The Hollower (29 page)

He felt his balance thrown and his good arm pinwheeled for a moment, and then he caught himself. His heart thudded in his chest.

“Damn it, she’s out of reach,” he told DeMarco.

She frowned, keeping a wary eye on the blackness. It had closed half the distance between Dave and Sally.

“We have to get her.” DeMarco pulled out her gun.

“Drag her back, if we have to.” Erik wiped sweaty palms on his jeans. His wound had started to seep blood again, and small throbs of pain coursed down the length of his arm.

“Count of three?”

Erik shrugged. “Just say ‘go.’ ”

DeMarco paused for a beat, then said, “Go.”

They jogged out onto the lawn. Immediately, the blades of grass
whicked
as if caught in a wind and sliced into their shins and calves. Some blades reached the bottom of his knees. He stopped a moment, and the blades and terrible cutting stopped, too.

Of course. Neat little psychological trick, right there
.

The blackness, having sensed not one but three large chunks of meaty prey, flowed forward on a hungry tide.

“Come on,” DeMarco said with barely concealed impatience. She fired at the tide and it stopped, back-splashing away from them.

Sally was within arm’s reach. The black oozed forward.

“Grab her.” DeMarco fired again, two shots, arresting the flow.

Erik put a hand on Sally’s arm, but she wrenched it away.

“Sally—”

“Go away.”

“Oh, hell no, sister. No time for this bullshit.” He bent at the knee, feeling blades of grass sink through his jeans and tiger-stripe his thighs. Then he scooped up Sally.

She was light—too light. Too soft. It was like picking up a doll. She wriggled a little, and he felt it where the Hollower had taken a chunk of his arm, but she was not nearly strong enough to make a difference to his balance. He held tight anyway.

“Anita, let’s go.”

She nodded, fired once more at the oncoming black, and ran back through the grass, wincing. She was shorter than Erik, and the blades cut higher—thighs, even hips. By the time she reached the patio, her pants sported long, crimson crisscrosses along both legs.

Erik lagged behind. Sally kicked her feet, pounding little fists against his chest, but he ignored it. The grass wrapped itself around his ankles, and each step required a pull, followed by a painful gash and the burn of open wound.

He looked at the edge of the patio—the cool tiles, the smooth tiles—and stopped. The grass eased its hold. Behind him, he could hear a low hum, like a thousand tiny voices. In the pause, even Sally grew quiet, her legs limp, her fists curled up against her chest.

Erik waited another second. Then he dove for the patio. The grass tried to tighten around his legs again, but it was a second too late. He stepped onto
the tiles and away from the lawn and when he turned, he saw blades still reaching, still making blind swipes at the air where he’d been. He put Sally down, staying close for several moments to make sure she wouldn’t bolt for the lawn again. She didn’t.

Cheryl was there, hugging him suddenly.

“Good job, Erik.” Her voice sounded heavy, and when she pulled away, he saw tears in her eyes.

They turned to Dave, who still hung off a picket across from the edge of the house. His pale face looked relieved, nonetheless. He called out, “Thank you!” Erik thought he mouthed something else—could have been a prayer, could have been more thanks—before turning, with some degree of reluctance, Erik thought, back to the fence.

When Dave faced the wood again, he let the tears go. He cried for the absurdity of having to hang on to a goddamned fence, and for nearly having lost Sally to a bloody lawn. He cried that she was so broken. He cried for having been so much a coward and a failure that once again, instead of saving her, he was as far away as possible, and he cried because it was better that way, with him strung up on old wood, caught between two dimensions. Better because the ex-junkie and the cop were the bravest, most beautiful people he knew right then, and he was glad that he’d convinced DeMarco to let him leave Sally in their care.

He cried because they were going to die in that yard, every one of them, because their sole plan of escape rested on him. Their entire plan since the beginning had rested on him, and he hadn’t had a clue any step of the way.

And when the silent tears were done, he sniffed, wiped his eyes with the back of his sleeve, and inched forward again. The picket behind him creaked, then groaned. When it fell, the rush of wind nearly tore him off his spot on the fence. He held on, eyes squeezed shut, until he heard the thud of wood smacking tile. Then he chanced another look behind him. The others came running. Erik held Sally’s hand, tugging her gently along.

