Dark Hollow (20 page)

“Have you guys noticed the rats?” Dale asked, rifling through dresser drawers.

“The nests,” Cliff said. “Haven’t seen one yet, though.”

“No,” Dale agreed. “You haven’t. Neither have I. How about you two?”

Merle and I shook our heads, and Dale continued.

“We’ve seen evidence of mice and rats, but we haven’t actually encountered any. And the bugs. Plenty of dead ones, but we haven’t seen a live one yet. Not a moth or a cockroach or even a fly. Plenty of spiderwebs, too, but no spiders.”

“That’s a good thing,” Cliff muttered, sitting down on the bed. He looked tired.

I knew how he felt. The caffeine from the morning’s coffee had worn off, and the cigarettes weren’t helping. I stifled a yawn.

“No spiders are always a good thing,” Cliff repeated.

“Is it?” Dale’s eyebrows twitched. “I wonder…”

Merle opened the closet door and peeked inside. “What are you getting at, Dale?”

“There’s nothing living here. This place should be crawling with vermin, but it’s not. It’s just full of dead things.”

As he was talking I bent down and shone the flashlight under the bed. The space beneath was full of dust balls.

I stood back up and wiped my hands on my pants. “Damn.”

“You give up?” Cliff asked, checking his watch. “It’s noon already. Can we go home now?”

“No,” I told him. “We haven’t checked the attic yet.”

Sighing, he heaved himself off the bed. “Well, let’s get it over with.”

The attic was accessible from the master bedroom via a narrow, winding staircase. It was blacker up there than anywhere else in the house, including the basement. Whoever had nailed the plywood over the attic’s broken window had done an uneven job. Daylight filtered through a few small cracks around the edges, but that just made it seem darker. The flashlight’s beam weakened, unable to fully penetrate the gloom, and I wondered how much longer the batteries would last.

“Jesus.” Merle gasped when we reached the top.

The attic held even more clutter than the cellar. Boxes and chests were piled high on top of one another. Some had their contents scrawled on the side in black Magic Marker. Others were blank. We waded through the junk, opening boxes and looking for anything that would give us insight into Hylinus. Cliff used his cigarette lighter to give us more light, until the tip grew hot and burned his fingers.

“This is fucking pointless.” He sucked his index finger. “We’ll never find anything in this mess.”

“Adam,” Dale said. “Shine that light over here a second.”

He studied an old-fashioned wooden steamer trunk buried beneath a stack of boxes. Frowning, he ran his fingers over the lettering on the side, stirring up dust particles.

Cliff sneezed. “Frigging dust.”

“What is it?” I asked Dale.

“This lettering,” he said. “It looks similar to the lettering on the stone.”

Merle knelt beside him. “LeHorn’s?”

Dale nodded. “I think so.”

Cliff and I gathered around them. Cliff’s eyes were watering from the dust. We looked at the trunk. The letters did seem familiar, crafted by the same hand. But the message, whatever it meant, was different. It said:

Ito, alo Massa Dandi Bando, III. Amen J. R. N. R. J.

Beneath that, in the same erratic handwriting, was some kind of prayer, followed by more gibberish:

Mary, God’s Mother, traversed the land,

Holding three worms close in her hand;

One was white, the other was black, the third was red.

SATOR

AREPO

TENET

OPERA

ROTAS

“What the fuck is this?” Cliff asked, rubbing dust from his eyes.

“A charm,” Dale said. “That prayer, at least, is classic powwow.”

Cliff wasn’t convinced. “How do you know?”

“Because I’ve seen it before,” Dale told him. “When I was a kid. If I remember correctly it’s supposed to be a spell against worms, termites, and the like.”

“He’s right,” Merle said. “It sounds like the stuff my grandma used to recite.”

“So what’s the rest?” Cliff asked.

Dale stroked his chin. “I’d guess a protection of some sort. Safeguards. Protecting the trunk, or whatever’s inside it.”

Sator. Merle pointed at the word. “You think that’s supposed to be ‘satyr’?”

“Maybe,” Dale said. “I don’t know.”

I trained the light on the trunk’s hasp. “It’s not locked. Open it.”

