Dark Hollow (28 page)
Hylinus screamed; his thrashing increased.
Ramirez handed me Cliff’s last cigarette. I lit it and bent over, my face inches away from the satyr’s.
“This is smoke from Cliff’s magic cancer sticks. As I breathe his last breath into you, may it be yours as well. By our names do I slay thee: Adam Senft and Dale Haubner and Merle Laughman and Clifford Swanson and Cory Peters, and by the names of our wives, Claudine Haubner and Tara Senft, and all the other women you’ve fouled: Shelly Carpenter and Shannon Legerski and Antonietta Wallace and Leslie Vandercamp; and in the names of those men whom you slaughtered: Michael Gitleson and Paul Legerski and OfficerAl Uylik; and for Nelson and Patricia LeHorn and their children; and for anyone else that you’ve harmed through the ages…die now and never return!”
I inhaled. The tip of the cigarette glowed. Then, leaning closer, I placed my lips to the satyr’s and exhaled smoke into his lungs. His spine arched and he threw his head back, choking. Then spasms racked his body. I stood back, hurrying Dale and Ramirez away from him.
I’m not sure what I expected to happen. He didn’t burst into flames or explode or vanish in a flash of light. It was anticlimactic, really. Hylinus flopped on the ground like a fish out of water and finally lay still. His chest rose one final time, and then did not rise again.
“You okay?” I asked Dale.
He nodded. “Got the shit beat out of me, but I think you look worse.”
“Claudine?”
“She’ll be…well, she’s unharmed—physically, at least.”
I pointed at Hylinus. “Throw him on the bonfire. Fire purifies, right? So that’s good magic. Make sure you throw his pipe on there, too.”
Dale and Ramirez grabbed the satyr’s arms and legs and dragged him toward the fire, grunting with the effort.
I knelt beside Tara. Her hands were red with Big Steve’s blood. Tears streamed down her face.
“I…don’t understand what’s happening,” she cried. “Adam, what’s going on?”
“It’ll be okay,” I lied.
Something wet brushed against my knuckles. I looked down and Big Steve nuzzled me again with his nose. His big brown eyes were filled with pain, but also mirrored love and affection. He licked my hand—and then he died.
I hung my head and wailed. Sobbing, Tara leaned against me. We held each other, crouched there in the dirt and leaves, and cried. So many were lost—Leslie and Cory and Cliff and Merle, some of the best friends and neighbors I’d ever had—but the toughest loss of all was Big Steve. He’d been a part of us, a part of Tara and me—a part of the family. It felt like losing another child. The pain was a raw, open wound, and I wept in a way I hadn’t done since the miscarriages.
“Adam.” Dale squeezed my shoulder. “The forest fire is getting closer. We’ve got to go. Now.”
I helped Tara to her feet.
“Big Steve,” I said to Dale. “We can’t just leave him like this. And what about Merle’s and Leslie’s and Shannon’s bodies?”
Tears spilled from his eyes. “We can’t carry them. There’s nothing else we can do.”
Antonietta Wallace shrieked, tripping over Paul’s and Michael’s severed heads. Detective Ramirez ran to her. Michael’s severed heads. Detective Ramirez ran to her.
“This isn’t right,” I insisted. “They deserve better.”
“Yes,” Dale agreed, “they do. But we can’t give it to them, Adam. Look at us. We’ve both had the shit beat out of us. I can barely stand, let alone carry Merle. Neither can you. We don’t have time to bury them.”
The bonfire roared, the satyr’s corpse now engulfed in flames. His skeleton blackened as the flames licked at it. The shepherd’s pipe had melted. In the distance the forest fire’s orange glowdrewcloser, crackling and popping. The sound reminded me of the ocean. The smoke grew thick as fog.
Tara coughed. “Please, Adam. I want to go home.”
“Okay,” I whispered. “Let’s go home.”
Slowly I led her away. The firelight lit our path, parting the darkness. The trees stood frozen, unable to flee the advancing destruction—unmoving, as normal trees were supposed to be. Dale and Claudine limped after us. Detective Ramirez and Antonietta Wallace brought up the rear. I found Big Steve’s leash and collar lying amid the vines, and I picked them up. His tags jingled.
“What has happened to us?” Antonietta rasped, choking on the drifting smoke.
“You wouldn’t believe it if we told you,” Ramirez said. “In truth, I didn’t believe it either.”
