Zeke didn't descend the cellar steps that night.
Instead, he did what his instincts told him to do—he locked the cellar door shut, barricaded it with a chair, and sat in the living room all night, clutching the fireplace poker and staring at the door like it might start breathing.
It was quiet. Too quiet.
No scratching. No thumping.
But that tooth still sat there, on the first rung of the ladder. He'd picked it up with a rag and placed it on the mantle. It was human. Yellowed. Root still attached. And it was warm for far longer than it should have been.
The next morning, light finally trickled through the cloudy windows. Zeke stood outside, gulping fresh air like it was the last clean thing in the town.
He had two questions and no answers:
Where was Uncle Warren?
What the hell was in the cellar?
He decided to start with Warren's journals.
Back inside, he dug through the stacks of papers on the kitchen table and eventually found what looked like a handwritten log. Leather-bound. Rough pages, brittle and stained.
The first few pages were mundane—weather notes, mentions of hunting trips, small town gossip. But around six months ago, the tone changed.
Journal Entry - February 2nd
There's something under Black Hollow. I heard it again last night. It's not in the earth. It's beneath the earth. Something old. Something hungry.
They called it a "breather" in the native tongue. The old Algonquin stories were true. Not myth. The land here is thin. It was never meant to be built on.
March 14th
I went to Dead Man's Rise today. The soil there moves. It sighs. I brought back a sample and it's... alive. Zeke would never believe me. No one would. But I think I've found its lair.
April 9th
I lost a dog. Max went into the forest and never came back. That's three gone in as many weeks. The ground swallowed them. Literally. There's a sinkhole near the old mine shaft that wasn't there before. And last night, I swear I heard barking beneath my floor. Max is dead. I know it.
May 27th
It's opening again. Like it did when Zeke's parents vanished. I tried to seal the cellar but the boards warp. It WANTS to open. I need help. I need Zeke. If I don't survive, he needs to finish this. Burn it. Collapse it. Don't let it out.
Zeke closed the book.
His throat was dry. A part of him wanted to laugh—this was madness. Old breathing earth? Creatures in the soil? But the tooth, the claw marks, the warm, pulsing floorboards… they said otherwise.
Something had scared Warren. Something real.
He pocketed the journal and stepped outside.
The fog hadn't lifted. The sun barely cut through it.
He decided to head into town. Maybe someone had seen Warren. Maybe someone had answers.
Main Street, Black HollowIf Zeke thought the town looked dead the night before, daylight only confirmed it.
The diner was closed. The post office, locked. Not a single car moved on the streets. A cat watched him from the roof of a boarded-up pharmacy, its eyes too wide, too human.
Zeke walked toward the general store, the only place with a flicker of light inside. The bell above the door jingled when he entered.
Behind the counter sat Old Man Doyle, the owner for as long as Zeke could remember. His skin looked paler than it used to. Eyes sunken.
"Zeke Jackson," Doyle rasped, like the name was coated in rust. "You came back."
"Where's Warren?" Zeke asked, wasting no time.
Doyle stared at him for a long moment. Then he stood, walked to the door, flipped the CLOSED sign, and locked it.
"I warned him," Doyle muttered. "Told him not to dig. Told him it sleeps light."
"You know what's under the town?" Zeke asked.
"I don't know. But I remember." Doyle's hands trembled as he opened a drawer and pulled out a folded newspaper. He handed it to Zeke.
"MISSING: Local Couple Vanishes Without a Trace."
Zeke stared at the article. His parents. A photo of them smiling, standing beside a younger Warren. The article was dated June 12, 2010.
The day they disappeared.
"No bodies. No blood," Doyle said. "Only thing left was an open door and an echo. Warren spent the last fifteen years trying to figure out what took them. Thought it was down there. Under the town. But that thing ain't just in the earth, Zeke. It's in the people now."
"What do you mean?"
Doyle leaned in close. His breath smelled like soil.
"I mean some of them—those who stayed—ain't right anymore. They hear it breathing. Some… answer back."
Before Zeke could press him, Doyle looked toward the window and went pale. "You need to leave. Now. You shouldn't've come back."
"What did you see?"
Doyle's voice dropped to a whisper. "She's coming."
"Who?"
But Doyle didn't answer.
He backed into the storage room, muttering prayers in a language Zeke didn't recognize.
The air suddenly grew heavy, static snapping at the edges of Zeke's vision.
And outside—just beyond the fog—a woman was standing in the middle of the road.
She wore a pale yellow dress and had no eyes.
Just two dark holes, empty sockets leaking a thin trail of soil.
Zeke stepped back.
The woman raised a hand and pointed… directly at him.
End of Chapter Two