Headstones grow in the Hollow.
Whenever I feel that Gods’ Hollow can no longer surprise me, it reminds me that it can.
This morning, I felt the need to walk along the North Road and to inspect the Hollow. There are days when I awaken and realize there is something wrong.
Now, most of the townsfolk in Cross understand that the Hollow is a place they should steer clear of. Some ignore this, and they pay for it accordingly.
In recent years, there has been an increasing issue with students and professors from the Cross Branch of Miskatonic University going to the Hollow. For the most part, they survive their experiences, though I wish the professors themselves would not.
As I approached Gods’ Hollow this morning, I saw a group of ten students and one professor, a man whom I did not recognize. This little outing stood by the stonewall and peered out at something which I have never seen in the Hollow before: a walled-in cemetery.
A pair of students were taking photographs from the road, and one student was nodding as the professor gave him instructions. Drawing nearer, I heard the man telling the student to go into the cemetery and to take as many photographs of the headstones as he could.
As a camera was passed off to the student and the young man clambered over the top of the stonewall, I called for them to stop. The professor motioned for the student to go on, and the young man did.
The professor, a man, named Bartley Helfe, told me I should mind my own business. I told him I’d knock his teeth out for him if he didn’t get a civil tongue behind them. As I stepped forward to make good on my promise, one of the students cried out in horror.
I turned in time to see the last of the student vanish into the earth. It did not swallow him, rather he sank right through it, as though the ground was nothing more than vapor. The camera remained on the ground, and a new headstone pushed itself up where the young man had been.
In a shaking voice, Professor Helfe started to issue instructions for the camera to be retrieved.
I knocked his teeth out before he could finish.
