The Hollowed

by Jay Caselberg

If what Patrick said was true, then something had happened. Something had happened that involved Anastasia. In a bizarre sort of way, it made sense. It would explain the flashes that kept creeping in front of his inner eye. It would explain the semi-panicked feeling of unease that was following him around. But none of it made sense. Why couldn’t he remember? If he’d thought about it, he would have followed Patrick then, pinned him down and questioned him, but he was still too unsettled by their brief encounter to think properly. To be honest, the guy scared him too. Never knowingly get involved with a crazy if you can help it.

  As he headed for home along empty streets, his head was churning with thoughts, with alternatives for what he could possibly do. He neared the end of his tree-lined street, and there, sitting on the opposite corner sat a large, black bird, watching him, its head slightly tilted to one side. Chris frowned. It was just a bird. He could never tell one from the other, whether it was a crow or a raven. It was big enough to be the latter. Either that or a very large crow. He stopped and watched it back. The bird tilted its head the other way, still with one beady black eye fixed on him. It seemed completely undisturbed by his presence, as if it expected Chris to be there, as if he were the intruder in its peaceful street. The look reminded him of a look he’d had from someone else, recently, assessing, testing.

  It hopped along the sidewalk, once, twice, three times, then swiveled its head to look at him again. Chris turned away from it with difficulty. There was something about the bird, something about its presence right then and there that opened up a void-like feeling, cold and dark, inside him. Dark as the color of its feathers. He glanced back at it. He gave himself a humorless smile. Which one was it? Was it Thought or Memory? One of them had come to visit, and he couldn’t tell which. The answer wasn’t quite with him yet.

  Chapter Five

  Bleeding

  For a few moments after Chris turned away from the bird, he thought he was losing his mind. He was imagining all this shit—the encounter at the bus shelter, Stase, the guy with the beard, the strangely aware black bird watching him from across the street. He was losing pieces of his memory and his head was compensating by simply making things up. It was like those sensory isolation tanks. When you start to lose all input, the brain makes things up to fill the void. As he wandered slowly back home, the papers completely unimportant now, he suddenly changed his mind and halfway along their street, headed back to the shops. He wasn’t ready to face the need for explanations just yet. If he came back empty handed, Stase would want to know why, hit him with a barrage of questions about what he’d been doing.

  “I thought you were going to get the papers.”

  “Yeah, well, I met this guy called Patrick at the bus shelter and we had a little chat. Then I had a meaningful moment with a crow.”

  Not likely.

  He’d have to find Patrick again, find out exactly what he’d been talking about; that much was clear, but he was hesitant about the idea. He was even starting to doubt that the conversation had taken place in the first place. Had any of it happened, or was his head really conjuring things to fill the gaps in his memory? Though he looked, by the time he reached the corner again, there was no sign of the bird.

  He continued walking, grabbing at the memory fragments, trying to weave them into some sort of definable pattern. Other things made connections, drifting thoughts, observations—all of them were part of the one big varicolored weave. The dead actress was one. She was dead, and yet she wasn’t. She’d been given some sort of life by the media within which she existed. She was there and yet she wasn’t there. The blank faces at the bus shelter. The sterility of the office environment. Flickering images on the television late at night in the darkness. These, all of them, had something to do with the phantom mental sculpture taking shape before him. It was a population, a landscape deserted, yet full at the same time.

  The papers were the usual weighty collection of weekend advertisements, magazines, lifestyle columns and sections. He grabbed the two majors and paid, glancing down at the first one’s cover. Middle East Atrocity. The words, big and black, nearly shouted from the page. Beneath the banner headline was a full-color photograph of a street strewn with rubble and blood, and bits of body. He scanned the text, knowing what he’d find. Yet another suicide bomber had blown herself to pieces along with parts of the street, some cars and several bystanders. It was right there in his face, and yet there was a distance, a sense of removal. How many times had he seen this already—different pictures, different days, but the same sort of thing? Chris tucked the papers under his arms and headed for home. He had more to worry about than what was happening in the Middle East or Russia. They could shove the stuff in his face, but that didn’t mean he had the capacity to feel anything about it. It was just too far away, and besides, he’d seen it all before, we’d all seen it all before.

  Maybe it had all started with television. He could remember all those images of starving kids in Africa, flies crawling around their big, brown, forlorn eyes and their mouths. Then there’d been pop stars getting together singing about how they could save the world. The television coverage had gone on for days and weeks. It had been in the papers, on posters, everywhere you looked and in front of it all stood the pop star icons. Crowds of people waved their arms in the air in football stadiums, cutting to images of the starving Africans, cutting to a close up of the band playing on stage. Which became the icon—the pop star or the starving child? Year after year, the images had become more intense, more in your face.

  Then there had been the Gulf War, with the images of flashing weaponry and tracer bullets lighting up a night sky that looked vaguely green in the light-enhancing technology they used to sharpen the images. They were nothing more than fireworks in an alien skyscape. The colors weren’t right. There was no veracity. How could any of that be real? CNN ran it twenty-four hours a day, day after day. Then there were the Balkans, and the floods in Southern India and the huge mudslides in South America and the mass graves. There was the Middle East, 9/11, the War on Saddam. Atrocity after atrocity buried itself deep into our subconscious and sat there, tangled up with thought and memory and feeling and everything that went with it. After a while, the images just blurred into one another.

