Now Entering Silver Hollow

by Anne L. Hogue-Boucher

  “Last words?” Dumfries asked. He was sure he didn’t want to hear them.

  “You’re already in Perdition,” she said, eying as many of the people as possible. The gazes back at her were mixes of defiance, shame, and desire.

  They pulled her up until she was five feet off the ground.

  She swung, gurgling, kicking, body stiffening, and noose tightening. She lost her bowels and urinated, and Dumfries consoled his erection with a quick, soft tug. If anyone noticed, they said nothing. It was tempting to take care of it and see if anyone joined him. At that point, he was so feverish throughout his whole body, he didn’t care. His mind saved him with a reminder—there were other things that needed attention in this town.

  He didn’t think he’d get away with it, though he was almost certain there were two ladies—Aggie and Maggie—who saw it and liked it. Maybe he’d attend to it later with them both, on top of the cold, dead body of Ella Mae Smith.

  They watched her swing from the old willow tree, the stars in the clear black sky as silent judges.

  JOURNAL SCRAPS

  2 September

  Thoughts of friends and this journal are the only things keeping me sane. It’s been four months of living in Silver Hollow now. Summer is over and soon I’ll be returning to Grace City—what a relief.

  This place is a tiny little township. The residents call it both a town and a township here, depending on the age of the resident, and the two terms are interchangeable. I’m not sure why, and I’ve never asked. I don’t care.

  Cities. My life has been set in cities. During the summers, Father would bring Phillip and me to Albion’s countryside. The bitterness of sweltering summers that left me itching in my starched dresses. The smell of horse manure lingered in the air and left me with a distaste for the countryside. When Phillip wasn’t pinching me or using me as a target for his rock launcher, covering me in bruises all over my back, chest and legs, I was either getting strains on my inner thighs from horseback riding, or coping with ringing in my ears from shooting clay pigeons. Only later did I learn that Phillip was removing the foam hearing protection in my kit. The nights were quiet, but I never noticed, passing out from being exhausted and understanding how a pin-cushion felt. The city always made me more comfortable—a lifelong theme for me.

  The heavy, metallic air of the city is more appealing. Watching skyscrapers glisten in the morning sun over breakfast and tea on the penthouse balcony is the best way to wake. After a fortnight in the clean, open air with fresh-cut grass and glistening dewdrops on the verdant fields, hearing animals chatter and birds singing their songs, it’s time to go home. Take me back to the sounds of horns, sirens, people chattering, and the smell of freshly baked bread and spices from the bakeries. Fresh-cut grass makes me sneeze.

  This town, or township, is small, and that’s an understatement. One church of the Timeworn Order or Alastor (or both, I don’t care) now just a meeting hall, a constable’s office, a general store, and perhaps about forty-five people separated by at least two or three acres of land each. Except near the roundabout, where there is a small cluster of buildings.

  The locals are right out of a horror film. They stare until I look back. Then they avert their eyes. At six feet tall and one who doesn’t shy from wearing heels, I gather by the gaping maws that I might seem interplanetary. There are people here who still use old wives’ tales as medicine, putting grapes on cuts to heal them, and other such woo.

  A look around the general store, and one can find old liniments for arthritis and cod liver oil for irregularity (which isn’t unsafe, just dated). From the dour looks on their faces, the oil wasn’t working.

  At best, the reception was lukewarm—they saw me as an outsider with my Albion accent and tailored suits. Although when I saved the old man who runs the general store, they moved from active disdain to distant tolerance. The man had pneumonia, and they were treating him with herbs and such. I paid no attention to what they were using because their witchcraft wasn’t working. They might as well have brought in an ancient priestess to dance around in a tutu or whatever it is the religious superstition requires. After taking a sputum culture, I treated him for bacterial pneumonia. Three days later, he was well enough to get back on his feet (still taking the course of antibiotics). After that, he smiled when he greeted me, and offered me free items when I came in to purchase a delicious treat or something for my dinner.

