The Hollow Beneath Ashford
When a girl vanishes into the pines above the quiet town of Ashford, journalist Nora Holcomb arrives expecting a simple human story and finds something far older waiting in the silence. The locals speak in careful half-truths, the sheriff keeps one step ahead of every question she asks, and the forest itself seems to be holding its breath. As Nora digs into the town's guarded past, tracing disappearances, unmarked graves, and a name no one in Ashford will say aloud, the hollow beneath the pines begins to give up its dead. The deeper she pushes, the more the investigation tightens around her own life. A former friend resurfaces with a warning. A grieving mother insists the girl was never really missing. And a stranger with too much interest in Nora's work begins to appear wherever she turns. With allies she cannot fully trust and a truth the town has spent generations burying, Nora must choose how far she is willing to follow the hollow before it swallows her too.