Page 2 of Hollow
“Then why the fuck would you insist on camping out here?” Beth rolled her eyes. “I will never understand that type of dumb shit.”
Rex’s eyes went wide, watching Derek shrink further, the louder Beth yelled.
“Oh, there’s a monster in the woods,’” Beth continued in a mocking tone, poorly imitating Derek’s voice. “’Let’s go run around in the trees. I bet it’ll scare the girls into sleeping with us. Hehehe.’”
Rex and Tiffany eyed each other, trying their best not to laugh. Rex had a harder time with it.
“Look, we’re not in any danger as long as we stay in the designated zones,” Derek said, retrieving his map. “The monsters keep to their territory.”
It was an official map of the wilderness surrounding Sleepy Hollow. Rex read the front flap and snorted. “‘Daxter’s Guide to Surviving Sleepy Hollow’? This is cheap tourist crap. They’re not real.”
“They are,” Derek continued. “They’re locked in eternal combat, fighting over this land. And they’ve killed hundreds of people. Thousands even. Anyone who wanders too deep into the woods and stumbles onto their battle.”
Rex rolled his eyes.
“Oh, shit.” Tiffany turned her phone to face Rex. “He’s not lying.”
She scrolled through links to articles all citing confirmed deaths in these woods.
“Well, he is exaggerating,” Rex said, realizing there weren’t hundreds or thousands of confirmed deaths, and most of the articles cited accidents and animal attacks.
“I’m telling you,” Derek said with a wicked glint. “I know the whole story…”
CHAPTER ONE
Jack stepped through the fog at the edge of the forest and casually made his way down the trail that led to the nearby market. Sleepy Hollow always had a ton of tourism, especially in the fall, and Jack loved to capitalize on adding to his adoring audience.
“Holy shit,” a woman shouted with a hand pressed to her chest. “Honey, look at him.”
She turned to the man beside her, and Jack immediately noticed their wedding bands. As the fear washed away from the woman’s face, her heavy breathing was replaced by nervous laughter.
“Whoa, man, that’s wild.” The husband approached, eyeing Jack up and down, taking in every aspect of his monstrous glory.
Jack stood shirtless in a pair of ripped skinny jeans. The woman and her husband stared at Jack’s haunting gray skin; they eyed the black stitches that held his broken flesh together. They locked their wide eyes onto the bulbous pumpkin head covering Jack’s grotesque face.
“You are quite the sight,” the woman said. “Isn’t he something, hun?”
“Yeah, Marg.” Her husband nodded, side-eyeing Jack’s shredded abdomen with an envious streak. “Definitely something.”
“Oh, and is that your puppy?” Marg asked as she finally noticed the bloodhound following alongside Jack.
“I am no puppy,” Astaroth bellowed in a commanding telepathic echo. “I am an arch-demon of Hell, grand and great with legions of warriors ready to lay siege upon the lands at my behest. Now, kneel before me, mortal, and give me the belly rubs.”
Marg blinked, completely stunned, unable to comprehend what she heard. Most humans only heard Astaroth’s voice as a faint whisper in the back of their mind, whereas Jack heard the telepathic voice of his demon-possessed dog as clear as day.
Despite her initial shock, she obeyed the demon and gave the bloodhound lots of belly rubs.
“Now, tell me I am the bestest boy in all the lands, who shall bathe in the blood of my enemies and those goddamn squirrels.”
“Aren’t you just the bestest boy in all the world?” Marg said with a chipper smile. “Yes, you are, oh yes you are.”
“Astaroth, stop messing with people’s minds.” Jack snapped his fingers. “You know that gives them nightmares.”
“Only the weak-willed.”
The hound huffed and sat back up. When the couple stared at Jack with confusion, he played it off by making a minxy grin with the shadows on his pumpkin head. This created more confusion, but the perplexed smile on Marg’s face proved Jack had piqued her curiosity.
“Well, how’d you go and do that?”
