Hell's Hollow

by Summer Stone

  It made me sick that Zach’s suffering had once provided entertainment for me.

  Astrid was sitting at the table with MK, the two of them chatting like old friends. They looked up when we walked in.

  “Doesn’t look like the fresh air helped much,” Astrid said.

  MK waved me over and I collapsed in the chair beside her. She stroked my hair. Astrid came around and started doing her aura-cleansing thing. I looked up when I heard the chimes over the door. Mason McDowell stood there, staring at us. He looked creeped out.

  “You … gave me the wrong change,” he said. “I handed you a twenty. You gave me change for a ten.” He looked like he didn’t want to come in.

  I had no idea if it was true. But I needed him out of there, needed to not see his eyes calling us freaks. I went to the register, grabbed a ten and brought it to him at the door. He took one more look at Astrid and MK, and then took off.

  The image of me with the sickle popped into my head again. This time the knife was bloody and Mason’s body was on the ground in front of me. I shuddered. It was just a thought, I told myself. It isn’t real.

  Myra Clay walked by, heading toward the mini-market. I stepped outside. She stopped, stared at me. Neither of us said a word. Then she continued on her way. I wondered how much she knew about me, and if she knew that I knew about Zach.

  I helped Mom clean and close, and then we drove home. MK’d had a quiet day. She twitched less and less often.

  “No dinner for me tonight,” she said in the car. “I don’t think I’ve eaten that much sugar since … probably since your tenth birthday, B. Do you remember?”

  From the back seat, I could see the edge of Mom’s smile. “I remember,” she said.

  MK turned to me. “Your mom wanted a chocolate cake and Gran didn’t know the first thing about baking. I guess she got tired of your mom whining about it, so she drove into Sonora and bought every chocolate cake she could get her hands on. There must have been dozens! She piled them on the dining room table in a huff, then stormed off to her room.” MK laughed. “I think your mom and I ate half of them right there on the spot. I guess we were afraid Gran would come out and take them away if we waited.”

  “I felt awful,” Mom said. “What a stomachache.”

  “It was weeks before I wanted anything sweet again,” MK said.

  Mom took her hand.

  “Why do you call her B?” I asked.

  “We used to call her that when she was little,” MK said. “Clarabelle seemed too big a name for such a little baby. First Clarabelle got shortened to Clara B, then just B.”

  I wondered what it had been like when MK was well enough to be the big sister, how hard it must have been for Mom to switch roles when MK got sick.

  Dr. Gates came by in the evening. She watched me more than she did MK. Then she took Mom into the kitchen and whispered with her. They had to be plotting about taking me to Meadowland. They knew I wouldn’t go easily.

  When MK went to bed early, Mom settled on the couch. I sat beside her. “You can go to bed,” I said. “She’ll be okay.” I was trying hard to remember why I needed Mom to go. It had something to do with outside, but when I tried to focus on it, it was like there was fog in my brain, obscuring the details.

  “How are you doing with all of this?” she asked.

  The cat flung itself at the window. I hoped it couldn’t get through. “Fine.”

  “Maybe you were right all along,” she said. “Maybe there’s hope yet for this healing of yours. Maybe you’ll be the one to break the chain.”

  I nodded, while the cat tried to break the window with its head. What chain was I supposed to break? I hoped the fog would clear before I had to break it.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I must have fallen asleep on the couch. I woke to the worst Zach tug I’d ever felt. The piercing pain of it focused my mind. Mom slept on the other end of the couch. How was I going to get out the creaky door without waking her? It seemed safer to sneak out my bedroom window. But that would require me going in there — with the mirror.

  For Zach, I crept into my room. I didn’t look in her direction. I held my breath.

  “Better take that knife with you,” the girl said. I looked. She had it in her hand and she was hacking at the mirror from inside it. I wasn’t about to wait around to see if she managed to break it.

  I shoved open my window and dove outside, where the cat was hissing at me, rearing up. I ran as fast as I could down the hill and around the boulders and through the trail to get to Zach.