“And now, Detective?” Dale asked. “Now do you believe?” “Oh, yes, Mr. Haubner. I’m a believer. I’m just not sure what it is I now believe in.”
“Hell,” Dale said. “We’ve seen proof of hell.”
When I glanced back for one last look, the clearing was an inferno.
That was six months ago. The Forest Fire of Spring 2006, as it came to be called, destroyed over five hundred acres of woodlands, including LeHorn’s Hollow and the adjoining farmhouse and outbuildings. Nothing was left. Investigators suspected arson, but were never able to determine the exact cause. In the end, it was speculated that a careless cigarette or an untended campfire had sparked the conflagration. It made national headlines, and for a week we had even more reporters than before hanging around. It overshadowed the original story—the disappearances.
Eventually the media and the authorities pulled out that reliable old chestnut, the satanic cult, and got the public to believe it. Dale, Ramirez, and I knew the truth, of course, but we kept silent. Ramirez believed, but he knew that others wouldn’t. I don’t know who the spin doctor was, but by month’s end the rumor was that Shelly Carpenter and the Legerskis were leading a coven that practiced black magic somewhere in the woods and worshiped Nelson LeHorn.
It didn’t hold up in the light of day; there were too many unanswered questions and too many loose ends. But the authorities were never able to answer them. The fire had destroyed much of the evidence, aside from Cory’s body, Michael Gitleson’s car and his headless corpse, and a few hoofprints outside Shelly’s and the Legerskis’ house, along with that tuft of fur they’d recovered from Gitleson’s car. Tara, Claudine, and Antonietta Wallace had no memory of their abductions, or anything that happened after that, up until the time we’d rescued them. Paul’s and Michael’s deaths were investigated, as were Cory’s, Cliff’s, and Merle’s. I suppose it was just easier for the authorities to take those bits of information that didn’t match up with the cult theory and sweep them under the rug. It’s not like television. Other crimes were being committed and there were other cases to solve. This one had been neatly wrapped up, complete with a bow. It did them no good to examine the wrapping paper for holes and tears. The national media didn’t even report on it after the first week. There were other things going on: natural disasters and terrorist attacks and wars and corporate scandals.
For the most part we managed to keep our involvement totally out of the paper. Tara was never mentioned by name, and the only thing the news really reported was that Cory’s body had been found murdered inside my home—or, as they put it, BODY FOUND MURDERED INSIDE HOME OF LOCAL AUTHOR. That caused all kinds of questions and speculation, but like I said, after a few weeks the questions stopped and people looked elsewhere at the other stories happening in the world.
Ramirez retired—at least publicly. I’d heard he was forced out for bungling the investigation, just like he’d fumbled the bank robbery and hostage standoff in Hanover. I felt sorry for him, but I never revealed the truth to his superiors. If Ramirez was happy to keep his mouth shut, then so was I. Last I heard he was working for a private security firm somewhere down south. I hope that he found what he was looking for.
Antonietta Wallace and her husband moved to Florida a few weeks ago. Leslie’s kid went to live with her parents. They live up north, near Allentown. I don’t walk down to the gas station anymore, and I buy my cigarettes at Wal-Mart. Paul and Shannon Legerski’s house sold to a nice young couple from Maryland. They’re expecting a baby. I met them once, and have avoided them since.
Merle’s house is up for estate auction. He left everything to Peggy, his ex-wife. Dale and I saw her in the weeks that followed, as she went through Merle’s belongings. We told her how much he’d loved her, that his last thoughts had been of her, and she cried. She asked us how he actually died, and we lied to her. The auction is next month. They’ll sell everything: the antiques, the house, even the wood shop out back. The only thing missing is LeHorn’s books. I’d left them in the wood shop when we went to confront Hylinus, and I rescued them the same night.
New tenants moved into Cliff’s and Cory’s apartments: a young couple downstairs and an elderly woman in Cliff’s. Dale and I refuse to talk to them, other than nodding hello or exchanging pleasantries. That’s the way it is these days. You really don’t know your neighbors, other than minor small talk. Sometimes it’s better that way.
Our neighborhood has changed. It’s no longer home.
I haven’t written since that night. I tried to, eventually. Went through the daily ritual, my own personal writer’s powwow. But the words would not come. There was something missing—a key ingredient, the essence of my muse.
Big Steve.
