It meant to have other Hollowers pour through, just like what he’d seen on his television that night. It occurred to Dave that, unlike the other Hollower, this one wasn’t willing to risk death just for sustenance. This one wanted vengeance, and it was willing to give up its meats just to see them all destroyed.
Its thought-answer felt like a sharp pain behind his eye. No. You’re mine. The others will come and destroy everyone that any of you have ever loved, everyone connected to you, everyone whose lives you’ve ever touched. They will find ways to hunt them all down and wipe them all out. Any trace that you all ever existed, and any ripple outward through your Likekind, mine will obliterate.
From the looks on the others’ faces, he knew that they had heard this, too, in their heads.
“You can’t do that,” Dave said out loud.
“Yes, I can,” it told him. “I can make it like you never were at all.” And it giggled again, high-pitched and manic.
Dave felt all the guilt, the frustration, the anger—everything he couldn’t do for Sally, everything he couldn’t be for Cheryl—all of it, and something snapped inside him. His whole body felt hot and tingly, a pins-and-needles sensation of getting the feeling back in a limb that has fallen asleep. His vision blurred a little and grew white around the edges, like he was going to faint, but he knew he wasn’t; he’d never felt so strong, so alive. He’d never felt so powerful. So in control. He knew that no matter what happened, however it all turned out, no feeling in the world would ever be able to top this one moment.
Dave knew the Hollower wasn’t going to hurt any more of his friends. Simply, he wouldn’t let it.
Dave not only saw but also felt the Hollower, which, poised with confidence on the edge of the rip, awaited its kin. He felt its anticipated triumph, its hate, and Dave’s own senses, particularly the ones above and beyond his basic five, sang with energy. A bellow of rage and determination rose up from the soul of him, the marrow of his bones, the blood in his veins.
No.
He remembered seeing the Hollower he’d killed stringing up his sister in its barbs and whips, a thing they’d made physical, ugly, weak. He remembered thinking deep down that he couldn’t save her, that he never had been able to save her, and the sheer rage toward the beast that was hurting her. And toward himself, for not knowing how to have protected her in the first place.
A low, quick sound, like a horn that hasn’t actually fully realized its tone, the sense of a sound about to crescendo, stirred the air. It was coming from the rip. Somehow, it was more horrible a sound than growling or screaming or crying, because it suggested what was to come. It meant they were coming, and the very notion of a thousand or even a hundred Hollowers, hell the thought of even one more of them coming through that rip was absolutely unbearable.
No.
He didn’t know if he’d ever been much good to anyone in his life, but he’d be damned if he didn’t at least try to stop it. It would not, would never so long as he breathed hurt another one of his friends again. The sentiment was a pull, undeniable, useless to fight against, and he let it sweep him up in its intensity.
No.
He charged the Hollower head on, tackling it with arms gripped around the torso, and for just a moment, he expected to fall straight through it, like passing through smoke, and into the rip, down, down into the blackness beyond. But he connected with something, not quite solid, but not exactly lacking substance, either.
Like a torrent of blood was the thought that came into his mind. It felt like hitting a wall of something, a liquid surface that the image of thickening blood seemed to capture just right.
They both tumbled backward, back through the rip and into the dark, he and the Primary, the Hollower, struggling in his grasp. He could see just enough to make out both himself and the monster, as if they were illuminated from within, but nothing beyond.
Then the cold started in on him. It felt like freezer burn on the places where his exposed skin made contact with the Hollower’s body. The cloth of his shirt against his chest felt stiff, uncomfortable, even painful. The Hollower struggled against him, looking to Dave to be worse off than he was. Where Dave touched it, it rippled and even vibrated as if caught in a terribly strong and concentrated wind. He could feel nothing but the cold, and yet, somehow, he could sense where the forces pressing against the Hollower came from—the volatile, the unstable, the ever unbalanced vacuums inside it.
