After awhile, the others dragged mattresses and blankets into the room and made a nest around me, and we packed together for warmth against the encroaching chill. But as the others began to bed down, I found myself unable to sleep, despite my exhaustion, and I got up and paced the room for a while, watching the children from a distance.
I’d felt so many things since our journey began—joy, fear, hope, horror—but until now, I’d never once felt alone. Bronwyn had called me brother, but that didn’t sound right anymore. I was a second cousin to them at best. Emma was right: I could never understand. They were so old, had seen so much. And I was from another world. Now it was time to go back.
* * *
Eventually, I fell asleep to the sound of ice groaning and cracking in the floors beneath us and the attic above. The building was alive with it.
That night, strange and urgent dreams.
I am home again, doing all the things I used to do. Tearing into a fast-food hamburger—big, brown, and greasy. Riding shotgun in Ricky’s Crown Vic, bad radio blaring. At the grocery store with my parents, sliding down long, too-bright aisles, and Emma is there, cooling her hands in the ice at the fish counter, meltwater running everywhere. She doesn’t recognize me.
Then I’m at the arcade where I had my twelfth birthday party, firing a plastic gun. Bodies bursting, blood-filled balloons.
Jacob where are you
Then school. Teacher’s writing on the board, but the letters don’t make sense. Then everyone’s on their feet, hurrying outside. Something’s wrong. A loud noise rising and falling. Everyone standing still, heads craned to the sky.
Air raid.
Jacob Jacob where are you
Hand on my shoulder. It’s an old man. A man without eyes. Come to steal mine. Not a man—a thing—a monster.
Running now. Chasing my old dog. Years ago she’d broken away from me, run off with her leash still attached and got it wrapped around a branch while trying to tree a squirrel. Strangled herself. We spent two weeks wandering the neighborhood calling her name. Found her after three. Old Snuffles.
The siren deafening now. I run and a car pulls alongside and picks me up. My parents are inside, in formal wear. They won’t look at me. The doors lock. We’re driving and it’s stifling hot outside, but the heater is on and the windows are up, and the radio is loud but tuned to the garble between stations.
Mom where are we going
She doesn’t answer.
Dad why are we stopping here
Then we’re out, walking, and I can breathe again. Pretty green place. Smell of fresh-cut grass. People in black, gathered around a hole in the ground.
A coffin open on a dais. I peer inside. It’s empty but for an oily stain slowly spreading across the bottom. Blacking the white satin. Quick, close the lid! Black tar bubbles out from the cracks and grooves and drips down into the grass and sinks into the earth.
Jacob where are you say something
The headstone reads: ABRAHAM EZRA PORTMAN. And I’m tumbling into his open grave, darkness spinning up to swallow me, and I keep falling and it’s bottomless, and then I’m somewhere underground, alone and wandering through a thousand interconnecting tunnels, and I’m wandering and it’s cold, so cold I’m afraid my skin will freeze and my bones will splinter, and everywhere there are yellow eyes watching me from the dark.
I follow his voice. Yakob, come here. Don’t be afraid.
The tunnel angles upward and there’s light at the end, and standing at its mouth, calmly reading a book, is a young man. And he looks just like me, or almost like me, and maybe he is me, I think, but then he speaks, and it’s my grandfather’s voice. I have something to show you.
For a moment I jolted awake in the dark and knew I was dreaming, but I didn’t know where I was, only that I was not in bed anymore, not in the meeting hall with the others. I’d gone elsewhere and the room I was in was all black, with ice beneath me, my stomach writhing …
Jacob come here where are you
A voice from outside, down the hall—a real voice, not something from a dream.
And then I’m in the dream again, just outside the ropes of a boxing ring, and on the canvas, in the haze and lights, my grandfather faces off against a hollowgast.
They circle each other. My grandfather is young and nimble on his feet, stripped to the waist, a knife in one hand. The hollow is bent and twisted, its tongues waving in the air, open jaws dripping black on the mat. It whips out a tongue and my grandfather dodges it.
Don’t fight the pain, that’s the key, my grandfather says. It’s telling you something. Welcome it, let it speak to you. The pain says: Hello, I am not other than you; I am of the hollow, but I am you also.
The hollow whips at him again. My grandfather anticipates it, makes room in advance of the strike. Then the hollow strikes a third time, and my grandfather lashes out with his knife and the tip of the hollow’s black tongue falls to the mat, severed and jolting.
They are stupid creatures. Highly suggestible. Speak to them, Yakob. And my grandfather begins to speak, but not in English, nor Polish, nor any language I’ve heard outside my dreams. It’s like some guttural outgassing, the sounds made with something other than a throat or a mouth.
And the creature stops moving, merely swaying where it stands, seemingly hypnotized. Still speaking his frightening gibberish, my grandfather lowers his knife and creeps toward it. The closer he gets, the more docile the creature becomes, finally sinking down to the mat, on its knees. I think it’s about to close its eyes and go to sleep when suddenly the hollow breaks free of whatever spell my grandfather has cast over it, and it lashes out with all its tongues and impales my grandfather. As he falls, I leap over the ropes and run toward him, and the hollow slips away. My grandfather is on his back on the mat and I am kneeling by his side, my hand on his face, and he is whispering something to me, blood bubbling on his lips, so I bend closer to hear him. You are more than me, Yakob, he says. You are more than I ever was.
I can feel his heart slow. Hear it, somehow, until whole seconds elapse between beats. Then tens of seconds. And then …
Jacob where are you
I jolted awake again. Now there was light in the room. It was morning, just the blue beginning of it. I was kneeling on the ice in the half-filled room, and my hand wasn’t on my grandfather’s face but resting atop the trapped hollow’s skull, its slow, reptilian brain. Its eyes were open and looking at me, and I was looking right back. I see you.
“Jacob! What are you doing? I’ve been looking for you everywhere!”