The Hollow

THE HOLLOW LEON CROW Copyright © 2023 Leon Crow Published by Carrion Publishing All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. For information visit carrionpublishing.com Cover design by Blck&Grey Cover image: iStock.com/Bruce Stansfield. Content THE HOLLOW Copyright © 2023 Leon Crow Content Before 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 28 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 After About The Author Before Claire Gibson thought nothing of the man at first. He was just another figure in the park. It was May. The early evening sun was shining. Parents were playing with their kids on the grass. A group of men were chasing a football around. The common was busy but the secluded pathway in the trees was deathly quiet. She heard the stranger’s desperate breathing the second before he fell upon her. Then he had his hand over her mouth and was trying to force himself inside her tracksuit. Reaching. Grabbing. She felt his eagerness, smelt his rancid breath. She had to defend herself. She kicked him hard in the midriff, but he didn’t go down. He didn’t run away either, not even when she started screaming. He came at her instead, kicking and punching, landing blow after blow upon her forearms and upper body. Some of the footballers came running to her aid. She could see them in her peripheral vision, splashes of colour racing towards her, close enough to witness what was happening but desperately out of reach. Her attacker saw them too. He moved as if to flee and then gave her one last flurry of blows. This time he went for her stomach. She didn’t remember much after that, though she was told much later her attacker had fled and the police were still looking for him. She was told these things while she lay in her hospital bed staring up at Ben and the defeated doctor who had the unenviable job of telling her she’d lost the child growing inside of her. After that came months of numbness and nothingness and the saddest of fogs that engulfed her world and refused to lift. Then the letter arrived. 1 The building was sneering at him. Ben stared at the photograph on the dashboard. It showed Blackberry Cottage in the height of summer, the perfect English country dwelling. And yet the photograph made him uncomfortable. He reached for it as Claire awoke from her nap. “Welcome back,” he said. “Hi,” she responded. “Have I slept long?” “Twenty minutes,” he said. “Just enough time for me to get you this…” He handed her the coffee. “…and this.” He lifted a pain au chocolate from the paper bag on his lap and waved it in front of her nose. “Yesss,” she said. “You’re a star.” She snatched the photograph from his fingers. “Doesn’t the place get prettier each time you look at it?” she said. “I can hardly believe it’s been twenty years since I stood on that doorstep.” Ben nodded. “Let’s get moving,” he said. “Otherwise it’ll be another twenty years before we get there.” They drove for three more hours, exiting the serpentine motorway for town and village, each one with its own ancient church, little shop and curiously named public house. It was like stepping fifty years into the past. Claire smiled at Ben. Ben smiled back. Perhaps there was something appealing about being so far from London. After all that had happened to them, the least they deserved was a break from the mad rush of city life. They reached the small fishing town of Port Agnes in the later afternoon. The road dropped steeply away through tightly packed cottages. A cluster of fishing boats, moored tightly together in the inner-harbour, bobbed up and down on the water. Further out to sea, huge black clouds gathered. “There’s a storm coming,” said Claire. “Can you feel it?” She reached over and gripped Ben’s knee. She had a childlike gleam in her eye, one he’d almost forgotten. Perhaps his wife was returning to him. As they drove up out of Port Agnes the clouds rolled in. Soon they were driving in a heavy mist. Ben slowed the car to a crawl. His driving posture changed. He sat bolt upright, trying desperately to make out the edges of the lane through the gloom. His neck muscles burned. “I don’t remember the lane being this narrow,” said Claire. “Maybe because you were so much younger,” he said. “Or maybe not,” she said. “Is that a crossroads up ahead?” He pressed his right foot on the brake. The car lurched to a stop. “Where are the signs?” he muttered. “I don’t remember a crossroads,” said Claire, studying the map, tracing a finger across the page. “There isn’t a crossroads on this road at all, Ben.” “We’re not on that road,” said Ben. He took the map from her. “We came in to Port Agnes this way...” he started. “Port Agnes is there.” “Exactly and we’re on this road here. See? And there’s the crossroads, which…” Ben traced the route back towards the village. The road he imagined them to be on did not go through Port Agnes. “We’re lost,” said Claire. “We are not lost,” he said. “Well where are we then? You say we’re on a road without a crossroads and yet we’re sitting on one.” A dark shape appeared in the fog ahead and transformed into the hulking shape of a tractor.