The Hollow Places

by Kingfisher, T.

  “We have to get out of here,” said Simon hoarsely. “Can you walk?”

  “I don’t care,” I said, which wasn’t very coherent but was absolutely true. I did not care if my legs weren’t working. I would crawl back to the Wonder Museum if I had to.

  We staggered down the hall together. My knee throbbed, and every throb was more pain than I’d ever felt in my life and it didn’t matter. It was pitch-black in the hall, so Simon pulled out his phone and held it up and we had enough light to get to the hole, while behind us the pounding and the screaming went on and on and on.

  The hole was jagged and even larger than it had been. Apparently I’d pulled the entire drywall patch off, and the only things left were screws stuck to studs that didn’t exist on this side, and I was in so much pain that I didn’t even care how any of that worked. I hauled myself through the hole and started to cry, partly because of the pain in my knee, mostly because I hadn’t gotten out and I’d never get out and I needed to run and keep running but I couldn’t because then Uncle Earl would be left alone with a hole to a willow-filled hell and partly because there was a monster on the other side of a no-longer bolted door.

  I couldn’t hear the boatman. He couldn’t get through, not without tearing bits of himself off to fit, but I couldn’t swear that he wouldn’t do that, either. Oh, gods and saints and angels, let him not get through.

  He can’t. Surely he can’t. He’d have gotten Sturdivant, wouldn’t he? That door was open. Oh, please, God…

  “How did you know?” I asked Simon as we yanked cabinets in front of the hole. The raccoon case wasn’t going to do it anymore. I wanted anvils and filing cabinets and bags of concrete. “How did you know I was there?” My knee was killing me, but the sheer horror of having sleepwalked back into a nightmare was starting to overtake the pain. Under that, somewhere, was humiliation. How stupid was I, to have gone back there?

  Simon grimaced and jammed his shoulder against the big case with the stuffed puma and the teapot that might have been used by the Duke of Wellington, walking it carefully toward the hole. “I didn’t.”

  “What?”

  “I was sleepwalking, too, I think. At least at first. I thought I was dreaming, but then I got this pain like somebody was shoving a railroad spike in my eye. I couldn’t sleep through that. But then I was awake, and I was really there.” He shook his head. “I was about to run back, but I saw you up at the top of the steps.”

  “It got you, too…,” I breathed.

  “It?”

  “Whatever made me sleepwalk.” Despite the awfulness, I felt a sudden urge to laugh. It wasn’t me. I hadn’t been trying to get back to the willows in my sleep.

  It’s not a good thing to have a hellish otherworld trying to drag you back into it, but it’s somehow worse to think that you’re trying to get back to it yourself out of some bizarre self-destructive madness.

  “Well, that’s a happy thought. But, yeah, I guess. I must have come out of my room and through the back door.”

  “If we get in the car, I can have us halfway to Virginia before sunrise.” I had no idea what I was going to do about Uncle Earl. Kidnap him and take him to Virginia, too, maybe. Nothing in Virginia was going to help, but maybe extradimensional horrors couldn’t cross state lines. If they do, they get tried in federal court…. I had a strong urge to giggle and squelched it.

  Simon looked as if he was thinking about it, then shook his head. “I can’t. I owe my sister. And Earl.” Simon gestured to himself. “Plus I’m not really dressed for it, you might notice.”

  This was the first time I’d registered that he was wearing an oversize T-shirt with Eeyore the donkey on it and a pair of boxer shorts.

  I looked down at myself. I was wearing the same T-shirt I’d gone to bed in and a pair of granny panties that would have embarrassed any self-respecting granny of my acquaintance.

  “I’m really glad you’re not a straight man right now.”

  “Carrot, I mean this in the nicest way possible, but even if I was, that outfit would not do it for me. Also, your knee’s a wreck.”

  I looked down at my knee. It was red, with that peculiar puffy shade that means purple is not far off.

  “You better wrap that sucker,” said Simon. “It’s gonna swell like a grapefruit. Do you have health insurance?”

