The Hollow Gods

by A. J. Vrana

  Based on our town’s history, we tend not to view violent initiatives against the wolf population as a necessity for ecological balance, but rather, as a necessity for our own survival. Mythology is indeed a powerful shaper of sociocultural thought. However, I find it troubling that the people of Black Hollow, who pride themselves at maintaining our local history and culture, would turn a blind eye to the unyielding repetition—the endless resurrection of violence—that has always come from believing too firmly in a fable.

  Unyielding repetition? Endless resurrection of violence? Could something like that truly be credited to a fable? Mason removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. He didn’t understand how a fairy tale could inspire violence. What exactly was this violence, anyway? It wasn’t as though Black Hollow regularly made headlines.

  Library archives were the only place he’d find reliable information. None in town were large enough to hold the kind of data Mason wanted, but a quick drive to a nearby university would solve that. And while he couldn’t borrow anything, nothing was stopping him from reading in-house and using the photocopy machine.

  “I’m heading out for the afternoon,” he called to Annabelle from the lounge.

  Poking her head out from the kitchen, she flashed him a bright smile. “You have yourself a good one, Mason!” she called back as she waltzed around the oven.

  “Sure thing!” He saluted her with a lopsided grin and headed out the door.

  Mason knew well that searching the archives was no easy task. They were organized by place of origin and date—not by their subject matter. Looking for a specific kind of document meant guessing who was most likely to have produced it. If the issue was violence, the best candidates were journalists and government officials.

  It took Mason two hours to compile enough sources to sift through. Newspaper articles, police reports, town council blueprints clipped to damage reports—several of them going back to the 1860s. The town was no stranger to catastrophe, suffering from riots and man-made disasters that often led to property and habitat destruction. Among the violent crimes spattered throughout the last century, Mason noticed a troubling pattern: local women being murdered by close family at far higher rates than what would have been typical for such a small town.

  As Mason tore through the documents, he grew frustrated at how poorly the older texts were preserved; hardly any of them were legible anymore. It didn’t help that the archives room was barely lit. The smell of dust and the ceiling light's incessant flickering contributed to a skull-crushing headache.

  As Mason sat on the floor, surrounded by paper, one thing became clear: The town had witnessed recurring eruptions of hysteria over abductions allegedly carried out by the Dreamwalker and her wolves. Several articles mentioned a trial that occurred in conjunction with a mass wolf cull in 1868. Accompanying the reports were written testimonies by citizens who lived through the event. Mason wasted no time photocopying them before filing them away in his backpack for safekeeping. He would look at those later.

  But aside from the trial, there was little to go on. The available reports were vague, with not a word about the people involved—no mention of mayors, church officials, or authority figures. Mason flipped through the pages with growing impatience, until something seized him—an image clipped to one of the police reports from the trial of 1868. There was no caption at the bottom of the illustration—no credit to the artist responsible—but it must have been important to be included in an official report.

  It was a grotesque depiction of a massive black wolf with a broad, spiky tail and hackles that shot up like daggers. Its jaws were open wide—nearly unhinged—tongue hanging out over long, tainted fangs. The claws were stylized as sharp, curved blades emerging from the wolf’s paws. The eyes were bright, crimson red—unlike anything in the natural world. In the background, three women hung from crosses, flames at their feet as they looked towards the sky with agonized expressions. Mason leaned in close and examined them; they were all young, all dressed in plain clothes and drawn with the same face. Were they predecessors to the more recent murder victims? His gaze shifted to the wolf’s eyes, the red paint raised from the page like dried blood. The way its jaw sliced open gave the impression of a wicked grin—a malevolent promise soon to be fulfilled.

  Then, from somewhere in the room, the voice of the old man from the market echoed like a call from a distant land.

  “In the flames, their daughters burned, traitorous daughters, against them they turned. Lost in the forests where they lay with darkness, their souls devoured and their bodies in her likeness. To exorcise the demons and to banish her from this world, they set them alight, they lay out the lure. Oh, cleansing flames, may this lay her to rest, may this cleanse our shame. May we send her back to the realm of dreams, may we absolve our sins, whatever the means. But oh! How they were fooled. Oh! How they were wrong; the wolves cried in despair, haunting all with their song. Their blood now soaks the earth, awakening the forest as we approach her rebirth.”

  As the words reverberated through the air, ink slowly bled into the page beneath the monstrous image of the wolf. Each letter emerged with slow, deliberate revelation, as if the old man himself were engraving them as he spoke.

  Mason’s entire body went numb; his teeth chattered as he watched the ominous rhyme write itself into the page. His vision blurred, a chill seeping into his bones as his heart hammered and his chest began to hurt. The light flickered more erratically, shadows dancing on the floor with a life of their own. He released the file as though it was on fire, then felt a distinct hum against his thigh. His hand crept into his pocket, feeling around each of the three, smooth edges.

  The dream stone was with him.

