Ollie heard them, though, and he froze, every hair on his back going rigid under Gabe’s skin. Gabe sat up, waiting. He figured it must be some kind of animal, a bear or a bobcat, but then he heard it.
Twigs snapping somewhere not too far away. And a voice, no, more than one. Voices that were calling his name.
Gabe did his best to stamp out the flames so no one could find them, but they roared all the way up past his knees. No sooner had he started than the leg of his pants caught fire, and he had to roll around in Ollie’s dirt bed to put it out again.
“Where are you, zombie brains?” called a voice that turned his blood to ice. It was Jace, and Gabe heard other sets of footsteps, too, trailing not far behind. He flashed back to that day in the churchyard and the mean, wild look in Jace’s eyes. He would’ve hurt Ollie bad if Caleb hadn’t stepped in. Now he’d come back for more.
Gabe tried to figure out a plan, but everything was happening too fast. To make matters worse, with the dark and the trees and the way sounds tend to echo in the woods, Gabe couldn’t tell which direction the voices were coming from.
“We’re gonna have to run,” Gabe whispered in Ollie’s ear, his tongue dry as a prune in a tanning booth. “You stick close to me, you hear. Close as close can be.”
“Hey, freak-o, I know you’re out here. Didn’t anyone ever teach you to cover up your tracks?”
Gabe forced his body to stay still, despite his insides, which were shaking something awful. With no other sounds to distract him, he searched the darkness, trying to figure out where Jace could be. If Jace had almost clobbered Ollie once, what would he do now that he was twice as mad?
“Over there!”
Gabe spun around, expecting to see Jace or Caleb wielding his old baseball bat, but there was no one. At least not that he could tell. The dark was so thick he could barely see a foot in front of him, and the flames of the still-burning fire made it worse, casting an orangey glare on the space between the trees.
“Gotcha, dead boy.” To Gabe’s horror, the footsteps crashing through the brush sped up. No doubt they’d spotted the fire and were running this way. Where were they? Were they closing in on him? Which direction should he run?
“Say, my buddies and I have a question for you, freak!” Jace’s voice echoed off the trees. He was breathing heavier now, shouting and sprinting at the same time, that same snarl lighting up his words. “We wanna know if zombies still bleed!”
Gabe couldn’t wait any longer. He still didn’t know where they were coming from, but he had to choose a direction, any direction. He broke into a run. “Come on, boy, follow me!” Ollie growled and whimpered and then growled some more. Gabe could tell he wanted to attack the voices, but it was too dangerous. “Now, boy! This way!”
Ollie ran, but he kept right on grumbling. He couldn’t help it. It was in his nature to know when Gabe was scared and to try his best to defend him. Trees darted past on either side as Gabe coaxed Ollie on. They were going so fast, Gabe only had a few seconds to swerve around one tree before another popped up right in his path. He couldn’t see the ground, so he had to trust he wasn’t stepping into a trap or a hole that he’d never see the bottom of.
“You still there, boy?” Gabe said, and then he wished he hadn’t.
Ollie barked, and that was when the whole world crashed in around them. A shadow heavy as a wrecking ball knocked Gabe to the ground and started pounding away at him with fists like steel. Gabe’s jaw cracked and a second later he all but swallowed a tooth. A boot sank into his side next, over and over, and then there was someone yelling.
At first, he thought it might be Caleb, yelling at them to stop, but not this time. It was Ethylene Roberts, laughing at the top of her lungs, a frantic, frightened sort of laughter.
If Gabe had still been Gabe, he probably would have died all over again, right then and there. As luck would have it, he wasn’t the same boy who’d once gotten his head stuffed down the hole of Mr. Benton’s outhouse. The blows shook him up, sure enough, but they didn’t hurt. No, sir. Gabe was different now. Those hateful, no-good brothers were right. He was a zombie freak-o dead boy, and he was sick of letting life, and Chance’s brothers, beat him down.
It took all his might, but he wriggled free of the knee Jace had planted in his chest. He scrambled to his feet, and for the first time in his whole entire existence, he pulled back his fist.
