2.2

Same month. Same week, even. And always the same kind of story. A young man. A late-night walk. Vanished without a trace, swallowed by the darkness.

Chills ran down my spine, prickling my skin. The air in the corner seemed to grow even colder, and the shadows danced with a newfound intensity.

"You're not the first to come looking," a voice said from behind me, the words soft yet sharp, cutting through the heavy silence.

I turned sharply, my heart leaping into my throat. A woman stood at the end of the row, half-hidden in the shadows cast by the towering shelves. Mid-thirties, maybe, though the lines around her eyes suggested a life lived beyond her years. Long, dark curls framed a face that was both striking and haunted, and her eyes… her eyes looked like they had seen too much, reflecting a deep, unsettling knowledge.

“Maya?” I asked, recognizing her face from occasional town events – and whispered rumors that painted her as an outsider, a recluse, a woman touched by something… different.

She nodded slowly, stepping closer, her movements fluid and almost unnervingly silent. “Your friend. Eli. It’s happening again, isn’t it?” A flicker of something. Fear crossed her face.

I narrowed my eyes, suspicion warring with a desperate hope for answers. “You knew?”

She looked away, her gaze drifting towards the window, where the wind rustled the leaves of the ancient oak trees outside. “I’ve read things. Heard stories. There’s a legend in Ravenswood. One we don't talk about out loud, for fear of giving it power.”

I didn’t speak, afraid to interrupt her, afraid that if I broke the fragile thread of her confession, she would retreat back into her silence.

“They say there’s something in the woods. Something ancient, something malevolent, that wakes every few decades… and takes.” She swallowed hard, her voice barely a whisper now, as if she were afraid the very walls had ears. “A shadow. A hunger.”

I let out a shaky breath, trying to rationalize what she was saying, to dismiss it as folklore and superstition. “You believe that?”

“I believe people disappear,” Maya said, her voice regaining a sliver of its earlier strength. “And I believe no one ever finds them. Not truly.”

Her eyes flicked to the window again, where the trees swayed in the wind, their branches clawing at the sky like skeletal fingers. They seemed to be listening, waiting.

“You want answers, Aliyah?” she continued, her gaze locking with mine, her eyes piercing and intense. “Start with the Hollow Book.”

I blinked, the name unfamiliar and unsettling. “What’s that?”

She leaned closer, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “It's not on any shelf. You won't find it in the catalog. But it exists. Hidden in the library, woven into its very fabric. Or maybe... it finds you.”

And just like that, she turned and walked away, disappearing into the labyrinthine shelves as silently as she had appeared.

I stood there for a long moment, her words echoing in my mind, a chilling mantra that resonated with the growing unease in my heart. A shadow. A hunger.

I looked back down at the old newspaper clippings, my hands trembling slightly. One headline from 1887 caught my eye, the bold letters seeming to leap off the page.

Boy Disappears by Moonlight — Locals Blame Forest Curse.

My hands were trembling now, the clippings shaking in my grasp. The library suddenly felt colder, the shadows deeper, the silence more oppressive.

Whatever was happening in Ravenswood… it had happened before. It wasn't a new phenomenon, a random act of violence. It was something older, something darker, something woven into the very fabric of the town.

And I had a feeling it was just beginning again.

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