The Hollow-Eyed Boy

They say the dead don’t walk in Marrow Creek—but no one explains the muddy footprints that appear each morning outside the chapel or the boy with hollow eyes who stares through people like glass. Folks stopped asking after the autumn of ’47, the year Josiah Vex came down from the mountain.

World War II had ended, but peace never made it to Marrow Creek. The coal dried up, the trains stopped running, and hunger swallowed the town whole. Families huddled in collapsing cabins, eating boiled dandelions and tree bark. But not Josiah.

Josiah Vex lived high on the ridge, where the pines grew black, and the mist never lifted. A former dynamite man turned bootleg chemist, he distilled things that burnt like truth and went down like lies. No one knew how he got his hands on the ingredients or where he learnt his tricks. His “shimmer tonic” lit up lanterns and livers alike—and the broken men of Marrow Creek paid whatever they had to feel warm again.

But Vex wasn’t generous. If you didn’t pay, he came for you.

They said he could twist a man’s bones without touching him. Said he knew your worst memory and whispered it back to you through keyholes at night.

So when the widow Merrin burst into the chapel during Sunday prayer, her face smeared with tears and soot, no one moved.

“My boy,” she gasped, “my Will. He drank Vex’s brew. Wandered into the ridge last night. He came back... blind. His eyes were gone. Just... gone!”

Josiah stepped from the back row, calm as moonlight, a leather coat hanging from his shoulders like smoke.

“You let your pup sniff at poison,” he said coolly. “Don’t whine when he licks the bowl clean.”

She screamed, lunging at him with clawed hands. Her nails raked his face, and as they dragged her away, she snarled one final curse:

“May the eyes you stole be all you ever see!”

That night, Josiah returned to his shack high on the ridge. He had three stills, each buried under roots and stone, hidden like secrets. As he prepared his next batch, something felt off. The air was thick. Too still.

He lit the fire beneath Still One—but the flame hissed and turned green.

His eyes stung. The shadows bent.

And then the still screamed.

Not hissed. Screamed. Like metal being flayed open.

He backed away, stumbled, and slipped on something slick. He looked down. The dirt was bleeding.

Heart hammering, Josiah fled to Still Two. The glassware was intact, the coil glistening—but when he opened the mash barrel, the stench of rot hit him like a fist. Floating inside were fingers. Dozens. Pickled and writhing.

He vomited. Wiped his mouth. “No. This is some kinda dream. Some sick joke.”

He ran for the third and final still—his oldest, buried beneath an uprooted tree where nothing grew. He dropped to his knees, unlatched the hatch, and there—coiled around the copper tubing—were eyes.

Hundreds.

Blinking.

Watching.

A whisper filled the woods, dry as wind through a coffin: “Trade is trade, Vex.”

He spun around, and she was there.

The widow Merrin. Cloaked in shadow. But her eyes—they weren’t hers anymore.

They were his.

“Y-you can’t be here,” he stammered. “You cursed me. That’s all. Just words.”

“I didn’t curse you, Josiah,” she whispered. “I collected. You brewed with pain. Now drink your own.”

With a sudden gust, her cloak burst into crows, shrieking skyward.

And from the tree behind him, a boy stepped forward.

No eyes.

Just two black hollows that leaked smoke.

He opened his mouth.

And Josiah Vex screamed like a still coming apart.

By dawn, his shack was found abandoned—no sign of a struggle. Just scorch marks. And a trail of muddy footprints that led down the ridge and ended at the chapel door.

That day, young Will Merrin sat in the pews again.

He could see.

But when folks looked into his eyes, they swore something inside looked back.

And at night, when the wind howled through the trees, they heard a man’s voice weeping.

From deep underground.

[To be continued.]