Dark Hollow (4 page)

Wrong? I glanced behind us, back into the dark part of the forest. Something wasn’t just wrong. Something was terribly fucked up. And despite the sunlight and the warm spring air, I didn’t want to stay in those woods a moment longer.

“Come on, buddy. Let’s get the hell out of here.” I lit a cigarette, and that seemed to make things a little better.

Big Steve wagged his tail in eager confirmation, and we headed home.

For a brief second, as we left the tree line and crossed back into the park, I thought I heard the satyr’s pipe. But then I realized it was just a bird, singing from its perch high on the monkey bars.

The bird caught sight of Big Steve and flew away. It darted toward the forest, and then veered in midair and turned toward the open sky, almost as if it feared the woods more than it did the dog.

FOUR

By the time we made it back to the house, my arms, legs, and hands were tingling as if they’d fallen asleep. My ears rang, and I felt both nauseous and exhausted. Despite the warm weather, I was shivering. Cold sweat beaded on my forehead and under my arms. Then my vision blurred. Delayed shock. I almost fell over right there in the yard. Stumbling for the door, I tried to shake it off.

“We didn’t see that,” I told Big Steve, and then repeated it to myself. But saying it out loud didn’t make it any less real.

I unhooked the dog’s leash and he made a beeline for the kitchen. We kept his food and water dishes on the kitchen floor, next to Tara’s grandmother’s antique china cabinet. While I hung up the leash and lit another cigarette, Big Steve buried his snout in his water bowl and slurped greedily. His fast-flicking tongue sloshed water out onto the floor. I wiped it up with a paper towel. Finished drinking, Big Steve ran over to the counter. On top of it was a wicker basket filled with rawhide chews and dog treats. He looked at me expectantly and wagged his tail.

I laughed, and as I did I felt some of the tension drain away. Despite everything that had just occurred, Big Steve still had his priorities in order. Every day, after returning from our morning walk, the first thing I did was give him a rawhide to gnaw on. Usually he chewed it underneath my desk while I started the day’s work. It kept him busy and out of my hair for the first half hour or so. After that he’d usually take a nap. If he didn’t, I’d then find other ways to distract him.

I grinned. “You want a bone?”

He leaped into the air, slammed back down onto the floor, and then ran in an excited little circle. It was times like that I wished we’d had him when he was a puppy. I’ll bet he was cute back then.

I fished a rawhide out of the basket and surrendered it without making him first run through his gamut of tricks (sit, shake, lie down, roll over, and stand up). After all he’d been through, it didn’t seem right making him work for his treat.

Big Steve expertly caught the rawhide chip in his mouth and then trotted away with his head held high. He curled up underneath my desk and chewed away in happy contentment.

I tried to follow his lead, tried to shake off the morning’s weird experience. I made a pot of coffee and, while it was brewing, fired up my laptop and turned on the stereo, setting the fifty-disc changer to random play, and keeping the volume low. I like to write to music, but I keep it turned down, almost like background noise. The random-play option chose Queensrÿche, and then followed them up with the Water Boys. I’m pretty eclectic with my musical tastes. By the time I’d poured myself a mug and returned to my office, the computer was ready. I clicked the mouse, created a new document, and stared at the blank white screen.

A new novel. Anything I wanted to write about. No presold synopsis binding me, so I could do the Civil Warbook if I wanted to. The sky was the limit. I didn’t need to turn it in until mid-July. This would be easy.

I continued with the daily ritual, twisting my head from side to side, popping my neck joints, and then cracking my knuckles. It might sound funny, but that’s how I started work every morning. I lit another cigarette, took a sip of coffee, set the mug down, then took a deep breath and exhaled. My fingers hovered over the keyboard in restless anticipation.

The laptop beeped, and I imagined it sounded like a note from a shepherd’s pipe. In the background the Water Boys sang about the great god Pan still being alive.

Pan. The name wandered around for a moment inside my head, looking for something to connect with. Pan. He was a god from Greek or Roman mythology, if I remembered correctly. A satyr.

“Shit.”

My hands started shaking. My lips quivered, and the tip of my cigarette trembled.

Like a tidal wave the visions returned and engulfed me—Shelly on her hands and knees in the middle of the grassy hollow, sucking the dick of a petrified satyr. The statue coming to life, stone turning into flesh. The creature’s laughter echoed in my head, along with that haunting pipe melody. And that weird stone marker with the indecipherable words carved on it. It couldn’t have all been real, could it?

