The Hollow Places

by T. Kingfisher

  “I’m not sure….”

  All told, we must have stood there for ten minutes or more, listening and turning in place, and at the end we were no closer to figuring it out than we had been. The sound was coming from overhead, or underground, or far away, or inside our heads.

  It was creepy, but when you have spent the night in a nightmare world filled with willows, merely creepy things no longer make much of a dent on you. Eventually we looked at each other and shrugged and set off to try more islands.

  We were systematic this time. Assuming that the rising waters had not actually buried some bunkers, our entry point was from the second line of islands from shore. We left a stick jammed on top of the one where we spent the night and began checking each one, in a zigzag line going upriver.

  “What if we don’t find it?” asked Simon.

  This pissed me off because I hadn’t been asking that exact question for a reason, but I swallowed it. It was my fault Simon was in this mess with me, and it was my own damn fault I hadn’t marked our entry point better. “We’ll try downriver.”

  He gave me a sidelong look that indicated that had not been what he meant. I ignored it because the only answer I had to the real question was “Eat all the FRRs, then go mad and starve in the willows.” This was a bad answer.

  * * *

  We waded to the next bunker and found a closed door. The one after that was crowned with willows, which our bunker hadn’t been, but we checked it anyway. Neither of us wanted to say that the willows might be moving around at night.

  There was a sandspit with ant-lion divots in it between us and the next bunker. I had an urge to dig down and see what the bug at the bottom looked like, which I squelched ruthlessly. All I needed now was for the insects to go all Wrath of Khan and burrow into our brains or something.

  I also still had the awful nagging feeling that the skin of this world was terribly thin, and if I tried to dig down, I’d punch a hole in it and end up on the other side, looking up at the willows from behind. Maybe on that side the spirits would no longer be confined to negative space. Maybe they would be real and present and fall upon me hungrily.

  I kept thinking that’s what had happened to the kids in the school bus. They’d fallen through to the other side of the world and were now pressed up against it, trying to push their way back in.

  The humming-gong sound came again, closer. At least, it seemed closer. Actually it seemed as if I was hearing it inside my chest, the way you hear the bass when you stand too close to a speaker at a concert.

  “I kinda think we should go away from that noise,” said Simon.

  “That’d be easier if I knew where it was coming from in the first place.”

  Simon turned in a slow circle, listening.

  I grabbed his arm. “Careful!”

  He looked down, to discover his stockinged feet perilously close to one of the ant-lion nests. This was a big one, the size of a dinner plate.

  “Oh, jeez…”

  “I’d rather not have alien bugs leap out and grab your toes.”

  “You and me both.” He scowled, then tore off a willow branch from a nearby shrub.

  I winced. Even though the stem was green and flexible and didn’t snap loudly, I had a sudden intense feeling that we were going to call attention to ourselves, that the things we’d seen last night would feel the willows being harmed.

  He poked the branch down into the center of the ant-lion nest and stirred.

  I held my breath, waiting.

  Nothing happened.

  He tried another, smaller divot in the ground, then another. Nothing latched on to the branch.

  “I don’t think these are bug nests at all,” he said. “Not doodlebugs, anyway. They should have latched on a dozen times by now.” He frowned, then, to my mild horror, stuck his bare left hand into the sand.

  “Simon…!”

  “Nothing. Really, truly. Look.” He stirred the sand, and if it were a horror movie, at that point a monster the size of a Buick should have leaped out of the ground, but this wasn’t a movie and reality has no sense of dramatic timing. Nothing continued to happen, except that we heard the humming gong again.

  I sat back on my heels. “Well, if they aren’t ant lions, then what are they?”

  Simon shrugged and tossed the willow branch into the water, where it slid away downstream. Something about the motion made me think of a snake swimming, not a tree limb, except that I rather like snakes.

  “Dust devils, maybe,” he said finally.

  “Dust devils?”

