#First of the Hollow | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

tendertenebrosity · 1 year

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Masterpost for the Hollow is here.

The bag that had been over my head was removed, and I blinked around in the light at the room I’d been taken to.

Dusty. Looked like… a warehouse? The ceiling was high and echoing over my head. You could see the square outlines of crates in the chaff and dust that nobody had bothered to sweep up. It was half full of people. Some of them in workman’s clothes, some of themin nicer street clothes or what were potentially uniforms. Whatever was going to happen here, the boss apparently wanted it to have an audience. My stomach flipped.

The hard thing I’d been set against seemed to be a support post, my hands pulled around behind it.

“Finally,” the foreman of the logging camp said, stepping out of the crowd. He put his head on one side as he examined me. “You’re a lot of fucking trouble, you know that?”

“I try,” I said. I tested my strength against the rope; not much give there. “You didn’t even let me get a word in this time.”

The foreman snorted. “You should have taken the hint, kid. I don’t go for this kind of thing as a first resort.”

“Principles. Nice,” I said, scanning the room. No shortage of exits, but people in front of all of them. Nobody in the crowd looked likely to help; some of them were leaning on walls or furniture casually, like they'd been talking before the boss got here. No sign of Isadora; this wasn’t really her crowd. I couldn’t expect help from that front again. “Hey uh…”

“Look, there have been enough stories about you coming back from the dead and it’s starting to piss me off,” the foreman said, conversationally. He rested a hand on the post I was tied to, looking down at me. “You have the devil’s own luck, and apparently I have some very incompetent employees. The river thing is a bit of a mystery to me, still don’t know how you managed that one. But it’s not going to happen again. You know what they say, if you want something done right, eh?”

“Yeah - no - wait,” I said, something like a nervous laugh bubbling up in my throat. I fought with the ropes. “Wait, you don’t want to -”

“So I’m not leaving any room for credulous stories or folk tales or incompetence,” the foreman said, over the top of me. He stopped leaning, and went down on his haunches in front of me. He gave a smile, mocking and insincerely rueful. “You’re dying today, here and now. And all of these good folks can watch and vouch that you are, in fact, a human being, and very dead. Maybe we’ll put the body up somewhere conspicuous for a few days, but that’s a bit gruesome.”

He had something in his hand - a knife, I realised after a second of craning my neck. No. Fuck. I was really bad at playing dead and there’d still be these ropes. What if they threw me in the river again when they were done? How sure was I that I couldn’t be killed? Nobody had ever tried burning me. What if they…

“The higher ups won’t like that much,” one of the other people in the room said, a woman in secretary’s clothes, not as fancy as Isadora’s. There was a nervous note in her voice, but when I tried to twist my head to make eye contact, she slid her gaze away.

“Well, what they don’t know back home won’t hurt’em,” the foreman said.

“No! No, we can talk about this!” I protested. How was this going to play out? I tried and discarded scenarios in my head at break-neck speed. All of them were ugly. “All I ever wanted was to -”

“Talk and talk and talk,” the foreman said. “I fucking know.”

He grabbed my hair, fingers twisting into it to hold me still. The knife came up, as the word I’d been saying caught and choked in my throat, and he stabbed me. Into the soft part under my chin, to the left; and then dragged to the right with a horrible wrenching movement.

He was doubtless expecting a truly appalling amount of blood. So was I, despite myself; I’d seen animals slaughtered before.

There was some blood. Not as much as there should be.

Not enough to slump over and pretend. As established, I was shit at that anyway. He let go of my hair and I was too shocked at the pain to prevent myself from leaning back from him, pulling the knife out with a horrible sucking empty feeling.

I met his eyes with mine, probably as wide and horrified as each other.

He recoiled, holding the knife awkwardly against his chest.

“What the fuck,” he said, slowly, quietly. His eyes moved over my chest, over the blood that was soaking slowly into the front of my shirt but no further. Like I’d had a nosebleed instead of having my throat slit. It seeped from the wound as slowly as tree sap.

I wanted to touch the wound, radiating white-cold-aching pain, but the ropes prevented me from doing more than twisting and wrenching my shoulders.

Damn it. Damn it. What now? I should try for intimidating. Nowhere else to take this, right?

“Yeah, about that,” I said. Something wasn’t right with my voice; it came out hoarse and whistling and the wound felt awful. I met his eyes again, this time on purpose. “You might owe your employees an apology.”

