Dark Hollow (2 page)
Big Steve strained against his leash, urging me forward.
We crossed the alley and walked into the field, heading in the same general direction that Shelly had gone. The grass was wet with dew. Steve put his nose to the ground, catching a scent. He started tracking.
In the oak tree’s branches two squirrels began humping away, celebrating the season by making babies.
I wondered if Tara and I would ever have a baby. Then I thought of the last miscarriage. Sadness welled up inside me, and I fought back sudden and surprising tears.
Steve tugged at the leash, chasing the bad memories away like the good dog that he was.
We walked on. The wet grass soaked my shoes and his paws. I took us around the playground. It wouldn’t do to have the neighborhood children come flying down the slide and land in a pile of dog shit. As if reading my mind, Big Steve dutifully dropped a pile in the grass. Wincing at the smell, I turned my nose away. The dog wagged his tail, and it seemed like he was grinning. Then we moved along.
The neighborhood came to life around us. Paul Legerski’s black Chevy Suburban roared down the alley, with Flotsam and Jetsam’s “Liquid Noose” blasting from the speakers. An oldie but a goodie. Paul had the bass turned up loud, just like the high school kids who did the same thing with their hip-hop. He blew the horn and waved, and I waved back. Paul and his wife, Shannon, were good people. One of my next-door neighbors, Merle, tried to start his lawn mower. It sputtered, stalled, and then sputtered again. Merle’s curses were loud and clear, and I chuckled. Then I heard the hiss of running water as another of my neighbors, Dale Haubner, a retiree, turned on his garden hose. A flock of geese flew overhead, honking out their springtime return from Southern climates. Honeybees buzzed in the clover growing next to the seesaw.
But beneath all of these familiar noises was another sound. At first I thought I’d imagined it. But Big Steve’s ears were up and his head cocked. He’d heard it too.
As we stood there it came again—a high, melodic piping. It sounded like a flute. Just a few short, random notes, and then they faded away on the breeze and weren’t repeated. I looked around to see if Shelly had heard it, but she was gone, as if the woods had swallowed her up.
In a way, I guess that was what happened.
The musical piping drifted toward us again, faint but clear. I became aroused again, and dimly wondered why. Shelly was gone, and there was nobody else in sight. I hadn’t been thinking about sex. It was weird.
Big Steve planted his feet, raised his hackles, and growled. I tugged the leash, but he refused to budge. His growl grew louder, more intense. I noticed that he had another hard-on as well.
“Come on,” I said. “It’s nothing. Just some kid practicing for the school band.”
Big Steve flicked his eyes toward me, then turned back to the woods and growled again.
The music abruptly stopped. There was no gradual fading away—it was as if someone had flipped a switch.
It occurred to me that it was Monday morning, and all the kids were in school, so it couldn’t have been a kid practicing. Then Steve’s haunches sagged and he returned to normal, his nose to the ground and his tail wagging with excitement over every new scent.
The narrow trail leading into the woods was hidden between two big maple trees. I don’t know who made the path, kids or deer, but Big Steve and I used it every day. Dead leaves crunched under our feet as we slipped into the forest, while new leaves budded on the branches above us. Flowers burst from the dark soil, lining the trail with different colors and fragrances.
I stopped to light a cigarette while Big Steve nosed around a mossy stump. I inhaled, stared up into the leafy canopy over our heads, and noticed how much darker it was, even just inside the tree line.
Primordial
, I thought.
I shivered. The sun’s rays didn’t reach here. There was no warmth inside the forest—only shadows.
The woods were quiet at first, but gradually came to life. Birds sang and squirrels played in the boughs above us. A plane passed overhead, invisible beyond the treetops. Probably heading to the airports in Baltimore or Harrisburg. The sun returned, peeking through the limbs. But I couldn’t feel its warmth, and the rays seemed sparse.
