Empties

by George Zebrowski

  “You wouldn’t say that if you saw her dungeon,” Benek said.

  “Tell me again what she does—exactly,” Reddy said.

  “I really don’t know,” Benek answered. “No one can know right now. It can’t be supernatural, of course.”

  “Why not?” Reddy asked. “You’ve asked me to believe as much.”

  “All I can do is give you an accurate description.” Benek took a deep breath. “She moves brains suddenly from one place to another, in a kind of wild jump. Either they simply disappear from one place and appear in another, or they simply... flow out from the skull.”

  “You mean they get ghostly?” Reddy asked.

  “I think it’s more a discontinuous jump.”

  “Excuse me,” Reddy said, “but you must realize that’s against all reason.”

  “I know, I know,” Benek said. “That’s why she’s so safe. No one can believe it unless they see it, and perhaps not even then. They must know in advance what they’re looking at. It has to be a physical principle of some kind at work, nothing supernatural.”

  “Of course,” Reddy said.

  “A lot of what once passed for supernatural,” Benek said, “were only real phenomena, poorly observed, and understood much later.”

  “You’re seriously deluded, Benek,” Reddy said.

  “She does it.”

  “You say she does it.”

  “I’ve seen it, and I’m a competent witness, Captain. I’m fully aware of how impossible it seems, but she does it.”

  “You really believe this?”

  “I don’t have to believe it. I’ve seen her do it.”

  “But you’re asking me to believe you.”

  Benek took another deep breath. “If you don’t help me prove it to you, you’ll find out for yourself, if you’re lucky and get to see someone else cored, or in the instant before it happens to you. I’m trying to save lives, Captain, maybe even yours and mine.”

  Reddy stared at him blankly.

  Benek said, “I don’t really blame you. I see what’s coming and I can’t stop it.” He wanted to weep, to relieve the tension that had stiffened his neck and back muscles. He put his hands up to his face, but there were no tears. He shook a little.

  “Take it easy,” Reddy said as he stood up. “Let’s go over to her place. I can do that much for you.”

  One of Dierdre’s tenants, a young business type, ran into them on the stairs outside the brownstone. After finding out that Benek and Reddy were cops, the man told them that he had been trying to get hold of the landlady about a leaky faucet and had left several messages on her machine besides knocking on her door at least three times without an answer. This wasn’t like her, so what the hell was going on with her anyway? Reddy said he would try to find out.

  Benek led the captain inside. The door to Dierdre’s apartment was closed. Reddy knocked, then tried the doorknob; the door opened. An unlocked door, a woman not responding to phone calls, a worried tenant—they had probable cause to enter and search, Reddy said.

  They entered with their guns in their hands, then holstered them when they were inside. Benek quickly led Reddy downstairs to the basement, and described how the rat’s brain had struck the now broken bed, then pointed to the filled-in hole in the wall. The captain nodded solemnly but took a deep breath when Benek showed him the half-dug grave in the back room.

  As they went upstairs, Reddy said, “It’s certain you and she didn’t get along well, did you? You must really hate her... to think the things you’ve told me.”

  “I didn’t know her very long. There wasn’t time for hatred. I told you what she wanted from me. Now she’s simply afraid of being discovered. When I’m gone, no one will know, and you’ll be next if you start to believe me then.”

  Reddy did not laugh, and did not answer.

  Frustrated, Benek went back up into the apartment and stumbled against a bowling ball bag in the hall. He kicked the bag aside, went into the living room and sat down on the sofa. He saw himself through Reddy’s eyes, and it seemed impossible suddenly that Dierdre was the monstrosity that he had encountered, and that he would not be able to stop her. More people would die because he had not been able to shoot her. He did not blame Reddy. It had been a mistake to attempt convincing him. Better to have gone out and killed Dierdre himself. Maybe there was still a chance that he could do it.

  Benek became aware of Reddy standing in the hallway, watching him, as if listening to his thoughts.

  “What is it?” Benek asked.

