Sarah didn’t remember leaving the stage.

  One moment she was buried in screams and porcelain grins, dolls closing in like a second skin—the next, she was on her knees outside, pavement scraping her palms raw, lungs heaving like she’d outrun death. The Regal was gone. No broken sign. No rotting doors. Just fog—thick as wet wool, curling up her legs like it wanted her back inside.

  Maybe she never left.

  Maybe there never was a theater.

  The town didn’t care. It just stared through the mist and whispered her name like a curse that wouldn’t quit.

  Sarah staggered into the haze, air thick as grave dirt, lungs choking on rot and regret. The fog wasn’t mist. It was a presence. A parasite. It clung to her skin, slithered into her clothes, whispered secrets to her blood. Every breath felt like drowning in someone else’s sin.

  The streets bled into each other—crooked alleys splitting like veins, doorways yawning where walls should be. Nothing held still. Street signs twisted in knots. Windows blinked shut when she looked at them. The town pulsed like it had a heartbeat, and it beat just for her.

  And that goddamn letter. Still in her pocket. Still burning.

  “You left me…”

  Miranda’s voice rode the silence like a scalpel—thin, sharp, and merciless. Sarah pressed her palms to her ears, but it was already in her head. Buried behind her eyes. Crawling down her spine like a wet centipede. Every time she tried to forget, Hollow Vale reminded her. With whispers. With guilt. With the sound of her own breath echoing like footsteps that weren’t hers.

  Then came the rustle—soft, like silk dragging across a coffin lid.

  She froze.

  The sound again. Closer. No wind. No trees. Just movement.

  “Sarah…”

  Her name, sliced from Miranda’s tongue. Her knees almost gave. Cold soaked through her boots, her jeans, into her marrow. She should’ve run. Should’ve screamed. Instead, she followed. Because guilt’s a leash, and she was still wearing the collar.

  Buildings warped as she moved—doorframes narrowing, bricks squirming like muscle under skin. The smell worsened. Mold. Old water. Copper. Something dead behind the walls. Her fingers twitched toward her pocket, but the letter felt alive now—wet—like it had been breathing her in the whole time.

  And then—

  A shape.

  Just at the edge of the world. Black against the white. Human… until it moved.

  Not walking—jerking. Like a marionette on tangled strings. Head twitching side to side, limbs buckling, resetting. Sarah’s breath turned to glass in her throat.

  Closer now. The doll.

  But not like the others.

  This one was sculpted. Like someone had carved Miranda’s face with a razor and spite. Its eyes were pits. Deep, black, swallowing pits. No glass. No paint. Just absence. Its mouth sewn shut with thick, greasy thread that pulsed with every word that slithered from somewhere inside it.

  “You left me, Sarah.”

  Her legs wouldn’t move. Her muscles screamed. But she was chained to the spot by that voice—by what was behind that voice.

  The doll lifted one jagged hand, its fingers clicking like insect legs. The thread over its mouth twitched. Bulged. Like something was trying to speak through it.

  “Why did you leave me?”

  That did it.

  She broke. Spun. Ran.

  Her boots hammered the pavement, each step a scream. The fog tightened around her, claws in cotton. The voice chased her—not from behind, but from inside. Every corner she turned, the town reformed, stretching, reshaping, mocking her panic. The doll’s footfalls echoed—not fast, not slow—just steady. A goddamn metronome of doom.

  “Sarah… help me…”

  She slammed into something—a wall, a door, a sign. The building ahead was an old café, windows busted out like eye sockets after a barfight. The sign above was gibberish, half-melted letters spelling “COFFEE” or maybe “CONFESS.”

  She didn’t care. She dove in.

  Inside, the café was a corpse. Tables overturned. Chairs snapped like bones. Counters caked in dust thick as ash. The air was still—like the room had been holding its breath just to watch her break. A bulb swung from the ceiling, flickering in spasms, casting shadows that moved when they shouldn’t.

  Then the voice.

  Closer.

  “Help me…”

  She followed it. Not because she wanted to. Because she had to. Because Hollow Vale doesn’t let go. It drags you by the guilt and makes you stare until your soul splits open.

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  And there it was.

  In the corner.

  Small. Delicate. Sitting like it was waiting for tea.

  Another doll. Miranda’s face again, soft porcelain pretending not to rot. The same black thread over the mouth. The same damn judgment behind the glassy stare.

  It looked at her. And knew.

  Sarah dropped to her knees.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, voice cracked open like an egg. “I’m so sorry.”

  The doll tilted its head.

  And then—

  The room breathed in.

  Walls groaned like ribs. Shadows flared. The floorboards twisted. This wasn’t a café anymore. It was a trap, and she was inside its stomach. The ceiling sagged like a tongue. The walls leaned in. Not collapsing—swallowing.

  She ran. Again.

  Dove through the door just as the building folded in on itself, sucked back into the fog like it had never been real.

  Outside?

  Quiet.

  Dead quiet.

  The town was still. Watching.

  But she knew better now.

  It wasn’t done.

  And neither was Miranda.

  The fog didn’t part. It thickened. Pressed in like a wet shroud, reeking of damp earth and broken promises. Sarah’s chest ached with every breath, her lungs straining against the weight of the air. The letter in her pocket pulsed like a heartbeat—beating in time with the town. She didn’t dare touch it. Didn’t need to. The words were carved into her skull.

  You left me to die, Sarah. You walked away.

  She hadn’t. Not really. But guilt doesn’t care about truth. Guilt only cares about the story you tell yourself in the dark.

  The street stretched on forever, pavement cracking beneath her boots like brittle bones. The buildings leaned in, windows dark but not empty. Something watched from inside. Not human. Not alive. Predators of memory. Parasites of sin.

