from the outhouse for the hour Uncle waits in the house until Robby’s mother returns with the car.

  Robby, of course, does not hear the voices raised in shouts, nor the brief bout of weeping, nor the quick sounds of packing and car doors banging.

  He does not see the house and porch lights being switched off.

  He does not hear the roar of the car’s engine or the sound of tires crunching over the gravel of the drive as his mother leaves him for the last time.

  Robby cannot hear the barking of the neighbor dog finally die down, like a scratched record finally being shut off, or sense the descent of silence in the neighborhood as the rains come softly, pattering on the leaves and dripping down from tears in the corrugated roof of the outhouse under the trees.

  All these things I have told you are true. All the things I have yet to tell you are true.

  And Saw the Skull Beneath the Skin

  The rottweiler leaped three seconds before Miz Morgan fired the shotgun.

  Bremen straddled the dead black man’s shoulders and wrapped the chain around the big dog’s neck as the creature clambered and scrabbled up frozen flesh to get at him. The rottweiler howled. Bremen jerked the chain tight and lifted. Miz Morgan saw the dog seem to levitate between Bremen and her and she raised the barrel of the shotgun even as she pulled the trigger.

  Bremen winced and almost lost his balance on the corpse and his grip on the dog as pellets slammed into the fluorescent light fixture above him and the ceiling above that. Sparks and glass flew from the light fixture. Some stray shot must have caught the rottweiler for the beast began howling with an increased frenzy and started whipping its head back and forth to bring its teeth to bear on Bremen’s hands. Bremen tightened the chain until the dog’s growls choked off and the howling became a high whine.

  Miz Morgan pumped the shotgun, pulled the leash tight on the second rottweiler, and came down the cold aisle between softly swinging sides of meat.

  Bremen was panting so hard that he was afraid he might pass out. The steel links of the chain were so cold that flesh was peeling away from his fingers and palms whenever he pulled the chain tighter or shifted position. The rottweiler was making a sound more like that of an old man gargling than that of a dog howling. Bremen knew that it would be seconds before Miz Morgan reached him; she could simpl
y stick the barrel of the shotgun up against him and pull the trigger.

  The first shotgun blast had knocked out the double row of fluorescent strip lights above him, but now there was dappled light falling on the hound’s dark head. Bremen looked up, saw the depression in the ceiling above the light stanchion, and blinked at the dozen flecks of light there. Holes in wood, not cinder block. Holes letting in light from the tall arc lamp behind the cold house.

  Miz Morgan moved between the corpses eight feet away. Her eyes glistened and seemed very large; her breath clouded the air between them. The rottweiler hanging from Bremen’s chain was no longer struggling and its long, bony legs twitched. The sight seemed to make the other dog go insane and Miz Morgan had to cradle the shotgun for a second to hold the animal on the leash as it leaped for the black man’s corpse and Bremen’s dangling legs.

  Bremen threw the dead rottweiler at Miz Morgan and climbed. He set his foot squarely on the corpse’s shoulder, and then its head as he climbed. The light stanchion took his weight but swayed alarmingly, pieces of broken glass still dropping into the icy vapor below them. Bremen thrust his shoulders and head up into the narrow well, balanced on the icy rod of the light stanchion, and set his shoulders against the light-flecked wood.

  Miz Morgan dropped the leash and raised the shotgun. She could not miss from eight feet away. The surviving rottweiler used the corpse of its mate to get a running start and all but climbed the swinging corpse of the black man to get at Bremen.

  Whatever collarbone or clavicle the hook had been set under in the black man’s corpse gave way then and the body came down, scrambling rottweiler and all, tumbling like a side of frozen beef onto Miz Morgan and the dead dog in the aisle.

  The shotgun blast missed the narrow well but slammed into the ice-tufted cinder block inches from Bremen’s left arm. He felt something rip at his left sleeve and a cold trickle, like a sudden electric current, flow through the soft flesh under his arm. Then he bent and heaved, almost slipped off the rod from the strain, then heaved again.

  The trapdoor, if it was a trapdoor, was locked from the outside. Bremen could feel the resistance of the steel hasp, hear its rasping.

  Miz Morgan shouted and kicked at the growling rottweiler eight feet below. The dog whirled and snapped at her in its confusion. Without hesitating a second, she lifted the shotgun and bashed the hound’s skull in with the heavy stock. The rottweiler collapsed almost comically onto the corpse of its mate.

  Bremen had used the six-second reprieve to catch his balance and to heave again, feeling something snap and tear in his back but also feeling the time-rotted and shotgun-weakened boards giving a bit. Cords stood out on Bremen’s neck and his face grew a bright red; he heaved with enough effort of will and energy to move mountains, to freeze birds in their flight.

  Bremen thought Miz Morgan had fired the shotgun again from directly under him—the blast and release of pressure was deafening—but it was only three of the broad boards splitting and flying upward above him.

  Bremen lost his balance and fell then, shoes sliding off the stanchion bar, but his cold-numbed left hand came up and grabbed the edge of broken boards even as his right threw the chain out the opening and clambered for a handhold of its own. He heard Miz Morgan shout something, but then he was pulling himself up, ripping his shirt on splinters as he pulled himself through, his feet pushing off from the light stanchion.

  He was blinded by the sudden glare of arc light from the water tower at the rear of the cold house’s flat roof, but he rolled away from the splintered opening just as Miz Morgan fired again. Two more boards exploded skyward, showering Bremen with splinters.

