A HOLE TO FIGHT

Life in Rockwood

Unbearable, my newest novel slated for release Sept 1st, is available for preorder in most of the usual places. Preorders can be tremendously helpful for writers, so maybe consider it if you have a little extra money burning a hole in your pocket.

Speaking of holes, I was digging around some old short stories and found this. Originally written to be read on a podcast, I thought I’d share it here now. It’s a tale of Rockwood, that sleepy, supernatural town that started this whole professional storyteller thing.

It’s about an killer hole, which ties in neatly with Unbearable, a story that also prominently features a killer hole. Is this the same killer hole in both stories?

I suppose that’s up to you to decide.

Smuggler’s Well never did have any water in it. It sat in a lonesome dusty field on land nobody owned. Some said it was dug by thieves and carpetbaggers to stash their ill-gotten wealth, but if so, that wealth had long been taken away. Others said it was put their by the indigenous tribes to bury their dead, but that they’d found the ground rotten and abandoned the hole before doing anything with it. And some said that it was just there and had always been there, and whenever anyone had tried to fill it, the hole would come back. So they put some stones around it and built a roof over it to make it look like it belonged there. And like most strange things in Rockwood, the citizens found a way to ignore it unless it was bothering them. 

There was a time when kids would dare each other to climb into the well’s darkness and stay for a minute or two. There were few takers, but those who dared never lasted more than a few moments before scrambling out. 

Only one boy, Russell Hansel, had climbed all the way into the dark. He’d stayed there for a good five minutes, and when it came time to climb out, it became apparent he wasn’t coming. So his friends called the sheriff, and the sheriff climbed down into the well with his flashlight and at the bottom, he found nothing. Just a hole.  

They never did find Russell, and someone floated the idea of building a fence around Smuggler’s Well, but it ended up always being somebody else’s responsibility, and it never happened. And most agreed that anyone foolish enough to climb into that hungry darkness wasn’t deserving of much sympathy. So the hungry well sat in its empty field and waited for someone to come along. 

Empty Parn was a woman of advancing years, though still with a spring in her step. Few would ever call Empty old, but much of her life was behind her. The years had taken her youth, her husband, and her daughter. Those same years had left her with her health and a son who lived in another state and never called. 

It was raining this day when she came to the well. She parked some distance from the hole and unpacked a few things from her trunk, enjoying the stroll across the field as the gentle drops hit her face, soaked her long gray hair. If this was her last day on earth, she meant to enjoy it. 

She set her backpack by the well and opened a beer. Old Milwaukee, Harold’s favorite. Holding it to the sky, she said, “Here’s to you, you cheap old son of a bitch.” She took a drink, winced. For a moment, she considered throwing the can into the hole but rejected the profane act. She poured the beer out, threw the can into her backpack, and found a joint. She stuck a beach umbrella in the cracked earth. The ground around the well was hard and barren. It took some work. She sat, her back resting on the stones, like her and the well were old friends, and smoked her joint. 

Thunder rumbled somewhere in the distance as the wind picked up. The bulk of the storm was to the north, and it wouldn’t be coming here. The raindrops thickened, pattering against the umbrella with a steady beat. She dug out her phone, the one her son had insisted she get against her will, and she found her playlist. As Peter, Paul, and Mary belted out their music, she closed her eyes and smiled. The boy might never call, but she still had the phone because of him. 

A police cruiser pulled up beside her car. Empty considered hiding the weed, but she didn’t give a damn. The well could be seen from the road, but she’d hoped nobody would notice her. Still, it wasn’t surprising either. 

Deputy Bumble stepped out of his cruiser. He was a lean young man with a face like a buzzard. His beady black eyes were made large by his thick spectacles. He advanced on Empty at a deliberate pace. Nobody ever said he was in a hurry. 

“Mrs. Parn,” he said, tipping his hat. The rain dribbled down the brim but didn’t seem to bother him non. 

“Sid,” she replied, taking another hit. 

It didn’t feel right calling him Deputy. She’d known him since he was an awkward boy, years before he’d grown into an awkward man. 

He eyed the joint but didn’t comment on it. “What are you doing out here?” 

“Free country,” she replied. There was flippancy in her voice, which she didn’t approve of but couldn’t be helped. “I’m not doing nuthin’ wrong.” 

She took another puff. 

“Well, nuthin’ you should care about.” 

The Deputy clicked his tongue, which had the unfortunate effect of causing his teeth to stick out and his Adam’s apple to bob like a real apple trying to climb up his throat. “Don’t give me guff, Empty. I’m just doing my job.” 

