The Empty

by Thom Reese

  There was a sudden commotion. Wilhelm had heard the disturbance, or perhaps he had simply happened upon the scene. Either way, he was there now, shouting with all of his bluster. “Beast!” he cried. “The beast is free! He has slain his keeper!”

  Dolnaraq was upon him before the large man could hope to flee.

  “See,” stammered Wilhelm as Dolnaraq harshly grabbed him by the collar. “See, I knew it. You are an animal.”

  “I AM NOT AN ANIMAL!” bellowed Dolnaraq. Then, even though his once long and deadly fangs had reduced to human-like teeth, he plunged his mouth onto Wilhelm’s neck, bit deep, and tore away a hunk of flesh nearly the size of a baseball.

  Dolnaraq released the man, allowing him to stumble to his knees, clutching at the enormous gap in his enormous neck. He spit the meat of the man into Wilhelm’s face, and turned, marching directly to Oskar’s bloody corpse. Here, he knelt on one knee, slipped his hand into Oskar’s left rear pocket and withdrew the man’s wallet. He already bore Oskar’s face. Now he bore the man’s identification. A quick trip to Oskar’s trailer and he would bare his banking information as well. Dolnaraq made to rise, and then glanced down at the corpse, truly noting it perhaps for the first time. “Dolnaraq,” he said quietly. “My true name is Dolnaraq. I am in your debt.”

  With that he rose, gazing deeply into Tresset’s eyes, wanting perhaps to hug him or in some other way express the joy he had in seeing him. But such affections were the things of humanity. Besides, there was little time. Surely someone had heard the commotion. Others would investigate.

  “Come,” he said in breathless excitement. “We go to America.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  1910-1911

  As it turned out, Oskar Kohler was a wealthy man. And as Dolnaraq had taken Kohler’s identity, it was he who was now wealthy. This was not a fortune, but still enough to allow two young reyaqc a comfortable upper middleclass existence in the ever-expanding New York City of the 1910s. The late Oskar’s money had not come from his years as a university professor; that position did not enable a man to accumulate significant sums. And obviously, the wealth had not come from his time serving in the traveling carnival. No, this was family money passed on after the death of his parents, and Dolnaraq was quite fortunate to have it. It’s said that knowledge is power, well no less so is money. Dolnaraq was able to provide passage to America for himself as well as for the not-quite-conventional-looking Tresset with few questions and limited paperwork. As well, a few well-placed dollars allowed the two to bypass the barn-like immigration port at Ellis Island and its physical examinations which neither reyaqc would likely pass. Instead, they moved through a much less densely populated facility reserved for first-class passengers. Most of the normal bureaucracy had been skirted and the two soon found themselves happily situated in a fourth floor apartment near Columbia University where Dolnaraq enrolled for the purpose of attaining his first of many degrees.

  Knowing the money was not infinite, he’d met with several brokerage firms, selected two, and invested his excess funds with the hopes of multiplying his investments. Dolnaraq proved to have a knack for increasing his holdings, and by the time the great depression came and went nearly two decades later, the young scholar had maneuvered himself into millionaire status.

  While Dolnaraq loved his new life, treasured the verve of civilization, thrived on the fast-paced metropolitan experience, Tresset found a renewed hatred for his human cousins. Of course, there was the human smell, and in a city this size, that odor was overbearing. Additionally, though Tresset had now been over four months without animal essence, his appearance was still peculiar at best, thus forcing him to leave his dwelling only at night, to pull his homburg hat low over his forehead, and to flip the collar of his topcoat so few could glimpse his atypical features. Tresset detested the binding restraints of clothing, and loathed the needed subterfuge. Dolnaraq encouraged him, saying that soon these features would recede entirely and Tresset would be free to embrace all society had to offer. But what Dolnaraq had yet failed to realize was that Tresset had come to despise humanity, to loath these people to his primal core.

  Though the city did offer one very strong concession for Tresset.

  The hunt.

