Chapter One: The Move to Ashmoor
The first time Ellie saw Hollow House, it was shrouded in fog.
The moving truck rumbled up the winding gravel road that led through thick pine trees, their branches swaying as if trying to block the path. The house loomed at the top of a hill, crooked and tall, its black shutters clinging to the windows like eyelids that hadn’t closed in a hundred years.
“Home sweet home,” her dad said, trying too hard to sound cheerful. Ellie just stared.
It didn’t feel like home. It felt like a place where sunlight went to die.
They parked by the overgrown garden, where rusted wind chimes tinkled on their own. As Ellie stepped out, a cold breeze wrapped around her ankles. She looked up at the house — and thought she saw a flicker of movement behind an upstairs curtain.
“Did someone already move in?” she asked.
“Nope,” her mom said, opening the car door. “Just us.”
Ellie’s younger brother, Jonah, was already poking around the porch, pulling cobwebs from the railing. The front door opened with a groan that sounded like a sigh. Inside, the air was dry and musty, filled with the scent of old paper and something faintly metallic — like rust, or blood.
The realtor had said the house was over a hundred years old. “A real gem,” she’d called it. “Bit of history, lots of character!”
Ellie wasn’t so sure.
That night, she lay in her new bedroom, staring at the high ceiling. The wallpaper was peeling in thin, curling strips. A crack ran across one wall like a lightning bolt frozen in place. Her parents had put a nightlight in the corner, but it only seemed to make the shadows darker.
At some point, Ellie fell asleep.
She woke to a whisper.
At first, she thought it was Jonah. She sat up, listening. Nothing. Then she heard it again — soft, distant, like it came from inside the walls.
“Leave…”
Ellie froze.
She turned toward the noise. It wasn’t coming from her room. It wasn’t outside. It was inside the wall.
She got up slowly and placed her ear against the old plaster.
Silence.
Then—
“Get out… before it wakes…”
Ellie stumbled back, her heart racing.
The voice was gone.
In the corner, the nightlight flickered — and then went out.
Chapter Two: Whispers in the Walls
The next morning, Ellie didn’t say anything about the voice.
She told herself it had to be a dream. A weird, creepy dream brought on by the stress of moving and the weird smell of the house. Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling that someone—or something—had been in the room with her.
Downstairs, the kitchen was buzzing with the noise of unpacking. Jonah sat cross-legged on the floor, building towers out of soup cans while their dad struggled with a coffee machine that clearly didn’t want to work in its new home.
“You okay, El?” her mom asked as Ellie walked in, clutching a box of dishes.
“Fine,” she said quickly. “Just tired.”
Her mom gave her a knowing smile. “First night in a new house always feels weird.”
Ellie didn’t answer. Instead, she glanced around the kitchen. The corners seemed darker than they should be, and the ceiling creaked with slow, heavy footsteps — but no one was upstairs.
She set the box down and whispered to herself, “It’s just an old house. Old houses make noise.”
Later that day, Ellie wandered out back. Behind the house was a small, twisted orchard of leafless apple trees and a crumbling stone path that led to a rusted iron gate. Beyond it was the woods — dense, shadowy, and far too quiet.
There was something unnatural about the silence.
Not a bird. Not a squirrel. Not even the wind.
She turned to go back inside, but something on the ground caught her eye — a broken doll’s head, half-buried in the mud. Its glass eyes were cracked. Its mouth was slightly open, as if trying to scream.
She kicked dirt over it and hurried back toward the porch.
That night, the whispering came back.
Ellie lay stiff under the blankets, every nerve in her body awake.
Scratch. Scratch. Tap.
The sounds came from inside the wall behind her head.
She turned slowly.
This time, it wasn’t a voice. It was scratching—like fingernails against wood. Then a tapping, rhythmic and slow, like someone drumming with bone fingers.
She sat up, heart pounding.
“Jonah?” she whispered.
But her brother was fast asleep in the room down the hall. She knew the sound wasn’t him. She knew, deep down, it wasn’t anyone alive.
Then, just as quickly as it started, the noise stopped.
Ellie’s breath came in short, shallow bursts. She reached for her flashlight—but before she could grab it, something moved in the wall.
A bulge.
Like something pushing from inside, trying to get out.
Ellie scrambled back, her mouth open in a silent scream.
The bulge flattened, then disappeared.
A moment later, the wallpaper peeled off by itself, curling away to reveal a strange mark underneath. Not paint. Not mold.
A symbol.
Carved directly into the wall.
