The Hollower (25 page)

Sally Kohlar shook her head. “No, it won’t. It’s sensed you. Now it can find you like it finds us.”

Standing inside Feinstein’s bedroom, Dave felt surprisingly at peace. He couldn’t quite put a finger on it, but it seemed like the hub, a place from which all the rest of the rooms sprang. The rest of the house scared him with its alien hostility, but in that room, that objective control to the rest of the experiments remained constant. Ironically, the safest place in the house was right in the heart of it.

Until the Hollower returned.

By degrees, he realized he could hear other parts of the house—a television, a gunshot, what sounded like a fire alarm. His first instinct was to run toward the sounds, to try to find the others and help. After the first few steps he was seized with a strong sense that to interfere would cause the others harm, that he could cause them to get lost where they thought they were, or hurt by what they thought they saw. Or worse.

The idea wasn’t his, though; the Hollower wanted him to think that. He bucked in doubt and made his way toward the door. Before he could get far, a space
opened up in the floor before him and his arms pinwheeled to keep him from falling through. Peering down, he saw Sally in some dark room—a closet, maybe, or somewhere in the basement. His heart thudded.

“Sally! Sally, up here!” he called, but she didn’t seem to be able to hear him. “Sally!”

Sally for the others
, a voice in his head said.
Sally if you just let me have them
.

Dave’s hands clenched into fists. He made for the door again. When he opened it, he fully expected something with metallic claws to jump on him and tear open his throat.

He stepped out into the hall and made his way down to the first floor without incident. He checked the closet where he’d gone looking for the box. She wasn’t there.

Dave turned to the study and was about to search there when the clock struck. He counted off the chimes,
one, two, three
. . .

And realized he hadn’t seen a grandfather clock the last time he’d been there.

Six, seven
. . .

He went toward the source of the chimes. The study? He opened the door to a large hall. At the far end was the clock.

Eleven, twelve, thirteen
. . .

The polished mahogany casing stood tall and opposing, hooded by a Gothic arch. Beneath the arch, its white face, set in a black frame of stars and nebulae, featured no numbers at all. The black iron hands pointed straight out at him.

Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen
. . . He wondered if the chimes would ever stop.

They did, and that, to Dave, was worse. They didn’t just ring and then fade to pleasant oblivion. They wound down, like a broken merry-go-round. As he got close enough, he heard wood splinter beneath the momentum of the heavy gold pendulum. It dislodged, crashed into the other side, pulled itself free again. The weights and their gold chains tangled in the gears, the force of their relentless turning prying loose cogs and shafts and gear wheels. They sprang away from the clock as if it were on fire, and he flinched when one grazed his cheek. When they landed, they turned into red meaty things—organs, chunks of flesh, tissue—and the chimes blurred into a long, loud wail of pain.

The clock was dying.

He backed away from it, then turned to find the room blazing with sunlight.

No, not a room
. He was outside. In the front yard of his childhood home.

Dave felt queasy. He remembered that apple-blossom smell in the air, and the sunshine warmth on the back of his neck that made him hot as he realized what he’d done, and the tears cooled by the breeze.

Sally’s little body lay on the ground at his feet. Her eyes were closed and she wasn’t moving, except for her chest, which made shallow attempts at maintaining breath. Blood encircled her head like a halo. Dave looked at her through nine-year-old eyes, and remembered.

“Maaaaaaa!” A scream, terrified, frenzied—his voice, but not coming from his mouth.

His mom came running out of the house, saw Sally, and crumpled a little where she stood. “Sally!
Oh, my baby girl! Sally!” She came running, folded next to her daughter, and touched her neck.

“I’m sorry,” Dave said, and the voice came out of time, a child’s voice full of guilt and apology and abject fear.

“What did you do?” his mother growled, and looked up. He half expected her to have no face, but she did. Angry eyes, hateful mouth. “What did you do?”

“It was an accident,” he said. That was what he’d said then, that it was an accident. He hadn’t meant to push her.

But he had.

He hadn’t meant for her to hit her head. It was the kind of thing he’d done to her a hundred times, a big brother’s right to scrape off the annoying questions, the tiring demands that he play with her, the silly little girl observations about everything. He didn’t want to hurt her, he’d only wanted to—

—get her away from him.