  He lay on his back in the center of The Hollow.

  “You made it,” I said.

  He sat up slowly, moving his body stiffly. “I needed to see you. In case I can’t come back … for a while. I wanted you to know… it’s meant a lot to me, meeting you here. I’ll miss it … you.” His pale skin looked green in the shimmery moonlight.

  Here in The Hollow, his tug felt even stronger. I wasn’t sure I had the strength to do what had to be done. Nausea overwhelmed me. I sat by my sequoia, tried to steady my breathing.

  The cat followed me, its hissing distracting.

  “What’s there?” Zach asked, following my gaze, looking right at the cat.

  “You see it?” I asked, elated.

  “See what?” he replied.

  I needed to act fast. There was no telling when the fog would obscure my thoughts again, when the hallucinations would demand attention.

  “I healed my aunt,” I said.

  “You did?” he asked, his face, though pained, lit up.

  I sniffled. “Yeah, she’s not crazy anymore. She’s up at the house right now, sleeping in her old room.”

  “Sera, that’s awesome. It worked.” He flinched at the movement of his body.

  I nodded.

  “And nothing happened to you? All that stuff your mom warned you about?” He struggled to arrange his limbs in a position he could tolerate.

  I hated lying to him. But I had no choice. “Nothing,” I managed to say. “So let’s get this cleared up so your grandmother won’t have to take you to the hospital.”

  “It might be different with me.” He shifted uncomfortably. “What if you pass out like last time? I won’t be able to carry you.”

  “I won’t. I know how to do it now. Like I told you before, I just needed more practice.”

  He turned away from me. “What if it was because … you know… what if I hurt you?”

  “You can’t,” I said. “Me passing out had nothing to do with you, I promise. Come on, we should start.”

  He hesitated. “I wouldn’t have to go through… I mean, I don’t want to put any pressure on you. But what I remember about the hospitalizations … It would be really good to not have to go through it again.”

  I nodded, gesturing for him to come over. He stood slowly, shuffled toward me.

  “She took me to the doctor the other day. He said he’d never seen scars open up like that after so long. They did some tests and stuff, but they didn’t have any answers about how it could’ve happened. They wanted to do some kind of research on me — like a guinea pig. That’s why she took me home.” He sat down beside me.

  “It was weird how she freaked out when I admitted I’d been down here. And what’s even stranger is how nice she’s been to me since then. I guess ’cause I’m hurting so much. Except she never seemed this nice when I was little and freshly burned and… Sera, what’s wrong?”

  “We should get going,” I said. “In case she comes looking for you.” I wanted to hear what he had to say, so much, but my mind was starting to cloud. There was no telling how fast it would turn wild, how soon I’d forget why I was even down there.

  “Do you think she’d come down here?” he asked.

  “Who?” I said.

  “What do you mean ‘who’ — my grandmother?”

  I closed my eyes, tried to ignore the hissing cat. Behind my eyelids I saw Myra Clay with a sickle, sneaking up on us. I jumped, turned to se
e. Something moved behind the tree at the bottom of the town trail. “Is she here?” It might have just been the wind.

  “Are you okay?” Zach asked, looking funny.

  I wondered if it was possible that I was seeing the future like MK. If so, then we were in danger. We needed to get out of there.

  “Shut up!” I yelled at the owl that wouldn’t stop hooting.

  “Sera?”

  I opened my eyes, saw Zach in front of me, focused my thoughts. “Whatever happens,” I said, “just remember that you’re the best friend I ever had, and that … you know…” My cheeks got hot.

  “I… love you, too,” he said, his voice a whisper.

  My heart did some sort of flippy thing, and then it crashed, knowing our chance of ever having something together was about to die along with my sanity.

  “Are you afraid?” he asked.

  I closed my eyes to shut out his question, forced my mind to imagine roots coming down out of my body, grounding me in the earth.

  In the past, when I’d imagined what it would be like to go crazy like Gran and MK, I sort of thought it must feel like spacing out into some fantasy world. I never realized how terrifying it was, how confusing, how desperately depressing.

