The Hollow Places

by T. Kingfisher

  The wildebeest snorted again, loudly, and I heard the scrape of its horns against the wall as it thrashed.

  I limped as far as the stairs and stared up them. They might as well have been a thousand feet tall. I couldn’t climb the stairs on my feet, surely.

  Fine, I thought grimly. If I can’t climb, then I’ll crawl.

  I went up on my hands and one knee, a step at a time. The brief half second on each step when my bad knee had to take weight was like an electric shock. Red flared beneath my eyelids, briefly drowning out the willowlight.

  The fur-bearing trout, a joke played on gullible tourists, flapped against its plaque. The jackalope groomed its antlers with its paws. I did not look at the Genuine Feejee Mermaid, but I could hear a dry snapping in the shadows.

  It’s the mermaid’s teeth. You know it’s the teeth.

  Stop it stop it stop it!

  I crawled on. The jackalope turned to watch me go. The snapping was drowned out by the wheeze of breath in nonexistent lungs, the sounds of horns and antlers clicking, and hooves pawing against the walls.

  It took a hundred years of agony, but I reached the top and looked over the steps.

  The giant otter stood in a halo of shattered glass. The hole in its chest gaped open like a wound, dripping silver light.

  Too late. I’m too late. It’s in the otter.

  For an instant, I felt relieved. It wasn’t in the grizzly bear. It was an otter. Otters are just clownish water ferrets. This wasn’t the worst thing, surely?

  Then it turned its head.

  Glass eyes moved over me. I froze. My heart stopped in my chest. Claws as long as my fingers. Teeth even longer. It could take my throat out in a single bite, as easily as Beau dispatching a mouse.

  The eyes moved over me and it looked away. I did not concern it.

  When it leaped down from the remains of the display, it moved like oil. It had none of the awkwardness of the fisher. The carving fitted into this beast’s chest like a key in a lock.

  God help me, I would have preferred the grizzly bear. The grizzly bear couldn’t have walked, with the bad leg. The otter was eight feet long, and even if the muscle was gone, the skin remembered.

  Apex predator. Water jaguar. The pattern of white on its chest shone sickly silver, like fox fire in the dark.

  If it had come toward the stairs, I would probably have pitched over backward and broken my neck, saving it the trouble. But it did not. It walked on silent feet to the patched back wall.

  The great otter reared up on its hind legs. Its body was too long, too snake-like, a beast from the age of dinosaurs, not the age of mammals. It shoved the Bigfoot statue aside with careless strength and raked its claws against the wall.

  Skrreeeeeeeeeek.

  The batik tore. Claw marks scored the metal, but it held. I could see the dull reflection of the willowlight in the surface of the metal.

  I remembered the hole in the grizzly bear, the hole that I’d thought had been rats. Had the corpse otter tested it out, realized it was short a leg, and decided not to bother? Or had it lacked some other intangible quality that the carving required?

  The otter dropped to all fours, then stood back up again, moving its head bonelessly from side to side. It moved its paws over the metal and I realized suddenly that it must be blind.

  That’s why it didn’t come after me. It couldn’t see me.

  Questing paws found the edges of the metal, and it sank its claws into the wall with a crunching sound.

  Oh God.

  It doesn’t need a human to open the way anymore….

  It must have tried before, as the raccoon, but it wasn’t strong enough. It couldn’t move the statue. The fisher was just temporary, until it could get to the otter. Then it had done… whatever it did. Cast a spell or invoked its alien gods or called the willowlight to it.

  The willowlight had come, the light that brought things to freakish, alien life, and it had been strong enough to wake everything in the museum.

  It had been strong enough to break into the otter’s case as well. I could see the fisher, a deflated rag of fur, lying in state on the bed of broken glass.

  The monster got its claws under the metal patch and pulled.

  The screws tore out of the wall. The metal squealed as it bent. Cold air rushed past the otter and brought the scent of water and gravel and willows to me.

