Point Hollow

by Rio Youers

  Abraham’s Faith.

  What happened up there all those years ago?

  The truth is buried somewhere in this town, and I’m going to find it.

  July 27, 1997.

  Kip Sawyer is the oldest man in Point Hollow. His exact age isn’t known, but his older brother (not much older, it has to be said—maybe six years) was killed in the Second Battle of the Marne. That was World War I, summer of 1918, so it would be fair to assume that Kip is in his early- to mid-nineties. He walks slowly, carefully, with the aid of two sticks, can’t see worth a damn, but there’s nothing wrong with his thinker. He was on the town council until three years ago, and you’ll often find him at Blueberry Bush Park, or sitting in Cuppa Joe’s, magnifier in hand, zipping through the New York Times crossword.

  I’ve known him, obviously, all my life. He’s always been around, like Abraham’s Faith, or the red mulberry—fantastic for climbing—on the corner of Burgess and Willow. I often wonder how I appear to him. Kip Sawyer was old when I was born, twenty-seven years ago. I must be like a housefly, bopping senselessly against a window.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Sawyer.”

  He glanced up from his crossword, his washed eyes squinted behind his glasses, identifying me by voice and outline. He wore a floppy hat, and I saw streaks of sunscreen on the backs of his hands. Blueberry Bush Park was as busy as it ever gets: a few kids playing ball, Frisbee . . . couples sprawled in the sun, catching rays, making out. Lazy Sunday afternoon. Kip Sawyer was in his preferred place: a bench beneath the generous shade of a sugar maple. He would remain there until the sun found a way through the branches.

  “Young Oliver Wray,” he said with a smile. “Temporary town during the depression. Eleven letters.”

  I shrugged and shook my head.

  “The fourth letter is a V.”

  I have always been too scared to talk about the mountain. It knows my name, after all, and where to find me. I certainly never discussed what Matthew and I discovered in that deep place during the summer of 1984, and Matthew held his silence, too—terrified, probably, although I heard he’d been lost in the woods for three days, and was found trembling and delirious, so I’m not sure how much of the incident he recalled.

  So how could I find out what happened up there—who the children were, and how they met their fate—without revealing what I know, or unmasking, and showing the town my darkness?

  “Hooverville,” Kip said.

  “I’m sorry?”

  He scratched the letters into the empty boxes and moved his magnifier to the next clue. I sat on the ground in front of him, partly in the shade. Sunlight tattooed my right side. I could see the edge of the mountain from my position and considered the myriad skeletons trapped in the gloom. Kip adjusted the newspaper and the movement caught my eye. There was a picture of Connor Wright on one of the pages. Missing for over a month now. His eyes were like mine.

  Where are we going, Uncle Tookie?

  Kip folded the newspaper and he disappeared.

  “How can I help you, Oliver?” he asked.

  “I’m curious,” I said.

  “Join the club,” Kip said, and winked at me. “That doesn’t go away as you get older. You get wiser, sure, but that only makes you more curious. It’s life’s way of jerking you off, but never quite finishing the job.”

  “Sounds like my ex-girlfriend,” I said.

  “Life is the most beautiful woman you’ll ever sleep with,” the old man said. “But she’ll kick your keister if you don’t treat her right.”

  “I guess.”

  “Bronze man function. Seven letters.”

  “I have no idea.”

  “That’s because you haven’t thought about it. Most things can be solved with a little thought, Oliver.”

  I nodded, but groaned inside. I didn’t want this conversation to turn into the maxims of Kipling Sawyer, nonagenarian and crossword enthusiast. I had to draw rein—get to the point.

  “What’s wrong with this town?” I asked.

  He looked at me, frowning, but there was a mirthful tilt to his lips. He nodded once, set the magnifier and pen down, and then gazed at the children playing ball behind me. His rheumy eyes widened. I wondered how much he could see—if the children were more like shadows. Or ghosts.

  “Why would you ask such a thing?” His gaze fell on me. It was surprisingly heavy, considering the way his lips tilted, but I took comfort knowing I was a blur to him. A housefly.

