Hollow

by Rhonda Parrish

  This isn’t how I’d imagined Keith’s apology would sound, and I had imagined his apology. Over and over. I’d imagined him admitting his guilt, and in my imagination it had lifted the mantle of confusion, shame, and hurt, turned it into nothing but vapor that would float away and make things like they’d been before. Make me like I’d been before.

  “I’m so, so sorry—” he says, and do I feel better? No. No, I only feel angry. So angry. It’s wrong. It’s all wrong. This is the wrong boy, the wrong world, the wrong words. They aren’t making anything better. Nothing at all.

  “Red and blue!” Un-Keith interrupts himself, his voice cracking with excitement. The words, words which make no sense at all, pull me from my thoughts but do nothing to smother the simmering coal of anger in my belly. “Red and blue lights.”

  “What?” I snap.

  From the other room comes the sound, once more, of something shattering. Something big and glass breaking into a thousand pieces. It makes me jump, and even Ghost flies up into the air at the sound before settling once more on the closet rod.

  “Red and blue lights,” Un-Keith says, his voice a hopeful whisper I have to lean forward to hear. “I see red and blue lights. I think they’ve found us.”

  “Keith!” a sharp, slurred voice comes through the walls. “Keith, you useless son of a whore, get out here!”

  The boy diminishes visibly. His face pales, his shoulders fold inward, chin falls to his chest. “Get out here and clean up this goddamned mess!”

  “Terry, leave him out of—” His mother’s voice. Weak, tear-filled. It’s cut off by the sound of impact, choked off, swallowed in sobs.

  “Shut up, whore, ain’t nobody askin’ you.”

  Un-Keith crawls out of the closet, moving slow as a dream, stiff as a corpse.

  “Don’t—” I say, reaching for him and then pulling my hand back as soon as he enters the light of his bedroom and looks very much like Keith again. I can’t bring myself to touch him. Not voluntarily. Not even in this world. “Don’t,” I say again.

  “I have to.”

  “Don’t make me come in there and get you, boy!”

  “Go out my window. Quietly. He won’t hear. I’ll make sure of it.” Un-Keith turns away, visibly straightens his shoulder and reaches for the doorknob. Touching it, he pauses and looks over his shoulder at me. “I’m sorry I wasn’t stronger.”

  He darts out the door before I can reply, even if I want to reply, and I’m not sure I do. He pulls the door closed behind him, and the next thing I hear is Un-Keith crying out in pain and a bang as he slams into something in the other room. “Next time I call you, you come right away goddamn it!”

  I look toward the bedroom door, then the window. I want to go help the boy and his mother, want to save them, but fear chills my veins. And anger.

  Whatever Keith had done to me, his mother doesn’t deserve this.

  Ghost lands on my shoulder. He moved so quietly I hadn’t even heard the whoosh of air against his feathers, but I don’t jump at his touch. It’s familiar now, comfortable.

  “I have to try,” I say out loud. Hoping the words will steel my resolve, make me braver. They don’t. They don’t, but even so I have to try. I can’t leave his mother to that man. I have to try.

  Turning my back on the window, I cross the room in two big steps, twist the doorknob, and step through without hesitation so I won’t change my mind. Can’t change my mind. “Hey!” I say, and the word echoes over and over and over again in the vast white emptiness I find myself standing in.

  I jerk around, back toward the bedroom I’d left only to find it, too, vanished—replaced with a milky fog that goes on and on and on.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  GRADUALLY, AS I stand there lost in nothingness, a forest resolves around me. Like a photograph developing, the trees sort of fade into existence, becoming more and more substantial until they are as real, as solid as I am.

  The trees, barren of leaves, with boughs twisted like something out of the scary scene in a Disney movie, loom over me while piles of ash cover the ground and form little drifts around the bases of their trunks. I stare up at them uncomprehending. I can’t breathe, can’t move. I’d been—

  The tears that rise in my throat threaten to choke me. I can’t swallow them down but can’t let them out either. I’m frozen. Frozen.

  The magpie detaches itself from a branch and flies toward me. I hadn’t seen him there, his feathers in shades of grey had camouflaged him well in the murk, in the shadows.