  Never before had Tresset been in such a place. In the past, when he’d hunted villages on the outskirts of civilization, the death or injury of one person caused uproar throughout the entire settlement. But, here—here! Who noticed one missing from among over two million? The immediate family, of course, but few beyond. He quickly learned to hunt the lower east side of Manhattan where recent immigrants from Ireland, Germany, Poland, and Italy crowded into multistory tenement buildings. Frequently, two or three families squeezed into one three-room apartment. The people were mainly poor, many did not speak the language of the land, and they were easy prey for Tresset.

  The displaced molt had tried to include Dolnaraq in these excursions, but his increasingly humanized companion routinely declined. Dolnaraq felt the need to maintain a consistent appearance, that of Oskar Kohler. If his features changed too drastically, even over a matter of months, this could elicit curiosity among his university peers. Thus, Dolnaraq was very picky about his choice of donors, for not only was he seeking a particular look, he also desired essence from those of above average intelligence. Dolnaraq had thus taken to drawing primarily from other university students. This, Tresset considered risky, as Dolnaraq was known on campus; but thus far he had been successful in his endeavors. He’d even shared that there was a particular student with whom he hoped to recruit as a voluntary and ongoing giver.

  On this evening, Tresset had decided to hunt the Italian neighborhood on Mulberry Street. As was often the case, the process of getting to his intended destination was a nerve-racking event. Henry Ford’s Model T automobiles were the growing rage so not only did Tresset need to dodge electric streetcars, pushcarts, and bicycles, but this new mechanical hazard as well. Garbage littered much of the overcrowded street and the odors of cesspools and humanity mingled, causing Tresset to breathe primarily through his mouth. There was a slight drizzle, and the unpaved street was a muddy slop. Tresset paused under an awning, surveying the row. The sun had receded, and with it, many of the outdoor vending tables had been cleared of their wares, carts pulled to alongside tenement buildings, and the general hubbub of the place had settled to a more palatable din. The lamplighter, a pudgy adolescent of about fourteen years in age, made his way up the street, igniting the sparse and unevenly spaced gas street lamps with a long unwieldy pole.

  A red-faced man pushing a two-wheeled cart loaded with broken chairs and table legs, passed within about four feet of Tresset. Glancing at the reyaqc, whose face was hidden in the shadows, he chortled, “I come to America because they tell me the streets, they’re paved with gold. When I get here, the streets, they aren’t paved in gold; they aren’t paved at all. And who do they expect to pave them? Me. That’s who.”

  When Tresset failed to respond to the affable gripe, the old Italian mumbled a curse, and moved on repeating his clever grievance to the next person he encountered. Wiping his hands with a coarse cloth kept in his coat pocket, Tresset slipped around a corner and into a narrow alleyway between two buildings. He’d come too early this eve. The streets were still overly populated. He’d keep moving, not giving anyone a chance to get a good look at him, and then, in an hour perhaps, he could begin the hunt in earnest.

  Toward the back end of the same six-story building, Tresset came across a young boy of perhaps ten years in age, urinating against the brown brick wall. Tresset sniffed at the fetid air and glanced in either direction. Miraculously, in a place crammed with thousands of souls per square mile, they were alone in the alleyway. Tresset did not often infuse from youth, but neither did he ignore the opportunity. What care did he have if he received from the young or from the mature? And what care did he have if the human was left intact, damaged irreversibly, or even dead? These were not his kind. Did the humans care ho
w many cows perished to give them beef? No. And neither did Tresset care how many humans expired to grant him continued life.

  The boy finished making water and glanced up at the approaching figure. His brown eyes were wide and round, his nose a button, his cheeks just now shedding the last vestige of baby fat. He gasped at the frightening sight of Tresset, but the reyaqc was fast, clamping one hand over the boy’s mouth even as the other slid round to the back of the neck. Yet it was not the child that shouted an alert, but the mother, some three stories above. Her head and shoulders protruding from the window, she shouted, “Mia figlio! Mia figlio!” A moment later, an iron frying pan hurled down toward the startled reyaqc. The pan missed, clanking against the metal fire escape and bouncing harmlessly off to the left, but the mother’s frantic and continued cries of, “Mia figlio! Mia figlio!” had alerted others, and now there were startled voices from Mulberry Street behind as well as thundering footsteps from above as three men in various stages of undress bounded down the fire escape.

