Hollow Pike

by James Dawson

  ‘Tomorrow we could go into Leeds,’ Delilah suggested. ‘My dad owes me some money.’

  Kitty had some sort of family meal so she couldn’t go, and Lis wasn’t sure she could afford the long journey when she had so much homework to do. They talked about a trip for next weekend instead, and Lis was glad to feature in their future plans. It was reassuring.

  There was one last stop on the tour. Kitty and Delilah had promised to save the best for last. They headed down a curving, cobbled side street that twisted away from the main shopping centre. Past a couple of olde-worlde looking shops, they reached their destination. This part of town felt more authentic. Here was a proper Yorkshire town with a baker, a blacksmith and some tiny second-hand bookshops. It was a shame more of Fulton wasn’t like this. In fact, Lis realised, they had almost walked back into Hollow Pike.

  ‘Oh, no. Look who it is,’ Delilah whispered.

  Across the street was Laura. God, she was the last person Lis wanted to see. Lis immediately tensed up, subconsciously hiding behind Kitty. Her foe was arguing with a handsome man who had closely-cropped silver hair and a Riviera tan, her father perhaps?

  ‘Check out the domestic!’ Kitty chuckled.

  Although they were out of earshot, it was apparent that Laura and the gentleman were having a fiery disagreement. Laura looked hot and teary, even stamping her foot stubbornly at one point. She spat an insult into the man’s face, but this was the last straw. With a heavy hand, he seized her arm and dragged her towards a midnight blue BMW parked in one of the side streets.

  Even from where they were, Lis heard Laura scream a curse.

  ‘Come on. Let’s not get involved,’ Delilah said and pulled Lis away by the hand, but in Lis’s stomach there was now the familiar hybrid feeling of hatred and fascination she only associated with Laura Rigg. Heads down, they swiftly made their way along the cobbles.

  ‘We’re here!’ Delilah presented a run-down looking shop with a grimy net curtain and a sign on the door reading ‘Friends of the Church’. Lis guessed it was a charity shop, although what really caught her attention were the two terrifying mannequins in the window. One was bald and missing an arm, and you could still clearly see that its companion had empty eye sockets, despite the wig that covered most of its face. Both were wearing hideous floral dresses.

  ‘You have got to be kidding!’

  ‘No!’ Kitty squealed. ‘Wait and see . . . It’s amazing! I promise you’ll find some buried treasures.’

  The two girls took her by the arms and thrust her through the front door, a dainty bell signalling their arrival. The smell of musty old clothes and mothballs hit Lis in an invisible tsunami. She fought the urge to gag.

  ‘You don’t even notice the smell after a minute,’ Delilah hissed, reading her mind.

  The shop was in hazy darkness, only tiny shafts of light filtering through the filthy net curtains. Clothing hung off rails and junk was piled all around in recycled tea chests. Bric-a-brac was stuffed into any available space, while mounds of books filled every corner. Like the TARDIS, the shop was somehow bigger on the inside. Kitty was right, though – despite the smell, Lis found herself in an Aladdin’s cave.

  ‘Afternoon, ladies!’

  All three jumped as a strange vision appeared behind the counter. The shopkeeper was hard to age; she was buried under a ton of bad make-up and a huge blonde wig. Lis’s mouth hung open: this woman looked half human, half clown.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Gillespie,’ Delilah said politely. ‘How are you?’

  The figure waved a jewelled hand around the shop. ‘You know how it is, darling. So much to do, not enough time to do it!’

  The three girls nodded.

  ‘You won’t think I’m rude if I carry on folding scarves, will you?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  Mrs Gillespie slowly took a scarf from a teetering pile and neatly folded it before selecting another. Lis doubted whether folding scarves would help rescue the shop from its current state of chaos.

  Kitty took her hand and they slowly advanced to the back of the shop.

  ‘You know her?’ Lis whispered.

  ‘Yeah, we shop in here a lot.’

  ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Delilah read her thoughts again, ‘but if you look close enough there’s some fabulous retro stuff here. All the desperate housewives were young and cool in the seventies and eighties and they’re always having clear outs.’

  ‘OK, I’ll start digging!’

  ‘Enjoy!’ came Mrs Gillespie’s shrill voice. Lis wondered if she’d heard every word they’d said.

