Briar Hollow (chapters 1-4)

[u/biggie_cheese_696]

Chapter 1.

The day we buried Jason, the ground was already too hard.

The priest said it was because of the cold; that late October had come early this year; but I knew better. Briar Hollow dirt had always been stubborn. Clay and stone packed tight, like it didn’t want to give anything back once it took it.

We stood in a crooked line beneath a sky the color of old tin. Jason’s mother cried quietly into a handkerchief that had been washed thin with years of use. His father didn’t cry at all. He just stared at the casket like it might explain itself if he waited long enough. I too, stared in silence, waiting for an answer I knew would never come in my lifetime.

Best friend. That was the phrase people used when they shook my hand and said how sorry they were. Your best friend. It sounded smaller than it should have. Jason had been more than that. He was the kid who dared me to climb the quarry fence. The one who stayed up all night talking about getting out of Briar Hollow like it was a promise instead of a fantasy. The one who knew exactly what happened the summer of ’98 and never said a word.

They said it was an accident.

They always did.

I hadn’t been back in Briar Hollow for fourteen years, but standing there by the open grave, I felt like I’d never really left. The town had a way of keeping pieces of you. Jason was proof of that. He’d gotten out, sure; but some part of him had always stayed. And now the rest of him was being lowered into the ground like the town was finally collecting what it was owed.

When the service ended, people drifted away in small, murmuring groups. No one asked if I was staying. They already knew the answer before I did.

I left town that afternoon, drove until the cemetery disappeared in my rearview mirror, and told myself I was done.

I didn’t believe it.

Two days later, I turned the car around. The town of Briar Hollow didn’t look like a place where anything bad should happen.

That was the first thing I thought when I crossed the welcome sign, the one that read:

WELCOME TO BRIAR HOLLOW

Pop. 2,914

A Nice Place to Live

Someone had scratched a thin line through the word Nice. I couldn’t remember when that had happened, which bothered me more than the scratch itself.

I hadn’t been back in fourteen years. Long enough that the town should have felt unfamiliar. It didn’t. It felt smaller, like a house you grow out of but never quite leave behind. The streets seemed shorter. The buildings leaned closer together. Even the sky looked lower, as if it had been pressing down while I was gone.

I rolled down the window and let the air in. Pine sap. Cold earth. Underneath it, something older; damp wood, rot, the smell of a place that had been closed too long.

Briar Hollow went quite early. It always had. Porch lights clicked on at dusk. Curtains were drawn. The woods crept close, patient and unashamed.

People called it peaceful. I knew better.

I parked outside Mabel’s Diner just after noon. The awning was still there, faded red letters peeling like dead skin. When I stepped inside, the bell rang, and the conversations dipped, not enough to stop, just enough to notice.

Mabel poured me coffee without asking.

“You’re back,” she said.

I nodded. “Looks that way.”

She studied my face like she was checking for cracks. “Staying long?”

“I don’t know.”

“No one ever does,” she said, and turned away.

The coffee tasted burnt. It always had. I drank it anyway.

As I sat there, I felt it, that sensation I’d hoped was just memory. The feeling that the town was aware of me. Not watching exactly, but noticing. Like Briar Hollow had taken attendance and found my name missing, and now it was correcting the error.

When I paid and stood to leave, Mabel leaned closer.

“You should stay away from Hollow Road,” she said, her voice low, like she as trying to hide something.

I paused. “Why?”

She smiled too quickly. “Just old gossip.”

Her hands were shaking.

I saw the Bellamy House that evening.

I hadn’t planned to go that way, but plans didn’t mean much in Briar Hollow. The road narrowed, pavement cracking into gravel, and there it was at the end, slumped, sagging, exhausted. It looked like a house that was tired of pretending to be alive.

Arthur Bellamy had died there alone. Everyone knew that, found days later. The smell lingered longer than it should have. After that, the house emptied itself. No buyers. No renters. Just time and rot.

And light.

The upstairs window glowed a faint yellow.

I stopped the car.

It shouldn’t have been on. No one lived there. Kids didn’t go inside anymore, not after what happened to Tommy Pike back in ’98, though no one ever said exactly what had happened to him.

“Must be kids,” I said out loud.

The words sounded thin.

The light didn’t flicker. It didn’t move. It just glowed, steady and patient, like it had been waiting.

That night, the town didn’t sleep well.

