The Hollowed

by Jay Caselberg

  Chris wasn’t fooling himself that he didn’t have problems too. Everything was starting to seem pretty meaningless. There was work, but that was little more than an automated routine. It was a persona he pulled on day after day, comfortable in its familiarity, but deadening in its sameness. There was nothing new or exciting there, and somehow, it was like being alone in a crowded room, no real connection, because he wasn’t really there after all.

  Chris began to realize that he had spent so much time imprinting his life and his identity on Anastasia that with her turnabout, he had been cut adrift, and if he couldn’t regain some semblance of his life with her, he wasn’t left with very much at all. Unless he could cross that bridge between them and rebuild some sort of connection, then he, as an individual, almost had no identity left of his own. It was a hard realization and one he would have rather denied.

  He made a decision to monitor what she was doing. He wouldn’t broach the subject of the house, not yet. He wanted, rather, to find some common ground with which he could build a platform to reconnect with her. He knew he had to tread carefully, skirting the hostility that sat festering between them, but he had resolved to take some action. Every night, when she came home from work, he’d ask her how she was doing, what her day had been like. She was sparse on details, and Chris was becoming frustrated. She rarely asked him what was happening with him. And still, underlying it all was the touch of accusation lying beneath her brief and inconstant gaze.

  A few days after the encounter in the back hallway, she announced that she had found something new to do.

  “I’m going to this thing tomorrow night,” she told him. “Are you going to be okay on your own?”

  “I guess,” he said. “It’s not going to be much different from normal, is it?”

  She almost glared at him. “Anyway, I think this thing’s going to be good for me.”

  “What is it?” Chris asked, leaning forward and clutching at some hope that there might be something there he could become involved in with her.

  “It’s a self-development seminar. I heard about it from one of the girls at work. They teach you how to take control of your life. Teach you empowerment and how to be assertive about yourself.”

  “Are you sure?” he asked.

  Again the look of hostility.

  “Okay, listen, how much do you know about it? There are a lot of suspect outfits out there.”

  “It’s legitimate. You don’t have to worry about that. It’s called the Root Network. They call it that because it lets you get to the roots of your inner strength and helps you grow.”

  Chris sat back. “Um, okay…does this cost anything?”

  She shook her head. “Anyway, that’s not the point, whether it does or not. It’s something I want to do. The girl from work loves it. It’s only an introductory seminar anyway. If I don’t like it, I don’t have to go back. There’s no commitment.”

  Already there were faint alarms going off in Chris’s head, but if he mentioned anything right then, he knew Stase was just as likely to leap down his throat and accuse him of trying to undermine her again. It was just too much of a familiar pattern of late. He couldn’t seem to question her about anything. The fact that the ‘girl from work’ was nameless too did nothing to ease the concern. He shut up and went back to watching the television. It was a weekly soap that Stase liked to watch. A couple on screen were having an argument. Chris barely saw them. Seemingly satisfied, Stase settled back to watch the show as well.

  The next night, when she was out at her ‘introductory seminar,’ Chris decided to do some research. He got online and typed in: “Root Network.” The results were immediate and manifold. There was a website devoted to the organization, but there were other things too. He briefly scanned the website and then hit the back button on his browser to follow the other links. Entry after entry followed and very few of them were good. Many of the links pointed to cult warning sites. He leaned in closer to the screen, frowning. After following a couple of the links, he was frowning even more. A number of the sites went so far as to discuss brainwashing techniques openly.

  “Jesus,” he breathed and sat back from the screen. He paced the room for a while, deciding what his best course of action was. It was the standard stuff. Where they talked about self-development and empowerment, they were really setting things up to bleed as much as they could out of their potential victims. The root structure was evident. It was based on a principle of pyramid selling: their members were encouraged to proselytize, gaining status points for helping to induct new members. There was a series of ranked seminars, each one costing more than the last, eventually getting to a point where members were supposed to contribute a proportion of their income to the group. Meanwhile, they battered your self-confidence, looking for targets to blame, then rebuilt and refocused it. Their program had a history of turning its participants against wives, against families, against loved ones, until they gained support only from the organization itself. Why would she want to get involved in something like that?

  He returned to the screen and followed a few more of the links, finding out all he could, including the fact that their founder had been arrested on fraud charges more than once and been forced to change his name, as well as the name of the corporation.

  He found a few select entries and printed them out. If Stase wouldn’t listen to him, she might just listen to something in black and white.

  Chris waited patiently for her to arrive home.

  He met her at the door, a sheaf of papers in his hand.

  “So, how was it?” he asked.

  She was visibly glowing. “It was great, wonderful,” she said, putting down her bag and actually smiling back at him for once.

  “Um, okay, Stase, that’s great,” Chris said hesitantly, “but I think you need to come in here and sit down with me.”

  He led her into the lounge and steered her to the couch. She was looking at him with a puzzled expression, but there was none of the hostility he had seen of late. Once she was seated, he handed her the papers. “I think you need to read this,” he said.

