The Feast of Dead Man’s Hollow
Chapter 1
CHAPTER 1
S omething in the bog was watching. Theodore felt the unseen eyes as he picked his way across sodden ground, cutting a familiar path toward a solid strip of land where trees still grew. Something always watched within Dead Man’s Hollow. Never anything he could see, but whether it was the birds or some other creature, he never gave it too much thought. Today, however, the fine hairs at the nape of his neck prickled as he scanned the trees for hidden security cameras, his heart a jackhammer inside his chest, chiseling away at flimsy courage.
It wasn’t like Theodore to risk his neck.
But he’d do anything for this bog, including keeping it untouched by those who thought that the best way to appreciate beauty was to build a resort on it.
Fog rolled off standing water, curling its wispy tendrils around the leatherleaf and stunted black spruce that jutted from vibrant red mats of sphagnum moss.
He sloshed through a partially submerged area in his waders, using a walking stick to test the bottom. It was soft but holding firm, enough to hold his weight, at least. As he trudged, wafts of slowly rotting peat—all at once earthy, dank, and slightly floral—plumed the air.
There was a cluster of sundews ahead, their brightly colored rosettes tipped with dewy, sticky filaments, sweet to taste but designed to hold on and never let go. Each tiny maul secreted a digestive enzyme that broke down the plant’s trapped prey and absorbed it.
Bending to examine the carnivorous plant, Theodore was mildly disappointed to see it hadn’t caught anything in its embrace, its stems still unfurled and reaching. But it was only a matter of time before an unlucky insect fell for its dangerous welcome.
To have and to hold.
To hold and to feed.
Theodore had always loved the pretty, vicious things.
Climbing from the murk and onto firmer ground, he entered the copse of trees, each step squelching. A lone, dead larch towered before him. Its trunk was as smooth as bone, bleached white by sun and time, every one of its branches bare and broken. Near its base was a hollow, an opening in the trunk just large enough for a child to squeeze into. He knew, because once upon a time, it had been his favorite hideaway. The place he returned to again and again to read or draw or daydream until the sun hung low in the sky.
Dead Man’s Hollow was a dangerous place to explore. Its many hazards were fodder for grisly tales—of people getting lost in the fog and swallowed by sucking mud, never to be seen again, of murder and ghosts and eerily well-preserved bodies dredged up from the murk. But Theodore always had a sixth sense for firmer ground, and he never found a body. Not a human one at least.
The peatlands he knew were rich with blueberry and cranberry patches; the former he ate by the handful, the latter collected for recipes. Sometimes he caught and released frogs or found a fallen log to sprawl across, basking in the sun. Often, he brought a book or notepad for sketching his naturalist drawings—dragging his mechanical pencil across paper to make little studies of the plants and wildlife he saw.
When he was a boy, his mother taught him how to safely walk the peat bog, how to appreciate its beauty while also respecting its dangers. She raised him in a solitary cottage at the bog’s edge, its timber walls and river rock foundation holding the fond memories of his childhood, but since she moved into town to be closer to friends, it was all his own.
No one else dared venture inside Dead Man’s Hollow, so it was a quiet place, his place , all to himself.
Or it was.
Theodore stared down the mud-splattered ditcher parked on a solid stretch of ground, unguarded but ready to dig the trenches that would drain the bog dry. To make the land “optimal for development.”
All so big-tech billionaire Leon Marks could dabble in real estate and build a secluded lodge for the ultra-rich deep in the Maine wilds—accessible by small chopper only, an exclusive experience. What was good enough for the Rockefellers and Vanderbilts on Mount Desert Island wasn’t good enough for Marks. He had to pillage precious, untouched land farther north.
All the town hall meetings Theodore attended, all the letters he wrote about the bog’s ecological importance, none of it had mattered. The Town Council still greenlit the project, permits swiftly granted. When the construction crews came, shattering the peaceful quiet with their shouting and heavy machinery, Theodore knew he needed to be braver than he ever had before.
He was always so careful and safe in his explorations. Even with three decades of peatland familiarity under his belt, a network of firm ground vividly mapped out in his mind, he still carried a long stick equal to his height to perform depth tests. Poking here, poking there, but never quite stepping a foot out of line.
And now Theodore was about to do something very stupid.
Kneeling next to the machine, he slipped off his backpack, filled with wrenches, cutters, and other tools. He spent the day studying online diagrams and equipment manuals, learning how to best break a ditcher and delay development without hurting the bog itself. Then, he waited for the construction crew to pack up and leave for the evening.
What he called activism, others called sabotage. Or worse, eco-terrorism.
A cold sweat trickled down the back of his neck, and he paused to push a pair of glasses up the bridge of his nose. Black plastic frames that were usually paired with crisp button-down shirts and a compulsive need to iron his trousers. That is, when he wasn’t wading through bog muck. While his sense of style, and his modestly gelled and side-combed hair, vibed better with the 1940s and 50s than 2025, he was no Clark Kent. More of a Fred Rogers in both personality and stature.
The most modern thing about Theodore’s appearance was his smart watch and the tree line cuff inked around his right forearm. Nothing about his appearance made him feel confident enough to be any good at crime.
The fog thickened as he worked, hands stained with grime and grease. Overhead the sky darkened, and the temperature dropped, heralding a brewing storm—a storm his weather app hadn’t warned him about today.
Every ghost story he ever heard crowded his thoughts—stories he ignored in the face of a beautiful, bountiful ecosystem. Shadows crept in, closing in from all sides, and when water splashed nearby, he nearly jumped out of his skin, certain cold, clammy, dead hands would seize him from below.
A creature’s long, skinny legs kicked out, just beneath the surface, before disappearing into the murky water.
“A frog,” he breathed, wiping away the cold sweat that broke out across his brow.
The nerves, the jumpiness, and the annoying armpit sweat, it was because he was doing something illegal. That’s all. Not because there was anything haunted or supernatural to fear.
Leaving his walking stick behind, Theodore shuffled around the ditcher to better reach and mess with the engine. The sooner he got this done and over with, the better. But as he stepped down, wider than he meant to, the ground gave out beneath him, and he plunged backward into a pool of cold mud.
Panic made him flail and kick, thirty years of experience out the window in a single instance. The struggle made him sink deeper.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
Overconfidence and complacency were deadly.
And Theodore had just made a fatal mistake.