The Hollow City (8 page)

“Okay,” she says. Her fingers on my arm are cool and calming. “Is there anything you need?”

I pause. It’s been too long since the reporter was here—she said she’d be back in a few days, but it’s been over a week. What went wrong? Was it too hard to find evidence in my favor?

“Do you know … Is there some kind of list of people who come to visit? Like a sign-in sheet or something?”

“There is,” she says, nodding. “Would you like me to check on something?”

“I’m just…” I don’t know what I’m just. “I was expecting a friend, and she hasn’t come, and I just wonder if … I don’t know.”

“You think she might have come when you were asleep?”

I look at the window in the door, showing faint light from the hallway. “I guess I’m just worried that she might have come and looked in and decided not to come inside. You know? Like I’m all…” I realize my eyes are wet, and I wipe them with the back of my hand. “It’s like I’m a monster. I can’t do anything, I can’t see anyone, I can’t go anywhere.… It’s like I’m in a zoo.”

“Easy, Michael,” she says, and squeezes my wrist. I feel stupid and weak. “I know it’s hard in here,” she says, “but you’ve got us. We’re your friends.” She smiles, and I try not to flinch away from the penlight. “You like peaches?”

“Peaches?”

She laughs, warm and cheerful in the darkness. “I love peaches—my parents used to have an orchard, and my mom would can them every year. They always cheer me up. I know it’s not much, but if you want some peaches for breakfast I can put a note on your chart and see if the kitchen can send any up in the morning. Make you feel a little more … like a person. You know?”

I feel stupid and embarrassed, but it does sound nice. I nod. “That’d be good. I like peaches.”

“Great.” I can’t see her in the dark, but I imagine she’s smiling. I smile back.

*   *   *

IN THE MORNING
my oatmeal comes with peaches, but they taste wrong—sweet but superficial. I can’t place it exactly. I also have an extra pill; they’ve doubled my dose. I feel depressed, like I’ve somehow ruined everything. The commons room buzzes with conversation, but from what I can tell most of the patients are talking to themselves, not to each other. Which one is my secret ally? I scan the tables silently, trying not to look suspicious, but it’s impossible to tell.

“Michael.”

I jerk my head up, surprised, and see Dr. Vanek settle into a chair beside me. “You’re rather deep in thought; I could barely get your attention.”

“Sorry,” I say, “just … thinking.”

“Which is why I said you were deep in thought.”

Another patient sits at our table, a small man with wide eyes and frizzy hair, but Vanek shoos him away. “I hate these hospitals.”

“Seriously,” I ask. “How did you ever become a psychiatrist?”

“You might call it a survival mechanism.”

“You hate everyone here.”

“I hate everyone out there as well, so psychiatry is no worse than anything else.”

“Great.” I take a bite. “What brings you here, anyway?”

“Your psychoses. I find myself increasingly fascinated the more I learn about them.”

I nod and click my tongue. “I’m glad I’m entertaining.”

“Tell me, Michael, is there some specific memory of a phone that you find particularly horrifying?”

“What?”

“Phones,” he repeats. “You’re scared of them, and I want to know why. Many schizophrenic delusions are based on specific events from the patient’s past—it may be that you see Faceless Men, for example, because of some childhood abuse by a man with an obscured face.”

“I was never abused,” I say quickly.

“Yes you were,” he says, “at least emotionally, by that disaster you call a father. It may be that your delusions of Faceless Men somehow come from him.”

“My father has a face.”

“I can see that you’re missing every point I try to make,” he says. “We will retreat from the general and return to the specific: why are you afraid of phones? Is it all cell phones? Is it the mere idea of them, or is it their usage? Is it a specific ring that holds some kind of buried meaning for you?”

“You already know why.”

“Yes, yes,” he says, “but that explanation applies to all devices generically. Your outburst a few weeks ago, when you attacked Devon, was focused on a specific device. You didn’t react to the clock radio in your room, but the cell phone scared you terribly.”

“Wait,” I say, setting down my fork with a frown. “There was a cell phone in the room?”

“Of course there was; what did you think was buzzing?”

“That buzzing was a cell phone?”

Dr. Vanek raises an eyebrow, drumming the table with his pudgy fingers. “He keeps it set to ‘vibrate’ to avoid disturbing the patients, though that obviously didn’t work in your case. Tell me, Michael, what did you think it was?”

