The air smelled like rust and wet stone when Lila first saw the hole. It yawned in the earth behind the abandoned mine, a jagged mouth swallowing the late afternoon light. She crouched, fingers brushing the damp soil, and wondered if her father’s boots had ever touched this spot. The journal had mentioned a ‘passage beneath the sinkhole,’ but no one else in town believed him. Not after he vanished.
Jax leaned against the rusted chain-link fence, chewing gum with a lazy rhythm. “You sure about this?” His voice was all drawl, but his eyes flicked to the hole like he’d seen something there. Lila didn’t answer. She was already unclipping the flashlight from her belt, its beam slicing through the gloom. The mine’s entrance had been sealed for years, but the journal’s pages—yellowed and brittle—had whispered secrets only she could hear.
“It’s not safe,” Jax said, stepping closer. His shadow fell over her as she shone the light on the cracked earth. Something glinted in the dirt, half-buried. Lila dug with her hands, nails scraping against stone. A metal tag, etched with symbols that made her pulse quicken. She recognized them from the journal’s sketches—ancient, unreadable, but alive with meaning.
“What is it?” Jax asked, but Lila was already pulling the tag free. It weighed more than it should, cold against her palm. The symbols pulsed faintly, as if the earth itself was breathing. A sound echoed from the hole—distant, like a stone dropping into water. Lila froze. “Did you hear that?”
Jax’s grin faltered. “Yeah.” He stepped back, but not before the flashlight caught something in the shadows. A shape, too long, too still. Lila swallowed hard. The journal had warned about the Hollow, a place where time unraveled. Her father had written, *”Beware the voice that isn’t yours.”* But it was too late for warnings.
The ground trembled. Dust rained from the mine’s ceiling as the hole widened, swallowing the light. Lila stumbled back, clutching the tag to her chest. Jax shouted something, but the sound was swallowed by a low, resonant hum. The air thickened, heavy with the scent of ozone and decay. And then, a voice—not Jax’s, not her own. It spoke in a language that didn’t exist, yet she understood every word.
“You should not have come.” The voice was layered, as if multiple people spoke at once. Lila’s knees buckled. The tag burned against her skin, and the symbols flared bright, casting jagged shadows on the mine walls. “Who—what are you?” she managed, her voice barely above a whisper.
The hum deepened. The hole pulsed, and the ground shifted. Lila saw it then—a figure emerging from the darkness, its form flickering like a dying flame. It had no face, just a hollow where one should be. “I am the Hollow,” it said. “And you have awakened me.”
Jax’s hand closed around her wrist, yanking her back as the figure lunged. The flashlight died with a click. Lila hit the ground, scrambling away as the mine erupted in sound—crushing stone, shrieking wind, the voice now a scream. She didn’t stop running until the hole was behind her, until the town’s lights blinked in the distance. But the tag still burned, and the voice echoed in her skull, relentless.
“You’ll come back,” it whispered. “You always do.”
—
The town of Blackmoor had always been a place of whispers. Its streets were narrow, lined with sagging houses that leaned like tired old men. The mine had been the lifeblood, until the day it swallowed ten workers and left nothing but silence. Lila’s father had been one of them. The police called it an accident. The townsfolk called it a curse. But Lila knew the truth—the journal had shown her.
She kept it hidden in her backpack, its pages filled with her father’s scrawl and diagrams of the Hollow. The symbols were everywhere now: etched into the mine’s walls, woven into the fabric of the town’s oldest buildings. Even the trees seemed to hum with them, their branches twisting into shapes that looked like the journal’s sketches. Lila had started seeing them everywhere—on her skin, in her dreams, in the way the wind moved when no one was around.
“You’re chasing ghosts,” Jax said one night, as they sat on the rusted steps of the old school. The sky was bruised with storm clouds, and the air tasted like rain. “Your dad’s gone. Accept it.”
Lila didn’t look at him. She was tracing a symbol on her palm, the same one that had appeared on her father’s last journal page. “It’s not a ghost. It’s something else. Something real.”
“And you think you can fix it?” Jax’s voice was sharp, but there was fear in it too. He’d seen the hole, felt the tremors. He’d even heard the voice, though he’d never admit it. “You’re just like him, you know? Always looking for answers where there are none.”
The words stung, but Lila held her ground. “I’m not like him. I’m going to find out what happened.”
Jax stood, kicking a pebble into the gutter. “Then you’ll die like him.”
He left her there, under the stormy sky, and Lila didn’t stop him. She had bigger things to worry about—the journal’s final entry, a map she’d barely begun to decipher, and the growing certainty that the Hollow wasn’t done with her.
—
The second time she went back, she was prepared. She brought a knife, a compass that never pointed north, and a lantern that burned with a blue flame. The hole had grown wider, its edges jagged and fresh. The air smelled different now—sweeter, almost metallic. Lila stepped over the threshold, her boots crunching on loose gravel.
The mine was darker than before, the walls slick with moisture. Her lantern cast long shadows, and the symbols glowed faintly beneath her feet. She followed the map from the journal, her breath shallow, heart pounding. The passage twisted and turned, leading her deeper into the earth. At one point, she thought she heard a sound—like a child’s laughter, too high-pitched to be real.
Then she found it: a chamber, vast and empty, its ceiling lost in darkness. In the center stood a pedestal, and on it lay a book. Lila approached slowly, her fingers brushing the cover. It was leather, worn and cracked, but the symbols on it were fresh, as if they’d just been carved. She opened it—and the air shifted.
The voice returned, but this time it was different. Softer, almost pleading. “You’ve come back.”
Lila’s hand trembled. “Who are you?”
“I am the Hollow,” the voice said. “But I am also something more. Your father knew me. He tried to save me.”
The book fluttered open, revealing a page filled with her father’s handwriting. *”The Hollow is not a monster. It is a prison. A place where the lost are kept until they can be set free.”* Lila’s breath caught. “What does that mean?”
“It means you must choose,” the voice said. “To stay and become part of the Hollow, or to leave and let it remain as it is.”
Lila stared at the book, her mind racing. She thought of Jax, of the town, of the life she’d always known. But then she thought of her father, his final days filled with this secret. “What happens if I stay?”
“You will remember everything,” the voice said. “You will see the truth. But you will never leave.”
The choice was clear, but the weight of it was crushing. Lila looked around the chamber, at the symbols that had haunted her dreams, at the book that held the answers. She thought of the voice that had whispered to her in the dark, and the way it had called her name.
“I choose to leave,” she said, her voice steady.
The chamber trembled. The voice grew louder, desperate. “You don’t understand! The Hollow needs you!”
Lila stepped back, the book still in her hands. “I’m sorry.”
The ground shook, and the chamber filled with light. The symbols blazed, and the voice screamed. Lila ran, the book clutched to her chest, until she emerged into the open air, gasping for breath. The hole was gone, replaced by a field of wildflowers. The mine was sealed, its secrets buried once more.
But the book remained, and so did the voice. It whispered in her dreams, in the rustle of leaves, in the silence between heartbeats. Lila knew it would always be there, a part of her now.
She returned to Blackmoor, but nothing was the same. The townsfolk noticed the change in her—how she spoke to the wind, how she saw things others couldn’t. Jax watched her from a distance, his usual smirk replaced with something like awe.
Lila didn’t explain. She never would. The Hollow had left its mark, but it hadn’t taken everything. She still had the book, the memories, and the knowledge that some secrets were meant to be carried, not forgotten.
And in the quiet moments, when the world was still, she could still hear the voice—soft, patient, waiting.
“You’ll come back,” it whispered. “You always do.”
