Harrower Field Report #9821: Hollowmere, Cumbria
Submitted by: Torian Maithe
Classification: Priority Red
Activity: Persistent spiritual interference, residual hauntings
Historical Note: Hollowmere was razed and sealed during a Seelie incursion. Site suspected to be atop a sealed soul gate. Recon advised. Do not disturb local inhabitants until veil integrity is assessed.
Additional Note: Preliminary readings indicate faint traces of sirenic aural residue, likely from proximity to deepwater myth-rooted currents beneath the site. Unclear whether this has altered the veil's properties or drawn latent spirits into recursive states of haunting.
Evening fell like a hush as they arrived. The road narrowed into gravel, then into nothing at all. They left the Land Rover and continued on foot, boots crunching across frost-bitten bracken, mist curling like breath around their ankles.
Grey was the first to spot the village through the fog. "Is that... smoke?"
"Yes. And fog," Maerlowe murmured absently, studying the aged map in his hands. His brow was furrowed, mouth tight. "But not natural. Something here remembers." A faint tune threaded through the mist—barely audible, strange in its rhythm. It didn't sound like birdsong or wind, more like a hum recalled from the depths of the sea. Grey felt it prickle against her skin.
The village of Hollowmere emerged like a bruise from the moor: cottages with bowed roofs and broken chimneys; fences that sagged as if in mourning. No birds called. No lamps flickered. Yet the windows were lit from within, shadows moving behind lace curtains.
The mist here didn't move like it should. It held shape too long, clinging to gutters and eaves as if listening. When the wind stirred, it carried not sound but silence—a silence with teeth.
They paused at the stone marker on the edge of the village. Half-buried, etched with faint Harrower glyphs and strands of Faesign now dulled with age.
Grey ran her fingers over the carvings. "These are sealing runes. Worn, but still holding."
Wickham stood beside her, hands in his coat pockets, eyeing the surroundings warily. "Places like this don't forget," he grumbled. "Even if the world does."
They moved inward slowly, every step a question. Doors stood open in welcome or warning. A child played with a skipping rope in the square, her movements looped too precisely. Across the way, an old man whittled at air, smiling at nothing.
Grey felt it first—a tug low in her chest, familiar and cold. The quiet pressure of souls nearby. Too many. Too close.
"They're ghosts," she said quietly, to no one in particular.
Alaric gave a slow nod. "Some of them. Not all. Hard to tell the living from the dead in a place like this."
Maerlowe drew a deep breath through his nose. "There should be a soul gate below us."
"There is," Grey hummed in agreement, looking around apprehensively. "I can feel it."
They briefly split up to observe. Grey passed by a bakery where fresh loaves steamed behind glass that should've shattered long ago. Wickham tried speaking to a woman hanging laundry that never dried. Alaric stood by the church gate, watching a boy carve names into the frost—names that faded even as he wrote them. Maerlowe paused near the village well, staring at a reflection that didn't match his own.
The villagers smiled. They waved. They talked. But none of them remembered dying.
They stopped outside a house tucked behind overgrown hedges, its thatched roof uneven and bowed by age. Mismatched windowpanes glinted under the dull sky, warped by time and something less natural.
They knocked.
The first time, the child opened the door with a shy smile—freckled, wide-eyed, in patched corduroy trousers and a jumper with a stitched duck. "Have you come to fix the bell?" he asked, head tilted in hopeful expectation. His image flickered and faded into nothing.
When they moved on and tried another door, the same child opened it. Again, and again. Same clothes. Same voice. Same question.
Grey frowned. "It's looping," she whispered, a chill creeping up her spine. "He's not aware it's happening."
Wickham let out a low whistle, folding his arms and glancing over his shoulder at the ever-present mist. "Well. That's not creepy at all. Just your standard, perfectly normal ghost village with copy-paste children. Delightful. Someone remind me why I didn't stay in bed today?"
They knocked on several more houses, but none of the residents seemed to register anything unusual. Each door opened onto the same moment playing out like a trapped breath.
Grey stepped back, heart knocking strangely.
Around the corner, an elderly woman leaned on a garden gate. Her eyes found Grey and softened like old silk. "You always did glow, love," she said fondly, as if greeting a long-lost granddaughter.
Grey frowned, and opened her mouth to reply, but the air changed. Something tugged. Alaric tensed and took a step closer to Grey, defensively.
