The Hollow Places (20 page)

“What now?”
Sarah whispered to herself as she watched Firdy walk around the
building until he was out of sight. She jumped when Simon
answered.

“I don't know
what happens now,” he said.

“More
people?”

Simon shook
his head.

Without the
grumble of the engine, the van was pervaded by an silence.
Gradually, Sarah became aware of voices in the back. She couldn't
make out the words, only the tone: urgent, furious, desperate.

“Who's back
there?” Sarah asked.

They had seen
Will enter with his son, Zak, but three others had joined them
while Sarah slept. Firdy had collected them from three different
locations and had ushered them into the van where Simon stayed to
guard his sister, ready to assist Firdy if necessary. As each
person approached the van, Simon met with a level gaze.

There were two
men and woman. The men were polar opposites in many ways. The far
taller of the two, Jonathan, never Jon or Jonny, had been dressed
in a sharp, business suit, as if he was on his way to head office
rather than a Transit van and dirt roads. A briefcase and umbrella
would have completed his image. His mind, thrumming now in the back
of the van, was a circuit board of ones and zeros. He was a man of
few desires and made his decisions quickly. He didn't see them as
decisions at all. Some alternatives were weightier than others. He
went with the flow. It made him an efficient worker for the Third.
He had delivered a lot of people and he had no more idea about what
happened to them than Simon had. In his mind, these people had
glowed until he had turned them off. He had known that his turn
would come and now that it was here it wasn't so bad. He saw
nothingness in his future. Becoming nothing, he thought, wasn't so
bad.

Simon closed
his eyes. He didn't want to know this, but stray thoughts were
close all around. Their mental boundaries were dissipating and it
became normal for one person's thought to spill into the mind of
another.

The other man
called himself Moody. Moody was probably his last name, but it had
stuck, not only because of his disposition, but because of his love
of all things military. When Firdy picked him up, he had been
dressed in combat trousers and an army surplus jacket and, unlike
Simon, had also opted for full camouflage. Even now he was
imagining that he was being transported in an armoured personnel
vehicle and that the driver had paused while the track ahead was
checked for mines. In his mind, there were distant explosions.

He had nobody
to leave behind. There had been no obvious leverage to get him
here. Firdy had probably convinced him that this was his purpose.
Be all you can be. Be someone you can be.

He was a good
soldier, he was a weapon and he was willing to see the night
through to its conclusion, no matter how sour for him. He only
wished he had been asked to kill more people before the end had
come.

The woman was
the most focussed of the passengers. All her thoughts were edged
with a desire to escape and the knowledge that what was happening
to her was not fair. She had done as the Third had asked, despite
her growing distress, and yet she was here anyway in the back of
the van with that thing. She had to get free. She had to get free.
This wasn't fair. She had a little girl named Olivia; she was only
three years old. She had to get free.

Her anger
raged through her like a forest fire. It flickered through them
all.

“How many of
us are there?” Sarah asked.

“Four like
me,” Simon said. “We're all connected. And there's the boy, Zak,
like you; dragged into this by no fault of his own.”

“It's not your
fault,” Sarah said. “It's not.”

A tumble in
the back made the van shiver.

“They're
talking about escaping,” Simon said, staring out at the gutted
building. “Any second now, they'll ask me to help.”

A bang rattled
the metal wall that divided the rear of the van from the cab. The
woman Sarah had heard earlier yelled:

“Get me out of
here. Let me out. You in the front. I know you can hear me. You've
got to let me out of here.”

“Maybe she's
-”

“They can't
run,” Simon snapped. “There's nowhere to run to.”

It doesn't
matter, she realised. It didn't matter that there was nowhere to
hide. She would run and this time she would keep going for as long
as she could, because even an hour more might be enough to prevent
Firdy seeing out his plan for them.

Before he
could stop her, Sarah slid across the van into the driving
seat.

“No,
Sarah.”

Her hand found
the handle.

“The cat will
find you,” Simon said and reached for her, but she slipped away
from him.

“I have to
go,” she said. “For all of us.”

Beyond a litter and glass-strewn alley, two young men
eyed Firdy and sucked their teeth. Their dog, a muscular
Staffordshire Terrier, strained on its lead and barked. The man
holding the lead yelled at the dog to shut up, while the other
laughed and said:

“Good boy! No
offence, mate.”

Firdy kept his
head down. He had never been one for confrontations. He didn't have
the heart for it, but people – and their dogs - took a dislike to
his appearance. In the past, that had served as reason enough for
people to spit in his direction, to call him a freak, to shove him
from behind in the hope that he'd topple. That was why he only came
out at night when he was able, with the spiders and the rats and
the slugs.

He followed a
one-way street that took a winding route downhill towards a row of
unhappy tenements, differentiated only by the colours of their
doors. The standard was brown and while some people had opted for
new paint jobs, new windows, new knockers, this had evidently
happened a long time ago. The sea air had done the buildings no
good at all.

Each house had
been converted into flats, with separate doors for upstairs and
downstairs. Aside from their coastal location, individual access
points had been a major factor in Firdy's decision to live here.
Also important was that his flat had been unoccupied for at least a
couple of years.

Pretty much in
the middle of the row, Firdy shouldered open a red door and
squeezed inside.

Nobody had
challenged him when he moved in, although he had heard a couple of
neighbours refer to him as 'the junkie'. He was quiet and he didn't
have loud parties, unlike the people living beneath him. Those who
had noticed him at all were probably aware that he was squatting,
but, like him, nobody made a fuss about it.

A few others
had shown an interest in squatting the place themselves. The first
time it happened, Firdy had simply told them that it was taken and
asked them to leave. They had. On the other occasion, he had
summoned the Dog. They left too.