Merle sat his rifle aside, and then he and Cliff moved the boxes off the chest. Dale unfastened the hasp and raised the lid, sending another cloud of dust and the faint scent of mothballs wafting into the air.

The trunk was full of books. We huddled around and began examining them. On the top was a small, thin hardcover, its binding made of brown leather and the title embellished with gold lettering:
The Long Lost Friend, A Collection of Mysterious & Invaluable Arts & Remedies
, by John George Hohman.

I whistled, my fatigue and disquiet forgotten. “Guys, I think we’ve found what we were looking for.”

Dale picked the book up, blew the dust from its cover, and turned to the first page. He squinted at the tiny lettering.

“Nineteen sixteen—older than I am. This thing would probably fetch a pretty penny on eBay. And it’s even signed by the man himself.”

He held it up. Nelson LeHorn’s signature was scribbled in the upper margin. The handwriting was the same. I realized now that it was also the same handwriting on the charm we’d seen above the back door in the laundry room.

“LeHorn’s spell book,” Merle said. “So all we gotta do is find a charm against the satyr.”

“Let me see the flashlight,” Dale said.

I handed it to him, and he sat down cross-legged and began thumbing through the book. While he was perusing it I rifled through the other books. Some of them looked very old; others were cheap modern paperbacks: a King James version of the Holy Bible,
The Golden Bough
by Sir James G. Frazer,
De la Demonomanie des Sorciers
by Jean Bodin and
De Praestigiis
by Johann Weyer (neither of these were in English), Aleister Crowley’s
Magick in Theory and Practice
, a paperback biography of John Dee (missing its cover), several slim paperback volumes by Charles Fort, and
Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology
by Russell Hope Robbins. At the very bottom were
Der Lang Verborgene Freund
—which looked to be
The Long Lost Friend
translated into German;
The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses
(which was in English and purported to be based on magic and cures that Moses learned while living in the house of Pharaoh); another German translation of the same (
Sechstes und Siebentes Buch Mosis
); a three-volume set by Albertus Magnus called
Egyptian Secrets
; something called the
Daemonolateria
; and an old ledger, the kind farmers used to record their crops and accounting in. Paging through some the books, I saw what appeared to be mystical incantations, prayers, and magic symbols.

I was confused. “Some of these are in Latin and German. Now, it’s conceivable that he knew German, but if LeHorn didn’t read or speak Latin, then what was he doing with them?”

“Maybe he was a collector,” Cliff said.

“Or maybe they had power on their own,” Merle whispered. “I wouldn’t fuck with them if I were you, Adam.”

Shrugging, I picked up the hardcover of
The Golden Bough
and flipped through it. It smelled musty, and the edges of the pages were yellow with age, but otherwise it was in good shape. I came across an underlined segment called “Ancient Deities of Vegetation as Animals.” It was hard to read (Dale still had the flashlight), but sure enough, the passage concerned satyrs and other goat- and horselike creatures. I scanned a few paragraphs. It didn’t tell us anything new, and I put the book back down.

Dale had better luck. “Listen to this. You know the writing on the outside of the steamer trunk? We were right about the second part.
The Long Lost Friend
describes it as a remedy for worms and insects. The first part, that begins with ‘Ito,’ is supposed to protect houses and property against theft.”

“And what about the ‘Sator’ bit?” Merle asked. “What’s that?”

Dale turned the page. “Didn’t have anything to do with satyrs, apparently. Says here it’s a charm to extinguish fire without water. I’m guessing that LeHorn wanted to protect these books. So he put them in the trunk and covered it with charms.”

I picked up the ledger. It was a hardcover with lined white sheets of paper and a sewn binding, just like you’d find in a stationery store. I opened it near the back. The pages were filled with cramped handwriting—a man’s. I squinted at the dates and realized it wasn’t just a ledger after all.

My heart beat faster.

“Or maybe he wanted to protect this.”

“What is it?” Dale asked. “What did you find?”

I grabbed the flashlight from him and shone it on the book, letting them see.

“Nelson LeHorn’s journal.”

The attic grew even darker. Outside, the wind picked up, whistling through the cracks in the house. Inside, we slid closer to one another without really thinking about it. Something rustled behind the walls, and I told myself it was just a mouse.

Turning to the last few pages, I began to read out loud.