  But, Tresset did not flee. He was a creature of the wild, such as these poor immigrants had never seen in their precious urban kingdom. Blood was sweet and battle welcome. Too long had he crept about, hiding in shadows, cowering from the daylight. Tresset welcomed the conflict, embraced it even. With what was surely seen as amazing agility, he tossed the startled boy aside and leapt vertically, grasping the bottom of the still-suspended fire escape. The metal shuddered and groaned as it opened, allowing the reyaqc to bound up the structure with cat-like fluidity. Startled, the lead man hesitated, causing a blockage for those coming behind. Surely, these three had expected to chase the scoundrel off by the sheer fact of their presence. In no way had they expected a mugger to bound up the swaying structure like some cornered jungle cat.

  Reaching the first of the three, Tresset easily tossed the man over the side and two stories to the ground. Landing with a thud and a sharp snap, the Italian now lay below, unmoving, and thus beyond Tresset’s concern. The reyaqc still possessed his retractable claws, though they had shortened and weakened some in the past months. Swiping cleanly from right to left these proved quite effective in shearing the left cheek from the next assailant. There was a splay of blood and panicked shrieks from the gathering spectators below. Though he thrived on the hunt, Tresset detested the feel of the disease-ridden human blood against his skin and wished the drizzle would graduate to downpour and cleanse him of the sickness.

  Realizing that there were now men racing toward him from both above and below, Tresset tossed the bloodied form toward those ascending, and then bounded off of the fire escape and toward an adjacent window some four feet distant. The window was short and narrow, and even with his catlike agility Tresset was unable to launch his entire body through in one easy move. But still, he’d managed to get head and shoulders through the opening while his lower body slammed against the brick exterior. Only three seconds later, the reyaqc had scampered through the window and now raced across the tiny apartment and out through the doorway and into the adjacent hallway.

  Realizing his pursuers would assume he’d try for ground level, Tresset instead made his way up the nearby stairway. Arriving on the roof in just over a minute’s time, he glanced in each direction, spied the nearest building, raced toward it, and leaped, landing deftly on the adjacent roof. The night air was cool and moist. The moon now illuminated the night sky and street lamps cast flickering shadows across the avenues. And though Tresset longed for essence, the ruckus below told him all he needed to know. For this night at least, he had become the hunted, not the hunter.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Bathed in the wavering light of a mercury vapor lamp, Dolnaraq dipped his pen in the ink well and jotted another line. He was hunched over his desk, three books open, each overlapping the other. Several pages of scribbled notes splashed across the writing surface. “Very curious,” he muttered while flipping another page of the topmost book. Aristotle. There were some very interesting things in the ancient philosopher’s background: some hinted anomalies, some missing pieces, suppositions about his parentage. Dolnaraq had come across the first of these while studying for a world history exam. At first, he’d dismissed his thought as fanciful. But the seed of an idea had been planted. And so he’d rushed off to the university library and returned to his small apartment with an armload of books on the man. The more he studied, the more he became convinced that he and this ancient man of wisdom might have a curious link. How very remarkable that one of the great human minds of history might not have been human. Dolnaraq would need to carry out more research, of course. There’d be other sources to collect, Aristotle’s own writings to dissect—possibly even scholars to interview—but if Dolnaraq’s supposition proved true, how many others like the ancient philosopher might there be as well?

  Dolnaraq’s contemplations were interrupted by the sound of approaching footsteps in the adjacent hallway. The door swung open and the reyaqc was assaulted with a too-familiar odor as Tresset marched through the doorway. The molt’s cloths were bloodied, and he wiped furiously at his hands and face with an old gray towel. “I assume the blood is not yours,” said Dolnaraq.

  Tresset grumbled something unintelligible and tossed the rag onto a small Victorian table adjacent the kitchenette.

