Hollow

by Rhonda Parrish

  As I push open the gate, my phone beeps its low-battery warning, piercing the silence between Sevren and I. “I didn’t mean for that to sound so—”

  “I know,” he says. “What’s happened?”

  We cross the street and start walking around the hospital’s block. The same route I find myself running so often, but in the opposite direction. I tell him about Amy, about everything that’s happened since I left him this afternoon.

  “This proves it,” I say. “The camera is—”

  “How does this prove anything?”

  “How does it not?” I stop beneath a streetlight to stare at Sevren, hands on my hips, jaw relaxed. “How does it not?”

  “Amy had a temper tantrum. She was mad at you and she lashed out. How does that prove your camera is possessed or cursed or whatever?”

  “Sevren, of all the people in—I thought you at least would believe me.”

  “Movies and books are one thing, Mor, but this is real life.”

  “Sevren, you know Amy. You know this is totally unlike her. How else can you explain it?” I can hear the plea in my voice, whiny and weak like when I’d said “What do you want from me?” in the showers. I hate it.

  “Morgan, you’ve had a lot, your whole family has had a lot to deal with since the accident. Maybe—”

  “What are you, Dr. Phil now?”

  “I just—”

  “You just? You just what? I thought you at least would believe me. I thought I could tell you anything!”

  “No, you don’t.” He doesn’t look mad anymore, he looks tired. Tired and sad.

  “What?”

  “You don’t think you can tell me anything.”

  “I did until—” Until now, I want to say. Until tonight. But that’s not true so I swallow the lie. I want it to be true, but it’s not. I’ve been too scared to tell Sevren about what happened with Keith. Too embarrassed. Too ashamed.

  “You didn’t. You don’t. You’ve been keeping something from me. For weeks. Something you don’t trust me enough to share.” His voice cracks and my heart breaks along with it.

  “You can, you know,” he says. “You can tell me anything. You can tell me anything and trust I will give you an honest reaction, an honest opinion, same as I did about the camera.”

  I’m tempted. I’m so tempted. It could be a relief to share this with someone. Maybe. It could also be devastating. What if he doesn’t believe me, or thinks I’m making too big a deal out of it?

  I open my mouth to tell him, to trust him, to let the words pour out, but then I close it again and shake my head. “I—it’s not you, Sev, I just—”

  “Whatever,” he grumps and stomps away.

  “Sevren—”

  “Leave me alone,” he snaps. “I need some time alone.”

  I stand, lost in the pool of orange light from the streetlight. “I’ll text you,” his voice comes from the murky darkness.

  Angry, sad, torn, I run. I run and run, only stopping when I’m beside the opening in the fence. Going onto the hospital grounds seems like a natural fit. The right choice. And so, for no reason beyond that, I do.

  Chapter Nineteen

  THE HOSPITAL IS a different creature in the darkness than it is during the day. The light from the streetlamps can’t reach it, not really, and their efforts to illuminate the area only deepen the shadows into darker pools of blackness than the night around them.

  The battery light on my phone is red and blinking, and the phone itself is making a plaintive beep every few seconds in case I don’t know it needs to be charged. And soon.

  That noise is the only one which pierces the background drone of distant traffic, and the stark light from its screen shrouds me in a tiny bubble, keeping the dark and the shadows away.

  I call Marcus.

  I need to hear a friendly voice right now. If I’m right about the camera he’s likely to be a bad candidate for that, but if Sevren is right, talking to Marcus could be the thing to fix everything. It would prove Sevren was right. Would mean I could forget about the camera thing, the hospital thing, and go back to the house and try to work things out with Amy.

  The phone rings.

  And rings.

  Marcus picks up on the fifth ring.

  “What do you want?”

  It’s there. The coldness in his voice from the other day, but amplified. I cough to clear my throat of the thickness in it, but when I talk my voice is still husky and whispery. “I, hi Marcus.”

  “What do you want?” he repeats.

  “I just . . . to talk. I haven’t seen you since—”

  “Yeah. There’s a reason for that.” His voice, icicle-like, pierces me like the shard of mirror in The Snow Queen and then, he hangs up.

