The Hollow Man

for you?” Better tell the police that Mr. Bremen has come out of what we told them was almost certainly an irreversible coma. He’s not going anywhere for a while, but I’d better tell that detective … what was his name?

Bremen groaned and tried to speak. The noise made no sense even to himself.

The doctor blur had left, but the white blur that was female came closer, did something to his covers, and adjusted the IV drip. “We’re very, very lucky, Mr. Bremen. That concussion must have been much more serious than anyone had guessed. But we’re all right now, a few more days here in intensive care and—”

Bremen cleared his throat and tried again. “Still alive?”

The blur leaned close enough so that he could almost make out the details of her face. She smelled of cough drops. “Why, of course we’re still alive. Now that the worst is past we can look forward to—”

“Robby,” rasped Bremen through a throat so raw that he could imagine the tubes that had been forced down it. “The boy … in my room … before. Is he still alive?”

The blur paused, then efficiently began tucking in his covers. Her voice was light, almost bantering. “Oh, yes, no need to worry about that little fellow. He’s doing just fine. What we have to worry about is ourselves if we’re going to get well. Now, is there anyone we’d like to contact … for personal or insurance reasons?”

And what she had thought in the second before speaking: Robby? The blind, retarded kid in 726? He’s in a much deeper coma than you were in, my friend. Dr. McMurtry says that the brain damage was too extensive … the internal injuries untreated for too long. Even on the respirator, they think it’ll only be a few more hours. Maybe days if the poor child is unlucky.

The blur continued to talk and ask friendly questions, but Bremen turned his face to the white wall and closed his eyes.

He made the short voyage in the early hours of the morning when the halls were dark and silent except for the occasional swish of a nurse’s skirt or the low, fitful groans of patients. He moved slowly, sometimes clutching the buffer railing along the wall for support. Twice he stepped into darkened rooms as the soft tread of nurses’ rubber-soled shoes squeaked his way. The stairway was difficult; several times he had to lean over the cold metal railing to shake away the black spots that swam at the edge of his vision.

Robby was in the room Bremen had once shared with him, but now the child was alone except for the life- support-system machines that surrounded him like metal carrion crows. Colored lights flickered from various monitors and LED displays flickered silently to themselves. The shriveled and faintly odorous body lay curled in a fetal position, wrists cocked at stiff angles, fingers splayed against sweat-moistened sheets. Robby’s head was turned upward, and his eyes were half-open and sightless. His still-battered lips fluttered slightly as he breathed in rapid, ragged surges.

Bremen could feel that he was dying.

He sat on the edge of the bed, trembling. The thickness of the night was palpable around him. Somewhere outside, a siren echoed in empty streets and then fell away to silence. A chime sounded far down the hall and soft footsteps receded.

Bremen laid his palm gently against Robby’s cheek. He could feel the soft down there.

I could try again. Join them in the wasteland of Robby’s world. Be with them at the end.

Bremen touched the top of the misshapen head tenderly, almost reverently. His fingers were trembling.

I could try to rescue them. Let them join me.

He took a breath that ended as a stifled moan. His hand cupped Robby’s skull as if in benediction. Join me where? As memory wavefronts locked away in my brain? Entomb them as I entombed Gail? Carry them through my life as soulless, eyeless, speechless homunculi … waiting for another miracle like Robby to offer us a home?

His cheeks were suddenly damp and he stabbed roughly with the back of his free hand, rubbing away the tears so that he could see. Robby’s straight black hair stuck up between Bremen’s fingers in comic tufts. Bremen looked at a pillow that had fallen to one side. He could end everything for them here, now, so that the two people he loved were no longer stranded in that dying wasteland. Wavefronts collapsing as all possibilities are canceled. The death of sine waves in their intricate dance. He could go to the window and join them seconds later.

Bremen suddenly recalled the fragment of some poem that Gail had read to him years ago, even before they were married. He couldn’t remember the poet … Yeats, maybe. He remembered only a bit of the poem:

The eyes are not here

There are no eyes here

In this valley of dying stars

In this hollow valley

This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places

We grope together

And avoid speech

Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless

The eyes reappear

As the perpetual star

Multifoliate rose

Of death’s twilight kingdom

The hope only

Of empty men.

Bremen touched Robby’s cheek a final time, whispered something to them both, and left the room.

This Is the Way the World Ends

It took Bremen three days and three nights to drive the intern’s Volvo from St. Louis to the East Coast. He had to park frequently at rest stops along the Interstate, too exhausted to continue, too obsessed to sleep. Bradley had only three hundred dollars in his wallet when Bremen had opened his locker, but that was more than enough for gas. Bremen did not eat during the transit.

The Benjamin Franklin Bridge out of Philly was almost empty as he crossed it an hour before sunrise. The double strip of highway across New Jersey was quiet. Occasionally Bremen would lower his mindshield a bit, but always flinched and raised it again as the roar of neurobabble lashed at him.

Not yet.

He blinked away the migraine pain and concentrated on driving, occasionally glancing at the glove compartment and thinking of the rag-covered bundle there. It had been at a rest stop somewhere in Indiana … or perhaps Ohio … when the pickup had pulled in next to him and the sallow-faced little man had hurried in to the rest rooms. Bremen had flinched at the cloud of anger and distrust that had surrounded the man, but he had smiled when he was out of sight.

The .38-caliber pistol was hidden under the driver’s seat of the man’s pickup. It looked almost like the weapon that Bremen had thrown into the Florida swamp. There were extra bullets under the seat, but Bremen had left those. The one in the chamber would be all that he needed.

The sun was not up, but morning light was paling above the rooftops when he drove onto Long Beach Island and took the road north to Barnegat Light. He parked near the lighthouse, set the revolver in a brown bag, and carefully locked the car. He set a slip of paper with Bradley’s name and address under the windshield wiper.

The sand was still cool when it lopped over the tops of his sneakers. The beach was deserted. Bremen sat in the curl of a low dune so that he could see the water.

He took off his shirt, set it carefully on the sand behind him, and removed the pistol from the bag. It was lighter than he remembered and smelled faintly of oil.