I ran it over in my mind. The stone marker; I’d touched it, felt it vibrate beneath my fingertips, cleared dirt away from the lettering. I looked at my fingernails. They were black underneath. So I hadn’t imagined that part. What it was, who had carved the lettering, and what it was doing out there, I had no clue. But it had been real enough. It wasn’t easily explainable, but it was real just the same. Maybe it had just been some kids—a prop for Halloween, or something for a secret clubhouse somewhere in the forest.

I got my mind around that, accepted it, and then moved on to the satyr. That was when my mind begged me to stop, came to a screeching halt, and decided to take a break for a bit until I came back to a more reasonable line of thinking.

This wasn’t like my teenage years, when I’d heard something in the woods while trying to get in Becky Schrum’s pants. What we’d experienced that night was easily explainable as a deer or a bear or some drunken redneck trying to scare us.

This was different. Satyrs were mythological creatures. They didn’t exist. And yet, despite that pesky little fact, I’d seen one. I’d watched a statue of a satyr come to life in front of me. It couldn’t have been real, but it was. That left few possibilities. One, I’d gone insane, or was on my way there. That didn’t appeal to me very much. Maybe I’d hallucinated the whole thing, blacked out in the middle of the woods and dreamed it all up. But I didn’t believe that, either. It sounded like a cheesy plot device from a novel, the kind my editor would shoot me for if I ever used it. And besides, Big Steve had seen and reacted to the situation as well, and his sanity was beyond reproach.

However, statues didn’t just come to life like that, so maybe it hadn’t been a statue at all. Maybe it had just been a guy dressed up in a satyr suit. At first I’d thought he was just a hairy man, until I saw the horns and the ears and the hooves. Perhaps he was just some hairy guy, and he’d been wearing prosthetics. Those were easy enough to make. I’d been a guest at a mystery, science fiction, fantasy, and horror convention the year before and saw costumes that were just as convincing: people dressed like elves and Klingons and Jedi knights. For a few bucks you could buy fake Vulcan ears at any novelty store. It seemed plausible. Shelly had a new boyfriend, one who liked to play kinky games outdoors. He was one of those people who like to dress up in stuffed-animal costumes and have orgies. Furries, the media called them. They planned ahead of time to meet in the woods. Thought the hollow would be a nice, secluded spot where they could get their freak on without getting caught—except that Big Steve and I accidentally stumbled across them in mid–blow job. Or mid–golden shower, I thought, remembering how he’d pissed directly into Shelly’s face, and into his own. Maybe he was bisexual or into threesomes, as well. After all, he’d invited me to join them. That was another thing. He’d spoken clear English. As for the stone turning into flesh, that could have easily been some weird trick of the light. A mirage. It had been pretty dark from my vantage point; the sunshine was bright in the hollow, and my eyes could have deceived me. It all made sense.

I told myself that was all it was, just a freak in a suit, but I didn’t believe a word of it.

Still, I tried to move on. I had a book to write. U2’s
Achtung Baby
was playing on the stereo. I tried to lose myself in the melodies, tried to summon the words, but nothing came. My hands had stopped shaking, but my fingers still refused to move. I got another cup of coffee, took a deep breath, and sat back down. The cursor blinked at me like an eye. I gave it the middle finger.

Big Steve finished his rawhide bone and curled up under the desk. He closed his eyes, and his breathing grew shallow. Sound asleep. Apparently he’d already made up his mind about what we’d seen.

I cracked my knuckles again and then typed, CHAPTER ONE.

“Okay,” I said to my muse. “We’re off to a good start. What happens next?”

What happened next is that I sat there for fifteen minutes and smoked cigarette after cigarette and stared at the blank screen. I didn’t believe in writer’s block, a term used by authors to describe days when they couldn’t seem to find the words or the ideas behind the words. Writer’s block is nothing more than a convenient excuse for laziness. Get me drunk in a room full of writers or editors and you’d hear me say it time and time again. When you’re writing full-time like I am, writing to pay the bills and keep a roof over your head and food on the table, you can’t afford to have writer’s block. It’s just like any other job. When you show up and the whistle blows, you start working whether you feel like it or not. Otherwise you’re just a lazy bum who’s relying on his spouse to bring home the bacon all by herself.

I didn’t believe in writer’s block, but I sure as shit couldn’t write that morning. I tried forcing it, but the words still wouldn’t come. Each of those great ideas I’d had regarding the Civil War, the ones I’d mulled over all winter long, had vanished. I couldn’t remember a single one, and when I racked my brain all I got was a headache. Eventually, after a prolonged period of inactivity, my screen saver popped up. screen saver popped up.

