Bugs me that I’m getting this Halloween-themed tale up more than a day-and-half later than I intended, but oh well…
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All Hollows
Clarity.
Or something like it.
He had no idea when last he had felt that sensation filling his mind, but it had been a long time, certainly. Since the time before he lost his self and came to wander the United States as a man divided. A transhuman fractured. A shell filled with demons and angels; gentlemen and scoundrels.
Still, despite a sense of clarity, he didn’t know his name.
Oh, he knew the name others had given him, and it was all he had to hold to for a consistent identity.
Doctor Holiday.
So this clarity he felt now wasn’t knowledge. His old self had not been unearthed. But there was a peace inside him—a calm that he had probably only known before emerging as Doctor Holiday. He knew that many different “selves” lived in this brain, not a one of them so far the personality that had existed before Doctor Holiday was created by…
…by…
…them…
…government men. Real doctors—physicians and scientists.
He felt a surge of anger. A rush of betrayal. There was, inside him, a feeling that payback was due. But in his current personality, revenge wasn’t his goal. He wanted understanding. He had awoken with no other purpose than wondering who he was and seeking answers.
Taking stock of his surroundings, he realized he was in the back of a semi trailer—though there was no movement or bumping to suggest the vehicle was in motion. The digital display he usually carried—that covered his chest and announced the latest holiday that had awoken him—was several feet away. Image of ghosts, witches, monsters and candy scrolled across the display, along with the words Halloween is Here! and Happy All Hallows Eve!
He lifted his fingers to his face, and realized with a shock that the strips of cloth bandages that normally hid his visage were gone. He turned around completely, and saw them lying in a pile just behind him.
This realization was as startling as the silence in his mind. Normally, he knew, a personality awoke in full control of the body with some set of transhuman powers, but it was never alone inside its head. The others always whispered in the background. They were a multitude that made their presence quietly known, even if they had no influence. But they were all silent now.
He could sense the hundreds of places in this shared mind where they lived, but those other selves were purposely quiet or they slumbered. For all intents and purposes, those mental cells were empty.
So many hollow places, on All Hallows Eve.
* * *
Exiting the semi trailer nearly an hour ago hadn’t given him any more understanding of where he was or even who he was supposed to be right now. It was in an empty lot, with no cab attached to it. No corporate markings. No Department of Transportation number. No license plates. Nothing but what he had left there—all the normal trappings of Doctor Holiday.
His first instinct was that he needed to find a mirror.
With his face revealed, and no inhibition in place about looking upon it, he could gain his first clue to whom he had been before he became Doctor Holiday. It took a while, but he found a large gas station with an attached greasy spoon-style diner. No one gave him a second glance. Just another guy in jeans, long sleeve cotton shirt, and hiking boots.
With as casual a gait as he could manage, he headed for the bathroom.
There was a face in the mirrored glass before him, but no revelation about his name. He continued to stare, though, into his own eyes. Brown, like the little werewolf scampering across the digital chest display at one point when he was still in the trailer.
Display.
The display reminded him…of…that…
He could see himself—his hands, at least—in his mind. Working. Fiddling. Tinkering with circuits and wires. The display. He had built it himself. Not in the lab where Doctor Holiday was born but later, after his escape. Later, before his full awareness began to emerge only on holidays. There was a brief, shining time when he had been almost his original self. When he must have sensed what was coming. When he prepared by making and programming the chest display.
He probably hadn’t known his name then, either. He wondered, though, given that he was skilled and intelligent, whether he had guessed back then someone in the news media might think of the holiday connection to his appearances and think of the “Doc Holliday” of the Old West legends and combine the two in his unsolicited transhuman name. Probably not, as there was nothing of the digital display nor the wrappings that normally covered his face that hinted at Western history or folklore.
But now he realized that he had skills beyond the transhuman powers. He must have been an engineer, or programmer—perhaps a scientist of some sort.
There was no name to go with that memory, just as there was no name to go with his first view of his own face unbandaged. Such a plain face. A short mustache and beard. Brown to match his eyes, but with gray streaks here and there. Short hair, just a little curly, of a similar hue. A square jaw and broad forehead. Narrow lips. An everyman.
But in that memory of making the digital display, coming upon him anew, another image.
Of etching a number and a name inside the casing of the device.
His damaged mind had given him moments of clarity today, and freedom to explore himself.
