The Hollow Pact

The Scratch On the Wall

The cabin held its silence after he left.

Caleb's mug still sat on the top shelf. His flannel still hung over the chair because washing it felt too much like admitting he wasn't coming back.

I knew he was dead.

The part of me that dealt in facts accepted that.

The rest of me still looked up every time the floorboards creaked.

I'd stopped fighting that particular habit months ago.

The fire had burned low by the time I heard it, a sound from outside, close to the wall. Not an animal moving through the undergrowth. Something slower. A dragging sound. Something scraping slowly across the wood.

I moved away from the window.

The sound continued at the same pace, like whatever was making it didn't care about being heard.

I crossed the room until my back was against the door and sat there, hands pressed flat against the wood behind me, and listened. My chest was tight. My breath was the one thing I could still control, so I controlled it.

Then it stopped.

The silence after was worse than the sound had been.

I counted. Got to thirty before I trusted myself to move. I turned, unlocked the door, and opened it enough to see outside.

Nothing. Cold air, pine, the dark between the trees offering no sign of what had made the noise.

I stepped out.

The mark was beside the door. Carved into the wood of the outer wall, deep and clean, the grooves were warm against my fingertips. The same three curved lines. The same shape from the window, from my mother's hand in the dirt when I was seven, from the dream I couldn't shake.

Only this time it wasn't burned into frost that would melt when I touched it.

This time it had been cut.

I stood with my fingers in the grooves.

For a heartbeat, I saw dirt beneath my mother's hands instead of snow.

Three curved lines.

Her voice cracked with fear.

"...don't..."

The rest shattered before I could catch it.

Pain burst behind my eyes, and the cabin snapped back into focus.

I pulled my hand back.

Hurried inside. Locked the door. Stood in the middle of the room with the note in my hand, Caleb's handwriting looking back at me.

'The Hollow can't stay dead.'

The mark outside was fresh.

Whoever had carved it had done it while I stood only a few feet away.

I hadn't been alone.