Hollow Oaks

by Paddy Kelly

  "Sure. But I couldn't bear it, being the one who broke the line. Although the line's already broken. The title, the Knight of Brufort. That's gone now."

  I remembered. Dermot had been a knight, some hereditary and mostly pointless title that had followed with the estate for centuries. "But why? You're still family, right?"

  She slid the last cartridge into its plastic storage box a little too hard, then closed it and replaced in her pack. "The title passed from father to son. I had no brothers, so now it's just … evaporated. All because I was inconsiderate enough to be born with the wrong genitals."

  "Tell me about it." She looked up, and grinned. It felt as warm as the gas flame.

  "The house, how do you keep it going? It looked … expensive."

  "However I can. I worked as a web designer, and I still do that, from home. Plus ghost tours, murder mystery weekends, astronomy nights, writing retreats … anything to pull in money. I also rent out the tree to the travellers. For trade. That brings in cash, but it's never enough. That house is one big money hole."

  I nodded, not surprised by the travellers renting her tree. They'd always been involved in the craft trade. I was just a bit annoyed I'd never heard of the Brufort House tree. Not even Cormac had known about it. Or maybe he had, but hadn't bothered to tell me.

  A yawn burst from my face. Debbie stood and slung the shotgun over her shoulder on its strap. "We need sleep. But I have to check that tunnel first. Are you okay here?"

  I glanced towards the fat stone pillar that guarded the way to the outside. "I was the last few hours. I don't think they're very keen to come in, the lepps or the fairies."

  "Which is what worries me. Here." She slid her rucksack over to me, and gave a nod towards the sleeping bag and foam mattress tied to it. "You get those ready for sleeping on. I'll have a quick look in that cave. If anything sneaks in while I'm gone, just yell blue murder."

  "But there's only one bag, what will you—"

  "The ground's good for me. And it's only one night. Or day."

  Debbie pulled out her own torch, leaving mine on the floor. A few steps took her to the collapsed wall and a few more took her past it. I heard footsteps receding at a trot, fading with the reflected gleam of her torch, and in seconds they were both gone.

  I got to work arranging the skinny mattress and sleeping bag on the floor. Fatigue pressed on me as I pulled off my other boot and coat. Bomb-disposal slow, I edged my feet into the belly of the bag and wriggled in after them. I had arranged water bottle, knife, and torch beside the makeshift pillow of my folded jacket when the footsteps returned, followed by Debbie.

  She sat down beside me, with a sigh.

  "What?" I said, guessing I wasn't going to like it, whatever it was.

  "Mostly good. No obvious way in or out, so nothing's going to sneak up on us. But the less good news is there's a tomb in there, down some steps. A small cave with a slabbed floor, with all these niches in the walls, full of bones. Lots and lots of bones. Look."

  She showed me the photos on her phone. I sat up. "Fuck." A small cave room, its alcoves stacked with tiny bones. There were skulls like ping-pong balls, ribs like dirty matchsticks, and so very many of them. My skin was crawling as I slid to the next photo. This one showed the end wall, smoothed flat, and on the floor in front of it, a ring of stones.

  "What's that?" I zoomed in "Wait, is it … is it a well?"

  "Could be. I didn't go so far in. I think I saw water in it, though."

  "It's round. Not square." She looked at me quizzically. "It's just, a fairy told me to watch out for a square well. But I guess that's not it. So they're all fairy bones?"

  "I'm almost sure of it. Hundreds of skeletons. I think we've found the reason why they don't come here. Burial places are sacred. Maybe even lepps honour that."

  I wasn't entirely pleased about sleeping close to a room full of bones. Although, of course, I'd already done it, I just hadn't been aware of it. "Anything else in there?"

  "Not there, but in the other direction. And it was weird too."

  She flicked ahead, to a photo clearly taken with a flash. And it showed … wait, what was that? A huge, round room, with walls made of large blocks, covered by a dome of a ceiling. A paved path skirted the circumference, inside of which lay a gaping round pit.

  Debbie flipped ahead to another photo, showing the pit's interior. Out of its walls stuck stone slabs, like great black teeth. Many had broken off and, probably, dropped into the water that lay like a skin a few metres down. Green strings ran into the pit, around some of the blocks, and across the floor.

