Chapter 1: Welcome to Blackvale
The road narrowed the closer they got to town, swallowed by gnarled trees that hadn't seen pruning in decades. The forest around them felt alive—watchful. The GPS had stopped updating two miles ago, and Ellie Hartley's phone had lost signal completely. Her mother, Meredith, tapped the screen twice before sighing.
"Of course," she muttered. "Dead zone."
Ellie leaned her forehead against the window. Fog rolled in thick, brushing against the glass like smoke from something that hadn't stopped burning. She felt the pressure in her chest tighten, not from the car ride, but from the quiet. The kind of quiet that made your skin twitch.
They passed a sign, its wooden boards cracked and overgrown:WELCOME TO BLACKVALE — EST. 1712Beneath it, someone had scratched into the wood with a knife:"WE NEVER LEFT."
Meredith didn't seem to notice.
The Hartleys hadn't planned to move. But after the accident — after him — everything in Boston had turned too loud, too close, too haunted in its own way. Meredith said they needed a fresh start. Somewhere cheap. Remote. A real estate agent online had called Blackvale "a hidden gem with small-town charm." A fixer-upper at an absurdly low price sealed it.
Now they rolled into a town with no visible stores, no gas stations, and no welcome committee. The buildings looked like they belonged to a different era — early 1900s, maybe earlier. Not charming. Not cozy. Just… still. Too still.
They pulled up to the house on Bracken Lane. Colonial, whitewashed, tall windows. Ivy crawling up its left side like veins. One shutter clung to a rusted hinge. The mailbox read 39, and just beneath it, almost invisible in the chipped paint, was the name: Hartley.
Ellie frowned. "Did you… tell them our name?"
Meredith looked up. "What?"
"The mailbox. It already says Hartley."
Meredith's brow furrowed. "Probably a coincidence."
Ellie didn't answer. She opened the car door and stepped out.
The air was wrong. Heavier. Denser. Like walking underwater.
The inside of the house smelled like wet stone and something faintly sweet — like old flowers left too long in a vase. Dust coated everything, though oddly, there weren't any cobwebs. The realtor had said someone would clean it. Either they hadn't, or someone had… and then left everything untouched. That felt worse.
The staircase groaned when Ellie climbed it. The second floor had four bedrooms. Hers faced the woods.
The wallpaper was faded green, patterned with twisting vines. She opened the closet and found only a single coat hanger swaying gently, as if it had just been touched.
That night, as she lay in her creaking bed, listening to the wind push against the old house's frame, she realized the walls were thin. She could hear her mother coughing downstairs, the refrigerator humming…
…and something else.
A whisper. Faint. Like breath moving over the rim of a bottle. Not words. Just sound.
She sat up. "Mom?"
No answer.
She tiptoed to the hallway. The floor chilled her bare feet instantly. The whispering stopped.
The hallway stretched longer than it had earlier that day. At the far end, a door stood slightly open. She didn't remember it being there.
She approached it slowly, breath held.
The door creaked open.
Empty room. Dust. Nothing else.
Until she turned to leave — and saw, in the reflection of the hallway mirror, a shadow move behind her.
But when she spun around — nothing.
She shut the door. Hard.
Morning came grey and quiet.
Downstairs, Meredith made toast and coffee like nothing had happened. Ellie said nothing about the whisper. Or the mirror. Or the shadow. Not yet.
She stepped out onto the porch with her breakfast. Across the street, an old woman stood perfectly still by her gate, hands clasped.
She didn't wave.
Just watched.
Ellie raised a cautious hand. The woman tilted her head. Her eyes didn't blink.
Then, without warning, she turned and vanished into the fog.
School started the next day. Blackvale High was a squat brick building that looked like it'd been condemned a decade ago and just ignored the order.
Inside, everything smelled like paper and mold. Lockers clanged. Fluorescent lights buzzed.
She was introduced in homeroom by a thin, pale woman named Ms. Stokes who had the energy of an embalmed librarian.
"This is Eleanor Hartley. Be kind."
No one really looked up. Except one girl — strawberry blonde, blue eyes too big for her face. She smiled. Warm, but tired. Ellie took the seat beside her.
"I'm Gracie," she whispered. "You're gonna hate it here."
Ellie blinked. "Thanks?"
"Not your fault. It's the town."
"What's wrong with it?"
Gracie leaned in closer. "You'll see."
That night, Ellie sat in her bed again. The whisper returned. Stronger. Her closet door slowly creaked open.
She reached for the bedside lamp. It flickered—once—twice—and then died.
Something breathed from inside the closet.
Then a voice—clear, unmistakable:
"Welcome back, Eleanor."
She didn't sleep that night.
Chapter 2: The Bell That Doesn't Ring
Blackvale High sat hunched at the end of a broken concrete lot, surrounded by thin, crooked trees that looked like they were leaning in to listen. The school wasn't big — maybe 200 students, tops — and yet it had four stories. Most of the windows on the top floor were boarded over.
Ellie stood by the front entrance on her first real morning of school, her breath frosting in the early chill, though it wasn't cold enough for that. She pulled her hoodie tighter, pretending not to feel eyes on her. The kids entering barely spoke. The ones who did, whispered. All of them stared — not with curiosity, but like they were trying to remember where they'd seen her before.
She walked in.
Her first class was history, where a gray-faced teacher named Mr. Cleary gave a lecture on local Blackvale lore, which included mentions of a fire in the 1800s, a flood in the 1900s, and "The Vanishing Term of 1973," which he skipped completely with an uncomfortable throat-clearing.