“I thought it was … I don’t know.”

“Surely you thought about it long enough to concoct some kind of explanation. Pants don’t just buzz for no reason, and your intense reaction to the sound makes it obvious you were aware of it.”

“I thought it was—” I stop. I can’t tell him what I thought it was. For all I know Vanek is part of the Plan as well. “I didn’t know it was a cell phone.”

“But it was,” he says, “which returns us to my question: why are you afraid of phones?”

“It’s not all phones,” I say, “just cell phones—it’s not even cell phones, it’s the signals they send and receive. Normal phones keep their signals trapped in cords, but cell phones just shoot them through the air.” I glance around nervously. Is there another doctor listening? I don’t want them to hear anything they think is crazy. “Why are you asking me this?”

“Because I’m a psychiatrist.”

“But not my psychiatrist; not anymore.”

“I have arranged a research agreement with the hospital,” he says. “I have limited access to all patients, pending doctor approval.”

“And Dr. Little approved your visit to me? He doesn’t seem to like you.”

“And I don’t like him,” says Vanek, shrugging. “Thank goodness we manage to act like professionals regardless.”

Devon had a cell phone. Everything happened because of a cell phone signal. Is that the switch that lets them control me—an external signal from a nearby phone? I smile. That might be a good thing—if they have to use an outside source, that means I don’t have a transmitter actually on me. That means I can escape and be free, as long as I stay clear of their signals. This could be the break I’ve been waiting for.

“So?” asked Vanek. “Why do you think you’re afraid of cell phones?”

I click my tongue and take another bite of oatmeal. “I’m not crazy.”

Vanek nods. “Saner words were never spoken. Tell me, Michael, have you seen any more of the Faceless Men?”

I shake my head. “Of course not. You told me yourself they aren’t real.” I click my teeth. “I’m not crazy.”

He smiles thinly. “Two weeks ago you used their reality as evidence of your sanity; now you use their unreality as evidence of the same. You can either be crazy then or crazy now, but given that you’ve mentioned the Faceless Men at all you have to be one or the other.” He stands up. “Think about your story more carefully the next time you talk to Dr. Little.”

He walks away, and I stare at my tray. He’s right: I can’t claim to be cured without acknowledging that I was sick, at least for a while. I nod, twice, searching for an answer.

“Medicine time,” says Devon, and I shy back reflexively. Will his cell phone go off again? He sets a small plastic cup on the table next to me; there’s two Loxitane in it, half green and half tan, like camouflage. “Everything going okay?”

“Great,” I say, picking up the cup. It doesn’t matter what they think; I can escape now. I click my teeth. “I’m great, thank you for asking.” I swallow the pills and wash them down with apple juice. It’s time to get out of here.

EIGHT

SOMEONE WALKS THE HALLS
at night. It’s not Shauna, the pretty nurse, though I know she’s there as well; her footsteps are soft and gentle, like she’s wearing slippers. I can hear her go up and down the halls, checking our vitals and meting out drugs. But when she stops, and the halls fall silent, that’s when the other footsteps come. They’re heavy, and loud, and the space between them is wider; whoever they belong to has longer legs, and a longer stride. His shoes click on the floor like the ticks of a clock.

I use more soap than the other patients, scrubbing my hair and body extra hard to make up for the cold water. I don’t dare use the hot, and I never go in the showers when someone else is already there. They can control which spigot is connected to the cyanide, just like they can control which devices are watching me.

I sit in the commons room, waiting for Lucy, watching the patients and the nurses and the doctors and wondering who they are. I watch them walk around, all stiff limbs and floppy joints and bodies so solid they block the world right out. I’m surrounded by water and meat, by dead hair and slow, shuffling circuits. I listen to them talk and the words make no sense: tile. Tile tile tile tile tile. Words lose all meaning. I wonder how these creatures can communicate at all.

And then I’m back, and I wonder what it was that bothered me so much.

It’s been almost three weeks since Lucy came in, and I haven’t seen her since; I have to assume They got to her. I have to find her. If I can figure out the key code for the gate, I can escape.

