Chapter Thirteen: What the Town Forgot
The next morning, Ellie didn't wake in her bed.
She woke in Miss Whitaker's house—sitting in the old rocking chair by the window, a cold cup of tea on the side table.
Her journal lay open on her lap.
But it wasn't her handwriting anymore.
Page after page was filled with entries from people long dead. Names she barely recognized. Scrawled memories in ink she didn't own.
> July 3rd, 1944 – The circle opened again. I gave my brother to it. The voice says he's warm now. It sings when I sleep.
October 12th, 1979 – They buried the truth beneath the new school. But it's growing through the walls. We thought it would forget. We were wrong.
March 20th, 1996 – Lila went willingly. But it wanted Ellie. It always wanted Ellie.
Her breath caught.
The house creaked around her, timbers bending like sighs.
In the kitchen, every cabinet had swung open.
And written on the inside of each one:
> REMEMBER
---
Ellie stepped outside into the sunlight, blinking hard.
The town square was quiet. Too quiet.
A parade had been scheduled. The Harvest Festival. Music, kids, pumpkin pies.
But today, the streets were empty.
Chairs overturned. Streamers faded mid-air.
Only one person stood in the middle of the square.
Granger.
He was shaking.
"You see it too," he whispered.
She nodded.
"They're gone," he said. "All of them. No screams. No signs. Just... vanished."
Ellie stepped closer. "They didn't vanish. They remembered."
He looked at her, eyes hollow. "What did you do?"
She placed a hand on his chest, where his own spiral—long healed—had begun to burn through his shirt.
"I opened the door," she said. "But they walked through."
---
She returned to the chapel.
It was empty now, hollowed out.
Father Michael was gone.
But the ancient book remained.
She opened it to the last page—one that had always been blank.
Now, a message appeared, burned into the paper:
> When all is remembered,
when the truth has no more shadows,
the Voice no longer whispers.
It speaks.
---
That night, Ellie stood once more in the center of the grove.
The sealed pit was now glass.
She could see beneath it.
Thousands of faces, flickering like fireflies, pressed to the underside—watching, waiting.
And one by one, they began to speak.
Ellie didn't run.
She listened.
And as she did, her body became light.
Her veins: ink.
Her breath: wind through trees.
She was no longer just Ellie Carter.
She was every secret Maple Hill had buried.
And the Hollow Root?
It didn't hunger anymore.
It had found its voice.