  I stand in the darkness. Alone. I feel the coldness of Marcus’ voice; his words chill me. Spreading. Replacing my pain, my anger, my guilt with nothing. Making me hollow.

  “No,” I say to no one in particular. I press the button to call Sevren and wait while it rings, over and over, before eventually the dialling sound surrenders to his voice mail.

  “This is me. You know what to do,” his voice says, sounding strangely small in the night.

  “Sevren, it’s me. I’m sorry. Please answer your phone.”

  I hang up again and start away from the main building of the hospital where I’ve been leaning. I’ll go find him. He probably hasn’t gone far. I’ll find him and explain. Tell him. Tell him everything. That will fix—I stop. That might fix us, it might make him understand, if he believes me. If . . . But it won’t fix Amy. Or Stacy. Or Marcus. Or any of the other people I’ve photographed.

  Sevren can’t believe me about the camera. Fine. I get it. It’s a lot to swallow, but something is wrong with this place. I look up at the monstrous building looming above me. Something is wrong with this place and with every single person I’ve photographed with the camera I took out of it. If there’s a solution, it’s inside, and I can’t possibly find it soon enough.

  I press the button to call Sevren again. It’s a big, empty building at night. If I’m going to go back inside someone needs to know where I am, even if that someone is totally pissed at me.

  I tap my foot while the phone rings. Once. Twice. Halfway through the third ring someone picks up. “Sevren! I know you’re mad at me and—”

  “Heh. It’s not your boyfriend, Morgan.”

  Keith’s voice is filled with a cold mirth, and in the background I can hear another voice, Simon’s voice, and beneath that, the sounds of a struggle. Meat on meat, and Sevren grunting. Again. And again.

  “He’s a little busy right now.”

  I feel like I’m going to throw up and lean against the hospital to stay upright as my thighs shake and my knees turn to water.

  “Keith, what are you doing?”

  “Morgan! Help!” Sevren’s voice comes, not just from the phone but from the darkness around me. He’s close.

  “Sevren, where are you?” I shout into the phone but the words bounce around the hospital and its outbuildings, ricocheting like Amy’s button.

  “Tree!” I hear him groan, then the distinctive sound of shoes against gravel, crunching leaves.

  The connection is closed. The conversation ended. The battery icon on my screen blinks back to me, taunting me as the only thing moving in the night.

  Tree, Sevren had said. When we’d been kids we used to climb the giant poplar tree which stood outside the hospital grounds. We’d played innumerable games of fantasy-themed house complete with slain dragons, scary dungeons, and epic sword fights. Given the direction Sevren had started off in, it made sense.

  I jam my phone into my pocket and, with my bag bouncing against my back with every step, run across the hospital grounds. I don’t have time to be scared or cautious about the shadows. Keith and his buddies are hurting Sevren now and there is no time to waste. I take the most direct route, which is also the darkest. In front of the hospital, around the outbuildings. As I near the fence,
I see them, a group of boys silhouetted in the light which spills from the interior of a Trans Am. Keith’s Trans Am. The Trans Am. Oh how I’d thought it made him cool, once upon a time, owning a car. Now I know better.

  The car door is wide open, and the car is making a sad ding, ding, dinging sound while its light spills out to push back the night. Keith and Simon tower over Sevren, who is slumped on the ground. He’s on his knees, head hanging low, face turned to the dirt while Darian hovers in the background.

  I put on another burst of speed, then feel something hard and unmoving connect with my foot. Suddenly I’m falling, lunging forward, out of control. My arms splay, a failed attempt to regain control and balance before I spill onto the ground. My knees bang into the compacted earth and my palms scrape against it, embedding tiny bits of gravel deep within. I cry out and Keith turns toward me. The hospital grounds are too dark for him to see me, especially standing in the light from his car as he is, but he knows I’m here.

  “Morgan? Oh hey guys, look, Morgan’s here. We got ourselves an audience.”

  A string of something, something I hope is saliva but which shines slightly red, hangs from Sevren’s parted lips. It swings there, suspended, then drops onto the ground in front of him. He turns toward me, but with the light behind him I can’t see his face. I’m not sure I want to.