THIRTEEN

March 01, 1985

Changed the spark plugs in the tractor today and now my hands and fingers hurt. Arthritis, I reckon. I’m no spring chicken anymore. Spring. Spring chicken. Spring fever. Got spring on my mind. It ain’t till later this month, and even then I’ve seen snow in April and even May some years, but it feels like spring today.

It may feel like spring outside, but inside this house it’s still winter. My wife and children think me a fool. They don’t love me no more, and I feel cold. They say they do. They still mouth the words, give me a peck on the cheek. But it’s in their stares. When they look at me sometimes it feels like a blizzard. Maybe it’s ’cause we’ve grown away from God, or grown away from each other. I don’t know. All I know is it makes me feel like crying.

Will make me a remedy for the arthritis later. Need a quart of unslacked lime, two quarts of water, a pint of flaxseed oil, and a little lard. Mix it all up and apply it and I’ll be right as rain again.

Wish I could remedy our family just as easy.

March 03, 1985

Arthritis feels much better. Was cutting brush today, down near the hollow, and saw something mighty strange. There was an old elm tree with a knot about halfway up the trunk, right about level with my head. The knot looked like a face. Nature’s art, I reckon. Reminded me of the one they call the Green Man, who there are pictures of in some of my other books. It stared at me and I stared back. Felt like it was seeing inside of me.

The face in the tree looked sad.

Patricia and the kids were grumpy tonight. Went outside to smoke my pipe, but in truth I really just wanted to be away from them all. Don’t like the way they make me feel. I feel like the tree.

I wonder if it cries too, when nobody’s looking?

March 04, 1985

Saw a groundhog out in the field today. Reckon he was a little late for Groundhog Day. Had his summer coat already, which ain’t normal. That don’t usually show up until May. The creek down in the hollow is running slow, almost a trickle, but it ain’t dammed up anywhere. The air feels funny. And that face in the tree is gone, or else I had the wrong tree when I went back to look today. It up and vanished. Sometimes I wish I could do that, but I’ve got my responsibilities.

March 06, 1985

Went to the feed mill over in Seven Valleys today to pick up some grain. It was near lunchtime, and the workers were all piling out the door to go eat. Suddenly somebody yells, “Mad dog,” and I see a huge Doberman tearing straight toward us with froth coming out of its mouth. It’s growling and racing at us, and there was nowhere to run because the men were still blocking the door. So I stepped between them and the dog and said the words from the book: “Dog, hold thy nose to the ground; God has made me and thee, hound.” Then I made three crosses at it and stared it in the eye. The dog quit frothing and sat down on his rear end and wagged his tail. Old Man Wellman, who knew what I was about and knows the way of powwow, wanted to take him home for his grandkids, but Paul Melniczek, who owns the mill, called animal control and they took the dog away. I reckon they’ll put it to sleep, which is a shame. Poor thing. Would have liked to see it come to a better end. Dogs are close to God.

March 07, 1985

Matty got in trouble again at school. Caught him smoking out back behind the woodshop, and he gave the teacher a hard time and talked back when they took him to the principal’s office. They gave him ten days of in-school detention. I told the principal they ought to just tan his hide. She said they can’t do that no more on account of the lawyers. Don’t know what to do with that boy. Ain’t got a lick of sense. All he does, when I don’t have him working around the farm, is sit up in his room and play Atari and listen to that music. The devil’s in it, I can tell. Songs with names like “Number of the Beast” and “Shout at the Devil.” Heavy metal, they call it. Some of the singers look like women. Wear more makeup than a woman, too. I ought to make him throw them out. Patricia says I’m too hard on the boy, but I’m starting to think I ain’t been hard enough. She coddles him. Coddles them all.

You know what she wants to get? Cable television! Imagine, paying for TV when you can get it for free right out of the air. She says the kids’ friends all have it, and we should too. I put my foot down and said no. We can’t afford a new combine or a roof for the chicken house. How are we to pay for television?

That stuff is a fad, anyway. In ten years, nobody will still have cable. It will be like those Pet Rocks and eight-track players. I remember when the kids all wanted eight-track players and I told them we couldn’t afford it. Now they never even bring it up, because nobody listens to those eight-track tapes anymore.

Nothing good on TV nohow.

