What the Hollow Remembers
The town forgot the name of the forest long before she moved there.
On the maps, it was just Old Grounds.
But the locals whispered another name — The Stillwood.
They said things didn't grow there anymore.
Not properly.
Not after the fire.
Elena didn't believe them.
She never did.
The night she wrote the last letter, the air felt heavy — thick with that familiar dampness, like earth pressed against her skin.
Her light flickered again, pulsing with every heartbeat.
The walls were whispering.
Not words this time, but rhythm — a pulse, a memory.
She whispered back, "I'm listening."
And the floor breathed.
When she opened her eyes, she wasn't in her apartment anymore.
She was standing in a field.
Barefoot again. The air smelled like rain that hadn't fallen yet.
In the distance — the tree.
The hollow stretched open, wider than it had ever been. The edges pulsed faintly, like lungs inhaling.
She took a step forward, the grass crunching under her feet.
Every sound echoed — too loud, too slow.
Like time itself had gone soft.
"Elena," a voice called from somewhere inside.
It was soft, almost tender. Familiar.
She froze.
"Who are you?"
The voice laughed quietly — and it was her own.
The ground rippled beneath her, the soil breathing, shifting.
Faces formed for a second beneath the grass — fleeting, trapped, dissolving.
She saw her own reflection among them — not the girl who came back, but the one who never did.
The one who stayed behind when they were thirteen.
The one who whispered the pact first.
"We'll never be apart. No matter what they take."
And then the tree answered them.
It had taken something, and given something else back.
Something not quite human.
Elena pressed her hand against her chest, feeling the faint heartbeat beneath her skin. It wasn't steady. It stuttered like the tapping beneath her floor.
"What did we promise?" she asked.
The ground trembled.
The hollow widened, black and breathing.
"To keep the door open."
She stumbled backward, shaking. "No. No, we closed it. We came back. We—"
"You came back hollow."
And suddenly, she remembered the night they returned six years ago — the moment the forest let them go.
They'd woken up beside the old tree, clothes torn, hands dirty.
Elena had whispered to Mara, "Don't tell them what we saw."
Because deep down, she knew.
They hadn't escaped.
They'd only been released.
The wind howled through the hollow now, and she could hear voices within — laughter, crying, whispers that sounded like her parents, like Mara.
She stepped closer, trembling, drawn by a pull she couldn't resist.
The bark felt warm under her hands.
She pressed her forehead against it and whispered, "If I open it again, will it stop?"
The hollow pulsed in answer.
And then the whisper — "Welcome back."
The world bent around her.
Light fractured.
For a moment, she saw herself from above — a figure standing before the tree, her shadow stretching into its mouth like it belonged there.
Then everything went black.
When her eyes opened, she was in her apartment again.
The light was dim.
The clock on the wall read 3:09 a.m.
Her feet were muddy.
Her hair smelled like smoke.
And across her mirror, written in something dark and wet, were the words:
"You left the door open."