Pixie Dust: Part Three

I didn’t even check if she was breathing.

My legs moved before my brain could catch up, stumbling back from her collapsed body as the echo of her voice still hung in the air. The ancient darkness awakens… Her words pounded behind my eyes, turning my stomach inside out.

One second I was standing in my living room. The next, I was bolting through the front door into the cold night. I don’t even remember grabbing the keys. Just the sound of the door slamming behind me like a gunshot and the rubber shriek of my tires peeling out of the driveway.

I didn’t stop driving. Not even when my hands started to shake so bad I had to hold the wheel at ten and two just to keep from veering into a ditch. My breaths came in sharp, panicked bursts. The road stretched like an endless artery of black beneath the headlights, and for a moment I wasn’t sure if I was still dreaming. Or if I had ever really woken up.

Every time I blinked, I saw her eyes. Glowing. Alien. Not her.

The worst part?

Somewhere deep down… I think I knew. I think part of me always knew Raven wasn’t just the girl who made my coffee sweet and my nights tolerable. She was something else entirely. And now that thing had stepped into the light. And I’d left her behind on the fucking floor.

Phil. I had to get to Phil.

Phil’s trailer sat at the edge of a mountain road that didn’t even show up on GPS. It always looked like it might slide off into the trees with a good enough storm. But it was his sanctuary. And tonight, it was my last tether to anything resembling reality.

I parked beside his rusted Ford, its hood still warm. He was home.

The porch light flickered, casting a jaundiced halo over the rotting steps. I banged on the door.

“Phil?”

Nothing.

I knocked harder.

“C’mon, old man, open up!”

Still nothing. Not even his usual grumble from the recliner.

My stomach twisted. Something was wrong.

I reached for the light above the porch. The bulb burned my fingers, but sure enough—the key was still tucked right where he’d always left it, duct-taped to the top in a plastic bag. I peeled it down, unlocked the door, and stepped inside.

The smell hit me first.

It was sour. Mildewed. Like rotted meat and burnt oil.

The place looked normal at first glance. The recliner sat where it always did. The kitchen sink was full of old dishes. A half-eaten plate of something unidentifiable was growing new life on the counter.

The TV was on.

But not to a show—just static. Endless, rippling white noise.

“Phil?” I called out, more cautious now. “It’s me, Chase.”

The static was loud. Too loud. I fumbled with the remote on the coffee table and shut it off. The silence afterward was worse somehow—thick and watchful.

I checked every room.

Bathroom? Empty. Bedroom? Sheets unmade, light on, no Phil. Back door? Still locked from the inside.

It was the office that stopped me cold.

His computer monitor was cracked, spiderwebbed like someone had smashed their fist through it. The desk was overturned. Papers were scattered across the floor. But it was one particular drawer, still half open, that caught my eye.

Inside was a neatly organized chaos of newspaper clippings, photocopied birth records, missing person flyers, and yellowed polaroids—dozens of them.

Names I didn’t recognize at first. But one headline stood out:

“PRISCILLA MAYHEW FOUND IN COMATOSE STATE – LOCAL AUTHORITIES BAFFLED”

That was Raven’s mom.

Another article, older still, read:

“Appalachian Women Vanishing in Clusters – Cult Activity Suspected”

The dates stretched back decades. Women from all over the Shenandoah region. All young. All found mutilated—or never found at all.

There were photos, too. Candids. Some were of Raven as a child, others… looked ritualistic. Women kneeling in a circle. A fire. A chalk sigil drawn in the dirt. One picture showed Priscilla, wild-eyed, with blood down her face, clutching something to her chest like a baby.

My hands were shaking as I flipped through the pile.

In the back of the drawer was a journal. Leather-bound, worn soft at the edges. I opened it.

The first page was addressed to me.

