by Billy Coffey
Faced with too many threats, Taylor seemed unsure where to steer the gun next. He settled on my head. He raised the stock to his cheek and stepped around Phillip’s fist, moving me back. The barrel moved to Kate and Lucy and to Phillip again. Taylor stopped only when he reached a position between the fire and the rocks where he could watch us all.
“What hell have you conjured, Jake?” he asked. “Is this your play?”
Kate moved closer to Lucy, who huddled farther into the stones. Lucy’s head shook no. I heard her whisper, “This isn’t real, this is n’t real, this is n’t real.”
“It’s no conjuring,” I said. “Phillip’s drawn us.”
“No,” Taylor said. “NO. Not him. You deceive me, Jake. He is my aid.”
Taylor’s finger sat at the trigger, and he did not see Jake’s hand draw back. His eyes were on the boy—not at his glow (witchlight was what he’d told Lucy, and witchlight it was, Taylor had seen plenty of that both in the Hollow and in his dreams) but at his feet. At the boy’s shoes. He lowered the shotgun and peered at the footprints left in the riverbank’s soft mud. Ones Taylor remembered well.
The shotgun trembled in Taylor’s hands. He spoke with a reasonableness that sounded just short of insanity—calm at first, louder in the middle, and at the end a shout that echoed off the cliffs above: “You cain’t be my salvation. You cain’t be here, boy. I Woke you up. You came at me with your arms wide and I Woke you up, I Woke you up and YOU CAIN’T COME BACK.”
The boy eased his arm to his head. When he opened his hand, there was only the brilliant skin of his palm. He drew back the hood of his sweatshirt and lifted his chin. Light poured forth from the wide gash where his throat had once been. Taylor’s knees buckled. Kate and Jake shielded their eyes. Lucy looked on into the night as though darkness surrounded them.
Taylor let the shotgun drop to his side. He reached into his back pocket with his free hand and drew out the same flint knife he’d carried into the Holler that day long ago. He looked at Lucy, his eyes filling with a terror that stopped her. It was a look Taylor never expected to share with his true love. It was hope lost.
“Stop it,” Lucy screamed. “Stop it stop it stop it. There’s no one there. Can’t you see there’s no one there and why don’t you just go and leave us alone?”
Kate came to her slowly and crouched by the rocks. From the corner of her eye, Lucy saw Kate’s hand rise to stroke the jagged ends of her hair. She didn’t feel Kate’s touch. Lucy could feel nothing at that moment other than the slow unwinding of her life.
“You did it,” I said. I looked from Phillip to Taylor, to the knife in his hand. “You killed him. You cut his throat.”
Taylor shook his head. “That weren’t what happened, Jake.”
Phillip looked at me and then to the crags above. And was there the faint start of a smile upon his lips?
“You were both up there, on the cliffs. Is that right? They found his daddy’s truck on that switchback. Sheriff Houser said you must’ve took a walk and got lost. What were you doing here, Taylor? Were you running away too? Both of you, to here. Somehow in all this land, you reached the same spot. And then you murdered him.”
Taylor said, “I . . . Woke . . . him.”
“That’s how you saw me,” I said. “You were watching the whole time. Phillip was bashed to pieces when I found him. That gouge on his neck, it’d just look like he’d hit another rock when he jumped. No one ever thought otherwise because no one ever thought anyone else’d be in this Holler.” I looked to Phillip. “You never spoke in my dreams. I heard you in my head. Because you couldn’t talk. You traded worlds and came back, but you couldn’t talk.”
A smile. That’s what I saw upon Phillip’s face. And when he once more raised his fist slow to Taylor’s eyes, I saw in that smile not a threat to take but a want to give.
Taylor raised the gun.
“No,” I said. “Taylor, listen to me. He doesn’t want to hurt you. Neither do I. Let’s just go. We’ll take Lucy and we’ll go. We’ll end all of this.”
“There will be an end, Jake. That end comes here.”
