The church bell's tolling clawed at Eleanor's nerves as she fled the standing stones. Her boots sank into the spongy earth, the skeletal hand's message burning in her mind. The door is open. The words echoed in time with her frantic heartbeat. She didn't stop running until the woods spat her back onto Blackthorn Hollow's main street, where the morning sun fought weakly through the haze.
The town felt different now. Eyes watched from behind grimy windows. A mangy dog with too many teeth trailed her for half a block, growling low in its throat before slinking into an alley. Eleanor's hand drifted to the revolver in her satchel. Too late for running, the girl had said. But running was all she could do—for now.
Martha Harlow stood on the inn's porch, arms crossed, her green eyes glinting like broken glass. "Out early," she remarked, though it sounded like an accusation.
Eleanor forced steadiness into her voice. "Research. The local flora is… fascinating."
A smirk flickered across Martha's lips. "Flora. Right." She stepped aside, her gaze lingering on the mud caking Eleanor's boots. "There's coffee in the parlor. And a visitor."
The parlor's fire had been stoked to a roar, casting writhing shadows over the taxidermied ravens and foxes. A man sat in the wingback chair nearest the hearth, his face obscured by a cloud of pipe smoke. He stood as Eleanor entered—tall, broad-shouldered, with a sheriff's badge pinned to his weathered coat. His eyes were a cold, pale blue, but his voice was disarmingly gentle.
"Dr. Voss. Elias Burke. I hear you've been poking around the Whispering Sisters."
Eleanor stiffened. "Is that a crime, Sheriff?"
He chuckled, though it didn't reach his eyes. "Around here? Might as well be. Those stones… folks say they're cursed. Been accidents. Strange accidents." He tapped his pipe against the hearth. "Now, I don't hold with superstition. But I do hold with keeping visitors safe. Whatever brought you here… let it lie."
She met his gaze. "And if I can't?"
The sheriff's jaw tightened. For a moment, she thought she saw fear in him—a crack in the lawman's armor. "Then stick to daylight," he said finally. "And don't go into the church."
The Blackthorn Hollow Congregational Church loomed at the town's edge, its steeple spearing the low-hanging clouds. Eleanor stood across the street, memorizing its details: the boarded-up windows, the chains coiled around the doors, the crude symbols carved into the oak—spirals, triangles, eyes. The sheriff's warning throbbed in her skull, but the girl's words throbbed louder. The door is open.
She waited until dusk, when the fog thickened into a shroud. The church's chains were old, rusted through in places. Eleanor wedged her flashlight between two links and levered it down. The metal snapped with a groan that echoed into the valley.
Inside, the air reeked of mildew and something sharper—ozone, like the breath of a storm. Her flashlight beam cut through the darkness, revealing pews overturned, hymnals rotting in piles. The altar was a slab of black stone, its surface etched with the now-familiar spiral-triangle. But it was the mural behind it that froze her blood.
The painting stretched floor to ceiling, its colors unnervingly vivid despite the decay. A colossal, amorphous shape dominated the center, tentacled and studded with glowing eyes. Around it knelt robed figures, their faces upturned in rapture. At the creature's feet lay a village—Blackthorn Hollow—its streets choked with writhing shadows. Above it all, a swarm of distorted stars pulsed in a sickly yellow sky.
Eleanor's recorder clicked on, her voice a whisper. "The mural depicts a ritual. The entity resembles descriptions of Yog-Sothoth from the Necronomicon… The worshippers—possibly the Blackthorn family—are channeling it through the standing stones. The stars… 'Before the stars fall right.' The alignment must be a catalyst."
A cold draft snuffed her flashlight.
She fumbled for the revolver. "Who's there?"
Silence. Then—
"Y'ai'ng'ngah… yog-sothoth…"
The voice from the inn. The thing from the inn.
