Chapter 17

The Hollow


Inside me existed a tasteless, unnamed, disfigured existence that swirled around with bitterness and anger. A completely new being void of love and sanity that only understood how to move through whatever was in its path. It whispered to me through the thin blanket of reality, telling me wonderful yet treacherous things. This thread like being that had woven itself throughout my skin somehow broke free during this reign of chaos with some depthless hunger that craved the darker parts of the world.

I had shut myself inside my own body, letting this seductive terrorizing being take control of my every fiber. Confined to darkness and solitude I watched myself through glassy eyes raise the axe and hit the chained door with more power than I could have ever possessed. It was beyond the power of adrenaline and survival and I had somehow entered a forbidden zone of horrific perportions. Every whack after was accompanied by a "TINK!" and a slight spark until finally the chain gave and broke with an earsplitting metallic screech that shattered the glass windows embedded in the double doors.

Kicking open the doors, my feet silently started forward until the sound of glass crunching beneath me was heard and the soft flesh of my feet were sliced by the broken glass, but somehow I refused to notice. Tiny shards were nestled in my bleeding feet as I continued up the stairs to the second and last level of the hospital where I knew Cory and his frightening captor were hiding.

Hallway after twisting hallway I searched leaving bloody foot prints until finally I came across one that I somehow knew he was in. Dropping the axe at my side, I padded forward with a slight sweat on my brow and a cold alien heart that beat with a crazed determination. I finally stopped in the middle of the hallway and closed my eyes, listening for any kind of movement, but instead I felt a smooth finger graze my neck as the voice of my brother's abductor whispered my name in an eerily cold voice.

Snapping my eyes open, I looked around and saw no one until what seemed like my mind was playing tricks on me happened. There he was, the orange eyed madman who haunted me for so long standing in the middle of the hallway twenty feet away just staring at me. When the lights flickered, he was gone and that's when it started getting mind bending. One moment I would catch a glimpse of him walking into one room and then he'd be walking out of another two doors down. Every time the hanging fluorescent light above failed or twittered he would be in another place.

Because I was in fact completely and utterly mad and in a state of solid insanity, it didn't phase me. Instead I lifted my chin to the ceiling and laughed the most maniacal laugh I had ever heard. Suddenly I went silent, knowing he was watching, and lifted a finger to my throat and made a slicing motion across my neck with a little smile. Then I did something to completely throw him off, something that marked the turn of my mind. Reaching back with one hand I untied the hospital gown and dropped it to the floor standing completely naked in the freezing hallway.

Rolling my head forward I looked to the ground then lifted my chin to see a set of metal doors at the end of the hallway. Slowly, I lifted a foot in front of me with a heavy breath and it felt like I was moving through quick sand for a moment, but as I lifted the other leg forward in a zombie like way the settings around me changed and I was no longer in the hospital. The room had become pitch black minus a single light following a blurry couple dancing around a stone balcony in the snow. As my vision cleared and came into view, I saw that it was me and Cory waltzing, smiling and laughing in silence, but as we twirled playfully he pulled out a single rusty, jagged edged blade and drove it into my lower back. I saw myself shaking violently while blood covered the pale blue dress I had been wearing as he dropped me to the ground with another soundless cynacle laugh like a broken China doll.

Shutting my eyes tightly I shook my head back and forth ripping the image from my mind and storing it away from this moment of hatred. He would not take away my darkness with such a weak image and suddenly I was free from his tortuous illusion, back in the hospital hallway. Tightening my grip around the axe I picked it up and wrapped my other hand around the upper part of the handle. With one quick stride I broke free of the invisible cement around my legs and began to run toward the door passing images in rooms that I knew would horrify me if I stopped.

When I reached the door I kicked it open with my bare feet and walked in with one quick stride as the doors slammed shut behind me. At first it seemed as though no one was there, as if I had come to another frustrating dead end, but then I felt it again. The fingers caressing my neck and back sensually. It was the oddest feeling and I had to shut my eyes momentarily, but when I opened them sitting in the seat in front of me dressed in a black business suit was the autumn eyed freak that I had been searching for.

Then he spoke with a deep sweet voice that overcame my senses as it rumbled off the walls and bounced around in my empty head, "Before you do anything Charlie, I have an offer you can't resist. I will set your brother free in exchange for you." His eyes tore through me like a gust of the strongest wind blowing away all of my memories and current thoughts, somehow he was entrancing me, he was possessing me. "I can give you everything," he continued still captivating me in his harvest moon pools, "I can show you the most marvelous terrible things. Why? Because I know what lurks within your soul, the darkest of all things. I can show you the secrets of your past that you never knew. All you have to do is agree."

Somehow my lips moved and spoke for me in a whimpering, "Yes." The next second he was behind me, his hot breath on my neck as he began the run his long pale skinny fingers up my wrists to my shoulder, then tracing my collarbone. His voice tingled my ear as he spoke, "I found the evil within you that night on the roof top. The never-ending blackness that screams to be released. I will show you the truth." He then lifted a little razor blade from his pocket and moved to my side. With a quick painful motion he slid the razor across my mid fore arm's flesh, then brought his lips down to the blood.

When his flesh connected with mine I dropped the axe to the floor as a flood of images began to flash in my mind's eye like lighting upon a rock. Images of a woman who looked just like me except with bright, fiery green eyes and a tall man with a large smile who worked for the Gray. They were accepting papers from a broad-shouldered man who looked like an angel with perfect skin whose eyes seemed oddly pained. They seemed so familiar, as if they were my real parents. Then I knew, they were my real parents, but how could that be? I had been raised since birth by Sarah and John.

What killed me even more was the man they were standing with, he was the man who had been protecting me. I knew from his strange eyes that were broken and screaming for a release of his inner torture. The loneliest man alive.