Page 89 of The Corruption of Hollis Brown

Then he wiped their tears with Yulia’s scented toilet paper and stood up and faced the mirror.

Walt gazed back at him with brown, bloodshot eyes.

Break

Hollis pulled the towel from the rung and unlocked the door. He opened it slowly, and as he expected, Yulia and Annie were waiting for him.

Annie was crouched low, Bible in one hand, crucifix in the other. Yulia threw the remaining herb water at him, and he skidded back, caught drops of it in the towel.

“STOP!” he shouted, before she could begin chanting. “This isn’t working the way you think!”

“How does it work, then, demon?” Yulia said, her eyes flat and cold.

“Just give me a minute to explain.”

“Fuck you, Hollis!” Annie shouted.

In his panic, he’d missed the steak knife in Yulia’s other hand, but he was definitely noticing it now.

“Just put the knife down and give me five seconds,” he begged.

Yulia twisted her wrist, fluorescent light flashing off the blade. “No.”

Things were rapidly getting out of control again. Hollis could feel the sweat sliding between their shoulder blades. Walt was, mercifully, silent.

“I know this is fucked up. I know and I’m sorry, I just didn’t know what to do. You don’t understand—”

“Then explain it, for fuck’s sake, what the hell happened to me?” Annie sobbed.

“I’m trying!” Hollis cried. “I don’t know what you want me to say. Oh, I got possessed, but we figured things out. How would you even have reacted to that? Realistically, what would have happened?”

“You could have told us!”

“No, I couldn’t! By the time that was even an option, I . . . we . . . Annie, it’s so much more complicated than that.” Hollis shook his head.

“How do we even know who we’re talking to?” Annie was starting to hyperventilate. “Does your mom know? Does anyone know? What the fuck, Hollis! What’s wrong with you?!”

“HEY,” Yulia barked over Annie’s hysterics. “You keep saying we won’t understand, but you haven’t even tried. Try.”

Hollis took a breath.

“First, how did you figure it out?” he asked. “It’s been happening for so long. . . . On the first day I hoped you would somehow know it wasn’t me. That you’d . . . save me or something, I don’t know. What happened that made you—”

“The day we took you to get drug tested, your eyes were a different color. I told Yulia and she . . . she wanted to try this to be sure,” Annie said.

“At dinner.” Yulia stabbed the point of the knife into the ground. “It said we.”

“What?”

“It said, We’re not doing that anymore.” Yulia stared at him, unblinking. “How long has it been, Hollis?”

Hollis closed his eyes for a moment, opened them to study the floor.

“That day I went into the woods and didn’t come out until late, when I stopped answering your calls. That was the night we met. He was . . . shivering and cold. He was scared. And he was desperate. He was dying, and I was kind and thoughtless.”

Walt was quiet, listening. Hollis put a hand on his knee and squeezed.

“It’s been a little over three months. For the first month it was all him. He walked me around and used my voice. Asking questions in my head to make sure he got things right. He was . . . kind and thoughtless too. Every day, he tried hard to make sure he didn’t scare anyone. He was patient at school, sweet to my ma, helped out around the house. Followed any strong rules I gave him, he’s . . . It’s not what you think at all, and I understand why you feel the way you do, but I’ve had time to—”