Taylor put his back to the mound I had built, steadying himself. Phillip stepped forward, breaking the rough circle we’d all formed, and looked down when he reached the log Taylor had bent to before. I saw trouble on Phillip’s face. I saw the same pleading he had shown before Taylor rose up behind that fire with a gun in his hands. Yet while then that look had been, Hurry, it now said, Do something, Jake.
I have often wondered how things would have gone if I had done something else. Despite what Kate and Taylor and I always thought, it was choice rather than fate that governed our lives. It was choice, not Phillip, that had brought us to the riverbank. It was a frightened girl choosing long ago to play a trick on two innocent boys, and those boys choosing to be led away by her. It was a child who’d lived in his father’s shadow until wilting, choosing to go to the rusty gate to prove himself a man. It was Phillip choosing to wander through the woods rather than go home, and it was Taylor choosing to give in to his rage. In her own way, Lucy was the same. The only difference between her and us was that she had chained herself to a dead mother while we had chained ourselves to a dead boy. Now we were all there, four poor souls who could no longer carry the burden of knowing all that lay before us would always be colored by all that lay behind. God in His mercy had allowed us to settle our accounts and put an end to our struggles. And Taylor meant to put an end to those things as well.
Taylor looked from Phillip to Kate. The gun swung there. “You ruined me.”
Phillip looked at me, pleading. My hand moved slow, an inch at a time.
“I’m sorry,” Kate said. “I’m so sorry, Taylor.”
Lucy rose from her crouch. She took two steps before Taylor stopped her. “Go, lady,” he said. “Back to where we started. Holler’s yours now, and all that’s in it. I’ll keep them here. They won’t follow.”
My hand, closer.
Lucy took Taylor’s words like a punch. “No, Taylor, I’m not leaving you.”
“Go now,” he said. Tears welled in his eyes. “I’d not have you see what comes.”
“Don’t go, Lucy,” Kate said. “It’s going to be okay now. We’ll take you home.”
Lucy wheeled and screamed, “This is home. Don’t you understand that? I’m never going back there.”
My hand shook against fear and fatigue. I thought of the tree stump behind the sheriff’s office and how Justus said trees don’t kill you if you—
“Stay if you want,” Taylor said. “Only step away from Kate. Jake’s right. It ends here.”
Kate shrank against the stones and called my name. Phillip raised his fist to Taylor a final time. Waving it. Begging.
Taylor moved his finger from the guard.
Kate screamed at the trigger’s pull.
Bessie flew.
13
You hear stories of time slowing in the midst of something gone terribly wrong. It was true with me that night along the riverbank. But at first it was more like time skipped, that there was a moment when Bessie sat tucked at my back and another when her blade cleaved the air. Taylor raised on Kate and I saw his finger squeeze on the trigger, and I ask you this: What man would not do as I then did? What woman? That’s what I’ve told myself. I tell myself that I saved my wife, even if I really didn’t save Kate at all.
Because just as Bessie closed the distance between Taylor and me, that trigger pulled. And what followed was not an explosion of buckshot, but the dry click of an unloaded gun.
And then time slowed. Kate’s mouth stuck in a scream. Her hand covered her face as her body slumped against the rocks. I froze in my follow-through as that click came and I knew I’d let Bessie go and there was no pulling her back. I knew it even as I heard the wet, heavy thud of the blade entering Taylor’s chest just inside his left shoulder and a sound like Hawp! as the air was forced from his lungs. The shotgun clattered onto the riverbank. Taylor’s head jer
ked back. He fell as though pushed by a hard wind.
Time lurched forward again when Lucy screamed.
She was too late to catch him. Taylor landed in the shadow of the rocks and did not move. Lucy knelt over him. Her fingers trembled over Bessie’s buried head. Blood flowed from the wound in Taylor’s chest like a hidden spring.
“No,” she wailed, just that word again and again, like some mantra that would undo what had been done. “NOTHISISN’TREAL.”
Taylor reached for the tomahawk and grasped it by the haft, wrenching it from his body. He coughed a spray of red into Lucy’s face. She gasped and tried to wipe it away, but the blood mixed with her tears and streaked her face. Lucy’s hands went from Taylor’s chest to his head, hoping that touch would be enough to anchor him to the world. Phillip watched. Light still shone from within him, yet it only made the despair on his face clearer and deeper. Kate rose from her place against the rocks and stumbled toward Lucy.
