Dark Hollow

by John Connolly

  "If this snow keeps up, the plane's going to have to turn back," said Patterson.

  "Nearly there," said Ryley. "Another ten minutes and we'll have her."

  A gunshot exploded in the darkness ahead of them, then a second. The light on the plane tilted and started to rise. Patterson's radio burst out with an angry blast of speech.

  "Hell," said Patterson, with a look of disbelief on his face. "She's shooting at them."

  The Cambodian stayed close to Paulie Block as he moved to the rear of the car. Behind them, the younger men pulled back their coats to reveal Uzis hanging from straps on their shoulders. Each kept a hand on the grip, one finger just outside the trigger guard.

  "Open it," said the older man.

  "You're the boss," said Paulie, as he inserted the key in the lock and prepared to lift the trunk. "Paulie's just here to open the trunk." If the Cambodian had been listening more intently, he would have noticed that Paulie Block said the words very loudly and very distinctly.

  "Gun slits," said Briscoe suddenly. "Fucking gun slits, that's what they are."

  "Gun slits," repeated Nutley. "Oh, Jesus."

  * * *

  Paulie Block opened the trunk and stepped back. A blast of heat greeted the Cambodian as he moved forward. In the trunk was a blanket, and beneath it was a recognizably human form. The Cambodian leaned in and pulled the blanket back.

  Beneath it was a man: a man with a sawed-off shotgun.

  "What is this?" said the Cambodian.

  "This is good-bye," said Paulie Block, as the barrels roared and the Cambodian jerked with the impact of the shots.

  "Fuck," said Briscoe. "Move! Move!" He drew his SIG and ran for the back door, flipping a switch on his handset and calling for the Scarborough backup to move in as he opened the lock and headed into the night in the direction of the two cars.

  "What about noninterference?" said Nutley as he followed the older man. This wasn't the way it was supposed to happen. It wasn't supposed to go down like this at all.

  Cheerful Chester 's coat flew open, revealing the twin short barrels of a pair of Walther MPK submachine guns. Two of the Cambodians were already raising their Uzis when he pulled the triggers.

  "Sayonara," said Chester, his mouth widening into a grin.

  The 9mm parabellums ripped into the three men, tearing through the leather of the briefcase, the expensive wool of their coats, the pristine whiteness of their shirts, the thin shells of their skins. They shattered glass, pierced the metal of the car, pockmarked the vinyl of the seats. It took less than four seconds to empty sixty-four rounds into the three men, leaving them wrinkled and slumped, their warm blood melting the thin layer of frost on the ground. The briefcase had landed face down, some of the tightly packed wads scattering as it fell.

  Chester and Paulie saw what they had done, and it was good.

  "Well, what are you waiting for?" said Paulie. "Let's get the money and get the fuck out of here."

  Behind him, the man with the shotgun, whose name was Jimmy Fribb, climbed from the cramped trunk and stretched his legs, his joints creaking. Chester loaded a fresh clip into one of the MPKs and dumped the other in the trunk of the Dodge. He was just leaning down to pick up the fallen money when the two shouts came almost together.

  "FBI," said the first voice. "Let me see your hands now."

  The other voice was less succinct, and less polite, but probably strangely familiar to Paulie Block.

  "Get the fuck away from the money," it said, "or I'll blow your fucking heads off."

  The old woman stood in a patch of clear ground, watching the sky. Snow fell on her hair, on her shoulders and on her outstretched arms, the gun clasped in her right hand, her left hand open and empty. Her mouth was gaping and her chest heaved as her aging body tried to cope with its exertions. She seemed not to notice Ryley and the others until they were only thirty feet from her. The nurse hung back behind the others. Ryley, despite Patterson's objections, took the lead.

  "Miss Emily," he said softly. "Miss Emily, it's me, Dr. Ryley. We're here to take you home."

  The woman looked at him and Ryley suspected, for the first time since they had set out, that Miss Emily was not mad. Her eyes were calm as she watched him, and she almost grinned as he approached.

  "I'm not going back," she said.

  "Miss Emily, it's cold. You're going to die out here if you don't come with us. We've brought you blankets and warm clothes, and I have a thermos of chicken soup. We'll get you warm and comfortable, then we'll bring you safely back."

