The Depths of the Hollow (Mercy Falls Mythos Book 2) Read online

  “Oh Mayor,” Sarah whispered, just loud enough so he could hear her through the window. When he looked up she was surprised to see him smile. She was expecting terror, was eagerly anticipating terror, and when she did not get terror, she was sorely disappointed.

  Sarah wasn’t sure what to make of that smile, but

  she was hungry.

  “Invite me in,” she said.

  Charles got up from his desk, briskly walked over to the window, pulled the blinds up the rest of the way, and slid the glass up. “By all means, come in.”

  She didn’t have to hypnotize him. There was no thrall. He just walked happily over as if he was content to die. Maybe they’d driven him crazy. No matter. She was happy to oblige him.

  Sarah sank her teeth into his extended forearm. The blood ran down, thick and dark. It tasted even better than the blood from the young male. More energizing somehow.

  “Ouch,” the mayor said. “Now that wasn’t very nice.” He wrenched her head off him, and with clenched fist backhanded her, striking her temple with such force that it sent her flying into the sidewall of the office. Her body left an imprint in the plaster, crumbling and showering her with white dust. She sank down, trembling.

  “Now look what you’ve done to my office.” The mayor walked over to her, in his white dress shirt partway unbuttoned with the sleeves rolled up, and tan slacks, and stood over her, fists at his sides, his left forearm still dripping with blood.

  Sarah looked up at him, fearful. “What are you?”

  The mayor smiled. “What I am is less important than what I can do for you.”

  Spoken like a true politician Charles, if I do say so

  myself.

  “You want blood, is that it?”

  Sarah bobbed her head up and down, uncertainly.

  “Of course you do. That’s why you came, to have yourself a little snacky snack. Well, it just so happens that I have what you need, right here.”

  He pointed a little farther off behind his desk. He walked over to a mini-fridge and pulled out a mason jar filled with a rich crimson liquid. She could smell it even

  through the glass.

  “I know you fellas prefer it warm,” the mayor grinned, offering it to her, “but beggars can’t be choosers.”

  She snatched it from him, twisted off the lid and gulped it down.

  “Easy there Philly, you’ll give yourself a brain freeze.”

  She smiled through blood-coated teeth as she downed the last of it, wiping the blood running down her chin with the back of her hand. She burped loudly.

  The mayor scrunched up his nose. “God, that’s disgusting! I mean, I’ve got to drink the shit too, but Jesus, have some manners young lady.”

  “Sorry?” Sarah said.

  Mayor Tremont seemed tickled by that. “No problemo. There’s more where that came from. Have a seat.” He pulled up a chair from a sidewall, and placed it at the front of his desk.

  Sarah rose cautiously from where she sat on the floor, dusting herself off. She plopped down in the offered chair and the mayor sat across from her, behind his desk.

  “So, you’re not one of ours, are you?” he said.

  “One of...?” Sarah shook her head. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “A pit vampire. You’re a solo. Of course! One of The Others made you; those naughty rascals! Left you to fend for yourself did they? They do love their mayhem.”

  “I’m confused.”

  “Of course you are,” Charles said. “All shall be explained. I think I need to introduce you to your new friends, tonight.”

  “Others, like me?”

  “Like you and I, certainly not like The Others.”

  She shook her head again, bewildered.

  “All in good time,” he said.

  “You’re not a vampire,” Sarah said. It was not a

  question.

  “No.”

  “And that wasn’t human blood you gave me.”

  “No. Vampire blood. Good shit huh? It’s a wonder they need humans at all. Of course, they would probably bleed each other dry and die. But that stuff will keep you energized and full for at least a couple of days. Sorry, nights that is.”

  The mayor opened his desk drawer and pulled out a first aid kit, placing it on the desk. He opened it and took out some gauze pads, wrapping his bleeding forearm.

  “Sorry about that,” Sarah said, having no idea why.

  “Pish posh. Not a problem kiddo. It’ll heal in no time.”

