Chapter Nine: The Circle Beneath
The man in the body bag hadn't died from any wound the coroner could name.
Granger said the skin on his chest had been scorched from the inside out. No burns on his clothes. No external trauma. Just blackened flesh that spiraled outward from the heart—like roots curling through soil.
They tagged the death as unexplained.
But Ellie knew better.
---
Hours later, she sat cross-legged on the floor of Miss Whitaker's abandoned home. The police had released the property to next of kin—there wasn't one—and Granger had quietly let her in through the back, trusting her instincts now more than his own.
The house smelled of lavender and smoke.
She pulled the diary from her bag. The entries weren't linear—fragments, symbols, pages torn out.
But she noticed something now: every time the spiral appeared, it was accompanied by a name.
Lila – 1996
D. Marrow – 1981
Whitaker's sister – 1955
E. Carter – 1996
Her own initials.
She had been marked.
Why?
Ellie found a rusted lockbox behind the bookshelf. Inside was a bundle of letters tied in faded green ribbon, a flashlight, and an old map.
The map showed the grove—but not as it was now.
It showed the original grove, before the school was built. Before the town expanded.
And at the center, where the well now stood, was a hand-drawn circle labeled:
> THE HOLLOW ROOTS CIRCLE
Below that, written in scratchy ink:
> The town was founded on it. The circle is older than any of us.
Those who hear it must enter willingly. That's the rule. That's the trap.
Ellie's breath caught.
The well wasn't the source—it was the door.
And Lila hadn't been taken by accident.
She'd been led.
---
She left the house at dusk, heart hammering, fingers still stained with old paper ink. She knew what she had to do.
She needed to go back to the circle.
Alone.
At night.
Willing.
The wind picked up as she stepped into the grove, the trees groaning like old bones. The school behind her was dark, empty. She passed the well, following the ancient path etched faintly into the ground—a spiral path she never noticed before.
It led her deeper than she'd ever gone.
And there, at the very center of the grove, hidden beneath layers of earth and leaves, was a stone circle. Seven flat slabs arranged like teeth around a cracked pit.
The Hollow Roots Circle.
She stepped inside.
Silence fell. The wind stopped.
And then she heard it.
"Ellie…"
The voice came from below.
But it wasn't Lila.
It was older.
Ragged.
Hungry.
Something shifted beneath the soil.
The stone at her feet pulsed—warm, like flesh.
She should have run. But her legs refused. The spiral on her wrist burned, glowing faintly in the dark.
The thing below whispered again.
> You remember now.
You came back.
You're ready.
And Ellie—against every instinct, every scream building in her mind—whispered back:
"What are you?"
The earth cracked. A breath rose from the pit—damp, cold, and alive.
> I am what they fed me.
I am what you left behind.
Suddenly, the flashlight flickered.
And a figure stepped into the circle.
Not a child.
A woman. Pale, soaked in ash. Yellow coat tattered like gravecloth.
Lila.
But her eyes were not Lila's.