  I’m a horrid cook but living alone has given me opportunity to burn plenty of things and learn how not to bake something, and how grease fires can be put out with baking soda. Once I tried to make cupcakes but had no eggs. Since eggs are a binding agent (I didn’t fail chemistry), I thought to use applesauce instead. Too much applesauce (this was obvious in retrospect). When the timer went off and I opened the oven, six puddles of chocolate and flour-flavored applesauce stared me in the face. Lots and lots of chucking dinners in the bin and discovering curse words I’d forgotten existed. Still, a learning experience.

  But the poor cooking skills are another issue. There’s a much bigger problem in this part of the Northeast Territory, and treating the elderly gentleman who runs the general store highlighted this greater matter. My presence here is because the area is lacking in physicians, and I volunteered to help. That meant that I had to bring equipment with me. (They will see the out-of-pocket expenses on my next tax return—I gave them to my accountant.) I brought a portable defibrillator, EKG, sonogram device, etcetera, along with a slew of antibiotics, sedatives, and epinephrine. I brought everything I might need for an emergency to keep at home, because with the exception of a simple first-aid station at the constabulary, they have nothing. That’s how backwards and isolated Silver Hollow is.

  Mercy Hospital is stocked and equipped due to the new health regulations. It’s also a twenty-minute drive. It’s in Terrace Lake, and it services several neighboring towns. The place is nestled among other areas of industry—an enormous laboratory facility for the Center for Health Assurance, a steel mill, and several other factories. The people who live close by are mill workers and those who make no decent compensation for their work. Yet it’s one of the richest areas next to Nashton Lake. It shows in some of the bigger homes and manors on the water.

  Near the lake, the sprawling homes and yachts in the slip enhance the outskirts where dilapidated and decaying small houses with three or four cars out front rust and rot alongside.

  They don’t pay their physicians much, either. I took this work as my personal required outreach, in fact. The highest paid physician here doesn’t make enough to support a family—it’s “not in the budget.” It’s sad, when one looks at how much they spent going to medical school, only to wind up struggling to make out a life. It’s getting better, so the economic reports say, but it will take time.

  So while Terrace Lake is a ‘rich’ town, and Mercy Hospital is well-equipped and well-stocked, they are overburdened. Because the budget of the territory goes into other projects and making sure the hospital is prepared, there isn’t much leftover for salaries (they line the pockets of the administrators first). Once these hitches are resolved it’ll get better, I hope. After my tenure this summer, I will contact our legislature and prove to them that better funding for this section of the Northeast Territory is needed.

  For now, I’m stuck here, gathering information. I didn’t bring my personal assistant or any of my staff and I regret that decision. It’s most painful when I have to throw out a whole chicken because the skin isn’t supposed to turn to ash when one cuts into it (note: do not fall asleep while something is in the oven. Also, check on fire insurance policy.).

  It’s so quiet here, even in the daytime. At night, stillness settles over the house like a heavy blanket. With the windows open, a cool breeze comes through, and the songs of crickets, cicadas, and little peep toads come through—nature’s chorus. Most nights. Sometimes it gets far too still here. As if something smothers the property into silence. The house pops and
creaks as it settles, but that never lasts. Or worse, sometimes I hear the foundation settle and it sounds as if tiny little feet are running across the oak floors. Then the silence impregnates the room and I can’t get back to sleep.

  It’s not like the place I come from—Great Smoke City. Great Fire City was what they called it when I left and moved to the Union. Those were terrible times. I hate to remember them at all.

  Mercy Hospital is almost a nice escape from the house, but it would be better with two or three servants to help. They’re all back home, taking care of things there until I return. I’m a fool for not bringing Faith, because at least she can cook. The nearest restaurant is a twenty-minute drive from my rental home, in Terrace Lake. Most of the time I’ll get takeaway and bring it home with me, but I’ve learned how to cook noodles, omelets, and steak. They’re nothing compared to what Faith can make, but once I found recipes, I discovered it was easier than trying to guess around it and winding up basted in flour, looking like a fat-lipped ghost.

