by A. J. Vrana
Mason also couldn’t stop thinking about John Doe—or Kai Donovan, as he’d begun to refer to him. The coincidence of a town with an almost mythical relationship to wolves and a mysterious patient with the blood of a wolf was bizarre, to say the least. While he tried to keep the legend, the murder of Elle Robinson, and the case of Kai Donovan schematized in neat, separate compartments, Mason found himself continuously synthesizing them, scrambling to make some kind of connection.
It was hard work fooling himself into thinking he’d gotten over his obsession. That Saturday, Annabelle offered to accompany him to a local event, but he wasn’t in the mood, opting instead for a jointly-made meal and some quiet company. They hardly spoke as they ate, but Mason could feel Annabelle’s eyes probing him.
“You know, you’ve been here for a while, and we’ve hardly talked about why you actually came to Black Hollow,” she said after clearing the plates.
Mason fiddled with the hem of the tablecloth. “That’s probably because I was trying to run away.”
“Run away?” She paused as she scrubbed the dishes. “From the big city?”
“Something like that.” He remembered how excited he’d been to leave his worries behind and experience the peaceful rural landscape. “The big city and all the stress that came with it did have something to do with it.”
Draining the sink and wiping her hands, Annabelle returned to the table after preparing some chamomile tea.
She placed a mug down in front of him. “Go on.”
Mason pulled the mug towards himself and took a breath. He’d never told Annabelle about his profession, despite her sharing Mathias’s illness with him.
“I’m an oncologist,” he said finally, glancing up to evaluate her reaction.
She looked taken aback, and he wondered if she was upset. It must have stirred some uncomfortable emotions. “Near the end of my residency,” he continued when she failed to respond, “I was given charge of my first case. A test of sorts, to see if I could handle the burden of terminal patient care.” He plucked at a loose string on the hem. Everything he’d been shoving down crept back up his throat. “I um, I failed.”
Annabelle cupped the mug with her palms, tilting it back and forth. “It’s not easy,” she said quietly. “That’s why so many doctors just check out.”
“Like my supervisor,” Mason sighed. “He’s one of those. And I think that’s why he gave me this case. He wanted me to learn a hard lesson, and I refused until the bitter end.”
“What do you mean?”
Mason swallowed the lump in his throat. He wasn’t sure if he was ready, but there was no other way to find out than to simply jump.
“Her name was Amanda.” He paused, thinking back to when it happened—when he first held the results in his hand. “I should have told the family their daughter had no chance. That she should spend her last six months doing what made her happy. But I just…I couldn’t. They were searching for someone to give them hope…” he trailed off, laughing now as he realized how stupid he’d been. “I wanted to play hero.”
Annabelle smiled, but her eyes looked hollow. “You were trying to be kind.” She reached over and squeezed his hand.
Mason shook his head, unable to reciprocate. Her words did nothing to console him. He didn’t want reassurance; he wanted judgement. “I just—I rationalized. Miracles happen, I told myself. Positive thinking, social support, meditation—all those things that helped miracle patients beat the odds.”
“And they do!” Annabelle held his hand tightly, her eyes glossing over. “My Matty lived years past his expiry date.” It was the blackest joke he’d ever heard. “What did you tell them?” she asked quietly, reaching for the tissue box as her cheeks grew moist.
“Don’t give up.”
Annabelle nodded, turning her head to the side as she looked out the window. “That’s the only thing people can do.”
“You don’t understand,” Mason hissed, tearfully confessing to the experimental treatment and how it’d ruined her quality of life. “I told them there’d been cases with unexpected results.”
He searched her eyes for something other than sadness—anger, regret, hatred even.
Annabelle lowered her gaze. He heard a quiet whimper, though it was quickly silenced with a sharp breath.
“When did she…?”
“Three months in,” Mason said. “She died of uterine haemorrhaging, a side effect of aggressive treatment.” It was the rawest thing he’d ever experienced and by far the most terrifying. Death happened so quickly, without regard for all the effort put into preventing it. Mason had watched as months of treatment and hope bled out in mere seconds. Amanda’s family was devastated, their grief too overwhelming for them to think about who to blame. At the end of it all, they even shook his hand. Thank you for everything you’ve done, they’d said, but all he’d done was kill their daughter. He even received an invitation to the funeral and attended out of obligation.
“Two weeks later,” he continued, “I took a leave of absence from the hospital. I needed to get away from it all—the stress, the guilt.”
An oppressing silence followed as the two sat across from one another. In front of him, Mason did not see Annabelle, but the mother of a child whose life he’d shortened because of his own unwillingness to accept one simple fact: people die.
“I forgive you.” Annabelle’s words almost dissipated by the time they reached Mason’s ears. It was as though she knew exactly what he needed after having been on the battlefield so long herself. She squeezed his hand to let him know she was still there. “It’s what us mothers do.”
“Thank you,” he breathed out, his shoulders caving in as the weight slid off them. Perhaps this was the moment of healing he had been searching for, and his fractured heart could finally begin to mend. At last, he could look at Annabelle as Mason Evans would, and not as the guilt-stricken doctor who'd failed. He smiled tentatively, warmth spreading through his chest.
