Chapter 15: Beneath the Hollow
Evelyn plunged into darkness.
The air felt thick, clinging to her skin like wet silk. It wasn't just blackness it was something alive.
Then
She hit the ground.
The impact knocked the breath from her lungs. Cold, damp stone pressed against her palms. She coughed, pushing herself up only to realize
She wasn't alone.
Shapes loomed in the shadows, shifting, whispering.
And then, from the dark corners of this place, figures began to emerge.
The Forgotten Ones
They weren't just trapped here.
They were waiting.
Eyes hollow, skin pale, their bodies partially faded as if they were losing their connection to existence itself.
One stepped forward.
A woman.
The same one from the glass.
Her lips moved, the words coming out like scratches on a windowpane.
"You're almost one of us now."
Evelyn's stomach twisted.
"No. I'm getting out."
The Forgotten murmured among themselves, their voices overlapping. Some sounded hopeful. Others... doubtful.
The woman tilted her head.
"Then you must break the trade."
Evelyn's chest tightened. "How?"
The Forgotten shifted, uneasy.
Then, a single whisper rose above the rest:
"Erase it... before it erases you."
The Reality Unraveling
Evelyn's blood ran cold.
Her replacement.
It was living her life. Pretending to be her.
And if it was fully accepted if everyone believed in it she'd be gone.
Forever.
Panic surged. "There has to be another way!"
But the Forgotten faded back into the dark.
Their voices echoed.
"Erase it... or be erased."
The ground beneath her shook.
A deep, guttural voice rumbled through the Hollow:
"You will not leave."
The Hollow One had found her.
The shadows closed in.
Meanwhile, in the Real World…
Nathaniel frowned as Evelyn or what he thought was Evelyn sat across from him at the diner.
Something was off.
She smiled, but it was too perfect.
Her eyes didn't quite match the expression.
And when she reached for her coffee, she used her left hand.
Evelyn was right-handed.
Nathaniel's grip tightened around his fork.
His instincts screamed at him.
This wasn't her.
This wasn't Evelyn.
But if this wasn't her…
Where was the real Evelyn?
The Hollow One's Game
A deep, suffocating cold coiled around Evelyn's throat, pressing, pulling her deeper into the darkness. The air shimmered, shifting like an oil slick as the shadows slithered toward her.
She was not alone.
The Hollow One was here. Watching. Waiting.
"You are already forgetting, aren't you?"
Its voice didn't come from one place. It came from everywhere.
The stone beneath Evelyn's knees felt wrong. Soft, but not like dirt more like something rotting. The walls around her pulsed, breathing as if the Hollow itself were alive.
Evelyn pressed her hands to her head, her mind fraying at the edges.
She had to hold on.
She had to remember.
But already, something was missing.
She tried to recall the name of her hometown but it was gone.
Her mother's face blurred.
Her childhood home hollow, empty, erased.
She sucked in a sharp breath.
The Hollow wasn't just trying to trap her.
It was erasing her from herself.
And once she forgot enough… she would become one of them.
One of the Forgotten.
The False Evelyn
Nathaniel gripped the edge of the diner table, his jaw tight.
The woman sitting across from him looked like Evelyn. She spoke like her. But something about her was… off.
The way she smiled. The way she held her coffee mug, her fingers wrapping around it like a mimicry of habit rather than something natural.
And that tiny slip earlier the left hand.
Evelyn was right-handed.
Nathaniel's heartbeat pounded.
Could he be wrong? Maybe it was just the stress of everything the investigation, the ghosts of the past creeping back in.
But then
Evelyn or what he thought was Evelyn tilted her head slightly, her eyes darkening.
"Something wrong, Nathaniel?"
His stomach dropped.
Because the way she said his name
It wasn't her.
He forced a smile, his fingers twitching against the table. "No. Just tired."
The thing wearing Evelyn's face smiled back.
And in that moment
Nathaniel knew.
This wasn't Evelyn.
This was something else.
The Hollow Maze
Evelyn stumbled forward, the shadows wrapping tighter around her limbs.
The walls moved. The tunnels shifted.
No matter where she turned, the path ahead was always different.
A never-ending, twisting maze.
Something brushed against her ankle.
She gasped, jerking back
And saw a hand.
Thin, skeletal, reaching from the ground.
It belonged to a face no, a person half-buried in the stone. Their mouth open in a silent scream.
The eyes snapped to her.
A rasping whisper slithered from their lips:
"Run."
Evelyn did.
Her heart slammed against her ribs as the tunnel behind her collapsed, the darkness surging forward like a living beast.
She wasn't just being trapped.
She was being swallowed.
The Imposter Moves
Nathaniel watched.
The way the false Evelyn blinked too slowly.
The way she tilted her head at the exact same angle every time she smiled.
Like a rehearsed performance.
Then, a mistake.
She reached for the salt shaker.
Evelyn never used salt.
His chest tightened.
This wasn't her.
And that meant
The real Evelyn was in danger.
Nathaniel set his mug down slowly, his expression calm.
But in his mind, he was already making a plan.
He was going to find Evelyn.
And he was going to destroy whatever had taken her place.
The Forgotten Door
The tunnels stretched endlessly, twisting and shifting, each path closing behind Evelyn like the mouth of some hungry beast.
Her breath came in short, sharp gasps. The whispers grew louder. Not from the shadows from inside her head.
Memories flickered. Fragments.
Her mother's voice, but the words were muffled like trying to recall a dream slipping through her fingers.
A birthday party. Candles. A wish. But whose birthday was it?
She was losing herself.
The Hollow was winning.
She pressed her hands against the stone walls, fingers tracing the rough, damp surface.
And then
A door.
Half-rotted wood. Iron hinges, rusted and dripping with something too dark to be water.
She swallowed hard.
A door meant escape.
Or a trap.
A voice whispered behind her.
"Choose wisely."
The Doppelgänger's Game
Nathaniel's hands curled into fists beneath the diner table.
The thing wearing Evelyn's face took a slow sip of coffee.
Watching him. Studying him.
Testing him.
He forced himself to breathe evenly, not to give anything away.
The imposter was playing a game. And it thought he was too blind to see the board.
But Nathaniel had spent his entire life seeing patterns others missed.
And something wasn't adding up.
Then, the waitress arrived with the check.
And Evelyn or whatever was pretending to be her didn't reach for her purse.
She just watched.
Nathaniel's heartbeat pounded.
The real Evelyn always insisted on splitting the bill.
Every. Single. Time.
This thing didn't know that.
It didn't know her.
His stomach twisted.
He had to move carefully.
If it suspected he knew
He might not make it out of here alive.
The Door Opens
Evelyn grabbed the iron handle.
It burned.
The pain snapped through her like a lightning strike.
But she held on.
She had to get out.
She shoved the door open
And the world shifted.
Not like stepping into a room.
Like falling through time.
The hallway beyond was wrong.
The walls were covered in scraps of old photographs. Black-and-white images of faces she didn't recognize except for one.
Hers.
Or… versions of her.
Some younger. Some older.
All of them dead-eyed.
All of them trapped.
And at the very end of the hallway
A mirror.
Something stood on the other side.
Waiting.
Not a reflection.
A replacement.
It smiled.
"Ready to trade places?"