When the Hollow Man Visits

I get kind of shaky when the hollow man visits. Mama told me he is one of those ghostly beings that haunts the Appalachians around where we live.  When you live in these parts, you hear stories about entities that can test your timbre and make you quake in your boots, if you choose to wear such things.  

When I was just ten years old, my mama took me to Charlotte to have Dr. Weston checked me over since she claimed I wasn’t quite right in the head.  As it turned out, he concluded that I, Marlin Pakachance, was living inside my head.  I didn't quite understand what was wrong with me, but Hollow man done killed Daisy,  our old hound dog when she went sniffing where she didn't belong.  Mama cried when she found poor Daisy hanging from a noose up past Sycamore Ridge. I told her when the Hollow Man visits, bad things happen.

Dr. Weston called it Dissociative Identity Disorder.  He said it is  when you have other people who live in your head.  He told me these people will sometimes express themselves when I am experiencing trauma, whatever that is.  

My pa took me quail hunting when I was seven years old.  I liked quail.  Mama had a special way of cooking them that made them taste real good.  It was the first time he took me into the deep woods to hunt for them.  We took Daisy, on account Daisy was really good at flushing them out of the places they like to hide.  

Pa was a crack shot.  He learned about shooting from the war he was in.  He didn't like talking about it though, but he did when we camped out by Bootleggers Creek.  I'll never forget about how dark it was when he told me about some guy named Charlie.  Maybe that's what he called Hollow Man because I heard the gun go off, waking me from my sleep.  I got my flashlight and found him leaning against a sycamore tree with the top of his head blown off.  Daisy was whining and pawing at him.  His eyes were still open looking at me.  The rifle was still in his hands, smoking from the barrel.

"It was Hollow Man who done this to me, Marlin." He told me as tears rolled down my cheeks. How could he talk to me being like he was?  I was scared as I could be. 

"Who is Hollow Man?" I asked him, but he did not answer.

Sheriff Newton Stalwart came up there the next morning after I got back to tell mama what happened.  She went over to Miss Talbert's place to use her phone. Mama refused to let go up to where pa was, telling me the sheriff needed to be left alone.

It would be the first time I saw Hollow Man.

He was in pa's shed where he made his special corn squeezing's.

He didn't have any eyes.

His face was made of dried leaves and other dried up droppings that you walked on when you were in the woods.

His smile was empty and hollow, as he poured gasoline my pa used to keep in A can all over his work bench. He struck a match.  The work bench nearly exploded into flames.

"Did you start this fire, Merlin?" Sheriff Stalwart squatted down so he could look me in the eyes.

"No sir." I fought off my tears. He had pa in the backseat of his patrol car, zipped up in A big black bag, but I could hear him calling my name and Warning me about the Hollow man. "It was the Hollow Man. When the Hollow Man visits, bad things happen."

Sheriff Stalwart looked at my mama as her legs turned to jelly.

It was shortly after that she took me to Dr. Weston's office and I told him about the Hollow Man and how he killed my pa. He asked me a bunch of questions. 

We got to stay in a fancy hotel while we were in Charlotte.  Mama dug up one of the mason jars pa used to keep his money in from selling his corn squeezing's.  

When we got on the bus to go home, I saw the Hollow Man walk into Dr. Weston's office.

Hollow Man came one night when I was having a bad dream.  It was several years later.  He always came when I least expected him.  When I was in times of distress.  

He was in this dark place where the trees were all dead, not a single leaf on any of their branches that reached out to seize me like long honey fingers.   

"It is your time of reckoning." Hollow Man's voice was deep.  It resonated through me.

Then my eyes were open when I heard my mama's voice, "No! Please don't!" 

Silence. I ran to her room.

There was Hollow Man standing there holding a bloody knife. He cut her across her throat.

Sheriff Stalwart and Deputy Terrell took me into custody. The black and white photographs of the crime scene clearly showed the full horror of the attack that ended my mother's life.  

"Violet Pakachance was brutally murdered by her son Merlin." Daryl Lohse, the prosecuting attorney pointed to me during his opening argument. 

No, it was the Hollow Man.  The Hollow Man did it.  He lives in the deep woods. I saw him with his crooked grin and the bloody knife in his hand.  His whole being is nothing but woody tendrils and fibrous material.

