The Empty Ones

by Robert Brockway

  Stacy shook her head, like she was trying to clear water out of her ear. The light snapped around and moved back over to her real quick. She sat still again. I could hear part of a song coming from somewhere. It sounded familiar, like what Mom used to sing to her when she was real little. But it wasn’t in the same language, and that wasn’t Mom’s voice. It smelled like pancakes. Stacy flinched like somebody had slapped her. Then her eyes got bright, like there were little fires in there. My stomach started to feel funny. I got the feeling this was about to go from a weird dream to a bad dream. I stood up and crossed over to Stacy, making sure to give the light extra room. But it still didn’t seem to care about me.

  I put my hands on her shoulders, and she screamed.

  I jumped back, and I screamed some too. She was screaming way too loud; I didn’t think she could make that sound. But she was also trying to make words. She was yelling about the air in the forest and our old address. She laughed and cried at the same time, and then her words started bubbling. Clear, thick liquid that shimmered like a rainbow came out of her mouth and spilled down her chin, but it started turning black after a couple of seconds. Now it looked like the road when they first pour it out of that truck that builds roads. The road stuff ran down her neck, and where it touched her pajamas, they crinkled up like plastic in the microwave. The whole room smelled like a burning action figure. The black syrup stopped around her chest, and then it started going backwards.

  This had to be a dream. Liquids can’t go up.

  But this stuff did. It climbed up her neck, and around her face, and now there was so much of it. It was all over her. I pulled my hands back before it reached her shoulders. Stacy wasn’t making any noise anymore, but I was. I guess I hadn’t ever stopped screaming.

  The liquid was on the bed now, and little flames danced around Stacy’s blanket. It went up so fast. When we went camping, it took Dad forever to light a campfire. He should just use whatever Stacy’s blanket was made out of, because the whole thing was on fire now. I wanted to grab Stacy, but I somehow knew I shouldn’t touch that black stuff. I wanted to run, but the light was between me and the door, and it was singing its screaming ocean song, and everything was too much. I couldn’t do anything but scream, so I closed my eyes, and I screamed.

  I don’t know how long I was like that. Our room smelled like smoke so strong I could feel it filling my nose like water. Big hands grabbed me hard and yanked me. Then something was carrying me, and I could hear my mom yelling for Stacy. I tried to tell my mom that a light had come on and turned Stacy into part of the road, but only coughing came out. So much coughing there was no room for breathing. I fell asleep.

  NINE

  1978. London, England. Carey.

  In case you’re wondering: Yes, tar men can open doors. But they’re shit at climbing stairs. Even dragging Meryll, me and Randall outpaced them easily. We took two landings for every one of theirs. There were too many of them in too narrow a space. They kept tripping each other, blocking each other, and slowly crawling over one another in their mindless desperation to reach us. By the time we made it to the street, we were soaked in sweat. Then we were just soaked.

  I grabbed my crotch and gave the cabbie both fingers, but he still didn’t stop.

  How the hell are you supposed to hail a cab in this godforsaken country? Wait, hold on, here’s another one.…

  “Hey! Hey … fuck you!”

  Nothing.

  I tried jumping up and down; I tried throwing beer cans at their windshields; and, obviously, I tried swearing. I was all out of ideas, and I could not get these guys to stop for us. We had been standing out in the cold London rain, Meryll slowly dying in Randall’s arms, for five minutes. They must have thought she was passed out drunk or high, and didn’t want her puking in the back of their precious cabs. That’s the only reason I could figure why they weren’t stopping.

  “Carey, come on, man…” Randall said.

  He shifted Meryll in his arms. She was a little pudgy, sure, but she wasn’t a big girl. Couldn’t have been more than a buck fifty. But she still kept slipping right out of Randall’s hands. It’s harder than you think, dragging an unconscious person around. That’s one thing I’ve had a lot of experience doing.

  “Switch with me,” Randall said.

  “You think you can do this better?” I was almost offended.

  But shit: I was getting nowhere. Might as well hold the chick for a while. Maybe she’ll wake up right then and see me bundling her up like fuckin’ Clark Gable and she’ll fall uncontrollably in love with me and we’ll fuck right on top of stupid Randall’s ugly shirt collection.