He couldn’t see any better than before, but he was getting ready to strike all the same, when he heard a sound that turned his blood cold.
There was a hard, dull whack, like someone swinging a bat at a punching bag, followed by a yelp. It was Ollie, no doubt about it.
Every muscle and tendon and nerve in Gabe’s body stood at high alert. Somehow, he heard that bat swish through the air again, and he knew it was heading straight toward his dog. Without thinking or aiming or praying, he reached his hand into the darkness and grabbed that dang bat right out of midair. He shouldn’t have been able to stop it, but he did. He wrenched it free and Ethylene’s shrill laughter went dead quiet.
The clouds must have parted overhead just then, letting in a sliver of moonlight, because Gabe caught a glimpse of Jace’s and Caleb’s nasty, rotten faces. He expected their eyes to be blazing and savage, like the wild beasts they were, but more than anything they looked scared. Two skinny, scared boys with a brute of a daddy and a lot more guts than brains. Gabe couldn’t see Ollie, not right then, and that was probably a good thing.
If he had seen him, he might not have said what he did.
“Go on, get the hell out of here. I mean it.”
Ethylene didn’t wait. She took one look at his face, and the bat he was holding, and she ran. Jace and Caleb stood their ground for a minute, but then Gabe jerked his body in their direction, and they took off like a pair of rats at a firing range.
“If I see you again, you’re dead!” Gabe shouted at their backs. “Deader than dead. And it won’t be like me, ’cause I’ll make sure you never come back!” Gabe was shaking when he said it, but in that moment he meant every word. Not only that, but he knew how the brothers thought. Being honest and neighborly wasn’t in their nature. But threats, well, that was one part of life the brothers understood.
Gabe was still shaking when the moonlight shifted a little, and he saw Ollie lying on his side, just like he was sleeping. His left back foot was bent at the wrong angle, and his fur was slick with blood.
Gabe sank to his knees to try and wake him, his chest swelling with fear at what he saw. He held his fingers close to Ollie’s nose, and thanked God in heaven when he found that it was still wet. What was more, a warm, shuddery breath tickled Gabe’s fingertips.
“Praise the Lord and all his angels. Why’d you have to try and help me fight? Why couldn’t you have run?”
Now Gabe really was crying, tears and all, but he hardly even noticed. He was considering the best way to lift Ollie up when a light appeared not twenty feet away, glowing orange among the trees. Another light appeared, and then another and another. The next thing Gabe knew, a shot rang out.
“He’s over there!” a voice called, and he knew without a doubt it was Jace.
To his horror, an entire army of feet trampled the brush, making its way toward him. More lights burned in the distance, four, five, and then at least a dozen.
“Don’t let him get away!” A shiver of fear jolted down Gabe’s spine, because that wasn’t Jace or even Caleb, it was Mr. Lawson.
Another shot cracked in the darkness. They were only ten feet away now. Gabe fumbled with Ollie, no time to worry about his shattered leg. He pulled him close to his chest and did the only thing he could. Despite every muscle screaming in protest, despite the fear scorching into his gut, the certainty that a bullet would bury itself in his body at any moment, he ran.
He looked back once as he was sprinting through the thick brush. That was a mistake, because in that one awful moment he saw their faces. Mr. Lawson and Pastor Higgins. Elmer from the Pump ’n�
�� Save and Mrs. Romero, her skirt hiked up past her knees. They were all racing toward him, flashlights casting cold orange shadows down their faces. Faces that looked more like masks than people. Masks etched with a hatred so pure and alive it was like a whole separate person, like a beast ready to tear him apart piece by piece. These had been his friends, his neighbors. The people who had promised to look out for him, after Mama and Daddy had died.
“Shoot, Jimmy. I see his face. Shoot!”
The rifle blasted again. There was no time to move, to think, to jump out of the way. It wasn’t like the movies, when time froze and he could see the bullet coming. Instead, a weight struck him from the side and he hit the ground hard, Ollie tumbling from his arms.
If it was possible to die twice, he was pretty sure he’d just done it. He felt around desperately for Ollie, and for the hole where the bullet had hit him, but didn’t find either.