At lunch, Gracie found her again. She carried a half-eaten apple and a sketchbook filled with charcoal drawings that looked like they'd been done in the dark.
"Do you eat?" Gracie asked bluntly, sitting across from her.
"I guess?" Ellie blinked.
"Good. Some people don't anymore." She tapped her head. "They forget to."
Ellie forced a laugh. "You always this weird?"
Gracie smiled with her eyes. "You'll get used to me."
After school, Ellie wandered the courtyard behind the gym. The air felt heavier out here, closer to the trees. The cracked cement gave way to moss-covered bricks, and in the center of the yard stood an enormous, rusted bell hanging from a blackened wooden frame. It was cracked down the side. A plaque at the base read:
BLACKVALE TOWN BELL – FORGED 1713 – NEVER REMOVED
She stared at it.
It looked… wrong. Like it belonged in a cathedral, not a high school. Chains hung from it, wrapped tight like someone had restrained it.
Gracie appeared beside her.
"You found it," she said. "Everyone does. Eventually."
"What is it?"
"The bell. It's been here longer than the town. Longer than the land, they say."
"Does it ring?"
Gracie's eyes narrowed. "Hasn't rung in years."
"Why not?"
Gracie didn't answer. She just backed away and said, softly, "If you hear it… run."
That night, Ellie couldn't sleep again. The air in her room was heavy, dense with the same pressure she'd felt at the bell.
She tried distracting herself — reading, music — but her mind kept drifting back to the chains, the crack, the eerie way it seemed to watch her.
At exactly 3:17 a.m., she sat up in bed, her heart pounding for no reason.
And then — it came.
A low, echoing, metallic toll that shuddered through the air like thunder under her skin.
The bell was ringing.
One.Two.Three times.
She clutched her chest. The sound wasn't outside. It was in her bones.
Her window rattled. The closet door creaked.
Downstairs, something moved. Not footsteps. Not her mother. Something slower. Dragging.
She crept out of bed, heart hammering. The hallway light was flickering, a sickly yellow glow like a candle about to die.
She made it halfway down the stairs before the house suddenly went dead silent.
The bell stopped.
Then, a single knock — sharp and sudden — came from the front door.
One knock.
She froze.
No one in town had mentioned visitors.
Her mother's bedroom door remained closed.
Ellie moved to the peephole.
At first, she saw nothing.
Then… she saw the rope.
A frayed, splintered rope, hanging in the air in front of her door — the kind you'd pull to ring a large, ancient bell.
The air outside shimmered, thick with fog.
And then something pulled the rope down.
Toll.
She fell backward.
The next morning, Meredith acted like nothing had happened.
Ellie sat at breakfast, pale and quiet, her cereal untouched.
"Did you hear… anything last night?" she finally asked.
Her mother paused. "Like what?"
"A bell."
Meredith frowned. "There's no church here, Ellie."
Ellie's spoon clinked in her bowl. "Yeah," she whispered. "I know."
At school, the bell stood as it always had — silent, chained, cracked.
But when Ellie passed it on her way to math class, she noticed something that hadn't been there the day before.
On the stone base, beneath the plaque, scratched into the weather-worn brick, was a name:
Eleanor Hartley
…and beneath it, the date:
"Rung for you. 3:17 a.m."
She didn't remember falling, but the nurse said she fainted in the hall.
No one believed the inscription had been there.
By the end of the day, it was gone.
But she knew. She knew.
The bell had rung.And it had rung for her.
Chapter 3: Names Etched in Fog
The nurse sent Ellie home early.
She didn't argue.
The last thing she saw before fainting was her name, etched into the base of a centuries-old bell — followed by the time it rang just for her. And no one else seemed to remember it had rung at all.
Not even Gracie, who tilted her head and said, "What bell?" as if they hadn't stood there together the day before.
Ellie walked home with her hoodie pulled tight and her fingers clenched around the note from the school nurse. Her mind was spinning, trying to make sense of what she saw, what she heard, and what she now couldn't prove.
Blackvale's silence felt louder today. The trees were still. Not a bird in sight. No cars. The clouds above hung like ash-stained cotton — too low, too unmoving.
As she turned onto Ridge Street, the fog rolled in.
At first, it was gentle — a pale haze that gathered near her ankles. But within seconds, it thickened. It poured between houses, crawled over porches, wrapped itself around stop signs like fingers. Ellie couldn't see more than a few feet in front of her. Her skin broke out in goosebumps. Her ears popped — like something was shifting in the air pressure. A wrongness that seeped deep into her stomach.
She should've stopped walking.But her legs kept moving.
Somewhere in that white void, the fog whispered.
It wasn't wind. It wasn't imagination.
It spoke.
Her name.
"Ellie…"
She spun around. No one.
She walked faster. Fog pressed against her like a wall.
"Eleanor…"
She broke into a jog. The houses disappeared behind a sheet of gray. Her hands trembled.
And then—she saw something.
A street sign, just ahead. The words on it were normal at first:
WILLOW AVE.
But underneath, newly scratched into the green metal, was a list of names.
Not spray-painted.
Carved.
Like with a knife or a claw.
EMILY DUNNEPAUL RIGGSTAMARA WINTERSGRACIE WINTERS…and at the bottom:
ELEANOR HARTLEY
Her heart stopped. She stared.
The metal looked freshly gouged. The scratches were still bleeding rust.
"Gracie…" she whispered.
The fog swirled faster.
Ellie reached into her pocket and fumbled for her phone. She tried taking a photo. Flash. Click. Nothing. The image wouldn't save. It glitched and disappeared.
