Hell's Hollow (10 page)

“But it’s not what you said. It’s not from touching them.”

“I don’t know why you’re so upset by this. It
is
from touching them, because any of those things could happen while you’re holding them. And many of those illnesses do
not
have cures.” Her face changed then. She swallowed. Her voice sounded like she was talking to a wild animal. “Let’s sit down, stay calm. We need to get some food in you. Then we can head over to Meadowland.”

“So what —
you can lock me up with them? I’m not crazy and you can’t control me!” I felt wild, ready to lash out, sick from the way she’d misled me all this time.

She looked so terrified it actually calmed me down. Like I couldn’t stand to see her so scared.

“I’m sorry,” I said, sinking onto the chair. “It’s okay. I’m fine.”

She went back to the kitchen without saying a word. Every few minutes she sniffled and breathed weird, like she was crying.

I went in and put my arms around her. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I just had a weird day. I’m okay, I promise.”

She hugged me to her chest and cried for a minute, then pulled herself together. “Let’s have some soup and go visit.”

We ate in silence. She kept swallowing hard, like she couldn’t make the soup go down. On the car ride over to Meadowland, I put on my quiet playlist, closed my eyes, and worked on building up my shield.

I never knew what to expect opening the door to their room. Today Auntie MK was sitting in the recliner chair, her hands frozen awkwardly in the air. She stared into space, her posture perfectly upright. Gran sat by the window in the straight-backed chair, holding a small radio above her head as though she were about to smash it.

“Mother!” Mom called out to stop her. “What are you doing?”

Gran pulled the radio in toward her chest, probably hoping Mom wouldn’t take it away. “Infernal radio waves trying to infiltrate my brain with messages. Did you hear what they were saying on the short wave about listening when you’re not spoken to? Do you understand what it means for us in here? I’m not talking about thirty seconds in the limelight of lemongrass pie,
I’m
not looking to die.”

“Gran,” I said, trying to pull her out of her mixed up thoughts.

“Seraphina!” she said. “What brings you to town?”

Mom moved toward MK, tried to lower her arms so she didn’t look so strange. But MK wouldn’t be budged. Her hands held rigidly to their position no matter how hard Mom tried.

“Don’t bother,” Gran said. “She’s been like that since yesterday.”

“Are they doing anything about it?” Mom asked, looking kind of freaked.

“Pill du jour.” Gran turned to me. “Close that door! Anybody could get in here.”

I closed it. “Why is she like that?” I asked.

“Who? Mary Kate?” Gran replied, then waved it off. “Child never could handle her visions.”

My heartbeat thumped loudly.
Nobody
talked about this. I wasn’t about to miss the opportunity. “She… she had a vision?”

Mom stopped trying to push down MK’s arms and sent a warning look at Gran. Gran opened her eyes wide and made a face at Mom. I giggled, then covered my mouth, tried to hold it in.

“Had something to do with Sera and some sort of explosion. Had her up and screaming for hours. Bunch of hooey if you ask me.”

While the world pretty much froze in that moment for me, Mom had a different reaction. “Stop it right now!” she yelled. “That’s enough. You know as well as I do that MK’s visions can be interpreted in many ways, that
she’s been way off ever since..." Her voice trailed off.

“Since the car accident?” I asked.

“How do you know about that?” Mom asked, then looked to Gran. “What did you tell her?”

“The truth,” I whispered.

Mom gasped. “MK, please.” She pushed again on MK’s arms. But they wouldn’t go down. “Has the doctor seen this?”

“She’ll be fine,” Gran insisted. “Just needs a little recovery time, out to lunch, if you will. Be a pill. For a thrill. When you’re still.”

Mom walked out.

I rushed to Gran’s side. “Don’t tell Mom. I tried to heal a chipmunk. I think I killed it.” I hadn’t planned on saying it, it just spilled out without me meaning for it to. My heart raced. My palms were sweaty. I wished I could take it back.