  He lands on my shoulder, and the spell is broken.

  I cry, if such violent sobbing can be called that, about what happened with Keith for the first time. The first time. I gag on my grief, on the tears, the shame. I gag on it, but let it out. I fall to my knees, to the ground which is thick with ash, and gag and choke on the sobs that claw their way out of me, violent, angry.

  In time my retching subsides, becoming normal sobs which shake my shoulders and make my stomach roil but allow me to breathe without choking and no longer press me into the ground. I raise my eyes from the mound of ash I’m kneeling in, and the magpie flaps from one twisted bough to the other, doing tail flips and kekking at me. I don’t know how long it had been kekking while I’d sobbed and cried, nor do I know how long I’ve been here, but my eyes feel as though someone has plucked them out, fried them lightly, then put them back in my skull, my abdominal muscles ache, and my throat is ragged.

  My mouth is coated with the silky ash which surrounds me, adding to my immense thirst. The air is ripe with the scent of burned wood, like a forest fire, but the trees, though bare and twisted, show no signs of having been burned. They also show no signs of bark. They are all smooth and pale as bone.

  I stumble to my feet, and the magpie flies from the tree above my head to another a little further on. I follow it. I don’t know where Ghost is leading me, but anywhere is better than sitting here waiting for something to happen.

  My legs are heavy, arms hanging straight down at my side. I’m so exhausted. So incredibly weary. I hadn’t realised how much that encounter with Un-Keith was taking out of me until after it was over. Hadn’t recognised how much the choice to go through the door had cost me until it melted the ice dam around my tears, and now it’s as if all my vitality drained away with them.

  So, much like with running, I put one foot in front of the other, following Ghost mindlessly from tree to tree. My heart is raw. I don’t want to see Keith the way I saw Un-Keith. As a victim. I don’t want to feel anything like empathy for him. If I do, will that excuse what he did to me? Will it mitigate it?

  No, I tell myself firmly. No it doesn’t. And unlike so many of my other internal voices, this one I believe. Of course, I sometimes nearly believe the voice that tells me it’s not my fault too, nearly, but never for long.

  With each step I take I feel a little bit better. A little bit lighter. I’m still emotionally drained but by the time I catch up to Ghost, I’m weary but not drowning.

  The tree Ghost is perched on is wounded, a large branch lays at its feet, sticking partway out of the billowing ash. Where it’s been torn from the trunk there’s a gaping wound, a big black hole. Sap, black as the wound, had dripped out and now surrounds it, looking more like blood in moonlight than anything which ought to run through a tree, even one as bizarrely shaped as this. As I look up past the hole, I see it—an eye. A human eye. A human eye deep in the hole, looking out, looking at me. At first I think I’m imagining it, but then it winks. Slowly, deliberately, it winks.

  I stuff my fist, filthy with ash, into my mouth to smother my scream. The acrid taste of the ash fills my mouth and I gag on it, try to spit it out, but my mouth is too dry from trying, from the ash which coats it, to summon even the tiniest bit of moisture.

  “Kek kek,” the magpie says. The magpie whose colouring looks almost normal in this grey world, this place of shadow, twisted boughs, and ash. “Kek kek.”

  I follow it, from tree to tree, I
follow it. I stumble, falling and throwing my hands out to catch myself. I feel something beneath them when I land. Something hidden in the ash. Something warm that gives when I touch it. I squeal and reel backward, eventually making it to my feet again and very carefully placing one in front of the other, unwilling to risk another tumble.

  Suddenly a roar resounds through the forest. The force of it shakes minute amounts of ash from the trees, and it falls around me, and on me, like snow, dusting my hair and clothes. My heart jolts, springing up to my throat and thudding wildly as I spin about, squinting through the milky fog between the trees. “What the hell was that?”

  Ghost remains perched on a branch ahead of me, his tail flipped up as he leans forward, then back down. He tilts his head at a nearly impossible angle, watching me with his far-too-intelligent gaze. A chirp-burble sound emanates from his belly, and he does another tail flip but does not otherwise answer me.

