He turned away from me. “What if it was because … you know… what if I hurt you?”
“You ca
n’t,” I said. “Me passing out had nothing to do with you, I promise. Come on, we should start.”
He hesitated. “I would
n’t have to go through… I mean, I don’t want to put any pressure on you. But what I remember about the hospitalizations ... It would be really good to not have to go through it again.”
I nodded, gesturing for him to come over. He stood slowly, shuffled toward me.
“She took me to the doctor the other day. He said he’d never seen scars open up like that after so long. They did some tests and stuff, but they didn’t have any answers about how it could’ve happened. They wanted to do some kind of research on me — like a guinea pig. That’s why she took me home.” He sat down beside me.
“It was weird how she freaked out when I admitted I’d been down here. And wha
t’s even stranger is how nice she’s been to me since then. I guess ’cause I’m hurting so much. Except she never seemed this nice when I was little and freshly burned and… Sera, what’s wrong?”
“We should get going,” I said. “In case she comes looking for you.” I wanted to hear what he had to say, so much, but my mind was starting to cloud. There was no telling how fast it would turn wild, how soon I’d forget why I was even down there.
“Do you think she’d come down here?” he asked.
“Who?” I said.
“What do you mean ‘who’ — my grandmother?”
I closed my eyes, tried to ignore the hissing cat. Behind my eyelids I saw Myra Clay with a sickle, sneaking up on us. I jumped, turned to see. Something moved behind the tree at the bottom of the town trail. “Is she here?” It might have just been the wind.
“Are you okay?” Zach asked, looking funny.
I wondered if it was possible that I was seeing the future like MK. If so, then we were in danger. We needed to get out of there.
“Shut up!” I yelled at the owl that wouldn’t stop hooting.
“Sera?”
I opened my eyes, saw Zach in front of me, focused my thoughts. “Whatever happens,” I said, “just remember that you’re the best friend I ever had, and that … you know...” My cheeks got hot.
“I… love you, too,” he said, his voice a whisper.
My heart did some sort of flippy thing, and then it crashed, knowing our chance of ever having something together was about to die along with my sanity.
“Are you afraid?” he asked.
I closed my eyes to shut out his question, forced my mind to imagine roots coming down out of my body, grounding me in the earth.
In the past, when I’d imagined what it would be like to go crazy like Gran and MK, I sort of thought it must feel like spacing out into some fantasy world. I never realized how terrifying it was, how confusing, how desperately depressing.
But there was no question now of what I needed to do. I had opened his wounds. I had to heal them. As I pulled back on my shield, his tug overwhelmed me. I let The Hollow rush in. But his wounds felt bigger, darker than the light of The Hollow could handle. I was afraid to touch him, afraid it would knock me out before I had a chance to heal the damage. Suddenly, I realized what I had to do.
“Let’s move over here,” I said, pointing to the center of The Hollow, his favorite spot.
“I thought you didn’t like that part,” he said.
“It’ll be okay,” I replied. I felt bad about making him move again, but I knew the power would be stronger there. I stepped into The Hollow, felt the unbearable rush of energy as it drove into me. I flopped down on a bed of sequoia needles and dirt. He maneuvered his way beside me.
I took a deep breath and held his hands — and then it was out of mine. His wounds overwhelmed my body, crushed me with agony so much worse than he’d let on. The Hollow fought against it, lighting up every point of pain. The energy whirled and swirled through me, and still I felt the red-hot fire of his skin. I opened to The Hollow more and more, removing any barrier that held me together as a separate human being, demanding that it heal him, even as the intensity of it promised to rip me to shreds.
The Hollow flooded into him, coursing through every cell, shocking something inside of him to life. I worried about what had happened to
the chipmunk happening to him — that he would be overwhelmed by the intensity. But at the same time, I knew this was our only chance. We wouldn’t have another, so I had to go all out. And truthfully by this point, I’d lost control over The Hollow. I couldn’t have called it back if I’d tried. More and more of the energy rushed through me and into Zach’s body, connecting us, like wires inside a light bulb. It seemed to come back at me, into my head, into the dark places, lighting them. His whole body lit up as the healing energy licked each open wound. Light
burst
inside my head just as it burst inside his, clearing away all the rubble there that had kept him so wounded, that had blocked his memories. The ground rumbled and shook back and forth as if a child had picked up a wrapped present and given it a good shake. Then the earth dropped out from beneath us, as the world exploded in light.
The woods felt silent and still. “Zach?” I called, sitting up and wiping dirt out of my face.
“Down here,” came his voice.
An orange glow lit the edge of the wood. Daybreak. The cat was gone. I looked where I’d heard Zach’s voice. He was about three feet down in a trench that had moments before been the center of The Hollow, and he was covered in dirt.
I realized then, it had been the implosion of The Hollow MK had fore
seen —
inside turned outside, rumbling and cracking
.
“Are you hurt?” I asked Zach. “Can you move?”
“I’m okay,” he said. He lifted his hand and I gave him mine. A jolt of energy passed between us as I pulled him to standing. He touched his arms, his chest, his face. Then, he sat on the bank of The Hollow. Steam escaped from the ground below. I sat beside him, surprised that my thinking felt not just clear, but heightened, like I could hear every animal in the area, and smell each of them, too. Maybe that was part of the new level of crazy.
I tore off his filthy bandages. Some of them were stuck to his skin, which seemed to buzz at my touch. I worried about infection. But benea
th the bandages, he was whole — just faded pink scars where the old vicious ones had been — like brand new skin. I touched the right side of his face, felt a zing of electricity. “It’s you,” I said.