  Or she’ll just die on the street. Then the tar men will come bustling up out of that maintenance stairway half a block back and melt you into a puddle of liquid asshole.

  I looked down at her face. Her eyes were closed. Big fake eyelashes, one hanging loose from the edge of her eyelid. Too much mascara, the rain making it run down her cheeks and into her black lipstick. Her dark, wet hair matted to her skull. She had great skin. Pale, of course—she was English, after all; poor thing couldn’t help but look like a sickly eggshell—but, you know, in a hot way. I turned her face a little and got another look at her neck. Maybe it was the dim lighting, or maybe I had been panicking back in the tunnels, but the burns didn’t look so bad. I mean, they looked bad. They didn’t look good. But they didn’t seem as dire anymore. I swore, when I first saw them, that they were so deep I could see her fat and muscle bisected at the edges of those massive fingerprints. But I must have been hallucinating. They weren’t much more than skin-deep. Just an angry pink sunken bit, not a gaping hole in her neck.

  Shit. Maybe we can go back to the Clark Gable shirt-fucking fantasy.

  A whistle loud enough to deafen God.

  For a second I thought another tar man was going up, and all the muscles in my body knotted into tight little balls. Then I saw Randall with one hand in the air and two fingers in his mouth. One of those obnoxiously cute old-timey London cabs boated over to the side of the road, soaking Randall’s legs in puddle-water.

  Something croaked. It appeared to be coming from my arms.

  Yes. She was awake!

  “Hegh…” she said, and wound up doing a sort of coughing hiccup. She tried again: “He … got one.…”

  Oh, no. Oh, god dammit, seriously?

  “Yeah, but I softened them up for him,” I pleaded. But she was already fading.

  And I could see it now: Visions of heroic Randall wrestling cabs to the side of the road like a fucking horsebreaker. Pile-driving automobiles into submission and dragging her buxom body to safety. Then they would fuck on my ugly shirt collection.

  Screw it. At least she’s alive.

  I dragged Meryll to the cab while Randall held the door open for us. The heels of her clunky black boots scraped along the pavement. I handed Randall her head, took her legs, and together we shoved the wad of girl into the far end of the backseat. Then we piled in after her and shut the door.

  “You boys were at the show, eh?” The cabbie was a squat guy, face like somebody’d punched a potato.

  “What?”

  “The punker rock show, at the Rainbow? I been hearing about it all night. Heard you animals tore up all the seats and threw ’em at the band.”

  Fuck me. Is that what happened? And I missed it?!

  “Yeah, just coming from the show,” Randall confirmed.

  He does this voice sometimes, mostly to cops or those half cops that try to bust you for jumping turnstiles. It was tired, a little respectful, and laced with just a hint of regret. Swear to god, boy deserves a gold statue.

  “It got pretty out of hand at the end, and our friend wasn’t feeling so good, so we figured we should get out of there,” Randall finished.

  I could see it working already. The cabbie’s shoulders lost tension, he turned around in his seat, and looked Randall square in the eye. He laughed. “Eh, it’s all right. I been known to bash it up in my
younger years too. Where’s home for you lads?”

  “I…” Randall looked at me.

  I gave him the hardest shrug I could manage. We’d been crashing at a hostel.

  Oh, hey, yeah, sorry, Andrew: We know we’re not supposed to be out past eleven and no guests, but we thought we’d bring this severely mangled girl back to our communal bunks at two in the morning for a bit of a good time.

  “Hospital?” he whispered to me.

  “I don’t know, the burns don’t look as bad anym—”

  “No.” Meryll slapped me weakly across the chest. “Bermondsey Wall West.”

  “You’ve gone insane. You’re not putting words in the right order,” I told her, gently.

  “I got it, boys,” the cabbie said. “I know the place.”