  The otter dropped down and investigated the hole. I saw the whiskers working. It might be blind, but it could still sense the edges. It rose up again, grasped the metal, and pulled to widen the hole.

  It’ll go, I told myself. It’ll go away and it’ll be gone and we’ll fill the hole with concrete and the carving will be back where it belongs and that’ll be the end of it.

  Please, I begged the monster silently. Please just go.

  It set its paws on the bottom of the hole, shoulder deep in the other world.

  And then something touched me, something soft and furry, and I let out a muffled shriek and Beau the cat locked eyes on the monstrous otter and began to yowl.

  My cat. My stupid, valiant cat who never lost a fight in his life and didn’t realize he could and who was not going to let a monster twenty times his size get away.

  My cat who had probably just doomed us both.

  The monster’s head snapped around. Blind it might be, but there was nothing wrong with its hearing.

  Beau punctuated his yowl with a hiss.

  The otter turned in that narrow space like it had no spine. It might be enormous, but it was still a weasel. I snatched Beau up and fled.

  My knee couldn’t handle the stairs, but that was fine. I went down on my ass, in a fast, bumpy slide, and it hurt like the devil, but it was a lot faster than trying to limp down one step at a time. Beau sank his claws into my shoulder, but I’m not sure if that was to hold on or in outrage that I was taking him away from his prey.

  I looked over my shoulder and the otter was there. It came down the steps like a river of oil, eight feet of sleek, monstrous predator. A more dangerous host for the carving I couldn’t imagine. The carving had found the worst possible thing in the Wonder Museum.

  And it was silent. So very, terribly silent. The Feejee Mermaid snapped her teeth at it as it went by, and I heard the clicking, but I could not hear the water jaguar’s paws on the ground.

  I rolled to my feet and ran with a desperate hobbling stride toward the back of the museum. My bedroom door was open and I threw myself inside and slammed the door closed. I fumbled with the lock, looking around for anything to jam against the door—the chair, the nightstand, anything that might stop the monster for a few seconds.

  The door rocked on its hinges as the otter hit it.

  I flung Beau down on the bed. He resumed his yowl unabated.

  The door banged again, higher up. The otter was on its hind legs, raking those gigantic claws along the door. I grabbed the chair and jammed it under the knob, the way they do in movies, then learned immediately why they only do that in movies.

  There was a loud crack! of breaking wood. This plain old interior door was a flimsy little hollow-core number, of course. It would stop someone like me. It wasn’t going to stop the otter.

  It was also the only way out of the room.

  Oh God, why had I run into my room? It was instinct, pure stupid instinct. I’d run to the bedroom and locked the door because some part of me believed that it was A Safe Place and surely the corpse-otter would respect the ancient rules of privacy and not open the door.

  Completely absurd, of course, but I hadn’t been thinking. I’d just run. If the bathroom door had been closer, I’d probably have locked myself in there, instead.

  Splintering, cracking noises came from the wood. I heard the bolt squeal.

  I had a strong urge to get under the bed, the same urge that had sent me running to my room. Monsters can’t get you there. I fought it back. All that would happen would be that I was a sitting duck for the otter to reach in and haul me out. And
Beau would never consent to sit quietly until it went away again.

  “Oh God,” I said out loud. “Oh God…”

  On the wall, Prince moved.

  There was no shock left in me, only horror. I watched him turn his head, animated by the terrible power of the willows. His antlers scraped against the wall behind him and he bent his neck forward, as if surprised.

  “Not you, too,” I said. “Oh God, Prince, not you, too.”

  I didn’t know if I could bear it. I loved that elk. His nostrils flared and he turned his head to look at me.

  The otter hit the door again, and Prince jerked sideways, ears going flat back. His mouth opened and he gave an enormous huffing snort, despite having no lungs.

  The doorframe gave way.

  I think the sudden lack of resistance startled the otter as much as it did me. The door slammed inward, sending the chair flying and tearing out a chunk of the doorframe as the bolt went through the wall and the otter tumbled forward into the room.