He looked at his hands, his arms. He smiled. “I don’t hurt,” he said. He pulled off his shoes and jeans and unraveled all the bandages. No open wounds, no terrifying scars. He stood there in his bare feet and boxers and laughed. He ran around the clearing like the chipmunk, like MK.
“Woohoo!” he screamed. “Woohoo!”
I smiled, watching him. Then I noticed something. It wasn’t just his tug that had disappeared. It was the energy of The Hollow. The stillness wasn’t just the quiet of sunrise. Something had changed. The Hollow didn’t feel Hollow-y anymore. The vortex was gone. The ground felt empty, silent.
I looked down into the place where the earth had split open. Through the steam escaping from the pit, a fleck of blue caught my eye. I moved closer to see what it was.
“Grandmother is going to flip!” Zach was screaming. “How am I going to explain this?” He laughed maniacally, then saw my face and stopped. “What is it?” he asked.
I couldn’t speak. I pointed into the shallow grave at a decaying skeleton in a blue nightgown.
He recognized the nightgown. We sat on the bank, trying to take it all in.
“You said you saw her lying still before the fire happened,” I said. “That you hid in your closet. What else can you remember?”
He closed his eyes. “I can see it all now, all those things I couldn’t remember before. They’re there like a movie I’d forgotten.”
“What do you see?” I asked.
“They were fighting.” His voice trembled. “He was calling her names. I don’t think he meant to kill her. He pushed her. She fell against the brick hearth.”
“Where were you?”
“Watching from the top of the stairs. He drove away in his truck. I ran down and tried to wake her up. Blood spilled from her head.” His voice cracked.
“What did you do?”
“I ran to find the phone to call 911. But then I heard his truck come back. I was afraid he would kill me too. So I hid in my closet again. I heard the front door slam. Even after the truck left I stayed hidden. I was so scared. I should’ve called 911.”
“You were so little,” I said. “Of course you were scared.”
“The truck came back one more time. And then I smelled smoke. I still stayed in the closet. But I was afraid I’d burn, so I ran downstairs. The flames stopped me in the living room. That’s when he came in and saved me.” He was crying now. “Why did he save me?”
I held him while he cried. I’d never held a crying boy in my arms before. He felt warm, his skin buzzing, the leftover energy from the healing seemed to form a circuit between us. I stroked his hair, let him cry.
I tried to keep from talking, but my mind was racing. “Why’d he leave and come back so many times? He must have taken her body and buried her here, then come back to burn down the house. You said she’d told him you were at your grandmother’s. He had no way of knowing you were in the house when he set it on fire.
“Maybe this explains the tug that called you out here,” I said. “Maybe your mother thought the time was right for you to find her.”
Mom and MK came racing into the hollow. “We looked for you after the earthquake. You weren’t in your room. We heard yelling,” Mom said.
I didn’t know where to begin. I pointed at the skeleton.
Mom and MK came closer to see what it was. MK gasped.
“Seraphina, let’s take your friend up to the house. Whatever is going on, we’ll figure it out up there,” Mom said. She stepped closer to me. “Your skin is all cleared up.”
I took Zach’s hand. He bit his lip, looking once more into the grave. “That’s my mom,” he said.
“I’m so sorry,” Mom replied.
When we got to the house, I set MK on a mission to bring out every chocolate treat she could find. She kept popping out of the kitchen with something else. But Zach wasn’t eating. He was sitting on the couch, confessing his whole story to Mom.
A new crack had crept across the living room wall from the earthquake. It would be a constant reminder that The Hollow was dead.
Mom squeezed Zach’s hand. “All these years,” she said. “Maybe the stories of the ghost were a call for help. Maybe she wanted someone to ask for the truth. I’m sorry we let you down, Zachariah.” She paced the living room. “Seraphina, may I speak with you, please.”
I followed her to her room. “You healed him,” she said.
I nodded.
“After promising me you wouldn’t try that again.”
I took a few breaths. “He was suffering.”
“There will always be people suffering,” she said.
I hung my head. It didn’t matter anymore anyway.
Then she tipped my face up to her. “I’m proud of you.”
I hugged her, trying not to cry.
“You’re … a healer,” she said, as if trying out the sound of it.
I shook my head. “Past tense,” I said.
She cocked her head to the side.
“We killed The Hollow. The power is gone.”
“Are you sure?” she asked.
I nodded.
“And your
thinking — it feels okay?”
“It’s weird,” I said. “After MK, I thought maybe, well no, I mean it was fine. It’s just… anyway, it’s better now, like completely.” I wasn’t even afraid to go into my room. I knew that girl in the mirror was gone. “I wonder if The Hollow being dead means Gran is better.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Mom said. “We’ll have to go see. But first, we’re going to need to do something about Zachariah. His grandmother will be looking for him.”
“Maybe we should call the police,” I said.
She nodded and then
shook her head, too. “I think we should go see her first, give her a chance to explain herself.”
The four of us got into Mom’s car and drove to Myra Clay’s. As we passed the bakery, Mom slowed. Someone had scrawled across the window in black spray paint
Twitchy witches belong in cages.
I leaned forward and put my hand on Mom’s shoulder, held my breath. “It’s just some dumb kids,” I said. “No one cares.” I looked to MK, wondering if she was hurt by it.
She smiled at me. “Not the first time, won’t be the last.”
Mom’s lips tightened in that way they did when she was stressing. But she drove on to Myra Clay’s anyway. I wondered if there’d be any damage inside the bakery from the earthquake. But there’d be time to deal with that later.
When we pulled up to her house, Myra Clay was on her front steps, looking up and down the street, her forehead wrinkled with worry. The look on her face flickered between relief and dread as Zach stepped out of the car. Then it morphed into shock when she saw his whole, healthy face.