Chapter 4: The Second Session

Nathan sat at the kitchen table, hands wrapped around a coffee cup he hadn't drunk from, watching Margaret move through her morning routine. She was pointedly not looking at him. Sophie chattered about a friend's birthday party, oblivious to the tension between her parents.

"I have to pick up Priya from the airport this afternoon," Nathan said.

Margaret's knife paused mid-slice through Sophie's apple. "Who's Priya?"

"A colleague. She's consulting on a case."

"Which case?"

"Patient 217."

Margaret set down the knife. Her movements were careful, controlled—the same way Nathan controlled himself during difficult sessions. "I didn't know you needed outside consultation."

"It's a complicated case."

"You said that already." She finished slicing the apple and arranged the pieces on Sophie's plate. "Where is this colleague from?"

"Seattle. We met at a conference a few years ago."

*Fourteen months ago. Boston. A hotel room that smelled like jasmine and shame.*

"Interesting." Margaret's voice was flat. "Well, I'm sure she'll be very helpful."

She knew. Or suspected. Nathan could see it in the set of her shoulders, the careful way she avoided his eyes. The wall between them had been building for months, but now it felt impenetrable.

"Margaret—"

"We'll talk tonight." She picked up her keys, kissed Sophie's forehead, and walked out without looking back.

The door clicked shut.

---

Nathan arrived at Blackmoor early, before the morning shift had fully settled in.

The asylum was quieter in the early hours—fewer screams, less chaos, just the steady hum of machinery and the occasional shuffle of patients in their cells. He found himself walking toward the maximum-security wing without conscious decision, drawn by the same pull that had brought him there yesterday.

Patient 217's door was closed, the observation window dark.

"He's waiting for you."

Nathan turned. Dr. Chen stood behind him, tablet in hand, expression curious.

"I thought you were doing research only," Nathan said.

"I am. I've been reviewing the historical files Grant mentioned. The 1994 case, the 1973 case, the 1952 case." She moved to stand beside him, looking at the door. "They all follow the same pattern. Patient appears with no identity, knows impossible things, drives the treating psychiatrist to breakdown or suicide."

"That's just coincidence. Pattern recognition bias."

"Is it?" Chen pulled up a file on her tablet. "Dr. Harold Finch, 1952. Documented his sessions in detail before he went mad. Listen to this."

She began reading: "'Patient exhibits knowledge of personal matters that should be impossible to obtain. After the sixth session, I began experiencing vivid dreams in which the patient appeared. After the tenth session, I began questioning my own memories. After the fifteenth session, I could no longer distinguish between what was real and what I had imagined.'"

"That could describe any difficult psychiatric case."

"'After the twentieth session,'" Chen continued, "'I understood. The patient is not a patient. He is a mirror. He shows us the parts of ourselves we cannot bear to see. He is not mad—we are. We have always been. And once you understand that, once you truly understand, there is no going back.'"

She lowered the tablet. "Finch committed suicide three days after writing that entry. Shot himself in his office, same as Sullivan hanged herself in hers."

Nathan stared at the door. Through the window, he could see nothing but darkness.

"What about 1973?"

"That's where it gets interesting." Chen scrolled through her files. "1973 patient—Patient 89—was treated by Dr. Richard Crane. But Crane didn't kill himself. He tried to kill the patient."

"What happened?"

"The incident that sealed the basement. Crane brought a knife into a session. He managed to stab Patient 89 seven times before security subdued him." Chen's voice was steady, clinical, but her eyes betrayed something deeper. "The patient should have died. Seven stab wounds, including one to the heart. Instead, he walked out of the room, walked down the corridor, and walked out of the building. No blood trail. No sign of injury. Just... gone."

"That's not possible."

"I know. But that's what the reports say. Multiple witnesses. And Dr. Crane..." She hesitated. "Crane died in the struggle. Security shot him to stop the attack. But before he died, he said something that the report recorded."

"What?"

"'He's empty. There's nothing inside him but us.'"