He jerked upright, to his feet and away from me, as if someone was pulling him. He backed away, and I could see his fingers shifting position on the knife handle, slippery with blood.

The audience he’d gathered seemed a little slow to catch on - maybe they didn’t know how much blood there was supposed to be, or they hadn’t seen what he’d done until he moved away. But as he backed away, the cries of shock and disgust started up.

Dread twisted in my stomach. I felt sick. The coppery smell of blood went to the back of my throat. The foreman was right about one thing, there wasn’t going to be any explaining this one away.

I had a reputation already in the settlement as a fanatic, a crazy radical. Maybe a political agitator or a cultist nutcase.

Well, I was about to gain a new one.

Revenant. Monster.

“What are you?” the foreman demanded. Somebody pushed their way up front to stand beside him and see what had the boss rattled; he saw me, upright and looking around with my throat a gaping wound. He backed up an involuntary step, reaching for the weapon at his belt.

The secretarial woman was white as milk; the man beside her looked like he was about to throw up.

“A servant of the forest,” I said, and coughed. “Like I said.”

Come on. Intimidating. I tried to make my voice light and unconcerned, as if I still had the upper hand. Tried not to give away the fact that I was dizzy, my whole body buzzing with fear and pain, probably as close as they were to losing my stomach contents on the floor.

“I told you that you were messing with…” I had to take a deep breath. “… with things that you didn’t understand. You can see…” I pulled harder on the next breath, and something bubbled weirdly in my throat; one of the people in the room made a tiny stifled upset noise and kicked a chair aside in their haste to put more distance between me and them.

“I’m not a trick,” I told the room, forceful. “And I’m not a folk tale. I’m very real. Thing is, I didn’t come here to…” Pause for a whistling breath. This was messing with my momentum. “To be your enemy. The forest is angry… but I’m not. Yet.”

The room was silent; I looked past the foreman and addressed everybody else. I shrugged my shoulders, trying to lift my hands in invitation to cut the ropes. “So how about this. You can - hh - loose the ropes, I’ll let bygones by bygones. Water under… under the bridge. And we can… talk, like I wanted.”

For a second I thought it was going to work. The foreman was just standing there, knife hand slack by his side, looking at me in disbelief. One of the workers was even standing and starting to edge towards me.

Then it all went wrong. More wrong.

The foreman snapped his hand out to prevent anybody from going near me. “Nobody touches that thing until I say so,” he said.

That thing. Oh, gods.

“What is it?” somebody asked. “Boss, what do we do? He can’t be… How can he…”

“I don’t know, give me a second,” the foreman said. He came closer, his mouth set and determined, steeling himself to get closer to me. I threw myself to the side in my bonds.

“Hey, no, no, don’t - ”

He went to one knee, pinned my shoulder against the wood with the heel of one hand, and with the other plunged the knife into my chest, up under the breastbone.

It hurt like being punched or kicked by a horse. I yelled, or tried to; I couldn’t get enough breath. The foreman pulled the knife out, looked at it and then at me with his brow furrowed.

“Stop! What the fuck!” I yelped. “What was that supposed to - Y-you don’t learn quick, do you?! Get off - ”

Almost calm, experimental even, he did it again. Lower this time, halfway down my abdomen; I felt things tear. He lifted his hand again, and something in the fixed expression he had, horror but curiosity, that almost exploratory intent - oh, fuck, I can’t do this.

“Stop,” I said, frantic - and I knew I’d lost it. People with the upper hand did not plead. “I - stop! That’s pointless! If you - if I - you shouldn’t -”

“Shut up,” he said, almost absently, his mouth twisted in distaste, flecks of my blood on his face. “If you could do anything to stop me, you’d have done it by now, wouldn’t you?”

I panted, tried to wriggle away from him. “The forest will -”

He put his hand over my mouth, shoved my head aside so he could look at the wound in my neck. I felt rather than saw his fingers probing the wounds, making sure they were real, making sure it was exactly what it looked like. I shuddered convulsively at the pain and revulsion, his hand stifling and horrible over my face, fingers jabbing painfully into my wounds. Air touched the moss in my chest, cold and drying and deeply uncomfortable as always.

I contemplated trying to bite him, trying to kick - maybe I could damage my wrist enough to get my hands out of the ropes? The time to try that was some time ago, when I was still trying to sell myself as the intimidating monster, before I’d let him see how afraid I was.