  Ignoring his bleeding thigh and hip and left arm, ignoring the frostbite pain from his. curled hands, Bremen got to his feet, retrieved the chain from the graveled rooftop, and ran to the front of the building, leaping over a thick fire hose that ran to the south side. Four of the rottweilers were still there by the door, leashes tied to an iron pipe. They went crazy as Bremen leaped from the twelve-foot rooftop. He hit hard, felt his left leg give way, and rolled heavily on gravel and small stones.

  The dogs leaped for him, their leashes pulling them back ten inches out of range.

  Bremen got to his knees and staggered toward the door. It was open only a few inches; cold, rancid air flowed out like the breath of some dying demon. Bremen could hear the sound of Miz Morgan’s boots on the ice-grooved floor as she ran toward the doorway.

  He lunged forward, slammed it almost shut just as the weight of her struck the other side. The pressure lessened and Bremen imagined her stepping back, pumping the shotgun. The four rottweilers were leaping at him so hard that they were jerking themselves off their feet, landing on their backs. Foam and spittle struck him from three feet away.

  Bremen ran the chain through the hasp, lifted the heavy padlock from the dust, and slammed it on just as Miz Morgan fired the shotgun.

  It was a six-inch-thick steel door set deeply within its steel frame. It did not budge. Even the sound of the shotgun was a distant, hollow thing.

  Bremen stepped back and grinned, then glanced toward the rooftop. It would take her less than a minute to slide another corpse into position and climb out the way he had come. He would not have enough time to find a ladder or material to cover the hole. He doubted if he could beat her back to the hacienda given his injuries. Bremen began limping and hobbling toward the south side of the cold house.

  One of the rottweilers, a bitch, broke free then, and came lunging after him, apparently so surprised by her sudden freedom that she forgot to howl. Bremen whirled at the corner of the building, dropped to one knee to avoid the snapping jaws, and punched the animal in the gut, right under its ribs, as hard as he could.

  The wind went out of the rottweiler like air from a punctured balloon. It went down, but its legs were already scrambling, claws scratching to get back on its feet.

  Weeping, Bremen knelt on the big animal’s back, grabbed its jaws with his swollen, throbbing hands, and snapped its neck. The surviving three went wild behind him.

  Bremen hobbled around the corner. The jerry-rigged shower stall that Miz Morgan had used was still there, the five-gallon holding tank seven feet up, the heavy fire hose running to the fifteen-hundred-gallon tank above. Ignoring the pain, Bremen ran to the shower, leaped for the shower head, leveraged himself up high enough to get a grip on the holding tank, and swung up until he could get his bleeding hand around the four-inch fire hose.

  The tank ripped loose from Bremen’s weight and fell away to the stone pad below, but he was already eight feet up and shinnying up the now-dangling fire hose.

  He swung over the edge of the roof and lay panting for a second on the gravel of the rooftop, the arc lamp on the fifteen-hundred-gallon water tank still blinding him. There were sounds from the broken vent or old skylight that he had climbed through. Bremen went over, peered down, and saw the barrel rising toward the opening just in time.

  The shotgun blast went past his shoulder. The effort of raising the weapon had made Miz Morgan lose her grip and she went sliding back onto the shoulders of a young woman’s corpse. Bremen could hear the curses as Miz Morgan began climbing again, one-handed. The light stanchion squealed as the big woman swung up on it.

  Bremen had to sit down or faint. Even then, his head between his knees, the arc-lighted world dwindled to a narrow tunnel between walls of black. Distantly, so distantly, he heard the noises of Miz Morgan climbing, finding her balance, resting the shotgun against the inside wall of the vent, getting to her feet. Bremen closed his eyes.

  Come on, Jer. Get up! Get up now. For me.

  Tiredly, sighing, Bremen opened his eyes and crawled across the tar paper and gravel to the fire hose. He left bloody handprints and a smear from his left leg as he went.

  With the last of his strength—no, with strength that was not his but that he borrowed from some hidden place—he lifted the fire hose, stumbled back across the rooftop, and teetered on the edge of the
hole.

  Miz Morgan’s head and shoulders were already out. With her eyes so white and wide, the rimming of frost on her wild hair, and her lips pulled so far back in the killing grin, she looked like something not nearly human being born. The white noise of her psychotic bloodlust was all but overridden by the sudden surge of triumph that emanated from her like warm urine. Still grinning, she struggled to raise the shotgun through the gap.

  Not smiling at all, Bremen slapped the release valve open and held the fire hose steady as six hundred pounds of water pressure slapped the woman down out of sight and pounded the boards loose around the hole. He walked closer, and a stray geyser from the swiveling nozzle shot gravel fifty feet out into the night.

  She had taken the shotgun with her as she fell. Bremen shut off the water and peered carefully over the rim of the hole where icicles were already beginning to form.

  Miz Morgan was climbing back up, a figure wreathed in hoarfrost and sheeted with ice. She was still grinning wildly. The shotgun was in her milk-white right hand.

  Sighing, Bremen stepped back, set the hose over the opening, and opened the valve all the way. He staggered toward the front of the building and collapsed on gravel just short of the low wall around the edge of the roof. He closed his eyes for a second.

  Just for a second or two.

  EYES

  The problem is that Gail has suffered terrible migraines since puberty, so when the headaches become more frequent and more severe, neither she nor Jeremy takes adequate notice for some months. Emotional stress often triggers the migraines, and both of them suspect that Jacob Goldmann’s suicide is what has triggered this most recent series of headaches. Finally, though, when Jeremy has to leave a symposium at the college, weaving with the reflected pain of her headaches, to find her vomiting endlessly in the downstairs bathroom, blinded by the pain, they see the doctor. He sends them to a specialist, Dr. Singh, who immediately schedules Gail for CAT scans and MRI studies.