Cry Baby Hollow

by Love, Aimee

  “Get,” she snapped again, peeved that the animal was so shaken by its near-miss that it couldn’t get out of her way. She picked up a handful of loose gravel from the road and stepped further out of her car so that she could be sure of not hitting its hood. She chucked the gravel at the deer, underhand, trying to scare it into flight. It flinched as the gravel rained down on it and shifted nervously from side to side, but it didn’t budge.

  “God damn it,” she muttered, looking at her watch. It was almost eleven. She stepped out and slammed her door shut with enough force to rock the car. Taking a menacing step toward the animal, she waved her arms over her head.

  “You’re supposed to be skittish,” she shouted at it with her mind awash in thoughts of rabies and lime disease. She stepped up reluctantly to shove it away.

  It waited until she was within arm’s length and then darted out of reach, just outside the pool of her headlights. Aubrey saw another set of eyes below and behind it and wondered if it was a mother, and if its strange behavior were somehow meant to protect its fawn. She decided it was far enough out of the way for her to pass and was just turning to go, when it let out a terrifying scream that she never would have imagined a deer was capable of, and lurched around directly at her. She felt something moist hit her face and heard a noise somewhere between a laugh and growl come echoing out of the fog. She wiped at her face and then looked at her hand. It was covered in bright red blood.

  She jumped behind the wheel, slammed the car into reverse, and floored it. The car leapt backward, and she cut the wheel hard. Her front tires left the gravel and hit the soft dirt of the shoulder. They spun uselessly for a moment before catching and sending her hurtling back the way she had come. As she came around she had one final sight of the deer.

  It was laying in the center of the road, its back to her, and she could see one of its legs sticking nearly straight up in the air, twitching spastically. Its head thrashed and something crouched behind it, a looming shadow that used the deer’s body as a shield from the light as it tore at its belly. The last thing she saw before the dark and fog engulfed the ghastly scene was the huge, full moon eyes of the deer turning toward her entreatingly. It was still alive, and resting on its flank she saw what looked like a hand, holding it still. Aubrey gagged.

  She traversed the lake road and made it to Vina’s in record time, her heart pounding in her chest as she checked the rearview mirror every few seconds. She took the turn into Vina’s at high speed, and when she hit the bump where the gravel road met Vina’s paved driveway, her iPhone bounced free again. This time she let it dangle.

  Aubrey pulled up the drive and careened to a halt as close to the front path as she could. She hopped out and dashed up to the house, taking the front steps two at a time.

  She hit the doorbell, glancing over her shoulder into the fog, and stepped to the right of the door out of long habit.

  Vina was partial to thrusting open the door with an abruptness designed to startle the person on the other side into hopping backward and falling down the front steps. It was an old trick of hers. She had, to the best of Aubrey’s knowledge, the only out-swinging front door in existence. If you asked her why, she would tell you with a good deal of fake authority, how it was harder to batter down or force your way in through an out-swinging door. If you had the guts to ask her who she thought was going to try to force their way into a somewhat decrepit looking farmhouse that was surrounded by national forest and a ten minute drive from the nearest road sign, she would confide, depending on her mood and how much of an idiot she thought you were, either that the ATF had been looking for an excuse to take her out of the equation for years now, that zombie incursions always started in rural areas no matter what the government claimed, or (and this was Aubrey’s personal favorite as a child) she would point to the forbidding forest that loomed all around and simply whisper “werewolves”. Tonight, with memories of the deer fresh in her mind, Aubrey didn’t think it was very funny at all.

  When the bell failed to bring a response, Aubrey began pounding on the door with the heel of her hand. After a few minutes, her heart still racing and her hand growing sore, she dashed back to the car, jumped in, and locked it. She picked up her cell phone and dialed Vina’s number.

  “Hi,” Vina’s voice said after two rings. “I ain’t gonna be home tonight on account of we’re all going over to visit with Germaine, and then I have to take Betty home ‘cause she can’t drive until she gets her cataract surgery. By the time I get back I’m gonna be tired so don’t bother leaving a message and don’t call back until tomorrow. If this is Aubrey, I left you a key under the gnome in case you show up early, which is rude, by the way. Wait for me in the kitchen and help yourself to the booze.” BEEP.

  Aubrey swore under her breath. If you’re going to tell the whole world where the key is, why not just leave the door open? It would be a hell of a lot more convenient since the gnome was in the backyard, halfway down to the lake, buried amid the sea of hostas that surrounded a venerable old oak tree.

  Aubrey reached into her bag and pulled out her mini-maglight and her stun gun. She switched off the safety and pressed the button to test it. A thick band of electricity arced between the two prongs on the top, and a crackling sound like bacon being thrown into a hot pan pierced the air. Aubrey stepped out of the car and did a slow 360° turn, flipping on her flashlight and shining it in every direction. Seeing nothing but fog, she left the driveway and started cautiously down the stepping stones that led beside the house and toward the lake. The fog grew thicker the closer to the water she got, and played odd tricks with sound. She heard a car crunching along on gravel, but she knew from experience that that could be all the way on the other side of the lake, and at one point she stood stock still, convinced that she heard footsteps close behind her.