Annabelle too smiled, and the silence stretched on until she finally let go of his hand and pulled back. “You must be tired,” she said, though he could see she was equally exhausted.
“I think I’ll just go to bed early tonight,” he decided, drinking his tea in one gulp and taking the mug back to the sink. He wanted to be alone to process what just occurred. He glanced at Annabelle, still sitting at the table.
“I’ll catch you in the morning,” he told her, receiving a shaky smile in return.
He paused on his way out and peeked at Annabelle’s face, strained with sadness. Their conversation undoubtedly stirred up painful memories. He opened his mouth to ask if she was all right, or if she needed to say her piece—but he stopped. What could he possibly tell her that she hadn’t already heard from a dozen other well-meaning doctors and friends? What if his attempts to comfort her only backfired? His heart finally sung with relief; he didn’t want to ruin it just yet.
Deciding to cut his losses, Mason retreated upstairs. After a long, hot shower, he crawled under the duvet and sunk into the mattress. It was the first time he really felt how the memory foam melded to his body. Closing his eyes, Mason rolled over to turn off the bedside lamp, the iridescent dream stone resting quietly at its base.
“It’s over,” he whispered. “All this stuff about the Dreamwalker, wolves, Kai Donovan—I’m done. I don’t need it anymore.” He broke out into a triumphant smile. “I found my answer.”
He reached over the dream stone and switched off the light.
When Mason awoke in the middle of the night, a strange man was standing over him. He was pale, sickly, his eyes sunken and his face haggard despite looking about thirty. Something about his coppery hair, the shape of his nose, and the lines of his face struck Mason as familiar. The man stared down at him with a displeased frown, as though he was confronting an intruder.
As Mason struggled to clear the fog, he realized that he couldn’t lift his head from the pillow. He tried to wiggle a finger, but he felt nothing in
his hands—like his limbs had been severed. But he was too preoccupied with the figure to panic over his lack of mobility. Gradually, the recognition strengthened until he realized who it was, his pulse quickening as he waited for the apparition to disappear. Surely, he was dreaming; surely, he was not looking into the face of a ghost—not after he’d finally earned Annabelle’s forgiveness.
Surely, this was not Mathias.
The ailing phantom tilted his head, his features warping monstrously, his eyes and nose melting from his face while his mouth twisted sideways, then upwards into something resembling a smile. Like hot, raw dough, his flesh slewed off, dripping in globs over his shoulders and chest.
Cold sweat ran down Mason’s face and neck, his breathing laboured as he grew increasingly aware of his own consciousness—the texture of the pillow, the smoothness of cotton sheets brushing against his legs, the familiar shadows that danced along the four walls he’d grown so accustomed to. But he was unable to tear his eyes away. The creature before him reached up and dug its fingers into its own face, peeling away what remained of the putrid flesh.
Beneath it was something unexpected—another face, a familiar one bearing a cutting smile and two pitch-black eyes that glistened like wet asphalt.
Gavran.
“You never came back,” his eerie voice echoed through the vacant space, “so I’ve come to you.”
Leaning over, the old man lowered his head like a vulture, those depthless pools growing larger and larger as his face drew near. When the boundary between them crumbled away, Mason could see nothing else. He fell into the void and onto the other side, to a place beyond what should have been possible.
23
The First
Mason came to standing in the centre of an abandoned village. Many of the buildings were burnt to the ground or charred black. Smoke rose from the trees peppering the town, and the smell of ash smouldered in his nostrils. There were no cars, no lights, no power lines, no pavement, and certainly no signs of life. The buildings appeared to be made of wood and stone, and none were larger than an ordinary cottage. Up ahead, he saw a burning pyre with a post fastened in the middle—but no one was there.
“Where am I?” he wondered aloud, the words swallowed by the open space.
“I told you. I’ve come to you.”
Startled by the youthfulness of the voice, Mason spun around to find a boy no older than twelve standing behind him. His hair was a cold midnight black with a slight iridescent glow, not unlike the plumage of a bird. His skin—white like porcelain but with a touch of sickness—seemed lifeless and waxy smooth. It was like the boy was nothing more than a container. But those eyes—those glistening, inky eyes—told Mason exactly who this boy was.
“Gavran,” he all but choked on the name. “Where are we? Why do you look like that?”
The corners of the boy’s lips slithered outward, stretching over bloodied teeth. The sound that left him could not have been less human—a throaty cackle echoing into the eerie silence. He chortled with unfettered glee.
“There,” Gavran hissed sharply, his eyes widening in delight, the tresses on his head ruffling like feathers. His body jerked awkwardly as he hunched over in a predatory stance, stiffening in anticipation of something in the distance. As Mason whirled around, a shadow passed overhead, mutating the scene.
As if having moved back in time, the village was no longer in ruins. The buildings were intact as smoke rose from the chimneys, and the houses seemed inhabited. Up ahead, Mason saw the orange glow of dozens of torches—a group of men and women congregating around the village gates.