She looked up again — and the names were gone.
Not covered. Erased.
The metal was smooth and clean, as if it had never been touched.
She backed away and nearly tripped over a tree root that hadn't been there before. Then she noticed the trunk beside her.
Something was carved there too.
This time, it was just her name.
ELEANOR HARTLEYBORN 1935 – MISSING 1952
She gasped.
A hand touched her shoulder.
She screamed.
Gracie stood behind her, eyes wide. "Ellie—what the hell? You ran off after lunch. I've been looking for you."
Ellie could barely breathe. "The sign… it had names. Your name. Mine. Then it was gone."
Gracie blinked. "My name?"
Ellie dragged her to the tree, to the carving. "Look!"
It was gone.
Just bark.
Clean.
Ellie staggered backward. "It was here."
Gracie looked deeply at her. "Ellie, maybe you should rest. You hit your head this morning, remember?"
"No—I know what I saw."
"Come on. I'll walk you the rest of the way."
At home, the fog lingered around the porch steps like it didn't want to let go of her.
Meredith wasn't back from work. Ellie made tea with trembling hands and went to her room, locking the door behind her.
She didn't touch the tea. Instead, she searched her closet for the trunk she had seen last week, the one her mother had said came with the house.
She hadn't dared to open it yet.
Now, she needed to.
The wood creaked as she lifted the lid. Inside were old winter clothes, blankets, a moth-eaten Bible… and something wrapped in cloth.
She unwrapped it carefully.
It was a knife. Small, silver. Old.
And on the handle, etched in curling, ancient letters:"Return to her."
Underneath it, tucked in the cloth, was a photo.
Black and white. Faded.
A girl standing at the edge of a fog-covered street. A tree behind her.
Carved in its bark:ELEANOR HARTLEYBORN 1935 – MISSING 1952
The same carving.
The same tree.
The girl in the photo… was Ellie.
Same eyes. Same hair. Same scar under her left eye.
She dropped the photo and stumbled back.
The fog outside her window thickened, curling around the edges of the glass like smoke.
And faintly, impossibly, she saw the tree again… and her name reappear on it.
Like the town was reminding her:
You've been here before.
You never left.
Chapter 4: The Missing Girl
Ellie didn't sleep.
After what she saw in the photo — her own face staring back from 1952 — sleep felt like an invitation to something watching, waiting. The fog had wrapped itself around the house like ivy, clinging to her windows until dawn.
Now, sitting in homeroom at Blackvale High, her head pounded from exhaustion. But even through the ache, she noticed something else was off.
There was an empty chair.
Third row, by the window. Julia Markham's seat.
Julia — the loud, confident girl who'd handed out glitter pens and perfume samples like she ran the school. Ellie had spoken to her just once: a quick exchange in the hallway about how "Blackvale sucks," followed by an awkward laugh. That was it.
And now… she was gone.
No announcement. No "Julia's moving." No mention at all.
Just silence.
Gracie sat beside her, chewing on a pen cap. Ellie nudged her gently. "Where's Julia?"
Gracie blinked, then tilted her head like she was trying to remember if such a person existed. "Julia…?"
"Julia Markham. Wavy brown hair. Heavy eyeliner. She sat there."
Gracie looked at the empty chair again, slowly. "Oh. Yeah. I guess she… left?"
"Left?"
Gracie shrugged. "People leave all the time. Blackvale's not exactly paradise."
Ellie narrowed her eyes. "But her backpack's still in her locker."
Gracie paused, her fingers tightening slightly around the pen. "Then maybe she's still here. Or... just forgot it."
It didn't feel right.
None of it did.
Ellie waited until lunch. When most of the school filtered outside to the quad, she slipped back into the hallway and found Julia's locker.
Still locked.
Still covered in little heart stickers and band logos.
She leaned close. There was a sound — something soft. Not quite a whisper, not quite breathing.
It was murmuring.
Ellie's stomach turned.
She hesitated, then twisted the small lock Julia used to show off. 11–4–28. She remembered seeing it once when Julia had bragged that "nobody steals in Blackvale, because where would they even go?"
The locker creaked open.
Inside were photos, gum wrappers, a cracked mirror, and a pink floral diary with a broken latch.
Ellie reached for it. Her hands trembled.
The moment she touched the cover, the hallway lights flickered. Just once.
She pressed the book to her chest and walked quickly back to the girls' bathroom — the only place that didn't have cameras or roaming teachers. She sat in the last stall, locked the door, and opened the diary.
Julia's DiaryEntry 1:
Blackvale is weird. I get headaches near the lake.There's a boy who watches me. I think I saw him standing on the water.But when I looked again, he was gone.
He had no face.
Ellie turned the pages faster.
Entry 4:
I dreamt of fire.I couldn't breathe.There were children in the lake, singing.The boy smiled at me.He said, "You're next."
Entry 6:
I tried telling Mr. Greene. He said I was "stress-hallucinating."But he looked scared. I think he knew something.Why do the teachers never leave Blackvale?No one retires.No one dies.
Entry 9:
I heard them calling me again."Come to the lake."My mom says I sleepwalk.But I keep waking up with wet feet.
Entry 12:
I saw her today.The girl in the photo.She looks like Eleanor.But she was in the yearbook from 1952.She's wearing the same necklace.I don't think she knows yet.
Ellie's fingers went numb.
She clutched the necklace around her own throat. It was antique. Her mom said it had belonged to her grandmother. An old heirloom. The locket was heart-shaped, the clasp rusted.
She hadn't opened it in years.
Hands shaking, Ellie flicked it open.
Inside… was a tiny, faded photo.