  “Sarah…”

  The voice again. Softer now. But sharp as ever. It came from everywhere—above, below, inside her own throat. She stumbled, caught herself on a lamppost that was too soft, like flesh instead of metal. She yanked her hand back, bile rising.

  The rustle came again. That silk-on-wood sound. Closer. She didn’t look back. Couldn’t. If she saw that doll again, she’d lose what little was left.

  She moved forward. One step. Another. Into the town’s festering heart. Hollow Vale wasn’t a place anymore—it was a need. A hunger. A mouth with no bottom.

  A house loomed ahead. Wrong. Too tall. Too narrow. A silhouette stretched like a neck about to snap. Windows boarded, but sickly yellow light oozed from cracks like pus.

  She shouldn’t go in. Every nerve screamed it. But Miranda’s voice was louder.

  “Help me, Sarah. Please.”

  The door was open. Waiting. Black as a throat. She stepped inside.

  The air was different here. Thicker. Sweeter. Like rotting fruit left out too long. The floor creaked under her weight, each step answered by a faint, wet squelch from somewhere below. The walls were covered in wallpaper, peeling and stained, patterned with shapes that might’ve been flowers or faces or both. She didn’t look too closely.

  A staircase spiraled upward, its banister splintered and jagged like teeth. The voice came from above.

  “Sarah…”

  She climbed.

  Each step felt like a descent instead of an ascent, like the house was pulling her deeper into its guts. The air grew hotter, stickier, clinging to her skin like a second layer of guilt. The walls pulsed faintly, in time with the letter in her pocket. She could hear it now—whispering, rustling, reading itself to her in Miranda’s voice.

  You could’ve saved me. You chose not to.

  At the top of the stairs, a hallway stretched into darkness. Doors lined both sides, each one slightly ajar, each one leaking that same sickly light. She didn’t want to look inside, but her feet moved anyway, drawn forward by the voice, by the guilt, by the town that wouldn’t let her go.

  The first door showed her a memory.

  Miranda, laughing, her hair catching the sunlight like spun gold. They were young then, stupid and fearless, running through fields that didn’t belong to Hollow Vale. Sarah reached for her, but the memory twisted. Miranda’s laughter turned to screams. Her face melted into shadow. The field became fog.

  Sarah slammed the door shut, her heart pounding in her throat.

  The next door was worse.

  Miranda again, but not alive. Her body crumpled in the dirt, eyes wide and empty, blood pooling beneath her. Sarah was there too, in the memory, standing over her, hands shaking, mouth open in a scream that never came. She hadn’t left her. She’d tried to help. But the memory didn’t care. It showed her walking away, leaving Miranda to rot.

  She stumbled back, tears burning her eyes, and the hallway seemed to laugh—a low, wet sound that came from the walls themselves.

  “Sarah…”

  The voice was at the end of the hallway now, behind a door that hadn’t been there before. It was different from the others—old, warped, covered in scratches that looked like claw marks. The handle was cold, too cold, biting into her palm as she turned it.

  Inside was a room that shouldn’t exist.

  It was Miranda’s room. Not as it had been, but as it was now, in Hollow Vale’s twisted heart. The bed was there, but the sheets were stained, rotting, crawling with things that weren’t quite insects. The walls were lined with dolls—hundreds of them, all with Miranda’s face, all with sewn-shut mouths, all staring at Sarah with eyes that weren’t eyes.

  And in the center of the room, sitting on a chair that looked more like a throne, was Miranda.

  Not a doll. Not a memory. Miranda.

  Her skin was too pale, too smooth, like porcelain stretched over bone. Her eyes were gone, replaced by those same black pits Sarah had seen on the doll. Her mouth was sewn shut, the thread pulsing, writhing, as if it was alive. But she smiled. Somehow, she smiled.

  “You left me,” she said, her voice coming from everywhere and nowhere. “But you came back.”

  Sarah’s knees buckled. She fell, the floor cold and slick beneath her. “I didn’t… I tried… I’m sorry…”

  Miranda’s head tilted, the movement too sharp, too wrong. “Sorry isn’t enough.”

  The dolls on the walls began to move. Slowly at first, then faster, their limbs jerking, their heads twitching. The thread over their mouths bulged, split, and voices poured out—Miranda’s voice, over and over, a chorus of accusation.

  “You left me.”

  “You left me.”

  “You left me.”

  Sarah screamed, clawing at the floor, trying to crawl away, but the room was shrinking, the walls closing in, the dolls climbing down from their perches, their porcelain hands reaching for her. Miranda stood, her movements fluid now, predatory, and the fog poured in through the windows, through the cracks, through Sarah’s own skin.

  “You can’t leave me again,” Miranda said, and her voice was the town, the fog, the guilt, all of it woven together into a noose.

  Sarah’s hand found the letter in her pocket. It was hot now, burning, and she yanked it out, tearing it open, the words spilling out like blood.

  You left me to die, Sarah. You walked away.

  But there was more. Words she hadn’t seen before, written in her own handwriting.

  And you’ll stay here forever.

  The room vanished. The dolls vanished. Miranda vanished. But the fog was still there, and so was the guilt. Sarah was alone, but not alone. Hollow Vale was with her, inside her, and it wasn’t letting go.

  She ran, but there was nowhere to go. The town stretched on, endless, alive, and hungry. The dolls were still out there, she knew, waiting in the fog, their sewn-shut mouths whispering her name. And Miranda was with them, her voice the sharpest blade of all.

  Sarah’s screams faded into the haze, swallowed by the town that never forgets.

  And Hollow Vale smiled.