by Ronald Kelly
It was at that moment that they all came to the same realization. The dark evil that had once reigned the place known as Hell Hollow was no more.
EPILOGUE
“I’m gonna miss you,” said Jasper, extending his hand.
Keith ignored his grandfather’s gesture. He let the neon green backpack sag from his shoulder and smiled, then stepped in close and hugged the old man tightly.
“Yeah, me too,” he said as he pulled away. The boy from Atlanta was tanned and healthy, and appeared to have grown an inch or two during the past month. “I had a great time… except for that crazy business down in the hollow, that is.”
Jasper laughed. “I know what you mean.” He smiled at his grandson. “Remember, next year you’ll have to come and stay the whole summer. Agreed?”
“You bet,” said Keith. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
The twelve-year-old turned and reluctantly faced his friends. Rusty, Maggie, and Chuck gathered around him near the security check-in at Nashville’s Metro Airport. Rusty was the first to speak. “It’s been fun, cuz,” he said, offering his hand.
Keith shook it firmly. “I had a blast, Hiram. Oh, I almost forgot,” he said, reaching into his backpack. “I want you to have this.”
Rusty reached out and took the iPod. “Aw, come on! Are you sure?”
“I’ve got another one at home,” Keith assured him. “You’ll probably have to download some hillbilly tunes. The stuff I listen to is far too cool for your ears.”
“Thanks a lot,” said Rusty with a big grin. He clipped the player onto the belt of his best go-to-town blue jeans.
Keith turned to the chubby boy in the wheelchair. “Hey, Chuck, don’t wear the wheels off that sidecar this fall, okay?” he said. “I aim for us to put it to good use next summer.”
“We’ll tear up Hawkshaw County on those bikes,” Chuck promised, shaking the city boy’s hand. “But we’ll stay clear of the woods, if you don’t mind.”
“That sounds just fine to me,” said Keith. And he meant every word of it.
“Keith?”
The boy turned to find Maggie staring sadly at him. “Hi,” he said, feeling a lump surface in his throat.
“You mean ‘bye’, don’t you?” she asked.
Keith tried to muster a smile, but found it difficult to do so. “Hey, it’s only temporary, you know. I’ll be back to visit at Christmas and again next summer. It’s not like you’re never going to see my ugly face again.”
“I sure hope not,” said the girl softly. She stared at Keith for a long moment, as if debating on whether to do something or not. A second later, she made up her mind. She quickly stretched up on her toes and kissed him on the left cheek.
Keith’s face turned bright red, but he smiled. “Cool,” was all he could manage to say.
“See?” commented Rusty. “I knew they had the hots for each other.”
Chuck leaned over and popped the farm boy in the arm. “Aw, leave ‘em alone, will you?”
After their goodbyes had been said, Jasper nodded toward the security area. “I reckon you’d best get in line. You know how picky they are with security these days. Might take a while.” He hesitated, then added, “Now, you be sure to give your old grandpa a call when you get home. Call collect if you want.”
Keith rolled his eyes. “Are you kidding? My folks can afford it, remember?” He stared at the old man for a moment. “I love you, Grandpa.”
Jasper smiled brightly. “I love you, too, Keith. Take care of yourself.”
“I will if you will.”
“It’s a deal,” laughed the farmer.
Keith waved to his friends, then turned and entered the line that lead through the airport security check-in.
~ * ~
Thirty minutes later, he was sitting alone in a window seat as other passengers began to board for the brief flight to Georgia.
Alone, Keith couldn’t help but recall the frightening events that had taken place during his month-long stay in Harmony. Although none of them had said anything further about that deadly night in Hell Hollow, he found himself thinking of it often.
He glanced around to see if anyone was looking. Everyone was busy preparing for the flight. No one paid him any attention at all.