Of her.
Standing by the lake.
Behind her — a boy.
Smiling.
Faceless.
That night, Ellie sat in her room, the diary on her lap, the locket beside it.
Rain fell outside in cold slants. But the fog still clung to the corners of her window like spiderwebs.
She heard it again.
That whisper.
"Ellie…"
She ran to the window. The glass was frosted over.
And then — tap tap tap — something moved in the fog.
A figure. Pale. Thin.
Long hair.
Wearing Julia's clothes.
Ellie gasped.
The girl looked up.
But she had no eyes.
No mouth.
Just… smooth, blank skin.
Then she turned and vanished into the fog.
Leaving only the words scratched into the outside of the glass:
COME TO THE LAKE
Chapter 5: Gracie's Warning
Ellie didn't sleep again.
The sight of the faceless girl in the fog, the eerie entries in Julia's diary, the photo inside her own locket — they all nested in her brain like rot behind wallpaper. Her thoughts twisted through the night, creeping, whispering.
By morning, the fog still hadn't lifted. It clung to the town like it was trying to keep something in.
She kept Julia's diary buried deep in her backpack.
No one else mentioned Julia. Not even teachers. Her name was slipping from people's minds like a dream evaporating after waking.
But Ellie couldn't forget.
And she knew exactly where she had to go next.
"Gracie," Ellie said in a low voice at lunch. "Can we talk?"
They sat together at the back of the library, hidden between tall, forgotten shelves smelling of dust and mildew. Outside, the bell tower loomed in the fog like a corpse on a noose.
Gracie tilted her head. "You look like hell."
"I didn't sleep. I… saw something last night. In the fog."
Gracie tensed. Her fingers clutched the edge of her chair. "What did you see?"
"Someone. A girl. No face. She was wearing Julia's clothes."
Gracie didn't speak. She just nodded once. Too quickly. Like it wasn't surprising at all.
"You're not going to call me crazy?" Ellie asked.
Gracie's voice lowered. "Crazy doesn't exist in Blackvale. There's just things people can't explain."
They sat in silence for a moment. Somewhere above them, the school's ancient heating pipes groaned like a dying animal.
Then Gracie whispered, "You ever hear about the lake?"
Ellie nodded slowly. "Julia wrote about it. Something about a boy in the water."
Gracie's jaw clenched.
"My brother… Lucas… he went missing three years ago. For three whole days. He was eleven."
"What happened?" Ellie whispered.
Gracie looked around, then leaned in. Her voice dropped to barely a breath.
"We were playing near the lake — me, him, and my dog Ollie. I turned around for one second. One second. He was gone. No splash. No scream. Just… vanished."
Ellie's blood chilled.
"And then?" she asked.
"He came back. Three days later. Just walked into the kitchen like nothing happened. But he didn't… look right."
"What do you mean?"
Gracie's eyes glistened with something unspoken. "His eyes were darker. Not the color — just… the way he looked at things. He stopped calling Mom 'Mom.' He didn't remember Ollie. He barely spoke for a year. He'd stare at corners, like something was there. And he kept saying one word in his sleep."
"What word?"
Gracie looked directly at Ellie now. "Bellwether."
Ellie felt her stomach twist. "That was the name on the photo in my locket. It said 'Bellwether Lake, 1952.'"
Gracie nodded. "That's the name of the lake. But nobody uses it anymore. Most people don't even know it has a name. They just call it The Water. Like it's always been there."
Ellie leaned back, her pulse pounding in her ears.
"Sometimes," Gracie continued, her voice breaking, "I think Lucas didn't come back at all. Or… maybe the thing that did come back just knows how to wear him."
A long, cold silence passed between them.
Then Gracie added, "Last week, he killed our cat. Said it talked too much."
That night, Ellie stayed awake in her room, lights off, watching the fog breathe outside her window.
At 2:13 a.m., she saw him.
Lucas.
Standing perfectly still at the edge of her front yard.
In the fog.
Facing her window.
Not moving.
Not blinking.
His face was pale in the moonlight, expressionless. His mouth hung slightly open. In his hand, he held something.
It was Julia's pink diary.
Ellie's breath caught in her throat.
She'd hidden it in her backpack.
Which was right next to her bed.
Lucas raised the diary slowly… and smiled.
Not a boy's smile.
A thing's smile.
Then he dropped the book on the grass and vanished into the fog without taking a single step.
Just… gone.
Ellie ran downstairs, heart pounding, barefoot on creaking wood.
The front door creaked open without her touching it.
She stepped outside.
The air was freezing.
The diary was lying exactly where he'd left it.
When she bent down to pick it up, she noticed something else carved into the dirt next to it.
Letters scratched by something sharp.
BELLWETHER WAITS.
She looked up.
The fog around the trees across the street began to ripple — not from wind — but as if something massive was moving inside it.
Watching.
Waiting.
Calling.
Chapter 6: The House With No Light
Ellie didn't go to school.
After what she saw — Lucas standing in her yard with Julia's diary, the message in the dirt — she couldn't pretend anymore. She didn't even tell her mom. She couldn't. Meredith had been distant for days, her words slower, her eyes hollow like something was draining her spirit from the inside out.
Blackvale was taking things.
And Ellie knew, with a sick certainty, it would try to take her next.
So that morning, instead of grabbing her backpack, Ellie grabbed a flashlight and tucked Julia's diary into her coat. She left through the back door, stepping into the gray mist that never seemed to lift.
The fog clung to her skin, her lashes, her lungs. It muffled every sound — her footfalls, the occasional rustle of trees — like the town didn't want anyone to hear her leaving.
