Now Entering Silver Hollow

by Anne L. Hogue-Boucher

  “Walker, you don’t think I’m going mad, do you?” Connie asked as she leaned back, staring at the white ceiling with the fleur-de-lis etchings.

  “No. You’re not given to emotionality, nor are you trying to convince me you aren’t losing your mind, so that says you’re sane, at least to me.” Walker reached into the tub and cupped her breast, then leaned down to kiss her.

  She snorted a laugh. “At least I haven’t scared you away.”

  “Not yet, madwoman.” He grinned at her and leaned back. “It’ll take much more than a vision to scare me away.”

  ***

  The next two weeks passed without incident. Constance finished her project and mailed it off to her son. The elder son and middle daughter’s packages were already en route, and she hoped they would all receive their gifts before Solstice Day. She included similar notes with each gift. Just a few details of their year in Silver Hollow and that they were hopeful they were well, and to write soon.

  Walker sent his scarf to Jeanie and sent a similar note though shorter. They made a day of it by stopping at the Jewel Grove Inn for a late lunch and shopping at the large general store for dry goods and winter supplies.

  By the time they arrived home, the sun slipped over the horizon and lit the sky in a deep purple display. Walker put the horses in their stalls for the night and gave them their oats and hay and made sure they had unfrozen drinking water. He put out salt licks for them and made sure they were nice and warm with blankets. Once they settled in, he went up to the house and entered through the kitchen.

  That’s when Constance screamed.

  Walker froze as he tried to locate her. Muffled sounds from below.

  He grabbed his loaded shotgun from the parlor wall, thinking that perhaps a wild animal entered and attacked Connie—although her screams weren’t frightened—they were furious.

  When he got to the basement door, he turned the handle and met with resistance. Jammed? No—the door had some give at the bottom, but the knob wouldn’t turn. Locked—yet there was no lock put on this door (it was on his list of things to do for the past year). He put his boot to the wood near the knob with all of his weight and it popped open. That’s when the malodor hit him.

  Rancid, rotted meat and feces overwhelmed his nose and he wretched, but Connie’s war cry drove him forward.

  A man was on top of her, thrusting, his clothes dirty and covered in reddish brown matter. Connie was screaming underneath him, dress ripped, breasts exposed, and clawing at her attacker.

  Walker didn’t know what he was seeing—the man wasn’t even reacting to Connie’s resistance. Her nails sank deep into the man’s face.

  But not a human face.

  Walker aimed his shotgun at the thing and fired. It blew a hole in the creature’s midsection and knocked it off of Constance. She scrambled away, blood covering her body and rushing to pull her skirts over her lower half.

  “What is it? For the love of Stèphanie de Montaneis, what?” Walker could feel his voice working but not hear it as he went over to the thing and kicked it over. His ears were ringing from the blast and Connie was trying to say something.

  He turned back to her and tried to read her lips. I don’t know was the best he got from it. Walker looked back at the lump of being on the floor.

  It had a man’s body and a wolf’s face. He stared at the creature for a moment, then set down the shotgun and knelt beside it, gripping the sides of its head and pulling. It had to be a mask.

  The head didn’t budge. Walker inspected the thing. A wolf’s head, furry and soft with the skin underneath his fingertips growing cold—how?

  Without a word, he dragged the wolf-man up the back steps to the outside, leaving a bloody trail behind him as he moved.

  Inside, Constance’s ears were still ringing, and she hobbled to her feet to run a bath. All she could think about was washing that filth off of her. She reeked of it and it clung to every pore in her body. Connie tossed her clothes—and her boots—into the furnace and trudged up the stairs to the bathroom.

  She got to the water closet in time to retch up the faint remnants of her late lunch. The speed at which everything happened made her dizzy. One moment she heard a commotion in the basement and went with her broom to chase out whatever animal was there. The next, she was on the earthen floor of the cellar with that creature on top of her and inside her. The creature wore a man’s clothes, and its wolfish head snapped at her.

