The Hollowing: How a Village’s Children Became Vessels for Something Older

Season 1

Chapter 1 : Whispers Before the Silence

The village of Eldwynd was forgotten by most maps, nestled in a low valley surrounded by dense pines that whispered secrets to the wind. To outsiders, it was a quaint hamlet where time had seemingly paused ....weathered cottages, a single dusty road, and the faint, distant tolling of the church bell every hour. But beneath its sleepy veneer, Eldwynd held a story that even its oldest residents dared not speak aloud.

It began with the children.

At first, it was small ....odd murmurs that could be mistaken for childish imagination. Mothers noted their toddlers staring blankly at walls, tracing invisible shapes in the air with trembling fingers. Then came the laughter that didn’t belong to any child, a hollow, echoing sound that seemed to seep from the cracks of the wooden floors.

Mrs. Abernathy, the schoolteacher, was the first to notice the change. During morning lessons, several students stopped responding, their eyes glossed over as if watching something invisible behind the classroom walls. When asked to read aloud, their voices trembled, then merged into a low, unison hum that resembled the beginning of a hymn. But it wasn’t any hymn she recognized.

At home, parents heard it too ..... a sound that grew heavier with each passing night. Whispers, or maybe chanting, just beyond the edge of hearing. The village dogs bayed relentlessly, refusing to venture beyond their yards. The wind carried a coldness that wasn’t seasonal, and shadows twisted unnaturally against the flickering street lamps.

By the third week, the children began to disappear. Not entirely ....they were still seen in windows, wandering the village paths, their lips moving in silent prayer or some terrible incantation. But their laughter had been replaced by a dreadful stillness.

A fever took hold of the village, but it wasn’t medical. It was something older, something that had waited beneath Eldwynd’s earth for centuries.

One night, the village priest, Father Calloway, was summoned to a small house on the edge of town. The Abernathy boy, Timothy, had been found in his bed, skin pale as ash, his eyes rolled back into his head. The only sound in the room was his low, rhythmic chanting ....words of Latin, perfectly enunciated but utterly unknown to the father.

The next morning, when the CDC arrived, they found a community gripped by terror. Eldwynd was quarantined without warning. The streets were eerily silent except for the soft, unified chanting emanating from the children who had not disappeared. Scientists and doctors observed but could not explain the symptoms: peeling skin revealing text beneath, voices merging into unholy hymns, and behaviors too coordinated to be anything but possession.

In the quarantine tents, children sat huddled together, eyes flickering with unnatural light. Their bodies shuddered in unison, as if possessed by a single, malevolent will. The lead investigator, Dr. Lorne, wrote in his sealed notebook: “The entity mimics family members’ voices to lure victims closer. The infection is less biological than memetic....like a parasite of the mind and flesh.”

The villagers who resisted possession began to hear it too ....a whisper in the static of radios, a flicker in security cameras, a shadow darting just out of sight. Eldwynd was no longer a village; it was a vessel.

As the sun dipped below the horizon, the chanting rose, weaving through the pine trees, echoing over the silent valley ....a lullaby for the hollowed.

Excerpt from Dr. Lorne’s sealed notebook (Page 17): “The vocal patterns are non-human in origin. Children recite Latin hymns with no prior knowledge, indicating possession or external control. Skin biopsies reveal pigmentation changes forming script beneath epidermal layers. Recommend strict isolation and further linguistic analysis.”

Chapter 2: The First Infection

Eldwynd, Vermont | February 9, 1983 | 5:23 A.M.

The scream that woke Eleanor Vance was not human.

It tore through the valley before dawn—sharp, fragmented, and impossibly layered, like three voices stacked atop one another, all screaming in slightly different pitches. She shot up in bed, the scream still ringing in her ears, her heart thudding wildly beneath her nightdress.

The room was freezing. A thin layer of frost coated the inside of her window, the glass cracked in the corners as if the cold had clawed at it. She looked toward her stove: dead. The embers that had still glowed red a few hours ago were now gray, frozen to the metal basin.

Then came the second scream.

Not from the forest. This one came from her neighbor’s home—Clara Bell’s.

