Owl Hollow

 It was supposed to be the perfect vacation with me and my wife, Susanna. Something to get us away from the house...away from civilization. Up in the mountains, far from the tentacles of that soul sucking, hate filled shit-show we call New York City. We traveled south, to the smokey mountains of Tennessee, our destination being a log cabin that in a secluded clearing on the edge of a small lake. Along the way, my car, a 2005 Volkswagen Jetta, had decided to stop working.

“Didn’t you check it before we left?” Susanna had asked. I tried to pretend I didn’t hear her, mostly because I didn’t want to explain why I failed to do a rudimentary inspection of the damned thing. “Did you hear me?” She asked again impatiently.

“No, hon, I’m losing hearing in this ear,” I responded, my voice echoing off the hood of the car. The fumes permeating the air were starting to make me nauseous. “Do you have any signal at all out here?”

“I’ve been trying for the past 30 minutes, John. If it’s not working by now, it isn’t going to work until we get out of these trees.” Of course she was right. We were somewhere in North Carolina, surrounded by everything we had hoped for. Trees, birds, and the occasional salamander were the only company we had. The whole time we were out there, no cars passed us. Why would anyone drive on that God-forsaken road during the off season? And is it not better that we were left alone? The hicks there probably would give us Yankees a hard time for doing something so stupid as to be roaming about the woods when tourist season was far from being active.

“Does the GPS in the car at least work?” I asked while slamming the hood of the car down. I couldn’t see myself, but from the soot that had blackened my white shirt, I could tell that my face probably looked a mess. Susanna shrugged her shoulders and went back to waving her phone around in the air. “What kind of answer is that?”

“I don’t know how that thing works. I’ve only ever used my phone for directions, and I don’t have an offline map of this place,” She responded. This was my punishment for marrying someone 10 years younger than me. At the time, it seemed like a great idea, but she was as useless as the dead car out there in the forest.

I moved myself to the drivers seat, flipped the GPS on, and scrolled around the area, “Look here,” I said pointing at the screen, “There’s a little town a little ways off the road up here.”

“Owl...Hollow?” Susanna said. “What’s a Hollow?”

I tried really hard to stop my eyes from rolling, but reflex got the better of me. “It’s a lowland in the woods. It’s like a copse.”

“What?”

“Never mind. Look, if we walk in that direction we should be able to find people who can help us. I know it’s probably a little podunk town, but surely to God they have a landline.”

And so we walked. And walked. And walked. The more we walked the further away from reality we seemed to stray. Mist started rolling in, and that mist eventually turned into a fog so thick that I swear that my perception of time was starting to distort. It wasn’t too much longer after that that Susanna and I were holding hands in order not to lose track of each other. I impatiently tugged her along. The noises in the distance didn’t sound like any sort of animal I’d ever heard, but I didn’t tell her that.

Truth is, I was probably just as afraid as she was. Before I had time to finish any thought process about the creatures scurrying in the shadows, I was standing face to face with a swinging sign hanging off of a pole; “OWL HOLLOW” it read. I looked past it and focused my eyes. Shapes of small buildings started to take form. “It’s this way,” I said under my breath. Susanna clinched my hand tighter, and I, for a reason I couldn’t see at the time, felt an instinctive need to protect her. I was out of my element, and she was so far removed from her element that it would have been like putting a goldfish in a river.

I knocked on the first door we came across. No answer. Something was wrong. Something didn’t feel right. At that moment fear created a knot in my chest, as if someone were sitting in my stomach pushing their fist up through my esophagus. The door started to slowly move open. Still, no one was there. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone, flipping the assistive light on. “Excuse me,” I cried out like a fool. The house was obviously empty, and there were no lights to be seen. The only luminous gleam that wasn’t coming from my phone was pouring through the window.

It smelt old. Really old. Like the wood of an old barn, or mildewed slates under a bathroom floor. I waved my phone back and forth, scanning the room for any possible danger. Right before I had given up looking around, something in the corner caught my eye.

“Susanna...” I said in a whisper.

“Yeah?”

