The first thing that stands out about Andy Davidson’s The Hollow Kind is the exceptional writing. It’s as if Henry Thoreau went out into the woods, was captured by demonic trees whose roots bit into his flesh, and then wrote about the experience. What I’m trying to get at here is that Davidson’s great novel is freaking scary. Imagine something like Poltergeist, only it takes place on a Georgia estate and there’s something evil lurking underground that demands blood sacrifices. Oh, and there’s also a creepy guy who actually wants to live on the property.
Count me in. I love horror like The Hollow Kind that can keep you up at night. And when I say the writing is great, I’m not exaggerating. Take this moment, when a young boy named Max encounters something horrible in the old house he and his mother have moved into:
A woman’s face swims out of the darkness beneath the stairs, moaning and slavering, bits of red hair clinging to the white dome of a skull. A jaw that hangs like a broken cabinet door as the woman-thing tries to speak through a sudden well of black blood, and the tongue that comes slithering out is not a tongue at all, but a fat brown worm–
Oh, it gets better:
Suction on his arm, pressure, razor-blade teeth as the fingers become tendrils and the tendrils sink little teeth into his skin and the woman-thing yanks him hard, like she’s going to drag him right through the narrow gap in the stairs, like meat through a grinder, down into the dark with her–
Max and his mother Nellie should never have moved into the old house on the Redfern estate. What exists underground can’t be satiated, and it will go to great lengths to feed …
Dark Pathway: Dual Timelines
The Hollow Kind actually takes place in two timelines. One timeline follows Nellie and her son, Max, as they move onto the Redfern property long past its prime. The other timeline takes place in the past, following Nellie’s grandfather as he sets up a turpentine facility in a forest full of dark secrets. As creepy things begin to happen to Nellie and her son, the story switches back to the past where Nellie’s grandfather begins to feed dead bodies to the thing growing underground. In each of the timelines, tense family drama plays out behind the scenes: Nellie is fleeing an abusive husband, and her grandfather is unable to satisfy the monster lurking underground.
You can use dual timelines in your own story to add depth and mystery. It can also be fun for the reader, too. Nellie and Max never learn the entire history of the Redfern estate, but we as readers are privy to it through the flashback chapters. Davidson also does something very clever toward the end of the story, one that I think you should take to heart if you ever decide to split up your own writing into timelines. Davidson makes sure that the past and the present storylines converge as what remains of Nellie’s family all find themselves on the Redfern estate (don’t worry, this isn’t a spoiler … the ending is incredibly powerful and horrific).
Whenever you’re writing multiple timelines, always think about how to bring it all together, to ensure that there’s an interconnectedness. Keep that in mind and you’re guaranteed to keep people reading!
Ken Brosky is the author of The Beyond, a horror novel available through Timber Ghost Press. His work has been published in Grotesque and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, among others. He’s currently working on a screenplay and a new novel.