  The woman actually smiled then, a broad smile with no humor to it, and no trust.

  "You can't keep me safe," she said softly. "Not from him."

  Ryley frowned. He recalled something about the woman now, an incident with a visitor and a later report from one of the nurses after Miss Emily claimed that someone had tried to climb in her window. They'd dismissed it, of course, although Judd had taken to wearing his gun on duty as a result. These old folks were nervous, fearful of illness, of strangers, of friends and relatives sometimes, fearful of the cold, of the possibility of falling, fearful for their meager possessions, for their photos, for their fading memories.

  Fearful of death.

  "Please, Miss Emily, put the gun down and come back with us. We can keep you safe from harm. No one's going to hurt you."

  She shook her head slowly. Above them, the plane circled, casting a strange white light over her frame, turning her long gray hair to silver fire.

  "I'm not going back. I'll face him out here. This is his place, these woods. This is where he'll be."

  Her face changed then. Behind Ryley, Patterson thought he had never seen an expression of such abject terror. Her mouth curled down at the edges, her chin and lips trembled and then the rest of her body began to shake, a strange, violent quivering that was almost like an ecstasy. Tears flowed down her cheeks as she began to speak.

  "I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry…"

  "Please, Miss Emily," said Ryley, as he moved toward her. "Put the gun down. We have to take you back."

  "I'm not going back," she repeated.

  "Please, Miss Emily, you must."

  "Then you'll have to kill me," she said simply, as she pointed the Smith & Wesson at Ryley and pulled the trigger.

  * * *

  Chester and Paulie looked first to their left and then to their right. To their left, in the parking lot, stood a tall man in a black jacket with a handset in one hand and a SIG held before him in the other. Behind him stood another, younger man, also holding a SIG, this time in a two-handed grip, with a gray alpaca hat on his head and flaps hanging down over his ears.

  To their right, beside a small wooden hut used to collect parking fees during the summer, stood a figure dressed entirely in black, from the tips of his boots to the ski mask covering his head. He held a Ruger pump-action in his hands and he breathed heavily through the round slit in the mask.

  "Cover him," said Briscoe to Nutley. Nutley 's SIG shifted from Paulie Block to the black-garbed figure near the edge of the woods.

  "Drop it, asshole," said Nutley.

  The Ruger wavered slightly.

  "I said, 'Drop it,'" repeated Nutley, his voice rising to a shout.

  Briscoe's eyes moved briefly to take in the figure with the shotgun. It was all Chester Nash needed. He spun and opened fire with the MPK, hitting Briscoe in the arm and Nutley in the chest and head. Nutley died instantly, his alpaca hat turning red as he fell.

  Briscoe opened fire from where he lay on the road, hitting Chester Nash in the right leg and the groin, the MPK tumbling from his hands as he fell. From the woods came the sound of the Ruger opening up and Paulie Block, his gun in his right hand, bucked as he was hit, the windshield behind him shattering as the shots exited. He slumped to his knees and then fell face down on the ground. Chester Nash tried to reach for the MPK with his right hand, his left hand clasping his injured groin, when Briscoe fired two more shots i
nto him and he ceased moving. Jimmy Fribb dropped his shotgun and raised his hands, just in time to stop Briscoe from killing him.

  Briscoe was about to rise when, from in front of him, he heard the sound of a shotgun shell being jacked.

  "Stay down," said the voice.

  He did as he was told, placing the SIG on the ground beside him. A black-booted foot kicked the gun away, sending it spinning into the undergrowth.

  "Put your hands on your head."

  Briscoe lifted his hands, his left arm aching as he did so, and watched as the masked figure moved toward him, the Ruger still pointing down. Nutley lay on his back close by, his open eyes staring out at the sea. Christ, thought Briscoe, what a mess. Beyond the trees, he could see headlights and hear the sound of approaching cars. The man with the shotgun heard them too, his head twisting slightly as he placed the last of the cash in the briefcase and closed it. Jimmy Fribb used the distraction to make a lunge for the discarded SIG but the gunman killed him before he could reach it, firing a shot into his back. Briscoe tightened his grip on his head, his injured arm aching, and started to pray.

