The Hollower (21 page)

She felt better having Bennie there, especially. Some part of her brain recognized this in vague and discomforting terms, but it wouldn’t quite gel in the forefront of her thoughts. She didn’t need him. It was nice, was all. Nice that he was there.

She exhaled slowly, glanced in the mirror again, and shook her head. May would have called her out on that. “
Stallion sex, my left foot. You like him, An. More than you’re willing to tell him
.”

Maybe. She turned left and peered ahead into the darkness. Up in Lakehaven, some of the back roads got swallowed in the shadows of overhanging trees and outcroppings of rock for a curve or a dip or a small hill, and then emerged into the moonlight. She slowed down as she plunged into just such a pocket of shadow, careful of deer and unfamiliar bends and twists. Behind her in the rearview, Benjamin Mendez and Joe Rubelli followed her into the dip.

They didn’t come back out again on the other side. As DeMarco pulled farther and farther from that patch of shadow, she glanced between the rearview and the windshield, expecting them to emerge any minute and pick up her back.

Behind her, the road lay like a silent tongue on the floor of a rocky mouth.

It had swallowed their squad car.

She slowed and picked up the radio. “Rubelli? Mendez? What the hell happened to you? Where are you?”

The radio crackled back but gave her no answer.

“Guys? Where are you?” Still nothing.

DeMarco frowned, checked the side view, then the rear view again. She rolled to a stop, waited a few minutes, then glanced at the clock.
Five more minutes. If those two ditched me
. . .

But Bennie wouldn’t have done that. Something was wrong. She made a U-turn in the road. That small part of her more than professionally concerned for Bennie’s well-being fully expected to be
swallowed up, too, and spit out wherever the squad car had gone.

Their car broke down. They’re stopped in that dark patch there, that’s all
. She came back through into the moonlight and turned around again. Her car rolled back into the dip. The headlights gave her little more than a foot or so, but she rolled straight through to the other side without rear-ending them.

DeMarco put the car into Park. Could she have missed them when she turned around? Possibly. What May Davis called her “cop hunch” didn’t think so, but it was possible. She tried tracking them by pulling up their car on the computer. It was a bust. The computer told her they were a hundred yards or so behind her. She tried radioing into the station, but got static.

“Shit.” Her voice sounded timid in her own ears, solitary in the darkness. “Shit.”

She put the car in Drive and moved forward. With any luck, she’d find them at the River Falls Road residence. She glanced in the rearview mirror once more, her brow furrowed, and then turned her full attention on the road ahead.

“I don’t understand what you’re going to do, exactly. Who are these people again?” Casey leaned in the doorway and brushed a strand of hair from her eye, then crossed her arms beneath her chest.

Erik tugged on a pair of jeans and zipped them. Fragments of the dream he’d had about beating his father to death with a crowbar—and worse, that he hadn’t been by himself when he’d done it, but watched by something—remained like a bad after-taste. “That thing I told you about, the Hollower. We’re going to stop it.” He crossed to the closet and
pulled a green T-shirt off the hanger. “We’re going to kill it.”

“Baby, you’re scaring me. You’re not going off to kill somebody, are you?”

“Not some-
body
. Some-
thing
. It’s not a person, I swear to you. It’s definitely not a person.”

He paused in lacing up his boots. “You don’t believe a word of this, do you?”

“I’m worried about you.”

“You should be.” He rose.

“I believe you,” she said, coming into the room. “I believe you see this thing. I believe these . . . people you’re meeting up with tonight see this thing. But—”

“You don’t believe this thing is really there, is that it?”

She slipped her arms around his waist and rested her head on his chest. He put his arms around her, and wondered for a moment if it would be the last time he’d feel her.

“I don’t know what to believe anymore. I really don’t.”

“Do you trust me?”

She looked up at him. “Yes. If you say this will make things better, then yes.”

“Then that’s all I need.” He pulled her close to him, inhaling the scent of her hair.

“Promise me you’ll be okay.”

He kissed the top of her head. “I can’t.”

“Promise me something.”

“I promise you I’ll be careful.” He thought a moment, then added, “And I’ll do my best to stay out of trouble.”

“Then that’s all
I
need,” she whispered, but he could feel the tears soak through his T-shirt.

