Bone Hollow

by Kim Ventrella

  “He’s in a better place now, sweet girl.”

  “Leave me alone.”

  “Sure you don’t want to come in and say goodbye?”

  Wynne wriggled out of her grasp and ran. Away from the schoolhouse and the crowd of people in black.

  A cracking eggshell brought Gabe out of Wynne’s memory. She was watching him now, a sad look on her face. He thought about asking her about what he’d seen, but he decided she already looked sad enough for one night.

  Wynne brought the egg over to Ollie and he ate it out of her hands. When he was done, she wiped her hands on a dishtowel and went to stare out the dining room window.

  “What is it? What are you looking at?”

  Gabe strained his eyes, seeing nothing at first but waves of mist reflecting back the moonlight. But then, over the trees and far away, he glimpsed a faint blue flicker. Then, the harder he looked, the brighter it grew, till it wasn’t a flicker anymore, but a giant flame roaring over the treetops.

  “Something’s on fire,” he said. “We should call the fire department.”

  Wynne smiled, but the smile didn’t reach her eyes. “It’s not that kind of flame.”

  “What is it, then?”

  “I can show you, if you like.”

  Gabe hesitated. “Is that where you went yesterday, too?”

  Wynne didn’t answer. Instead, she set down her cup and turned to Ollie. “You’ll have to stay, boy. Your leg isn’t ready for a big adventure.”

  But Ollie yipped and wiggled his bottom with such vigor that Gabe had no choice but to take him.

  “Come on,” Wynne said. “It’s best if we start outside.”

  “How are we going to get there?” Gabe said. “It looks awful far away.”

  “Take my hand.”

  But Gabe’s hands were occupied with holding Ollie, so Wynne grasped his elbows instead.

  “Now close your eyes and picture the flame.”

  “You mean we’re going to get transported or something, like in Star Trek?”

  Wynne blinked a few times, like she didn’t understand.

  “You know, the TV show?”

  “Just concentrate. Think of nothing but the blue flame. How it moves back and forth on the wind. Imagine it calling to you, begging you to come near. Hold that in your thoughts, the brightness of it, the flickering. Let it draw you in.”

  A silence stretched between them. Gabe tried to focus, but after a while he couldn’t help himself.

  “Nothing’s happening. I think I’m doing it wrong.”

  “Open your eyes.”

  Gabe would have screamed, but he was pretty sure he’d just swallowed his tongue. They were zooming through a tunnel made of swirling gray clouds. Ollie had his mouth open and was doing his best to capture wisps of cloud on his tongue.

  “What’s that?” Gabe cried as a face emerged from the churning mass of gray. It had bulging eyes, droopy ears, and a nose like a deflated balloon.

  “Going somewhere?” said the face, dissolving in a fit of laughter.

  “Where are we?” Gabe gripped Ollie tighter to his chest.

  “Ghost tunnel,” Wynne called over the roar of the wind. “Don’t worry, they won’t hurt you.”

  “They?” Gabe peered around at the gray walls rushing past, and sure enough he caught sight of other faces, some pleasant, others foul, and more than a few pointing transparent fingers at him as he went.

  The tunnel veered sharply to the right and then down. Gabe’s stomach shot into his chest. Wynne squeezed his elbow harder and Ollie yipped and howled in excitement.

  “Next time, maybe we should walk!” Gabe shouted, but just then a plump ghost shot into the tunnel, bouncing off Gabe’s chest.

  “Apologies!” he warbled, but it was too late.

  The jolt had separated him from Wynne.

  “Gabe!” she cried, but it was no use. He dropped out of the tunnel into the cold night air. Free-falling at top speed, Ollie clawing at his chest and neck. In less than a second, he burst through the clouds and the ground sped toward him. He held on to Ollie with all his might, the wind trying like mad to tear him away.

  Then, without the slightest warning, he plunged into blackness and Ollie flew from his arms.

  The next thing he knew, someone was setting him down gently on the grass. He turned around to see a kindly old friar with a bald head and a very tiny pair of silver spectacles smiling at him. Ollie came down next, carried in the arms of the plump ghost, who wore an apron and a pair of fluffy plaid slippers. He placed Ollie in Gabe’s arms, but he soon jumped out and kept trying to kiss each of the ghosts in turn. The problem was he kept falling through them, right to the other side.