  “There was another article in the newspaper. They’ve dubbed you ‘the Mulberry Street Butcher.’”

  Slipping out of his soiled overcoat and hanging it on a wooden coat rack, Tresset replied, “Do you think I care about your newspapers?”

  Dolnaraq closed the top book and turned toward his companion. “The newspaper is not the issue. It’s the fact that you’re drawing attention. They’ve increased the police presence on the lower east side. People are more alert, they’re taking precautions. You’ll be caught if you don’t change your method.”

  Tresset snorted. “The humans are weak.”

  Setting his pen aside and rising to his feet, Dolnaraq glared at his companion. “Are you that stupid? Has that cat essence muddled your brain? There are tens of thousands of them, Tresset. Hundreds on every block. They have guns. And now they’re looking specifically for you. Have you already forgotten I was nearly killed by humans, that I spent almost a year caged like a beast? We are not infallible, you and I.”

  Tresset straightened, the short hairs of his neck stood on end. “What is it you want me to do? I must have essence and so I must hunt.”

  “My need is the same, and yet I have killed no one since arriving on this continent. I’ve drawn no attention to myself. I lead a comfortable existence and my needs are met.”

  “You’ve become soft, just like your precious humans. Every month you think less like a reyaqc. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were one of them.”

  Dolnaraq drew close to his companion. How small-minded this molt could be. How shortsighted. “Understand this. I am not human. I do not desire to be human, nor do I idolize the race. But, I do acknowledge the potential gain from these people. We are few, but they are many. They have great knowledge, great resources. I will take advantage of these. In doing so, I will help our own people to rise above savagery.” He paused, made direct eye contact. “When we lived in the woodlands, we drew from the essence of the beasts. But we also learned from them, how to hunt, how to survive our environment—how to thrive. We’re in a different place now. We have new lessons to learn. But more than that, we have an opportunity to lead the reyaqc far beyond our present state of near extinction.”

  Tresset turned from Dolnaraq, paced the room. Dolnaraq knew his companion resisted this line of thinking. He’d always wanted to do things on his own terms, had never been willing to see a grander design. Yet he was intelligent and often showed keen insight. If only he could be made to see his true potential, he could one day become a great leader of the reyaqc. But not if he continued in this manner. Not if he became nothing more than a brutish killer.

  After several moments, Tresset turned, facing his companion once again. “None o
f this changes anything, Dolnaraq. I still need essence.”

  “Not with such frequency. There’s no need to kill. Spread out. Hunt different neighborhoods. Draw essence in moderation. Leave your donors alive.”

  Tresset snorted. “You are not the reyaqc I knew before.”

  “Neither are you. Before my capture you took more care. You used logic. You understood the need for secrecy. Now it seems you have a vendetta against the humans. Not only do you have the physical need for essence, but you seek some senseless revenge upon them all.”

  “They are filthy creatures—diseased.” Tresset grabbed his soiled rag and rubbed it furiously against his palms. “They—every one of them—deserve a swift journey to hell.”

  Dolnaraq sighed and shook his head as he placed a hand on his companion’s shoulder. “Tresset, this is a war you cannot win.”

  * * * *

  Tresset did not heed Dolnaraq’s advice. The killings persisted. Tresset was simply too vengeful, too maddened by the disease he believed himself to have contracted from the drunk so many months gone, too enraged by the defilement subjected upon him by the girl Lyuba. Dolnaraq saw no sign of the blemishes Tresset battled. Perhaps they were real. Perhaps they were just below the surface of the skin and Tresset felt them itching or burning. But more likely, this impurity had long since purged from his system and Tresset fought a phantom. He would not hear this, of course, but it was Dolnaraq’s opinion nonetheless.

  The “Mulberry Street Butcher” did expand his hunting ground, though, thus making it more difficult for authorities to capture him. He found victims on Doyers Street in Chinatown. He attacked lovers in Central Park. Eventually he braved Sixth Avenue, plucking a shopper right off of the street and dragging him into an alleyway as the man exited a tailor’s shop. The attacks became more brutal and more frequent.