The Hollow Beneath the Pines

Caleb Marsh has nowhere left to go when he inherits a rotting house at Raven Hollow from a grandfather who refused to acknowledge him. Inside, beneath plaster that bubbles like skin, he finds a journal written in a stranger's hand: Ezra Hollis, the last tenant, documenting a slow unraveling, mirrors that reflect rooms that don't exist, a woman named Mira watching from the photographs on the mantle, and a hunger in the pines that mimics voices until even loved ones sound wrong. Deputy Harlan Voss appears asking questions about the grandfather's death and the tenants who came before, his warnings arriving too late and his eyes a little too still. The house offers Caleb answers through a locket, a vision of a sister he never had, and an apparition of Mira who flickers between ally and threat. Ezra's journal reveals that Mira's spirit is bound to a hollow beneath the pines, and that the Hunger wearing her face has already begun feeding. Caleb must decide whether to burn the house down with himself inside or open the hollow and face what has been tenant after tenant since the first name was carved into the door. Every choice ends in the pines.