  “That’s enough, Keith. He’s had enough,” Darian says. He’s standing on the far side of the car, shifting his weight from foot to foot like a kid who has to pee. “It’s enough.”

  Darian. The only one of the three whose picture I hadn’t taken—

  “Since when are you such a softie?” Keith snarls and twists Sevren’s head up by his hair, turning him so I can see the blood smeared across his face. The whites of his eyes. Sevren struggles against him, but weakly and without hope.

  Ding, ding, ding goes the car as I get to my feet and limp over to the chain-link fence which separates us.

  “Mor—” Sevren’s voice cracks on my name and he swallows its ending. I feel as though I was the one punched, the one beaten. He is there. He’s right there but I can’t reach him because I’d been too stupid to go back through the fence before I ran this way.

  I curl my fingers through the holes in the fence. It rattles and shakes, and I think about climbing until I look up and see the coils of wire crowning it. I won’t be much help to Sevren if I make it to the other side in time to bleed to death.

  “What you gonna do, Morgan?” Keith taunts while Simon laughs and Darian keeps doing his little dance in the shadows. “Whatcha gonna do? You gonna cry? You gonna cry and beg me to let your boyfriend go?”

  Helplessness fills me. To be this close to Sevren and be unable to do anything. It’s made even more offensive by how close to Sevren’s house we are. I can see it from here, just down the street. A person should be able to feel safe, to be safe, within sight of their house.

  “You’re too late,” Keith says, shoving Sevren’s head to the side with so much force Sevren tumbles over, his upper body splayed across the floor in the back of the car.

  The. Car.

  I can’t stand it.

  “C’mon, man—” Darian says.

  I curl my fingers around the chain link and, as loud as I can, I scream for help. “Boris! Boris! Help, Boris! C’mere boy!”

  I hear him before I see him, a low growl coming from the darkness, growing in volume like the rumble of an oncoming train.

  “C’mon, Boris! C’mere, boy!”

  Simon picks up Sevren’s lower body and heaves it into the back seat of the car. Sevren kicks at him, re-invigorated, I think, with knowing Boris is coming, but Simon is too strong for him. He shoves Sevren in the car, then gets in as Boris charges into the scene. Ninety pounds of teeth and fury.

  Darian breaks and runs, tearing across the street faster than I’ve ever seen him move before, and Keith leaps up onto the hood of his car. Snarling and snapping, Boris jumps at Simon, but Simon slams the car door. I hear Boris' nails scratch at it frantically.

  Keith scrabbles, spider-like, across the hood of his car. For a moment, it’s just him and me staring at each other across the night, then he opens the door, flooding his face with light, and ducks into his seat.

  “Keith! Wait!” I yell, but Boris is on his way over to Keith’s side of the car and he slams the door. The car spins away, barely missing Boris and spitting bits of loose gravel in its wake. Boris chases after the retreating tail lights, leaving me alone in the dark.

  Chapter Twenty

  I DIAL 911.

  As soon as the operator answers, the phone beeps, reminding me in its own plaintive way that the battery is about to give out.

  “911, what is your emergency?”

  “My friend. He was beaten up and pushed into a car. A black Trans Am, and taken against his will.” I speak quickly. I have no idea how long my battery is going to last and I want the cops to have as much information as possible. Plus adrenaline is pumping through my body, making me shaky and unable to slow down even if I wanted to.

  “Slow down, ma’am—”

  “Can’t. My phone is going to die.” I continue without pause, “My friend’s name is Sevren Abendroth. He was beaten up and kidnapped by Keith Holmes and Simon Amir right by the Westwood Hospital. They drove south but—” Something about the quality of silence on the line tells me the connection has been severed. The battery is done.

  I swipe at the tears coursing down my cheeks. I can go home. I can go home right now and call 911 again, answer whatever questions the operator has, but what good will that do? I’ve told them everything I know, talking about it more isn’t going to help. The only thing that might help Sevren would be to stop whatever it was I started when I took Keith’s photograph. I have to figure out how to end it, how to make him back into the asshole he’d been before, rather than the monster I’ve turned him into.

