Hollow Wood(s)
This was my first ever published story, enjoy.
Hollow Wood(s)
By Ryan Oliver Brandt
They were already in the dead heart of April. Shya hadn’t seen a cloud since February and the California sky was as barren as the desert she lived in.
Not like it matters. She thought. We’re all doomed.
Her gaze drifted toward the crowd of highschoolers lining up for their buses. She whiffed the sour tang of feverish body odor, seeing the waves of heat coming off of the kids’ skin like a gas stove.
“There’s another one,” she said, rubbing the crescent skateboarding scar beneath her eyebrow.
“What?” Benny chuckled, his grommeted Hot Topic belts jingling as he approached. He ran fingers through his shamrock-green hair and tucked his thumbs under his backpack straps. “Hey, did you already do the math homework?”
“Yea, here,” Shya said, pulling her backpack off.
“Another zombie?” Ashley asked. Her full face of makeup—cracked from baking at school all day—her burgundy lipstick freshly applied. “Where?”
“Right there, under that shade tree?”
Shya aimed her black fingernail at the anomaly they had dubbed: Los Zombis de la Escuela del Desierto Verde, or “The Green Desert Highschool Zombies”.
The latest infected was one of the boys on the varsity basketball team, Julio, lying propped up with his eyes rolled back and his mouth agape. The shadows gave his face an empty, skeletal appearance. A fly landed on his cheek and he didn’t flinch.
“That’s the fourth this week,” Benny said, crossing his arms. “That’s not the devil’s lettuce, not unless it’s laced. Hey, you got the history homework, too?”
“Yea, it’s in there, but they’re obviously on like, gnarly drugs, right? Text me, my bus is leaving.”
Shya zipped her backpack up and hugged Benny goodbye, but when she went to hug Ashley, she didn’t budge.
“I know what’s really happening to them,” she said. “I’ve seen it.”
“Ash, come on, I have to go.”
“Let’s skate home together. Have your mom pick you up later. It's on the way, trust me, better than the devil’s lettuce.”
“I’m in,” Benny said without prompting. Obviously, he’d follow Ashley into a wood chipper.
“Come on Shy, what’ve you got better to do?”
Shya shielded her eyes from the sunlight. What did she have better to do? Go home, eat, get yelled at by her dad ... probably run away and hide in her neighborhood alleyway until he goes to bed.
It’s that, or blow my brains out, same as every other kid in this shithole.
“One missed bus ride from changing your entire life, babe,” Ashley said and blew her a kiss.
“It’s nothing like that crackhouse from last time, right?” Shya said, turning her back to the bus.
“Nope, just us. It’s real desert magic, Aladdin and the cave of wonders shit. I’ll show you the world!” she sang.
Shya took one last glance at her bus before skating away with her friends.
#
On a good day, it would take them an hour to reach Ashley’s. It had been so hot that the trek to the dead field behind her neighborhood took almost two. Ashley continued to sing as they skated down the hill leading to a desert lot filled with hundreds of ashen black trees.
Shya swore they had seen the entire town when they were learning to skate, but she couldn’t recall this landmark stretching for miles upon the pale white desert bed.
“Creepy A—F,” Benny chuckled, “What happened? Did they burn down or something?”
“No way, dummy, the ground’s not burned,” Shya said.
Ashley dropped her backpack and rushed toward a tree. Shya followed and watched Benny knock his knuckles against another mutilated willow.
“Hollow, they're all hollow,” he said, paused, and swallowed hard.
“Quiet. You have to listen. Shya, come over here.” Ashley dropped beside a tree and pressed up against it.
Shya approached and noticed Ashley’s initials A.S. carved into the trunk. The pigment was off. The hacked wood beneath appeared burgundy, like a scab.
Snickt!
“Here.” Ashley had opened up her pocket knife and moved to hand it to her. “Do it, too.”
What have I got better to do? Shya thought. No one’s texted me since we left. I won’t be able to go to the movies until Saturday, that's if dad even lets me.
Shya took the cold knife and started carving her name. It wasn’t until after she had finished that dark red sap dripped from beneath the bark. She dropped the knife to the ground and stepped away.