On this day of Halloween, when so many people donned masks, he was finally unmasked.
To remain inconspicuous, he forced himself to go out and order some food, paying with the cash in his pocket from who-knew-where. He had eaten as quickly as he could without looking panicky or suspicious, and then he had walked briskly out of the diner. When he thought he was fully out of sight of any onlookers, he broke into a full run toward where the cargo trailer sat, wishing he had Speedster powers and enhanced stamina in this incarnation of Doctor Holiday.
* * *
He had gotten back to the trailer thoroughly winded, dehydrated and almost ready to vomit, wondering how he was going to open the casing of the digital display, and then feeling around in his pockets. In one of them was a Swiss army knife, with two different screwdriver tools.
At least I won’t have to give myself a heart attack running at full speed in circles trying to find a hardware store, he thought as he went to work.
When he got it open, he tipped it to where his memories said the etched characters were.
A name with a number. But not his name.
1031 Autumn Road.
An address.
A clue perhaps to why the many facets of his mind had unilaterally agreed that none of them would be let out except during a holiday.
Because it was beginning to look like he had lived on a street practically named after one—or knew someone who lived there.
He was going to visit 1031 Autumn Road on October 31—Happy Goddamn Halloween.
Doctor Holiday hoped like hell it was in a town nearby, because he figured chances were slim the legion of personalities that made up his mind were going to give him more than this one day of freedom to investigate who he was.
Those many hollow, quiet places would fill up again, and the voices would shout him down to silence and inaction.
Until the next holiday and the next personality and next set of powers.
* * *
He sprinted back to the gas station and diner in the hopes it would still be old-fashioned enough to have a phone booth outside with a phone book in it.
It wasn’t.
However, once he had bought some water and drank it down to keep from passing out, he did find a small bank of pay phones for the truckers who came through, probably—those who didn’t have cell phones or didn’t have national calling plans for them or perhaps who had let their batteries run down.
Or for the occasional oddball tourist who still used one.
Or the wayward transhuman from time to time, trying to figure out who he was.
Flipping through one of the phone books there, chained to a kiosk, the unmasked Doctor Holiday discovered that he wasn’t in the middle of nowhere as the landscape had thus far suggested—just on the ass end of a modest-sized city near a major interstate highway.
A quick call to 411 let him know there was an Autumn Road in that city. Based on the address of the random business on that street that the operator had given him, it was likely that the address 1031 existed somewhere along its length.
He picked up the phone again and called himself a cab.
* * *
Per his request, the taxi driver dropped him off at the very same business that had given him his reference-point address on Autumn Road after the 411 call. Doctor Holiday put on the sunglasses and hat he had purchased at the gas station while awaiting the cab, and looked around. Autumn road was a mix of commercial and residential structures, though mostly residential along this stretch. The business he was in front of was an accounting and law office. Nearby was a small convenience store and across the street a second-hand shop and an insurance agent. Everything else that he noticed for two blocks was apartment buildings, a couple small condo complexes and a half-dozen or so single-family homes.
As he moved cautiously but not too slowly, Doctor Holiday went to the side of the street with the even-numbered addresses, walked a bit, and discovered that 1031 was one of those single-family homes.
House.
Home.
Not just any home. Even from across the streets and several doors down, he could feel the emotional warmth of it. This had been his home. Whether childhood home long ago or as an adult more recently, he couldn’t be certain. But there were memories in his head of children. Of a kind woman who was their mother. His wife and their children? His own mother and his sibling? Something else? There were no distinct faces he could attach to these memories any more than he could attach names—but he felt them.
There were no obvious signs that the house was being observed, but he remained leery. He might not remember who he was, or even the facility where his powers emerged, but he had access to every memory of every emergence of a Doctor Holiday personality. He remembered this body fleeing a secret government facility with the use of Speedster powers—a wild retreat so confused and panicky that he had no idea where he was running nor remembrance of the location he had fled. He remembered that it was a little over nine years ago, on Independence Day 2001, and that this was Halloween 2010 today.
Given how powerful he was as Doctor Holiday, regardless of what personality was in control, he imagined the government forces behind his creation would like him back. After nine years, they might not be watching his home as closely, but chances were they would keep tabs on it somehow, just in case some memory led him back here.
He wasn’t sure what he might do when he got to the front door, but that was his destination, once he was sure none of the cars on the street were occupied by potential government agents. Hands in his coat pockets, head lowered slightly, he proceeded to the front door.