It looked like an eye with jagged lines radiating from it — and beneath the eye, a single word scratched in a shaky, spidery script:
“AWAKENED.”
Chapter Three: The Locked Door
The next morning, Ellie was the first one up.
She couldn’t sleep. Not after what she’d seen — the bulging wall, the strange symbol, the word AWAKENED scratched into the plaster like a warning. But when she returned to her room after breakfast, the wall was perfectly smooth.
No carving. No bulge. No peeling wallpaper.
She ran her fingers across the spot. Just cold, dry plaster.
“Did I imagine it?” she whispered.
But her fingertips still tingled, and deep inside, she knew the truth: something was hiding in the house.
While her parents argued over where to put the couch, Ellie explored the second floor. The long hallway stretched out like a spine, lined with doors on either side. Most were bedrooms, empty and echoing with the creaks of age. Dust floated in the air like ash.
Then she found the locked door.
It was at the far end of the hall, across from a boarded-up window. The doorknob was brass, tarnished and cold, and when Ellie turned it—nothing. It didn’t budge.
She knelt and peered through the keyhole.
Only darkness.
But after a few seconds, she heard breathing — slow, raspy, like someone on the other side was sleeping.
She staggered back, heart hammering in her chest.
That’s when she noticed something strange: the floor in front of the door had a warped spot, like it had been soaked in water — or blood. She touched it gently. Damp. Sticky.
“Ellie?”
She jumped and spun around.
It was Jonah, in his socks and pajamas, clutching his stuffed bear. He rubbed his eyes sleepily. “You weren’t in your room. Are we playing hide and seek?”
“No,” she said quickly. “Go back downstairs, okay?”
But Jonah just stared at the locked door.
“I heard someone in there last night,” he said. “She was crying.”
Ellie’s stomach twisted. “What do you mean?”
Jonah shrugged. “I thought it was you. But it didn’t sound like you. She was saying, ‘Don’t let him out. Don’t let him out.’”
He turned and wandered back down the hall like it was nothing.
Ellie’s fingers brushed the doorknob one last time.
It was warm now.
That evening, while the house was quiet, Ellie returned with a flashlight and a paperclip she’d bent into a crude lockpick. She wasn’t a thief, but she’d seen enough mystery shows to get the basic idea.
Click. Click.
Click.
The lock gave way with a soft pop.
She hesitated, her hand trembling as she pushed the door open.
The air was colder in this room — heavy and still, like a tomb. The walls were painted a deep burgundy, and long curtains hung like funeral drapes. A child-sized rocking horse sat in the middle, its paint peeling, its glass eyes staring forward.
Ellie stepped inside.
There was dust on everything, but no footprints. Not even hers. Like the dust refused to settle after all this time.
A cracked vanity sat in the corner. A music box rested on top. She opened it, expecting silence.
Instead, the music played.
Plink… plink… plink…
A slow, broken lullaby.
The mirror above the vanity was cloudy, warped in the center — and then the reflection moved.
Ellie blinked.
Behind her, in the mirror, a figure stood in the far corner of the room. Pale. Thin. Its face was hidden in shadow.
She spun around.
Nothing there.
When she turned back to the mirror, the figure was closer.
Its head tilted.
Its mouth opened, but no sound came out.
Then it smiled.
Chapter Four: The Girl in the Mirror
Ellie stumbled back from the mirror, her pulse pounding in her ears.
The smile on the figure’s face was too wide, too unnatural — like it had never been meant to smile at all. Then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, the reflection blurred… and vanished.
Only Ellie’s pale, trembling face remained in the glass.
She slammed the music box shut.
The lullaby cut off mid-note.
Something shifted in the room. A cold breath against her neck — not wind, but presence. Ellie turned slowly.
Still nothing.
But then she saw the handprint.
A child-sized handprint, smeared in the dust on the edge of the vanity. Fresh. New. Pressed deep as if made only seconds ago.
Ellie backed toward the door, not daring to take her eyes off the mirror.
Behind her, the floor creaked.
One step too many.
Something whispered, not from her ears—but from inside her mind.“
She’s still here.”
Ellie bolted.
She slammed the door shut behind her and twisted the lock back into place. Her breath came in shallow gasps as she leaned against the wood.
But before she could move, a soft sound echoed behind the door.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Then a child’s voice — high and distant — singing:
“Ring around the hollow house,
Ashes fall and never out,
Don’t look back, don’t make a sound…
Or he will pull you… underground.”
She didn’t speak a word of it to her parents.
Not that night. Not the next morning.
