Hollow Read online

  Hollow

  An Literary Action Thriller

  A Science Fiction Mystery

  A quirky Romantic Comedy

  A story told with Haiku and Bullets

  by

  Lee Doty

  Copyright © 2015 by Lee Doty

  Published by: CreateSpace

  ISBN-13: 978-1505742923

  Contents

  Mother

  The Hallowed World

  The Hollow World

  Couples Therapy

  The Learning Place

  Object Lesson

  Menace

  Ghosts

  Haiku Fugue

  Interbellum

  Tigers and Dragons

  Mission

  Purpose

  First Incursion

  Familiar Faces

  Premeditation

  Objectives

  Delivery

  Second Incursion

  Meanwhile: Xian

  Facts and Life

  Spiral

  Priorities

  Two Pursuits

  Found

  Family

  Sacrifice

  Epilogue: The Lunchroom

  Free Sample: Out of the Black

  A Beginning

  The wounded are condemned

  Fire leaves the deepest mark

  The wounded are dangerous

  Souls by scars distorted

  Burnt young, forever burning

  The tears of sorrow’s children

  Fall hot and loud

  Bang bang! Fire at will!

  -Rammstein, “Feuer Frei!”

  (Massive liberties taken in translation)

  It is primal among the powers of man to reason, to discover, to decide.

  The politician, the party zealot, the totalitarian dictator all share a common goal with the slaver of the distant and bloody past: to liberate men from the burden of this fearsome responsibility, to keep the truth from men until they lose the taste for it. To bind their freedom in willing chains of alternating apathy and zeal. Apathy for the empirical and zeal for the soothing dogmas of their velvet-fisted masters.

  George Orwell hit much closer to the mark with “Animal Farm” than he did with “1984”.

  -Dr. Therese Smith

  “A Shadow Among the Stars”

  An autobiography published posthumously, copyright 2062

  Mother

  Chicago, 2020: Office of Dr. Therese Smith

  “So, tell me about your mother, Jo.” Dr. Smith started with her standard opening cliché. The springs of the doctor’s antique chair creaked as she crossed her legs, settling her tablet on her lap.

  Jiao-Long Farris reclined on the dark leather couch. Her clear gaze drifted around the richly paneled office, but returned again to the darkened skylight above her. Through its glass, past the vague images of the reflected office, shadowy boughs of tall trees shifted against the deeper black of the starless sky. She let her focus drift, releasing the shifting branches and her distant reflection resolved again in the glass. The vaulted roof with the skylight was high, but Jo’s sharp eyes could make out her reflected features fairly well, at least well enough to see the lies she liked to wear. She could see the mirth in her optimistic smile, the confidence in her steady gaze, the symmetry of her features, but no hint of the scarring that covered both body and mind.

  Jo released the deceptions of her reflected gaze and turned her head slightly to regard the doctor. Dr. Smith’s face was a practiced balance of detached professionalism and maternal concern. She tapped her thumb idly on her expanded tablet as she waited for Jo’s opening move. Somewhere between fifty and ageless, Smith’s short silver hair was swept up in the controlled spiky chaos preferred by women less than a third of whatever her age might be. Her dead serious suit was embellished by no jewelry, her angular face was softened by no makeup that Jo could discern, yet fashion choices that might make others seem harsh had no such effect on the Doctor. Maybe it was her warm brown eyes, or the way her lips were always twisted just slightly at the corners as if she were constantly looking for the next reason to smile. Maybe it was because Jo had known her as long as she could remember, which was almost nine months.

  “Concert ballerina.” Jo pronounced as seriously as possible, crossing her legs and entwining her fingers behind her neck.

  “Concert… ballerina.” Smith said with a contemplative nod, narrowing her eyes slightly as she jotted notes with her stylus—or maybe checked email—on her tablet. Though Smith liked to play it dry and professional most of the time, Jo couldn’t help picturing her as somewhat grandmotherly. The lines of her face were those of kindly discipline refined by age and experience. Though consternation swam through her eyes, it was soft and warm like incense smoke.

  “Concert… ballerina.” Smith repeated, wondering how much leeway to allow her patient.

  “Yes,” Jo said with airy irony, “you know, like a concert pianist, only for ballet, of course. You see Doctor, some ballerinas cannot be constrained by the narrow confines of a ballet company. Their fans require solo performances unencumbered by dancing flowers and bepackaged leading men in tights.”

  The ends of the doctor’s mouth twitched upward, and though a twinkle could be imagined in her eyes, her professional composure didn’t soften.

  “You know Jo, there will be an end to this.”

  “Oh, I’m not nearly done. I’ve been working on this all week…”

  “…an end to the darkness behind you.” The doctor interrupted, looking over the edge of her reading glasses.

  “Oh, I don’t know, my behind is pretty dark…” Jo hedged after an uncomfortable pause. Her short black hair bobbed with her earnest nodding, but neither eyes nor humor could hide her frustration.

  Smith leaned forward slightly, imparting an air of speaking in confidence. “Jo, you’ve got to believe that someday you’ll meet her.”

  “Who?”

  “Your mother.”