The name on the mailbox was “Jansen.” It did not feel familiar to him. The small front lawn was recently mowed and raked, with only a scattering of fall leaves upon it. The planters outside the front windows were empty of any life—just soil in them. The curtains were closed at every window. No decorations for Halloween or even fall-themed ones. There were a couple hooks in the porch roof above the front deck, but nothing hanging from them. No wind chimes. No decorations.
No welcome mat. No decoration hanging from the nail in the front door, just above the old brass knocker.
A nervous flutter in his belly. A quick, panicky feeling of compression in his chest. And then he pressed the doorbell button.
The buzzing noise echoed back to him. He waited, and no one came to answer it. He pressed it again. Same result.
He made his way around the back of the house, and let himself into the tiny backyard through a chain-link fence gate. No lock; just a little metal latch. The leaves were thicker here, but still probably recently raked. There was no barbecue there—neither a hibachi nor a small Coleman grill nor a larger gas grill. No bikes. No sign of anyone using it or kids playing in the area. As with the window planters in front, a small garden existed back here, but nothing was growing there now but a few weak-looking weeds.
He looked at the back door. He didn’t want to bust the door in or break a window, even though he figured he could do it without attracting attention. Ideally, if the people who created him weren’t watching the house right now, he wanted to get in and out without leaving any sign of his presence.
Besides, I don’t even know what powers I have in this incarnation, he thought, or whether they’ll protect me well. So often, until they are needed, the mind won’t reveal them to the personality in charge.
He paused. Turned. Strode away from the back door and to the tiny, empty garden plot in one corner. He lifted up one of the bricks bordering it, and found a plastic film-wrapped key. He replaced the brick, unwrapped the key and stuffed the plastic wrap in one pocket.
This will never work. The locks will have been changed, by the government or the new owner.
He put the key into the deadbolt lock on the back door and turned it. It resisted for just long enough to give him a panicked paralytic feeling in his chest. Then a click. A door opened thanks to a random memory and an unchanged lock.
Nine years is a long enough time for a lock to be unchanged, but within believability, he thought. This wasn’t my childhood home. It was mine. There is probably no way a key would remain and a lock there to fit it from a place going back to my childhood. I’m at least 35 from what I see in the mirror, and perhaps in my mid-40s. The children and woman I feel in my few memories of this place were mine.
The question that haunted him, though, was whether they still lived here. And if they did, why did the name Jansen feel so unfamiliar? His wife’s maiden name, perhaps? Or was there a new man in her life? A new marriage?
Nine years is a long time, he reminded himself.
Entering the house, the feelings of familiarity and warmth he had sensed from outside wavered and threatened to vanish entirely. There was a wrongness here. He wandered for several minutes through the rooms wondering why it felt so wrong. It was more than just changes. It was more than just the fact things obviously were not exactly what they had been nine years ago—that was something he would have expected.
The problem was that so many things were the same.
He could feel it. Even without names in his mind to attach the wife and children of his past, and even without foreknowledge of how his home had once been decorated, he could feel that this place was preserved. It was the household equivalent of a fly caught in amber.
There were only three places that feeling didn’t reign. The kitchen had been used. It hadn’t changed much, but it had been used recently and semi-regularly. The living room seemed sterile and little-used, though, as did most of the bedrooms. The main bathroom had new toiletries and was clearly being used by someone. The dining room had likely not seen guests in years, though. One bedroom had slightly rumpled sheets and a recent novel on the bedside stand—though how he knew it was recent, Doctor Holiday didn’t know.
Someone stayed here, but didn’t live here.
His home was still under observation. And at least one observer stayed here at times. Maybe every day.
But not now.
Not right now, anyway.
For a moment, he considered fleeing. But he had come too far; this was perhaps his only chance to find out who he was. Then he wondered if it were wise to stay here too long, lying in wait for the person who watched his home from inside—after all, when Halloween ended so too would the awareness in this body, most likely. It would return to a more automaton-like state and wander until the next holiday; appear in some other place.
Unwilling to lose time in an internal debate, Doctor Holiday instead started opening desk drawers and closet doors. He began to look for clues to his identity, not knowing how much—or how little—time he had.
Over the next hour or so, he found photos of himself with people he had once apparently loved but now could not name. He found jewelry and clothing that were clearly part of his previous life, but had no context for them. He found books that he could remember the plots of, but didn’t know if he had ever enjoyed them.
