The Hollows--A Novel

by Jess Montgomery

  “And his smell,” Jolene says. “I think he smelled like tobacco?”

  Lily pulls her children back to her. She rocks on the edge of Micah’s bed, as if they’re all in a rocking chair. “Your father did often smell like tobacco. Don’t worry. Someday, the both of you, you’ll sense him—maybe when you need to do something very brave, or maybe when you need some guidance—and you’ll know what to do. That will be him. Letting you know.” She presses her eyes shut. She doesn’t know if she believes this to be true. She must tell her children something to ease their fears. To ease her own fears, of both her and her children forever being haunted, not by Daniel’s presence in the form of a ghost, but by his very absence.

  She presses her eyes shut, breathing in the sweet, soft scents of her children. A surge of gratitude for Mama swells her heart. She must have helped them get their baths. Then a surge of longing to protect her children from all the cruelty of the world.

  The thought crosses Lily’s mind—Jolene lost her father at almost the same age as Thea lost hers.

  The stark image of Thea fills Lily’s mind’s eye, even as she rocks her children: her small, almost childlike body, in just the nightgown, tossed like a doll into the woods alongside the track, her head and body broken by the impact of the train and then the hard, cold earth.

  Had a ghost from the past caused her to make the trek from the Hollows Asylum to the Moonvale Hollow Tunnel? Something that had haunted her since her childhood, something that had happened when she’d lived on the old Dyer farm?

  Lily sighs, and her children grow heavy against her. The rhythms of their breaths lengthen and even.

  Tomorrow in Cincinnati, she will somehow find Thea’s son, and hope that he knows something from his mother’s past that will lend insight—and that he’ll be willing to share it.

  Finally, Jolene and Micah have fallen asleep. Lily carefully lets Micah down onto his bed. He sighs as his head rests on his pillow. Lily carries Jolene to her bedroom, careful not to disturb Mama on the other twin bed, tucks her in, then goes back to Micah to make sure he’s covered by his blanket. She checks on Caleb Jr., still sound asleep. She smiles. Her little brother could sleep through anything.

  Then Lily stares at her bedroom door. All that talk of Daniel … she does not want to be in their bedroom—her bedroom—alone. It’s late, but she might as well get the damned pie made for the weekend’s county fair. She can ask Mama or Hildy to deliver it to the judging tent, while she goes to Cincinnati on the morning train.

  She makes the pie with only half her mind on the task, mixing up the lard crust, then while it bakes, cooking the filling on the stove top, comprised of simple ingredients always on hand—eggs, sugar, flour, water, white vinegar. Then Lily pours the filling into the crust and while it bakes a while longer cleans up and nearly laughs out loud as she thinks how Mama calls this (along with its sorghum and sugar cream cousins) a desperation pie, as in, pie is called for, but very few ingredients are handy. Desperation fits her mood—desperate to solve the case of Thea’s death, to stem the hatred rising in her county, to take care of her children, to find a way back to being gentler with Hildy and Marvena and Mama.…

  After Lily puts the vinegar pie to cool on the worktable, she heads back through the parlor. Surely, now, she can sleep. But in the parlor, she pauses by her desk. She’d only just mailed her reply to Benjamin Russo in Cincinnati. Would it be odd to find the Bureau of Mines office in Cincinnati, drop in, wish him luck in his new post in the Kinship region? She closes her eyes, trying to imagine how it would play out. Hello, Mr. Russo. I happened to be in Cincinnati on a case, and thought I’d drop by to wish you the best.… Implausible. Cincinnati is a huge city, not a town like Kinship where it’s commonplace and simple to “drop by.” Hello, Mr. Russo. I’m in Cincinnati on a case and thought it would be efficient for me to discuss how area law enforcement might help with your office’s research into safety practices.… Ridiculous. How could it help? Oh God, another possible reason to visit arises unbidden from the deepest part of her: Ben, I’d love to see you when you’re in Kinship, to get to know you better.…

  Exhaustion overcomes her, like a sudden fever. She places one hand on the back of Daniel’s old chair, swaying from weariness, but she can’t bring herself to sit down in it, not yet. After a moment, she opens her eyes and makes her way back upstairs.