Outside, he heard Dave’s car pull up to the house. “I’ve gotta go. I love you, baby.” He pulled away from her, then grabbed his jacket without turning around and headed for the stairs. He couldn’t look at her.

“I love you, too,” she called from the bedroom.

He swallowed the lump in his throat and went out the door.

“You okay?” Dave asked as Erik slid into the backseat. From the look on the boy’s face, he thought maybe there had been another run-in with the Hollower.

Erik shrugged. “My girl,” he muttered, and from his tone, Dave thought it best not to press further.

They drove in silence toward Cheryl’s house for a while before Erik said, “Not like I don’t have buckets of faith in us or anything, but what we’re planning to do—”

“We don’t have a plan yet,” Dave reminded him.

“But we have a goal. And we’re up against some pretty big odds in achieving that goal.”

“Yup.” Dave kept his eyes on the road.

“It ain’t a bad thing if we’re scared, is it?”

“I wouldn’t say so. Just my opinion, but I’d have to wonder about the sanity of any carload of fools who
weren’t
afraid of staring down death like that.”

Erik snickered in the backseat, and Dave cracked a smile.

“Yeah, they’d have to be real nut jobs, wouldn’t they?”

“Hell yes.”

Erik’s smile faded. “Yeah.”

Dave glanced at him in the rearview. “There isn’t any other way. You made me see that.”

Erik nodded.

When they pulled up to Cheryl’s house, she was waiting outside. She hopped in on the passenger side and greeted them. She was shivering.

“Chilly?” Dave asked.

“Not really.” She offered him a small smile, and he squeezed her hand.

There was a pause, and Erik said, “Hey, I’ve got a joke for you. Stop me if you’ve heard this one.” Dave hadn’t heard it—a dirty one about a drunk in a bar—and he laughed heartily at the punch line. Cheryl, who had heard that one and just about every other bar joke in her experience as a bartender, laughed anyway.

After that, the conversation warmed quickly. Dave had expected the car ride to the Feinstein place to be solemn and silent, but it wasn’t. They talked about the Tavern, and the gossip that the locals told her in semidrunken hazes. They joked some more and laughed at one-liners and banter between them. And Dave and Cheryl flirted. He caught Erik’s knowing smirk in the backseat from time to time. It felt comfortable. It felt
right
for them to be there, together. They were connected. Dave thought maybe they always had been.

The laughter died away when they turned onto River Falls Road. By the time Dave rolled to a stop in front of the Feinstein place, all conversation had ceased.

They sat for a moment, staring at the house, its front door closed, its curtains half drawn, its porch sighing into the foundation. Dave wondered what they’d do if the door was locked, then almost had to laugh at his own thought. The door wouldn’t be
locked, not if the Hollower was in there, waiting for them. It would be expecting them.

“It doesn’t look so big,” Erik said finally. “Not too many places to hide in there.”

Dave nodded. “We’ll find it.”

“And we’ll kill it,” Erik said.

“Damn right, we will,” Cheryl added.

No one made a move to get out of the car.

“I’ve got weapons in the trunk,” Dave said. “Can’t see that they’ll do much good, but I thought we might feel better having them.”

“Good idea,” Cheryl said, giving his arm a squeeze.

Just then, movement in one of the upstairs windows caught Dave’s attention. A moment later, the front door opened. They sucked in a collective breath. No one moved.

Nothing came out through the front door.

But it was in there, oh yes. Dave had no doubt about that at all. It was most certainly in there, waiting for them.

“Guess there’s no time like the present, huh?” Erik opened the car door. Reluctantly, Dave and Cheryl followed suit.

They followed Dave around to the back of the car. The air blew cool around him, creeping beneath his jacket. He glanced around. No neighbors peered out. No one interested, maybe. No one to care about three strangers breaking into a dead man’s house.

And then he thought of the nurses’ station, fully staffed, and how no one had seen Sally leave and how the old woman hadn’t seen any nurses. He shivered against the wind.

Dave popped the trunk. Inside, he’d put a butcher
knife, a crowbar, and a battery-powered nail gun, as well as three flashlights.

Cheryl giggled nervously. “Power tools—now, that’s what I’m talking about.”

“Take it—it’s yours,” Dave said, then nodded to Erik to help himself.