  “Apologies again,” said the plump ghost in his quivering, friendly voice. “I always do get in the way.”

  “Nonsense,” said the friar, giving the other ghost’s arm a reassuring pat. “The lad must learn how to focus.”

  “But he’s new. He wasn’t to know.”

  “True enough, true enough. I say!” He turned his attention to Ollie. “Do you mind? That tickles!” He shivered, his transparent body rippling like water. The next time Ollie went to lick him, he banged his nose into the friar’s shin.

  “It’s not as easy as it looks, remaining solid,” the plump ghost confided. “I’ll never understand how you lot manage it.”

  “He’s not a ghost, now is he?” said the friar reasonably. “Anyway, we had best be off. No use distracting the boy from his work.”

  “Work?” Gabe said.

  “Nice to meet you,” said the plump ghost, waving. “Ta-ta!”

  Together they zipped up and up and in a few seconds were indistinguishable from the gathering rain clouds.

  “What on earth was that?” Gabe said, pulling Ollie into his arms again and planting a kiss square on his forehead. For his part, Ollie seemed unfazed by their near escape from doom. “And more importantly, how are we gonna find Wynne?”

  As if in response, Ollie barked at something moving above the treetops up ahead. It was the blue flame, and it was even bigger and wilder than before.

  “Come on,” Gabe said, plucking up his courage. “Wynne might need our help.”

  Gabe picked Ollie up, and they raced through the trees, the air humid and electric against their skin, the way it always got just before a storm. Soon they reached a deserted country road. On the other side stood a tall iron gate. The flame was so large now it cast a blue light over the entire landscape.

  Gabe and Ollie crossed the road. A rusty sign hanging from an old rope on the front of the gate read, “Shady Oaks: May All Who Enter Be at Rest.” The gate stood open, and even before he stepped through, Gabe could see it was a cemetery.

  Headstones stretched back as far as the eye could see. Flat ones and thick ones, marble and plain concrete. Statues of lions and generals stood guard atop some of the most elaborate graves. Gabe and Ollie walked in silence down a narrow gravel path, their breath leaving traces of white on the air despite the heat.

  The blue light overhead cast strange shadows that crept over the grass toward them. The farther they walked down the path, the larger the graves became, until each one looked like a tiny stone house at least as big as Miss Cleo’s old shed. He thought these ones were called mausoleums.

  Gabe opened his mouth, thinking he might shout Wynne’s name, but it didn’t seem right somehow to be shouting in a graveyard. He let his mouth fall shut again, and simply followed the flame in silence.

  Finally, at the very back of the cemetery, Gabe saw someone. He stopped dead and watched. It wasn’t Wynne, just an old man sitting in a lawn chair next to an open mausoleum. He was talking to someone, though Gabe couldn’t see who, and his teeth were chattering.

  “Put the Christmas lights up last week, Maud, just the way you like ’em. Blue and gold on the front, and green for the tree. It’s hard to get the star on top nowadays, without you to hold the ladder, but I had the Smith boy come over and do it. Nice kid, he’ll b
e ten years old come the end of December.”

  He paused, and he poured himself a cup of something hot from a metal thermos. His hands were shaking so bad he spilled most of it onto the grass.

  “Guess you don’t know the Smith boy. You went and left us the month before he was born.” He was quiet for a while, and when he spoke again his voice sounded scratchy. “Ten years is a long time, old gal. But I did like you said, I kept going.” He took a ceramic mug from a bag by his feet and poured another cup of steamy liquid. This one he set on the steps leading down into the mausoleum.

  “I think I’m coming home to see you soon,” he said, both crying and laughing when he said it. “And, you know what, it’s about damn time.”

  Just then, a figure emerged from behind the statue of an angel with a sword and two massive wings. It was Wynne, only she seemed taller somehow, and thinner. She walked toward the old man, and as she did her shape started to change. Her skin pulled tight against her face. So tight he could see her jawbones jutting out from underneath. Her hair grew long, draping over her shoulders and down her back, until he blinked and it became a cloak, flapping on the humid wind.

  The man turned around slowly and stood up. The cloak covered Wynne’s body now and hung low over her eyes. She reached a hand out toward the man, and her fingers were made of long, thin bone.

