“No,” she said, and offered no more explanation than he’d given about his family.
“I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable.”
She waved it away and put on a light, easy expression. “No, it’s okay. No biggie.”
He tried out a couple of different responses in his head and settled on, “Can’t blame you for needing a break.”
She looked confused.
“Pretty girl like you probably gets lots of guys hounding her.”
She smiled a little and looked away.
A few minutes later, Erik rolled up to the curb. He wore jeans and a gray T-shirt with the logo of the landscaping company he worked for on the breast pocket. A baseball cap was pulled down backwards over his head. He cast a sidelong look at Dorrie and then raised an eyebrow at Jake.
Jake said, “She can see it, too. It attacked her.” He nodded at Dorrie’s arm.
Erik eyed her skeptically. “Are you sure?”
“It has no face,” she said hollowly.
Erik looked at Jake. “How did it attack her? It didn’t actually…?”
“Touch her? No. But like you said, it doesn’t really have to.”
Dorrie’s eyes looked wet. “Please, if you know what this thing is, then I need your help. Please.” She paused, her expression betraying the discomfort of hearing her own desperation, and she added. “This…whole thing just seems so…crazy. But Jake says you know what’s going on, and I…I’m so confused. I don’t know what to do. It’s getting worse, and I…I just don’t know what else to do.”
Erik paused for a moment, the wariness gradually changing, Jake thought, to a contemplative frown, sizing up Dorrie in her jeans and blouse, examining the bandage. Finally, he said, “I’m Erik. Pleased to meet you. Wish it could have been under better circumstances. Get in.”
Dorrie got in the back seat and Jake in the front. Erik pulled away from the curb.
An uncomfortable silence settled over the car for a few miles, until Erik cleared his throat and said, “My friend’s name is Dave. He and I go to the same bar. The same monster that has been stalking both of you killed his sister.”
Neither Jake nor Dorrie answered. After a moment, Erik continued. “We’ll give you the details when we get to Dave’s house, but the essential story is this: each of us was carry ing around something inside, some guilt, some anger, some fear, some crooked view of the world.” Jake could see Erik’s grip on the wheel tighten and relax as he clenched and unclenched his fists, over and over. “It can sense those things, and that’s how it finds you. Any time, anywhere. And, well you know what it can do.”
The others nodded. Jake was afraid to speak, afraid of changing the dynamic of the car, he supposed—a dynamic that was already tenuous and awkward and heavy with fear and confusion. But Jake also felt a degree of hope. He found it surprisingly comforting to know that these ghosts he was seeing weren’t really ghosts of people he’d hurt, but rather reflections of his own haunted thoughts. And more comforting still was the idea that he wasn’t alone in seeing them, that…maybe he wasn’t so much worse a human being than anyone else. Everyone carried around something, just like Erik said. And that made him feel closer to Erik—and to Dorrie— than he’d felt to anyone since his brother.
“What is it?” Dorrie asked. “Where does it come from? Does it have a weakness? I mean, can we stop it?”
Erik’s face was hard to read. It seemed to Jake he was struggling with the answer he wanted to give. Finally he said, “We killed one once. This one is different. Stronger. But yeah. Yeah, I think we can stop this one, too.” A pause. “I think it’ll probably be easier when you see the tape—”
“The tape?”
Erik nodded at Jake. “A videotape Dave has. Everything we know about the Hollower we learned from that tape.”
“The Hollower.” Dorrie tried out the word quietly.
They fell into silence for the rest of the trip. Jake wondered what it had been like for Erik, confronting it that first time, attacking it head on. He wondered about other car rides, uncomfortable silences among people who felt closer than strangers should. And he thought about what it was like to think you’d put the worst of things behind you, only to find them looming over you again, faceless and thrumming with hate. It gave him a faint headache and a craving for nicotine.
Jake wasn’t so sure he wanted to see what was on that tape.
