Chapter One: Return to Black HollowThe sky was already bruised purple when Zeke Jackson rolled into Black Hollow.
The town looked worse than he remembered—shops boarded up, windows dusty, streetlamps flickering with what little electricity the aging grid still managed to push through. A cold fog hugged the cracked asphalt as if trying to swallow the town whole.
It had been fifteen years since Zeke left. He swore he'd never come back. But a letter—mailed, of all things—changed that.
It was from Uncle Warren, the only family he had left, and it simply read:
"Zeke,
If you're reading this, it means I failed. Come back. It's waking up.
Don't trust the ground.
-W"
No return address. No explanation. Just that.
Zeke leaned on the steering wheel of his pickup truck, engine idling as he stared at the outline of his uncle's house at the end of Hollow Street. The last time he stood in that house, his parents were still alive. The memory of their disappearance pressed against the back of his skull like a migraine.
The town never found their bodies. Just a cellar door left wide open and an empty hole in the earth beneath it. The ground had collapsed in on itself, swallowing everything.
He blinked the thought away and killed the engine.
Gravel crunched beneath his boots as he stepped out. The air smelled of moss and rot. Leaves rustled, though there was no wind.
The porch groaned under his weight, and when he tried the doorknob, it opened. Unlocked.
Zeke stepped into the house.
The interior was exactly as he remembered: dusty photographs on the wall, the scent of pipe tobacco and cedar. The kitchen table was cluttered with old books, crumpled papers, a half-drunk mug of tea, now cold.
"Uncle Warren?" Zeke called out.
Silence answered.
Zeke walked into the living room. A single oil lamp flickered weakly, casting long shadows across the walls. Bookshelves were half-emptied, and maps were pinned to the wallpaper—old, faded topographical maps of Black Hollow and its surrounding forest, most with hand-written notes in the margins.
He picked up one map. A red circle was drawn around a portion of the woods labeled "Dead Man's Rise." Scribbled next to it in black marker were the words:
"It breathes beneath."
Zeke's skin prickled.
A noise came from upstairs.
A slow, dragging scrape.
He turned, eyes locked on the stairwell, where the top floor sat swaddled in darkness.
"Uncle Warren?" he tried again, louder this time.
Silence. Then—another sound.
Not footsteps. Not creaking wood.
More like... scratching.
Against the floorboards.
Zeke grabbed a fireplace poker from beside the hearth and started up the stairs.
Each step moaned under his weight. Dust swirled in the flashlight beam as he reached the landing. Three doors lined the hallway: the guest room, the bathroom, and Uncle Warren's bedroom at the end.
The scratching sound came again—this time from behind the bedroom door.
He crept forward, heartbeat pulsing in his ears.
The door was slightly ajar.
He pushed it open.
The bedroom was empty.
Everything was in its place—neatly made bed, nightstand, a shelf lined with small glass jars filled with herbs, bones, and preserved insects. Uncle Warren had always dabbled in the occult. Zeke never took it seriously.
But what made his breath catch wasn't what he saw in the room—it was what he saw on the floor.
Claw marks.
Dozens of them.
Gouged into the wood. As if something had tried to claw its way out from underneath the floorboards.
Zeke stepped closer. The floor felt... warm. Almost alive.
He crouched down and placed a hand near the gouges.
The boards were pulsing.
As if something below them was moving.
Suddenly, the closet door behind him creaked open.
Zeke spun, poker raised.
But the closet was empty.
Only an old coat and some shoeboxes.
Then—
THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.
From below.
Beneath the house.
Zeke backed out of the room, down the hallway, and practically ran down the stairs.
When he reached the kitchen again, something had changed.
The cellar door—padlocked for as long as he could remember—was hanging open.
A ladder descended into pure darkness.
And on the top step, still warm, sat a single object:
A human tooth.
Zeke didn't sleep that night.
End of Chapter