The Hollow Ones(61)

Solomon waited, smelling buttermilk. A radio or a turntable somewhere in the house played marching music. Flies flew at a nearby window, buzztap-buzztap-buzztap, again and again.

Solomon checked Blackwood. He was looking up at the unfinished ceiling. Solomon looked up himself but didn’t see anything remarkable. The British man must have been simply clearing his thoughts.

Coleman, the twenty-year-old, came out of the back, slowly but not shyly. Deliberateness was part of his manner.

“Cole, it’s Agent Solomon.”

“Yessir.”

“Here to see Vernon. I brought along a specialist.”

Cole looked at Hugo Blackwood. He did not ask what kind of specialist Blackwood was. Nor did he appear to be very optimistic.

“He’s been quiet,” said Cole.

“Everything all right, Cole?” asked Solomon.

“No, sir,” said Cole, turning without further explanation, walking ahead of them to the rear pantry. He stepped inside there rather than the closed door next to it, pulling on a chain to illuminate a bare bulb, and removing a key from a high shelf. He handed it to Solomon rather than unlocking the door himself.

“Thank you,” said Solomon, but the young man was already walking away.

Solomon listened at the door, expecting to hear the boy call Blackwood’s name again. There was no sound. Solomon inserted the key, turning it, pulling the door open.

Inside was the same bed with the same thin, bare mattress stained with blood.

But no young boy. The chains lay on the floor, manacles open.

Solomon, alarm rising, hurried back down the hallway of loose floorboards, calling Cole’s name. The young man stood near the front entrance.

“Who took him?” asked Solomon.

Cole shook his head, confused. “Took him?”

“Vernon. He’s gone.”

Cole started past Solomon, needing to see for himself. Solomon saw the young girl sitting in a metal folding chair inside an adjoining room, watching him, scared.

Blackwood gripped Solomon’s elbow suddenly, pushing him toward the front door. Solomon allowed himself to be maneuvered outside.

“What?” said Solomon.

Blackwood said, “I think I know where he is.”



Solomon’s senses were on high alert as he followed Blackwood back into the dreaded woods. There was just enough light through the overhead canopy to allow them safely through the trees and the grabbing branches without use of the flashlight gripped in his left hand.

Blackwood strode ahead with an uncanny sense of direction, having only visited here once. They arrived at the hanging tree, but Blackwood’s pace never slowed. He continued toward the first marked trunk he had seen, moving symbol-to-symbol toward the forgotten slave burial ground. Through the trees ahead, harsh orange light through fitful shadows. A campfire, thought Solomon, the young agent rationalizing everything he encountered with some real-world explanation.

As they came upon the clearing, Solomon’s mind was unable to take in everything at once. The images appeared to him in sequence, like a series of smaller explosions culminating in a total demolition.

A ring of fire burned in the scrub grass, five feet in diameter, black smoke rising into the night.

Inside the fire ring knelt the boy, Vernon, all of six years old, before the row of grave markers, wearing only a pair of dirty cotton pants. He held his arms high, hands open, as though summoning something from the sky.

But what appeared came from below, a fine haze rising from the grassy floor like an evaporating mist, suffused with light. Out of the headstones arose a different vapor, thicker, violet-hued, forming roughly human shapes. With the imagination of a man seized by terror, Solomon made out the upper torsos, heads, and outstretched arms of rising, gaseous specters.

Beyond the graves, standing at the far edge of the tree line, stood a figure in a hooded white robe, sleeves drooping from its outstretched hands in the shape of open, moaning mouths. Shadows thrown by the flame gave the illusion of more figures moving behind it, a league of black-robed officiants performing ministrations over the burial site…but there was only one.

Solomon froze at the sight of this ungodly rite. His mind had no accounting for it. The distress rang like alarm bells in his head.

The robed figure was immediately aware of their intrusion. Its unseen head turned toward Blackwood, and suddenly it withdrew into the trees, obscured by the frenetic shadows.

Blackwood ran after it. Solomon could hear nothing, not even his own voice as he called after Blackwood, not knowing what to do. Blackwood rushed past the circle of flame, the low mist swirling at his legs as though grabbing after him. He hurried between two violet apparitions, their hazy forms rippling in his wake as they seemed to turn and reach out to him.

Blackwood entered the tree line where the robed figure had disappeared, and vanished himself.

Before Solomon’s eyes, everything in the slave graveyard started to collapse. The flames dipped as though controlled by a dial. The ground mist faded like smoke. And the gaseous grave figures—the half-risen spirits of long-dead Negro slaves—died a second death, limbs and torsos dissipating, their pained faces the last to go.

The boy, Vernon, turned slowly, head first, his small, skinny body following. He was emaciated, his small ribs plain against his midsection, arms and legs thin. His eyes were silver moons with a small black dot in the center, eyes more animal than human. His lips were curled back to reveal his teeth, though not in the form of a smile.