I start by setting up a chair in the lunch area, with a clear view of the gate, but it’s too far away—I have pretty good eyesight, but at that distance everything melts together and I can’t tell one number from another. I need to get closer. I try walking right up to the nurse in the side office, hoping to make small talk until someone walks up and uses the keypad, but I can’t do it—the nurse’s computer is right there, just a few feet away. I can feel it like a buzz in my head, burrowing in, trying to get control. I wave at the nurse and go back to the commons room.

It’s the TV that eventually gives me my chance; irony’s like that sometimes. Every morning at ten-thirty Dr. Linda holds a group therapy session in the TV area, where all the nice couches are; not only do they turn off the TV, but the group is big enough that it spills just slightly into the hallway. I watch them from the cafeteria tables, calculating the distance. If I pull over a chair and sit right
there,
I’d have a perfect view of the keypad from only a dozen feet away. I stand up and drag my chair across the room.

“Hello, Michael,” says Linda. “Thank you for joining us this morning.”

I sit down. “Hi.”

“This is a social therapy group, Michael. Today we’re talking about jobs and responsibility.”

“I had a job,” says Steve. “I worked in a bookstore. I could sell anything.”

“That’s wonderful,” says Linda. “Tell us about it.”

I zone out while Steve talks about how important he used to be, and subtly turn an eye to the hallway. I can see the keypad clearly. All I need is for someone to use it.

“I could sell anyone a mystery,” says Steve. “It didn’t matter what they came in for, I could send them out with a mystery.”

“Why do you think that was?”

“They always want to know how it ends.”

Devon walks past me toward the nurses’ office. He stops and chats with the lady by the computer. Just use the gate! He says something too low for me to hear. She laughs. I flex my arm: open, close, open, close.

“What were some of your responsibilities in the bookstore, Steve?” asks Linda.

“I did everything,” he says. “I had to do everything because nobody else ever did anything.”

“Did you help open the store?”

“No, the manager did that before I got there.”

The nurse by the computer says something else, and it’s Devon’s turn to laugh. He waves good-bye and reaches for the keypad. 6. 8. 5. Another nurse joins him, blocking my view.

“Michael?”

I spin my head around, my heart beating rapidly. Linda and the patients are looking at me. Do they know what I was looking at? Do they know what I’m doing?

“Did you have a job before you came here, Michael?”

“Um, yeah,” I say. I try to soothe my nerves and pull myself together. I nod. “I worked in a bakery. Mueller’s Bakery, the place with the coal oven.”

“I’ve never eaten there,” says Linda, “but it sounds delicious. What did you do there?”

I hear the gate click; Devon’s already through, and I missed the numbers. I click my teeth a few times. “I helped load and unload stuff, like bags of flour and trays of bread and stuff like that. Mr. Mueller did everything by hand—all the mixing and the kneading and everything, like in the old days. No machines at all.”

“It sounds like you had a lot of work to do, then,” says the doctor. “What was your favorite part?”

“Don’t answer that,” says a voice. “You don’t have to tell them anything without a warrant.” I look around, but it doesn’t look like any of the other patients said anything. I flex my arm.

Why am I flexing my arm?

“I wish I’d worked in a bread store,” says Steve. “I hated that bookstore.”

“Please be respectful, Steve,” says Linda. “It’s Michael’s turn to talk.”

I look back at the gate. There’s nobody there. I glance the other way and see another orderly walking toward us from the back rooms. Is he coming to us, or to the gate?

I turn back to Linda. “My favorite part was the heat.” I try to drag it out—to tell her everything I can about the bakery so that she can’t ask any more questions until I’m done, and nothing can distract me from the keypad. “I know that sounds weird, but I liked it.” I nod. “It was hot and dry, like a cave in the desert, and you could just sit there and enjoy it, the heat and the smell of yeast, and pretend you were a lizard hiding under a rock. Maybe a dinosaur.” The orderly walks past us to the gate; I turn my head just far enough to see the keypad, and try to make it look like I’m staring into nothing. “I used to stand in the back, in the red dark by the ovens, and listen to the sound of the walls popping as the heat pressed out against them.” 6. 8. “I’d pretend I was in a balloon, filling up with hot air, and eventually I’d just float away.” 5. His arm moves and I miss the last number—a 1? Maybe a 2? It had to be one of those. 6851. Or 2. If I enter the wrong code, will it set off an alarm?