Detective Steve Corimar arrived at Dave’s house a few minutes after Erik and his passengers. Introductions were made all around, and while Dave went to grab beers from the refrigerator (for all but Jake and Erik, who politely declined anything to drink), the others chatted first of polite surface things, much as Jake and Dorrie had done. But by degrees—a joke cracked here, a witty response there—they eased into each other’s company. Steve, although quiet, delivered well-timed comebacks in a mannered, articulate way, and Jake worked a room like a showman when he told a story, laughing and gesturing and doing impressions of voices. Erik grinned through one of Jake’s stories, “calling bullshit” as he put it, and interjecting comments along the way. And when Dorrie laughed, it was like the clinking of crystal. It filled the room and made him want to laugh, too. He noticed that Jake seemed most pleased in amusing Dorrie, and she flushed warm and glowing when he paused to include attention to her in his narrative.
Dave smiled, too. He could remember that same feeling of connectedness, that same feeling of safety in numbers, when he and Erik and Cheryl had first gotten together. There was camaraderie there, a sense of having found people to believe in—and people who were willing to believe in you.
Dave thought maybe, just maybe, they had a fighting chance. And that possibility made him feel good. Better, he supposed, than the tequila made him feel. He held it together, intending to ride out the alcohol in his system, but Erik gave him a look that indicated concern (Are you okay, man?), and Dave nodded reassuringly that he was fine.
After a while, the chatter and the laughter died down a little, and the purpose for their meeting seemed to sink over the company like a heavy fog. Some of them still nursing their beers, they settled down around Dave’s den. Steve and Erik took the couch, and Jake the easy chair. Dorrie sat on the arm, and Dave saw that Jake was holding her hand, squeezing it, he supposed, for comfort.
Dave himself stood by the television. He didn’t feel much like sitting, although the tequila made his head heavy and his limbs clumsy and oversized. He tried very hard not to sway where he stood and thought he managed tolerably well. Still, he could feel Erik’s eyes on him, anxious, concerned. Dave imagined his friend felt that same anxious knot in the stomach that he felt. Erik had seen what was on the tape. He knew about Max Feinstein blowing the back of his head off in his upstairs bedroom because dealing with the Hollower had gotten to be too much. He remembered the night they set out with Cheryl and Sean and, later, DeMarco to kill the monster before it killed them. And whatever little answers they’d gotten from that tape, whatever little comfort their meager knowledge had provided, seemed to pale in comparison to the powerful, vindictive, savage thing they were up against now. He didn’t much think that the tape would offer any new clues, or even anything this new crop of victims could take to sleep with them that night, and he suspected Erik felt very much the same way.
“You ready?”
They nodded at him, their faces solemn, their eyes expectant.
He pushed the PLAY button on the VCR and waited.
The blue screen was followed by a flash of static. Max’s hand shadowed the screen for a moment, and then it pulled away. Max sat behind a desk, hands folded over a forest-green blotter amidst a tumultuous sea of curling Post-it notes. Max smiled.
“Who’s that?” Dorrie asked. Her voice sounded loud among the held breaths. Dave paused the tape.
“Max Feinstein,” Erik answered her. “He owned a house on River Falls Road. It was his place where we found the first Hollower…its lair, I guess. We killed it there, on his front lawn.” He bare
ly glanced at her. Since all this business had started with the new Hollower, Erik had become quieter, more serious than he had been, and far less warm, less open. It was almost like he was constantly cringing from some phantom ache, ever tensing in his muscles to brace himself against pain. It made Dave despondent to see him like that, and it threatened to topple some of that newfound hope. Erik had always believed they could fight the Hollower. It was that unshakable belief that had encouraged them, united them. Without that…
Finally Jake asked, “Where is he now?”
“Dead,” Dave answered flatly. “He shot himself in his bedroom right after making this tape.”
Dave thought Jake’s face drained of color at that, and the boy turned away from his gaze.
Dorrie shivered. “That’s awful. That poor man.”
Steve didn’t look surprised, but Dave supposed he didn’t expect the detective to. Steve had probably been putting scraps and bits of this story together long before this. The tape was probably the unifying element, the key to the code.