Keith hadn’t yet placed his backpack in the overhead storage compartment. He now unbuckled the straps of the backpack and opened the flap. He had brought back two souvenirs from his stay in Harmony. Oddly enough, both had to do with the dark happenings that he and the others had unwillingly been caught up in.
The first was the oversized playing card. He held it between his fingers, studying the drawing of the police detective on the rain-soaked streets of an urban jungle. Keith thought of the Big Man and his brush with death on the waterfront pier. He shuddered at the memory and quickly stuck the card out of sight.
The other was a long, slender object in a plastic bag. Carefully, he opened the bag and removed the item.
He couldn’t believe he had actually gotten it through security. He recalled his exchange with the man at the counter.
“I don’t know about this, son,” the fellow had said. “You’re only allowed to take four ounces of liquid on the plane. This looks to be at least eight.”
Keith had faked a convincingly phlegmy cough. “But it’s just cough medicine. I really need the stuff.”
The man had regarded the bottle suspiciously. He had removed it from the Ziploc bag.
“I believe I’ll have to confiscate this, kid. For one, it’s a glass container. And, for another… what’s with the cork? They don’t package medicine like this anymore.”
“It’s an old home remedy,” Keith had told him. “This is Tennessee, you know.”
The man had pulled the cork from the bottle and raised the mouth to his nostrils. Almost instantly the concerned expression on his face faded and a soft dreamy look had filled his eyes.
Keith had watched him carefully. “So… is it okay?”
“Uh, sure,” the man had said with a nod. “Here you go, kid. Nothing wrong with this.”
Sitting there, waiting for the flight to take off, Keith regarded the bottle of Doctor Augustus Leech’s Patented Elixir. In fact, it was the very bottle that Slash Jackson had held in his hand upon their arrival, following the fatal wagon crash. Keith had lifted it without his grandfather or the others being any the wiser.
Keith stared at the bottle, watching the light from the plane window play across the dark liquid within the glass. Once again, he looked around. One of the flight attendants was standing nearby, but she was facing the other way. Carefully, Keith removed the cork from the neck of the bottle. He immediately smelled the enticing aromas of the rural town he had just left; the odor of pink bubble gum, RC Colas, and salted peanuts from Hill’s General Store, his Aunt Susan’s home-baked apple pies cooling on her kitchen counter, the rich fragrance of honeysuckle on the breeze of a warm summer night. And, of course, the faint, but heady scent of Maggie’s shampooed hair whenever he stood particularly close to her.
Those aromas and more drifted from the mouth of the elixir bottle. They seemed to beckon to him, tugging at him strongly, tempting him to taste those wondrous things, instead of merely smelling them.
Keith brought the bottle slowly up. It approached his parted lips. One inch. Two.
Then he laughed softly. “Aw, come on, Doctor,” he whispered. “I’m not that stupid.”
The boy took the cork and positioned it above the mouth of the elixir bottle. Abruptly, the enticing scents he had just savored changed drastically, revealing the true nature of the dark poison that lay within. The stench of decay and brimstone, the putrid odor of gunpowder, fresh blood, and burnt human flesh… all assaulted his nostrils. It was the smell of evil, pure and simple.
Keith Bishop quickly stuck the cork into the mouth of the bottle and pressed it in snuggly, sealing away the disturbing odors. Then he placed the bottle back in its bag, stashed it away in his backpack, and settled ba
ck for the trip home.
The End
THE LONG ROAD
TO
HELL HOLLOW
by Ronald Kelly
Have you ever taken a construction detour and found yourself traveling unfamiliar ground? Or maybe you took a short cut to save time and ended up lost and way off the beaten track?
That was sort of how it felt for me, concerning my newest novel, Hell Hollow, which, incidentally, isn’t all that new after all. Let me explain…
In 1996, my horror-writing career was in full-swing. I’d had seven novels published by Zebra Books and another, Blood Kin, was on the verge of being released. Plus I had a couple more in the wings; Hell Hollow and Restless Shadows, a sequel to my first novel, Hindsight. Things seemed to be moving forward in a brisk and positive manner. But then, sometimes things aren’t exactly how they seem to be.
