Page 2 of The Woman in the Hollow
I jumped in my Jeep and started down the road, singing along to my ‘Spooky Season’ playlist the whole way up the highway until DG Greens came into view.
The building itself wasn’t much to write home about. It was a low brick and glass building that housed the store, but it had a much longer addition off the back—creepily windowless—that was home to our haunted house.
Between the manager of the garden center, the staff of eager teens, and me, I had to admit that the haunted house was pee-your-pants terrifying.
“You ready for this shit?” my manager asked. Domenico looked like he stepped right out of some mafia show and into the pumpkin patch. Did that make sense? No. But that was the only way to describe him. He was tall and fit, with a granite jaw, dark hair, and guarded black eyes.
Nothing about him suggested he should be in charge of class trips full of actual impressionable children. Yet, here he was. In all black with a really expensive-looking watch and a gold chain featuring a diamond-encrusted cross.
I mean, obviously, they were knock-offs. What garden center manager could afford that much diamond and gold?
“Absolutely,” I said, bouncing on my feet. “I mean, I need some pumpkin spice coffee, an apple cider donut or two, and then I’m ready. But yes. I’m so excited.”
“Can see that,” he said with a head shake.
“Oh, come on. You’re excited too! You put a lot of thought and work into the haunted woods and house.”
“Because I like scaring the shit out of people.”
Well, okay then.
Mission accomplished.
“That is part of the goal. Though that’s mostly an after-school part of the day.” For the most part, everything for the class trips was really toned down. The schools didn’t want to traumatize the kids. That was for the parents who came back later. “What do you need from me?”
“I dunno. Just… check with everyone and shit.”
Domenico wasn’t exactly thebestmanager I’d ever come across. In fact, aside from his contributions to ‘scaring the shit out of people,’ I wasn’t sure I’d ever actually seen him doing any kind of work. I was a little confused about how the garden center operated over the summer without me to try to pull things together.
I mean, Domenico hadn’t even ordered the extra hay bales we needed for the hayride. The center itself provided the straw we needed for the stuff-your-own scarecrow activity and the corn for the maze, but we needed the hay to sit on in the back of the cart. He also hadn’t stocked any of the fall and Halloween-themed gifts in the shop. Or the t-shirts for the garden center featuring really cool vintage Halloween designs.
But he sure stuffed a lot of black garbage bags, wrapped them in duct tape to resemble human bodies, and strung them in the trees.
So, balance, I guess.
I didn’t want his job, per se. Titles weren’t important to me. But maybe a raise for picking up his slack would be nice.
“The boss is going to be here today, right?” I asked Domenico as he followed me to the coffee cart, getting his usual bitter black coffee as I ordered my sugar-sweet pumpkin nonsense.
“Dante, yep.”
Dante.
That was the first time I’d heard his name. Interesting.
“You’ve met him?”
“He’s my cousin, so yeah.”
Oh. Okay. That actually made a lot more sense how Domenico kept a job he was clearly ill-suited for.
“Is he bringing his kids?”
“Dante? No. He don’t have any yet. No matter how much his ma is on his ass about it.”
“Oh. I figured he wanted to create all this magic for his own kids,” I said, waving out at everything we’d created. Had I busted my ass working fourteen-hour days since I started to bring it all together? Sure. But, God, it was worth it.
“No. But we are closing one night so all the family’s kids can come and go apeshit. Looks like we’re about to be invaded.” Domenico nodded his chin. Turning, I saw a big yellow bus making its way up the highway toward us.