  But there was no question now of what I needed to do. I had opened his wounds. I had to heal them. As I pulled back on my shield, his tug overwhelmed me. I let The Hollow rush in. But his wounds felt bigger, darker than the light of The Hollow could handle. I was afraid to touch him, afraid it would knock me out before I had a chance to heal the damage. Suddenly, I realized what I had to do.

  “Let’s move over here,” I said, pointing to the center of The Hollow, his favorite spot.

  “I thought you didn’t like that part,” he said.

  “It’ll be okay,” I replied. I felt bad about making him move again, but I knew the power would be stronger there. I stepped into The Hollow, felt the unbearable rush of energy as it drove into me. I flopped down on a bed of sequoia needles and dirt. He maneuvered his way beside me.

  I took a deep breath and held his hands — and then it was out of mine. His wounds overwhelmed my body, crushed me with agony so much worse than he’d let on. The Hollow fought against it, lighting up every point of pain. The energy whirled and swirled through me, and still I felt the red-hot fire of his skin. I opened to The Hollow more and more, removing any barrier that held me together as a separate human being, demanding that it heal him, even as the intensity of it promised to rip me to shreds.

  The Hollow flooded into him, coursing through every cell, shocking something inside of him to life. I worried about what had happened to the chipmunk happening to him — that he would be overwhelmed by the intensity. But at the same time, I knew this was our only chance. We wouldn’t have another, so I had to go all out. And truthfully by this point, I’d lost control over The Hollow. I couldn’t have called it back if I’d tried. More and more of the energy rushed through me and into Zach’s body, connecting us, like wires inside a light bulb. It seemed to come back at me, into my head, into the dark places, lighting them. His whole body lit up as the healing energy licked each open wound. Light burst inside my head just as it burst inside his, clearing away all the rubble there that had kept him so wounded, that had blocked his memories. The ground rumbled and shook back and forth as if a child had picked up a wrapped present and given it a good shake. Then the earth dropped out from beneath us, as the world exploded in light.

  The woods felt silent and still. “Zach?” I called, sitting up and wiping dirt out of my face.

  “Down here,” came his voice.

  An orange glow lit the edge of the wood. Daybreak. The cat was gone. I looked where I’d heard Zach’s voice. He was about three feet down in a trench that had moments before been the center of The Hollow, and he was covered in dirt.

  I realized then, it had been the implosion of The Hollow MK had foreseen — inside turned outside, rumbling and cracking.

  “Are you hurt?” I asked Zach. “Can you move?”

  “I’m okay,” he said. He lifted his hand and I gave him mine. A jolt of energy passed between us as I pulled him to standing. He touched his arms, his chest, his face. Then, he sat on the bank of The Hollow. Steam escaped from the ground below. I sat beside him, surprised that my thinking felt not just clear, but heightened, like I could hear every animal in the area, and smell each of them, too. Maybe that was part of the new level of crazy.

  I tore off his filthy bandages. Some of them were stuck to his skin, which seemed to buzz at my touch. I worried about infection. But beneath the bandages, he was whole — just faded pink scars where the old vicious ones had been — like brand new skin. I touched the right side of his face, felt a zing of electricity. “It’s you,” I said.

  He looked at his hands, his arms. He smiled. “I don’t hurt,” he said. He pulled off his shoes and jeans and unraveled all the bandages. No open wounds, no terrifying scars. He stood there in his bare feet and boxers and laughed. He ran around the clearing like the chipmunk, like MK.

  “Woohoo!” he screamed. “Woohoo!”

  I smiled, watching him. Then I noticed something. It wasn’t just his tug that had disappeared. It was the energy of The Hollow. The stillness wasn’t just the quiet of sunrise. Something had changed. The Hollow didn’t feel Hollow-y anymore. The vortex was gone. The ground felt empty, silent.

  I looked down into the place where the earth had split open. Through the steam escaping from the pit, a fleck of blue caught my eye. I moved closer to see what it was.

