Chapter 39 The Priest's Confession (Evelyn Cross POV)

Chapter 39 The Priest's Confession (Evelyn Cross POV)

Father Marcus stands in my flashlight beam, hands visible and empty, his white collar bright against his dark coat.
"Don't." I raise the crowbar higher, backing against the stone shelf. "Don't come any closer."
"I'm not here to stop you." His voice is steady. Calm. The voice of a man who's spent decades offering comfort to the dying. "I'm here to help."
"Help?" The word comes out bitter. "Like you helped my mother? Like you helped Emma?"
He flinches. "I deserve that. I deserve far worse. But Evelyn, please, lower the weapon and let me explain."
"Explain what? How a priest watched children die and did nothing?" My grip tightens on the crowbar. "How you documented this curse for decades like some kind of academic observer instead of stopping it?"
"Forty years." Marcus takes one careful step forward, stopping when I tense. "I've been documenting the Hollow for forty years. Since I arrived at St. Catherine's as a young priest fresh from seminary, idealistic and faithful and certain that evil could be defeated with prayer."
"And you learned it couldn't?"
"I learned that some evils are older than faith. Deeper than prayer can reach." He gestures toward the record books scattered around me. "May I sit? My knees aren't what they used to be, and this conversation requires time."
I don't lower the crowbar. But I don't stop him when he slowly lowers himself onto the stone steps, his joints creaking audibly.
"Nineteen eighty-five," he begins. "I'd been at St. Catherine's for three years. Young, zealous, convinced I could save this town from its darkness. Then I met Catherine Hale—Jonas's aunt. She was seventeen. Terrified. Came to confession saying the Hollow wanted her."
My breath catches. "Jonas's aunt?"
"His father's younger sister. The Cross bloodline married into the Hale family two generations back—enough connection for the curse to claim her." Marcus stares at his hands. "She begged me to help her escape. Said her family was preparing the ritual. That they'd already started the negotiations at Larkin Inn."
"What did you do?"
"I helped her run." His voice drops. "Gave her money from the church collection. Arranged a bus ticket to Chicago. Told her to never come back, never contact her family, never even speak the name Hollow's End again."
"And it worked?"
"She's still alive. Married. Three children. Lives in Oregon now under her husband's name." He looks up at me. "But her escape cost this town dearly. Without a sacrifice that year, crops failed. The river flooded. Seven people died in accidents that shouldn't have happened. The town blamed me. Threatened to burn St. Catherine's to the ground if I ever interfered again."
I lower the crowbar slightly. "So you stopped interfering."
"I became an observer instead of a participant. Documented everything, hoping that understanding might eventually lead to solution." His expression is anguished. "I told myself I was gathering information. Building a case. Waiting for the right moment to act."
"That's cowardice dressed up as strategy."
"Yes." He doesn't argue. Doesn't defend himself. "Yes, it is. I've lived with that cowardice for forty years. Watched Margaret die knowing I could have helped her escape like I helped Catherine. Watched Emma—" His voice breaks completely. "Watched Emma's body carried off that island and knew I could have warned you. Could have told you what was coming."
Tears are streaming down his face now. This elderly priest who's maintained composure through decades of horror, finally cracking.
I set the crowbar down. Not because I forgive him. But because holding it seems pointless when we're both prisoners of the same curse.
"Why are you here now?" I ask. "Why help me after forty years of watching?"
"Because I'm dying." He pulls a handkerchief from his pocket, wiping his eyes. "Pancreatic cancer. Three months, maybe four. And I refuse to die having done nothing but document evil. I refuse to meet my God with Emma's blood on my hands and silence on my lips."
The admission sits heavy in the cold vault air.
"The town made a pact," he continues. "Eighteen forty-seven. That's when the Hollow truly began. Before that, it was just—just something in the woods. Something hungry. The town's founders trapped it, bound it, made a bargain."
"What kind of bargain?"
"Protection in exchange for blood. One Cross woman per generation, sacrificed at the Old Well during the alignment." He pulls a small leather journal from inside his coat. "The Hollow would protect Hollow's End from disease, famine, outside threats. Make the crops grow. Keep the river calm. Ensure prosperity."
"And it worked?"
"For a hundred and seventy-eight years, yes. This town has never had a plague. Never had a drought that lasted more than one season. Never been touched by the wars and depressions that devastated neighboring counties." His mouth twists. "We've been blessed by something that demands blood for favor."
I slide down to sitting, my back against the stone shelf. "The rituals at Larkin Inn. Jonas found evidence of them."
"Not worship. Negotiations." Marcus stands slowly, walking closer. "Every few months, representatives from the founding families meet at the inn. They burn offerings. Make requests. Sometimes the Hollow answers. Sometimes it demands more."
"More what?"
"More sacrifices. Additional victims between the generational offerings. That's what's been happening since you returned—the Hollow demanded extra payment because Margaret's sacrifice only bought ten years instead of twenty. It wants the debt settled with interest."
The weight of that settles on my chest like a stone. "Sarah Kellerman. Marcus Webb. Lisa Chen. Victoria Hayes. Emma." I look up at him. "They all died because my mother's love wasn't enough?"
"They died because the Hollow is greedy and cruel and the town was too cowardly to refuse its demands." He extends the journal toward me. "But there's another way. Grace Cross discovered it. This is her private journal—the full account, not just the testimony she recorded publicly."
I take the journal with trembling hands. The leather is soft with age, the pages yellowed but the handwriting still legible.
"What's in here?"
"The truth." Marcus sits beside me on the floor, closer now. "Grace didn't just survive through indifference. That's what she told people because the real method was too dangerous to share. She survived by offering the Hollow something it wanted more than her blood."