“Listen.” Ashley said, paused, glanced away, then back. “Can you hear it?”
Shya unconsciously rubbed her scar, watching as Benny picked up the knife. She sensed something was behind her.
“Shya,” a voice whispered into her ear. Shya. Shya. Shya. Shya. No matter which direction she looked, the genderless whisper came from just behind her.
“You can. It’s insane, right? It’s been non-stop since yesterday—all I can think about. Like a song stuck in my head, but I can feel it. You wouldn’t of believed me unless you heard for yourself.”
Shya dropped her backpack and gripped the crumbling tree bark with her bare hands. She easily scaled the rotten wood to the top and gazed down into its emptiness. It stank like the worst breath ever, but besides the stench, it appeared empty. Nothing within, but darkness.
“See anything?” Benny asked, carving into the tree.
“Nada.” She dropped down and shook her head. “I’m like ... I dunno, cold? A little strange.” She dusted residue off of her hands and jeans.
Shya, Shya, Shya, the trees whispered.
“When does it stop?”
“It doesn’t.”
“What?” Shya said, quivering like a line of frozen ants had crawled up her spine. The voices still murmured behind her. “I’m not gonna drop like Julio am I?”
“I haven’t,” Ashley said with a dismissive shrug. “Besides, who cares if you did drop. I bet nobody in the entire world has ever experienced this. Julio sure didn’t seem worried.”
“Benny, cut that shit out. I’m going home.” Shya said with another shiver.
“Ha, you shoulda just took the bus, Shy,” Benny taunted, carving a heart around his and Ashley’s bleeding initials.
#
Shya. Shya. Shya. Shya. The voices hadn’t stopped since she’d arrived home.
“Sweetheart?” her mother asked, laying a hand on her shoulder, startling her back to reality.
“What?” Shya snapped back.
“I’m sorry. Is there something wrong with your lasagna?”
“No, I’m sorry, it’s fine,” she said and forked up a mouthful of pepper and tomato sauce, finding it hard to swallow.
“Shya, not tonight,” her father said, leaning back in his chair. “I’ve been working too much. You want to argue? Wait until the weekend.”
“I didn’t say anything,” she said, gazing at him from beneath her brow.
“If you have time to argue, you've got time to clean this place up. I don’t know why you’ve always got to have such an attitude.”
Shya. Shya. Shya.
“Alright, you know what?” Shya said, slamming her fork down and crossing her arms. “I fucking hate it here. I can’t be the only one who hates it here, right? My whole life, I’ve fucking hated it here. I’d do anything, anything to go somewhere, be anywhere else. No chance we ever move. I should just blow my brains out, right?”
“Shya, please, I have a headache,” her mother groaned.
Her own name didn’t even sound like a word anymore
“Are you on drugs?” Her father growled. “You want to be committed, is that it? Is living in this house so bad that you'd rather live in a mental asylum? You know, it was horrible when you stopped going to church with us, acting like you have better things to do with your time? That affected all of us, Shya. You don’t believe in Jesus and now this shit.”
Her father shot up from his seat, his chair scratching against the hard-wood floor.
“It’s that girl, Ashley. I know it is. You gotta stop hanging around her and that other freak. I swear they put that in your head. This is our home, and it’s been nothing but good to us.”
The moment her father began wagging his finger at her, she was out the front door.
“Don’t walk away from me. This is your problem, I can’t talk to you!”
She hopped onto her skateboard and was down her cul-de-sac hill before her father made it across the threshold.
Turning into her alleyway, she kicked her skateboard hard enough to split its nose and screamed into her arm. This was her place, her only place. She could hide and practice for hours without anyone watching, but tonight, it felt unfamiliar.
Shya. Shya. Shya.
Turning her headphones up as loud as they’d go, she blasted Deftones and kickflipped until nothing seemed real.
For a time, she must have fallen asleep, or into some sort of trance. She snapped awake, leaning against the cold brick wall.
Shya. Shya. Shya.
She plucked her headphones out and sat with the voices, rubbing the divot of her scar. There was a beckoning, an urge, like when you see a scab and have to peel it off. She wanted to go back to the desert, to carve more words into the hollow wood.