  “You know, little tiny tornadoes, a couple feet tall? They move around some leaves and some sand and then go away again….” He trailed off as I looked around the sandspit, which was pocked like Swiss cheese everywhere there weren’t willows. “Look, I didn’t say it was a good theory.”

  “The sand’s mostly wet. Or damp, anyway. It’d have to be a pretty strong dust devil.”

  Simon shrugged helplessly. “In this place? Who knows what the weather does at night?”

  I remembered the ghostly forms rising out of the willows and stood up. I didn’t want to think too much more about it.

  The humming noise sounded, as if it were directly overhead. We both looked up, but there was nothing but gray sky.

  Without speaking, we stepped off the side of the sandspit and began to wade toward the next bunker. Even when we found a closed door, we didn’t say anything, just continued wading to the next one.

  The sound came again, farther away, as if whatever it was had gone in a different direction. Relief shivered through me, although even that was probably ridiculous.

  The next bunker had a cracked doorway and got our hopes up, until we realized it was mostly flooded and might be one of the ones we’d looked at last night. Two more after that, one completely without a door, and my spirits, not particularly high, began to sink.

  Oh, suck it up, I told myself. What are you going to do, sit down and cry and refuse to keep looking for a way out?

  The next bunker had a half-open door. Simon looked at the water level and shook his head. “Too deep, I think.”

  “Even with the rain yesterday?”

  “Well…” He frowned. “Dammit, I can’t tell. You’ve got depth perception, what do you think?”

  He swept the flashlight beam across the far wall, almost negligently, and I fell back as if I’d been kicked in the chest. The sound I made was more like a kicked dog than a human.

  “What…?” Simon began, half turning, and then the image must have tripped inside his brain and he saw it, too.

  The back wall had an alcove in it, made by two concrete pillars rising out of the water. Wrapped around one of them, emaciated but clearly alive, was a person.

  As we watched, the figure turned their head and looked at us. Eyes shone in an angular, sunken face. They stood waist deep and had long hair that fell clear to the water. When they moved, I could see the hollowed outline of their ribs. Their arms were wrapped around the pillar, holding it tightly. The arms were so thin that they had looked like vines or tree roots.

  Slowly, slowly, the person released the pillar. I saw their throat working, and finally they said, in a wet, raspy voice, “Please… the light hurts… my eyes…”

  Simon and I scrambled backward. Simon’s hand was shaking so badly on the flashlight that the person seemed to move as if they were in a strobe light.

  “The light… please?” they said again.

  Their words finally penetrated. Simon dropped the circle of light to the water. The surface was black and oily-looking. The skeletal figure was still visible at the edge of the beam.

  “Move back… a few steps… please?”

  It was a Southern accent. That was what killed me. This nightmarishly thin figure was in the middle of another goddamn dimension, and they had a drawl like any of the good old boys down at the hardware store. Not the genteel Gone With the Wind kind, with the I’s drawn out until they had an extra vowel in them and the R�
�s softened down almost to nonexistence, but the kind that drinks out of a mason jar and wouldn’t know a mint julep from a hole in the ground.

  “…yes…,” they said. “I… probably can’t… reach you… there…”

  What the hell does that mean? I didn’t know. I didn’t want to know. I backed up another step.

  Then they laughed, or something like a laugh. The sound was a swallowing click. “Gck… gck… gck!”

  “Oh God,” whispered Simon. “Oh fucking God.”

  The laughing person stood slumped in the water, hair hanging down like a shawl. The tips of their fingers were black and violet.

  “No…” they said. “Not… God.” They coughed, and their voice became a bit stronger. “Not God. Sturdivant. Martin Sturdivant.” They lifted their head just a little, hair clinging to their skin like algae. “Are you… real?”

  God help me, I almost said “No.”

  Simon was made of stronger stuff, or maybe he’d done enough drugs that he was better at dealing with impossible visions. “Are you?” he asked.

  “I am… I was… a park ranger…” They laughed again, but cut off quickly. “Not anymore. Obviously.”

