Kent Kelly - The Hollow Men

No.

Some one else.

Sophie gasped.

An elderly black man was standing out there, sweating and shivering. He frowned at the vault door and then at Peter Henniger’s uncovered hand and back again. There were pulpy ropes of burn tissue bulging out on his throat. Cables of fresh scar tissue stood out upon his forearms. His chest must have been burned as well — he was wearing lumpy work boots and corduroy trousers, but instead of a work-shirt or a jacket, he was wearing something else entirely.

He shifted and rolled his shoulders, wincing in pain. And as he moved, Sophie realized what it was. The man was wearing a black and loose-fitting plastic trash bag over his torso, with ripped and duct-taped holes plucked outward to let his arms peek through. Atop his bald and burned head there glinted a cracked pair of ski goggles, and two stubborn gun-cotton tufts of white hair were puffed out over his ears.

The man did not seem to be carrying any weapons, or tools, or even any water. He was leaning his meager weight upon a polished blackthorn cane, an antique and well-worn masterpiece, crowned with a silver fox head which glinted its sparkling eyes from between his bloated fingers.

The man shuffled forward, tapping the cave wall at random, and as he did so a fresh gust of static blizzarded across the video display.

Tap tap.

When Sophie could speak, she whispered to the screen. “Oh my.” She swallowed past the dryness that was creeping up her throat. “Oh, oh goodness, how did you… how—”

The man scratched the side of his nose. He bent down and scowled at something to his left, where the edged cuts of radiance from the glo-lites cast their deepest shadows. He tapped there once, and the vid screen puffed up a blossom of pearlescent static once again.

Sophie cleared her throat. She lowered the HK submachine gun and pressed one of her gloved hands against the door. She called out loudly through the door seam: “Who are you?”

The tapping stopped. On the vid screen, the old man took a jerky step back and then stood very straight, peering over his left shoulder and then over his right. His lower lip jutted out, and then he idly stuffed a pinky into his ear. Then, almost casually, he decided to address the vault door itself.

He said the words very clearly, but still, they did not register with Sophie because they were impossible. “Name’s Silas, ma’am. Silas Colson, of Ol’ Littleton. Oh you know, down out west o’ Denver, down by Little’s Creek? Well. You don’t know me. Lady, you got dead people out here. And this, oh this man. Are you — are you Mrs. Sophie? Sophie S.-G.?”

And how in the Hell does he know that?

When she did not answer, he lifted a gray scrap of bloodstained notebook paper and rustled it toward the camera. He called out, “Because this good man, this good man o’ the law who pass away down here, well now. He wrote you a note if you are, if you are her, that Sophie, see? He wrote it out to the last, I reckon. Was balled up in his hand when I climb down here. Me, I put that hat upon his chest, for he had a good heart and I can see that, writing you love and apologies and all, and I cover him best I can. Cut-up plastic tent from the trunk of that police car. Oh, those poor souls piled up high in there. Didn’t mean to find you, see? I’s just looking for a place… a place to lie down. To find mine own last.”

Still in shock, Sophie could not reply.

And the man named Silas, he leaned with both of his hands laced over his fox-head cane and with his toes pointed outward, rocking back and forth. He was too proud to do anything but grimace away the pain. He almost looked like a somber, indefatigable Charlie Chaplin. And he shrugged — he shrugged of all things — and he said: “Well-up. Reckon I understand. And so? I’s sorry to bother you and all. I’ll be going now.”

And he turned, giving the body of Peter Henniger the widest berth the shaft’s confines would allow, and he limped his way back toward the ladder.

What am I seeing? Is this real? Is he real?

Sophie tried to breathe out a laugh of humorless disbelief, but her mouth hung open and her jaw worked futilely for purchase. She was no longer in shock. She was flabbergasted.

The man plucked at the garbage bag over his right shoulder blade, and winced a little as he pried it free of his scarred and peeling skin. He crooked his cane under his left armpit, then smoothed the sweat off of his palms in preparation for the climb.

Pounding on the door, Sophie found her voice at last. “Wait!”

And the elderly man did not turn, but he cocked his head to gaze at the vault door over his shoulder. One of his pulpy hands spread out, its fingertips each covered with some kind of reflective and hardened glaze. He was waving .

“No, you good,” he called back to her. “Bless you, you good and I can see that. You best to be letting me go. I realize that now. Too dangerous to let me in, Mrs. S.-G. I was wrong to come, I was just… well. I was wrong as wrong can be. I’ve got no right. Don’t you open that mighty door to me, ma’am. It’s… it’s terrible out here.”

And he began to climb.

Sophie muttered in a blur, “Unbelievable-oh-my-God-I, I can’t believe he thinks that I would, that I, I …” And she screamed through the door, as loudly as she could: “You stop right there!”

The man almost jumped out of his skin. He raised his hands, as if he were about to be mugged, and his blackthorn cane clattered down to rest over the ladder-shaft’s bloodstained floor grate.

“Un- fucking -believable.”

Beneath her breath, Sophie continued to utilize her vast and comprehensive sailor’s vocabulary as she pumped the vault door’s pressure wheel counter-clockwise. An alarm klaxon wailed, she punched at a blinking red light that flashed upon the door. She shook the wheel back and forth, then kept turning away. The wheel at last relented, rapidly slipping through her fingers as it continued to spin on ever faster. Droplets of mineral oil spattered out of a gasket, up over her hazmat suit’s breath-fogged faceplate.

She watched the change in the ladder-shaft’s environment through the vid screen. Air puffed out of the shelter’s tunnel in a square of visible and ballooning streaks. Black clouds of dust went puffing out around the elderly man’s silhouette. He kept his burned and slender arms up over his head, even though his head was beginning to loll toward his chest. Then he turned toward Sophie, not to confront her, but only to have enough room to bend over and take in a ragged breath. He planted his scarred hands over his torn-trousered kneecaps and tilted toward the opening door, coughing and gagging.

The door released, and Sophie shoved it open on its powered rails. She stepped out of the tunnel and into the shaft, awash in reflected glo-lites. When Silas had done with coughing he rose and turned toward her more properly, a shuffling little circle, and she could see that although he was wearing green leather work boots over his feet, the soles had melted off. His hole-ridden socks, trailing prints of water, were stained umber and crimson with emerging and growing tangles of bloody filth. His lower lip was trembling but he stood his ground, his eyes were wide and bloodshot and unwavering. His brow furrowed. A dried clot of blood and pus stood out like an unpolished jewel over his right eyebrow.

He was staring. Not at Sophie, but at her right hand. She was still holding the HK submachine gun, and it was leveled in the direction of his shins.

The alarm klaxon’s guttural echoes finally drained away. Into the relative silence of howling wind gusts and the waterfall from far above, the old man whispered, “Oh, Lord.”