The Hollow Church

by Amy Cross

"I don't care," I mutter.

  "Yes, you do."

  "No."

  "You don't care about pain and suffering? You don't care about people dying in agony?"

  "I only care about myself," I tell him.

  "Come on, Abigail, that's not true." He pauses. "I've been inside your mind, remember? I've felt everything you feel, and I know that you care very much."

  "I don't care about some bunch of vampires who run around with stupid plans," I insist.

  "They need blood," he continues. "Lots of blood. More blood than one can possibly imagine. Now do you care?" He waits for me to say something. "I know about the bodies in the building. I'm not sure whether it's a coincidence that you were part of the team that started investigating what happened, but either way, you must surely recognize that there's a problem, and so far you've only found the tip of the iceberg. The amount of blood that these people need... I doubt that there's enough in the entire city."

  "Why do they want it?" I ask.

  "That's excellent," he replies with a smile. "You're engaging. You're asking questions. I can tell I've caught your interest. The Disgrace will be very pleased."

  "Don't get used to it," I say.

  "And you're angry. I like that."

  Pulling at the chain, I realize I need to try something else. Instead of trying to rip the chain out of the floor, maybe I should try to rip the floor out of the apartment. Hell, I'm willing to tear this entire building down if it's the best way for me to get away from this asshole. I've already spent far too long at his mercy, and I feel as if every second that passes makes him feel more and more certain that I'm going to be a good little girl and decide to help him.

  "If we work against one another," he continues, "we'll only slow things down. You'll get in our way, we'll get in your way, and we'll achieve nothing. If we can't find a way to cooperate, we risk letting these people, whoever they are, get ahead of us. The Disgrace has been investigating for a while now, but -"

  "And what does that mean?" I ask, interrupting him. "The Disgrace? I get that you seem to think they're important, but I don't have a clue what you're talking about. I've never heard of them."

  "We were originally the knights of Gothos," he says with a sigh. "We -"

  "You've already told me that," I reply, "but who are you now? Who's in charge?"

  "You don't need to know the details."

  "I think I do," I tell him. "It seems as if you want me to work with you, but I'm not working with anyone if I don't know who they are. So tell me what's going on. Who or what are the Disgrace?" I stare at him for a moment. "If I'm negotiating," I say eventually, "I'd rather speak directly to the organ-grinder, rather than his monkey. I mean, how do I know that your word is worth anything?"

  "I'm authorized to conduct -"

  "That's not what I asked," I continue. "I want to speak directly to the Disgrace."

  "No," he says. "Trust me, you really don't want to do that."

  For the first time since Absalom arrived, I realize that I've finally managed to ruffle his feathers, and I figure I might as well see if I can turn this into a clear advantage. "No direct talk, no deal," I say after a moment, enjoying the feeling that I've got an edge over him. "I want to know what I'm getting myself into. With all due respect, which I have to admit is very little, I want to look your boss in the eye."

  "I don't think anyone's ever done that," he replies.

  "That's okay," I reply. "I like being the first at stuff." I wait for him to say something, but it's starting to look as if I've genuinely caught him off-guard. "I don't know why you're hesitating," I say eventually. "I've already told you my terms. I'll consider everything you've been saying, but first I want to speak to your boss."

  "You should be careful," he says, with a hesitant smile. "If you're unlucky, I might give you what you want."

  Reaching down, I take hold of the chains and hold them up. "I couldn't break these," I remind him, "but maybe that was just because I under-estimated the power I'd need. I know you think you can hold me here indefinitely, but are you absolutely certain?" I wait for him to reply, but it's clear that he's worried. "If there's even a sliver of doubt in your mind," I continue, "then you need to rethink your whole plan. Remember who I am. Remember my father. If you really think that I'm like him, then are you sure you want to try to keep me prisoner like this?"

  He stares at me, and I can see the doubt in his eyes.

  "What I'm asking for isn't much," I continue. "I just want to see the face of whoever I'm negotiating with. And unless you're one hundred per cent certain that I can't find a way out of these chains, either using brute force or some other method, then maybe you should give me what I want."