DeMarco grinned at him. “You’re better than we thought,” she said. “Nice bridge.”

The break was a foot or so off the lawn, creating a slight incline from the tiles to the fence. But its weight rested sturdy on that fence. The others could cross there, and continue out the gate. That is, if Dave could open it.

“Heh. I’m a regular mastermind up here.” He gave them a grim smile, and jerked his head toward the gate. “Almost there.”

“Good luck, Dave,” Sean said.

“Thanks.”

Dave turned his attention back. The gate was all that mattered now. Three more pickets. Left foot, right foot, left foot. Two more. Cramped hand. Burned calf. Left foot right foot left foot. One more.

The gate had no noticeable cracks or crevices, other than the keyhole.

He remembered the odd tool in his belt loop, and wondered. Letting go of the wood with one hand, he reached for it and worked it free. He had the crazy notion then (
why call it crazy?
) that all of those strange tools laid out on that slab of obsidian were keys, and that whatever lay on the other side of the gate depended entirely on which key one used.

Dave hoped to God he’d chosen the right one.

Behind him, DeMarco had one foot on the fallen picket, ready to help him if he needed it. The others crowded close behind her.

“Hold hands,” he told her.

“Sorry?”

“Hold their hands. I think . . . I think things are going to change.”

DeMarco didn’t question him further. She took Erik’s hand and Sean’s, who took Cheryl’s. Sally looked up at him, tilting her head to the left.

“Are we going home, Davey?”

He nodded between breaths. The strength of holding himself up on the fence was starting to get to him. “We’re going to try.”

“Our home, or its home?”

“Don’t know, hon. I don’t know.”

Dave pointed the tip of the key—he was nearly sure now that a key was exactly what it was—and it slid in, glinting burgundy off the gold plate.

Nothing happened. Dave gave it a slight turn, and it clicked.

He looked at them, all but Sally paused in anticipation, eyes expectant, each clutching a hand, chests rising and falling, lips chewed and an air of silent prayer hanging overhead.

Dave wondered for a minute where the Hollower had gone, and why it hadn’t come out after them while they were in the backyard. It occurred to him that maybe it was there, though, all along. Maybe it was the little figure disguised, watching, waiting for them to fall prey to the lawn, waiting for them to scale the fence and sail off into the space between worlds.

It occurred to him to that maybe by their drawing
the Hollower into the physical world, all the deviations and changes and overlaps and wrinkles of reality it had caused, once fluid and subject to the Hollower’s whim, took on physicality, too. In whole or in part, its skewed perceptions had dried and hardened into nightmarescapes. When Dave opened that gate, he’d be unleashing whatever else had taken form from its mind.

Dave was terrified.

He thought he heard DeMarco say, “Do it” as he turned back to the gate.
Do it, one quick shove, fast and forceful like ripping off a Band-Aid
.

With a grunt, he pushed the gate open, and a giant shark-mouth rushed forward, obscuring all else, roaring humid heat and the stench of rotting meat, and its long black gullet swallowed them all whole.

For what felt like a long time, it lost them in the maelstrom of hate. It was being pinched and stretched into parts scrabbling for dominance, clawing each other in a race to the same goal. It was spread apart and snapped together, and the dark and empty spaces inside, in between, blinded it to everything else, even to the sense of them.

They had done this. They had hurt it. Its hold on the reins of both worlds slipped. It could not have meat biting back. It would not tolerate their survival.

The voids inside it roared. It screamed with them, and fought against them.

And then it was whole again. Hungry. Angry.

The Hollower had regained some control.

As suddenly as they had been swallowed up, they found the long throat and the smell of decay and the
thunderous din ceased. Dave found himself facedown on a lawn—the front lawn, maybe—with his arms flung over his head. He dropped his hands to leverage himself up and picked up his head. He moved slowly, aware of the blades of grass. Out front they were smaller, but that didn’t mean they were any less dangerous.

He pushed himself up on his knees, listened for the angry hum of blackness, and heard nothing. He patted the grass to his right. It felt soft, cool, and a little dewy. Probably safe. The Hollower was done with that particular game, for now.

In front of him lay the metallic key he’d used to open the gate, and without really thinking too much about it, he picked it up and tucked it into his belt loop. Then he got up and looked around.