  I turn my back on the fence and make my way across the hospital grounds, picking my route more carefully than I had when I was racing to Sevren’s rescue. A dark mound resolves into my backpack as I draw closer. I hadn’t even realised I’d taken it off as I’d run, nor had I missed its weight on my back until now, but there it is. When I pick it up, it feels heavier than before. Heavy with the weight of my responsibility. My guilt.

  I sling my bag over my shoulder and look up at the hospital. It looms over me, the jagged silhouette of its roofline like the broken teeth of a leering jack-o-lantern, its boarded-up windows empty eye sockets daring me to enter. Then a shadow, a small shadow, disengages itself from the rest and comes soaring toward me. As it approaches, making only the barest whisper of sound, I can see that it’s not dark. Not dark at all.

  It lands on the outbuilding nearest me, dipping its tail down, then straight back up while it catches its balance, and then the ghost magpie tilts its head and looks me square in the eye. “Kek kek kek,” it says. Its voice sounds foreign in the darkness and I can’t remember ever seeing a bird at night before. Maybe owls in the movies, but nothing in real life. “Kek kek.”

  “Yup,” I say, straightening the pack on my shoulder. Talking to the bird has a calming effect on me. “I’m going in. You coming?”

  I hold my arm out like I’ve seen people do for raptors on television shows, and though I hadn’t actually expected the bird to join me, I’m not surprised when it does, swooping down from its rooftop perch and settling on my forearm. So many other odd things have been happening lately that this feels natural in comparison.

  The bird shifts his weight back and forth, then left and right before he settles down. Then he tilts his head and looks me in the eye. Much the same as Aric used to do whenever he asked a question he particularly wanted to know the answer to. The bird’s eyes are black beads, his feathers a myriad of shades of grey, and his body heavy and warm on my arm. I smile a little despite all the horrible things that have happened; it feels good to not be going in alone.

  When we reach the window, the bird hops off my arm and waits on
the ground while I climb into the hospital, then I hold the board aside to let it in too. “How’d you get in before?” I ask, though I don’t expect an answer. Mostly I want to talk to keep my fear at bay. Inside the hospital there are no streetlights, no moonlight, no light at all. I reach for my phone, then realise it’s not going to be any help with a dead battery, and instead offer my arm to the magpie once more. He lands on my arm, then hops up and perches on my shoulder.

  “All right, Lassie,” I say, then reconsider. “On second thought, you seem more of a Ghost than a Lassie. You like that? Ghost?”

  It shifts its weight from one foot to the other, sharp little claws clutching me. It doesn’t hurt, but I have the distinct feeling that it could. Without any indication of the bird’s opinion of its new name, I have to rely solely on my judgement, and I like it. “Okay, Ghost,” I say to bolster my courage. “Let’s do this.”

  Running my hand along the wall and shuffling my feet, I make my way slowly and noisily down the hallway. If there is anyone in here, vagrants or partiers, they are certainly going to hear me coming. I almost hope they do—they might at least have light.

  The darkness presses at me and plays on my imagination. Every sound is amplified. The noise of my breathing, the way the concrete sounds beneath my feet, the skittering of something small in the room to my left. It all booms loud in my mind. My heart pounds so hard it’s like I’ve run a marathon, and my mouth is as dry as the dust I’d written my name in on my first trip here. My palms throb and my knees ache with each step. Only the weight of the bird on my shoulder is comforting. A friendly force. Something warm and benevolent. Or, hopefully benevolent.

  How could I know the bird is here to help me? Maybe it’s leading me to my doom. Though, it did get in between me and the camera when I was taking that selfie with Marcus, and try to keep me from picking up the camera in the first place. Hell, if I’d listened to Ghost the first time I’d come in here, none of this would have happened.

  I pause, looking at the bird, straining to make out any details of its form in the darkness. Even with it right on my shoulder I can only see its outline, the broad strokes. “Kek kek kek!” it shouts, and I jump so much it flutters up from my shoulder, smacking me in the face with its wings, before settling back down against me. My stomach rolls with tension, my legs shake.