Bone Hollow

by Kim Ventrella

  All that was clear as day. The falling part, at least. But Mr. Morton was right about one thing, there must be something else. He closed his eyes even harder, glimpsing the swirling clouds, feeling the whipping wind. And then, there it was, an image he’d only just now remembered. The weather vane flying from his fingers, and him and that nasty old piece of iron free-falling side by side.

  Then he hit the ground with a crack, and that was it. Only maybe it wasn’t. Maybe he did remember something pinching into his back, right at that very last second before he passed out, and maybe he had seen it slice right through him like a toothpick through Jell-O, only he hadn’t wanted to remember. If he squeezed his eyes even tighter and breathed deep, he could almost feel the tip of that weather vane, cold and rough and wet, protruding from the front of his shirt.

  Gabe opened his eyes.

  He didn’t speak for a while, his lips numb. It was all he could do to keep from throwing up. Ollie grew restless and started chewing on his shoelaces.

  “But I’m not dead,” Gabe repeated, swallowing hard. “I’m here. So even if it happened like you said, even so, there’s no way I can be dead.”

  Mr. Morton considered for a moment, and then he asked a question Gabe wasn’t expecting. “Do you know what day it is?”

  “What does that matter?”

  “Do you? I’d be curious to know.”

  “Sure I do. Why wouldn’t I? It’s Thursday.”

  Just then, the church bell started to toll. Not the regular chime that marked every hour, but the full-length song that called people to worship.

  “Sunday?” Gabe said, feeling like a weight was slowly pressing down on his shoulders. “Can’t be.”

  “Three days,” Mr. Morton said. “That’s how long you laid on this table after you were dead. Three days for me to get you ready, so to speak. Do you know what we do here, to get a body ready for burial?” Mr. Morton tried on a sad face, but his eyes were still smiling.

  Gabe didn’t answer. He’d seen enough TV and read enough books to know what Mr. Morton meant. His stomach seized, like he was gonna lose his lunch right then and there, and then something inside him snapped. Like popping a rubber band in a big, empty chamber. And he was empty, wasn’t he? A cold piece of meat with all the warm bits drained out. He clapped his hands over his mouth, but he didn’t throw up. How could he? Throwing up was something normal people did, when they were still alive, and he was …

  Dead. He was really dead. Like Mama and Daddy and Gramps. Dead as a dormouse in a snowstorm, that’s what Miss Cleo would have said.

  The facts seemed undeniable, but Gabe was still shaking his head. He couldn’t accept it, he just couldn’t. A headache bloomed behind his left eye, pounding and throbbing and getting bigger by the second. It was this place. This cruel, cold, horrible place. Why’d he ever think he could come here for help?

  He’d had enough. He snatched up Ollie, holding his warm body tight to his meat locker of a rib cage.

  “We shoulda never come here, Mr. Morton, and so this is goodbye.” For once, he relished the word.

  “Sorry to say, but not a soul around here will take you in,” Mr. Morton said, though he definitely wasn’t sorry. “We could make a deal, though, you and I.”

  Mr. Morton slid in front of Gabe, quick as a viper, placing one veiny white hand on the door. “Nobody will believe it till they see you. But, oh, when they do.” He laughed. It was a raspy, metallic sort of laughter. “Well, let’s just say, I’m sure we could come to some sort of arrangement. You need a friend, after all.”

  Gabe pulled on the knob, but Mr. Morton slammed the door shut.

  “Look at yourself,” he said. “Where will you go? What will you do, without me, that is? How long do you think that mutt’ll survive without food?”

  That made Gabe pause. Part of him was furious that Mr. Morton dared bring up his dog. It may not have been a threat, but it was close enough. The other part of him, though, knew Mr. Morton was right. One bag of food from Miss Cleo wouldn’t be enough to feed Ollie forever, maybe not even for a week. If Mr. Morton had a way to make money, maybe he should hear him out. Even if he was as rotten as a slimy old piece of meat. For Ollie’s sake.

  “That’s my boy,” Mr. Morton said, snaking an arm around Gabe’s shoulders and leading him away from the door. Ollie started to growl low and deep in the back of his throat the minute Mr. Morton touched him. Gabe sure didn’t blame him, but maybe Mr. Morton knew a thing or two. A dog needed food and a bed and a place to call home.