Eleanor wrapped a woolen shawl around her shoulders, grabbed her lantern, and stepped outside into the snow-drenched street. A thick fog had rolled in overnight, and it now blanketed Eldwynd in a suffocating silence that even the wind didn’t dare disturb.

A figure stumbled out of the mist.

It was Clara, barefoot, her robe soaked and torn, her hands shaking violently. Her eyes darted about in frantic half-circles, but her mouth didn’t move. She opened it as if to scream again—but nothing came out. Instead, she dropped to her knees, pointing behind her.

Eleanor rushed past her.

And that’s when she saw him.

Jonah Bell.

Clara’s son. Only ten years old.

He was lying on the church steps.

Face up.

Eyes… gone.

Not gouged. Not wounded. Just... missing. As though they had never been there to begin with. Smooth sockets stared at the overcast sky, glistening slightly from the frost.

But that wasn’t the most horrifying part.

His entire torso was carved—no, engraved—with text. Thick, vertical lines of Latin calligraphy stretched from the base of his throat to his navel. Each symbol perfect. Delicate. Not torn by blade, but scorched into his skin with precision and reverence.

Like scripture in flesh.

Eleanor dropped to her knees. She wanted to scream but choked instead.

From behind her, other villagers emerged from the fog, drawn by the noise. Father Calloway, wearing only his slippers and a heavy coat, froze when he saw Jonah. He fell to his knees and began to sob—not from grief—but recognition.

“It’s... it’s the Exsultet,” he whispered.

“The what?” Eleanor asked hoarsely.

“A hymn. Sung only during Easter Vigil. But this isn’t... it’s wrong. These lines… they’re out of order. They’re speaking to something else.”

🔍 FIELD REPORT | Audio Log #3 - Eldwynd Perimeter Team | Timestamp: 05:45 A.M.

“Confirmed patient zero is male, approx. age 10. Zero blood loss despite visible tissue disruption. Engravings follow ritualistic alignment — Latin, mostly ecclesiastical.

…The skin around the wounds is not cauterized. It's... fused. Not cut. As if his body grew the scripture. Repeat: no surgical entry or burn marks. Subject is unresponsive.

No pupils. No corneas. No ocular cavities. His eyes... never formed. The sockets are smooth. This is biologically... impossible.”

🌬️ That Afternoon

The town’s grid failed at precisely 3:06 p.m.

There was no storm. No fallen trees. Just a low, subterranean hum that rose slowly, like the build-up before a symphony’s first note—then everything went dark.

Eleanor was inside her kitchen when it happened. The flickering lights died. The radio went silent mid-hymn, the singer’s voice stretching eerily as if pulled backward through time.

Outside, the wind began to whisper in a rhythm.

Children stared out of their windows and started humming in unison. Wordless. Monotone. Synced.

All of them.

Even babies.

🩻 Incident File - Eldwynd Medical Board | Nurse Harrow's Testimony

“We brought Jonah’s body to St. Hedwig’s morgue. It wasn’t cold. His skin was... warm. Too warm.

When we tried to insert an IV for autopsy fluids, the needle bent. The skin felt like vellum—ancient parchment. Not elastic, but stiff like dried scripture pages.

At 2:41 p.m., the body exhaled.

His chest rose—not a twitch, but a full inhale—and every light in the autopsy room shattered.”

🕯️ February 10, 1983 — 12:03 A.M.

Eleanor couldn't sleep.

Jonah’s image haunted her: the vacant eyes, the reverent posture. It didn’t feel like a murder.

It felt like a ritual.

Suddenly, she heard a sound.

click-click… click-click… click.

She turned.

Her landline phone was hanging off the hook. The receiver dangled, swinging slightly as if someone had just hung up. She hadn’t used it all night.

From the earpiece came a whisper—not loud, not angry. Childlike. Reciting.

“He comes clothed in names we forgot to fear.”

She dropped the receiver.

The whispering continued.