Nathan felt the cold spreading through his chest. The feeling he'd come to associate with 217. Being watched. Being known. Being slowly drained.

"This is insane," he said.

"Yes." Chen closed her tablet. "But insane doesn't mean impossible. And if there's a pattern, if this thing—whatever it is—keeps coming back, then we need to understand why. And what it wants."

"It wants secrets." Nathan heard himself speak before he'd consciously decided to. "It feeds on them. The dark things people hide. It knows them, and then it uses them."

Chen studied him. "Speaking from experience?"

Nathan didn't answer.

---

The session was scheduled for 10 AM.

Nathan entered the interview room to find Torres already present, along with two additional guards. The security presence felt excessive, but after Chen's revelations, he couldn't argue with it.

Patient 217 sat in his usual chair, posture perfect, eyes fixed on the door. When Nathan entered, those eyes tracked him with predatory focus.

"Good morning, Nathan." The voice was soft, almost affectionate. "I've been looking forward to this."

"Let's keep things professional today." Nathan sat across from him, maintaining the careful distance the room's layout encouraged. "I'd like to understand more about your background. Your earliest memories."

"I don't have memories." The Hollow Man smiled. "I have other people's memories. That's quite different."

"Explain what you mean."

"I mean exactly what I said. I don't experience the world the way you do. I don't have a past, a personality, an identity. I'm empty. A vessel. I fill myself with what I take from others."

"That's not how human consciousness works."

"Did I say I was human?"

The question hung in the air. Torres shifted uncomfortably. The other guards exchanged glances.

"What are you, then?" Nathan asked.

"I don't know." For the first time, 217's voice carried something other than smug certainty. "I've been here—in some form, in some place—for a very long time. But I don't remember my origin. I don't remember being created. I simply... am."

"Like a blank slate?"

"Like a hole. A space where something should be but isn't." The man leaned forward slightly. "You understand, don't you, Nathan? You have a hollow place too. That's why we recognized each other. That's why I chose you."

"You didn't choose me. You were assigned to me."

"Was I?" The smile returned. "Or did I make sure I was in the right place at the right time, with the right records, to catch the attention of exactly the psychiatrist I wanted?"

Nathan's pen stopped moving. "Are you saying you orchestrated your own capture?"

"I'm saying that nothing happens by accident. Not in your life. Not in mine." 217's eyes gleamed. "The accident on the road—was that random? Or were you always meant to kill that man, to bury him in the woods, to carry that guilt until it opened a door inside you?"

"I don't believe in fate."

"I know. You believe in science. In rationality. In the comforting fiction that the universe operates according to rules you can understand." The Hollow Man laughed softly. "But you're wrong, Nathan. The universe doesn't care about your rules. It doesn't care about your guilt. It doesn't care about anything. It simply is—vast and indifferent and full of things you cannot imagine."

He leaned closer.

"I am one of those things. And I am going to take everything from you."

---

The session lasted another hour, but Nathan learned nothing useful.

Patient 217 spoke in riddles and metaphors, answered questions with questions. He offered fragments that could be read a dozen ways, then danced around Nathan's secrets like a cat with prey it wasn't ready to kill.

By the time Nathan called an end to the session, he was exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with physical fatigue.

"Same time tomorrow?" 217 asked as the guards moved to escort him out.

"We'll see."

"You'll come back." The man's voice was certain. "You can't help it. You need to understand me. And the more you try to understand, the more of yourself you'll give away."

Torres took his arm. The Hollow Man allowed himself to be led toward the door. But just before he crossed the threshold, he turned back.

"Give Priya my regards."

Nathan's blood went cold.

"What did you say?"

"Dr. Patel. Your friend from Boston. She's arriving this afternoon, isn't she?" The smile widened. "I've been looking forward to meeting her. She has such interesting secrets."

He was gone before Nathan could respond.

---

The airport was crowded with afternoon travelers.

