The first thing Mara Vex noticed about Black Hollow was that it had no birds.
Not a single chirp from the trees, not a rustle of wings overhead. The canopy of oaks and elms leaned heavy over the narrow road, their gnarled limbs twisting toward her windshield like blackened fingers. Her GPS died ten miles back, and her phone had bled out to a flicker of red before sputtering black. No signal. No reception. Just the static hush of the forest and the mechanical wheeze of her decade-old Jeep.
She told herself it was fine. It was a small town—of course reception would be spotty. Still, she gripped the wheel tighter.
The town came into view like a bruise in the land—old buildings, most boarded up, some half-swallowed by creeping vines. Shingles curled on roofs like scorched skin. Windows blinked with dusty eyes. The "WELCOME TO BLACK HOLLOW" sign hung sideways, one of its wooden posts snapped at the base and rotted through. Beneath it, someone had spray-painted in crimson, "DO NOT LISTEN AT NIGHT."
Mara stopped the Jeep. The hairs on her arms stood up.
She stepped out. The wind didn't move. The silence had weight, thick and unnatural. It wasn't just quiet—it was dead. She didn't even hear her own footsteps crunching the gravel, though she felt them vibrating up her spine.
At the inn—The Willow's Grin—no one greeted her.
The bell above the door jangled as she stepped inside. The lobby was old-world charm at first glance: cracked wood beams, a stone fireplace long cold, lace curtains browned with age. But the smell hit her second—dampness, mold, and something acrid, like iron. Blood?
She pressed the desk bell. Once. Twice. The sound didn't echo.
A door behind the counter creaked open.
A woman stepped out. Thin, translucent skin stretched taut over a face too sharp, too long. Her eyes were wrong—not in color, but in focus. They never quite met Mara's, always looking just beside her. Like she was watching something hovering over her shoulder.
"You're late," the woman said.
"I wasn't aware I had a schedule."
"Doesn't matter. Room's ready." Her voice sounded like wet paper tearing.
Mara hesitated, then took the key—a rusted iron thing on a brittle string tag: Room 7. The woman didn't offer to help with bags. Didn't ask for ID. Just stared until Mara turned away.
The hallway to the rooms stretched longer than it should have. At least twice the length of the building's exterior. Wallpaper peeled like shedding skin. The sconces buzzed with dim amber light, though no bulbs were visible.
Mara found Room 7 at the far end. She slid the key in, turned—
Click.
The door swung open on its own.
Inside was worse.
The room had no window. The bed was low to the floor, the sheets a grayish off-white, pocked with tiny brown stains. The walls were covered in charcoal drawings—dozens, maybe hundreds—of faces. Each contorted in silent screaming, mouths wide, eyes black pits. Some bled into each other, drawn too close, merging into nightmarish clusters of agony.
She turned to leave. But the door had shut behind her.
And the key… was gone.
There was no panic at first. Just unease.
She paced the room. Tapped the walls. One echoed hollowly behind the headboard. She knelt, moved the bed aside—beneath it, scratched into the floorboards, was a spiral of symbols burned deep into the wood. Not runes. Not letters. They looked like worms twisting into knots.
And in the center: a single word, carved violently over and over:
"NYCTROOT"
A high-pitched whine broke the silence. It didn't come from the room, but from inside her ears. A pressure, like altitude sickness. Her nose began to bleed. And then—
A voice.
Low. Whispering. Right beside her left ear.
"He opened it. Now you're next."
She spun around. Nothing.
No one.
But the drawings… they had changed.
The faces were no longer still. The mouths were wider. Smiling now. Not in fear, but hunger.
And in the far corner of the room, a new figure had appeared—drawn in red.
A man with no eyes. A face made of stretched skin. And vines sprouting from his mouth.
Mara backed away.
Then—knock knock knock—three sharp raps on the door.
She didn't answer.
The door handle twisted. Slowly.
Then stopped.
A whisper leaked through the keyhole, soft and wet:
"There are roots beneath your skin. He will feed through you."
The light flickered. The faces screamed silently from the walls.
Mara grabbed her phone, forgetting it was dead, and tried to snap a photo of the drawings. The flash went off.
For one instant, just a blink—she saw them.
Not drawings.
Faces. Real ones. Pressed into the walls. Eyes darting. Mouths silently howling behind thin layers of fleshy wallpaper. One of them had her father's face.
She screamed.
The floor beneath her cracked. A tendril, black and pulsing, shot up through the boards and wrapped around her ankle. It was cold. Wet. And alive.
She grabbed a lamp and smashed it down, severing the root. It twitched and shriveled, but the floor now pulsed like something breathing below.
The door burst open.
Not the innkeeper.
Not a person.
A thing.
Tall. Wrapped in layers of soil-stained cloth, stitched with twine and teeth. No eyes. Just a stretched mouth, gaping, filled with rows of writhing tendrils instead of a tongue. And from its back… dozens of roots, dragging along the floor.
Mara ran.
Down the hall, out the inn, into the woods.
Behind her, laughter—wet, bubbling—followed like a storm.
And far ahead, in the trees, lights flickered.
Voices echoed. Singing.
Children.
Singing an old rhyme:
> "Down by root and down by stone,
The Hollow's mouth will take its own.
Flesh to vine and mind to mold,
Never warm, and never cold…"
Mara fell to her knees.
The trees watched.
The dirt moved.
And below her, something whispered her name—not with a voice, but with a thousand tiny mouths opening beneath the earth.