Dark Hollow

"Don't," I said. "Answer me: did you take Judith Mundy?"

"I swear I'll see you dead," he hissed. He stared beyond me to where his son lay, the muscles in his jaw tightening as he gritted his teeth against the pain he felt. He looked like some strange, ancient demon, the tendons on his neck standing out like cables, his teeth long and yellowed. "I took it to breed on, after I thought my other boy was lost to me, lost down a shithouse sewer."

It. "Is she dead?"

"Don't see how it's any of your business, but it bled to death after it had the boy. I let it bleed. It weren't of no account anyways."

"Now you're back."

"I came back for my boy, the boy I thought was lost to me, the boy that bitch kept from me, the boy all them bitches and sonsofbitches kept from me."

"And you killed them all."

He nodded proudly. "Them as I could find."

"And Gary Chute, the forestry worker?"

"He had no business being there," he said. "I don't spare them that cross my path."

"And your own grandson."

His eyes flickered for a moment, and there was something close to regret in them. "It was a mistake. He got in my way." Then: "He was a sickly one. He wouldn't have survived, not where we were going."

"You've got nowhere to go, old man. They're taking back their forest. You can't kill every man who comes in."

"I know places. There are always places a man can go."

"No, not anymore. There's only one place you're going."

Behind me, I heard a movement on the stairs. Ellen had ignored me and gone to Walter. I guessed that she would.

Caleb looked over my shoulder at her. "She your'n?"

"No."

"Shit," he drawled. "I saw you, and I saw your granddaddy in you, but my eyes must have deceived me when I saw you in her."

"And were you going to 'breed on her' too?"

He shook his head. "She was for the boy. For both my boys. Fuck you, mister. Fuck you for what you did to my boy."

"No," I said. "To hell with you." I raised the gun and pointed it at his head.

Behind me, I heard Walter groan and Ellen shouted "Bird" in her strange, cracked voice. Something cold buried itself in the soft flesh at the back of my head. Billy Purdue's voice said: "Your finger moves on that trigger, and it'll be the last thing you ever do."

I hesitated for an instant, then released my grip on the trigger and moved my finger away from the guard, raising the gun to show him that I had done so.

"You know what to do with it," he said.

I slipped the safety and threw the gun onto the porch.

"Down on your knees," he said.

The pain in my side surged as I knelt. Billy moved in front of me, Walter's gun tucked into the waistband of his pants and a Remington shotgun in his hand, then stepped back so that he could keep both Caleb and me in view.

Caleb Kyle looked upon him with admiration. After all that had happened, after all that he had done, his son had come back to him.

"Kill him, boy," said Caleb. "He killed your half brother, shot him like a dog. He was kin to you. Blood calls for blood, you know that."

Billy's face was a mass of confusion and harsh, conflicting emotions. The shotgun moved toward me. "Is that true? Was he kin to me?" he said, unconsciously adopting the phrasing of the older man.

I didn't reply. His nostrils flared and he brought the butt of the gun down in a glancing blow across my head. I fell forward and from in front of me I heard Caleb laugh. "That's it, boy, kill the sonofabitch." Then his laughter subsided, and dazed as I was, I could see him move forward a step.

"I came back for you, son. Me and your brother, we came back to find you. We heard you was lookin'. We heard about the man that you hired to find me. Your momma hid you away from me, but I came lookin' for you and now the lamb that was lost is found again."

"You?" said Billy, in a soft, bewildered tone I had never heard from him before. "You're my father?"

"I'm your daddy," said Caleb, and he smiled. "Now you finish him off for what he did to your brother, the brother you never got to meet. You kill him for what he did."

I rose to my knees, my knuckles supporting my weight, and spoke: "Ask him what he did, Billy. Ask him what happened to Rita and Donald."

Caleb Kyle's eyes glittered brightly, and spittle shot from his mouth. "You shut up, mister. Your lies ain't going to keep me from my boy."

"Ask him, Billy. Ask him where Meade Payne is. Ask him how Cheryl Lansing and her family died. You ask him, Billy."

Caleb sprang onto the steps and his right foot kicked me hard in the mouth. I felt teeth break, and my mouth filled with pain and blood. I saw the foot come forward again.

"Stop," said Billy. "Stop it. Let him be." I looked up and the pain in my mouth seemed as nothing to the agony etched in Billy Purdue's face. A lifetime's hurt burned in his eyes; a lifetime of abandonment, of loss, of fighting against a world that was always going to beat him in the end, of trying to live a life that had no past and no future, only a grinding, painful present. Now a veil had been pulled back, giving him a glimpse of what might have been, of what might still be. His daddy had come back for him, and all of the things he had done, all of the hurt this man had inflicted, he had done for love of his son.

"Kill him, Billy, and be done with it," said Caleb, but Billy did not move, did not look at either of us, but stared into a place deep inside himself, where all that he had ever feared and all that he had ever wanted to be now twisted and coiled over each other.

"Kill him," hissed the old man, and Billy raised his gun. "You do as you're told, boy. You listen to me. I'm your daddy."

And in Billy Purdue's eyes, something died. "No," he said. "You ain't nothin' to me."

The shotgun roared and the barrel leaped in his hands. Caleb Kyle hunched over and tumbled back as if he had been struck hard in the pit of his stomach, except now there was only a dark, spreading stain in which viscera shone and from which intestines protruded like hydra heads. He fell over and lay on his back, his hands raised to try to cover the hole at the center of his being, and then, slowly and agonizingly, he hauled himself to his knees and stared at Billy Purdue. His mouth hung open and blood bubbled over his lips. His face was filled with hurt and incomprehension. After all that he had done, after all that he had endured, his own boy had turned on him.

I heard the sound of another shell being jacked into the gun, saw Caleb Kyle's eyes widen, and then his face disappeared and a warm, red hand obscured my vision, winter light dancing through it like thoughts through the mind of God.

From Dark Hollow the sound of sirens came, carrying on the cold air like the howls of wounded animals. I looked at my watch. It was 12:45 a.m., on the twelfth of December.

My wife and child had been dead for exactly one year.