  “Ha ha ha.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  My knee was a raw red agony. If this was what Uncle Earl had been dealing with, he wasn’t just a saint, he was a martyr. Fortunately, the one thing the back room had in spades was knee braces, medicated heated kneepads, and all manner of other treatments. I hobbled into the bathroom, opened the cabinet under the sink, and pulled out something that promised lidocaine and knee support, then tossed down a couple of aspirin.

  The knee was indeed swelling, but if I could keep it wrapped, maybe it’d just hurt and look ugly. I’d have to call Uncle Earl and tell him that now we matched.

  I heard grating sounds from upstairs. Simon was moving more cases around to block the hole. We’d tried that before and it hadn’t worked, but maybe we hadn’t tried hard enough. And we couldn’t just leave it open.

  I leaned my forehead against the mirror, feeling dizzy. It had happened. The boatman had been there. The roots coming out of the bottom of the boat and the way it melted together…

  But it’s not me. It got Simon, too. That means I’m not trying to kill myself by going back into the willow world. I may be crazy and I probably am—who wouldn’t be, after all this shit?—but it was the willows grabbing my brain, not my brain trying to kill itself.

  Was that better? Maybe a little. At least this meant that it wasn’t my fault. We were just possessed or mind controlled or something, that’s all. We’d drunk the water and breathed the air, and now the willows had their roots into our heads.

  Comforting thought.

  I must have spent longer in the bathroom than I thought, because Simon eventually appeared in the doorway. “I’ve done what I can. Once the hardware store is open, we’ll put something heavy-duty in place.”

  “Will that work?” I asked. In the mirror, I looked dreadful. My hair hung down in limp strings and my skin was blotchy. On the other hand, for having just survived an unexpected trip to hell, I was looking fantastic. I turned away.

  “Dunno,” he admitted. “But it’s all I can think to do. Come on, grab some pants and let’s go.”

  “Where are we going?” I wasn’t arguing, just curious.

  “You got money for a motel?”

  “No.”

  “Then back to my place.”

  “We shouldn’t sleep until we get the hole patched.” I limped toward my bedroom. Beau made a cranky noise from the bed. Apparently the… mind control, whatever it was… didn’t work on cats. Or maybe it would have if Beau had been to the willows, but he hadn’t been, so it didn’t.

  I preferred that theory. Otherwise everyone in the neighborhood could potentially start trying to break into the Wonder Museum in their sleep.

  “Hell no. But the adrenaline is gonna wear off in a bit, and then we’ll both go down like a ton of bricks,” said Simon. “We’ll have to keep each other awake.”

  I was still trying to shake the image of a crowd of people staggering zombie-like through the streets, headed into the willows like lambs to slaughter, and it took me a minute to parse what he was saying. “Oh. Yeah.” I shoved myself into a pair of sweatpants and dragged my fingers through my hair. “Yeah, okay. Let’s go.”

  * * *

  The steps up to his apartment were murder on my knee, but I wasn’t about to suggest that we stay in the museum until sunrise. Simon went into the kitchen and I heard the microwave, followed by a familiar glug glug glug.

  “Hot instant lemonade,” he said, bringing two mugs out. “Cure for what ails you.”

  I sniffed this peculiar concoction. “Seems kind of high proof.”

  “That’s the vodka.”

  I sipped it. It was su
rprisingly good. “Does it cure sleepwalking into portals to hell?”

  “It might.”

  I took another sip.

  Simon collapsed into a chair across from me. We stared into our respective mugs. Neither of us wanted to be the one to say something, I expect, but I finally had to break the silence before I started screaming or sobbing or both.

  “They reached out to us, didn’t They? To get us to open the way back up.”

  “Maybe,” said Simon. “Something did, anyway. We can’t both have decided to sleepwalk at the same time. I never sleepwalk.”

  “So They’re in our heads.”

  He looked up sharply. “We don’t know that.”

  “What? What else can it be?”

  “Lots of things. They could just be calling us somehow. Like silent dog whistles, and we’re the only ones who can hear it because we’ve been over there. It doesn’t mean the dogs are mind controlled, it just means they’re sensitive to a frequency we’re not.”