But Mr. Loshe continued with his bombastic verbal attack on me.  He had Dr. Weston's reports from ten years ago with my diagnosis and a summary stating that my intellect was in the top one percent.  This did not mean anything to me since both my parents did not consider me very smart.  I accepted their crude assessment of my intelligence, but in the back of my brain was this unwavering spark that told me, "Merlin, you are a lot smarter than you think you are." 

I tended to ignore it, but lately I began to reckon with the possibility that my brain was more complex than I thought.  Perhaps deep inside my mind, my amygdala was a sleeping giant who was finally waking up.  

One of my teachers, Mrs. Canby, wrote a note on my report card in the third grade, two years before my pa removed me from school, saying it was a waste of time.  She wrote that my intellect was far superior to my classmates and how I should be placed in advanced classes that would challenge me intellectually.  Mr. Loshe read the note as further evidence of my criminal mind.

Mr. Gabney, my defense attorney, spoke of how potential intellect did not prove criminal intent. 

I raised my rifle.  A quail was looking for some seeds that had fallen on the ground.  I pressed the trigger. It was over in a split second.  

"Mr. Pakachance, did you hear me?  Please take the stand." Mr. Loshe put his hand on the witness box. I walked over and did as I was instructed.

It was a clean shot, just as pa had taught me.  I had taken his head off leaving the rest of the carcass to dress for cooking.  Pa put his arm around me and smiled, complimenting me on my expert shot. I felt proud. It was a rare moment, because he spent most of the time telling me how worthless I was.  He was quick with the switch. Spare the rod and spoil the child, was not his way.  He told me his father was even harsher in those beatings where he drew blood after a whooping .

"So your father, Owen Pakachance beat you on a regular basis?" Mr. Gabney asked.

Beat me?  Shoot, he would keep hitting me even when I begged him to stop.  Mama would be sobbing.  He would be panting.  His face would be scarlet red. He would get this strange look in his eyes, "Charlie is everywhere, Mack.  Keep it locked and loaded, eh?"

"Did you hear me, Merlin?" Mr. Loshe asked, leaning on the rail in front of me. I shook my head.  The fact was, I was a million miles away.

The Hollow man was waiting for me up near Sycamore Pass.  

"Perhaps we should call a recess." Mr. Gabney suggested. 

" An hour recess." The judge banged his gavel.

"Are you okay?" Mr. Gabney handed me A cold coke from the cafeteria fountain.

 "I saw him," I said after taking a quick sip.

"Who?" Mr. Gabney sat across from me.

"Hollow Man." 

"You know, I'm from a stone's throw from Asheville and them hills were full of stories about boogeyman and nightmares." He shook his head, "Hollow Man was one of them from an of Cherokee legend." 

"Was he evil?"

"As bad as they come." He chuckled.

"Every time I see him, something bad happens." I sighed and looked away.

The Hollow Man was sitting at the next table. When I blinked a couple of times, he morphed into a fair haired man in a suit and tie reading over some notes from an open briefcase. 

The bailiff led me out to the lockup.  I could not get the Hollow Man out of my mind. 

I pulled the blanket over my head.

The next morning the newspaper was filled with the so this account of Mr. Loshe's murder.  

"I will protect you." His voice was guttural and as deep as a well.  I sat up in my cot.  The shadow of the Hollow Man fell across the floor. Sheriff Stewlart paid me a visit and we talked about Mr. Loshe.

"Whoever did this removed his heart." He informed me, "A lot of folks are pretty rattled over this." 

"No one believes me." I sat there shaking my head.  

"What, Hollow Man? Seems like you have your fingers on his buttons.  Whoever you see as a threat becomes his next victim.  Of course me saying this might put me high on the list, eh?" His smile appeared like a knife wound running jagged across his face.

Due to the untimely death of Mr. Loshe, the trail was delayed meaning, I got a temporary furlough.  I went home to my small trailer nestled in the back lot of my father's place.

Sitting on the small deck I built for myself, I was swallowed up by the darkness.  When the sunsets, light can be hard to come by.  Shadows take over and strange noises seem to echo from some of the darker places.  Jackals and banshees howl their eerie songs that can rattle your bones.  But this is my home.  This is where I grew up under the strict hand of my pa.  Now I was in charge.  I had seen and heard all of the dark timber had to offer and none of it phased me, except the haunting existence of the Hollow Man.

