Settler tales, miners’ lore and carnival nightmares, filled with the Hollow and grown huge. Every one has a tell, an answer and a window. Every big one comes apart.
A few of the more than twenty. Each one guards a crossing, and each one fights with a painted super move that takes the whole screen. The statues you see are found in the world before the fight.
First grave on a new knoll goes to a dog. That's the custom. This one has guarded the knoll ever since, and the Hollow gave it a head for every grave it couldn't keep.
Each head lights before it bites. Learn the order. Break a head and it loses that bite.
Its statue, found before the fightA suit of plow iron that was never quite finished, grown to the size of a barn. It guards the first crossing because it never let anyone cross.
Sweep, slam, charge. Its plates fly off, and without them it fights with its fists.
Its statue, on the summit pathAntlers of sycamore limbs, eyes like two tree rings. The trees say it has no story of its own.
It paws twice before it charges down the slope.
Its statue, under the eyrieA golden eagle that learned to wait for the drum. The Hollow gave it a second head, and it doesn't care which side either one is on.
Its shadow grows on the ground before it stoops. Step out.
Its statue, by the tippleThe weigh-boss who weighed every car short. The Hollow gave him a ledger for a chest. He says she's in the book too. The oldest account.
Every debt comes due. So does his.
Her statue, at the drowned midwayThe pond hag every mother warned of to keep children out of deep water. So many believed in her that the Hollow could grow her out of the telling.
When the green grin opens, parry.
The Ferris wheel that lit the whole valley every summer night. When the park closed it kept turning in the dark for years on nothing. The Hollow lit it again.
When a car's lamps go red, step off.
No pictures yet. You’ll see them soon enough.
The mud devil under the ferry crossing. It swallowed shoes, letters and lanterns until it was the size of the ferry. It doesn't hate anyone. It's full.
When the pool sinks toward its mouth, swim for your life.
The tale of the thing whose tail was cut off and eaten. It came back every night, scratching, calling for it. It lives upside down now, still calling.
It calls its own name, then drops from above. Don't stand under the beam.
A mountain panther that learned to scream like a mother calling her children. Don't answer it.
When the crickets stop, it is about to scream. Face it.
An empty coat with coins for eyes. He takes the toll and never raises the pike. He keeps a ledger of everyone who ever crossed, and she isn't in it.
Pay in blows. After him, the pike stands raised.
A courier on fire from the inside, riding ahead with an order he is never allowed to deliver.
Hoofbeats from the far edge, then the sword line. Jump it.
Three times a man's height, green pennies on his eyes. He carried everyone who ever left the valley, and never gave anyone back.
He'd take her if he could. He's not allowed.
A picket who lost his head in the rout. His nerve, the old men say, not his neck. Now a column of fog wearing every coat from that day.
A hundred barrels in the fog. Drop flat.
The night bird that calls by the house before a death. It has called so long it believes the calling is what does it.
Count its calls. If it stops, run.
Knockers knocked to warn miners before a fall. This one's crew stopped listening. Now he knocks to call the rock down.
Three knocks, then the roof. Learn the count.
The spirit in the coal that took a share of every lunch. The company stopped letting the miners leave it. He took his share another way.
Leave him your bread. Pa always did.
A striped coat and a megaphone with no one in it. He talked the valley in every summer and never told one truth. He offers her a ticket out. It's fake.
He cries a number. That many things fall on her marks.
Raw Head and Bloody Bones, the bogey grandmothers made up to keep children from the well. Told so many times that it came true. It was never a child.
River stones in arcs, then it drags you under.
Every enemy above fodder has a pattern: a tell, one answer, and a window to punish.
The newest things to crawl out of the valley, shown as model renders before they take the field.
Dragged up out of the burying ground, packed with dirt and roots. It grabs, it bites, and it sinks into the ground to come up under you.
A bloated flatboat man with a boat hook. Burst his belly and he comes at you thin and fast.
Coal-boom dead with a pick. It leaves the bad air behind when it falls. Don't stand in it.
A long rifle grown into a dead stump. A glint runs down the barrel before it fires.
A fieldstone marker with nothing cut on it and grave fire in the crack. It spits in arcs.
A burl on the great sycamore that fans its seed balls onto marked ground.
A tipple chute that lobs burning coal, then spills a load that rolls along the floor.
