The Hollower (31 page)

The whips pulled a little more, and this time the groaning sound came from within Sally. Her head lolled. The Hollower raised a claw.

Without a word, Dave charged forward.

He felt it when he drove the sharp end of the key through what should have been a face—he felt the texture of the Hollower’s head, the terribly wrong softness that killed the first few layers of skin on his fist and split his knuckles. He felt a small imploding from inside it somewhere and beneath that, like a vacuum behind cheesecloth, he felt a sucking against his hand. He let go of the handle. A claw knocked the wind out of his chest, and he went stumbling back. Already, the pain in his hand was growing numb.

The Hollower did not cry out, but its whole body trembled. Its head shook like it was trying to clear its mind, or bring the world back into focus. With spasmodic jerks, it wobbled on its long and now unsure scissor legs. Its whips fell away from Sally, who crumpled on the grass. Then they thudded into the earth in unison, its claws chattering irregularly in some spastic SOS.

Dave hooked his arms under Sally’s armpits and dragged her away from the Hollower. Her eyes were closed, but she whimpered in her throat, and in between whimpers, she mumbled words. He couldn’t make out all of it, but he caught enough: “It hurt me,” and “I’m scared of it, Davey.”

Around the key in its head, the wound distorted, tugged and snapped back against the metal. Beneath its chest, the taffy pull of its insides made movement beneath the pale and fluttering chest.

The claws picked up a fevered pace, opening and closing so fast they almost blurred. Then they slumped at its sides and the chest lurched up as if the force inside it pushed it toward the sky. The swan curve of its neck lashed back and forth, and the blades fell out of its back and clattered on the ground.

It sank toward the earth, slumping a little, twitching its head, its body wracked by shudders it could not control.

Its last breath, if it could have been said to even have a breath, sounded like thunder, cracking against the sky. Then it collapsed on the grass. From beneath, the blades bit into its skin, embedded like shrapnel.

For a long time, no one said anything. Dave concentrated on the throbbing in his thigh, the pain keeping him alert and aware, keeping him from sinking to the ground. He put a protective arm around Cheryl, and another around Sally. The former, breathless, maintained her ground but leaned against him, her bloodstained hand pressing the wound on her shoulder. The latter trembled slightly, slack in the crook of his elbow.

To his right, DeMarco squeezed Sean’s hand. Erik leaned against her on the other side, bruised, bloody, his eyelids heavy.

All around them, subtle changes rippled through the neighborhood: houses regrafted with vinyl siding, scalps balding to reveal grass beneath hair, bones sinking into the earth, maples to oaks, trellises whole and blooming with ivy, scuffs on house siding, cars restored to usable condition. The shower of gore dried up and disappeared from their clothes and hair, and the stench of dead meat dissipated.

They were back.

Before them, the Hollower lay, but not quite still—not yet. Inside, something still stretched and expanded the shell of the body, and it began to emit a low wail like an air-raid siren far, far off in the distance. The sound seemed sad to Dave, the leaking out of a life of anger and hate and nothing else to be remembered by. The end of a predator known only through the eyes of prey.

The wailing continued long after the movement beneath its surface grew still and the whole of the monster sank a little in the grass.

“Is it dead?” Erik limped forward. “Maybe we should—”

He flinched when a black bolt of what looked like lightning schismed the air above the Hollower, stopping just short of its body. The bolt—more of an inversion, Dave thought, or some kind of rip—crackled with energy, tearing open the air of River Falls Road. It quickly grew to about six feet in height, then pulled apart, gaping like a mouth turned on its side.

The wailing inside the dying thing ceased.

And through the rip stepped three Hollowers,
each blank-faced, gloved, and trench-coated, hats tipped low on hairless heads, black-clad legs stepping carefully down into the grass around their dead comrade, their feetless shoes not really touching any part of the earth at all. Behind them, the fissure between worlds sizzled and hummed.

In unison, they looked up at Dave and his friends, and the luminous white committee of facelessness seethed with hate.

Two bent low, one at the head and the other at the legs. For several long moments, their gloves passed over the body as if they were swishing the air above it to clear it for a better view. With each pass, they made muted sounds that reminded Dave vaguely of whales—mournful, angry sounds that got into the meat of him and stuck there.

