THE CLOSET BLEEDS RED Prologue: Whispers Behind the Closet Door The classroom was a tomb, and the tomb was alive. A low hum pulsed beneath the cracked fluorescent lights – a heartbeat neither living nor dead. Shadows clung to peeling walls, whispering secrets no child should hear. They called it the Boogeyman. Not a man. Not a ghost. Something older. Something waiting. In the corner stood the closet – its door cracked just enough to leak darkness like spilled ink. No one saw the way it breathed. No one heard the quiet scraping beneath the floorboards. But Daniel “Dan the Man” did. A flicker in the corner of his eye. A scratch in the silence. He knew, even then, that fear was a hunger – and the closet was starving. Chapter 1: The First Scribble The bell cracked like a whip. Dan blinked, the harsh fluorescent light of Room 13 settling onto his skin like frostbite. The air tasted stale, thick with unseen weight. The walls, once pale blue, now seemed bruised – suffused with creeping rot no one else noticed. He tugged his sleeves over his hands, rubbing rough skin, a nervous tic he couldn’t stop. His eyes flicked to the closet door – closed, but not silent. That faint scrape. That whisper beneath the wood. His chest tightened. Fear wasn’t just a feeling. It was alive. A thing growing inside him. Misty “Cheeks” Johnson sat two desks away, giggling over a comic strip she’d drawn. But Dan saw the jagged shapes curling in the margins – sharp teeth, hollow eyes staring back at him like silent screams. The doodles writhed, almost alive. When Misty vanished, the classroom held its breath. No shouts. No running. Just silence. Only her pencil remained – sharpened to a point soaked in something dark and sticky. Dan swallowed hard. The chalkboard bore a new line, slanted and cruel: One down. The letters seemed to drip. His mind spiraled. Was it his fault? He’d told his mother about the closet’s whispers the night before – begged her to check – but she only smiled, kissed his forehead, and said, “It’s just your imagination, honey.” But it wasn’t. Dan’s dreams were no refuge. The closet followed him there, twisting into monstrous shapes that crawled over his skin and burrowed beneath his ribs, squeezing his heart like a cracked egg. He hated the way his own breath caught. He hated the tremor in his hands. He hated that he was alone. The Boogeyman didn’t just want to kill – it wanted to consume. To own. And it had chosen him. His palm pressed against his desk, knuckles white. If I don’t stop it... If I can’t fight it... Then what am I? The classroom’s cold silence pressed down like a shroud. And behind the closet door – the darkness breathed. Chapter 2: The Haunted Doodler Dan didn’t sleep that night. The moon cast pale, accusing light through his bedroom window, and the closet – that monstrous cavern in Room 13 – clawed at his mind relentlessly. He tried to drown it out, but the whispers grew louder: soft scraping, faint breathing, like a thousand tiny nails raking the wood. His fingers trembled as he traced the lines of his notebook, but the images wouldn’t stay still. They danced, twisted – like the doodles Skylie McJiggle had drawn in class. She was next. Skylie. “Skylie ‘Tits’ McJiggle,” they called her – a nickname whispered with a mix of awe and cruelty. She was restless, rebellious, her sketchbook filled with swirling ink monsters that seemed to crawl off the pages. Dan could almost see those creatures tonight. He dreamt of ink seeping from the closet like a living tide, black tendrils creeping along walls and floorboards, reaching for him. When the sun rose, the classroom felt colder, heavier – as if the walls remembered the horrors that clung beneath the paint. Skylie sat at her desk, her pencil scratching feverishly, doodling wild beasts and faces twisted in silent screams. Dan’s eyes darted to the closet door again. He could feel it watching. Waiting. The moment came in a blur. A sudden black wave surged from the closet – inky, viscous, alive. It wrapped around Skylie’s arms, squeezing tight like iron bands. She screamed, but the sound was swallowed. Her skin bubbled and tore as the ink seeped under her flesh, pooling in her veins, corrupting her from within. Her fingers melted into grotesque tendrils, dripping black slime onto the floor. The classroom was paralyzed – frozen in terror. On the chalkboard, a new line appeared, dripping like fresh blood: Two down. Dan’s breath hitched. The Boogeyman was writing its poem. And each line was a promise. Dan knew he had to act. But how do you fight something that feeds on your fear – that lives inside your nightmares? He clenched his fists, the cold sweat running down his back. The Boogeyman was coming for them all. And Dan was next. Chapter 3: Warning the Fingerbang The classroom was no longer a place of learning. It was a hunting ground. Dan sat near the back, eyes darting, heart pounding like a war drum against his ribs. The chalkboard’s latest line mocked him: Two down. His breath came shallow. Every nerve screamed in warning. He had to warn Billy “Fingerbang” McGee. Billy was loud, brash, the kind of kid who dared the Boogeyman to come closer. If anyone could listen – maybe it was him. Dan approached Billy’s desk, voice trembling like a leaf in a storm. “Billy... you’ve gotta stay away from the closet. Don’t look at it. Don’t... don’t go near it.” Billy laughed, the sound harsh and brittle. “Relax, man. You’re tripping. There’s no closet monster. It’s just a dumb story.” Dan shook his head, panic rising. “No, Billy. It’s real. It’s killing them. Misty, Skylie... they’re gone.” Billy scoffed. “You sound crazy.” Dan’s hands clenched, knuckles white. The Boogeyman was more than just a story, more than fear – it was a presence that sucked the warmth from the air and left a rot in its wake. That night, Dan’s mind unraveled further. He saw the closet breathing in his dreams – black tendrils weaving into his skin, twisting his flesh. He woke in cold sweat, gasping for air. The line on the chalkboard burned in his memory: Two down. He wasn’t safe. No one was. The world around him blurred – shadows grew longer, whispers louder. Dan’s obsession consumed him. He searched ancient books, forgotten legends, anything to stop the nightmare. But the closet waited. Hungry. Chapter 4: Shadows in the Archive Dan sat hunched over a pile of dusty books in the cramped corner of the school library, the fading afternoon light casting long, crooked shadows across cracked pages. His fingers trembled as he flipped through brittle tomes, inked with stories of monsters that lurked in dark places – creatures born from fear itself. Every legend whispered the same chilling truth: the Boogeyman was not a single being, but a hunger, a shadow born from children’s terror, feeding and growing stronger with every scream and every stolen soul. His breath hitched as he read of closets swallowing children whole, beds that became gateways to nightmares, and the dark promise that once you saw it, it could see you back. The chalkboard’s latest line echoed in his mind like a curse: Three down. The school was tense. Teachers exchanged worried glances, parents whispered in hushed tones, and the halls smelled of fear and antiseptic. Dan’s classmates were fracturing – some too scared to speak, others angry, blaming each other. No one wanted to admit the truth. He knew he had to act, to find a way to fight back. But how do you fight a shadow? That night, Dan lay in bed, staring at the ceiling as the whispers seeped beneath his skin. The closet door in his mind creaked open again, and the darkness beckoned. He clenched his fists, summoning every shred of courage he had. He would not go quietly. Not without a fight. Chapter 5: Melting Away The classroom was a tomb drowning in silence. Marcus “Moist” Pench sat slumped, sweat slick and cold against his skin, his eyes wide with something between terror and disbelief. Dan’s heart hammered as the air thickened, a rancid stench seeping from the closet like sour rot. Without warning, Marcus’s skin began to bubble – small blisters erupting like rotten fruit, weeping a viscous, acidic ooze. A low hiss filled the room as the flesh on his arms and neck dissolved into glistening slime. Marcus screamed, a sound torn from the depths of agony, but his mouth soon warped grotesquely – lips melting and stretching into a wide, leering maw of raw tissue. His body slumped forward as the slime pooled beneath him, bubbling and hissing like a corrupted swamp. Dan couldn’t look away. On the chalkboard, a fresh, gruesome line appeared in dripping, corrupted chalk: Three down. Dan’s breath hitched. The Boogeyman’s hunger was voracious, merciless. And the classroom was its feast. He clenched his fists so hard his nails dug into his palms. This was no mere legend. This was hell itself. Chapter 6: Fractured Mind Dan’s world had warped into a kaleidoscope of shadows and whispers. Sleep was a stranger; his nights haunted by flickering nightmares where the closet's darkness crawled beneath his skin, worming into his thoughts like a living poison. He saw the classroom walls drip and bleed, saw faces twist in agony – friends he’d never see again, their deaths etched into his mind like carved scars. His reflection in the cracked bathroom mirror was a stranger – hollow eyes sunken deep, lips cracked and trembling. The chalkboard loomed in his memory, each fresh line a death knell: One down. Two down. Three down. His thoughts spiraled, obsessive and frantic. He scribbled notes, crossed out pages, scrawled warnings in margins, trying desperately to map the Boogeyman’s pattern, its hunger, its weakness. But every answer slipped like smoke through his fingers. He spoke to no one, pushed away even those who tried to help. Paranoia coiled around him like a serpent. Was the Boogeyman inside him? Was he already lost? His hands shook as he traced the edge of the closet’s shadow in his mind. He vowed: he would stop it. Or die trying. Chapter 7: Ink and Madness The classroom felt suffocating, the air thick like wet wool. Dan sat hunched over his desk, the edges of reality blurring into shadowy whispers and twisted shapes only he could see. The closet’s darkness slithered into his vision, curling like smoke at the corners of his eyes. Skylie “Tits” McJiggle’s death was a grotesque echo in his mind – a nightmare made flesh. But now it was Tiffany’s turn. Tiffany McJiggle, Skylie’s twin, stared at her sketchbook with wide, unblinking eyes. The ink in her pen darkened, thickening, pooling at the tip as if alive. Suddenly, the ink spilled forth like a ravenous flood, black tendrils crawling over her fingers, coiling up her arms. They slipped beneath her skin, crawling like serpents beneath fragile flesh, writhing and twisting her veins into grotesque inky knots. Her screams shattered the classroom, but no one moved. Dan’s vision warped, the walls breathing, the chalkboard bleeding fresh chalk: Four down. He blinked and saw his classmates’ faces twist, eyes empty, mouths stretched into silent screams. His own hands trembled, and whispers echoed in his ears – mocking, cruel, unbearable. The line between nightmare and reality shattered. Dan was alone. Trapped. And the closet waited. Chapter 8: Voices in the Dark Dan’s world had shrunk to a suffocating blackness. The shadows whispered lies and truths tangled like thorny vines in his mind. At school, the empty desks screamed in silence. The remaining children moved like ghosts – eyes hollow, afraid to speak, afraid to look. The closet’s darkness wasn’t just a place anymore. It was inside him, crawling beneath his skin, eating away at his resolve. At night, his dreams twisted into fevered hallucinations: he saw his dead classmates reaching from the shadows, their mouths sewn shut, their fingers clawing through walls. The chalkboard lines haunted him, glowing in the darkness of his room: One down. Two down. Three down. Four down. He wasn’t sure if he was awake or dreaming, the world melting around him. But even in the madness, one thought burned fierce and raw: He had to stop it. He sought out Billy “Fingerbang” McGee, the only one who might listen. “Billy,” Dan whispered, voice cracked and desperate. “We have to fight. Together. Before it takes us all.” Billy’s eyes flickered with fear – but also something fierce, a spark of rebellion. “We’re not gonna just sit and wait,” Billy said, fists clenched. “We’ll take it down.” For the first time, Dan felt a flicker of hope. But the darkness was patient. And it was coming. Chapter 9: Blood and Resolve Dan and Billy huddled beneath the flickering hallway light, whispering frantic plans. “We bait it,” Dan said, voice raw but determined. “We trap it in the closet – seal it, burn it, whatever it takes.” Billy nodded, eyes hard. “No more waiting. No more running.” They rallied the few remaining kids – nervous, trembling, but desperate. Their plan: draw the Boogeyman out with a dummy – something that smelled like fear, like innocence – and when it came, trap it behind a barricade of fire and light. But the Boogeyman had other plans. As night fell, the school creaked and groaned, shadows lengthening like claws. One by one, the kids vanished. First, Lori “Gush” McNally screamed as her skin ruptured into a thousand tiny mouths, each whispering secrets of pain and death. Her body exploded into a grotesque bloom of flesh and teeth, painting the walls crimson. The chalkboard bore the cruel addition: Five down. Dan’s stomach twisted. The Boogeyman was stronger – smarter – than they imagined. Their trap was set, but the predator stalked its prey. And the darkness waited to swallow them all. Final Battle: Feast of Shadows The school was a mausoleum bathed in flickering, sickly light. Smoke curled from scorched walls, the acrid scent of burning flesh choking the air. The barricaded closet door groaned beneath the strain of unseen forces clawing to be free. Dan’s hands trembled as he gripped the makeshift torch, his body a brittle shell of fear and determination. Around him, the few remaining kids – broken, bloodied – huddled like desperate animals. The Boogeyman emerged – a nightmare sculpted from shadows and flesh, its body a grotesque patchwork of distorted limbs, dripping mouths sewn shut with tangled shoelaces, eyes hollow pits bleeding black ichor. It moved with impossible grace, reaching with sinewy tendrils that dripped corrosive venom. Its breath was the stink of rot and despair. One by one, it claimed its victims. Tommy “Slugger” Malone’s body convulsed as his veins erupted, pulsating worms writhing beneath skin, bursting forth in a symphony of squeals and slime. Jessica “Jiggles” Hart’s flesh melted into a viscous puddle, eyes wide with terror until nothing remained but a stain on the floor. Dan screamed, heart fracturing, as he faced the thing that had haunted his nightmares. With a roar, he plunged the torch into the Boogeyman’s writhing mass, flames licking tendrils that hissed and recoiled. The creature shrieked – a sound of a thousand broken souls – and lunged. Dan dodged, stabbing the torch into the ground, lighting the barricade ablaze. The room filled with screams and smoke, the air thick with burning flesh and despair. As the fire roared, the Boogeyman twisted, melting into shadows that seeped beneath the door. Dan slammed it shut, his hands bleeding raw. Silence. The chalkboard bore the final, cruel line in blood-red chalk: Seven down. Dan – alone, scorched, trembling – whispered through tears: “I’m not afraid anymore.” Epilogue: The Last Whisper The fire was out. The smoke had cleared. The school stood scarred, a husk of memories and nightmares. Dan sat alone in the burnt-out classroom, his body trembling, eyes hollow yet fierce. The chalkboard stood blackened but intact, the final line etched deep in his mind: Seven down. His breath was ragged, voice barely a whisper. “It’s over… but it’s never over.” The darkness had retreated – for now. But Dan knew the truth no one else would admit. The Boogeyman was not gone. It lived in the shadows of every closet, beneath every bed. A hunger waiting, patient and eternal. And Dan – Dan the Man – was the last witness. The keeper of its curse. He closed his eyes, feeling the weight of the silence. A single, fragile hope flickered inside him. He would fight. Always. Because some monsters never die. Whispers beneath the Bed In shadows deep where children dread, The Boogeyman waits beneath the bed. With stitched-up mouth and empty eyes, He feasts on fear, and silence cries. Seven fallen, names in chalk, A twisted game, a whispered talk. Yet one remains to bear the shame, A flicker’s hope within the flame. The closet’s door may close tonight, But darkness lurks beyond the light. For in each heart, the terror’s spun – The nightmare’s never truly done. So guard your dreams and lock your black door, For he’s alive forevermore. And when the night is thick and still, Beware the shadow’s hungry thrill. ======= PROLOGUE Whispers Behind the Closet Door The classroom was a tomb, and the tomb was alive. A low hum pulsed beneath the cracked fluorescent lights – a heartbeat neither living nor dead. Shadows clung to peeling walls, whispering secrets no child should hear. They called it the Boogeyman. Not a man. Not a ghost. Something older. Something waiting. In the corner stood the closet – its door cracked just enough to leak darkness like spilled ink. No one saw the way it breathed. No one heard the quiet scraping beneath the floorboards. But Daniel “Dan the Man” did. A flicker in the corner of his eye. A scratch in the silence. He knew, even then, that fear was a hunger – and the closet was starving. The Whisper’s