“Get up, quick, and be quiet about it,” an unfamiliar voice whispered in his ear. “And you’d better take your dog.”
She, for the voice belonged to a girl, placed Ollie gently in Gabe’s arms. He didn’t have time to be grateful, but he was all the same. It came in the form of a cool ripple that rushed through his body, beating back the fire of everybody’s hate.
“Hurry up, now,” she said, and she was right.
Mr. Lawson and Elmer and the others were closing in on them. Just a few feet away.
“He’s moving!” Elmer called.
Gabe heard Mr. Lawson cock back the rifle.
“Trust me,” the girl said, and she grabbed Gabe’s sleeve and pulled him into a thicket of bushes just as another bullet bit into a tree trunk an inch from his head.
They twisted left and right, those pounding boots and orange lights never far behind. The clouds must have scooted back in place overhead, because the moonlight dried up and they ran in complete darkness.
“Do as I say, you hear?” said the girl, tightening her grip on his sleeve. She was running so fast, he could barely keep up and carry Ollie at the same time. Her voice sounded strange, though he couldn’t think why.
“Don’t worry, not much farther now.”
She pulled him into what felt like the center of a tree. Twigs and thorns scraped against his skin. In his arms, Ollie woke up and started to moan.
“Shhh, buddy, gotta be quiet,” Gabe said.
Behind them, the voices grew louder. They were far enough away now that he couldn’t make out what they were saying, but they were coming, they’d heard him, he was sure of it.
“It’ll be alright, I promise,” the girl said. “Keep going.”
She led him through thick brambles that grabbed at his ankles and wild vines that whipped against his face and arms. He was certain she must have made a wrong turn until he saw a faint, silvery light shining up ahead.
“What’s that?” he said as they emerged into a clearing. The air felt different here, cooler and lighter, but at the same time heavy with mist.
“That is Bone Hollow,” said the girl, squeezing his elbow with her small, cold hand. “You’ll be safe there.”
He peered into the mist that streamed across the valley in waves. Like a school of fish flitting to and fro, reflecting back the light.
“But they’ll find us,” Gabe said, his awe wearing away under the weight of all that panic. “Come on, we have to turn out the light.”
He squeezed Ollie tighter and ran off into the mist, searching for the source of the light, but the girl didn’t follow. She laughed. It was quiet and musical, and Gabe thought he’d never heard anything like it.
“Didn’t I say not to worry?”
“But they have a gun,” Gabe called over his shoulder, not slowing down one tiny bit. “They want to kill us. Me, at least, and maybe you, too!”
“I know,” the girl said, speaking to him from the shadows, calm as a cucumber. He stopped just then and turned back to examine her. She was nothing more than a shadow wrapped in mist; he still hadn’t seen her face. “But they won’t find us. Not even if they search all night.”
“How can you know for sure?” Gabe didn’t understand it, but already he’d started to calm down. Like maybe she was right, and there was something about this place that meant they wouldn’t be able to find it. What had she called it? Bone Hollow?
“I just know,” said the girl, and then she stepped into the light. For a strange moment he thought he recognized her. The way her deep brown hair reached down past her waist, with one strand woven through with gold thread. Her eyes, one brown, one hazel. Her fairyland nose and chin, and her skin that had always reminded him of fresh-turned earth bathed in sunlight. Surely this must be Niko, his very first best friend, but it couldn’t be. She’d moved away to California after third grade.
“You’re smiling,” she said, amused.
Gabe looked down, as if trying to glimpse the smile still on his face, but then Ollie moaned again and the spell was broken.
Panic sprouted in Gabe’s throat at the sight of Ollie’s bloody back paw. He had to do something, to get out of here, or turn off that dang light, or something.
“You’re both safe and sound, I swear,” said the girl, her voice full of comfort and reassurance.
Gabe had to admit he did relax a little at her words, despite himself. It had been lucky, hadn’t it, her finding him out here in the middle of the night. Maybe too lucky. And what about that name? Bone Hollow? The very idea made him shiver.