How could she? They already thought she was “sensitive.” Her mom said it like a compliment. Her dad said it like a problem.
So she said nothing. Not even when she noticed the mirror in her bedroom had fogged up overnight — though she hadn’t taken a shower.
And on it, scrawled in a child’s writing with one long finger:
“YOU SEE ME.”
After school the next day, Ellie went to the town library. Ashmoor’s library was old and smelled like basement. The librarian, a wiry man with glasses too big for his face, barely looked up as she walked in.
She went to the local history section and found a dusty binder titled:
“Significant Structures of Ashmoor County.”
She flipped to the H’s.
Hollow House.
The entry was small, almost forgotten — but the headline grabbed her:
Morrow Family Tragedy — 1911.
Ellie’s eyes scanned the faded article.
“Local merchant Thomas Morrow and his wife Beatrice were found dead in their home in what authorities called a ‘tragic and unexplained event.’ Their only daughter, Lila Morrow, age 8, was never found. Some believe she wandered into the woods. Others… that she never left the house at all.”
There was a photo — black and white, grainy, but clear enough to see the little girl.
Lila Morrow.
Ellie’s breath caught.
She recognized the girl from the mirror.
The bow in her hair.
The hollowness in her stare.
Ellie left the library in a daze. Ashmoor looked the same — sleepy, gray, and still — but something had shifted.
She knew the girl had been real.
And she knew Lila’s ghost was still in the house.
But the question clawing at her brain wasn’t why Lila was haunting her.
It was…
Who is he?
The one she sang about.
“Or he will pull you underground…”
Chapter Five: The Diary of Lila Morrow
That night, Ellie couldn’t sleep.
The air in her room felt heavier than usual, like the ceiling was pressing down. The shadows seemed thicker, darker. The mirror sat across from her bed like a giant watching eye. She’d tried to cover it with a blanket, but it slid off in the middle of the night.
Just after midnight, the whispering started again.
“Down… down… down…”
This time, Ellie didn’t run.
She followed it.
Flashlight in hand, she tiptoed down the hallway, past her parents’ closed bedroom door, past Jonah’s room. She paused at the locked door.
Then reached into her pocket.
She’d taken a key from the kitchen drawer that morning. Old, bronze, shaped like an antique.
It fit the lock perfectly.
The door opened without a sound.
The room beyond was colder than before, and the air smelled faintly of lavender and decay. Ellie stepped inside, flashlight beam scanning the walls.
Something had changed.
The music box was gone.
In its place, resting on the vanity, was a small red leather-bound book. Its edges were worn, and the initials “L.M.” were pressed into the cover in faded gold.
Ellie opened it.
August 2, 1911
I heard them fighting again. Father says the house is changing him. Mother told him to burn the mirror. He laughed and said it was “his eye now.” I don’t like it. I don’t like the mirror.
August 5, 1911
I woke up in the middle of the night and saw someone standing in the corner. It wasn’t a dream. He had no face, just smoke and eyes that burned. He told me not to tell. He told me secrets.
August 9, 1911
Mother tried to smash the mirror. It didn’t break. It made her scream and scream and scream. Father says she’s resting. But the basement door is locked now.
August 12, 1911
I think He lives behind the glass. I think He’s waiting for someone to take my place.
Ellie swallowed hard.
She turned the page.
August 13, 1911
I drew a door with chalk, the way He said. It opens if you bleed on it. I don’t want to do it again. He’s so lonely. So hungry.
The page was smeared with what looked like dried blood.
Ellie’s hands trembled as she closed the book.
That’s when she noticed something on the wall across from the mirror: a faint rectangular outline, almost like…
A hidden door.
She ran her fingers along it, heart thudding.
It wasn’t a door made of wood. It wasn’t even a real door. It was chalk — pale, cracked lines forming the shape of a child-sized doorway. Inside it, someone had drawn an eye, just like the one Ellie saw behind her bedroom wallpaper.
Below it were the words:
“Knock three times. Offer what’s yours.”
A whisper slid past her ear, not spoken aloud — but into her mind.
“I’m still waiting.”
Ellie turned and fled, the diary clutched tight in her hands.
She didn’t sleep.
Instead, she sat at her desk, flipping through the pages again, heart racing.
Lila Morrow had been trying to warn someone.
But the diary entries had stopped. There were no more pages after August 13.
No one ever found Lila’s body.
Maybe that’s because…
She never really left.
And maybe—just maybe—He’s still hungry.
Chapter Six: The Spirit Lantern
The next morning, Ellie did something she never thought she’d do.