  Gabe turned, and saw his reflection in a small, square mirror screwed to the wall. He gasped.

  He’d seen a corpse before, sure enough, at Mama and Daddy’s and Gramps’s funerals. He remembered Gramps the clearest. He’d looked just like himself, like he was sleeping, only at the same time he hadn’t. Gabe could never put his finger on exactly why, but there was no way he could have mistaken Gramps for anything but dead. That was how he looked. Not bad, not horrible or moldy or peeling, but dead. Definitely dead. Somehow knowing it and seeing it were two entirely different things. Gabe started to shake from somewhere deep down, even with Ollie’s hot body pressed against his chest.

  “I can help you,” Mr. Morton was saying, closing his other slithery hand around Gabe’s wrist. “We’ll be famous. More than famous, we’ll be rich. You and I. We can do anything we want, go anywhere we please. Everyone in the whole world will want to know your name.”

  “And Ollie?” Gabe said.

  Mr. Morton couldn’t stop a look of disgust from creeping onto his face at the mere mention of his dog. That made up Gabe’s mind right then and there. That, and the fact that Ollie was now barking at the top of his lungs and struggling to be freed.

  Gabe tried to wrench his hand out of Mr. Morton’s grasp, but the old man only held tighter.

  “You can’t survive without me, don’t you understand? We’ll make millions. Millions of millions. People will pay anything to touch you, to talk to you, just to look at you.”

  “Let me go!” Gabe cried, and he stamped down as hard as he could on Mr. Morton’s foot.

  The old man grunted and released his grip, but he was fast, too. Gabe had only opened the door an inch when Mr. Morton grabbed him by the shoulders and yanked him backward. All might have been lost if Ollie hadn’t leapt and sunk his jaws into Mr. Morton’s arm. Gabe heard a crack, and then Mr. Morton let loose a full-throated shriek.

  “That-a-boy,” Gabe said, and together they shot out the door and ran as fast as their feet would take them.

  They nearly got flattened by a car at the corner of Flint and Unnamed Road. It was a pink station wagon with “Honk if you love Jesus” painted down the side in glittery letters. The driver slammed on the brakes, and then promptly backed up directly into a phone pole. Gabe would have stopped and helped, despite his present predicament, but the driver pounded on the gas and shot on down the road, blasting Gabe with a wave of dust and smoke. That car had a crushed bumper and at least two flat tires, but fear made people do funny things.

  He’d know that old station wagon anywhere, of course. It belonged to Mrs. Higgins, the pastor’s wife. And she wasn’t afraid of a baseball bat or some creepy mortician; she was afraid of him. Just like everybody else, except for nasty old Mr. Morton.

  Full of anger and spite and still crackling with fear, he picked Ollie up again and his run turned into a sprint.

  Sprinting turned out to be easy now that he was dead, despite the plastic bag banging into his thighs. Soon, he’d left the town far behind and was running through a big stretch of empty field. There were no sounds to bother him, apart from the tall grass crunching under his feet and the wind whipping his cheeks.

  That was good, because Gabe needed some silence to help him think. There were so many thoughts spitting and fighting in his head, it was hard to wrap his mind around just one. He’d only felt like that a few times before. The day of Mama and Daddy’s funeral, for one. Like his mind was full of wasps and he’d never be
able to see straight or think straight again. And it was true. Everything had changed after that, so much so that he hardly remembered how things had been before. Before them dying and him going to live with Miss Cleo. He hadn’t wanted to forget about them, but he had. Like how they smelled and exactly what Mama used to look like when she smiled.

  A branch slapped Gabe across the cheek, and he slowed down, but only a little. Ollie started to squirm and grow restless in his arms.

  “Sorry, boy. Not much farther.” He didn’t want to, but he started to cry, screwing up his face and gasping for air. His cheeks ached something awful, but no matter how hard he tried to get it all out, not a single tear came loose. “Guess I can’t even cry right,” Gabe said.