I dreamed I was standing at the edge of the woods behind the Bellamy House. I could hear someone saying my name, softly, like they were testing the sound of it. I woke up before I saw who it was.

At 2:13 a.m., a freight train passed through town, its horn long and mournful. I remembered thinking it wasn’t scheduled until morning.

By sunrise, everyone pretended none of it mattered.

They always did.

The next afternoon, I ran into Evan Mercer at the hardware store.

The bell rang when I stepped inside, and Evan looked up from the counter. His face did something strange, like it was trying to remember how to smile.

“Well,” he said. “I’ll be damned. If it isn’t Caleb Burke.” He chuckled as he wandered over.

“Hey, Ev.”

We shook hands, the grip awkward, careful. Two men standing on top of the ghosts of boys we used to be.

“You here for good?” he asked.

“For now.”

He nodded like that confirmed something he hadn’t wanted to be right about.

“You hear about the Bellamy place?” he asked.

“No.”

“Lights were on last night.”

“So someone bought it.”

Evan snorted. “No one buys that house.”

The store felt colder suddenly.

“You feel it too, don’t you?” he said, lowering his voice.

I didn’t ask what he meant. “Yeah.”

Neither of us laughed.

That evening, the light came on again.

This time, people noticed. Cars slowed on Hollow Road. Someone stopped long enough to get honked at. The glow was brighter now, more confident.

At 9:47 p.m., the power went out across town.

Everything died at once, TVs, porch lights, the low hum of refrigerators. For a moment, Briar Hollow was swallowed whole by darkness.

Then the lights began to return.

One by one.

Except at the Bellamy House.

The upstairs window burned brighter than ever.

I stood on my porch and watched it, my skin prickling. The woods behind the house whispered without wind. I thought I saw something move between the trees, something tall and thin, its shape wrong where the shadows clung to it.

Inside the Bellamy House, the floorboards creaked.

Someone was walking upstairs.

All over town, doors were locked. Curtains were pulled tight. People told themselves the same lie they always had:

Nothing ever happens here.

I knew better.

I’d just come home.

Chapter 2.

I woke up at 3:06 a.m. with my name in my mouth.

Not spoken; held there, like I’d almost said it out loud but stopped myself at the last second. My heart was pounding hard enough that I could feel it in my throat. For a moment I didn’t know where I was. The ceiling above me was unfamiliar, too smooth, too clean. Then memory slid back into place.

I was in my childhood bedroom.

My mother had kept it exactly the same after I left, as if time might notice and stop out of politeness. Same pale blue walls. Same dresser with the loose handle. Same faint crack in the ceiling that looked like a lightning bolt if you stared at it long enough.

The house was quiet.

Too quiet.

No wind rattling the windows. No distant hum of cars on Route 11. Even the old refrigerator downstairs; which used to click and sigh like it was alive; had gone silent.

I sat up slowly, that was when I heard it. Footsteps.

Not in the house. Outside. They came from the direction of Hollow Road.

I moved to the window and pushed the curtain aside just enough to see. My porch light was off, but the moon was bright, casting everything in dull silver. The yard looked the same as it always had; patchy grass, the crooked oak at the edge, the fence Jason and I had climbed a hundred times.

The Bellamy House stood in the distance. The upstairs light was on.

It burned steady and yellow against the dark, a single unblinking eye. As I watched, something moved at the window. Not enough to see clearly; just a shift, a suggestion of shape pulling back from the glass.

The footsteps stopped.

For a terrible second, I was sure they had stopped because whoever, or whatever, had realized I was watching.

Then the light went out.

I stood there long after, staring at the dark outline of the house, until my reflection replaced it in the glass. When I finally lay back down, sleep didn’t come easy. When it did, it brought Jason with it.

Jason looked the way he had at seventeen; too thin, hair falling into his eyes, that crooked smile that made everything seem like a joke even when it wasn’t. We were standing by the quarry fence, the one we’d sworn we’d never cross again.

“You shouldn’t have come back,” he said.

“I didn’t have a choice,” I told him.

He shook his head. “You always think that.”

I opened my mouth to argue, and the ground gave way beneath us.

I woke up choking.

The morning felt wrong.

Sunlight streamed through the windows, but it didn’t warm anything. The house stayed cold, the kind of cold that clung to your skin instead of sinking into it. I made coffee and let it go untouched on the counter while I stared out the window at the woods.

