The Hollowed

by Jay Caselberg

  “Chris. Shit, you look terrible.” It was George. George Stoutman. They were working together on the same deal, pitching a process solution to a big corporate. George, with every hair in place, the even tan, the well-cut suit, the manicured nails, was carefully crafted company enthusiasm.

  “Yeah, thanks. Bit of a rough night,” he said, trying to sink beneath George’s scrutiny.

  George continued peering at Chris, his marketing-supremo face breaking into a slow grin. He looked down, picking some imaginary lint from his jacket. “So, self-inflicted was it?”

  “Yeah, whatever.”

  “Well, you’ll get no sympathy from me, my man.”

  That was a given. This was George. Chris grunted in response and sat, placed the coffee down to one side, unpacked the laptop and started to set things up.

  “George, I’ll catch up with you when I’ve checked mail and stuff, okay?”

  “Okay,” George said, lifting his hands semi-apologetically and backing off, but still grinning.

  Some respite. Chris closed his eyes and leaned back while he waited for the machine to kick into life. Suddenly there was an image of Anastasia lying unmoving on the kitchen floor. What was that? Like some dead movie star. The connection came unbidden. Then there was a flash of a couple of clean-cut guys standing smiling in a doorway. Shit, he needed to get this stupid stuff out of his head. He opened his eyes, hunched over his screen, typed in his password and started looking for the presentation files they were working on—lots of pretty pictures and supportive figures to woo the corporate board. Blind them with science, they always used to say. You could do amazing things with graphics these days. He found the files, glanced at them briefly, then called up the news pages to have a quick scan through before getting into work.

  The rest of the workday progressed pretty uneventfully. There were meetings, conversations, plans, several coffees and the headache throbbing surreptitiously behind his eyes. Occasionally, in the deader moments, he thought about their relationship, of where it was going; it did little to allay the subtle pounding, and he tried to push the thoughts away. George approached again at the end of the afternoon and stood hovering near his desk.

  “You look like you’ve got something on your mind, Chris.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his handheld, tapping at its screen a couple of times with a designer silver stylus. “You want to go for a drink?” he finally asked.

  “No, sorry,” Chris said without looking up. “I have to get home.”

  “You’re sure? Look, if there’s something bothering you…”

  “Yes, dammit. I’m sure.”

  “Jesus, Chris, keep it together. I was only asking.”

  Keep it together. That was a laugh. Keep what together?

  George hovered for a moment or two longer; then, seeing that it really was the end of the conversation, he withdrew, slipping his handheld away and giving a couple of glances back in Chris’s direction on the way. Chris gave a slight sigh of relief. He could take George when he had to. He was good at what he did and, whether Chris liked the man or not, that earned some respect. He wasn’t about to unburden himself to George about his personal life, though, was he? George may just have been genuinely concerned, but Chris doubted it. It was more likely to be some more of that corporate bonding shit he played at. Or, maybe it was another attempt to get closer to him, probe the weaknesses and find ways he could manipulate him in the future. Anyway, Chris wasn’t in the mood.

  Absolutely sure that he was going to be left alone, Chris shut down the computer and started packing away. Day’s end and he was tired, but it was more than simple fatigue. Sure, he’d been up all night. Sure, he’d had a full day of work in a half-defined landscape that stretched his already strained attention, but it was more than that. With a weary sigh, he headed out the door with a don’t-speak-to-me aura wrapped tightly about him. They all seemed to get the hint.

  As the journey home progressed, the fog descended further. There was no thought, just simple uncomprehending observation. Faceless individuals, intent on getting to wherever they were going, oozed past the bus windows in a sluggish stream. Traffic crawled, hesitated, stopped and took off again, cut through by the noise of a horn or the metallic squeaking of badly maintained brakes. Lines of building, faceless, impassive, funneled the flow down grimy canyons heading out and beyond this nexus of daily industry. It all washed against him, broke, and trickled away. Staring blankly out the window, he saw none of it. In his head, Stase and he were arguing again.

  As he finally reached the end of the street, the clouds were making thumbprint bruises across the sky. Back to their place, and he turned the key to open the door on an empty house. That wasn’t so unusual. He dumped his bag, tossed the mail on the hall table, and headed into the living room to collapse gratefully onto the couch. The mail could wait till later. With any luck, he could grab an hour or so before Stase got in. He didn’t know if she’d even be talking to him, but he’d deal with that when it happened.

  Chris woke to the sound of the early evening news. Stase sat there in the armchair, leaning slightly forward, a cup of tea cradled in her palm. He could smell the warm sweet aroma, even from where he sat. She always took honey in her tea. It made it too sickly sweet for his taste. As he struggled to consciousness, he noticed that she still had on her work clothes.

  “Aren’t you going to get changed?” he mumbled. He had been deeply asleep, and he peered at her blearily.

  “Yeah, in a minute,” she said. “I just want to see the news.”

  “Hmmm. What do you want to do for food?”

