What the Hollow Keeps
Nine years after fleeing his cursed hometown, Reese Dark receives a call that drags him back to Briarvale, a nowhere town where the blacktop unspools into dust and the dead do not stay buried. A woman at Mile Seven has collapsed with wounds that bleed backwards, and she is not the first. As a paramedic who fled the only life he knew, Reese is the only soul who remembers the night the ground opened and swallowed Ezra Meachum whole, and the silence his family has kept ever since. His sister Mae, his old friend Cal, and Pastor Owen Thresh all guard the same terrible secret, one tied to the soil itself. Dr. Lena Pruitt at Mercy General sees patients disappearing from her ward without explanation. Hattie Vance, who once held the town's memory in her hands, now speaks in fragments. And Eunice Holler, who has lived longer than anyone should, watches from the porch of the house that will not fall. Reese has one chance to cut the tether binding Briarvale to its hunger. But the hollow keeps what it takes, and some debts are paid only in blood. To save the woman at Mile Seven, and himself, Reese must dig up what his family buried, before the next soul is claimed.