“Veil root,” she replies. “Grows where the boundary is thinnest.”
“Is it known for giving people visions?”
Mistress Bramble pauses, like I’ve said something surprising, which is answer enough.
“When I found the seed,” I tell her, “it gave me a vision of my mother being chased through the woods. Her name is Clara Green.”
I watch for a reaction, but she just continues applying the paste.
“I planted the seed and a leaf grew and I saw her again. Imprisoned insidede Overlaagwith Simon Vandenberg.”
This time, she does have a reaction.
She knows that name.
Everyone knows that name.
Even a recluse like herself would have heard it, along with the other three in the family—Lily, John, Maureen.
“It showed me how his sister was killed,” I tell her.
She sets the bowl aside and picks up the strips of linen.
“I watched her twist up into a hound.”
Mistress Bramble begins wrapping my arm.
“There really is a Hollow Walker in this town, isn’t there?”
She meets my eye.
Hers are a steely, watchful gray. Her face, a map of hard lines and sunspots. The wooden crate creaks under her and finally she says, “It is very hungry.”
“How do we stop it?” The old stories never mention this part. They only tell of appeasing his hunger and repelling his hounds. But black bread and salt won’t do. “How do you kill a Hollow Walker?”
“I find with most things, fire does the trick.”
30
LACERATED
The next morning, I might have thought the whole thing a dream if not for the pain in my arm and my empty window sill.
The plant is gone.
Mistress Bramble torched it.
If she hadn’t, I might not be alive right now. Still, I can’t help but feel a deep pang in the depths of my stomach. The plant was our way into the Overlay, a window to my mother, and now, it’s ash.
I swing my legs around and plant my feet on the cold floor. Before leaving Mistress Bramble’s cabin, she removed the poultice. She applied a tacky salve that smelled like eucalyptus. Then sent me home with more of it in a mason jar, freshstrips of linen, and instructions to change the dressings in the morning.
That was it.
Should something go wrong, like an infection, she didn’t invite me to return. I imagine showing up at the ER, trying to explain to the nurse what happened.
Funny thing. I was attacked by some inter-dimensional flora.
Very gingerly, I unwrap the linen. The wounds are deep and angry. My skin, puffy and bruised. In the bathroom, I shower awkwardly, trying to keep the injury dry. Then I apply the salve with gritted teeth and wrap my arm exactly as Mistress Bramble instructed. I dress in a pair of leggings, a hoodie, a puffer vest, and my Converse All Stars, then head downstairs, where Dad cooks breakfast in the kitchen—Black Friday pancakes, his one culinary specialty.