“It’s not the half of it,” Dave said, and pressed PLAY again.
“Uh, hi, David. Hi,” Max’s voice said on the tape. “Or maybe I should call you Dave. I hope you’ll forgive me for taking the liberty of informality here, but I believe we share a common affliction.” After straightening his tie, Max reached out a hand as if to adjust the camera angle then drew back, leaving the camera angle as it was.
Leaning into the lens, he said, “I hope you can see and hear me okay. I have so much to tell you. Sally tells me you’ve seen the Hollower. Worse, the Hollower has seen you.” He chuckled. “I suppose ‘seen’ isn’t the right word. It doesn’t see you the way you or I might see each other. No,” he said, and shook his finger in their direction. “Oh no. It’s a different beast entirely.”
He pulled a bottle of scotch and a glass of ice from some place behind the desk, poured some with badly shaking hands, and set the bottle down again off-camera. He raised the glass, and Dave noticed the tiniest tinkling of the cubes against the sides as Max held it up in a toasting gesture. Then Max took a gulp and swallowed. “I’d offer you some, but obviously, I’m not in a position to do that. I’m not a drinking man—never have been. But this is a special occasion. Today…” His voice trailed off and he took another smaller sip.
“Today is the last day.”
There was an appreciative murmur from the new members of the audience. Erik said nothing. Dave glanced in his direction and saw the grim, set expression, the gaze fixed on the television.
“Dave,” Max’s voice was saying, “let me see if I can explain this thing as I have come to understand it. See, the Hollower is an intangible being. Where our senses stop, its senses start, and continue above and beyond the range of even the most psychic of our kind. The Hollower is not quite physical here, but it seems able to act on this world. As far out as all that sounds, I think you know this much. This…being, this monster—it feeds on its victims’ sense of unreality. On their surreality, if you will. People’s confusions. Their insecurities. I know that’s vague, but it’s the best way to put it, believe me. The Hollower is sustained by impressions and perceptions and points of view. Its greatest protection is its anonymity and androgyny. How does it find you on such vague terms, you ask? By ‘smelling’”—Max made finger-quotes around the Hollower’s concept of smell— “your most skewed thoughts. By smelling your irrational feelings. These evidently carry their own musk, their own meaty scent that clings to us. Think about it, about those wonderful, awful dating years and how you just got…vibes, I guess you’d call it. Feelings about people. The strongest scents set off red flags about their neediness, their stalker potential. So maybe we do possess a glimmer of that sense it uses to ‘see’ us or ‘smell’ us.” He smiled, and Dave was once again struck by the fatigue in the man’s face, the utter rubbing out of once clear features and sharp eyes. He had a dull, hazy look. He took another drink.
“It collects identities and voices at will and uses them against you. It’s the perfect weapon—the perfect disguise. Few things can hurt us more than the way we can hurt ourselves, am I right? Little else shakes our faith in ourselves so much as self-doubt, however off-kilter or misplaced. And few things are more dangerous than misconceptions about the world around—”
On the videotape, Max drew in a sudden, sharp breath. His eyes grew wide. In the background, the sound of a few footsteps drew closer to the camera and then receded. Dave felt his chest tighten in anticipation. God, he remembered this part. Hated it. He hadn’t looked at the tape, not once, since the night he showed it to Cheryl and Erik. In truth, he hadn’t even been sure he’d be able to find it to show to Steve. He’d gone to put the tequila bottle away, and when he’d come back, the tape was lying on the coffee table. Like someone had taken it out for him. Like something had wanted him to go ahead and have it at his disposal, by all means, for whatever little good he thought it would do. Like something was very much amused by the idea that Dave would show his weak and terrified little friends the last words of a dead man who hadn’t been able to fend off even a Secondary.
That was the thought, almost verbatim, that had popped into his head. It wasn’t his thought at all, not in even his own mind-words, but he’d understood it well enough, and where it came from. He’d been almost afraid to touch the tape (Hell, why not be honest? He’d been damned well afraid to even look at it too long), with the mental residue of the Hollower still in his head. So there it sat until the others arrived, and he’d pushed it into the VCR to give up its secrets.
