The Hollow Gods

by A. J. Vrana

  “What’s up!” It was Hannah, pulling Miya from her field study. She sat on the other swing and wiggled her butt into place.

  “Hey, not much.” The edges of Miya’s lips tugged into a smile as she greeted her friend, taking in the platinum streaks in her dark tresses. “Looks good.”

  “Thanks!” she accepted the compliment with ease—a feat Miya admired. “Got it done at work yesterday.”

  The two had been friends since childhood, but life had taken them on diverging paths. Hannah left home at seventeen to pursue a dance career—headstrong and unrelenting in her ambitions. But after a devastating knee injury, she was forced to abandon her dream. Miya reckoned that if anyone had a right to be pissed at life, it was Hannah, but she kept her chin up and went on to beauty school. Tougher than I could ever hope to be, Miya thought.

  “Aren’t you creeped out?” Hannah asked, glancing towards the forest.

  “Why would I be?” feigned Miya.

  “You know what this spot is.”

  “Yeah.” She shrugged, “And?”

  Hannah threw her head back and huffed at the sky. “I don’t get how you can be so blasé about it. You found Elle Robinson here. What if it happens again?”

  Miya’s chest tightened as she remembered her encounter, but she knew telling Hannah would be like dangling bait over shark-infested water. “Next time someone stumbles out of the woods, I’m directing them to the nearest bar.”

  Hannah snorted and waved her off. “You’re an asshole. But,” she grinned ear-to-ear, “want to do me a favour?”

  Miya pressed her lips together and shrunk back. “What might that be?”

  Hannah flashed a beaming smile. “A reading, of course. You’re always crazy accurate.”

  “A reading?”

  “Right now!”

  “You’re so demanding,” Miya joked, then reached into her backpack and pulled out playing cards.

  “Guess that’s why all the boys left the yard.” Hannah flipped her hair over her shoulder.

  “Women and their need for reciprocity!”

  Miya’s scoff was followed by an eruption of laughter between the two girls.

  “Seriously though, how are you?” Hannah prodded as she shuffled the cards.

  Miya had called her here to tell her she was moving away, but the words got caught in her throat. “Well, I’m broke.”

  “I know that part. Hard time getting gigs?”

  Miya hesitated, one of the cards folding against the rest and popping out of her hands. “I’ve been...I don’t know. I can’t sleep. My thoughts are all over the place. Just feels like something’s not right. Only there’s nothing to feel wrong about. I can’t explain it.”

  Hannah crossed her legs, her brow creasing. “I mean, that would mess with anyone.”

  Miya picked the stray card out of the sand—the king of spades. “It’s been hard meeting deadlines for school. And every time I try to get my shit together, the anxiety hits harder, just to remind me I can’t.”

  Using her overturned backpack as a make-shift table, she began laying out the cards in pairs. Ace of hearts.

  “Have you talked to your family?” Hannah suggested.

  “They’d worry too much, and I feel like a shitbag for wasting their money.” Jack of Hearts.

  “How about therapy?”

  “I looked into it. Psychologists are way too expensive, and student insurance just doesn’t cover it. I checked out student counselling too, but the wait times are insane. Seems like everyone’s fucked up, only no one looks it from the outside.” Nine of diamonds.

  “You’re pretty good at hiding it, too,” she pointed out.

  “Doesn’t feel that way.” King of clubs.

  “I’m here for you, you know.”

  Miya looked over the card spread. It was obvious that Hannah had good things going for her, and there was no need to dampen that with personal problems. “You’re my friend, Hannah. You can’t be my therapist too.”

  “Why not?” she chuckled. “I don’t cost a dime.”

  “Because being a therapist means saying things the other person might not want to hear from a friend. If friends made good therapists, psychologists wouldn’t charge two hundred dollars an hour.”

  “Well, fine then.” Hannah rolled her eyes and then nodded to the cards. “So, what’s it say? I see hearts. Hearts are good, yeah?”