Beyond them he could see the edge of a massive forest—one that struck him as familiar. He was still in Black Hollow. The people in the crowd wore archaic clothing, though Mason couldn’t place from what year. They whispered to one another, the air tense as their gazes fixed on someone just beyond the gates. It was a young woman in a cloak. Her face was obscured by a hood, though Mason guessed she was female by her dainty hands and the subtle swell of her hips. She was facing away from the villagers, staring off into the forest, when suddenly a howl erupted from somewhere in the distance—a call both haunting and sorrowful. There was a collective gasp among the villagers before their whispering grew louder, and Mason heard a single word flutter through the crowd:
Dreamwalker.
The villagers battered the hooded girl with mistrusting glares.
“Dreamwalker,” they hissed at her again, the name both accusation and revelation.
Was this girl the fabled spirit that haunted Black Hollow?
Was the Dreamwalker just an ordinary young woman, forced to leave her home behind? There appeared to be nothing supernatural about her.
Yet the scene before Mason was anything but mundane. Around the villagers floated a strange, life-like mist. It slithered through the air, approaching each of the townsfolk and swirling around them until they spewed venomous accusations at the alienated young woman. Only then did the dark vapour move on to the next person. A sinister presence was among them, and Mason wondered if it was the source of the villagers’ malice.
“He was right,” Mason heard someone say, and the dark mist trembled as though laughing. “We should have banished her sooner. No one comes out of those woods alive.”
The presence began to shift, gathering into a pool of darkness behind the villagers. The mass was at first formless, its edges flickering like ebony flames. Gradually, it took the shape of a man, his face shrouded save for two sharp, golden eyes—cold like metal gleaming under a florescent light. Whatever it—or he—was, he couldn’t have been benign. The malevolent entity appeared to have turned the villagers against the girl—the Dreamwalker. While Mason couldn’t fathom what this girl might have done to make him so angry, it was clear that he harboured ill will towards her, that he wanted to punish her.
Mason watched as the young woman began walking towards the forest—towards the howls that echoed from within it. Yet even though everything suggested she was being exiled, Mason sensed a longing in her that matched that of the howling wolf—a yearning to return to something. Was she accepting her fate, or had she chosen it for herself? He couldn’t tell which it was. As she moved away, the villagers began shouting, pumping their fists in the air, spitting on the ground she walked on and cursing her name.
Her choice did not matter; the villagers wanted blood, and the malevolent puppeteer stalking the grounds behind them would have nothing less than her damnation. As her figure grew distant, Mason’s anxiety mounted. Feeling the need to act, he bolted forward, trying to reach the crowd—yet no matter how hard he pressed his feet into the ground, he didn’t get any closer. Frustrated, he called out to them, but his voice was sucked into a vacuum.
The villagers didn’t hear him—but he did. The shadowy being turned its attention away from the scene, taking note of the intruder for the first time. His bright eyes lock onto the young doctor.
Mason stumbled back as the dark flames dancing along the creature’s form twisted erratically, sweeping outward and rushing closer. He looked towards the village gates and beyond, but the young woman was far out of sight. It was too late to stop her. When he turned back, he was face-to-face with the entity. A low, distorted growl reverberated from the murky depths of the molten black silhouette. The phantom drew nearer with every breath, his gleaming eyes widening with rage as his essence bled out, cloaking the land like a plague.
“It’s time to go,” Gavran hissed, the boy’s breath cold on Mason’s cheek before something seized his shoulders. Hands—no, more like talons—plucked him from the ground as sharp, curved nails cut into his flesh.
As he was pulled up, the entity below shrieked with monstrous fury. Colour drained from the landscape as the entity dispersed, swallowing the village—and its inhabitants—until nothing remained but a boundless sea of black miasma.
24
Gasping for air, Mason shot upright, his mouth watering as a powerful wave of nausea ripped through him. He
could feel the bile rising as he tumbled out of bed and tripped into the bathroom. By the time he keeled over the toilet, he had already thrown up in his mouth, the acidic smell making his insides churn until the rest of dinner came rushing up. When there was nothing left, he rested his elbows against the toilet seat and heaved for air.
What he’d just witnessed—was it part of the legend?
Mason pushed himself away from the toilet and peeled his shirt off, wiping the sweat from his neck. He needed to solve this mystery, and he needed to do it now.
Through his own research and Mathias’ fragmented blog critiques, Mason knew about the town’s history with murdered girls and wolf culls. The undying belief in the myth, the violence against women, and the mass slaughter of wolves—how were they connected?
Each time they say she steals one, the stolen one burns.
Gavran’s words may not have been so crazy, after all.
Mason plopped down on the cool ceramic floor, his mind whirling. The pieces of the puzzle were all there; he just needed to put them together. The girl from the legend—the one they expelled...deep down, the villagers must have known she was just an ordinary woman and not some supernatural creature.
But what about the sinister presence in the dream? Was that embellishment? Metaphor? Why had Gavran forced Mason to see and feel that thing?
What on earth was the old man trying to tell him? How had he teleported across space and through consciousness? He seemed to be everywhere and yet nowhere all at once. Mason recalled his experience in the archives—the voice in the shadows, speaking to him in riddles and rhymes.
Then he remembered the testimonials. He’d photocopied every last one.