She smiled at his use of her first name. Like he was a grown man, which, she supposed, he was if one were to be technical about it. She’d liked Sid as a boy, and she’d liked him as a man. It was the badge she didn’t like, though the law in Rockwood had never been much of a hassle to her. Still, it was the principle. 

“Is your job harassing old women minding their own business?” 

“Nobody comes to Smuggler’s Well with good intentions. Especially on a day like this.” 

The rain picked up. Empty patted the ground beside her. “Get your fool ass out of the rain, boy.” 

Bumble moseyed to a seat beside her. She offered him a hit, as a matter of politeness, but he waved it off. “Sheriff wouldn’t approve.” He removed his glasses and used a cloth to wipe the fog from the lenses. “What are you doing here?” 

She thought about lying, but it’d never been in her nature.  

“I’m here to kill this damnable hole.” 

Thunder rumbled. The rain fell harder still, but the cracked barren earth remained dry and hungry. 

“You can’t kill a hole,” said Bumble. 

“No, probably not,” she replied. “But I can try.” 

They sat there, surrounded by the steady patter of the storm. The wind picked up enough that the umbrella was inadequate cover. She covered her joint with her hand as she smoked. 

“But why would you?” he asked. “Smuggler’s Well hasn’t done you any harm. Hasn’t done much of anything in decades.” 

“It waits,” she said. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” 

“It’s sumthin’ that shouldn’t be,” she replied. “As long as it exists, the world has a wrong thing in it. And it’s a patient wrongness. Patient as the earth itself. And one day, sumthin’ bad will happen because of it.” 

Bumble said, “That’s hardly a reason.” 

“Best reason I got,” she replied. “Sid, I don’t have nuthin’ left in this world, except bridge club on Sundays and my chickens. And my chickens mostly take care of themselves, and I hate bridge. I raised my family. I lost ‘em. And now all I have to look forward to is a slow walk to the grave. Figure if I’m going to end up in a hole in the ground one day, might as well be one of my own choosing. And if I can accomplish something good while doing it, so much the better.” 

To her relief, Bumble didn’t deny any of it, as she feared he might. He didn’t offer limp reassurances that she wasn’t that old or that she had a lot to look forward to. He didn’t deny her the malaise she carried, had been carrying for years now. 

“Maybe so,” he said, leaving at that. 

“You aren’t going to try to stop me?” she asked. 

“I could run you in for possession,” he replied. “But we both know you’d just come back later. Anyway, been years since anyone climbed into that hole. I don’t think it’s dangerous anymore.” 

“If you’re wrong, Sheriff Kopp isn’t going to be happy.” 

“Well, then you’d best come back out, Empty.” 

She made no promises. 

She pulled a revolver from her backpack and tucked it into her waistband. She’d never liked guns. She checked her supplies. Rosary beads, a star of David, the jawbone of an ass, a wooden stake, holy water (from multiple denominations, all labeled), Hopi kachina dolls, a silver steak knife, a gold ankh, a Quran, some old runestones that were probably fake but all she had at hand, and some betel nuts. 

“You came spoiling for a fight,” said Bumble. 

“Pays to be prepared.” She hefted on the pack and felt it in her lower back and knees. But she could carry it. 

He helped her tie a rope to her fender, and she threw it into the depths. Looking into Smuggler’s Well was never the same. Some people saw nothing but blackness. Others saw something moving in the dark, but what that was, they could never agree upon. And some, like Empty, saw something that they couldn’t describe beyond a terrible hunger. 

“Been good knowing you, Sid,” she said as she switched the light on her miner’s helmet. 

Then she was gone, climbing down the rough rocky sides. The air grew hot and stale. As she went deeper, the dark closed in around her. Her light dimmed, unable to fight against it. She felt sharp pinpricks, like invisible things biting at her flesh. And when she hit bottom, the hot ravenous appetite of the hole caused her entire body to itch.  

The top of the well seemed a thousand yards away, but she could still see the point of light. She dropped her pack and rifled through her weaponry as the hunger closed in from all sides. A near irresistible urge to scramble up the rope came to her. A clap of thunder rumbled down the shaft. Or maybe that was the well itself. But the well didn’t strike. Something kept it at bay. For all its boundless appetite, it couldn’t consume her while her light burned. But she couldn’t kill it either. They were separated by a flickering bulb. Something, many things, one great thing, skittered along the walls. 

“All right. Let’s do this.” 

She switched off the light. 