Lament Beneath the door, the darkness sighs, A hollow breath that never dies. It waits for footsteps soft and small, To drag them down beyond the hall. Seven souls it seeks to claim, Each a whispered, broken name. Fear is fuel, and shadows spread, For the closet bleeds in crimson red. That morning, Dan sat at his desk, knuckles white and heart hammering. The stale air seemed to press down on him, thick and suffocating. He wasn’t the only one who felt it. The walls seemed bruised, mottled with a rot no one else could see, a sickness that gnawed at the edges of reality. But the closet – ah, the closet – it was something else. It was alive. It breathed. It watched. And it hungered. Dan’s eyes never left the faintly cracked door, where the darkness pooled and flickered like a wound that refused to heal. Whispers curled through the quiet like smoke, a voice just beyond understanding. Daniel... Daniel... The sound curled into his skin, deep into his bones. It was a promise. A warning. A hunger. And Dan knew the game had begun. The closet’s breath was slow and heavy, like the exhale of something vast and patient. It had waited for him. And for the others. For seven. The Closet’s Counting One... a scratch, a vanished face. Two... the ink that stains the place. Three... the skin that melts away. Four... the silent screams that stay. Five... the mouths that whisper lies. Six... the shadows in your eyes. Seven... the final, whispered dread – The closet bleeds the names of the dead.--------------- CHAPTER ONE The Smell of Chalk and Blood It started on a Thursday, though time felt strangely soft in Room 17 – bent at the edges like burnt photographs. The sky that morning was dull as ash, clouds hanging low like a warning. The kind of sky that made children quiet and grown-ups lie. Dan walked to school alone, counting his steps like a prayer. One-two-three-four, don’t let the closet open more. Five-six-seven-eight, keep your eyes straight past the gate. He didn’t know where the rhyme had come from. It had been in his head for weeks now, echoing in different voices. Sometimes it was his own, and sometimes – worse – it was not. The school loomed ahead, tall and cold and rotting beneath its fresh coat of paint. Laughter leaked through the brickwork like water through a dam – high-pitched, nervous, trying too hard. Dan didn’t laugh anymore. He hadn’t since Marcus disappeared. Marcus Rivera was the first. He had sat two desks to the right. Always chewing on his hoodie string. Always drawing monsters with too many eyes and crooked teeth. One morning, Marcus came to class pale and sweating, his eyes sunken like he hadn’t slept in days. He pointed at the closet. “I heard something,” he whispered. “Like what?” Marcus shook his head. “Breathing. And... singing.” The next day, he was gone. They said he ran away. But his backpack was still under his desk. His hoodie still hung on the back of his chair. Dan remembered the smell. Chalk. And something else. Something that smelled like pennies and wet meat. The smell of blood. They didn’t talk about Marcus. The teachers smiled too widely. The principal made long speeches about “student wellness” and “open doors.” But the closet remained shut. Locked, they said. Sealed. It wasn’t. Dan knew better. Because at night, when the dreams came, the door creaked. And something inside whispered his name. Poem ‒ Marcus in the Walls He drew with crayon, teeth and bone, And now the desk is not alone. His whispers claw beneath the tile, He sings the song with crooked smile. “Let me out,” he softly begs, “I’ve got no arms, I’ve got no legs. I’m just a voice, I’m just a sigh – The closet keeps the ones who cry.” In Room 17, the air always tasted like old paper and static electricity. The teacher – Mrs. Alden – tapped the chalkboard with her long, dry fingers. “Today,” she said, “we’ll be starting the unit on myths and legends.” Dan stared at the board. The chalk scratched like fingernails. The word myth twisted into something else. Myth. Myth. Myth. Death. He blinked. Still myth. His hand trembled as he raised it. “May I go to the nurse?” Mrs. Alden didn’t look up. “There’s no nurse today. Sit still.” Dan lowered his hand. The closet exhaled. Something Behind the Door At recess, the other kids ran screaming across the yard. But not Dan. He sat beneath the dead elm tree behind the gym, where the teachers never looked. That’s where Sam found him. Samira Patel, everyone called her Sam. She had freckles like burnt stars and eyes that didn’t blink enough. She wore her backpack like a shield. “You saw it too,” she said. Dan didn’t reply. Sam sat beside him, pulling a folded paper from her coat. It was a drawing – lines jagged and smudged. At first, it looked like a maze. Then Dan saw it was a mouth. A mouth inside the closet. Rows of teeth. No tongue. Just black. “It sings to me sometimes,” she said. Dan looked at her. “So I’m not crazy?” She shook her head. “No. But if we wait too long, we will be.” They made a pact that afternoon beneath the shadow of the elm. To watch the closet. To write down everything. To find out what happened to Marcus – and the others. Because it wasn’t just Marcus. No one talked about Lily Tran, or Theo Mendez, or the boy with the red hoodie whose name no one remembered anymore. Seven, the rhyme said. Seven names. Seven disappearances. Dan and Sam were numbers five and six. Only one left after that. And then? Then the closet bleeds red. Poem ‒ Pact Beneath the Tree We swore a vow in dirt and dust, Beneath the tree, beneath the rust. We carved our names with broken glass, And promised none of us would pass. “If I go first,” said Sam to me, “Don’t follow where the eyes can’t see. Stay in the light, stay near the day – The closet dreams in shades of gray.” And I, with fear like fire fed, Just nodded once and bowed my head. But dreams don’t care for sacred vows. And blood still stains the paper now. The final bell rang. Children laughed, and screamed, and vanished into waiting minivans and buses and hands that held theirs too tightly. Dan walked home, his backpack heavier than usual. Inside it, the paper from Sam. Inside it, her drawing. Inside it, the beginning of the end. He didn’t notice the shadow that crossed his path just before he reached his house. It moved too quickly. Too quietly. It had no eyes. But it smiled.-------- CHAPTER TWO Sam’s Book of Whispers There was a notebook. It wasn’t like the others Sam used for class – no doodles in the margins, no stickers of space cats or glittery skulls. This one was black. Old. Bound in soft leather that felt warm, almost like skin. Its pages smelled faintly of lavender and mildew. She called it “The Book of Whispers.” And when she handed it to Dan the next morning, her hand trembled. “I don’t know why I started it,” she said, eyes darting around the classroom, “but it keeps track of what the closet says.” Dan turned the book over in his hands. It felt heavier than it should have. The first page was blank, save for a line written in ink too red to be just pen: Don’t let them read this. Even you. Especially you. The bell rang. The closet creaked. And Room 17 grew just a little darker. They flipped through the notebook together at lunch, huddled behind the music building where the smell of old brass instruments masked the scent of rot. It was filled with poems, strange symbols, and dates – each one marked with a tiny, scratched shape of a door. Dan stopped on one page, his breath catching in his throat. October 3rd The voice said: “Marcus has no bones now. Only wires.” The door bled again. I think it liked it this time. Don’t hum near the closet. It thinks you’re singing back. Dan closed the book. “Why are you writing this stuff down?” “I don’t know,” Sam whispered. “It tells me to. In dreams.” She looked pale, hollow. Like something was slowly being scooped out from inside her. “I think it’s how it keeps us,” she added. Dan stared at the school across the courtyard. “Then we stop listening.” Sam shook her head. “We can’t.” Poem ‒ Whisper Journal The ink is red, the pages moan, I write with hands that aren’t my own. The book remembers what I lose – My words, my breath, the paths I choose. It drinks my thoughts and leaves me dry, A mouthless thing that’s learned to lie. But still I write – because it warns. Of shadows born from fractured forms. And if I fail, if I forget, This book will bleed with my regret. That night, Dan couldn’t sleep. The notebook sat on his desk, its black cover gleaming in the moonlight like wet stone. His digital clock blinked: 2:13 AM. Then: 2:14. And then… silence. The kind of silence that bends the air. He heard it. Breathing. Not his own. And humming. A soft, girlish tune, broken in the middle like a skipping record. Dan sat up in bed, sweating. The closet door – his own, in his bedroom – was open just an inch. Too