House of Hollow

Iris walks into the hallway of Grey’s smoky apartment, but the bull-man returns. He pulls out a gun and starts shooting, breaking a mirror. Vivi slams the door to Grey’s room, and bullets rip through the door. She’s shot in the arm, making Iris hysterical. The man batters the door, and the girls escape out the window, dropping to the ground and running.

Iris and Vivi dash through town to escape the bull-man. The sisters find safety in a cafe, where they peruse Grey’s salvaged belongings and use the barista’s first aid kit on Vivi’s arm. They find sketches of fashion designs and a tumbledown house that’s vaguely familiar, then their father’s notes. Gabe’s entries describe his joy at his daughters’ homecoming, then his mistrust and angst; he cites the girls only talking to each other, wandering their house as though they’ve never seen it, and their physical changes (their eyes turning black, their hair turning white, and Iris’s regrown baby teeth). He considers his paranoia a symptom of PTSD, as Cate and his therapist say, but still believes something is “wrong with all of them”—“especially the one that looks like Grey” (97). Gabe is afraid of the girls, asking where his children are before he writes, “I have come to a terrible conclusion.