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The Hollow Ones
Author: Guillermo Del Toro

 


PRELUDE: The Box

 


Wedged between two buildings in the Financial District of Manhattan—namely 13 and 15 Stone Street—exists a sliver of a property that officially stands as 13½ Stone Street.

Roughly four feet wide and composed of a colonial stone running the space between the buildings, capped off at thirty feet above the ground, this property serves no apparent purpose but to hold an unremarkable cast-iron Edwardian mailbox.

The Box has no ornaments, no distinguishing characteristics other than a large envelope slot, and there is no door or key to retrieve the mail once it is deposited.

Behind The Box, a solid wedge of stone and mortar.

The deed on this minuscule urban mystery dates back to Dutch colonial times, and the taxes on it have been punctually paid by the firm of Lusk and Jarndyce since 1822. Before that time, its property records exist only in reference, but all are in perfect legal standing.

The oldest recorded mention of The Box goes back indeed to a pamphlet published in what was then named New Amsterdam. The most complete narrative of the vicissitudes of Jan Katadreuffe and his Final, Virtuous Elevation to the Kingdom of Our Lord.

In said pamphlet—published by Long and Blackwood, 1763, Folio, four pages—a wealthy spice merchant makes a deal with a demon in order to secure the arrival of his ships and cargo.

The ships are delivered, but henceforth a foul spirit runs amok and tortures the merchant—every nightfall—biting him savagely, scratching his back, and riding his body like a jockey while the wretched soul screams in abject misery and commits sinful acts of great violence.

In the drama, a layman, trying to help, tells a learned priest of a possible solution:

“…The iron box on High street, your woes is there to greet. Sealed letter bears the Blackwood name. And in a forthnight thee shall meet…”

The priest praises the Lord and the sacraments as the only solution to pursue. Katadreuffe pays for a litany of masses and is liberated from his torment only hours before passing away, purified.

A small, unassuming gravestone memorializes the passing of Katadreuffe. On the Rector Street side of Trinity Church, the tombstone reads:

HERE LIES THE BODY OF JAN KATADREUFFE, LATE MERCHANT OF SPICE AND WOODS WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE THE 16TH DAY OF OCTOBER 1709—AGED 42 YEARS. BEHOLD AND SEE THEE PASS BY. AS THEE ARE NOW, SO ONCE WAS ME, AS I AM, YOU SOON WILL BE. PREPARE FOR DEATH AND FOLLOW ME…

 

Over the centuries, 13½ Stone Street has withstood many a litigation: zoning, corporate, and otherwise. Every one of these legal battles has been won at great expense. And so The Box stands: a mystery standing in plain sight. Most people pass by without even giving it another glance.

A decade ago, a large insurance company across the street installed three security cameras. A dedicated observer could attest that, even though a few letters arrive to The Box—approximately one every three weeks or so—no one ever picks them up, nor does the mailbox ever overflow.

Of this small mystery, one thing has been corroborated time and again over the decades: Every letter that arrives at The Box is a letter of urgent need—a desperate call for help—and every single envelope carries the same name:

Hugo Blackwood, Esq.

 

 

2019. Newark, New Jersey.

 

Odessa set down her menu and looked around the Soup Spoon Café for a list of specials. She found it, a whiteboard near the hostess station, written in block lettering with a red marker. Something about the handwriting triggered a long-forgotten memory of her days at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia.

A Behavioral Sciences lecturer drew up homicide definitions with a squeaky red dry erase marker on the big board in the front of the auditorium.

The differentiation, the lecturer explained, had nothing to do with the homicides themselves—severity, method, or manner—but rather the cooling-off period in between.

The Serial Killer’s hallmark is their cycle. Weeks, months, or even years may pass between homicides.

The Mass Murderer kills in one setting, within a fixed time frame, totaling a minimum of four homicides committed in close succession with little or no downtime in between.

The Spree Killer murders in multiple settings, usually over a brief period of time, the duration lasting anywhere from one hour to several days or weeks. Related: a Rampage Killer, a single person who murders multiple persons in a single homicidal event.

The last two classifications allowed room for overlap. One case that was difficult to properly classify—and was generally considered to be the first rampage killing in the United States—had occurred just seventy-five miles south of the café in which she now sat.

On September 6, 1949, Howard Unruh, a twenty-eight-year-old World War II veteran, departed his mother’s house in Camden, New Jersey, dressed in his best suit and a striped bow tie. He had argued with his mother over breakfast, prompting her to flee to a neighbor’s home, frantically telling them she feared something terrible was about to happen.

Unruh walked into town armed with a German Luger pistol, carrying thirty 9-millimeter rounds. In a twelve-minute span he shot and killed thirteen people, wounding three more. Locations included a pharmacy, a barbershop, and a tailor. While the desire to murder was proven to be premeditated—Unruh was later found to have kept a list of enemies in a diary—his victims were a mix of preferred targets and people unfortunate enough to cross his path on that clear Tuesday morning. Victims and eyewitnesses alike described the look in Howard’s eye that morning as trance-like, dazed.

To anyone other than a law enforcement professional, the classification of the crime matters little. The only truly important fact of the matter was that, for more than sixty years, Unruh’s shooting spree stood as the worst rampage killing in New Jersey.

That is, until the night Walt Leppo ordered meat loaf.

 

 

“Is it cooked fresh?” Walt asked the young server after his return from the men’s room.

“Oh, absolutely,” she answered.

“Would you do me a favor, then?” he said. “Could you look and see if there’s maybe a slice or two left over from the lunch rush? Preferably set under a heat lamp for a few hours? Really dry with toasted edges?”

The server held his gaze for a few moments, as if unsure whether or not she was being put on. She was a student probably, likely at one of the nearby law schools. Odessa had put herself through her third year of law school in Boston waiting tables, and she acutely remembered the uneasy feeling she got when certain male customers made vaguely creepy, borderline fetishistic food requests—usually loners, men who she suspected wished that they could order women off menus, not just food.

The server glanced at Odessa sitting across from Leppo. Odessa offered an encouraging smile, hoping to set the fellow young woman at ease.

“Just let me check,” she said.

“Thank you,” he said, closing his menu and handing it to her. “By the way, I prefer the end pieces.”

She left with their orders. Walt added to Odessa, “We used to call the end pieces the heels.”

Odessa nodded as though fascinated. She said, pleasantly, “Serial killer.”

Walt shrugged. “Because I like my meat loaf the way my mother used to make it?”

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