Nathan waited at arrivals, scanning the stream of passengers for Priya's familiar face. His mind was still spinning from the session—217 had known about Priya's arrival. Had known her name, her profession, everything.

*Someone's feeding him information. There's no other explanation.*

But that explanation felt increasingly thin.

"Nathan."

He turned. Priya stood a few feet away, rolling suitcase at her side, looking at him with an expression he couldn't read. She was as beautiful as he remembered—and also clearly furious.

"You look terrible," she said.

"Thanks. You look..." He hesitated. "Good."

"Don't." She walked past him toward the exit. "I didn't fly two thousand miles for compliments. I came because something is wrong, and you're the only person who might understand what it is."

Nathan followed her to his car. They drove in silence for the first ten minutes, Priya staring out the window at the gray Portland sky.

"I did some research on the flight," she finally said. "About your patient. About the historical cases."

"What did you find?"

"Nothing. No records, no papers, no documentation. It's like the previous cases never happened." She turned to look at him. "But you said Director Grant showed you files. Physical files."

"She did. They exist. I saw them."

"Then why can't I find any trace of them online?"

"Maybe they were kept internal. Confidential."

"Confidential enough to be completely absent from any database? No mentions in psychiatric journals? No discussions in academic circles?" Priya shook her head. "Something about this doesn't add up, Nathan. Either those files are fabricated, or someone has gone to extraordinary lengths to keep this quiet."

Nathan thought about the pattern Chen had described. 1952, 1973, 1994, 2025. Every twenty years, like clockwork. A patient appears, destroys a psychiatrist, vanishes.

And no one talks about it. No one investigates. It just happens.

"I want to see him," Priya said.

"That's not a good idea."

"I don't care. I've been dreaming about this thing for a week. I've felt it watching me, knowing me, reading every secret I've ever kept. I need to look it in the face. I need to understand what it is."

"That's exactly what Sullivan thought. And Finch. And Crane."

"And what happened to them?"

"They died. All of them. One way or another."

Priya was quiet for a long moment. Then: "I'm still going to see him."

"I know." Nathan sighed. "That's what I'm afraid of."

---

They checked Priya into a hotel near Blackmoor—professional distance, she insisted, though they both knew the truth was more complicated.

Nathan walked her to her room, carrying her suitcase, trying not to remember the last time they'd been alone in a hotel together. The door opened to reveal a generic space: beige walls, floral bedspread, a view of the parking lot.

"I'll pick you up tomorrow morning," he said. "We can go over the files before you meet him."

"Nathan." Priya set her bag on the bed and turned to face him. "Before we do this—before we go any further—I need to know something."

"What?"

"The body in the woods. The man you killed." Her eyes were steady, unflinching. "Is it still there?"

Nathan felt the ground shift beneath him. "What?"

"You said you buried him twenty years ago. Is he still there, or did you move him? Is there evidence? Something that could connect you?"

"I... I don't know. I've never gone back."

"Then we need to go."

"What?"

"We need to go to the woods." Priya's voice was calm, clinical—the voice she used with patients. "Because if Patient 217 knows about this, if he knows where the body is, then he has leverage over you. And leverage is power. We need to know what we're dealing with."

"You want me to go back to the place where I buried a man I killed?"

"I want you to face what you did. Completely. Honestly. No more hiding." She stepped closer. "That's what 217 feeds on, isn't it? Secrets. Shame. The things we bury. So we stop burying them. We dig them up. We look at them in the light."

"That's insane."

"Is it?" Her voice softened. "Or is it the only thing that makes sense?"

Nathan stared at her. This woman he'd wronged, who'd flown across the country to help him, who was now asking him to confront the worst thing he'd ever done.

"Tomorrow night," he said quietly. "After you meet him. We'll go to the woods."

Priya nodded. "Tomorrow night."

Nathan left her room and walked to his car, feeling the weight of everything he'd buried pressing down on him.

Tomorrow, he would show Priya the monster at Blackmoor.

And then he would show her the monster he really was.