The Hollow City (19 page)

Two: Before the janitor, I saw more Faceless Men, watching me from a distance, though no one else ever seemed to see Them. Either the hospital was part of the conspiracy and helping to cover it up, or I was the only one who saw Them. I was still hallucinating back then; they probably weren’t even real.

I stop walking, gripped with a sudden realization. The hospital found the janitor and told Vanek, but they didn’t say anything about his face. They could be hiding it, true, but what if they just didn’t see it? What if I see Faceless Men not because I’m crazy, but because somehow I can see Them as they really are? Somehow everyone else sees normal, everyday people, and I see their true nature.

But no—that’s the schizophrenic narcissism again, telling me I’m different and better and more important than everyone else. It makes more sense to say I’m hallucinating than to say I have some kind of superhuman awareness. And yet … I have the proof. I have the janitor’s paper. I get it out again, desperate to see it, to touch it, to know that I’m not crazy. It’s still there; it’s still my dossier. I touch it reverently and tuck it back inside.

There’s one more fact I haven’t considered: the nurse was unconscious. If the Faceless janitor was coming for me, and if the hospital was in on it, why was the nurse unconscious? And where was the guard? It makes more sense that the janitor was acting alone, observing me for months and then finally, when the time came, incapacitating the nearby witnesses to hide his actions. But what was he going to do? I searched his clothes and his equipment—he didn’t have any drugs or surgical tools or anything else suspicious. Only the paper and the gate code. Was he going to talk to me?

Was he going to take me?

I hear a siren in the distance, short and clipped. A cop just pulled someone over. The sky is brighter now, and I realize I need to get off the street. If the cops are looking for me I should keep to the back roads and out of sight. I’m too conspicuous in this coverall. I turn down the next alley, hiding in the narrow space between two fat brick buildings.

I need new clothes. Drugs and clothes and money. I could go home, I guess; there’re clothes there, and the old Klonopin I never took, but it’s too risky. The police are sure to be watching it. Even if they’re not, my father would sell me out in a heartbeat. I can’t go home. But then where?

Where can you even buy drugs on the street? High schools, probably, but I couldn’t get in to one of those looking like this. Maybe the parking lot behind one? I see a bank with a large electric sign. Eight in the morning; school’s already started. Is the sign watching me? I shake my head and keep walking.

It feels like I walk for hours before I find a school. It’s a brown brick high-rise, set in among a forest of smaller buildings; the block across the street is a fenced-in field covered with dying yellow grass. The parking lot is small, and the swarm of parked cars spills out to fill the curbs in every direction. I don’t see any cops, but I assume they’re close by; my own high school was always filled with them, and this one’s just as ghetto. I’ve seen drugs, and drug deals, but I’ve never bought them myself before. I don’t know what to do. I walk down the street slowly, taking in every detail. There are people here and there in the shadows, some in the cars and some on the front steps of the neighboring houses; some are kids, some are adults. I’m too scared to approach them. What will I even pay with? Maybe I can just find out the price, and come back later. What if I get arrested, or shot? What am I doing here?

I walk around the block, trudging slowly, running through my approaches in my mind. Do I want to look confident, or will that make me look too aggressive? If I try to stay quiet and nonthreatening, will I come off as too weak? It doesn’t matter if they try to rob me—I don’t have anything to steal. I should leave. I circle the block again, slowly, watching the people as I pass but never making eye contact. The dealers I saw in high school were usually older, sometimes much older—thirties or forties. Old pros who’ve been doing this for years. I walk past without talking to anyone. I feel the anxiety rise in my chest, fluttering like a trapped, angry bird. I can’t do this.

I’m hungry; I haven’t eaten breakfast. I walk until I find a diner and carefully count out my change.

“What can I get for $2.25?”

“Cup of soup.”

“Thanks.” The waitress brings me clam chowder and I sip it slowly, trying not to burn my tongue. There are a handful of other patrons in the diner, but none of them look like cops or drug dealers. Are any of them Faceless Men? If they can hide from others, can they hide from me? Could anyone I see be one of them, wearing a face like an insidious mask? I’d have no way of knowing. I leave the diner and walk back to the school, always moving, always watching. There’s an old man in a window; there’s a little girl on the steps. Who’s watching me?