St. Hedwig’s Asylum Internal Memo

Case X-9H – Jonah Bell

“Autopsy suspended. Cadaver remains in preservation, despite zero cooling. Skin emits low-frequency hum. Latin script appears to grow daily. Day 3: New phrase—‘In nomine tenebris, ego praesumo.’ Translation: ‘In the name of darkness, I presume control.’”

Chapter 3: They Spoke in Her Voice

Chapter 3: They Spoke in Her Voice

(Audio Analysis Report, #SD-2043 | Source: LaRue Orphanage Surveillance, March 1982)

"We confirmed 13 voices reciting nursery rhymes simultaneously in Room 4C. However, spectral analysis shows only one person physically present: subject ‘Abigail.’" — Dr. Yvette Sloan, Parapsych Audio Forensics Team, file redacted.

🕯️ March 4th, 1982 — LaRue Orphanage, Arkham Ridge

By the time the children at LaRue began whispering the same phrases in unison, the staff assumed it was mimicry. Children copy things. They mimic adults. Cartoons. Other children.

But they weren’t mimicking anything they’d heard. They were mimicking a voice that had never spoken aloud.

That voice belonged to Callie Wren.

She hadn’t spoken in two years.

When she arrived at the orphanage, malnourished and mute, the doctors blamed it on “selective mutism.” Her file indicated she'd been discovered inside a rusted-out school bus in Claremont County, alone, clutching a cassette tape and covered in her own fingernail scratches. The tape only contained white noise. They labeled her non-verbal.

Until every child started speaking in her exact voice.

It began at 2:13 AM.

Dorm mother Eliza Chambers was the first to hear it. A lullaby, soft and familiar, like the hum of a grieving mother in an empty nursery:

“Goodnight, Mama, don’t open the red door…”

Over and over.

But it wasn’t the singing that made Eliza drop the tray of sleeping pills.

It was that every child in Rooms 4A through 4F was singing in Callie Wren’s voice.

Identical pitch. Cadence. Tone.

Even the boys.

Staff Log, LaRue Orphanage Internal Memo

"Children showing signs of shared vocal hallucination. Callie Wren remains non-verbal in isolation. No audio devices present. Request psychiatric consult. Recommend spiritual intervention blocked by administration (see: Bishop McTavish denial, Feb 20)."

🩸 3:04 AM .....Security Footage Log (Redacted)

Surveillance from the eastern wing showed something no one could explain.

The camera angle caught only the lower halves of the children, their tiny feet dangling from their beds, rhythmically swinging, all in sync.

From their mouths came the same nursery rhyme, slowed now:

“Don’t open the red door… Don’t open the red door…”

But what chilled the spine of the technician reviewing the tapes days later was what happened at frame 9932:

A shadow passed across the ceiling. A human silhouette. Upside-down. Crawling above them.

No one was in the ceiling crawlspace.

Worse, the timestamp on the footage read: March 4th, 2:03 AM.

Ten minutes before the footage was recorded.

Internal Case Notes: Dr. Amelia Kovac, Resident Psychologist (Session Excerpt)

Patient: Callie Wren

Age: 11

Session Date: March 5, 1982

Dr. Kovac: “Callie, can you tell me what the red door is?”

(Callie does not respond. Begins scratching left forearm violently.)

Dr. Kovac: “Is the red door something real?”

(Callie looks directly into the mirror. Not at Dr. Kovac. At the mirror.)

(Her mouth moves, but no sound.)

Playback audio later revealed a whisper in reverse: “She already opened it.”

🦴 Medical File Entry (Confidential, CDC Archive #Z-11b)

Subject: Mateo Rojas, 8, orphan

Symptoms:

• Vocal cord strain (despite not speaking prior)

• Tongue abrasions matching bite patterns not his own

• Iris discoloration: left eye now entirely white

Physicians assumed possession was metaphorical.

Until Mateo began speaking while sedated, in Callie’s voice — describing events that hadn’t happened yet.

He predicted Eliza Chambers would “die before seeing sunrise.”

Eliza was found impaled through the throat at 5:49 AM, her body positioned with both arms reaching toward the red-painted door at the end of Hallway C.

