Chapter 4: What We Are in the Dark

Chapter 4: What We Are in the Dark

"Family?" The word was a dry, rasping sound in Alex’s throat. A hysterical bubble of laughter threatened to burst from his chest. "You have a corpse under your sink, you talk about it like it's spilled milk, and you call me family? You're insane. Both of you."

He was still holding the cheese knife, but his grip was feeble. It was no longer a weapon; it was a pathetic reminder of a world that had operated on understandable rules, a world that had vanished the moment Wallace said, "So?"

"Insane is a human word for things humans don't understand," Wallace said, his voice a calm, steady river in the raging chaos of Alex’s mind. "We're trying to help you understand, Alex. We’re trying to bring you home."

Dan chimed in, leaning forward with an earnest, almost pleading look on his face. "He's right, man. We’re your brood. The only one you've got."

"Brood?" Alex shook his head, the room tilting around him. "What are you talking about? I have a mother in Ohio. I have a second cousin in Nebraska. I have—"

"No, you don't," Wallace interrupted, the words gentle but absolute. "Alexander Vance had those things. You just have his memories."

The statement was so profoundly absurd, it almost broke through the terror. Alex stared at him, bewildered. "I am Alexander Vance."

"Are you?" Wallace’s gaze was sharp, dissecting. "Tell me, Alex. For the last six months, have you felt like yourself? Or have you felt like a ghost? An imposter in your own skin, going through the motions, the color and taste bled out of everything?"

The accuracy of the description was a physical blow. It was the secret, shameful truth he’d been unable to articulate to anyone, the suffocating fog he lived in. The constant, nagging feeling that he was a poorly-rehearsed actor playing a part.

"That's… that's depression," Alex stammered, clinging to the diagnosis, to the rational, medical explanation.

"We thought so at first, too," Dan said, surprisingly gentle. "We've never seen it happen like this before. It was… messy."

"It's not depression," Wallace stated, his voice dropping lower, pulling Alex in. "It's the seam. The place where the new reality was stitched to the old one. For you, the stitches didn't quite take. They're pulling apart, and you can feel the draft coming through."

Alex felt a wave of nausea. He leaned on the table for support, the cheese knife clattering from his numb fingers onto the floor. "The new reality… what are you saying?"

Wallace took a breath, like a teacher preparing for a difficult lesson. "We are not human, Alex. We never were. The men you knew as Wallace and Dan… they're gone. Just like the man whose empty vessel is under my sink."

He let the words sink in. Gone. Empty vessel. Housekeeping. It all clicked into place with a horrifying, internal logic.

"We are… something else," Wallace continued. "Call us Hollows. Call us echoes. It doesn't matter. We are consciousness without form, born in the dark. And we were hungry."

"Hungry for what? Pizza?" The weak attempt at sarcasm was all Alex had left.

Dan actually chuckled. "Nah, man. Hungry for this." He slapped his own chest. "For life. For senses. For the feel of a chair under your ass, the taste of a cold beer, the sound of a stupid game on TV. You can't imagine what it's like. The nothingness. It's not black, it's not silent. It's just… nothing. And you'd do anything to escape it."

Alex’s mind recoiled. It was the stuff of fever dreams, of cosmic horror stories whispered in the dark. Entities from another dimension? Consciousness-stealing parasites? He was trapped in a madhouse with two lunatics who had constructed a shared, elaborate delusion to justify murder.

"So you kill people," Alex whispered, the horror coiling in his gut. "You kill them and… what? Wear them?"

"It's not killing," Wallace corrected him, his tone sharp with a sudden, surprising indignation. "Killing is an ending. This is a transfer. A continuation. The original consciousness… it just goes to sleep. We step in. We live their lives, we feel their feelings, we access their memories. We are better pilots for the machines they built. We appreciate it more."

"And the body in the bathroom?"

"A mistake," Dan grumbled. "A messy transfer. Wallace was still new at this. Had to hide the shell."

The casual way they discussed it, the complete lack of remorse, was the most inhuman thing of all. Alex looked from Wallace’s cold, analytical face to Dan’s strangely earnest one. They believed it. Every impossible, insane word.

And the most terrifying part was the small, traitorous part of his own mind that felt a flicker of recognition. The fog. The sense of being an actor. The alienation from his own life. What if it wasn't a sickness? What if it was a symptom of something far worse?

"No," Alex said, shaking his head, trying to clear the encroaching madness. "No, this is crazy. You're trying to trick me. Trying to… to what? Make me an accomplice?"

"We're not trying to trick you," Wallace said, his voice softening again. "We're trying to help you remember. The process… it isn't always perfect. It takes a tremendous amount of focus to graft yourself onto a life, to learn its every contour and pattern. Sometimes, especially with a consciousness as… frayed as yours was, the new mind gets lost. It forgets what it is. It tries so hard to be the person it replaced that it buries its own nature."

He leaned forward, his eyes locking with Alex's, and delivered the final, world-shattering blow.

"We call it 'blanking.' It's what happened to you, Alex. You're not a human man they're trying to trick. You're one of us. You replaced Alexander Vance months ago. And the shock of it made you forget."

Time stopped. The hum of the refrigerator faded away. Alex’s own heartbeat was a distant, foreign drum. He was one of them. The imposter. The actor. The ghost. It wasn't a feeling. It was a fact.

A tidal wave of vertigo washed over him, and he gripped the edge of the table to keep from falling. His memories felt fake, like photos of someone else's vacation. His name, Alexander Vance, sounded like a word in a foreign language. The entire edifice of his identity crumbled into dust, leaving only a raw, terrified awareness in its place.

He started to laugh, a raw, unhinged sound that was half a sob. He couldn't stop. It was too much, too big, too fundamentally broken to be real.

Wallace and Dan exchanged a look. It wasn't frustration, but a shared, knowing pity.

"We know," Wallace said quietly, waiting for Alex's desperate laughter to subside into ragged gasps. "Words are just air. Your human brain, the one you're borrowing, is fighting this with everything it has. It's trying to protect itself from a truth it can't handle."

He pushed his chair back and stood up, grabbing a set of keys from a hook by the door.

"But we can do more than talk," he said, his voice now a low, compelling command. "We can show you. We can take you to see the one thing your mind won't be able to deny. The undeniable proof."

Dan stood up too, his expression grim but resolute. "It's time you met yourself, Alex."