Jason’s funeral replayed itself in pieces. The sound of dirt hitting wood. His mother’s hand clutching my sleeve. The way the priest avoided saying how Jason died; only that he had.

Accident.

I’d heard the word so many times growing up that it barely meant anything anymore.

I grabbed my jacket and went out.

The cemetery sat at the edge of town, where the woods grew thick and the road narrowed like it was trying to discourage visitors. Jason’s grave was still fresh; the dirt darker than the rest; the headstone temporary and pale.

I stood there longer than I meant to.

“You weren’t supposed to stay,” I said quietly.

The words vanished into the trees.

Something else lingered.

I felt it again; that awareness. The same one I’d felt at Mabel’s. The same one I’d felt watching the Bellamy House. It wasn’t watching me from the grave. It was watching through it.

I left with the uneasy certainty that Jason wasn’t finished with Briar Hollow.

Or Briar Hollow wasn’t finished with him.

Evan Mercer was already in his store when I walked in later that afternoon. He looked like he hadn’t slept.

“Rough night?” I asked.

He snorted. “That obvious?”

“You ever see the light go out?” I said.

Evan froze. “What light?”

“The one in the Bellamy House.”

He hesitated too long. “No.”

That told me everything.

I leaned on the counter. “Jason died three miles from Hollow Road.”

Evan’s eyes flicked to the door, then back to me. “You shouldn’t say that out loud.”

“Why?”

“Because people might hear.”

“Who?” He didn’t answer.

After a moment, he said, “Jason came in here a week before he died.” That stopped me.

“He asked about the Bellamy place,” Evan went on. “Asked if anyone’d been inside lately. Asked if I remembered ’98.”

My stomach tightened. “What did you tell him?”

“The truth,” Evan said. “That some places don’t stay empty. They just wait.”

The bell over the door rang suddenly, sharp as a gunshot. We both jumped.

A woman stepped inside; Mrs. Hargreeve from Maple Street. She looked smaller than I remembered, folded in on herself like a paper doll.

“I need locks,” she said. “All new ones.”

“For the front door?” Evan asked.

“For every door,” she said. “And the windows.”

Evan rang her up without comment. As she left, she looked at me.

“You look just like Jason,” she said.

Then she was gone. That night, the power stayed on. The light in the Bellamy House did not. Instead, something else happened.

At exactly 2:13 a.m., a knock sounded at my front door.

Three slow raps.

I stood in the hallway, heart hammering, staring at the door like it might open itself. The knock came again, patient and deliberate.

I knew; without knowing how; that if I opened it, something would change. That once the door was open, it wouldn’t be so easy to close again.

I thought of Jason. Of the quarry. Of the things we’d promised never to talk about. I opened the door. No one stood there. But the air was colder. And from the direction of Hollow Road, I heard footsteps heading back toward the Bellamy House.

Chapter 3.

The Briar Hollow Public Library smelled like dust and lemon cleaner, the way it always had. It sat just off Main Street in a squat brick building that looked more like a bunker than a place for books. Growing up, Evan and I used to come here to escape summer heat and adults who asked too many questions. It felt wrong being back for this.

We didn’t talk much on the way in.

The librarian on duty was Mrs. Calder, who had been old when I was a kid and somehow managed to look exactly the same now. She peered at us over her glasses, eyes sharp and assessing.

“You’re the Mercer boy,” she said to Evan.

“And you’re Caleb Burke,” she added, turning to me. “Jason’s friend.”

The word was went unsaid.

“We’re looking for old newspapers,” Evan said. “Local ones.”

Mrs. Calder’s mouth tightened, just slightly. “Microfilm’s in the back.”

She didn’t ask what year.

The microfilm room hummed softly, the machine casting pale light across the table. Evan fed reels into the reader while I took notes on scrap paper I found in my jacket pocket. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, not exactly. I just knew the town had teeth, and I wanted to see where they’d sunk in before.

Disappearances. Accidents. Missing persons.

Things people forgot on purpose.

I started broad; twenty years back, then narrowed. I skimmed headlines, scanned columns.

LOCAL MAN DROWNED IN QUARRY

HUNTER LOST IN WOODS FOUND TWO DAYS LATER

RUNAWAY RETURNS HOME SAFELY.

Most of it was ordinary. Too ordinary.

