The man decided to quit while he could and leapt back into his boat. Sharon tore away the canvas covering the outboard motor, yanked its ignition cord, and our boat sputtered to life just as a third came speeding out of the murk alongside us. Inside were three more men, one armed with an old-fashioned pistol that was leveled right at Emma.
I shouted at her to get down and tackled her just as it cracked and sent up a puff of white smoke. Then the man pointed it at Sharon, who let go of the throttle and put his hands up. And that would’ve been it for us, I think, had not a throat-full of strange words come gushing up and pouring out of me, loud and sure and foreign to my ears.
Sink their boat! Use your tongues to sink their boat!
In the half second it took everyone to turn and stare at me, the hollow had pushed off from our hull and flung its tongues at the other boat. They fired out of the water, whipped around the lip of its stern, and flipped the boat up and backward in a reverse somersault that launched all three men out.
The boat crashed upside down on two of them.
Sharon might’ve taken the opportunity to hit the throttle and get us out of there, but he stood frozen in shock, his hands still raised.
Which was fine. I wasn’t done yet, anyhow.
That one, I said, looking at the gunman flailing in the water.
It seemed the hollow could hear me underwater because moments after I’d said it the man screamed, looked down, and was sucked under—gone, just like that—and immediately the water where he’d been bloomed red.
“I didn’t say eat him!” I said in English.
“What are you waiting for?” Emma shouted at Sharon. “Go!”
“Right, right,” the boatman stammered. Shaking off his stupor, he lowered his hands and leaned on the throttle. The motor whined and Sharon turned the rudder and spun us in a tight circle, tripping Emma, Addison, and me into a pile. The boat bucked and shot forward, and then we were speeding through whorls of murk, heading back the way we’d come.
Emma looked at me and I looked back, and though it was too loud to hear anything over the motor and the rush of blood in our ears, I thought I could read in her face both fear and exhilaration—a look that said, You, Jacob Portman, are amazing and terrifying. But when she finally spoke, I could make out only one word: Where?
Where, indeed. I’d hoped we could get away from the hollow while it was finishing off the Ditch pirate, but reading my gut now I knew it was still close, trailing behind us, most likely using one of its tongues as a towline.
Close, I mouthed back.
Her eyes brightened and she nodded once, sharply: Good.
I shook my head. Why wasn’t she afraid? Why couldn’t she see how dangerous it was? The hollow had tasted blood, and just left a meal half-finished behind us. Who knew what meanness still boiled inside it? But the way she looked at me. Just that crooked bit of smile gave me a surge, and I felt I could do anything.
We were coming up fast on the bridge and the murk-making peculiar. He was waiting for us, crouching and sighting us down the length of a rifle he’d rested on the bridge’s handrail.
We ducked. I heard two shots. Looking up again, I saw that no one had been hit.
We were going under the bridge. In a moment we’d be out the other side and he’d have another shot at us. I couldn’t let him take it.
I turned and shouted Bridge! in hollowspeak, and the creature seemed to know just what I meant. The two tongues that weren’t holding on to our boat whipped upward, and with a wet slap each one wrapped around the bridge’s flimsy supports. All three tongues unreeled triangularly until they were pulled taut, like elastic stretched to the limit. The hollow was forced up out of the water, tethered between boat and bridge like a starfish.
The boat slowed so quickly, it was like someone had thrown the emergency brake; we were all tossed forward onto the floor. The bridge groaned and rocked, and the peculiar taking aim at us stumbled and dropped his gun. I thought that surely either the bridge would give or the hollow would—it was squealing like a stuck pig, as if it might rip down the middle—but as the peculiar bent to snatch his gun, it seemed the bridge would hold, which meant I’d traded all our momentum and speed for nothing. Now we weren’t even moving targets.
Let go! I screamed at the hollow, this time in its language.
It didn’t—the thing would never leave me of its own accord. So I rushed to the back of the boat and bellied over the stern. There was one of its tongues, knotted around the rudder. Remembering how Emma’s touch had once made a hollow’s tongue release her ankle, I pulled her over and told her to burn the rudder. She did—nearly falling over the side to make the reach—and the hollow squealed and let go.
It was like releasing a slingshot. The hollow flew away and slammed into the bridge with a splintering crash; the whole tottering contraption buckled and went tumbling into the water. At the same time, the back of our boat dropped, and the motor, once again submerged, flung us forward. The sudden acceleration toppled us like bowling pins. Sharon managed to hold on to the rudder, and righting himself, he steered us sharply away from a collision course with the canal wall. We flew down the spine of the Ditch, a black V of water shooting out behind us.
We hunched low should any more bullets fly. We seemed to be out of immediate danger. The vultures were somewhere behind us, and I couldn’t imagine how they’d catch us now.
Panting, Addison said, “That was the same creature we met in the Underground, wasn’t it?”
I realized I’d been holding my breath and so let it out, then nodded. Emma looked at me, waiting for more, but I was still processing, every nerve jangling with the strangeness of what had just happened. This much I knew: this time I’d nearly had him. It was as if, with each encounter, I dove a little deeper into the hollowgast’s nerve center. The words came easier, felt less foreign to my tongue, met less resistance from the hollow. Still, it was like a tiger onto which I’d managed to clap a dog leash. At any moment it might decide to turn and take a bite out of me, or any of us. And yet, for reasons beyond my understanding, it hadn’t.