She had only one destination in mind now.
Bellwether Lake.
The road sloped gently through Blackvale's wooded edges, following the old creek that ran toward the water. As she walked, she passed abandoned cars swallowed by weeds and fences that seemed to hum slightly when she got too close.
It was halfway down that cracked path that she saw her.
A girl.
Not Gracie.
This girl was pale, barefoot, wearing a tattered white sundress. Her long black hair was damp, dripping onto her shoulders even though there'd been no rain.
She didn't look at Ellie. She just turned, slowly, and walked across the street into the woods.
Ellie froze.
She should have run.
But something pulled at her, gentle and steady — like gravity, but darker.
So she followed.
Branches snapped underfoot. The trees were too quiet. The air had a sharp, metallic taste — like blood.
The girl led her to a crumbling, two-story colonial house choked in ivy and time. Its windows were shattered. Its door was missing. The number carved above the entrance read:
147 Ashmoor Lane
The hairs on Ellie's neck rose.
She knew that address.
It was the house that burned in 1967.
The one everyone in town claimed collapsed. Condemned. Gone.
But it stood there now, silent, real.
The girl stepped inside.
Ellie, heartbeat thunderous, followed.
Inside, the air shifted.
It was warm. Too warm. The smell of smoke lingered in the wallpaper, like the fire had just died out.
Furniture stood where it shouldn't — armchairs near blackened windows, a dusty baby crib in the hall. But there was no ash. No sign of decay. Just… stillness.
The girl was gone.
"Hello?" Ellie whispered.
Nothing answered.
Until she stepped into the living room.
On a table lay a pile of Polaroids — thick, fresh, untouched by time.
She picked one up.
It showed her house.
The front door.
Another showed her in the school library, reading Julia's diary.
Another — her brushing her teeth last night.
Her hands trembled.
And then she saw it.
The last photo.
It was her.
Asleep in bed.
But the angle was impossible — taken from above, almost at the ceiling.
Her chest rose and fell beneath the covers. Her face was slack with sleep.
But that wasn't what froze her.
It was what stood over her in the photo.
A figure. Tall. Skeletal. Standing on the ceiling like a spider. Long arms stretched wide, nearly brushing the walls. Its head bent at a crooked angle, and it was smiling.
Ellie dropped the Polaroid.
Suddenly, the temperature dropped — from warm to freezing in seconds.
The photo began to crumple in on itself, curling like it was being burned in reverse.
Behind her, she heard footsteps.
Slow.
Wet.
She turned.
The girl in white stood in the hallway again.
Only now her head was tilted — broken — like her neck had snapped long ago.
She lifted one arm and pointed toward the stairs.
Ellie didn't want to go.
But her legs moved anyway.
Each step groaned like a scream.
The upstairs hallway was scorched, wallpaper half-peeled, but the air still had warmth — and the heavy scent of candlewax and old perfume.
She pushed open a door at the end.
It was a bedroom.
A child's room.
Unburned. Preserved.
Toys on the floor. A mobile spinning slowly above a crib that hadn't held anyone in decades.
A name was carved into the wood:
EVIE.
Ellie's breath caught.
No one had called her that since she was five.
"Evie," her mother used to whisper, "my little heartbeat."
But Meredith stopped using that nickname after their accident. The one Ellie wasn't supposed to remember.
She backed away.
And then — behind her — a voice rasped:
"You left me."
She spun.
The girl was right there.
But this time, her eyes were black voids. Her mouth stretched wide, impossibly wide, like her jaw had cracked down to her collarbone. Her skin peeled and sloughed like wax. She stepped forward—
"You left me in the fire."
Ellie screamed and ran.
Down the stairs. Past the photos. Through the door.
Back into the fog.
She didn't stop running until the house was gone — swallowed by the woods behind her.
At home, she locked every door and window.
Then, trembling, she opened Julia's diary again.
In the back pages — where she'd never looked — a note had been scribbled in unfamiliar handwriting:
"If you're reading this, you've seen her.The house is always there. Just not for everyone.She lives inside it.But she's not the worst thing here.Look under your bed.If there's a nail missing —you've already let it in."
Ellie slowly turned toward her bed.
Bent down.
There, on the hardwood floor, where the frame touched the ground…
One nail was gone.
And something had scratched into the floorboards beneath it.
"I'm already in."
Chapter 7: Blackvale Has No Church
Ellie didn't sleep that night, again.
The missing nail. The message under her bed. The Polaroids. The house that wasn't supposed to exist.
She was unraveling.
No — not unraveling.
Awakening.
Because everything she'd been told — everything she thought she understood about this world — was wrong.
People disappeared in Blackvale. But no one cared.
People whispered things they shouldn't know. But no one listened.
And when people died… they didn't seem to stay dead.
So that morning, Ellie asked a question that felt almost silly in a town like this:
"Where do people here go to pray?"
Meredith wasn't home.
She hadn't been since yesterday. Her bed was untouched, her mug cold on the counter, her phone lying dead on the table.
No note. No goodbye. No memory of leaving.
Just absence.
Like she'd been swallowed whole by the town itself.
But Ellie didn't panic.
Not anymore.
She just knew.
Blackvale was taking her mother — piece by piece.
And it would do the same to her if she didn't find answers.
She wandered through town on foot.
The fog was lighter than usual, but still thick enough to distort shapes and muffle sound. Houses seemed to drift behind her, reappearing on the opposite street. Blackvale didn't just hide things — it moved them.