March 08, 1985

Luke Jones come by the house today. Said his cattle keep getting out and he can’t afford to put up a new fence, on account of he owes back taxes to the government. He says it’s all Reagan’s fault, but I’m of a mind he’d owe no matter who was in office. I told him to pull out three bunches of their hair, one from between the horns, one from the middle of their back, and one near the tail, and mix the hair in with their feed. The Book says that will make them return to the same place.

March 10, 1985

Got copy of the me a German Book at an estate auction over in Lancaster today. Picked up a skid of bricks too, for less than five dollars. I’ll use them to shore up the retaining wall. The German translation cost a bit more, but was still a steal. Looking through it now, as I write this. I reckon it pretty much matches up to my English copy. Can’t read it, but it’s nice to have. It’s important that things like this not get lost through time. Besides, I can’t read Latin neither, but those other books written in it have come in handy. Been able to use the drawings and sigils out of them and such.

It was very hot today, hotter than normal for this time of year. Means it’s going to be a dry season. There’s a drought coming this summer. Squirrels and groundhogs have their summer coats already (I saw another one to-day) and the spiders are making their webs low to the ground. The creek in the hollow is almost dried up. These are bad signs. A bad season’s coming.

March 11, 1985

Had a fight with the wife tonight. That woman tests me. Says I don’t fancy her no more because we don’t make love. She never used to talk like that. It’s these damn talk shows she watches, like that Phil Donahue, and those magazines she reads. Anyway, Patricia said she’d go get it somewhere else if I didn’t give it to her. I told her go ahead, long as it meant I could get some sleep.

She won’t, though, and I’m glad for that. I love her, but I’m just too tired.

Still warm outside. Spring has come early. No denying it now. Gnats are out already, swarming around in little clouds. Another bad sign.

March 13, 1985

The warm spell continues unbroken. I’ve seen the signs, all of them bad. Drought coming this summer for sure, unless I do something to head it off. First day of spring is next week. Perfect time to work some powwow. Only thing is, I can’t use the Book. Will have to turn to one of the other books, the
Daemonolateria
, to do it right. I don’t like fooling with that one, but there’s no other way.
The Long Lost Friend
don’t provide for this.

The
Daemonolateria
is in Latin. Wish I could read it. There’s a fella out in Hanover named Saul O’Connor that can help me translate the parts I need. He’s aided me before, when it suited his purpose. He’s a bad one, but I’ve got no choice. If the crops fail this summer we’ll be ruined. I don’t know how to do anything else, and I’d hate to see this land get sold to the developers. The girls want to go to college. Can’t let this harvest fail.

Patricia’s been sleeping on the couch the last few nights. She ain’t happy and I don’t know how to make her happy anymore. Yesterday I brought her some flowers that I picked down in the hollow, first flowers of spring, blue and yellow. Real pretty, just like her. I gave them to her while she was doing dishes. She just grunted and then put them in a vase. I think she forgot about them already. Tried making love to her last night, before she went down to the couch. She didn’t make a sound, barely moved. I don’t think she enjoyed it.

I’ll win her over again, just as soon as I take care of this planting season.

Need to study and meditate until the equinox. Will have to fast too, as according to what O’Connor said was written.

Don’t have much of an appetite these days, nohow.

March 17, 1985

Hungry and weak. Made myself some tea from the inner bark of a birch tree, and that’s remedied the weakness in my limbs some. Would do more, but I can’t. Have to observe the fast. Can’t put nothing else into my body, or it could ruin the powwow. Still, I don’t feel good. Been having headaches all the time, and been grumping at Patricia and the kids, too.

They know some of what’s going on, but not all. The kids don’t take an interest in powwow, and Patricia’s forgotten a lot of it from when she was younger. My daddy done it and her mother did too. That’s how we met. Our families worked it together on occasion. Patricia used to practice. She was a novice, but she still believed. But now she says I ought to stop it. She don’t believe no more. Don’t observe the rituals. Don’t practice. Don’t do much of anything anymore. Hasn’t told me she loves me in a long time, and sometimes a man likes to hear that. Doesn’t laugh anymore, unless it’s to laugh at me. I feel alone, even in my own house with my own family. That ain’t how a man’s supposed to feel in his home.