His collar and leash still hang on the door. I can’t bring myself to take them down.
I don’t take walks anymore, and I’ve put on weight.
At night I lie in the darkness next to Tara and there’s an empty space in our bed that wasn’t there before. I wakeup in the morning, expecting to feel his cold nose, listening for his snores or the helicopter sound he made when he shook his ears, but instead there are only the quiet sounds of my own muffled sobs.
I cry a lot more these days. Seems like I cry all the time.
Big Steve’s absence isn’t the only space between Tara and me. We have grown distant, two strangers sharing a house. I’m worried about her, worried about us. I don’t think she loves me anymore, and the thought scares me to death, because she’s all I have left. I remember how she used to be, before all this happened. She’s different now. Cold. Unemotional. We don’t hold hands. We don’t talk. We don’t make love. At first I figured it was because she’d been raped. Figured we’d get through it together, just like we get through everything else. But it wasn’t because of that. It was because…
She’s pregnant.
We found out a month and a half after the incident. Her period was late. We chalked it up to the emotional and physical trauma she’d been through. But then she took a test, and a trip to the doctor confirmed the results. We haven’t made love since the spring, and we supposed that it happened the last time we did, right before Hylinus abducted her. Yes, we’d been careful, and no, we hadn’t exactly completed the act, but accidents happen. And this was a joyful accident.
We were cautious at first. We had reason to be. But the months passed and everything seemed fine. It’s supposed to be the happiest time of our life, especially for us. We didn’t suffer a third miscarriage. This time the baby is healthy and normal.
Or so I was told.
I didn’t go with her to the last ultrasound. I’d promised Dale I’d help him build a wheelchair ramp to his porch. He needs it to get around in more and more these days. He’s grown a lot older in the last six months.
I helped him with it and missed the doctor’s appointment. Tara went by herself. She promised that she’d bring home a picture of the baby so that I could see it too. When she got back, she seemed quiet and distant. She said that they couldn’t determine the sex, and that the machine hadn’t been working right. She told me there was no picture. Then, complaining of a headache, she’d gone to bed and slept till the next morning.
The distance between us started then, and we’ve continued to grow apart ever since. Now I know why. This morning, when I was putting away the laundry, I found a piece of paper crumpled up and stuffed into her underwear drawer. It was from the ultrasound. A picture of our baby.
The baby…
The baby has horns. Andwhat appears to be cloven feet.
And it’s definitely a boy. Judging from the size, it takes after its father.
Tara is upstairs crying again. I confronted her with the picture, and I guess I said some things I shouldn’t have. Accused her of remembering more than she’d let on. Mentioned an abortion. Hell, I demanded one. She was furious with me. Accused me of wanting to kill the baby. She ran up into the attic and locked the door.
I’ve sat here all afternoon, reading through LeHorn’s books, trying to figure out what to do. She’s stayed in the attic. Occasionally I hear her crying, but she’s been quiet, for the most part. I think I found something, a certain potion and spell to stop this from happening. All she has to do is drink it, and that should take care of the baby. I’m going up to the attic and try to talk with her. I love my wife. I want a family. But not like this. I want things to be normal again. Everything I have to do now, I’m doing for her. If I can make her see that, then maybe we can get through this. Maybe we can still have a child of our own.
I want her to love me the way she used to.
I’ll write more later on. I’m going to save this file and then burn it onto a disc, and hide it with LeHorn’s books, so that it stays safe.
I’m going up to the attic now, and I will do what I must to make things right.
It’s funny. I’ve been up in that attic a million times, but those stairs have never seemed steeper than they do right now.
I am very tired.
Thanks to Cassandra and Sam; Don D’Auria and everyone at Leisure Books; Larry Roberts; Bob Ford and Whutta Design Agency; the Shrews bury Fire Department for their technical assistance; Elizabeth, Lindsey, Don, Uta, Mike, Doug, and Jason; contest winners Paul, Shannon, Toni, and Michael; Loki, who unknowingly convinced me to finish this book when I didn’t want to; Steve Pattee, you son of a bitch; and, of course, to you, my faithful readers, for continuing to heed the piper’s call.
Although many of the Central Pennsylvanian locations in this novel are real, I have taken certain fictional liberties with them. So if you live there, don’t look for your woods or hollow. You wouldn’t recognize it—and if you go searching for it, you might hear the shepherd’s pipe and end up dancing in the firelight…