  “Usually.” Miya stared down at the pairs. She ran the cards’ individual meanings through her mind, but she knew that wasn’t how readings worked. Meaning had to be put together. The whole was greater than the sum of its parts.

  “Well…”

  Miya looked up at her and smiled coyly. “You’re dating again, aren’t you?”

  “What!” Hannah shrieked, eyes widening. “How’d you know that!”

  Miya tapped the first card. “Ace of hearts. New relationship.” Then she tapped the second. “Jack of hearts—a message about love or, in more common terms, being asked out.”

  “Well, damn.” Hannah leaned back and almost tumbled from the swing. “I am seeing someone new, but it’s nothing serious. Not yet, anyway. What about the next two?”

  “You’ll have to tell me about him,” Miya offered, but she knew Hannah wouldn’t divulge until she was sure he was worth the breath. “The nine of diamonds is an improvement in your financial situation, and the king of clubs represents practical power. Might be a new job offer, or a promotion.”

  “Sweet!” She sounded more pleased with this than the dating part. “I’ve been applying for jobs. Had a few Skype interviews and an offer in Burnaby.” She hesitated. “I know it’s super short notice, but I’ll be moving in a few weeks. I found a really nice place and couldn’t pass it up, and the pay will be way better, too.”

  Even for someone working full time, making ends meet could be tough. And if Hannah was struggling, Miya dreaded what that meant for her.

  “Oh…” she trailed off, swallowing back the bitter taste. “But hey, looks like life is on the up and up for you.” She tried sounding cheerful, but a deep, desperate fear clawed at her from inside. What did it matter where Miya went? Her problems would follow. What if she couldn’t get a job quickly enough? How would she afford to live?

  Leaving Black Hollow wouldn’t solve her problems.

  Hannah traced the edge of the ace of hearts, smiling contently. “You’re really good at this, you know. You should try making some money with it.”

  “What? Be a fortune-teller?” Miya snorted at the idea, though not without secretly relishing the compliment. “I don’t think I’d make enough to pay rent.”

  “Better than nothing! I bet you could really make bank with some Dreamwalker predictions.” Hannah extended her hand. “Here, give me the cards. I want to do a reading for you.”

  “Oh no, no way am I taking part in that. Do you have any idea how many Dreamwalker fortune-telling scams there are? They scare the shit out of people.” Miya gathered up the pairs and handed over the deck. “And weren’t you the one freaking out about the Dreamwalker kidnappings two minutes ago? Now you want me to profit off them?”

  “Someone might be next.” Hannah shuffled the cards like they were trying to flee her fingers. “And we all know what could happen now that Elle’s back.”

  “I’d rather not think about it,” Miya mumbled.

  Seven of hearts, five of spades. Ace of spades, king of spades.

  Him again, Miya thought, eyes lingering on the king.

  “Yikes—that’s a lot of spades,” Hannah remarked with a cringe. “I must be doing it wrong. Spades are bad, right?”

  “Usually,” Miya repeated, her gaze trained on the ace.

  “You got one heart though,” the eternal optimist offered.

  “Sevens are about troubles.” Miya fought to smile. “A seven of hearts is about troubled emotions.”

  “Oh...”

  “Five of spades is disease. And the ace of spades,” she picked the card up, “is death.”

>   “Shit, it’s totally wrong then.” Hannah plucked away the card. “You’re not going to die.”

  Miya flopped over the swing and let her eyes roll back. Slackening her jaw and letting her tongue hang, she released a shuddering gurgle. The display sent Hannah into a fit of giggles, and Miya savoured making someone laugh despite her mental fog.

  She failed to mention that the ace of spades didn’t always mean a literal death; it was the force that mediated the material and the spiritual worlds. If anything, the card signalled a spiritual death—an end to things as they were currently understood.

  “Maybe I’ll slip on some pigeon shit and crack my head open on the sidewalk!” Miya pulled herself up by the chain, laughing away the lump in her throat.

  “I don’t think pigeon shit is slippery.” Hannah squinted. “What about the last card?”

