Esther Hollow's Arc

Chapter 11 of 8

The water sat still now. But the faint warm tether still pulled at Esther's chest, back toward the hotel. She followed it. Jen walked beside her, the glowing plant cupped in both hands. The pull did not lead to the lobby or the library. It bent past them, toward a small building Esther had never entered in eleven years of haunting this place. It was an old sheriff's office, its boards faded and split. Swinging doors hung crooked over the entrance. Bars covered the two front windows. Esther stopped at the step. "It's here," she said. "Whatever holds me now is in here." Jen pushed the swinging doors. They creaked apart. Cold air rolled out, colder than the night. A figure stood behind the bars of the far cell. A ghost. He wore a wide hat and a long coat, a tin star pinned to his chest. His face was bone, smiling without meaning to. He gripped the bars from the inside, though no lock held him. "Took you long enough," he said. His voice was dry as old paper. "Eleven years I've watched you drown yourself every night and never once looked this way." Esther stepped closer. "I don't know you." "Joe Holloway. I kept the peace here before the flood." He tipped his hat with one skeletal hand. "The night the water came, folks ran to me. I locked the drunks in this cell to keep them safe from the current. Then the current came through the door." His smile did not change. "I drowned my own prisoners. I've stood in this cage ever since, waiting for someone to say it out loud." Esther understood then. The pictures. The names. She had freed every drowned soul but one. "You're the last," she said. "The last name nobody could read," Joe said. "The frame in your stack. The glass was too clouded." Jen lifted the plant. Its green light reached through the bars and touched him. His bones brightened. "I can't lay you to rest alone," Esther said. "I need the living for that. But I can do this." She turned to Jen. "Say his name with me." Jen nodded. Together they spoke it. "Joe Holloway." Once. "Joe Holloway." Twice. Esther pressed her palm to the cold bars. "Joe Holloway." The sheriff let go of the bars. His grip loosened for the first time in eleven years. "Well," he said. "That's a fine thing." He did not vanish like the others. He stepped through the cell door, free to move, and stood beside Esther in the crooked room. "But I'm not gone," he said, looking at his own solid hands. "Neither are you." Esther felt the tether snap loose from her chest. The warm pull was gone. But she was still here, still a ghost, and now another ghost stood freed but unrested at her side. "No," she said. "We're both still here. And now there are two of us to finish this."