“Who are you?”
“FredJoeGeorge.”
“Where are you?”
“Fred is dead.”
“Where are you?”
“With Fred.”
“Are you in Hopman’s Hollow?”
“Fred is. Fred is dead.”
“Did you cause the hole to collapse?”
“Fred did. Fred is dead.”
Tricia gasped loudly and Fred looked up from the notepad. The three others stared, open-mouthed and wide-eyed, at the board. The glass spun under their fingers, faster and faster, in a tight circle around the word
NO
. Without warning, it cracked and fell in three pieces to the board.
For a second everything went completely quiet and still.
“What just happened?” the man across the table said. Tricia looked at Fred.
“I think it was them.”
Fred lit a fresh smoke, having to force his hands to stay steady.
“You three have just spooked yourselves. There ain’t no such thing as ghosts.”
“Are you shitting me?” the man across the table said. “After what we’ve just seen?”
The lights in the room all dimmed at once, and the background hum that had been there from the refrigerator weakened and dulled to little more than a whisper. Shadows gathered in the corners, darkening as the lights faded further. The trailer vibrated, thrumming like a tuning fork, sending tremors up through Fred’s body. He felt wetness at his lip and tasted fresh blood. The jackhammer started up again behind his right eye.
Oh, crap. I think we’re in trouble.
Tricia looked down at the dribble of blood that ran from her chin down to her cleavage. Fred found he was no longer quite so interested in the contents of the top. The man across from them wiped at his nose and left a bloody smear across his cheek. The girl beside him sat, leaning slightly forward, dripping a steady patter of droplets onto the glass tabletop, where they pooled and started to run towards the broken shards of the drinking glass.
“What is
this
shit?” Tricia said.
No one had time to reply.
The floor lurched beneath them. The girl across the table screamed—the first sound he’d heard from her all night. Tricia grabbed his hand, hard enough to bring a flare of pain as the old trailer squealed and tipped up, kitchen end first. The four of them tumbled and rolled, as if caught in a washing machine’s cycle.
* * *
Despite the booze, Fred was the first to react as the trailer came to a stop with a thud. He had a mental flash, an image of Hopman’s septic tank tumbling down into the black chasm, and had a good idea what was happening to them.
“Everybody out. Now!” he shouted, and headed for the door, even as the trailer lurched again and tipped up to a thirty-degree angle. Loose furniture slid across the floor, and there was a clatter and crash from the scullery as the kitchenware scattered.
The other man crouched in the fetal position by the sofa, moaning piteously. The two women were right behind Fred as he opened the door. The front end of the trailer took a fresh dive downwards, threatening to knock them off their feet again. Bottles, glasses, television and coffee table all flew in the air to crash and break against the kitchen wall. The hunched man slid, almost comically slowly, across the floor, mewling like a frightened kitten as he went.
Tricia made a move to go to help him, but Fred pushed her out the door.
“I’ll get him. Just go.”
Outside all was dark. Screams echoed through the night, accompanied by a crashing, tearing cacophony of breaking glass and twisting metal. Whatever was happening, it wasn’t confined to this trailer. But there was no time to dwell on that.
The quiet girl had already leapt, still silent, out into the dark. Tricia turned in the doorway and held out a hand towards Fred.
“Come on,” she shouted. “It’s going over.”
Fred reached for her. The man across the room wailed again.
“Don’t leave me!”
Fred looked at Tricia’s hand, then across at the terrified man in the corner.
Like a deer in the headlights
.
“I can’t leave him,” Fred said. “You go. I’m right behind you.”
He waited until Tricia leapt from the doorway before heading across the room, almost having to climb as the trailer took another lurch.
Out of time. I’m not going to reach him.
“Come here!” he shouted at the man.
The man wailed again, a wordless cry of fear. Fred yelled back at him. “If you don’t come here right now, I’m going to kick ten grades of shit out of you.”
That finally got the other man moving. He got unsteadily to his feet and headed for Fred in a sideward shuffle. The trailer squealed and rolled slightly, throwing the men together. They clasped hands and headed for the doorway, reaching it just as the trailer stood up, almost vertical on its front end.
“Jump,” Fred shouted. The man seemed to have gained some courage from somewhere. He leapt out into the darkness. Fred tried to follow, but was caught off balance by another jolt of the trailer. A scream came from outside, and then the trailer started to tip over. Fred grabbed for the edge of the door, managed to get a hold and pulled himself upright.
“Jump,” someone shouted. He didn’t need to be told twice. He leapt into darkness, just as the trailer fell away from beneath him.
He heard a crash, far below, but he was too busy scrambling for footing. He managed to get clear of the falling trailer, but had jumped, not onto solid ground, but against the crumbling wall of a newly formed hole. For a horrible second he thought he might tumble down to join the debris in the pit, but then he found some purchase, and pulled himself up, clambering out of the hole. He rolled aside, panting with exertion and trying not to throw up what little remained in his gut.
Another scream came from somewhere nearby, one that was quickly cut off, leaving behind only silence.
He got unsteadily to his feet and looked around, disoriented.
“Don’t just stand there,” Tricia shouted. “Run.”