  “I think you know,” I replied firmly. “Everything is so goddamn pristine—so Norman Rockwell. The little pink houses, the white picket fences. I’m just suspicious, I guess. It’s like the husband who cheats on his wife and brings her flowers. I think this idyllic exterior is covering something more sinister.”

  “Is that so?” Kip uttered a dry laugh that turned into a cough. He fished a Kleenex from his shirt pocket and covered his mouth. It took him a few moments to catch his breath. The birds whistled and the sobbing wind rolled through the branches.

  “Something feels . . . off,” I said.

  He wheezed, blinked hard, and dabbed silver flecks of spittle from his lips. “Do you think the town is full of Nazi war criminals? Something like that?”

  “No.” I smiled, trying to curb the intensity. I was aware of the edge applied to my tone, but it’s hard to fish when you don’t have any bait. “I just have trouble believing that something so perfect can be genuine.”

  “Why don’t you just accept it, Oliver?” he said. “Stop worrying about it.”

  If only, I thought.

  “This isn’t a problem unless you make it a problem.”

  “You’ve lived here all your life,” I said, and that edge was back. “You know this town. You breathe it, and know its history better than anyone. I just want to know if anything ever happened here. Anything . . . untoward.”

  “There’s a well-stocked library on Main Street,” Kip said.

  “Yes, there is, and you’d think I’d be able to find something about Point Hollow’s history, wouldn’t you? There are books about the Catskills, and Point Hollow is mentioned, but it’s cursory, at best—the triviality we learned in grade school: the first settlers arrived at the end of the revolution, and Point Hollow was established as a town in 1810. Other than that . . .”

  I held out my hands: empty.

  Kip nodded, and he still had that strange smile on his face. He knew something, I was certain of it. This isn’t a problem unless you make it a problem, he’d said, which was another way of saying, Let sleeping dogs lie. He took off his hat and ran a hand over his hairless head. His eyes closed for a moment and I imagined him listening to the children playing, drifting momentarily from my company to a place of ignorance, filled with spurious smiles and deeply dreaming dogs.

  “There’s nothing wrong with this town,” he said. He opened his eyes and absorbed my outline. I saw his pupils contract behind the cataracts, like twin faces drawing away from twin windows. “The people here are happy. They live in nice homes and breathe fresh air. There are no slums, virtually no crime, and the streets are clean. The schools are excellent, and Cuppa Joe’s serves arguably the best coffee north of Guatemala. Whatever suspicions you have can safely be laid to rest, Oliver. Point Hollow is a wonderful place.”

  And what about the dead children in the mountain? I almost asked, but zipped my lip.

  Kip went back to his crossword, which was his way of dismissing me, but I wasn’t quite done. I allowed a minute or two to pass, regaining composure, somewhat unsettled by his reticence. A plane roared overhead, vapour trails scoring the sky. I listened to the children play. Kip’s pen moved as if it were dancing with his hand. I took a deep breath and said:

  “What about Abraham’s Faith?”

  It was as close as I dared to get. I felt my heart drumming in my chest and prayed my expression would
not betray me. I looked squarely at Kip. His eyes flashed with uncertainty and for a second—no more—his mirthfully slanted lips disappeared into the lines of his face.

  “What about it?” he asked. Was his voice trembling?

  “Look on any map and it’s called Old Bear Mountain.” I linked my fingers to keep my hands from shaking, and noticed that the old man had done the same. “Yet we call it Abraham’s Faith. Why the nickname?”

  He shrugged. “One of those small-town affectations, I suppose.”

  “Does it have anything to do with the Bible story?” I pushed. “Abraham taking his son to the mountain, to sacrifice him at God’s command?”

  Kip sighed. The pen rolled from his lap and dropped between the slats of the bench’s seat. A flicker of agitation touched his brow. “You’re asking a lot of questions, Oliver. Don’t you have anything better to do on a Sunday afternoon?”

  I reached beneath the bench and retrieved his pen. “What can I say? I’m a troubled man.”