  She started scanning the first page then slapped the papers down on the couch beside her, glaring up at him. “Typical. This is bloody typical Chris. I find something that I like, and the first thing you do is try and find some way to get at it, to turn it bad for me.”

  Chris held up his hands. “Stase, it’s not like that at all. Listen to me. I’ve heard about this sort of stuff before. I was worried about you. I really think you need to read what’s there.”

  She narrowed her eyes and lifted the pages again. This time she read them more slowly. “Okay, so what?” she said after a few pages.

  “Can’t you see what they’re doing? Look, a number of groups like this have been banned. It’s bullshit, Stase. They fuck with your head and take your money. That’s how they work. It’s no better than a bogus religion. We don’t need that kind of shit right now. You don’t need that kind of shit right now.”

  She kept reading, not saying anything.

  After a while, she put the papers back down, more gently this time. Her shoulders slumped. “But they were so good,” she said. “I felt great. There was no hard sell. I know other people who swear by them, say they’re great.”

  “But that’s how they work, baby. Don’t you see that? Suck you in, then suck you dry. I really don’t think you should have anything more to do with them. Really.”

  She turned slowly to look at him. Her eyes were shining moistly. “Okay, I’ll think about it, Chris.”

  “You promise?”

  “Yeah, I promise.”

  He thought he’d dealt with that one, until they got a phone call a few nights after from a male voice that Chris didn’t recognize. Stase took the call and spoke in low tones for a while before returning to the lounge. She didn’t volunteer anything, so Chris asked.

  “Who was that?”

  She shrugged, reaching for the remote and switching channels. “Oh,
that was just Asid.”

  Chris had never heard the name before. “Who the hell is Asid? And why so secretive?”

  She shrugged again. “He’s just a guy I know.”

  “From where?”

  She flipped the channel again. “I met him at the seminars.”

  “Jesus, Stase. What are you doing?”

  Still she didn’t look at him, seeming to have settled on a television channel and settling back on the couch. “He’s fine. He’s just a friend.”

  Chris clamped his jaw shut, took a breath and then continued. “I thought you were done with all that bullshit.”

  She turned quickly to look at him. “He’s just a friend, all right?” She turned back to the television.

  Chris closed his eyes and fought to keep himself calm. Okay, he was just a friend. Maybe he was. Maybe she was done with the seminars. He’d give her the benefit of the doubt for now. It just wasn’t worth the hassle otherwise. He opened his eyes and sat watching her. Just once or twice while she was watching whatever was on the screen, her eyebrows flickered up and down, almost a semi-shocked reaction, one of startlement. There was nothing on the screen that should invoke a reaction like that, and he wondered where it was coming from.

  Chris noted it and put it away, but something he’d deal with later, maybe. It was as if the world, everything she looked at, was surprising her from moment to moment.

  For the time being, his life together with Stase, finding some common thread between them and building on it was Chris’s only focus. But then he saw the fat man on Sydney Street, the girl in the bus shelter, and the world decided to take him to a totally different place whether he was aware of it at the time, or not.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The Commune

  About halfway through Stase’s final year, Chris came over to the flat she shared with the other girl, Barbara. She let him in, stopping him at the door and putting a finger to her lips.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Come in really quietly. I’ve got something to show you.”

  Chris followed her on tiptoe into the living room. Stase gripped his upper arm, stopping him before he went any further.

  He gave her a questioning look.

  “Over there,” she whispered and pointed.

  Sitting on the couch, staring up at them with big, wide eyes gazing out from a ball of fur was a black and white kitten. He laughed.

  The kitten backed away at the sound, hair fluffing up, a hiss issuing from its mouth.

  “Where did you get that?” he said. He didn’t wait for her answer, but stepped over to the couch and crouched down, reaching out a hand. The kitten backed away further into a corner of the couch. Gently he stroked its head. It trembled, but let him touch it.

  “I found it,” she said.

  Chris turned to look at her back over his shoulder. “What do you mean? Where?”

  Stase moved over and crouched down beside him, reaching out to stroke the kitten too.

  “I was out for a drive,” she said.

  “A drive? Where?”

  “Oh, I was down at the beach. I’d just gone for a drive. It was down there on the beach alone. There was nobody around, so I brought it home.”

  Chris kept stroking, but what she had told him worried him. “How do you mean, you just brought it home? Maybe it belongs to someone. Did you look?”

  She shrugged. “There wasn’t anyone around. Isn’t it cute?”

  “I’m not sure you did the right thing just bringing it home, Stase. Don’t you think it might be someone’s pet?”

  She gave another little shrug. “It’s mine now.” She leaned in closer, putting her face right next to it. “I need to think of a name for it.”

  Chris stood back up and looked down at her. She seemed totally enamored with the small furry ball. It was purring now.