🕳️ Nurse Helen Mathis

Nurse Logbook Entry, March 6th, 1982

“When I touched Callie’s hand to apply the IV, I heard her speak. In my own voice. I swear to God it was my voice. But she never moved her lips. And she whispered: ‘Stop pretending. You opened it too.’”

She resigned the next morning.

No forwarding address. Her apartment was abandoned, door open, red paint smeared on the inside.

🩻 X-Ray Report: Callie Wren, 3/7/1982

Findings: Anomaly detected in thoracic cavity. Appears to be an object lodged between ribs 3–5.

Object ID: Unknown. Shape inconsistent with known foreign bodies.

Upon surgery, no object was found. However, the surgeon fainted during the procedure, claiming “the ribs hummed.”

The surgical recording audio was corrupted.

Spectrogram analysis revealed one phrase embedded in the distortion:

“She is the door.”

Chapter 4: The Red Door Opens

(Recovered Memoirs of Sister Delores McRae, LaRue Orphanage, March 1982 — unarchived until 1991 due to content restrictions.)

"The door wasn't always red. But ever since they started dreaming about it, it bled through every wall. We sealed it. Nailed it. Prayed it away. But in the end, it didn't open from our side."

🩸 March 8th, 1982 — The Door in Hallway C

At LaRue Orphanage, Hallway C was a dead end. It wasn’t on the official building plans. But it existed.

No windows. No plumbing. Just a long corridor that got inexplicably colder the further you walked. At the end stood a single wooden door, splintered, with peeling red paint and rusted hinges.

The children called it “The Mouth.”

The staff didn’t talk about it. Sister Delores McRae, the senior nun, claimed it had been there since the orphanage was built in 1911. “Some doors don’t lead to rooms,” she once said. “They lead to places.”

The children, however, had begun drawing it. Over and over. In charcoal, blood, and feces. Always the same. No handle. A single eye in the center. And behind it, whispers.

“Open me. I remember your name.”

🧼 March 9th: Incident 3 — The Bleeding Wall

At 3:44 AM, Nurse Patel was performing a routine check when she saw what looked like red ink dripping from the walls of Hallway C.

When she approached the door, she claimed to hear her mother’s voice, though her mother had died three years prior.

“Diya… sweetheart. You’re not supposed to be here, baby.”

She reached out.

The moment her hand touched the red wood, her body convulsed backward six feet. Security footage showed no visible impact. Her heart stopped for 14 seconds.

She awoke with third-degree burns across her right palm and a name carved in reverse across her cheek: “Callie.”

Nurse Patel quit that night. Her hospital intake form, filed later at St. Francis Memorial, recorded her words under “mental state assessment”:

“It didn’t let me in… because it’s not finished using the children.”

🗂️ Internal Records, Case File #FENRIR-003 (Restricted Clearance)

Subject: Red Door Phenomenon

Location: Hallway C, LaRue Orphanage, Arkham Ridge

• Attempts to paint over the door failed; paint peeled away within hours.

• Locking mechanism fused shut from the inside, despite no known interior.

• Wood samples showed traces of hemoglobin — blood. Human, multiple donors.

• Whisper frequencies detected between 18–23 Hz — below human auditory range, causing headaches, nausea, hallucinations.

RECOMMENDATION: Demolish Hallway C.

RESPONSE: Denied by Diocese. Quote: “You cannot destroy what is already inside you.”

🎭 Flashback: Sister Delores (Private Journal Entry)

"I placed thirteen crucifixes across the doorframe. I chanted the rites. I even used the ash of holy text mixed with my own blood. But that thing… it was mocking us. The nails bent. The crucifixes turned upside down. The last candle I lit near it split in two—without touching it."

She later discovered the word "FEED" scrawled on her bedsheets in fresh blood. None of the children were injured.

🧒 The First Crossing: Child #31

On March 11th, at precisely 2:07 AM, the power cut out in the west wing.

Every camera feed went dark....except the one aimed at Hallway C. That feed stayed live.

In the grainy footage, one child walked into frame. It was Caleb Myers, 6 years old, unremarkable, diagnosed with chronic night terrors.

