The Hollow Man

And Saw the Skull Beneath the Skin

The rottweiler leaped three seconds before Miz Morgan fired the shotgun.

Bremen straddled the dead black man’s shoulders and wrapped the chain around the big dog’s neck as the creature clambered and scrabbled up frozen flesh to get at him. The rottweiler howled. Bremen jerked the chain tight and lifted. Miz Morgan saw the dog seem to levitate between Bremen and her and she raised the barrel of the shotgun even as she pulled the trigger.

Bremen winced and almost lost his balance on the corpse and his grip on the dog as pellets slammed into the fluorescent light fixture above him and the ceiling above that. Sparks and glass flew from the light fixture. Some stray shot must have caught the rottweiler for the beast began howling with an increased frenzy and started whipping its head back and forth to bring its teeth to bear on Bremen’s hands. Bremen tightened the chain until the dog’s growls choked off and the howling became a high whine.

Miz Morgan pumped the shotgun, pulled the leash tight on the second rottweiler, and came down the cold aisle between softly swinging sides of meat.

Bremen was panting so hard that he was afraid he might pass out. The steel links of the chain were so cold that flesh was peeling away from his fingers and palms whenever he pulled the chain tighter or shifted position. The rottweiler was making a sound more like that of an old man gargling than that of a dog howling. Bremen knew that it would be seconds before Miz Morgan reached him; she could simply stick the barrel of the shotgun up against him and pull the trigger.

The first shotgun blast had knocked out the double row of fluorescent strip lights above him, but now there was dappled light falling on the hound’s dark head. Bremen looked up, saw the depression in the ceiling above the light stanchion, and blinked at the dozen flecks of light there. Holes in wood, not cinder block. Holes letting in light from the tall arc lamp behind the cold house.

Miz Morgan moved between the corpses eight feet away. Her eyes glistened and seemed very large; her breath clouded the air between them. The rottweiler hanging from Bremen’s chain was no longer struggling and its long, bony legs twitched. The sight seemed to make the other dog go insane and Miz Morgan had to cradle the shotgun for a second to hold the animal on the leash as it leaped for the black man’s corpse and Bremen’s dangling legs.

Bremen threw the dead rottweiler at Miz Morgan and climbed. He set his foot squarely on the corpse’s shoulder, and then its head as he climbed. The light stanchion took his weight but swayed alarmingly, pieces of broken glass still dropping into the icy vapor below them. Bremen thrust his shoulders and head up into the narrow well, balanced on the icy rod of the light stanchion, and set his shoulders against the light-flecked wood.

Miz Morgan dropped the leash and raised the shotgun. She could not miss from eight feet away. The surviving rottweiler used the corpse of its mate to get a running start and all but climbed the swinging corpse of the black man to get at Bremen.

Whatever collarbone or clavicle the hook had been set under in the black man’s corpse gave way then and the body came down, scrambling rottweiler and all, tumbling like a side of frozen beef onto Miz Morgan and the dead dog in the aisle.

The shotgun blast missed the narrow well but slammed into the ice-tufted cinder block inches from Bremen’s left arm. He felt something rip at his left sleeve and a cold trickle, like a sudden electric current, flow through the soft flesh under his arm. Then he bent and heaved, almost slipped off the rod from the strain, then heaved again.

The trapdoor, if it was a trapdoor, was locked from the outside. Bremen could feel the resistance of the steel hasp, hear its rasping.

Miz Morgan shouted and kicked at the growling rottweiler eight feet below. The dog whirled and snapped at her in its confusion. Without hesitating a second, she lifted the shotgun and bashed the hound’s skull in with the heavy stock. The rottweiler collapsed almost comically onto the corpse of its mate.

Bremen had used the six-second reprieve to catch his balance and to heave again, feeling something snap and tear in his back but also feeling the time-rotted and shotgun-weakened boards giving a bit. Cords stood out on Bremen’s neck and his face grew a bright red; he heaved with enough effort of will and energy to move mountains, to freeze birds in their flight.

Bremen thought Miz Morgan had fired the shotgun again from directly under him—the blast and release of pressure was deafening—but it was only three of the broad boards splitting and flying upward above him.

Bremen lost his balance and fell then, shoes sliding off the stanchion bar, but his cold-numbed left hand came up and grabbed the edge of broken boards even as his right threw the chain out the opening and clambered for a handhold of its own. He heard Miz Morgan shout something, but then he was pulling himself up, ripping his shirt on splinters as he pulled himself through, his feet pushing off from the light stanchion.

He was blinded by the sudden glare of arc light from the water tower at the rear of the cold house’s flat roof, but he rolled away from the splintered opening just as Miz Morgan fired again. Two more boards exploded skyward, showering Bremen with splinters.