  “Something smells in here,” Reddy said, pointing to the bag at his feet. He knelt down and opened the bag. “Like some kind of cleanser.”

  Benek came over and bent down for a look. The bag was empty, but he knew suddenly what it had contained. “I want this checked for human blood and tissue.”

  “Why?” Reddy demanded, standing up.

  “I think she used this bag to carry away Gibney’s brains, then cleaned it out.”

  “Think so?” Reddy asked, shaking his head in disbelief. “You never stop, do you? You’re witch hunting. That went out in the middle ages. How complete is this delusion of yours anyway?”

  “So complete that it’s real,” Benek said.

  Reddy frowned, then kicked the bag away. “There’s nothing here, and maybe we shouldn’t be inside. Go home, Benek,” he said in a low voice. “Rest up.” He gave Benek an agonized look and added, “That’s the best I can do for you right now.”

  “But the grave in the basement,” Benek said.

  Reddy smiled at him. “Go and rest up for a day or two, Bill.”

  And for a moment Reddy’s show of concern moved him to consider that it all was a delusion, a nightmare from which he had just awakened, and he felt like the boy coming out of confession with all his sins absolved by the priest, uncaring of the penance in prayers he would still have to say or the good deeds that were necessary, the priest had reminded him, to amend his life. They never checked up; it was a given that new sins were always incoming, but lack of amends should have been the first sin in the next confessional.

  18

  She came upstairs to the front door the next morning and peered out through the dirty glass. The sun was a cool white glow in the overcast sky. Pools of dirty water shook like gelatinous mirrors amid the debris of the razed block. The lot around the house was deserted, but beyond the chain link fence, on the far side of the street, she saw a parked car. It pulled away after a moment, its muffler coughing blue smoke. She tensed as the engine backfired with a flash and the car swung around the corner.

  She pushed the door open and stepped outside for some air, feeling bloated and achy, both sure signs that her period was imminent. Benek had failed her. She would have no child, not yet; they had not spent enough time together.

  She took a deeper breath and it brought back her nightmare. Benek was telling her that she shouldn’t want a child, by him or anyone else, that mothers and sons all had problems, daughters and mothers even worse sometimes. She had only to remember. “And if they have your skill,” he had said, “they’ll come against you. There may be others like you,” he had reminded her, “and they won’t be your children. They’ll come against you, and you won’t be able to stop them all. That war will end with a mystery of dead brains.”

  She tensed as the dream warned her again, but she told herself that her kind would cooperate and rule the world. She had told Benek that in her sleep. “Fat chance,” he had said. “Look at the rest of us around you. There’s always a war and always will be.”

  In that case, the best of all possible worlds will have only one of her kind, her waking self insisted, where no one would ever know, where no one must ever know. Her life would be her own.

  She felt the menstrual flow threatening within her, and was glad not to be pregnant. She would be unique, born of a blindly generous quirk that had let her into the world to do as she pleased.

  She wondered whether Benek’s claim that there might be unrelat
ed others should make her afraid; but there had been no fear in the dream, so she would not fear now.

  She watched as a police black-and-white appeared around a ruined corner and pulled up in front of the fence. A tall man got out, saw her, and raised his hand as he came through the ragged hole in the chain link. He was dressed in a brown blazer, with matching slacks, and a white shirt with no tie.

  “Are you Dierdre Matera?” he called out as he picked his way toward her, and she felt a menstrual cramp creeping up on her. She tensed, ready to core him, but his casual, unthreatening manner stopped her.

  “Yes!” she shouted back, feeling a second twinge begin, then ebb away.

  “Want to ask you a question,” he said as he came up to her. “I’m Police Captain Joseph Reddy.” He showed her his badge. “What are you doing here?”

  “Checking my property,” she replied firmly, watching him closely, ready to reach out and empty him if necessary.

  He looked up at the building, and shook his head. “Doesn’t seem worth owning.”

  His comment angered her, but she restrained herself. “You may be right, Captain, but this is the first I’ve been out here in a long time.”

