Chapter Two: The Man at the General Store
Elias woke to silence.
The kind of silence that pressed against the ears, like being underwater. It was still dark, though the pale blue edge of dawn crept between the slats of the bedroom blinds. The old bed beneath him groaned with every breath he took. Dust floated lazily above his head in the shaft of dim light, and for a moment, he forgot where he was.
Then the floor creaked in the hallway.
He sat up fast.
Nothing followed. No footsteps. No movement. Just the groaning of old wood as the house settled around him—or so he told himself.
He dressed in silence, grabbed his coat, and left. The house seemed to exhale behind him.
The only place open in town was Harlan's General Store, a leaning, narrow building that looked as though it had been assembled out of leftovers from a dozen other structures. A rusted sign dangled from a single hook above the door, reading simply: "Harlan's" in chipped red paint.
A bell above the door jingled as Elias stepped inside. The place smelled like motor oil and old coffee. Wooden shelves lined with canned goods, faded postcards, dusty fly traps, and hunting knives gave the impression that the town hadn't had a proper delivery since the 1970s.
Behind the counter stood a man who looked as though he'd never left the store in his life. Tall, gaunt, and pale, with a thick beard gone to gray, he watched Elias with eyes that didn't blink enough.
"You're the writer," the man said flatly. Not a question.
"Was," Elias replied, rubbing his eyes. "Now I'm just a guy trying not to drink himself into a ditch."
The man nodded like he'd heard that before. "House on Wyeth Road?"
"Yeah."
Another pause. The silence stretched.
"Shouldn't be out there alone," the man finally said, voice low.
Elias raised an eyebrow. "You gonna finish that sentence, or just leave it hangin' for dramatic effect?"
The man didn't smile. "It's not the house that's the problem. It's the ground."
Elias waited.
"They buried something there, long time ago," the man went on. "Or maybe someone. Doesn't matter. That place—it's like an open wound. Always bleeding into the land."
Elias, a career horror novelist, had heard a thousand versions of this story. Local legends. Haunted barns. Hexed lakes. Cursed crossroads.
Still, something about the way the man said it unsettled him.
"And what exactly bleeds into the land?" Elias asked.
The man's eyes narrowed.
"Memories."
As Elias left the store with a bag of instant coffee, canned soup, and a dented flashlight, the fog had thickened. The forest around the town stood silent and wet, draped in low mist like it was mourning something. The path back to the manor felt longer somehow, like it was stretching the distance on purpose.
He stopped once, near a tree.
There, carved into the bark, barely visible through the moss, were three letters:
ELI
He hadn't been in this town before. Had he?
No. Couldn't be. He'd never even heard of Black Hollow until the ad for the manor showed up online.
He turned back toward the road.
Behind him, the wind whispered through the leaves:
"…you came back…"