  "Copper wires," she said. "They looked very old, too."

  "Copper?" I looked up. "So that pit was a crafting device?"

  "I suppose. God only knows who built it. I could have poked around some more but I'd checked for exits and that was enough." She put her phone away. "So definitely empty. I'm more worried about what might come in the front way."

  "We could grab some stones and built up a wall at the pillar, make it slightly harder to get in. If we both do it, it shouldn't take us too long—"

  "Uh-huh." Debbie stood and laid her gun against the wall. "I'm doing it, and then I'll fix your crutch. Your give that foot a rest. It's dawn in an hour, and as soon as the sun goes down again, we need to be ready to walk, pain or no pain. Here." She handed me a half pill. "It might make me a bad nurse, but this should help you get some proper sleep."

  I didn't argue and swallowed it with some water. She strode to the collapsed wall and grabbed a few blocks, transported them to the other side of the cave, by the entrance behind the pillar, and went to get more. I lay back down, allowing my eyes to close.

  To the clonk of blocks being placed on other blocks, and the hum of whatever Debbie was singing, I drifted off, imagining her as a nasty nurse, and smiling slightly too much.

  I woke to find myself staring at a grey wall.

  Something had woken me. Not a noise, but … a voice, whispering from the dark, making me warm and then cold and then hungry. So very hungry.

  "Debbie?" I turned around. She wasn't there. "Debbie?" I sat up, blinking. The cave was faintly lit by reflected light sneaking around the pillar. Daylight outside. But Debbie was gone. Her bag was there, and her shotgun, even her boots. But not her.

  I gripped the sleeping bag as I tried to shake the fogginess from my head.

  "Debbie?" I said again, loud enough to produce an echo. "Hello?"

  Silence. My watch said three in the afternoon. It was bright outside, so she couldn't have gone out there. So where the fuck had she gone, without her boots or her gun?

  The passage, that was where. The fairy tomb, or the room with the pit. But why? To take some more photos? For a piss? Either way, it felt odd.

  I stood. The foot still hurt, so I decided to skip my boots. I grabbed my torch, slipped my knife into its holder on my belt, and grabbed the tree branch that Debbie had made into a crutch.

  "Debbie?" I yelled, making proper echoes. The carved faces on the walls grinned at my lack of reply. "Fuck it." I grabbed the shotgun, slung it over my shoulder. And, hobbling on the crutch, I approached the scattered stones, and carefully stepped over them.

  The passage ran on ahead, its brown stone slanting to almost a point above. "Hello?" I yelled down its vaguely vaginal gullet. And waited. And swore. And walked.

  Slow steps in damp silence, the gun slung around me, banging on my back. Mouth dry, I reached the intersection. I swung my torch beam left, revealing a flat-ceilinged passage, with a hint of space at the end. To the right, a shorter passage, then steps, leading down.

  To the bone room.

  "Debbie?" Nothing. I unslung the gun, aware that I didn't know how to use it. It was hard to hold with the crutch and torch, so I tested the bad foot, and discovered that if I only walked on the heel, it didn't hurt so much. The floor ahead glittered grey in the torchlight as I leaned the crutch against the wall. I hobbled towards the steps in my socked feet. When I reached them, the
floor of a chamber below came into view.

  I descended, each breath a pained rasp, the shotgun a heavy tremble.

  Two steps from the bottom, I stopped. The chamber was like Debbie had described — flat floor and ceiling, and hacked-out alcoves filled with bones like stacks of tiny firewood. But my torch wasn't fixed on any of that. Instead, the beam lit the far end of the cave where, kneeling on the floor, in front of what I assumed was the well, was Debbie.

  She had her back to me, and her head bowed, as if praying. She hadn't reacted to my light.

  "Hey!" I hissed into the chamber. "Debbie! Fuck's sake, what are you doing?"

  No reply. No movement. Was she sleepwalking? Had to be. But were you supposed to wake them or not wake them? I couldn't for the life of me remember.

  I limped down the final steps and into the chamber. Bones sat piled in their niches to both sides, a thousand tumbled sticks, wrapped in a bad smell of mould. I kept my eyes fixed ahead, on Debbie's ponytail and broad back, swelling and falling to her slow breaths.