  “It’s not safe—the building or the neighborhood.”

  “I’ll probably be selling it soon,” she said, trying to sound pleasant. “Why are you here, Captain?”

  “It’s about Detective William Benek. You know him, I think.”

  “Yes, what about him?”

  The man was embarrassed, she noticed. “Well, he’s made some pretty strange statements about you.”

  “Oh?” she said, smiling as another cramp clutched at her insides.

  “I was wondering if you could come down to the precinct, say tomorrow, and make a formal statement. It would help clear up a few things. He’s been a good cop.”

  The fool, she thought, the stupid fool. But they didn’t believe him, as she had expected. Another cramp locked, held, then started to fade away. Tomorrow, she knew, the discomfort would be worse and she would need a painkiller. “What is this about? I can tell you

  anything you want to know right now.”

  “You went out with Detective Benek?”

  “Yes. Is he in some kind of trouble?”

  “Maybe not. What about the room in your basement, with the bed and manacles?”

  She smiled at him and tried to look worldly and unconcerned. “Fun and games, Captain. Not against the law between consenting adults.”

  “And the grave?”

  “Grave? Oh, you mean the hole in the back room. Bill dug it for me. I need to run a drain in there. He saved me some money. He seemed to want the exercise. It was very nice of him. Now I can call in the plumbers to connect the pipe to the sewer in the street. When I can afford it.”

  The captain shook his head and smiled. “I thought it was maybe something like that.”

  “Is there anything else, Captain? Bill is a good man.”

  “Nothing at all. Would you still come in and make a statement?”

  “But why?”

  “Detective Benek is a little... unwell. It would help him to have someone speak up for him more formally. He doesn’t have any family.”

  She smiled and looked into the captain’s blue eyes, knowing exactly how to play him. “Of course. I guess he didn’t take breaking up very well. We didn’t last very long, I’m afraid.”

  “You broke up?”

  “Yes,” she said, sighing for his benefit. She felt a hot flash, then a moment of weakness.

  “Well, thanks for your help,” he said and turned to make his way back toward his car.

  She watched him go. As he reached the fence, she called out, “Oh, Captain Reddy!”

  He turned and looked at her.

  “Did you say tomorrow?”

  He nodded and turned away, then bent down and went out through the hole in the fence. She felt another cramp coming. Soon she would be aching in her back and feeling pains in her legs, and the cramps would crowd into her and stay, varying in intensity. They were preparing her for childbirth, she told herself, when she would feel like pushing because there would be something for her to push out.

  Something she no longer wanted.

  On the following afternoon, Benek came into Reddy’s office, as the captain had asked him to do, and sat down in the wooden chair before the desk. Reddy looked at him and pushed over a single piece of paper. “Bill, that’s Dierdre Matera’s statement of this morning. Please read it.”

  Benek tensed at this repeated use of his nickname, and saw it as still another sign that the captain was not taking him seriously, but wanted to sound kind. He picked up the sheet and read it through, and the last hope that Reddy might still believe him died.

  “Well,” Reddy said. “What do you say?”

  “Don’t you see, Captain?” Benek said, standing up.

  “See what, Bill?”

  “It’s all a lie. She’s just covering her tracks, so no one will ever know. Her biggest mistake was revealing herself to anyone.”

  “Only to you, Bill.”

  “Yeah. What did you find in the bag?”

  “Nothing. I guess you’d say she cleaned it out thoroughly.”

  “What about Gibney?”

  “He was cremated, as he wished. Bill, everything you’ve claimed has come up empty, with perfectly ordinary explanations. You had a falling out with this woman, and somehow you jumbled that up into the case you and Gibney talked about. You’re not well. As far I can tell, you’ve imagined all the evidence.”

  “So I’m hallucinating?” Benek asked, feeling himself shake slightly. “What about the autopsy on the wino?”

  “Gibney did say in his notes that he suspected a hoax. Somehow, it got you going in this direction. Don’t you see, Bill? This just can’t be. You’ve got it all jumbled together, like a bad dream.”