Their arms slid beneath the body and lifted it up. They didn’t look quite like they were touching it, but rather, the air between it and their arms rippled and blurred and that carried its weight. The third Hollower stood watching, almost daring Dave and the others to try and stop them. It tilted its head, and raised an arm, its fingers spread in a wave. But then the fingers curled into a fist it held away from its body, and from the black balled glove, blood pattered into the grass. When it opened its fist again, palm out, he saw clean black leather. Behind it, the other two Hollowers disappeared with their fallen back into the black rip.

The last watched them without eyes for several moments, and Dave heard a whisper, sexless, powerful, but somehow of a different timbre than their original Hollower.

In his ear, it said, “Found you.” Then it stepped through the rip, which promptly zippered up and disappeared with a pop, until it was as if nothing had ever been there at all.

Dave felt dizzy for a minute, leaning against the women on both sides of him. He wasn’t sure if that Hollower simply meant to echo the last thing the dead one had said to them, or if maybe—

His brain swallowed the second thought. He wouldn’t consider it, wouldn’t entertain the possibility.

Sean ran to Cheryl and buried his face in her stomach. He laughed and it dissolved, as laughter sometimes does, into tears of relief.

“Let me walk you home, baby,” she cooed at him, and he nodded into her top. Taking his hand, she started with him across the street. Erik, DeMarco, and Dave with Sally in tow followed to the far curb, but Cheryl brought him up to the door.

The boy put a hand on the knob, glanced back once at her, then peered around her to the others. “Thank you.” To her he repeated it specifically: “Thank you, Cheryl.”

It looked as if he wanted to say more, but couldn’t
think of anything that better said what his “thank you” encompassed. Cheryl gave him a hug, then waved as he disappeared through the door.

When she turned back to them, there were tears in her eyes, but she was smiling.

“We did it,” she whispered. She walked up to Dave and kissed him, and nothing had ever felt so good, so complete to him. He slipped his free arm around her waist, wanting to hold on to her forever. He thought that maybe he could—not because he was a great protector or a brilliant man or even a brave one, but because he earnestly cared about her, and he thought she knew he would try, at least, to be everything else to her that he’d never thought he could be to anyone.

When the kiss ended, and the others, with embarrassed grins, nodded toward the car, he held her hand as they crossed the street.

At the detective’s car, Erik limped over to DeMarco, who was returning her gun to its holster, and stuck out a hand.

“You take care of yourself, Erik.” She pulled him into a hug instead, and although he winced in pain, he smiled.

“Don’t think I can do much more damage than this, eh? Hey, tell Detective Mendez I said hi when you see him, okay?”

DeMarco pulled away from him, looking pained for a moment, but then she said, “You got it.”

To Dave and Cheryl, she said, “We should take Sally to the hospital.”

Dave nodded, and caught the detective’s eye. She winked at him, then leaned in and said, “She’s lucky to have a big brother like you.”

He didn’t know if he had ever been a good big brother or not, but he thought that maybe it had never been about fixing her, or keeping her from falling apart. Maybe it had always simply been about keeping her comfortable and safe, and not beating himself up because he couldn’t do more.

He smiled. “Thank you, Detective.”

“How about you, Anita—are you okay?”

DeMarco waved Cheryl’s question away. “I’m fine. I’m a tough broad.”

“And your cases?”

DeMarco grinned at Cheryl as she opened her car door. “You folks are gonna cost me a hell of a lot of confusing paperwork. But I’ll survive.” She got in the car, then leaned out her window, waiting for them to pull away to follow them out of the development.

Dave put Sally in the passenger seat. She sank against the fabric and smiled up at him, but her eyes were vacant. He wasn’t sure she even recognized who he was. Erik got in behind her, and Cheryl next to him, and Dave drove them all away from River Falls Road.

They dropped Erik off first, at home. He said he’d go to the hospital later, but right then, the most important thing was that he get home. He only wanted to see his girlfriend. Not just see her but
feel
her, to make sure she was okay. Dave could understand that.

She likely had been waiting by the window, since she came running out to greet him before he’d even managed to hobble too far from the car. She hugged him, almost hugged through him, and he hugged her back.