  "Stay flat on the ground and don't look up," he was told.

  Briscoe did as he was told, but kept his eyes open. Blood flowed on the ground beneath him and he moved his head slightly to avoid it. When he looked up again, there were headlights in his eyes and the figure in black was gone.

  Dr. Martin Ryley was forty-eight, and was anxious to see forty-nine. He had two children, a boy and a girl, and a wife called Joanie who cooked him pot roast on Sundays. He wasn't a very good doctor, which was why he ran an old folks' home. When Miss Emily Watts fired at him, he hit the ground, covered his head with his hands and began alternately praying and blaspheming. The first shot went somewhere to his left. The second sprayed wet dirt and snow on his face. Behind him, he heard the sound of safety catches clicking off and he shouted: "No, leave her, please. Don't shoot."

  Once again the woods were silent, with only the high buzzing of the Cessna as a distraction. Ryley risked a glance up at Miss Emily. She was crying openly now. Carefully, Ryley rose to his feet.

  "It's okay, Miss Emily."

  Miss Emily shook her head. "No," she replied. "It will never be okay." And she put the mouth of the Smith & Wesson to her left breast and fired. The impact spun her backward and to her left, her feet tangling beneath her as she fell and the fabric of her coat igniting briefly from the muzzle flare. She shuddered once then lay still upon the ground, her blood staining the earth around her, the snow falling on her open eyes, her body lit by the light from above.

  And around her, the woods watched silently, their branches shifting occasionally to allow the passage of the snow.

  This is how it began for me, and for another generation: two violent occurrences, taking place almost simultaneously one winter's night, bound together by a single dark thread that lost itself in tangled memories of distant, brutal acts. Others, some of them close to me, had lived with it for a long, long time, and had died with it. This was an old evil, and old evil has a way of permeating bloodlines and tainting those who played no part in its genesis: the young, the innocent, the vulnerable, the defenseless. It turns life to death and glass to mirrors, creating an image of itself in everything that it touches.

  All of this I learned later, after the other deaths, after it became clear that something terrible was happening, that something old and foul had emerged from the wilderness. And in all that would come to pass, I was a participant. Maybe, looking back into the past, I had always been a participant without ever really understanding how, or why. But that winter, a whole set of circumstances occurred, each incident separate yet ultimately connected. It opened a channel between what had been and what should never have been again, and worlds ended in the collision.

  I look back over the years and see myself as I used to be, frozen in former times like a figure in a series of vignettes. I see myself as a young boy waiting for the first sight of my father as he returns from his day's exertions in the city, his policeman's uniform now put away, a black gym bag in his left hand, his once muscular form now running a little to fat, his hair grayer than it used to be, his eyes a little more tired. I run to him and he sweeps me up into the crook of his right arm, his fingers closing gently on my thigh, and I am amazed at his strength, at the muscles bunched below his shoulder, his biceps tight and hard. I want to be him, to emulate his achievements and to sculpt my body in his likeness. And when he begins to come apart, when his body is revealed only as the flawed shield for a fragile mind, then I, too, start to fall to pieces.

  I see myself as an older boy, standing by my father's grave, only a handful of New York policemen straight and tall beside me, so that I too have to be straight and tall. These are his closest friends, the ones who are not ashamed to come. This is not a place where many wish to be seen; there is bad feeling in the city about what has taken place, and only a loyal few are willing to have their reputations frozen in the flare of a newsman's flashbulb.

  I see my mother to my right, coiled in grief. Her husband-the man she has loved for so long-is gone, and with him the reality of him as a kind man, a family man, a father who could sweep his boy into the air like a leaf on the wind. Instead, he will forever be remembered as a murderer, a suicide. He has killed a young man and a young woman, both unarmed, for reasons that no one will ever properly explain, reasons that lay in the depths of those tired eyes. They had taunted him, this thug making the transition from juvenile to adult courts and his middle-class girlfriend with his dirt under her manicured nails, and he had killed them, seeing in them something beyond what they were, beyond even what they might become. Then he had put his gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

  I see myself as a young man, standing at another grave, watching as they lower my mother down. Beside me now is the old man, my grandfather. We have traveled down from Scarborough, Maine-the place to which we fled after the death of my father, the place in which my mother was born-for the funeral, so that my mother can be buried beside my father, as she has always wished, for she has never stopped loving him. Around us, old men and women have gathered. I am the youngest person present.