He was naked. Scratched. Bleeding from the soles of his feet.

He stood before the red door for 33 seconds.

Then ....without touching it .... the door opened inward.

What lay beyond was not another room.

It was a void. Black, endless. Moving like oil. Inside it were voices. Not echoing — living. Folding into each other. Whispering in a chorus of Callies.

Caleb stepped forward.

The door closed behind him.

He was never found.

📞 Aftermath: Audio Transcript from Emergency Call

Operator: “911, what is your emergency?”

Caller: (whispers) “He walked in. Caleb. The door opened.”

Operator: “Ma’am, are you in danger?”

Caller: (crying) “It’s not the door that opened. It’s something else. It opened in us.”

Caller identity: Sister Delores.

Call timestamp: 2:11 AM.

Delores was found dead in her chapel pew at 2:15 AM — eyes sewn shut with black thread, her rosary lodged down her throat.

🔥 The Fire That Didn’t Burn It

March 13th, 1982 — the remaining staff attempted to burn the door.

They used kerosene, magnesium, holy water, and modern accelerants. Fire consumed Hallway C completely.

Except the door.

It stood untouched. Every flame veered away from its wood as if it repelled combustion.

Fire marshals claimed it was “impossible.” But one young rookie, Mark Yarrow, went back inside that night to confirm.

He never returned. His radio broadcasted only one phrase before cutting to static:

“It opened again.”

Chapter 5: The Others Who Came Through

(Reconstructed from orphanage incident records, survivor interviews, and classified transcripts. Dates redacted under Diocese-locked authority.)

"You close the door. You nail it shut. You burn it. But what do you do when something comes back through it ....wearing the face of someone you lost?"

🌒 March 14th, 1982 - The Returned

Three days after Caleb Myers vanished into the void behind the red door, he returned.

Not walking. Not crawling. But appearing ....standing in the courtyard of LaRue Orphanage, beneath a sky with no stars. At 3:33 AM.

The CCTV footage glitched for precisely six seconds. When it resumed, Caleb was standing under the statue of Saint Jude, barefoot, dripping wet, his skin pallid and eyes entirely black.

His lips moved, but there was no sound. A nun approached .... Sister Helen, the night caretaker.

She bent down to him, crying, whispering, “My God, we thought you were…”

Caleb looked up at her, tilted his head, and said in a deep, wet voice:

“He’s not Caleb. He’s watching Caleb now. From behind your eyes.”

Her hair turned white overnight.

She never spoke again.

🗝️ The Lockless Room

Later that morning, Sister Martha was instructed to isolate Caleb in the “lockless room”....a concrete chamber used for aggressive children with no interior handles or windows.

But by the time she returned with another staff member, Caleb was gone.

The door had remained closed, the only key still in her apron pocket.

Written on the inside wall, in what forensics later confirmed to be human tongue tissue, were the words:

“You opened the wrong door.”

Father Marcus Belmont (Exorcist-in-Training)

"He was not a child. The body was a shell. What walked into that orphanage was a mimic .... a shadow doused in flesh. It looked like a boy, yes, but it made no sound when it moved. It did not blink. And the room grew cold when it stared at you."

Father Marcus was the Diocese’s emergency contact for spiritual anomalies. He arrived on March 15th and stayed for one night.

On March 16th, he attempted to burn himself alive in the prayer room, claiming, “It touched my thoughts. I saw what’s on the other side.”

He survived, barely. But he never blinked again.

🧒 Other “Returns”

By March 18th, four more children who had been reported missing between 1971-1979 suddenly appeared within LaRue grounds.

• Annabelle Chu, age 10 (missing since 1974)

• Jonas Mire, age 7 (missing since 1978)

• María Estrella, age 8 (missing since 1975)

• Thomas Sayeed, age 9 (missing since 1976)

None of them had aged.

They did not speak unless prompted. When spoken to, each responded in perfect Latin, though none of them were ever taught.

When asked their names, they all gave the same answer:

“We are waiting for the rest of you.”

Their pupils dilated fully under fluorescent lights. Their shadows moved opposite their bodies.

