Now Entering Silver Hollow

by Anne L. Hogue-Boucher

  Table of Contents

  Foreword

  LOST HIGHWAY

  MYSTERY MAN

  DUBBS HOUSE

  THE DIARY

  MERCY HOSPITAL

  A RED CAT

  PERMANENT VACATION

  TEA TIME

  ELLA & HER CHILDREN

  JOURNAL SCRAPS

  BEFORE THE BEGINNING

  NOW ENTERING SILVER HOLLOW

  A Composite Novel by

  Anne Hogue-Boucher

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  The author isn’t sure how locales can be dead, but perhaps that’s why they’re called ghost towns.

  Copyright © 2016 by Anne L. Hogue-Boucher

  All rights reserved.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  Edited by Michael Strong

  Cover Art by Michael Strong

  Special thanks to Pixabay.com

  For more information, visit the author’s page at themacabreauthor.wordpress.com.

  I’d like to thank my spouse and editor for endless patience and for the love I’ve been given, as well as the encouragement to never give up. I love you.

  Foreword

  Dear Reader,

  There are so many influences in this work, and I think you’ll see tributes to some of my favorite authors and stories. Shirley Jackson, H.P. Lovecraft, Stephen King, Edgar Allan Poe… to name a few. I hope that you’ll enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. This work was born back in 2011-2012, when I first started sketching out an outline, but it really began when I was a kid, and wanted a world of my own, where I set the rules. My world has seen a lot of changes and has shaped into something that isn’t ‘this’ place.

  So, if you see something funny, know that you’re not losing your mind (maybe), and that you are in a world that’s like ours, but not like ours.

  You’re not home anymore—so take my hand, and I’ll lead you to a new world where the rules are unknown, and something is waiting to taste you around every corner. Don’t let go of my hand. I know the way out.

  Anne L. Hogue-Boucher

  October 17, 2016

  Atlanta, Georgia

  LOST HIGHWAY

  The yellow school bus lumbered down the highway. Light streamed in the windows as the trees broke the morning sun with shadows and lines over the man’s face. No other cars passed the pale gray stretch of road.

  Hale Lemley didn’t always rise this early, but today was his special day. Today was Monday. The day all the children got picked up.

  Every day, Lemley picked up the children from Silver Hollow and brought them to Central School. Boisterous on the way home from school, quiet in the morning. The bus driver preferred them quiet, and wished, every afternoon, that they would stay that way.

  But they never did.

  And every day, every goddamn day, he thought, he’d wind up going home with a headache. Horrible headaches. This wasn’t always from the smell of the diesel, but from the noise. The children made so much noise. These hadn’t always happened, no. Maybe six months—or a year—he didn’t keep track. Lemley didn’t go to a goddamn doctor who’d charge him half his paycheck only to tell him to take aspirin.

  Some days, the pain in his head became worse than others. Some days, his skull threatened to split in half. By the time he got home on those days, he would rush to the bathroom, vomit, then crawl into bed and sleep right through to the next day. Fridays were the worst. With the kids worked up for the upcoming weekend, they were loud. Sometimes he’d have to yell, or pull the bus over to get them to be quiet.

  But at least with Fridays he had the weekend to sleep it off.

  He didn’t dislike children, but he didn’t like them, either. Lemley never married—found no one who could stand him and he couldn’t find anyone he could stand, either. The man never had nor wanted any of his own, either a wife or children. The kids would make too much noise, and sometimes the idea of a wife with her shrill voice and constant nagging made him cringe. Women and children were fine when they were quiet, and that’s when he liked them. When they were loud, though, that’s when he hated them, children more than women.

  Overall, mornings were best.

  Mornings were the key to happiness.

  Children should be seen, and not heard, his mother always said.

  Friday evening, Lemley came home to his empty, four-room house (which was more a converted shack than anything else), a terrible headache having descended on him. The worst one he’d ever had.

  This was unusual. No nausea yet, but that would come. The throbbing of his head matched the ringing in his ears, and a chill flowed through his body. That’s what was so unusual. The chill.

  Hale, true to his name. As an adult he had plenty of headaches, but that was because of the noisy kids. He had never had so much as a cold in his adulthood and only had the flu twice when he was a boy. Otherwise, it seemed as though he was impervious to illness.

  Feeling this foreign chill come over him, he wasn’t sure what to do about it. Running a hand through his greasy, dingy salt-and-pepper hair, Lemley figured he’d wait till he threw up, chew aspirin, and sleep. The headache would be gone by morning.

  Hale puked in the toilet after watching the clock go around halfway and crawled into bed, chewing five aspirins from the bottle on his nightstand. He closed his eyes and waited for the medicine to work like he always did.

  That was the hardest part. The waiting. The pain was incredible, and he wondered through ringing ears, watering eyes, and throbbing down his neck and spine, if he would die from it. Death might be a relief.

  The fifty-eight-year-old man who looked older than six decades curled up onto his side and placed his hands over his eyes. That helped, having icy hands over his eyes.

  Not this time. His hands were too hot and uncomfortable. With a grunt, he turned over on his back. Now he was sure he had a fever.