  Once again, her new friends had been spot on. In amongst some hideous fashion relics there were some cool pieces that suited Lis’s new metropolitan style down to the ground. But the most fun part was the changing room: basically a corner behind a curtain. The three girls quickly organised a fashion show for each other. Taking it in turns, they would take armfuls of clothing behind the curtain. Some were genuine purchases, but mainly they chose the most grotesque, comedy-value items they could unearth. One second, Kitty would emerge from behind the veil in a giant peach bridesmaid dress, and the next Delilah would crawl out in a PVC catsuit. The eighties power-suits were something else! Lis laughed so hard her ribs ached.

  ‘What do you think of this?’ she asked, strutting around in a little red trench coat. It was the boldest blood-red she’d ever worn and, while it wasn’t her normal style, she was feeling brave.

  ‘So cute!’ enthused Kitty. ‘Very “rainy day in Manhattan”!’

  ‘You have to buy that!’ Delilah agreed.

  ‘Excellent!’ Lis smiled, basking in the sunshine of friendship.

  As Delilah and Kitty searched for a winter coat for Kitty, Lis broke away and started to look at the books and gifts. Most of the stock consisted of ancient crockery or glass ornaments that looked a lot like they had been cleared out of dead pensioners’ houses, a thought that made Lis uneasy.

  She ran a finger across a stack of dusty books topped with three copies of the Spice Girls 1997 Annual. At the very bottom of the tower was a huge hardback entitled An Occult History of Hollow Pike by Reginald J. Dandehunt. Any relation to Ms Dandehunt? Lis wondered. She pulled the heavy tome out, careful not to let the whole pile tumble down. How many Dandehunts could there be in such a small town?

  Sitting cross-legged on the floor, she set the ancient book down in front of her. Turning to the publisher’s page, she could see that the book had been published in 1922. It was an heirloom! Lis grinned at the pencilled price of £1.75. She wondered what it would fetch on one of those BBC antiques shows.

  She made a mental note to ask Ms Dandehunt if her granddad had been called Reginald, and then started leafing through the book. Lis adored old photographs – as a child, she had genuinely believed that the past had been black and white. She immediately recognised Hollow Pike village. From a distance it looked almost unchanged by time: the copse, the winding roads, the cobbled streets. What was noticeably different were the people: they stood in front of old houses and shops with blank, austere faces.

  Apparently it was true, Hollow Pike did have a supernatural history. She flicked to a page entitled Early Witchcraft – The Reformation and Beyond. No photos here, only curious paintings and etchings. They showed hags shoving chubby infants into a bubbling cauldron, laughing as they did so; boils and plagues; whole fields of dead cattle – all supposedly a result of witchcraft. One image showed nude women – witches – dancing around fires.

  Flicking further in, the book grew darker still with drawings and etchings of pentagrams and goat-headed demons. Sinister words like ‘blood rites’ and ‘sacrifice’ jumped from the page, and there were haunting images of animal offerings and strange altars where crones stood entwined with gleeful demons. Lis remembered enough from RE to know how Christianity had demonised pagan practises, but the images disturbed her nonetheless. Her eyes lingered on a more recent photograph of four hooded figures, standing arms aloft, worshipping some unsee
n deity. But what brought the sting of tears to her eyes was the background: a tiny stream was clearly visible in the picture. It was the stream in Pike Copse. The stream in her nightmares.

  ‘What you looking at?’

  At Kitty’s voice, Lis slammed the book shut. ‘Nothing,’ she said instinctively, ramming the book onto the nearest bookshelf.

  ‘Cool, do you like this coat?’ Kitty modelled a huge brown fake fur.

  ‘Gorgeous!’

  ‘I know! Are you finished? I’d best head home soon.’

  Lis nodded, quickly forgetting the book and its sinister contents. ‘I just need to pay for my jacket.’ She picked up the red coat from where she’d left it and headed for the cash desk, where the eccentric Mrs Gillespie was still folding scarves.

  ‘Hi. I’d like this, please,’ Lis said.

  The old woman continued clawing through the scarves, apparently unaware of her presence.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Gill—’

  ‘You’re new,’ Mrs Gillespie stated, reaching over and taking the jacket from her.

  Lis smiled nervously, trying to remain as polite as possible. ‘Yes, I just moved here from Wales.’