The experimental look in his eyes terrified me. Maybe he couldn’t kill me, but what was he going to do in the attempt? And what was he going to do when he concluded he couldn’t?

He made a soft noise of horrified surprise. “What the fuck,” he repeated, quietly. I squeezed my eyes shut against tears, but I could guess what he’d found; I was probably leaking moss and leaf litter like a mauled stuffed toy.

He let me go, finally. I pulled myself as upright as I could against the post, shaking my head. I spat out a mouthful of blood-tinged saliva on the ground at his feet.

He was wiping his hand on the thigh of his trousers, looking down at me with fascinated disgust.

“You’ll regret this,” I said, a hoarse whisper, wishing I sounded more intimidating. “I’m your first warning. You may not get another. The forest - ”

“The forest is out there,” he said. “You’re not. Joyce! How fast can we get a message to head office?”

Someone answered, hesitant.

“I don’t care how much,” the foreman said. “I don’t know how long this thing’ll keep moving, and they’re going to want to see it for themselves.”

#First of the hollow #Ciaran #whump #whump writing #body horror #gore #fantasy whump #stabbing #blood #emesis mention #healing factor whump

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tendertenebrosity · 1 year

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Masterpost for the Hollow is here. We're jumping back a bit to before the last posted scene. This one is refreshingly body-horror-free! Only emotional pain!

I was in the settlement down by the river mouth, Newtown. It seemed to get bigger and more crowded every time I came. That was a bit more of a burden on my shoulders - that many more people taking their lives into their hands if they went upriver into the forest, that many more people in the firing line if the forest got angry enough to do what it threatened.

But I didn’t mind it. In the smaller towns some people recognised me on sight now, and I was getting sick of people calling me crazy or muttering to each other about the ‘forest cult’ before I even had the chance to open my mouth.

In this crowd, nobody would look twice at me unless I wanted them to. Nobody would recognise me unless I got really unlucky. So I wasn’t on edge as I made my way through the crowded square on market day, weaving a circuitous route through the crowd. Just anybody else picking up supplies and trying to keep my elbows to myself.

I heard somebody call out behind me. “Hey!”

Was that directed at me? Something about it made me feel like it was. I paused for a second, looking around. Oh, great, had I managed to do something to offend somebody?

“Hey, wait! Just wait up!”

The accent said home, I realised, and turned to look behind me just as the person who’d been following me got around the chatty group of women he’d been behind and came face-to face with me.

I stood in the street feeling like I’d just been doused in ice-water.

It was my uncle Bren.

“Ciaran! Love of God!” he exclaimed, his face alight. “It’s really you! I can’t believe it!”

He approached in a few quick steps, his arms out as if he was going to clap me on the shoulders and hold me at arms length to look at me.

“No,” I said, my mind overtaken with panic.

I ducked out from under his arm - almost falling over my own feet and accidentally shoving somebody aside. Their indignant yell followed me as I scrambled upright, darted between the next few people, and made for the nearest corner, feet flying. I didn’t try to hit anybody, but I wasn’t able to try not to, either.

I thought I heard Bren’s voice in the cacophony of protests and yelling behind me. I didn’t stop until all the voices had faded into the bustle of the city behind me. All I could think was: no.

Once rational thought returned, I ducked into the alleyway behind a building and pressed myself up against a wall, heart hammering.

Unfortunately rational thought didn’t have much better to offer me. This was just as bad as my instincts said, probably worse.

Uncle Bren, here. In Newtown. And he'd seen me.

I slid down the wall, covering my face with my hands. I wished passionately, violently, that I had been the one to see Bren before he saw me. It would have upset me almost as much but at least I would have been able to hide.

How many of them were here? Were my parents here? The plan had been for everybody else to follow us a year later, but I’d assumed that plan was off! Half of the crew got dragged into the swamp by living vines, they barely escaped with their lives, and my stupid fucking family decided great, bring the wives and kids over?!

My life had just gotten incomprehensibly more difficult.

I checked the address that had been on the note Isidora had given me. Maybe I was stupid to have actually come here; maybe I was going to get another knife in my back.

Then again, Isidora had seemed to feel bad enough about the last time that I really couldn’t see her doing that to me. ‘Somebody I should meet’. Would it have killed her to include a hint?