He waved good-bye as Dave, Cheryl, and DeMarco
pulled away from the curb, but neither he nor his girl let go, nor even looked up. Dave suspected it would be a long time before either of them did.

DeMarco discovered her police radio worked on the way to the hospital, when it crackled to life, startling her out of worried thoughts about Bennie.

It was his voice, though, that came through.

“DeMarco, where the hell are you?”

She frowned, picking up the radio to respond. “Bennie?”

“Yeah. Where’ve you been for the last few hours? We were at sixty-eight River Run Road, then radioed the station, then went back to the station, then went to sixty-eight River
Falls
Road, then radioed in again—”

“Bennie, is it you?”

A pause, then, “Yeah, An, it’s me. You sound funny. You okay? What happened to you?” His voice, gentle, sounded concerned.

She eyed the car ahead of her, full of weary bodies and tired spirits. “Nothing. Nothing, I’m fine.”

“Did you check out the Feinstein place? Everything okay?”

“Fine. Yeah. I found the Kohlar woman wandering around inside. Her brother and I are taking her to the hospital now.”

“Wanna tell me about it?” Cop hunch. He knew something was up—something unprotocol, something off-kilter. She could hear it in his voice.

“Yeah, I do, actually. Later. Later, I want to tell you a lot of things. You gonna be around?”

“Sure.” He sounded pleased. “For you, Annie, I’m always around.”

She smiled. “Good. ’Cause I like you around.”

In the background, she heard Rubelli’s voice singsong an “oooooooh” reminiscent of grade school teases.

“Shut up, man,” Bennie said, but she could hear laughter through the radio. To her, he said, “See you later?”

“Looking forward to it.” Then she clicked off with him, and radioed the station.

Inside, she felt warm and giggly. May was right about her feelings for Bennie Mendez, but then, May was always right.

There were police reports to be filed, and medical papers to fill out, and insurance issues to be taken care of. Sally’s ankle had to be bandaged, as well as DeMarco’s wrist, and both Cheryl and Dave needed stitches. DeMarco fielded the hospital’s questions. And when all of that was said and done, when a few weeks stretched into a few months and the dreams faded from the night’s rotation, Dave started to relax.

He sat on the porch swing with Sally, enjoying the sunset. It was Friday afternoon, and he’d taken the day off from work to come see her. He went to see Sally regularly in the assisted living community that Dr. Fiorello suggested. Sally trusted the new doctor, and seemed to like him much better than she had Dr. Stevens. And Dave liked Oak Hill. The community was quiet, pleasant, a comforting series of cool white-stone buildings encasing a hilly green lawn on which most of the residents met for picnic lunches, chess or checkers, or occasionally, to paint pictures or play games. Dave thought Sally was content
there. The whole place kept an easy, soothing rhythm that appealed to her gears-out-of-whack.

“You okay? You warm enough?” He adjusted the blanket over Sally’s lap, and she giggled, waving him away.

“I’m okay, Davey.” Sometimes she knew his name.

“Okay, then.” He stood. “I’ve gotta go now, hon. I’ll come see you Sunday, okay?”

She stared off across the rolling lawn between the buildings. She’d already forgotten he was there.

“See ya, Sals.” He kissed the top of her head, then walked down the steps and around the corner to where Cheryl was waiting.

Cheryl smiled when she saw him, and linked her arm through his. “How is she?”

Dave shrugged. “Comfortable. Safe.”

Those things—comfort, safety—had finally settled into the cracks and grooves of his life, and he was glad for it.

He saw Erik sometimes; the boy had eventually gone for stitches in his arm and some bandages for his other injuries, and was healing up nicely. When they ran into each other at the Tavern, they made light, easy conversation—Erik and Casey’s wedding plans, movies, the latest Yankee game, a bar joke that Erik had heard at N.A. Sometimes, after a shift, even Detective DeMarco would stop in for a drink. And Cheryl would come by with her cloth and wipe the bar down and put a Diet Pepsi in front of each of them, and the conversation would be both comfortable and safe. The Hollower hung between them, keeping them from ever really enjoying the silences of friendship, but they were content to talk around it, and to fill the spaces with anything else.
They didn’t talk about the Hollower directly. Not there.