Eleanor Grey tugged the rusted key from her pocket, its jagged teeth biting into her palm as she fit it into the attic trunk’s lock. The air reeked of cedar and decay, motes of dust swirling like spirits in the lone shaft of November light. Inside lay a stack of letters bound in faded ribbon, each envelope addressed in her grandmother’s trembling script: *To Eleanor, When the Hollow Calls*.
The first letter crumbled at the edges. *Dearest child*, it began, *if you’re reading this, the 50 years have passed, and the mist is hungry again…*
Eleanor’s breath hitched. The town’s legends whispered through her memory—stories of seamstresses, schoolteachers, widows swallowed by the fog in 1923, 1873, back and back, their absence marked only by empty bonnets left on park benches. Her grandmother’s words spilled secrets: protections carved into doorframes, salt lines dissolved by rain, a pact made with something that moved through chimney smoke and mirror reflections.
Outside, the church bell tolled three times. Too many. Montgomery Hollow’s clock tower had been silent since the last vanishing.
The final letter slipped from her grasp. *The thirteenth letter is yours now. Burn it, and you burn your tether. Keep it, and you anchor the cycle. Forgive me. I tried to outrun the choice.*
Coldness crept up Eleanor’s spine, pricking at the birthmark behind her ear—a crescent moon, same as the women in the old portraits downstairs. Floorboards groaned beneath her. Footsteps. Slow, deliberate, ascending the attic stairs.
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