  “What did they do to you?”

  “I’ll tell you what they did. Gave me a new lease on life, that’s what. I’m just about immortal. Strong as an ox, full of energy. Can’t heal quite as fast as you guys, but still pretty quick. Can’t fucking float or fly or anything like that, but who’s complaining? Never really liked flying anyway. I can still walk around in daylight and I don’t get all toothy. So I’m good. All I have to do is keep drinking vamp juice. I swear I don’t know how you guys actually enjoy drinking it. Worse than V8 juice.”

  Sarah cracked a smile. “Kind of just getting used to it myself.”

  “Of course you are. But you enjoyed it didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s in your nature now. It’s not mine. That shit is foul! But it’s worth it, for the power.”

  “Power?” Sarah replied angrily. “This isn’t power. This is a curse. I almost fed on my best friend tonight.”

  “Unfortunate, but it happens. But you did say almost. Hey, I’m not making any judgment calls on who you feed on. But no one touches my family. I get my power, and everybody’s happy. I bring them fresh humans, serve as daylight protector, and in your case bring them freshly turned vampires. You could say I’m liaison to the undead.”

  “What if I don’t come with you?” Sarah said.

  “Oh, that’s easy. You come peacefully and quietly with me or I can send my friends after you.”

  “I thought they were my friends too.”

  “Our friends, for different reasons obviously.”

  “You’re sick.”

  Charles Tremont laughed. “And you’re not?”

  “Not by choice.”

  He jumped forward behind his desk so suddenly and forcefully, coming within an inch of her face, that she squealed.

  “Do you think they gave me a fucking choice?! They worked on me, force-fed me the shit! I acclimated! You should be grateful I’m trying to help you through this you selfish bitch!!”

  She shrank back in her chair. He settled into his, the anger tapering down like a steam valve shutting off.

  “I’m sorry,” she whimpered.

  “Damn right you are,” he said calmly, matter-of-factly.

  “All right. I’ll see for myself. But if I’m not happy there, can I leave?”

  “If that’s what you want. But where will you go? If

  tonight was any indication it doesn’t look like you’d

  survive very well out there on your own.”

  “Fair enough. I have nowhere to go as of now so I’ll go with you.”

  “I’m touched,” he said.

  “When?”

  “Now if you like. I have to dot a few more i’s and cross a few more t’s and I’m done. If you don’t mind waiting a few more minutes. You did interrupt me after all.”

  “By all means,” she commented snidely.

  Sarah didn’t know what to make of the mayor, but she didn’t entirely dislike him. He did appear to retain more of his humanity than she. In fact, he appeared to be in total control, when just a moment ago she was teetering on the brink of insanity.

  She sat with her thoughts as the mayor finished his work, wondering about her uncertain future. Sarah was never very religious; more like quasi-religious. Her parents had taken her to mass when she was younger. As she grew, she wanted to go less and less. She believed that God existed, but she wasn’t sure what role he could play in her life now. Not after what she’d done. There was no redemption, no c
oming back from that at all. Being sorry would never be enough, knowing she would have to do it again. And did she have free will if the hunger brought her to such a peak of despair, where it felt like she had no other recourse but to feed? She’d been another person in that room with Gwen and Stephanie, no longer Sarah, but someone she didn’t recognize. The hunger brought out a wickedness in her she didn’t know she was capable of. And could she still be a good person after taking lives?

  “...um, hello?” someone was saying. “Hello, Catatonia?” It was the mayor. “Are we ready to go?”

  She briefly registered him and his question, but she still had so many questions of her own. She nodded, still in a daze of thought.

  I’m still a good person, aren’t I? I’m not evil; I can

  still change.

  She shook her head fervently.

  “Which is it princess? Are you ready to go or not? You can’t be both.”

  “Am I evil?” she said aloud, staring through him. “I’m not evil am I?”

  The mayor stared at her. The girl was clearly cracking.

  “I’m not evil,” she answered her own question.