I had wanted to put up some of my posters in this quarter of the town anyway, so once the time rolled around I made my way to the address on the note, my remaining posters tucked under my arm.

Kind of too respectable an area for a stabbing, if that was what was going to happen. The address turned out to be a store that sold clothing and boots, down a lane broad enough to let carts trundle down it slowly. I leaned against the wall, scanning the thin crowd that meandered by, and wondered how long I would give this mystery person of Isidora’s to show up.

Naturally, I was looking in the wrong direction when my uncle Bren stepped out from the crowd.

“Ciaran, please don’t run!” he said quickly. “Please, just talk to me. Please?”

Oh, the next time I saw Isidora, I was going to throw her and her stick and her fancy fucking dress into the harbour!

I pushed myself away from the wall and genuinely considered making a run for it again. Distantly - so very distantly, this far away - I could feel my heart speed up.

But, boxing me in to my left was a rickety set of stairs leading up to the next level of the building, and a cart happened to be rumbling past to my right. And the last thing I needed was to end up under the wheels of that, and there were people here watching, and Bren was standing there with his hands up as if to show me they were empty, or as if I was a drunk he was trying to talk down from being aggressive.

I sighed, shoulders slumping. My voice came out small and wobbly. “Hey, Uncle Bren.”

He looked relieved, and let his hands fall. “Thank God.”

People changed their course to walk around Bren where he stood in the middle of the path, casting us annoyed glances. I shuffled my feet and wished I had spent more time thinking about things to say for this meeting, which had been inevitable, but I had wanted to deal with the warehouse first, and…

Bren cleared his throat. “Ciaran, we - we’re all so happy to find you,” he started, seeming almost as awkward as I was. “We never thought we would, otherwise we’d have been back sooner. Cob would never have left.”

We. Of course. “How many - who’s here?” I asked, a little despairing. “Did you all come back?”

He looked puzzled. “Well, in Newtown… just me and Cob and Lin and the twins right now…”

Well, it could be worse.

“We’ve got lodgings over near the shipyards,” he said. “You can come back with me now - we’re all dying to talk to you. It’ll be a little cramped, but you could stay with us there too, I’ll talk to the landlady about it. Where have you been living? How long have you been…”

I could feel my shoulders tense and my fingers gripped the posters too hard. “No, Uncle,” I said. “I - I don’t need somewhere to stay. I can’t even really - look, I…”

I trailed away.

I could not possibly live with my uncles and cousins. Even only temporarily, until I could convince them to leave for home again. It just wasn’t even worth considering for a second. But there wasn’t really an explanation for not going that I could give him that he would accept, or that wouldn’t lead to more questions. If I said I had a job, he’d want to know where and what.

“No,” I said eventually, trying to lean on the word hard enough to get it through his head. “I can’t. Sorry.”

He was giving me a not-very-subtle looking over, eyes wandering over my clothes, my boots, the bundle of posters in my hand. He was frowning. “Listen - listen, Ciaran, if you’re caught up in something bad, you know we’ll help you, right? Doesn’t matter what it is.”

I pressed the posters against my chest so he couldn’t see what was on them. “Something bad?” I said. Uncle Bren, you have no idea. “Like what?”

“Well. I don’t know.” Bren looked awkward. “Kiddo, you… you bolted.”

I looked at my feet. Why did I still seem to have enough blood to feel my face going red? That wasn’t fair. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t expecting you.”

“It’s okay,” he said, again with the reassuring hand movements. “We’re just happy you’re alive. And, if something’s happened… even if you’ve done something, and you’re scared that we might… ” He cleared his throat. “Look, your dad won’t care, I don’t care, Cob doesn’t care. All that matters is that you’re alive. And if you’re in trouble, we can fix it. There’s nothing so bad we won’t be able to help you fix it.”

If I’ve done something? I stood baffled for a few seconds before I realised. Of course. Why else would I run? As far as he knew, I’d been stranded alone in a foreign port with no money for close to two years, and now I barely wanted to meet his eyes. I’d acted like I had something to be ashamed of - he probably thought I was a prostitute or a cutpurse or something worse.

Well, he’d have to go on thinking that. Once I’d processed the rest of what he’d said, I found myself unable to speak. If you’re in trouble, we can fix it. Like I was fifteen and getting into fights on the walk home again, or sixteen and accused of theft and terrified... “Uncle,” I said, and had to stop to fight with the lump in my throat. “I don’t… you can’t…”

He waited patiently for me to finish what I was saying, but I was done. I couldn’t finish the sentence. Why do you have to be here? I can’t deal with you right now. I can’t have you here. Please go home, God, please just go home!