What did she have better to do?
She jumped on her skateboard and hurried home, sneaking in through the backdoor and eating cold lasagna.
Shya. Shya. Shya.
The night dragged on, and she couldn’t sleep. The hushed tones were all that occupied her mind. To go her entire life hearing her name-
Shya. Shya. Shya.
Scratching the inside of her head with long dirty fingernails, it seemed too much. If she went back to those woods, she’d find a way to make it stop. Carve something more into their husk? Dive down into one? Anything, anything to make the voices go away.
She binged trashy cartoons all night and by the time the sun rose, her eyeballs ached in their sockets.
#
As Shya stepped off the school bus, her legs were sluggish, heavier than even after freshman year volleyball camp. To make matters worse, it was even hotter than the day before. She dragged her feet and caught herself gazing mindlessly at the sky.
As other high school zombies fell in around her, she did her best to shake her exhaustion, but kept finding herself spacing out.
“At least I’m not the only one,” she sighed, monotonously rubbing her scar.
Ashley wasn’t in first period English, and Benny wasn’t in second period World History. Shya wanted to be worried, but by the time third period was over, she had blown through her entire thermos of coffee. At lunch break, she was too tired to eat, and collapsed under a tree. Someone she didn’t recognize had nodded off beside her.
“There you are,” a familiar voice she couldn’t be bothered to recognize said. “I’ve been looking everywhere.”
Ashley fell down beside her. Shya tilted her head, noticing she hadn’t put on her makeup that morning.
“Really didn’t take long for you to drop, yikes.”
“How are you—how are you standing?”
“Tolerance and I believe in myself? Like Micheal Jordan. Here, take this,” she handed her a pill.
“I don’t—don’t think I should?”
“Do it, what’re you, a square? Hurry, it won't kick in right away,” she said and shielded her eyes from the sun. “I can’t find Benny anywhere.”
Shya took the pill with water. It may have been placebo, but the clouds behind her eyes cleared up and the ache in her legs dissipated. She sat up a little straighter.
“Can you get up? I’m gonna find Ben.”
“One sec,” Shya said. “You know, I don’t care about school or anything. Even if you and Benny don’t graduate, it’s okay. All I want is for us to stay friends, forever, alright?”
“Whatever,” Ashley said and reached down to help her up.
“Are you mad at me?”
“Yea, stupid. Don’t let me drag you down. You gotta take care of yourself. Y’know, that day, at that trap house—it was the smartest thing you ever did to let me go in alone. Things haven't been right for me since.” Ashley bit her lower lip. “I’m gonna ditch and keep looking for Benny. If I can’t find him ... don’t look for me, okay?”
Her body was numb, but her mind was back to normal.
“Ashley, what the fuck is going on?”
“Last night I followed the voices. I saw Julio crawl into one of those trees.”
“Did you look inside?”
“If I did, you’d have never seen me again. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have brought you there.”
The bell for fifth period Biology rang.
“Keep looking. After school I’ll skate over. Wait for me, Ashley, do not go into the desert alone.”
#
Ashley’s medicine worked until Shya got off the school bus. She nearly tripped and fell, but managed to edge her way out. Under normal circumstances, her antics would have the entire bus laughing, but what few students remained seemed in worse shape than her.
After seeing the bus off, she popped the second pill Ashley had given her. She hadn’t asked how long she should wait or about permanent damage, nor did she care. It was that or pass out. Both her parents were at work and her younger brother was at baseball practice.
Good, too, because she doubted she’d be able to think of any excuse for stealing her dad’s ax. She dumped out all her school books, put the ax in her backpack, and was skating down the hill within minutes.
Ashley waited for her, her head in her hands, sitting on the curb outside of her house. When she leered up, she looked worse than Shya felt. She had tried to do her makeup, which resulted in a combination of a clown and a demon. Her waterproof mascara had taken a beating and looked like two different colors entirely. She’d obviously been crying.
“You shouldn’t of come.”
“Sorry, nothing better to do,” Shya said and smiled. She wished she had something to wipe her make up away with, but Ashley didn’t wait. She hopped on her board and started toward the desert.