Erik grabbed the crowbar, turning it over in his hands. Softly, he said, “I wanna cave the bastard’s head in.”

Dave picked up the knife, then handed out the flashlights. “Ready?”

“Ready as we’ll ever be,” Erik said.

Cheryl nodded. “Let’s kick some ass.”

Dave suddenly remembered something, and popped the trunk again. “Almost forgot this.” He reached in and grabbed Feinstein’s mirror, then tucked its handle into a back pocket before closing the trunk lid. “Feinstein said we’d know what to do with it when the time came.”

They followed Dave back around to the front of the car and stood a moment, facing the house. Dave took a deep breath and exhaled it. “We can beat this thing.”

He wasn’t sure he’d spoken it out loud, though, until a small voice behind him said, “I want to help.”

No place would be safe, so long as the Hollower was still alive. It could get to Sean any time, any place.

It couldn’t be put off any longer.

That night, Sean told his mother he was exhausted. He explained that he hadn’t slept well the night before (which was the absolute truth) and that he wasn’t all that hungry. He just wanted to go to bed. His mother hovered with a worried expression,
questioning what he’d eaten, why he wasn’t feeling well, what was bothering him, and why he was so willing to go to bed at a reasonable hour. He thought he did a good job of convincing her she had nothing to worry about, and went through the pretense of brushing his teeth, washing his face, and slipping into pajamas.

In bed, though, he found that his eyelids felt like they were on time-springs and his stomach felt all coiled up. He had to concentrate on relaxing his brow so that sleep wouldn’t look forced when his mom came to kiss him good night. Beneath the covers his hands grew sweaty and he felt a warm, uncomfortable lump weighing in his chest.

This is it, Seany. Tonight’s the night
.

He heard his mom’s footsteps in the hall and pretended to be asleep. His mom came and kissed him good night, ruffling his hair softly and making baby kisses on his temple. She did that when she thought he was asleep and wouldn’t wiggle uncomfortably beneath the display of affection.

This time, it drove a pang of sadness through him. Sean had never felt so much in need of his mom as he did then. He hadn’t felt so small in a long time. He wondered for a moment if it would be the last time he’d feel her touch his head or kiss him. He wouldn’t allow the thought to stay, though. He swallowed it with the lump in his throat.

He waited for what seemed like hours, but was, by the digital clock on his night table, maybe twenty minutes at most. Then he slipped out of bed. He’d hidden jeans, a red T-shirt, and sneakers under the bed and he crouched and slid them out. Trying not to make a sound, he changed into his clothes. Then
he wadded up the pajamas and put them under the covers of his bed, which he pulled over his pillow to make it look like he was tucked down under them. When he’d put on his sneakers, he reached under the bed once more for the baseball bat he’d brought up from the basement.

The entire time, his heart ticked into the darkness. He felt as well as heard each pulse.

With a quick glance across the hall at his mother’s sleeping form, he crept to the window. The house across the street stood dark and quiet. The curtains in the upstairs bedroom did not stir. If the monster was there waiting for him, it didn’t want to give away its location.

Sean was sure it was there, though.

He turned from the window and crept out into the hall. He fought the impulse to run; if he could catch it by surprise when he went into the house, maybe he could get a jump on it. But he had to be patient. He’d be outside and across the street soon enough, taking matters—taking his own life—into his hands. It took all his willpower to ease himself with careful steps toward the stairs.

He tiptoed past his mom’s bedroom door. A floorboard creaked and his mom shifted on the bed. He squeezed his eyes shut and froze. If she caught him now, he’d never get out, and he’d have to spend a good hour explaining what he was doing back up again, fully dressed, with a baseball bat in his hands. He did have a cover story—he planned to tell her he’d heard a noise, and had gotten up to investigate—but he preferred not to have to use it, if possible.

He opened his eyes and turned his head in her direction.
Part of him wanted to crawl into bed with her and stay there, safe from the monster across the street. He couldn’t, though, and he knew it. The Hollower wasn’t ever going to stop.

He watched her for a few moments and when he felt pretty sure that she was still asleep, he crept forward again, easing down the stairs. At the bottom, he exhaled a long, quiet breath. He crossed the front hall and unlocked the door, listening one last time. He heard nothing but the muted sounds of breathing, so he went out into the night, closing the door softly behind him.