“This is Deacon Musselman. I hope I’m not calling too late.”
She put the takeout container in the sink. “What happened.”
“Now, there’s no cause for alarm. Your sister Ruby’s been through a difficult patch — you know how Ruby gets — but she’s settled now. She’s at peace with things.”
The word settled landed somewhere behind Calla’s sternum.
“What does that mean.”
“She went up the mountain and it helped her through it. She’s right as rain now.”
“I’ll be on the first bus,” Calla said.
“There’s really no rush—”
She ended the call.
She knew exactly what that vocabulary was for. She’d used it herself, in hospital hallways, on families who weren’t ready for the truth. Comfortable. Resting. Doing well. Words that meant something was being managed, not named.
She just didn’t know yet that finding out what “settled” really meant would mean walking back into the place — and the woman — she’d spent ten years running from.
————————————————————————————————————————————————
Calla Burke left Harlan’s Hollow at eighteen and never looked back. Not at the mountain that swallows the afternoon light by 3 p.m. Not at the elders who speak in soft, pastoral voices and have never once needed to raise them. And not at June — the girl she loved in secret, in a town with no tolerance for what they were.
Ten years later, one phone call drags her home. Her sister Ruby went up the mountain struggling and came back settled — cooperative, hollowed-out, smiling in a way that has no bottom to it. And the only person who might know what the community’s ritual actually does to a person is the woman Calla broke her own heart leaving behind.
As Calla and June are pulled back into the orbit they never fully escaped, they have to face down a community that smiles while it erases the people who don’t fit, a mountain that may or may not be listening, and the decade of silence sitting between two people who never stopped loving each other.
What the Hollow Keeps is a slow-burn sapphic romance wrapped in atmospheric Appalachian gothic horror — for readers who want their happily-ever-after to come with a body count of secrets.
✔️ Sapphic / F/F Romance
✔️ Folk Horror
✔️ Appalachian / Southern Gothic
✔️ Second Chance Romance
✔️ Slow Burn
✔️ Small-Town Cult & Conformity Horror
✔️ Forbidden Love
✔️ Atmospheric, Literary Horror-Romance
