Point Hollow Read online

  Praise for Rio Youers

  “Point Hollow proves Rio Youers to be the real thing. His prose flows without a ripple and his conflicted, multidimensional characters—even the villain—demand you care. The edge-of-the-seat finale is as relentless as it is terrifying.”

  —F. Paul Wilson, author of the Repairman Jack series

  “Rio Youers is one of the most promising new writers to come along in ages. Point Hollow is a dark and twisted thriller full of small-town secrets, horrific murders, and the way evil takes root if we’re not careful. Read it!”

  —Christopher Golden, author of Snowblind

  “Rio Youers has written an incredible story with all the right ingredients to keep a reader turning the pages quickly—and staying awake in the dark! Marvellous and creepy!”

  —Heather Graham, author of Waking the Dead

  “Rio Youers’s storytelling is so charming, so affable, so apparently effortless, that you're still grinning like an idiot when the sheer horror of his imagination leaps up and suckerpunches you in the gut.”

  —Robert Shearman, author of They Do the Same Things Different There

  Point Hollow © 2015 by Rio Youers

  Cover artwork © 2015 by Erik Mohr

  Interior design by © 2015 by Jared Shapiro

  All Rights Reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Distributed in Canada by

  Publishers Group Canada

  76 Stafford Street, Unit 300

  Toronto, Ontario

  M6J 2S1 Canada

  Toll Free: 800-747-8147

  e-mail: [email protected]

  Distributed in the U.S. by

  Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc.

  10150 York Road, Suite 300

  Hunt Valley, MD 21030

  Phone: (443) 318-8500

  e-mail: [email protected]

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Youers, Rio, 1971-, author

  Point hollow / Rio Youers.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-77148-330-8 (pbk.). ISBN 978-1-77148-331-5 (ebook).

  I. Title.

  PS8647.O58P63 2015 C813'.6 C2015-900094-7

  C2015-900095-5

  Edited by Samantha Beiko

  Proofread by Michael Matheson

  CHIZINE PUBLICATIONS

  Toronto, Canada

  www.chizinepub.com

  [email protected]

  We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts which last year invested $20.1 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada

  Published with the generous assistance of the Ontario Arts Council.

  For my mother, Lorraine May,

  who knows all about mountains, and how to conquer them.

  Chapter One

  1984/2010

  The mountain spoke to him.

  Oliver looked east, where the ragged peaks scraped the sky’s pale belly. The sound had traversed the miles and echoed in his mind. Not words, but a command. It was followed by a stillness that made him wonder if the world had stopped breathing.

  “Did you hear that?” Oliver asked his mother.

  She was watering her plants, her thumb capped over the end of the hose to create a spray. Rainbows sparkled in the mist. “Hear what?”

  “It sounded like thunder.”

  She looked at the sky, a deep and characterless blue, as if it had been painted by an artist with no talent for texture. “I expect it was Mr. Sawyer’s truck backfiring again. He should drive that old shitbanger directly to the junkyard.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” Oliver said, but he knew it wasn’t Mr. Sawyer’s truck, because he only ever drove it to and from town, which was to the south, and this sound had reverberated from the east. From the mountain.

  “And you didn’t hear anything?” Oliver asked.

  “No, but I’m in a world of my own here.” She directed the spray at the marigolds. Her face was bleak despite the sunshine. Broken, almost.

  But it was so loud, Oliver thought. He looked east again. The mountain shimmered in the heat. At thirty-four hundred feet, it was the tallest of the peaks surrounding the town of Point Hollow. To the outside world it was called Old Bear Mountain, but everyone in town called it Abraham’s Faith.

  Oliver strolled to the eastern edge of his garden. Fourteen years old, with wide blue eyes and a wave of black hair. Sweat glistened on the bridge of his nose. His young heart thumped eagerly.

  “What do you want?” he whispered, and Abraham’s Faith replied with its mighty voice. Oliver thought the sky would crack like ice and fall in jagged blue pieces. He turned to his mother—she must have heard that—but she carried on spraying the flowers, deaf to everything.

  Again, not words, but a command. It rippled through the ground and into his soul. A feeling. A certainty. It was like seeing shapes in the clouds, or hearing music in the rain. And Oliver was less frightened by the fact that the mountain had spoken to him, than he was by what it would do if he didn’t obey.

  As if to emphasize, the mountain boomed again. Its edges trembled.

  “Yes,” Oliver whispered. A tear slipped from his eye.

  He knew what he had to do.

  ———

  Seven-year-old Ethan Mitchell had been missing for three days. He was last seen playing in the front garden of his home in Lafayette, New Jersey. “I was watching him from the living room window,” Ethan’s mother told police. “The phone rang and I answered it—five seconds, maybe—and by the time I moved back to the window, he was gone.” Police worked around the clock, following leads, exhausting resources. They assured Ethan’s mother, and the media, that no stone would be left unturned, although everyone knew that—without positive development—hope was growing frail.

