I ran to the hollow. It was getting dark now. Adults were on the street with flashlights. And the police. They were looking for Trevor. I knew if they caught me, they would take me to my dad. I hid in some bushes once. Then I ran some more. When I finally got to the woods, it was dark and quiet. I didn’t want to run in the hollow. I was too afraid I would trip, like before. I stopped and pulled the little key chain flashlight out of my backpack, the one I used as a night light when we stayed at my grandma’s. It was LED. It was bright. I decided I didn’t like the hollow anymore. It was too scary. I wished Wilson was with me. And Mr. Étranger. I wished my mom was home and my dad liked me. I wished my secret would go away and never come back. I wished I was strong enough to beat it. Maybe if I beat it, Dad wouldn’t worry so much and I would get to stay.
I walked through the gap in the ring of downed trees. The moon was faint overhead. Everything was so dark. And quiet. I took a deep breath. I could see the slim opening to the basement. Right away I knew it was inside. It had chosen the same place I had. A place adults didn’t know. Someplace dark. Someplace hidden. Someplace close to all the kids in my neighborhood. I looked at that dark hole. There could be anything inside. I walked forward. That’s when I saw something new resting on the dead leaves nearby. It was a dead rat. Someone had skinned it and left it sitting. They had burned a candle to its head, which left little spires like a crown. Above it, they’d folded green twigs back and forth together to make a kind of scaffolding. And there was a wasp. A big one. As big as three of my fingers. It crawled over the back of the rat, antennae twitching. It saw me. I heard its wings buzz and it flew right at me.
The white raven snatched it from the air. She swooped to a nearby branch and swallowed it in one gulp. But she didn’t call. I think that meant we had to be quiet.
I held my breath.
I made fists.
I put the little flashlight in my mouth and got on all fours and crawled into the hole. I was just small enough.
There were wood stairs. I slid my feet around in front of me and stepped on the first and it creaked. I listened. But there was nothing. It was so dark. Like outer space but without the stars.
And quiet.
I climbed down one step at a time into the basement of the hollow. The stairs creaked as I stepped on them, and dust fell. The staircase ended before it reached the floor, like it had broken off. I had to jump a little ways. I waved my flashlight around. I was shaking. There were lots of dead leaves everywhere and some trash in the corners. Tree roots had grown down from above. Big ones. They twirled like fat snakes sprouting tiny hairs. There were cobwebs everywhere and little crawling insects on the walls like the ones you find when you lift a big rock, like the ones I had fed the raven when it was sick and hiding in the garage at my old house.
I was shaking so bad I could hear my teeth rattle. I slapped my hand over my mouth. I raised my flashlight. And there he was. Trevor. Lit by the round beam from my light. He was so small. I could see his face. His eyes were closed, but they fluttered like he was half awake. His head, arms, and legs jutted from a round, white sac hanging from the exposed roots. It was just like the sac spiders make. Only bigger. Big enough to trap a small boy. And it was throbbing.
The fear-eater had laid eggs. Its young squirmed inside. I looked around but I didn’t see the monster. But I saw my plastic bag a few feet away. I had missed it at first because it looked like any old bit of trash blown in by the wind. I ran to it and set my flashlight down so it pointed up at the dark ceiling. Old webs hung from it like drapes and reflected the light in all directions, and then I didn’t feel so scared. I dumped the raven’s collection on the ground and got to work as fast as I could.
That’s when I heard it. It was like a laugh, but full of snot and hunger.
My heart beated faster. Don’t be afraid, I told myself. Don’t be afraid.
But it was in there with me. It was close. I looked around. Everything beyond the reach of my little night light was dark. It was somewhere in those corners. How far back did they go? I couldn’t tell.
Then it spoke, like a thousand hissing spiders all talking on top of each other. But there was no sound. It was in my head.
Did you think because you nursed me as a youngling that I would spare you?
“You said you were starving! You said you didn’t want to hurt anybody! You said if I helped, you’d leave everybody alone! You said!” I grabbed the twine and the Frisbee ring. I laid the clips out in a row.
Young minds. So easily scared. So ripe with terror. Like sweet, bulging fruit.
I heard a sound like it was licking its lips.
I have tasted you. And I cannot stop. You saved your little friend. But I was just a worm then, barely more than the young I have begot.
I tried not to think about the squirming things inside the sac in the corner. How many of them were there? Hundreds? Thousands?
But you lied to me! it cursed.
“I did not!”
You tricked me. I needed to feed. But you don’t have fear like the others. You are different. You kept me starving. Barely alive! Unable to grow.
“I had nightmares every night!”
A mass of rats exploded from the dark. I turned to look. I couldn’t help myself. They rose up into a two-legged mass. A shape like a mouth opened at the top and spiders spilled out. They rose up and white leeches spilled out. And so it leapfrogged itself, each form changing and disappearing, getting closer. Closer.
I turned back to my work and wrapped the twine faster.
Mosquitoes rose up in a buzzing swarm, so loud I could barely think, and then it was quiet and I saw my mom. I stopped what I was doing. It didn’t look fake. It looked like her. She was in her red work suit. I could smell her, like when she would hug me after school. Laundry detergent and perfume.
“Mom?”
