The Hollow Men (Book 1): Crave (12 page)

Maddy had a warrior’s spirit. “Natural athlete” did not describe her. “Freak of nature athlete” did. She mastered any physical activity as if born to it. Lacrosse, gymnastics, rock climbing, dance… If it required strength, speed, or dexterity, she’d conquer it. When she inevitably grew bored, she would maniacally tackle something else. She was perpetually restless, a constant blur of motion.

She had piercing blue eyes that looked into a person’s soul, and appraised. If she found nothing compelling, which was most of the time, she abruptly disengaged with the subtlety of a guillotine. When people hit that wall, they’d seek help from Scott, “Be more interesting next time,” he offered with a casual shrug.

People laughed as though he were kidding.

Maddy did have a soft side, which she revealed only to those whom she loved the most: her dad, her mom, her two little sisters, and her closest friend, Chase. With those in her inner circle, she was sweet, she was funny, she laughed easily, and she still called Scott “Daddy”.

Older boys and men had started to pay attention to her, sometimes brazenly ogling her in front of her dad. When they did that, they walked on hazardous ground. Scott always had his shotgun close. He did have a shovel. And though his house sat on only half an acre, he had his ancient family cabin in the Adirondacks. Hypothetically of course, he could hide several bodies there.

Maddy walked out of the bathroom just as Scott reached the top of the stairs. She had taken a five-minute shower, a luxuriously long one by her standards. She’d already pulled her hair into a ponytail. “Hi Daddy!” she greeted him with a big smile, the same smile he’d adored every day of Maddy’s life.

“Hi, baby girl. How did you sleep?”

She did her typical focused evaluation of him. He put his game face on. It didn’t fool her. “You’re hurt. What happened?”

Her question was the
en garde
for a kind of mental fencing, moves and countermoves all made in silence. Psychological grappling with a teenager wasn’t necessarily strange in itself, but Scott always assumed his battles of will with his daughters would be fought over parties, grades or boys. He might have preferred those types of skirmishes instead.

“It’s stupid. I got lost in my thoughts and accidentally ran into a car during my run. Then I slipped into a ditch and scratched my legs on some bushes on the way out.” There was at least some truth to that.

She detected the deliberate misdirection. “Uh huh.”

Scott gave her nothing. She scrutinized him. He returned her stare and crinkled his eyes at the corners, giving her a sly smile without using his lips. “Sorry, not this time,” his expression told her.

She shrugged, let it go, and continued downstairs. Dad won this round.

In the hallway, he paused at the door of his precocious daughter, Emily. She was an old soul, mature beyond her eight years. The light in her room was on. As usual, she’d fallen asleep while reading. Scott wondered how many pages she had digested during the night, and in how many hours.

Emily frustrated her teacher. Whenever he walked around the classroom, he caught Emily hiding her Kindle inside her open textbook, pretending to follow along with the class in the appropriate subject matter: math, history, science etc. She always rushed through her schoolwork, considering it a distraction from immersing herself in a book.

She had Scott’s coloring: olive complexion, bright blond hair, and green eyes. Emily was small for her age at just under four feet, waifish, carrying only fifty pounds on her slight body. Her arms and legs offered the barest hints of muscle attached to her stick-like bones. She was tough and extraordinarily fast, however. Whenever Scott expressed worry about Emily’s size, the doctor assured him that one day she would explode to a height and build similar to her older sister’s.

Like Maddy, Emily was profoundly insightful when it came to people. Where Maddy was severe, Emily had empathy. Her greatest treasures, after her books, were her many friends. She had oceans of charisma. She was gifted in the way she listened and talked. She put people at ease and made them feel good about themselves.

Scott reached into Emily’s room, flipped off the light and closed the door, hoping the extra darkness would extend her sleep for another couple of hours.

His four-month-old Autumn slept in the room closest to the master bedroom. Scott and his wife Laura had thought they were done after having two kids, yet God had other plans and sent them another girl. Their pretty baby daughter enthralled them both. They had forgotten the happiness that came from having a baby in the house. The late night feedings and constant diaper changes were worth it. It was magical to see their baby grow and discover the world around her.