Dave shivered, the cold sinking so low into his body that it made him numb and heavy. He found it difficult to move at all, to even blink, and eventually the shivering slowed and stopped, too. So did the pain. He felt insubstantial, less there. Dave, whose body was never meant for a place in between dimensions, could, however, still feel the shuddering of the beast in his arms, and with the last of his strength, he let it go.
It drifted away from him in their free fall. It wailed, a siren sound he’d heard once before from the depths of another Hollower, a death-wail that only by the sheer power of it carried at all through the nothingness around them. Then, whatever unstable vacuum was inside it punched through—around the middle, where Dave’s arms had been, a blackness several shades deeper than the nothing-space around them, darker than anything Dave had ever seen, sucked at the Hollower’s pretended clothes, its pretended form, and pulled them into itself.
The wail crescendoed for several moments while it struggled, and then the Primary Hollower simply winked out of existence. Its death siren carried for a few seconds after that, and then it, too, faded out.
It was not just a matter of there never having been corporeal bodies in this place. There could be no physicality there. Dave was sure of that. His solidness, his realness, had polluted the Hollower. And now he could feel that solidness unraveling and dissolving all over. It didn’t hurt. In fact, it didn’t feel much like anything at all.
Dave smiled—or at least, that was the sentiment behind the movement, although he was past the point of knowing or caring whether he’d been successful in achieving it. He had a moment to wonder where he’d go once he winked out of existence, too, and then he thought of Sally, waiting.
He’d fixed it. He’d fixed all of it. Not bad, Kohlar. Not bad.
Then, with perhaps the only truly contended exhalation of breath in his entire adult life, Dave Kohlar faded out of being, too.
Dorrie screamed when Dave made contact with the Hollower and watched in horror as they stumbled backward, locked in hate, and fell through the rip.
It sealed up behind them with a faint pop that the cavernous walls of the catacombs bounced back and forth above their heads.
Dorrie, Erik, Jake, and Steve half ran, half limped (and in Steve’s case, was half dragged) to the spot where the rip had been, feeling the air with outstretched hands, hoping to grab some part of Dave still left in this world.
But he was gone.
Dorrie’s tears came fast and heavy, her sobs echoing on the heels of their movements. Jake pulled her close and held her, blinking and finally wiping the blood out of his eye. Erik sank to the ground beside Steve, both of them stunned and in too much pain to stand. With effort, Steve clapped a hand on Erik’s shoulder, and for a moment, he thought he would crumble beneath the modest weight of it. Erik did buckle a little but remained upright.
“He did a brave thing,” Steve said softly. “Sally would have been proud. His girl Cheryl, too.”
Erik didn’t turn to look at him. In fact, he didn’t move at all. Steve didn’t think Erik heard him until his words, thick, saturated with the heavy threat of tears, drifted back over the clapped shoulder.
“For once, I hope he was proud of himself. He should have been.”
“You’re talking about him like he’s…” Dorrie broke off and buried her face in Jake’s shoulder.
“He’s dead,” Erik said in that same thick tone, a certain note of inarguable sureness in it that left the others silent. “Him, and that thing with him.” He rose, offering Steve a hand to get up. “It’s
done now.”
EPILOGUE
At the close of his first day back to work, Steve found himself in a fairly empty police station with Bennie Mendez. The other detective had ribbed him some about looking all beat up, but not as much as Steve expected. Something in Mendez’s eyes, sublimating even the warm easiness of his smile, suggested that he knew Steve’s injuries were not a matter of jest.
As Steve picked up his car keys, he spied the folder labeled “Feinstein, Maxwell—Suicide” and picked it up. He crossed the room to Mendez’s desk. The detective didn’t look up, so Steve just slid the folder neatly on top of a pile of folders.
“Spun, signed, and done with.”
“Really?” Mendez kept his eyes on his paperwork.
“You can tell her we killed it. It isn’t coming back.”
Mendez didn’t answer. Steve moved away with a small smile, and it wasn’t until he reached the door that the other detective called his name.
