The Gift of the Hollow Hills

I was eleven that winter, small for my age, and the world still smelled of coal smoke and pine needles. My brothers, Marcus and Eddie, were giants to me, five and six years older, with secrets I could only guess at. We lived in a rambling house on the edge of a town that clung to the foothills like a barnacle to a rotting hull. My mother, a woman of sharp eyes and sharper tongue, ruled our home with lists and schedules. My father, a quiet ox of a man, did the heavy lifting, both literal and metaphorical.

That Christmas, we drove out to my aunt and uncle’s farm, a place called Hollow Hills, buried in the narrow valleys between the ridges. The road twisted like a snake that had swallowed a goat, and the trees pressed in, bare and black against the grey sky. I remember the car’s heater coughing warm air against my legs, and the way the frost painted the windows with ferns of ice. I was too young to notice that my mother’s mouth was set in a line, or that my father kept glancing at the rearview mirror as if he expected something to chase us.

We arrived to a house that sagged with age, its porch held up by wooden columns that looked like bones. Inside, it was a swarm of cousins and aunts and uncles, all loud and red-faced from the heat of the kitchen. The tree was a monstrosity, dragging its branches on the floor, shedding needles like tears. We exchanged gifts in a frenzy of paper and ribbon, but I remember that when Marcus slit the tape on a present from Uncle Roy, he froze. The box was plain, wrapped in brown paper, and the label read For Marcus, with love. He peeled back the paper, and I saw the cover of a board game, something called The Hollow Hills, with a picture of a hill that looked like a sleeping giant. His face went pale, and he shoved the thing back in the paper, trying to look casual.

Eddie noticed. He gave Marcus a look that I didn’t understand, but now I think it was fear. They had a hushed argument in the corner, and Eddie said something about ‘the hills are watching.’ I thought they were being silly, but my mother overheard, and she went still, her hand hovering over a plate of biscuits. She said, ‘We open our gifts properly in this house,’ and she snatched the box from Marcus and tore it open herself. Inside was the game, and a note that said, ‘To the boy who listens, the hills will speak.’ She threw the note into the fire, but I saw it curl and blacken, and for a moment I thought I saw letters crawl like worms across the flame.

We had dinner, a huge bird and potatoes and gravy that dripped like blood. The adults drank too much, and the laughter grew louder, more brittle. I was sitting on the floor near the radiator when I heard it: a low hum, like a distant horn, coming from the window. I looked out, but the hill behind the house was just a black shape against a darker sky. Then I saw lights, tiny flames bobbing along the base of the hill, as if people were walking with lanterns. But it was Christmas, and no one would be out there. I asked my mother, but she said it was just the neighbors’ fireflies. It was December. There are no fireflies.

Later, while the adults played cards, we kids were sent to the attic to play with the old toys. There was a pile of moldy books and a rocking horse with cracked eyes. Marcus carried the board game up there, and we set it up on a dusty table. The box was heavier than it looked, and when we opened it, there was a board with a map of hills and valleys, and pieces that were shaped like little trees and stones. The rulebook was written in cramped handwriting, and I couldn’t make sense of it. Eddie said, ‘Let’s play,’ and he rolled the dice. The first roll came up a six, and the little tree piece moved by itself, sliding along the board to a space marked The Hollow Path. We stared. Eddie laughed, but it was a nervous laugh. Then Marcus rolled, and his stone piece moved to The Crying Brook, and I heard a sound like water over stones, but there was no water in the attic.

I rolled last, and my piece, a tiny house, skittered to a space called The Forgotten Door. There was a click, and the attic door behind us swung open. We all turned, but there was no one there. My heart hammered. The wind moaned through the eaves, and the floorboards creaked. I saw Marcus’s hand tremble as he put the game back in the box. He said, ‘We have to bury it.’ Eddie agreed. They took the game downstairs to the yard, and I watched from the attic window as they dug a hole under the old oak tree and buried the box. The snow had started to fall, big fat flakes that swallowed the light. When they came back up, their faces were white, and they wouldn’t talk about it.

On the drive home, I was in the back seat, half asleep, when I heard that hum again, louder now, and the car’s engine sputtered. My father cursed under his breath and pulled over. He got out to check the engine, and I saw the hills on either side of the road, looming, closer than they should have been. The trees were silhouetted against a moon that was too bright, and I saw shapes moving in the shadows, tall and thin, like men made of sticks. My mother told me to close my eyes and count to a hundred. I did, but I counted wrong, because I opened them at fifty to see a face pressed against the window, pale, with eyes like holes. It was gone when I blinked.

We made it home, and I thought we were safe. But that night, as I lay in bed, I heard the hum again, and the cold seeped through the walls. I got up and looked out my window. The street was empty, but the lamp across the road flickered, and I saw a figure standing under it, too tall, its head brushing the lamp. It was holding something—a board game box. It raised its arm and pointed at me. I screamed, and my parents came running, but when they looked, the figure was gone. They said I had a nightmare.

But I know what I saw. And I know that the next morning, when we checked the yard, there was a fresh mound of earth under the oak tree at my aunt’s farm, but we were miles away. And I know that Eddie started waking up at 3:33 every morning for months, and he’d whisper, ‘The hills are hungry,’ before he even spoke to anyone.

Years passed, and we never spoke of it. Marcus became a geologist, of all things, and he went to work in the mountains. Eddie moved to the city, but he always said he could feel the ground humming beneath him. I still see that figure in my dreams, holding the game, its mouth open in a silent invitation. And sometimes, on quiet nights, I think I hear the dice rolling in my closet, and a voice whispering, ‘Come play.’ I have never gone back to that house. But the hills, they follow you. They follow you in your mind, and there’s no burying that.

I am old now, my memory frayed at the edges, but I remember that Christmas with a clarity that cuts. I remember the look on Marcus’s face when he saw the box, the note in the fire, the lights on the hill, and the face at the window. I remember what we buried under the oak, and what came unburied. And I know that when I die, I will be buried in the ground, and I will feel the hills around me, and they will whisper my name, and I will answer. Because some gifts are for a lifetime, and some are for eternity. That Christmas, Uncle Roy gave us a gift that keeps on giving. And I wish, to this day, that we had never opened it.