Interview Excerpt: Dr. Helen Graves (Child Psychologist)

“They wouldn’t eat. Wouldn’t sleep. Just stared at the red door and whispered in languages that don’t exist. We checked audio against every known dialect. Some words were too structured to be noise ....more like commands.”

One night, Dr. Graves heard Thomas whisper, over and over:

“The unborn will walk backward. The blind shall dream of teeth.”

She turned on her recorder.

At playback, her voice was on the tape instead ....screaming, “Open it again! I SAW MY MOTHER IN THERE!”

She slit her wrists that evening.

Physical Anomalies: The Body Isn’t the Same

Autopsy of the “returned” (Jonas Mire - declared deceased after a seizure) revealed:

• A second larynx forming inside the rib cage.

• No stomach. Just a chamber of bone filled with black fluid.

• Heartbeat at 17 BPM .... consistent with hibernating reptiles.

• Traces of ash from ancient Egyptian embalming rituals in his sinuses.

And carved into his thigh bone, inside the marrow, was the phrase:

“He is learning. You are all windows.”

The Door Opens Again

On March 21st, a visitor came to LaRue claiming to be Caleb’s father.

No record of him existed. No identification. But his DNA matched Caleb’s 100%.

Staff reluctantly allowed him to see the boy.

He approached “Caleb” in the chapel.

Witnesses claimed the boy looked up and grinned.

The man kneeled.

And then, in front of three staff and nine children, Caleb crawled inside the man’s mouth.

Not metaphorically.

Witnesses described it as “folding into smoke” and condensing into the man’s body, which swallowed the child whole in seconds .... mouth distending, skin cracking, eyes rolling back.

Then, the man stood up, taller now. Older. Eyes like coal. He spoke once:

“It’s not about who went in. It’s about what’s coming out.”

And with that, he walked through the red door, which opened itself .... in the middle of the chapel.

It had moved. It no longer needed Hallway C.

Chapter 6: The Teeth Beneath the Floorboards

Compiled from floor plan schematics, survivor entries, and classified Vatican EVP recordings

“The red door is not the beginning. It was buried. Forgotten. The true hunger sleeps beneath the boards — it waits in bone and whisper.

🌑 March 22nd, 1982 - The Scratching Begins

At 4:04 AM, Sister Miriam was awakened by a soft scratching noise echoing from the east dormitory .... the ward housing children who had recently “returned.”

Initially dismissed as rodents, the noise grew louder over three days, until it resembled nails raking against concrete.

Children refused to sleep.

They began to whisper about “the one below.”

Drawings were found tucked under their pillows .... disturbing charcoal sketches of rows of teeth spiraling downward beneath wooden planks, a pale figure with no skin, and a door beneath the orphanage’s foundation.

Jonas, one of the returned, explained without blinking:

“He waits in the wood. He eats what the door spits out.”

________________________________________

📓 Personal Notes - Sister Miriam (Recovered after her disappearance)

“They dig. Not with tools, but with fingers. Bare. Until their nails break. Until their knuckles bleed. I caught Annabelle at 2 AM, trying to bite through the floorboard with her own teeth. She didn’t stop. Didn’t blink. Just said, ‘He’s hungry. We owe Him our roots.’”

When she attempted to restrain the girl, Annabelle vomited a mouthful of live moths, all bearing small red dots on their wings ... arranged like sigils.

📍Discovery of Sub-Basement B13

On March 25th, Sister Agnes fell through a rotting floor plank in Corridor D .... revealing a sealed sub-basement that did not exist on any known orphanage blueprint.

Labelled only:

“B13 ... Denti et Silencio.”

(Teeth and Silence)

Descending into the chamber required a permit from both the Diocese and local government. Neither would acknowledge the request.

Father Marcus (still hospitalized from his immolation) sent a single reply via typewriter:

“Do not enter B13. If you do, burn your clothes. And your mouth.”

The staff descended anyway.

⛓ Inside B13: The Pit of Teeth

What they found was not architecture.

It was an anatomical structure .... the entire chamber pulsed faintly like flesh, its walls composed of an unidentifiable calcified material, studded with molars, canines, and bone plaques.