“You keep following me around looking for trouble Shya, and you’re gonna find it. I’m telling you. Go home.”
“No one is dragging me down. I do what I want. Now shut up and let’s find Benny.”
Shya followed close behind. Slowly; which seemed the only pace Ashley was capable of, and even that seemed an effort. She pumped her leg as if going up a steep hill and huffed like a marathon runner.
Just as Shya was about to suggest that they take a break, Ashley kicked her board into a curb. She turned around and tossed her hands up.
“What’s your deal anyway? The sun’s setting Shya, go home.”
Shya’s shoe skidded her to a stop.
“My deal? Ashley, we’re going to help Benny, and we’re going home together. Why are you slowing us down?.”
“You’re an idiot,” Ashley crossed her arms. “You have all this potential, you’re great at math, you could be an engineer or something, but you refuse to work on yourself. You’re content with bottom feeding. You can’t be this stupid, I know youre not.”
“What?” Shya asked, rubbing her scar. “Ashley, this isn’t you talking. It’s those woods, they’re messing with your head. All I want is for the three of us to keep things going how we have them, having fun, not worrying.”
“That isn’t real, Shya. Look at me, I was given a shit hand at the start. I could have made things better for myself, really I could have, but I chose to make them worse. That day, at that drug dealer's house Shya ... I’ll never be the same. After school if I’m lucky, I’ll find someone. If I’m unlucky I’ll be dead. Friends like us don’t stay together. Bad things happen. Get that through your skull. Go home Shya.”
Without a glance back, Ashley picked up her board, and rode toward the sunset.
So, I am the only one who doesn’t want things to change. Shya thought, and fighting back tears, chased her friend.
Whatever adrenaline Ashley had, carried over into the desert. She threw her board into the dirt like she hated it and reached into her pocket, gazing at the dead orchard.
“You know there is no helping them, right?” she said, and produced a handful of cleansing wipes.
Even though she wiped, it was impossible to tell if the makeup actually came off. It had become twilight, and the setting sun bathed everything in burnt orange dusk.
“I don't care. I’m here for my friends.”
“So you’re saying you knew we were doomed from the start?”
“You’re being dramatic. Let’s find him,” Shya said, shading her eyes.
“No Shya, you need to help yourself. Maybe, someone just like you, who’s about to do something stupid with someone like me.”
Neither of them mentioned it, but the hollow trees were filling the air with a thousand names.
Marlene, Marlene, Marlene, Eddie, Eddie, Stuart, Steven, Paul, Annie, Annie, Jose, George, Brandon, Brandon, Stuart, Shya, Aaron, Aaron, Tamara, Benjamin, Benjamin, Benjamin.
“I hear Ben,” Shya said, a bitterness filming the back of her throat.
She led the way as the sunlight turned from carrot to cherry and the moon showed in the sky. The temperature had dropped over thirty-degrees since the afternoon, and now the cold Santa Ana winds blew from the west. The gusts bit like little fishes, nipping at her bare arms.
“I’m scared,” she said, biting her lip.
“Me, too, like, terrified. More scared than when your dad came home the morning after we pounded his bourbon.”
Ashley meant last year during a sleepover. They broke into Shya’s dad’s whiskey and drank the entire bottle while playing Mario Kart. The night eventually climaxed with both of them puking their brains out. Reminiscing had them both grinning.
“I feel like shit,” Ashley groaned and fell down beside a dead tree.
“No, no, no, nope,” Shya reached down and gripped Ashley by the wrist, yanking as hard as she could. “We’re not resting, not here. No, you’ll get all the sleep you need after we find Benny.”
“Just leave me and go home. You shouldn’t be here, Shy.”
Ashley dropped like dead-weight, tucking her hands into her armpits and resting her face against the gnarled root of one of the dead trees.
Shya rubbed her scar. Just before she was about to call Ashley a bitch, frigid spectral fingers caressed her neck and icy lips pressed against her ear.
Benjamin, Benjamin, Benjamin.
She stopped and pointed at the tree Ashley rested her head against.
“It’s this one,” she said and dropped her backpack.