  7

  After the alarming discovery of the dream stone, Mason shoved the photocopied documents into his bag and left the library in a cold sweat. He was shaken. So shaken, it took him over a week to gather the courage to seek out the old man. He’d pushed the incident out of his mind for as long as he could, distracting himself with menial tasks: helping Annabelle around the farm, experimenting with new recipes, indulging at bohemian cafes and a craft brewery. After dodging calls and emails from friends and family back in Vancouver, he finally responded with more than a pithy text message. They were more understanding than he anticipated. Take as long as you need, they’d said. Still, he grew increasingly irritable and found himself going on long walks that inevitably led him back to the same spot: the edge of the forest. He was burning to understand what happened to him in the library.

  Come when you have the courage to seek the way, the old man had said.

  Mason wasn’t sure if it was courage or desperation, but he was willing to give it a shot. He’d torn through every psych lecture and mental health seminar from his post-secondary education in search of an explanation. The old man’s harrowing voice could have been a simple trick of the mind; perception was a funny thing, and with anxiety and lack of sleep, it wasn’t unheard of for people to twist their surroundings. But that didn’t explain the words that had bled onto the page.

  No, he hadn’t hallucinated that. Something had happened to him, and he didn’t want to settle on an easy but ill-fitting explanation. He needed the truth.

  Having exhausted his own resources, Mason ventured into the woods. He took out the dream stone and stared it down, wondering if the old man would magically appear behind him. Of course, no such thing happened. Turning it over in his hands, he angled his palm so the rock caught the sunlight, watching the wave of purples, greens, and golds shimmer over the surface. Unable to tear his eyes away, Mason wandered as though hypnotized until he lost all sense of his surroundings and tripped, the rock flying out of his hand and landing several feet away.

  Scrambling to his feet, a flicker of violet alerted him to its location. He picked up the fang-like stone and wiped the dirt away with his thumb. It was humming softly. Mason turned in place, waiting for the song to strengthen. When he felt the stone sing, he began
to walk.

  He was headed uphill, stepping over moss-covered tree roots that protruded from the ground and slithered through the soil like hardened snakes. As minutes passed, Mason thought himself crazy for following a stone, until he noticed he was on a path weaving through a maze of oak trees. Veiny boughs towered over him and twisted inwards, forming an imposing gate-like structure overhead. Eerily deformed, leafless and haggard, the long, crooked limbs entwined with one another and all but blotted out the sky.

  Up ahead, Mason spotted a small round hut that looked half-devoured by an ancient redwood. The back wall and roof merged with the massive trunk. Leaves and pines scattered around the door like a bird’s nest. The tree was colossal in both height and girth, forcing Mason to crane his neck as he peered skyward in search of its peak. It was like a tunnel leading to the sun, the base serving as a roost of some kind.

  When Mason finally reached the redwood, the hut’s door swung open and the old man from the market stood in the shadowy entrance. Without a word of greeting, he turned and walked back into the darkness as if expecting Mason to follow. The doorway was too small for a fully-grown adult. Crouching down, Mason followed him into his tiny world.

  A single room extended into the hollow of the redwood. On one side, a hole was burrowed into the trunk like someone had hacked through with an axe. About the size of a carving pumpkin, it was just large enough to serve as a window. Save for the gap and the sunlight that peeked through the cracks, the room was dark. Above them, deer antlers and knife handles protruded from the walls like perches. How they’d gotten there was a mystery. Tied to the ends were webs of string that stretched across the interior of the trunk, glassworks and sparkling Christmas ornaments hanging from the delicate white threads.

  The old man went about his business, moving around the dark space with unexpected ease; there was no groping of walls, no stumbling about. He lit a lantern—mostly for Mason’s benefit—that revealed an impressive hoard of shining baubles. In the centre of the disorder was a small table with a deck of cards and several wax candles.

  “Sit,” the old man instructed as he glided in close. Mason was alarmed by how pallid his eyes were—like a cloudy sky with a sliver of ice blue dancing around his irises.

  “You are curious about Black Hollow,” he said.

  “How did you—”

  “There is someone you seek.”

  “Someone...?”

  The sound of flapping wings by the window caught Mason’s attention. Glancing over, he saw a large raven perched on the jagged edge. The bird cocked its head, its eyes like obsidian beads narrowing in on the new guest. Mason squirmed and turned back to the old man, but the person sitting before him suddenly appeared different. The air of death about him was gone. It was as though the vitality of youth had returned, and he was now ageless: His posture was upright, and his eyes—ghostly pale moments earlier—were now a deep, coal-black. His once grey, thinning hair now mirrored the colour of his gaze, the newly enriched strands glistening sapphire and obsidian like the plumage of his feathered friend. His bony frame had strengthened with long, wiry muscles, flowing gracefully as he extended his arms and breathed in deeply.

  “Look with different eyes,” he said cryptically.

  Mason’s head swam as the room turned hazy.

  “If you do...Inversion. Revelation,” he hissed. His thin lips quirked sharply, cutting across his face like a knife. He flipped one of the cards on the table—an ace of spades.

  The raven cackled—the sound almost human—then flew away.

  As the air grew lighter, Mason turned his attention back to the man. His eyes were colourless again as if he’d shed something of himself with the raven’s flight.

  “You never told me your name,” Mason ventured.