She passed the diner, the library, the abandoned movie theater where the same poster had hung for decades:"NOW SHOWING: THE BOY WHO WASN'T"
Everywhere she went, she looked for signs — stained-glass windows, steeples, bells, grave markers. Anything.
Nothing.
There was no church.
No funeral home.
No cemetery.
No symbols of any faith — no crosses, no stars, no crescent moons. Even books in the library on religion were gone — shelves marked "REFERENCE" were completely empty.
At a small general store, she asked the old woman behind the counter.
"Is there a church in town?"
The woman paused. Her eyes twitched.
"We used to have one," she whispered. "Long time ago."
"What happened?"
The woman leaned in, voice dry as parchment. "It heard something it shouldn't have. So the town took it."
She found Gracie that afternoon, sitting alone on a swingset behind the school.
"I need to show you something," Ellie said, breathless.
Gracie didn't turn.
"You're looking for the church, aren't you?"
Ellie blinked. "How do you know?"
"Everyone does it eventually," Gracie said, her voice low. "When the town starts getting in. You think maybe God can get you out."
Ellie swallowed. "So there's really nothing?"
Gracie finally looked at her. Her eyes looked older than before. Tired.
"There's a graveyard. But not the kind you're thinking of."
That evening, Gracie took her past the edge of town — toward the forest that bordered Bellwether Lake.
They hiked through the trees for nearly thirty minutes. The sun had long since disappeared, and the moon barely shone through the fog. Ellie's flashlight flickered like it wanted to quit.
Then they reached it.
A clearing.
Empty. Silent.
Except for one thing.
The ground.
Dozens of shoes stuck out from the dirt.
Not bodies. Not bones.
Just shoes. All types — sneakers, boots, heels, loafers — each one upright, like someone had been buried feet-first and the earth had swallowed everything but what they walked in.
Gracie knelt beside one.
"This was my cousin Daniel. He used to run track. His feet were always cold. Said he felt something under the ground when he ran."
Ellie stared, horrified.
"This is a graveyard?" she asked.
Gracie nodded. "Kind of."
"What happened to them?"
"They went into the fog. Or into the water. Or into the other places. And the town… it kept their steps. That's all Blackvale ever really buries."
Ellie turned around slowly. The fog pressed against the trees like a crowd watching silently.
And then a voice behind them whispered:
"You're not supposed to be here."
They turned.
A boy stood in the trees.
Tall. Pale. Hair slicked back like it belonged in a different decade.
He smiled.
Too wide. Too many teeth.
Ellie's breath caught. "Who are you?"
But she already knew.
Julia's diary had described him.
"The boy in the lake smiled at me."
The boy tilted his head, that too-wide grin still stretching across his face.
"We don't die here," he said, "because the town remembers us. Even when it shouldn't."
He raised his hand and pointed to Ellie's feet.
She looked down.
The dirt beneath her was stirring.
Slowly shifting.
Then — splitting.
Something was trying to pull her shoes into the earth.
She stumbled back, barely keeping balance, dragging her feet free with a cry. Gracie grabbed her arm and yanked her away.
They ran.
Branches slapped their faces. Fog rushed past like wind. Behind them, the boy's laughter echoed — high-pitched and hollow, like something that didn't know why it was laughing but did it anyway.
Back home, Ellie bolted her door and collapsed to her knees.
On the kitchen table, something waited.
A Polaroid.
It hadn't been there when she left.
She picked it up with shaking hands.
It was her — and Gracie — standing in the forest clearing.
Taken from high above. As if someone had been watching them the entire time.
And scrawled at the bottom, in that same shaky ink:
"Stop looking for God.He left."
Chapter 8: The Night Everyone Forgot
The photo was still on the table the next morning.Same cold Polaroid. Same message:"Stop looking for God.He left."
Ellie didn't touch it.
She just stared.
Her head felt light, her body like it was lagging behind her thoughts. Even when she moved, her footsteps didn't quite match the sound they made. Like reality was slightly out of sync.
The fog outside the windows hadn't lifted. It pulsed in slow waves like it was breathing.
She stepped outside.
Silence.
Not the small-town kind. Not the sleepy Sunday kind.
But absolute silence — the kind that screamed.
The leaves didn't rustle. The birds didn't chirp. The power lines didn't hum.
Every house stood like a cardboard cutout. No light. No curtains twitching. No sound of dishes or radios or footsteps.
The town was still.
Unmoving.
Wrong.
She called out, once. Then twice.
No reply.
Gracie didn't answer her texts. Her mother's number rang but didn't connect. The phone booth across the library blinked a green light, but the receiver was warm and dripping when Ellie picked it up — with what, she couldn't tell.
At the school, every door was unlocked.
Lockers hung open. Lights flickered. A basketball rolled across the gym floor without anyone pushing it.
In one classroom, every desk had a different name scratched in deep — none of them hers.
NINA. MARCO. WREN. ELLIE. ELLIE. ELLIE. ELLIE.
Four times.
Same handwriting.
Same angle.
Different pressure.
She backed out.
At Blackvale Square, the town clock was stuck at 3:06.
The same second ticked over and over.
3:06.3:06.3:06.
She stood there for minutes, maybe hours. Her phone died. Her reflection in the bakery window blinked even when she didn't.
And behind her reflection…
A shape moved.
She spun around — but nothing was there.
Just fog. Cold, dense, and now rising at her ankles.
She finally found someone — a man slumped on a bench near the old bus stop. His face was turned away, body stiff.
"Sir?" she asked, gently tapping his arm. "Are you okay?"
He didn't move.
She circled around…
The man was made of wax.