  Connie didn’t care. She wanted the bastard off and out of her.

  Skin crawling, she ran the water as hot as she could stand and filled the tub with her oils, grabbing a strong lye soap and her roughest washcloth. The water stung at her skin, bringing blood to the surface, but Connie stayed. She scrubbed, layers of scum coming off her, out from her. She shoved the cloth inside and scrubbed herself numb.

  “It’s dead. Dead. Walker killed the thing. Gone.” She cleaned her face and drained the tub, then filled it again, watching the fresh water rise to meet her breasts.

  Outside, Walker dragged the body into the woods, off-trail, thumping and thunking as it hit rocks jutting up from the ground. He stopped with a jerk as its mouth caught on a thick tree root. Walker kicked the head to move it. The thing’s face made a sloppy crunch noise as something in its face broke.

  He tossed the corpse into the ravine, surprised at his own strength, and watched it grow smaller and smaller until it splashed into the water. There was no point in reporting it or talking about it. Walker turned and dashed back to the house. Connie. He had to make sure she was safe.

  With water from the pump outside, he washed the bloody trail on the steps. Snow and season would wash away the rest and he could always blame a wild animal. Connie was more important.

  The bathroom door was ajar, but Walker knocked anyway. There was no answer, so he peeked inside. Red as a beet, nude, and scrubbing the tub. Walker grabbed her robe and a towel before he approached.

  “Connie?”

  “I have to clean this. I have to make it all clean.” She looked up at him with a tear-stained face. “I can still smell it.”

  “The scent is gone, Connie.”

  “It’s all over you. You have to get clean.”

  “I will.” Walker put the towel around her and offered her the robe. “Come and lie down on the chaise and I’ll clean up. I don’t want you out of my sight right now.”

  In Faber’s book, he talked about possession and how people behaved in a different manner, as though something guided them. Walker saw this in Connie—the thing attacked her, and now she displayed these curious symptoms. Or not so curious. He had seen this before and called it shock. There didn’t need to be a fancy, otherworld explanation for it.

  Despite what they’d seen, Walker told himself it was just a mask that the assailant had glued onto his face. A sickness. Madness. Perhaps he believed he was a werewolf or other nonsense.

  Walker threw his clothing in the hamper and climbed into the bath, washing with a new bar of the lye soap. Constance sat in the chaise and stared out the window.

  Once he finished, Walker dried off and put on talc, then donned his own robe. He knelt by her side. Constance continued to look away from him.

  “How can I help?” His voice sounded small and weak to his own ears because of the ringing.

  Connie turned to look at him in the dim light. “We will never speak of this again. That’s how.”

  Walker nodded. He respected her wishes.

  She raised her arms to him and he picked her up, carrying her to bed. Her skin was hot from the bath, and he opened the window when she requested it.

  Falling into an uneasy sleep, Walker saw Ella dancing nude with the wolf-head man as they ate the entrails of the children—her children. He watched her breasts jiggle as the creature took her, and then it was Constance again. Only this time, her screams weren’t anger—they were pleasure.

  He woke with a start as the shotgun bla
sts spattered their innards into each other’s, intestines commingling, moving snake-like into each other as though their coupling continued in death.

  This was wrong, and he dismissed his visions as he turned to face his wife. She was awake, staring at the ceiling.

  She looked over at Walker, unsmiling. “I’ll get breakfast started. It’ll be ready once you’re back from your chores.”

  Walker nodded and reached out for her hand. She hopped out of bed before he could touch her.

  He stayed outside for a long time with the horses, making sure everything in the barn was secure and they were still warm. After that, instead of going inside, Walker checked on the greenhouse. Despite the bitter cold just outside, the glasshouse made a testament to midday in May. So much so that Walker took off his overcoat as he examined his plants. Fresh tomatoes bud on the earthy, spicy scented leaves of their plants. Soon, he’d be able to harvest them and surprise Constance with his success. A fortnight or less. They were small and green, still. He wanted them a luscious red before plucking them from the vine.

