A Little DABS Will Do Ya!
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A Little DABS Will Do Ya!
Hollow Creek - Tell it Right
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Next on Retreat at Hollow Creek…
The writers thought telling the truth would set things right.
But Hollow Creek isn’t interested in the truth.
It’s interested in balance.
A photograph begins to change.
A guestbook writes its own rules.
And the house demands something none of them are willing to give.
Because at Hollow Creek…
every story comes with a cost.
And this time, the river wants a witness.
Previously, on retreat at Hollow Creek, at first light four writers told the truth as if it were the only door that still opened. Clara admitted to hiding letters addressed to Evelyn Ward. Letters that might have been meant for the girl in the locket. Myra confessed she ignored a grieving mother's plea, believing silence could spare her. Elias revealed the warning line he'd cut from a novel, words that might have taught them the rules of this place. Jonas owned the three breaths he once waited while a boy leaned too far over a rail, then let others retell the moment until he sound brave. The Creek listened. It tried to seat Jonas in a photograph of a 1999 doc wrote one for one on the back and called the lodge with a command Tell it right. At the end, the photograph warm in Jonas' hands, a fifth shadow stepped onto the dark image, and a child's voice rose from the floorboards. One of you already lied. Morning is the color of an old receipt, faded but legible. The lodge is a throat that wants to clear itself. Three people sit around a table meant for four. Two silver lockets rest on the mantle, lids ajar like careful mouths. On the table lies the dark photograph, warmer than paper should be, the faces of children sharpened by attention. The names on the back, Lena Ward, Tamson Cole, Peter Gardner, and Noah Bell seem to lift slightly, as if the letters are standing up to be counted. We need to answer that voice before it finishes the sentence for us. One of you already lied. It's fate. It wants us to turn on each other.
SPEAKER_02We'll turn toward each other instead. If there's a lie, we name it ourselves. We decide what the word already means.
SPEAKER_03I'll go first. It said already, not just now. So it's reaching backward. Fine. I told you it was three breaths at the lake. It wasn't. It was five. Two extra that I shaved off to keep the story from making me look worse than I already do. That's my correction.
SPEAKER_01Uh, thank you. Mine is, I said I left the attic letters unopened. Well, that's not completely true. I slipped one, but just a corner now, and stopped when I saw the first word was a name Lena. I closed it like a door, didn't want to be responsible for opening. I let myself believe I hadn't read it because I hadn't read all of it, right? That's a lie by measurement. But I read enough to owe someone an answer. Then I'll go next. Because what I'm about to say sits under everything else I've said. Samson Cole on the photograph. She was my sister. I didn't say it because it burns when I say it. I've spent 19 years choosing softer words like inspiration and influence and loss, as if changing the vocabulary would change the fact. She didn't drown at Howl Creek. The bridgery was for later and somewhere else. But she knew these names. And I let the world pretend she was just a story in my book. That was convenient. It wasn't true enough.
SPEAKER_03He just saved it. In trouble.
SPEAKER_02There's more for me. The line I cut, the warning about naming the shape a place takes, that wasn't the only change. When I sent the book back to the editor, I pretended the change had always been there. I told the author whose ending I revised that nothing important had been altered. I thought I was protecting him from a fight with the publisher. I was protecting myself from admitting I'd chosen approval over accuracy. That's the lie.
SPEAKER_01There's a quiet that rooms make for people who stop pretending. This is that quiet. The fire seems to approve by choosing not to crack just then. The lockets hold still. Beneath the table, the floorboards accept the weight of honest feet. The photographer shivers. Jonas steadies it. The fifth shadow on the dock moves closer to the children in the picture. Not as a throat, threat, but as a listener ready to hear what comes next. If the voice is satisfied with corrections, it will tell us. If not, it's gonna escalate. We don't wait for escalation. We define the next step ourselves. The instruction wasn't pay it right, it was tell it right.
SPEAKER_02So we take telling literally out loud. No paper for now. Words only. Places like this hate being narrated by the people they're trying to own.
SPEAKER_03Then let's narrate. Like we're building a raft.