  I snatched up the lamp, still attached by its cord. I didn’t know how much good it was going to do, but I’d lost my cane somewhere along the way.

  The otter stood up, shaking itself off. It turned its head back and forth, whiskers sweeping the air, then triangulated. Not on me. On Beau, who was still wailing like the damned.

  Oh, shit.

  The otter lunged forward, and two things happened simultaneously.

  With an absolutely stupid courage I hadn’t known I possessed, I jumped in front of the cat and brought the lamp down—and Prince ducked his great head, twisted sideways, and raked his antlers along the otter’s side.

  My blow was ineffectual. Prince’s wasn’t. His antlers jammed into the otter, and Prince lifted it up, half-impaled on the points, while the otter writhed silently. Silver willowlight oozed through the spots on its belly.

  Beau, seeing the enemy brought low, launched himself from the bed and onto the otter’s face, wailing like a police siren. He tore at the otter’s eyes, a commendable effort, but given that the otter was blind, not terribly useful.

  The otter tried to swat at its attackers but couldn’t quite get leverage. It squirmed on the antler points, got free of one, and its hindquarters dropped to the floor.

  Beau raked out one of the huge glass eyes and sprang free. Apparently he felt this was enough for his part of the fight, because he bolted through the doorway and into the museum.

  That struck me as a very good idea. I flung myself past the squirming otter just in time, as it finally was able to brace its feet and begin to tear itself off the antlers.

  I was frightened that it might hurt Prince—insomuch as taxidermy that shouldn’t be alive can be hurt—but sticking around seemed like a very bad idea.

  I had to get away.

  Think, I said to myself as I staggered down the hallway. Think! Where can you hide?

  The animals tossed their heads on the walls. The bone snake struck ineffectually at the glass.

  What would happen if we left the museum? What if I ran and it chased me? What could it bring to life outside?

  I had visions of the silver light settling over the trees of my own world and turning them into willows. Willows growing from the cracks in the street, filling the windows of the Black Hen and the boutique with the scented candles, overrunning the gutters, everyone in Hog Chapel surrounded by willows, and Them coming through, not just one but hundreds of Them, once the willows had their roots in.

  It wasn’t enough to hide or to get away. I had to stop it. I needed fire or an axe or…

  No.

  The corpse-otter carving was the animating force behind all of this. It had been trying to get back into the willow world. It had been trying to get itself home, before it had seen me.

  Oh, God, it must have been so frustrated! I could imagine its small carved paws paddling at the ground, shoving itself along like an overturned turtle, and then who would come along but the bumbling human, picking it up and putting it back, over and over. No wonder it wanted me dead. I was its jailor and torturer. For all I knew, the power to animate the skins was a last-ditch effort, something that had taken years off its life (if it was even alive) or hurt like hell or some other alien emotion that a flesh-and-blood mammal couldn’t possibly understand.

  But I understood wanting to go home. I had been trapped on the other side of the hole, in an alien world, and I would have sold my hope of heaven to go home again.

  I knew where I had to lead it.

  My knee had stopped hurting in the red stabbing way and started to hurt in a strange, ominous numb way. Whatever I had done to it, it was getting a lot worse, fast.

  It made going up the stairs much easier, but the knee also buckled on every step if I tried to put weight on it, so I was hopping and hauling myself along on the railing. Nothing subtle about it. I could hear the thudding noises as the otter and Prince fought below me. I was terrified for Prince, but I just needed the elk to hold him until I got up the stairs.

  The Feejee Mermaid clacked in my ear as I passed. The trout flapped. Was it my imagination, or were they moving slower? Was the power winding down?

  I couldn’t take the chance that it would wear out before it did something horrible to my own world. I snatched up a rainstick from the display at the top of the stairs. It wasn’t a good crutch, but it was better than nothing.