She just stood there looking at me. But her eyes were so cold. Like she didn’t even recognize me. Not at first. And when she did, like she didn’t care. Like I was just someone in her way. Someone she used to know.
“Mommy . . . ?” The corners of my lips turned down. My mouth quivered as I sucked in breath. “Please don’t look at me like that. I won’t be bad anymore. I promise.”
But she just stood there, looking at me. With those eyes. Cold. Uncaring.
She stepped closer. Just looking.
My mom didn’t love me anymore. That’s all I could think. She stood over me and looked down with those eyes, like I should just get out of her way. She was important. She had important things to so. And she didn’t want me. Not anymore. She barely even remembered my name.
She leaned over and reached for my throat and all I could do was cry. I felt her fingers wrap around my neck, nail polish and all. I was losing something. I couldn’t tell what it was, but I knew I was going away somewhere. And I wouldn’t come back. And that would be it. I would be gone.
I couldn’t fight. Not anymore. I was tired. Everyone said I was bad all the time and I was tired of being bad. Maybe I should just sleep. Yes. I would sleep. I wanted to.
Yes. That was it. I would sleep a loooooooong time and then I wouldn’t be bad and no one would have to worry about me anymore.
But I couldn’t fall asleep because there was a noise. In the distance.
My mom lifted her head. That meant it wasn’t in my mind. It was real because she heard it, too.
There it was again.
It was my name. Someone was calling my name.
My dad.
My mom turned to face it. She looked worried. And then I knew. It wasn’t her. Not really. It was just a fake. A nightmare. A terrible, awful nightmare. It wasn’t the truth!
My dad yelled my name again. Mr. Étranger must have called him and told him where I was going to be. The sound of his voice carried through the still, cold air of the hollow. He was out there looking for me, calling my name. But he was still so far away. He couldn’t find me.
I pushed my mom, but she was too strong. She snarled and gripped tighter.
But now I knew it was a lie. I remembered that my mom loved me. And as I thought that, I felt the fear-eater’s grip loosen.
So I thought it again. And again.
And again.
I gasped for breath. Then I pushed as hard as I could. I pushed up with my legs and my nightmare fell free. But I stumbled too and knocked over my flashlight. It turned and the leaves blocked the light. It was completely black. I heard the fear-eater hiss and slither and buzz and snarl around me in a circle, but I couldn’t see it. And I couldn’t see my dreamcatcher, the one I had almost finished. The white raven had given me three paper clips, and I had attached them to the ring of the Frisbee at the points of a triangle and used them as anchors as I wrapped the twine back and forth. The rubber spider dangled on one side and the shiny bottle cap on the other. It was almost ready. But now I couldn’t find it!
I began to feel through the leaf litter.
“Oh no . . .”
The fear-eater was swirling, gathering itself again, like a rattlesnake getting ready to strike. It rumbled and hissed and howled and snapped and clawed and stank. I couldn’t hear my dad anymore. I tried to call to him, but my voice was lost in a storm. I felt the earth shake. I saw the sky rip free. And I heard it speak, like the rumble of thunder.
Let me show you the future, boy.
And then it didn’t seem like I was in the hollow anymore. And what I saw made me cry. Babies, skin cracked open like dried earth, right down to the red, were shrieking in nurseries, one after the other. Thousands and thousands of them, all over the world. They had some new kind of disease. It was everywhere. Then I saw rows of coffins draped with flags, filling a runway for a mile as soldiers loaded them onto a row of transport planes, even as more and more were coming. The sky burned above. Deserts spread across the world. Oceans rose. People moved but they didn’t know where to go.
And that was the worst. The faces. So many people. Good people. Ready to give up. Working and working and never making anything better. Still sick. Still poor. Still powerless.
This is what awaits your world. For a portal has opened and the Nameless are summoned to take back what was lost. In death and despair, there will be so much fear. More than we can drink. We will grow forever and walk like gods among you, feasting for all time!
And then I saw the giants, walking with wings and tentacles through the ruins of a city. Skyscrapers were cracked and frayed like corn husks. Others had fallen to the streets. There was no power. Everything was dark except the smoke in the air. It reflected red as if lit by a big fire far away.
I was supposed to be afraid.
But I wasn’t. Not even a little. Because I knew something no one else in the whole world knew. Not even Mr. Étranger. The stag had told it to me. I knew the word. And I knew that if the Others had given it to us, that meant it wasn’t too late. This was just a nightmare too.
I felt my dreamcatcher in the leaves. I raised it. I held the sea shell on the other side. I lifted them high and kicked the litter from my flashlight. The shiny, dangling bottle cap caught the freed beam and the fear-eater shrieked. It wanted to turn, but it had glanced.
And just like that, it was gone.
My waking dream disappeared and the earth over my head returned and the wriggling in the white spider sac stopped. It shriveled. Thousands of unhatched worms, like long, squirming maggots, fell to the ground. They dried up and turned into dead leaves.
Trevor fell, too. He was unconscious. I think.
I looked down at the shell. A little insect, like a stinkbug, was trying to wriggle out. I took the blue pebble out of my pocket and wedged it in the opening to trap the bogeyman. Then I put the shell in my coat and ran to make sure Trevor was breathing. When I saw his chest move, I ran to the stairs and yelled as loud as I could for my dad.