  Through spidery lashes, Mrs Gillespie eyed Lis with suspicion. Her piercing green eyes burned into Lis’s own and her ruby mouth grew tight. Without warning, the woman reached out a thin arm and grasped Lis’s hand. Cold rings pressed into her flesh. ‘I’ve heard about you, Lis London.’

  Lis pulled her hand away sharply. ‘How do you know my name?’

  Mrs Gillespie’s face shook with intensity. ‘The birds are your friends, but beware the trees!’

  ‘What?’ Christ, the woman was mental.

  ‘You don’t know, do you?’ Mrs Gillespie went on. ‘Well, listen up, young lady . . . your dreams are a warning!’

  Tears suddenly stung Lis’s eyes. The woman couldn’t know about her nightmares – that wasn’t possible. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  Mrs Gillespie relaxed, smiling once more. ‘Very well. That’ll be three pounds fifty then, please.’

  Lis quickly fumbled in her purse for the money as Kitty and Delilah arrived at her side.

  ‘Are you OK?’ asked Kitty.

  ‘Yeah, fine. Let’s go.’ Seizing the jacket, Lis turned and ran out of the shop, stumbling onto the cobbled pavement outside. She sank down onto the cold, stone step as Delilah followed.

  ‘Lis? What’s up? Kitty’s just paying for her coat.’

  Lis looked into her friend’s concerned face and told a lie. ‘I’m OK. That smell was just making me feel sick. Sorry.’

  ‘No worries,’ Delilah replied sympathetically.

  On the contrary, Lis’s head was now full of nothing but worries.

  Tired

  The dream was back with a vengeance and it had evolved. It would start the same as always: Lis crawling, exhausted, through Pike Copse, struggling for breath. The trees, the birds, the distant screams were all there, as was the moment when her assailant drove her face into the freezing waters of the stream.

  And then she would wake up, cocooned in her still, silent bed. She would roll over to try to return to sleep, only now Mrs Gillespie would be lying in bed next to her. Yellow teeth revealed in a snarl and red painted nails reaching for Lis’s face . . .

  ‘Liiiisss!’

  And then Lis would wake up for real.

  A week of broken sleep became full scale insomnia. Although her body was exhausted, fear prevented sleep, and, by the following Monday, Lis could feel the sleep deprivation beginning to affect her health. Weak and dizzy, she felt somehow separate from reality, like a hologram.

  What had Mrs Gillespie meant by calling her dreams a warning? Lis wondered if the nightmare was a taste of things to come, but then told herself that that was impossible. She also reminded herself that Mrs Gillespie was a fruit-and-nut-case who couldn’t possibly be talking about her dreams, because it was also impossible for her to have known about them.

  God, she needed a good night’s sleep.

  And yet she drifted into school, hoping tedium would squeeze out the strangeness of her encounter at the shop. Lis was in luck; she received a cold, hard dose of reality as soon as she entered the gates. Laura hadn’t lied – she was waiting, just as she’d promised. She and her hags were draped around the railings: gargoyles protecting their lair. Nasima spotted Lis and turned to whisper something in Laura’s ear. A shadow of a smirk crept across Laura’s perfectly glossed lips as she stared at Lis, and she drew a perfectly manicured nail across her elegant throat.

  Adopting a classic victim stance, Lis put her head down and scurried past before the spider could lunge for the fly. She cursed her own weakness. If she wasn’t her, she’d probably pick on her! Lis wished she’d caught the bus with the others instead of having Max drop her off; at least there was strength in numbers.

  Somehow, registration and first period drifted by easily like a hazy summer cloud. She was so tired. She had to sleep tonight. She’d read all sorts of things about what happened if you didn’t sleep for too many days: hallucinations, anxiety attacks, spontaneous fits of sleep, blackouts. Lis knew she couldn’t be far off. She hadn’t slept for more than thirty minutes in over forty-eight hours.

  Second-period Spanish. At least she had the whole gang to keep her afloat in this lesson. They sat in the corner at the back of the classroom, farthest away from Mr Gray at the front and Laura near the windows. But Spanish oral practice was dull and the classroom was way too hot. Maybe I could sleep here, Lis thought. Would Mr Gray even notice? Across the room Laura had artfully arranged her blazer into a pillow and had her head down, pretending to repeat the lines to Harry.

  ‘Me duele la cabeza,’ Jack announced. Spanish with a Geordie accent sounded extra special.