“Don’t look.”

“What?”

“Don’t look, God dammit!”

It was too late, the corpse sitting in the chair had already sent her into a panic. Instead of screams, she let out little squeals of fright. I knew that her throat had closed up, and she was having difficulty breathing. Pushing her our of the front door, I said, “That body was fresh. The flies were still hovering around it.”

“Shut-up, John!” She yelled. Tears streaming down her face, she started to run back the way we came. I lost sight of her. The fog had dissipated, and now only lingering night remained. How, I thought to myself, how is it already nighttime? It was only 12 when we started walking. Before I had time to process the strange phenomena we had been experiencing, I noticed that her foot steps had stopped thumping against the ground.

“JOHN!” She cried out from a short distance. I ran in the direction of her voice, hoping to God that some beast hadn’t shown itself to her. At that point, I was starting to lose all sense of rationale. My natural skepticism started to fail me, and flights of fancy started filling my thoughts. What if this place is haunted? What if there are monsters? What about the walking dead? The flood of thoughts increased my anxiety to an all new high. It was a wonder I didn’t fall over and die right then and there.

I approached Susanna, and before too long, I saw what had caused her to scream.

“What in the hell…?” I said under my breath as I looked down. The earth itself had cracked, and between us and escape, there lay a ravine. I shined my light forward, seeing if it hadn’t been a mistake. Hoping that we had ended up somewhere else besides the way we came in. Hope is a fickle thing that can be crushed by the most trivial of realities. I saw the sign swinging on its hinges, almost taunting us to try and jump.

“Now what?” Susanna said. Her voice was already starting to feign defeat.

“Now...now we press forward. There has to be a way out of here,” I said in response. In retrospect, I was doing more to give myself the illusion of bravery. At that point in time, deep down inside, I suspected that we were screwed. I grabbed her by the hand and gave a reassuring smile, “It’ll be fine.”

The look on her face told me she wasn’t buying it. I don’t blame her for expecting the worse. I know I didn't, but onward we walked through the town. It wasn’t long that we were looking at the Town Hall, or what I had assumed was the Town Hall. It was the most official looking building in that hellhole, but that’s not saying much.

It stood as, what seemed to me, a mockery of traditional architecture. It had two warped pillars holding the withered roof up. Vines had crept their way up the front face of the building, going so far as to infiltrate the broken windows. There were two stories. I feared that I would have to go up there looking for answers, some sort of map, anything. The floors were sure to be rotted beyond any sensible measure.

As Susanna held my arm, I pushed the ungodly heavy door open. The hinges were, of course, rusted to the point of nonfunctional bobbles meant to make life harder. The air on the inside smelt of dust, and the furniture wasn’t much better. With my sense of smell being assaulted by the odors of the past, my sense of sight caught something interesting flickering in the distance.

“Hey,” I said pointing towards the bobbing light in the room behind the reception desk, “do you see that?”

“Is somebody else here?” Susanna whispered.

“I don’t know. Let’s go check it out.”

We both walked slowly, so as to not make the floorboards creak under the weight of our combined masses. Heel toe, heel toe, heel toe...very primitive technique for remaining silent, but still very effective for two modern people.

When we reached the door, I hooked my head around to see if it was someone else. In a sense, I suppose you could say that was technically the case. Another corpse dangled upside down by his feet. This time I was expecting it, and didn’t lose my composure.

“Well?” Susanna said.

“Well, they aren’t going to hurt us.” I said.

I finally saw what was causing the light to dance around; a mag-light was shoved through the poor sods mouth, causing the jaw to extend far past it’s natural state. “You stay here, I’m going to go get the light.”

“But what about your phone light? Isn’t that enough?” Susanna asked. More trademark ignorance of her generation. Still, a 21 year old should know that the light from a phone can’t compete with a concentrated beam. Not at a distance.

I motioned for her to remain still as I approached the poor bastard hanging from a rope. When I reached up to grab the light, something unexpected happened. The corpse started flailing around, and bubbles of blood started to burst out of the slit in his throat.