  Ollie licked his chin, and he kept on going. The woods grew thicker as he went, closing in around him. Soon, the tall grass was gone, replaced with cool black mud. All the sounds of the town disappeared, too, even the buzzing from the electrical power plant. Gabe pulled to a stop for a moment, listening to the leaves and the quiet roar of crickets.

  “Just you and me,” he said, peering around at the dark tree trunks and the long gray trails of Spanish moss. “Don’t worry, boy, we’ll be alright.”

  About an hour or two later, they came to a creek cutting a jagged path through the trees. Ollie took a big, long gulp and then went to work splashing in the water. Gabe knelt down, too, and scooped some chilly liquid into his palms. He realized he hadn’t taken a drink himself this whole dang time. He brought the water to his lips and swirled some around inside his mouth. He tried to swallow, but it was like someone had shut a door in his throat and thrown away the key.

  No matter what he did, the water kept dribbling out again. Ollie bounded over, soaking wet and pawing at the plastic bag. He wiggled his bottom and whined something awful. He was such a pathetic sight, Gabe couldn’t help but laugh. The sound felt weird after all that crying, like it didn’t belong to him, at least not anymore.

  He removed the bag from his belt and looked inside. There were three apples from the tree behind Miss Cleo’s house. He’d always called it that, Miss Cleo’s house, instead of his house or their house or home. Now it was really true. Maybe that was what Miss Cleo had wanted all along. Gabe allowed himself one long sigh before continuing.

  He lined up the shiny red apples on the grass. Ollie touched each one with his nose, and then snarfled in Gabe’s general direction. A snarfle was kind of like a bark and a snort combined, but Ollie only did it when he really wanted something bad, or when he was just plain excited.

  “Okay, you stubborn mutt. Let’s see what else we got.”

  He fished around in the bag and came out with a whole ziplock bag full of charbroiled hot dogs, a Tupperware container packed with homemade tuna salad, and a dozen of Miss Cleo’s sweet-and-savory biscuits wrapped in foil. Those were Gabe’s favorite, or at least they had been. They were kind of like regular biscuits, except they were filled with chunks of salty bacon and swirls of sugary syrup.

  Ollie snarfled again, so Gabe tossed him a hot dog. He gobbled it up in all of three seconds, and then started nudging Gabe’s hand, asking for more. Gabe figured he’d better wait a few minutes before giving him another, otherwise he’d only throw it all up again.

  “Hush, now, and stop being so dramatic.”

  As could be expected, his words had little effect, so he did his best to ignore Ollie and turned his attention to the biscuits. As soon as he unwrapped the foil, he was aching to take a bite, despite his anger at Miss Cleo. It must have been his imagination, but it seemed like the biscuits in the middle were still warm. He removed one of the warm ones and held it against his lips. The smell was happy and sad, all at the same time. He loved Miss Cleo’s biscuits something fierce, so that was happy. The sad part was that he knew now how little Miss Cleo cared for him. These biscuits weren’t filled with love, just butter and sugar and a whole lot of bacon.

  Even so, a still-warm biscuit was too much for his tummy to resist. He sank his teeth into the crispy outer shell. He wasn’t disappointed. The rich taste of bacon tingled on his tongue, mingling with the sweet, sticky syrup.

  He swallowed down that first bite, ready for the second, when a strange thing happened. Just like the water had dribbled out the edges of his mouth, the food didn’t want to go down. He tried again, taking a big gulp, but that food kept coming back up.

  Finally, he had no choice but to spit it on the ground and wash his mouth out with water. Staring at those slobbery chunks was one of the worst moments of his whole entire life. Without warning, his face crumpled up and he started to dry heave.

  “Just quit it!” he said, a hot wave of shame and confusion sweeping over him. He’d never cried so much in his whole dang life, and he couldn’t even conjure up any tears. He wasn’t a crybaby, he really wasn’t!

  Ollie bounded over and started licking his face, which made him feel the tiniest bit better. At least someone still cared about him. Ollie curled up in his lap, and slowly Gabe’s breathing returned to normal. “Don’t you fret, now, you hear?” Gabe said to Ollie, scratching his chin. “We’ll be fine, you and I.” Saying the words out loud, Gabe just about believed them. Even if they might freeze to death or starve in the woods all alone. Even if Gabe felt more lost than he ever had, apart from the day Gramps came over to tell him Mama had died.