  This was much more comforting than mind control. I sagged on the couch. Not in my head. Just calling. A dog doesn’t have to answer a dog whistle. Hell, my dogs growing up wouldn’t answer anything but the dinner bell.

  “Do you think the boatman was calling us?” I asked.

  Simon frowned. “I can’t be sure. But I doubt it. He didn’t look like… like…”

  “Them.”

  “Figure They are the things in the willows. Not the ones from the light show. The ones making those humming calls.”

  “Okay.” I wrapped my hands around the mug, trying to warm them. I felt so cold that I didn’t know if I’d ever be warm again. “And the boatman?”

  “He wasn’t one of Them. He was like Sturdivant, I bet. Or the kids on the bus. They got him and did something. Did you see his feet?”

  I nodded. “He was part of the boat. And there was stuff underneath, too. Like willow roots. Okay. That makes sense to me. Maybe he came through somehow on the boat… an opening on the river, maybe… and They got him. And then They called us and he was there.”

  “ ‘He’s always hungry,’ Sturdivant said. But also, ‘Oh, him.’ Like he wasn’t very impressed with him.”

  “I imagine when you’re soaking in a pool of your own guts, you’re pretty hard to impress,” I muttered. Was I joking about this? Yes, apparently I was. It was that or run screaming into the night, and my knee didn’t feel up to that.

  I tried to remember the whole horrible experience of waking up from the nightmare to discover that I was really on the far side of the wall. “I heard the call, though,” I said abruptly. “Their call. The humming.”

  Simon nodded. “I did, too. Close. Maybe it was… oh, I don’t know. Like the boatman was a dog flushing a rabbit so that They could shoot it.”

  “Making us the rabbit?”

  “Yeah. I don’t think They see us real well, do you? We were right out in the open a bunch and They couldn’t quite find us. Like They knew we were there, but They were groping around in the dark. And we kept moving so They couldn’t find us. And when we were under the boat, one of Them was right there, but it couldn’t quite grab us.”

  “You think They can see the boatman?”

  Simon sighed, draining his vodka and lemonade. “I don’t know. I don’t know if any of this makes any sense. But it fits, a little. Sturdivant said something about the willows getting their roots in. Maybe They’re not really in the willow world completely. They’re just close to it, and They can get through where the willows are.”

  “And the boatman was full of willow roots.” I took another sip. “You think that’s it? They’re from yet another world but the willow world is closer than we are?” I remembered my chopsticks and paper, attempting to work it out. Maybe Simon was on the right track after all.

  Simon shrugged. “Maybe the willows growing there makes it closer. I don’t know. The willows could be… like… symbiotic with them. Or maybe they’re some kind of invasive murder willows from dimension X.”

  “I don’t see that one tearing up the box office anytime soon.”

  “I dunno, they’ve made movies about killer everything else. Might be worth a try.” Simon rubbed his hand over his face. I hadn’t realized until that moment that he was wearing eyeliner, and only then because it was smudged. Goddammit, did the man have to be prettier than me all the time?

  I pointed out the smudge. He grumbled. “No, I don’t wear makeup to bed. I just didn’t get it all off, I guess.” He inspected his fingers. “Twenty-four-hour waterproof, my ass.”

  “Well, it wasn’t designed to go to other dimensions.”

  Simon yawned. “Neither was I. Okay. I think I’m crashing. Talk to me about something.”

  “What if we both fall asleep and wind up sleepwalking back over there?”

  Simon considered this for a moment, then went to a closet. A minute later, he emerged with a large wind chime.

  “My aunt sent me this,” he said, by way of explanation. “She means well.”

  “You don’t have a balcony. Or a deck.”

  “And I hate direct sunlight!” He waved the wind chime, which clashed and jangled, then opened the door and hung it on the outside doorknob. “There is no way we won’t hear that, and no way to take it off from in here.”

  “Clever.”

  “I have my moments.”

  Simon’s couch was not comfortable, but it also was firmly in this world. I didn’t think I could possibly sleep anyway. How could I? I was still listening for dog whistles. No, there was no possible way that I was going to sleep.