  “Yes, you are,” the mayor replied, “You just don’t know it yet.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  SETTLING

  Being a fisherman in Cape Cod for a local seafood restaurant called The Great Catch was a far cry from the quiet life Ben was now getting further inland. Mercy Falls had its charms, but as far as Massachusetts towns went, it wasn’t exactly a cultural or tourist Mecca.

  He’d moved in hopes of getting some much-needed R&R, especially after an accident on his boat involving a failing winch, where his right hand ended up with an inch deep trench through the palm where the steel cable had snapped and torn into him as he was hoisting the sail. His right hand had been his good hand. Not anymore. However, he’d live.

  Benjamin Caldwell was more concerned with dying of tedium. He had only been here for a week. On temporary disability, with staples holding his heavily bandaged hand together, there wasn’t much to do but read or catch a movie, and he wasn’t much of a reader. At forty-three, and a burly man with a thick head of dirty blonde hair mixed with patches of gray, and a mustache and chest fur to match, he didn’t look like much of a reader either.

  Currently he was getting up from bed, tossing some “reading” material aside- some book about a clueless cop and his corrupt partner that nearly had him bored to tears, and heading down the stairs and out the door for an evening walk. The owners of the Hillside Bed and Breakfast on the outskirts of town (where he was staying until he could find a more permanent residence) were in the master bedroom downstairs watching TV, so he wasn’t concerned about disturbing them. He didn’t really talk to them all that much

  anyway.

  Most of his friends were work buddies, and he had divorced a year ago, his kids now nearly grown and living with their mother in North Carolina, so he mostly relied on himself for entertainment now. He found he wasn’t all that interesting. No wonder she’d left him.

  The shops were still open and several people were still milling about outside the neon glow of the vendor’s windows. Ben popped a Marlboro between his lips and lit up. His mother always told him they’d be the death of him, but he thought he’d die at sea before he ever died from lung cancer. It was up in the air how long he would be out of work, though the short-term disability covered him for up to twenty-six weeks (in which case it then became long-term disability, which the company was probably not going to pay for) or whether he’d ever be able to return to work at all. So his mother might be right.

  He had his head down, avoiding people’s gazes for the most part until a teenage boy with a clever logo on his t-shirt walked by. It read: Y2K? WHY TO CARE?

  Ben grinned, bobbed his head toward the kid, and said, “Nice shirt.” Why to care indeed. Everyone was freaking out over this “millennium bug” that was supposedly going to cause all computer systems to crash at twelve a.m. on January 1st, 2000, and all the big companies were scrambling trying to fix the problems that would inevitably be caused by all those pesky zeros. If it was the end of the world, so be it. If technology was going to be our downfall, so be it. If all credit cards, loans, and car payments were wiped out, and everyone started again at zero, would it be so bad? A clean slate. Hell, we might have to live like the Amish for a while, but humans were incredibly adaptive. He was more concerned about nuts like those kids at Columbine a few months back shooting up and bombing a school to punch his clock more than some computer virus. They’d invariably blame the violent video games, the drugs, the guns, the lack of parental supervision, the “Goth” culture, but it all boiled down to one thing- unstable minds doing heinous things. And humans were always capable of great evil. Some people required much less of a push to drive them over that edge.

  He walked past the shops into a more secluded residential area. He noticed a teenager going through a hole in a fence a block up, leading into woods. There was a large NO TRESPASSING sign. Benjamin shouted, “Hey!!”

  The kid ran through. Ben followed him into the woods. He didn’t know why. He probably should have called the cops, but he didn’t have a cell phone, and it didn’t feel right to rat on the poor kid. He had been adventuresome too, once. Fishing could be an adventure sometimes, which was why he enjoyed it so much. He sometimes got to act like a kid.

  “Hey!” Ben yelled again, now on the other side of the fence. The kid was fast. “Come back here! You’ll get us both in trouble.” Ben started to run, quickly feeling winded.