  “Ga-vran,” the old man croaked.

  “Gavran?” Mason repeated.

  He smiled in response, a warmth in his expression that hadn’t been there before. “She says I’m Gavran.”

  “Who’s she?”

  “The one you’ve come to ask about.”

  “The Dreamwalker.” Mason had no clue if this Gavran had a lick of sense to him, but at least he was willing to talk about the town’s fabled character. “Do you know the Dreamwalker?”

  The old man grinned toothily. “All my life.”

  Gavran said nothing more, the eerie silence starting to weigh on the lopsided conversation.

  “I-I’m Mason.”

  “I know who you are,” Gavran chided, his grin warping his features into something alien. “Sit and ask your questions.”

  Mason finally obliged and helped himself to a folded quilt on the floor, clearing his throat. “Did you call me here?”

  “You asked to be called.”

  The old man’s response didn’t make sense, and yet it did. He’d nearly gone mad looking for this place; didn’t he himself do the calling? “But how did I get here?” Mason asked.

  “The forest brought you.”

  “But why me?” Mason insisted.

  “Grief reverberates, shaking things from their slumber.”

  Mason’s heart nearly stopped. How did the old man know he was grieving?

  “You’re making noise.” Gavran flattened his palm against the wall. As if disjointed at the knuckles, his fingers drew up in a grotesque display of flexibility, then splayed over the surface. He scratched at the wood with elongated nails. “The forest hears you, just as it heard her.”

  “Her?”

  “There was once a woman. A Dreamwalker. In the woods, she was lost, and there she found him. Deep under the willow.” White, sightless eyes locked onto Mason’s.

  Their blood now soaks the earth, awakening the forest as we approach her rebirth.

  The words echoed in Mason’s mind. “Found who?”

  Gavran cackled at the question. “Who will you find?”

  Mason wondered if he was being spoken to in riddles, but perhaps Gavran could tell him what the villagers wouldn’t. What exactly was the relationship between this fable and all the violence that came after it? Why the monstrous depiction of the black wolf in the historical record? Why the murdered women?

  “I heard your voice in the library,” Mason continued. “And I saw…” he trailed off, unsure of how to articulate it. “Were you there? Did you follow me?”

  Gavran’s head teetered to the side, his eyes shifting to the window where the raven had been. Maybe the old man had no clue what he was being asked. Mason unfolded the paper with the illustration of the wolf and the burning women, then placed it in front of Gavran. He hadn’t noticed before, but the words beneath the image had vanished.

  “What does this mean?” Mason asked. Tapping his finger on one of the women, he tried to meet the old man’s gaze. “Is this because of the Dreamwalker? Is she responsible for setting wolves on the town…for all the violence that’s happened here?”

  Gavran rocked forward, his eyes widening as he fixated on the wolf. “Each time they say she steals one…each time the stolen one burns.”

  Mason frowned. “The stolen one?” He remembered reading on Mathias’ blog about the villagers’ belief that the Dreamwalker kidnapped girls from Black Hollow. Then, he glanced down at the anguished faces of the burning women. “Why would the villagers kill the girls they were trying to save from being abducted?”

  “Round and round and round it goes,” the old man whispered, his pupils losing focus.

  This was insane. Mason could hardly understand what was driving him—why he was pursuing explanations for historical events by interrogating a crazy hermit in the woods. But when he thought of getting up and leaving, of going back to Annabelle’s and realizing he had nothing to do, something tugged at him to stay. His heart deflated at the thought of being alone with Mathias’ ghost. This is better, a tiny voice said, kindling his growing desire to learn about this fable—to debunk it, and to expose this skewed telling of local history.

  Accompanying this was a morbid curiosity; had these w
omen truly been killed because of superstition? The idea was medieval—outrageous enough that a self-righteous air inflated the young doctor’s chest. The prospect of enlightening the village eased the burden of his own mistakes.

  Mason was about to demand elaboration when a female voice cut off his incoming question.

  “Gavran, are you in there?” she called from outside, a light knock sounding at the door. The raps were echoed by the raven’s beak, pecking at the window’s jagged contours as he returned from his brief adventure.

  “Are you out there?” Gavran replied before opening the door to reveal an elegant woman standing in the entrance.

  Mason took immediate notice of her gorgeous amber eyes, framed by long, thick tresses that were white as snow despite her youth. She wasn’t very tall, but her presence filled the redwood like sunlight spilling into a darkened room. A navy leather jacket fit her waist like a second skin, complemented by a long taupe skirt that split at the front to reveal black leather boots hugging her legs just below the knees. She was carrying a shoulder bag, the seams stretched from the heavy load. Observing Mason briefly, she returned her attention to the man she came to see.

  “I brought you these,” she told him, swinging the bag off her shoulder and laying its contents out on the table one by one: a chrome Chevy hub cap, a stainless steel toaster, silver collectors' spoons, what appeared to be a diamond engagement ring, and a handful of coins and colourful bottle caps.

  Gavran wasted no time inspecting the eclectic items, possessively grasping each of the coins between his bony fingers as he searched for the perfect throne.