  Not to worry, he thought. The aspirin would take care of that. Come morning, he’d be fine.

  Driving down that long, empty highway to collect the children might be the death of him.

  The highway is covered in shade. The path is long—stretching out forever, and Lemley drives on. There are kids everywhere, and he isn’t stopping. The bus is full of screaming children. They aren’t screaming in delight, but terror, faces pulled into grotesque masks of pain, confusion, and fear.

  Hale is smiling, face covered in blood. There is a red hand print on his shirt, no bigger than an eight-year-old’s hand.

  Black teeth breaking as he smiles, pulling into a wider, toothless grin.

  Hitting bump after bump, passing all the stops as the engine roars. The miniature soldiers fall, wet splashes of red flying up to the windshield. The wipers leave streaks.

  ten … nine … eight … seven …

  Bump. Screams.

  Lemley laughs.

  six … five … four … three … two …

  He is no longer on the highway. The bus is on a field. A field undisturbed by people. The grass is tall, and birds flutter and fly out of his way. Smells of petrichor and iron filling his nose.

  The children on the bus are silent now, little bodies collapsed and sprawled out, over and under the seats. A hand juts out from between the cushions, but it has no owner.

  A little girl with red hair appears in front of the bus, holding a stop sign in the middle of the field.

  Hale obeys. She drops the sign.

&nbs
p; The driver in the blue-gray coveralls gets out, helpless in his state. He opens the door and goes to the little red-haired girl with the freckles and green eyes. Does he know her? No. She must be a new girl.

  There are tiny flowers on her dress, now filling the surrounding field.

  ‘You know what to do,’ she says.

  ‘No.’ Hale says. Tears are streaming down his face.

  ‘Pick me up,’ her voice rings with the command of a general giving orders.

  Hale picks her up.

  They move together through the field of flowers and head toward the sound of running water, and get in where the water is warm. Tiny hands wash the blood away. He sets her down. The freckle-face girl swims to the center of the river, where he cannot reach.

  ‘You know what to do,’ she says again.

  ‘No, I can’t. Not you.’ Hale says, no longer crying.

  ‘Yes, you must. It’s time to pick them up.’ The girl smiles at him, still in her dress, soaked with the clear river water.

  ‘This isn’t right,’ he says. His voice cracks, and he hates himself for feeling so feeble.

  ‘Nothing is right. But you will make it right.’ Nodding, the little sage submerges herself into the water, and is gone.

  one …

  Lemley woke up with a start, surprised that it was morning. His head still throbbed as it had the night before. The chill was no longer on him, but he still felt feverish.

  He slept through the day that Saturday, and when the sun set, his eyes snapped open and he sat upright.

  There, at the end of his moldy, come-stained mattress, was the little girl. Starched white dress with daisy print, clean auburn hair pulled back in a neat ponytail, and smelling of dried roses.

  “You know what you need to do,” she said. Still that serene smile, green eyes glittering with something sage but cruel behind them.

  Lemley blinked and rubbed his eyes, but she was still there.

  Then he noticed his headache vanished. He inhaled, smelling the rose-scented air around her.

  Wherever the girl was, his pain was not.

  “It’s time to pick them up?” His voice was raspy, and to him, it sounded far away.

  The little gem nodded. “Yes. All of them.”

  “No more pain?”

  “None. For any of us. Save them, Hale. You know how.”

  She crawled up onto the bed as Lemley’s limbs went weak, life oozing out of him. As she got closer, he drew back, lying flat. There was no fear pumping through him—just a sense of having to surrender.

  Hale closed his eyes as her hand came near to his face, cool over his feverish forehead.

  “Sleep now,” she said. The dainty hand connected, soothing.

  He closed his eyes.

  Sunday, he woke up as the sun filled his bedroom with light, hitting his eyes and making them sear with a different pain. His headache was still present, but it was mild. The chill left him, and the fever had passed. There was still a ringing in his ears, not familiar to him.

  Slight throbbing in his head didn’t matter—he could cope with that. He chewed another three aspirin and got up to make himself breakfast.

  The headache, it stayed.

  That was a first. Those aches always evaporated by Saturday. Sunset, at the latest.

  He wandered into the kitchen and grabbed a can of lard out of the refrigerator, and several eggs. After he found a pound of bacon that was still before the expiration date, he set about making breakfast and coffee.

  As the four eggs in the lard and bacon grease popped and sizzles from cooking the pound of bacon, he thought he heard a noise in the living/dining area. Letting the eggs set a minute, Hale turned away and looked. There was nothing there. He shrugged and went back to his eggs.

  The albumen turned white (one of those know-it-all kids taught him that word), yolks kept runny for his bacon and toast. Once they were ready, he dug them out with a spatula and put the eggs on top of one slice of hot, buttered toast. Then he took them to his kitchen/dining table, along with a large mug of coffee.

  Sometimes, the coffee helped make the ache go away, but he wasn’t sure if it would work this time.

  The little girl sat at the table, and what headache remained disappeared again.

  He ate as the little girl watched him, large green eyes never leaving his face.