Taylor’s eyes were wide with surprise and pain. He reached for Lucy and said, “Run now, lady. We’ll have our day.”
“No,” she cried, “I’m not leaving you, I’m—”
Kate placed her hands on Lucy’s shoulders, trying to ease her away. Lucy twisted and shot a fist upward, missing Kate’s face but connecting with the side of her head. I caught Kate as she wheeled backward.
Phillip moved beside Kate as I went to Lucy. She reared up again, this time reaching for Bessie, but I kicked the tomahawk aside and took hold of her. “If you want him to live, you’ll get aside.”
She moved, placing Taylor’s head in her lap. She stroked his matted hair and watered his cheeks with her tears.
I took off my uniform shirt and pressed it against Taylor’s wound. He cried out. I looked around for help. My eyes met Phillip’s. He pointed to the log behind the fire, where a small pile of shotgun shells lay.
“Why?” I asked him. “Why’d you make me do that?”
Taylor coughed again. After came a gurgle and, “Should’ve been done long ago, Jake. Don’t pay no mind.”
To Lucy I said, “He won’t last long if we don’t get him out of here.”
Lucy stroked Taylor’s cheeks, grounding him, keeping him there.
Kate moved from her place beside Phillip and went to Lucy. Her words were gentle, like coaxing a lost child in from the dark. “Come on, Lucy. We have to get him help. We have to get you help too.”
Lucy’s hands settled at her thighs. I saw that as invitation enough. I took off my belt and cinched it round Taylor’s chest, pressing my shirt to his wound. I took his arms and pulled him up. Taylor cried out again as I tried to hoist him over my shoulders. Kate left Lucy to help.
“No,” I said. “Tend to the girl. I have to do this myself.”
Phillip looked at me and raised his fist as my knees buckled under Taylor’s weight. A crunching sound came from my back. Still, I straightened.
Kate went back to Lucy. This time the girl did not protest. She stood hunched over, as though sheltering a dying ember.
I felt Taylor’s wheezing against my shoulder. The riverbank stretched out before us. Far in the distance stood Indian Hill. It was miles that way to the gate. Miles and uphill.
I turned to Phillip. “Is there another way?”
Phillip’s eyes went to Lucy. He nodded yes but slowly, as though wanting to say the long way was best.
“Show me.”
He led us on through the trees. I carried Taylor as Kate fell in behind me. Lucy was last upon the riverbank. None of us saw her reach down for what my fear and weariness had left behind.
14
To Lucy the way was through utter darkness, and though she perceived Jake as leading, she could not understand how he knew the way. Taylor lay draped over Jake’s shoulders. His breaths were labored, and his blood soaked Jake’s neck and chest. Lucy wrapped Taylor’s ponytail around her hand. She sang in a soft voice the song they’d shared upon Taylor’s bed, of how death is only a dream of glory beyond a dark stream. Kate draped an arm over her. If that arm lowered itself just a bit more to where Jake’s tomahawk lay waiting, Lucy would shrug her off.
Lucy felt a pain she could not measure, though one tinged with a kind of sweetness. In the shards of her broken heart, she now knew Taylor in a way the sharing of their bodies could never promise. Love cannot be called true unless two people know the pains of one another as well as the joys. Lucy had suffered much in life, but Taylor had suffered to the point where all was lost and living gave way to mere survival. Now at the end, that was a hurt Lucy knew well.
She also knew they meant to take her back to town. Lucy would return to her father, and even if Taylor survived, she would never see him again. He would be sent away, as would she—if not to prison for trying to kill Hollis, then to Glendale or Lipscomb or some other private school where her father could stay away from her and keep an eye on her at the same time.
And their Hollow, their lovely Hollow. Gone too, and forever.