SPEAKER_01They pull their chairs closer, fingers splat flat on the table, palms down like witnesses. The dark photograph sits in the center like a small stage that's decided to listen for once.
SPEAKER_02We are in the Hollow Lodge at Hollow Creek. Time is warning. Weather, honest. Four chairs, three bodies, one absence we refuse to promote into a legend. The lockets on the mantle are open and quiet. The photograph is warmer than paper should be. We are holding each other in sentences because we don't trust the air.
SPEAKER_01We speak names as first anchors. Lena Ward, Tamson Cole, Peter Gardner, Noah Vale, Jonas Vale. We say them without pleading. Names don't like begging, they like accuracy. We declare intentions. No one is traded. No one is balanced against a column. No one is collected like library books. If the legend demands a womper one, it can count the words we give it and take that instead.
SPEAKER_03We confess the motive under our bravery. We're afraid, afraid of being misreprimed, misremembered as the worst versions of ourselves. Afraid of the way the creek finds pressure points. Afraid that our work, the stories we ever dare to write, built a bridge for something that wants to talk into this house and rewrite us. We say that out loud, so fear can't sit in the corner and pretend to be our friend.
SPEAKER_01Something adjusts in the room that isn't temperature. The board stop complaining. The mugs settle. The clock forgets to tick for a moment. It feels like permission. Then a sound from nowhere in particular, thin as a pencil line, a single drip of water landing on stone. They look at the mantle. Neither locket is weeping. The drip came from the wall above the hearth, where there is no pipe, no steam, only wood. Another drip, then a third, a line of wet like a sentence gaining confidence. Oh, it's writing. Read it as it forms. The wet gathers itself into three shapes. The curved outline of letters without ink. W I T. Then a pause long enough to make a person doubt. N E S S. Witness?
SPEAKER_02It wants someone to attest. This place loves signatures. It hates accounts that flow without a name on the bottom.
SPEAKER_01Hanson witnessed once. She wrote the names on the back of the dock picture. She's not in this room to sign for us now. Evan Wood sent letters to my house. She must have witnessed something. She's not in this room either.
SPEAKER_02We are. We can witness each other. We don't need permission. We need nouns.
SPEAKER_03Then make a page. Not one it brings. One of ours.
SPEAKER_01Elias tears the sheet from his notebook. A humble thing with a coffee ring, like a badge. He writes at the top in capital letters, a phrase none of them rehearsed, but all of them knew was coming. Balance Clause. Okay, read it as you write, and we so we don't forget who it belongs to.
SPEAKER_02Whereas a taking was attempted without consent, and whereas a story was mistold by omission, we the undersign restore by offering a true account one page for one breadth, one paragraph for one step, one name for one return.
SPEAKER_01Add this we refuse barter and bodies. We trade only in sentences and the years they cost.
SPEAKER_02Who signs first?
SPEAKER_01I will. Me next. I saved the mother's letters to prove I wasn't heartless. Instead of answering it to prove I wasn't. Mara Cole. There. If anything tries to take my name, it has to go through my handwriting first.
SPEAKER_02Bly as hell. And because the ledger loves rules, write this beneath our names. Witnesses refuse guardianship. Words are fences. Build one.
SPEAKER_03The moment I sign anything, the paper will try to count me as payment. So I won't sign. I'll say instead, I attest by breath. And I'll stay within arm's length. That's a kind of signature the creek can't swallow.
SPEAKER_01They set the page in center of the table. The lodge breathes in. Loud enough to be heard. The wet letters over the hearth drain down the wall and vanish as if the word witness has been accepted in one language and no longer needs translation. From the hall, the old wooden mail slot gives a polite metal cough. No footsteps, no knock, just the small indignation of a door that's been asked to perform. Something has been slipped into the house without crossing the threshold like a guest. I'll check. Nobody following till I say. She disappears into the hall and returns with an oil skin envelope tied in twine. It's dry as if it never touched weather. The handwriting on the front is careful, insistent. Hollow lodge for those who keep count.
SPEAKER_02We open it together.