Ashley scrambled to her knees and gazed at the tree. The last rays of daylight passed beneath the horizon. She pressed her ear up against the wood and held a hand up. After a moment, she frantically waved her over. Shya obeyed and pressed her ear up against the tree. There were muffled noises, like someone being gagged, and soft scratching.
“Shya, go home,” Ashley gasped. Her lipstick-smeared grimace appeared ghoulish in the street-lamp light.
“Get back,” Shya said, lifting her father’s ax above her head.
“Even if you get him out, nothing will ever be the same.”
“What? You want me to keep him in there?”
“Yes, get out while you still have hope.”
“Oh shut the fuck up about hope.”
Shya reached back, and with a grunt, struck. The ax stuck with a wet thwack! She yanked it out and a chunk of the wood came away. The gash into the bark was wet like a flesh wound, but peeking in, she could see the whites of Benny’s Chuck Taylor’s.
“Shit! Fuck! Shya, get him out of there!”
She struck again and this time when she yanked the ax, a door-sized chunk came away with the blade.
Ashley screamed.
A slurry of meat-grime poured from the tree and steamed in the dirt. All of Benny’s hair had been melted away, as well as everything from the waist up. He looked like one of the biology book diagrams of a body without skin, but caramel-apple dipped into a thick pink ooze. A stink like boiled hot dogs filled the night air. He reached an appendage toward Ashley, and she screeched and kicked wildly. She booted Benny’s hand, separating it from his wrist as easily as knocking off a chunk of Jell-O.
Benny moaned. Gazing at his freshly severed limb, he made a noise like a sad whimper and coughed up a thick bubble of bloody saliva.
Shya still gripped the ax hard in her hands. She couldn’t look away from whatever Benny had become. The sounds of his pain and sadness brought tears to her eyes. She forgot about everything else. Her heart slammed in her chest as the voices all fell silent.
There was more scratching, a lot more. She looked around, and all the trees' susurrus namings had been replaced with the frantic scamper of phalange bones on wood.
“We gotta go. We gotta leave now,” Shya said.
She gripped her best friend and watched as different pairs of shoes appeared out of the tops of the trees. They remained stagnant for a couple of shallow breaths, then shot from their tops like mortars. A sequence of wet smacks followed. Shya reached down and took out her phone, shining the flashlight all around them. There was an army of the hairless, bloody Jell-O zombies, and they were rising. Each was in its own various stages of decay, of digestion.
Both girls screamed; kicking up rocks as they turned to run, but it wasn’t long before a ghoul blocked their path. Shya cut horizontally and hacked him, or her, in half.
They kept moving, and she sliced through two more. Soon, they’d be surrounded. Shya’s vision was blurring, she wasn’t even sure if they were heading in the right direction.
“Shya, Shya!” Ashley screamed.
A ghoul had Ashley’s arm and her skin sizzled like meat in a pan. A second gory tendril affixed itself on top of her skull.
Shya attacked, severing both its arms. The ooze and a few bones stuck in Ashley’s hair. Some of the terrible slime had intruded its way into Shya’s mouth, like horrible cold chili, foul rotten, filthy, disgusting gelatine hamburger meat. She stopped to vomit, she had to, unable to control herself.
Ashley picked up her ax, and hacked and stomped and spat and screamed; trying to cut a path out of the woods. It appeared hopeless. She turned back, and one of her eyes had the skin melted shut around it.
“Run!” she screamed, then turned toward the desert. She hacked into every tree she passed by, and sprinted deeper into the woods’ darkness, gathering the attention of the ghouls.
Shya ran.
Eventually, the desert sand turned into sweet solid concrete. She sped up to the nearest streetlight and turned around.
Only a few revenants remained. Most had already turned back, shambling towards the hollow woods. Shya roared in triumph, stabbing middle fingers in the desert's direction.
“Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you!”
She fell to her knees and let out a hard, chest wracking sob. Her friends were gone, taken by the desert, and thanks to Ashley she’d been given a second chance. Even still, she could still hear the woods calling to her.
Shya. Shya. Shya.
It may never stop, but she knew for certain that she would never go back.
“I won’t let you go,” Shya sniffled, wiping her tears away, her scar itching terribly. “I promise, I won’t let anyone else go.”