Empties

by George Zebrowski

  Her big mistake was that she had revealed herself to him, making him the one who could stop her, and that was one too many—if he could find her. She would have to keep after him. Gibney was gone, and he was next. He wondered if Captain Reddy had paid any attention to Gibney’s report on the dead priest. Maybe Reddy could be persuaded to see what was going on. Maybe.

  He rummaged through her desk, both fearing and hoping that she might return at any moment. Perhaps she had set a trap for him after all, after concluding that he might not want to make a fool of himself by trying to convince others to help him. She was lucid enough to realize that no one would believe him, that he would have to come after her alone. Or had she been so distraught after the restaurant demonstration that she had fled? What had she been trying to prove to him? Had she wanted only to show off?

  He got up and went to the window. She had made mistakes, but she was not stupid, and some of her mistakes might not be mistakes. He lifted a blind slightly and peered out. The street seemed deserted. He looked to his right, toward First Avenue, and caught sight of her as she came around the corner, carrying what seemed to be a bag of groceries. She was dressed in blue jeans, a heavy flannel shirt, and walking shoes, a young woman going about her daily chores. Why, then, had she left all the doors open? An invitation to parley, or a trap? She might have finished him in the restaurant, but for her pride. Is that all it had been? It made no sense, but he knew that he would never debate it with her.

  He moved back from the window, knowing that he had to leave at once. Her power was not like a gun, but some strange entanglement of human minds. It could not miss. Once she saw him, he was finished. He had to keep behind her. Even facing her in a mirror might not protect him.

  He went back to the front window and looked down in time to see her enter the tailor shop to the right of the stairs. He would have just enough time to go out the front door.

  He waited, then heard a door open, and realized that she had gone through the shop to her back door. He went to the front door, opened it, and hurried out into the hall, stopping before the outer door. Maybe she had sent someone to the back door with her groceries, and was waiting for him on the stairs outside.

  He peered out through the long, white-curtained window of the door and saw no one. He opened the door and rushed down the stairs into the street, turning left and walking away quickly, as close to the houses as possible, so she could not see him from her window. The back of his neck tingled, as if she was watching him and about to strike. Hurrying up the street, he felt the sickeningly urgent need to shield his head from the blow that was somehow being delayed, but which he knew he would not feel if it felled him. Somehow, it seemed to him, human minds were one at some level, and there was no escape...

  She was not a medusa who could be made harmless by approaching her with a mirrored shield. Only a large group of armed police might have a chance of bringing her down, but how would he explain to Reddy afterward, after the inevitable deaths, that she had been better armed? With what, where? All the evidence would die with her...

  He would have to shoot her from behind, or from a distance with a high-powered rifle, and take the secret to his grave. It still seemed to him that she had to see her victim, and perhaps make eye contact, before coring. Or did she? Could she simply stand outside his apartment building and discreetly remove his brain? Could she simply visualize her victims? Perhaps not, but maybe she did not yet know what she could do.

  He paused at the corner of Second Avenue and Tenth Street. A long line of people was forming at the St. Mark’s Place movie theater. He looked back and saw that he wasn’t being followed, then looked back to the theater. The line was getting shorter, and he had the sudden impulse to get on it and hide in the theater. He stood there, searching his thoughts—and realized that he was trying to remember the address of Dierdre’s property up in the Bronx.

  Miraculously, the address was in his head as if he could see it, and he knew that he could wait for her there, if she panicked and fled.

  He found a phone inside the theater and dialed the number on her card. She picked up on the third ring.

  “Hello?”

  He said, “A dozen police are coming to arrest you. You can’t get them all.”

  “What... do you mean?” she asked, sounding shaken.

  “Just that,” he replied angrily. “They’ll get you. You may core one or two, but they’ll finish you. You do know I’m telling the truth, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” she said, “I’m sure you are. But what will you do with me after I’m arrested? Hold me?”

  She laughed suddenly, and hung up on him, leaving him with a sickening feeling that he had overlooked something, but that killing her was still the only solution. What had he expected her to say when he called, that she would surrender?

  He left the theater, went to the corner and peered down the block toward her house. She came down the stairs quickly, carrying a small suitcase in one hand and her bag of groceries in the other, hurried to the corner of First Avenue, waved down a cab and got in, slamming the door hard. As the cab pulled away, he took out his notebook and wrote down her Bronx address before it faded from his memory, suspecting now that she had tried to trap him in her apartment by leaving the doors open, hoping that he would think she had fled. He considered waiting for her where she would not expect it, which would give him a chance.

  He found his car and drove back toward his apartment, suddenly imagining that she had been clever enough to leave the Bronx address for him to find, to lure him out there, and that was why she had given him time alone in the apartment. The cab might even be taking her to his apartment, with the suitcase being a ruse; she couldn’t get into his place without setting off an alarm, but she didn’t have to; a moment of eye contact on the street, in the lobby or the elevator, was all she needed.

  Suddenly, he realized that he couldn’t be sure of anything. Fear had twisted his reason to the point where any possible course of action, hers or his own, would immediately summon up its own opposite. Objections hid within larger ones; simple practicalities and solutions became delusions and proliferated beyond probability. Pure possibilities branched into an infinity of confusions.

