Contracted to Hell

At 3:12 a.m., St. Brigid's Hospital smelled like bleach, burnt coffee, and something underneath both that no cleaning crew had ever scrubbed out. Damon Lockwood smelled it the second the elevator opened on the fourth floor. Sulfur, but older. Wetter. The smell of a door held open from the wrong side. Four floors of sleeping patients, and not one of them knew how thin the walls were. A chaplain in a rumpled collar waited at the nurses' station, gripping a paper cup like a rosary. Father Brennan. Fifties, gray stubble, six hours of prayer and no answer. "Just Lockwood," Damon said before the man could speak. "Where is he?" "Room 417. His mother's in the lounge. I told her we were bringing a specialist." Brennan hesitated. "I didn't say what kind." "Smart." "The doctors say psychosis. They've sedated him three times. His heart rate never changes." Brennan's voice dropped. "Last night he told a nurse her daughter's name. Her daughter died in 2009. Nobody here knew that." "Hollow," Damon said. "They dig. They find the door you'll open yourself." He walked down the hall with his coat open and his hands empty. No cross. No holy water. Seven years ago he'd carried a duffel bag of that stuff, and it had gotten him killed on a church floor with a nine-year-old girl screaming behind him. These days he carried something better. A contract. The number came the way it always did near a Hollow: a pressure behind his eyes, like a tooth he couldn't stop probing. Seventeen hundred and ninety-five. Days owed, out of five thousand. After that, Hell stopped sending reminders and started sending teeth. "Should I come in?" Brennan asked. "Pray in the hall. Loudly, if it helps. Don't open that door, whatever you hear." Through the lounge glass he saw a woman in a yellow cardigan folded forward in a plastic chair, lips moving. She looked up as he passed. *Please be real,* her eyes said. He gave her a nod. It was all he had. A nurse stood guard outside 417 with her arms crossed and her badge turned backward. She took one look at Damon and stepped aside without being asked. People did that. They never knew why. Room 417 was cold. Not air-conditioned cold. Cellar cold. Frost covered the inside of the window, in October, on the fourth floor, with the heat running. A boy lay strapped to the bed, nineteen maybe, dark hair stuck to his forehead, eyes open and fixed on the ceiling. The chart said Danny Okafor. Pre-med until Monday. Damon dropped into the chair and let his eyes unfocus, reaching for the second sight his contract gave him. Hellsight. Dim, a weak flashlight, but enough. The room rearranged itself. Danny was a frightened glow under the sheets, and folded inside him, wearing his outline like a borrowed coat, sat something long and narrow and hooked at the edges. Its face turned toward Damon. It smiled. "Lockwood," said Danny's mouth. The voice came layered, two people speaking in perfect unison. "They sent the dead one." "They send who they can afford. You got a name, or do I call you Hollow?" "Rank two. A house. A hundred years of grudges." The boy's head tilted. "You are a rental, Lockwood." "A rental with a very good lease. Leave the kid on your own and I forget your address." "Or?" "Or I do it the expensive way." The Hollow laughed. The restraints groaned. Frost thickened along the bed rails into spikes. "What I smell on you isn't sulfur," it said softly. "It's paperwork. A thousand tiny signatures. Whose leash are you on, little rental?" The smile stretched. "I know what you carry." The room held its breath. "Seven years you have been shouting, rental," the Hollow whispered. "Every one of us in this city has heard it. You think she is the only one who is awake?" Damon kept his face still. Seven years of practice. "Then you know I'm going to enjoy this." He closed his eyes and reached down into the part of himself that wasn't entirely his. It hummed under his ribs like a second heartbeat, cold and patient, a signature at the bottom of every page. The contract. The reason he was breathing. *Clause One. Ward-Skin.* Heat poured down his arms. The air around him shimmered like a summer road, and the line between him and everything else went thick and impossible to cross. "Oh," the Hollow said, and the pleasure was gone. "You're *marked.* Who sold you?" "Ask me after." His eyes were black now; he knew it. In the window, his reflection lagged half a second behind. He put his palm flat on the boy's chest. The Hollow's grin cracked. For the first time in four days, something in that room was afraid. The Hollow screamed. It did what Hollows do. It bolted for the nearest open door, and Damon was the nearest open door. It poured into him like smoke down a chimney, hot and shrieking, hunting for a soft place to settle. Ward-Skin closed around it like a fist. No soft place. Only the contract, and the contract didn't share. The Hollow clawed at his throat, his lungs, the old hollow behind his sternum where the church floor still lived. It found the scar there and pushed. "Out," Damon said, from far away. "Out of him. Out of me. Out of this city. *Go.*" The corridor lights burst one by one. A monitor flatlined and recovered. In the hall Brennan's prayer rose to a shout. A thousand voices stacked inside Damon's skull, and every one knew his name. *Damon Lockwood. The dead one. We saw you on the floor. We saw what you gave away.* "Shut up." *She asked for you by name.* His knees hit the floor. Blood ran from his nose and froze on his lip. The number ticked upward like a taxi meter. Seventeen ninety-six. Seventeen ninety-seven. Ninety-eight. *Come on, you stubborn bastard.* Ninety-nine. Eighteen hundred. The Hollow tore loose with a sound like a ripped sheet and hung on the ceiling as a smear of black smoke, thinning, scattering like ash. The frost slid off the window in sheets. The room warmed ten degrees in a breath. Danny gasped, a huge, desperate, human breath, and started to cry. Damon stayed down a moment while the world finished tilting. His reflection caught up with a jerk, like a dog on a leash. Eighteen hundred. Five days for one clean exorcism with the cheapest tool he owned. He'd pay it again. He just didn't have to like the math. He pressed two fingers to his wrist out of habit. Nothing there yet. That was the trick of Hell's ledgers: the bill never looked like much until it came due. He loosened the restraints one at a time. "It's over. Your mother's down the hall." "I don't remember anything," Danny choked. "It was like someone was standing behind my eyes." "I know. It's gone." It wasn't, not really. Hollows didn't die. They went home and filed a report. He opened the door. Brennan almost fell in. Down the hall, Mrs. Okafor had come out of the lounge with both fists pressed to her chest. "Go on," Damon told her. She ran past without looking at him, which was fine. He'd never needed to be looked at. "Mr. Lockwood," Brennan said. "How do I thank you?" "The diocese can send a check. And Father? Nothing like that walks into a hospital by accident. It was fishing." "For what?" "I'm working on it." Brennan crossed himself. "God go with you, Mr. Lockwood." "He's welcome to try," Damon said. "He hasn't had much luck." He pressed the elevator button. The doors opened on his own tired reflection, thirty-two years old, wearing a dead man's coat. Behind him, a voice spoke. Not in the hall. In the room. Damon turned. Danny Okafor sat upright in the bed with his mother on her knees beside him, sobbing into his hand. His eyes were empty. His mouth moved without him. It was the layered voice again, soft and amused, delivering one last sentence it had been saving. "Vessel." Damon froze. Nobody called him that. Nobody alive knew there was anything to call him. "She's awake." Mrs. Okafor didn't hear it. Brennan didn't either. It was meant for one pair of ears. The frost on the window cracked top to bottom with a sound like a gunshot. "And she's coming to find you."