There was trouble brewing in the horror world at that time… something we old-timers call the Big Horror Bust. What it all amounted to was an oversaturation of horror literature in the mass market publishing field. The good novels were being totally drowned out by the white noise of too many novels that were mediocre to downright bad. Horror was immensely popular between the mid-80’s and mid-90’s, and the publishers had all jumped on the bandwagon in a big way. But then they started overdoing it, releasing too many books that just weren’t up to horror readers’ standards, and eventually sales began to suffer. By ’95 and ‘96 most of the larger paperback horror publishers were cutting their losses by ditching their horror lines completely. It was an uneasy time for horror authors back then; watching their peers lose their publishers left and right. I never thought it would ever happen to me… I reckon I was simply naïve. Then, in October of ’96, my agent gives me a call. My hopes for another multi-book deal from Zebra were dashed when I was informed that Zebra was shutting down their entire horror line and that I was basically out of business as far as they were concerned. Blood Kin would be released, but the other two, Hell Hollow and Restless Shadows would not.
Needless to say, I was devastated. I tried to pick up the pieces and find a new publisher, but it was impossible. No publishers were taking on new authors – even established ones – and especially not if horror was their forte. Eventually, I tired of butting my head against the wall and simply gave up writing altogether. I stuck Hell Hollow and the other novel in a drawer and returned to the normal world; one without deadlines, release dates, and hours behind the keyboard.
For ten years I existed in a non-writing limbo, resigned to the fact that I’d had my shot at the writing life and lost it due to no fault of my own. Then, in 2006, something peculiar happened. Folks started asking about me on the internet horror forums and buying my old books off eBay and Amazon. Some very good friends and loyal fans contacted me and convinced me to come back to the horror arena. Is it possible? I asked myself. Do I really have a second chance? After much soul-searching, I decided to try my hand at it again. Believe me, there was a generous amount of doubt and fear involved. I wondered if I still had what it took to write good, effective horror… or if I could even write at all, being out of practice for so very long. But as I began to write and submit new work, I found that my worries were unfounded. If anything, I seemed to be more prolific and actually write better than I had a decade before.
One of my first big deals was with Cemetery Dance Publications. Richard Chizmar gave me a call and suggested we do a short story collection and novel. My story collection would be Midnight Grinding & Other Twilight Terrors (published in 2009), while my comeback novel would be the long-unpublished Hell Hollow.
The deal was done and I waited. And waited… and waited. Due to Cemetery Dance’s huge backlog of unpublished titles, Hell Hollow was in the pipeline for nearly four years. But, finally, my coming-of-age novel about four summertime friends and their battle against an evil medicine-show man incarnated from a serial killer was released this past August in a signed, limited print edition and has now made its debut in digital format, thanks to Crossroad Press.
So Hell Hollow’s unforeseen detour – one that spanned fifteen long years from conception to release – is nearly at its end. Now I can let out a sigh of relief… and hope that needless detours – at least in my horror-writing career – are a thing of the past.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
RONALD KELLY is an author of Southern-fried horror. His novels include Hindsight, Pitfall, The Possession, Fear, and Blood Kin. His audio collection, Dark Dixie: Tales of Southern Horror, was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1992. His upcoming publications include After the Burn, Cumberland Furnace & Other Fear-Forged Fables, Timber Gray, and Undertaker’s Moon, the first in the Essential Ronald Kelly Collection.
He lives in a backwoods hollow in Brush Creek, Tennessee with his wife and three young’uns.
Check out Ron’s official website at www.ronaldkelly.com and his blog at www.ronaldkelly.blogspot.com .
Hell Hollow can be ordered in a signed, limited edition at www.cemeterydancepublications.com
Thank You For Reading!
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Table of Contents
PART ONE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
PART TWO
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
PART THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT