The Hollows, page 20
Am I going crazy? I thought to myself.
“You’re already crazy. You lost your mind a long time ago.”
I turned in circles, looking for the source of the voices, “Well, no shit, Sherlock. But, you’re new.”
“We’ve always been there.”
I rolled my eyes and went for the door at the end of the hall, not bothering to check the other doors for an exit route.
“Why do you even bother? Why do you try? Nothing you do now will change what happened to you.”
I shrugged, “Because sitting around with my thumb up my ass waiting to be saved isn’t my style, cupcake.”
“Sarcasm and wit are coping mechanisms in which you are well practiced. That does not change the truth, though. You cannot hide from yourself.”
“Well, I’m about to kick my own ass if you keep whispering.”
The door came open easier this time, much easier than any of the twenty times before it. To my surprise, the hallway, this time, was completely bare. No door at the end. No escaping. No way out.
“We told you,” the voices said in unison, “You cannot hide from yourself.”
The door shut behind me and locked. I pushed hard against it with everything I had, but it didn’t give. I was stuck.
“What do you want?” I screamed at the hallway.
“You act so strong. We know better. We know what you really fear.”
“And what might that be?”
“You were abandoned so long ago. Years before your memory would have imprinted the faces of your parents. You were abandoned by the system, forcing you to live with people who would do you harm.”
“Yeah, so? I came out okay,” I said, but my voice was not nearly as convincing as it should have been.
The first voice spoke, “You were abandoned by your case workers, left without a second thought.”
The second voice spoke, “You were abandoned by God, himself, when those people tore through your skin and your soul.”
The third voice spoke, “And you were finally abandoned here, in the depths of hell, by Day, by the witch, and by the seven eyed one.”
The spoke together again, “You have never been wanted and you’ll always be left. Alone. Maybe it is because you deserved what happened to you. Maybe you deserved to be left. You are nothing, Serenity, to anyone or anything. Even here you are nothing.”
I swallowed hard, trying desperately to keep the tears from forming. I wanted to be defiant. I wanted to be sarcastic and let the words roll off my shoulders. Instead, they sat there with their weight, pushing my words down into my stomach and causing it to go sour.
“They’ll come back, you know,” The voices said again.
“Who will?” I choked out.
“Richard Charpiot says ‘hello’.”
I screamed and threw my hands up to my ears. Crouching down, I yelled until my voice was hoarse, trying to both drown out the voices, but also the pain. To stop the remembrance of his face, his hands, and the suffering.
There I sat and cried. Forgive me for it, please. I was there for a long while when the tears started flowing. They didn’t stop either. They came out through the dam I had put up in my mind. They came out of the floodgates with a vengeance, taking a foothold in every moment I had suppressed them before. There was no stopping them, and when I could cry no longer, when the river had dried after every drop had been drained, only then did I dare to open my eyes.
There on the ground was a tiny knot of rope at my feet. The thin, but sturdy, wire of rope that made my mind flash back to that house, that garage, and that hallway. The same hard knot was still intact, with small dried blood around the insides where it had tied my wrists.
Staring at it for a moment, I couldn’t believe what my mind was processing. Reluctantly, I found myself reaching out for it. A compulsion that I couldn’t contain. It was there, in front of me, wanting to be taken. And I, to gain back what little sanity I had left, needed to take it. My fingers had barely the chance to wrap around them when I stood up with it, feeling it between my fingers.
In a span of a blink, everything changed. It might have been during my tears, or when I picked up the loose piece of rope, I don’t know. But now I stood alone in a field. It was still night, as it always was, but my eyes were soon adjusted.
I turned to see a house. The House. You know the one, I will be damned if I need to describe again why I had so much hatred for it. The shutters, the glass on the door, even the well-manicured lawn all seemed a perfect replica even at night. Staring at it for a moment, something moved inside. Even as I watched, I would have sworn I saw the same oversized knit sweater that the Charpiot bitch had worn the night I ran away.
Hatred fueled me and suddenly the hunger pains were gone and so was my fatigue.
The three voices were whispering, but I couldn’t hear them, now. The night’s air and the hell house that lay before me was enough to keep them quiet.
Then the door behind me creaked open. When turning, I saw it was the same door that I had opened and closed twenty times in twenty hallways, one of solid brass and heavy hinges. It stood alone in the middle of the field behind me, and its opening bared only shadows.
One by one they poured out into the fields, each equally dressed in their immaculate suits. Some were taller, some smiled wider, and some had no mouths at all, but they stood there as clones none-the-less. My fear had allowed them to follow. Those voices in my head, my voices. Betrayed by my own mind.
Ten of them in all. Ten starving Gray wanting nothing more than to rid me of their world.
“Shit.”
One of them took a step forward and tilted his nose into the air, smelling the sweet aroma of fear that seeped through my pores. I bottled down as much of it as I could manage until he took a single, horrifying step forward.
The others followed suite.
I backed away slowly but was soon aware of what I was being backed up into. That house stood as a monument to my terror, and the Gray were eating it up.