Maerlowe crouched near a gutter, fingers skimming the trembling surface of a rusted wardstone. He rose slowly, face drawn. "The boundary's collapsing. The veil is thinning. If this keeps leaking—"
"—it'll pull more than ghosts through," Alaric finished.
He stepped a few feet off, eyes on the chapel tower. His voice was quiet, the words like stones dropped into a well. "I was stationed here once," he said. "Briefly. During the first Dissolution. There was too much sorrow. We sealed it before it drowned everything in it. Seems the wards didn't hold."
Silence followed his words, stretching between them like the mist that blanketed Hollowmere. And from deep below, the soul gate pulsed, once. Alive.
The scent led them to the epicentre of the disturbance—smoke that wasn't smoke, curling through the village like the ghost of some great pyre. Grey followed it past a leaning fence and into a garden overgrown with thistle and thorn.
In the center stood a girl. Barefoot. Hair singed and eyes wide with terror. Flames danced up her nightdress, but she didn't scream right away.
Then it began.
A scream torn from the soul—raw, looping, never-ending. Each time she burned, her small voice tore itself to shreds, calling out a name none of them could catch. Her eyes, wide with panic, searched the smoke as if salvation might materialize from the haze.
Her small hands reached out again and again, blistering before vanishing. The flames licked at her hair and clothes like living things, hungering, gleeful. Her cries cracked with desperation, each repetition more distorted, as though memory itself had frayed at the edges.
Her agony wasn't just pain—it was betrayal, abandonment, the unbearable weight of waiting for help that never came. It had become her only language, her world reduced to fire and silence and the echo of a name she would never remember.
They stared in horror.
Wickham swore. "Bloody hell!"
He stepped forward and raised a ward—but the loop snapped back into place. The fire rewound. The girl reappeared. Again, and again.
Grey moved past him. "Let me."
She knelt, ignoring the searing heat that didn't burn. The Spindle's Twin shimmered faintly under her skin. With slow hands, she drew threadlight into a shape—a silver lattice that wrapped the flame in ash and shimmer.
"Shhh," Grey whispered. "It's done now. You're safe."
The girl looked at her with eyes that remembered nothing and everything.
"It stopped hurting," she said, voice like breath, her eyes wide with a wonder that cut through the pain. Her small hands clutched at Grey's coat, trembling, as though trying to hold on to something solid for the first time in years. Then her expression softened—relief blooming like a late-spring flower. "Thank you," she whispered, voice wet with gratitude, and then she vanished, not torn or ripped away, but fading gently like a song coming to its final note.
Wickham wiped his face with one sleeve. "You're getting frighteningly good at this, darling."
Grey didn't answer. She simply looked down at her hands.
Maerlowe was the first to find it—half-hidden behind the crumbling chapel ruins, where moss overtook stone and tree roots buckled the earth. A slight dip in the land, ringed with old yew trees and overgrown ferns.
"The gate lies here," he said, voice taut. He knelt, brushing back a tangle of leaves. Beneath them, a circle of stone shimmered faintly with fading sigils—etched in a mixture of fae goldleaf and Harrower glyphs. The lines flickered erratically, like a heartbeat out of rhythm.
Grey stepped forward, heart drumming to match the pulsing earth. "It's... it's almost through."
She dropped to her knees and reached for both the Spindle's Twin and the black star—the marks of power etched in her very soul now. As her palms touched the stone, the gate reacted: a deep, low hum that vibrated through the bones of the world.
Threadlight flared from her hands, bright and shivering with both clarity and chaos. The twin powers responded not as tools, but as companions—eager, strained, burning with purpose. Grey could feel the pull of frayed threads beneath the gate, unravelling.
With a sharp breath, she began to weave.
"Balance through thread," she whispered, eyes glowing, voice cracking from strain. "Peace through pattern."
The threads formed a lattice of starlight, spinning outwards in constellations of silver-black. As the gate surged open, light exploded into the clearing.
And the memory came.
A voice—her voice—pierced her like lightning through ice.
"You must not let them bind you," it said. "You were always the thread that ran against the grain."
Grey gasped, but didn't stop weaving. Power rushed through her, guided by instinct, pain, and love. The seal shuddered, then steadied. The leaking stopped. The wound closed, re-stitched with light.