  She waved a hand at him to be quiet and leaned in closer to the screen. He watched her, body angled even further forward as she sipped her tea, attention focused on the moving images in front of her, seemingly oblivious to anything he might offer. He may as well have not been there at all. Maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he hadn’t actually been there for a long time. Maybe neither of them was. He had to think about that and taste exactly what it meant, but now was not really the time. He needed to be thinking more clearly than that half-asleep state he was in right then.

  He rubbed at his neck and shoulder, wincing as he discovered a soreness on the top of his shoulder. It felt like he’d scratched himself somehow. He probed beneath his shirt and frowned when he felt a slight, sore, line in the skin. He didn’t remember doing that. But then there were lots of little things you forgot or almost forgot.

  Chapter Four

  The Ice Cream Van

  He dreamed that night of ice cream vans—square, blocky, white with a window at the side and a cone attached to the roof, a stupid familiar tune floating tinnily from a speaker up front. The man inside the window was clean-cut, dark-haired, and he wore a white coat. For some reason, he reminded Chris of a doctor. He smiled knowingly at Chris, as if they shared some sort of secret knowledge. He leaned forward through the window and inclined his head conspiratorially.

  “We know what you’re going through,” he said. “We understand. It’s only as real as you make it, you know.”

  Chris woke, clutching at the wisps of dream memory, frowning. Outside, the sun was already high, and milky light filtered through the makeshift curtains they had tacked up shortly after they moved in. They hadn’t got around to curtains yet on Stase’s list. At the end of the road, the sound of a truck, and glass clinking together with the occasional voice thrown in, incomprehensible, told him that today was trash collection day. It was the weekend. Anastasia yawned and stretched beside him, then opened her eyes. She turned on her side and traced a finger down his cheek, her hair falling in a wave across the pillow and half across her face.

  “Morning,” she said. “How do you feel?” It was the most affection she had shown him for weeks. Her breath was slightly sour and at the same time a little too sweet across the pillow. It had the flavor of something slightly off.

  He took her hand and held it gently away from his face, turning his head to stare at the ceiling. “Mmmm, a bi
t worse for wear. I was having the weirdest dream.”

  “What about?”

  “An ice cream van of all things. There was this guy in it. Sort of clean cut.”

  “Huh,” she said. “I wonder what brought that on.”

  “No idea.” There was a lengthy silence as they listened to the world shake itself awake outside, several steps ahead of them.

  “You know,” he said. “I keep having this feeling that something weird happened yesterday.”

  Her eyes were closed again, her mouth half open. Seeing her lying there like that started to tweak at something in the back of his head. She’d been lying…where? It had something to do with whatever had happened the day before. He struggled with the memory, but it wouldn’t quite come.

  “Stase?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Did you hear what I said?”

  She cracked one eyelid, subjecting him to a half-focused look. “What?”

  “I keep feeling that there’s something strange going on. Did anything weird happen to you yesterday? It’s…like…it has something to do with the dream I was having. I keep thinking I should be remembering something, but I can’t remember what.”

  “It’ll come to you, if you leave it alone,” she said, drowsily. Then her eyes were open. “Oh, that reminds me. I forgot to tell you. I’ve decided to do this meal run thing. It happens on Thursday nights.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, it’s like a charity. A bunch of people go around in this van and give out sandwiches and things to the homeless. Your dream reminded me.”

  He frowned again. A van? That thought skittered away. This was the first he’d heard of it. “What do you want to do that for?”

  “Well, we do well enough. I just want to feel as if I’m doing my bit.”

  “What is it? Some sort of church thing? You’re not starting up that whole religious thing again, are you?”

  She sat up and looked down at him. “No, I’m not starting up any religious thing. I just think we could be doing something more than we are.”

  They’d never agreed on religion. He had his own beliefs, but they had nothing to do with the orthodoxy that was a part of her particular upbringing. It was one of those things they’d agreed not to talk about. Hearing her mention charity always sounded warning bells in the back of Chris’s head, and this time was no different. This, from the woman who would refuse to buy a train ticket if she thought she could get away with it, getting missed by the inspector, relishing it as some sort of private pointless victory. He linked his fingers behind his neck and watched her as he tried to work the sleep dryness from his mouth. Maybe it should have made sense, but he didn’t really think about it properly till much later. Charity was another one of those things that you could wear like a designer suit or a house or a career. It was one of the things that those who had, did. Certain types of giving he could understand; others, it seemed to him, perpetuated as many problems as they solved.

  “So, what do you do? Go around and find people on the street and then what?”

  “Like I said, we give them something to eat, something to drink. A cup of tea or coffee. A cup of hot soup. Sometimes it’s the only decent meal these people get.”

  “Don’t you think that defeats the purpose? It gives them less of a reason to change their circumstance. If people are always giving them handouts, well…”

  They’d had that particular conversation before.

  She sighed. “You can think what you like, but I’m doing it.”

  He was still skeptical. “Why pick on this? Aren’t there better things you could be doing? How did you hear about it?”

  “Oh, one of the girls from work. She’s been doing it for a while. So, anyway, I’m going this Thursday to see what it’s like. Ride around for the night with them.”