The darkness surrounded her but didn’t touch her. It slipped and sloshed around her, and while she could feel its hate, palpable, hot, and ravenous, there was still something between her and it. If she’d been a religious woman, she might have believed some higher power was protecting her, but Empty had long ago abandoned any gods. It wasn’t that she ruled out their existence. She just didn’t figure they’d give much of a damn about her if they did exist. 

The ground moved beneath her feet, and she knelt down. The earth pulled away under her nails, and under that, there was something burning and wet, pulsing with an unsteady rhythm. If she listened close, she thought she could hear the hole breathing. 

She couldn’t see a damn thing. Even the distant light from above was gone. An instinct demanded she turn on her mining helmet again, but she was willful enough to ignore it. She wouldn’t run from this fight. 

In the darkness, the hole wasn’t a hole at all but a piece of something infinitely larger. Something that she could never truly comprehend, and something that, in turn, could never comprehend her. They were two things never meant to meet, and one was destined to obliterate the other merely by existing so closely. The hole was bigger than her. Vast and powerful and devouring. She was walking on a raging alien sun, and by sheer force of its gravity, she should have been crushed. 

But here she was. Alive still. Not devoured. 

“What’s wrong?” she asked the hole, her voice echoing from everywhere, but in a peculiar manner. Less like it was bouncing off the walls and more akin to traveling across the universe and returning from the other direction. “Can eat a child, but can’t face a grown woman?” 

The hole hissed. It hated her. Not her, in particular, but just things like her. Perhaps it saw her the way she saw it. If it had a mind, she wasn’t sure it did, and if that mind thought in ways remotely human, she didn’t think that likely, then it must have seen her as an abomination, a little lump of flesh and blood thinking it mattered.  

But she hadn’t been devoured. Not yet. 

She set her backpack on the pulsing ground and stretched the kinks out of her spine. Now that she’d become accustom to the dark, there was something reassuring about it. This wasn’t so bad. The darkness hated her, but it couldn’t touch her. Not if she refused it entry. To stand against the infinite malice of the universe and not wither away was a triumph in its own way.  

She found her joint in her pocket and lit it up, sucking on the sweet smoke. The light from the doobie flared in the void, and something moved on the edge of her sight. She reached for the gun in her waistband, ready to face whatever horror the well sent to claim her. 

The boy stepped into the light, and she suspected a trick. But she didn’t draw her weapon. 

The boy couldn’t have been more than twelve, though she was uncertain of that since most everyone under forty looked like a child to her nowadays. Even Deputy Bumble seemed barely old enough to drive. Tears stained his cheek, and his flesh was pale and colorless as if he hadn’t seen the sun since the day he was born. 

“I’m lost.” He sniffed, wiped his nose on his sleeve. 

Empty squinted. Her memory often failed her when it came to things that happened yesterday, but she remembered decades ago well enough. 

“Russell Hansel, is that you?” 

Russell nodded. “Did they send you to get me?” Skepticism tainted the question, as it should have. Nobody with any sense would send Empty to retrieve a boy from this hole. 

“How long have you been down here, son?” she asked. 

He started crying again at the question, and his fear and hopelessness brought a hot wave of satisfaction from the hole. She considered the boy, down here for decades in this timeless place, Smuggler’s Well supping on his misery. 

Unless this was all a trick. 

She suspected that such subtlety was beyond the well. It wasn’t that kind of evil. It didn’t seduce or tempt. It only sat and waited for someone or something foolish enough to climb into it. Like a child. Or a stubborn old woman. 

“You have to get out of here,” she said. “Use this rope.” 

But the rope was gone. She turned on her helmet and swept the irregular walls. 

“It won’t let us go,” said Russell behind her, his voice breaking, his eyes watering. “I want to go home.” He sat on the ground, tears rolled down his cheeks. “I want to go home.” 

Empty cursed the hole. It wasn’t just that it would prey on a child. The well made no distinction. It cared not where its meals came from. But it had polluted the purity of her struggle against it. She’d been prepared to die today, but she wasn’t prepared to sacrifice Russell. 

She didn’t have much recent experience with children, but she knelt beside him and put her hands on his cheeks, used her thumbs to wipe the tears from under his eyes. 

“You’re scared,” she said. “You have every right to be. This is a scary place. But it can’t hold you if you don’t let it. You can climb out. You just have to do it one handhold at a time.” 

Russell’s lip trembled. He was just a boy. He didn’t look a day older than the day he’d disappeared, and there was no telling how time worked down here. If it worked at all. 

She removed her gloves and gave them to him. Fortunately, her hands were small, and they were a close enough fit. The walls was steep, but jagged enough that climbing it wasn’t impossible. 

