509: The Hollowed Man

Synopsis

After a restless night at the Last Lighthouse, Dom pores over the journal from the briefcase, the Proverbs of the Never-Whence Pilgrim. It is a thin folio of ten cantos of riddling verse, translated from the Latin, with notes in the margins by Fiona. Her note on the title page says the pilgrim "must have been a mad one who fancied himself a poet" and that she fears she will end up the same, "but I feel that there is something here, something real." Simeon tries to treat the gash on Dom's head, without success. Ezra heads down to the kitchen to show innkeeper Emily Marnsarn how to make Grand Slams, and Hobo Joe, who has moved in with the group, demands one too.

Over breakfast the group reads the cantos aloud. The first warns that the hollow cannot be found by seeking, that it "will not take what you offer gladly, it will take what you clutch most tightly," and that "what is given to the hollow is never returned." In her notes, Fiona reveals her motive: "If this strength can free Sam from the Order forever, do I dare risk the price? What if the many must bleed for the few? What if Dominic?" Canto four, the "Threnody of the Burning Rite," leads the group to suspect that the great fire of 1914 was part of a ritual to open the way to the hollow. Fiona asks there whether the hollow requires actual lives. They also connect canto seven, the "Litany of the Aching Night," to Hannah Baker's lullaby, and they conclude that Hannah touched the hollow during the fire and was left behind. Canto six, the "Parable of the Vacant Tome," ends with "the vacant tome of the hollowed man." Fiona's note calls it a "terrifying magic of erasure." Canto eight, the "Dirge of the Dire Ones," describes beings that Fiona thinks may be "shaped by hollow power," which the group links to the figures in the briefcase.

Dom suspects that the hollow took his memories of Salem, and he lets Billy use Command of the Wizard on him: "Tell me what you did in Salem on June 25." Dom speaks in a flat voice, collapses and wakes remembering only flashes of light, shouting, fighting and his train pulling into the station. The others tell him that he came to Salem in 1914 with Hannah, days after Fiona arrived. Dom is stunned that he may have found Fiona years ago and forgotten it. The group wonders whether Dom was the sacrifice.

Weighing their leads (the Peabody Museum, Devereux Street, the Hawthorne Inn where Grayson stayed, and Luke Renz, the fisherman at the Widow's Wake tavern in Blubber Hollow who champions the "two-fire theory"), the group takes a cab. They drop Simeon and Billy at the Peabody Museum to research the Order with the mirror while the rest head on to the Widow's Wake.

Funny Moments

• "It might be time to put a moratorium on scooping."
• Ezra, the American, teaches Emily to make Grand Slams, while Dom gets beans on toast.
• Hobo Joe insists Billy invited him to stay: "Anyways, I'm here. I want a Grand Slam."
• Billy's Command of the Wizard is "your solution for everything." "It is. It works." "Don't trust him, he's going to make you take the cop's gun and run."
• "More drink now, search for wife later."
• Timeon's gloves of ogre strength: "Please, hollow, don't take my brother."
• "I don't think Rosie's ever been hollow in her life."

Notable Quotes

• "It will not take what you offer gladly, it will take what you clutch most tightly." —Proverbs of the Never-Whence Pilgrim, canto one
• "If this strength can free Sam from the Order forever, do I dare risk the price? What if the many must bleed for the few? What if Dominic?" —Fiona's notes
• "I'm sorry, you think I found Fiona years ago and then I just don't remember that I found her?" —Dom
• "The parable ends where it never began, in the vacant tome of the hollowed man." —canto six