The floor was a pitless spiral of dentine, leading downward.

At the base:

A throne.

Not man-made.

Grown.

And something sitting on it, wrapped in the robes of an old priest .... his face flensed away, revealing a vertical mouth where his face once was.

The being lifted a bony hand and sighed .... a sound like a thousand teeth grinding.

It whispered through the walls:

“I am the hunger. The door is my mouth.”

Everyone fled.

Except Sister Martha.

She walked to the throne, knelt, and began pulling her own teeth out .... with her hands.

🪦 The Silent Ones

By March 28th, six children had gone entirely mute. Their throats collapsed inward, becoming smooth hollows.

On April 1st, they began to communicate telepathically with one another .... answering staff questions before they were asked.

When one nun joked, “Do you have eyes in the back of your head?”, a child named María opened her skull .... literally. She peeled back a flap of skin and revealed a blinking, silver eye behind her scalp.

They called themselves:

“The Descendants of the Hollow.”

📼 Transcribed Vatican Audio (March 30th, 1982)

Location: Beneath B13, microphone lowered into the spiral pit. Recording time: 3 minutes 17 seconds.

[00:05] .... Muffled grinding sounds

[00:17] .... Whispering in Aramaic: “Feed the echo. The bones remember.”

[00:44] .... Unidentified voice: “Your god is not the first. We were here when He bled.”

[01:58] .... Guttural chant begins .... reverse speech

[03:00] .... Voice becomes human, pleading: “Please… I’m still in here. Let me out.”

[03:17] .... Screaming. Then silence. Tape ends with twenty seconds of chewing.

The Vatican never commented on the recording.

Callie’s Awakening

On the morning of April 2nd, Callie, who had kept her distance from the returned, was found unconscious in the chapel.

Burned into her palms were rows of human teeth, pressed like stamps into the skin.

She had been sleepwalking, found just steps from the red door.

When she awoke, she said:

“I remember it now. I opened the door when I was five. I was the first. I’m the lock. He’s in me.”

Callie begins to bleed from her ears whenever someone mentions “B13.”

She doesn’t sleep anymore.

Chapter 7: The Lock Inside the Blood

🌑 April 3rd, 1982 - Callie’s Transformation

Callie was no longer a child.

The burned marks on her palms had spread into jagged veins tracing her entire body, like an ancient root system beneath her skin.

She refused food, sleep, and sunlight.

Instead, she spent hours pressed against the red door, whispering:

“I am the lock. I am the seal. I keep Him out... but I’m breaking.”

Her voice was no longer wholly hers.

At times, a deep guttural tone .... ancient and hungry .... echoed from her throat.

🩸 The Blood Ritual

On April 5th, Sister Miriam returned from a secret meeting with the Diocese, her eyes hollow and frantic.

She revealed a forbidden rite....one whispered only among the oldest Vatican exorcists....The Blood Lock.

The ritual required Callie’s blood to be willingly offered, not spilled in violence, to bind the hunger beneath the door.

But Callie’s blood was different. It was mixed....corrupted with the hunger’s own essence.

When the ritual began, her veins glowed with a black ichor, writhing beneath the skin like live shadows.

📓 Sister Miriam’s Journal

“The ritual demanded a communion with the hunger. Callie screamed, but did not bleed. Instead, shadows seeped from her pores, crawling across the floor like serpents.”

“Father Marcus whispered, ‘The lock is breaking, and so must the door.’”

The Shattering

At the ritual’s climax, a massive tremor shook the orphanage.

The red door .... for decades sealed .... cracked from top to bottom, black blood oozing like tar from the fissures.

Callie screamed, a sound layered with dozens of voices....children, priests, beasts....echoing inside her.

She collapsed, her chest rising and falling rapidly, as if something within struggled to escape.

The Entity Awakens

From the cracks in the door, something dark began to seep.

A shadowy tendril, covered in teeth and eyes, slithered onto the floorboards.

It whispered in a thousand voices:

“I am the hunger, and I am free.”

The children who were mute and hollow-eyed began to convulse, their bodies merging with the darkness.