  Now he was the one who was dead, and he had a pack of eleven and a half uneaten biscuits to prove it. Gabe sat there by the stream for a long while, his head buried in Ollie’s fur. He didn’t see how things would end up alright, but he had to pretend. For Ollie’s sake.

  Pushing away the late-afternoon shadows that seemed to coil around him like snakes, he tied up the bag and decided they should go a bit farther on. No use sticking close to town, since he was about as welcome there as an ant on a wedding cake. He tried not to let that thought depress him as he pushed even deeper into the forest. He didn’t know all that much about the area, except that the trees went on for miles and miles, all the way to the state line.

  They walked till going on nightfall, Ollie stopping every few feet to sniff or pee or sniff some more. Every now and then, he trotted back to check on Gabe, nosing his shins and slobbering on his bare toes. Gabe was still full of that strange energy, but he couldn’t bring himself to do much else but slump forward, dragging one foot after the other, offering Ollie an occasional, everything’s-going-to-be-okay smile.

  Later, when the sun had dipped just below the horizon, Ollie darted off ahead, yipping and hopping with alarm.

  “What is it?” Gabe said, ready for just about anything. He didn’t think anyone could find them all the way out here, but he couldn’t be sure.

  “Rarf!” Ollie said.

  Gabe ran to catch up and his heart settled back down in his chest. It was a campsite, complete with a metal grill, a tent pad, and a stack of leftover firewood. “Ain’t that something? You really are a sniffer dog.”

  Gabe rewarded Ollie with a chunk of bacony biscuit. His heart broke a little to see him swallow it down whole, without even really tasting it. Oh well. He couldn’t expect a dog to understand the subtleties of fine cooking.

  “Might as well settle in here for the night.” Gabe went about starting a fire, and Ollie helped by gathering bits of stray wood.

  By the time the sun disappeared behind the trees, the fire was snapping and crackling. Gabe watched the dancing flames, remembering those chilly nights when Gramps would tell him spooky stories around the campfire. His stories always started out scary but turned funny by the end. With the monster exploding or turning into something harmless, like a stuffed animal.

  He missed Gramps, the way he missed Mama and Daddy. All the people Death had taken from him. Gramps had always been such a good listener, giving him advice and arguing with Miss Cleo on his behalf. Now he was one of those missing souls, taken away from his home by that no-good Grim Reaper.

  Partly out of frustration, and partly as a test, Gabe stuck his finger right in the
middle of one of those dancing flames. It tickled his skin and singed his fingernail, but it didn’t hurt a lick, the same way his bare feet didn’t hurt after all that running.

  With a big old sigh, Gabe turned away from the fire and fashioned Ollie a bed out of a mound of soft dirt. As soon as Ollie settled in, Gabe flopped down and used him as a pillow. He really was the best pillow ever, since he was warm and squishy and just the right size. Lying there like that, with Ollie’s breathing to calm him down, he felt the tiniest sliver of hope for the future. He was out in the world all alone, sure, but he wasn’t lonely. Not as long as he had Ollie by his side.

  Together, they peered up at the stars, except Ollie might really have been sleeping. Gabe watched the full moon drift slowly from east to west. He pushed away all thoughts of Miss Cleo and Chance and Mr. M. M. Morton. Instead, he tried to remember what Gramps had said the day he’d come to visit. It seemed nearly impossible, but by then, Gabe must have already been dead.

  Gramps had reached out his hand, like he was going to take Gabe somewhere. To heaven, maybe, or into the bright light. Wasn’t that what was supposed to happen when you died? Then why had Gramps pulled back at the last second? Why had his old, wrinkled eyes looked so sad?

  Maybe it had something to do with him saying he was sorry. Gabe remembered that part the most, but not the details of it. Why had Gramps felt the need to apologize? What on earth did he have to be sorry for?

  And, more important, why had Gramps left without taking Gabe along with him?

  All these questions were bouncing around inside his head, and so he didn’t hear the voices at first, calling from off in the distance.