But then I felt the compass needle jerk away, and in the rearview I saw the hollow skitter off the road and disappear behind a house.
“It’s trying to cut us off,” I said, and we both leaned right as I swerved to avoid a tipped-over golf cart in the road.
“Then go a different way,” Noor shouted.
“I can’t! There’s only one way out of this labyrinth . . .”
For the next couple of turns we didn’t see it, but I knew it was close, tracking us, running as fast as its injured body could carry it. Then, up ahead, the guard gate. The exit. Beyond that a main road, a straightaway where I could finally reach an uncatchable speed.
I felt the hollow before I saw it, streaking out along our right side to block the way. We were heading straight for it, down the little alley that ran between a low curb and the unmanned guard gate.
“Hang on!” I shouted, and I stamped down the gas and swerved sharply right.
We hit the curb. My unbelted body lurched forward, slamming the wheel as we launched over. One of the hollow’s tongues grazed the side of the car. The other managed to punch through my driver’s side window, and as we sailed onto the putting green that fronted the neighborhood, we swept the hollow off its feet and pulled it with us.
We spun across the clipped grass, turning a wide half circle before I cut the wheel and straightened us out, and thank God, thank Abe this was no ordinary old car but one he’d clearly modified, because the engine had enough grunt and its back wheels enough grip to keep us skidding across the soggy putting green, enough momentum that instead of diving nose-first into the ditch we jumped it, the back tires slamming its outer edge before finding traction again, then sending us off like a shot down Piney Woods Road.
All good, all fine, but for one thing, which Noor couldn’t see because the hollow had now been washed clean by the storm: Its tongue was inside my window, had wrapped itself around my door’s inner handle. We were pulling it behind us, dragging it down the road at forty, fifty miles an hour, and still I did not feel it dying, could only feel its rage.
That tongue was tensed hard as steel. It was not only hanging on, but slowly reeling the hollow in, up off the road that was surely skinning it alive.
Because I could think of nothing else to do, I punched the gas all the way down.
“Have you got anything sharp?” I shouted.
Noor looked at me in horror, realizing at once why I had asked. I prayed for an oncoming car, something I could use to peel the monster off, but Englewood was a ghost town now and the roads were empty. No one but us was stupid enough to be driving in the middle of a hurricane.
“Just this,” she said, and once again offered me the bronze-handled letter opener: the ever-useful, Swiss-Army-knife, totemic thing that wouldn’t leave me alone.
The hollow was howling with pain and from the effort of pulling itself to my door. I didn’t dare take my foot off the gas, even as chunks of debris forced me to swerve all over the road.
I grabbed the letter opener. Asked Noor to take the wheel, which she did. I stabbed the hollow’s tongue. Once, twice, three times. Hollow blood spattered me, black and hot. The creature screamed but wouldn’t let go, wouldn’t let go, and then, when it finally seemed about to—
“Jacob, brake!”
My foot had been planted on the gas but my eyes had been on the hollow. I turned to see an abandoned pickup truck and a downed tree blocking most of the road and stomped the brake. The Caprice did a dopey back-ended swerve that almost missed the pickup but not quite, our tail connecting with a jolting smash. We kept going, the branches of the downed tree raking us, cracking our windshield and tearing off the side mirrors before we finally cleared it and skidded to a stop.
We had ceased to move but the world still spun. Noor was shaking me, touching my face—she was okay, had been wearing her seat belt. The letter opener was gone, torn from my hand, and the hollow’s tongue was gone, too.
“Is it dead?” Noor asked, but then she frowned as if embarrassed by her optimism.
I turned to look out the shattered rear window. I could feel the hollow still, steady but weakened, but couldn’t see it. It was far behind us, knocked loose in the crash.
“It’s hurt,” I said. “Bad, I think.”
On both sides of the road were darkened strip malls. Up ahead a snapped traffic light twisted dangerously in the air. On a different day I would’ve turned the car around and gone back to finish off the hollow. But today I couldn’t afford the time or the risk. One hollowgast running loose was the least of our worries.
I touched the gas. The car wobbled forward, the Caprice’s nose angled slightly downward and to the left.
We’d popped a tire but could still roll.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
I didn’t dare push the damaged Caprice too hard, lest I risk popping a second tire and stranding us completely. We limped along at what my grandfather used to call “after church speed,” wobbling through a town I hardly recognized. It looked like the end of the world: shuttered stores, abandoned parking lots, streets littered with wet trash. Traffic lights blinked, heeded by no one. The small boats people docked in creeks and canals had snapped their moorings, and in the heavy chop their masts tick-tocked like wagging fingers.
Under different circumstances, I would’ve been narrating the drive for Noor, would have enjoyed playing tour guide in the town where I’d grown up, relished the chance to measure the extraordinary turns my life had taken against the straight and stultifying path I’d once seemed destined for. But now I had no words to spare. And the hope and wonder such musings had once made me feel had been extinguished under a suffocating blanket of dread.
What was waiting for us on the other side? What if the Acre was already gone, and my friends with it? What if Caul had simply . . . wiped it all away?
Thankfully, the bridge to Needle Key was undamaged. Thankfully, too, the storm had begun to let up, so that as we climbed the wide, frowning arc of the bridge there were no sudden gusts, nothing to push us over the flimsy guardrail and into Lemon Bay, that stripe of whitecapped gray below. Key Road was still passable, if strewn with downed branches, and with some effort we were able to navigate past the shuttered bait shops and old condos to reach my house.
I had assumed it would be empty. Even if my parents were back from their Asia trip, they would probably have evacuated to Atlanta, where my grandma on my mom’s side lived. Needle Key was a barrier island, practically below sea level, and only the crazies stuck around during hurricanes. But my house was not empty. There was a police cruiser in the driveway, its rollers flashing silently, and next to it a van with ANIMAL CONTROL emblazoned on it. A cop in rain gear stood beside the cars, turning as soon as he heard our tires crunch the gravel.