  Oliver knew the numbers: approximately eight hundred thousand children reported missing in the United States every year. An average of two thousand per day. A huge majority returned home safely—children that had been lost or injured, family abductees, or runaways. Nonfamily abductees made up a smaller percentage, of which a fractional subset could be classed as stereotypical kidnappings. New Jersey police did not have sufficient information to determine that Ethan Mitchell fit this latter subset, but Oliver knew that he did . . . because Oliver had taken him.

  When the mountain called, he answered. He served.

  Always.

  And now, only three days after taking Ethan Mitchell, he was serving it again.

  “Oh . . . could you grab that for me, please?”

  The little girl had hair the colour of fall leaves and a delightful splash of freckles across her cheeks. She was wearing a Justin Bieber T-shirt, blue jeans, and Crocs. Ten years old. Maybe eleven. Oliver processed this information in less than a second. The news reports and “missing” posters would obviously feature her description, and her red hair and T-shirt were details that people would remember. He had second thoughts, but these, too, lasted less than a second; Oriole Avenue was otherwise deserted, an empty baseball park on one side, and a withered patch of grass on the other. Nobody there now. The situation was perfect.

  He was carrying an empty box, with a rolled-up newspaper tucked under one arm and a knapsack slung over one shoulder. He needed to give the impression that his hands were full, and he acted as if the box were the heaviest thing in the world. On
top of it he had placed a Transformers toy, still in its colourful packaging. As the little girl walked toward him, he tilted the box so that the toy slipped off and fell to the ground at her feet.

  “Megatron,” she said, and he asked if she could grab it for him. She picked it up, looked at it for a second, and then stood on her tiptoes and tried to slide it back on top of the box. Oliver puffed and lowered the box an inch, no more, his arms trembling. He dropped his shoulder so that the knapsack slipped into the crook of his elbow.

  “I need another pair of hands,” he said with a smile.

  “I can’t reach,” the little girl said.

  “My car is right there.” He nodded toward a silver Chevy Impala—nondescript in every way—parked on the road less than ten yards away. “You wouldn’t just throw it on the back seat, would you? I’d really appreciate it.”

  She didn’t hesitate. She turned, her bright hair flicking over one shoulder, and skipped toward the parked car.

  “Is it unlocked?”

  “Sure is.”

  She opened the door and tossed the toy onto the back seat, but then paused, as he knew she would, looking at the bright gift bag, festooned with bows and ribbons, that he had placed on the seat—just out of reach.

  He came up behind her.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “My daughter’s birthday present,” he replied. He opened the passenger side door, threw the newspaper and knapsack into the footwell, and placed the empty box on the passenger seat. He also opened the glovebox, where he kept the duct tape. “It’s a Zhu Zhu Pet. I’m not sure if I got the right one. She wanted Mr. Squiggles.”

  “Mr. Squiggles is brown,” she said, as if everybody knew this. “And it should say right on the box.”

  Oliver smiled and gave her a dumb-adult shrug. “Take a look, if you like.”

  Again, no hesitation. She kneeled on the back seat and leaned toward the bag. Oliver acted quickly. He grabbed the duct tape, closed the passenger door, then pushed the little girl onto the back seat and climbed in behind her. In less than a minute she was bound, gagged, and thrown into the gap behind the driver and passenger seats. Oliver stepped out of the car, walked calmly around to the driver’s side, got behind the wheel, and drove away. The entire grab—from the moment he dropped the toy to the moment he pulled away—took less than two minutes.

  He drove to his home in Point Hollow, with music softly playing, the sun falling to the west, and the little girl crying and squirming in the gap behind his seat.

  ———

  Oliver’s fear had turned to exhilaration—a from-the-gut feeling of being moved by a higher power, something beyond his comprehension. It was like the moon’s tidal pull. His heart drummed so hard that it hurt.

  “Mom, I’m going out.”

  He knew she wouldn’t ask where he was going. She never did.

  “Dinner at five,” she said. “Make sure you’re back.”

  “Sure.”

  “It’s spaghetti and meatballs.”

  “Sure.”

  Oliver reeled from his house and started down Cold Creek Road. The knapsack on his back was packed with only two items: a flashlight, and his father’s hunting knife. He had no idea how long he would be gone, but would eat blueberries and dandelion leaves if he got hungry, and drink from the spring to quench his thirst.

  Abraham’s Faith would look after him.

  It rumbled in the east, drawing him on.

  Late afternoon heat bleached the air, making everything too white, even the roads, gleaming like burnt chrome. Sprinklers whirled and air conditioners hummed. People languished on their porches, barely dressed, fanning themselves and drinking lemonade. An ice cream truck weaved a tempting melody through a dozen neighbourhoods, and Oliver imagined children tagging along behind like a school of minnows. He passed Blueberry Bush Park, where teenagers played baseball, bare-chested, while their girlfriends watched from the bleachers. A radio beside them played the new song by Duran Duran.

  He walked on. The town would soon give way to natural beauty. The roads would end. There would be no buildings or streetlights, only the world, wild and raw. Numerous trails snaked through the forests, followed rivers, and scaled several peaks, although no trail came close to Abraham’s Faith.