  “What the hell am I doing?” he asked himself. “Screw you kid, you want to get in trouble that’s on you.” He turned to go back when an unearthly growl brought him to a halt. It sounded like a wild dog, maybe a coyote or something, but not like any he had ever heard. It was as if someone had rolled ten of them into one. The roar was like a furnace blast. Promptly following it, he heard the teenage boy scream. His cry was filled with fear, panic, and desperation, as if the animal must be upon him, and he were trying to get away.

  Oh hell! He wished he had some sort of weapon; even a fishing rod would be something. But he ran toward the sounds anyway. He could not leave in good conscience now.

  He reached the boy too late. He lay there mangled, his insides turned out, his arms and legs twisted in improbable ways, his mouth an “O” of terror, eyes blank and sightless. Whatever had done this to him appeared to be gone now. Ben needed to head back into town immediately and report this to the police.

  Something heavy and covered in fur leapt onto his back, knocking him off his feet. He had the presence of mind to turn around before the thing was fully on top, but he was pinned either way. The thing growled like a dog but was nearly the size of a grizzly, with large pointed ears. It slashed at his face with sharp claws, and then brought its massive head to bear down on his neck, biting down, nearly tearing his throat out, except he grabbed the things head with both hands to stop its advance. It was too strong to hold it off, but Ben’s fingers were near its eyes, those black soulless eyes. He dug his thumb into one of its eye sockets, at first encountering a gelatin like resistance before it popped with a liquid burst, coating his hand with thick dark blood. The thing roared, rearing back its head. Benjamin slid out from under it and ran.

  

  He felt light-headed and his head felt like it weighed a ton at the same time. After making his way to the hospital and talking to the police; confirming both an animal attack and the whereabouts of the body; he spent the night in ICU, and was moved the next morning into a standard room. His wounds- both the claw marks on the side of his face, and the bite wounds on his neck- seemed to be healing remarkably well.

  The following day they released Ben, although the doctors had predicted at least a week before he would be ready. He was glad to get out of there. He didn’t like hospitals and their antiseptic look. It was all too pristine. He preferred his clutter. He wasn’t a germaphobe but the thought of so much sickness and death near
him 24/7 gave him the heebie-jeebies.

  At least the Sedricks were happy to see him back at

  their Bed and Breakfast, though he wanted out of there too. They didn’t bother him much, and he had his own space, but he desperately needed a place of his own. Except for his own kids, he wasn’t good around kids and they had a twelve-year-old daughter who ate breakfast with them, when he chose to eat there. Ben had no idea what to say to a twelve-year-old girl, especially since he had two boys. He didn’t know what constituted interesting conversation, except for a few snippets he caught while she talked to her parents. All kids seemed to care about apparently was downloading music off something called Napster and the newest cell phone Nokia was putting out.

  What Benjamin Caldwell needed was a job, one that could accommodate someone injured (twice now). However, that sounded like a desk job, for which he had no marketable skills. Collecting disability was fine for a while, but he needed to be doing something. What that something might be he was not yet sure.

  The following day he became aware, to his bewilderment; after noticing that the throbbing and itching in both his hand and his neck were subsiding; that his injuries appeared to be healing at a more accelerated rate than he’d expected. He undid the bandage on his hand, and found that the nearly inch deep gash had more than halfway closed up and was scabbing amazingly well around the staples.

  He thought maybe he’d be able to get a job sooner than he thought. Maybe... He thought back to the animal that had attacked him for some reason. What was that? It looked like a wolf, but it was much larger, and for a moment he swore it stood on its hind legs, as if it had arms. He wasn’t prone to superstition or flights of fancy, but he found himself checking the calendar for the last full moon. Yes, last night had been the final day of the full moon. The end of July, the 28th to be precise, was the next one. He laughed at himself. Ridiculous! He couldn’t even believe the thoughts he was entertaining right now. Still, there it was. He could be persuaded otherwise but for that inhuman growl.