  * * *

  Hours later, Lily stirs to confused, fuzzy wakefulness.

  She sits up, rubs her eyes, the mist of some strange, troubled dream quickly receding. She sighs, letting it go, not trying to grasp its last slippery tentacles and pull it back to her. It is a relief to be free of whatever it was.

  Now a shout from outside, below her window, startles her. More voices rising. It must be this commotion that awakened her.

  Lily rushes to her bedroom window, pulls back the drapery, and stares at the sight below.

  A cross, erected on her front lawn. Burning. In the light of the flames, hooded and caped figures. One turns its hollow, soulless slits for eyes up to her window.

  Oh God. So this is why Margaret was so willing to be taken to jail. To whip up her followers into rash, hateful action.

  The children. Mama. She must get them out.

  She wakes them, hurries them down the stairs, to the kitchen door. Lily thrusts Micah into Mama’s arms, even though Mama is already holding crying, confused Caleb Jr. Poor boy—he couldn’t sleep through this atrocity.

  “Go to Hildy’s! Get her to take you to Mrs. Gottschalk’s!” Lily orders her mother.

  “Mama!” Micah screams, reaching for her, and Jolene grabs on to Lily’s nightgown. But Lily shoves her daughter toward Mama. “Make sure Mamaw does as I’ve said!”

  Then Lily rushes back in, grabs her shotgun from the mantel. By the time she is out on her front porch, the Klanswomen have gone, disappeared into the veil of night.

  Anger seethes and rises, and Lily lets loose with a fierce scream.

  The corrupt cross, its flames a desecration of all a cross should stand for, crackles and collapses, falling toward the porch roof. Lily jumps back, into the house, runs back to the kitchen. It seems hopeless, but she puts her rifle on the kitchen worktable, nearly knocking off the vinegar pie, and fills a bucket at the pump sink. The water sloshes out, soaking her gown, as she runs out the back and around to the front of her house, gasping with desperation and shock, and sorrow at the impossibility of her task. She’ll never get the flames out, alone.

  But as Lily comes around to the front, she sees that she is not alone. Men and women in neighboring houses have heard the commotion, too, seen the burning cross, the flames now spreading across the roof porch. They’ve come with buckets of their own water, and someone has a ladder up alongside the house, and a bucket brigade gets under way, as more and more people pour out of their homes and join the communal effort.

  A process is already unfolding—a few older people in line to pass along the full buckets to the man going up and down the ladder, while sprier folks bring buckets of water to toss on the burning lawn. The air is filled with the smell of woodsmoke and the hiss and crackle of the flames already dying out and the alarmed voices of people calling out to one another.

  Someone hands her an empty bucket, but she shakes her head. She can’t become part of the brigade, not yet. “The prisoners! I have to get them out of the jailhouse in case the fire spreads.” She must get the prisoners to safety. Even Margaret. Lily’d spoken tonight about the rule of law, and she knows she must stand for it, even for those she considered the community’s vilest members.

  A man holding a bucket of water turns and looks at her. It is Leroy, the guard she’d fired, one of the men who had jeered her at the debate. He pauses for a moment, giving her a look that is a mix of regret and sorrow, and then he hands his bucket to someone else.

  “I’ll help you,” he says. “We can get them to the courthouse.”

  As Lily runs alongside Leroy, she glances back at the brigade that’s quic
kly formed to douse the hateful burning cross, to save the sheriff’s house.

  This too is her community.

  CHAPTER 28

  HILDY

  Wednesday, September 29—10:00 a.m.

  “I wish to take back my statement,” Margaret says.

  Hildy looks up, startled. As she’d swept the threshold to the jailhouse, her thoughts had been on the news that Lily had received from the undertaker that Thea would be buried today in the Kinship Cemetery. Though it should fall to Mother or Thea’s mysterious son as Thea’s next of kin, Lily had agreed to pay for the burial out of her personal funds, but would not witness the internment, as she was making sure her children, Mama, and her little brother were safely settled in at Widow Gottschalk’s—and after that, she was determined to be on the train later this afternoon to Cincinnati.

  Now Margaret sits primly on the edge of her straw mattress, as if she is waiting at the train depot, rather than in jail for having beaten a woman.

