“I’m telling you, son, it don’t bear thinking about what might be down there by now, but I know one thing…we don’t want it getting back up here.”
* * *
Fred was quiet for a while, thinking about the thing he’d barely caught a glimpse of back in the hole; a white, slithering thing he’d only seen at the edge of his vision but suspected might be haunting his dreams that very night. Charlie, after his bout of being talkative, went back to a more normal period of silent drinking, which was fine by Fred. He was getting settled in for a long evening, and in truth was looking forward to the eventual oblivion the booze would bring.
Scraps of information came back from Hopman’s Hollow over the next few hours, the gist of which was mostly more of the same. Big hole, getting bigger. There were other stories too; there would always be other stories where the Hopmans were concerned. Folks told of bodies that were there then were gone, of weird voices calling up out of the hole, and of strange diagrams seen on the walls and floor of the Hopman house just before it fell into the chasm. Fred and Charlie listened, then went back to drinking, both of them hoping to start to forget their own tribulations earlier that day.
But it was not to be.
The bar began to fill up, the crowd again full of excited chat about the
hole
which was the biggest thing to happen to the town in many a year. Once people heard that they’d been first on the scene, Fred and Charlie became the focus of some attention. Charlie got exasperated at first with the incessant questioning, but the pair of them quickly cottoned on to the fact that, as minor celebrities, they could squeeze a fair bit of free beer out of their story if they padded it out long enough.
Fred even started to enjoy himself, embellishing his story with new detail on each subsequent telling so that after an hour or so he had made himself out to be quite the hero. The one thing he didn’t mention was the memory of the pale thing that had moved in the pit. He kept that locked away, and after a few more beers even started to forget about it completely.
6
Janet sat back from the microscope, then leaned forward for another look, just to make sure she had indeed seen what she thought she had. She had a sample on the slide, taken from the decayed matter she had gathered at the side of the hole.
It hadn’t changed; it remained the same even on this, her third look. Where she’d expected to see cellular structure, maybe even blood cells, remnants of skin, some indication of organization, she saw instead merely a blob of undifferentiated protoplasm with nothing to indicate it had recently been part of a living body. There was no sign of mitochondria, nor of Golgi apparatus; no sign of much of anything. She was at a complete loss to explain it.
Maybe this is an elaborate joke at my expense? Let’s tease the outsider?
“Well?” Bill Wozniak said. He sat across the table from her, cradling a coffee mug in his huge hands. She couldn’t believe the sheriff would be part of such a joke.
And besides, creating a huge hole on the highway is taking it a bit far.
She allowed herself a small smile at that, and Bill picked up on it.
“Have you found something?”
Janet shrugged.
“It’s too badly degraded to tell much of anything,” she said. “I’m afraid there’s no easy explanation.”
“Devils don’t need no explaining,” Bill said softly.
“Come on, Bill. Even you know that what we saw wasn’t any such things as devils.”
“I know no such thing,” Bill replied. “And I’ll tell you something else for nothing…I’m scared, Janet. Scared that there’s going to be more of them before the night is out.”
She didn’t know how to answer that, and sat quietly. Bill spoke to fill the awkward silence that had developed.
“The sooner we get that hole filled in again, the happier I’ll be.”
“We need to investigate it further,” Janet said.
Bill shook his head.
“Ain’t gonna happen. I’ve got my orders from the town council. Close it up. Fill it with concrete if I have to. Just get rid of it.”
Janet remembered the size of the hole as she’d last seen it. It was clearly a job well beyond the scope, and the budget, of the town’s resources. She held her tongue though, as Bill was obviously in no mood for heeding the realities of the situation—not yet. That would come in the morning, when engineers, surveyors, builders and councilmen would all no doubt have their say, and at great length if precedent was anything to go by.
But for now, Bill was more concerned with the three bodies, or rather, the lack of them.
“We did see those demons, didn’t we?” he asked. There was a plaintive tone in his voice, a memory of a younger, less confident man.
Janet nodded.
“We saw them. But as I told you, they weren’t demons. They looked more like genetic mutations to me; some kind of mole rat, grown huge in a closed niche environment. I’ve heard of such things but…”
Bill cut off her speculation.
“Mole rats? That’s not what I saw. Since when were mole rats bright red? Since when did mole rats have sharp horns? Since when…”
Now it was Janet’s turn to interrupt.
“We’re talking at cross purposes here, Bill. How about you tell me what you saw, see if I can make sense of this?”
He sipped at his coffee before answering, staring into the distance as he remembered.
“The hole weren’t quite so big when I got there. This was just twenty minutes or so after Hopman called the ambulance for old Charlie. I left Deputy Watts with Hopman and did a tour of the damage. That was when I saw them, and I damned near shot myself in the foot getting my pistol out before I noticed they weren’t moving. You say mole rats? I’m in no doubt of what they were. I told you already they were demons, and I ain’t changing my story. The skin was bright red; it even looked kind of burnt. And the horns were stiff and sharp points. And those long fingers…with the talons and all? I’ll never forget them, as long as I live.”
But it’s not what I saw. There’s something really hinky going on here.
She thought it, but again held her tongue. The situation was fraught enough without adding another layer of confusion at this stage. She brewed up more coffee and steered the conversation away from the hole, for the moment. She knew it wouldn’t be long before Bill was back worrying at it; that was his way. Just as it was her way to try to do something to keep him sane.
