The Hollow Places

1) "Earl believes strongly in Jesus, Moses, the healing power of crystals, the Freemasons, the Illuminati, that aliens landed at Roswell but the government is suppressing it, secret histories, faith-healing, snake-handling, that there is an invention that will replace gasoline but the oil companies are suppressing it, chemtrails, demon-possession, the astonishing powers of Vicks VapoRub, and that there’s proof that aliens contacted the Mayans and the Aztecs and probably the Egyptians, but the scientists are suppressing it. He believes in Skunk Ape, Chupacabras, and he positively adores Mothman. He is not Catholic, but he believes in the miracle of Fatima, visions of Mary appearing on toast, and he is nearly positive that the end times are upon us, but seems to be okay with this, provided it does not interfere with museum hours."

2) "The final object in the box was wedged crosswise to fit. It was a wooden carving, about the size of my forearm. Uncle Earl unwrapped it on the counter and paused, slowly crumpling the newspaper in his hands. 'Yech,' I said. 'That’s a creepy one.' He picked up the card and read, 'Carved corpse-otter effigy, Danube area, circa 1900.' 'Corpse-otter?' 'That’s what Woody says….' Uncle Earl slid off the stool and actually came out from behind the counter to study the carving from both sides. 'What a strange piece.'"

3) "If you play video games, sometimes you’ll encounter a bug where you suddenly fall through the world. Something goes wonky and the landscape that is pretending to be solid suddenly isn’t. And you fall through and suddenly you see that the whole virtual world is just a skin a pixel deep, and you’re looking at it from the back, like a stage set viewed from behind. All the shapes are still there, all the rocks and mountains and trees, but inverted. You can stand inside things that looked solid just a minute ago and look up through trees that are suddenly chimneys. I was getting the strangest feeling that the willows were somehow like that. If I dug one up, it wouldn’t have roots, it would just be attached to the sand, a thin willow-shaped skin made of the same stuff as the islands and the river. As if the willows and the river were… not artificial, exactly, but behind them was something vast and hollow. Hollow, but not empty."

4) "I closed my eyes against the light, which didn’t help. On the backs of my eyelids, I could picture my friends and neighbors running down the street while some unseen thing overhead hummed and chimed and unraveled their flesh until they fell down in their tracks, not alive but not nearly dead enough."