  For once—more’n likely because it is mid-week—the jailhouse is relatively empty. Margaret is in her cell. Another is empty, and in the third a man sleeps off too much moonshine, face to wall, his snores so loud they nearly rattle the cell bars.

  “You heard me,” Margaret says. “I wish to retract my statement about beating Miss Olive Harding. I would never do such a thing. I only said as much because Sheriff Ross intimidated me. My husband will attest to this fact. He stepped out of the room to bring me a drink of water, and while he was gone, Sheriff Ross threatened to hurt us—to, to burn down our very house if I didn’t confess! Missy Ranklin happened to come into the room, and hear the threat.”

  Hildy stares in shock at the woman. Lily would do no such thing.

  But Perry would back up his wife, and Missy would vouch for her benefactress.

  Margaret snaps her fingers twice, impatiently. “Well, go!”

  Hildy flinches. Margaret’s smile crawls farther up her face.

  For a moment, the exhaustion, the smell of bleach Hildy had used to disinfect the cell where the ill prisoner had been, the memory of the night before, all spin Hildy around. The earth comes up toward her and she grabs the doorframe.

  She thinks of Olive’s beaten, broken body. She does not rush to get Lily, as she once would have. Instead, as Lily would, Hildy calculates.

  Margaret’s willing admission to Olive’s brutal beating … of course that would get her arrested, put her in the jailhouse, her flock stirred up, but she herself with the perfect alibi for last night’s WKKK attack. Maybe she’d even ordered them to act as they had if she was ever arrested.

  Hildy leans her broom against the wall, tapping the handle loudly enough to stir the hungover prisoner. As Hildy strides to her jail cell, now Margaret flinches—how satisfying. It’s Hildy’s turn to smile as she says, “You planned this.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Go fetch the sheriff—and ask your dear mother what she thinks of your liaison with that filthy miner.”

  Hildy recoils. How does Margaret know about Tom—unless some of the women of Rossville are in the WKKK? Why reference Mother—Oh God. What if Mother is part of the hateful group? What if she’d been at the Dyer farm that night? What if she recognized Thea?

  Hildy turns, runs from the jailhouse after all. As she goes out the door, she brushes against the broom, knocking it to the ground. The sound of its crack against the earth does not mask Margaret’s trill of laughter.

  * * *

  “I don’t know, Hildy.” Lily sighs, busily folding a few items of clothing for her travel bag. “Yes, your mother implied to me that she is part of the women’s Klan—but I don’t know.”

  Hildy stands in the doorway to Lily’s bedroom. “What if she was there? Saw Cousin Thea? What if—” Hildy’s voice withers. Does she really think her mother would be capable of murder? Mother clearly still hates Thea. What on earth could be between them from all those years ago to keep alive such vile emotion?

  Lily turns abruptly, her gaze scorching Hildy with impatience. “Thank you for telling me about Margaret. I will let the judge know before I leave. Hildy—you look weary. Just rest while I am gone. I have the deputies in place that I need—”

  “You’re angry about me and Tom.”

  Lily jerks back as if stung. “Oh, Hildy. I—Yes, I wish you’d told me, rather than Marvena. I know I’ve been preoccupied—” Lily looks down. Maybe, finally, if only for a few moments, they will talk, find their way back to friendship. When Lily looks back up, her expression is again shuttered. “Hildy, go to Thea’s burial today, and after that lay low while I’m gone. It will just be for a few days. Tell you what—you want to help? Just type up my notes from this case.” Lily picks up a notebook, hands it to Hildy. “I’ve filled up this one, and hopefully, I’ll fill up pages in the new one with information that will put an end to this case.” She gestures at her bag, holding the new notebook.

  Hildy stares at the notebook she’s holding. A typist for Lily. Busywork. Surely not—but as she looks up at Lily, she sees the pity and worry in her friend’s eyes.

