The Hollows(5)

Sally died by strangulation. A makeshift ligature, probably a belt, had been tied around her throat and tightened until she choked to death. Marks on her fingers indicated that she had struggled and attempted to claw at the ligature around her neck.

The traces of semen and saliva on and inside her body belonged to Eric. There was no evidence that she had been raped, although there was bruising on her arms to indicate that she had been pinned down. The pathologist wrote that this bruising could have been caused during consensual sex, but it seemed most likely the murderer had held her down before strangling her. Perhaps he had intended to rape her, before changing his mind or being unable to do it.

As David and Connie told the story, a question formed in my head. It was horrible, yes. But murder was not uncommon, even double murders. Why was this slaying so notorious?

Why had it brought all these dark tourists flocking to this place?

I was about to voice the question when Connie said, ‘Here’s where it gets weird. At the centre of the clearing is this huge, flat rock. The bodies were left lying across the rock.’

‘Head to toe,’ said David.

‘What?’

‘They’d been laid out so his head was by her feet, and vice versa. But that’s not the weird part.’

‘There were symbols painted on the rock beside their bodies,’ Connie said.

‘In their own blood. Or Eric’s blood, I should say. Sally wasn’t bleeding.’

Now I was beginning to understand the murders’ gruesome appeal. ‘What kind of symbols?’

David’s eyes widened with excitement. ‘The horned god.’

‘And the triple goddess,’ said Connie. Unlike her husband, she said it in an almost reverential tone. Serious and unsmiling.

I blinked at them. ‘What are they? Satanic symbols?’

‘It’s more pagan,’ Connie said. ‘They’re two of the primary Wiccan deities.’

‘The horned god represents male power,’ said David. He had dropped his voice as if there might be ears in the forest, listening in. Perhaps the trees themselves. ‘He’s the lord of life.’

‘And death,’ said Connie. ‘The triple goddess represents the divine feminine. They were kind of crudely etched, but all the experts agreed that’s what they were meant to be.’

‘Here, hold on,’ said David. ‘I’ll show you.’

Show me what, for God’s sake, I wanted to ask, but he’d already disappeared into their cabin. A moment later, he came out with a blank sheet of paper and a Sharpie. He drew a large circle, then a crescent on top. It looked like a crudely drawn head with thick horns. ‘That’s the horned god. And this is the triple goddess.’ He drew another circle, then a crescent on either side, facing outwards.

‘Do these represent the moon?’ I asked.

‘You got it,’ he replied. ‘The goddess symbol represents the waxing and waning of the moon. The male one is more a literal representation of a dude with horns.’ He chuckled. ‘But yeah, the moon is important to pagans.’

‘And it was a new moon that night,’ said Connie.

‘So this was . . .’ I was loath to say it. ‘Some kind of offering? A sacrifice?’

‘That’s the theory,’ she replied.

Light was beginning to drain from the sky, the spaces between the trees darkening. I looked up, wondering where the moon was in its cycle, but it hadn’t yet appeared. I had an image of the bodies, pale and bloody in the moonlight, flies already gathering, drawn by the sweet, sticky blood . . . and just like that, I’d been transformed into a dark tourist. I couldn’t help but see, peeking through a gap in the trees, the yellow eyes of some creature, some god – and a shiver of nausea and horror went through me.

‘It only took the cops a few hours to figure out who did it,’ Connie said, bringing me back to the real world.

‘His name was Everett Miller,’ David said.

‘A local?’

‘Yep. He lived in Penance.’

Penance was the nearest town, several miles from Hollow Falls. I had looked it up before coming to the US, wanting to know what was nearby and if there were any places worth taking day trips to. Penance, which had a population of 2,068 at the last census, didn’t appear to have anything worth seeing. There wasn’t even a cinema; just a couple of bars, a Baptist church and a handful of shops.

‘Everett Miller was the local weirdo,’ David said. ‘The guy that everyone whispered about or laughed at when he went by.’

‘He had long hair and dressed all in black,’ Connie said. ‘He wore make-up and had piercings all over his face.’

‘And he was into black metal,’ said David. ‘All these crazy-ass bands out of Norway and Finland or wherever. Screaming about Satan and death and all this bizarre pagan shit. There was this one band he was into, Wolfspear – all their songs were about blood sacrifices and murder and burning churches. Their newest one at the time had a video where the lead guy dressed as the horned god and rampaged through the woods with all these naked women, and then murdered them and had sex with their bodies. Real X-rated horror-film stuff. It was banned but Everett had a videotape that he’d imported from Norway. He had the band’s symbol painted on the back of his leather jacket too.’