They’d grown close in recent months. People thought of them as rather an odd couple—the big bluff cop that knew everybody and the small thin doctor that everybody spoke to, but nobody knew. That was the way Janet liked it, or at least it had been until she met Bill. They’d clicked almost immediately, back more than a year ago, but Bill was still hurting then from the death of his wife. Janet was only now seeing signs that Bill might be getting over that, might be ready, if not to move on, to at least enjoy himself a little. Over coffee they made tentative plans to spend time together over the weekend.
“It’s going to depend,” Bill said. “If that hole keeps getting bigger, we might not be left with anywhere to go. It could turn out to be something the national media will take an interest in, and if that’s the case, I ain’t going to be getting any free time for a while. I’ve got a bad feeling about this one.”
After Bill left, she went back to studying the slide under the lens. She still couldn’t make any sense of it. She refused to countenance Bill’s talk of demons, but after examining the slide it was also clear that whatever she had seen, it certainly wasn’t anything that fit into her conception of what made up a mammal.
Bill wasn’t the only one with a bad feeling.
* * *
It was still worrying at her when she left the surgery later to make her way home. She didn’t have far to go, and normally she enjoyed the slow stroll through the sleepy streets of the town. But now the place felt different; she couldn’t put her finger on it, but it seemed as if the place had been given a dose of
hurry-up
. Everything seemed to be happening faster, people walked and talked with more purpose. The town had undergone a change, and she wasn’t sure if she liked it.
Her own street was a case in point. On a normal evening she’d be one of the few out and about at this hour; most folks would just be sitting down to an evening meal, or crashing in front of the television. Tonight though, there was activity everywhere she looked. Clumps of people stood on corners or on porches, while others had even gone as far as starting to pack their pickups in preparation for making a getaway should it be needed. Children called and giggled excitedly and it felt more like the night before a carnival than anything else.
Switching on the television news didn’t help matters. Bill had been right. The media were taking an interest. A too-tanned man of indeterminate age stood with his back to the hole in Hopman’s Hollow. He appeared almost gleeful at the prospect of more devastation.
“The sinkhole is estimated to be growing at two feet an hour,” he said. “And it is by no means clear how much farther it will extend. It has already swallowed the home of local landowner and industrialist John Hopman, who tonight can only stand and observe as everything he has ever worked for falls away into the depths of the maw.”
At least they’re not talking about devils.
She listened for a while as she prepared a meal, but it was obvious that the reporters knew even less than Bill Wozniak did about the situation, and they were just filling up the airtime with idle speculation; everything from fault lines and mine subsidence, to earthquake and fracking damage. It did seem to be quite the story though, as, behind the reporter she was watching, she saw several other news crews, at least one of them
nationals
. Bill had been right to worry.
This is going to get worse before it gets better.
She didn’t eat so much as shovel in fuel, and was surprised to look down and see the plate nearly empty. She stood over the garbage bin to dispose of the meager leftovers. And that’s when she heard it again, a distant hum, like machinery running just at the reach of her hearing. She put a hand on the doorjamb, and felt a slight vibration thrum through the wood. Something seemed to slip inside her head, and she felt then tasted hot blood on her upper lip. A vise gripped her skull and started to tighten; a drummer taking up residence to pound out a beat that drowned everything else out. She staggered to the bathroom, smearing blood on door handles, sink and medicine cabinet before finding the painkillers. She took three, washed them down with water from the tap, then sat on the side of the bath, hand towel pressed to her nose, waiting for the drummer to tire, or her head to explode.
Either will be a relief.
* * *
Her doorbell rang just as the pain started to subside. Thankfully the nosebleed hadn’t lasted long, and the mess it left behind was mainly confined to a blot on the hand towel and the bloody handprints she’d left in her path from the kitchen. She wiped the mess clean as she headed for the door and felt almost human again as she opened it.
Bill Wozniak stood outside on the sidewalk, a rueful grin on his face. He looked as tired as she felt, but she managed a small smile when she saw the tequila bottle in his hand.
“A nightcap for my lady?” he asked, and waved the bottle.
“Just the one,” she replied. “It’s been a long day.”
“Don’t I know it,” he said. “And yes, it will just be the one. Then I’m heading back out to Hopman’s Hollow. I left young Watts on patrol duty, and I can’t let him stay there all night. He was getting twitchy the last time I called.”
Over a glass of tequila—a large one for her, a smaller one for him, Bill brought her up to speed on the situation at Hopman’s Hollow.
“It’s getting bigger,” he said. That was all he had to say.
“How fast?” she asked.
“A couple of feet an hour. That don’t sound too bad, but at fifty feet a day it ain’t gonna be too long before it starts eating into some expensive real estate. That’s when the squealing is really going to start.”
A thought struck Janet.
“The
hum
…it’s happening when the hole grows, isn’t it?”
Bill smiled.
“I like a lady with plenty of smarts. Yep, I spotted that earlier. I was out there when the last
hum
started. It got rid of the news crews quick enough…first signs of nosebleeds and they were all off to the hospital squawking about chemical weapons.”
“How about you? You okay?”
The big man tossed back the tequila, looked at the bottle, and shook his head sadly.
“Nothing a few more stiffeners wouldn’t cure. But that’ll have to wait. I’ve got to go. It’s going to be a long night.”
She spoke without thinking. “Want some company?” She wondered whether she’d misread him and spoken out of place, but his face lit up in a grin.
“That’ll set a few tongues wagging in town. Ellen Simmons will surely be at your door first thing in the morning with a detailed report of proceedings. Are you ready for that?”