Pa warned me.  He said Hollow Man was a banshee.  The relic of a ghost.  He told me Hollow Man was one of the Cherokee who refused President Jackson's order to vacate the hills of the homeland.  One of the soldiers shot him dead, but his spirit rose from his dead body and screamed a death cry for everyone to hear.  His spirits still haunts the woods And every now and then he will sound a cry that comes from the hounds at the gates of Hell.

   I heard it many times and while it can raise the hair on the back of your neck, it has a comforting effect like a lullaby.  He knew these woods well, almost well enough to track in total darkness, but a lantern did provide assured news against unexpected company.  The long tooth man enjoyed playing pranks on unaware travelers.

"Where are he off to, young Merlin?" Long Tooth's face appeared in a dying pine.

"To find Hollow Man." I answered.

"What for?" His smile became a grimace.

"To set things right." I held up a finger and pointed it straight ahead.

"Seems that he'd be better left alone." His voice echoed to the sound of a whippoorwill.

"He has made it clear that I'm his intended target." I continued down the path I knew would lead me to him.

"Stay here in the safety of your home." He implored me.

"If all I seek is safety, I will never know what splendid things await me."

"And what dangers lurk in the shadows." He reminded me.

"True enough, but I went to the university when those wiser than I told me it was a foolhardy quest." I continued on my way.  Having earned my diploma allowed me to climb out of the low estate I had been born to. The low class of being labeled as white trash and the stigma that accompanied it, motivated me to excel, but there was no escape from the stain that marked me in such a way people assumed the worst in me. I was the Hollow Man.  I was the fiend, the monster of my own nightmares. No matter what I did or who I tried to be, I was the embodiment of him. In destroying the evil, I would be destroying myself.  

Dr. Weston told me of how we invent monsters to mask the mister that lives inside us.  

I hung Daisy, because I hated the way she whined after sniffing me.  Dogs sense it.  Dogs know the evil that resides in you.  I did it so she would not give me away.

But it wasn't enough.  Evil is not something you can conceal.  You cannot mask it.  It will show through.  One dozen people have seen the Hollow Man in me and they have paid with their lives.

You do not tell yourself that you want to be a serial killer, it just happens when your true identity is revealed.  Poor Daisy, she fought to get free. Her weight was not enough.  She failed and fought for over an hour until she finally accepted her fate. I heard her final gasp as she gave up, her black eyes fixated on me until the glint in her eye faded to oblivion.  Right then, I decided I could not allow the ones who would follow to suffer like that, so I made sure their demise was quick and definite.  Mr. Loshe, my latest, did not have time to feel the steel of my knife.   His final vision before I turned off his lights, was looking into the empty, hollow  sockets of my eyes.  In His final gasp, he managed to utter, "You..."

I removed his heart to make sure the deed was done.

I disappeared in the darkness, the husk of my naked body covered in the poor man's blood.  I walked into the fire I started and let the flames consume my physical presence while leaving my spirit intact.  

I saw the police try to put the fire out, but by then most of  Mr. Loshe's corpse was incinerated.  There was enough left for them to see what I had done to him, but I left no clues connecting me to his death.  My physical presence was nothing more than indistinguishable flakes of ash.

There is an underground cave up near Sycamore Creek where I will take refuge until such a time when I will make my presence known again.

Dr. Weston had it right.  I do have a Dissociative Identity Disorder, but this disorder has turned me into something I used to fear when I was A child.  

I never would have guessed that as I sat next to my pa as he drank straight  from his moonshine bottle and told me the story of Hollow Man with our campfire blazing in the pit.  

"Merlin, that Hollow Man comes visiting, bad things start to happen." He would turn to me and smile.  I could smell the moonshine on his breath. This story was intended to scare me from running into the woods unescorted, but little did he know what would really happen.  

As I sit in the darkness at the mouth of the cave, I see a familiar shadow drift toward me. In a moment I will transition.  

As l shed my human form, I can hear my pa's voice  telling me as the moonshine clouded his eyes and slurred his words, "Mark my words son, stay clear of him, hear? Cause when the Hollow man visits, he will be pure evil.  And he will make you evil, too." this    

I don't think he ever really knew how right he was.