Steve turned around. Mendez regarded him with an almost apologetic look. “I’ll tell her. Thanks, Steve.”
Detective Steven Corimar nodded. “My pleasure.” And he headed out into the night.
It had always been Erik’s habit to order a Diet Coke at the Olde Mill Tavern. He didn’t drink, as it came too close to using a drug for the likes of either him or his sponsor, but he liked the atmosphere, the noisy crowd of pretty, tight-clothed women and muscle-heads trying to pick them up, the jukebox music, the bleeps of that near-to-ancient Outrun arcade video game. He liked watching people with their different personalities, their different levels of control, their celebrations and good, hearty laughs, quiet smiles, and jealous observances. He liked watching how many times a guy would approach a girl’s back and turn away, and he’d bet to himself on whether the guy would have the guts, and if he did, whether he’d strike out.
It was a social society he would never quite be a part of, but that was okay. It soothed him, being outside and yet able to observe their lives. It was like watching an old familiar sitcom whose set design, characters, and canned laughter gave the comforting appearance of simple resolutions, of happy endings, of nothing ever being too much to handle or too hard to fix. It was escapist, coming to that bar, drinking those Diet Cokes, and Erik needed that.
After the first Hollower, he and Dave had made it quite a habit, going to the bar to escape things. Diet Cokes for Erik, and a shot of tequila—Jose Cuervo—and a Killians for Dave.
After Dave’s death, Erik thought of asking Jake but thought better of it. He might understand about the Diet Cokes, and his sponsor, Gary, might understand, but there was no way that he, as a sponsor himself, could, in good conscience, invite his own recovering addict charge to a bar, virgin drinks or not. Besides, nowadays Jake and Dorrie spent a lot of time together. They’d even talked of moving in together, as that house on Cerver Street gave Dorrie the creeps and Jake was tired of sharing his own house with ghosts.
Erik’s going to the Olde Mill was a man thing, he always thought—man versus the elements, man versus himself, man conquering temptation and ruin, that sort of thing. So asking Casey was out.
Since Dave’s death—really, since the night of his funeral—Erik had developed a new habit. It seemed to skirt close to the edge of good recovering-addict behavior, but the bartender never cared because he still got the money and Gary had been swayed to Erik’s way of thinking when it had been explained.
Several weeks after they’d climbed sweating and bleeding and bruised all to hell out of the catacombs, Erik went to the bar alone. And as was his new habit, he ordered a Diet Coke, a shot of Jose Cuervo, and a Killians. The latter two he didn’t touch at all, nor did he let the bartender sweep them up with the empties and forgotten drinks of the night. He didn’t let any of the jostling, half-crocked jocks that often frequented the place scoop them up either. They sat untouched, slightly to the right of his Diet Coke as if waiting for the one to drink them to return from the men’s room, say, or from the Outrun game. In Erik’s mind, they were for Dave, and they stayed that way until closing time, until Erik walked out that door. He never turned around. He never watched the bartender swipe the glasses and dump the booze, untouched. He didn’t have the heart to.
But that night several weeks after the catacombs was different. Erik sat there, sipping his nonalcoholic drink and watching an old man put the moves on a very drunk, somewhat chunky blonde in her early forties, whose eyes were half-closed and whose V-neck sweater was crooked enough that when she leaned over to hear what the old man was saying he got full view straight down. Behind Erik, the door opened and closed, and the unoccupied stool next to him was fitted with a familiar form.
“Steve.” Erik nodded at him. “How are ya?”
Steve nodded back. “Off duty to night. First night off since…” He waved it off, letting the obvious dangle between them. “Looking to get good and drunk.”
Erik considered this for a moment and then slid the shot and the Killians in front of the police officer.
“First of the night. On me. Drink up.”
Steve looked at the drinks skeptically. Erik supposed he was trying to figure out why he even had those drinks to dispense with in the first place.
“Seriously?”
Erik felt a lump in his throat, but nodded. “I…yeah, I think so.”