  He pulled away from the curb. The world outside the cab was lights and blurry water. No radio on. Just the sound of tires pushing water around and windshield wipers thunking and squeaking like a drumbeat. Meryll’s eyes roved around the interior of the cab—to the windows, to Randall, to me—but they couldn’t seem to find what she was looking for, so she closed them. The adrenaline was starting to fade, and I could feel my hip burning again. I tried shifting weight off of it, but nothing doing. The bastard was determined to hurt no matter what I did. At least my shoulder wasn’t quite so bad anymore. I rotated it—stiff, but nothing fucked up in there too badly.

  Randall was staring out the window at nothing. At rain streaks and traffic lights.

  “What?” I asked him.

  “What?” he asked me.

  “You’re all quiet and shit. What’s your problem?”

  “Her burns aren’t as bad.”

  “That’s a problem? You and me, we got different definitions of problem.”

  Randall glanced down, made sure Meryll was still out. It was hard to tell, but she wasn’t moving and her breathing was deep and regular. He risked it.

  “I saw them too,” Randall whispered, “down in the stairs. They were halfway to the bone. Looked like she got choked out by the devil.”

  “Ah. I thought so too,” I said, barely whispering. If Meryll was awake, I was damn well planning on getting some points for defending her. “But we were freaked, and it was dark.”

  “No, man. That girl was dead,” Randall said. He turned back to the window.

  “Well, I’m glad she changed her fucking mind, then. I don’t get what the problem is.”

  I reached down to push some of Meryll’s hair off of her face, and she slapped my hand away.

  I got them points, Randall.

  Turns out Bernardsey Wall or whatever was a street. Or at least it used to be. It looked like somebody had dropped a bomb on a sadness factory and nobody’d ever bothered cleaning up the debris. Must have been a port or something in its heyday. Big brown brick buildings, lots of concrete, not a lot of windows. There were lights on in a few of them. Tinny music filtering through the bricks from somewhere far above. Somebody was living here. It smelled like water, and we’d crossed a bridge a ways back. Must be near the river, though I couldn’t see it. The street was barely big enough for a single car, and the warehouses looming on either side of us made an urban canyon.

  Randall and me had gone to drag Meryll out of the cab, but she was alert enough to take our hands instead. We had her in a soldier’s carry.

  “So…” Randall said.

  “So we just stand in the street for a while?” I supplied.

  I shuffled Meryll a bit, trying to rouse her.

  “Rape office,” she said.

  I laughed.

  “Girl’s got a concussion,” Randall said. “Knew we shoulda gone to the hospital.”

  Then I spotted it. Sure enough: Rape Office.

  It was tall, four or five stories, but thin. Bricks that probably started off red, then turned to shit brown after somebody rubbed a few decades of shit on them. Every single window was broken and boarded over, but the doors were intact. Above them, in severe metal letters: Rape Office.

  It used to say “Trade Office.” You could still see an imprint in the grime from the now-missing “T.” The “D” had lost a few retaining bolts, so it hung upside down, now a lopsided, rusting “P.”

  “Huh,” Randall said, now spotting it. “Good name for a band.”

  We hobbled Meryll up the steps. They were concrete, chipped damn near out of existence. Old newspapers and what was probably bloody fur splayed across them. I gave up counting after I spotted about a dozen needles. I didn’t even try to count the crushed beer cans. You’d have to straighten the place up a bit to call it a squalid hellhole.

  “You’re sure this is where you wanna go?” Randall asked Meryll.

  She pulled her arm from across my shoulder, and almost fell. I went to catch her, but she shrugged me off. She steadied herself against Randall with one hand. With the other, she knocked a pattern on the flaking metal doors. One knock. Slight pause. Four knocks. Long pause. Two knocks.

  Shave and a haircut. Two bits.

  Nothing happened for a long, suspicious minute. Two thrashed-looking American punks on an abandoned wharf, holding a beaten, nearly unconscious British girl between them, standing outside of a building called the Rape Office. I just knew a cop was gonna come by right then. Do they have the death penalty in England? If so, we would get it on general principle.

  Finally, the door swung inward. A short, ugly guy with scars all across his lips wobbled in the doorway. He peered out at us with hooded little rat eyes. He belched, and I smelled cheap beer.

  Well, hell, now I’m thirsty.

  “We, uh…” Randall started, but there was no need to finish.