  She had to leave the path to reach the hostas and the lawn had been freshly mowed. Wet clumps of the cuttings instantly coated her shoes, and whenever she hit a particularly large patch she lost her footing and slid. By the time she found the oak and began pushing the fat leafed plants aside with her foot, searching for the gnome in their midst, she was thoroughly annoyed.

  “Well, hello there,” said a voice, inches from her ear.

  She spun around and was confronted by a wall of a man standing well inside her personal space. The thin beam from her inadequate flashlight played along his face, but all that registered was his leering grin and the sledge hammer he carried casually propped against his shoulder. She jabbed the stun gun into his abdomen and hit the button.

  He fell to the ground, looking more shocked than hurt, and twitched.

  The flood lights on the back of Vina’s house came on and the reflection from the fog made the entire backyard instantly bright. Aubrey looked up and saw Vina standing a dozen steps away, feet planted shoulder distance apart, arms crossed against her chest. She was barely five feet tall, might have weighed a hundred pounds if she was carrying two bags of flour, and admitted to being ninety-two, though everyone suspected she was lying by at least five years, and yet she still looked as intimidating as a center lineman.

  “Which part of ‘The Key is Under the Gnome’ did you not get?” Vina demanded by way of a greeting.

  Then she caught sight of Aubrey’s blood spattered face and the man lying on the ground at her feet.

  “Jesus Almighty,” she exclaimed. “You’ve killed Joe.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  There was no way they could m

  ove him, so they just stood over his prostrate form, waiting silently. As soon as he opened his eyes and started to get up Vina asked, “Did ya piss yourself?”

  He shook his head.

  “I think I hit my head on the sledge when I fell, though,” he told her, getting shakily to his feet.

  “Damn, I thought they were supposed to piss themselves,” she told Aubrey accusingly.


  “I could sure use a beer,” Joe said in the thick, regionally unspecific accent of a TV southerner. He abandoned the sledge hammer on the lawn and staggered toward the house.

  Vina shot Aubrey a look of scorn and took his arm, helping him up the back steps.

  Once he was seated at the big table in the kitchen, a beer in hand, Vina rounded on Aubrey.

  “Just what the hell were you doing?”

  “Me?” Aubrey squeaked. “I was looking for the gnome. What was he doing walking around in the fog with a sledge hammer in the middle of the night?”

  Vina grabbed her by the sleeve and dragged her to the front door. She flicked the light switch, slid back the deadbolt and opened it. Stepping out, she pointed down. Aubrey glanced over her shoulder and saw the gnome, standing guard just below the doorbell.

  “I didn’t see it there,” she said lamely. “I thought you meant the one in the hostas.”

  “Why the hell would I put the key all the way back there?” Vina demanded. “Just because my idiot step-children are trying to have me declared incompetent don’t mean I am.”

  She turned and stalked back to the kitchen, leaving Aubrey to shut off the light and lock up.

  When Aubrey came back into the kitchen, Joe was looking better and working on a second beer. She took a moment to examine him. Tall and broad, he wore jeans and a plaid shirt unbuttoned far enough to show off well-defined muscles and a deep tan. His hair was light brown fading to gold where the sun hit it and his eyes, when he looked up at her, were a gentle blue. He had deep smile lines and crow’s feet at the edges of his eyes, making his age hard to guess, but she put him at around forty. He looked oddly familiar but he was handsome enough that Aubrey was sure she would have remembered him if they’d met.

  “This is Aubrey,” Vina told him, pointedly ignoring her.

  “I gathered as much,” he drawled and stood, extending his hand.

  Aubrey realized she was still clutching the stun gun. She flicked the safety on and set it down on the counter.

  “I’m sorry I startled you,” he told her, grinning. “I was out of beer and I remembered I’d left some here when I cut the grass today so I headed over. It’s closer than the store.”

  She shook the offered hand, feeling awful. She had electrocuted him and he was the one apologizing. His hand was huge, completely engulfing hers but he shook it gently and released it reluctantly.

  “So you’re the infamous Joe?” Aubrey asked, giving him the once over. She had heard stories about him, of course. Nothing happened in the hollow that wasn’t endlessly chewed over, but in her minds eye the fishing, lawn mowing, beer drinking Joe had been older, fatter, and considerably less polite.

  “Tuesdays I am,” he told her. “The rest of the week I drop the infamous and just go by Joe.”

  “Do you always carry a sledge hammer?”

  “Once I got close, I saw the light around the back of the house so I came to check things out. We’ve had some boys takin’ out mailboxes and I thought they might have moved up to felonies. I picked up the sledge from beside the garage just in case.”

  “I’m very sorry,” Aubrey told him.

  “Why are you covered in blood?” Vina finally asked, apparently forgiving her now that she had apologized.

  “There was a deer,” she tried to think of a way to explain the incident on the road, the sense of malice and impending disaster it had instilled in her.

  “You hit it with that?” Vina asked, pointing to the stun gun.

  “You are from the city,” Joe said with a chuckle. “The deer in these parts aren’t known to be vicious.”

  Aubrey shook her head.