  Staring at me for a moment, Absalom seems lost in thought. "In any other circumstances," he says eventually, "I'd turn your request down cold. However, because of who you are, I suspect that perhaps something can be arranged. At the same time, Abigail, I must warn you. The consequences of speaking directly to the Disgrace are... well, no-one has ever dared to do such a thing, and I can't make any guarantees. There's a reason he usually sends me to act as an interface. Speaking to him directly might just burn your mind to a crisp. What's the point of insisting on this, when all that's left of you in the end might be a broken husk?"

  "I'll be fine," I tell him.

  "Such confidence," he replies, clearly amused by me. "I'll have to ask him. He might turn you down, but I'll do my best. I know he's quite curious about you, so it's certainly possible. We shall see what we shall see." With that, he turns and heads over to the door.

  "Are you sure you can't unchain me?" I ask. "I mean, at least so I've got a fighting chance."

  "You don't have a chance at all," he replies, stepping out of the room and pushing the door shut.

  Left alone, I take a deep breath and try to work out what to do next. Despite all my bluster, I'm not sure whether it was a good idea to demand the chance to speak to Absalom's boss. After all, I don't really know what I'm getting myself into, and I'm not in much of a position to defend myself. Grabbing hold of the chain, I try to find some way to get loose, but it's clearly secured far too tightly to the floor. I give it another tug, just in case, but I quickly accept that I'm stuck here until Absalom comes back. As I look around the room, waiting for someone to turn up, I suddenly realize that something has changed. It takes a moment before I turn to the window and work out what's wrong: the world seems to have fallen completely silent. Shuffling to my feet, I'm just about to go and take a look when I feel a jolt of pain start to crack through my head, dropping me back down to the floor. Before I have a chance to recover, the pain gets even stronger, and suddenly I realize that some kind of presence has joined me in the room.

  Mark Gregory

  "You seen this girl?" I ask, holding up a photo of Clare Stamler.

  "What's it worth?"

  "I'm a police officer," I reply. "She might be in danger."

  "So what's it worth?"

  "Your peace of mind," I tell him. "Just tell me if you've seen her around here."

  He pauses for a moment. "Never," he says eventually. "I'm good with faces. She hasn't been here."

  Turning away, I start walking across the barren wasteland. I'm out by the waterside area where a bunch of vagrants spent their days, and I'm pursuing the only lead that I've got. Clare Stamler, as damaged as she is, might be my best hope of breaking this case right now. After all, she's seen the people who might, just might, have been possible for the abductions, and if I can take her back to the station and sharpen her up somehow, I can hopefully get her to tell me a little more. Unfortunately, I'm striking out so far, and there's no sign of her in any of the places I've looked.

  "You after someone?" asks a voice nearby.

  Stopping, I see an old woman sitting over by one of the bridge supports. She's covered in rags, and to be honest I don't think I'd have even noticed her if she hadn't called out to me.

  "Have you seen this girl?" I ask, stepping closer
and holding the photo out to her.

  "What's she done?" the woman asks.

  "Nothing. I just need to find her."

  "Why?"

  "I think she can help me with an investigation."

  The woman sniffs. "She's pretty."

  "Yeah," I reply, "she is. She's also a potential witness in a case I'm working on. If I can find her, I might be able to save some lives."

  "She was here," the woman says after a moment. "On and off, over the past few months. I remember her because she was pretty when she arrived, but she got crazy sick by the end. I don't know what she was on, but she was definitely using."

  "Do you know where she is now?" I ask.

  She pauses. "I don't mean anything bad by this," she continues eventually, "but if I have some information that you want, I figure I should try to maximize my asset. I'm not asking for much, but just a small token of your appreciation could really help me to remember." She reaches a grimy hand out toward me. "Please."

  Reaching into my pocket, I pull out a couple of dollar bills and hand them to her.