All around the room, the others, including Erik, leaned in toward the television.
On the tape, a soft and sexless chuckling close to the mike caused Max to grow tense where he sat. The picture dissolved into static, and the chuckling broke up like cell reception in a tunnel. The static didn’t clear, but every once in a while it would clear for just a second, just long enough for the eye to register Max’s form, wide-eyed, leaning close to the camera.
“It knows. The Primary, it knows. It’s here, I think. Outside,” Max whispered. A flash of clear picture showed a trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth, and—
Shit…is that blood on the wall behind him? Dave felt a dreadful unease in his chest. The tequila, which had settled down to a manageable half-buzz, roiled angrily in his stomach, threatening nausea.
Something was wrong with the tape. Dave and Erik exchanged glances. This wasn’t how it played out last time. The others, having no prior experience with the tape, kept watching.
“—always watching, waiting.” Another pause, followed by his own laughter, tinny and forced, that was drowned out by a crescendoing wind-tunnel noise that roared over the static. Louder still than that came more laughter, the sadistic delight of many voices at once.
Another flash of clarity, and Max slumped over the desk, a rough exploded mess of red and gray and white replacing the visible back portion of his head. Jake squeezed Dorrie’s hand. Erik shifted uncomfortably in his seat, and Dave shook his head, hoping to clear it, hoping to bring some sense back to what he was seeing. Steve, glancing up and seeing their reactions, gave them a quizzical look.
“What?”
Dave said, “It isn’t supposed to show that. The tape is different. Different than last time. This”—he waved at the TV as the static took over again— “isn’t supposed to be there.”
In the next moment, Max, still slumped over the desk, no longer had a halo of blood on the wall behind him. Now it streaked the wall, forming crude letters:
HOLLOW
The frame of the camera only caught the side of a sleeve, a black glove, the flap of a trench coat that stood next to the blood letters behind Max. Most of the figure stood off-camera. But they recognized it; the collective gasp of the room confirmed that.
The wind-tunnel noise stopped dead, but the laughter didn’t. And the black glove raised over Max’s head and closed into a fist.
“Every one of you,” it said
, “will be killed.”
Static erupted across the screen again.
Dave jabbed a finger out and pressed STOP on the VCR, but the tape kept running. The picture cleared, and Max’s body was alone again. After a second or two, it picked its bloody head up.
There was a gaping hole where the mouth should have been, except that it was vertical, taking up the majority of the facial plane, its frayed edges of flesh singed black, swaying like cilia. Otherwise, the smooth, pale expanse of the head was blank.
“All of you will be killed, just like Sally, just like Cheryl, just like all the others. And I’ll make it hurt so much that you’ll trickle out all your pain and despair for me, just like they did. You will die, die, die, die, die.” The voice that spoke didn’t come from the mouth hole of the figure on the tape. In fact, it didn’t seem to come from the tape at all. Each of them cringed when the sound got too close to his or her ear. Dave swore under his breath when the voice came close enough to make neck hairs stand on end.
The Max-thing on the tape rose and leaned in close to the lens, pointing a black-gloved finger. “Every one of you. You always were nothing but meat.”
Then the gloved hand reached across the frame again and shut the camera off, and the screen went dark.
CHAPTER TEN
For several minutes, none of them spoke. Dave looked from face to face. All were washed out, with worry in the eyes, soft downturns of the mouth, all chests rising and falling with ragged breaths. All of them looked exhausted, unsure.
Seconds ticked by as they waited to see if they were alone in the house, or if the Hollower would make any other moves. They warily eyed the few paintings that Dave had hanging on the walls, mostly landscapes that they half-expected to become populated with distorted figures or horrific acts captured in the stark stillness of paint and ink. When, as a whole, they came to the conclusion it was gone, they began to relax a little and started moving around slowly, as if coming out of a deep sleep. But their few words were mumbled and sounded too loud, too stiff in the quiet of the house.
Found You Page 14