“We’d better go inside,” said the girl who might be Niko, just as Gabe heard the faraway call of voices coming from beyond the hedges.
He was certain they would break in. His muscles pinged and stretched, and his fingers dug into Ollie’s fur, getting ready for whatever was to come.
“Follow me,” said the girl, without a worry in the world. She swept past him in her lacy white dress, heading toward the light.
Gabe hesitated. Not because he was scared, not exactly. Surely the real danger was behind him, trying to find a way in. It was just something about how that dress clung to the girl’s body when she moved. Like there was nothing underneath, no skin or muscles, just bone.
And her face. As if she could read his thoughts, she turned around at that exact moment and winked. For some reason that wink made him shudder even more. Surely, it was Niko, only she was older now, his age. But her skin and eyes. They looked different. He thought of the image he’d seen of his own face in the mirror at the funeral home, and then he took a step back toward the hedges.
“Not that way,” said the girl, and there was a sudden urgency to her voice, like maybe she wasn’t just being helpful, like maybe she needed him to stay.
Then Ollie started whining and moaning in his arms, and it was all Gabe could do not to break down crying at the sound of it.
“You’re gonna die, freak!” Those words drifted through the thicket, like a message carried across a vast ocean. They sounded far away and close all at the same time. Anger pooled in the back of Gabe’s throat, and Ollie wriggled and cried out in pain.
“Just a little bit farther,” said the girl. She’d come back, and now she was standing just a few feet away, reaching out her hand.
Part of him knew, true or not, that if he took her hand there was no going back. He knew it the same way he’d known that once he’d kissed Maisy Hughes on the mouth his life would never be the same. Mostly, that was because her daddy had knocked out two of his teeth, but still, he’d felt different inside after that, too.
He looked down at her hand, and for a moment he didn’t see Niko’s hand at all, warm and inviting and familiar. He saw long thin bones, scraped clean and polished white. Behind him the voices bellowed, in his arms Ollie cried out in pain. All around, the waves of that glittering ocean seemed to buzz in his ears. Were they pulling him forward, or dragging him down underneath the water? If only Gramps were here, if only he could help.
“Listen to the ocean,” whispered a voice in his ear.
Gabe spun around, but of cou
rse no one was there. Gramps had always told him that, though. “Listen to the ocean.” Even though Macomb County was about as landlocked as you could get, Gabe knew what he meant. The ocean was like his dreams and the sky and all the possibilities in the world smashed up into one.
“Listen,” Gramps said.
The girl inched her hand closer. It wasn’t bony anymore, but soft and brown. Gabe didn’t know what to think or who to trust anymore, but he knew Ollie needed help bad. He might even die if he didn’t move fast, and that was more than enough reason for Gabe.
He took the girl’s hand, and together they walked into Bone Hollow. The odd thing, the truly unusual thing, was that the closer they got to that eerie white light, the more distant the voices sounded. Like they were drifting away across that peaceful ocean, leaving their angry, hate-filled yells back on the shore.
They descended into a small valley, where all the mist had collected, just like someone had scooped it off the top of a pot of boiling stew. Except this mist was cool and it smelled like wood and fresh-cut grass. Ollie was still moaning something awful, but once in a while as they walked he stopped to take a bite of the mist, and that made Gabe’s heart sing. Lit from behind the way it was, those tiny water droplets looked for all the world like miniature stars. Ollie gobbled them down with a weak snarfle, and then went right back to crying.
“It’s just over here,” said the girl, and they emerged from the mist to the sound of tinkling music. Gabe couldn’t tell where it came from at first, but then he saw dozens of hand-carved flutes dancing in the breeze. They were dangling from the roof of a small cottage, overgrown with ivy and mint and vines Gabe had never seen before, and, shimmering in the flower beds encircling the cottage, glittering blue buds.
“They bloom brightest at night,” the girl said, but Gabe was more interested in the flutes. They clinked together, making a pleasant but peculiar sort of music. It reminded him of a wind chime Elmer had put out in front of the Pump ’n’ Save one summer, except that one hadn’t been made of wood, but hollowed-out bone.
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