Autumn’s name suited her—she had auburn hair that already showed slight curls, growing at the base of her neck in a little duck tail. Her personality was delightfully happy, and her sisters adored her.

When Scott opened the door to Autumn’s room, her baby smell washed over him, a fragrant mix of lotion, clothes washed in special detergent, the baby herself and, yes, diapers. Since Autumn was their last baby, Scott caught himself getting emotional as she progressed into toddlerhood. He knew he’d miss that unique scent in their home. Nothing could replicate it.

He noticed the window was open. Strange. Even stranger, her room lacked the sounds of her baby snores and adorable cooing. After the night before and his bizarre experiences from the morning, his nerves were on a hair trigger. He rushed to Autumn’s crib.

It was empty.

Terror stabbed at him. Scott and Laura never brought the baby into their bed, afraid that they might accidentally roll on top of her. He hoped fervently that his wife had broken her own rule. In two rapid strides, he reached the master bedroom and threw the door open. Relief came immediately.

Autumn’s little face peeked from the small baby blanket that wrapped her like a little sausage. She slept soundly, making tiny whimpering sounds and sucking noises as if she were nursing. He wondered what she dreamed. Certainly, the storyline featured food.

Laura slumbered deeply, lying on her left side next to the baby. Quiet snoring escaped from her. She hated when she snored; Scott found it endearing.

He carefully carried the baby to her room, rocked her for a moment on his shoulder, shut the window, and put her gently into her crib. Then he returned to lie next to Laura. He put his arm around her, accepting shoulder pain in exchange for hugging her. Laura gave a tired whimper and stirred. She opened her mouth to speak, but only unintelligible mumbles came out.

Scott and Laura had met on a blind date. Not quite love at first sight—it took a couple of glances—they were engaged within four months and married in less than a year. They had been together almost sixteen years and he loved her more than he ever thought was possible for one person to love another

Laura was much smaller than Scott, stretching only to his mid-chest, and had a graceful, athletic build. Though small in stature, she filled a room with her giant personality and her infectious laugh. Each of the girls carried a part of her. Maddy got her dark hair and blue eyes. Emily got her charisma and sensitivity. Autumn continued to tease her parents with what characteristics she would take from her mom. All three of their kids showed Laura’s mental and physical toughness, which was no small thing.

When Scott and Laura were first married, they had a friendly wrestle on the floor that turned very competitive and serious. She had the flexibility of a contortionist and the power of a gymnast. Scott barely squeaked out the win. Laura claimed she had thrown the fight to keep his “manly pride” intact. Maybe it was true. Scott truly didn’t care because the rematch was a just as vigorous as the first round and a lot more fun, starting in the living room and ending in the bedroom.

He shook his sleeping wife gently. This time, she jumped up as if he had thrown cold water on her. Her eyes were unfocused and streaked with red. Her features briefly morphed into fury then fell into a tired smile. She rolled to her side, burying most of her head in her pillow.

“Last night was brutal, Scott,” she croaked in a voice soaked with fatigue. “I had terrible nightmares, and Autumn just wouldn’t sleep.” He stroked her soft blond hair as she continued. “All night, she just kept eating, sucking at me until I bled. See?”

Laura opened her pajama top to show him one of her breasts. Scott cringed. She carefully covered up again. She typically suffered chafing until the newly born girls learned to latch properly. This was a different level of trauma. Autumn’s little teeth buds had broken Laura’s skin, leaving raw sores as she fed.

“The dreams. They were worse. They were so terrible. I just want to rest. I’ve never been so tired…” She drifted back to sleep.

He gazed at her for a few minutes before going to shower. Laura was even more beautiful to him than when they first met. His loved her deeply. She was the heart and soul of their family. He hoped she found more pleasant sleep, full of heavenly dreams.

Hot water thundered at Scott with a force only slightly less savage than a professional-grade power washer. He’d set the showerhead on “massage”. The water blasted away the dirt and sweat and everything else that he’d carried with him into the house after the run. The heat melted the pain.

Tiny jets of water stung his head and neck. Leaning forward, he pressed his right hand against the sandstone-tiled wall. His injured left arm hung heavily at his side. Droplets formed at the end of his blond hair and ran down his jawline. He closed his eyes and sifted through his memories of the morning.