  “Grandmother is going to flip!” Zach was screaming. “How am I going to explain this?” He laughed maniacally, then saw my face and stopped. “What is it?” he asked.

  I couldn’t speak. I pointed into the shallow grave at a decaying skeleton in a blue nightgown.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  He recognized the nightgown. We sat on the bank, trying to take it all in.

  “You said you saw her lying still before the fire happened,” I said. “That you hid in your closet. What else can you remember?”

  He closed his eyes. “I can see it all now, all those things I couldn’t remember before. They’re there like a movie I’d forgotten.”

  “What do you see?” I asked.

  “They were fighting.” His voice trembled. “He was calling her names. I don’t think he meant to kill her. He pushed her. She fell against the brick hearth.”

  “Where were you?”

  “Watching from the top of the stairs. He drove away in his truck. I ran down and tried to wake her up. Blood spilled from her head.” His voice cracked.

  “What did you do?”

  “I ran to find the phone to call 911. But then I heard his truck come back. I was afraid he would kill me too. So I hid in my closet again. I heard the front door slam. Even after the truck left I stayed hidden. I was so scared. I should’ve called 911.”

  “You were so little,” I said. “Of course you were scared.”

  “The truck came back one more time. And then I smelled smoke. I still stayed in the closet. But I was afraid I’d burn, so I ran downstairs. The flames stopped me in the living room. That’s when he came in and saved me.” He was crying now. “Why did he save me?”

  I held him while he cried. I’d never held a crying boy in my arms before. He felt warm, his skin buzzing, the leftover energy from the healing seemed to form a circuit between us. I stroked his hair, let him cry.

  I tried to keep from talking, but my mind was racing. “Why’d he leave and come back so many times? He must have taken her body and buried her here, then come back to burn down the house. You said she’d told him you were at your grandmother’s. He had no way of knowing you were in the house when he set it on fire.

  “Maybe this explains the tug that called you out here,” I said. “Maybe your mother thought the time was right for you to find her.”

  Mom and MK came racing into the hollow. “We looked for you after the earthquake. You weren’t in your
room. We heard yelling,” Mom said.

  I didn’t know where to begin. I pointed at the skeleton.

  Mom and MK came closer to see what it was. MK gasped.

  “Seraphina, let’s take your friend up to the house. Whatever is going on, we’ll figure it out up there,” Mom said. She stepped closer to me. “Your skin is all cleared up.”

  I took Zach’s hand. He bit his lip, looking once more into the grave. “That’s my mom,” he said.

  “I’m so sorry,” Mom replied.

  When we got to the house, I set MK on a mission to bring out every chocolate treat she could find. She kept popping out of the kitchen with something else. But Zach wasn’t eating. He was sitting on the couch, confessing his whole story to Mom.

  A new crack had crept across the living room wall from the earthquake. It would be a constant reminder that The Hollow was dead.

  Mom squeezed Zach’s hand. “All these years,” she said. “Maybe the stories of the ghost were a call for help. Maybe she wanted someone to ask for the truth. I’m sorry we let you down, Zachariah.” She paced the living room. “Seraphina, may I speak with you, please.”

  I followed her to her room. “You healed him,” she said.

  I nodded.

  “After promising me you wouldn’t try that again.”

  I took a few breaths. “He was suffering.”

  “There will always be people suffering,” she said.

  I hung my head. It didn’t matter anymore anyway.

  Then she tipped my face up to her. “I’m proud of you.”

  I hugged her, trying not to cry.

  “You’re … a healer,” she said, as if trying out the sound of it.

  I shook my head. “Past tense,” I said.

  She cocked her head to the side.

  “We killed The Hollow. The power is gone.”

  “Are you sure?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “And your thinking — it feels okay?”

  “It’s weird,” I said. “After MK, I thought maybe, well no, I mean it was fine. It’s just… anyway, it’s better now, like completely.” I wasn’t even afraid to go into my room. I knew that girl in the mirror was gone. “I wonder if The Hollow being dead means Gran is better.”