  Not that I’d expected him to. Thankfully, hearing my own voice in this surreal landscape is enough to help me recover from my shock at the noise. Ghost and I are obviously not alone in this forest, and given that the trees have eyes, I’m in no hurry to see what the other inhabitants look like.

  The roar comes again, closer this time, and the ground rumbles in its wake. At first I thought it was from the growl, but even after its thunder has faded from echo to memory, the ground shakes beneath my feet. Harder and faster with every passing second.

  “Oh no . . .” I whisper.

  Ghost does one more tail flip then takes to the air, soaring through the branches to alight on another tree, further away.

  “Good idea,” I think, and follow in his wake.

  Again the sound, primal and fierce, attacks my ear drums, and I pick up my pace. Not running, but walking very quickly in the opposite direction. I can’t see anything through the white fog, nothing but the shadows of the closest trees and Ghost soaring overhead. Even those things aren’t clear, often blurring around the edges, becoming indistinct and dream-like. The ash puffs up in little clouds as I trudge through the piles, tickling my nose and making me cough while the rumbling in the ground drives me forward, like a drum calling me to battle. Except, I think, that I’m running away.

  When the roar comes again it’s close. Too close. And I can feel the rhythm of the rumble. No longer a gentle vibration, it has defined thuds which grow in intensity with every repetition. One-two, three-four. One-two, three-four. Something hitting the ground hard and fast behind me. Footsteps. One-two, three-four. Closer, and closer.

  A girl’s scream pierces the mist, followed by the roar again. The thudding, the thing’s footsteps are so close, so heavy, that the grey mounds on the ground shake themselves flat like flour in a giant sieve and the ash falls from the trees in handfuls, filling the air and making it even murkier and harder to see.

  Then Stacy is here.

  Her hair, impossibly long, impossibly red, flares out behind her, bright as a fire truck, winding itself around and through the trees in the forest as she runs. “Morgan! What are you—?” she shouts, then steals a look over her shoulder. Coming parallel to me, she grabs my arm and pulls me forward. “Come on! He’s coming! Run!”

  Remembering the hateful words Stacy had hissed at me the day before, I pull my arm from her grip, but follow her advice and run. Ghost glides alongside me, above me, weaving through the tree branches as effortlessly as smoke.

  Running in the ash is difficult. It pulls at my feet, stings my eyes, and makes me cough. As it puffs up into the air, visibility decreases, and I’m ever aware that the trees might be watching and something warm and living could be lurking, hidden by the ash. Still, I run. As best as I can, I run. I run because I can feel the creature coming closer, and closer. Its feet beat the ground like a drum and its roar shatters a branch on the tree, exploding it to splinters and leaving a bleeding hole. I’m sure if I could pause long enough to look I’d see an eye in that hole, looking out at me, winking. But I can’t stop. Not even if I wanted to. I can’t stop because the thing, the monster, is gaining on us.

  “What is it?” I cough, arms pumping, legs stretching. “What is chasing us?”

  “A monster!”

  “I got that bit—” I start to say, then trip on something beneath the ash and stumble forward. I wave my arms wildly and manage to stay on my feet, but I have to speed up once more to catch Stacy, who hadn’t slowed for even a second.

  How long has she been running? How is she running still? It seems impossible. Her cheeks are sunken, her eyes protrude oddly, and ash covers her from forehead to toe, turning her a ghastly shade of grey. Every part but her hair, which is so red it nearly seems to glow.

  “What if we climb a tree?” I say. Stacy had hurt me pretty badly at school, but all the same I’d rather not watch her get eaten by a monster. Especially if it’s the camera that made her call me what she did. Un-Keith had implied it was the good parts of him locked away here, the bad bits left out.

  “Can’t,” Stacy gasps, shaking her head.

  “Hide?”

  “Follows hair.”

  It follows her hair. Because of course it does, I think. Stacy has always had a love/hate relationship with her hair. I’ve always loved it, been envious of it, even. But not now. Not here.

  Then I glance over my shoulder and all thought is wiped from my mind. The creature is there. I can see it. So close that if it reached out its paw it could swipe Stacy’s hair. It is grotesque, made even more so by the white mist which shifts and moves around it, hiding this bit, exposing that one.