She was ten yards to his left, standing with the other two. Fred immediately saw that he stood in a precarious situation. The ground at his right was still falling away into the darkness as a new hole grew. And it wasn’t the only one. Fresh screams rose from all around the trailer park, and even from where he stood, Fred saw that at least a dozen of the mobile homes had been swallowed, lost somewhere in the deep. Off to his left another leaned at a precarious angle and, before he could move, tumbled away out of sight.
“Get over here,” Tricia shouted. She sounded almost hysterical. “Right fucking now.”
He started to move towards the trio…just as the ground collapsed in front of him. He managed to keep his balance and leapt to safety.
The others weren’t so fortunate.
The wall of the new hole slid in one huge slab of earth with them on top of it, straight down into the blackness.
The last thing Fred saw as he looked down was the blonde mop of hair, disappearing into the gloom as Tricia, and her friends, fell screaming into the dark.
8
Janet and Bill were parked just off road to the west of Hopman’s Hollow. They sat on the bonnet, sharing the last of the sheriff’s coffee from the large travelling mug he kept in the car. It had gone lukewarm, but Janet didn’t mind that, as long as the brew was strong, and Bill liked his coffee strong enough to stand a spoon in.
A clear sky hung overhead, and a crescent moon was just coming up over the trees. It might almost have been peaceful, if it wasn’t for the almost constant sound of earth falling away into the growing hole. They were over a hundred yards from the edge, parked at one of the roadblocks Bill had asked to be set up, and Janet still didn’t feel quite safe.
But I’m not leaving Bill out here alone.
They’d both been quiet for several minutes, but this was no awkward silence.
“We should do this more often,” she said.
Bill laughed.
“What, stand guard over a hole that threatens to swallow the town?”
She punched his arm, playfully.
“You know what I mean. It’s nice to get some peace and quiet.”
Bill nodded and looked up at the stars spread overhead.
“Do you ever wonder? What it’s all about? What it’s all for?”
“Having deep thoughts, Bill? It’s not like you.”
He took a while to answer.
“It was seeing those
devils
that did it. I always had some sort of faith, a weak one, but it’s there. But seeing those—things—has made me think. How about you?”
She had a speech pre-prepared; one honed in long, slightly drunken, conversations at medical college, back when she’d tried to engage in debate with her more religious classmates. She brought it out again, for the first time in years, but she remembered it almost by heart.
“Faith? I put my faith in science. Life for me is an opportunity to create meaning by my deeds, my actions and how I manage my way through the short part of infinity I’m given to operate in. And once my life is finished, my atoms will go back to forming other interesting configurations with those of other people, animals, plants and anything else that happens to be around, as we all roll along in one big, ever-changing, universe.”
“No God?” Bill asked softly.
She shook her head. “None needed. Not for me.”
“Then I pity you,” Bill said, and Janet felt a flash of anger that she pushed down. Back at college she would have vented at his point, letting loose a diatribe against
big sky fairies
and
superstitious claptrap.
But that wasn’t anything Bill needed to hear.
Not now, not tonight.
“Look up there,” Janet said. “Some of that starlight blazed billions of years ago, from billions of stars in billions of galaxies. I’m not so conceited as to think that all of that was created just for the benefit of folks that live on a tiny speck of blue and white tucked away in a small corner in the middle of nowhere. We folks have only been here for a tiny fraction of the lifetime of the universe, and given the way we’re going, I don’t think we’ll be around long enough to make too much of an impact on the grand scheme of things. But some of my atoms will be around long enough to be there at the death of our own star. I rather like that idea.”
Bill was quiet for a long time.
“Do you think there’s anyone else out there?” he said.
“If there is, I doubt they’re anything like us. Evolution happens through a process of species adapting to ecological niches, and ecology is too highly determined by place. Our planet’s ecosystem is highly adapted to living eighty or so million miles away from a yellow sun, with a captive, close moon. There won’t be that many others just like us…but I’m sure there’s other life out there somewhere. The universe is too big to be empty.”
“But that’s something you take on faith?” Bill asked.
It was her turn to laugh.
“I suppose it is.”
It’s faith based on a good scientific guess. But that’s a discussion for another night.
She felt a chill as a breeze got up. She didn’t feel tired, despite the long day. Years of medical training meant she was well used to pulling all-nighters, something doctors shared with cops. She held tight to Bill’s arm, and hoped their differing views on faith were not going to grow into a problem.
She was still mulling that over when she felt the squad car tremble beneath them, and heard a distant, but distinct, hum. Her headache kicked in again, and there was fresh blood at her nostrils. It wasn’t an outpouring like the gush that had hit her back in her home; the bleed was little more than a dribble. But the headache was much worse, like a vise had been clamped on her skull and tightened until the bone was close to cracking.
“We should go,” Bill said, his voice seeming to come from a great distance. Janet didn’t answer. Her gaze was fixed on Hopman’s Hollow. At first she only thought she’d seen movement there, the barest hint of something flickering. Then it got brighter, and more persistent.
A pulsing blue light rose out of the hole. It grew brighter still until it threw harsh shadows over the whole area. Something rose out of the deep and lifted into the air, hovering above them, a steely-blue saucer that hummed and throbbed before departing up, fast as a blink, into the blackness of the stars. They watched it go until its light was too faint to distinguish among the stars.
A voice whispered at her ear.
Do you think there’s anyone else out there?
She turned to see who had spoken. There was no one there. There was just the wind in the trees, and darkness at the side of the road.
“What is going on here?” Bill said.
Janet didn’t have an answer.