  Lily looks away, as if ashamed at being caught pitying Hildy. She picks up a hairbrush, pushes it into her bag, adding, “If anything, go to Mrs. Gottschalk’s to check on … everyone, and if Olive decides to press charges, go immediately to the judge, and—”

  “I have an idea,” Hildy blurts. “I’ve been thinking about a way I could help us learn more about Thea’s motivation to leave the asylum—”

  Before Hildy can explain, Lily crosses the room, as quickly as if she’d flown. She grabs Hildy by her shoulders and gives her a shake. “No! Hildy, don’t do anything! I will see what I can learn from Thea’s son. Just do as I ask.”

  * * *

  A few hours later, Hildy alone stands in the Kinship Cemetery, save for the three gravediggers waiting quietly outside the gate. The closed pine box holding Thea’s remains is next to a neat rectangle they’ve already dug.

  A stiff wind blows across the top of the hill, making leaves chatter mournfully to one another. Far off, a bird chirps. One of the workers spits a stream of tobacco.

  Hildy wishes for Frankie, who would know a song to sing. Or Lily, who in spite of her gruff doubts would have a Bible verse handy. Marvena or Mama or Nana would all know something to say. Tom might put a gentle, comforting hand on her shoulder.

  Hildy, by herself, finds her mind a gray blank—and not just from the hour and a half she’d spent typing up and organizing Lily’s notes. A blur of impressions, interviews, even dates from the Dyer family cemetery. A jumble of facts and tidbits, like rags in a box saved for a quilt, but none of them yet coming together in a clear pattern.

  Still, she’d fulfilled her obligation. Left the notes on Lily’s desk. Her hands are stiff from typing so fast, so hard. Now she forces herself to reconstruct at least an outline of what she and Lily had learned about Thea Kincaide.

  Thea had lost her father when she was just seven, in 1857. She’d said it was at the hand of John, an escaped slave her father had been helping, and remarkably, her identification of him had been sufficient for the court at the time to convict John and hang him to death in the town square.

  In 1857, Thea and her mother, Cleo, had moved to the Dyer farm, working full-time, for room and board, for the family they’d once done laundry for. Tending to sickly Joyce, to one-year-old Murphy Dyer. After Joyce died, Cleo married old man Dyer and Thea stayed—until she was old and brave enough to run away to chase a life of glamour and adventure.

  Eventually marrying, having a son, divorcing, remarrying.

  Yet—she’d come back once, for her uncle’s funeral, her uncle being Hildy’s grandfather, Mother’s father.

  A few postcards sent to little Hildy. Why? Had Cousin Thea seen something of herself in Hildy—a girl trapped by circumstances, yearning for a bigger life?

  Then a large blank—except for the postcards Hildy had forgotten about—until Thea at last ended up back in Athens, where her son was
a professor. He’d provided minimal room and board for her and then set her up to go to the Hollows Asylum—but didn’t leave his name as contact. Instead, Mother’s name.

  Thea left the asylum, determined to get back to the Dyer farm, on the night of a full moon. The light of the full moon had made it easier for others to be out, too—Clarence and Olive. The WKKK gathering at the recently unoccupied Dyer farm. After coming across Clarence and Olive and persistently going to the Dyer farm, Thea had either fallen or been pushed to her death in the path of an oncoming train.

  Why? Now Hildy looks around, wishing for some glimpse of the old-fashioned lady she thought she’d seen several nights ago, as if a specter might hold all the answers—the lady who, she realized, she wanted to believe was Thea.

  Just your fool imagination. She can hear Mother saying it.

  The cold fall wind stings her eyes, and Hildy dashes her hand across her face. Not tears of emotion. A mere physical response. For ever since her conversation with Lily, she’s felt nothing. Been unable to think anything, beyond wanting to follow through on her plan. No matter what Lily said.

  No one thinks she is strong enough. But she is.

  Yet she doesn’t wish to do this just to “show” them.

  She wants to do this for Thea. For herself.

  Or, she fears, she will never feel anything again. She will be so numb that she herself might as well be in that box.

  Now Hildy crosses over to the mound of dirt. She picks up a small scoop, stares at the dark, loamy earth. Inhales its strong, musky scent. Perfect earth for burying.

  She goes to Thea’s box, lets the earth sift through her fingers onto the lid, the bits of dirt softly tapping.

  Maybe that is enough for a funeral song.

  “I’ll try my best,” Hildy whispers.