small for anything to come through. But not too small for it to look out. Sam Begins to Fade The next morning, Sam didn’t speak. Her eyes had deep circles under them, and her fingers twitched. She hadn’t brought the notebook. “Where is it?” Dan asked. She didn’t answer. Instead, she handed him a folded scrap of paper. One word was scrawled across it: “Soon.” Dan looked up sharply. But Sam was already walking away, her steps slow, like she was moving underwater. At recess, she disappeared. Ten minutes of panic. Then twenty. Then Mrs. Alden called the office. By the end of the day, the principal made the announcement. “Samira has gone home due to illness.” Dan knew it wasn’t true. He checked her desk before he left. The chair was empty. But the notebook was there, waiting. Open. To a brand-new page. October 11th It found her. It found me. It wants to sing through us. And at the bottom, scrawled in frantic, bleeding ink: THE CLOSET KNOWS YOUR NAME. Poem ‒ Dan’s Doubt I try to run, I try to pray, But closets don’t just go away. They feed on names, they feed on fears, They drink our screams, they salt our tears. Sam has gone where eyes don’t go. Her voice is trapped in something slow. The closet groans. The closet weeps. It never dies. It only sleeps. That evening, Dan sat in his room, surrounded by printouts – missing children, urban legends, maps of the school, class rosters from ten years ago. There were seven names. All different. All vanished between October and November. All from Room 17. He circled them in red marker. He added Sam’s name. Then his. He was next. The Closet Opens He didn’t go to school the next day. Instead, Dan walked the halls at night, the key he’d stolen from Mrs. Alden’s drawer cold in his hand. Room 17 was darker than usual. The hallway lights flickered. The closet sat in the corner, silent and still. He unlocked it. It didn’t creak. It sighed. Inside was a void – not black, but empty. So empty it screamed. He felt something pull at him. Not his body. His voice. Then – A sound behind him. A girl’s voice. Whispering. Singing. “Seven steps and you will see, Where silence folds eternity…” He turned. No one there. Just a red hoodie. On the floor. Marcus’s. Poem ‒ The Seventh Name We are the names the teachers hide, The rules they make, the ones who cried. We are the hum that fills the night, The breath behind the flickering light. One was Marcus. Two was Theo. Three was Lily. Four: Emilio. Five was Sam, and six is Dan – Seven waits to take your hand. The closet’s full, but makes more space. It stretches deep. It knows your face. Dan slammed the closet shut. Locked it. And ran. But the whisper followed. Not in his ears. In his head. Like a song stuck on repeat, chewing through his thoughts. He knew then what the notebook meant. You didn’t have to go into the closet. Sometimes, the closet came into you.------------ CHAPTER THREE Red Rain at Recess It rained the next day. Not the soft kind. Not gentle. It came down like knives – sharp, fast, and red. Dan stood outside Room 17, watching it soak the blacktop. No one else seemed to notice the color. Children laughed. Teachers herded them under the awnings. But the puddles weren’t water. They were wine-dark, staining the air with the scent of copper. He stepped closer. Raindrops hissed where they landed, like acid against the earth. A worm squirmed out of a crack in the concrete. Its body split open. Something crawled out. Not another worm. Not from here. It turned its small head and looked at him. And then it whispered: “She’s still singing, Dan. Come back.” The Return of Sam Dan didn’t sleep. When he came to school the next morning, Sam was there. Sitting in her seat. Smiling. Too wide. Her eyes were wrong – too bright, too empty. He sat beside her anyway. “Where were you?” She didn’t answer. She just handed him a piece of folded paper. He opened it. Inside, in her sharp handwriting, it read: They made a mouth for me inside. Now I can hum even when I sleep. Dan stared at her. “You’re not – ” She turned to him slowly. And smiled again. There was blood at the corner of her lips. Poem ‒ Sam’s New Smile They carved me quiet, gave me grace, A mouth behind my face. Now I sing without a sound, Humming underground. They stitched my silence into thread, And sang until my name was dead. That day, Room 17 felt smaller. The walls leaned in. The windows seemed further away. And the closet… breathed. Dan heard it under the sound of pencils and paper. A quiet in-out, as if it waited for its next guest. Mrs. Alden taught her lesson, but her eyes twitched toward the closet every few minutes. Her hands shook when she wrote on the board. Dan raised his hand. “Mrs. Alden, where do the kids go?” The chalk snapped in her hand. A long silence. Then: “What do you mean?” “The ones who stop coming. The ones from this room.” She turned slowly. Her voice dropped. “We don’t speak of them.” The Letter Dan found the letter taped under his desk. A note written in handwriting he didn’t recognize. The letters slanted, half-erased and rewritten over themselves, as if the writer was unsure of what they were allowed to say. If you see your name on the closet wall, it’s too late. Don’t hum. Don’t whisper. Don’t dream. The closet feeds on unfinished songs. We tried to stop it. We failed. – Lily (Three) Dan stared at it. Another name. He remembered Lily now. A girl with braces. Gone last October. He looked at the closet. He was shaking. He had to open it again. Inside Again That night, Dan returned. This time, he brought salt. A lighter. And the notebook. He unlocked the closet. It opened soundlessly. No void this time. Just darkness, deep and patient. He stepped in. The air was wet. It smelled like old music, rust, and breath. The walls pulsed faintly. And voices sang: “In the dark where silence grows, Footsteps fall where no one goes. Fingers scratch and teeth are bright, We are the choir of endless night.” He held the salt close. He reached into his backpack for the lighter – Something grabbed his arm. It was Sam. Or… a version of her. Not a body, but a shape – her outline in shadow, stitched with red thread, eyes like lamps beneath deep water. “You came back,” it said. “I came for you.” “No,” she said. “You came for yourself.” Then she pulled him deeper. The Place Beneath the Closet It was not a room. It was a hollow. A negative of reality. Everything looked drawn in charcoal, the air vibrating with memory and static. Other children were there. Not moving. Floating. They didn’t look dead. But they weren’t alive, either. They hummed. Dan recognized them all. Marcus. Theo. Lily. Even Emilio, still clutching his backpack like he was late for class. Each had a thread running from their mouths to the walls of the space. Mouths stitched shut but humming perfectly. Sam’s voice came from behind him. “They let me keep mine. Because I write. Because I remember.” He turned. Her face was cracked porcelain. Hair like ink in water. Eyes red with singing. “You have to help us.” “How?” “You’re next.” Poem ‒ Dan’s Choice Seven names carved in the air, Seven doors and no one there. I choose the path with open flame, I speak aloud the secret name. If I must die, then let me break – The strings they use, the songs they fake. Let me sing a note off-key. Let me set the silence free. Breaking the Thread Dan pulled the lighter. Lit it. The flame hissed against the air. The shadows screamed. The children turned. Dan stepped toward Lily. The thread at her mouth twisted and shimmered. He reached out. And burned it. The thread snapped. Lily gasped. For the first time in a year. The closet screamed. Walls convulsed. The void bled red mist. Screeching music and discordant laughter echoed. Dan broke another thread. Then another. The place cracked like glass. And then – Everything fell upward. Back to the Surface Dan awoke in the classroom. Room 17. Children staring. Mrs. Alden frozen. Sam beside him. No red eyes. Just Sam. “What happened?” she whispered. Dan looked at the closet. It was shut. Chained. He stood slowly, and so did the others. The ones who had vanished. They were older now. Changed. But there. A few teachers wept. Mrs. Alden collapsed. The principal resigned two days later. And Room 17 was closed permanently. But the school stayed open. And the closet? They built over it. They said it was safe. They said it was done. They said it couldn’t come back. They were wrong. Final Poem of Chapter Three ‒ The Song Never Dies They built a wall, they cut the cord, But darkness hums behind the board. You cannot kill what never lived, A mouth that takes, a song that gives. One day soon a child will sing, A note too true, a fragile thing. The closet listens. Always near. Waiting for that sound it hears. So hum not tunes from lullaby – For that’s the call the dark replies.