The Hollow City Read Free Page B

“Have you seen any bodies, anywhere, with the faces destroyed?”
    “Why do you keep asking that? Where would I have seen something like that?”
    “Can you remember where you’ve been for the last two weeks?”
    “No,” I say, “I can’t remember anything! Tell me what’s going on!”
    Dr. Murray glances at the other doctors, then back at me. “Have you ever heard of the Red Line Killer?”
    I freeze. “Some.” I’ve heard the name, but I don’t know much. Some kind of serial killer. I get a deep, sinking feeling in my gut—not just from the name, but from the faces of the doctors as they watch me. They’re nervous and scared.
    They’re scared of me.
    “Over the past eight months,” says Dr. Murray, “the Red Line has killed nearly ten people in and around Chicago. Nobody has any idea who he is, but his story has been all over the news. Are you sure you’ve never heard of him?”
    “I don’t watch TV,” I say, glancing at the darkened set on the wall. Can it see me while it’s turned off? “Why are you asking me about this? What does it have to do with me?” And why are you so scared?
    “If you’d seen the news, Michael, you’d know: when the Red Line Killer kills someone, he … mutilates the bodies.” He frowns and continues. “He kills them and then he destroys their faces—skin, muscle, bones, everything.”
    And there it is. A killer on the loose, a tenuous link, and the floodgates of suspicion break open in a torrent. I’m still the same person, but in their eyes I’ve changed—no longer just a man brought in for a fall, but an unbalanced psycho who might be a murderer.
    “I haven’t done anything wrong,” I say carefully.
    “We’re not saying you have.”
    “You wouldn’t have brought this up if you didn’t think it was me.” I have to get out now. I have to run before this goes any further.
    “We don’t think anything, Michael, no one’s accusing you of any—”
    I leap up suddenly, catching them by surprise, but I only get halfway out of the bed before the orderly grabs me; the doctors are only a few steps behind. I fight like a caged animal, kicking wildly with my legs, and feel a horrifying crunch in my foot as one of the doctors grunts and falls backward. They’re screaming now, calling desperately for nurses and sedatives, and all I can think to do is bite the arm wrapped tightly across my chest.
    “Where’s the Geodon!”
    “Frank, dammit, hold him down!”
    Someone lets go and I struggle to my feet, almost clear of the doctors, and then suddenly my arm’s getting twisted around and my shoulder’s nearly popping and I howl at the pain. My legs go limp and I whimper, all of my attention focused desperately on my arm.
    The room has more people in it now, and I feel hands picking me up and positioning me back on the bed; there’s a sharp prick in my arm, and I know they’ve given me a shot. A sedative. I don’t have long.
    “Please,” I say, “you’ve got to get me out of here. I’m not who you think I am, and They’ll be here any … any minute.” Images swirl in and out of each other, and I squint to catch them before they fade.
    “Find Dr. Vanek,” says one of them; Murray, I think. There’s something on my arms, and I try to lift them up to see, but they won’t move. My head weighs a ton, ten tons, but I steel myself for the effort and raise it up, just enough to look down at my body.
    “The drugs are hitting quickly—how much did you give him?”
    “It’s just the standard dose—it shouldn’t work this fast.”
    “He can barely move.”
    I squint again, my head as empty as a balloon, my body slipping away down a tunnel. I can feel it drawing out, stretching like putty, but there’s something I have to see, someone standing in the back of the room. I fight my way out of the tunnel, struggling for just one glimpse, and—there it is.
    A man with no face.
    They’ve found me.

 
    TWO
    I WAKE UP WITH A SCREAM , suddenly, as if I were