Not just his face — everything. Pale, shiny skin. Blank eyes. Slight smile. Stiff limbs.
There was a crack down the side of his neck, leaking something dark like tar.
Behind him, carved into the bench in tiny, almost invisible script:
"It's your turn."
She made it home just as the sun was setting — or trying to.
The sky stayed frozen in that sickly orange hue, never getting darker, never lighter. The world was stuck.
Inside the house, the TV was on — but the screen showed static.
The static formed a face.
Eyes. Lips. Watching her.
Ellie unplugged it. The face didn't go away.
She covered it with a towel.
In the hallway, every family photo they'd hung up had changed.
The faces were wrong.Not distorted — replaced.
In each photo, the people smiled, but their eyes were wide with screams.
In one frame, Ellie was standing with a tall man she didn't recognize. Her hand was in his. He had no face.
She blinked — and the photo changed back.
But she knew what she saw.
That night, the town returned.
Suddenly. Quietly.
Lights in windows. Cars on streets. Voices in the distance.
It was as if nothing had happened.
No one mentioned the silence. No one remembered being gone. When Ellie asked Gracie about the wax man, she looked confused.
"Ellie… what wax man?"
Ellie showed her the photo of the bench.
It was clean. Untouched.
The carving was gone.
Later that night, Ellie sat in her room, unable to rest. The digital clock on her nightstand blinked 3:06 — over and over.
She reached for her laptop and opened the webcam folder.
She had a habit of leaving it on by accident — something she'd been meaning to stop.
Inside the recordings, she found a video labeled with the date.
Today's date.
She clicked it open.
The screen went black for a moment. Then fuzzy. Then…
There she was.
Ellie.
Standing outside the house.
But she wasn't walking.
She was floating.
Her feet hovered inches above the grass. Her eyes were closed. Arms at her sides. Head tilted like she was listening to something only she could hear.
She floated to the street.
Paused.
Turned back — and looked directly into the camera.
Then smiled.
The video ended.
She stared at the screen.
Suddenly, her phone vibrated to life on the desk beside her. It had been dead for hours.
A new text lit the screen.
No number.
Just words.
"Don't float too far, Eleanor.You might forget how to fall."
Chapter 9: The Disappearance of Meredith Hartley
The message still burned on the screen.
"Don't float too far, Eleanor.You might forget how to fall."
She stared at it for what felt like hours, unmoving. Waiting for another text. Another flicker. A glitch. Something to make it all untrue.
Nothing came.
The house groaned like it was breathing — slow and reluctant, as if waking up from a long, hateful sleep.
Ellie turned off the screen. She needed to see her mom. Hear her voice. She needed something real.
She padded barefoot down the hallway. The floorboards were cold. Too cold.
Her mother's bedroom door stood ajar.
"Mom?" she whispered.
Silence.
She pushed the door open.
The bed was neatly made. The lamp still glowed softly — warm yellow against pale blue walls.
But the room was empty.
No clothes in the closet.
No toothbrush in the holder.
No coffee mug by the windowsill.
No smell of lavender shampoo.
No jacket on the hook.
Ellie opened the dresser drawers — empty. No socks, no shirts, not even dust.
"Mom?" Her voice cracked.
The mirror didn't show her reflection right.
It showed her room — but without her in it.
She backed away, heart in her throat, breath sharp and uneven.
She ran to the kitchen.
No plate in the sink.
No wine glass on the counter.
No note. No list. No crumbs. No sign she'd ever existed.
She flung open the fridge — only a half-eaten sandwich she knew she hadn't made.
The calendar on the fridge had no handwriting. No circled dates. No scrawled reminders.
Just a single line written across the month of October in red ink:
"STOP ASKING."
Gracie didn't believe her.
They met at the bus stop. Ellie's eyes were wide, bloodshot. She hadn't slept, but she wasn't tired. She was shaking.
"She's gone," Ellie said. "My mom. Meredith. She's just… gone."
Gracie blinked. "Ellie… what are you talking about?"
"My mom, Gracie. Meredith. We moved here together. She drove the U-Haul. You met her. She came to the school orientation with me!"
Gracie tilted her head, brow furrowed.
"You… came alone. Remember? You told me your mom died in a car accident years ago."
Ellie froze.
"No. No, that's not— That's not right."
"It is. You cried about it at lunch. The first week. I remember."
"No, I didn't. She's alive. She was alive. She was just here last night! She made me tea!"
Gracie took a step back. Her voice softened. "Ellie, are you okay?"
The world tilted.
Ellie pulled out her phone and scrolled to her photos — nothing.
No selfies. No screenshots. No pictures of her mom.
Her contact list?
No Meredith.
She raced back to the house after school. Tore through every drawer. Every file. Every cabinet.
Birth certificate — hers.
No mother listed.
Social security card? Her own.
No parents.
She opened her laptop. She remembered uploading a picture of her and her mom at the Grand Canyon. She knew where it was.
But the folder was empty.
No — worse.
There were pictures of her standing alone in the same places.
Smiling.
Arms wrapped around empty air.
She walked to the town records office. A cold gray building behind the courthouse that always seemed to be open, no matter the hour.
The clerk at the desk — a woman with a permanent smile but dead eyes — handed her a file.
It was thin.
Just one page.
Name: Eleanor Hartley.Date of Birth: Unknown.Guardian: None listed.Address: 4 Elm Grove.
She flipped it over. Blank.
"What about my mother?" Ellie asked.
The clerk blinked, smile never shifting. "You don't have one, dear."
"Yes, I do!"
"No, dear. You arrived alone. People don't come with others. They only arrive."