She told someone.
Not her parents. Not Jonah.
She told Mrs. Winslow — the antique store owner downtown who always wore velvet gloves and smelled like mothballs and old roses.
Mrs. Winslow had lived in Ashmoor her entire life. She’d once told Ellie that some places in the town were “older than they looked — older than people.” That had stuck in Ellie’s mind.
Now she needed answers.
The bell above the door jingled as Ellie stepped into the shop. Glass cases lined the walls, filled with tarnished trinkets and faded photographs with scratched-out faces. The place always gave her the creeps. Today it felt almost comforting.
Mrs. Winslow looked up from behind the counter. “Ah. The girl from Hollow House.”
Ellie blinked. “How did you know?”
The old woman smiled thinly. “I see things. That house… it breathes. What do you want to know?”
Ellie hesitated, then pulled the diary from her backpack. “Do you know who this belonged to?”
Mrs. Winslow opened the book. Her smile vanished.
“Lila Morrow,” she said quietly. “I haven’t seen this in decades.”
“You’ve seen it before?”
Mrs. Winslow nodded. “I was a girl when it last surfaced. The diary appears when the house wakes up. It’s part of the cycle. Every few decades, someone new hears the whispers. Sees the girl.”
Ellie’s voice shook. “What happens to them?”
Mrs. Winslow didn’t answer right away.
Instead, she walked to the back of the store and returned with something wrapped in dark velvet.
She unwrapped it slowly, revealing a small lantern — wrought iron, with a glass dome etched in strange runes. A blue flame flickered faintly inside it, though it had no wick. No fuel.
“Take this,” Mrs. Winslow said.
“What is it?”
“A spirit lantern,” she said. “Old magic. It shows what hides. And it protects, if your heart is steady.”
Ellie reached for it carefully. It felt warm in her hands, like it knew her somehow.
Mrs. Winslow’s eyes darkened. “But be warned: if the flame turns red, run.”
That night, Ellie waited until everyone was asleep.
She crept back to the room.
Back to the chalk door.
The diary was in her pocket. The lantern was in her hand. The blue flame pulsed softly, casting long, curling shadows across the room.
She stood before the door drawn in chalk.
“Knock three times. Offer what’s yours.”
Her hand trembled.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
The chalk began to glow faintly.
Ellie bit her lip, then drew a paperclip across her palm — just enough to draw a thin line of blood.
She pressed her hand against the eye.
The chalk hissed.
Then the wall shivered, like something was alive beneath it.
The flame in the lantern turned purple — then green — then deep, angry red.
A low growl rose from the floorboards.
Ellie stumbled back as the chalk door opened inward, revealing darkness made of breath and teeth.
Inside stood a man-shaped shadow, all smoke and twisting limbs. Eyes like burning coals. Mouth stitched shut — but Ellie could still hear his voice:
“She opened the door.
Now you will, too.”
Suddenly, from behind her, the mirror shattered.
And through the shards…
Lila Morrow stepped out.
Chapter Seven: A Warning from the Dead
The room froze.
Not just with cold — but with a silence so thick it hummed in Ellie’s bones.
Shards of the broken mirror floated midair, suspended like glass stars, and from the splintered surface stepped Lila Morrow.
She looked exactly like the photo Ellie had seen at the library: delicate dress, lace collar, bow in her hair.
But she wasn’t just a girl anymore.
Her skin was pale as paper. Her eyes shimmered with something too deep for a child. She wasn’t alive — but she wasn’t fully gone either.
She was caught.
“You shouldn’t have knocked,” Lila said softly.
Her voice echoed oddly, like it came from far away — or from inside Ellie’s thoughts.
Behind the chalk door, the shadow thing growled. Its stitched mouth stretched unnaturally, cords of black smoke writhing behind it.
Ellie’s lantern still glowed red in her hands, the flame hissing and flickering wildly.
“I didn’t mean to open anything,” Ellie whispered. “I just wanted to know what happened to you.”
Lila stepped forward. She left no footprints in the dust.
“He’s the one who watches through the mirrors,” she said.
“He calls himself the Hollow One.
But his real name is forgotten… that’s how he stays strong.
As long as we don’t remember his name, he can keep feeding.”
Ellie’s grip on the lantern tightened. “Feeding on what?”
Lila’s eyes flicked to the chalk door.
“On the ones who listen.
On the ones who let him in.
On fear.”
The shadow howled — a sound like shattering ice and screaming wind — and suddenly the chalk door began to pulse with light. The drawing peeled, warped, and started forming a real doorway.