------ CHAPTER FOUR The Quiet Between Summer came early that year. But Room 17 was locked. A plaque had been nailed to the door in brass letters: “CLOSED DUE TO STRUCTURAL INSTABILITY.” It was a lie. Dan knew it. Sam knew it. And the others… the ones who had come back… they carried that same silence now. They spoke in hushed tones, avoided mirrors, flinched at the sound of wind chimes. But worst of all: They dreamed in red. The Night Bells It was Sam who first heard them again. Three weeks after Room 17 was sealed. A soft clang in the distance. Bells that didn’t belong. Not on Earth. She woke, sweating, her pillow soaked through. Her mouth tasted like old paper. Dan called her the next morning. “Did you hear them?” “Yes.” She didn’t have to ask what he meant. They met by the old storm drain behind the school – the one Theo used to dare them to spit in, claiming it led “all the way to Hell.” Maybe it did. Sam dropped a pebble in. No sound came back. Poem ‒ The Bells They ring for those with names erased, The ones who lost, the ones replaced. A note, a hum, a ringing tune, A shadow born beneath the moon. Don’t listen close. Don’t count to four. The bells unlock a different door. Something Follows Dan began to see her again. Not Sam. The Other Sam. The shadow-wrapped version he’d met in the Hollow. She watched from reflections. From puddles. From glass. But never moved. Until he blinked. Then, she was closer. He scribbled pages in his notebook, trying to anchor himself. "I burned the threads. I freed the voices. Why won’t it stop?" No answer came. But at the bottom of one page, he found handwriting not his own: “You only freed the mouths. Not the song.” – Lily (Still Here) The Substitution List Mr. Barlow was the new substitute. Young. Smiled too much. Had teeth that didn’t quite fit in his mouth. He handed out worksheets that made no sense. Questions like: “How many eyes does a song need to see?” “Circle the word that bleeds the least.” “When you hum, does your shadow hum too?” Dan stared at him. Mr. Barlow stared back. He blinked once… and his eyelids closed sideways. Sam whispered beside him: “That’s not a teacher.” Dan didn’t need convincing. He looked down at his paper. At the bottom, where the name section usually was, his had already been filled in: Daniel Gray ‒ Absentee Pre-approved for the next door. The Room Returns Though Room 17 was sealed, it never left. The school kept shifting. Hallways longer than they used to be. Ceilings lower. New doors appeared behind old lockers. One opened to reveal a closet. Just a closet. But when Dan touched the doorknob, it pulsed beneath his fingers like flesh. Sam dared him. “I’ll go if you go.” They went together. Inside was not the Hollow. This time, it was… a theatre. The Theatre of Red Echoes Rows of velvet seats – crimson, dusty. A stage wrapped in cobwebbed curtains. And on the stage, an old reel projector spun with no film. Yet a moving picture played in red-tinted shadow. They sat. They watched. What they saw: A boy being born without a mouth. A classroom where names were fed to walls. A teacher humming until her teeth cracked. Sam. In the Hollow. Writing. Watching. Smiling. Dan, burning threads – except the last one. (His own.) He reached for the projector, but his hands passed through it like fog. The room echoed with whispers: “Finish the song. Or stay to watch it forever.” Poem ‒ Theatre of the Lost The play begins with breathless screams, And ends in fractured children’s dreams. Applaud the ghosts. They know their part. Each beat is carved into their heart. The audience? A mirror true – If you see them, they see you. The Backstage Door Dan and Sam ran. Off the stage. Behind the curtains. Backstage smelled of wet leaves and teeth. A single door stood there, wooden and old. Etched into the frame were dozens of names. Their names. Along with one sentence scratched over and over: “WE OWE THE SONG A VOICE.” “WE OWE THE SONG A VOICE.” “WE OWE THE SONG A VOICE.” Sam grabbed Dan’s hand. Together, they opened it. Behind the door: A mirror. It showed Dan, older. Paler. A red thread at his lips. He hummed. Without knowing it. Sam screamed – The mirror cracked. And they were somewhere else. The Teacher’s Secret They awoke in a room of clocks. Ticking out of sync. And in the center: Mrs. Alden. Alive. Younger. Sitting at a child’s desk, humming to herself. They approached. She looked up. Tears ran down her cheeks. But her mouth didn’t move. It was sewn shut. Dan dropped to his knees. “Why didn’t you tell us?” She reached into her lap. Handed him a final note: “I was the first to open it. It wanted my voice. So I gave it silence.” Then she dissolved into dust. The clocks stopped. Only one ticked on, softly. The one inside Dan’s chest. Poem ‒ The First Teacher The first to see, the first to hush, A voice removed, a world to crush. She kept the song from taking more, Until the children found the door. Now silence breaks, and threads unwind, A tune once buried wakes the mind. The Final Bell (A Sound Approaches) They returned to the surface. To the school. But it was empty. Desks overturned. Halls flickering. Over the intercom, an announcement played. Not words. A humming melody. The same one from the Hollow. And it grew louder. The closet was no longer behind a wall. It now was the school. A building made of threads and voices. And it was waking. Dan clutched Sam’s hand. “I think we need to finish it.” Sam nodded. “But how?” Dan opened his notebook. And on the last page was a single line: “Sing it wrong. Break the tune.”------ CHAPTER FIVE A Voice Unwritten They returned to Room 17. But it had changed. There was no floor now – only pages. Pale paper, thousands of them, stitched into the walls, the ceiling, the very air. Words moved on them, re-writing themselves. Letters fell like snow. And all of them spoke his name. Dan. Over and over. In different fonts. Ancient scripts. Crayon scrawls. Typewriter clacks. But never his voice. That was the problem. The Hollow wasn’t trying to take him anymore. It wanted him to sing. And that, he now understood, was far worse. The Book With Teeth At the center of the page-storm, a pedestal. And on it: a book. Bound in red thread. Its title read: “THE CLOSET BLEEDS RED ‒ BY DANIEL GRAY” He didn’t remember writing it. He didn’t want to open it. But Sam already had. She flipped through the pages, eyes wide, skin pale. “These are your dreams,” she whispered. “But they’ve been… changed.” Inside were stories – half-true, half-nightmare: One where he let Sam fall into the Hollow and never went after her. One where Theo tore the closet door off its hinges and found only bones. One where Dan cut his own lips, and the blood became a song. “Is this what could happen?” he asked. “No,” said Sam. “I think it’s what wants to happen.” Poem ‒ The Unwritten Voice A song unwritten haunts the pen, Until the ink becomes the end. And voices born from silence deep Are taught to hum instead of weep. The final verse was never made – The voice was lost. The ink betrayed. Sam’s Truth Sam hadn’t told him everything. That night in the Hollow, when she found her name carved into the floor beside Lily’s… She remembered something. She’d sung. Just one note. A hum. Barely audible. But it had echoed… and called something close. That’s why she’d been let go. Not saved. Traded. Dan looked at her in horror. “You answered it?” “I didn’t know,” she whispered. “But now I do. And it’s still inside me.” He stepped back. But she grabbed his hand. “Dan… if we’re going to destroy it, we have to finish the song.” He shook his head. “We can’t finish it. We have to wrong it.” Sam nodded slowly. “Then let’s ruin the melody.” The Melody Machine In the middle of the book-forest, a machine rose. Like an organ made of bones and violin strings. Metal mouths. Crimson pipes. Stools with teeth. It was where the song had first been written. Sam stepped toward it. The mouths began humming in unison: “�� Sing the voice, the voice, the line... Thread by thread, undo the spine... ��” Dan stood at the opposite side. He pulled from his backpack the only thing he had: The recorder Theo had used in 6th grade to cheat music class. He blew a note – shrill, clumsy, off-key. The machine screeched. Sam grinned. “Again.” He blew it wronger. The machine began to shake. Poem ‒ The Broken Melody Strike the chord that doesn’t fit. Hum the wrongness. Don’t admit. The perfect song is not the key. A shattered tune can set you free. For things that feed on voice and grace Can’t feast upon what’s out of place. They Who Write As the machine cracked and burned, They came. Not the children. Not the ghosts. But the authors. Shapes in ink. Tall, skinless, faces made of calligraphy. Fingers made of quills. They wrote with their claws, and what they wrote became real. Sam screamed as her skin began to shift – words dancing beneath it. They were trying to re-write