Chapter 6
Hallowed Ground
The room was still echoing with the last words on the tape. The static had long since faded, but it lingered in their bones.
“She’s alive,” Baz had said, voice sharp and certain.
Now, in the gray light of early morning, they stood around Mac’s desk, the cassette tape in its cracked plastic case sitting like a loaded gun between them.
Mac hadn’t moved for nearly a minute. His jaw was set tight, hand gripping the edge of the desk like it might float away if he didn’t anchor it.
Silas finally broke the silence. “You’re sure it was her?”
Baz nodded. “She said her name. Sarah Franklin. She sounded… exhausted. Afraid. But clear. She said they’re making her sing. Said the songs hurt.”
Mac exhaled slowly, the sound heavy. “That’s not just ritual. That’s reinforcement. Repetition. They’re conditioning her.”
Baz’s eyes were sharp, but something deeper flickered beneath. “She wasn’t crying. She was trying not to break.”
Silas ran a hand through his hair, staring down at the tape like it might start whispering again. “We need to assume they’re watching us too. They left this for us. They want us to chase our tails.”
Mac shook his head. “No. They want us to arrive just late enough to watch the aftermath. Like last time.”
Baz’s voice cut through the quiet. “Then we can’t be late.”
They stood in a moment of shared understanding. No rescue was coming from above. No cavalry. Just them, and a pattern trying to eat another girl alive.
Then Baz grabbed her coat. “Let’s start with the old cemetery.”
The cemetery behind the church wasn’t on any of the new town maps. It didn’t need to be. Everyone in Sableton’s Hollow knew it was there — tucked beyond the overgrowth like a memory too heavy to uproot. A wrought-iron gate leaned on one hinge, the archway above it etched with scripture long weathered into suggestion. Beyond that, rows of crooked headstones slumped into dry earth, names fading, dates missing, the silence thick enough to chew.
Baz clicked off the engine. “We’re too late,” she muttered.
Mac raised an eyebrow. “For what?”
She scanned the graves. “Whatever happened here already happened. This place doesn’t just feel dead — it feels… harvested.”
Silas stepped through the gate first. The metal groaned like it resented the interruption. He scanned the horizon. No wind. No birds. Even the crickets had the decency to stay quiet.
They moved in slow, deliberate arcs — boots kicking up dust and brittle weeds. The air smelled like scorched sage and old stone, with a faint undercurrent of something acidic. Burned wood, maybe. Or bone.
Baz knelt by a collapsed headstone, her gloved fingers brushing the edge of a charred symbol barely visible in the dirt.
It wasn’t Christian. It wasn’t anything she recognized from her tours, either. A looping pattern, half-sun, half-mouth. It looked like it was meant to speak.
She swallowed hard. “Mac…”
He was already by her side. He squinted at the mark. “Seen it before,” he said flatly. “Just once. Back in ’07. A farmhouse fire in Jackson Parish. Girl went missing there, too.”
Silas crouched beside them. “You report it?”
Mac shook his head. “Didn’t have the proof. Only had the scorch mark. Feds chalked it up to cult hysteria and arson. I let it go.”
Baz looked at him. “You think this is the same group?”
Mac didn’t blink. “I think I made a mistake back then.”
Baz stood and scanned the far edge of the cemetery — a crumbling mausoleum half-swallowed by vines. One of the stone panels had been pried loose. Inside was a pile of hymnals, all open to the same page. The number blacked out. The lyrics rewritten.
No rest for the fallen.
No mercy for the flame.
We sing not for heaven.
We sing to be claimed.
Baz stepped back. Her voice was low. “This isn’t worship. It’s bait.”
Silas turned toward the fence. He caught movement — a shadow. Small. Quick.
He was already drawing his weapon when a shape darted between two trees and vanished.
“Someone’s watching us.”
Baz sat in Mama K’s kitchen, the space warm with the scent of freshly brewed tea and cinnamon bread cooling on the counter. Mama K moved easily around the room, pouring tea and humming softly — a tune Baz couldn’t quite place but felt comforted by all the same.
Baz stared into her cup, the steam rising slowly, lost in thought. “He doesn’t take care of himself,” she murmured.
Mama K paused, her hand steadying on the pot. “Silas?”
Baz sighed deeply, frustration mixed with a tenderness she couldn’t hide. “Yes. He’s always running himself ragged. He carries so much weight—so much blame. He needs to forgive himself.” Her voice softened. “Even though he did nothing wrong.”
Mama K eased into the chair opposite Baz, watching her carefully. “Forgiveness ain’t a thing you can give someone who’s not ready to take it, child. Silas has his own roads to walk, just like you have yours. Sometimes you can’t lead someone off their path — you can only walk beside them until they find their own way.”
Baz smiled slightly, warmed by Mama K’s calm wisdom, yet still troubled. She fell quiet, her fingers tracing patterns on the worn tablecloth.
Mama K waited, the silence gentle yet deliberate, giving Baz space to gather her thoughts. When Baz said nothing further, Mama K leaned forward just slightly, her eyes kind but perceptive.
“How long have you loved my son?”