Then silence.
She collapsed to her knees onto the grass, panting, the last glow fading from her fingertips. The soul gate was quiet once more.
And Hollowmere held its breath.
As the soul gate sealed behind them, Hollowmere shifted. The fog thinned. Light returned—not from sun or flame, but from clarity. Spirits flickered and faded, some vanishing with soft sighs, others blinking awake as if from a long dream.
A little boy clutched his mother's hand. "The bad dreams are gone," he said.
Alaric walked in silence, jaw tight, eyes shadowed with old grief. Wickham cast him a long look but said nothing, only adjusted the cuffs of his coat. Maerlowe lingered at the edge of the village, staring toward the chapel ruins. "The past doesn't sleep," he murmured. "But maybe it can rest."
Postscript: Harrower Archive Entry — Scribed by E. Maerlowe
Field Report Addendum #9821.1
Location: Hollowmere, Cumbria
Filed by: Harrower Maerlowe, Archivist-Emeritus
Date: [REDACTED]
Summary:
Upon return to Harrower Hall, I submit this record of the stabilization of the Hollowmere soul gate. The operation was led by Harrower Grey Wyrde, supported by Alaric Fen (formerly of the Hunt) and Harrower Wickham. The site had suffered long-term veil damage as a result of improper sealing during a Seelie incursion.
Evidence confirms that the village had become a liminal echo-state—housing both unawakened spirits and deteriorating glamours. The presence of a residual child haunt served as both emotional anchor and veil rupture point.
Gate was located behind the ruined chapel, beneath a collapsing yew grove. Initial seal remnants included fae goldleaf intertwined with Harrower binding sigils. Markings were failing—likely due to entropy and accumulated spiritual trauma.
Harrower Wyrde engaged both artefacts (Spindle and Star) in a simultaneous weave to reseal the breach. Subject experienced a spontaneous prophetic memory during reweaving. Wording recorded as: "You must not let them bind you. You were always the thread that ran against the grain."
Stabilization successful. Village state normalized. Majority of spirits released. Residual veil anomalies remain, but site presently considered dormant.
Recommendation: None. Seal regarded as intact.
Coastal cliffside, Cumbria
The ghostlight clung low to the grass—bluish-white, flickering in bursts, as if trying to breathe through mist.
Torian Maithe crouched beside it, one hand resting in the sodden earth, the other clutching a small tin lantern etched with Harrower runes. It hummed faintly against his palm, then fell still. Whatever had drawn it here… was gone.
Below, the sea roared like an afterthought. Wind lashed the rocks but did not touch him.
He had followed the thread of a recent passing—a widow who'd walked into the surf three nights ago. Her grief had been so heavy it left prints on the tide. But when he'd found her ghost earlier this evening, she hadn't wanted to stay. No weeping. No clinging. Just a soft smile and a murmured song that wasn't hers.
She'd called him by name before she vanished.
Not his name now. A name from before.
Torian straightened slowly, expression unreadable. The lantern at his side flared once, then went dark. That meant something. Ghosts never left clean.
He scanned the bluff. Nothing moved. Just wet stone, soaked bramble, and the half-rotted ribs of a chapel that hadn't heard prayer in fifty years.
But the air was wrong. Not empty. Reverberating.
He stepped into the ruin and stopped beside a tide-warped pew. A single word had been carved into the wood long ago, now nearly erased: return.
Torian's jaw tightened.
He reached into his coat and pulled out a folded cloth square, unwrapped it, and held it up to the wind. It was stained in salt and ghostlight—a trace from the widow's passing.
Then he heard it. Not the wind. Not the sea.
A note.
High, lilting, echoing along the edges of perception. Just a sliver of sound, like the tail of a lullaby that should have ended long ago.
"No," he murmured. "That's not her voice."
He inhaled deeply, once. The wind brought lavender, soaked in brine. His lips thinned.
"That's not her grief."
Torian turned back to the sea and scanned the black horizon. Something was coming. Or someone had sent it. He muttered the Harrower's rite of warding under his breath and didn't finish it.
He'd heard that note before. Long ago.
"Sirens don't lose their songs," he said aloud. "Not unless someone steals them."
The wind shivered. So did the sea.
And in the hush between waves, the ghostlight flickered one last time—not blue. But gold.