  He had medicinal plants growing as well. Mint and ginger for indigestion, yarrow for inflammation, and so on—guided by Constance’s knowledge of medicine when their supplies ran out during the Great Shortage.

  His flowers. His precious mums and lilies. He smiled at the blackberry lilies growing next to them and doing so well. He clipped two and brought them inside for Connie.

  She smiled faintly at the lilies and put them in a small vase, setting it on the kitchen table. “Thank you. I know you’re trying to make me feel better.”

  Walker nodded. “I love you.”

  She swallowed hard, and he saw a glint of tears in her eyes, but she set her jaw and he could see her wrestling with herself to not let them fall. “I love you, too.”

  The rest of the day was busy with chores as were most days. When they sat down to dinner, things almost seemed normal again. Constance had more color in her face though she didn’t smile. Her body was tense, as though she expected the wolf-faced creature to jump out at her any moment. She didn’t speak much, and there was no joy in her voice when she did.

  Walker filled the spaces of silence by chatting about things he read in the library, and how he thought of purchasing a newspaper subscription and making them deliver from Jewel Grove.

  Constance did laugh at that. “They’d deny you service—imagine driving the horses all that way just to deliver one paper.”

  Walker chuckled. “I suppose they’d charge me more.”

  “A bit.” She clapped her hands and finished her pot roast.

  “Excellent dinner, Connie. Your best yet.” Walker touched her hand. She let him.

  “You always say that.” Connie squeezed his hand. Her fingers were dainty threads of ice.

  “I always mean it.” He didn’t say anything else as he helped clear the table.

  The darkness fell earlier than the night before, but to Walker, it seemed to get dark hours before instead of minutes. They retired to the den.

  Connie began a new knitting project. Knit one, purl two—for three rows. Walker started a fire and for a while, the only sounds were a clack of the knitting needles and the snap of a reply from the kindling in the fireplace. Clack, snap, clack. Clack, snap, clack.

  She stood up and jammed her needles into the ball of yarn. The large window seemed to call to her to come sit. She did. She stared out the window.

  Walker joined her.

  “What are you looking for, Connie?”

  Connie put her face in her hands and wept.

  ***

  “Constance ill?” Old Haverty shook his head. “I don’t see you out here often.”

  Walker gave Haverty a smile. “No, she’s as well as ever. Just working on a new project in the house and can’t tear herself away, so she sent me to pick up some staples.”

  This was a lie. After her night of weeping, Constance was quiet throughout the next day. She ate nothing and just sat in the den, staring out the window. Walker sat with her and stared at her.

  “I don’t feel well.” Constance ran her hands through her hair, undoing the pins and letting her curls drag around her face.

  “I’ll help you to bed.” Walker stood and offered his hand.

  “No. You’ve done enough.” There was an icy note in her voice that he’d never experienced. The chill reached his heart and gripped it.

  He watched her leave the den and heard her ascend the stairs. Walker sighed and left as well, but headed in the opposite direction—to inspect the basement.

  The room still reeked of feces and blood as Walker descended the stairs. Each footstep caused them to creak and pop, and the spirit of dread—of heavy air and mist around his body, squeezing his breath from him—grew in his descent.

  What he found at the bottom landing made that sensation tighten and grow, filling him with shivers. There was—his mind couldn’t make sense of it at first. He grew dizzy. A faint chanting came from every direction of the basement. He gagged.

  The walls were covered in a scarlet liquid that stank like the inside of a slaughterhouse—an array of symbols and pictographs he didn’t recognize.

  Walker remembered his mother’s advice from when he had to take care of the sick animals that stank up the barn. Keep breathing and you’ll adapt. But here, the more he tried habituating to the odor of rotting carcass and the sickly copper tang of blood, the worse it got. That’s when he realized it was getting stronger.

