Ethan
There was a thin layer of dust over everything in Madison Hollow.
It clung to the road signs, softened the glare of the sun, and settled in the creases of Ethan's suitcase as if the town itself was trying to erase the sharp edges of arrival.
He stepped off the bus into the kind of quiet that didn't ask questions. No honking, no footsteps, just the low hum of cicadas and the wind moving reluctantly through tall, brittle grass. The driver didn't say goodbye. No one waited at the station. If it could even be called that—a rusted bench under a warped plexiglass awning and a single vending machine that blinked the word "OUT" in red digital letters.
Ethan adjusted the strap of his camera bag and scanned the street. Three blocks of storefronts, most closed or forgotten. A laundromat with half its letters missing. A diner with no one inside but an old man hunched over coffee like it was the only warm thing left in the world. This was Madison Hollow—where time came to sleep and memory came to rot.
He raised his phone. No signal. Just a faint static bar, taunting him with the idea of connection.
Perfect, he thought, and exhaled. Then he walked.
He wasn't here for nostalgia or pity. He was here to shoot a story that would win awards.
"Portraits of Vanishing America," the editor had called it. "We want grit. Silence. Places that never made it out of the twentieth century. You're good at finding ghosts, Ethan."
So here he was, chasing ghosts in a town that looked like it had buried itself.
The church came into view at the end of Main Street—an old white wooden structure, paint peeling like tree bark, stained glass windows dulled by decades of grime. A perfect anchor for the story. A skeleton of belief in a town too tired to pretend.
He pushed open the heavy front door. It creaked like something waking from a long sleep.
Inside, the light filtered through dust-choked windows, scattering in broken shafts across pews covered in torn hymnals and collapsed prayer books. The altar was bare except for a single rusted crucifix and a vase of fake flowers, now sun-bleached and colorless.
He lifted his camera.
Then he saw her.
She was sitting in the third pew, knees drawn up to her chest, hair falling forward like a curtain. No sound, no movement, just her profile, barely touched by the fractured light.
He lowered the camera slowly.
"I didn't mean to—sorry," he said, voice soft, uncertain.
She didn't move. Only her eyes turned, slowly, toward him. Grey-blue. Sharp in a way that made him feel suddenly foreign in his own skin.
"This is a dead place," she said, after a long pause. "It doesn't like being remembered."
Ethan blinked. "I'm not here to remember it. I'm here to see it."
She tilted her head, not smiling. "That's worse."
She stood without warning and walked down the aisle past him. Her boots left faint marks in the dust. She stopped at the door, half-turned.
"You'll find what you're looking for here," she said. "Just don't expect it to be kind."
And then she was gone.
Ethan stayed for another minute.
Long enough to take one photo—of the light falling across the empty pew where she'd sat. It would look like nothing to anyone else. But in the frame, in the silence between shadows, he swore he could still see her shape.
And outside, the wind began to rise.
⸻
June
I knew someone had come in the moment the wind changed.
The church has a particular silence. It breathes—if you sit still long enough, you feel it. The way the wood expands in the heat. The way old glass hums when trucks pass too close. The way dust shifts with the weight of memory.
So when the door creaked and the air folded in on itself, I didn't need to look. I just kept my knees tucked to my chest and waited.
Another outsider.
You can always tell. They walk like the ground is foreign, like they expect it to shift beneath them. Like they think they're above something, even if they don't mean to. You can hear it in the way their shoes hit the floorboards—cautious, calculated, rehearsed.
He had a camera. I could feel its lens before I saw it.
I hate that feeling—being watched, being framed. This town's already been dissected by too many eyes that never stayed long enough to see. They come for the "decay," for the "charm," for the "sad poetry of places time forgot." And then they leave, their pockets full of pictures and their hands clean.
He said sorry.
Soft voice. East Coast maybe. Too careful.
I turned just enough to meet his eyes. He didn't look away, which surprised me. Most people do, especially when I stare like that. I've been told I have a gaze that could slice through granite. Truth is, I just got tired of blinking for other people's comfort.
"This is a dead place," I said.
Because it is.
He didn't argue. That almost made me trust him.
When he said he came to see, not to remember, something tightened in my chest. That's what they all say. They want to see. But seeing is never neutral. Seeing is wanting. Taking. Owning.
"That's worse," I told him.
And it was.
I stood because I didn't like how quiet the room had become. Not empty-quiet. Charged-quiet. Like something about him might stick if I sat too long.
I walked past him without slowing. He didn't move. Just stood there, watching like someone who doesn't yet know whether to be afraid or amazed. He smelled like airport soap and vinyl. Clean in a way this town has forgotten how to be.
At the door, I looked back. Just once.
He was still staring, but not in the way most people do. He looked like someone trying to memorize the shape of what he didn't understand.
"You'll find what you're looking for here," I said.
"Just don't expect it to be kind."
And I meant it.
I didn't ask his name.
Because names come with expectations, and I've had enough of those.
But I knew he'd follow the silence, like they all do.
And when he did, I'd be waiting—in the places this town doesn't show on maps.