He stood at the walls and stared up into the void. The light above was so far away, like the last distant star dying in the empty universe. 

“I can’t do it,” he said. 

Empty said, “You can.” 

“It’s too high.” 

“It’s not as high as it looks,” she replied, uncertain of the truth of that, but if it was a lie, it was a necessary one. 

“I can’t,” he said. 

“You can!” she shouted. 

Her voice echoed through the well, reverberating for longer than it should have and becoming deeper and angrier in each moment. Russell recoiled, and the hole burned hotter. 

If the boy was ever strong enough to get out of this hole on his own, he wasn’t now. He was probably already lost. He was only a distraction. The sensible thing to do would be to turn off her light, leave him in the darkness, resume her fight. But she’d never been very sensible. 

“Climb on my back,” she said. 

Russell looked dubious, but Empty’s patience was frayed. 

“Do you want out or not?” she asked, harsher than she meant to. 

He nodded. 

“Then give me my gloves and climb on my back.” 

He did so. She felt the weight, in her back, in her knees. He was heavier than the backpack, but she could stand. The hole rumbled at her aches and pains. She took another hit of her joint before extinguishing it and sticking it back in her pocket.  

“Hold tight,” she grunted, prompting Russellto squeeze his arms tighter around her throat. “Not that tight, boy,” she wheezed. 

She climbed. The irregular shape of the walls gave her plenty of hand and footholds to steady herself. She didn’t stop. If she did, she might not keep going. She avoided looking directly up to avoid discouragement. There was only the climb, one handhold at a time. 

Smuggler’s Well went quiet, waiting for a moment of weakness. When she thought about her situation, considered her aching muscles, her stiff joints, the hole would crawl around in her head the same way she was crawling around in it. They were a bound circle now, and this might be her new eternity. 

She laughed. Or maybe it was the hole. She couldn’t be sure. Just as she couldn’t be sure if her ragged breaths were hers alone or if the hole’s hungry anticipation. 

Something stirred in the darkness below, and this time, if she entered, she wouldn’t be coming out. Which was all well and good for her, but not for Russell. 

“I’m scared,” he said, squeezing her tighter, though mindful to let her breath. 

“No shame in that,” she wheezed. “But we’ll make it.” 

She said it with certainty. For Russell’s sake. And for hers. He needed to believe it. As long as he believed it, she could too. 

Time became impossible to measure, but as the strength drained from her, she found it harder to find a good grip. Harder still to pull herself up. At some point, her rope reappeared, but she was mindful to not think it signaled much progress. Below, Smuggler’s Well waited. Its patience was endless. It would outlast her. 

“I see something,” said Edgar. 

Empty dared look up, and her vision blurred under a flash of light. A shadowy figure reached for her, and in shock, she let go. The hand took her by the wrist. She screamed at the tight grip, but it kept her from tumbling below. 

“I got you, Empty,” said Bumble. 

He nearly yanking her arm from her shoulder, but with one final heave, she was out of the well and into the light. The rain hit her face, cool and welcoming. She pushed herself to her knees and struggled to catch her breath. 

Russell stared into the overcast sky, like it was a miracle. 

She supposed it was. 

Life had taken a lot from Empty Parn, but sometimes, it gave something back. 

They found Edgar’s family. His parents had grown into grandparents, but they were happy to have him back. The color came back to his cheeks in a few days, and if the well took anything from him, he had the resilience of youth, frozen as it might have been for a few decades, to move on and forget about it. 

Empty visited him once or twice, and neither of them talked about what they found down in that hole. And that was fine by the both of them. 

A few months later, when Empty came by to revisit Smuggler’s Well, she’d found it gone. The stones and roof were still there, but the hole had vanished. She had no illusions she’d beaten it. It was no doubt off somewhere else, waiting new victims. But it wasn’t here, and that was about as good as she could expect. 

The hard earth had softened and a few rush pea bushes had started growing. Empty spread an old blanket beside one and sat. She took out a doobie and lit it. Bumble’s cruiser pulled up, raising a cloud of dust. He got out, leaned against his hood. 

She released a lungful of sweet smoke. “Afternoon, Sid.” 

He tipped his hat. “Empty.” 

“You aren’t here to run an old woman in for enjoying her retirement?” 

Bumble plucked a purple flower from a bush and handed it to her.“You aren’t that old.” He tipped his hat before driving off. 

Empty lay back on her blanket, against the hard, but not as hard as it once was, earth, and let the sun shine down on her.