Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
Unread Message: “Please don’t do anything until I get there. I begged you not to go back, but you went back. And now I’m coming, baby. I’m coming to bring you home.”
Maureen hadn’t seen the town of Sallows Hill in twenty-seven years, but it haunted her dreams so often she could still draw every crumbling stone of it. The main road split through the heart of the valley, weather-worn signs pointing the way to nowhere worth being.
She gripped the wheel tighter until her knuckles were white. The GPS had long since failed her, but she didn’t need it. She remembered the way.
Frantically, she had driven through the night without stopping, hands shaking, tears she refused to let fall, blurring her vision. Every time her phone reached Isaac’s voicemail, she told herself there was still time.
The funeral home came into view just past the bend in the hollow, same slate-blue siding as it had when she'd fled with a baby and a stack of saved-up money from Ezra in her hands. Its windows were dark, but the porch light was still on to counter the dark as the sun was just beginning to rise.
She slammed the car into park and stumbled up the steps to find the door was unlocked.
Inside, the house reeked of preservation—the chemical stench of formaldehyde layered over years of dust and memories. Her boots echoed against the hardwood floors, searching for her son. She moved fast, heart slamming, calling his name without realizing she was shouting.
“Isaac!”
Nothing.
The house felt abandoned, yet there were signs of recent activity, a wet jacket slung over the banister, a coffee cup still half-full and cold on the table. And then there were the photos.
They lined the wall above the mantel: her son at different ages—young and laughing in a way he hadn’t since childhood, one of him as a toddler in her arms, and—
Her heart skipped.
Ezra.
Her first and only love. Isaac’s father.
A photo of him standing in the backyard behind the house, dressed in funeral black, holding a shovel like a man sent to the gallows because he had been.
Doomed to watch his son and love grow up from afar to keep them safe from the town.
Another of the two of them from before she ran, smiling and pressing their foreheads together as they stared at one another.
Shaking off the melancholy of what could have been, she found the back door open, and a strange mechanical noise sounded in the distance.
Following it, she moved around the back of the property, where the earth opened up into plots into the stretch of forest. She saw the machine—a backhoe, still rumbling softly, as if waiting for the next body.
And beyond it: fresh earth covering a single grave.
Maureen, weeping, dropped to her knees and clawed at the earth as she howled for her son’s soul. The one she tried so hard to protect. The one Ezra dedicated his life to. Only for it to end like this wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right—
A loud boom sounded in the distance where the cult lived in the town beyond the trees. Maureen wiped the tears from her eyes and finally saw the trail of soil leading from the new grave into the trees.
She immediately took off, sprinting through the woods as fast as she could.
Branches tore her sweater and jeans and left marks on her face, but she didn’t slow down.
In a matter of minutes, she reached the edge of the town, and at the center of the main road, two figures stood hand in hand, dirt still clinging to their skin as the elders secured their black robes around their naked forms.
Isaac.
And the girl.
Even from this distance, Maureen felt their eyes on her like a blade right through her chest. Her son’s mouth curved into a smile that wasn’t his, and she felt her heart shatter. The girl leaned close, lips brushing his ear, and watched as her son nodded in agreement to whatever she was saying.
Then the entire town turned in unison, thousands of eyes lifting toward her.
“Mother,” they said.
One voice, spoken from every throat.
Maureen stumbled back and fell against a tree for balance. She told herself to run, but knew it wouldn’t matter. Because now she knew that she had not come too late at all—she had come exactly when they wanted her to.
And in that moment, with the sun rising over Sallows Hill, Maureen realized the truth: she hadn’t escaped the town twenty-seven years ago. Just as her son hadn’t escaped his death, the girl hadn’t escaped her destiny.
They’d all been pawns in the resurrection of the Hollow Bridegroom, and the celebration was about to begin.