Resigned to not writing, I logged on to the Net and checked my e-mail. There was nothing new. A few readers had dropped me notes about my books. I responded to each, and thanked them for the kind words if they liked it, and apologized if they didn’t, and told them I hoped they’d like the next one regardless. My editor had e-mailed as well, wanting to know how the next book was coming and if she would get first look. I lied and told her it was coming along well, really cooking now, and I’d be happy to send her the first three chapters very soon.

My headache grew worse, to the point where I couldn’t even concentrate on e-mail. I sighed in exasperation. Big Steve opened one eye, looked at me, and then went back to sleep. I reopened the file and tried writing again, but the cursor just kept blinking.

“Fuck this.”

I shut the computer off, went outside, and walked down to the gas station on the corner to get a pack of cigarettes. The weather was still nice, but my mood had soured.

The door beeped as I walked in. Leslie Vandercamp was on duty at the register, just like she was every weekday from eight to five. Every month she dyed her hair a different color. Yesterday it had been auburn. Now it was hot pink.

“Hey, Adam.” She smiled, cracking her gum.

“Dig the hair,” I said.

“Thanks. Did it last night.”

“It’s very pink.”

She laughed. “Start the new book yet?”

I opened the cooler and grabbed a soda. “Don’t ask.”

“That bad, huh?” She rang up a customer buying gas and lottery tickets, while I got in line. I liked Leslie. She was a single mom in her early twenties, with a two-year-old son at home. She’d met the father at the Maryland Line Bar, and never saw him again after that because two days later he was killed in a car wreck. His blood alcohol level had been the equivalent of a brewery.

Leslie read all my books, and over the years she’d become my sounding board for story ideas. Plus, she kept me supplied with cigarettes, which made her the third most important woman in my life, after my wife and my editor.

Eventually the customer left, and Leslie turned her attention back to me. “Writer’s block?”

“Yeah.” I nodded. “Bad.”

She looked surprised. “I thought you didn’t believe in writer’s block.”

“I do now.”

She reached above the counter and automatically pulled down two packs of my brand of cigarettes, without my even asking for them. Like I said, she was good. I paid her for the soda and smokes. As she handed me back my change, Leslie frowned.

“You okay, Adam? You don’t so look good.”

“Think I might be getting sick,” I lied. “A cold or something.”

She glanced outside. “In this weather? That sucks. It’s beautiful outside. Almost feels like summer.”

We made small talk for a few more minutes. Leslie was excited. She told me about the big date she had lined up for Wednesday night with some guy named Michael Gitelson, how she’d bought a new outfit and her mom was going to babysit for her.

Another regular, an old man named Marvin, walked in. He picked up a newspaper, saw Leslie and me talking, and smiled.

“Watch what you say to this guy, Leslie. He’ll put it in his next book!”

He laughed, and I smiled politely and wished death upon him, because all writers hear things like that, and it gets really annoying. Then I told Leslie I’d see her same time tomorrow, said good-bye to Marvin, and left.

When I got home I knew I still wouldn’t be able to write, so I decided to mow the lawn instead. It didn’t really need cutting yet, but there’s something about that first mowing of spring that really makes you feel good, the smell of fresh-cut grass and the feel of the mower in your hands and the neat, symmetrical rows. I thought maybe some time spent doing that would kick-start the idea machine inside my head.

I made sure the mower had enough oil and gas, and then I rolled it out into the driveway. I primed it, pulled the cord, and it started on the second tug. If my neighbor Merle was watching, it would really give him something to curse about, after the trouble he’d had with his earlier that morning.

Remembering Merle’s outburst made me think about what had happened in the woods again. Things had seemed so normal at that point. My neighborhood was operating the way it was supposed to. Merle cursing and Paul Leger ski flying down the alley with eighties metal blasting from his truck’s speakers—these were everyday things. They were safe. Mundane. They weren’t supposed to lead to what I’d seen in the forest.

But in hindsight, even at that point things had beenweird. I’d heard the pipes about the same time as I’d heard Merle and Paul.

I mowed on autopilot, pushing the lawn mower up and down the yard in neat rows. Insects jumped out of my way, and the first dandelions of spring disappeared beneath the blades. The smell of fresh-cut grass hung thick in the air, and a cool breeze tickled my face, but I couldn’t enjoy either of them. The lawn mower’s handle vibrated under my palms, but I barely felt it. My thoughts were elsewhere. I pictured Shelly, naked and on her knees, and then pushed the image from my mind. I was hard again.