March 27, 2019
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
The grandfather clock counted seconds like a countdown to execution. Rain hammered the roof, turning the ceiling into a constellation of leaks. Thunder didn't roll—it detonated, so close William felt the pressure change in his inner ear. The sound seemed to come from inside the house itself, as if the storm had found a way in through the cracks.
"Carl!" Jenna's voice cut through the chaos. She pointed at a stain spreading across the plaster. "The roof is leaking! We need to fix it quickly!"
Carl emerged from his study, already wearing his black raincoat. He grabbed lumber, a hammer, nails. His movements were precise, mechanical, like a man going through motions he'd rehearsed a thousand times.
William blocked the door. "You need help?"
Carl looked at him—really looked—and something flickered behind his eyes. Fear? Regret? Whatever it was, it vanished before William could name it.
"No need." His hand landed on William's shoulder, heavy and final. "Stay inside and wait here for me. Okay?"
William nodded. Good sons nodded.
He didn't stay inside.
William cracked the door, rain soaking his face. Through the storm, he saw his father's silhouette on the roof—black against black, hammering with desperate force. Water streamed off his hat in sheets, running down his collar, but he didn't seem to notice or care.
Then he stopped.
Carl went rigid, hammer frozen mid-swing. He stared upward—not at shingles, but at the sky itself. At nothing. At something his eyes couldn't process.
"Dad?" William's voice cracked. "You okay?"
"Yeah, boy." The hammer rose and fell, a puppet's motion. "I'll be there soon."
He wasn't.
Carl scrambled down, movements jerky and wrong. He shoved past William without a word, leaving rainwater and wrongness across the threshold. The air seemed colder where he'd passed, charged with static.
"Carl?" Jenna appeared, dish towel in hand. "Is it fixed? Why are you—"
"Need to check something." Breathless. Rushed. He didn't remove his coat, didn't hang his hat. He took the stairs two at a time, boots leaving muddy prints.
William listened to the creak of floorboards overhead. The secret room.
By the time he reached the top, Carl was already emerging. The ladder retracted with a pneumatic hiss. His face was gray—not pale, but gray, like color drained from his blood. His eyes too wide, and his hands...
Clutching something.
William saw it for only a moment before Carl shoved it into his pocket—a yellow device, screen casting a sickly glow. And the sound: that electronic whine, searching for a signal that shouldn't exist.
"Dad, what—"
"Stay downstairs." Carl brushed past, smelling of ozone and fear-sweat. "Both of you. Just... stay."
Jenna met him at the bottom. "Carl, you're frightening me. What's happening?"
"I have to go." Hand on the knob. "The bridge. Equipment. I need to—"
"Carl, it's hurricane conditions! You can't—"
The door slammed. The engine roared. Red taillights vanished into the dark.
William pressed his palm against the cold glass. At the end of the lane, the brake lights flared—one final pause, one last look back.
Then the car accelerated into the Thornveil Forest, and the storm swallowed him whole.
William's eyes opened to pain.
His forehead throbbed, wet and sticky. Blood. He touched it, wincing, and his fingers came away red. The cave spun around him, blurred at the edges like a watercolor left in rain. He blinked hard, forcing focus, and reached for his pocket.
Empty.
The device was gone.
Panic cut through the haze. William scrambled up, too fast—his head screamed protest, the world tilting sideways. He caught himself against the cave wall, breathing hard, and stumbled toward the light.
Outside, the world had changed.
The soil was dry. Not damp, not drying—bone dry, dust rising in small clouds where his feet dragged. No puddles. No mud. No evidence of the storm that had nearly killed him hours before.
Hours?
The sun was rising. Golden light filtered through the trees, birds calling morning songs. William's stomach dropped. He'd been unconscious all night. His mother—God, his mother—she'd be frantic, waiting, thinking the forest had taken another Anderson.
He started walking. Fast, then faster, directionless, just moving toward where he thought home might be.
Then he saw them.
A deer. No—deer. Five, six of them, grazing peacefully in a small clearing. Their coats caught the sunrise, turning them to living bronze. The nearest one lifted its head, ears twitching, and looked directly at William.
Its eyes were kind. Innocent. A creature that had never known the Hollow, never seen the air turn to glass, never watched a father disappear into static and equations.
William stood frozen, drinking in the moment. The peace. The normalcy.
The gunshot shattered it.
The crack echoed through the trees, impossibly loud. A bullet whined past his ear and buried itself in the oak beside the lead deer. Bark exploded. The animal bolted.
William ran.
Not thinking, not choosing—pure instinct, legs pumping, terror flooding his veins. More shots followed, crack-crack-crack, bullets tearing through leaves, chewing bark, seeking flesh. The deer ran with him, graceful and terrified, and William ran with them, part of the herd, another animal fleeing the predator.
A bullet caught the smallest deer. It stumbled, legs folding, blood spraying the dry earth. William didn't stop—couldn't stop—but he saw it fall, saw the light leave those kind eyes.
He looked back.
Figures. Through the trees, moving with purpose. Human shapes, but wrong—too synchronized, too efficient. He couldn't see faces, couldn't count them, couldn't understand why—
Crack.
Fire exploded in his hip.
William screamed. His legs betrayed him, the ground rushed up, and he hit the soil so hard his teeth clicked together. Pain—white, blinding, all-consuming—radiated from his right side. He tried to crawl, fingers digging into dirt, but his body wouldn't obey.
Footsteps. Crashing through underbrush. Getting closer.
"Stop shooting!"
The voice was deep, raw with command and something else—panic. William tried to turn, to see, but his vision was tunneling, darkness creeping in from the edges.
Hands grabbed him. Rough, efficient, lifting him from the ground. He caught a glimpse of fabric—olive green, tactical, unfamiliar insignia—and a face hovering above his, young and severe, framed by auburn hair pulled tight in a bun.
"Subject is juvenile," he called out, voice clipped. "Civilian clothing. Local."
"Bring him in," another voice answered, deeper, male. "Command wants to know what he was doing at the extraction point."
William tried to speak, to ask who, to demand where, but his mouth filled with copper and his thoughts were scattering like startled birds.
The last thing he saw before unconsciousness took him again: the sun, rising over the Thornveil Forest, painting the sky in shades of blood and gold.
Then nothing.