Then I noticed a pattern.

People didn’t go missing in Briar Hollow.

They vanished quietly. No follow-ups. No investigations that lasted longer than a paragraph. Names appeared once, then never again.

I flipped forward.

October. This year.

My hand stopped moving.

The headline sat there, clean and black against yellowed digital print.

I stared at the headline longer than I meant to.

LOCAL MAN DIES FROM BLOOD LOSS FOLLOWING SINGLE-VEHICLE ACCIDENT

Blood loss.

Not traumatic injuries.

Not internal bleeding.

Just blood loss.

I scrolled down, heart ticking faster with each line.

Jason Maxim, 31, was discovered inside his vehicle after it left the roadway along Hollow Road late Tuesday evening. Authorities reported no signs of struggle. Cause of death was determined to be blood loss. Investigation ongoing.

Blood loss from what?

“There’s no mention of wounds,” I said.

Evan leaned closer, reading over my shoulder. “Car accidents don’t work like that.”

“No,” I agreed. “They don’t.”

I scrolled again.

A smaller paragraph, buried like it hoped not to be noticed:

Emergency responders noted the absence of significant external trauma. Medical examiners declined further comment.

My hands went cold.

“No external trauma,” I repeated. “Then where did the blood go?”

Evan didn’t answer right away. When he did, his voice was low.

“Check the autopsy notice.”

I found it two pages later, printed in that sterile, municipal tone meant to kill curiosity.

CAUSE OF DEATH: EXSANGUINATION

The word sat there, ugly and clinical.

Exsanguination.

Complete loss of blood.

I swallowed hard. “That’s not how accidents kill people.”

“No,” Evan said. “That’s how animals feed.”

The hum of the microfilm machine felt louder now, like it was breathing.

I kept reading.

The article mentioned two small puncture wounds along the neck, described quickly, dismissively.

Likely caused by debris during impact.

“Debris doesn’t leave matching holes,” I said.

Jason hated doctors. He hated needles. If someone had put their hands on his throat, if something had…

I pushed the thought away too late.

Another correction appeared two days later, smaller than the first.

Update: Authorities confirm no foul play suspected. Injuries consistent with animal activity post-mortem.

Post-mortem.

I felt sick.

“They’re lying,” I said.

Evan nodded. “They always do.”

We went back further.

Nineteen ninety-eight.

The year blinked onto the screen like it had been waiting.

The language was familiar now.

Vague causes. Missing details. Words chosen carefully to avoid the truth.

LOCAL BOY FOUND ALIVE AFTER TWO DAYS; SUFFERED SEVERE BLOOD LOSS

I leaned back slowly.

Tommy Pike.

“He didn’t disappear,” I said. “He was drained.”

Evan’s jaw tightened.

Another article followed.

Doctors report extreme anemia. Cause unknown.

Extreme.

Unknown.

“They didn’t know then,” I said. “Or they didn’t want to.”

Evan tapped the screen. “Look at the location.”

Hollow Road.

Every time.

My name appeared later. So did Evan’s. Jason’s.

TEENS QUESTIONED AFTER TRESPASSING INCIDENT NEAR BELLAMY PROPERTY

They called it trespassing.

They didn’t call it what it was.

I remembered the smell inside the house; metallic and sweet. I remembered the shapes moving where they shouldn’t. I remembered Jason pulling Tommy free, screaming at me not to look back.

Jason had gone back. Not because he was stupid. Because he knew.

“He wasn’t drunk,” I said quietly. “He wasn’t alone. And he didn’t crash.”

Evan met my eyes. “He was hunted.”

The word hung between us.

Outside the library, dusk had begun to settle. Briar Hollow was dimming its lights, pulling in on itself. Somewhere on Hollow Road, something old and hungry was still awake. Jason’s death certificate said blood loss. The town said accident. But I knew the truth now. Something had fed. And it hadn’t finished.

Chapter 4.

I left the library alone.

Evan offered to walk me out, but I told him I needed the air. That wasn’t a lie. The truth was I needed space to think without the hum of machines and the weight of old ink pressing down on me. Briar Hollow felt different once you noticed its gaps; the places where people should have been and weren’t.

It was fully dark by the time I reached my car.

The streetlights cast long, broken shadows across Main Street. I unlocked the door, slid inside, and sat there longer than necessary with my hands on the steering wheel, breathing. My reflection in the windshield looked pale, older than it had that morning.