But in all the searching, he found not one document or trace of evidence about his name, or the names of his family. No diplomas. No checkbooks. No driver’s licenses or passports. No bills. Nothing.
And then a click.
His heart seemed to stop. For a moment, he thought a gun had been cocked but then he realized it was the front door. A key turning. A lock releasing. A door opening.
He walked calmly toward that sound—a grim resolve filling him.
He stopped in the dining room, which at one end opened into the foyer of the house.
When the stranger entered through the front door, Doctor Holiday said, simply, “What are you doing in my house?”
The man who had entered, wearing simple slacks, sensible shoes, denim shirt, light jacket—and just the barest hint of a shoulder rig under one arm beneath that jacket—was startled for a moment, then returned to equilibrium.
“Well, it’s nice to see that with just under three months left on this assignment, my yearlong stint here is the one to finally produce results,” the man said.
“Where is my family?” Doctor Holiday demanded.
“I’m sure you have many questions, but I need…”
The man’s words were cut off when Doctor Holiday surged forward, wrapped one large hand around his throat, and slammed him against a wall.
“I don’t care what you need,” Doctor Holiday said, but his hand relaxed to let the stranger breathe. “What I need is what matters. I need to know who I am.”
“Let’s start with who I am. Special Agent Jansen. Nice to make your acquaintance. Seventh of a string of residents here since you left. One of your renters, I suppose, technically—though I doubt a dime of rent has made its way into any of your old bank accounts.”
“Awfully glib for a government agent,” Doctor Holiday said. “Are you trying to provoke me? Or del…”
Doctor Holiday’s mind expanded—filled the neighborhood—brought him back thoughts that couldn’t be read exactly, but gave him a sense of intent and numbers.
“How many? How many people are out there gathering, positioning and waiting to attack? How much time do I have?”
“Your time was up when you walked in here, Doctor Ke…Holiday. There are hidden cameras all over. I do actually spend most nights here, but today, I got my first visitor—you—and we had time to prepare while you were rooting around the place. You need to surrender. It’s over, Doctor Holiday.”
“You did a great job of acting surprised. All to buy a few extra seconds—all to let everyone get into position. All to let people watch and listen to me before they make a final move,” Doctor Holiday said. “Right?”
“It’s over, Doctor Holiday,” Agent Jansen repeated. “They’ll gas both of us, so I’m not going to be much of a hostage. You can calmly surrender and get a nice shot in the arm that will make you go night-night pleasantly, and then wake up in a safe new place, or you can go down choking and coughing, and still end up in a safe new place.”
“Just a couple problems with that plan, Agent Jansen,” Doctor Holiday responded.
“And what would those be?”
“First, you almost said my name before, and it wasn’t ‘Holiday,’ which tells me you know something about me. Second, we’re not even in the house anymore. And we haven’t been for the past five hours.”
* * *
With a suddenness that filled him with vertigo and almost made him retch, Agent Jansen’s world changed from a sedate but well-decorated dining room into a stark and mostly empty semi trailer.
“That was a long walk, and having to alter your perceptions the whole way didn’t help one bit,” Doctor Holiday said. “I finally had to give up and get a cab for the last several miles because my brain was about to skip town on me. I have a raging headache right now, and some anger issues. So I’ll need you to cooperate, for your own good as well as mine. Who am I?”
Agent Jansen remained silent.
“We’ve been in this trailer for nearly 40 minutes before I let you see reality again, Jansen. If your friends had any way to track you or any idea where I had gone, they’d be here already. What is my name?”
Agent Jansen shook his head slowly, but said nothing.
And then Jansen’s world changed again. A place of fire and blades, acid and thorns, ice and needles. It went on for hours, and then the world of the trailer returned.
“About…damn…time…you came to your senses…and…let me out of that,” Agent Jansen said, his words heavy and strained. “Now, let’s talk about your surrender, before anyone really gets hurt.”
“Jansen, what you just went through only took up about 10 seconds in real time. I can rinse and repeat until you lose your mind, and still have time before nightfall to catch a movie,” Doctor Holiday said. “What is my name? That’s where I want to start. Who am I?”