  ‘My head hurts,’ repeated the translation on the CD.

  ‘Your turn,’ Jack prompted, but Lis remained slumped in her corner, her eyes aching.

  ‘You do it,’ she mumbled.

  Kitty turned round from the row in front and pulled her headphones off. ‘What’s up?’

  Lis leaned forward, every movement a triumph in her current state. ‘I’m not sleeping too well.’

  Delilah looked concerned and paused the CD. ‘Why not? What’s on your mind?’

  ‘Nothing. I suppose I’m just a “troubled sleeper”.’

  ‘My dad knows some amazing homoeopathic sleeping remedies,’ Delilah said. ‘I’ll get him to dig you something out.’

  ‘Thanks, Delilah, but I’m sure I’ll sleep tonight,’ Lis told her.

  ‘My mum swears by three Nytol and a glass of Chardonnay,’ Jack put in, pausing their own CD.

  Kitty spoke. ‘Bad dreams?’

  Lis froze. A knowing glint sparkled for the briefest moment in Kitty’s blue eyes. Impossible! This was her paranoia again. Kitty had asked a perfectly reasonable question given the context. Regardless, Lis wasn’t ready to share the full horror of her nightmares with her friends yet. Would any of them understand her horrific recurring dreams? She feared she was too freaky, even for them.

  ‘Something like that,’ Lis muttered, cutting the conversation short.

  Kitty’s gaze held suspicion for a second and she opened her mouth to speak.

  ‘Kitty!’ Mr Gray yelled. ‘Turn around and get on with your practice, please.’

  Kitty rolled her eyes and pulled the headphones back onto her head. Lis leaned back as Jack continued his butchery of the Spanish language.

  ‘Me duele la espalda.’

  ‘My back hurts,’ the CD responded.

  ‘Me duele el brazo.’

  ‘My arm hurts.’

  ‘Me duele . . .’ His voice grew quieter.

  Lis jumped. Something freezing cold washed over her feet. There must be a leak or a flood . . . or blood. Looking down, she saw deep, purple-black liquid rushing up around her ankles. Time slowed to a crawl and she turned to Jack, but he was gone. They were all gone. Lis was alone in a deserted classroom.

 
; Angry winds somehow blew through the walls, and the posters and displays of G2 faded to be replaced by the familiar criss-cross lattice of branches against the night sky, the tree canopy locking her in its cage. Pike Copse. Once more Lis heard the branches whispering her name in their monotone: ‘Lissss’, the final phoneme hissed like a serpent.

  The classroom dissolved to nothing. Lis realised she’d fallen asleep in class. Oh, God. She was asleep in class! She looked around the forest, now standing knee-deep in a bubbling stream of oily blood. This was different though, new. She’d never ever been standing in the stream before. She had to wake up. Lis screwed her eyes tight shut. Wake up, Lis. Wake up, right NOW! she told herself. She opened her eyes but, instead of Jack, she saw something else that she’d never seen in the nightmare before: herself.

  About six metres ahead she could see her own slender body locked in the futile crawl through the brook, her long brown hair matted to her soaking back.

  ‘Lis!’ she screamed. That was weird, calling to herself. ‘Stop!’

  She started to wade through the blood, or water, or mixture of both, towards her doppelgänger. It was exhausting, forcing her legs against the current. Instinctively she knew she had to reach herself, warn herself about the inevitable conclusion the nightmare always reached. Maybe this time she could break the cycle.

  ‘Lis!’ she called again, but her clone failed to respond. Lis quickened her pace, trying to jog through the stream, the sharp pebbles shifting underfoot. As she drew closer, she now saw that she was wearing her school uniform. She’d never noticed that in her previous visits.

  Two metres away. ‘Lis, for God’s sake!’

  She stumbled, toppling forwards into the icy water. Steadying herself, Lis saw that she was just a metre away from her other self.

  Her hand now moved as though it were not hers. She watched as her fingers glided forwards of their own volition, reaching towards her own drenched hair. In the same instant she became aware of a solid object in her right hand. Her fingers were gripping a leather handle of some sort. Connected to the hilt was a deadly-looking blade, the edge waved and engraved with an intricate pattern of circles and some sort of writing. Lis couldn’t read the inscription, though. It seemed to be in old English – beyond anything she could understand.