  I told myself this firmly and then yawned jaw-crackingly wide.

  “Fuck,” I muttered. “Maybe we should drive somewhere and sleep in the car.”

  “Sleepwalking around town dressed like this will get us picked up by cops at best. Talk to me, Carrot. What are you working on?”

  “A bunch of logos for a chicken hatchery. They sell day-old chicks. They want fancy button designs for all the various stuff they offer.”

  “Cute.” He fiddled with the stereo, putting on something with a pounding bass line and a lot of screaming. “Suddenly I regret never getting into speed metal.”

  “Heh.” I ran my hands through my hair. “What are you working on?”

  “I’m writing a memoir about being raised by religious party clowns.”

  “That seems like it would sell.”

  “You’d think. Do you want coffee?”

  “Do you have any?”

  He gave me a look.

  I remembered that we were, in fact, located above a coffee shop. “That was a stupid question. Yes. Coffee would be good.”

  “Come with me.”

  We slunk down to the coffee shop and he poured out cold brew into cups, not turning the lights on in case a customer showed up at three in the morning. The bitter taste shocked my tongue. I wanted drugs or to cry or something. I leaned against the counter, drinking cold black coffee, and tried to explain to Simon about wormholes and sheets and throats. I don’t know how much sense it made, but he nodded a lot.

  Six hours later, I opened the Wonder Museum. I was so tired that the shadows were starting to get twitchy in the corners of my vision. I am sure the tourists thought that I was on drugs. I only wished that I were.

  Twelve hours later, Simon arrived on the doorstep of the Wonder Museum with his solution to the sleepwalking issue.

  “Sheet metal?” I said blankly. “We’re going to fight another world with sheet metal?”

  “I’m open to other suggestions.” Simon turned sideways to fit his burden through the door. “Grab this bag, will you?”

  The bag was full of heavy-duty screws and a power drill. “This is nuts,” I said, following him up the stairs.

  “More or less nuts than having a portal to Really Bad Narnia in your attic?”

  “The tourists are going to notice!”

  “We’ll hang more batik over it.”

  “We cannot save the world with sheet metal a
nd batik!”

  “Why not?” He climbed the stairs and I rushed past him to save one of the fur-bearing-trout mounts from being banged by the corner of the metal. “Sorry, depth perception…”

  “It’s fine,” I said, and then I whacked my knee on the wall under the trout and it was not fine at all. “Gaaah!”

  “You got that wrapped?”

  “This is utterly mad.” Nevertheless, I seemed to be carrying the bag and helping to haul the cases out of the way.

  “We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”

  “Why couldn’t it have been Wonderland on the other side of the hole?” I asked hopelessly.

  “The way things are going, we’d have giant stoner caterpillars crawling out and eating everyone. What’s that on the floor?”

  “Goddamn carving,” I muttered. The stupid corpse-otter had fallen off the raccoon case, yet again.

  #93 - Corpse-otter carving, circa 1900, from Danube…

  “It’s wobbly. Probably rolls off every time the door slams.” I was tired of dealing with it. I unlocked the display case and shoved the otter inside, next to the albino raccoon and a rather moth-eaten ermine. If it fell over again, big deal, the ermine wasn’t going to get any more dead.

  “All right,” said Simon. “Help me hold this up.”

  I flattened my hands over the metal while he set about patching a hole in the universe.

  We put the sheet metal over the hole, and he bolted it or riveted it or did something to hold it in place. I tested the edges. They weren’t sharpened, but if I tried to haul it back with my bare hands, I was going to tear my nails off or slice my fingertips to ribbons long before I got through the patch.

  This would have worried me a little, given that apparently sleepwalking me was getting through the patches anyway, but after my encounter with the boatman, I didn’t care if I lost all my fingernails. What were fingernails, really? So I couldn’t tear open plastic packaging quite as easily, big deal.

  My tentative experiments had already proved that there was something about this particular spot that made it a portal to evil Narnia, and I couldn’t just gnaw through the drywall somewhere else in the museum. Probably. So this was as safe as we were going to get. Probably.