Strings of dust held the moon and the earth together in their dance across the sky. One world dying, the other, already dead. I woke up suddenly in a cold sweat. My heart a drum. Shadows were moving across the moonlit walls, the scattered remnants of bad dreams. Gradually I came to, and gradually the strange child with the weird voice and the unicorn fled to the darker, deeper recesses of my brain. Looking around, forcing myself to focus, I was conscious of something odd, a dark malignant shape huddled at the end of a cot. He was up. The Hollow Man had risen. Dark and empty, the Hollow Man filled the room with nothing. I turned as quietly as I could to get a better look at him, not wanting to disturb his moments alone with himself and alone with whatever horror had taken hold of his soul. The wood groaned under me but he didn't seem to notice. He didn't make a sound. He somehow didn't seem alive. In the dark his shadow was very still. I was afraid, afraid of him, of the Hollow Man. Through the window, the moon was a sharp steel blade in the sky. The stars were shattered glass. Outside the sound of ravenous animals going about their business. Hunters preying on the weak. Sharp steel blades ripping apart fur and flesh. The song of crickets in the fuzzy air. I watched Hollow Man and what scared me was the black emptiness. The absolute absence of...anything.
The Hollow Man got up and walked to the window and stood. He again became motionless. A silent sentinel watching for the inevitable approach of whatever was coming for him. I turned away and tried to go back to sleep, but my eyes were stuck open. As alert as any small creature hiding out there in the savage dark. I thought of him coming after me in the night. Sticking a curved steel knife in me, ripping up bone and flesh, letting my blood run free. The others were obliviously asleep. The french boys, no doubt, were dreaming of dope and girls, Frank perhaps of past lives.