  The ugliest man in the world had turned away and was already staggering down a short, narrow hallway filled with soiled mattresses and broken shopping carts. Halfway down, he looked over his shoulder at us, and gave us an exaggerated wave. Nearly knocked himself over doing it.

  Follow me to my den, says the troll.

  We did.

  Meryll was walking on her own now. Not very well—she’d get booked for public intoxication if she went to the mall like that—but she was moving, and that was good. It was not at all disturbing for a girl to be moseying about an hour after getting strangled by an acid monster. Totally normal. So normal it would be stupid of me to think about it anymore.

  The hallway ended in a soggy pile of T-shirts that reeked of ammonia. I could see Randall eyeballing them hungrily. The man just cannot turn down a free shirt. But the troll was moving along at an unsteady clip, down the hall to the right and nearly out of sight. We followed him, and wound up in a skinny room with a ceiling so high it disappeared into shadows. It looked like there had been floors to this building, at one point. But something came through from above, a long time ago, and blasted most of them out, one by one. The ground beneath our feet was one great big shattered crater, sloping from the farthest edges right down to the center of the room. Old, black water had collected at the deepest point. Somebody had posted a crude, hand-drawn sign that said “Swimmin Pool.” The whole place was lit with gas lanterns. Some hung from hooks embedded in what little ceiling remained. Most were just shoved randomly into the debris. One corner had been given over entirely to band equipment—amps, guitars, a partially kicked-in drum set held together by duct tape. The other corners were filled with torn couches, broken recliners, and smashed TV sets. Kids sporting Mohawks and patchwork jackets were wrestling across the wreckage, passed out on the couches, and playing drinking games by the lanterns. A record player tucked into a broken safe was playing The Adverts’ “No Time to be 21.”

  I was here. I was home.

  I looked around for our guide-goblin, but he wasn’t there. Took me a minute to spot him. He was climbing a ladder lashed up against one wall that looked like it had been part of a fire escape, once. It poked right up through the blasted ceiling. The light from the gas lanterns was thin and didn’t carry far, so I couldn’t see it until my eyes adjusted: Every floor, or at le
ast what little that hadn’t been caved in yet, was occupied. I could hear other songs from up above, tinny guitars rattling around unseen speakers, voices laughing and yelling. One was just making monkey noises over and over. Or shit, maybe they had an actual monkey!

  Calm down, Carey. There’s probably a very slim chance that you will finally be able to get drunk with a monkey tonight. Just concentrate on the task at hand.

  I hollered up at the ugly guy, who was quickly ascending out of sight into the gloom above us. He turned around to glare at me.

  “What are we supposed to do, drag her up there?” I asked.

  He motioned for us to sit, then silently resumed his climb.

  Me and Randall steered Meryll over to half a row of folding seats that had been boosted from some upscale theater. They smelled like ancient butts and dust mites, and they tilted crazily when we put weight on them, but they held. Meryll slumped gratefully, laid her head on Randall’s shoulder, and closed her eyes.

  I made up my mind to get over that shit as soon as possible. What good was fucking mooning over her gonna do if she’s made it clear the only pole she wants to slide down is attached to that doofus Randall? I mean, so what if she could fill out a skirt and uppercut a guy out of his own shoes? I’m sure there are plenty of fish in the sea … with sexy freak strength … who’ll jump out of a moving bus with you.…

  Fucking Randall.

  I looked around for other chicks to annoy with my presence, but there were only guys around. Not even particularly girly ones that I could ogle if I squinted hard enough—they were all ropy boys with broken teeth and black eyes. I held out a thin sliver of hope that they segregated the sexes by floor, and the second story was all slutty punk rock coeds with low standards. But that seemed about as likely as the monkey fantasy.

  Not impossible, but no sense counting on it.

  I watched the punks hollering, throwing cans at each other, and making a huge point of ignoring us. I was waiting to see which foolish cub would unwittingly lead me to their beer stash. The one who finally did it was a kid, maybe sixteen or seventeen, with a head shaved like a monk and two front teeth missing. He stumbled toward a kicked-in TV set, reached through the shattered glass, and pulled out two cans.