If only they knew I was doing this for them. For all of us. The old ways are the best ways, and in another generation I wonder who will do it when I’m gone? Maybe I’m the last one in these parts. I’ve heard tell of a fella down south, a Korean War vet. Folks call him Silver John. Walks the Appalachians with a silver-stringed guitar and works some really strong powwow. Hear tell he’s got a real nice singing voice, too. But I don’t think he’s ever made it this far north. Sticks below the MasonDixon. And there was an old Amish fella, but he passed on five years ago. Now, here in central Pennsylvania, it’s just O’Connor and me.

O’Connor is a bad one, no mistake. Wish that I could read Latin; I wouldn’t give him the time of day. But I can’t, so I’m stuck with him. Ain’t nobody else in these parts that can fool with the
Daemonolateria
, except for old Rehmeyer, and he’s been dead nigh on fifty years. My daddy spoke highly of him. But he got himself murdered by that Blymire fella. Killed Rehmeyer for his copy of the Book, but it burned up with him.

That will never happen to me. When I pass on to the Lord’s house, I’d like to be surrounded by Patricia and the kids. Even if they don’t love me no more, I’d still like their faces to be the last things I’d see. Maybe then I’d see some love.

O’Connor’s schooling me. Been learning my lines and what to draw on the ground, and what to bring. I aim to call up a minion of Nodens, who O’Connor says is the father of Pan. That ain’t the way I read it in other books, but O’Connor says a lot of the history books are wrong. Nodens is one of the Thirteen, those who weren’t angels or demons, but something else—something that exists outside of heaven and hell, in another place that connects those realms to this world. It’s called the labyrinth. O’Connor says that Nodens’s minions can bless the planting and make sure we have a good crop this summer, drought or not. O’Connor also says we have to be careful, or else we could bring forth one of the others, one of the Thirteen themselves, rather than a minion, and that would be bad for all. I daresay it would. Don’t want to mess with them. O’Connor says you ain’t supposed to say Nodens’s name out loud, but he didn’t say nothing about writing it, so I reckon I’m okay.

The
Farmer’s Almanac
says that March 20 at 11:10 a.m. is when spring starts. I’ll cast the spell then, and everything will be okay, long as I keep my wits about me.

March 19, 1985

Tomorrow is the day. I can hardly sleep. Feel excited, like I haven’t in a long time. Things will be okay. Patricia come upstairs and slept beside me tonight. After she fell asleep, I lay there and held her, listened to her breathing and smelled her hair, and I was happy.

I still love her. Now more than ever. Just wish she felt the same. Maybe she will after I’ve saved the day.

March 21, 1985

O’Connor lied. He tricked me. At least, I think he did. Something went wrong. The words didn’t work. I couldn’t send it back. And now I’ve done a terrible thing. I’ve brought something bad into this world. It’s out there now, on the loose. In the hollow.

Patricia and the girls are out there with it. And what I saw…what they were doing…

No, can’t write about it. Not yet.

Something’s gotten inside the trees. They’re different now. Dark. They’re moving by themselves, and I hear them whispering to each other on the wind. Except that there’s no breeze.

There are faces in the trees. Lots of faces. And these faces don’t look sad. They look angry.

March 22?

I don’t know. Can’t remember what day this is. Maybe it’s only been a few hours or maybe it’s been days. I don’t know. I’m drunk. Haven’t let a drop of liquor pass my lips in almost thirty years, but I’m drunk now. Or trying to be, anyway. Not having much luck, because I’m still awake. Feel light-headed. Woozy. But it’s not enough. I need to feel numb. Dead. Need to not think. And when I close my eyes, I don’t want to see.

O’Connor’s dead. I don’t know where to start, so I reckon that I might as well start with that. Saw it on the news this morning. They found him in his backyard, all burned up and lying next to a burn barrel. There was still some trash on fire inside of it. Sounds to me like he was working some powwow.

In his house they found a dead dog…and a boy. Both of them had been carved up. Butchered. Sliced open like a pair of fish, symbols cut into their flesh. Guts missing. O’Connor had been using them in rituals. Cops don’t know that, but I do. I do now. And I know what kind, too. He was trying to go somewhere else. Trying to open a door to a place no door should lead to. Damn fool!