Big Steve pulled at the leash, and we continued on. The winding path sloped steadily downward. We picked our way through clinging vines and thorns, and I spotted some raspberry bushes, which gave me something to look forward to when summer arrived. If I picked them, Tara would bake me a pie. Blue-tinted moss clung to the squat, gray stones that thrust up from the forest floor like half-uncovered dinosaur skeletons. And then there were the trees themselves—tall, stern, and proud.
I shivered again. The air was growing chillier, more like the normal temperature for this time of year. Stepping over a fallen log, I wondered again who’d made the path, and who used it other than Big Steve and myself. The most we’d ever gone was a mile into the forest, but the trail continued on well past that. How deep did it run? All the way out to the other side? Did it intersect with other, less-used pathways? Did it go all the way to LeHorn’s Hollow?
I mentioned the hollow earlier. I’d been there only once, when I was in high school and was looking for a secluded spot to get inside Becky Schrum’s pants. It was our first date, and I remember it well—1987, my senior year. We saw a
Friday the 13th
flick (I can’t remember which one), and when it was over we cruised around in my ’81 Mustang hatchback, listening to Ratt’s
Out of the Cellar
and talking about school and stuff.
Eventually we found ourselves on the dirt road that led to the LeHorn farm. The farmhouse and buildings had stood vacant for three years. Nelson LeHorn had killed his wife, Patricia, in 1985, and then disappeared. He hadn’t been seen since, and his children were scattered across the country. His son, Matty, was doing time for armed robbery in the Cress on state penitentiary up north. His daughter, Claudia, was married and living in Idaho. And his youngest daughter, Gina, was teaching school in New York. None of them had ever returned home, as far as I knew. Because the old man was legally still alive, the children were unable to sell the property, and Pennsylvania law prevented the county or the state from seizing it. So it sat, boarded up and abandoned, providing a haven for rats and groundhogs.
The LeHorn place sat in the middle of miles of woodlands, untouched by the explosive development that had marred other parts of the state, and surrounded by a vast expanse of barren cornfields, the rolling hills not worked since the murder and Le Horn’s disappearance. In the center of the fields, like an island, was the hollow.
I’d parked the car near the house, and Becky and I had talked about whether or not it was haunted. And like clockwork she was snuggled up against me, afraid of the dark.
I remember glancing toward the hollow as we made out. Even in the darkness I could see the bright yellow NO TRESPASSING and POSTED signs hanging from a few of the outer tree trunks.
Becky let me slip my hand into her jeans, and her breathing quickened as I delved into her wetness with my fingers and rubbed her hard nipples beneath my palms. But then she cut me off. Not wanting to show my annoyance and disappointment, I’d suggested we walk to the hollow. I hoped that if her level of fright increased, her chastity might crumble.
The hollow was a dark spot created by four sloping hills, leading down to a place where no chain saw roared and no ax cut. A serpentine creek wound through its center. We heard the trickling water, but never made it far enough inside to see the stream.
Because something moved in the black space between the trees…
Something big. It crashed toward us, branches snapping like gunshots beneath its feet. Becky screamed and gripped my hand tight enough to bruise it. We got the hell out of there. We never saw the thing, whatever it was, but we heard it snort—a primal sound, and I can still hear that sound today. A deer, probably, or maybe even a black bear. All I know is it scared the shit out of me, and I’ve never been back to the hollow since.
Big Steve brought me back to the present by stopping suddenly in the middle of the trail. He stood stiff as a board, legs locked and his tail tucked between them. The growl started as a low rumble deep down inside him, and got louder and louder as it spilled out. I’d never heard him make a sound like this, and wondered if I’d mistakenly clipped someone else’s dog to the leash. He’d never gotten this worked up over something. He sounded vicious. Brave.
Or terrified.
Suddenly, as if summoned from my memories, something crashed through the bushes toward us. Big Steve’s hair stood on end, and his growl turned into a rumbling bark.
“Come on, Steve. Let’s go!” My heart raced in my chest. I tugged the leash, but he refused to budge. He barked again.