  This isn’t Narnia, I thought. This is Middle-earth and we just found Gollum. I swallowed. Surrounded by water, and my mouth was as dry as the surface of the moon. “Are you okay?” Which was a stupid goddamn question, because no one who looked like that was anything like okay. I tried again. “What happened?”

  Sturdivant trailed his blackened fingertips over the surface of the water. “This place. This place… happened. They happened.”

  Part of me, the kind and decent part, the Uncle Earl part, was saying that we should pull the poor man out of the water, put a sweater on him, get some food in him, he was obviously sick and starving and near death. The other part, the part that’s a lot like my mother, was saying that if Sturdivant took another step toward me, I should grab Simon and run like a rabbit.

  “Are you from here?” I asked instead.

  “Gck! No one is… from… here. Everyone comes… through… and most of us die or wish we had.”

  “Did you find a hole into this place, then?” asked Simon, steadying the light with the other hand.

  Sturdivant kept brushing the water with his fingertips, as if stroking it. “A hole. Kudzu. Do you have that, where you come from?”

  We both nodded.

  “Did you come through it?”

  “No,” said Simon. We glanced at each other. “There was a hole in the wall. Inside a bunker.”

  “Inside…,” breathed Sturdivant. “Lucky. Very lucky. Inside is… safer. I was not so lucky. I came through the kudzu. It was all through the park. It had grown over trees by the water. Real tall. Cathedrals… we call them cathedrals…. Gck! Gck!”

  Simon and I tried to flinch backward simultaneously and ended up sitting down hard on the steps behind us.

  “Sorry,” said Sturdivant. “Sorrysorrysorry. I forget. It’s been so long.” He shook his head, but his hair was so long and wet and clinging that it seemed to limit the distance he could turn his head. He coughed again. “The kudzu. I went into the kudzu cathedral. It’s like a basket underneath. I heard something. I went toward it, and then it got darker and darker, and I tried to turn around, but I came out here. In the willows.”

  “And you couldn’t get back?” I asked.

  “No… I could never find it again. I was lost or it had closed already. I spent days in the willows, looking….”

  “I hate those things,” I said.

  “Yes. You should.” He kneaded the water as if it were dough. “Yes. The willows are the soul of this place.”

  “So the holes are everywhere?” asked Simon. “Not just the bunkers?”

  “Everywhere. Anywhere. You come through where you come through.” Sturdivant raised his head. “Have you heard the sound yet?”

  Simon and I looked at each other, then back. “There was a hum,” said Simon cautiously. “Like a gong a long way away. We weren’t sure if it was real.”

  “Yesssss….” Sturdivant sank an inch or two down in the water. “Yes, that is Their sound.” After a moment he added, “You’ll hear it again.”

  “Whose sound?” I asked.

  “Them. The ones here. You must have seen their mark already.”

  Simon and I looked at each other again, shrugging helplessly.

  “Perhaps not. Perhaps I’m remembering wrong.” Sturdivant sank even deeper in the water, still stroking the surface with his fingers. “It’s been so long. How long have you been here?”

  “Since yesterday,” said Simon.

  “Not long, then. No. Not yet.” Was it just the water that he was touching? No, there was something else in there, something he was running through his fingers, over and over. I couldn’t make it out, except that it was long and dark. Waterweed, or… oh, Lord, maybe his own hair, in the water. How long was it? “Some holes last longer, I think. Yours may be there still. Or not.”

  It hadn’t even occurred to me to worry that the way home might have closed.

  “Did you see a school bus, when you got here?” asked Simon.

  “School bus? No.”

  Simon tried to describe it, the way the children were trapped inside. It was hard to wrap words around it. It was doubly hard when we were talking to a wet, skeletal man lurking in the dark water, stroking his floating hair.

  Not that he seems hostile, exactly, but… what did he mean by “I probably can’t reach you there”?

  The first person we’d met and I wanted to get the hell away as quickly as I could. Typical. Although if he can tell us something about this place… like what They are…

  “Yesss…,” said Sturdivant when Simon had finished. “That sounds like something They might do.”