  It boomed at him, and coupled with the exhilaration was a sense of worth—of having been chosen. Of all the people in Point Hollow, the mountain had selected him. Being wanted, and having value, was something Oliver could get used to. And so he fairly skimmed along the sidewalk, fully prepared to do what was asked of him. He had a flashlight. He had a knife. He needed only one more thing.

  Matthew Bridge was ten years old. Loose brown curls and a smile that seemed always mischievous, but rarely was. He was in his front garden, giggling wildly, trying to avoid the sprinkler spray as it oscillated toward him. His small body glistened, coloured by the sun. Water trickled from his curls. He leapt. The sprinkler caught him and he laughed, and then stopped, noticing Oliver watching from the sidewalk.

  Matthew wiped his eyes. “Hey.”

  “Hey.”

  “You’re Oliver, right?” Point Hollow was a small town. There were no strangers.

  “Yeah.”

  Matthew looked at the knapsack on Oliver’s back. “Where are you going?”

  Oliver managed a dry smile. He felt Abraham’s Faith looming behind him: a shadowy puppeteer, working the strings.

  “Treasure hunting,” he said.

  Matthew frowned and stepped closer. “What kind of treasure?”

  “I’m not sure. I found a map buried in our garden. An old map, so it might be gold.”

  “No way,” Matthew said.

  “Uh-huh.” Oliver nodded. “It’s got to be worth looking, right?”

  The sprinkler shimmied around and sprayed Matthew again. He squealed delightedly and stepped out of its range, closer to Oliver. Water sparkled on his shoulders.

  “Do you want to come?” Oliver asked.

  “Where’s your shovel?” Matthew asked. “You can’t dig up treasure without a shovel. Everybody knows that.”

  “The map said it was buried under some rocks. I don’t need a shovel, but I could really use some help moving the rocks.”

  “Yeah?” Matthew frowned again. “How far is it?”

  “A mile,” Oliver said. “Maybe two. It’s just off the orange trail. Close to Rainy Creek.”

  “I don’t know.” Matthew shrugged, then turned and looked at his house. “My mom said I have to tidy my room this afternoon. I’ll catch hell if I don’t do it.”

  “Okay, that’s cool,” Oliver said. “You’re probably not strong enough to lift the rocks anyway.”

  “I am, too.”

  Oliver started to walk away.

  “Wait!” Matthew said. He grabbed his T-shirt and sneakers from the porch, jumped the fence at the bottom of his garden, and ran after Oliver. His small shadow flickered on the sidewalk. “Wait up! I’m coming with you.”

  The mountain flexed its grey muscle and shook its forested shoulders.

  “Let’s go,” Oliver said.

  ———

  The little girl was sleeping by the time he arrived home. She had exhausted herself, crying and squirming. Strands of red hair clung to her face. He lifted her from the gap between the seats, cradled in his arms, and carried her into his secluded house. She woke when he placed her on the sofa. He saw realization, and then terror, bloom in her eyes. Her frail body tensed. More tears.

  Oliver walked away from her—couldn’t stand to look into those fearful eyes. He crossed the living room and stepped onto the rear deck. The midafternoon sun blazed. Small birds sprayed the sky, and far below, Point Hollow lay nestled among waves of green. A toy village, like something a collector would arrange around a train set.

  Let this be the las
t time, he thought, and looked east. Abraham’s Faith claimed the sky. It swallowed his soul. He heard it—felt it. The children, too. Their bodies were piled high. A mountain inside a mountain. I can’t do this anymore. Let me go.

  His world was a long, bright scream. It was a highway of broken glass. He stood on the rear deck and beseeched the sky’s emptiness, wanting to fly, to be drawn into that belly of endless silence, where he would float, untroubled, until he turned to ash and rained into the ocean.

  ———

  Oliver ran through the high grass and Matthew followed, laughing, wanting to show the older boy that he could run just as fast. A spring glittered ahead of them. Oliver reached it first, scooped chilled water into his palms, and splashed it over his face. An osprey took wing from a nearby tree, swooped close to the water, and then, with a cry, arced into the deep sky. Oliver watched it until Matthew drew alongside him.

  “I can run fast, too,” Matthew said. His face shimmered like the water.

  “I wasn’t racing,” Oliver said.

  Matthew smiled and looked around, hands on his hips. Only ten years old, yet Oliver thought he looked unusually adult, like a man who has found his place in the world.

  “Is this a river?”

  “It’s a spring,” Oliver said. “It comes from the mountain. It’s cold, even though it’s shallow. Try it.”

  “Drink it?”

  “If you like. Or splash it on your face.”

  Matthew’s small hands slipped among the pebbles and emerged cupped, the water trickling through the cracks of his fingers. “So cold,” he said, and gingerly dipped his face into his palms. Gooseflesh rippled across his forearms. He shivered.

  “Good?”

  The younger boy grinned and nodded, then reached into the spring and splashed Oliver. A child again.

  There was a forest on the other side of the water. Mostly spruce and fir. Beyond this, the ground became ragged and grey. The grass faded. Flowers lowered their heads. A mile of dark landscape that sloped into the foothills of Abraham’s Faith, where it became darker still—trees hooked out of shape, fractured rocks, bunched like knuckles. The mountain gathered against the sky, like a storm cloud that never moved.