The Hollows

The first Hollow appeared in the bright light of day.

It looked, at first, to be a deep obsidian humanoid statue, with long gangly limbs, slender fingers, and a v-shaped torso. The head tilted slightly to the side, unnervingly, as if deep in thought.

It stood, motionless, smack in the middle of Main Street in our small town of Cedar Hold. It simply spawned one bright morning as if somebody had erected it overnight. It did not appear to be made of any solid material, instead, the dark matter looked like a smoky cross between air and fluid, an opaque dark fog, like a three dimensional shadow.

Immediately, the whole town was enthralled by the strange apparition.

“It must be an optical illusion.” Hannah said, flicking a cigarette, the ash almost landing on the hem of my sleeve. “Or some sort of performance art piece, you know, to get the town talking.”

“Please.” I smiled. “This is not New York or L.A. Nobody is doing performance art in middle-of-nowhere cornfield USA.”

“What do you think it is, then, Dan?” Hannah looked at me curiously, her dark hair becoming increasingly frizzy from the midwestern humidity. Hannah and I used to be next door neighbors when we were kids, before she went away to college at UCLA. Now, a degree in biology and a whole lot of debt later, she was back in the town where we both grew up, to care for her sick father. I considered her one of my closest friends.

I shrugged as I handed her a mug of coffee. I didn’t have an answer to her question. Truth be told, the mysterious apparition deeply disturbed me. It felt invasive, the way it was just standing there in the middle of town, unmoving, watching us, studying us. Through the smudged glass of the wall to wall windows of the diner, I could see the dark shape about a mile down the road.

The town had erected a barricade around the shadow statue within hours of its discovery, so nobody had been able to come within ten feet of it. Some local kids have thrown rocks at it, most missing it completely, but the few stones that did manage to hit the target simply disappeared, as if absorbed into a dark void. It had been there almost three days already, and we were no closer to finding out what it was.

My best friend Lee sat beside Hannah hunched over his bacon and eggs, seemingly unbothered. “Aliens, obviously.” He said in between bites. “They’re probably, like, trying to communicate with us. Copying the way we look, that’s why it’s shaped like that, you know?”

“It doesn’t scare you?” Hannah turned to Lee, taking another puff from her cigarette.

Lee snorted. “Are you kidding me? This is the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to this town.” He paused, serious all of a sudden, which was a rare thing for my childhood friend. “And yes, it terrifies me.”

“Doesn’t seem to affect your appetite.” I quipped, trying to lighten the mood. Seeing Lee being anything other than his jovial self didn’t sit right with me.

“Theresa thinks it’s a demon.” Lee continued, shoveling another piece of bacon into his mouth. He ate when he was stressed. It was a wonder he was still so skinny. He pointed a fork into the sky, flinging a piece of scrambled egg onto the counter. “End of days, she says. But then again she says that every other week.”

I smiled to myself. Lee was always talking about Theresa. She and Lee had just gotten married two weeks ago, everybody telling them they were crazy, getting married at twenty-three. But Lee and Theresa have been together since high school and there was not a doubt in my mind they were meant for each other.

“Where is Theresa?” Hannah asked.

“At the doctor’s.”

“Oh no, is she sick?”

Lee smiled. He seemed about to bust at the seams with excitement.

A gasp from Hannah. “No way. Shut up. Are you guys pregnant? Already?”

I chuckled at the mix of emotions on Lee’s face. My friend never could keep a secret, wearing his heart proudly on his sleeve. “Now you’ve done it. Theresa is going to kill you.”

“Hannah, you have to promise not to say anything. We’re not telling people yet and—” Lee started.

Before Lee could say anything further, a piercing voice echoed through the quiet street from the edge of the barricade.

“It’s moving! It’s moving!” A distant panicked man yelled. “The shadow is moving!”

Then, there were screams.

—

As the days passed, more and more of the creatures appeared across town, in seemingly random places. The playground. The shopping mall. The roof of the municipal hall. They were all different shapes and sizes, some short and rotund, while others can be up to eight feet tall. One thing they all had in common was their eerie humanoid form. Two legs, two arms, a torso, and a head.

