Chapter 10
NIGHT OF THE HOWL
On Saturday, the storm front moves along. Night of the Howl is welcomed by the kind of November weather bonfires are made for. Fog rolls thick over the Blackwillow River and the weeping willows droop into the dark currents.
Twig and I sit across from one another at a picnic table drinking hot chocolate, sharing whispered theories over what in the heck Rafe could have meant by Lainey isn’t Lainey.
Around us, the atmosphere is rowdy and alive—a cacophony of drums and laughter, nervous shrieks and echoing howls as teenagers call into the woods and school kids play capture the flag, only instead of a flag, they’re trying to snag a bone carved from wood.
Along the walking path, industrial bins blaze with fire and police officers stand sentry, hands on their batons as though at any moment, the revelry might descend into chaos.
Or perhaps they’re worried someone else might go missing.
“Do you think he meant literally or figuratively?” I ask.
“Figuratively would make more sense.” Twig looks at the girl in question.
She drapes herself over Griffin and laughs with Brynn Alcott.
Kate sits at the same table, but she isn’t engaging with Lainey.
As the week progressed, she seems to have distanced herself, like her immediate relief has cooled into something more like uncertainty.
Twig scratches his chin. “I don’t know, Selah. I’m not sure we can trust what Rafe says. I mean, he doesn’t exactly have the best track record in truth telling.”
Twig is right, of course.
Rafe is a manipulative liar.
But he did tell the truth on Halloween night. Inside the Overlay, on our way to Dante’s tomb. Rafe had dropped the pretense. For once, he’d been candid. Forthright. Much less deceptive charmer and much more man on a mission.
“What does Jude think?” Twig asks.
“I haven’t told him yet.”
I was planning to do so in person, which I thought would have happened by now.
I scan the park, like I might spot him in line at one of the food carts or under the craft tent, making a dreamcatcher or a wolf mask.
Classmates peruse iron trinkets at a booth called Ward of the Hollow, where you can also buy mini loaves of black bread.
Two years ago, I tried one. Made from barley and rye, it was as tough as leather and tasted like earth.
I spot Naomi and Harper, each of them with corndogs, heading in our direction. As they pass the percussionist playing hand drums, I give Twig a look, like no more crazy talk. He wishes we could tell them. But of course we can’t. Naomi wouldn’t believe it and Harper wouldn’t be able to handle it.
Twig takes a drink of hot chocolate as they join us at the picnic table.
“Look who came,” I say to Naomi.
She raises her eyebrows like she can’t believe it either.
Naomi’s never been a fan of Night of the Howl. I can only recall her coming two, maybe three times over the years of our friendship.
“I promised her tonight would be fun.” Harper wraps her arm around Naomi’s. “We could all use some fun, don’t you think?”
Naomi nibbles on her corn dog skeptically.
“So, has anyone seen the witch yet?” Harper asks.
“She’s not a witch,” Naomi says.
Twig cranes his neck, like he might find Mistress Bramble mingling with the crowd, when of course, she’ll do nothing of the sort. My stomach tightens with anticipation. I’ve decided to approach her immediately after she finishes the story. It’s my best chance at getting some answers.
Harper finishes her corndog and wipes her hand on a napkin. “We should find seats before the storytelling begins.”
The three of them stand from the picnic table.
I tell them to go ahead. I’ll catch up. They mosey toward the far end of Willowmere Park where hay bales have been arranged in rows like stadium seating in front of a raised platform.
It sits at the edge of the woods, set with a microphone and a rocking chair, waiting for the woman of the hour.
I loiter, reluctant to leave, when finally, I see him emerge through the fog—his hair lightly tousled, his wool coat undone, like he had no time for buttons.
Finally, he’s here, very obviously looking for me as firelight dances along his profile. His brooding gaze finds mine and the knot that has been tightening in my chest ever since he told me he was leaving for New York loosens.
I feel like I can breathe again.
“Hey,” he says, his voice low as I step into his embrace, sliding my arms inside his coat, running my fingers across the waffle-knit cashmere of his henley.
I can feel the lean muscles of his back.
Smell the subtle scent of his cologne as he kisses my forehead and wraps his coat around me so we’re both tucked inside.
I tip my face up to his. “You’re back.”
His golden brown eyes drink me in, like he missed me as much as I missed him. But there’s something else in his eyes, too. The same troubled look he had before he left.
Before I can ask him about it, he nods in the direction our friends have gone. “Let’s go find a seat.”