  “Okay, if you’re sure you know what you’re doing…” He wasn’t feeling comfortable about the whole thing. But he could see the look on her face and he knew better than to raise any real objection right then.

  The funny thing was, it was gone in a week, nameless, apparently forgotten. Her housemate, Barbara, announced two days later that she was dropping out of university and moving back to the town she’d come from. Stase decided she had to find somewhere else to live, as the apartment was in Barbara’s name and changing everything over was just too much hassle. It was also too expensive to try and keep on her own.

  Chris was over waiting for her to finish getting ready before they went out somewhere, and he noticed the lack of the kitten. “Stase, what happened to the cat?” he said.

  “Oh, I took it back,” she said blithely.

  “You what?”

  “Took it back where I found it. I let it go.”

  “Where?”

  She looked at him as if she didn’t understand what his problem was. “Back on the beach, of course. Back where I found it.”

  He just stared at her. And that was the end of it. Stase didn’t talk about the nameless ball of black and white hair again and nor did he. It was just another one of those things he filed away with his incredulity. Not everything was black and white, not even a kitten.

  She found somewhere to live within the week. There was a large cream condominium down by the beach, a tall corporate-looking affair that had its own name. It was the sort of place designed for businessmen and the up-and-coming wealthy. Three other students from her old social group were planning on moving in and they asked her to join them. Chris was baffled by the fact that someone would even rent those places to students, let alone a whole group of them. It was right out of their range, out of their lifestyle, out of everything that made any sense to university life. He could see why Stase was attracted by it though. It looked good from the outside in a sort of slick, modern way. It was another external skin for Stase to wrap around herself.

  There was something else about it that was worrying Chris. Stase had moved out of her own social circle as much as he had, and he didn’t feel comfortable with the fact that she seemed to be slipping back into it. He was threatened. Added to the fact that she was going to be sharing with two guys as well as another girl, he was distinctly uncomfortable. It was a two-bedroom apartment. Sure, it had plenty of space, all the modern facilities—Stase had taken him to have a look at it once the decision was made—but it was still going to be close quarters for four of them. Yes, he was threatened.

  One of the guys who lived in the place, Jim, was a big Marilyn Monroe and Beatles fan and as soon as you walked into the place, there was a huge floor to ceiling black and white poster tacked to the wall, the standing-above-the-subway shot. Marilyn’s image was reflected from the large built-in mirrors at every angle as you walked in. It just seemed so unlike Stase, so outside of her reality. Jim was a good-looking man, high cheekbones, a mop of curly hair, strangely reminiscent of Jim Morrison. Chris noticed immediately the way he followed Stase around the room with his gaze. The other male resident was called Alex. He was tall, loud, a hard drinker and smoker and seemed to spend little attention on his personal hygiene. It looked like he hadn’t cleaned his teeth for years. Chris suppressed his shudder with some difficulty when they were first introduced.

  The other girl wasn’t there the first time he came to visit. Her name was Delores. Chris had had her in one of his classes once, and he knew her to be a poor performer, more interested in partying with the boys than any academic achievement. And this was the girl that Stase would be sharing a room with. It didn’t make sense. He knew she aspired to more than that, but he put it aside, telling himself that she’d be spending more time at his place anyway.

  Stase moved her stuff, the things that weren’t already at his place, into the apartment, and he sat back in numb acceptance. Chris didn’t like going there, but the times he visited Jim was easy-going and friendly, if slightly reserved. Alex, on the other hand, was aggressively friendly. Much shoulder slapping and loud laughter ensued. Chris was convinced that Alex really
didn’t like him. The couple of times he turned up and Alex wasn’t there, he felt relieved.

  The residents of this new apartment didn’t seem to do much. Every time he came over, Chris found them sitting around listening to music, smoking and drinking. Every time Stase dragged him over, he quickly found excuses to get out of there as soon as he could, generally trying to coax Stase to come with him.

  She started spending more and more time at the apartment. They had parties and they had people over and Chris’s resentment grew. He just wasn’t a part of that circle and yet Stase seemed to want to cling to it, as if she could cultivate a whole other world that was separate and beyond what she had together with him. One day, when they were driving back to his place, he voiced his concerns. He was driving. She almost always got him to drive, even when it was her car.

  “Stase, how come you spend so much time at that place? I thought we were supposed to be living together, well, at least during the week.”

  “Oh, come on,” she said. “They’re my friends. Besides, I have to study. I can’t study when I’m with you. We have other things to do.” She turned and gave him a half-suggestive grin.

  “I don’t know. I don’t like the place. You know that. And I don’t like you spending so much time in close proximity to Jim, either. He follows you around like a puppy dog.”

  She laughed. “Oh, don’t worry about him. He’s harmless.”

  “Yeah, well, he may be harmless, but I’ve seen the way he looks at you.”

  She pulled her fingers through her hair, looking back at the road. Clearly, she didn’t mind the concept that Chris was a little uncomfortable with her relationship with her housemates.