“If you’re reading this, I’m probably already gone. Don’t trust the girl. Find the others. Start with the clinic in Barrow’s Hollow. You’ll know it when you see it. —Phil”

I slept maybe three hours on Phil’s ragged old couch—if you could call it sleep. Mostly, I stared at the cracked ceiling, watching shadowy shapes crawl across the plaster and convincing myself they weren’t real.

When the sun finally rose, it didn’t help much. The whole place felt like it was holding its breath.

I cracked a window, brewed whatever sludge passed for coffee in Phil’s cabinet, and opened my laptop.

Even in the aftermath of demons, disappearances, and reality splintering open like a rotten pumpkin, Chase the Tech Support Rep still had tickets to close.

I logged into the work portal. Password reset requests, printer driver installs, a few “I swear I didn’t change anything but now it’s broken” emails. Easy enough. Auto-replies and polite bullshit got me through most of it.

I was still getting paid. And I needed gas money, burner phones, and motels that didn’t charge by the hour.

After a few hours of half-hearted clicking, I pulled out Phil’s journal and flipped to the next entry.

“The Dealer’s reach grows when no one watches. People forget what they saw. Whole towns forget what they lost.”

“Barrow’s Hollow used to be called Providence—before the mine collapse in ‘84. What came out wasn’t coal. That clinic? It’s the only building still standing from the original township. Look for the black fence and the mural. You’ll know it when you see it.”

I googled it. The place barely existed—just a blip on some Appalachian topography maps and a few grainy urban exploration YouTube videos. The clinic was mentioned in one thread on Reddit, buried under local ghost stories and Satanic Panic hearsay. Nobody mentioned what was in the clinic. Just that people who went in didn’t always come out.

Which meant I had to go.

Phil’s shed was an old corrugated metal thing at the back of the property, tucked under a leaning pine tree and half-swallowed by kudzu. It creaked when I opened it—like even it didn’t want to be disturbed.

Inside, it smelled like oil and old wood. A place built by men who thought duct tape and faith could fix most things. Maybe they were right.

The first thing I saw was Phil’s old Remington 870 shotgun hanging over the workbench. Twelve-gauge, pump-action. I took it down, checked the chamber. Empty, but clean. He’d taken care of it. There was a half-full box of shells in the drawer below. Birdshot—not ideal, but it’d make a loud argument.

I loaded it.

Next came the other odds and ends:

A weatherproof hiking pack, faded camo, with cracked leather straps.

A Buck hunting knife in a dry-rotted sheath—sharp enough to matter.

A half-roll of paracord, old but still sturdy.

A tactical flashlight with a cracked lens, but damn if it didn’t still turn on.

Two bottles of isopropyl alcohol, some cotton gauze, and a half-used tube of triple antibiotic ointment.

A metal thermos with Phil’s name scratched into the side.

A box of energy bars two years expired but probably still edible.

A compass with a broken chain and a prayer card tucked into the lid—Saint Michael, protect us in battle.

I even found a flare gun under the bench. Probably from Phil’s younger, wilder days. I tossed it in. Couldn’t hurt.

I threw it all into the pack, grabbed my laptop bag, and headed back to the trailer.

The Camry sat like a loyal old mutt at the top of the gravel drive. 2001, green, dented on the driver’s side. Windshield cracked like spiderwebs in the corner. Nearly three-hundred-thousand miles on it and still running out of sheer stubbornness.

I packed the trunk:

The pack went in first.

Then the Remington, wrapped in an old Army surplus blanket.

A few extra clothes and my laptop case.

Phil’s journal. Front seat. Within arm’s reach.

I stared at the house for a long time before getting in. Phil hadn’t come back. And I had a feeling he wasn’t going to.

The drive to Barrow’s Hollow wasn’t on any map app. The directions Phil scribbled in the margins of his journal were vague at best—turn left at the burned-out fire tower, take the gravel pass behind the “Jesus Saves” billboard, go past the third mailbox missing its door.

The deeper into the mountains I got, the less real the world felt. My cell signal dropped somewhere outside of Timber Ridge, and the air grew thick with pine and something else. Something wet and hungry.