The noise drew closer. Twigs snapped. Leaves rustled. The branches parted.
I screamed.
The deer, a spotted fawn, leaped over a fallen tree, darted across the path, and vanished again into the undergrowth, its white tail flashing. It looked about as scared as we were.
“Jesus fucking Christ!” I gasped for breath, trying to get my racing pulse under control.
Big Steve, meanwhile, had ducked behind me as soon as the fawn emerged. I glanced down at him. He looked back up at me with those soft brown eyes, and then thumped the tip of his tail as if embarrassed.
“You
should
be embarrassed,” I told him, and he lowered his ears and looked away.
My heart still hammered in my chest and my temples throbbed. I felt half-sick from the adrenaline surge.
Big Steve whined.
I shrugged. “Okay, maybe we both should be embarrassed. Is that better?”
Big Steve flipped his tail in agreement and then sulked out from between my legs. He sniffed around where the deer had been. Then his tail wagged steadily as he got his courage back. Deciding that it was all right to continue on our way, he pulled me forward.
I laughed. The brave mid list mystery writer and his faithful canine companion, scared shitless by a deer. Not just any deer, but a
baby
deer, at that.
A baby…
Unbidden, thoughts of Tara’s last miscarriage came to me again. My stomach ached, and I blinked away tears.
The woods seemed even colder.
When Tara had her first miscarriage, we weren’t even sure that was what it was at the time. It happened a year after we were married. We’d been trying to have a baby since our honeymoon, but weren’t having much luck. I can tell you that it wasn’t for lack of trying. You know the old adage about rabbits? That applied to us—morning, noon, and night, and triple that when she was ovulating. Maybe we were trying too hard, because despite the frequency we couldn’t conceive.
Then one month her period was a few days late. Tara was usually regular as clockwork, so we both figured she was finally pregnant. Before we could take one of those home pregnancy tests, Tara began experiencing sharp pains, cramps, and a heavy flow. Heavier than normal. There was a lot of blood, but then it was all over, and we chalked the whole thing up to just an unusually strong period. It wasn’t until Tara’s second miscarriage that we learned that was what that first experience had most likely been.
The second miscarriage was a lot worse. It happened a little over a year ago. That time we knew she was pregnant. There were no doubts. Tara took the first home pregnancy test about a week before her period was due. It showed positive, but the bar indicating the results was faint, so we waited. After trying for so long, we tried not to get our hopes up, promised each other that we wouldn’t, and then, of course, we did anyway. Finally we took the second test and it was also positive, and the following exam at the doctor’s office confirmed what we’d prayed for. We were finally going to have a baby.
Tara started planning what color to paint the baby’s room, and I started planning how to ask my publisher for more money so that I wouldn’t have to get a full-time job again just to pay the bills. (Back then I was working part-time at the paper mill and writing the rest of the day.) Knowing that we were about to become parents was weird and scary and exciting, all at the same time. We started thinking about names. If it turned out to be a boy, Tara wanted to name him John or Paul. That was her latent Catholic heritage shining through. I didn’t think much of those. I was partial to Hunter, after Hunter S. Thompson, my literary hero. She didn’t think much of that. For a girl we were in agreement and narrowed the choices down to Abigail, Amanda, or Emily. We bought an infant’s car seat, and a family-friendly new car to go with it. We also got a crib, infant swing, high chair, and a closet full of baby clothes. Tara finally decided on light purple for the baby’s room, complete with Eeyore wall borders. I spent a long, tiring weekend painting it, so she wouldn’t have to breathe the paint fumes.
Tara went to her first prenatal-care class and began researching maternity stuff on the Net. We discussed the merits of breast-feeding versus a bottle. I’d catch her looking in the full-length mirror in our bedroom, trying to figure out if she was showing yet. She asked me if I thought she’d be a good mother. I told her she’d be the best. We held hands a lot, and talked more often, and spent more time together. In many ways it was like we fell in love all over again. I don’t know if either of us had ever been happier in our entire lives.