She grabbed my arm with her ice-cold hand. “It’s right, what you do, never disconnecting from it, like I did in the city, so pretty by the bay.” Her hands went to her head. She pushed on it like she was trying to make it work right. “It’s the only way,” she said. “Sanity lies in the truth of wholeness. Do you catch my brainwave? There is no killing from there, not there in the under-where. It’s the
chipmunk
that’s dead! It’s the chipmunk that’s dead!”

“What chipmunk? Mother, there’s no chipmunk,” Mom said, as she came in and tried to soothe Gran.

Gran pointed at me. I shook my head, begging her to keep quiet. “I thought, I thought…”

“Did you see a chipmunk?” Mom cooed. “It wasn’t real.” She picked up their silver brush and began to run it through Gran’s hair, which seemed to calm her.

A cold emptiness settled over me.  I felt totally alone.

I needed Gran to not be so crazy so she could help me understand. At home, I got back into my antique four-poster bed and pulled the quilt over me. The fog crept in through the crack at the base of the window that never fully closed. What if, as my sensitivity to others’ pain was increasing, my ability to heal them was decreasing? What if by not using the ability, I was losing it? What if losing it meant I was losing
it
— as in bound for Meadowland with thoughts that made no sense or lost in some inner world? Or what if trying to heal and failing was what would bring on the crazy? How was I supposed to know?

I wished I had someone to talk to about all this. I considered the possibilities: Gran and MK were obviously out, as was Mom. That left Luke, Astrid, and Zach. Luke was too close to it, had grown up being brainwashed by Mom’s beliefs. Astrid and Zach would both tell me to try healing, maybe they were jealous, maybe they wished they could to it. I sat up suddenly. I sounded crazy.
Jealous?
Who could be jealous of this ‘f’-ed up situation? What was wrong with me?

Zach was in The Hollow. I could feel him there. But I co
uldn’t bring myself to go down — not with that fresh grave to remind me of how badly I’d failed. For a second I wished I had Gran’s sensitivity, wished I could hear Zach’s thoughts, know what he was thinking. But another sensitivity was the last thing I needed. And I knew for sure where Gran’s sensitivity would land me.

Time ticked slowly on the clock. My mind drifted. I stepped into Mom’s night dream. She was baking perfect even rows of banana nut muffins, each one the exact same height in its little tin. Except for one sloppy one that kept puffing up, looking like it might explode. She kept peeking into the oven, worrying that it would rise up out of control and blast out of the pan and make a mess all over the bakery. It kept rising and rising as if she’d added yeast to it. So different from the others, so unmanageable. It bothered her, made her feel edgy and uncomfortable. So she took a knife
, opened the oven door slowly — and slashed the center of the unruly muffin. It hissed as steam escaped, and then it collapsed down into itself — restrained, contained, sunken. Mom’s face turned ugly and green and she started laughing like the wicked witch of the west.

I woke up sweating, my hand over my belly, as if I’d been punctured.
Was that really her dream? Or was it mine?
The feeling that I’d been inside her head instead of my own was strange and unfamiliar. But I couldn’t tell if that was part of the dream or not. I jumped out of bed to get myself further from where I’d been, closer to reality. The cold wood floor against my feet helped, so did the breeze coming in through the crack below the window.

I didn’t sense Zach in The Hollow anymore. He must have given up and gone back to Myra’s. I wished I understood better why he didn’t just get up and walk out of there. Although I could see how it might be scary to think about trying to make his way in the world when he looked the way he did. People could be so … unforgiving. And the scars on his face and hands looked scary. I couldn’t imagine what kids like Cheyenne Trilotti and Mason McDowell would do to him. I looked out the window at the sky beginning to lighten.

When I’d first seen Zach’s scars I’d fantasized about healing them someday, when I understood the power better, when I found a way to heal without going crazy. But now, now that I’d killed the stupid chipmunk, I knew there was no way I’d ever be able to help him or anyone else. Which probably meant he’d never find the courage to get out of Myra’s prison. And once I ended up at Meadowland, he’d be alone again.