  I turn around, facing front once more and picking up my pace while the ashes coat my tongue and make my eyes water. That thing . . . the thing whose roar is even now resounding in my chest, making it feel hollow as an echo chamber, that thing is immense. It’s the size of a VW beetle at least, with wrinkly grey skin, hunched shoulders, flame-blue eyes, a pointed snout, and deadly-looking claws. I’d seen the claws even through the fog. They’d seemed to glint, sharp as razors, longer than my fingers. “God—”

  Stacy looks over her shoulder, then back to me. I watch her jaw tighten, see something harden in her eyes, and then, cobra-quick, she reaches out and shoves me.

  Caught unaware, I have no defence and my momentum works against me. I’m propelled forward and to the side, and stumbling, limbs akimbo, I try desperately to stay on my feet.

  And fail.

  I land, splayed out on the ground, helpless. I feel the ground jump beneath the monster’s feet and scramble to regain my footing while terror chokes my thoughts. That bitch! I think and then Stacy shouts.

  “Over here!” she screams, her voice thick with tears. She coughs then cries out once more. “Here!”

  I look up to see her hair, bright as a flare, snap around a massive tree, the ends of it flicking the bark like a whip, then a blur of grey as the beast which had been chasing us rushes past me. It ignores me completely, focused entirely on Stacy and her ribbon of hair.

  “No!” I shout, as understanding strikes me. “No!”

  The second protest comes out as a croak, and whatever tears I might have cried under normal circumstances are choked off by the ash.

  I lay, sprawled out in the dust, beneath the creepy trees, while relief and despair flood me, making my limbs wobble and my heart rate slowly drop to something more closely resembling normal. Ghost stares at me from a low-hanging branch, tilting his head this way and that but offering no commentary on the situation. “Oh, Stacy . . .” I think, my hurt and anger at being called a slut completely eclipsed by gratitude and fear for her.

  Eventually, I stand. I look down at the grey funk which covers me, but don’t even bother to dust it off as I begin, again, to walk.

  Ghost hops from tree to tree, leading the way. Or at least I hope he’s leading the way. The forest looks the same to me no matter where I look. There are no landmarks, no distinctive trees, nothing. And so I follow the bird. His colours are so perfectly suited to this landscape that I lose him no
w and then in the white, in the grey, but when that happens I stand perfectly still and eventually my eyes pick him out of the gloom.

  I walk, and walk, and walk. When I think I can’t possibly go on, when I can’t pick up my feet any longer but drag them instead, we reach the end of the forest. Or we must have. I didn’t notice it happening, don’t remember seeing any sort of transition, but the forest was there and then it wasn’t. In fact, as I look back, I can’t see it anywhere behind me. Nowhere. There’s nothing there, nothing but whiteness.

  “Help!”

  I look over at the bird, but it stares at me, head cocked to the side the way it so often is. “Did you . . . speak?” After all I’ve been through, a bird talking to me would be nothing. He merely blinks at me before taking a trio of tiny hops toward me.

  “Morgan?” The voice again, familiar, and not coming from the bird.

  “Amy?” Ghost jumps up into the air, then glides over, graceful and peaceful as anything I’ve ever seen, to land on my shoulder. I feel better having his weight there, having him near, especially as Amy’s voice comes at me from the roiling clouds of white. “Amy, is that you?”

  “Morgan!” Her voice again, louder, stronger. I turn toward it, walking heel-to-toe through the nearly opaque whiteness, my arms stretched out in front of me like a sleepwalker, or a zombie.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “AMY, I’M COMING. Keep talking.”

  “Morgan, I’m here! I’m here. Oh, Morgan! Thank God you’re here. It’s so scary here, so scary—”

  “I’m coming. Keep talking, I’ll find you.”

  Though I can’t see the tips of my fingers in front of me, I keep on. On and on. Amy’s voice never seems to get any nearer or further away. Always the same distance, teasing, drawing me on.

  “Amy, where are you?”

  “Over here, on the rollercoaster.”

  “The rollercoaster?” I squint, straining through the white, trying to see something, anything that resembles a rollercoaster.