  “Doc, we both know my parents died when I still knew them.” Jo said, failing levity.

  “Yes.” Smith said, tapping the edge of her tablet with her index finger, “But through our work, I believe you will eventually come to know them again.” Smith’s tone hardened a bit, “Now, I don’t want to suppress your imagination, but I think we’ll make better progress if you can put more thought into your answers—maybe go for more insight and a little less humor?”

  “Look Doc, I just don’t feel comfortable when I’m not smiling.”

  Smith’s motherly half-smile returned. “Truly, I’m glad to hear it. There are too many serious people in the world—you have no idea—you’ve never been to a psychiatry conference.” She gave a theatrical shudder, “Just be careful that you’re not using humor to insulate yourself from the hard work we need to do together.”

  “Check.” Jo said with a small smile.

  “Are you still having the dream?” Smith asked casually, stylus scratching across the surface of her tablet.

  Jo’s smile faded. “The one where I’m a robot in church?” Since she had woken in the hospital, she had been having a recurring nightmare. Not every night, which would have maybe allowed her to get bored with it or become jaded, but maybe once or twice a week. The dream had a few forms, but some of the elements were constant.

  “Twice.” Jo said.

  “Are you still keeping the journal?”

  Jo nodded.

  “Is it helping?”

  “No.”

  “You aren’t remembering more?”

  “No, I’m forgetting less.”

  Smith grimaced, “Jo…”

  Jo cut her off, “Yes, I know, I know. I understand that this is significant… that it might help me remember… it’s just…”

  Smith rode out the pause without pro
dding. Jo finally continued, “It’s just that after the dream I’m afraid that all of this…” Jo waved her hand around the room dismissively, “That all of this is pointless.”

  “Jo.” Smith said after considering for a moment, “I believe in you. I believe in what we’re trying to do together. This darkness will end and you will have the truth. The truth will set you free.”

  “Free?” Jo covered her eyes, she could feel the first heat of tears threatening, “Is that all the truth does?”

  “What do you mean, Jo?”

  “I mean that it seems like when the nightmare ends, it doesn’t. It feels like each time it happens, I feel like I wake a little less… like this will continue until finally the dream will have become reality and I will only occasionally dream about this world, and that those dreams will be sweet and terrible because they will only remind me of what I’ve lost.”

  “Jo”, Smith said, but then paused. When she continued, she spoke softly, “Those memories that threaten in these dreams… they are yours. You don’t need to worry that they will change you, that they will kill who you are now. You are who you choose to be.” Smith’s voice roughened subtly, almost imperceptibly, around the word ‘choose’.

  “The memories are just facts, Jo. They are the truth. And yes, Jo, yes… the truth always sets you free. It allows you the freedom of seeing the world how it really is, with all the lies stripped away. It allows you to choose.”

  “But what if I don’t like who I was?” Jo asked.

  “Then choose to be someone else.” Smith smiled, but it was sad, as if the smile was an old scar won in the battle between faith and harsh experience. “Memory has no weight, no size, no force but what you give it. You would not believe how much of my job is helping people to realize that the past does not determine the future. That today is where decisions are made, that the future is only a collection of todays yet to come.”

  Jo sighed, comforted, but not sure why. “That was deep, doc.”

  “It’s why you pay me the big bucks.”

  “I work in a preschool.”

  “It’s why your insurance pays me the big bucks.” Smith corrected, “Now… walk me through the dream again.”

  Jo felt the anxiety again, but its stab in her chest was smaller now, somehow more distant. She took a breath and began.

  “The first thing I remember is kneeling.”

  ***

  A haze of static fills her eyes and a black tendril of fear twists through her heart. She cannot feel the hard marble floor beneath her knees, but she knows that it is there… knows where she is. She opens her eyes and sees the gray swirls of the white marble floor, dull and pitted with age. The white marble is in a six foot circle in the middle of a black stone floor that fades into shadow only a few yards outside the circle white swirling circle. Both of her hands are pressed to the stone, palms down. As always, she begins here in the attitude of complete obeisance. She does not look to the left or right, but she knows she is not alone. In her peripheral vision, she can just make out the shadowy outline of a person on her right and just ahead of her, kneeling just as she kneels. She cannot see them, but she knows that there are two others kneeling in the circle to her right.

  The sound comes next. Some remote and analytical portion of her mind registers it as speech, but the words are inaccessible to her and all her ears hear is the screech of metal and rubber, shattering glass and the bloom of a roaring, continuing explosion in the shape of incomprehensible syllables too big and painful to hear.

  She moves at the sound, obediently raising her head and sitting back on her heels as she kneels on the floor. She can tell that the shadowy forms around her have mirrored her actions, each of them moving with clockwork precision like soldiers on parade.

  Another screech of raw and mechanical sound, and she raises her hands to her ears. With a few deft motions she presses on the sides of her head and there are a series of clicks followed by a thunk that seems to come from between her ears. Slowly, she brings her hands down and looks at the dull grey clockwork in her hands. With the long practice of ritual, she flips the machine over, hiding its many intricate, but apparently pointless mechanisms. Staring at the back side of the machine, Jo looks into her own eyes. Between her hands she holds her detached face, mouth slightly open, dull eyes staring. She sets the mask, clockwork side down, on the marble and for the first time looks ahead.