  “The king of spades?” He had come to her twice. “A powerful man. Or a spirit. Could also be fate. It’s hard to say.”

  “That’s because I can’t do readings!” Hannah threw her arms up. “See, you’re the psychic here.”

  “I’m totally not psychic. But thanks.”

  Hannah checked the time on her phone and announced that she would be late for work. After hugging goodbye, Miya remained on the swing, swaying gently as the wind tickled her face. She peered into the darkness between the trees, wondering what it would be like to live there. So much of her imagination was captivated by this spot, and all because of a momentary encounter with an animal that was probably dead. She was sure she’d never see the wolf again, but hoping ensnared her in something greater than herself, greater than her own mind.

  After reluctantly returning home, Miya launched a fruitless job hunt. She applied for anything entry-level and wound up agreeing to a weekend of pet-sitting, but the month’s rent couldn’t be scrounged up walking poodles and scooping litter. Waiting to toll the bell, Patricia reminded her that time was running out.

  Worn down by solitude, Miya mustered the courage to tell her family about the academic probation over the phone.

  “I had no idea you were struggling so much,” came her mother’s sympathetic voice on the other end, but Miya could detect the thick layer of disappointment beneath the concern.

  Her parents had moved to Calgary for her father’s work—a temporary move, he’d promised—but Miya knew that temporary didn’t mean short term. In theory, everything was temporary. She’d lost count of how many times the promise of a visit was fulfilled only by absence and a cheque in the mail.

  “I’m sorry. I guess I didn’t realize how bad it had gotten.”

  “Oh, Miya,” she sighed. “You’ve always been so strong-willed. I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”

  Will I, though? she questioned.

  “Do you need money?” her mother asked.

  “Huh? No, no, I’m fine,” Miya lied. She wouldn’t stoop to taking more freebies from them. “How’s Dad?”

  She was relieved when her mother changed the subject and began whining about his clutter in the storage room. Eventually, she ran out of complaints, and the conversation fizzled out until awkward farewells were in order.

  Her loneliness unabated, Miya called the centre for mental health at school but ended up shuffled from one automated system to the next. After having her sanity whittled away by the holding queue, she decided whatever advice they had wasn’t worth enduring the tinny, unyielding tune she’d been subjected to for the past forty-five minutes. She hung up and tried Google instead. The sheer volume of information was overwhelming. Unable to retain any of it, research devolved into distraction.

  Miya remembered being taught that if she set goals and worked hard, life would repay her in kind. She’d wanted to go into investigative journalism, to uncover unspoken truths, to excavate what lay hidden beneath the surface. She worked her ass off for the perfect grades, enrolled in the perfect program, and then she realized how hollow it was. Journalism turned out to be as formulaic as everything else in life. There was a template for how to hit all the right notes, to invoke the lowest common denominator. Most didn’t want nuance and complexity; they wanted a good soundbite.

  “Keep it simple,” her professor had said. “No one cares about the truth as much as they think they do. They just want easy answers.”

  As the program went on, Miya went through the motions, but she couldn’t quell her disappointment. The knowledge presented to her was shallow. There had to be something more, something deeper. That was when she started losing sleep, suffering anxiety, and failing classes. Nothing held her interest. It was a frightening, muted existence that offered no promise of more. What more meant, however, was elusive as the wind.

  Miya reckoned that plans were little more than pleas to the god of time, but the future was always ruthless in its uncertainty. Setting goals was like arranging a grandiose party for an unconfirmed visitor; it was self-sabotage, a setup for failure.

  Slamming her laptop shut, Miya collapsed onto her back and closed her eyes. She reconsidered her mom’s offer for financial help. It wasn’t like she had siblings for her parents to splurge on. But if she asked for help, she’d have to deliver results—results she wasn’t sure she could pull off.

  What she wanted was adventure, not obligations. She’d hoped running away would give her a welcome taste of chaos, but it was a foolhardy whim. If she wanted something to sink her teeth into, she’d have to hunt it herself.

