Episode 6: “Ashes and Echoes”
816 Words
Cold Open
A wide shot of a quiet, empty field. No houses. No road. Just mist swirling over an open clearing.
Hemlock Lane is gone.
But beneath the soil, the faintest trace remains—a blackened ring where something once pulsed, alive.
We fade into Lily’s eyes, wide open, staring at the ceiling of a hospital room.
---
Act I: Waking Up
Lily awakens days later in a small-town hospital on the outskirts of Black Hollow. Her mother lies beside her, pale but stable. Her father’s in another room, being monitored—still weak, but lucid.
A nurse tells her they were found wandering, confused, near the woods’ edge. No ID. No memory. It’s as if their names were wiped clean.
Only Lily remembers.
She asks about Hemlock Lane.
The nurse frowns. “That’s not a neighborhood. Never has been.”
No maps. No records. Nothing.
The Morgans never legally purchased a house. The deed they had is blank.
Lily is forced to lie. “We must’ve… gotten lost.”
The nurse doesn’t press it. But her look lingers too long.
Like she knows more than she’s saying.
---
Act II: Lingering Shadows
Back in the real world, life continues—except it feels… off.
Lily’s parents begin to recover, slowly. Rachel’s bite marks have faded, but sometimes she still flinches at sunlight. Daniel complains of vivid dreams—red skies, velvet halls, endless hunger. He jokes about them.
Lily doesn’t laugh.
She enrolls in the local school, tries to blend in. But she sees things.
A girl in the hallway who doesn’t cast a shadow.
A teacher whose eyes flash gold in the wrong light.
One evening, she finds a note slipped into her locker.
> “You broke the circle. But echoes remain.”
There’s no name. No one saw who left it.
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Act III: The Archive
Determined to find the truth—or at least proof—Lily returns to the Black Hollow Historical Society. The room where she once found the pictures of the Thornes is sealed off.
She demands answers from the archivist, Mr. Bell.
He looks at her with fear.
> “You were never supposed to remember.”
He pulls out a book he’d hidden—wrapped in chains. Inside are sketches of Hemlock Lane, dated back to 1793, labeled:
> “The Hollowing Grounds. Established for the preservation of the Old Blood.”
There are symbols matching the ones in Eleanor’s journal. A family tree. At the very top:
“L. Morgan” — circled in red ink.
Lily stares at it.
“I’m part of this?”
Mr. Bell nods. “You were the blood they needed to survive. But you’re also the one who could end them.”
Lily closes the book.
“They’re not done, are they?”
“No,” he whispers. “They never are.”
---
Act IV: Return of the Hollow
Strange things start happening.
At night, Lily hears whispers—voices calling her name through the trees.
Rachel finds dead birds on the porch, arranged in circles.
Daniel sleepwalks, muttering in an ancient tongue.
The sky turns blood-red for just a second during sunset.
And one night, Lily sees it.
Out in the field where Hemlock Lane once stood—
A single streetlamp, flickering.
A shape beneath it.
Watching.
Waiting.
She walks toward it, heart pounding, and finds something half-buried in the dirt:
The silver invitation. The same one from before.
But now, it says:
> “Welcome home, Lily. We’ve missed you.”
She backs away.
The lamp flickers once.
Then goes out.
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Final Scene: Full Circle
Lily stands before her parents, holding the invitation.
“I think… they left something behind in us.”
Rachel and Daniel exchange a look.
“I think we brought the Hollow with us,” Lily says.
Her eyes flash faintly red.
Just once.
But enough to know.
It’s not over.
- Writer