My uncle cleared his throat. “Can I… Ciaran, can I…” He stepped closer and held his arm out towards me. I realised that he was trying to hug me.

I was suddenly terrified; he would be able to tell. He’d be able to feel that there was something wrong with me. He’d put his arms around me and I would be cold and I wouldn’t have a heartbeat and he would be able to tell.

I retreated, my heel hitting the wall behind me with a painful thump. “No! Sorry - no hugs, Uncle, please -”

My voice had risen, higher and louder than I’d thought; enough to make people turn and stare.

He stopped immediately. “Okay! Okay, easy, kiddo.”

I tried to calm my breathing, the posters getting crumpled where they were pressed against me like a shield.

Bren pushed a hand through his hair, looking lost. I guess this conversation wasn’t going how he’d hoped it would.

“Look, I need to go,” I said, sounding strangled even to myself. “Uncle Bren, I love you, it’s - it’s real great to see you..." It's not. It's really, really not. "But I… I have… things to do. Work. You know.”

He brightened. “The papers? What are they for?”

I hoped desperately that he wouldn’t be able to find any of the others I’d already put up. “It’s just work. We can - talk later - maybe? We can arrange a time?”

He looked reluctant. “Ciaran, we only just… are you sure you won’t come home? Is there anything I could…” Perhaps seeing the tension in my shoulders, he shook his head decisively and waved his words away with one hand. “Sorry. Okay, you don't have to... We can arrange a time, I’d like that. Where do you live now?”

“I - oh, I move a lot,” I said. “Let’s just… maybe here, again? Next week? Same day?” Maybe I would have thought of what to say to them by then.

His face fell a little, but he didn’t push. “All right,” he said, soothingly. “Just - I’ll give you our address, so you can find us if you need to. The shipyards are - ”

“I know where the shipyards are!” I smiled to take the sting out of my words. I’ve spent more time sneaking in and out of the shipyards the last few months than you would believe. “You’ve been in town two damn seconds, Uncle…”

“Right, right! I expect you’re a real local by now!” he said heartily. “Of course you know where they are. Well, it’s the boarding house with the yellow flower on the sign, two streets up from the main entrance. Can’t miss it.” He patted his pockets, as if abruptly remembering something. “Are you - do you need money?” he asked. “We can help with that, if you need something to tide you over, I can - ”

“I’m good for money, Uncle,” I interrupted.

I watched his brows come together in the heaviest frown I’d seen yet. He said nothing, though. Oh, great, no steady job or address I’m willing to tell him but I’ve got money? He definitely thinks I’m a criminal now. He probably thinks I’m a highway murderer.

“Well, if you’re… hey, look, why don’t you just take…”

“I need to go,” I said. “Keep the money, you’ll need it more than I do. Don’t worry about me.” I did my best to smile. “I know it’s… look, don’t worry. I’m fine, I’m safe, I’m doing okay.” I am not murdering people, at least not people who don’t try to murder me first. I am literally incapable of dying, so really when you think about it I’m the safest I’ve ever been. I coughed. “We have a lot to talk about but you don’t need to worry about me. Give everybody my love, and I’ll - I’ll see you soon, okay?”

I edged away from the wall, and my uncle held his hand out for me to clasp.

The irrational terror seized me again. I was being stupid, if it was obvious enough that he could feel it from my hand, I wouldn’t be able to wander around Newtown with nobody the wiser like I did. But…

I forced myself to take his hand, and he felt like he always had; rough fingers, not as crushing a grip as my uncle Cob but strong. He squeezed and let go.

“Be careful, Ciaran,” he said, soberly. “You - you just think on what I said, okay? Whatever it is. We can handle it.”

I hoisted a grin on my face. “Sure, Uncle. There’s nothing to handle, but sure. I’ll - I’ll see you next week.”

I kept my shoulders straight and didn’t run; I turned down a street at random and leaned my arm against the closest wall.

There’s nothing so bad we can’t fix it.

I pressed my face against my arm and let the tears come, stinging my eyes. I wish you were right, Uncle. I really, really wish you were right.

#First of the Hollow #Ciaran #emotional whump #fantasy writing #My ocs #loving family

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