  “Maud,” the old man said, choking on his tears. “You came.”

  He walked toward her, and for just a moment Gabe saw what the old man must have seen. A plump woman with straight gray hair wearing a pale pink jogging suit, tears spilling down her cheeks. He took her hand, except the golden light filtering through the trees shifted, and it wasn’t Maud or Wynne, it was a skeleton.

  They walked together over the sparkling grass, only the old man didn’t leave any footprints. Gabe looked again at the lawn chair. The old man was still there, clutching his chest. The thermos had fallen from his hand, and brown liquid stained his pants. But, despite all that, he was smiling.

  When Gabe turned around again, the light disappeared with a snap and there was Wynne. A look of relief registered on her face, and she took a step toward him. Gabe took a step back.

  “Stay right there,” he said, breathing hard, the wet air filling up his lungs. “Ollie, no!”

  Ollie, being a stubborn hound, refused to listen. He wiggled out of Gabe’s arms and bounded across the grass toward Wynne. Only she wasn’t Wynne, not really. Her body flickered like the channels on Gabe’s old TV set. One second she was Wynne, frail and thin in her worn white dress, the next she was a skeleton, tall and horrible and draped in black.

  “Leave him alone!” Gabe sprinted across the grass and sprung, wrestling Ollie to the ground. Ollie, not a fan of having a good kiss interrupted, howled in protest.

  “Who are you?” Gabe said, backing so far away he could barely see Wynne’s face without the light from the blue flame.

  “I think you know.”

  Gabe shook his head. “No way, it can’t be. Why? Why did you come and find me?”

  “Don’t be scared, Gabe. It’s not what you think. You saw so yourself.”

  “I don’t know what I saw. Just tell me who you are!” Gabe squeezed Ollie so tight he yipped, but Gabe hardly even noticed. “Tell me!”

  “I’m Death.”

  Ollie slid from Gabe’s arms onto the grass. He looked from Gabe to Wynne and back again.

  “Shut up,” Gabe said, barely able to speak above a whisper. “You’re not, you can’t be—”

  “I am.” She stepped into a faint sliver of moonlight. She was Wynne again, at least for the moment, and her crown of braids glittered in the pale light. “And, if we’re being totally honest, so are you. That is, if you want to be.”

  Gabe dropped to the grass, too, as if in slow motion, as if his legs couldn’t hold him up anymore. Everything that had happened with Gramps and the cloak raced around inside his head, fighting for attention. Wynne wasn’t going to bring him to see Mama and Daddy and Gramps. How could she? She was the one who’d taken them away.

  “But how?” Gabe said. “You’re not Death. You’re just a kid.”

  Wynne started to answer, but then she too fell to her knees. She looked tired, like Gramps that time he’d raced Gabe all the way around the Bentons’ farm. Only more so, a deep-down tired that stretched all the way to her bones.

  “I won’t be around forever, you know.” Wynne smiled, but Gabe just kept on shaking his head.

  “You’re out of your dang mind, that’s what you are. I don’t know what you did to that old man, and I don’t wanna know. But if you really are Death … if you …” Sensing Gabe’s anger, Ollie tried to crawl into his lap, but Gabe stood up instead, cheeks burning. “Death took Mama and Daddy and Gramps from me. If you think for one dang second …” And then a certainty dropped down on him from above, like an anvil crushing his chest under its weight. “It was you.”

  “What was me?” Her usually serene expression grew troubled.

  “You killed my parents.”

  “No, Gabe, you don’t understand.” Wynne tried to get up, but her legs were shaking so bad they wouldn’t support her. She looked like Wynne again, but Gabe knew better.

  “You killed that man, and you killed Mama and Daddy, too. And Gramps!” Here he was, thanking God for sending Wynne to save him, when she hadn’t. She was the reason he was all alone. Heck, she was probably the reason he was dead.

  “No, I promise, I didn’t.” She reached for him, sounding truly desperate, but Gabe pulled away. “Let me explain. Let me …”

  But it was too late. Gabe took off running, ignoring the rain that started falling from the sky, making dark lines down the back of his T-shirt. Maybe it was a coincidence, and maybe it wasn’t, but the second Gabe set foot on that torn-up country road, a pair of headlights blazed around the bend. A horn blared in Gabe’s ears, tires screeched, and the air erupted with a crack!