her. Dan tackled her, grabbed the broken recorder, and screamed through it – his own voice, not musical, not melodic, just raw. The shapes recoiled. Their ink bled backwards. “WRITE THIS!” Dan howled, and threw the book of his own name into the fire of the melody machine. The pages screamed. The song stopped. The Closet’s True Form The closet, stripped of its illusion, was now a mouth. A massive, black, tooth-lined mouth in the center of the school, swallowing the hallways. Inside it: thousands of red threads. Children’s names on each one. Some were fraying. Some had snapped. Dan found his own. Still taut. Still humming. He took the thread and bit it. Blood ran down his chin. The thread curled, twisted, and dissolved. His name faded from the air. He turned to Sam. “Now yours.” Sam hesitated. Then nodded. And bit hers too. The song went silent. For the first time in a hundred years. Poem ‒ Silence Wins A song undone is not a loss, When silence cuts the thread it crossed. The closet’s teeth can hum no more, If voices choose to close the door. So let them sing. Let them deceive. But silence... is what makes them leave. Epilogue of Chapter Five: A Return The school returned to shape. Room 17 was gone. So was Mr. Barlow. And the Melody Machine. And the red-threaded book. Dan and Sam sat on the front steps. Their names no longer whispered in the wind. Their dreams now held only silence. Until – A voice. High. Small. Fragile. “Hello?” A girl. Holding a slip of paper. Lily’s handwriting. Dan turned pale. Sam stood. “Who gave you that?” The girl pointed to the woods. “To the woman in the red thread dress. She said… you owe her the last verse.” They looked at each other. And the silence hummed again.---------- CHAPTER SIX The Woman in Red Thread She was waiting in the woods. Not behind the trees. Inside them. The bark moved when you looked long enough – threads pulsed through the trunks, red and trembling, like veins. Roots hummed. Leaves curled into notes. The very forest had become a score of music, written in fear. Dan and Sam followed the little girl’s path to the edge of the clearing where silence turned into something worse than noise. It became anticipation. Like the breath a predator takes before the pounce. And then they saw her. The Woman in Red Thread. Her Eyes Were Unfinished She stood barefoot on soil that pulsed. Her dress was made of thread – thousands of red strands, each one pulled tight, vibrating with whispers. She didn’t walk. She drifted. She looked at Dan. And smiled. Not with her mouth. But with her threads. They shifted into a crescent curve across her chest, like lips made of fiber. “You bit your thread,” she said. “That was bold. Loud. Wrong.” Her voice was not one voice. It was a choir – each tone slightly off, as if all the children who had ever disappeared were speaking through her. Sam stepped forward. “What do you want?” The Woman cocked her head. “To end the story… or rewrite it.” She gestured to the trees. “So many verses. So many endings. You’ve ruined mine.” Poem ‒ The Weaver's Grin I sew the screams into the seams, And thread regret between your dreams. A stitch for sorrow, one for lies, A hem of teeth, and button eyes. But if you bite what I have spun, You’ll learn the thread is never done. A Glimpse into the Hollow’s Birth Dan demanded answers. So she offered him a vision. Her threads coiled around his eyes – burning, bitter, alive. And then he saw it: The origin of the Hollow. It hadn’t started as a curse. It was a lullaby. Sung by a mother who lost her child. She sang her grief into the floorboards of Room 17. She sang until the song couldn’t die. And it didn’t. It grew teeth. It demanded more. The woman had offered herself to it. And it took her voice, her body, her sorrow. And turned her into the first red thread. Now she was the mother of all missing. The seamstress of silence. The Muse of the Hollow. Sam Breaks the Vision Sam ripped the thread from Dan’s eyes. He staggered, screaming. But the vision was still burned behind his lids. The closet wasn’t a place. It was a memory echo. A melody turned into architecture. And now, that melody wanted to escape the school. It wanted to live in people. In poems. In stories. In him. “You’re not real,” he gasped. The Woman tilted her head again. “I’m more real than your silence. I am the voice that grief refuses to bury.” The Girl Returns The little girl stepped from the trees again. This time, her eyes were black. Thread peeked from her mouth like a tongue. She began to hum. “�� He who writes must pay the debt, Of lines unsung and truths unmet… ��” Sam screamed, covering her ears. Dan stepped forward. “No more songs.” And he spoke. Not a poem. Not a chant. Just truth. “My name is Daniel Gray. I was never supposed to be a poet. I was supposed to be the one who stayed silent. But silence feeds monsters. I saw Lily vanish. I let my fears write for me. Not anymore.” The trees shook. The red threads began to split. The Woman’s smile unraveled. Poem ‒ The Truth That Tears What thread survives an honest cry? What voice withstands the naked why? The story spins until it bleeds – Unless the speaker stops… and leads. The Woman’s Last Thread She reached into her chest and pulled it out: A single, glowing red thread. Dan knew what it was. Lily’s. The last one. Still unbroken. Still bound. “If you speak her name in love,” the Woman warned, “you’ll never see her again. But if you sing it in grief… she might come back.” Dan looked at Sam. Then at the thread. Then whispered: “Lily… I'm sorry I never came back. I was afraid you'd become a story. But you were always more than that.” He let the thread go. And it unwound. The forest turned to ash. The little girl fell asleep. The Woman screamed – not in sound, but in absence. And then she unraveled. A thousand voices screamed into wind – And were gone. Epilogue of Chapter Six: Footsteps Behind The woods were quiet again. Dan held Sam’s hand. His other hand clutched a small, black button. The only thing the Woman had left behind. “Do you think it’s over?” Sam asked. Dan looked back at the path behind them. And saw footprints forming in the soil. Fresh. Following. Not one pair. But dozens. All barefoot.--------- CHAPTER SEVEN Hush Songs and Doorless Rooms They returned from the forest, but something followed. It didn’t scream. It didn’t tear. It whispered. And that was worse. Because now the world had become a tapestry of almost-silence: A hum under the breath of children walking to school. A rhythm in the squeak of a schoolbus door. A verse that hid in the rattling teeth of radiator pipes. Dan knew the Hollow had left the woods. It was in them now. The Girl Who Walked Backwards On Monday, Ms. Clemens took attendance. Twenty-three names. Only twenty-two voices answered. “Lily Norr – ” She stopped herself. Dan glanced up sharply. No one else reacted. Except for a girl in the back of the room. A girl he had never noticed before. She was drawing tiny doors on her notebook. Over and over. None had knobs. She noticed Dan’s gaze. Then, without turning around, she stood and walked backwards from the classroom. Through the closed door. Without touching it. The class didn't notice. But Sam did. She mouthed: Did you see that? Dan nodded. The Hollow was seeping. Poem ‒ The Rule of Re-entry Do not hum if you don’t know why. Don’t follow laughter when it’s dry. If you find a closet with no frame, Close your eyes. Forget your name. The Hollow’s song is made of breath – A tune that births a second death. The Library and the Tape Recorder Dan and Sam snuck into the old library. Not the public one. The sunken one. The one that smelled of mold and mercury, built beneath the elementary school like a forgotten cellar of truths no one could quite shelve. They followed the sound of static. And found it: A dusty tape recorder. Already playing. A child’s voice was singing – off-key, trembling: “�� Door in floor, don't be sore, Let me in, I need no more… ��” It looped. And each time it played, the room got colder. Until the air was sharp enough to cut skin. Dan reached out to stop it. Sam grabbed his wrist. “Wait.” And then they heard it: Another voice underneath the child’s. A grown one. Whispering: “You’re next. Not in body. In memory.” The Hollow’s Plan It didn’t want blood. It wanted retellings. It fed on repetition, like a virus made of verse. It laced itself into nursery rhymes, ghost stories, fables. That’s how it spread: A child hears a story. Repeats it to another. Hums the song. Feels the pull. Vanishes. And once they vanish? They become verses in the next tale. Dan realized: they had cut the Woman’s thread – But they hadn’t stopped the loom. The story would rewrite itself unless someone refused to speak it. The Rule Breaker The girl who walked backwards appeared again. This time, outside the school gates. Facing away. She