Cheryl lay half on top of Sean as if to protect him from falling debris, her arms curled around his head and back. DeMarco lay somewhat crumpled and awkward on the porch steps. Erik lay on the driveway. A trickle of blood had run from his nose and down the cheek turned to the pavement. His eyes were closed.

No one moved. For one horrible moment, Dave thought maybe he was the only one left alive.

Then Erik groaned and stirred, followed by DeMarco, who winced and rubbed her shoulder as she sat up on the step.

“Everyone okay?” She got up to help Cheryl, who was shaking Sean gently. The boy’s eyes fluttered open. He had a small bruise on his cheek, below his right eye. Dave got up on shaky legs. He didn’t see Sally anywhere.

His chest felt tight. His throat, made drier by
heavy breaths, issued a weak cough when he tried to call her name. He jumped when he felt a hand on his shoulder.

When he turned, he saw Sally standing behind him. She offered him a small smile, and he pulled her into a hug.

“Thank God.”

Cheryl squeezed his arm. “She was over by the gate.”

Dave followed where Cheryl pointed to the side of the Feinstein house, to a normal-looking gate at the end of a normal-looking wooden fence to the backyard. In fact, when he let go of Sally and took a good look around the neighborhood, everything looked as it should. His car was parked on the street where he’d left it and another car, ostensibly DeMarco’s, was parked behind it. The other houses stood still, their doors locked, their curtains drawn, their lights out for the night. Garbage cans lined the curb, and they rattled soft rhythms in the wind.

“Looks like we’re back.” Dave wasn’t sure how, but there they were. “Back where we started.”

“I don’t get it,” Cheryl said. “Why did it let us go?”

“Maybe it gave up.” Erik ventured a grin.

“Maybe.” DeMarco gave Dave a skeptical look.

Dave was inclined to agree with DeMarco’s doubt. He was pretty sure they hadn’t killed it. He wasn’t even sure if they’d hurt it that badly. So why
had
it let them go?

“Something’s wrong.” Sean’s gaze fixed on the house across the street—his house.

“What is it?” DeMarco put a hand on Sean’s shoulder.

“That’s not my house.”

“What do you mean?”

Sean shook his head. “It’s . . . wrong. I don’t know.” He looked down one end of the street, then the other. “This isn’t my street. I think . . . I think if we were to go all the way to the end of the street on either side, we’d find dead ends. Or daylight. Or corners of the real world. But not this night, not this place. This isn’t my street.”

Cheryl gave a suspicious glance around the neighborhood. “How can you tell, sweetie? It looks okay to us.”

Sean pointed. “See my window up there, on the right? Left of that shutter there should be a scuff in the paint from where I hit a baseball and it bounced off the house. The way the moon’s hitting the house, you oughta be able to see it. And see Mrs. Parks’s whatchamacallit? The thing with the plants on it?”

“Trellis,” Cheryl offered.

“Yeah, trellis. There’s nothing wrong with hers. She keeps it clean and grows ivy on it. That one’s chipped, and it’s missing that piece of wood there. And that isn’t like the kind of ivy she grows. Isn’t like any kind of ivy at all, at least none I’ve ever seen.”

Dave squinted, looking hard at the trellis between Sean’s house and the house next to it. It looked a little shabby, true, but nothing weathering wouldn’t have caused. But then, it was Sean’s neighborhood. He’d probably spent every nice summer day out in that street playing with his friends, soaking up the colors and fibers of his stomping ground. He probably did know every scuffed shingle and every painted trellis. And the kid had a point about the ivy. Now that Dave looked at it, it looked black, snaking through the diamond-shaped openings. It seemed
alive with movement—breathing, pulsing, slithering, its leaves curling and uncurling.

“And over there,” Sean added after a time. “Mr. Porticallo’s house, four down on the right. He’s always had an oak tree on his front lawn with one low-hanging branch. When I was eight, he used to let me and my friends climb it all the time.”

Dave saw the lawn that Sean meant. There was a maple tree to either side. No oak.

Sean shook his head. “It’s like the Hollower wants us to see that it changed just enough of this street to still own it.” He made a little fist, his face knotted in anger. “It didn’t let us go. It’s messing with us.”