  All the times she’d caroused near the woods in a private dare to the spirits within yielded nothing. She flirted with the possibility of investigating them, like a ghost hunter on some bad reality show, but she never found the courage.

  Perhaps Hannah was right. Perhaps it was time to use what she had. She could take up cartomancy to find proof of the Dreamwalker—if only for herself.

  First, she needed to know more about the last abduction. Miya whipped out her phone to research the details, only to be confronted with a grizzly headline.

  Elle Robinson, 19, found dead in woods one week after reappearance. Father charged with first-degree murder.

  “What!” Miya scanned through the article, posted barely an hour ago. The police had Gene Robinson in custody; his wife had turned him in after he’d come home in the dead of night and confessed to dragging their daughter into the woods and strangling her to death with her own necklace.

  A shudder wormed up Miya’s spine until she pulled the duvet over her shoulders. She was the one who'd found Elle. She’d touched her, felt the goosebumps on her trembling arms just over a week ago. She was alive, and now…

  Maybe this was the wrong adventure for Miya.

  “You should be careful,” her father had said one year. “There are predictions going around about the Dreamwalker coming back. Young women will go missing.”

  The disappearances only happened once or twice every few years, usually in autumn and late summer. Miya thought the stories were exaggerated and the murders a product of sheer insanity. Yet they were always committed by those who knew the victims best.

  “Girls have disappeared in the woods before,” her mother said when she was too young to stay out late. “It’s not just legend; it’s been documented.”

  “Spirited away by the Dreamwalker.”

  The warnings rippled through Miya as she dropped her phone, wrapped herself in the covers, and squeezed her eyes shut. Perhaps it wasn’t so bad that Hannah was leaving. Black Hollow was no place to make a life.

  “It happens when the wolf populations grow. And you know what they say about wolves.”

  Fear mongering. The villagers warned that any girl could be the girl. They wanted them all to be afraid.

  Are you afraid? a voice echoed.

  Do you believe?

  Miya started with a gasp, the question a low murmur in her ear. She sat up, her eyes darting around the room until they passed over a shadow in the corner. A single, violet wisp lashed out into the dim amber lamplight as if reaching for Miya. The edge billowed and splintered in
to a spine, then plumped into a pulpy, vapour-like feather. It broke away from the tendril and wafted slowly to the floor, vanishing like mist.

  The spell broken, Miya’s gaze drifted back to the corner. She heard a soft chuckle—a woman’s voice. A delicate hand lifted from the dark silhouette and pointed a single finger at Miya, the gesture clear:

  You’re next.

  Her voice was sickly-sweet, her words chiming through the deathly air of Miya’s bedroom.

  Time to lose your way, she trilled.

  The Hollow’s still got hell to pay.

  6

  Mason

  Several days passed after Mason's adventure at the market. He still had the stone he'd bought, keeping it by his bedside as though it were a lucky totem. He enjoyed the way it glistened, and every so often, he’d hold it up to the light to admire how the green, gold, and purple shimmers melted into one another, the hues changing with the angle. Just as the stone could appear grey with one glance and suddenly a myriad of colours with another, life really was all about perspective.

  It wasn’t what he’d expected from Black Hollow, but between leisurely hikes, outdoor reading, and gorging on local fare, Mason immersed himself in the town lore, if for no other reason than to play Sherlock Holmes. The legends scratched at the walls of his rational worldview, planting a dark seed in his mind. With every passing moment he spent researching Mathias’ blog and scoffing at its claims, the seed burrowed deeper, soaking up the rains of doubt until something thorny began to grow. His fixation intensified as he fancied himself a seeker of truth, determined to fortify his doctrine.

  Nothing in Mathias’ blog provided the answers Mason wanted. The villagers believed the Dreamwalker would return one day, but the myth about her and the willow remained a mystery. There was one blog entry he thought compelling—a critique of the town’s enthusiastic support for a recent government initiative to slow the decline of caribou populations: a wolf cull. Mathias found the town’s beliefs overbearing, if not ridiculous. He also referenced the history of conflict with wolves in Black Hollow—and one that was particularly bloody: