The first time Lila saw the symbol, it was etched into the bark of an oak behind her grandmother’s house, half-buried in moss and rot. She traced the jagged lines with her thumb, feeling the grooves sink into her skin like a wound. The air smelled of damp earth and something sharper—burnt sugar, maybe, or the sour tang of old secrets. Her grandfather’s voice echoed in her mind: *Don’t go near the woods after dark.* But the woods were already whispering.
She didn’t know why she kept returning to the tree. The town called it Hollow Creek, a place where roads ended and the forest swallowed everything. Lila’s father had vanished here two years ago, leaving only his boots by the riverbank and a note scrawled in shaky letters: *They’re not human.* The police called it a suicide. Her mother called it grief. Lila called it a lie.
The symbol reappeared the next day, etched deeper, as if someone—or something—had carved it after she left. She brought a knife from the kitchen, its blade dull from years of peeling potatoes, and scraped at the bark until her fingers bled. The wood cracked open, revealing a hollow chamber filled with bones. Not animal bones. Human. Smaller ones. Children’s.
That night, Lila dreamt of eyes in the trees. They watched her from the shadows, pupils dilated like black holes. She woke to the sound of branches snapping outside her window. Her grandmother’s house creaked like a living thing, the floorboards groaning as if something heavy was dragging itself across them. Lila grabbed a flashlight and crept into the hallway, her breath fogging the air. The door to the attic was ajar.
She didn’t remember climbing the stairs. The attic smelled of dust and mildew, and the light from her flashlight flickered over rows of jars filled with preserved organs—lungs, hearts, kidneys—each labeled in smudged ink. A calendar on the wall showed dates from fifty years ago. Her grandfather’s handwriting. Lila’s hands shook as she pulled a jar from the shelf. Inside was a heart, still pink and wet, its valves pulsing faintly. She dropped it, and it splattered against the floor, leaving a trail of crimson that curled into the wood like a snake.
The next morning, Lila told Marcus. He was her best friend, the son of the town’s sheriff, and he didn’t believe her. “You’ve been reading too many horror stories,” he said, tossing a soda can into the trash. “There’s no such thing as monsters.”
“There’s something in the woods,” she said. “And I’m not going to stop until I find out what.”
Marcus frowned, but he didn’t argue. He never did. He was the kind of person who listened more than he spoke, his eyes always scanning the horizon like he expected a storm. Lila wondered if he’d seen the symbol too, if he’d felt the same pull toward the trees. But she didn’t ask. Some things were better left unsaid.
They started searching the town archives, sifting through yellowed newspapers and dusty photo albums. The first clue was a headline from 1968: *Local Boy Vanishes During Forest Expedition.* The second was a photo of Lila’s father, younger and grinning, standing beside a man in a lab coat. The third was a name: Dr. Elias Vorne. No record of him in the town’s history, but Lila found references in old medical journals—studies on human anatomy, experiments on neural pathways, and one article titled *The Hollowing: A Study of Consciousness Extraction.*
The word *hollowing* stuck with her. It meant emptiness, but also something more—something stolen. She imagined her father’s mind being pulled from his body, his thoughts scattered like ash. The idea made her stomach churn.
Marcus found a map in the archives, its edges frayed and ink faded. It showed a network of tunnels beneath the town, connected to the forest. “This is where they’re keeping him,” Lila said, her voice barely above a whisper. “Or what’s left of him.”
They didn’t tell anyone. Telling meant getting help, and help meant the sheriff, and the sheriff had a habit of looking the other way when things got too strange. Lila had seen it before—how the town protected its secrets, how it buried its sins under layers of silence. She wasn’t going to let that happen again.
The tunnels were colder than she expected, the air thick with the scent of damp stone and something metallic. Lila’s flashlight beam cut through the darkness, revealing walls lined with rusted pipes and faded graffiti. Marcus held her hand, his grip tight but steady. “We don’t have to do this,” he said.
“I do,” she replied. “If I don’t, they’ll keep taking people.”
They found the first body in a chamber filled with glass tanks. The man inside was skeletal, his skin translucent, his eyes open and staring. Lila pressed her palm against the tank, feeling the cold seep into her bones. The man’s lips moved, but no sound came out. She pulled away, her heart pounding.
“What is this place?” Marcus whispered.
“A prison,” she said. “For minds.”
They kept going, deeper into the tunnels, until they reached a massive chamber with a central platform. A man stood there, his back to them, wearing a lab coat stained with something dark. Lila recognized him from the photo—Dr. Elias Vorne. He turned slowly, his face gaunt, his eyes hollow.
“You shouldn’t have come here,” he said, his voice rasping like broken glass. “The hollowing is inevitable.”
“What did you do to my father?” Lila demanded.
Vorne smiled, a jagged thing. “He wanted to escape. To remember. But the mind is a fragile thing. It breaks easily.”
Lila stepped forward, her fists clenched. “You’re not real. You’re just a ghost.”
Vorne laughed, a sound that echoed through the chamber. “I am very real, child. And you are next.”
The lights flickered, and the tanks around them began to hum. Lila grabbed Marcus’s hand and ran, the sound of Vorne’s laughter chasing them through the tunnels. They emerged into the forest, gasping for air, the night sky above them a vast, empty void.
They didn’t stop running until they reached the edge of town. Lila looked back, expecting to see the forest swallowing them whole, but it was quiet now, the trees still as statues. She didn’t know if they’d escaped or if this was just another part of the hollowing.
In the days that followed, Lila kept searching. She found more tunnels, more bodies, more evidence of Vorne’s experiments. The town’s secrets were deeper than she’d imagined, and the hollowing was spreading. But she didn’t stop. She couldn’t.
Because somewhere in the dark, her father’s mind was still fighting, and she would find him. No matter what it took.
