The Hollow Places Read Online Free Page A

would be
bleak, but he needed to face what he had done before talking to
Sarah, even in the knowledge that it was a matter of time before he
would be doing the same to somebody else.
    Without
ethereal guidance, he searched for the greater part of an hour
before he recognised the turning into the wood. It didn’t look like
a turning at all now. There was a small dirt step, rather than a
slope and it led to something more like a gap between tree trunks
that someone might have used to shelter from the rain than a path.
Upon entering the channel, however, it veered to the right, then to
the left and then plunged on into darkness.
    As his eyes
adjusted, he felt his way ahead, one arm outstretched so that his
hand encountered branches before they struck or snagged him. He
resisted the urge to switch on his flashlight and crept on.
    The air was
clear and sharp. Creatures stirred amid the trees, watching him
with eyes much more accustomed to this than his. He snapped their
twigs and tripped over fallen branches, blundering into their
domain until the trail came to an end, signalled by a change in the
texture of the ground, from dirt that slid underfoot to a carpet of
weeds and sucking mud. His heart picked up its pace as he recalled
stopping the car, and the girl’s skinny arms in his fists, her body
almost twisting from him as he marched her into the wood.
    He had made
her play Twenty Questions.
    What had he
been thinking?
    He stomped
through the undergrowth, mindful now of the pain he had caused her,
fingers on pressure points that made her whimper, snapping her
finger back into place.
    People would
be wondering what had happened to her. She wasn't a carefully
selected vagrant. The Creature had decided that it wanted her and
that was that. Its reasons were unknown. She'd be missed, on both
sides of the Channel. A lover might have begun calling local
hospitals by now. If she had parents, perhaps they would dwell on
the memory that they hadn’t wanted her to go to England and they’d
argue about whose responsibility it had been to prevent her
leaving. Hours, days, weeks from now, they would be facing the
prospect of being invited to identify her body, her clothes in a
clear plastic bag; passionless talk of dental records.
    She wasn’t
necessarily dead though. He thought again of the wave that had
snatched her, like a tsunami, freezing momentarily to absorb her
legs before withdrawing the way it had come, dragging her with it,
wrapping itself around her torso like a black, foamy tongue.
    Dead would
probably have been better.
    Eventually the
authorities would catch up with him. He had never been especially
careful and now he had returned to the scene of his last delivery,
a reckless thing to do, but he couldn't help himself.
    Ultimately, he
reckoned, he'd either be captured or shot dead. Either way, he
wouldn't be able to work for the Creature anymore, which would be a
great relief, but both eventualities meant leaving Sarah alone and
he'd promised her that he'd never abandon her. He had no doubt that
she'd visit him in prison every week, if it came to that, even
though he'd order her not to come. She'd try to smuggle something
in for him; get caught; try again.
    He had to stay
sane and strong for Sarah, but, in lieu of any authority or proper
punishment, he berated himself a while longer, as the trees thinned
out and more moonlight filtered through the leaves. Ahead, waves
broke against the cliff.
    He knew how
this was going to end. He'd stand at the very lip of the cliff and
observe the waves below, contemplating jumping, fantasising about
hitting the rocks, but in the end he'd turn to face his ominous
journey back to the car, back home and back to his life, such as it
was, where Sarah would be surprised to see him and no less keen on
answers than she had been earlier that evening.
    He thought
about what he would say to her.
    Perhaps
jumping wasn't such a bad option after all.
    Dad had handed
him the keys to the family special