whispered a line as Dan passed her: “You’re breaking the rhyme, Daniel.” “How do you know my name?” She didn’t answer. But a thread peeked from her ear. Not red. Silver. A different song. She pulled it like a string on a marionette – And the school behind them vanished. Not in fire. Not in ash. But in ink. The building bled down into the ground, into smears and blots, as if erased from a notebook. Only Dan and Sam remained. And the girl. Poem ‒ The Silver Counter-Rhyme When red is thread and fear is bred, Let silver sing the rhyme of dead. One word right can seal the seam – But speak it twice, and lose the dream. A Second Thread The girl introduced herself. “I’m Elsie. I was almost taken.” “How’d you get out?” Sam asked. Elsie held up a small, cracked mirror. “My brother made me forget my name.” Dan blinked. “What?” “He whispered nonsense in my ear until I didn’t know who I was. The Hollow couldn’t keep a story it couldn’t title.” Dan looked at Sam. Then down at the tape recorder, which had followed them, now lying silently at his feet. The war wasn’t one of violence. It was a linguistic infection – a parasite of meaning. And the only cure was confusion. The Hollow Comes for Sam That night, Sam couldn’t sleep. She hummed in her bed – without knowing. The melody curled like smoke through the vent, into her closet. And something inside answered. She dreamt of a closet door that opened inward, endlessly. Of her mother standing on the other side. Only her mother’s mouth was sewn shut. Sam reached out. And woke screaming. Her closet door was ajar. Not wide. Just wide enough. Dan stood in the doorway. “I heard it too,” he whispered. The Hollow wasn’t done. It had chosen Sam next. End of Chapter Seven: The Last Safe Story Dan sat down with pen and paper. He wrote a story. A lie. Where Lily had come back. Where the school was safe. Where no children vanished. Where he had never bitten the red thread. And then he burned the story. Because even hope was a door. And every door was a risk. Some truths are only safe when unspoken.------ CHAPTER EIGHT The Silver Thread Some stories aren't told. They’re grown. Woven in silence. Spun in shadows. Kissed by forgetting. And some threads don’t bleed. Some bind. The Hollow knew this. And now, so did Dan. The Mirror and the Name Elsie led Dan and Sam to a place that wasn’t a place. “Stand on the playground hopscotch square,” she said. “The one without the number seven.” Dan obeyed. His sneakers pressed down into the chalky shape. He blinked once. And the world blinked back. Grass became parchment. Sky became ceiling. Wind became a turning page. They were no longer in the playground. They were in the Archive of the Forgotten. Archive of the Forgotten Books lined shelves that curved and curled into infinite spirals. Each book had no title. Only a scent. Cinnamon. Mourning. Rust. Snow. One floated toward Dan. Opened itself. Inside, he read: He was nine years old when he stepped into the Hollow’s mouth. His sister would remember him only in her dreams. A shadow at the door. A knock without a hand. Dan shut the book. It didn’t shut. The pages turned on their own, revealing hundreds of unwritten lives, names eaten by the Hollow’s hunger for repetition and fear. The Loomer At the center of the Archive was a figure. Bent. Tall as a tree. Skin like wax paper. Eyes black as unwritten ink. The Loomer. It turned a wheel with its long fingers, spooling silver threads from broken thoughts. Elsie stepped forward. “I came for a memory.” The Loomer stared. “You must give a name,” it hissed. “I have none,” Elsie replied. “That’s the bargain.” Sam leaned to Dan. “What’s happening?” Dan whispered, “The Loomer trades names for threads. Silver threads. Ones that bind instead of bleed.” “But we can’t give names.” “Exactly. That’s how we cheat it.” The Bargain of the Nameless The Loomer stretched a pale finger at Sam. “You carry one inside you. A story unshed. A death unborn.” Sam's lips trembled. She remembered the dream. Her mother, mouth sewn shut. Her mother – who was alive. But somehow, wrong. Changed. Quieter. Sadder. Since Lily vanished. She stepped forward. “I offer my silence.” The Loomer paused. “No one has ever offered that,” it said. Then: “The thread is yours.” From its wheel spun a silver strand – thin as spider hair, humming like memory before it wakes. Sam took it. And the moment she did, her eyes turned silver for a second. Poem ‒ The Threadsmith’s Pledge I spin no tale that takes or tears, I weave through silence, stitch through stares. If name you keep, then thread will bind. But speak it twice – And I’ll unwind. Tell not the Hollow what you dream. Lest it makes your whisper scream. Sam Forgets Her Own Name Back in the waking world, Sam was quiet. For a long time. At dinner, her mother said, “Sam, please pass the salt.” She didn’t respond. Her mother frowned. “Samantha?” Sam looked up. “Who?” Dan watched it happen: Sam had tied the thread into herself so tightly, she’d loosened her own identity. She was no longer a name. She was a witness. The Hollow could not take what had no label. But Dan feared the cost. How long could someone live unnamed? The Sound of Remembering That night, Dan heard a sound. Not footsteps. Not wind. But pages. Rustling. He followed it to his own closet. There, on the floor, was a book. Blank cover. Heavy. It opened itself. Inside, he read: *Daniel heard the song once more. Not with his ears, but his bones. It had a rhythm now. A purpose. It wanted to be finished. It needed a final verse.* He turned the page. And saw something horrible. A sketch of his own face. Eyes sewn shut with red thread. The Hollow Evolves Stories grow. And now, the Hollow had grown angry. Too many threads severed. Too many names erased. So it changed. It began writing back. Leaving new books in children’s rooms. Speaking in riddles only siblings could hear. Breathing under beds. It didn’t wait to be remembered. It came to remind. And the red thread began showing up in new ways: In a mother’s hairbrush. In a baby’s first drawing. In a substitute teacher’s smile. Dan realized the Hollow didn’t need closets anymore. It had infiltrated the story itself. Poem ‒ When the Hollow Writes Back Beware the tale that writes itself, With pens of teeth, on skin for shelf. If it dreams your name, you’re nearly gone. Say it backward – hold on, hold on. But once your face is inked and bred, Your thread is pulled. You’re bleeding red. Elsie’s Revelation Elsie confessed her secret. “My brother never escaped,” she whispered. Dan blinked. “But you said – ” “I lied. I needed the thread first. He’s still inside the Hollow. Not taken. Kept. Like… a librarian.” Dan felt cold. “Why?” “Because he told it a story it hadn’t heard. A lie so beautiful, the Hollow wanted to keep him forever. To hear it again.” Sam, still quiet, wrote something down: Maybe the only way to beat the Hollow is not to forget… But to tell a story it can’t end. End of Chapter Eight: The Untellable Tale Dan sat with paper again. But this time, he didn’t write to forget. Or to silence. He wrote a lie so strange, it made his teeth ache. “There once was a child who remembered forward. She saw endings before beginnings. And one day, she told the Hollow a story where it lost. It asked her to tell it again. She refused. And then the Hollow wept.” He gave the page to the wind. And the wind… laughed. The Hollow heard it. And for the first time – It paused.------- CHAPTER NINE The Child Who Spoke in Prophecy They called her Maera. No last name. No records. No parents who picked her up after school. She appeared one Monday morning in Ms. Talbot’s third-grade class. Sat at a desk no one remembered being there. Wore socks that didn’t match. Eyes too old. Voice too late. Her first words were: “The Hollow smiles tonight. Someone will forget their lungs.” No one laughed. Because two hours later, Mrs. Byron – the lunch lady – collapsed while stirring tomato soup. Couldn’t breathe. No cause found. Maera just blinked slowly and whispered, “One thread pulled.” Dan and Sam were watching. So was Elsie. And so was something else. The Hollow’s New Mouth The Hollow had grown cunning. Since Dan wrote the lie-that-hurt, it had sent something new. Not a shadow. Not a thread. But a Mouth. Maera was its Mouth. She didn’t blink when fire alarms rang. Didn’t flinch when a boy fell from the monkey bars and fractured time – or maybe just his arm. She simply murmured strange rhymes. Each came true, eventually. Dan found her at recess, sitting cross-legged in the sandbox. “Why are you here?” he asked. She looked at him as though he'd asked her why clocks existed. “I’m the tether. I’m the memory that misbehaves. The story you forgot to unwrite.” Sam appeared beside him, silver still pulsing faintly in her pupils. Maera blinked. “You’ve been threaded,” she said to Sam. “But not sealed. You