It oozed from the shadows—a hunched, spidery shape, its limbs too long, its head a distorted lump. The air curdled around it, and Eleanor's throat seized as the smell hit her: rotting meat and burnt hair. She fired. The shot tore through the creature's shoulder, spraying black ichor. It screeched, a sound that splintered the air, and lunged.
Eleanor stumbled back, firing again. The bullet struck its chest, but the thing kept coming, its clawed hand swiping at her face. She ducked, feeling the rush of air as talons grazed her scalp. Panic clawed up her throat—three shots left—when a new voice cut through the chaos.
"Away, abomination! By the blood of the Blackthorns, I banish thee!"
A torch flared, revealing Reverend Amos Blackthorn.
The old man stood in the doorway, his white hair wild, his black robes billowing. In one hand, he held a torch; in the other, a dagger crusted with dried blood. The creature hissed, retreating into the shadows as the reverend chanted in guttural Latin. With a final, gurgling snarl, it dissolved into a pool of viscous slime.
Eleanor sagged against a pew, her breath ragged. "You… you're a Blackthorn."
The reverend's eyes—vivid green, like Martha's, like the girl's—narrowed. "And you're a fool. Come."
He led her to a hidden door beneath the altar, down a spiral staircase into a crypt. The walls were lined with alcoves, each holding a coffin inscribed with spirals and stars. At the center stood a stone table, stained brown with age… or blood.
"Sit," the reverend ordered, lighting a candelabra. "You've seen the mural. You know what comes."
Eleanor gripped the revolver under the table. "The ritual. Yog-Sothoth. Your family's been trying to summon it."
"Summon?" He spat. "We've been trying to contain it. For three centuries, we've kept the door shut. But the bloodline thins. The sacrifices… they're not enough anymore." His voice frayed. "My son, Caleb—he thought he could control it. Use it. He broke the seals. Now, the stars are nearly right. And the Hollow… it's hungry."
Eleanor's mind raced. "The girl in the woods. The one with green eyes—is she your kin?"
The reverend flinched. "Abigail. My granddaughter. Caleb's… legacy." He opened a ledger on the table, its pages filled with frantic script. "When he opened the door, something came through. It took him. It changed him. Abigail was born nine months later."
The truth coiled around Eleanor's lungs. "She's not human."
"Not entirely. But she's the only one who can mend the seals. The blood of the summoner must close the door." The reverend seized her wrist, his grip feverish. "Help her, Dr. Voss. The tools are in the crypt beneath the standing stones. The ritual requires three things: the dagger of the first Blackthorn, the blood of the betrayer, and a name… the name. The one the stars will speak when they fall."
"Whose name?"
The candelabra's flame guttered.
"Yours."
The inn was dark when Eleanor returned, her mind churning. Martha's door creaked open as she crept upstairs.
"Out late," the innkeeper hissed.
Eleanor turned, her courage brittle. "Abigail Blackthorn. Where is she?"
Martha's face contorted. "Gone. Same as her father. Same as all of us, in the end." She stepped closer, her breath reeking of bitter herbs. "You think you're the first outsider they've sent? The scholars, the priests, the fools with their guns… They all end up in the woods. Parts of them, anyway."
"Who sent the letter, Martha?"
The woman's laugh was a dry rasp. "The Hollow did. It calls what it needs. And it's called you."
Sleep offered no refuge.
Eleanor dreamed of the standing stones. The spiral-triangle glowed crimson, and the stars above writhed like maggots. Abigail stood at the center, her dress stained with mud and blood.
"They're coming," the girl whispered. "They're here."
The earth split. A thousand luminous tendrils erupted, wrapping around Eleanor's ankles, her wrists, her throat. They pulsed with the same alien rhythm as the voice in the inn, the thing in the church. A colossal eye opened in the sky, its pupil a swirling abyss.
"ELEANOR VOSS…"
She woke screaming, her skin clammy, her room ice-cold. The symbols on the wall glowed faintly.
And outside her window, something scratched at the glass.