The Descendants of the Hollow were becoming something else....creatures neither human nor ghost.

🔥 Final Stand

Sister Miriam, Father Marcus, and a group of remaining staff gathered their faith and weapons.

They chanted ancient prayers, wielded relics imbued with sanctity, and confronted the spreading darkness.

Callie, her body twisted and glowing with black veins, became both the battleground and the key.

With a final cry, she reached into the broken door and pulled something cold and sharp .... a bone dagger pulsing with dark power.

With trembling hands, she plunged it back into her chest.

A brilliant light erupted.

The hunger screamed.

Aftermath:

The door slammed shut.

The darkness receded.

But the orphanage was forever changed.

Callie was no longer the same .... her eyes shimmered with an unnatural light, and the hunger was locked inside her blood.

She was the living seal, the lock within the lock.

The children whispered:

“The hunger waits, but now it dreams.”

Chapter 8: The Hungering Dream

April 6th, 1982 - 2:17 AM

The storm hadn’t ended.

Lightning lit the skies above the orphanage as rain clawed at the windows like skeletal fingers. Every rumble of thunder felt like footsteps ....something immense and slow, walking just beneath the veil of reality.

Callie hadn’t spoken in almost an hour. She sat in the infirmary bed, her back unnaturally straight, pupils dilated like twin voids. Her skin, once pale and thin, now shimmered faintly with a subdermal glow, pulsing like a heartbeat .... not hers, but something else’s.

Sister Miriam sat beside her, clutching a crucifix so tightly her palms bled.

“She’s still in there,” the nun whispered.

“But something else is dreaming through her.”

The Hungering Dream Begins

At 2:39 AM, Callie gasped once .... sharp, sudden .... and her body slumped back. She was no longer breathing.

The infirmary lights flickered.

The crucifix on the wall turned upside down.

Then came the sound: hundreds of children humming in unison, off-key, discordant .... not from outside the room, but from inside the walls.

Everyone in the orphanage fell asleep at the same time .... even those keeping watch.

Within Callie’s Mind

The children dreamed not their own dreams, but hers.

And inside that dream, they saw a twisted mirror of the orphanage:

• The hallways stretched endlessly, lined with identical red doors .... all breathing.

• Paintings on the walls bled from the eyes.

• Every clock ticked backward, and time ate itself.

Callie stood in the dream, naked and translucent, her insides crawling with shadows.

Behind her towered a vast humanoid shape .... tall as the sky, stitched together with limbs from a thousand screaming orphans. Its mouth was Callie’s face, crying in reverse.

The voice returned, this time louder:

“I fed on the ones you forgot. The unwanted. The unadopted. I am the god of your indifference. And you locked me in a child.”

Psychological Possession

Those trapped in the dream began to forget who they were.

Sister Miriam dreamt she was a child again .... locked in a cellar, rats crawling over her skin.

Father Marcus saw his mother giving birth to him with hollow eyes and blood-filled lungs.

The twins, Elijah and Rachel, couldn’t remember their names, only the word “hunger”, repeated infinitely as they clawed their faces in the dream.

Every child forgot their own parents. Some forgot their own language. They became clean slates .... perfect vessels.

One Survivor Remains Awake

Only one boy remained awake in the real world.

Samuel .... 10 years old, deaf, and mute .... immune to the auditory hypnosis of the hum.

He walked the quiet, echoing halls with a candle, tracing the blood symbols painted on the walls by someone (or something) unseen. He was drawn to Callie’s room.

When he entered, Callie’s body sat bolt upright.

She looked at him and smiled .... a slow, dreadful grin full of unfamiliar teeth.

Then, she signed in perfect ASL:

“Hello, little lockpicker. Shall we wake them up?”

Chapter 8 Ends with…

Callie’s body now serves as a conduit for the hungering god’s dream.

The entire orphanage is trapped in a shared nightmare .... a feeding ground for the entity.

Samuel, a deaf-mute boy, may be the only one capable of navigating both realities.

Season 1 Ends.

Stay Tuned for Season 2 arriving this Thursday

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