I lit a cigarette and cracked the window.

“Down the holler. Look for the black fence and the mural. You’ll know it when you see it.”

– Phil’s journal, page 14.

But that was it.

No cryptic warnings. No X marks the spot. No mention of what the fuck I was supposed to do when I got there. Just a town that didn’t exist anymore, a building that shouldn’t still be standing, and a voice in my head that wouldn’t shut up about Raven.

What was I looking for?

Answers, maybe. Or proof that I hadn’t lost my goddamn mind.

Or maybe I just needed to see it for myself—whatever it was.

I kept replaying the vision from the porch. Her voice. The markings glowing through her chest. The terms of peace have been renegotiated.

Peace with what, Raven?

What did you give them?

What did I give them?

I thought of Dustin—his last words. “She’s who they want.”

And Phil—maybe he knew more than he ever let on. Maybe he thought he could stop this. But Phil didn’t stop shit. He ran out of time. And now I was the only one still moving.

The road narrowed to a single lane—barely more than two ruts cut into the mud. Trees clawed at the Camry from both sides. Moss hung like funeral veils.

Then I saw it.

A wrought-iron fence, black as sin, stretching like a spine around the crumbling husk of a building half-swallowed by overgrowth. A fading mural bled across the brick wall: a woman in a flowing robe, her eyes blacked out, holding a torch made of serpents.

Bingo.

Barrow’s Hollow Clinic.

I parked beneath a leaning oak, grabbed my pack, and stepped out.

The air was wrong.

Still, but not quiet. The silence wasn’t absence—it was suppression. Like something was waiting for me to make a sound so it could answer back.

My boots crunched gravel as I approached the gate. Rust flaked off the hinges when I pushed it open.

The sign was barely legible, half-eaten by vines and rain-rot.

“Barrow’s Hollow Center for Reproductive Medicine”

Or what was left of it.

The chipped brick looked ready to collapse, the moss-furred tin roof sagging like it had lost the will to hold itself up. Windows were boarded up. The front door was bolted shut with a rusted chain and padlock that had probably been there since Bush was president.

I popped the trunk and grabbed the shotgun.

Didn’t load it for show this time. I slid in a shell, racked it with a familiar shk-thak, and slung the pack over my shoulder. I wasn’t expecting to shoot my way into answers. But I wasn’t expecting anything anymore.

The back entrance was less fortified. A maintenance door, mostly rotted through at the frame. One well-placed kick and it groaned open, metal shrieking like it knew I didn’t belong.

Inside, the air was thick. Stale. Damp.

Like mold and dried blood had formed a union.

The walls were that institutional off-white, but stained brown in streaks where the roof had leaked through the years. A few overhead lights still worked, casting a yellow glow over overturned chairs, broken equipment, and piles of medical forms curled up like dried leaves.

The waiting room looked frozen in time. Toys in a wire maze still sat on the kids’ table, untouched. A long-dead plant drooped in a pot beside the empty reception desk.

I crept through the corridors, each footstep echoing louder than I liked.

Then I found the file room.

The door was barely hanging on its hinges. Inside, one wall was lined with rusted filing cabinets, the others stacked with crumbling boxes of paper. Mildew clung to everything. I had to cover my nose with the inside of my hoodie just to keep from gagging.

I tried one cabinet at random—stuck. Yanked harder, and the drawer squealed open.

A stack of folders, yellowed and brittle. Most were routine patient charts—until I found a folder labeled:

PROJECT: PARTHENO-9

Next Phase in Human Evolution / Viability Studies / New Earth Protocol

Typed manifestos, half in medical jargon, half in pure cult scripture.

References to “pre-selective wombs” and “external gestational augmentation.”

One line repeated several times, each time in a different handwriting:

“The womb is the altar. The seed must be trans-dimensional.”

Another page:

“Earth as we know it is a failing simulation. Our task is not to save the world—but to seed the next.”

