The Hollow Gods (The Chaos Cycle #1)

Chapter 7

Chapter

Seven

After the alarming discovery of the dream stone, Mason shoved the photocopied documents into his bag and left the library in a cold sweat. He was shaken. So shaken, it took him over a week to gather the courage to seek out the old man. He’d pushed the incident out of his mind for as long as he could, distracting himself with menial tasks: helping Annabelle around the farm, experimenting with new recipes, indulging at bohemian cafes and a craft brewery. After dodging calls and emails from friends and family back in Vancouver, he finally responded with more than a pithy text message. They were more understanding than he anticipated. Take as long as you need , they’d said. Still, he grew increasingly irritable and found himself going on long walks that inevitably led him back to the same spot: the edge of the forest. He was burning to understand what happened to him in the library.

Come when you have the courage to seek the way , the old man had said.

Mason wasn’t sure if it was courage or desperation, but he was willing to give it a shot. He’d torn through every psych lecture and mental health seminar from his post-secondary education in search of an explanation. The old man’s harrowing voice could have been a simple trick of the mind; perception was a funny thing, and with anxiety and lack of sleep, it wasn’t unheard of for people to twist their surroundings. But that didn’t explain the words that had bled onto the page.

No, he hadn’t hallucinated that. Something had happened to him, and he didn’t want to settle on an easy but ill-fitting explanation. He needed the truth.

Having exhausted his own resources, Mason ventured into the woods. He took out the dream stone and stared it down, wondering if the old man would magically appear behind him. Of course, no such thing happened. Turning it over in his hands, he angled his palm so the rock caught the sunlight, watching the wave of purples, greens, and golds shimmer over the surface. Unable to tear his eyes away, Mason wandered as though hypnotized until he lost all sense of his surroundings and tripped, the rock flying out of his hand and landing several feet away.

Scrambling to his feet, a flicker of violet alerted him to its location. He picked up the fang-like stone and wiped the dirt away with his thumb. It was humming softly. Mason turned in place, waiting for the song to strengthen. When he felt the stone sing, he began to walk.

He was headed uphill, stepping over moss-covered tree roots that protruded from the ground and slithered through the soil like hardened snakes. As minutes passed, Mason thought himself crazy for following a stone, until he noticed he was on a path weaving through a maze of oak trees. Veiny boughs towered over him and twisted inwards, forming an imposing gate-like structure overhead. Eerily deformed, leafless and haggard, the long, crooked limbs entwined with one another and all but blotted out the sky.

Up ahead, Mason spotted a small round hut that looked half-devoured by an ancient redwood. The back wall and roof merged with the massive trunk. Leaves and pines scattered around the door like a bird’s nest. The tree was colossal in both height and girth, forcing Mason to crane his neck as he peered skyward in search of its peak. It was like a tunnel leading to the sun, the base serving as a roost of some kind.

When Mason finally reached the redwood, the hut’s door swung open and the old man from the market stood in the shadowy entrance. Without a word of greeting, he turned and walked back into the darkness as if expecting Mason to follow. The doorway was too small for a fully-grown adult. Crouching down, Mason followed him into his tiny world.

A single room extended into the hollow of the redwood. On one side, a hole was burrowed into the trunk like someone had hacked through with an axe. About the size of a carving pumpkin, it was just large enough to serve as a window. Save for the gap and the sunlight that peeked through the cracks, the room was dark. Above them, deer antlers and knife handles protruded from the walls like perches. How they’d gotten there was a mystery. Tied to the ends were webs of string that stretched across the interior of the trunk, glassworks and sparkling Christmas ornaments hanging from the delicate white threads.

The old man went about his business, moving around the dark space with unexpected ease; there was no groping of walls, no stumbling about. He lit a lantern—mostly for Mason’s benefit—that revealed an impressive hoard of shining baubles. In the centre of the disorder was a small table with a deck of cards and several wax candles.

“Sit,” the old man instructed as he glided in close. Mason was alarmed by how pallid his eyes were—like a cloudy sky with a sliver of ice blue dancing around his irises.

“You are curious about Black Hollow,” he said.

“How did you—”

“There is someone you seek.”

“Someone...?”

The sound of flapping wings by the window caught Mason’s attention. Glancing over, he saw a large raven perched on the jagged edge. The bird cocked its head, its eyes like obsidian beads narrowing in on the new guest. Mason squirmed and turned back to the old man, but the person sitting before him suddenly appeared different. The air of death about him was gone. It was as though the vitality of youth had returned, and he was now ageless: His posture was upright, and his eyes—ghostly pale moments earlier—were now a deep, coal-black. His once grey, thinning hair now mirrored the colour of his gaze, the newly enriched strands glistening sapphire and obsidian like the plumage of his feathered friend. His bony frame had strengthened with long, wiry muscles, flowing gracefully as he extended his arms and breathed in deeply.

“Look with different eyes,” he said cryptically.

Mason’s head swam as the room turned hazy.

“If you do...Inversion. Revelation,” he hissed. His thin lips quirked sharply, cutting across his face like a knife. He flipped one of the cards on the table—an ace of spades.

The raven cackled—the sound almost human—then flew away.

As the air grew lighter, Mason turned his attention back to the man. His eyes were colourless again as if he’d shed something of himself with the raven’s flight.

“You never told me your name,” Mason ventured.

“Ga-vran,” the old man croaked.

“Gavran?” Mason repeated.

He smiled in response, a warmth in his expression that hadn’t been there before. “She says I’m Gavran.”

“Who’s she ?”

“The one you’ve come to ask about.”

“The Dreamwalker.” Mason had no clue if this Gavran had a lick of sense to him, but at least he was willing to talk about the town’s fabled character. “Do you know the Dreamwalker?”