The lady next door came to watch him while his parents took Sally to the hospital. He couldn’t sleep, though, until he’d mopped up the blood. He’d used towels. There was a lot of blood, for such a little head. It was late when they came home, three worn, pale faces, one tiny blond head with stitches.

His mother had grounded him for a week over Sally. She’d smacked his arm when she saw what he’d done to her towels.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, with his own voice. He remembered, and felt cold inside his clothes.

“No, you’re not. You want to be rid of her. You want to be free.”

Dave shook his head. “That’s not true.” But part of it was. That part made him feel terrible.

“You’re a bad brother, Dave. You’ve always been a bad brother. You let her fall apart.” His mother rose, fixing a withering look on him. “You never wanted to take care of her.”

“I’d do anything for her.” Even now, his mom loomed impossibly tall. He shielded his eyes from the sun and looked up at her.

“Would you quit drinking? Worry more about her, maybe, than that floozy from the bar? Maybe show up for work on time and do your job so you can pay for better care? You think that doctor is doing her any good, or that silly support group? Maybe stop making promises to her you can’t keep—are you ready to do that, Dave?”

As she spoke, she’d gotten closer and closer to him until she towered over him. “You’ve ruined her.”

Dave felt his face grow hot, and his hands clenched into fists. All the years of guilt, the worrying, the frustration and anger, collected and smoldered in his hands and face.

His voice sank to a barely contained low. “No, I didn’t. I love Sally. I take care of her as best I can.”

“I should take her away from you.”

“You can’t have her.”

The mother smiled. It was a terrible fault across the expanse of her face. “I already do.” She nodded toward a place over his shoulder, and he wheeled around.

He was inside again, at the top of the stairs. He saw a flashlight beam arc its way across the landing at the bottom, but the source was out of his line of view.

Taking two at a time, he lunged downward. A figure
stepped in front of him just as he hit the bottom and he nearly plowed it over.

“Man, I get that you’re happy to see me, but you don’t need to bowl me over.” Erik laughed.

“Erik?”

“Yeah?”

“I mean,
really
Erik?”

He got Dave’s meaning and punched him lightly in the arm. “Our friend doesn’t seem to like physical contact, right? See, it’s me. In the flesh.”

Dave exhaled in relief. “Thank God.” He pulled the boy into a hug. Erik laughed again.

“Have you seen Cheryl or the boy?”

“Right here,” Cheryl’s voice said. They turned and found her, holding on to Sean’s hand.

“Found ya,” Sean said.

Dave smiled at the sight of her. “Have to test if you’re really you,” he said, and hugged them both, relieved that they were okay. Then, smiling wider, he said, “Still not sure about you, Cheryl,” and swept her up in a hug again. She giggled, and he felt her breath in his ear. It made him want to keep holding on to her, but after a moment longer, he let her go.

“So, what the hell just happened? I mean, one minute I’m following you guys, and the next minute, I’m having a conversation with my father.” Erik exhaled an unsteady breath, and gave them a meaningful look. “My
dead
father. Every time I turned around, the Hollower was there, and I blew every chance to kill it. I’m sorry. I blew it.” He held out a hand, palm down, and studied it. It shook.

“Yeah, we ran into it, too,” Cheryl said, somewhat breathless. Her eyes crinkled in a worried squint, and she glanced once around the basement. “Well,
not the Hollower exactly. But I guess it ran into us. Or over us. We didn’t stand a real fighting chance, either.”

Dave walked to the stairs and peered up. The door at the top smeared as if someone had taken a damp thumb to an ink picture. It looked surreal. Deadly, somehow. Certainly not the way to go. “None of us stand a chance alone,” he said. “It’s too easy, much too easy for it to change up reality and fade back and watch it all happen.”

“It split us up for a reason,” Erik said. “I figure, we stick together and if the Hollower wants us, it’ll have to show its face, so to speak, and come get us.”

“I think we should look for it around here,” Cheryl said, looking to Dave.

Erik shrugged. “I think she’s right. Basement’s got kind of a lairish thing happening.”

“It seems we might have more to go on here than I found in Max’s room. This place feels—”

“Unstable,” Cheryl finished.