  Takeaway it is five times a week.

  I have never experienced this much isolation in my entire life, and this isn’t a developing country. I’ve seen better communities in impoverished nations. That’s an exaggeration, but only by a bit. The dilapidated farmhouses with thin, bony dairy cows, dirty-faced men with holes in their pants, broken down cars and rotting barns, and people who can do nothing but sit on their porches and stare into the air—either too disabled to work, or they’ve given up hope—are a testament to what’s called “First World poverty.” There are no children here. None. Everyone here is in their twenties or older—and they’re considered the young ones. None of the youth have seen a university. The town hobbles along with support from Jewel Grove and whatever’s leftover in the territory’s annual budget. There is no surprise that this place doesn’t show on modern maps. This area is forsaken.

  I found it through a mailer which came from the Historical Society. Faith (or maybe it was Lucy, I can’t recall) said she didn’t see it in the mail she sorted, so by lucky (?) coincidence, I got to read about this forsaken place. Langelier must have taken my name from one of the Grace City Historical Society functions I’ve attended for my friend Mercy. Otherwise, this place might be the gateway to Perdition.

  If that place existed, this would be it.

  They have a sense of community from person to person though. Around here, everybody knows everybody. Except me. They don’t trust me because I’m an outsider.

  I don’t trust them either.

  They’re cordial enough, but they never say much—at least not to me. They have plenty to say to one another in whispers and pointing when I turn away. I’m that ‘damn city doctor.’ Except for the owner of the general store and his wife, who seem to be grateful, I am alien to them. At least the two of them give me free apple pies to show their appreciation.

  Silver Hollow used to be a bigger town. That’s what the Historical Society tells me—the population was in the hundreds. There have been several attempts over the years to breathe life back into the place, but all seem to fail in spectacular fashion. Children have been murdered here by the dozen, perhaps hundreds when the town was thriving, and that doesn’t sound inviting on a tourism pamphlet. The town began to rot after the first incident (there was more than one, I’m told), and people left.

  Well, perhaps it was already rotten, and that was just its death knell. Attempts to revive it have been futile.

  This place is full of strange history. I’m not good at history. That’s my friend, Mercy— she’s got her PhD in the subject and knows a lot about small town development over the course of the Union. But I’ve been trying to piece together the strange pull of this town—it attracted me too after I received the brochure from the SHHS. (I didn’t realize when they said ‘secluded’ that this what they meant.)

  According to local lore, the allure of Silver Hollow “pulls” people here and then things “go funny.” Those were Langelier’s words in quotes. (Mercy will visit soon, which reminds me I need to pick up a few things at Haverty’s.) He is skeptical as I am about these stories, but mentioned it just the same. It was so comforting I might vomit.

  The man is, without peer, the most egocentric, narrow-minded pragmatist I’ve ever met. He never stops speaking about either himself, or the Historical Society. He’s the only one who will spend time with me because he’s greedy for my money and for sex. Though I’ve donated already (money, not sex—I’d rather drink bleach), he’ll be back to solicit more money from me. He’s not a person I would put in my diary for a visit in Grace City, but company is needed sometimes. Even if it is a bit obnoxious.

  I am hopeful Bryce will be back from his business soon and will pay me a visit. I like the independence, but I would enjoy more-than-friendly company now and then.

  After Langelier told me that little story about Silver Hollow going mad at a stranger’s presence, I gather I’m the one who will make things go funny by existing here. I assume that’s what he was driving at, though I don’t understand what was the motive behind telling me all this. Except to enjoy another snifter of brandy and keep me asking questions.

  The old bastard left after that brandy and without a check in hand. I went to bed with a smug sense of satisfaction I’d annoyed him by not caving (on the money or his hand on my knee).

  Well, it’s been four months, and nothing. So far, the only funny things that have happened are weird incidents at the hospital. But that’s normal when working in A&E, or rather the ER or ED (Emergency Room/Emergency Department) as they call it here. That and the psychiatric cases that come in with some frequency. There are certain ones who stand out with their madness.

