The Hollow One

The past does not stay buried. Sometimes it waits.When Lena inherits a crumbling Victorian home in Joplin, Missouri, she hopes for a chance to start over. What she finds instead is a silence too heavy, shadows that breathe, and mirrors that whisper with faces that are not her own.An ancient presence has stirred beneath the foundations of the city — a hunger older than the streets, older than the mines, older than memory itself. It wears a crown of antlers. It drinks the laughter and cruelty of crowds. It calls itself the Hollow One.Once, the Osage people trapped it in clay and song, burying its vessel deep in the earth. Now that vessel is broken, and the Hollow One walks again. Every reflection becomes a doorway. Every whisper sounds like her sister’s voice. Every shadow asks her to kneel.Lena refuses to kneel. But defiance comes with a cost.As Joplin fractures into riots and violence, the Hollow One grows stronger, feeding on rage and grief, drawing worshipers to its side. Its robe is woven from the faces of the lost, and its voice shakes walls to dust. At the height of the city’s Halloween festival, when the streets seethe with masks and music, Lena must stand alone against a king who cannot die.Armed only with fragments of forgotten rituals, a clay vessel carved with wounds, and the weight of her own grief, Lena faces an impossible choice: surrender her pain and lose herself forever… or embrace the hollow ache of memory and use it as a weapon.The Hollow One is a haunting, atmospheric horror novel about loss, temptation, and survival. Equal parts psychological and supernatural, it explores the wounds we carry, the voices that promise relief, and the strength it takes to hold onto the pain that makes us human.For readers of Shirley Jackson, Stephen King, and Paul Tremblay, this is a descent into terror where the air itself listens, where every window might be a mouth, and where grief is both weakness and the only weapon strong enough to bind a king.Step inside the house. But be warned: the Hollow One is waiting. Read more