Of course, we now know they were anything but human.

We gave them a name: Hollows.

At first they stood unmoving, like statues. They remained in this state for three days. Then, like clockwork, on the fourth day, they would start moving. Slowly, at first, lumbering clumsily, in unfocused directions, like sleepy giants, then they became more focused, more dangerous. Interestingly, they seemed only able to move in daylight.

We lost almost half the citizens of Cedar Hold that first week. A third of the remaining survivors on the second. Theresa, unfortunately, was at the medical building during the first attack, and was one of the first casualties.

It had been three weeks now since the first Hollow appeared, and there was one Hollow in particular that was giving me and my friends trouble. It was one that appeared on Lee’s roof three days ago. Its long legs seemingly right at home in between the shingles atop where Theresa and Lee’s bedroom would have been.

The three of us stood somberly on Lee’s front lawn looking at the Hollow with a sharp object in each hand. For once, Hannah did not have a lit cigarette in hers. It was just as well. We were quickly running out of them.

“I just really think it looks like her.” Lee was saying, a strange expression on his face. A cross between desolation and hope. “It’s the hair, you see how it curls at the shoulders like that? I mean, it lands in exactly the same way as Theresa’s. The exact same way. And she’s the same height! It has to mean something.”

“I don’t know, Lee.” Hannah said softly, kindly. “I don’t think it has to mean anything.”

I glanced at my watch. We were coming up on seventy two hours.

“It’s almost time, Lee.”

“I know, I know!”

“We don't have to do this.” I said gently, putting a hand on Lee’s shoulder which he immediately shrugged off.

“I have to know, Dan. Don’t you understand?” Lee turned to look at me and I could see the desperation in his eyes. “I have to know if it’s her.”

I could have imagined it. The slightest of movements from the Hollow, a turn of the head. And I had to give it to Lee, it did look like Theresa for a second. The slender neck, the suggestion of hair landing right past the shoulders. But how could it be?

“She won’t hurt me.” Lee whispered, to no one in particular.

Silently we helped Lee set up a twenty foot ladder against the side of his house. It took some maneuvering between the three of us, we weren’t exactly college athletes, but eventually we all deemed the ladder positioned correctly and steady enough.

“Here goes.” Lee took a deep breath before climbing the ladder slowly, his expression dead serious, as if on his way to the gallows..

Hannah and I held our breaths as we watched. The dark shadow stood motionless on the roof, waiting, watching. The streets were so dead quiet, most of the remaining citizens having taken to self-imposed quarantine, that I imagined I could hear Lee’s pounding heartbeat. Or maybe I was hearing my own.

When Lee finally hauled himself up on the roof, the shadow remained perfectly still, like a statue. He came within three feet of it when suddenly, there was the smallest of movements, a millimeter, maybe two.

Hannah screamed.

“Lee!”

The Hollow was morphing. It tilted its head to the left and raised its right arm, mirroring Lee’s movements. There seemed to be smoky tendrils emanating from it, creeping, slowly, towards my friend.

Lee didn’t seem to hear us. He was entranced, his gaze fixated on the Hollow, his pupils so dilated they looked completely black.

“Get out of there, Lee!” I yelled scrambling to to get up the ladder. I feel Hannah’s hand grab my arm.

“Are you crazy? Don’t go up there!” Hannah begged.

I shook her hand off. There was no way I was going to leave my friend up there. I couldn’t see what exactly was happening from the ground, I had to get up there.

Suddenly, before I was even a couple of rungs up the ladder, a mist of pink and red showered us from the roof. Tiny reddish specks. The slight taste of copper in the air.

Hannah was crying now, and before I knew what was happening she was pulling me from the ladder with strength I didn’t know she had. Instincts took over then, and we ran, we ran and ran.

Screams from the rest of the town drowned Hannah’s cries.

We never did see Lee again after that.

We chose to believe that at least, now, he was with Theresa.

--