“Thanks.” Steve downed the shot and then kicked back the Killians. “God, I needed that.” He grinned brightly at Erik.
With a small smile, Erik turned back to his Diet Coke. “Do you like movies, father?”
“Huh?”
“Nothing. Line from an old movie.”
From the corner of his eye, Erik saw Steve nod, confused. “Ah. Well, for the record, I do like movies.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“We could catch one some time.” Steve held his hand up when Erik looked at him and seemed to tense a little. “Not as a date.”
Erik grinned. “So you’re not going to pay?”
Steve visibly relaxed. “Well, I was figuring that after the drinks, you were the paying type.”
“Hey, you asked me out. Although, I do consider myself a gentleman, of course…”
After that, the conversation was easy, even comfortable. They talked about the Mets and the Giants, they talked about places they’d traveled, about movies that sucked and movies they loved and their jobs and their high school days and psycho exes and what it might be like to spend a weekend partying with Derek Jeter. Steve introduced his attraction to men casually, off-handedly, and Erik acknowledged it by simply taking it in stride. They talked about books and Erik’s wedding plans and whether the old man was going to bag the chunky blonde. They even talked about Dave. The Hollower, though, never came up once—not because of an empty superstition of bringing them back through a new rip between worlds, but because, maybe for the first time, the subject finally seemed done and closed.
Steve got up to leave, and Erik said, “Still wanna catch a movie?”
The police officer nodded. “I know where to find you.”
“Long arm of the law.”
Steve grinned, considered something for a moment, then said in a conspiratorial lean, “Not just my arm.”
Erik laughed, and Steve looked relieved when he opened the door and tipped out into the night.
An hour later, as the Olde Mill Tavern was winding down, Erik got up to leave, too. The night had grown cooler, but not uncomfortably so. He walked toward his car, and a glint of something white and round and smooth caught his eye. He looked up and to the woods, in the direction of the thing, and saw an old hubcap, which had caught moonlight.
The breath Erik hadn’t realized he’d been holding seeped out in relief.
They weren’t coming back. It was done. They were gone.
Erik breathed in the night air, and when the rest of him believed that, he smiled to himself, got into his car, and drove home to his girl.
Behind him, in the woods, in the night air, in the quiet over the lake, on t
he empty streets of the suburban neighborhoods of Lakehaven, New Jersey, there hung the air of regrets, of lies, of fears and insecurities, but they were not Erik’s nor Jake’s, not Dorrie’s nor Steve’s, and nothing, sensing those things, came to find them.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to my first readers: Heidi Ruby Miller, Jason Jack Miller, Christopher Paul Carey, and Meghan Knierim.
Thanks to Don D’Auria and all the fine hard-working staff at Leisure, and also Frank Weimann and Jaimee Garabacik and The Literary Group International.
Thanks also Jim Moore, Dallas Mayr, Gary Braunbeck, and Gary Frank, for keeping me sane.
Thanks to Laura Mazzarone and Pete Markson for letting me bounce ideas off them, and for providing me with research information.
Thanks especially to Adam SanGiovanni, Michael and Suzanne SanGiovanni, Michele and Christy San-Giovanni, and to Jason D’Accardi for patience, love, and understanding during the completion of this book.
PRAISE FOR MARY SANGIOVANNI AND THE HOLLOWER!
“Mary SanGiovanni is one of my favorite authors. Her work is cause for celebration, and always a fun read! I’m a big fan!”
—Brian Keene, Author of Dead Sea
“With The Hollower, Mary SanGiovanni makes the kind of debut most horror writers dream about; this superbly-written novel is filled to the brim with mounting terror, shocking set pieces, some of the richest characterization you’ll encounter anywhere this year, and a central figure of undeniable dread. It’s got it all: scares, poignancy, people you know as well as your own family, and an unrelenting tension that will have your hands shaking by the time you reach its nerve-wracking finale.”
—Bram Stoker Award Winner Gary A. Braunbeck,
Author of Coffin County
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