CHAPTER 1
The asphalt gives way to gravel ten miles earlier. Now there’s only dirt.
Austin Scout’s van, a battered Ford that has certainly seen better days, rumbles and groans as it heads deeper into the Appalachian Mountains. The GPS had given up an hour earlier, fading into a distant silence. Now Austin is forced to orient himself using a faded map he bought from an old man at a ramshackle gas station that smelled of mothballs and whiskey. The old man has given a name to the place the boy is headed—Lowenwood—calling it a wound in the earth that will never heal.
Perfect.
He smiles, glancing at the GoPro camera mounted on the dashboard. Its red light is an encouraging cyclopean eye.
“All right, explorers,” Austin begins, his voice a little too loud. “We’re officially out of this world. The last sign of civilization was a rusty Pepsi billboard, definitely older than my dad. And that’s exactly why we’re here.”
Austin runs a channel he calls Forgotten Frontiers, and for the past three years, he’s made a living exploring America’s abandoned and long-forgotten places. Dilapidated asylums, ghost towns surrounded by desert, abandoned subway tunnels beneath chaotic cities. His subscribers love his work, but the competition is growing ever more intense.
Today, every teenager with their video camera becomes a paranormal investigator; so Austin needs something more powerful...something terrifyingly real. And one day he stumbled upon the legend of Lowenwood.
It’s not your typical ghost town story. Lowenwood—once a thriving mining community in the late 19th century—hasn’t just fallen into ruin...it’s simply disappeared. According to rare accounts, one night in the fall of 1888, following a terrible mine collapse that killed over a dozen men, a sudden and brutal illness struck the town. Three days later, when a doctor from the neighboring county visits the site, he finds no living soul...no one. No bodies, no signs of a struggle. He discovers only half-eaten food on tables and tools left lying where they lie.
The place appears...completely deserted.
The official account blames a mass exodus, driven by grief over the mine tragedy and superstition. But local folklore, the tales he’s unearthed in library archives, and conversations with elders tell a completely different story... a story about something that emerged from the collapsed mine... something that hates to be disturbed.
This is his chance... a true American mystery still unsolved.
The dirt road narrows, with trees closing in on either side, their branches scraping the van’s paint. The air becomes cooler, thick with the stench of damp earth and decay. It’s a familiar smell in Austin...the scent of places repudiated by memory. But here, it’s different...that scent is stronger.
Eventually, the road widens into a small clearing, overgrown with vegetation. And there it is.
A wooden sign, worn by time, crooked as if drunk and half-swallowed by ivy. The painted letters are barely legible:
LOWENWOOD - RESIDENTS ???
The resident number has been scratched out and retouched with paint so many times that it’s now just a black, disfigured rectangle. A shiver, unrelated to the mountain air, runs down the boy’s spine.
He turns off the engine; the silence that overwhelms him is absolute. It’s not just quiet, but a profound, anomalous absence of sound. No birdsong...nor the buzzing of insects...not even the movement of any animal in the undergrowth...it’s as if the entire forest is holding its breath.
“Okay,” he murmurs to the GoPro. “We’re here.”
Austin grabs his backpack from the passenger seat, filled with cameras, batteries, audio equipment, and enough protein bars to last a week. His base of operations will be the old church...the only stone building in the town, which, according to the map, stands on a small hill overlooking the valley.
Defensible and safe.
The thought makes him smile...a nervous smile...safe.
As soon as he steps out of the van, Austin is overcome by a wave of dizziness. The air feels...heavy. It’s hard for him to breathe deeply, as if the pressure is higher there. He shakes his head, blaming the altitude and the long journey.
The road leading to the center of Lowenwood appears choked with weeds. The boy can barely make his way, and on either side he’s flanked by the decrepit remains of wooden houses that look like ghostly guardians. Their windows resemble empty, dark eye sockets, and their porches droop like tired, fractured jaws.
On the lintel of the door of the Saunders residence, he sees it. A crude carving, clearly the work of an amateur, but the image is unmistakable: a stylized figure, but with the torso and neck unnaturally stretched, as if lifted by an invisible force. The head is tilted back and the mouth is open in a silent scream.
“How strange,” Austin murmurs, taking out his digital camera to take a picture. “Perhaps it’s a work of local folk art? A talisman against evil spirits?”
He observes another on the house next door...and another on the next. Over every single entrance of every single house is carved the same grotesque, elongated figure.
A feeling of uneasiness and cold begins to prickle the back of his neck.
This place isn’t just a ghost town...but a place with a story to tell.
And Austin is there to hear it.
