The Hollow Ones(65)

Grating away the flesh to reveal the tissue beneath.

Obediah searched the madman’s memory for information about Blackwood. It found there the agent as well—the very one he had passed over at the house where it took the agent’s partner.

Yes, it thought. Blackwood’s agents. His accomplices.

All Obediah knew was that it was on the right path now. Beyond that, the vehicle told it very little. Obediah regarded its revealed face, the blood and meat of this human, and twisted it into a smile.

And then it ran. Sprinting through the streets of Englewood.

Past the screams.

Running hard until the expressway came into view.

And then the overpass.

Climbing the curved safety fence. Goring itself on the top spikes.

Getting over the top.

And then falling.

Until impact.

And expulsion.

Ecstasy.





Odessa returned Linus’s call from a hospital bathroom. “How’s Omaha?” she asked.

“It’s good, it’s good. Not enough desk space in my hotel room, I’m working the desk, bureau, and bed here, but everything else is fine. Lonely, though. Where are you? I was calling.”

“I’m back in Queens at the hospital where the old agent who had a stroke is,” she said. “Checking on him again.”

“That’s good, that’s nice. How’s he doing?”

“I’ll find out, he’s not in the room again. Waiting for him to come back.”

“You sound better,” Linus said. “Energized. More like the old you.”

Odessa did feel better, though she knew it was temporary and illusory. “Staying busy,” she said. The mystery that was Hugo Blackwood had invigorated her, no question. And frustrated and annoyed her. She couldn’t begin to get into it with Linus over the phone.

“You hear back from the lawyer?”

Her mood dipped a bit. “I have a few emails to catch up on.”

“Just asking, just asking. It didn’t feel right, leaving you.”

“You’re sweet,” she said. She looked at the door, anxious to get back to the room before Solomon did. “I’m glad I caught you.”

“Okay,” he said. “Don’t leave me hanging so long, keep checking in.”

“Sure, Mom,” she said, and heard him laugh.

“Okay,” he said. “Keep smiling.”

She hung up, then stood looking at Linus’s picture on her phone before his contact screen faded out. After these strange escapades with Blackwood, it felt reassuring, and also discomfortingly strange, to have a straightforward human conversation. She noticed her email notification light flashing and reluctantly opened her inbox before stepping back into the hall. The one email that jumped out at her was from Laurena, her friend at the New Jersey Field Office, but sent to Odessa from her personal Gmail account. Subject line: WTFF?!

Odessa returned to Solomon’s room. His bed was still gone, and she was relieved she hadn’t missed the reunion. The corner television was on mute, a grid of six pundits performing on a news network. Blackwood stood with his back to the room, looking out the grimy window at the city below, turning as she entered.

He said, “That took a long time. I was about to leave.”

“You don’t do waiting very well, do you? I would think after four hundred and fifty years, you’d achieve some higher level of patience.”

“Maybe if I felt this was a prudent use of my time…”

Odessa regarded this strange forever man standing in the gray light of the dirt-speckled window, challenging every expectation she held about reality. At times, he seemed a fearsome alien figure to her. Maybe it was the rush of energy from the Greek salad she had eaten, but at the moment he struck her more as a novelty than anything.

She carried her phone over to him. “Do you spend much time in Eastern Europe?” she asked.

He looked at her strangely. “Why do you ask?”

She showed him a washed-out color photograph on her phone, featuring a group of men standing near a Volkswagen with a German license tag before a rainy bridge crossing. The men wore hats and thin neckties. One sign read ALLIED CHECK POINT and featured images of American, French, and British flags. The other sign read, in three languages, YOU ARE LEAVING THE AMERICAN SECTOR.

She held it up for him to see, though Blackwood veered back from the smartphone, as one might withdraw from a knife blade or a snarling dog.

“Checkpoint Charlie,” she said. “One of the main crossing points between East Berlin and West Berlin during the Cold War. This photograph is from the FBI archives, taken in 1964.”

She widened her thumb and forefinger on the touch screen, zooming in the image on the men’s faces. Each man was smiling except one. She zoomed in closer, as wide as she could.

Blackwood looked at the face, then looked at her, unfazed.

“That’s you,” she said. She worked her phone back to the email, opening up another attached photograph. “How about Waco, Texas, 1993?”

She showed him a photo of an observation post set up at a roadblock. A group of FBI agents consulted near a man wearing a large pair of binoculars. To the left stood a familiar man wearing a dark suit.

“The Branch Davidian cult?”

She zoomed in on Blackwood’s profile. The man next to him was facing away from the camera, but dark skin was visible beneath a blue ball cap.