  “I’d say you are.”

  I held out the pen. He reached for it and yes, his hand was shaking quite badly.

  What do you know?

  His fingers closed around it and I held on for a moment before letting go.

  “This is a God-fearing town, Oliver,” he said. “The church is an important part of who we are. This was truer in the past, before the many distractions of modern life. There was a time when the church was all we had. And so yes, I’m sure the mountain’s sobriquet is derived from the Old Testament, but for no other reason than that we had—and still have—absolute faith in our creator. And why wouldn’t we, when living in such a beautiful part of the world?”

  I smiled and nodded. “God’s Footprint.”

  “Indeed.”

  I got to my feet and my smile widened, as false as everything else in this town. Kip Sawyer knew more than he was letting on, but he wasn’t about to share it with me.

  “One more question,” I said.

  That mirthful tilt of the lips again. “But of course.”

  “Do you believe that an inanimate object, or place, can be spiritually possessed? That evil can exist in something non-living?”

  “We’re veering into the paranormal now,” Kip said. “Quite a departure from the Bible.”

  “Not really,” I said. “The Book of Revelation 18:2: ‘And he cried with a mighty voice saying, Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, and is become the habitation of demons, and a hold of every unclean spirit, and a hold of every unclean and hateful bird.’”

  He regarded me thoughtfully for a long time. I saw a small muscle in his jaw working. Eventually he replied, “Yes, Oliver, I suppose I do believe that evil can reside in just about anything.”

  I nodded and looked at the mountain. “But something would have to make it evil, do you agree?”

  “I do,” he said. “Something . . . or somebody.”

  October 14, 1997.

  Today I went to Abraham’s Faith and searched the skeletons (looking for clues, information—anything), but found nothing that helped. A few trinkets. A small wooden toy. I looked at the boy-skeleton dressed in blue jeans and Converse All Stars, and noticed the initials J.C. stitched into the collar of his T-shirt. Jacques Cousteau? Jesus Christ? Johnny Carson? The initials were interesting, but useless. This was, however, the only child dressed in jeans and sneakers. The others wore simpler clothes, most of them rotted to rags, clearly from a different time. Easy to deduce that J.C. had been brought here much later. Or perhaps, like me, he had been called here, and had given his own life.

  That’s one way of attaining silence.

  March 20, 1998.

  Almost nine months and nothing from the mountain. It hangs in my life like a picture. Silent. Unmoving. But how long before it booms again, ravenous?

  One year? Ten?

  Or maybe it’s over.

  How can I pursue a normal life, walking this tightrope, never knowing?

  For my part in this, I feel I am owed the truth. You can forget Dr. Kim and trazodone. Ditto grade-A drugs and sunset on the Pacific. The truth is the only thing that can help, and it may forever elude me. But know this: until my dying day I will endeavor to find out what happened on that mountain.

  And what it really wants from me.

  Chapter Two

  It had been a long time since Matthew had woken up screaming—more than twenty years, and back then his parents had been there to comfort him, and assure him he was safe. He never remembered the dreams he’d pulled himself from, only that they were dark and damp. He assumed that someone, or something, pursued him through the darkness, but this aspect of the nightmare was blessedly vague.

  The screaming stopped, but the nightmares followed him into adulthood. Once, sometimes twice, a week. They stemmed, almost certainly, from a childhood incident of which he had no memory: ten years old, lost for three days in the Catskill Mountains. He was eventually found, shivering like a new fawn, nine miles from home. But how he came to be there . . .

  No recollection. Zero.

  Kirsty had shown concern during the blossoming phase of their relationship, but it was a fallacious thing, and had worn thin quickly. They had been married for six years, but emotionally divorced for the last two. On the occasions he awoke, bathed in perspiration, the bed sheets so damp you could wring drips from them, Kirsty’s response was invariably disdain, as if it were a childish habit he had never grown out of. She would often remove to the couch, uttering imprecations. Her caged-cat temperament had twice impelled her to strike him as he blinked the nightmare from his eyes.