The faint peak of Indian Hill disappeared, swallowed by a forest so thick and pressing that it stole my breath. For too long the dark land beyond the rusty gate had fed upon Taylor’s anger and regret, trading his memories for madness. Now that source was fading, and the Hollow began to rouse and fight. Phillip’s light pushed against a darkness that pushed back. The eyes were on us all. Whispers from amongst the trees called out in wailing, mournful tones. I faltered beneath Taylor’s dying weight, the cords of my neck straining, willing my tired body to find one more step and then another. Other than a series of shallow moans each time I stumbled, Taylor remained silent upon my back. I implored him to speak, to hear Lucy’s song. To stay awake. Kate took her hand from Lucy’s shoulder and laid it at Taylor’s back.
I asked, “How far?”
Phillip turned and brought up three fingers. Whether miles or hours, I did not know.
Lucy, thinking that question had been aimed at her, said, “I don’t know. I’ve never been this way.”
Twisted saplings gave way to their tall and ancient kin farther on, which then thinned to a small meadow. Lucy’s mind was still on Taylor when Jake stumbled to his right, bumping her. She reached to steady Taylor and felt her hips brush against something hard. A stone. There just to Kate’s right was another, this larger, its gray face faintly glowing in the moonlight. Four more lay just ahead. To her left the trees rose again, towering and thick like a wall, and that cinder of hope in Lucy Seekins now flickered once more.
She broke away and rushed for the forest. Kate’s voice called out into the night—“Lucy, where are you going?”—but the words only pushed Lucy harder. Toward the trees and the path beyond. Toward what she prayed was home.
Kate ran after her. Phillip followed close, leaving Taylor and me alone in the field. My lungs burned and heaved too much to call for them. My shoulders and back were a mass of knots and pulled muscles. I watched as Phillip’s light faded in the dense trees, unsure what to do. Taylor answered for me, using the precious little air he had left.
“Fly, Jake, for my sake and the sake of our loves. That way leads only to death.”
15
It was only by Phillip’s light that Kate could weave around the trees. She called for Lucy again as the ground went soft beneath her shoes. Kate looked down and saw that the forest floor had become a path.
Lucy disappeared ahead. Kate’s legs ached from the long run. Her face stung with tiny red scratches from the branches that had poked her. Phillip ran ahead, pushing her, barely keeping her in his light. Kate followed him and stopped in horror. There in the grove the moonlight shone down upon the cliffs like falling water, making the red hands upon the walls shimmer. But it was the Hole that held Kate, that perfect sphere of tarry black that hung in the air and contradicted everything she thought could never be.
And Lucy stood not ten feet away from it, staring into its face.
Phillip motioned for Kate to follow and stopped her well away from Lucy’s reach. Kate understood why. He was
afraid of what Lucy would do to the woman who had ruined the man she loved. The hair on Kate’s arms stiffened as she neared the Hole. She willed herself not to look and found that will crumbling. Kate turned to the Hole, and beyond that thin shroud she felt every nightmare she had ever dreamed and every monster she’d ever imagined.
“Lucy,” she whispered, “you have to come with me now. I have to get you away from here.”
Lucy only stared. Her eyes were two giant ovals. “I’m not going anywhere,” she said.
“Taylor needs help. If we don’t get him back to town, he won’t make it.”
Phillip took a step past Kate, closer to the Hole.
Lucy’s voice came from a place that sounded far away: “Doesn’t matter. I know that now.”
“It matters,” Kate said. “Everything matters. Come with me, Lucy. Please? We’ll go back to Jake and Taylor. I want to help you, but you have to trust me.”
“But I don’t, Kate,” she said. “I don’t trust you. Taylor told me what you did. You say you want to help me, but do you really? Is it me you want, or do you just want my name to write down in a book you use to tell yourself what a good person you are? Do you see all those people when you help them, or do you see Taylor and that boy? And do you see the good you did after, or do you only see that the thousand good things you do won’t ever make up for the one bad thing you did?”
Kate’s lips trembled. She said, “That’s not true,” but the murmur of her heart and the look Phillip offered told her it was.
“It is true,” Lucy said. She reached out a finger and traced the edges of the circle in front of them. “You shouldn’t burden yourself with that, Kate. Do you know why? Because Taylor says none of this is real. He says it’s all a dream.”
“It is real, Lucy.”