He had tried
to think of the dog's death as collateral damage, but he couldn't
shake the feeling that it had been personal, that Simon had enjoyed
destroying something that belonged to him. Considering what would
happen tonight, perhaps that was fair. He shouldn't begrudge him a
small victory. But he did.

When he
reached the top of the stairs, he glanced at the living area on his
way to the 'kitchen'. Against one wall was a sofa, basically a
cheap wooden frame with tough, fibrous material stretched over it.
He had seen these before, always in the cheapest rental properties.
Despite its severe angles, it had turned out to be better for his
back than the bed and it was just long enough, so he sometimes
slept there instead of in the bedroom.

This is not
going to be an issue anymore, he thought, looking at it for the
last time.

He had set up
a small, battery-powered television on a table made from bricks and
a broken palette. Television hadn't afforded him much in the way of
release though. It provided noise, but not distraction. It marked
the hours, but didn’t rush them along. In the end, he’d only seen
the worst traits of the worst kinds of people. Their willingness to
be humiliated and tortured in return for popularity dismayed him.
He had often asked himself what he would be prepared to do to be a
part of a group. He was answering that question now and he admitted
that it frightened him. He wasn't so different from them after
all.

He sat down in
the kitchen and pulled his ‘collected works’ from his jacket
pocket. The book felt strange now that Simon had touched it. The
magic of it had dissipated somewhat. He had considered the words a
spell that would somehow set him free, but he didn't believe it
anymore. Now it was only a journal.

The Third had
made him and the Third would set him free. Not the book.

He flipped
through the pages, his handwriting jumping out at him.

ALL DEAD

ONE BY ONE

CAN'T HIDE

IT'S OVER

He turned the
pages until he reached the first blank one, thinking that it would
be fitting to finally make a personal entry. Although he was an
amalgamation of strange thoughts and ideas, the dreams and
nightmares of people he had never met, a part of him was
individual. Over the years, he had assembled abstract pieces,
sharpened up hazy recollections and tested memories, and still
there was a gap into which none of these things fit and that gap
had named itself Firdy.

After tonight,
he was unsure how much of him would be left. Perhaps there was only
so much to go around. Maybe the soul was finite after all. The
Third seemed to think so.

He picked up
his pen to add his voice to the semi-permanent record. An anologue
clock punctuated the seconds and then the minutes. The words had
come easy when the thoughts had been someone else’s.

'I am Firdy,'
he wrote and to his dismay the letters came out in long, spidery
ribbons. He stared at the scribble, unable to go on. This mess was
what happened when his hand and mind were unguided.

His fingers
ached from squeezing the biro. He had anticipated a deluge, but a
lifetime of guarding his thoughts had helped render him incapable
of letting go.

Deep inside,
on the surface, all around, The Third grew increasingly impatient.
She was almost ready to take over and his free will was about to
come to an end.

A couple of
minutes more would have been useful.

It was like
not being able to pee while standing at a urinal next to a taller
man. If only he would go away.

He wondered
whether The Third was that man.

Or Simon.

Maybe someone
inside, or someone he had yet to meet, or someone he had yet to
be.

FIRDY. IT'S
TIME. I'M READY FOR THEM.

In a final bid
to focus he projected himself into the future. He imagined himself
walking out of the icy water, naked; new body, new mind. In that
circumstance, he thought, in a week, a month, a year from now, if
he found himself compelled to come here and pull up the floorboard
near the socket in the bedroom, what would he want to know about
his previous existence?

After a
moment's thought, he tore a page from the book. And then another.
Then another.

Nothing, he
thought.

He ripped page
after page from the book and then set to work on the individual
pages, tearing them into halves. When it was done, his fingers felt
as though they were on fire, but he took comfort in the knowledge
that tomorrow he would have new hands, new arms, new memories;
perhaps no more nightmares.

NOW, FIRDY.
NOW. NOW. I'VE MADE EVERYTHING READY.

He felt the
Third shift and was more aware than ever of his cargo in the van:
Will, Naomi, Ian Moody and Jonathan. He felt the Cat, waiting,
watching, wanting them. Most of all, he felt connected to Simon. It
didn't frighten him anymore.

Despite their
differences, every one of them shared an eagerness to move things
on to the next stage, in one way or another.

He put his
head around the bedroom door. Sheets of cardboard clung to the bay
window. A broken bulb hung from the ceiling. Damp crept up and down
the walls, meeting in the middle wherever it could.

There was
nothing to take with him. Even the loose panel where he had been
intending to leave his memoirs seemed nothing special now.

It was time to
be reborn.

He skipped
down the stairs, then paused at the front door. He took a deep
breath, surprised by his hesitation, then walked out into the night
for the last time, his head pounding.

Sarah thought she could slip away, but Simon snatched
her by the forearm. He held her effortlessly. Despite the pain in
her shoulder, she pulled away, not only with her desire to be free
but with revulsion.

“This is our
last chance,” she said. “Let me go.”

“This isn't
the way,” Simon said.

“I've got to
try,” she said. “Someone's got to do something.”

Simon sighed.
He seemed to change his mind and as if illustrating his decision,
he released his sister. She had been pulling so hard that she
slammed into the driver door.

She didn't
waste time saying goodbye. She threw open the door and swung her
legs out.

Firdy offered
her his hand.

“Out,” he
said.

He had removed
his glasses and Sarah saw his eyes clearly; one large and brown,
the other nothing but a milky slit with a grey dot in the
centre.

She slid down
to the ground. Like sewage.

Layer by
layer, she succumbed to the cold.

Without an
exchange of words, Simon hopped out of the van on the passenger
side, took Sarah by the wrist and they joined Firdy at the rear.
Simon gripped her so tightly that he was restricting the blood to
her hand. She knew that he wouldn't loosen his grip unless she
stopped trying to pull away, but she couldn't help herself.