  A red light stopped him just before Central Park, and he longed to think clearly again. It was a prayer.

  16

  The taxi driver was reluctant to take her out to the Bronx. She offered him fifty dollars, but he said it was too risky and had to be seventy-five. She gave it to him, but he took it as if he had no choice. She had him pull up at a bodega, where she bought a box of tampons and some more provisions. She saw him glance at the gun inside his open glove compartment as they crossed over the bridge into the Bronx and went up the Grand Concourse. It was the safest way to go, turning right at Fordham Road and heading down into the South Bronx by way of Webster Avenue.

  Luring Benek to her was now the only way to have a chance of killing him. Her open-door ploy had failed, but it was unlikely that he had gone through her desk and not found the Bronx address. He might go there with backup, but she doubted it, because that meant convincing his superiors of an incredible story. No, with Gibney dead, he would act alone because he had no choice; and his male pride demanded that he settle his score with her. All she had to do was wait for him to come to her, and that would be the end of her problem. If he came with help, she would see it and leave.

  Yet still, she told herself, he might be able to tell his superiors some kind of story, enough to bring a few police with him. Could she bring them all down? One or two efforts in rapid succession tired her dreadfully. Maybe if she practiced and got a lot of sleep before the encounter, she might be able to core them all, and then no one would be left who knew enough to pursue her. What could the evidence of several brainless bodies tell them? Even with careful autopsies, what could any coroner conclude? Cause of death: sudden removal of brain? Absurd. No, if he came at all, Benek would come alone.

  Still, the safest course was to kill e
veryone who had the slightest knowledge of her. No one must know anything about her ever again. She would never make that mistake again. She smiled and repeated to herself that her ability was not something anyone would easily believe existed, and that gave her an advantage. In fact it was impossible to accept. Benek might even now still be doubting what he had seen, or questioning his own sanity. Nevertheless, some imaginative genius might accumulate enough information about her to guess the truth. She would make sure to leave nothing behind her—no clues, no one alive; no risk left standing. Soon she would be back at the beginning, when no one knew about her and she could do as she pleased.

  “It’s just over here,” she said to the Israeli cabby. She pointed to the rubble and brick-strewn lot with only one seven storey house on it.

  “That? It’s condemned, lady. Looks like fucking Beirut during the wars. Excuse me, I was there.”

  “You’re kidding,” she said, just to say something.

  “Yah, I drove a tank into Gaza once. Made me sick breathing the fumes...”

  “Stop at the corner,” she said before he could finish.

  “You want to be left here?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “Got a gun somewhere in those tight jeans, lady?” he asked as she got out. He sighed as he watched her take out the bags of groceries and her suitcase. “Even if you had a gun, you don’t have enough hands! In this neighborhood they’ll take your pretty coat and eat you alive with your groceries. Believe me, lady, what I tell you!”

  She glared at him.

  “So now you put your death on my head? Please, lady!”

  “Get going,” she said. “I’ll be fine.”

  He grimaced. “So what can I do if some people want to get killed?” he said and pulled away.

  She held the bags of groceries against her, grabbed the suitcase with her right hand, and picked her way across the rubble toward the boarded up building she had lived in for two years as a child, by her uncle’s charity, long before he and her father had bought the brownstone. She had not sold it, thinking that the land might one day become valuable, but that day had not come, and would probably never come. The city had no money to tear the place down. She continued to pay the taxes for no reason beyond vague sentiment, so the building was not technically abandoned, although at least one lawyer had told her that technically she no longer owned even the land. She had refused the price he wanted to settle the question, and the city never sent back her tax checks.

  She wondered, as she neared the entrance, whether the basement apartment was usable without water and utilities, but she wouldn’t have to stay long, if Benek was smart enough to follow her promptly.

  She stopped at the big glass door, still miraculously unbroken, and looked back along the way she had come. A few people were staring at her from across the street, but they quickly seemed to lose interest.

  She put down her bag and pulled back the big door. It squeaked and stuck open. She slid the suitcase inside, set the grocery bags next to it, and pulled the door shut behind her as she came inside. Picking up the groceries, she went to the stairwell and cautiously made her way down to the basement, remembering the child who had run down these steps with no fear of falling, crying out to hear her echo.

  She crept through the basement hall and saw that the door to the superintendent’s apartment was open. She peered inside and saw no one, then stood still and listened, but heard nothing. She went inside, put the groceries down on a dusty wooden table, and tried to close the door behind her. It creaked, but closed without latching. She tried the lock and found that it was broken. She went to the barred window and looked up through the dusty glass at the late afternoon sky that was already deepening into a dark blue.

  Turning, she looked around the studio apartment, noticed a lamp, and tried it. The switch clicked but the bare bulb remained dark. Then she noticed that the cord was not plugged in. She put it in and the light went on. Somewhere, a circuit still worked, or had been illegally connected.

