Previously: As winter looms over Cold Hollow, Sheriff Jon Carter investigates a chilling death with hollowed eyes and an dark message. Haunted by visions of a past he doesn’t remember, he realizes something ancient and hungry has returned.
Cold Hollow, Vermont — November 1999
The night was deathly quiet.
Sheriff Jonathan “Jon” Carter gripped the steering wheel of his patrol truck as he pulled up to the Cold Hollow Retirement Home for the second time in as many days. His headlights illuminated the entrance—a modest, two-story building that had once been a place of peace for the town’s elderly.
Now, it felt like something was rotting from within.
Jon stepped out, his boots crunching against the frost-covered ground. He had barely shaken off the unease from Mr. Grayson’s death when another call had come through. Another body. Another mystery.
Lisa Gardner, the nurse who had shown him Grayson’s corpse, stood at the entrance, her arms wrapped around herself despite the thick sweater she wore. Her face was pale, her eyes hollow.
“It happened again,” she whispered before he could ask.
Jon’s stomach clenched. “Show me.”
Lisa led him through the dimly lit hallway, past rooms filled with the slow breathing of sleeping residents. The air smelled of antiseptic and something else—something faintly metallic, like rust.
Or blood.
When they reached Room 203, Lisa hesitated before pushing the door open.
Jon stepped inside—and his breath caught.
Harold Mason, age 89, lay sprawled on his bed. His nightshirt was torn open, revealing his bare, wrinkled stomach. But it was not the way he had died that froze Jon to the core.
It was what had been carved into his flesh.
The Hunger of Cold Hollow
“FEED ME.”
The words were jagged, as if written in a desperate, shaking hand. Blood had dried around the letters, forming a grotesque contrast against the pale skin. Mason’s face was twisted in terror, his mouth gaping wide, his eyes black and empty—just like Grayson’s.
Jon forced himself to breathe. His hands clenched into fists.
“What the hell is happening here?” he muttered.
Lisa stood by the door, trembling. “I don’t know, Sheriff. But… but this isn’t natural.”
Jon’s pulse pounded in his ears. Two bodies. The same hollowed-out eyes. And now… this message.
Something was here in Cold Hollow.
And it was hungry.
The Town Holds Its Breath
By morning, the entire town had heard whispers of what had happened.
People avoided looking Jon in the eye as he walked down Main Street. At Holloway’s Garage, the usual chatter had died down to nervous murmurs. At Maggie’s Diner, coffee cups trembled in unsteady hands. Even Eleanor Whitmore, who had seen more winters than most, kept her doors locked during the day—a thing unheard of in Cold Hollow.
Jon knew why.
The winter freeze was coming. Within a week, the roads would be buried under six feet of snow. For the next four months, no one would be able to leave. No one would be able to come in.
And if this was a plague—if it spread—Cold Hollow would become a graveyard.
The Flashbacks Return
That night, Jon sat in his office, staring at the files on his desk. Two dead. No suspects.
No explanations.
He rubbed his temples, exhaustion clawing at him. But as his eyes began to close, the darkness behind them was not empty.
Suddenly, he was not in Cold Hollow.
He was somewhere else—somewhere old, somewhere soaked in blood.
The Battle of Ashfield, 1863
A battlefield. Broken bodies. Screams in the distance.
Jon—no, not Jon—Monroe—stood among the dead, his sword heavy in his grip. The Lady in Black stood before him, her eyes deep, endless pits of hunger.
“You hesitate, my love,” she whispered.
He tried to speak, but his voice was lost.
“Do you not see?” she murmured, stepping closer. “They were always meant to be fed to me.”
Monroe—Jon—watched as a dying soldier, barely clinging to life, gasped for air. The Lady in Black knelt beside him. Her lips parted.
And she drank.
A thick, black mist slithered from the soldier’s mouth into hers, and as she rose, his body collapsed, empty—just like Mr. Grayson. Just like Harold Mason.
Monroe staggered backward, horror twisting his gut.
“This is wrong,” he choked.
The Lady smiled. “No, my love. This is war.”
Cold Hollow, 1999
Jon jolted awake, nearly knocking over his chair. His breathing was ragged, his skin clammy.
What the hell was happening to him?
He had never fought in any war. He had never seen that battlefield.
But he remembered it.
The horror. The blood. The way she had fed.
A sharp knock on his door made him flinch.
Lisa stood there, her face ghostly pale. “Sheriff,” she whispered. “It’s happening again.”
Jon grabbed his coat and followed her into the night.
Outside, the wind howled through the trees like a warning.
Something was coming.
Something old and starving.
To be continued…
Stay tuned every week for a new episode.
If you enjoy Horror Stories in Episodes, don’t miss the finished episodic series of the Lake Lady.
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