  But for more than twenty years he hadn’t screamed. He’d trapped it in his throat and eased it out in a succession of shallow breaths. Until two nights ago. The nightmare had dragged him deep and he’d burst from it howling. Kirsty had ripped from her side of the bed as if something had crawled under the sheets and bitten her ass. She’d thrown a glass of water at him and slapped his face. Matthew cried into the early hours, confused and ashamed. Kirsty didn’t come home from work the following day. She called him at nine P.M. and told him she needed time to think—not to mention a good night’s sleep.

  “You need help, Matthew.”

  “I see Dr. Meeker every Thursday. A hundred and twenty dollars an hour. How much help do I need?”

  The screaming episode had been the catalyst, preceded by two years of discontent and falsehood. Silence. Lies. Verbal and physical abuse. Adultery. And that was just Kirsty. Matthew, for his part, played the victim. His submissiveness was Kirsty’s fuel.

  “This isn’t working,” She sat at the kitchen table, looking at its scuffed wooden surface, massaging her temples with her forefingers, avoiding eye contact. Matthew didn’t know why she couldn’t look him in the eye, given everything they had shared during their six years of marriage. He had seen her pee and shower (and pee in the shower, on one occasion). He had lifted the hair from her face while she vomited. He had peeled open her labia and gazed wondrously and wonderingly inside her, like an astrologer gazing at the surface of some newly discovered planet. He had made love to her—been inside her, as deep and close as it was possible for anybody to get. They talked, shared secrets, laughed with and at each other. They used to hold hands in the movie theatre, like teenagers. They had sworn their vows before family, friends, and before God. They were togetherness. No longer individuals.

  But she couldn’t look him in the eye. Matthew believed this was their most intimate moment of all: the beginning of heartbreak; something that would scar them both. And she couldn’t face it.

  “What do you mean?” he asked. It was a knucklehead question—of course he knew what she meant. But he wanted to make her work at breaking his heart.

  She sighed and glanced up, but not at Matthew. Her blue eyes skimmed toward the window, where the blush of sunset pressed against the blinds. She kept massaging h
er temples, as if ending their marriage was giving her a headache. Just another inconvenience, like their rowdy neighbours.

  “Look at me,” he said.

  She looked at the table.

  “Look at me, Kirsty. At me.”

  “I don’t want to look at you, Matt. I’m so tired of looking at you.”

  Matthew’s shoulders slumped. He leaned against the sink, shuffled his feet, and let silence happen. He had always thought of it as a Mexican Silence—both engaged in the other’s downfall, with no good coming from it. Moments like this could only be resolved with conversation, but stubbornly they resisted. Which meant, of course, that Kirsty was right; it wasn’t working. Matthew had known it for a long time, but held on because he loved her. He hadn’t forgotten the rare glimmer in her eyes as she walked down the aisle. He wasn’t ready to let go.

  He took a seat at the table beside her, touched her upper arm. She didn’t pull away from him, but he felt her stiffen, as if it were the first time he had touched her. A stranger becoming overly familiar. Her muscle flexed as she went on massaging her temples. Infinitesimal beats, like her small heart.

  “We should talk about this,” he said, breaking the silence, standing down. He had dropped his weapon and spread his arms. Kirsty unloaded on him, bullets tearing into his flesh. No mercy.

  “There’s nothing to talk about. I don’t feel anything for you. No love. No emotion. You’re like that plant: dried-up and wilted. You don’t excite me anymore.”

  She trailed off, making disinterested gestures at the peace lily on the shelf, its flowers brown and drained. Matthew had always liked that plant. It used to bring colour into the kitchen, but neither of them had watered it for a long time. He imagined the wretched thing sucking moisture from the air, straining its green lungs. He felt a sudden impulse to throw a mug of water into its soil, but Kirsty had reloaded and was rattling rounds into him again.

  “This isn’t a marriage, Matt, it’s a prison sentence. I can barely stand the sight of you, and I hate when you touch me.”

  He removed his hand from her arm.