“Yeah,” Dave said. “Unstable.” Maybe he’d been wrong about Max’s bedroom. Maybe it wasn’t the hub of the Hollower’s activity but simply the room most grounded in humanity. Maybe it struck him as an eye in the storm of the house not because it was the first place the Hollower retired to, but the last place it touched in its torment of Max, and likely, only after the man died.

In that basement, the feeling was different than in the bedroom. There beneath the house, the solidity of wall and floor gave way to material thrumming with alien life. The very
sureness
of a wall or floor was missing. To get lost in such a place was to mistake a slab of concrete for a safe place to lean, or to
take a step and keep falling through to the center of the world.

The Hollower’s world.

He thought of the vision of Sally, and felt impatient to move forward.

“Anyone see a light switch around here?” Dave felt toward the nearest wall, but found nothing. He didn’t much expect to. The Hollower didn’t need to see, and wouldn’t want to make it any easier for them.

“Nothing up there,” Erik called from the middle of the stairs, then jogged back down. “There isn’t even much of a door anymore.”

“I saw that,” Dave replied with a grim nod. “Nice touch.”

From over by the far wall, Cheryl and Sean shook their heads.

“Okay, I guess we forge ahead with the flashlights.”

Their flashlight beams skittered about ahead of them, but didn’t illuminate much more than a few feet. Their footsteps echoed and as they walked on, Dave got the distinct impression that beyond where the flashlights could penetrate, the walls were drawing back and the distance ahead of them stretching beyond the width of the house.

But then they turned at a bend in the hall and came abruptly upon a wooden door. In the weak light, the irregular patches of chipped paint looked like bloodstains. From beneath the door he heard muted sounds of voices.

Dave held up a hand for them to wait, and they stopped, silent and huddled, behind him.

He turned his head and whispered, “There are people in there.”

“People.” Erik’s whisper implied doubt.

Cheryl touched him lightly on the shoulder. “Maybe Sally?” Dave met her gaze for a moment, and she gave his shoulder a squeeze.

He turned back toward the door. “Let’s find out.” He was aware of the cold metal of the knob before he was conscious of the fact that it was turning in his hand. The door opened.

And the muzzle of a gun pointed directly at the tip of his nose. He felt his stomach bottom out.

The detective from the hospital stood in the doorway. When recognition dawned in her eyes, she lowered the gun.

Her name came to him after a second. “Detective DeMarco?”

“Mr. Kohlar. Ms. Duffy, hello there.” She paused, looking from one to the other, and finally to Sean. She looked unsure what to say next. After a moment, she opted for, “I’ve found your sister.”

Dave’s heart leaped in his chest. “Is she okay?”

DeMarco stepped back to let them pass, and he moved into the room on heavy legs. The others crowded in after him.

Sally sat with her feet tucked under her on the floor and her arms wrapped around her. She rocked gently to a rhythm only she could feel. Dave felt a rush of both relief and lingering fear. She looked okay, but the slack-jawed expression made him worried.

“Sally?” The question sounded so loud in his ears, so pregnant with the things he needed to know.

She kept rocking, but closed her eyes.

Dave crouched next to her. “It’s Dave. Can you hear me?” He felt a lump forming in his throat, which made pleading with her difficult. “Please. Please talk to me.”

She turned her head and gave him a blank stare. “It’s here, in this basement,” she whispered. “The furnace. It says the most awful things.”

Then he saw the gash on his sister’s ankle, the dried blood that had collected over and at the top of her shoe, and looked up at DeMarco, his eyes burning with the beginnings of tears. “What happened?”

The detective reholstered her gun. “I wish I could tell you, but that’s all she’ll say. I was hoping
you
could tell
me
.” When none of them answered, she added, “Look, I’ll spare you the breaking and entering bit, since I have a pretty good idea why you’re here. I’ll also spare you the interrogation, since I would bet a paycheck that none of you brought Ms. Kohlar here yourselves. And I also figure that whatever condition Ms. Kohlar suffers from, none of you were the ones who made it worse since she’s been gone. But someone did. Someone made it a whole lot worse. Someone you’re all here looking for. But what I don’t get,” she said finally, “I mean, what I’ve been spending the better part of the last half hour trying to wrap my brain around, is what the hell this Hollower really is. And how does it mess up the world the way it does? Because that’s enough to break
anyone
.”