The Hollows(75)

Chapter 41


Greg lay on the floor of his bedroom, covered in his own blood.

The carpet beneath my feet was sticky with the stuff. It was spattered across the white paint of the door. Greg was a big man, and his body filled the space between the foot of the bed and the closet. He was wearing his red Hollow Falls polo shirt and I imagined him getting ready for work, another day in his new job. Although I didn’t want to look too closely, I could see that some patches of blood were darker. It looked like he’d been stabbed in the belly. Twice at least. The room stank of something foul. Blood and sweat and excrement.

I stepped back, out of the room, not wanting to look at Greg’s corpse for a moment longer, unable to bear the stench.

I flapped a hand at David, motioning for him to go downstairs. My legs were weak and I had to grip the handrail. It took all my self-control not to vomit. David was not so lucky. He bent double and threw up, splattering the carpeted hallway. He went into the kitchen and splashed his face with water, then opened the back door, gulping fresh air.

‘The twins,’ I said, standing behind him. The PlayStation controllers. The cans of Coke. The scattered candy. ‘They did this. They killed their own dad.’

‘That means . . .’

We were both trying to figure it out. Had Greg been innocent all along? Had I been wrong about Greg being Crow, having leapt to the wrong conclusion when I realised he was the twins’ dad? One thing was for sure. Frankie and Ryan were not here. I doubted they’d ever been here.

‘We’ve got to call the police now,’ David said.

I pushed my hands through my hair. Out here in the back garden, I was able to breathe again. The air was thick with heat but at least it didn’t stink. That cloying stench. The blood. I didn’t think I’d ever forget it.

‘Tom?’ David urged. The sight of Greg’s body had taken something out of him. He looked defeated. Almost resigned.

‘Let me think,’ I said. I had to believe that Frankie and Ryan were still alive. Buddy and Darlene and Crow, whoever that was – could it actually be Everett? – had taken them somewhere and were waiting, but for how long? If I knew what they were waiting for . . .

There was a calendar hanging on the wall in the kitchen. I went inside to study it. Something I had read in Jake Robineaux’s book, his account of the murder scene, was niggling at me, just out of reach. And then I saw it, marked on the calendar. The symbol that gave me the answer.

‘David, come here.’

He came into the kitchen, queasy and exhausted-looking.

I pointed to the calendar. ‘What’s special about today?’

He peered at it. ‘Nothing.’

‘Look again.’

He did as I asked. ‘Wait. It’s a new moon.’

‘And the first murders happened on a new moon too,’ I said. ‘Is that right?’

‘Yeah. Yeah, they did.’

‘And the new moon symbolises . . . ?’

He stared at the moon symbol on the calendar. ‘Connie covered this on the podcast. Fresh beginnings, sending your intentions into the world. Stuff like that.’

‘Which fits with what we now know they were trying to do back in ’99,’ I said. ‘Ridding this place of the campers. It would fit with their wanting to purify this place for the spirit of that woman. Abigail. It’s a new moon tonight. That’s what they’re waiting for. Frankie and Ryan are still alive. I’m sure of it.’

I didn’t believe in spirits or pagan gods or the dark power of rituals. But what I thought wasn’t important. All that mattered was that they believed it. And besides, however it was dressed up, the original killings had achieved a concrete aim, hadn’t they? The campground had shut down. Whether it was wrapped up in ancient beliefs or not, there was no reason to think it wouldn’t work again.

‘Tom, I think we need to call the police.’

He was right, wasn’t he? We couldn’t leave Greg’s body here like this. And if the abductors needed to wait until the night of the new moon before conducting their ritual, surely that meant their threat to kill our kids if we called the authorities was intended purely to scare us. To stop us doing exactly that.

And I had fallen for it. I should have called the cops last night.

I took out my phone and dialled 911.

While it rang, David said, ‘I’m going to drive back to the resort, let Connie know what’s going on. She must be going out of her mind.’

‘Okay.’

As I watched him run back to the car, 911 came on the line. I explained everything to the call-taker. It took a few minutes to answer her questions. I didn’t mention new moons or rituals because I was pretty sure that would make them think I was a crank.

‘How long will it take?’ I pressed. ‘Before somebody gets here?’

I could sense her tapping at a computer, and remembered what Wyatt had told me. The nearest police were ninety miles away. It would take them at least an hour to get here. The ambulance might be quicker, but they were already responding to a couple of emergencies in the area where the patient had some hope of survival.

An hour. I couldn’t stand around waiting for that long.



The children were still playing on the lawn next door, the picture of innocence. Sweet faces concentrating on their game. Had Buddy and Darlene been like this once? I remembered what Nikki had told me, about the twins’ mother running off because she thought her kids were evil. It was hard for me to imagine looking at a two-year-old child and thinking that. Difficult, naughty, uncooperative. All two-year-olds are terrible; everyone knows that. What had she, their own mother, seen in them that made her run? Had she foreseen this? It made me shudder.