Ignoring his bleeding thigh and hip and left arm, ignoring the frostbite pain from his. curled hands, Bremen got to his feet, retrieved the chain from the graveled rooftop, and ran to the front of the building, leaping over a thick fire hose that ran to the south side. Four of the rottweilers were still there by the door, leashes tied to an iron pipe. They went crazy as Bremen leaped from the twelve-foot rooftop. He hit hard, felt his left leg give way, and rolled heavily on gravel and small stones.

The dogs leaped for him, their leashes pulling them back ten inches out of range.

Bremen got to his knees and staggered toward the door. It was open only a few inches; cold, rancid air flowed out like the breath of some dying demon. Bremen could hear the sound of Miz Morgan’s boots on the ice-grooved floor as she ran toward the doorway.

He lunged forward, slammed it almost shut just as the weight of her struck the other side. The pressure lessened and Bremen imagined her stepping back, pumping the shotgun. The four rottweilers were leaping at him so hard that they were jerking themselves off their feet, landing on their backs. Foam and spittle struck him from three feet away.

Bremen ran the chain through the hasp, lifted the heavy padlock from the dust, and slammed it on just as Miz Morgan fired the shotgun.

It was a six-inch-thick steel door set deeply within its steel frame. It did not budge. Even the sound of the shotgun was a distant, hollow thing.

Bremen stepped back and grinned, then glanced toward the rooftop. It would take her less than a minute to slide another corpse into position and climb out the way he had come. He would not have enough time to find a ladder or material to cover the hole. He doubted if he could beat her back to the hacienda given his injuries. Bremen began limping and hobbling toward the south side of the cold house.

One of the rottweilers, a bitch, broke free then, and came lunging after him, apparently so surprised by her sudden freedom that she forgot to howl. Bremen whirled at the corner of the building, dropped to one knee to avoid the snapping jaws, and punched the animal in the gut, right under its ribs, as hard as he could.

The wind went out of the rottweiler like air from a punctured balloon. It went down, but its legs were already scrambling, claws scratching to get back on its feet.

Weeping, Bremen knelt on the big animal’s back, grabbed its jaws with his swollen, throbbing hands, and snapped its neck. The surviving three went wild behind him.

Bremen hobbled around the corner. The jerry-rigged shower stall that Miz Morgan had used was still there, the five-gallon holding tank seven feet up, the heavy fire hose running to the fifteen-hundred-gallon tank above. Ignoring the pain, Bremen ran to the shower, leaped for the shower head, leveraged himself up high enough to get a grip on the holding tank, and swung up until he could get his bleeding hand around the four-inch fire hose.

The tank ripped loose from Bremen’s weight and fell away to the stone pad below, but he was already eight feet up and shinnying up the now-dangling fire hose.

He swung over the edge of the roof and lay panting for a second on the gravel of the rooftop, the arc lamp on the fifteen-hundred-gallon water tank still blinding him. There were sounds from the broken vent or old skylight that he had climbed through. Bremen went over, peered down, and saw the barrel rising toward the opening just in time.

The shotgun blast went past his shoulder. The effort of raising the weapon had made Miz Morgan lose her grip and she went sliding back onto the shoulders of a young woman’s corpse. Bremen could hear the curses as Miz Morgan began climbing again, one-handed. The light stanchion squealed as the big woman swung up on it.

Bremen had to sit down or faint. Even then, his head between his knees, the arc-lighted world dwindled to a narrow tunnel between walls of black. Distantly, so distantly, he heard the noises of Miz Morgan climbing, finding her balance, resting the shotgun against the inside wall of the vent, getting to her feet. Bremen closed his eyes.

Come on, Jer. Get up! Get up now. For me.

Tiredly, sighing, Bremen opened his eyes and crawled across the tar paper and gravel to the fire hose. He left bloody handprints and a smear from his left leg as he went.

With the last of his strength—no, with strength that was not his but that he borrowed from some hidden place—he lifted the fire hose, stumbled back across the rooftop, and teetered on the edge of the hole.

Miz Morgan’s head and shoulders were already out. With her eyes so white and wide, the rimming of frost on her wild hair, and her lips pulled so far back in the killing grin, she looked like something not nearly human being born. The white noise of her psychotic bloodlust was all but overridden by the sudden surge of triumph that emanated from her like warm urine. Still grinning, she struggled to raise the shotgun through the gap.

Not smiling at all, Bremen slapped the release valve open and held the fire hose steady as six hundred pounds of water pressure slapped the woman down out of sight and pounded the boards loose around the hole. He walked closer, and a stray geyser from the swiveling nozzle shot gravel fifty feet out into the night.

She had taken the shotgun with her as she fell. Bremen shut off the water and peered carefully over the rim of the hole where icicles were already beginning to form.

Miz Morgan was climbing back up, a figure wreathed in hoarfrost and sheeted with ice. She was still grinning wildly. The shotgun was in her milk-white right hand.

Sighing, Bremen stepped back, set the hose over the opening, and opened the valve all the way. He staggered toward the front of the building and collapsed on gravel just short of the low wall around the edge of the roof. He closed his eyes for a second.

Just for a second or two.