The old man grinned toothily. “All my life.”

Gavran said nothing more, the eerie silence starting to weigh on the lopsided conversation.

“I-I’m Mason.”

“I know who you are,” Gavran chided, his grin warping his features into something alien. “Sit and ask your questions.”

Mason finally obliged and helped himself to a folded quilt on the floor, clearing his throat. “Did you call me here?”

“You asked to be called.”

The old man’s response didn’t make sense, and yet it did. He’d nearly gone mad looking for this place; didn’t he himself do the calling? “But how did I get here?” Mason asked.

“The forest brought you.”

“But why me ?” Mason insisted.

“Grief reverberates, shaking things from their slumber.”

Mason’s heart nearly stopped. How did the old man know he was grieving?

“You’re making noise.” Gavran flattened his palm against the wall. As if disjointed at the knuckles, his fingers drew up in a grotesque display of flexibility, then splayed over the surface. He scratched at the wood with elongated nails. “The forest hears you, just as it heard her .”

“ Her ?”

“There was once a woman. A Dreamwalker. In the woods, she was lost, and there she found him. Deep under the willow.” White, sightless eyes locked onto Mason’s.

Their blood now soaks the earth, awakening the forest as we approach her rebirth.

The words echoed in Mason’s mind. “Found who?”

Gavran cackled at the question. “Who will you find?”

Mason wondered if he was being spoken to in riddles, but perhaps Gavran could tell him what the villagers wouldn’t. What exactly was the relationship between this fable and all the violence that came after it? Why the monstrous depiction of the black wolf in the historical record? Why the murdered women?

“I heard your voice in the library,” Mason continued. “And I saw…” he trailed off, unsure of how to articulate it. “Were you there? Did you follow me?”

Gavran’s head teetered to the side, his eyes shifting to the window where the raven had been. Maybe the old man had no clue what he was being asked. Mason unfolded the paper with the illustration of the wolf and the burning women, then placed it in front of Gavran. He hadn’t noticed before, but the words beneath the image had vanished.

“What does this mean?” Mason asked. Tapping his finger on one of the women, he tried to meet the old man’s gaze. “Is this because of the Dreamwalker? Is she responsible for setting wolves on the town…for all the violence that’s happened here?”

Gavran rocked forward, his eyes widening as he fixated on the wolf. “Each time they say she steals one…each time the stolen one burns.”

Mason frowned. “The stolen one?” He remembered reading on Mathias’ blog about the villagers’ belief that the Dreamwalker kidnapped girls from Black Hollow. Then, he glanced down at the anguished faces of the burning women. “Why would the villagers kill the girls they were trying to save from being abducted?”

“Round and round and round it goes,” the old man whispered, his pupils losing focus.

This was insane. Mason could hardly understand what was driving him—why he was pursuing explanations for historical events by interrogating a crazy hermit in the woods. But when he thought of getting up and leaving, of going back to Annabelle’s and realizing he had nothing to do, something tugged at him to stay. His heart deflated at the thought of being alone with Mathias’ ghost. This is better , a tiny voice said, kindling his growing desire to learn about this fable—to debunk it, and to expose this skewed telling of local history.

Accompanying this was a morbid curiosity; had these women truly been killed because of superstition? The idea was medieval—outrageous enough that a self-righteous air inflated the young doctor’s chest. The prospect of enlightening the village eased the burden of his own mistakes.

Mason was about to demand elaboration when a female voice cut off his incoming question.

“Gavran, are you in there?” she called from outside, a light knock sounding at the door. The raps were echoed by the raven’s beak, pecking at the window’s jagged contours as he returned from his brief adventure.

“Are you out there?” Gavran replied before opening the door to reveal an elegant woman standing in the entrance.

Mason took immediate notice of her gorgeous amber eyes, framed by long, thick tresses that were white as snow despite her youth. She wasn’t very tall, but her presence filled the redwood like sunlight spilling into a darkened room. A navy leather jacket fit her waist like a second skin, complemented by a long taupe skirt that split at the front to reveal black leather boots hugging her legs just below the knees. She was carrying a shoulder bag, the seams stretched from the heavy load. Observing Mason briefly, she returned her attention to the man she came to see.

“I brought you these,” she told him, swinging the bag off her shoulder and laying its contents out on the table one by one: a chrome Chevy hub cap, a stainless steel toaster, silver collectors’ spoons, what appeared to be a diamond engagement ring, and a handful of coins and colourful bottle caps.

Gavran wasted no time inspecting the eclectic items, possessively grasping each of the coins between his bony fingers as he searched for the perfect throne.

The woman calmly watched his manic hopping with a twinkle in her eye. “I found him, Gavran.”

Mason winced as Gavran dropped the toaster with a loud clank and bounced back to the table to settle his new pieces into their proper places. Once he was satisfied, his peculiar dance brought him to a stop in front of his guest.

“Keep an eye on him. Make sure he’s not late this time.” He glanced up at the raven and grinned. “Take my eyes, too.”

She inclined her head as if showing reverence, and Gavran patted her hair like one would a favoured child. Then, as if guided by ritual, she turned to leave without another word, the raven following close behind.

“Wait,” Mason interrupted her exit. “Are you a friend of Gavran’s?”

She stopped just outside the doorway, speaking to him over her shoulder, “My name is Ama. We will meet again, I’m sure.”

Mason turned to Gavran after she ambled away. “How would she know that?”

The old man clapped his hands together and pranced about in delight. “Light the torch of your grief,” he cackled. “Follow it deep into the woods.”

“I don’t understand.”

Gavran reached out and placed a knobby hand on the young doctor’s chest. “When night falls, only flames reveal the road ahead.”