In that one moment, I hated everything. I hated the Gray, I hated Day, I hated Cassandra, I hated Sevens, I hated myself, and I sure as hell hated that house. Yet, in that same blink, I found something inside of me. As much as I hated all of that, the idea of dying was at the forefront.
So, under brash decision, I turned and ran with everything I had. Running towards the house, towards my fears. Sprinting towards whatever hell that may lay on the other side.
I wrenched the door open without giving myself a chance to second guess my decision, throwing it open with a will.
Chapter 12.5:
Safety Behind Closed Doors
There was a howl in the night. The deep and terrifying growl of something suddenly full of hatred that made the glass around her tink and clang with the hollow vibrations. The thunderous bellow brought her to her feet, nearly dropping the glass panther and the music box. The unnamed girl clutched them tightly in her shaking hands, frozen with the sudden ferocity of the Iktomi.
She started backing away from the sound, no longer paying mind to the glass beneath her feet or the direction she’d be heading.
The girl found herself daydreaming. She found it almost amusing, the absurdity, considering her conditions, but she dove into them still looking the direction with which she originally came. Thoughts of such small and petty fears, she counted them. Insects, bones, being alone, being hunted, drowning, death, ghosts, the boogeyman, broken toys – all in descending order, bearing towards her childhood. She knew what was next, and it made her stomach churn.
Which of these two would she lose? The most beautiful thing she had ever seen or the most beautiful thing she had ever heard? Everyone loses things, children mostly, bringing about a large fear of never seeing something so childishly beloved again.
The last would be the fear of a dark hallway, one that she would sprint through without hesitation to avoid anything lurking in its corners to finally reach a safe-haven.
The door at the end of the hall was hit with unbelievable mass and force that the door’s hinges were practically vaporized and the door fell, crunching a pile of glass beneath it. The door frame was not wide enough for the Iktomi’s massive tendrils. It began beating the bulk of its body against the concrete, trying to widen the space. Even from the distance and the dark, the unnamed girl could tell with the cracks and the sounds that the wall was starting to give into the Iktomi’s desire.
It pushed, it broke, it tore, and it ravaged against it with a fury before leaning down and looking. The girl would have let out a scream; she would have run; she would have done something if it had not been the eyes. When the unnamed girl looked into the eyes, they seemed to swallow her, sinking its fangs into her mind-paralyzing her body with a telepathic venom. From brow to toes, she stood rigid as it glared. Eight eyes, darker than the shadows, darker than the night, beheld a type of total blackness that swallowed everything around it into an emptiness. They stood there, looking at each other from across space, neither moving, neither breathing.
The eyes beckoned her. They called her, coaxing her feet to come towards it. Her mind screamed silent demands to stop, but her foot took a step. Then another. Before she knew what she was really doing, she had already walked halfway back to the opening, towards the eyes.
Stop. Please, stop. Her mind raced, trying to regain control.
Another step.
The Iktomi looked neither pleased nor angry, it simply waited.
Another step.
No. Not like this. No.
Another step. Slower.
The eyes tilted and became more focused, seemingly putting in more effort.
The moth flying frantically in front of her face, causing her eyes to become unfocused on the Iktomi. She could see its palps on either side of its fangs, pawing at the ground and twitching, becoming more defined through the haze she was returning from. Her eyes bounced from the Moth to the Spider, from visible and changing designs on the insect’s wings to the large spinnerets behind the Iktomi’s body.
Another step.
Stop. No. I said-
“STOP!”
Her foot was in the air, but this time she remained motionless. The Iktomi strained against the wall, glaring with force.
“No, you cannot have me,” The unnamed girl said aloud. Her foot fell to the ground behind her. Then another behind that. The moth floating towards her and resting on her shoulder as she made her slow retreat.
The Iktomi snarled in frustration, hating the girl for resisting. Hating her for fighting his attempts to lure her as it had done so many times with so many others. Hating the abrupt change in expectation.
She could feel the heat of his loathing as she backed away, one foot at a time.
Then the walls around it collapsed. Rock, concreted, wood and soot fell from a barrier at the Iktomi’s weight. It burst through the crumbling rubble and clawed over the heaps and piles. The girl took off at a run, not bothering a glance back over her shoulder.
The spider raced, all eight legs jagged as razors, split the ground and propelled it towards her. She ran, hearing the terrible sounds of the hunt behind her, driving her feet with the full weight of terror behind her.
She ran deeper into the room, rounding piles and heading for the furthest wall as it was becoming clearer through the dust and dark. The girl saw a door becoming clear, a tarnished golden knob like a saving grace in the shadows.
The spider was so close. So close. Just behind her.
Almost on top of her.
“No, please no,” The girl pleaded to herself knowing there was no one around to hear her cry.
She lunged forward and made a frantic grab at the knob, twisting it open and throwing herself inside. She didn’t stop as she took off down the corridor, never looking back. Another door appeared on her right and with less than a thought, she darted through it. Then another. And another. A twisting and winding of faceless doors, not bothering to care what might be on the other side. Ten different hallways with ten different doors. Then eleven. Then Fifteen.