“Oh fuck!” I cried, while falling to my backside. The commotion was enough to cause Susanna to disregard all safety for herself in order to come to my defense. Her sense of heroism left her body soon after she entered the room. Her eyes widened and mouth dropped at the sight of the reanimated body. Before I had time to think, I had already jumped up and placed myself between her and the moving cadaver. He wasn’t going anywhere, so I forced the light out of his mouth. Soon after I did, the body stopped moving. It had returned to it’s eternal hibernation.

We both ran out of the room, but this time I had the benefit of being able to see more than a few feet ahead of me, so we were able to avoid any obstacles that may have tripped us up.

“Was that a fucking zombie?” Susanna panted.

“Don’t be ridiculous, they don’t exist.” I said, equally out of breath.

“Then what the fuck was that thing?” Her mousy voice didn’t give her the benefit of sounding serious when she cursed, so I let out a short giggle at the sound of her swears. “Do you find this funny?”

“Not at all,” I said.

Susanna didn’t get a chance to respond because something in the corner of my eye darted away into the shadows. I quickly highlighted the area that it went, looking for...whatever it was. Nowhere was it to be found, but there was a mirror in that direction. Before I saw myself shining a light at it, I saw the word “BASEMENT” written in dust. “Looks like we’re going to the basement.”

We fumbled around the lobby, looking for a door that had steps leading down. This went on for about 15 minutes before Susanna pointed out that there was a trapdoor with a bullring handle on it. “Good eye,” I said. Expecting it to be about the same weight as my grandfather’s cellar door, I reached down and grabbed the handle. But no, this was worse than the front door. I handed Susanna the flashlight so I could get a firm grip with both hands. Only after giving every bit of strength that I had did it open.

The air wafted in my face. It was cool, damp, and the sound of running water could be heard. We slowly made our way down the concrete steps, giving extra caution to the overhead beams that seemed to have been hanging too low. Something caught me off guard when we got to the bottom of the steps: the sound of an owl…

I pointed the beam of my light in the direction of the sound, only to be greeted by the unholiest of all sights. A deformed, humanoid bird creature was sitting perched on on a small boat that was anchored to an underground dock. I stuck my arm out in front of Susanna in a motion to let the creature know that she was mine. “Shoo,” I instinctively said.

In an instant, the creature lunged at us, howling with the most harrowing sound I had ever heard. I, out of reflex, flung the mag-light up into it’s face, knocking the beast to it’s side. “Susanna, go loosen the boat from it’s anchor.”

“Wh-what?” She cried out.

“Get the rope that’s connected to the boat, and disconnect it from the loop on the pole there,” I said while shining my light at the objects I was talking about. The creature didn’t stay down long at all. It was on it’s feet once more, but this time it aimed it’s ire at Susanna. As he darted towards her, I jumped on his back, pounding the end of the flashlight into the back of its skull. I didn’t know what the anatomy of this thing was, but I I knew that the back of the head is the best place to hit something from behind. I finally put it down. It was still breathing, but it appeared to be out cold.

Susanna had done what I said. We wasted no time getting on the paddle boat. Soon, we were drifting down what appeared to be a large sewer pipe. The silence was as bad as anything else we had encountered, but we saw light at the end of the tunnel. And then something strange happened. I blinked my eyes, and when they were open I was staring down at the smokey engine of my car.

“Susanna?”

“Yeah, John?”

“Are you okay?”

“Besides being stuck out here for hours, sure.”

“I mean...from before?”

“Before what?”

The sound of an owl echoed off the trees, and I let out a shutter, “Never mind. I guess it’s better we don’t talk about it.”

“Talk about what? Are you okay?”

“The damned town, Susanna!”

“Huh?”

Another, more somber hoot entered my ears. I ran over to the drivers side of the car and flipped on the GPS. For what seemed like an eternity, I scrolled, zoomed out, zoomed in, looked everywhere, and I couldn’t see Owl Hollow anywhere on the map. I sat back in my seat staring off into the distance.

“I don’t remember you bringing that flashlight with you,” Susanna said.

“I didn’t.”