"Then how did I rent a house? How do I pay bills? Who signed the lease?"
The woman tilted her head. "What lease?"
Ellie dropped the folder and left.
She could feel it now.
That horrible, heavy erasure.
The world around her rearranging itself, burying memories under fog and silence and lies.
That night, she opened every closet. Checked every crawlspace. Even the attic.
She climbed the old ladder and opened the creaking door.
Dust filled her lungs.
A single lightbulb swung above.
There were boxes. Old, unlabeled. Yellowed paper. Moth-eaten quilts.
And in the corner, a rocking chair.
Sitting in it — her mother's coat.
Meredith's favorite gray wool coat.
Still warm.
Still smelling like her.
Folded neatly on the floor: her mother's scarf. Her ring. Her glasses.
And next to them — a photo.
A Polaroid.
Of Ellie.
Asleep in her bed.
But this time, someone else was beside her.
A woman.
Dark-haired, kind-eyed, smiling with her hand on Ellie's shoulder.
Meredith.
Ellie dropped the photo and screamed.
The attic lightbulb burst.
Darkness.
Only the sound of the rocking chair… moving.
Back.
And forth.
And then, a whisper behind her ear:
"You should've stayed asleep."
Chapter 10: The Photograph from 1952
The attic had gone quiet again. Too quiet.
No wind. No boards creaking. No breath.
Only the thick, pressing silence that made Ellie feel like the air itself was watching her.
Her trembling fingers gripped the broken flashlight. The rocking chair no longer moved. Her mother's coat lay crumpled on the floor now, as if it had never been worn. The Polaroid… gone.
She backed away, heart pounding in her ears, and stumbled into something hard — a trunk. Old. Leather. Bound in rusted metal straps with no lock, but it smelled like earth and mildew, like it had been buried for decades.
She crouched beside it, fingers hesitant, and slowly opened it.
Dust exploded into the air like ash. Inside, wrapped in brittle yellowing cloth, was a photo album — thick, water-damaged, and rotting at the edges.
Her name was burned into the leather:
"Eleanor Hartley."
She stared.
Her breath caught in her throat.
She opened it.
Photographs filled every page. Not printed, not digital — old ones. Sepia. Polaroids. Faded color shots, even tin-types. They were… decades apart. Maybe more.
She turned each page with growing dread.
There she was — standing by a Model T car, wearing a dress from the 1920s.Next page — a photo of her on a swing in front of a war memorial dated 1946.Another — in front of Blackvale High, newly built, her hair in soft curls, holding books from the 1950s.
Then—
Page 17.
Her fingers froze.
A black-and-white photo.
Slightly curled.
Labeled in neat handwriting:"Eleanor Hartley — 1952."
She dropped to her knees.
It was her.
No doubt.
Same wide, wary eyes.
Same scar above her eyebrow — the one she'd gotten when she fell off her bike as a kid.
Same heart-shaped locket around her neck.
Same tired smile.
She was seventeen in the photo. Exactly the age she was now.
Her voice cracked. "This… can't be…"
She flipped to the next photo.
Eleanor Hartley — 1974.Eleanor Hartley — 1989.Eleanor Hartley — 2001.Eleanor Hartley — 2010.
Different clothes.
Different backgrounds.
Same girl.
Same face.
Same scar.
Same eyes.
Her hands shook violently as she turned the final page.
No photo.
Just a blank page with a short message scrawled in dried ink:
"You always come back. But you never remember."
The attic floor moaned beneath her, like it was breathing again.
Ellie stumbled back. Her vision blurred.
She pressed her palms to her face. Hot tears fell.
"Who am I?" she whispered.
But the house didn't answer.
It never did.
Downstairs, the radio flicked on by itself.
A soft voice crackled through static — a 1950s tune playing like it never left.
🎵 "I'll be seeing you… in all the old familiar places..." 🎵
Ellie stood at the top of the stairs, trembling, holding the photo album tight to her chest.
The lights flickered.
And then she remembered something.
Not a sound.Not a voice.A feeling.
She remembered standing in this same house before.
She remembered watching fog creep through the windows as a girl screamed her name.
She remembered holding someone's hand and promising they'd get out this time.
She remembered the door opening… and stepping through…
...into nothing.
She ran.
Ran out of the house. Into the fog.
She needed to find Gracie. She needed someone to tell her she wasn't losing her mind.
But the town was too quiet.
Even the fog felt heavier now. Alive.
She clutched the photo album to her chest like a lifeline, but it pulsed in her arms — not with warmth, but with memory. With history.
The kind of history no one should ever find.
She stumbled onto Main Street.
Shops shuttered.
No headlights.
Even the streetlamps blinked like they were tired of pretending this was a real town.
Then she saw it.
The bell.
The rusted, towering school bell.
It had rung that first night.
It hadn't stopped since.
But now she understood what it really was.
A signal.
Not a warning.
A welcome back.
She collapsed to her knees beneath the bell, the photograph clutched in her hand.
Eleanor Hartley — 1952.
She stared at it.
And finally… remembered.
Not everything. But enough.
The lake.The fire.The boy who never blinked.The pact.The fog swallowing a train.The words carved into bark.The black-eyed girl she left behind.
She remembered waking up in this town, over and over and over again.
Each time, believing she was new.
Each time, trying to leave.
Each time, forgetting.
The truth hit her like ice in her spine.
She hadn't moved to Blackvale.
She'd been called back.
She wasn't the new girl in town.
She was its oldest secret.
And in the distance, the Black Man watched.
Waiting.
Smiling.
Continues in Season 2...