He was coming through.
“Close it!” Ellie shouted. “How do I stop him?”
Lila didn’t answer.
Instead, she reached into her chest — and pulled something out.
A string of black ribbon.
Tied to it was a single silver key.
“He bound me here with this,” she whispered.
“If you take it… I won’t be able to warn you again.
But the door might close.”
Ellie stepped forward.
Took the key from the ghost’s outstretched hand.
The moment her fingers closed around it, Lila vanished in a burst of cold air and shattered light.
The room shook.
The chalk door screamed.
Ellie ran forward and jammed the key into the glowing eye symbol at its center.
It fit perfectly.
She turned it.
Click.
The door slammed shut with a thunderous boom, and the wall sealed over like nothing had ever been there. The chalk faded. The glow disappeared.
The flame in the lantern flickered…
…and turned blue again.
Ellie collapsed to her knees, heart racing, key still in her hand.
The house creaked above her, then went still.
But the damage had been done.
She had drawn his attention.
He’d almost crossed.
And now he knew her name.
Chapter Eight: The Hidden Room
For the next two days, the house was silent.
No whispers. No footsteps. No faces in the mirror.
But Ellie knew it wasn’t over.
It was waiting.
She kept the key on a chain around her neck and the lantern by her bedside, its blue flame a steady pulse in the night. She didn’t tell her parents — not yet. They were busy replacing pipes and trying to fix the furnace, which had begun making odd groaning sounds in the walls.
She barely saw Jonah.
He spent most of his time drawing.
That was strange, too.
Because he didn’t used to draw… not like this.
On the third day, Ellie walked past Jonah’s room and paused. His door was cracked open. He was sitting on the floor, surrounded by paper.
She peeked inside.
Dozens of drawings lay scattered across the room.
Every single one was of the Hollow One.
Twisted limbs. Mouth sewn shut. Eyes like coal. Standing in the shadows of their house. Behind Ellie’s bed. At the foot of the stairs. Even in the mirror in their parents’ bathroom.
She stepped into the room, heart pounding. “Jonah… who told you about him?”
Jonah didn’t look up.
He just whispered, “She said I should get ready. Because he’s almost through.”
Ellie knelt beside him. “She? Lila?”
Jonah finally looked up. His eyes were glassy, faraway. “Not her. The other one. The one that used to live under the house.”
That night, Ellie couldn’t take it anymore.
She waited until everyone was asleep and followed the cold draft down into the basement — an unfinished crawlspace of stone walls and rotting wood. The lantern’s blue flame guided her through the dark.
She moved past the furnace, past the shelves of paint cans and rusted nails, until she saw it:
A seam in the stone wall, like a faint outline. A door that wasn’t supposed to be there.
She pressed her fingers to it.
It felt warm.
Just like the chalk door upstairs.
The flame in the lantern flared green.
She pushed gently, and the wall gave way — not like wood, not like brick, but like flesh.
She stepped inside.
The room beyond wasn’t made of stone.
It was smooth, curved, like the inside of a massive egg. The walls glistened faintly. In the center of the chamber was a broken rocking horse, the same as the one from upstairs. Except… it was rotting.
Bones lay in piles in the corners.
Tiny bones.
Ellie stepped closer.
Then she saw it.
At the far wall: a mirror, ten feet tall, framed in black iron.
And in the mirror—a hundred Ellies. All staring back. But only one moved when she did.
The rest stood still.
Then, one by one…
They all began to smile.
The flame in the lantern turned red.
Ellie ran.
She shoved the false wall closed behind her and bolted up the basement stairs, heart hammering in her chest.
As she reached the top, she heard a voice from the basement below:
“You found my cradle.
And now I’ve found yours.”
Chapter Nine: The Hollow Ones
Ellie didn’t sleep.
She sat in bed with the lantern flickering red beside her, the diary clutched tight in her lap and the key cold against her chest. Every shadow in her room felt alive. Every creak of the house sounded like a breath behind the wall.
When morning came, the air felt wrong.
Too still. Too heavy.
Like the house was holding its breath.
She went downstairs to find Jonah already at the table, drawing. Again.
Except this time… he was drawing her.
Over and over, her face scribbled in charcoal, but with hollow black eyes. No pupils. Just void.
Ellie’s voice cracked. “Jonah? Are you okay?”
He didn’t answer.
His hand moved in slow, hypnotic strokes.
His mouth opened — but the voice that came out wasn’t his.
“She opened the cradle.
She gave him a name.”
