I glance at Jude, disconcerted.
He looks back at me, just as unnerved.
Mistress Bramble lowers herself into the rocking chair and sets her hands on the arm rests, her bottom lip curling inward in that way a lip does when there’s no teeth to lend support. “So the old story begins.”
I swallow, unsure if her jarring words were part of the old story, or something separate.
You woke a great hunger.
In all my years of attending Night of the Howl, none of the other storytellers started in such a way.
Jude sets his hand on my knee as Mistress Bramble tells the tale.
“Long ago,” she begins, “when plague and famine ran through the Low Country, an alchemist set on conquerin’ death lost his mother and his sister soon after. Then the girl he loved. Death came for her, same as the rest. But he wouldn’t let her go. Used dark magic, he did. Saved her body, but hollowed her soul ’til she weren’t the woman he loved no more.”
I wrap my arms tight around Jude’s and press myself closer to his side.
“Desperate, he turned the dark magic on himself, thinkin’ he could fix what he’d done. But it rotted him from the inside out. He found, after a time, that if he took the breath of another, the hollowness eased some. But the girl he loved…” Mistress Bramble shakes her head forlornly. “She wouldn’t follow him into it. So he took her soul instead. That’s when he became somethin’ else.De Vrat. A Hollow Walker. The very first of his kind. Calling upon dark powers, he twisted that girl intoa hound. And every soul he took after just added to the pack.De Zwarte Muil. Black as soot, they were. Thin as a winter crow.”
I glance at Jude.
Other than our podcast, this is the first time he’s heard the story.
I’ve always found it to be an entertaining one.
“The Dutch settled in these here mountains and the tribes warned ‘em of a spirit that hunts the deep hollers when the cold sets in. A spirit tied to hunger and sickness. Then came the winter of 1760, brutal as a blunt ax. Four children dead in a fortnight. Cows and sheep wasted to bone. The holler echoin’ with howls through the long nights. Wolves, they said, in the fog.”
Mistress Bramble leans forward, firelight catching the wart on her chin. “But the settlers knew better. A Hollow Walker had come to their valley. Vorat, they called him. And he didn’t come alone. Brought his pack along. Hollow Hounds, with eyes like embers, huntin’ the woods, huntin’ the mines, huntin’ their very dreams…”
A young girl to my right burrows into her mother.
“Hollowed you out, they did. ’Til there weren’t nothin’ left but a shell. Hungriest in the winter. That’s how this night came to be.” She motions beyond us, toward the industrial bins blazing withfire and the hand drums. “All that noise and fire meant to drive him back. Keep the Hollow Walker and his hounds at bay ’fore the cold set in.”
Mistress Bramble comes to the edge of her chair, her fingers curling around the armrests, her elbows jutting outward at sharp angles. “Fires lit. A rooster set in a basket. Young and old beatin’ on drums, bangin’ on pots, howlin’ into the trees. Then they’d run. Lock their doors, lay salt and ash across the windows, cover the mirrors, and wait ’til first light. If the rooster crowed, he was gone another year. If he didn’t, well…”
I hold my breath, spellbound by the spinning of this tale, when a terrified sound rents the air.
Not the howling of townsfolk.
But a bloodcurdling scream that echoes through the hollow.
11
A BODY IN THE RIVER
For a disorienting second, I think this is part of the story—the screaming. A carefully placed sound effect. But the scream keeps going and the police are running.
People surge to their feet, myself included.
Mayor Ridley jumps onto the dais, as though the scream is a threat hurtling itself toward Mistress Bramble, like she is the kind of woman who might need his protection. She rises from her chair and peers into the dark as officers converge upon the covered bridge over the Blackwillow River.
“Is somebody hurt?”
“What’s going on?”
“Who’s screaming?”
The questions pop like heated kernels through the crowd. I grab Jude’s hand and we weave our way through the people, Twig hobbling behind us in his boot. By the time we reach the food carts, the officers and several volunteers have formed a human barrier, blocking curious onlookers who have taken out their phones and turned on their cameras.