  She tried the kitchen sink faucet. It ran clear. There was no stove, but she saw an old hotplate on the counter. She tried the sink in the bathroom and flushed the toilet. Both worked, with very little rust in the water. Someone was staying here, she realized as she went upstairs to get her suitcase. Probably homeless people who knew how to turn water on from the street. Or the city engineers had been sloppy.

  She looked out through the front door, and saw no one. The neighborhood where once the Third Avenue elevated train had come up from Manhattan was now a ruin, too large even for scavengers to exhaust, but they would soon get it all, leaving only shattered glass, broken bricks, concrete, and rotting wood. Strange that this door was still here, she thought, looking around at the deserted neighborhood.

  She came back to the basement apartment with the suitcase, opened it on the table, then heard footsteps outside in the hall and felt the familiar impersonal hatred stirring within her. Turning around to face the door, she waited, readying herself to strike.

  It opened slowly and she saw two figures, an old man and a woman, come inside. They stopped and stared at her in fear.

  “Who are you?” the man whispered as the old woman clutched his ragged coat sleeve with bony fingers.

  “The landlady. Go away.”

  The couple stood there for a moment; then the man said, “Can we stay here?” He spoke with a practiced pleading in his voice.

  “We have nowhere to go,” the woman said nearly as well. “Just until we find another place. Please.”

  “You can’t stay here,” Dierdre said.

  “Please,” the man said, “we’ve done no harm.”

  “So you’ve been here before,” Dierdre said.

  They both nodded.

  “Not today, go away.”

  They stood still, resisting her.

  “Right now.” She didn’t want to wear herself out on them; better to just let them go.

  “Please, just for today. My husband is sick. Can’t you see?”

  “No.”

  “You’re cruel,” the old woman said. “It would cost you nothing to be kind.” She sounded even more convincing this time.

  The man glared at her through his weakness. Dierdre sat down in a nearby chair and stared at the couple. The woman was holding the old man up, and Dierdre almost remembered that she might feel something for them, some sentiment that she had lost a long time ago, when her grandmother had held her.

  Now, Dierdre thought, might be a good time to try removing something other than brains; with enough practice she might be able to remove bones, leaving the body mostly intact. Livers and kidneys flying out of people might be amusing.

  Eyes.

  Hearts, better still.

  Yes, hearts. Maybe she could burst hearts. Hurl hearts. Leave them heartless. It would be useful to take hearts, she thought as she gazed at the homeless couple, and reached out to both of them at once.

  They grabbed at their chests and stared at her, confused.

  “Please!” the old woman cried.

  The old man moaned.

  But their hearts would not come out. Not one, or the other. Dierdre’s frustration jolted her hatred. How did they dare resist? It was as if some goodness, some defensive virus of pity within herself was protecting them, Dierdre thought as she collapsed and darkness passed across her eyes...

  “She’s bleeding,” she heard the old man say somewhere far in the dark flood.

  “We should call for help,” the woman said, her aged voice trembling with kindness.

  “No,” said the man, “we’ll only have trouble.”

  Dierdre felt the old woman take her wrist and hold it. “Her pulse is normal,” she said after a long time. “She’ll be okay.”

  “We’d better leave,” said the old man.

  Dierdre opened her eyes. The couple stood over her.

  “She won’t die,” the old man said.

  “She’s so pale,” said the old women.

  “She was p
ale when she came in,” the old man added. “Take her coat.”

  Furious, she closed her eyes—and opened them in time to see the old man collapse as if crushed by an invisible weight, and his brain dropped at her feet with a squish. The old woman whimpered and tried to hold him up with feeble arms. Dierdre reached out again and twisted, but it was like trying to open a stuck jar of pickles. Finally, the old woman’s brain hit the floor behind her man’s, as the couple fell face down on the dusty floor near her feet. Dierdre put out her hand to the table and sat up.

  She took a deep breath and felt a surge of strength fighting her fatigue. Her nose began to bleed and stained her coat. She lay down on the floor until the blood stopped and the fatigue passed. After a few more minutes she imagined that somehow her effort at hearts had strengthened her, even if she would have to stay with brains for a while longer. She had reached more deeply into herself than ever before, and further exploration might one day give her more than she knew, with greater control of her skill.

  She found some old newspapers, scooped the two brains up from the floor, took them into the kitchen and put them on the cooking counter. Then she went back to her suitcase, took out the ball of aluminum foil in which she had wrapped Gibney’s brain, and brought it to the kitchen.

  She cut up all three organs into small pieces and flushed them down the toilet. Then she dragged the two bodies out into the utility area of the basement and covered them with some old canvas, getting a few old bags for their heads to make it look as if they slept there. The bodies might not be found for a long time, unless the building was demolished. She washed up and went upstairs to the front door to see if Benek was coming.

  Surveying the rubble-strewn lot through the dirty glass, she wondered again whether he could get help to come against her. Killing the old couple had irritated her, and she knew that she was again thinking wildly. If she killed Benek and a few policemen, she might have to flee because the local precinct would know that they had come here, and they would look to question the owner of the lot. She would have to hide bodies. The police would not understand what had happened, by then might suspect her of... what? If she cored them and fled, some people might believe the impossible, she told herself. Superstition had never died out. She was better than any witch that never existed...