  Gabe fell back hard on the asphalt, tumbling over Ollie and whacking his head on a rock. He was certain he’d been run over. Near frantic, he felt his chest and legs, only to find that his body hadn’t been flattened after all. He sat up slowly and saw an old pickup truck peeling off down the road, sending a spray of gravel in its wake.

  Slowly, he pulled himself to his feet, wiping pebbles and tar off his already beat-up jeans. That was when a horrible thought dropped to the pit of Gabe’s stomach. “Ollie? Where are you, boy?”

  Before Gabe could get up and search, that dang hound bounded out of the shadows and started flapping his tongue, licking the dirt and muck from Gabe’s fingers. “Thank the Lord!” he said, kissing that dog about fifty times on the head. “Don’t you ever scare me like that again! Not ever!”

  He held Ollie even tighter and cursed those dang taillights as they disappeared around a bend and out of sight. A sick feeling worked its way up the back of his throat, and even though Ollie was fine and he hadn’t been flattened like a pancake the way he’d thought, he threw up on the side of the road. Nothing came out except for spit, but it still made his tummy ache something awful.

  “Dang!” he shouted, pounding his fist into the dirt. “Why does everybody have to be such a gosh dang liar!” He peered back across the road, through the open gate leading into Shady Oaks Cemetery, but only for a second. Not that he wanted Wynne to follow, not anymore, but it sure had been nice to have a friend.

  “This is goodbye, then,” he said to his former friend, swallowing the bitter taste filling up his mouth. And to think he’d given her Mama’s St. Christopher medal. With a sigh, he picked up Ollie and crossed the road into the dark, wet forest. Fat droplets of water showered his head as he walked, but Gabe ignored them. Ollie writhed and squirmed in his arms, but the second he put him down he took off running back toward the cemetery. Finally, Gabe gave up and hoisted that silly dog over his shoulder, despite his howling.

  “She’s no good,” Gabe said as they walked. “She’s a liar and a killer, too. That’s the only reason she saved u
s. To turn me into a monster just like her.”

  When Gabe reached the field where they’d fallen out of the sky, the shower turned into a full-on storm. He ran toward a large swath of trees that seemed to go on forever in every direction. He had no idea if he was heading toward Bone Hollow or away from it, but in that moment he didn’t much care. It just felt good to run. To shake up all the confusion and anger eating away at his chest.

  He’d had a home, a real home for once, and Wynne had to go and ruin it. Warm rain splashed down his face and pooled in the pockets of his jeans. The ground grew soggier as he ran, and before long his feet were caked in mud. The air stunk of mold and soggy tree bark, and Ollie’s whine grew so pathetic Gabe had no choice but to put him on his three good paws.

  “You stay with me, now, promise? I can’t lose you, too.”

  Ollie gave him a solemn look, which was about as close to a promise as a dog could get. They ran together till Ollie was soaked through and shivering. At the first hint of thunder, he planted himself on Gabe’s feet and refused to keep going.

  “Guess we’d better find a place to spend the night,” Gabe said, but the whipping rain filled up his mouth and nose, drowning out his words.

  Ollie stuck close to Gabe’s heels now as they trudged through the storm, searching for a cave or a hollowed-out tree or somewhere else to hide in. But Very, Very Tall Hill was nowhere in sight, and when Ollie took off for the safety of an old pine tree, Gabe had no choice but to follow.

  They huddled together on a bed of sopping pine needles. Ollie curled up on Gabe’s lap, shaking, his eyes wide and frightened, and nothing Gabe said would calm him down. That poor mutt always got the same way during a storm, like the whole sky was falling down around him.

  Just like the night Gabe had found him. Or, to be more accurate, the night Ollie had found Gabe. A storm had been raging over Macomb County like nothing anyone had ever seen, even the old-timers. Three tornadoes had touched down in the space of a minute. Gabe had left the safety of the storm shelter on Miss Cleo’s urging in order to fetch her poultry competition scrapbook from inside the house. That was when he heard something howling and whining underneath the floorboards. The house had a crawl space, and Gabe had to go down there every few weeks to empty the rat traps or scare out a misbehaving possum, but this didn’t sound like any possum he’d ever heard.