My Husband Dies Every Midnight

The Hollow Wants Her

The room suddenly felt like it was constricting around Thomas as he finished. "It wanted you."

Elena looked at him, confusion washing over her. Even though Nathan's hand was in hers, she suddenly felt as if the floor might tilt and they'd all fall. "No," she said finally, shaking her head. "No. That doesn't make any sense."

"I know," Thomas replied simply. It hardly seemed worth it to be indignant, not when his expression suggested he understood all too well.

She shook her head again, faster this time. "You think that thing in Denver has been following my husband around every night trying to get at me?" She turned to Maris. "You think that's why you never stopped me?"

"It was never only following Nathan," Maris murmured quietly.

"You should have told me!" Elena snapped, stepping away from Nathan's side to face her mother. "If you thought it was following him, that it was somehow connected to me, you should have told me!"

"I tried to keep you away from it," said Maris, voice trembling. "I didn't want to hurt you."

"By lying to me for my entire life?"

"By keeping you alive."

Lila shifted where she stood near the doorway, her camera now completely still and useless. "Well, I have to say," she muttered, "that I am officially very sick of secret families and their lies."

Ingrid, still pale, stood near the far side of the room, her grip tightening around the pages of the ledger in her hands. Perhaps it was the fact that she no longer seemed so inhuman in this place, but she looked almost as if she might cry. "Tell us what's happening," said Nathan, stepping to where Elena had been. "Explain it all."

For a moment, Thomas looked surprised, as if he hadn't expected mercy from the man who had imprisoned him. But he quickly recovered and nodded, as if coming to some unspoken decision. "The hollow takes its inheritance from blood and marriage," Thomas began. "But in the case of burden, memory, and survival, it takes the closest—the most deeply connected. In this case, it is you, Elena."

"Why me?" she asked, startled. "What does it see in me?"

"It sees your mother's survival," said Thomas, his eyes locking onto hers. "Because she was the one to break the pattern."

"Break the pattern?" she echoed, heart hammering. "What pattern?"

Thomas's eyes were fixed on the charm as he replied. "The memory key."

"Memory key," she repeated, her voice barely above a whisper. "What does that mean?"

Thomas's eyes darkened as he replied, "It means the thing you think the hollow wants is not your body. It wants you to remember. It feeds on what your mind holds on to. Every time the curse took Nathan and returned him to life, the hollow was learning how to slip inside a person's mind."

Nathan paled. "You're saying it's been slipping inside me?"

"You've been allowing it to," Thomas said bluntly. "There is a difference."

Maris crossed her arms over her chest, as if suddenly realizing how cold the room was. "When I was imprisoned the first time, I saw what the hollow was—what it had taken from beneath the chapel. It was warded so that the Warden could not enter, but what was inside could not speak to him directly. It had to take someone else's mind to reach out."

Elena looked up sharply. "And that someone is me, right?"

Maris nodded. "Yes. It is feeding on your memories of the chamber."

Nathan's face was a mixture of anger and fear as he stared at her. "Why her?"

"Because she is your wife," said Ingrid's voice from the side of the room. "Because the bond marked her. Because the door opened for you both."

Elena turned sharply to face the other woman. "You knew that, didn't you? That was why you started it all—with marriage."

Ingrid did not deny it. "The pattern would be strengthened by the bond. I did not know the hollow would choose so soon."

"It's not an excuse." Elena snapped. "You knew it could happen. You didn't even try to stop it."

"No," said Ingrid, and for the first time, her voice was not filled with lies. "It is not."

The room suddenly grew colder as a sound echoed from the door above them. A dull, heavy sound, like something falling. Everyone turned to look up at the opening in the ceiling.

Another sound followed. A low, rhythmic sound, like something approaching.

"We don't have much time," said Thomas.

"What is it?" asked Nathan. His voice was barely more than a whisper.

Thomas looked up at the opening in the far wall, which had been nothing more than bars stretching from one side to the other. "Something my captors left behind." His voice was grim.

Lila swallowed hard. "That's a very upsetting sentence."

The door above them suddenly slammed, causing dust to fall from the ceiling. "What is it?" Elena asked, turning to Thomas, her heart pounding in her ears.

"It is the one who guards what I was not allowed to know," Thomas replied, watching the far wall with something like dread.

It was not footsteps that followed, but something heavier, wetter. Something dragging itself along the stone above them.

Maris went pale. "It found us."

"Who found us?" asked Elena, her voice shaking.

Thomas was already moving, surprising her by grabbing a rusted hook from the far wall and working the chain from his ankle as he moved. "We have to get out of here. The moment the door opens, I will not hesitate."

Nathan hurried over to him. "Let me." Thomas shook his head. "Not enough time."

"Then tell us how to stop it," said Nathan.

Thomas turned to look at Elena. "There is a second chamber. Deeper than the one you've found. Deeper than the chapel. That's where the hollow first opened. That's where the memory was broken."

"Broken?" she echoed. "Broken how?"

Thomas hesitated, then looked back at her. "Your memory."

There was a stunned silence as Elena looked at him. Even the sound of the thing dragging itself across the ceiling seemed to stop.

"You mean," she began, her voice tight with something between anger and fear, "my memories of the chamber?"

Maris turned away from Thomas and covered her face with her hands. A single tear slid down her cheek and onto the floor. "When you were little, before the fire, your mother tried to keep you from the first call. She took you down to the underground chapel and tried to sever your bond to the house. It did not work. It only broke something in your memory."

Elena's breathing was shallow as she stared at her mother. "You're telling me that thing has been hunting me since I was a child?"

"Yes," said Thomas simply.

"And why hasn't it taken me?" asked Elena.

"Because something else stepped in," Thomas replied. "Something that stopped it."

"What?" asked Nathan.

"What?" echoed Elena, turning to face him. "Nathan, what aren't you telling us?"

Thomas looked as if he had swallowed something bitter. "You were never meant to die every night."

Nathan went still. Not physically—that would have been too easy—but emotionally. Inside, he had stopped, and the way he stared at Thomas was all the proof Elena needed that whatever the man was about to say was more horrible than anything they'd already endured. "Nathan?" she asked softly.

"I didn't know it was me," he said finally. "When I kept dying every night."

That didn't make any sense at all, but the way his mouth twisted as he said it told her he was telling the truth. "What are you talking about?"

"You have to tell her," Thomas urged him. "Tell her what happened in the first chamber. Tell her what you saw when we touched the key."

Nathan looked at Elena, his eyes dark with sorrow. "There was a man there. In the first chamber. In the hidden room. A man with my name."

Elena blinked in surprise. "What do you mean? A man with your name?" Her voice was quiet, almost reverent. "What are you talking about?"

"A record," said Nathan. "Not a person. Not really. Someone wrote my name in the ledger before I was born." The sound of the thing dragging itself across the ceiling suddenly seemed unbearably loud in the room. "Ingrid?"

Ingrid's hand was clenched so tightly around the papers that she was crumpling them. "If that's true," she said softly, "then it is not a person either." Suddenly Thomas was swearing under his breath. "I don’t understand."

The noise above them stopped for a moment, as if whatever was making it had paused to listen. Then the iron bars at the far end of the room suddenly bent inward, as if something on the other side had pushed against them. Again.

The metal shrieked in protest. "No, no, no," whispered Lila, pressing her back against the wall. "This is not happening."

Maris looked desperately at Elena. "Whatever happens next, whatever you hear it say, do not let it speak your full name."

The bar bent inward again, this time with a sound like thunder. Thomas moved away from the wall, his expression showing genuine fear for the first time since they'd met. Because the thing on the other side finally spoke. And it was using Elena's voice.