  I cleared my throat. No reaction. I edged ahead, a couple of steps, then to the side, to see her face. The tiny pool, inside its rim of raised stones, rippled as if something had just banged the floor. Debbie breathed on, raspingly slowly, making my bare skin shiver.

  My courage snapped. I hopped up, poked her shoulder. "Up. Come on, we're—"

  The pool splashed, as if it slapped by an invisible hand. I froze, watching the ripples shudder. Smells rose — the reek of an old unwashed fridge, vomit on a hot pavement, unwashed sex. Old and dirty and guilty smells, burrowing their deep way into me.

  Debbie raised her head, slowly, as if pulled by ropes and pulleys. Her eyes were open. Staring. "My armour," she said thickly. "Too heavy. Can you. Help me. To stand?"

  "There's no armour," I said, a fist in my throat. "You're dreaming. So if you just—"

  A howl erupted from the pool, like a stabbed dog. My breath was sucked from me and I fell gasping to one knee, clasping at my throat. The shotgun fell, the torch clattered across the floor. Choking, red-faced, I fought to pull in air, surrounded by the stink of rising death as torch flickered and went out.

  Panic roared. I had to get up, grab Debbie, run — the lights, why were there lights — and drag her up those steps and — my torch, it wasn't on, so why could I — and, and, and … oh. Look at that.

  My hand. The fingers were thick, hair sprouting on the knuckles. I nodded, as a thought came to say something about … something … and then skittered away.

  The air around me pulsated, golden, a sheen on sunny water. Slow contours, in soundless folds, in and out and in. I tilted my head. Bones slid, the joy of crack and thunk.

  The light … the torch … didn't I have…? Wasn't it…?

  No. It wasn't dark. It never had been dark. See? Never.

  Around me, candles sat flickering in alcoves, daubing the walls slick with light. Nothing else in those alcoves, just candles. And in that light I saw it, the beautiful shimmer of the world, a lavaflow of time, frozen, with me at its centre. The sun in a great glowing cloud.

  I was blessed. I was born.

  I turned and the room did too, whisper-slip silent. And Debbie. There she was. Beautiful, strong. Her skin, silver. I reached out to touch her. Cold, jointed, brilliant bright.

  It was armour, of course. Debbie was a knight, in helmet and gauntlets and chain-mail skirt pooling around her legs. It was her, her true self, who she always was.

  "I'll do it," she was muttering. "I am the knight, they won't take that away, I won't…"

  The water shuddered, ripples passing to the curved sides and back. A smell rose, stinging for a second, but then expanding into sweetness. My chest rose and fell, flat and hard.

  Something shifted in my trousers. I looked down, in the spit and flicker of the candles and felt the penis swelling. But why would that be odd? It had always been there.

  I gazed around, with a memory of there having been a way out. Because there wasn't one now. The walls were flat and seamless, a warm womb in which to always float.

  My children.

  The voice came from all around me, trembling the bubbles of the air, a cello of falling-over words you could be wrapped up in and not need to breathe again, ever.

  Here at my heart you are here my dears my loves.

  I smiled, floating in those words, and sat down, legs crossed on the floor. Before me, Debbie. I ran a hand up her armoured skin, to the smooth shell of her head where—

  Wait … wasn't that bare before? No helmet then, so where—

  Danger. The word rose, quivered, vanished. I looked around, surprised. No danger here. Any yet my hand crept to my belt, finding a thing that wasn't there. Waiting.

  A question rose. I inhaled, spilling water into the sun of my core, shuddering to its sharp orgasm. But the question, it was unravelling. I grasped at it, held it, asked.

  "What," I said, toffee-mouthed. "Debbie. What … do you want? With her?"

  She will hold me, the voice said, and hearing it, it was all I wanted to hear, and not my own voice, but only that one, gold threaded through words like pearls.

  She will contain me she will be my limbs.

  I sighed with happiness. Lucky Debbie, to have this always and nothing else.

  The small ones quicken and pass but not you my children your desires they burn so bright.

  Debbie turned to look at me through the open front of her helmet. Her eyes slid across me but it wasn't Debbie behind them. Those eyes … they were aflame.

  A shift. A splinter. My hand, under no instructions, re-discovered the thing on my belt. Pulled it out. A cold blade. The fingers softly closed around it.

  Only one, the voice said in the swirl of a million songs, only one.