still dream in red.” Prophecy I ‒ The Threads Unwind Maera stood up. No one else noticed. Not even the teachers. The world bent slightly. Recess froze. And then she spoke, voice like something old and candlelit: “A mirror cracked but not broken, A hand unstitches what was spoken. The sister dreams a lion’s den – The brother leaves and won’t come again. Unless the Hollow’s throat is fed, With truths unloved and stories dead.” Then the wind moved again. Children ran. Time resumed. But the air smelled like burnt string. The Dream of the Thread-Lion That night, Sam dreamed again. This time, the dream had claws. She stood in a circular room. Walls stitched from memories – old birthday cards, report cards, torn photographs. In the center sat a lion. Its mane was made of red thread. Its eyes were closed. But it breathed. In. Out. It spoke without opening its mouth. “You know me. I am every warning you ignored. Every thread you pulled without knowing the cost. I protect the library you broke. And I will roar when the last name is said.” Sam woke screaming. Elsie Remembers Too Much Elsie had been changing. At night, she no longer slept. She wandered instead. She whispered names into bottles and buried them beneath the garden. She traced words in chalk on her floor that vanished before morning. Dan caught her once, staring into a mirror and asking: “Are you my brother now?” He didn’t know how to answer. Dan Finds the Red Page While flipping through a used notebook, Dan saw a page he hadn’t written. It wasn’t even paper. It was thread, woven flat and thin, stiff as bark. On it was a message: *The Hollow is writing again. It has learned your hands. It wears your voice. Tell no stories alone.* Below it, a signature: D. K. His own initials. But he hadn’t written it. Had he? Poem ‒ The Warning Rhymes Do not speak to mirrors twice, They remember better than mice. If a name repeats at three, You’ve already ceased to be. A Mouth may mimic, lips may lie, But threads don't break – they only tie. The Library Shifts They returned to the Archive of the Forgotten. It was different now. The books screamed as they passed. Some shelves were empty – names fully eaten. Others dripped. Ink. Blood. Thread. The Loomer was no longer alone. A second figure now helped spin the wheel – a boy. No older than twelve. His mouth was sewn shut. Elsie gasped. “Micah.” Her brother. Still alive. Still threading. But every turn of the wheel made his eyes dimmer. Dan stepped forward. “We can save him.” The Loomer hissed: “You’ll have to trade.” “What?” “A lie for a truth. A name for a name. Or a soul for a thread.” The Unraveling Begins Back in the real world, Maera’s predictions worsened. “A sister will choke on her own shadow.” “A father will forget what eyes are for.” “The sky will blink. You’ll see its throat.” And people began to vanish. Not loudly. Quietly. Left shoes on porches. Toothbrushes still damp. No one remembered their names. Dan watched the empty seats grow in class. And then one morning – Sam was gone. No trace. Except one silver thread, draped across her pillow. It hummed like grief. Maera’s Last Message Dan found Maera waiting for him at the flagpole. “Why?” he shouted. “Why are you doing this?” She cocked her head. “You don’t understand. I was the first. Before the Hollow even had teeth. It took my name, Dan. But I remembered the rhymes.” She reached into her coat and handed him a note. In Sam’s handwriting: “I went in to end it. I know the lion’s real name. I’ll trade it for Micah’s.” Dan’s throat closed. Maera whispered: “Do not follow unless you’re ready to write your ending.” And then she stepped backward – And vanished into nothing. End of Chapter Nine: Into the Hollow’s Mouth Again Dan stared at the flagpole for a long time. Then he looked down at his notebook. He opened to a blank page. He took a deep breath. And he wrote: This is how the story ends. But not yet.------------ CHAPTER TEN The Boy Who Entered the Hollow Dan knew it the moment he crossed the threshold. There was no door. No light. No ceremony. One moment he was in his room, holding Sam’s thread. The next, the world unstitched itself. A sound like scissors. A smell like burnt paper. Then silence. The kind of silence that watches you. He stood in a corridor that pulsed like something alive. Walls of quilted memory, stained red. Each step he took left a soft echo behind – Like a name trying to remember itself. He was inside the Hollow. Not beside it. Not dreaming it. Inside. The Hall of Forgotten Faces The first room he entered was full of faces. Not people. Just faces. Pinned to the walls like masks. Eyes closed. Mouths stitched. Some had tears embroidered on their cheeks. Others had names written above them in dried ink: "Alina" "Mr. Tellers" "Mom" "Daniel (Once)" Dan froze. "That’s my name – " A whisper behind him. "Not anymore." He turned. Maera was there. Only it wasn’t Maera. Her eyes were empty now. Voice hollow. Skin translucent, stitched along her jawline with silver thread. “You shouldn’t have come,” she said, voice layered with others beneath. Dan swallowed. “Where’s Sam?” Maera’s stitched mouth curled into something like a smile. “She’s beneath. In the Spindle. Where the truths are bled.” The Spindle Down. Always down. The Hollow was deeper than the sky was high. As he walked, the corridor bent in impossible angles. Staircases made of paper. Rooms of tangled thread. He passed a hallway where children told stories backward. He passed a mirror that reflected only the things he regretted. He did not stop. Finally, he reached a chamber that hummed. The Spindle. A colossal wheel of bone and thread, turning slowly. Each revolution unraveled something from a body chained to its rim. And there she was. Sam. Eyes closed. Lips moving. She was reciting something. A story. A name. A binding spell? Dan rushed forward. The Loomer appeared. “You are not the Teller,” it said. “I’m her brother,” Dan replied. “Then you are the Witness. You may stay. But only if you give something up.” Dan reached into his pocket. Pulled out the red thread Sam had left on her pillow. And he whispered: “I give you my name.” The Name Unwritten The moment he spoke, he felt it – His memories unraveling. His first toy. His fifth birthday. His mother’s voice. Gone. Even the thought of his own face began to blur. The Loomer smiled. “You may pass.” Dan stumbled toward the Spindle. Sam’s eyes opened. “Dan?” He smiled faintly. “No. Just… someone who remembers you.” She wept. He pulled the threads from her arms. Each screamed. One tried to bite him. But he did not stop. Poem ‒ The Naming Spell In a room without light, A name must fight. Speak it once, Stitch it tight. Speak it twice, It takes flight. Speak it thrice, And the Hollow dies. The Mouth Awakens As Sam’s last thread was cut, the Spindle screamed. But it wasn’t metal. It was alive. It twisted upward. A shape rose from behind it. Tall. Bleeding ink. Wearing faces as a robe. The Mouth. It did not speak in words. It echoed. Every lie ever told. Every truth silenced. Every memory stolen. Dan fell to his knees. But Sam stood. She held a small book in her hand. A journal. Dan’s. She flipped to the final page. Her voice shook, but she read aloud: “There once was a girl who remembered too much. And a boy who gave away everything to keep her whole. The Hollow opened its teeth, but it had no tongue. Because a name is power. And this is our story now.” The Mouth screamed. Sam screamed louder. And then – The Hollow cracked. The Red Collapse Thread unraveled like rain. Walls wept ink. The faces screamed, but they were free. The Loomer turned to Dan. “You did what stories fear. You rewrote the ending.” And then it bowed. The Mouth split open. And inside – Micah. Alive. Tired. Thread still in his eyes. Sam rushed to him. “Come home.” The Exit The Hollow did not want them to leave. It threw memories at them. Echoes. Dreams. Unwritten versions of themselves. Dan saw himself as a villain. As a shadow. As a god. But he kept moving. He held Sam’s hand. She held Micah’s. And Maera – Maera held the thread that kept the gate open. Dan turned to her. “Come with us.” She shook her head. “I was never real. Just the first draft.” And she smiled – really smiled – for the first time. Then she let go. And the Hollow closed. Back Home Dan awoke in bed. So did Sam. Micah was in the living room, watching cartoons. Elsie hugged them all so tight it hurt. But none of them said a word about the Hollow. Not then. Only later, when Sam began writing again. Her first line was: “Some closets bleed red. But some stories end clean.” Epilogue Poem ‒ Final Thread I gave my name for you to breathe, To unwrite fear and memory’s teeth. The thread was red, the price was steep, But now the world may finally sleep. For stories told and stories fled Some must forget So others aren’t dead ...