Hollow’s End

When Nathan discovers a mysterious note from his grandmother, he is drawn to a forgotten town no map remembers. In Hollow’s End, he finds a past alive and a warning that the town is destined to vanish — unless he preserves its memory.

The first time Nathan saw the name Hollow’s End, it was written in his grandmother’s hand.

He’d been sorting through a box of her things in the attic — photographs curling at the edges, brittle letters, smudged recipe cards. Tucked inside a cracked leather journal was a folded scrap of paper. The ink had faded, but the words were sharp:

They’ll never find it, unless they want to be found. Hollow’s End. Don’t forget.

Nathan frowned. He had grown up in northern Michigan, hearing family stories of logging camps and railways, but he’d never heard of Hollow’s End. Nothing in archives or maps bore its name. It was as if the town had been swallowed whole.

And yet, his grandmother had written the warning deliberately. Not a riddle. A plea.

By morning, Nathan had made up his mind. If Hollow’s End was a ghost, he would track it down.

The backroads wound deeper than Nathan remembered, pines crowding the gravel shoulders, the late-summer air sharp with resin. He parked at the edge of an overgrown two-track, shouldering a backpack heavy with a notebook, snacks, and the brass compass that had belonged to his grandfather.

Concrete slabs emerged from moss. A square depression in the earth hinted at a foundation. He brushed away pine needles from a lump of iron — an old rail spike, eaten red with rust.

The hair on his arms prickled. He was close.

Then he saw her.

A young woman stood ahead in the clearing, watching him with wide eyes. She wore a blue cotton dress cinched at the waist, the kind Nathan had only seen in black-and-white photographs. Her dark hair was braided neatly, and though she couldn’t have been older than him, something in her gaze was ancient.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she said.

Nathan blinked. “I could say the same about you. This place is abandoned.”

Her expression shifted, almost pitying. “Not yet.”

Before he could reply, the air around him wavered. A high ringing filled his ears, sharp as a train whistle. Sunlight bent, flickering. He staggered forward, reaching instinctively for the compass —

—and when the ringing stopped, the world was new.

The ruin was gone. In its place, a town breathed.

Smoke coiled from chimneys. Horses clattered past with wagons stacked high in fresh-cut pine. Children shrieked with laughter, chasing each other between storefronts still wet with paint. From the woods came the bite of saws and the mournful cry of a train whistle.

Nathan staggered, pulse hammering. He was no longer in the forest. He was standing in the middle of Hollow’s End—alive, whole, impossible.

The young woman hadn’t vanished. She stood in the road as if she had always been there, braid glinting in the sunlight.

“You crossed over,” she said, voice low. “The town must have called you.”

Dust clung to his throat. “This… this can’t be real.”

She smiled then, not with joy but with sorrow. “Few things are. What matters is you’re here. But you can’t stay.”

Her name was Clara. She led him through streets alive with smell and sound — bread baking in open windows, sawdust thick on porches, children’s laughter ricocheting off clapboard walls. Nathan tried to piece together her words as she poured him tea in a small boardinghouse.

“The company owns everything here,” she said. Her hands trembled slightly, though her eyes remained steady. “The mill, the homes, the stores. Debts are crushing them. They won’t pay what they owe. Instead, they’ll erase us. Burn the records. Flood the valley with the new dam. Hollow’s End will vanish.”

Nathan set his cup down hard. “That’s… murder.”

Clara shrugged, weary beyond her years. “History is written by those who hold the ink. You understand, don’t you? Why you can’t stay?”

He thought of his grandmother’s note, the plea not to forget. He thought of the graves he had glimpsed in the woods, swallowed by roots. “You’re telling me they’ll destroy this town and no one will remember it ever existed.”

“Yes.” Clara’s gaze fixed on him. “Unless you do.”

Nathan wandered Hollow’s End for days, torn between awe and dread. He saw children chasing one another past the mill, the old man whittling on his porch, the couple dancing to a fiddle in the square. Ordinary lives, destined to vanish.

Clara stayed close, as if tethered to him. She answered his questions with fragments: her family had always kept the truth, though it had cost them dearly. Outsiders like him sometimes slipped through, but the town never let them remain.

Still, Nathan couldn’t let it go.

“You have to fight back,” he insisted one evening, when the sky was the color of copper. “If people know the company’s plan—”

“They won’t believe us,” Clara interrupted. “Even if they did, who would stop them? They hold the deeds, the law, the sheriff.”

Nathan’s fists clenched. “Then I will. I can change this.”

She reached across the table, fingers brushing his. “No, Nathan. History does not yield. It devours those who resist.”

But he had already decided.

The morning it happened, Hollow’s End woke to fire.

Smoke climbed in black pillars. Nathan smelled it before the alarm bell clanged. Shouts rose in the street. People ran, clutching children, buckets, whatever they could carry. He sprinted after Clara, heart hammering.

At the far end of town, men in company coats set torches to the mill. Flames roared, feeding on dry timber. Beyond, dynamite cracked in the woods — blasting paths for the dam that would swallow the valley.

Nathan grabbed one of the men by the collar. “You can’t do this!” he shouted. “This town belongs to these people!”

The man sneered, yanking free. “Not anymore. Never did.”

Hands seized Nathan, dragging him back. Clara appeared, pulling him into the chaos. “It’s too late!” she cried. “You can’t stop them!”

“But I can’t just let this happen!”

She pressed something into his palm — small, cool metal. “Then don’t. Remember us.”

Before he could speak, the ringing began again. Louder, sharper, splitting his skull. The world fractured, burning houses dissolving into fog. He clutched Clara’s hand, desperate—

And then he was alone.

A locket rested in his palm, tarnished silver, etched with initials he didn’t know. He snapped it open. Inside was Clara’s face, faded but unmistakable.

She had given him proof.

The trees whispered in the wind. The foundations at his feet were nothing but stone. But Hollow’s End was not gone, not entirely.

Nathan pulled out his notebook and began to write, the words spilling as fast as his hand could move. He would record every street, every name, every fire-lit shadow. He would not let them vanish.

When he closed the notebook at last, he held the locket tight. In his pocket, the compass weighed heavier, as if pointing not north, but backward — toward a town that once was.

A town is only gone when no one remembers.

And Nathan would remember. He would carry Hollow’s End with him — in story, in memory, in the silver locket that survived time.