When I came out to the kitchen, there were warm apple cinnamon muffins cooling on a rack. Mom had already left for the bakery. I took the biggest muffin out of the tray. I held it in my hand, licked the crumbled brown sugar and cinnamon off the top, took one bite out of the tip of the puffy softness. And then I smashed the thing to pieces.

Chapter Nine

After cleaning up the psychotic mess I’d made, I wrapped up three muffins, put them in a brown paper bag, and walked to George McGraw’s auto repair shop. I may not have been able to find anyone to give me answers about my own life, but at least I could try to find out more about Zach’s.

When I arrived at the shop, I could see George’s feet sticking out from under Melody’s ancient-looking station wagon. The whole place reeked of gasoline. I cleared my throat, but he seemed not to hear me. I knocked on the side of the car and heard him hit his head. I giggled as he cursed and slid out from under the car.

“Well, hey there, Seraphina,” he said, wiping his very clean hands on a dirty rag. “What can I do you for?”

I handed him the muffins.

He raised his eyebrows, opened the bag and inhaled. “My, my, to what do I owe this honor?” His first bite wiped out the better part of a large muffin.

I shrugged, wondering how I might get him talking about what I wanted to know. I cleared my throat. “I was thinking,” I said, “maybe I might try working a few hours for one of the older folks in town who might need a little help.”

“Hey now, are you calling me old?” he asked.

“I was thinking of Myra Clay,” I replied. “But I wondered where her own son is, why he isn’t around to help. Thought maybe you’d know.”

“Seems to me you ought to be asking her.” He gobbled more muffin.

“I wasn’t sure if it’d upset her,” I tried.

He looked right in my eyes. “Must be important if it’s got you talking to me.”

I waited. I’ve noticed that people who talk all the time miss how easy it is to get others going if you just wait them out, like they can’t stand silence, so they fill the air with words. Usually it’s junk, but sometimes, stuck in the middle of it all you can find a gem. I hoped the muffins might loosen him up, then I could just push him in the right direction.

“These muffins are delicious. What do you call that?”

“Um, apple cinnamon?”

“Mm. Your mama sure does know her way around a kitchen.”

“You were going to tell me about Myra Clay’s family,” I said.

He took out a second muffin. “Was I? I don’t know what kind of information you’re looking for. You know Old Abe died years ago. They just had the one son, Zeke. He lives east somewhere – Mississippi? Missouri? Something with an ‘M.’”

“How come he doesn’t ever visit?”

He laughed. “I imagine it’s the same reason no one around here visits with her much. She’s a tough cookie.”

“What about Zeke? Did he have a family?”

“He was married to a little lady from Sonora. I can’t pull up her name, but she was a doll. They had a son, must have been about your age or your brother Gabe’s.”

“So you don’t know anything about why they left?” I asked.

He looked at me all intently again, like he couldn’t figure out what I was up to. “There was a fire out at their place shortly before Zeke took off. The mother and son were killed in it. Zeke was simply devastated. He up and moved and that was that. I imagine he didn’t want to live near anything that reminded him of the family he’d lost.”

“Wait.” I swallowed, tried to steady my breathing. “You’re saying the mom and son
both
died in the fire?”

He looked up to the ceiling, trying to remember. “Far as I can remember, when the firemen reached the house, there was nothing left to save. Lucky for Zeke, he was out that night, or maybe unlucky, depending upon how you look at it.”

“So … you’re saying the son died?”

He looked at me funny. “Yes, he died. Good Lord, I thought I’d spelled that out pretty clear. Him and Deborah both – Deborah, that was her name!”

Just then, the circa-1970 transistor radio on the metal desk came on by itself blaring oldies. The Hollow was up to its tricks.

“That’s my cue!” he said. “Melody’s going to have my butt in a sling if I don’t get this hunk-a-junk working. And that right there is a good sign the time is now.” He pointed to the radio, then slid back under the car.