  He wretched, falling to his knees, and emptied his stomach onto the earthen floor. He watched the yellow liquid sink in as he took his handkerchief to his mouth to wipe off the greasy residue. A cough tugged at his throat and he cleared it, trying to swallow the bitter, burning bile.

  A groaning sound caught his attention from behind himself. Walker turned and choked out a scream. A hand—feral, oily black—emerged from the shadows and grabbed at him.

  “We seek revenge for our brother,” the chanting voice said. It clanged from every direction, echoing in his head. “Revenge for our brother. Revenge for our brother…”

  Walker pushed off the ground with his legs hard as the hand made another grab for him. Swipe and a miss—he fell against the wall and another hand from behind held him fast. The hands tore at his legs, moving up his thighs, and inside of him. The burn of his insides and blood flowing into the floor below only seemed to make them move faster and harder. If he didn’t get out, and soon, he'd die.

  He screamed and wrested away from his captor, pulling up his trousers to keep from tripping as he ran up the stairs. A scream came from above his head.

  “Connie?” He forgot about his own pain, the burning in his hind end—the sick roll of his lower abdomen—in favor of getting to his wife and making sure she was safe.

  When he reached the bedroom door, there were no more screams. Connie was asleep in bed, looking relaxed and peaceful. He kissed her forehead. She was cool to the touch, but the window was open and a northern breeze picked up enough to blow the curtains aside.

  “I don’t know what to do,” Walker’s mousy tone irritated him and he banged his fist into the wall. In the distance, laughter.

  Connie didn’t stir.

  She was heavy sleeper some nights, so Walker left her be and washed himself using quick, broad strokes and called it good enough. He dressed for bed and sat at his desk with a pen and paper.

  Something is happening in this house. I am a man of reason and logic, but my eyes deceive me, or I am going mad. I refuse to believe what has happened in the past few days. I reject the premise. Houses do not live—they are not animate. That means, logically, there is a yet-to-be discovered force trying to enter here. A malevolent race, I imagine. I am far more convinced of otherworld encounters. During my time in the war, our troops saw many odd things in the sky out in the Western Territory, and many believed them to be visitors. Those were no ordinary meteors or comets.

 
; It is logical that man is not alone. If they have the ability to travel though space just as one travels in the ocean on a ship, then perchance they have other abilities too.

  I still sound like a madman. Given my injuries tonight, I have either hallucinated on gone-over food and done this to myself, or there is something even more sinister going on here. But I shall not wake Constance for this nonsense. I will bear it.

  I do believe it is logical to leave this house come morning.

  ***

  Pink and red hues streamed through the window when Walker’s eyes snapped open. He gasped, as though something had been sitting on his chest. When he looked up, eyes full of morning debris, he thought something disappeared into the walls.

  More claptrap. Or they had gone mad.

  Walker turned to find Connie. She lay on her back and had a strange smile on her face. If it meant her dreams were pleasant, he was happy. He rose gingerly so as not to disturb her. The poor woman didn’t stir a bit.

  He went to the bathroom to do his morning routine. Walker planned to go downstairs and make breakfast, bring her to the kitchen, and tell her his ideas. That they needed to leave the house. For whatever reason, it was no longer safe.

  The man prepared a simple breakfast of toasted bread, bacon, eggs, and strong coffee. Walker ate as he cooked so that he could focus on Constance and ensure that she resumed eating.

  “We’ll go to Jewel Grove. Stay at the Inn. Then we can make plans. Investigate. Hire a health expert to inspect the house. Contact the Elburn Institute. Let them investigate.” He was talking to himself, but it helped diminish the weight of eyes on him. Of something behind him. The tickle on the nape of his neck. The tick-tock of the grandfather clock in the parlor seeming to be louder than ever.

  “Whoever you are, go away.”

  The creeping sensation dissipated.

  Walker took the stairs two at a time, driven by his good idea to have a brief holiday in Jewel Grove while they tried to regroup.

  He entered the bedroom in full stride, almost smiling. Something he hadn’t done in days—days that stretched out like weeks.