“I can’t…”
Doctor Holiday didn’t let him finish, plunging his mind instead into a place where a multitude of insects feasted on his flesh, inside and out, and it grew back as fast as it was consumed. It went on long enough that Agent Jansen figured his body had been eaten a dozen times over. The confines of the trailer returned as his reality, and he screamed at first when it did.
“This is making my head hurt even worse, Jansen,” Doctor Holiday noted. “Next time I can give you day’s worth of being peeled apart slowly with razor blades and vegetable peelers before you and your exposed under-flesh are rolled around in fields of salt. The worse I hurt, and the longer you make me wait, the more it sparks my imagination. I don’t feel any pity for you. I sense you really like your work, and your work seems to involve fucking me over and making my family disappear.”
“Kelly!” Agent Jansen blurted out. “Robert Matthew Kelly, Ph.D. That’s who you are!”
“That’s a start. But it’s just a name and a degree. It’s not who I am. Start talking.”
“There’s nothing to say. That’s all I fucking know,” Agent Jansen said. “I know plenty about Doctor Holiday, but I know next to nothing about Dr. Kelly. I have your name; I’ve given it back to you. Let me go. Or better yet, give yourself up. You’re a menace to society.”
“I’d be less a menace if people like you hadn’t created me.”
“How do you know you weren’t a willing guinea pig, Kelly?”
Doctor Holiday—still processing the notion of being a Dr. Kelly—paused at that, then met Agent Jansen’s eyes. “Maybe so. Maybe not. But there’s still a house full of keepsakes and none of the family members that belong to them. I don’t think my wife and children simply left without the photo albums and the rest, Jansen. That’s not what people do. Tell me where they are! Tell me the rest of who I am!”
“I don’t know a damn…”
Agonies and nightmares. Pain and humiliation. Fear and loathing. Piled one upon the other for a day or more. At least in Jansen’s mind.
When the real world returned, Agent Jansen returned to it with a sudden onslaught of sobbing. It took a half hour for him to regain any kind of composure, and Doctor Holiday said, “The rest of my history, and the location of my family. Or I spend from now until the end of Halloween sending you through the equivalent of years of torment the likes of which no amount of torture porn could ever hope to match.”
“Dr. Kelly—or Doctor Holiday—whichever you like…better,” Agent Jansen panted, “I don’t…know anything more…than what I’ve told you.”
At the hard and angry glare from Doctor Holiday’s eyes, Agent Jansen cried out, “I swear! The only other thing I know is you came from something called the Genesis One Lab, and I don’t know fuck-all where it is. You can send me on a few more visits through hell in my mind and it won’t change anything. I don’t know anything more than what I’ve told you, and if my bosses find out you even know that much from me I’m screwed beyond all recognition. It won’t change anything if you fuck-start my mind some more—I just don’t know any more.”
“Thanks for the support, and the suggestion. I like it.”
And Doctor Holiday plunged Agent Jansen into several more hells. Over and over. Questioning Jansen after each visit.
No matter what he had said to Jansen, though, Doctor Holiday didn’t like doing it one bit.
It hurt. It made his head feel like it would explode at any moment.
But worse, it made him feel dirty. Everywhere. Inside and out. He felt filthy and depraved down to his very cellular structure.
But he kept doing it until he was sure Agent Jansen was telling the truth.
At the end of it all, Doctor Holiday still didn’t know anything more than his former name and the place of his rebirth as a genetic monster.
* * *
The bandages were once again wrapped around his head and the digital display reattached by its belts, straps and buckled to his upper torso. No doubt when he entered his upcoming fugue state, his body would have done all that by rote anyway, but it felt right to do it himself. The hollows in his mind would soon refill with voices, some to praise him for his treatment of Agent Jansen. Others to chastise him. Still others to say nothing.
He’d been given a day to find himself. He’d found more than he’d expected, even if it wasn’t all that he desired. He’d seen his home and his family—even if the latter was in photographs alone. He’d found his name, and perhaps another personality would follow that lead on another holiday.
In the process, though, he’d also found out how much a horror he was, and he wasn’t sure whether to blame himself, or the kind of people who were like Jansen and had created him.
At 11:58 p.m. Halloween night, Doctor Holiday began walking.
Away from from the trailer.
Away from the man whimpering inside it.
Away from the vestiges of his former home.
He walked away as Dr. Robert M. Kelly. And as Doctor Holiday. Wondering which was more real.
Two minutes later, he was nothing again. A body on autopilot awaiting the promise of Thanksgiving Day.