  He repositioned the papers under his arm and wondered what it was all doing, that profoundly ugly mix. Human tragedy on such a scale was beyond his real capacity to comprehend as something that had any proper part of his existence. So, he walked along the streets to home, the beautiful morning washing over him, pictures of assorted horror casually tucked under his arm, his thoughts returning to the encounter with the man who called himself Patrick and what he was going to do next.

  Chris closed the front door behind him and wandered into the kitchen, tossing the papers onto the table. Standing in the middle of the kitchen, he stared up at the ceiling. There was no sign of movement from upstairs. Stase was apparently still in bed, either asleep or dozing. He set about making a cup of coffee and waiting for her to make an appearance. He took a sip of the coffee and sat at the table, slightly grateful for the space that this time of solitude with the coffee and the papers gave him. He did want to talk to Stase, but not yet, not until he had worked through the tangle of thoughts working inside him. If the events of the past few weeks were any indication, he wasn’t going to get much of a sympathetic hearing, but things might have changed. The feeling was different, as if nothing had ever been wrong between them. Had he been dreaming that too? All the same, it was better to know what he wanted to talk about before embarking on yet another tension-fraught battlefield of words. He slid one hand forward and jiggled the weekend magazine from between the pages of newsprint, pulled it towards him and started flicking through.

  An article about a third of the way through snagged his attention. It talked about perceptual overload. He frowned and paused, then leaned closer to the pages. The chill was back inside, working in the depths of his stomach.

  The article’s main argu
ment was that media, communications, all of the stuff that was thrust at us every day was reducing everyone’s capacity to feel. He sat back and thought about that, and then leaned over the magazine and read some more. Something about Nietzsche… Nietzsche had said, way back at the end of the nineteenth century that they were being bombarded by too many sensations, that it was making their brains numb, dumbing them down. Christ, if he was saying that back then, what did it mean for modern society more than a hundred years on? They didn’t even have television. He leaned back again, thinking about the implications. What about television, cinema, mass media, the web? What about the constant news coverage of world events? It was all one massive set of overlapping bombardment, designed to snag our attention and do the thinking for us. It was worse than that, because there was a lack of definition at the edges, one blurring into the other. He’d been noticing it more and more lately, the overlaps. He’d lost count of the number of TV series and movies he’d seen that made offhand references to stuff from other media sources. A brief mention of a popular book, or another series, as if everyone was meant to understand what the reference meant, some half-disguised in-joke based on the assumption that everyone watched everything. It was all part of popular culture, an accepted part, and no one thought twice about it. Maybe that’s what was happening to him, happening to everyone—perceptual overload. Was that really it?

  Stase stumbled into the kitchen, a white toweling robe wrapped around her, her hair in disarray. She smiled slightly as she leaned in the doorway, scanning the kitchen through bleary eyes.

  “I see you made yourself a coffee,” she said. “Where’s mine?”

  It was the most civil she’d been for a long time.

  “Sit down, and I’ll make you a cup of tea.”

  She nodded, pulled out a chair and sat, scratching her head, disturbing the already mussed hair still further. “Ah good, you’ve got the papers.”

  As he made her tea, he was half thinking about the article he’d been reading. She reached across the table, pulled the magazine towards her and started flicking through the pages. She stopped at an article on living room style and sat poring over it while he stirred the tea. He wrinkled his nose as the hot sweet steam floated up to waft around his face, then held the cup at arm’s length while he placed it down on the table in front of her. She hastily moved the magazine out of the way while he put down the cup. She eagerly reached for the tea, held it in both hands, and lifted it to her face, breathing in deeply. She watched him through a tangle of hair as he retook his place at the table and reached for his coffee.

  “So, what’s it like outside?” she said, taking another sip.

  “Oh, cool, but nice. It’s really bright out there.”

  She reached over and flicked a page of the magazine. “Good. I might do something outside today. At least we can make use of the weather.”

  She flicked another page.

  He sat watching her for a couple of minutes, then decided to broach what had been going through his mind.

  “Stase?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “There’s something I want to talk to you about…”

  Again: “Hmmm?”

  Another flick of the magazine, and she leaned closer to peer at a picture.

  He looked at the table’s center, at the headlines sitting there, the graphic photograph in full color. Stase hadn’t even glanced in its direction. He waited. Finally she looked up, brushed the hair from in front of her face with one hand and looked at him.

  “What is it?”

  Chris took a deep breath before starting. “You’ve seen that guy that hangs around the shops, haven’t you? You know, he carries around some bags, wears a long ratty coat, beard, wears this blue wool hat…”

  “Uh-huh.” A slight frown. “I think so. What about him?”

  “Well, I bumped into him this morning, and he spoke to me. He said some really weird things.”

  She gave a slight, frowning shake of her head and then a short laugh. “Well, what do you expect? He’s not all there. So, what did you do?”