The school is surrounded by students, talking and eating and smoking through the eleven o’clock lunch break. Half of them are talking or texting, and I turn down a side street, away from their phones.

The city is alive with energy, sharp fields of electromagnetics crossing back and forth through the air—TVs, radios, cell phones, wireless modems, buzzing and humming and prickling at the edges of my consciousness. They are formless pain. They are barbed tentacles of thought. They are voices from beyond the world.

It is nearly three o’clock when I return to the school, bone tired and sweating from exertion and heat. The clouds have cleared and the sun is hot and bright. School hasn’t let out yet. I walk in a slow circuit around the edge of the school.

“You looking for something?”

I stop; it’s not an old man like I’d hoped, but a young kid, maybe fifteen at the most. I recognize him from my walks this morning, still in the same car.

I look back, not sure what to say.
I want to buy drugs
is too simple, too forward. He could be a narc, or there could be one nearby. I shrug. “Yeah.”

“You homeless?”

“Yeah.”

“You can’t walk around a high school like this, man, people think you’re a perv. You got money?”

I hesitate. He’ll turn me away if I say no. I nod. “Yeah.”

He smiles. “Then what you need, my man, is some soup. I know a great soup kitchen, get you fixed right up, maybe find you a place to sleep and get you out of those stank-bag clothes. Get in.”

“I’m not really looking for soup—”

“Get in, dammit.” His face is hard. I nod, catching on too late to his pretense; I’m more tired and hungry than I think. I open the back door and sit down.

“Geez, Brody, this guy smells like a urinal!” There’s a young man in the backseat next to me. “What’d you go bringing him in here for?” I don’t remember seeing him before—is he actually there? Have the drugs worn off that much? He leans closer and sniffs. “You sleep outside last night?”

I don’t dare answer him; the other kid will throw me out if he thinks I’m crazy.

The driver, Brody, starts his car and pulls away from the curb. “You don’t want no soup, huh? You think I care if you want any damn soup? When I say get in the car you get in the car.”

“I’m in the car now.”

“What you looking for?” asks the man in the backseat. I look at Brody, still too scared to answer the other man out loud.

“Answer him, trashman—what are you looking for?”

I sigh softly, relieved to have the man confirmed by a third party. I swallow. “I need neuroleptics,” I say carefully. “Clozaril works best, but Seroquel can do in a pinch—”

“You want some Suzy Q?” asks Brody. “We can do that. How much?” He’s driving slowly, aimlessly, cruising the streets while we make our deal.

I frown and swallow again, nervous and scared. “How much does it cost?”

“That’s not how this works,” says the kid in the backseat. “You tell us how much you want to pay, and we tell you how much that’ll get you.”

“I…” I stop. “Can I get a … sample, first?”

Brody laughs. “You hear that, Jimmy? He wants a free sample.”

Brody’s voice is hard. “This ain’t no ice cream shop, junkie. You addicted to this stuff?”

“I need it for a medical condition.”

“He’s addicted,” Jimmy laughs.

“How much do you want?” Brody asks again.

I have nothing—no money, not even the $2.25 I spent on lunch. My pockets are completely empty, except for the paper and—

—and a small ring of keys. The janitor’s.

I touch my pocket, feeling the keys through the fabric. “I need to make kind of an unorthodox deal with you guys,” I say. “I don’t have any money.”

Jimmy and Brody curse in unison. Brody pulls over and swears again. “Get out.”

“Listen to me—”

“No,” shouts Brody, “you listen to me! You don’t come into our place of business and waste our time, and I don’t care what kind of deal you’re trying to make because if it doesn’t involve money I am not interested, end of story. Now get out of this car while that’s still the worst thing that’s going to happen to you.”

“I work in a hospital,” I say desperately. “See this logo on my coverall? It says Powell Psychiatric, I’m a janitor there. Half of the drugs you sell, that’s where they come from.”

“Then why are you buying them from us?”

“Because I lost my job, and I can’t get back in, but I can get you in and you can take all the drugs you want.”

The car is silent.

Brody shakes his head. “These places change the pass codes every time they fire someone.”

“I have metal keys,” I say quickly. “They change the pass codes but not the locks.”

Silence.

“It could work,” says Jimmy.

“It’s dumb as hell,” says Brody.