  “You hungry?” Hale shifted in his seat, awkward about eating in front of the little moppet.

  “I’m always hungry, but not for food.” The girl smirked.

  He snorted. “What for, then?”

  “Silence.”

  What did that mean? Lemley wasn’t sure if she meant she was hungry for silence, or if she wanted him to be quiet. Either way, he didn’t respond.

  He found he preferred things to be silent, too. After work, he’d come home and rest in front of his television, not bothering to turn it on. Instead, he’d sit and think. The noise on the TV annoyed him. When he wanted entertainment, he’d read a newspaper or a book. The past few weeks, though, he found he couldn’t concentrate enough to read anything but the comics section. It wasn’t always like that. Lemley had loved collecting articles about the Ladies Legion of Silver Hollow and Jewel Grove. They used to do all kinds of functions and quilting bees. Pretty ladies—he liked to look. Never got up the nerve to socialize with any of them, but he sure watched them. He’d clip their pictures and paste them up in his scrapbook with their eyes scratched out.

  The little girl sat with him through breakfast and followed him into the kitchen while he cleaned up. Once he finished the dishes he turned to her. “Why doesn’t it hurt when you’re here?”

  The girl smiled at him and giggled. “Because you’ll do what you have to do when I’m here. Pick them all up.”

  She faded. As she did, the pain returned.

  “Don’t go,” he said.

  “I’ll be back soon,” she said. “When it’s time, I’ll come back.”

  She disappeared.

  Lemley’s face got wet with tears. The pain returned, worse than ever.

  He went to his medicine cabinet and took out a bottle old painkillers he still had when he knocked out his back two years ago. They’d work.

  Hale chewed on two of them, then crawled back into bed and begged for the pain to go away.

  When she appeared in his dreams, the pain faded again. She stood watch like a sentry as he drove the bus to the far ends of Silver Hollow, picking up the children.

  They boarded the bus. Then the noise began. The screams, the excited laughter, the fights—are not! Am too! Nuh-uh! Uh-huh! It was just too much.

  Lemley slammed on the brakes and watched in his rear-view mirror as the children lurched forward. A few of them hit their heads with a meaty thwack! That made Lemley smirk.

  But the little ginger girl, now wearing a blue dress with a starched, white pinafore, stood still, her face wearing a placid smile.

  “Do it.”

  He parked the bus in a field.

  He grabbed a machete.

  Slice. Chop. Hack.

  Hale came. There was no more pain.

  He picked up the children and put them in the field.

  Everything was quiet.

  The little girl stood behind him, giggling.

  “Pick me up,” she said.

  “I can’t.”

  “You have to, and you have to take me with you.”

  Hale awoke with a start, his sheets a mess which hadn’t happened to him since he was a teenage boy.

  The pain had returned, and there was no little girl in the room.

  He wept.

  This was something Lemley didn’t want to do. But how else could he make the pain go away?

  You’ll do what you have to do, echoed the little girl in his head. The pain disappeared when she spoke.

  He closed his eyes as the high throb returned to his head. Sunday night dread settled into his stomach. Hale took a deep breath. The agony had to stop.

  Tomorrow, he would mak
e the pain go away.

  No! I couldn’t do that! This was wrong. So wrong. He sobbed. Why did he have to do this? They were just children.

  “Noisy, little bastard children.” The little girl said as she appeared at the foot of his bed. Now her dress was bright yellow with a large lily print on it. “You made a mess.” She said, face twisted in disgust.

  “I didn’t mean to,” he said, face getting hot from his cheeks to his ears. But at least there wasn’t any pain.

  “No, you didn’t.” Her eyes were cold, but her voice was sympathetic. “You can’t help yourself, can you?”

  “No.” Tears stung his eyes.

  “Your mother would be ashamed again.” This time, her voice was casual as though she were discussing a sudden weather change.

  “Yes,” Lemley said. Mother was always ashamed of my mistakes, he thought, an image of her standing in front of him with a thin hickory switch in hand floated by, and he shivered, pulse rising.

  He wondered how the little girl knew about his mother.

  That’s when the little girl giggled. “I see everything about you, Hale Lemley.”

  She said his name like a winter breeze, and the chills came back to him. “How do you?” He asked. “I don’t even know your name.”

  “It’s Daisy,” she said. “I’m your long-lost friend.”

  Daisy? He didn’t know any little girl or woman by that name.

  “You’re not my friend,” he said.

  “I make the pain stop. You need me.”

  The tears flowed down the wrinkles in his weathered face. “I need you.”

  “It’s time for work,” Daisy said. “Get up, get up, get up—”

  Lemley sat bolt upright in his bed. It was Monday. It was four o’clock in the morning, and his alarm had melded with Daisy’s voice—the ring-ring, ring-ring, ring-ring—was threatening to split his head in two. He slammed his fist into the alarm off button, and the clock rattled a death knell.

  Time to get ready for work.

  His head hurt again. There was no little Daisy in the room with him.

  Hale shrugged. Maybe it was just a weird fever dream. But the headache worsened. Still. He wished he could see that girl again.