The town was called Hallowreed.
Population: 237.
It didn't show up on most maps anymore.
But Evelyn didn't need directions.
She followed the pull.
It was the same every time now—
a tug beneath her sternum, soft as a breath, sharp as a scream.
There was a name in the soil here.
One no one had spoken in decades.
She walked past shuttered gas stations, a school that hadn't heard laughter since the 80s, and a church whose steeple leaned like a drunk in the wind.
And she felt them watching.
Not ghosts.
Not yet.
But echoes.
Waiting to be remembered.
She found the house at the edge of a dried-up lake.
Sagging porch. One green shutter. A door with seven bolts.
She didn't knock.
She sang.
Low. Quiet. A lullaby passed down from Lenore's tongue, now twisted into Evelyn's own melody.
The wind changed.
And the door opened.
Inside was darkness that felt… aware.
And something else.
Breathing.
Not hers.
Not Lenore's.
"It knows you," Lenore whispered inside her, voice tight.
"It was here before me."
Evelyn stepped inside.
The door slammed shut behind her.
It wasn't a house.
Not really.
It was a mouth.
The wallpaper peeled in slow, wet strips.
The floor pulsed beneath her feet.
And from the ceiling, names dripped like blood.
All hers.
All versions of her.
"Evelyn."
"The Carrier."
"Grief-Bride."
"Mother of Hollow Things."
She touched the nearest wall—and flinched.
Pain. Hunger. Worship.
This place didn't want her to remember.
It wanted her to surrender.
In the center of the room, something stood.
Not quite a woman.
Not quite anything.
Its face shifted every time Evelyn blinked—sometimes Lenore's, sometimes Elias's, sometimes her own as a child.
It smiled.
"You're so full of stories," it purred.
"Let me wear one."
Evelyn stepped back. "What are you?"
The thing tilted its head.
"I'm what comes after memory. I'm forgetting. I'm the silence you've stolen from."
Evelyn clenched her fists. "I remember the dead."
"And I make them beautiful again."
It lunged.
Not physically—but with voice.
Syllables that felt like teeth in her brain.
Like lies that tasted like love.
Evelyn screamed—and the sound turned solid.
It struck the thing like fire.
And for a second, it recoiled.
"You're not ready," it hissed.
"But soon. You'll come to me. You always do. You always will."
Then it was gone.
Just smoke.
And Evelyn fell to her knees, coughing, trembling.
Lenore spoke in her mind.
"That wasn't just forgetting. That was something older."
"What was it?" Evelyn rasped.
"The reason no one remembered us in the first place."
Outside, the wind had died.
The lake was still dry.
But Evelyn could feel a presence now behind every tree, every mirror, every shadow that didn't belong.
Something had awoken.
Something that didn't want her to remember anymore.
She whispered into the sky:
"I don't care what you are.
I carry names.
I carry grief.
And I do it with love.
You can't unmake that."
The sky didn't answer.
But far off, thunder rolled.
Like laughter.
That night, Evelyn wrote Elias a letter she would never send:
I miss your hands.
I miss your eyes.
But most of all, I miss the way you believed in the version of me I was trying to become.
I hope you still do.
I hope you're safe.
I hope you're telling stories.
Because I think mine just woke up a god.
Love always—
Evelyn.
[End of Chapter 22]