  "That all?" she asks, clearly not very impressed. "I know where your girl went, but two dollars... Hell, even to me, that's not much." She pauses. "What's wrong with you anyway? You got a twitch in your left eye?"

  Sighing, I take another note from my pocket. Seeing that it's a twenty, I pass it to the woman, and a big grin immediately breaks across her face.

  "That's better," she mutters, tucking the money into her coat. "That girl of yours was taken in a van. Same people who took a couple of dozen other folk yesterday."

  "A van?" I ask, immediately worried that Clare might have been taken by the people who were responsible for the bodies we found. "What kind of van?"

  The old woman shrugs. "Never seen it before, but they were offering food and medicine to anyone who wanted to go with them. It was obviously bullshit, but a lot of the kids took the bait."

  "And Clare?" I ask.

  She shakes her head. "She tried to stop people from going in the van, but no-one listened to her. In the end, one of the men grabbed her and pulled her inside, and off they went."

  "She was abducted?"

  "I guess you could say that."

  "Why didn't you call the police?" I ask. "Why didn't someone do something?"

  "Who gives a damn about us?" she replies, with the same defeated look in her eyes that I remember seeing in Clare the other day. "You think a crack squad of detectives would've come down here, diverting resources to looking into a bunch of drop-outs and vagrants? Do you have any idea how many of us go missing every year?"

  Sighing, I realize that she's right.

  "Post-traumatic stress disorder," she says suddenly.

  I turn to her. How could she...?

  "That's what got me," she continues. "I had a good life. I ran my own business. But..." She pauses. "I was a normal woman until my life fell apart. I still suffer. I'm not a drug addict like most of the others down here."

  Reaching into my pocket, I pull out the rest of my cash. It comes to about forty dollars, and I pass it to her.

  "Seriously?" she asks, her eyes as big as dinner-plates as she looks at the money.

  Without saying anything, I turn and walk away. Whoever's responsible for these disappearances, they've clearly been counting on the fact that no-one's going to give much of a damn if large numbers of vagrants go missing. It's clear that they finally got hold of Clare, which can only mean one thing: somewhere in this city, there's another blood farm.

  Abby Hart

  It's everywhere at once, pouring itself through my mind and trying to tear my soul apart. Whereas I could at least put up some faint resistance to Absalom, this thing - this new consciousness that has invaded my head - feels completely unstoppable. As it races through my every thought, my every memory, it seems to be consuming me from the inside. And then, just when I think there's going to be no end to the madness, the thing stops, as if it has reached some kind of roadblock. This must be the Disgrace, and Absalom was right: I feel as if I'm on the edge of destruction, like a feather falling to the surface of the sun.

  "What is this?" a voice whispers, sounding old and deep. "What are you trying to hide from me?"

  I try to answer, to tell him that I'm not hiding anything, but a blinding light explodes in my eyeballs and fills my body with fear. I'm being pushed out of my own mind, clinging to the edge by my fingertips, while the force seems to be hammering and pounding on a part of my consciousness that I never even knew existed. It's as if some kind of feral beast is loose in my head, and as it slams harder and harder into the part of my mind it can't access, it seems not to care whether or not it causes any permanent damage. I try to haul myself up from the abyss, but the force of the attack is too much and eventually I lose my grip, tumbling away from my own mind and hurtling into the light. In the distance, I can hear my own sanity being destroyed as something tries to rip everything apart.

  Mark Gregory

  "Abigail Hart?"

  "Everything you've got," I say, standing at the desk in the old archive center. While most of the department's papers have been digitized, there are still a few batches that remain paper-only, and I'm determined to leave no stone unturned as I search for answers about Abby. So far, I've discovered very little about her. In fact, it's almost as if she's gone out of her way to leave no paper-trails. Every system I've consulted has drawn a blank, and it's almost as if this woman never even existed until a few years ago.

  "It's gonna take a while," the woman says, staring at her computer screen. "Someone's gonna have to go down into the records department." Sighing, she hits a few more keys. "Are you sure you really need this? It's a hell of a lot of hassle for us to go through. Most of the stuff in the paper archives is just random bullshit. There's nothing down there that's gonna be any use to you. If it's not in the main archive, it must have been chucked down here 'cause no-one thought it'd ever be needed."