Freshly showered, Scott faced the mirror. A thin glaze of steam covered its surface. He wiped it clear with his hand. The bruise on his shoulder had turned to an ugly six-inch oval of purple and green. He extended his arm in different directions, halting when the pain became unbearable. Scratches from tripping around the forest marked his face.

Checking for signs of brain injury, he studied his eyes. Green irises swam in pink orbs cracked with red veins. Yesterday’s fatigue, lack of sleep and the morning’s distress had exacted a toll. At least he didn’t appear to have a concussion—his pupils matched at normal size.

Seeking a skilled medical opinion, he left the bathroom to talk to Nurse Hale. Professionally skilled and armed with the deductive power of Sherlock Holmes, his wife was a formidable diagnostician. Even before her nursing career, for as long as he’d known her, she had a perfect record.

Steam saturated with the smells of soap and shampoo billowed past him out of the doorway. He dressed quickly and sat on the bed next to Laura and gently shook her awake again.

Laura jumped away, afraid and disoriented. Before he had the chance to speak, she picked up the conversation where she left off before he’d gotten in the shower. “I had the worst dream.” She rasped. She shivered herself more awake and told him about it.

Picturing it was all too easy for Scott, whose indulgence was zombie thrillers in every format and iteration. Scott’s demeanor turned serious when Laura described how he’d taken their whole family with him into death.

“I remember wondering if my body would continue to walk the earth after dying or if it would just die. I didn’t know and I didn’t really care. I just wanted us to be together—whether this side of life or the other. Maybe some of the dream came from the way Autumn fed last night, but it just seemed so real, more real than any other nightmare I’ve ever had. I’m having trouble escaping from it.”

Laura sat up and rested against the headboard. Her face carried a deep sadness. Scott noticed she kept her distance from him. She hugged her knees to her chest.

“Dreams about zombies?!” She shook her head in bewilderment, brooding for a moment before finally waving her hand in front of her. After years of marriage, Scott recognized the motion as the physical manifestation of her mental effort to erase the memory of her nightmare.

Scott rubbed her leg to help calm her. He took a turn talking about his hallucinations from the morning. He described the more incredible parts—fleeing from a sinister Betty and Wilma, the silver chrome grill of a Dodge Ram bearing down on him, huddled shadowy forms in the muted red strobe of his broken running light, being hunted by an old man and a menacing cluster of others, a stumbling flight from them over fallen branches in the woods. Without Scott realizing it, his voice had plunged to a whisper. The bruise from his injury had worsened to a spectacular dark violet, egg-shaped mass that stretched across his shoulder and upper arm. It alarmed Laura.

Scratches on his face and arms, the injury to his shoulder, and fantastical recollections supported the theory of a concussion after an accident. Laura probed his arm, shoulder, and neck. She pressed harder near the joints, rotating his arm, exploring for signs of fracture. She couldn’t find any serious injury and double-checked his pupils.

“Hmm…” She frowned. “On our way to the doctor’s office, we’ll swing by Smithfield Main Street and retrace your steps. Maybe we’ll find a broken mirror from the truck and find something that triggers a memory to explain what happened after your accident.”

Scott shook his head. “Doctor’s office? No way. We might blow our whole Saturday at the doctor’s.” After a warning look from his wife, he added, “Think about it. People are getting sick. What if it’s like the diner last night? Remember how freaked out we were thinking Emily might have something deadly? I refuse to risk going to a place with any number of diseases. Besides, I’m on my feet and I don’t see any pink elephants.” He waited for Laura to digest his argument.

“If it’s a concussion, it means brain injury. Most people need to keep their brain cells intact, but you’ve already made it this far having fewer than most.” She clutched Scott’s shoulder with enough pressure to make his eyes water. She followed it up with a threat. “Here is my condition. The treatment for concussion is rest. You
will
rest. If you don’t, that will be the least amount of pain you experience today.”

He raised his hand in a Boy Scout salute. “On my honor: I will take it easy. Tom and I talked about having a barbecue later for all of us to talk over plans. I’d better start.” He stood up, ready to leave.