Then, six weeks later, Tara started bleeding.
We were scared, of course. Neither of us knew what it was. It happened so suddenly. One morning she sat down to pee, and when she wiped there was blood on the toilet paper. Not a lot of blood, like the first time. Just a smear. But it was a bright red smear.
I remember her saying that, the shocked disbelief in her voice. “It’s so
bright
. It shouldn’t look like that.”
Immediately the specter of a miscarriage reared its ugly head, along with the possibility that it was cancer or some other horrible thing. We made an appointment and went to the doctor, and the ride there was silent and terrifying. I drove very slowly.
The doctor told us it could be a miscarriage but it could also just be spotting. According to her, a quarter of all pregnant women spotted during the early stages of pregnancy. Tara’s own mother had bled so much when she was pregnant with Tara that she thought she was having her period. They checked Tara’s HCG count, and while it wasn’t rising, it hadn’t dropped either. I didn’t understand a lot of what they said, but I understood that if her count began to drop, that was bad.
So we waited, and the blood continued to flow and our fears multiplied. The cramps started early the next morning—mild and sporadic at first, but then stronger, more insistent. I made Tara lie down in bed, and I lay next to her. We stayed there for the entire day. We didn’t talk much, but we both cried a lot. I held her while she trembled, and she did the same for me. Once in a while she’d go pee, or check her pad, and there would be more of that bright, shiny blood. Tara tried to sound hopeful, but I saw the apprehension in her eyes. She said that maybe the blood was just pooling inside of her because she was lying down, and that was why there seemed to be more of it when she went to the bathroom. I smiled and nodded and agreed that was probably what it was. She smiled back.
Then we both started crying again.
I tried to distract her. We played Scrabble and Uno in bed, but neither one of us could concentrate. I called the doctor’s office again, and the nurse, in very sympathetic tones, told me to keep waiting. I wanted to holler at her, tell her we were sick of waiting, but I bit my tongue instead. We tried watching television, but every channel had a reminder; the characters on the soaps and sitcoms were pregnant or thought they were. I switched over to the news. It was full of stories about abducted children found murdered, and abandoned babies left in garbage Dumpsters. It felt like the entire world was conspiring against us.
Eventually Tara cried herself to sleep. I lay there, feeling afraid. I thought about getting up and trying to write, but at the time I didn’t own a laptop, and my computer was downstairs in my office. I didn’t want to leave Tara’s side. I truth, I probably couldn’t have written anyway. I was numb.
The worst part was the waiting, the certainty of knowing what was happening, that we were losing the baby, and the realization that I was powerless to do anything about it. I felt so fucking helpless. Tara was my wife and this was our child. I should have been able to fix things. That’s what good husbands do. We take the vow on our wedding day. That’s our job. We make everything better, keep our loved ones safe from the bad things in life. But I couldn’t protect her. I couldn’t do shit.
The hours ticked away. I pulled the new
Repairman Jack
novel off my nightstand and tried losing myself in the story, but gave up when I found myself reading the same sentence six times in a row and still not comprehending it. The words blurred together. I couldn’t help my family, couldn’t write, couldn’t read, and couldn’t sleep. All I could do was curl up next to Tara and hold her while she slept, and try not to weep. Try not to wake her up. I listened to her breathing, felt her chest rise and fall. Listened to her cry in her sleep.
She cried and bled and slept, while I wondered what to do next.
I was desperate and grasping at figurative straws. I prayed to God for the first time in a very long while. I wasn’t particularly religious. Tara went to Mass on Sunday sometimes, while I stayed home and wrote. My parents took me to church when I was a kid—Methodist. It never did much for me. I didn’t feel God inside the church. Didn’t feel much of anything except boredom. Each week we sang a hymn, read something in unison from the bulletin, listened to a sermon (during which I’d watch the old men nodding off around me), put our offering envelopes in the plate, and then mingled after the service, drinking coffee and discussing football. None of that filled me with the urge to talk to God, but I talked to Him then, that night, when I needed Him the most. I guess it’s that way for everyone, whether they believe or not. When you’ve got nowhere else to turn, you turn to God. I pleaded with Him, asked Him to help us out, to make everything okay. I begged Him to keep my wife and unborn child safe from harm, and promised Him the world if He came through for me.
