11

 

 

She knocked on the door to Frank Gibney’s office. The wood and frosted glass door rattled gently. She waited for an answer. She looked to her right and left and listened, but the entire floor was quiet at a few minutes past noon, as she had hoped it would be; city workers took their lunchtime seriously, but the higher-ups often went out later. She heard someone cough inside the office.

She knocked again.

“Come in,” a man’s voice finally called out from within.

She opened the door and stepped inside. An empty steel desk stood to the right of an open door.

“In here,” the man called. “My assistant is out to lunch.”

She went into the next office and saw a heavyset, balding man eating a sandwich at a wooden desk. He stared up at her, his eyes demanding what she wanted of him, then frowned and looked puzzled by what she was carrying.

“Going bowling?” he asked, pointing at her bag.

“Yes,” she replied, setting it down. “May I talk to you?”

He nodded and continued eating. “Pull up that chair.”

“Thanks, but I won’t take much of your lunchtime,” she said, smiling at him.

“Nice business suit,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“What’s this about?” he asked, setting down his sandwich.

“You are Frank Gibney?” she asked.

“Yes, I am.”

“I have to be sure,” she said, stepping forward and continuing to smile at him as she constricted her abdomen in readiness. “Detective Benek sent me to tell you he thinks he’s solved the mystery of the empties.”

“Oh?” Gibney asked. “And who are you?”

“We’ve been going out lately.”

“Good! He’s such a loner. I’m glad to hear he’s coming out of himself.” He leaned back, then smiled, looking more friendly. “He’s a good-hearted man, you know. Likes to read the ancient historians. I had no idea he discussed his work with anyone else.”

“My father’s name was Frank,” she said as he supplied her missing laugh. She reached into him with difficulty, her exertion lasting longer than expected. The old man’s brain came out hard, hanging for a moment on the outside of his skull like a skinned fruit, then hit the floor next to his chair as he slumped forward into his lunch.

She felt a moment of disappointment with her effort, then took a deep breath and picked up her bowling bag. Opening it, she took out two heavy cotton towels and threw one over the bloody mass on the floor. Bending down, she gently picked up the soft organ and put it in the bag, then cleaned up the mess with the other towel and dropped it in the bag, zipping it up quickly. In a moment she was at the door.

Opening it slowly, she saw that the hallway was still empty and slipped out, closing the door gently behind her. Ten quick steps, and anyone who might see her would not be able to tell out of which door she had come.

She hurried down the hall toward the street exit, right hand grasping the bag, smiling at how she would present it to Benek. She had made practical use of her power after all, in defense of her own future.

 

She was very tired by the time the taxi brought her home. She put the bag on the floor by the door, staggered to the sofa and lay down, unable to consider why her fatigue had taken hold in less than half an hour after her effort.

But sleep came quickly, renewing her, and she dreamed for what seemed an eternity, laughing occasionally as she felt her strength surge back, and she saw herself coring a dozen heads at once without fatigue. Armies fell before her on a battlefield, their brains dropping into the dust like lumps of dough into flour. “That’s not the way to do it,” Benek said, standing next to her with their two daughters on his shoulders. “Softly, subtly. No one must ever know what you can do, until it’s too late. All they need to know is that you can make people die in a strange way, without being sure how it happens, without being able to prove anything against you. No, not die, just disappear is better. Less is always more. Maybe you’ll learn how to make people simply vanish.”  Her two daughters gazed at her with love and admiration, but then hatred flashed into their father’s eyes and she felt a strange tickling in her head. “No!” she cried and sat up on the sofa, half expecting to glimpse her own brains on the rug before the darkness took her.

Shaken, she put her feet on the floor and composed herself. Benek was poisoning her thoughts, she told herself as she stood up and went over to the bag on the floor. It was time to crush his will once and for all.

She picked up the bag, went out the front door, and crept down the stairs to the basement, still feeling a bit weak, drawn by the need to humiliate Benek by showing him Gibney’s brains.

She paused at the entrance to the sub-basement and saw that the lock was broken. Pushing the door open, she hurried down the stairs, pushed open the lower door and saw the bent bars of the empty bed.

Her chest tightened with a deep breath. She went to the bed as if sleepwalking, put the bag down, and examined the broken posts. His desperation had made him strong, she realized.

Panic dissolved her anger as she imagined that she could be arrested at any moment. The house might already be surrounded. How many policemen could she core before they brought her down?

Not many. She was not yet strong enough for a prolonged battle. She had to flee the house before Benek came back with help, she told herself, grasping after what to do as she tried to estimate how long ago he had escaped, and how much time there had been since then for him to move against her. She had not been able to show him Gibney’s brains, so he might still be doubting what she could do. Just as well. He might come to her in the open and give her enough of a chance to finish him.