There was a page paper-clipped to the back. A list of names. Patients. Subjects. Whatever. Each with a red stamp beside them:

APPROVED

FAILED

BIRTH DECEASED

UNKNOWN

My eyes scanned the list until they stopped.

MAYHEW, PRISCILLA — Subject 044-A / Status: ACTIVE / Conception: SUCCESSFUL / Offspring: FEMALE / Monitored for cognitive instability post-labor

There was more—attached was a photo of a much younger Priscilla Mayhew. She was strapped to a birthing chair. Smiling. Wide, empty eyes. A dark smear of blood across her cheek.

Someone had handwritten across the photo in red ink:

“The Mother of the Veil. The Key’s first gate.”

I dropped the file. The sound echoed through the silence like a shot.

Raven’s mom hadn’t just lost her mind. She’d been used.

And if what I read was true… Raven wasn’t just caught up in this. She was born from it.

I don’t know what made me keep going after I found Priscilla’s file. Any rational person would've run straight back to the Camry and torched the whole goddamn place from the highway.

But I wasn’t feeling particularly rational. Not after what I read. Not after what I saw.

Raven’s mother hadn’t just suffered. She’d delivered something. And if that file was telling the truth, then this place wasn’t just a clinic—it was a cathedral.

And every cathedral has a crypt.

The stairs creaked beneath me, loud and alive. I moved slow. Careful. Every step down felt like it sank me deeper into something buried.

Halfway down, I heard it.

A sudden, metallic clatter at the bottom of the stairs. Loud. Sharp.

I froze.

Muscles seized. Every nerve screamed. The flashlight beam jittered against the walls as my grip faltered. I raised the Remington with both hands, bracing it against my shoulder. Safety off. Eyes scanning the dark, sweat dripping into them.

The flashlight beam trembled in my grip. I raised the Remington. Safety off.

“Show yourself,” I rasped into the dark.

Nothing. Just the wet drip of condensation and the echo of my breath.

I kept going.

The last step gave way to damp concrete. My boots sank into something slick. I aimed the light and—

Fuck me.

The basement wasn't a basement. It was a cavity. A carved-out hollow beneath the earth, raw stone and reinforced brick slathered in moisture and something darker. The clinic above had been built on top of this—like a bandage over a bullet wound.

The flashlight wavered, exposing the warped shape of the chamber. The ceiling dipped low and pulsed with slow drips of condensation. Thick veins—black and glossy—ran along the walls like roots, threading into rusted surgical equipment and partially collapsed operating tables.

And then I saw them.

Rows of containment pods. About the size of tanning beds, but built from steel and clouded glass. A few had shattered, their contents long since decayed into a puddle of meat and fluid. But others… were still sealed. Still pulsing faintly with mechanical life.

I stepped closer. The Remington tracked each corner like I expected something to leap from the dark.

Inside one of the unbroken pods was a woman—or what was left of one. Her body lay arched, spine bent at an impossible angle. Her mouth was open in a silent scream, and her stomach…

Her stomach was a cavern.

Hollowed out, like something had chewed its way out from within. Her flesh was shredded. Ribs cracked outward like the petals of some fucked-up flower.

I gagged. Turned.

And saw more.

Some of the pods held… things.

One had a fetus suspended in murky fluid. But this wasn’t human. Its arms were too long. Fingers webbed. Eyes oversized and silver, pressed against the glass like it sensed me.

Another pod held something older. Something dead—or sleeping. It had no face. Just a featureless mass of black flesh, pulsing slightly as if dreaming.

I stumbled back, nearly slipping.

That’s when I noticed the wall. Or what should’ve been a wall.

Instead, a massive sheet of stretched skin—stitched between iron rods—formed a sort of veil. Symbols were carved into it, some fresh, some ancient, all bleeding.

Beyond it: a large sealed door. Thick steel. Blood-crusted keypad. The symbols from Phil’s journal etched above the frame in something sharp.

I took a step toward it when—

Clang.

A pod door swung open.

To Be Continued...