Ellie stumbled back, heart racing.
“Jonah!” she shouted, grabbing his shoulders.
He blinked like he was waking up from a long dream.
“What?” he whispered. “Why are you yelling?”
She hugged him tight.
He didn’t remember a thing.
That night, the mirrors began to hum.
The one in the hallway. The one in the bathroom. The one above the fireplace.
All of them vibrated with a faint, thrumming pulse, like something on the other side was pushing… closer.
And when Ellie looked into the bathroom mirror, she didn’t see herself.
She saw the others.
The reflections from the underground room.
Empty-eyed Ellies, standing in an endless black void. One of them pressed her hand against the glass. Another tilted her head. Another mouthed a word Ellie couldn’t hear.
Then they all moved at once—
Banging against the mirror from the inside.
The lantern flared red in Ellie’s hand.
She backed away, heart racing.
Then she heard it again.
From the wall behind her.
Scratch. Scratch. Scratch.
A voice, low and cold and full of rot:
“You opened the mirror.
You are becoming Hollow.”
She ran to her room, slamming the door and pushing her dresser in front of it.
She flipped to the last few blank pages of Lila’s diary and began to write — not just for herself, but for whoever came next.
She wrote down everything.
The mirrors.
The door.
The Hollow One.
She even tried to draw the rune she’d seen behind the wallpaper. The eye. The spiral.
And then the pen stopped.
Because her reflection… was gone.
The mirror showed her room. Her bed. Her lantern. Her dresser.
But not her.
Just emptiness.
Ellie heard her name whispered from every direction at once.
“Ellie…”
“Elllllllie…”
“He sees you now.”
She turned in a slow circle.
Every mirror in the house began to crack. Just a little. A web of fine lines crawling across the glass like veins.
And then—
From the broken mirror above her desk, a hand reached out.
Long. Blackened. With sharp, jointed fingers.
It touched the edge of her reality.
And smiled through the crack.
Chapter Ten: The Final Binding
The hand crept farther through the mirror.
It moved like smoke made solid — fingers bending the wrong way, nails dragging sparks across the desk as it pulled its way into the room.
Ellie backed into the corner, lantern burning red-hot in her hands. It hissed like an angry snake. The silver key pulsed against her chest, glowing faintly.
Think, Ellie. Think.
She dropped to her knees, grabbed the diary, and flipped to Lila’s last bloodstained entry.
“He lives behind the glass… He’s so lonely. So hungry… I drew a door with chalk… it opens if you bleed on it…”
But Ellie had done that already.
And now He was here.
From the hallway, mirrors shattered one by one.
CRASH.
CRASH.
CRASH.
Reflections screamed.
Not just hers.
Others.
The Hollow Ones.
The ones who hadn’t escaped.
They were coming through too.
Twisted versions of herself, mouths stretched in silent screams, eyes black and leaking shadow.
She had seconds.
Ellie ran to her bookshelf, where she’d hidden the broken piece of the original vanity mirror — the one from the haunted room upstairs.
She dropped it on the floor.
Then she grabbed the chalk.
She drew a new door on the floorboards. Not like the last.
This one was a trap.
A circle around the mirror shard.
The eye symbol in the center. The spiral inside the eye. The same design from the wall. But this time, she added something new — a name.
She didn’t know how she knew it.
But it came to her, ancient and terrible.
She carved it into the floor with the tip of the key.
“Vorrak.”
As soon as the final letter was scratched, the lantern flared white-hot.
The room screamed.
Every mirror in the house howled.
The shadows twisted inward — toward the circle.
The hand in her room tried to pull back.
Too late.
Ellie slammed her bloodied palm down on the symbol.
The shard of the mirror shattered again, and the circle ignited with silver fire.
The Hollow Ones let out a final wail — shrieking not with pain, but fear.
Then they were sucked into the mirror, one by one, until nothing remained but glass dust and smoke.
The red flame went out.
The lantern turned blue.
Then dimmed to nothing.
Ellie lay on the floor, panting.
The mirrors were silent.
The key around her neck no longer pulsed.
Outside, for the first time in weeks, the wind moved through the trees again.
The next morning, her mom asked if she’d been in the attic.
Apparently, one of the old mirrors was missing.
Ellie just shook her head.
She packed the diary, the key, and what was left of the spirit lantern in a box.
And buried them.
At the edge of the woods, beneath a crooked pine.
Not to forget.
But to warn the next one.
Just in case.
Just in case Vorrak ever found a new name.
A new girl.
A new mirror.
End of Book One: The Hollow House