SPEAKER_01They cut the twine. Inside lies a single printed form on thick paper, the color of new bone, lines and boxes. A bureaucrat's dream of an afterlife. Across the top, written in blue, are the words Guardian release. The fields are already populated in a hand that mimics type too perfectly to be human. Ward Lena Guardian Baal Noah Guardian. You'll tell me I'm mistaken, and I will still read it aloud. Mara Cole. No, no.
SPEAKER_03That's not a mistake. That's malice. He's trying to force a roll.
SPEAKER_02Hold the paper to the light. The ink might confess what the form won't.
SPEAKER_01They tilt the page. Then it will be embedded impressions. The faint brushes of letters written hard rise like pale fish. Under Myra Cole, there's a ghost line. Older than the ink, not the same hand. Evelyn Ward. Under Noah Vale, a dash and a faint stamped word. Collected. And under Lena Ward, a smudge where a last name tried to form and was wiped away. It's forging corrections using names that already matter to us. It wants to make Mara the newsstand. Then we refuse. We don't sign forms written by water. We add to our own clause instead. We write a counter entry.
SPEAKER_02Counter entry. Core Mara, not collected. Witness, Elias Hill. Witness, Claire Wynn. Attestation by breath, Jonas fail.
SPEAKER_03Say it with me so it lands. Not collected. Not collected.
SPEAKER_01The lockets answer with a sound like swallowing, but nothing is taken. The fire does, the fire does not dim. The photograph remains on the table. The fifth shadow in the dark image turns its head towards the imagery camera, imaginary camera, and pauses, as if listening to a word it hasn't heard in years. No. We're not done. The voice will demand a guardian again. It likes the word because it can twist it.
SPEAKER_02Then we redefine it out loud. A guardian is not a take. A guardian is a witness who refuses to let a ledger own a life. Say it.
SPEAKER_01A guardian is a witness who refuses to let a ledger own a life. Above the hearth, water beats again, lines itself into a single word with exaggerated patience. Choose. Uh it wants us to pick. I will accept any answer that divides us. Then we choose each other. We choose that no one signs alone. We choose that every name said today is said by all of us.
SPEAKER_02We choose to hold hand at arm's length and deny the door the gap it needs.
SPEAKER_01They stand, hand's length. The lodge approves by refusing to crack. The male slot whispers, disappoint, and does not offer more paper.
SPEAKER_03I can feel it hunting edges. It's testing the place where my shoulder meets the room. Like it's measuring me for a soup I don't intend to wear. Describe it.
SPEAKER_01Make it obvious to itself.
SPEAKER_03Cold, but not winter. Wet, but not rain. It has patience, but not curiosity. It wants a conclusion without a scene. I can resist that. I know how to make scenes.
SPEAKER_01Then tell it one. Tell it the one where we live.
SPEAKER_03Alright. The four of us come here to tell stories. We respect drafts, not debt. We found a creek that learned math. It wrote a rule. One for one. And we're rewriting the math four for four. Names for names. Witnesses for witnesses. If it insists on a signature, we can have our posture. If it insists on a guardian, it can have our circle. If it insists on silence, it can be disappointed.
SPEAKER_01The temperature lifts a degree by conceding they are stubborn. The photograph cools in Jonah's hands. The fifth shadow on the dock sits down with the children as if exhausted from standing that long in a story. A small thug from the office doorway where the old lodge guessbook lives and dies by weeks. No footsteps, just the heavy sound of leather deciding to be noticed. A book lies open on the side table, though no one remembers opening it.
SPEAKER_02The guess book.
SPEAKER_01It shouldn't be open to that page. Read from here. Don't bring it to the table. Make the book come to our rules. Elias goes only as far as the doorway. He bends carefully. The page is old but not ancient. Written in a meticulous hand, lines ruled by a straight edge and a conscious dates from nineteen ninety nine. Names that should be familiar and are Ward Lena checked in.
SPEAKER_02Core Tamson checked in. Gardner Peter. The cigarnian male Noah signed out noted collected witness the space is blank. The word witness is there with no name next to it.
SPEAKER_01That's what it wants to make us fill the blank with one of us. If one name stands alone, there it will count that person as exchangeable. So we write over it with our voices. Three names and the fourth by breath.
SPEAKER_02Witness Elias Hell.
SPEAKER_01Witness Clara Wynn. Witness Mira Cole.