  “Uh-huh,” he said, knowing there’d be no point in arguing it. Seemingly satisfied, she lay back down and closed her eyes again.

  He watched her for a while, still thinking about the holes in what he was supposed to be remembering. Finally, he sat up.

  “I’m going out to get the papers. Are you going to stay lying there?”

  “Mmmm-hmmm,” she said without opening her eyes.

  He got out of bed, went to the bathroom and started to get ready to go out. As he stood under the shower, hot steaming water splashing against his face, his eyes closed, one hand flat against the wall tiles for support, he was still trying to give a name to his unease.

  The morning outside was glorious, and as Anastasia dozed on upstairs Chris hesitated in the doorway and squinted against the brightness, staring up at a cloudless sky. Further off, a few streets away, he could hear the trash men still at work. A slight breeze riffled through the leaves up and down the street, carrying with it the taste of newness and freshness, like the first clean blush after a heavy rain. Where had such a beautiful day come from? He’d been expecting clouds. He headed off down the street, his spirits lifted a little by the whole feel of the morning. He walked along Sydney Street. Something nagged at him there, almost made him stop and chase it, but he shook it away. He passed the bus shelter…and stopped.

  The girl. The young woman from the café. She’d been lying there, hadn’t she? He’d stopped and tried to make contact, to see if she was all right. He could see her slender form, the blonde hair, the vacant expression; it had been right there, and then when he’d come back, she was gone. He’d seen her in the café a few days later.

  That’s what had been tugging at him on Sydney Street—the older fat man, the jogger he’d seen there. Or had he? And then there were the others, the guy in the doorway, the quest, the searching and the finding, and always, always, the white van with the clean-cut guys. That was the ice cream van from the dream. Or maybe he’d just been dreaming it, after all. Dreaming all of it. Something was stepping in the way of his memories, drawing a veil across things over the past few weeks, making it hard to remember. But perhaps, for some reason, his subconscious mind was being vigilant. He didn’t understand how he could be forgetting things, especially when it seemed like he’d been so intent on determining what was going on.

  He was about to turn around and head back home—still trying to puzzle out what he wasn’t quite grasping—when something else happened that sealed it for him.

  There was an older man, or maybe he just looked older, who frequented their neighborhood, some sort of down and out. Chris would see him all the time walking the area around the local shops. He was just one of the elements of local color, and he had always seemed harmless enough. He unfailingly wore the same knitted cap and a long, brown tweed coat, whatever the weather. His dark hair hung in ratty strings around his face and a matted beard covered the bottom half of a swarthy hatchet face. His dark, close-set eyes almost disappeared in a deep crease that ran across the bridge of his nose. Occasionally, Chris would see him sitting alone in the local coffee shop, plastic bags piled by his side, sipping at a cup and muttering to himself. His gaze always seemed fixed somewhere in the distance. It was such a rare sight to see him anywhere but around the local shops. Once or twice, Chris, on the bus, had passed him a couple of suburbs up, but always on the main road. Even then, Chris had wondered where someone like him might actually live. He looked up to turn around and retrace his route, when who should come hobbling towards him, but that very man?

  The vagrant was muttering to himself, as usual, and waving one hand in seemingly random back and forward motions to one side of his body. His eyes seemed completely unfocused. Chris was about to beat a hasty retreat, expecting to be asked for something, some coins, or a cigarette, when the man called out to him.

  “Hey, she was there, wasn’t she,” he said. The voice was slurred, the words muddy, but they stopped Chris where he was.

  Chris debated ignoring him, getting out of there as quickly as he could, but he was already too close.

  “Yes, right there.” He was talking to Chris, but his wasn’t looking at him. He gestured
vaguely at the bus shelter.

  “Excuse me?” Chris said.

  “They took her away. There. Blonde girl. Pretty.” He nodded sagely, still watching the road.

  “What do you know about it?” Chris asked him, not sure whether he was doing the right thing.

  “Know them all,” he said. “They came and took her, just like they took me. Seen her again. It took with her, didn’t it?”

  “Who took her away? What took? I don’t understand what you’re saying.” Chris was about to dismiss the words as mere ramblings of someone not quite there, when the man said something else that made him think again.

  “The men. The men in the truck.”

  “What are you talking about? What—an ambulance?”

  He looked at Chris sharply. “You know. You’ve seen. I’ve seen you.” The gaze was immediately unfocused, and he was facing away again. “They took your wife too.”

  Chris was stunned.

  “Sorry,” the man suddenly mumbled. “Have to go. Must go.”

  He shuffled on past. The hand was waving again at his side and the muttering was back. Chris watched his retreating back.

  “Wait,” he called. “What about my wife? What about her?”

  The man waved his hand.

  “Wait,” Chris called again. “What’s your name?”

  “Patrick,” he mumbled. Chris barely heard it. He watched him hobble off to the end of the road, then quickly disappear around the corner.

  All thought of getting the papers had completely gone. He was left with questions tumbling through his head, looking first at the bus shelter, then back to the end of the road where Patrick had last been in view and back again. Chris was pretty sure that had been what he said his name was. It was something to hold on to, at least.