He called himself an antique hunter. It sounded better than the truth: he craved places abandoned by people. The Blue Ridge had plenty. Homesteads strangled by rhododendron. Cars rusting, half-swallowed by earth, bones protruding through soil. Things abandoned by those who ran, died, or finally understood.

The Old Raven Fork Water Treatment Plant didn’t show up on any trustworthy map. Concrete ribs jutted from the trees. Cinderblock stacked four stories high, if you counted the half-buried lower level. No trim. No sign. Just long window slits and rough, empty gaps punched through the walls. The building had lost its teeth and didn’t mind.

The woods pressed close. Bare trees crowded the walls. Roots nosed through splintered lumber, rusted metal, and trash gone soft with moss. The building didn’t rule the land. It squatted in it—something that lost the fight and stayed.

Inside, the air hit him first.

Cold.

Damp.

Stale.

Wet concrete, rotting wood, rust, and a feral undercurrent—damp fur and decayed nests pressed into the walls.

The sound was strange. His boots echoed too long in some directions, vanished in others. Above, loose metal tapped without rhythm. Below, water dripped in a near-pattern before slipping out of sync.

He found the hole near what used to be the filtration floor.

A rough circle had been punched through the concrete right where the floor met the wall, the edge breaking away as if the building had been hollowed from the inside. There was no strip of floor beyond it—no safe place to stand between the wall and the drop. Just a sheer bite taken out of the room.

He knelt, aiming his flashlight down.

Stone walls dropped farther than they should. The beam followed. Then the light vanished into a black void that gave nothing back.

No glint.

No dust.

No hint of a bottom.

He shifted his weight back and tested the floor with his heel. Solid. Bad concrete always told on itself. He’d learned where danger lurked; this wasn’t it.

That’s when he noticed the chalk.

A number was written on the wall just above the break. Small enough to miss if you weren’t already close. 49.

He frowned and leaned closer. Squinted. The chalk looked fresh enough to smear, which made both no sense and too much sense. More writing lay beneath, cramped and tight, like it didn’t want to be seen.

He stepped closer to read it.

Still careful.

Still balanced.

Way too close.

The words snapped into focus.

NOSEY LITTLE FUCKER AREN’T YA?

Something moved behind him.

A hand—gray, wet, wrong—shot out of the darkness and drove hard between his shoulder blades.

He didn’t have time to scream. Gravity took over. The hole accepted him. His voice echoed once, twice, then thinned and vanished, like it had never been.

Silence settled back in. The room reset itself.

The hand wiped the chalk clean with its palm, smearing the number away.

Then it wrote a new one.

50. 
    

T.C. 12.16.25