  “My car…”

  When she didn’t finish, Joe got up from the table and walked shakily to the front door. Aubrey saw a line of grass clippings stuck to his back where he’d fallen on the wet lawn. He flipped the lights back on and walked down the steps of the front porch to her car, with Vina and Aubrey trailing behind.

  He stood in front of it, shaking his head.

  “You hit a deer with this little toy, and the deer didn’t win?” He said in amazement.

  “It’s a Mini Cooper,” Aubrey told him, “not a toy, and I didn’t hit it.”

  Vina looked at her questioningly.

  “It was in the middle of the road, and I barely stopped in time. I was trying to get it to move when something attacked it.”

  “Something?” Joe asked.

  “Bear?” She suggested, not believing it herself.

  Joe shook his head and headed back inside.

  “The only bear around here are blacks, and they don’t attack deer. They might charge a person if they get between them and their cubs, but not a deer. Probably coyotes or wolves.”

  “Wolves?” Aubrey sputtered. “There haven’t been wolves in the Smokey Mountains in ages.”

  “They been breeding red wolves in captivity,” Vina told her as they followed Joe back to the kitchen. “They started releasing ‘em into the wild a while back on account of them being nearly extinct. It’s had all the farmer’s panties in a bunch.”

  “I thought I saw a hand…” Aubrey told them reluctantly.

  “Was it shot?” Joe asked, confused.

  Aubrey shook her head.

  “I didn’t hear anything but a growl but I really think I saw a hand… And eyes. They were glowing in the headlights.”

  “People eyes don’t reflect like that,” Joe told her. “I’d bet it’s just coyotes. Should I go move the carcass before someone else hits it?” He asked Vina.

  Aubrey shuddered.

  “I’m not going back out there,” she told them.

  “Where’d this happen?” Joe asked Aubrey.

  “On the lake road.”

  “It’s got a name now,” Vina told her proudly. “Red Bank Road on account of all the Indians that got slaughtered there.”

  Local legend held that there had been a massacre in the hollow, which was where Murder Creek got its name, and that if you walked along it in the moonlight its banks still glowed red with blood. More recently, the entire area around the lake had been dubbed Cry Baby Hollow, supposedly because a young woman had drowned herself and her illegitimate infant in the lake rather than face the scorn or the townsfolk. They said that when the fog was thick, you could hear the baby crying. Aubrey knew that while the first story might have some basis in fact, Vina had made up the second herself, to keep visitors away. Still, she imagined they had had a tough time deciding which macabre name to go with for the road.

  “I turned left at the fork,” she told Joe.

  Joe shrugged.

  “I’ll handle it in the morning,” he told Vina. “She and I are the only ones down that way.”

  “Me?” Aubrey asked, confused.

  “You’re stayin’ in the cabin,” Vina informed her. “I got no problem with a weekend guest from time to time, but I like my independence. I can’t have you livin’ here.”

  Aubrey sank into one of the kitchen chairs. She should have known something like this would happen. Things that involved Vina never went smoothly.

  “Joe will escort you, in case you run into another deer,” Vina assured her. “Now get out. I’m an old woman and I need my sleep.”

  Joe grabbed a beer from the fridge and headed to the door.

  “You comin’?” He asked Aubrey over his shoulder.

  Joe had to fold himself nearly in half and push the seat all the way back to get in the Mini, but once he was situated he seemed surprised at how comfortable he was.

  Aubrey pulled out of Vina’s driveway and headed toward the cabin, all to aware that she was also heading toward the deer.

  “When was the last time you were down?” Joe asked companionably.

  “Christmas
,” she told him, concentrating on the road.

  “The cabin must a looked pretty rough then,” he said, seeing the concern on her face and guessing the cause.

  “I didn’t go over,” she admitted, “except to drive by. I haven’t actually been inside it in years.”

  “It’s not bad,” he said reassuringly.

  “You’ve been inside recently?”

  “I helped Vina get it set up for you,” he explained. “The septic system is good and they turned on the power a few days ago. There’s my trailer,” Joe told her, sticking his arm in front of her face to point out toward the lake.

  She pulled into a muddy driveway that she didn’t remember ever noticing before. It wound through the trees briefly, and then they emerged in a clearing beside the lake. Instead of the single wide she had expected, she saw an old derelict RV, brightly lit by a pair of flood lights attached to a power pole beside it. She realized the fog was lifting and relaxed a fraction.

  “You don’t have to drop me,” Joe told her. “I can walk back after I help you get settled.”

  “I can’t believe Vina lets you park here,” she told him, trying to change the subject. She didn’t want to seem rude after he had been so nice about her assaulting him, but there was no way he was setting foot in the cabin with her. “She’s usually so fussy about the hollow.”

  “She doesn’t let me,” he explained. “She sold me the lot.”

  “Really?” Aubrey asked, amazed.

  He nodded.

  “It took a while to wear her down,” he admitted. “I was stayin’ in town one summer and talked her into lettin’ me fish in the lake. After a few years she got used to me and let me park my trailer here when I came to town. A few more years and she sold me the lot. I’m gonna build a house on it one of these days.”