I prayed silently for a long time. Eventually I fell asleep. My dreams were dark, and I tossed and turned a lot.
Halfway through the night a particularly strong cramp woke Tara from her own troubled sleep. She got up to pee, and that was when it happened. Her screams woke me. I ran to the bathroom. Tara was doubled over on the toilet, sobbing uncontrollably. I helped her up and put her back to bed. She curled into a ball and shrieked. I called the doctor’s office. While I was explaining the situation to the answering service, I walked back into the bathroom and glanced down at the toilet.
The water in the bowl was dark blue from one of those disinfectant tablets, and it made the blood look like green slime. There was a lot of blood—too much. And there in the middle of the dark blue water and clumps of toilet paper was our child. Sexless, not yet formed. It was about the size of a dime, really nothing more than a blob.
When we’d started prenatal care, the doctor gave us a calendar with little factoids that allowed you to follow along with your child’s development as the pregnancy progressed. According to the calendar, between the sixth and seventh weeks the embryo’s eyes, ears, and mouth were just beginning to form, as were the major internal organs, such as the heart, liver, and lungs.
An embryo. That was what they called it. Not a baby, just an embryo.
But the blob floating in the toilet wasn’t our embryo. It was our child. Our baby. Our hopes and dreams.
And it was dead.
Standing over the toilet I thought then, and still do to this day, that I saw eyes staring back up at me. Pleading.
Two little eyes begging me to make things better—not to let this happen.
As I watched, it slid off the little island of bloody toilet paper and sank to the bottom of the toilet bowl.
And I screamed.
I clutched the phone, my fingers tightening around it hard enough that my knuckles popped. The woman from the doctor’s answering service was still on the line, asking me if everything was all right, wondering if I was still there. I could barely hear her over my own screams. My prayers had been ineffective or ignored. I cursed God, and had He been there at that moment I would have cheerfully put a bullet right between His fucking eyes.
After that, well—we were both basket cases for a few weeks. I was angry and Tara was comatose. She missed work. I couldn’t write for shit, and acted like a zombie at the paper mill, sleepwalking through my shift. Neither of us ate much. We cried a lot. I tried to hold it together for both of us, and didn’t do a real good job. We’d told people she was pregnant: Tara’s parents, her coworkers, and some of my fellow authors. As we told each of them what had happened, it was like going through the miscarriage all over again.
Eventually wemoved on, I guess—if you can ever really recover from something like that. There was a deep, unspoken sadness between us for a long time. We never discussed trying to have another child. Not that we’d have had much luck. Tara’s sex drive became zero after the mis-carriage, and hadn’t improved much in the year since then. I guess I can understand that. Making love was now just another dark reminder of what had happened, because that was how you made babies. And children can break your heart in ways nothing else ever will.
But a few months later she came home with Big Steve, and he brightened up both our lives. And really, having him around was just like having a kid.
Sort of…
Sometimes at night, when I close my eyes, I still see our child staring up at me from the toilet bowl. See the baby floating in that bloody water. I feel the silent accusations in those tiny eyes, and the commode handle beneath my fingertips. I hear the sound of the toilet flushing—the sound of our baby, our hopes and dreams, going down the drain.
In those moments I still hate God and I still want to scream. But I’m afraid that if I start, I won’t be able to stop again. Each time, my heart breaks all over again.
We married later in life. Tara is thirty-five years old, and I am almost forty. No, we’re not old yet, but we’re not getting any younger either. Our chances of having a child lessen with each passing year. I will probably never have a happy Father’s Day. I don’t think God should be allowed to have one either.