  It also made the rattling-rice sound whenever I took a step. That’s fine. It’s fine. I need the otter to follow me.

  Was it going to follow me? The thumping sounds had quieted from below. Had it gotten loose from Prince? Where the devil was it?

  I had just barely had that thought, when I heard a sound much closer at hand. A clack, a scrabble, then a heavy thump, as if… well, as if a Genuine Feejee Mermaid had just tried to take a bite out of a large animal that had swatted its attacker off the wall.

  I looked over my shoulder, and God help me, it was right there on the stairs. One glass eye was gone and the other was dangling from its skull by glue and a rag of hide, like a handmade optic nerve.

  But it wasn’t alone. The mermaid was hanging off the otter’s whiskers, and the jackalope had leaped down from its shelf and was goring the otter in the leg. The fur-bearing trout was flailing so violently that its plaque rattled with every movement. A mallard came off the wall, still attached to its mount, and began flopping across the ground, hissing like a snake, wings beating violently against the floor.

  The museum’s protectors, as strange and dead and ineffectual as they were, were buying me time.

  I stopped dithering and lunged for the hole to the willows.

  The sounds of the museum faded as I scrambled through the hole and into the concrete corridor. All I could hear was my own breathing and the rattling of the rainstick. It was broad daylight outside, but if I could just get the otter to chase me out the entrance and circle back behind, then… uh… okay, the metal door had been smashed, but it was still blind, so maybe I could hide out in another bunker until it passed. Or something.

  Look, it wasn’t a good plan, but I’d like to see you do better under the circumstances.

  Anyway, if I could just get it out there, into the willows, maybe it would care less about catching me. It would be home. Then I’d come home myself and go crawl up the steps to the Black Hen and Simon and I would weld a dozen steel plates into the doorframe, fill the corridor up with concrete. I didn’t even care how hard it would be to lug the bags; I would sell blood to hire somebody to carry them up, if that’s what it took.

  But that was in the future. Now I just had to move.

  Get on top of the bunker, I thought. Get on top and when the otter comes out, you just lay low and wait for it to move off. It’s blind. Even if it wants to kill you, it’ll have to catch you first. And once it’s out and away, you drop back down into the bunker and get the hell out of this world forever.

  Sure. Piece of cake. I routinely dodged eight-foot predators that had claws like knives. What’s a functioning knee
between friends?

  I could hear the otter’s claws clicking on the concrete as it moved. I scrambled up the steps, no longer trying to be stealthy.

  Up. Up on top. Just get up behind it.

  I stepped into the sunlight. The glare blinded me, and I prayed that the boatman wasn’t right there, waiting for me, while black spots danced in front of my eyes.

  If he is, there’s not a damn thing you can do about it. Get up on top of the bunker, quick!

  I turned and tried to scramble up the grassy slopes. I remembered that they were grassy. I remembered it being smooth and green and…

  My hands met branches. I blinked away tears from the brightness and saw willows.

  They can’t be here… but remember you saw them before that’s why you didn’t realize this was the way home the willows grew up overnight because they were looking for you and Simon or they’re looking for a way into the world they know there’s a hole there the otter told them it made the hole and they want to get their roots into your world and grow and grow and grow…

  It didn’t matter. I’d moved through the willows before. It hadn’t killed me. The thing that was chasing me—that would kill me.

  I scrabbled at the willow branches, trying to make headway. I could get through. I could. It shouldn’t be this hard. They were only branches, they had to bend, except they weren’t bending and I was going nowhere quickly and the otter was coming up the stairs, or at least something was coming up the stairs, who the hell knew anymore, and I had to get out of here now.

  I abandoned my attempts to claw through the willows and tried to turn away, but the willows clawed back.

  I don’t know why that surprised me. You would think that I would have expected it by now. A light that could wake the negative spaces between branches could certainly wake the willows themselves. But I looked down at the thin branches hooked into my clothes, tangling in loops of thread and digging into my hair, and my skin crawled even more and I yanked myself back.