“Look,” I say, “if you get me a change of clothes I’ll even throw in the uniform. Clean it up and you can walk all through the halls without batting an eyelash. They know my face but they don’t know yours.”

Brody stares at me, eyes narrow. “Show me the key.”

I try to look firm. “Drugs first.”

Suddenly Jimmy is holding a gun. “You want to do business, you follow our rules.”

I nod, my eyes never leaving the gun, and slowly pull out the ring of keys. “They’re all right here: exterior doors, service hallways, medical cabinets, everything.” I don’t actually know what any of the keys do, but I try to sound convincing.

“Now we’re talking,” says Jimmy. He looks at Brody. “This could work.”

A train whistles nearby, shrill and piercing.

Brody starts driving. “Take off the uniform.”

“And you’ll give me the Seroquel?”

“He said take off the uniform,” Jimmy snarls, gesturing with the gun.

“We had a deal.”

“Money is a deal,” says Brody. “All you have is a handful of keys. How do we know they even work?”

“Why would I lie to a man with a gun?”

“Because you’re a junkie,” says Jimmy, “and junkies are stupid.”

The train whistles again. I look at the gun, then at Jimmy’s face. We’re in a residential neighborhood now, the houses grim and cracked. I need the drugs—I can’t leave here without them. I lick my teeth, feeling my chest grow cold and hollow. I hold up the keys.

And toss them straight into Jimmy’s eyes.

“What the—”

He flinches and raises his hands to cover his face, and as soon as the gun isn’t pointed at me I lunge forward, grabbing his wrist with one hand and pounding him in the face with the other.

“Holy—!” Brody shouts. The car swerves wildly as he first looks back and then overcorrects to regain control. “Shoot him, you idiot!”

Jimmy tries to point the gun at me but I’m too strong—strong enough to attack a whole room full of doctors; strong enough to accidentally kill a man with a chair. He fires one panicked shot into the roof, and I punch him again, feeling the crunch as his nose breaks and sprays us both with blood. The car lurches awkwardly to a stop as Brody slams on the brakes and stumbles out of the car, sprinting for the nearest side street. Jimmy and I lose our balance, nearly falling into the foot well, and I wrench the gun from his hand as he clutches feebly at his face.

I have the gun. The car is moving slowly again, drifting diagonally toward the side of the road. The train whistles loudly again, deafening and painful. I thrust the gun into Jimmy’s face.

“Give me the Seroquel.”

“Are you crazy, man?”

“I didn’t want to do this,” I say, “but there are bigger things I have to deal with. I am helping you, but I need Seroquel to do it.”

“We’re going to kill you, you know. Me and Brody and everyone else—we’re going to hunt you down and kill you.”

“Brody ran away,” I say. “You’re alone.” The train whistles again, a jagged blade of sound, and I grimace and cover my ears. “Why is that train so loud?”

“What train?”

It whistles again. “That train!”

“What are you talking about, man?”

I look up: there is no train. We’re in a tiny residential neighborhood, old houses and old cars, without a railroad for miles. I look back at Jimmy and he has no face, and I scream along with the blare of the train.

“We’re going to kill you,” says the Faceless Man. “All of us. You’re a dead man and you don’t even know it—”

The gun goes off.

Jimmy gasps, falling back against the door, a puckered hole in his chest spilling deep red blood. He grits his teeth and wheezes, eyes screwed shut in pain, his entire face a clenched, rigid mask.

His entire … face. He has a face.

I fumble the car door open and run.

EIGHTEEN

A WOMAN IS SCREAMING
. I look down and see the gun in my hand, black and inert. Can anyone else see it? Brody’s car is still moving, creeping slowly toward the side of the street until it bumps a car with a soft metallic crunch. A woman screams again, not in terror or anger but simply a scream. Inarticulate.

I look at the gun again. I shot a man—he had no face, and I shot him, and then his face was back, just like that. Was it real? Is he hiding his true nature, or did I kill an innocent man?

I run as fast as I can, arms and legs pumping like a cartoon. My chest is cold in the wind. The gun is in my right hand, and I don’t know where to put my finger. Will it go off? How should I hold it? I reach up with my other hand, slowly, awkwardly, and flip the gun down so I’m holding the barrel. I wrap my fingers around the outside of the trigger guard. Everyone can see it, up and down, up and down, waving like a flag as I run. I need to hide it. I need to run.