Baz’s head snapped up, startled, her cheeks flushing despite herself. She scoffed, her laugh edged with denial. “You aren’t any better at lying than Silas,” Mama K said gently but firmly. “I’ll ask again—how long have you loved my son?”
Baz opened her mouth to protest again but found no words. Instead, she looked away, her eyes focusing on nothing in particular, her expression softening with quiet acknowledgment.
Mama K raised a single eyebrow, her expression a knowing mix of amusement and compassion. She didn’t say another word, but her silence spoke volumes.
Baz looked away, her smile fading as quickly as it had appeared, her heart beating a little faster as she considered the truth of Mama K’s words. They lingered in the quiet, understanding each other perfectly, even without another word spoken.
That night, Baz waited until she was sure the others had fallen asleep. The fire had burned low, casting lazy orange shadows that danced against the old wood paneling of the safehouse walls. She sat near the hearth, her knees drawn up beneath her hoodie, her hair down — free in a way it rarely was anymore.
Silas lay nearby on a pallet, wrapped in an old blanket, breath steady and slow. He seemed to be resting a little easier tonight. Maybe it was the quiet. Maybe it was exhaustion. Maybe — and Baz hoped this more than she’d admit — it was because she was there.
She moved carefully, silently, pulling a small canvas bag from her duffel. Inside were fragments of another life: a thin leather journal, faded photos, a dog tag not her own, a paper crane yellowed from sun and sweat. Artifacts from a time when things made sense — or at least felt like they did.
She opened the journal and stared at a page filled with crooked handwriting and crude sketches. Notes about songs, codes, patterns — and moments. Real ones. Laughter in a humid tent. A boy who brought her sunflower seeds and tried to learn Pashto just to impress her. A night she once believed might change everything.
Why can’t it ever stay that way? she thought. Why does chaos always find us — no matter how far we run?
The fire popped softly. Silas stirred slightly but didn’t wake. Baz looked at him, her eyes soft in the firelight. She traced her thumb across a torn corner of paper and whispered, to no one in particular: “Don’t break this time.”
Then she closed the journal, tucked everything back into the bag, and sat in the quiet. She watched the embers breathe. A faint shiver ran through her shoulders. Just as she was about to stand, she heard a voice — low, gravel-soft.
“Fire cleanses everything,” Silas murmured, eyes still closed, “but our memories.”
Baz didn’t respond at first. She let the words settle, their meaning lingering longer than she expected. Silas shifted, lifting the edge of the blanket in quiet offering. He didn’t speak again — just held it open, hesitant, then smiling faintly.
Baz hesitated too. Then she moved.
She crawled beneath the blanket and lay beside him, just close enough to feel the warmth of his body. The silence that followed wasn’t awkward. It wasn’t charged. It just was — the kind of stillness that felt earned.
, Mac motioned them into the briefing room. “Sit,” he said, his voice flat. “It’s time you knew exactly what happened in Jackson Parish.”
Baz exchanged a look with Silas, sensing the gravity in Mac’s tone. They took their seats, bracing for what was to come.
Mac leaned forward, eyes sharp and haunted. The words came slow, like dragging something heavy out of a grave. “The girl’s name was Lena Garrison. Fourteen. Quiet, artistic. Disappeared during a stormy night just like the one coming in now. They found her bike at the edge of a cotton field. I found her journal in a barn that burned to the ground a few hours later.”
He rubbed the bridge of his nose like the memory still ached. “Inside that journal were sketches — symbols like the one we found today. Spirals, split suns, words scrawled in looping patterns. She wrote about dreams that didn’t belong to her. Songs she said had no sound, only… feeling.”
He paused. The room stayed still.
“I interviewed the parents, the pastor, even some local teens. Got stonewalled. The town shut down hard. Then one night, I got a call from an anonymous number. Told me to check the crawl space under the Garrison church. I did.”
He looked at them both. “What I found down there didn’t make sense. Black candles. Scorch marks. An altar built from pulpit wood and hymnal pages torn up and reassembled into something else — like a psalm for something that shouldn’t be praised.”
Silas spoke quietly. “You think it was a ritual?”
Mac nodded. “Or a rehearsal.”
He stood and crossed the room, retrieving an old case file from a locked drawer. His hands trembled slightly as he flipped it open. Inside were photos, brittle with time: the barn engulfed in flame, a girl’s bicycle twisted and rusted, and one torn journal page — the sigil drawn in graphite.
“This has been following me longer than I care to admit,” Mac said. “You ever wonder why I took the assignment in Ashwood back in the day? Why I requested this county again?”
Baz and Silas exchanged a glance.
“I thought maybe if I came back here… maybe I could stop it this time. I didn’t say anything sooner because I wasn’t sure what we were dealing with. Now I am.”
Baz’s voice was low. “Why now, Mac?”
He closed the file. “Because Sarah Franklin’s not just a victim. She’s the next verse in a song I’ve heard before.”
He looked at them — not just as partners now, but as people carrying the same ache.
“I think what we’re dealing with isn’t a person. It’s a pattern. A belief system that’s older than this county and smarter than we’ve given it credit for.”
He let out a long breath. “In ’07, I wasn’t just investigating a disappearance. I was hunting something worse — something older. And I think it’s here now.”