John Connolly - Dark Hollow

And the man known as Caleb Kyle has been buried in a patch of ground to the north of a churchyard outside Augusta, alongside the boy he called Caspar, and prayers were said for their souls. A few days later, a man was seen at the graveside, a big man with pain in his eyes. He stood in the snow and looked at the shape of the newly disturbed earth beneath it. To his left, the sun faded from the sky, leaving streaks of red across the clouds. The man had a small pack on his back, and a piece of paper with the date of his court appearance written upon it by his bail bondsman. It was an appearance he would never make, and the bondsman knew it. Some of Al Z's money had bought his complicity, and his silence. Al Z could take the loss, I thought.

This was the second cemetery that Billy Purdue had visited that day, and he would never be seen in either again. Billy Purdue would never be seen anywhere again. He would disappear, and no trace of him would ever be found.

But I think I know where Billy Purdue went.

He went north.

Two days after the anniversary of Susan and Jennifer's death, I attended mass at St. Maximilian Kolbe and listened as their names were read out from the altar. The next day, the fifteenth, I visited the grave. There were fresh flowers laid upon it-from Susan's parents, I supposed. We had not spoken since her death, and I think they still blamed me for what had happened. I blamed myself, but I was making reparation. That was all that I could do. That was all any of us could do.

On the night of the fifteenth, they came to me. I awoke to the noise of them in the woods, sounds that were not sounds but the slow joining of worlds within worlds, and I walked to my porch and stood, but I did not descend to them.

Among the shadows, behind the trees, a host of figures moved. At first, they might have been the light shifting as the wind stirred the branches, phantasms of hands and faces, for they were silent as they came forward for me to bear witness. They were young girls, and their dresses, once torn and stained with blood and dirt, were now intact and glowed from within, clinging to soft, slightly rounded bellies that might, once before and long ago, have caused the young men to twist in the seats of their bright red cars, to whistle at them from their vinyl booths, to lean across and whisper to them, to playfully block their escape as they basked in the light from their eyes. The moonlight shone on the soft down of their arms, the gentle movement of their hair, the soft glistening at their lips; the girls in their summer dresses, gathered together in the new-fallen snow.

And farther behind them, others emerged: old women and old men, nightdresses fluttering, stained dungarees war-painted with flecks and dashes of enamel, their gnarled hands traced with thick veins like the roots of the trees clinging to the earth beneath their feet. Young men stood aside for them, their hands joined with those of their women; there were husbands and wives, and young lovers, once violently separated, now together once more. Children moved between their legs, solemn and watchful, carefully making their way to the boundary of the woods; children with the broken bones in their fingers now miraculously restored, children who had been wrenched apart in dark, pain-filled cellars now restored to beauty, their eyes bright and knowing in the winter darkness.

A whole host of the dead gathered before me, their numbers stretching back into the shadows, back into the past. They did not speak but only watched me, and a kind of peace came over me, as if the hand of a young woman had touched me gently in the night, whispering to me that I should sleep.

for now

And beside the rail, where the old man had sat with his dog, where my mother had leaned, still beautiful despite the years, I stood and felt their eyes upon me. A small hand gripped mine and when I looked down I could almost see her, radiant and new, a small beauty revealed against the gentle luminosity of the snow.

And a hand touched my cheek and soft lips met mine, and a voice said:

sleep

And I slept.

A number of individuals assisted me with information and advice in the course of writing this book. I wish to particularly thank Rodney Laughton, historian and proprietor of the Breakers Inn at Higgins Beach, Scarborough; Bullwinkle's Guide Service in Greenville, Maine; Chief Duane Alexander of the Greenville Police Department; and Quark, Inc., in New York, for providing details of security technology. Bernd Heinrich's A Year in the Maine Woods (Addison-Wesley, 1994); The Coast of Maine by Louise Dickinson Rich (Down East Books, 1993); Coastal Maine: A Maritime History by Roger F. Duncan (Norton, 1992); and Fiasco by Frank Partnoy (Profile, 1997) also proved especially valuable. Any mistakes are my own.

On a more personal note, I would like to thank Anne and Catherine, who read this book in its early stages, and my family and Ruth, for their advice and support. I am indebted, as always, to my editor at Hodder & Stoughton, Sue Fletcher; Emily Bestler, my editor at Simon & Schuster; and, finally, to Kerith Biggs, my foreign rights agent, and my agent and friend, Darley Anderson.

John Connolly's first novel, Every Dead Thing, received the Shamus Award for Best First Novel in 1999 and was lauded a Los Angeles Times Book of the Year. It was also a bestseller in Britain and Ireland. John Connolly is a regular contributor to The Irish Times and has traveled extensively in the United States. He lives in Dublin, Ireland, where he is at work on his next book. For more information, see his Web site at www.johnconnolly.co.uk.