Phantom Hollow You can't just snap your fingers and expect me to be there.

And so the boy had been driven from the village: first to the ruined glen, then to the woods just beyond, until he could run no further and came to collapse where the river pinwheeled.

His head was throbbing. He was dizzy, disoriented, and stunk of old blood.

Here where the water churned the fallen leaves, where everything smelled steeped, wet, and dead, the boy who nobody wanted sprawled carelessly, as if to invite the water to crawl up the bank and snare him.