The Gallows Harvest
Meredith Gallows left Hollow Creek, Virginia years ago and swore never to return, until her mother's death drags her back to count the dead woman's secrets among the estate. The Appalachian town has not changed: the corn still grows tall enough to swallow a person, the church still preaches about Providence, and Sheriff Dale Hutcherson still drives the same dirt roads with the same unreadable eyes. But the soil remembers. When a shallow grave yields the body of an unknown young woman and the cornfields begin to give back what they have taken, Meredith's journalistic instincts refuse to let her leave. Widower Ezra Crane presses a weathered journal into her hands and claims her mother bargained with something called The Harvest King, a generational pact that has kept Hollow Creek prosperous at the cost of one body every autumn. Nora Pickett, the county clerk, holds ledger books that name names, and the names belong to the town's founding bloodlines, including the Gallows family and the long-dead patriarch Willem Gallows. Reverend Solomon Marsh insists salvation is within reach, but the Corn Wife whispers from the edge of the tree line that no salvation comes without a price. As the equinox narrows, Margaret Gallows is released from a hospital bed she has occupied for decades, and Clara Pickett goes missing from her own porch. Meredith can dig until the truth buries her, or she can run and let the next harvest fall on someone else. But the ground in Hollow Creek has already been opened, and it knows her name.