The Hollow Root

The rain in Oakhaven didn’t wash things clean; it just made the rot smell sweeter.

Elena stood on the wrap-around porch of Holloway House, her knuckles white as she gripped the railing. The storm was a bruised purple bruise across the sky, hammering against the Douglas firs that lined her property like prison bars. It had been two years, three months, and four days since the accident, and the silence inside the house was louder than the thunder outside.

The silence was a physical weight. It sat in David’s empty leather armchair. It collected dust in the nursery where the crib still stood, untouched. It followed her down the hallways, whispering that she was useless, that a mother without a child was just a ghost with a pulse.

A jagged bolt of lightning tore the sky open, illuminating the treeline.

And then she heard it.

It wasn't the wind. It wasn't the groan of the settling house. It was a cry. High-pitched, desperate, and wet.

* Waah. Waah.*

Elena’s heart hammered against her ribs. The sound hooked into her gut, pulling her forward. It sounded like Toby. It sounded exactly like Toby used to cry when he woke up from a nightmare.

"No," she whispered, shaking her head. "Stop it."

* Waah.*

She didn't grab a coat. She didn't grab a flashlight. She ran off the porch and into the deluge, the mud sucking at her slippers. The rain plastered her hair to her skull instantly, blinding her, but she followed the sound. It led her past the overgrown garden, past the rusted tractor, to the edge of the old growth forest.

There, at the base of a massive, rot-hollowed oak tree, she found them.

Nestled in the mud between the gnarled roots, shivering in a pile of pale flesh, were five of them.

They looked like puppies, maybe. Pitbulls, perhaps, but they were hairless, their skin the color of uncooked dough. They were shivering so violently their limbs were blurring. One of them, slightly larger than the others, lifted its head.

It didn't have a muzzle. Its face was flat, almost pushed in, and its eyes...

Elena wiped the rain from her lashes. The eyes were large, wet, and possessed distinct whites. They were human eyes set in a dog’s skull.

The creature opened its mouth and let out that sound again. *Waah.*

The maternal instinct that had been cauterized by the crash flared back to life, hot and blinding. Elena fell to her knees in the mud. She didn't see monsters. She didn't see the wrongness of their anatomy. She saw five helpless things that needed her.

"Oh, you poor babies," she sobbed, scooping them up. Their skin was fever-hot and slick, like wet clay. She gathered them into the hem of her nightgown, cradling them against her chest. "Mama's got you. Mama's here."

She ran back toward the house, shielding them with her body, unaware that the eyes of the Alpha pup were watching her face, studying the way her lips moved, learning the shape of her grief.