"What could it possibly want more than blood?"
"The truth about its origin." He taps the journal's cover. "The Hollow isn't a demon or ancient evil. It's something worse—it's a creation. Something made by the town's founders deliberately to protect their interests. Grace discovered the ritual they used in eighteen forty-seven. Discovered that the founders didn't trap something that already existed. They created it from their own fears and gave it power through blood sacrifice."
My hand stills on the journal's cover. "They made it?"
"Seven men. The founding fathers of Hollow's End. They performed a ritual meant to bind their prosperity to the land itself. But rituals require sacrifice—not human sacrifice initially, just animal blood and dedication. The problem is that blood magic has a hunger. What starts as a small feeding becomes an addiction. Within twenty years, it demanded human sacrifice. Within forty, it had become sentient."
"So it's—what? A spell gone wrong?"
"A spell grown beyond its casters' control. The Hollow is everything the founders feared—famine, disease, loss—given form and appetite. They created their own monster to protect themselves from natural disasters and discovered the monster demanded more than they were willing to pay."
I flip open Grace's journal, scanning entries written in careful, educated script:
June 12, 1927 - I have discovered the binding ritual in the church archives. Father Thomas kept meticulous records, God forgive him. Seven names. Seven bloodlines. Seven portions of guilt. They created this thing we call the Hollow and now it devours their descendants.
June 15, 1927 - The ritual requires seven participants because seven created it. Seven to bind. Seven to unmake?
June 18, 1927 - I will go to the well. Not to die. Not to refuse. But to speak the names aloud. To tell the Hollow what it is—not a god to be appeased but a slave that forgot its chains.
"She named them?" I look up at Marcus. "She told the Hollow who created it?"
"She revealed its origin. Reminded it that it was made, not born. That it exists only because those seven men gave it power—and what's given can be taken away." Marcus's eyes are intense. "The Hollow couldn't consume her after that. Not because she felt nothing, but because she knew everything. Knowledge is the one thing it can't digest."
My mind is racing. "The founding families. They're descendants of the seven who created it?"
"Yes. Cross is one of the seven original bloodlines. That's why Cross women are the preferred sacrifice—the Hollow feeds best on the blood of its creators." He stands, offering his hand to help me up. "But the other six families are equally guilty. Equally responsible."
I take his hand, letting him pull me to my feet. The journal feels heavy in my other hand—not from physical weight but from the truth contained inside.
"If I go to the well and reveal this," I say slowly, "what happens?"
"I don't know. Grace survived but the Hollow didn't die. It just—retreated. Released its claim on her. She lived free but the curse continued for others." Marcus squeezes my hand once before releasing it. "But Evelyn, you're the first Cross woman since Grace to know the full truth. The first to understand what you're fighting."
"And that gives me power?"
"It gives you choice. Real choice, not the false choice between sacrifice and surrender." He steps back, his expression solemn. "You can walk to that well as a victim. Or you can walk there as someone who knows the Hollow's true name."
I flip through more of Grace's journal, stopping at a passage near the end:
July 4, 1927 - I am free but not healed. The knowledge saved my life but cost my peace. I know now what we are—descendants of men who traded morality for prosperity. Who created a monster to protect their wealth and passed the cost to their daughters. This knowledge will haunt me until I die. But at least I die on my terms, not its.
"She paid a price," I whisper.
"Every survivor pays a price." Marcus's voice is gentle. "But Grace chose her price instead of having it chosen for her. That's the difference between victim and victor."
I close the journal, holding it against my chest. "The town needs to know. Not just me. Everyone needs to know what their ancestors did. What they're continuing."
"If you reveal this publicly, there will be consequences. The founding families will deny it. The town will resist. You'll be accused of—"
"I don't care." The words come out strong. Certain. "Emma died because this town has been lying to itself for a hundred and seventy-eight years. Because people chose comfort over truth. No more secrets. No more negotiations in back rooms. This ends in daylight."
Marcus studies my face. "What are you planning?"
"Gather the town at St. Catherine's Church tonight." I meet his eyes. "Everyone. The founding families, the compromised deputies, the people who've been taking money to look away. All of them. I want every person who's participated in this curse—knowingly or not—in that church at sunset."
"And then what?"
"Then I tell them the truth about what their ancestors created. About what they've been feeding with my family's blood." I pick up the record books, Grace's journal, Margaret's diary pages. "I'm going to give them a choice: keep serving the Hollow and live with the consequences, or help me unmake what their founders made."
"Evelyn, if you do this—if you force the town to confront their guilt—some of them will fight back. Violently. They've built their lives on the prosperity the Hollow provides."
"Then they'll have to fight me." I'm already moving toward the stairs, my arms full of evidence. "Because I'm done being the sacrifice this town thinks it's entitled to. I'm done letting the Hollow dictate terms. Tonight, we end this—not by feeding it or starving it, but by exposing it."
Marcus catches my arm gently as I pass. "You're very much like your mother. She would be proud."
The words crack something in my chest. Some small place where grief still lives alongside rage.
"My mother died trying to protect me alone," I say quietly. "I'm not going to die at all. I'm going to live—and I'm going to make sure every person in this town lives with the truth of what they've done."
"And if the truth isn't enough? If the Hollow can't be stopped?"
"Then at least I tried. At least I fought instead of accepting that Cross women are meant to die young and bloody." I shift the books in my arms. "Will you help me? Will you gather the town?"
Marcus is silent for a long moment. Then he nods once, decisive.
"I'll ring the church bells at sunset. The signal for emergency gathering. Everyone in Hollow's End will come—they're required to by town charter." He pulls out his phone. "I'll notify the founding families personally. Tell them it's regarding the Hollow and the upcoming alignment."