  These people stand out because there’s a pattern—almost like a mass hysteria, but not enough of them at once to qualify. These are the ones who blather on about a darkness consuming them, their place, and their lives. It sounds as if they’re trapped in a black hole and can somehow communicate what it’s like. They come to the hospital, terrified, jumping at every shadow, looking at me as if I’m not there—looking past me.

  I put them on a seventy-two hour mandatory hold, sedate them and send them on to the psych ward. It’s all I can do. But even when I sedate them with the most powerful drugs, they still appear to be disturbed by the things they claim to see. The never-ending darkness, which some claim is full of stars, and others say it’s filled with unspeakable horrors—it’s all they can talk about. They don’t even try to describe the horrors. If they do, they fall into gibberish. It sounds like a foreign language.

  There’s a pattern. It’s obvious.

  Fatigue has taken over, so I will come back to this later. Mercy is coming, and she’s real company, so I want to be rested so we can enjoy a week together.

  K.C.

  ***

  3 September

  Mercy sleeps tonight at Mercy Hospital, and I’m not leaving her side. I’m just sitting here with my tablet, touch-typing this out as a steady stream of beeps from her monitors tell me she’s still alive.

  This is awful. She’s a little worse off than I thought, though, more than just a mild concussion and amnesia. The amnesia is something she’s faking so Callfield and company won’t ask too many questions, but her ankle is broken and she lost more blood than I’d initially thought. She’s hooked up to three units of whole blood now, and her BP is climbing.

  I sent a message to Langelier a few moments ago:

  Francis, wanted to let you know there may be a fungal issue at Dubbs House, in and around the area. I was at the house with my friend as we were walking through the woods and heard noises. Chose to investigate and once at the property heard what we thought were cries for help. There was nothing inside. Suspect spores and suggest sending in inspectors. -Kathryn

  I left out the details of the tactile and visual hallucinations (I’m not giving him more ammunition than necessary), but there are some kinds of fungi spores which, once inhaled, cause people to hallucina
te. Monsters don’t exist. It’s fairy stories—and I don’t give in to tales of the supernatural.

  Father was a geneticist, and he taught us the hard facts of science. When I was a girl, and the governess brought me no comfort, he came into my room and sent her away. His presence—a tall, foreboding man was enough to frighten away any of my imagined and uninvited guests. The stentorian boom of his voice helped, too. “Your fears are natural, Kitty. Through millennia, our ancestors had to survive predators in the wild. Right now, you’re experiencing what every primate does—you’re keeping watch for them. But since they don’t exist, and you’re safe in the house, your brain’s gone into overdrive and making up stories to justify your vigilance. I assure you, my kitten, it’s not real.”

  Father’s explanations brought me greater comfort than that of my playmates’, whose explanations included belief in a savior saint name Alastor who chased them away with his supernatural powers. Twaddle. That was all it was.

  It was easier to tell myself that my brain was reacting to a wild imagination and that I was safe. Nothing was there in the dark that wasn’t there in the daytime.

  Mercy told the deputy she remembered nothing. Earlier she winked at me in the patrol car—she was more with it than she was letting on. That was because she didn’t want us getting into trouble for trespassing. She’ll be fine, I’m 99.9% certain. I told her of a possible hallucinogen in the air. She hasn’t commented on it. Instead, she looks at me like I might belong in the mental ward, complete with straight jacket and padded walls. I’ve known her for years.

  Does she really think a tentacle monster tried to kill her? I’m not asking. Doubt runs about in my brain like a hamster in an exercise wheel.

  The adrenaline has run its course through my body, and my heart has slowed into a quiet rhythm, but I have enough nausea to account for three people. My legs stopped shaking and my knees have become water. All I can do is have a lie down in the doctor’s lounge for now and check on Mercy to make sure I didn’t do any permanent damage. I hope she’ll still want to stay the rest of the week and not return home right away. I would return with her, but I have to stay till the end of my promised contract which means I’m here through mid-October.