SPEAKER_03Witness Jonas Vale.
SPEAKER_01The book does not link their words, but the room does. The blank space in the guest book loses a little of its hunger. The way a mouth closes when it realizes the food is not for it. The page lifts once and lies back down. An acknowledgement or an insult. Difficult to say. Okay, I'm going to do one more thing. Not for it, but for us. Hmm. Let me see. I'm gonna take the book, Dr. Photograph, Clause on the page, lay them side by side. I'm going to write a direct sentence. No one can misread. We refuse to participate in the arithmetic of grief. There is ugly. It's true. Now add this. Add this. We will carry letters to the person they were meant for, even if that person has to be found in the water.
SPEAKER_02Add we will say names until they stop needing to not.
SPEAKER_03And we will not let the worst version of ourselves write the ending.
SPEAKER_01They look at what they've made. It's not beautiful, it's better. It's a form the creek didn't draft. The lodge gives the good old sound of wood settling into a decision. The fire finds a higher whisper. The water word above the hearth tries one last time to assert its presence. Spelling C H O. The letters break apart, slide, and rearrange themselves without fishing. The landline rings once, then stops. The handside lifts a hair and settle, like a nod from something that finally decided to speak in their language. Tell it right. We are keep listening. There's more. There's always more. A giraff moves down the hallway and into the main room with the shyness of a guest. It brings a smell of wet stone, of iron, of something that remembers bridges. The lockets close with soft clicks, then open again like eyes that have slept enough to be kind. Jonas, do you hear anything besides us?
SPEAKER_03Well, not here. There. On the dock. In the picture. Like someone is walking up behind them. Describe. Light feet, not threatening, careful. The way a person walks when they don't want to scare fish. Lena? Maybe. Maybe the idea of her. Maybe the part of her that the creek couldn't catalog.
SPEAKER_01We should say what this house is out loud. If it hears us claim it, it has to argue instead of take.
SPEAKER_02This is a lodge in the woods where four people come to remember why stories matter. It has a table and a fireplace and a guest book that wants confused attendants with consent. It has a door that thinks it's very clever, and a mail slot that wants to be a messenger. It has windows that learn how to rattle like words. It is not a courtroom. It is not a vault. It is ours.
SPEAKER_01And the creek.
SPEAKER_02The creek is a ledger that turns into water, so it can keep moving and keep counting. It collects where it should witness. We will teach it the difference.
SPEAKER_01Something in the Rathers relaxes. The fifth shadow on the rock sits, feet dangling over the suggestion of water. The children in a photo look less posed and more like themselves. Even the heat of the paper eases. Say it again. Not collected. Not collected. Not collected.
SPEAKER_03I can breathe better, like the room widened by a rib.
SPEAKER_01Good. Now we plan the part where the day tries to renegotiate. We're not naive, it will.
SPEAKER_02We hold the photograph, our page, and the locket that behaves itself. If something knocks, we answer with a sentence, not a step. If something writes, we read it and then rewrite it out loud. If something demands a guardian, we give it a definition instead of a signature.
SPEAKER_01We also owe the future of promise. When we leave, we take the letters to their addresses, even if the address is stoned with the name. We take the book from Elias' closet and publish the warning line in whatever form will keep it alive. We'll call Jonas's father again and ask about Noah in a voice that doesn't flinch. We look up Ward, Evelyn, not as a ghost, but as a woman who signed too many lines alone.
SPEAKER_03And we eat because stubbornness needs bread.
SPEAKER_01They do the practical things. Breakfast like a ritual. Coffee like a treaty with the day. While water boils, the lockets remain open and unremarkable, which is remarkable. While cups pour, the landline stays polite. While plates cling, the photograph sits patient. Halfway through Brave Toast, the house decides to test them. Every unlatched thing unlatches, not all at once, not theatrical. A polite sequence. First a tiny click from the east window, then a soft surrender of the front latch, then a whisper from the back door that is not when so much as suggestion. No one moves.
SPEAKER_02We narrate instead. Doors are invitations. We decline without argument. Windows are glances. We return them without opening. House, you are not a corridor. You are a room. Remember that and we will respect your age.