  “Check the body again,” Benek said determinedly. “That’ll show you that the brain couldn’t have been easily removed. Check the priest.”

  Reddy took a deep breath. “Not easily removed, sure, but it was removed. The body has been disposed of, and the priest is in hallowed ground, so you have nothing. It’s clear to me that you need a rest, so I’m suspending you indefinitely, even though I badly need you on the job. Get some help right away, and have the doctor send me an evaluation. If you refuse, I’ll start the proceedings to fire you, and I don’t care what it costs.”

  Benek was silent, trying to see the impracticality of sticking to his story.

  “Well, Bill, what do you say?”

  Benek knew that Reddy didn’t want to lose a detective; it would leave the precinct short for a while.

  “Do you know what really gets me?” Reddy continued. “Your cases haven’t been tough enough to unbalance you. All I can think is that you never seemed to have anyone, no close pals, no women I can remember you mentioning. So you meet one, it goes wrong, and you develop this incredible delusion. Makes me think you were always a bit nutty. Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me you’ve been taking something.”

  Reddy was sympathetic, and not just thinking of the precinct, but there was no way to convince him, it seemed.

  “Exhume the priest,” Benek said. “This is all exactly what I told you. She’s covering her tracks and wants me to come after her so she can kill me. If I disappear, or if you find my body, have my skull carefully checked.”

  “I warn you, Bill, leave her alone,” Reddy said calmly. “I shouldn’t even be talking to you this much, since it can’t do any good if your problems are extreme, but I have this idea that maybe I can get through to you. Tell me I’m right. Tell me you’ll get over her.”

  “I won’t go near her,” Benek said, realizing what he had to do. He should never have told Reddy anything.

  “What’s happened to you, Bill?”

  “Bad dreams maybe,” he said.

  “Let’s hope so. Do you see how extreme a story you’ve been telling me?”

  “I won’t go near
her,” Benek said again. He had to say the words just to get out of the building.

  Reddy looked at him hopefully, and Benek realized that the captain had never been a hard ass. Way down deep he was a naive good man, wanting to believe the best about people. It seemed impossible that he had made captain of police. He couldn’t be on the take, either, which is how it was with the honest, or the stupid.

  Benek nodded slowly. “Maybe I do need some rest,” he said, realizing that he was alone in this now, that he couldn’t rely on anyone to help him, that in order to stay free he had to patch it up with Reddy even if it meant making it easier for Dierdre. To try to talk anybody into helping him now would only add to the number of people who would think he was nuts and whose lives would be put in danger. Reddy might lock him up and there would be no one to stop Dierdre.

  19

  Stalk and kill her. Hardest of all would be to imprison her. It seemed to him that she had to see her victim as she cored him, so it might be safest to observe her through one-way glass. But if she looked at anyone, brains would come out.

  Trying to convince Reddy had been useless, but it was not the captain’s fault. She was an insult to reason, to the organ of pride. What had made her? Did she just happen? Ironically, humankind had never needed her skill, having always had enough to account for all the evil in the world, while blaming it on devils. Knowledge and its tools had only magnified humankind’s dark inner freedom, which warred with nature and with itself. Some cosmic joke, blind to its own humor, had thrown Dierdre into the mix, but she was an unnecessary insult to humanity’s endless self-injury. Had Dierdre’s power grown out of that old darkness? Was it some form of self-inflicted punishment? Was she the first of her kind, or were there others? Better she had remained a folktale.

  There had to be a physical explanation for what she did, some simple topological snap, nothing supernatural but enough to do the deed. It had always been there, billowing in the quantum substructure’s chaos, ready to tear at the more orderly overworld. Might as well be magic, he thought, hating the idea of forces transcending human intellect, with no supporting explanation, standing outside of reality. He could not face an infinite perversity, if it existed. There could be no truce with it. Proliferate Dierdre’s power, and the streets would steam with dispossessed brains, bodies rotting where they fell, a world emptied of all mind, beyond all the horrors of the past.