  At a raised and ornate podium, a priest in white flowing vestments stands. In his hands, the priest holds a large hourglass full of a shifting, swarming sand the luminescent grey/black of static on a damaged television screen. Though his vestments include no hood, Jo cannot see his face. It is not hidden, it is not occluded by light or darkness… it is simply not there. Where the face should be is a hole in Jo’s vision, a blind spot that even when she shifts her eyes, she cannot peer around or penetrate.

  The priest lifts the hourglass high above his head with a slow, ceremonial flourish, and she can see his chest heave as if shouting. The sound crashes over her again, each syllable an explosion of chaos that falls on her heart like fear, like anticipation. She, and the unseen figures around her respond, she can hear the booming shout of their reply, feel five syllables vibrate through her throat, across her tongue and between her lips, though her mind understands none of it.

  The priest flips the hourglass over in his hands, then sets it on the podium with a boom so large that Jo’s chest hammers with it, her vision shivers with the force of it. The electric sand begins to fall, and the world fills with fire. The fire burns around her, consuming her. Through the fire, she can hear explosions and screams. She can hear her own, exultant laughter.

  When her eyes open, Jo is sitting in her bed, knotted sheets wet with perspiration, her scream echoing away in her small room.

  ***

  “You said that it is becoming clearer, Jo?” Smith said as Jo finished her account.

  “Unfortunately.” Jo said with a small humorless snort.

  “Which parts?”

  “All of it.” Jo sighed, “No part is more comprehensible. It just all seems more real somehow—closer maybe?”

  “Well,” Smith said, humor in her voice, “That doesn’t sound ominous!”

  “Yeah. Tell me about it.” Jo said, one corner of her mouth ticking upward.

  “Are the words of the chants becoming clearer?”

  “No.”

  “Did you get a look at the priest’s face, notice anything like that?”

  “No, only…”

  “Yes?” Smith prodded as Jo lapsed into silence.

  “Well, I’m not sure why, but I got the impression that I was the only one who saw the hourglass, that it was invisible to the others kneeling around me.”

  “Why do you say that?” Smith said, scribbling furiously on her tablet.

  “I don’t know.” Jo said slowly, thinking. “It was nothing I saw or heard… it was just an idea… it just felt true somehow.”

  “Interesting.” Smith said, looking up from the tablet. “And when you said that you heard your own laughter at the end, did you mean that you heard your laughter or that you were actually laughing?”

  Jo thought, brow furrowing, “I heard it, like a recording or a memory, but what I felt was horror and revulsion… what I felt was remorse.”

  Smith was silent for a moment. Long enough for Jo to get curious on the couch and shift her head to look at the doctor. Smith’s gaze was direct, and for a moment, unguarded. She was looking at Jo with a mixture of concern and empathetic sadness, like Jo imagined a mother might look at a child who had suffered an unearned injury.

  “Are you okay?” Jo asked.

  “I think I might need a psychiatrist,” Smith said with a small smile.

  “I know a pretty good one.”

  “She’s too expensive,” Smith said, “We can’t all work in preschools.”

  Jo smiled, “Eh. Shake it off. You’ll be allright.”

  Smith made a show of scribbling significa
ntly on the tablet and got back to business, “So, let’s try another line of discovery: let’s try reconstructing the crash again.”

  Jo rolled her eyes, of all the mental exercises Smith had her do, reconstructing the car crash that had put her in the coma was the most frustratingly pointless. She didn’t remember it at all and had the distinct impression that she would never remember it. It was pointless work, but for some reason Smith always pulled it out when Jo was feeling anxious. She wondered briefly if this was some kind of time out that Smith used to calm her down. Jo realized that if it was, it was reasonably effective. It was boring pointless work, but she always felt more focused, more calm afterward.

  Smith held up a warning finger when Jo opened her mouth to complain. “Start with the car, Jo… what color was it?”

  With a sigh of resignation, Jo crossed her arms and concentrated. “Green?”

  “Don’t ask, Jo. Tell me. You owned the car for three years… see if you can’t get some feel for it.”

  “Definitely pink.” Jo said, taunting. “Pink with green seats… green, sparkly seats.”

  Smith fixed Jo with her ‘expiring patience’ stare, “Continue. Where were you going?”

  “School. We both know that.”

  “Fill in the details.”

  Jo thought—nothing. She was standing in a dark cave with a flashlight that couldn’t reach far enough into the darkness to reveal more than empty air. After a few more seconds of searching the abyss, she did what Smith wanted—she said the first thing that occurred to her. “I was running late.”

  Smith nodded and scribbled on her tablet.

  “Traffic was bad, so I was in a hurry. That’s why I didn’t see the other car. I entered the intersection as soon as the light turned green and they ran the light.”

  “Excellent,” Smith said, still scribbling; “now let’s color in the crash itself. How did your leg get broken?”

  “I blacked out when the other car hit me?” Jo said hopefully.

  “But if you didn’t. Tell me how your leg was broken.”