SPEAKER_01One by one the latches re-catch without being touched. The room rolls its shoulders, embarrassed to have been dramatic. Somewhere under the floor, the creep resettles its stones like someone fixing a blanket. Good house, good house. Don't flatter it. It gets ideas. All right. We've told it right for an hour. Now we listen right. If it wants something else, it will ask. If it doesn't, it will try to trick. The trying arrives as a second envelope, thin as a promise, slid under the door with surgical politeness. No name on the outside. Inside a strip of photograph paper, cut to locket size, glossy, black at first, then developing fast to a slow signature line with a name written clearly beneath. Not Myra Cole. Not Elias Hale. Not Clara Wynn. Evelyn Ward. Signing from a place that doesn't take ink. Or it's showing us a signature it stole. Either way, it's insisting that someone already did the thing we're refusing to do. That's a weapon.
SPEAKER_02Then we say it, we say what it is without swallowing the blade. You are showing us a mother signing as guardian because you want us to agree that guardians are takers. We refuse a definition. If she signed anything, it was to stop a mouth from closing over a child. Say it with me. Evelyn Ward was a witness.
SPEAKER_03And if you need a signature now, you can have mine by breath again. I'm here. I am staying. I consent to nothing that counts me as currency.
SPEAKER_01The strip of photo paper turns gray and goes blank, as if limited to the chemistry at borrow. The locket nearest the mantle huffs a single drop of water and then behaves. The docket photograph, which has been mostly polite, does something it hasn't done before. It turns itself face down. On the back, beneath the four names, a new line etches itself letter by letter in that careful school-trained hand. One page for one return. Oh, for heaven's sakes, we've already wrote that on our clause. It's confirming or mocking.
SPEAKER_02Either way, it's language. We can meet language.
SPEAKER_01Then read our page to it again. All of it. Slow. As if the paper were a person who needs the dignity of cadence. They read. The house listens. The creek lowers its voice. The world allows three people to be stubborn in peace for the length of a kettle cooling. For a stretch, gracious minute, it seems enough. Then the guest book on the side table lifts its cover as if to yarn. It doesn't yarn. It chooses a new page, blank and white with a margin too wide for comfort. The creek likes margins. They look like permission.
SPEAKER_03Don't let it write itself. Then write.
SPEAKER_02Oh not collected. We wrote.
SPEAKER_01The blank page drinks the words by proximity, not ink impression. Enough. Then with the arrogance of a place that has had its way too often, the page pushed back. A single sentence appears in letters that arrive one by one like a person descending a wooden staircase, each step measured for effort. Guardian presence or house forfeited. The brass halfs as guest book snap shut, even though there is no half. The windows unlatch again, not politely this time, but as a coordinated loss of manners. The front door swings itself open on a wind that knows everyone's initials. The fire crouches like a small athlete about to be knocked off his feet. No, no, hold house, hold. Close rings.
SPEAKER_02Hands.
SPEAKER_01Do not move. Cole pours in with the authority of bad law. The room dims without the sun helping it. The mantle it loses a whisper of water the way a mouth exhales a thaw. The dock photograph sticks to the table as if afraid of the air. From beneath the floorboards, Hollow Creek turns a corner it has turned a thousand times and decided this time to rise. Jonas grips the table with both hands. Clara snatches the claw's paper and presses it flat with the palm as if stopping a kite from learning how to leave. Elias steps between the guest book and the open door with the sort of courage people laugh at when they're not the ones needing it. The voice returns. Not from the phone, not from the wall, but from the wood of the house itself. Grain speaking grain. Joust confining in joust. Soft as a mother teaching a name. Choose a witness. The sentence hangs in the coal like a lantern that doesn't get to be warm. The windows are open. The door is open. The creek is at the threshold. Polite in the way a flood is polite until it chooses not to be. The page under Clara's hand warms as if it were being signed by someone with nobody left to bring to a pen. The locket opens a fraction wider and waits. Blackout. Next time on Hollow Creek, the house has spoken. The river has made its demands, and the only witness it will accept may not be alive to give it. But at Hollow Creek, refusing the river has consequences. Tune in next time if you dare.