The drums have gone quiet. Children are shushed.
Our less interested classmates remain behind, laughing and roughhousing near the picnic tables, too far away to be distracting.
Jude and I sit next to each other on a hay bale behind Twig, Naomi, and Harper as Mayor Ridley stands on the dais introducing this year’s storyteller.
“Without further ado, I am honored to welcome Mistress Coraline Bramble.” The mayor claps his hands.
The crowd joins in with applause.
I shift to get a better look as the woman of the hour steps forward, torchlight throwing her weather-worn face into sharp relief. She’s as tall as Mayor Ridley and dressed like a mountain man. Her wild, salt and pepper hair looks as though it hasn’t seen a comb since the turn of the century.
Mistress Bramble, in the flesh.
Her steely gray eyes scan the crowd, then stop on me—so intense, so noticeable, the applause comes to a halt and Harper glances over her shoulder.
For a panicked second, I think she might give me a public scolding. Stop banging on my door, will you? Instead, she speaks in a ragged, gravely voice that has goosebumps crawling across my skin.
“You woke a great hunger. Now, it will hunt.”
A perfectly-timed howl rings through the forest.
Naomi jumps.
Nervous laughter ripples through the audience.
I glance at Jude, disconcerted.
He looks back at me, just as unnerved.
Mistress Bramble lowers herself into the rocking chair and sets her hands on the arm rests, her bottom lip curling inward in that way a lip does when there’s no teeth to lend support. “So the old story begins.”
I swallow, unsure if her jarring words were part of the old story, or something separate.
You woke a great hunger.
In all my years of attending Night of the Howl, none of the other storytellers started in such a way.
Jude sets his hand on my knee as Mistress Bramble tells the tale.
“Long ago,” she begins, “when plague and famine ran through the Low Country, an alchemist set on conquerin’ death lost his mother and his sister soon after.
Then the girl he loved. Death came for her, same as the rest. But he wouldn’t let her go.
Used dark magic, he did. Saved her body, but hollowed her soul ’til she weren’t the woman he loved no more. ”
I wrap my arms tight around Jude’s and press myself closer to his side.
“Desperate, he turned the dark magic on himself, thinkin’ he could fix what he’d done.
But it rotted him from the inside out. He found, after a time, that if he took the breath of another, the hollowness eased some.
But the girl he loved…” Mistress Bramble shakes her head forlornly.
“She wouldn’t follow him into it. So he took her soul instead.
That’s when he became somethin’ else. De Vrat.
A Hollow Walker. The very first of his kind.
Calling upon dark powers, he twisted that girl into a hound.
And every soul he took after just added to the pack.
De Zwarte Muil. Black as soot, they were. Thin as a winter crow.”
I glance at Jude.
Other than our podcast, this is the first time he’s heard the story.
I’ve always found it to be an entertaining one.
“The Dutch settled in these here mountains and the tribes warned ‘em of a spirit that hunts the deep hollers when the cold sets in. A spirit tied to hunger and sickness. Then came the winter of 1760, brutal as a blunt ax. Four children dead in a fortnight. Cows and sheep wasted to bone. The holler echoin’ with howls through the long nights. Wolves, they said, in the fog.”
Mistress Bramble leans forward, firelight catching the wart on her chin.
“But the settlers knew better. A Hollow Walker had come to their valley. Vorat, they called him. And he didn’t come alone.
Brought his pack along. Hollow Hounds, with eyes like embers, huntin’ the woods, huntin’ the mines, huntin’ their very dreams… ”
A young girl to my right burrows into her mother.
“Hollowed you out, they did. ’Til there weren’t nothin’ left but a shell.
Hungriest in the winter. That’s how this night came to be.
” She motions beyond us, toward the industrial bins blazing with fire and the hand drums. “All that noise and fire meant to drive him back. Keep the Hollow Walker and his hounds at bay ’fore the cold set in. ”
Mistress Bramble comes to the edge of her chair, her fingers curling around the armrests, her elbows jutting outward at sharp angles.
“Fires lit. A rooster set in a basket. Young and old beatin’ on drums, bangin’ on pots, howlin’ into the trees.
Then they’d run. Lock their doors, lay salt and ash across the windows, cover the mirrors, and wait ’til first light.
If the rooster crowed, he was gone another year. If he didn’t, well…”
I hold my breath, spellbound by the spinning of this tale, when a terrified sound rents the air.
Not the howling of townsfolk.
But a bloodcurdling scream that echoes through the hollow.