The Last Stop at Hollow Creek

Nineteen years after she buried her sister and fled her ancestral home, Maren Ellsworth returns to Greyhaven to settle the estate and finally lay the past to rest. From the moment the stone house rises between the elms, she feels the wrongness in the walls, drafts that carry whispers, a hallway that seems longer than she remembers, and a chill that settles in her chest like an old grief. Old Harlan, the groundskeeper who has outlived three generations of Ellsworths, refuses to speak of what happened the night Eleanor died, and the local doctor, Mira Thornwood, watches her with the careful pity of someone who knows more than she is willing to say. Buried in the cellar, Maren finds Tobias's journals, and the truth her family carried to the grave. Decades ago, the Ellsworths made a bargain to keep their failing estate whole. The price was a child. The debt was never paid. Now The Returning has come to collect, and every shadow in the house wears Eleanor's face. Maren has one choice: break the cycle her family began and surrender Greyhaven to the darkness, or feed it another soul to keep the lanterns burning. The creek behind the house is already rising.