  Chris took a moment before answering. “I listened to what he had to say. He said something about you. That was the weird thing. He said something about you, and about the other night.”

  There was a quick flicker of concern in her expression, and then her face darkened and her jaw set. He had her attention, now. “What did he say? What other night?” she said.

  “The night before last.”

  “What did he say? What does he know about me? Why’s he talking to you anyway? Did you do something?”

  He sat watching her.

  “Chris? I’m serious. What did he say to you?”

  He chewed at his bottom lip, took a deep breath through his nose, wondering what he was going to say next. “Before I tell you, do you remember anything weird about that night?”

  “Weird…like what?” She was looking uncomfortable. “We had a fight. What’s so weird about that? What, is that fucking guy listening outside our window or something?”

  He lifted a hand, wanting her to keep calm. “No, I don’t know. I just…well, I think there’s something not right, Stase.”

  She watched him warily for a few moments; then her expression softened, and she leaned forward in her chair and sighed. “I know, you’re right, sweetheart. There is something not right. It’s the house. It’s us. It’s always going to be like this in a new place. Living like this, what do you expect? We’re both tense. Everything will be better once we start getting the house together and decide what we’re going to do. We’ve both been under pressure at work and here. We’ve just got to make more of an effort. You wait and see. In a few months, everything is going to be so much better.”

  She reached across the table and took his hand in hers, fixing him with a concerned look. “I know things have been hard, baby. I know they have. We’ve just got to try. Both of us.”

  She held the look for a second or two longer, then withdrew her hand. She sat back and folded her hands in her lap.

  “Will you promise me you’ll try?” she said, not looking at him, looking back down at the magazine.

  “Yes, of course,” Chris said, an edge of puzzlement in his voice.

  She nodded and flicked another page. “When the house is sorted out, everything will be so much better. You’ll see.”

  That was the end of the conversation. He could tell there was no point pursuing it then, but at least Anastasia was talking to him again.

  Chapter Six

  A Fuck Off House in the Suburbs

  Stase had always wanted something with lots of rooms, white walls, something flat-fronted and Neo-Georgian. Actual Georgian would have been better, but their budget didn’t extend that far. Chris was happy to go along for the ride, particularly if it kept her satisfied. They were her dreams and sharing in them brought them closer together. He was never quite sure where those big dreams had come from or whether they would ever end.

  In the beginning, that’s what he saw them as, simply dreams. Each one was a stepping-stone to something larger, something to stretch them, and her conception of reality and what was acceptable for her life, further. The house became her outer skin, a designer suit that she could parade in public to any who might happen to see and by default, he wore it too. Occasionally, he wondered whether he actually wore it, or was merely a part of it. Whichever it was, he wasn’t entirely comfortable with it. When your own self-image becomes a reflection of what you project out to the world and is bound up in what you have and own, then the balance isn’t quite right. Chris was careful to keep those thoughts to himself.

  When they first saw the place, he had his doubts. It had been vacant for almost a year, the first house in a long line running down one side of a pretty cul-de-sac. Broad leafy trees lined the other side, filtering the spring sunlight in a dappled patchwork along its length. It was a nice street. There were window boxes and front gardens and lampposts. Wrought iron fences enclosed the small, well-tended fr
ont gardens. It was a perfect vision of contentment and suburbia.

  Stase was all enthusiasm right from the start. The man who showed them inside had all the sugar-coated demeanor of someone who thought he was finally going to make a sale after he’d given up all hope. He’d already seen the look in Anastasia’s eye. There were times when she simply telegraphed what she was thinking. He led them, grinning, into the front hall.

  The house was light and airy, a tall staircase running up from the front hall, lit by an arched feature window at the top. The smell of old dust and damp filtered through the first impressions.

  “It just needs airing,” the agent said, and Anastasia nodded, her gaze flitting from point to point, already making plans. Chris saw the look, just as the real estate agent had before him, and his heart sank. There was little doubt that the house would be theirs, no matter whether it was a good investment or whether they could really afford it.

  As they were led from room to room, he could tell that Stase wasn’t truly seeing any of it, the stained and torn beige carpets, the half-finished paint job in glorious mushroom overlaying an older, stained pink, the cracked ceilings, the lovely 70’s pine paneling thick and orange with varnish, tacked up over stairs and ceilings, the lurid pink bathroom. She was already seeing what the place was going to be. She gave his hand a slight squeeze as they stood together in the empty living room’s center, and that sealed it.

  Stase had always said that she just wanted a place where she could tell the world to fuck off. It wasn’t a retreat, a refuge. It was something she could hold up to the world at large and say, “Look. Look what I’ve got. Now, you can just fuck off.” This new place was a step on that path.

  He didn’t know then that it would eat her up inside, eat both of them up inside.

  The next day, after the initial rush of enthusiasm had faded a little, back at the old place they were still living in, the one they still owned, Stase started her preparations. She bought a stack of magazines. She went through them, page after page, a large pair of scissors in hand, clipping photographs or tearing out entire pages. She put these to one side in a neat pile, had one last flick through whatever publication she was working on, and then moved on to the next. Steadily the pile grew. Each day, the range and variety of magazines grew larger.