  I was filling up with that voice, sinking, when Debbie stood, metal joints easily bending. She leaned forward, a hand towards the floor, and straightened up, blazing bright. She held a thing. Long. Dark. A mace. Grasping it, ablaze in silver glare, she turned.

  A jarring flare. Then movement. Debbie towering, the mace in her hands.

  "My dear ones," she said, or the golden voice, both of them, the same. "Never again the hunger and pain and dying. All you need is here. Always here. But only one."

  A word orbited the sun of her, almost lost in the brightness. Unreal. All good things are unreal. And some real things are bad. Bite you. And this … this … this was…

  My traitorous finger slid up along the cold thing I was holding, the thing I couldn't see. Touched the blade, slid along, pressed … then cut.

  A flash of pain, and Debbie, bringing up the mace, also flashed, two images at once. I clawed at the meaning, like a scab. Where did that mace come from? Or those candles? Why was the light so very bright?

  She lifted it higher. I fumbled at my unseen knife, dizzy drunk.

  Steel. Something about steel. A thick penis, swelling. A painful sun in the sky. Bones in the wall. A shadow, about to fall.

  I turned the blade and nudged the tip into my palm. Pain exploded and the room lurched from blazing candles to a dark floor in torchlight with bones and black water bubbling. A gagging taste in the air, mortal and foul, of old underwear and puss…

  Then light rose like a cold breath and I blinked and it was gone.

  Candles burned again. Debbie stood there, in mail and plates, the mace-gun raised, trembling, her eyes struggling. Fighting … something.

  And I saw it. I got it. She was about to slam the thing onto my head.

  I pressed the blade again, forcing the tip into my palm. The shriek untangled me, flung me to the side as the mace fell under its own weight, hitting with a crack the part of the floor where I'd just been. Not a mace. Not that at all. But a shotgun.

  Debbie groaned, struggling to lift it again. I tried to stand. My legs wouldn't obey.

  Stay, the voice begged, pleadingly gorgeous, like a Christmas day morning, like a perfect birdsong dawn, like a lover's heart-warm hug. Always stay my love my dear
est.

  Blind, gasping, I seized the knife in a blood-sticky hand, located Debbie's foot and swung the blade down, before the golden fog could close again. It pierced the armour boot as if it wasn't metal but just fabric and flesh, jarring onto the stone floor.

  Debbie screamed as I pulled the knife free and staggered back and stood, pummelled by light and betrayal. I grabbed her, hauled her up, in the storm of gold and dark, her eyes rolling and her words yelling into my face. "You stabbed me, Jesus Christ, you—"

  She froze, seeing me, really seeing me. Her eyes widened with understanding. "Again. Do it again!" She held out a hand, and I didn't ask, just jabbed the fleshy pad of a finger.

  "Aah!" She staggered back and the room staggered too, flickering from bright to dark. In the darker, I saw the pool belching a vaporous stink, bubbling as if about to boil over.

  We had to get out. Get away before this fucking thing ate us alive.

  Please. The word bubbled up, beautiful, lonely and lost, only wanting to slip a hand into mine, to love me, so we could float together in the—

  "The knife," yelled a voice from behind. "The steel, Bren! The water!"

  The yell cleared my head, for a moment, but enough. I tossed the steel blade with a spin and a splash into the pool. And, like slashing a throat, everything became still.

  I was in a cave, hand slippery with blood. I turned to Debbie, trying to speak, but she was already limping towards the opening, torch out, leaving bloody spots on the floor. I staggered after, feeling the bones around me in the walls, the weight of all their pain.

  We reached the steps, as a gurgling rose behind us. And a smell, a fridge-full of shit and rotting rage. I kept moving — don't look back — and I was on the first step, Debbie ahead of me, when the chamber exploded with an animal roar and I looked back.

  Water was vomiting from the well in a solid column, slamming into the stone ceiling, making the walls shake. Bones slid off, spinning in the icy churn that had already risen to the lowest step. "Run," I croaked, turning, banging into Debbie. "I said fucking run!"

  I shoved her, sending her hobbling on her bleeding foot, as I staggered on mine, up the steps, into the passage and along it, as water roared behind us. We staggered over the broken wall and into the main cavern, where we stopped, panting, bleeding, shaking.