Once entering a lone hallway, the girl stopped and stared. The length was unimaginable. It rode on for miles in three separate directions, none of which had a foreseeable end. There was no time for debate or indecision as she ran for the nearest fork, taking a right and watching the high ceilings and concrete walls go by her in a blur. It came to another fork, then another. Then a set of three doors. She never allowed herself the time to think, only picking and choosing at random on a gut instinct.
The sounds of her pursuer had died so long ago, but she never took notice. Nor did she care. Door after door she went, room after room. Hallway after hallway. Across fields, across the grass, across the glass, across the sand, her feet pounded with a fury, never once stopping for a breath, because she feared it would have been her last. Her legs and chest were on fire. Her muscles strained with effort as she pushed her body beyond what she thought it could handle. Sweat slung from her nose and stung when it dripped into her eyes.
When she finally did collapse of exhaustion, she fell to the ground and stared at the ceiling, gulping in the breaths of a panicked prey. The girl’s head was swimming, trying to regain focus. Closing her eyes, she breathed through her nose and out of her mouth the way she had been taught.
Her breathing labored on like that for several minutes, gradually growing slower as it brought sufficient oxygen back to her lungs and muscles. She stayed there as she panted away in the night. It took all she had to catch her breath, swallowing the feeling of vomit and trying to lick away the sandy feeling on her lips. Soon, after the shock had eventually worn thin, the girl laid there in the quiet to take in the sweet breaths of life. The sweetness in the air became tangible, discernible. The sweet breaths of still being alive.
Sweet breaths that smelled vaguely of lavender.
Peeking through the slits in her lids, she saw a deep blue ceiling, painted in swirls of powder and navy and midnight. When recognition slowly wormed its way into her memory, she sat upright, looking around the room with her head spinning.
She knew this room well, unlikely to ever forget. The furniture was gone, but it did not matter, she knew it was hers. The girl never knew who or how the ceiling was painted, but she adored it, staring up longingly at it for all hours of the night, dreaming of a day when she could see those blues more clearly. The walls were the same, torn paper still hanging from their glue plastered on the walls in the uniquely awkward patterns she adored so much. The smell, a rarity to find such aromas, but her father had brought it from a day out and laid it in her room while she was sleeping so she could wake to the pleasant smell.
Even the two doors were the same. One dark unpainted wood leading to a small closet and the other a stripped door that still had hints of its former days of bright red that led to the scary hallway and to her haven.
Only then did she notice the music box missing.
“No! No, no no,” The girl said to herself, turning and looking around her. She felt for it, even though her eyes could not see it, but all she could find was the glass panther at her side, now broken cleanly in half. The door she entered was gone. Gone forever, hidden by the newly formed concrete and shambled sheet rock.
The girl stood up and fell hard against the wall. Her good hand lifted her straight as she brushed where the doorknob should have been. Then she felt around the corners. Maybe there was a latch or a hidden passage. Something to get into the hallway behind her. She had to find it! She had to!
“NO! Open! Please!” The girl screamed, slapping the wall.
The wall did not answer.
She wailed and bawled, her voice becoming hoarse. Her fists hit the walls several times over, leaving bloody imprints and smears. She took her time, looking again for a latch or hidden crevice. Nothing yielded itself. She sat down with her back to the newly red-smeared wall.
The girl let hollowness settle over her. The emptiness where there were no more tears to be cried. No more screams in to be heard within her lungs. No more disconsolate emotions to be found in her heart. Just the quiet vacant sounds of an empty room. The girl sat there in the void.
And for one small fleeting moment, she thought she heard the ringing chimes behind the wall. But as she listened, she resigned to it being only in her head. A wishful memory. She thought of the dancer and of the music and closed her eyes, taking in deep inhales and slow exhales to calm her.
Finally, when the girl let herself open her eyes again, she stared at the chipping red door across the space. That gloomy hall stood behind it, mocking her childish fear of the dark. The girl let out a breath of defiance and pulled herself to her feet. She knew the feeling was a silly fear, a childish dread. Everything behind her had been real. It had been alive.
But if she was correct, then everything was leading up to the first of childish fears in order. It had been a descending array of what had scared her through the years cultivating in one last, and technically her first major fear, the dark. And if she conquered the darkness, she might find her way to the center of the Labyrinth, and then possibly a hope of finding her way out.
The girl’s hands absentmindedly brushed her dress and she took a deep breath, holding her head high and walking with determination towards the red door. A moment past where she stared at the handle, but she shook off her apprehensions and twisted it open.
She opened it a crack at first, tilting her head and peeking cautiously around the edge. She could see nothing, of course. But she knew she wouldn’t. The moth flew over her head, melting into the shadows and fading into the dark.
Her hand pushed the door opened fully, leaving nothing between her and the pitch-black hall. Her eyes scanned every inch, taking in the repercussions of her decision.
“I’ve had enough,” the girl spoke to the darkness.
Before she could talk herself out of it, she took off at a sprint. Her vision was enveloped with the night, obscuring her sight and sending her thoughts back to her young age. Her feet had traveled the route more times than she could count and muscle memory eventually took over.