  I see snowfalls in winter. I see the old man grow older. I leave Scarborough. I become a policeman, like my father, like my grandfather. There is a legacy to be acknowledged, and I will not be found wanting. When my grandfather dies, I return to Scarborough and fill in the grave myself, spadefuls of earth carefully falling on the pine casket. The morning sun shines down on the cemetery and I can smell the salt on the air, carried from the marshes to the east and the west. Nearby, a golden-crowned kinglet chases cluster flies, filthy gray insects that lay their eggs inside living earthworms, their young eventually consuming the host from within, and seek shelter from the winter in the chinks and cracks of houses. Above, the first of the Canada geese fly south for the winter, a pair of ravens flanking them like black fighters escorting a flight of bombers.

  And as the last patch of wood disappears, I hear the sound of children's voices coming from the Lil Folks Farm nursery school close by the cemetery, the noise of their games high and joyful, and I cannot help but smile, for the old man would have smiled as well.

  And then there is one more grave, one more set of prayers read from a tattered book, and this one tears my world apart. Two bodies are laid down to rest side by side, just as I used to find them resting close to each other when I returned at night to our Brooklyn home, my three-year-old daughter sleeping quietly in the curled quarter-moon of her mother's form. In one instant, I ceased to be a husband. I ceased to be a father. I had failed to protect them, and they had been punished for my failings.

  All of these images, all of these memories, like the forged links of a chain, stretch back into the darkness. They should be put away, but the past is not so easily denied. Things left unfinished, things left unsaid, they all, in the end, come back to haunt us.

  For this is the world, and the echo of worlds.

>   CHAPTER ONE

  Billy Purdue's knife bit deeper into my cheek, sending a trickle of blood down my face. His body was pressed hard against mine, his elbows pinning my arms to the wall, his legs tensed against mine so I couldn't go for his groin. His fingers tightened on my neck and I thought:

  Billy Purdue. I should have known better…

  Billy Purdue was poor; poor and dangerous with some bitterness and frustration added to spice up the pot. The threat of violence was always imminent with him. It hung around him like a cloud, obscuring his judgment and influencing the actions of others, so that when he stepped into a bar and took a drink, or picked up a pool cue for a game, trouble would inevitably start. Billy Purdue didn't have to pick fights. Fights picked him.

  It acted like a contagion, so that even if Billy himself managed to avoid conflict-he generally didn't seek it, but when he found it he rarely walked away-five would get you ten that he would have raised the testosterone level in the bar sufficiently to cause someone else to consider starting something. Billy Purdue could have provoked a fight at a conclave of cardinals just by looking into the room. Whatever way you considered it, he was bad news.

  So far, he hadn't killed anybody and nobody had managed to kill him. The longer a situation like that goes on, the more the odds are stacked in favor of a bad end, and Billy Purdue was a bad beginning looking for a worse end. I'd heard people describe him as an accident waiting to happen, but he was more than that. He was a constantly evolving disaster, like the long, slow death of a star. His was an ongoing descent into the maelstrom.

  I didn't know a whole lot about Billy Purdue's past, not then. I knew that he'd always been in trouble with the law. He had a rap sheet that read like a catalog entry for minor crimes, from disrupting school and petty larceny to DWD, receiving stolen goods, assault, trespassing, disorderly conduct, nonpayment of child support… The list went on and on; sometimes, it seemed like half the cops in Maine must have cuffed Billy at some point. He was an adopted child and had been through a succession of foster homes in his youth, each one keeping him for only as long as it took the foster parents to realize that Billy was more trouble than the money from social services was worth. That's the way some foster parents are: they treat the kids like a cash crop, like livestock or chickens, until they realize that if a chicken acts up you can cut its head off and eat it for Sunday dinner, but the options are more limited in the case of a delinquent child. There was evidence of neglect by many of Billy Purdue's foster parents, and suspicion of serious physical abuse in at least two cases.