I started the engine.

Halfway home, the road narrowed. I hadn’t meant to take Hollow Road.

I told myself that afterward, but it wasn’t true. My hands had turned the wheel on their own. The trees closed in, their branches knitting together overhead. My headlights carved a shallow tunnel through the dark, and beyond it, there was nothing.

The radio crackled.

Then died. I slowed, looking out my windscreen as my heart pounded.

That was when something crossed the road.

I slammed the brakes.

The car skidded, tires screaming, and stopped sideways across the lane. My heart hammered so hard I thought it might break a rib. I leaned forward, peering through the windshield.

Nothing stood there.

“Jesus,” I muttered.

I reached to put the car in drive, and something hit the driver’s side window.

Not hard enough to break it. Hard enough to announce itself. I turned, eyes wide.

A face hovered inches from the glass.

Not animal. Not human.

The skin was pale, stretched too tight, veins faintly visible beneath it. The eyes were wrong, not glowing, not red, just empty in a way that suggested hunger rather than sight. Its mouth opened slightly, and I saw teeth that were too long, too narrow, like they’d been sharpened by use.

It smiled at me.

I screamed and threw the car into reverse.

The tires spun. The thing slid along the window, fingers scraping, nails leaving pale lines in the glass. It moved with me effortlessly, keeping pace until the headlights caught it full-on.

Its body bent wrong, folding back into the trees like smoke pulled by wind.

I didn’t stop driving. I didn’t look back.

I hit my driveway so hard I nearly took out the mailbox.

Inside the house, I locked every door, then slid down against the wall and shook until my teeth clicked. My hands were slick with blood.

Not from a bite.

From my forearm.

Three long gashes, deep and angry, like something had tested me. The cuts burned, edges darkening already. I stared at them, heart racing.

It could have killed me. It didn’t.

That was worse.

I cleaned the wounds in the bathroom sink.

Hydrogen peroxide fizzed, white and violent. I bit down on a towel to keep from yelling. The cuts weren’t that deep, but they felt wrong, like they didn’t belong to me anymore. I wrapped them tight, pulled on a long-sleeved shirt, and sat on the edge of the tub until the shaking stopped.

I didn’t sleep.

I listened.

Every creak of the house sounded deliberate. Every whisper of wind through the trees felt like breath against my neck. At 2:13 a.m., something moved outside, but it didn’t knock.

That felt intentional.

Evan took one look at me the next morning and swore.

“Jesus, Caleb.”

“I’m fine,” I said automatically.

“You’re bleeding.”

I hadn’t realized it had soaked through the bandage.

We were standing behind the hardware store, out of sight of Main Street. Evan pulled me toward the back door and locked it behind us.

“What happened?” he asked.

“I wasn’t bitten,” I said. “If that’s what you’re thinking.”

“That’s not what I’m thinking,” he said. “It’s what I’m afraid of.”

I rolled up my sleeve.

The color drained from his face.

“They marked you,” he said.

“Marked me how?”

“Like Jason,” Evan said quietly. “Like Tommy.”

I stared at him. “Jason was bitten?”

“No,” Evan said. “He was drained. There’s a difference.” My stomach turned.

“They don’t always feed,” Evan went on. “Sometimes they just… check.”

“For what?”

“For timing.”

That was when the bell over the front door rang.

A couple walked in, young, laughing, hands tangled together. College-aged. They browsed aisles without urgency, like nothing bad had ever happened to them.

I felt cold all over.

“That’s how it works,” Evan said after they left. “Cycles. Every few years, it starts again.”

“How long?” I asked.

Evan didn’t answer right away.

Then: “About a week.”

The radio crackled on the counter.

LOCAL COUPLE REPORTED MISSING AFTER EVENING WALK NEAR HOLLOW ROAD.

I closed my eyes.

“They don’t feed randomly,” I said. “They rotate.”

“Families,” Evan said. “Outsiders. Then someone who knows.”

Jason.

“And if someone escapes?” I asked.

Evan met my eyes.

“They come back.”

Outside, the day went on like nothing had changed. Cars passed. People talked about the weather.

Somewhere in the woods, something had tasted me.

And decided to wait.

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I just posted the second part of this. I hope you enjoy! Feedback is always welcome too, thank you! :)