  "That's probably exactly how she wants it," I mutter.

  "This a big case?"

  "It's something I'm working on," I tell her.

  Checking the screen again, she pauses. "She's an employee," she says after a moment. "This Abigail Hart woman works here. She -"

  "Obviously I don't want any publicity about the search," I say firmly.

  "You're looking into something internal?" She stares at me. "This could get messy."

  "I'd still like you to check," I say, unwilling to simply walk away. "There are other names I need you to look into as well. Sophie Hart, and someone named Patrick. I don't know the guy's surname, but he was her father, and I can't find him in any of the databases. Sophie Hart was murdered in Dedston, but I need to know more about her. I need to know everything. I've got half a dozen names of people who might be linked to her."

  "What did this Abigail Hart woman do, exactly?" the woman asks, raising a dubious eyebrow as she makes some notes on a pad of paper next to the computer. "She murder someone or something?"

  "Not exactly," I reply, preferring to avoid raising any unnecessary concerns, "but if anything comes back, I need you to keep it confidential, okay? Just send the information straight to me. Bypass all the usual channels. This is a personal favor I'm asking, Janet. You know me. I wouldn't be down here if it wasn't important."

  Staring at her screen, she enters some more data. "You ever heard of someone named Shelley Spineri?" she asks after a moment.

  I shake my head.

  "She was a woman who was found murdered in a hotel," she continues. "Seems she had some links to Sophie Hart. They were both from Dedston, but Spineri came and lived in New York for a while before going home. I don't know what she was doing, exactly, but I can bring up that data as well."

  "When you say murdered..."

  "Body found in an abandoned room in the basement," she continues, reading from the screen. "Seems like it was a violent attack. No-one was ever caught. Security footage was no help."

  "Sure," I reply. "I'd rather have too
much than too little. Bring up anything and everything you find. If in doubt, include it. I don't mind wading through all this stuff, Janet. Each lead gets me closer to..." I pause for a moment, realizing that I probably shouldn't go into too much detail right now. "It's complicated," I say eventually, ignoring Janet's rolling eyes. "Just get me the information," I continue. "Anyone associated with Abby. I think she had an uncle, too, but he died a few years ago. Again, I want to know everything. No detail is too small."

  "Your choice," Janet mutters. "You know you're gonna end up with a stack of information, right? How the hell do you think you're gonna get through it all?"

  "Instinct," I reply. "There's something about this woman that's got me interested. I just need as many pieces of the puzzle as possible, and then I'm going to find a way to put them all together. I need to get under her skin."

  "Huh," she says, smiling.

  "Not like that. She's hiding something, but I don't know what. I just need to get a better understanding of her, from every possible angle. I need to know where she comes from. Her parents can't just have vanished into thin air. Sophie Hart and Patrick had lives. I need to know about them."

  As she punches some more information into the system, Janet looks distinctly unimpressed by the whole endeavor. She tends to like vegetating at her desk, and I know for a fact that she gets annoyed when she's disturbed. The truth, however, is that I need to get some more information about Abby Hart. She's clearly done a good job of keeping herself out of sight, but no-one can go through life without leaving a trace. At some point, she has to have left some kind of record, and I'm determined to find out more about her, even if I have to send Janet insane in the process.

  "Anything?" I ask forlornly.

  "Are you sure you've got her name right?"

  "I'm sure."

  "Then I've got nothing for you regarding her father. You're welcome to go through the non-digitized material, but it'll be like looking for a needle in a haystack. There are only two possibilities. One is that she just didn't exist before a few years ago. Maybe she changed her name, or maybe she was raised by wolves? The other possibility is that she managed to erase herself. I don't quite know how she'd have done that, but maybe if she had connections..." Pausing for a moment, she seems to be lost in thought. "People can surprise you sometimes, you know. If she's resourceful, she could have done almost anything."