  “Why?” I asked. “Why would someone do that?”

  “Because… They weren’t hungry.” Sturdivant closed his eyes.

  “What does that mean?” asked Simon. “I don’t understand!”

  For a long moment, I didn’t think Sturdivant would answer. He was so emaciated that even talking to us must have exhausted him.

  “We have some food,” I said hesitantly. “If you’re hungry.” As skeletal as he was, I didn’t see how he couldn’t be hungry.

  Sturdivant shook his head. He was submerged to the collarbone now, but I could see his shoulders moving, as if he were treading water. “I’ve been starving this long. If I eat now… I’d have to start over.”

  That made more sense than I wanted it to make. I didn’t want to think about it, but there were so many things now that I didn’t want to think about that they were fighting and jostling for position in the back of my head.

  “What are They?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “This place. They live here. Don’t think too loudly. If you think about Them, it draws Them in….”

  I didn’t want to look away from Sturdivant, but I looked over my shoulder just in case. Nothing but sunlight and willows.

  “Where is this place?” I said. “What is it?”

  Sturdivant’s bony shoulders rose out of the water in a shrug. “A place. Just a place. Old. Touching many places. But eventually the willows found it and got their roots in….”

  “They live in the willows?”

  “From them. Of them.”

  “We saw… err… spirits,” I said. “In the willows last night. And something bigger.”

  “Yesss….” He lifted one hand. Hair or waterweed stuck to it as he made a vague gesture, then dropped it back into the water. “The light of the willows brings things alive. Then not alive. You understand?”

  We didn’t. Sturdivant shook his head, the wet, sticky hair wrapping around his cheekbones. “Things come alive in the willowlight. Not Them. Just things. Then the light goes and they’re not alive anymore. But the willows serve Them… never doubt it… gck!”

  “Is the boatman one of Them?” asked Simon.

  That was a good question, a
nd one I hadn’t thought to ask. “Oh, him.” Sturdivant shrugged again. “Don’t let him catch you. Or do let him, maybe. He’s always hungry.” He opened his eyes. “You asked what They do… if They aren’t hungry…” He smiled, baring teeth in black, swollen gums. I had to look away. “Then They play with you… take you apart to see what makes you tick… change you…”

  My skin was already crawling, but it crawled harder, as if it wanted to leave my body completely and go try to find the way home by itself.

  “There was a woman,” said Sturdivant abruptly. “I met her. She came through before me. A different way. She’d been here for days. A researcher.” He tried to shake his head again, but the thick weight of wet hair prevented him. “They got her a few days later. But They weren’t hungry. They came for us and we ran…. When I found her again, she was all twisted up and They’d stacked her bones up next to her, all very neat, from small to large… all the little hand bones lined up like beads.” The water shivered around him. “She was still alive. It took ages to kill her. She was like jelly….”

  My mind had gone completely blank. It felt like the black water at our feet, each awful word falling into it and leaving ripples.

  “They don’t come down here…,” Sturdivant said wearily. “Too much… concrete. The willows can’t… get their roots in.” He laughed softly. “Though that’s… changing. Water and muck and dead leaves… turns to dirt in the dark… and then they’ll start sending their roots down.” He had sunk so deep into the water now that it lapped against his chin when he spoke.

  “So They didn’t make the bunkers, then?” said Simon. I marveled at his ability to concentrate on that. I was thinking of the school bus, of children and the driver changed in some way I could only barely comprehend because They hadn’t been hungry. So They’d twisted their victims around, pulled them halfway out of reality, left them pressing against the skin of the world like hungry ghosts trying to get in.

  Sturdivant shook his head, sending ripples through the water. “I don’t think They could. I don’t know who did. Someone… before… maybe. Before the willows. Or after. Bunkers to hide from Them. Maybe someone trying to… fix… this place.” He closed his eyes. “But there’s no fixing it. Gck! Gck!”