Ashes Of Her Name

The town of Hollow Creek hasn’t changed.

It still smelled like damp earth after a storm, like old wood and secrets too heavy to stay buried. The trees leaned in as if eavesdropping, and the roads — narrow, winding, and cracked — still led nowhere in particular. It was the kind of place that wore its silence like a noose, and Clara Sterling felt it tighten the moment her car crossed the old iron bridge.

A bridge she swore she’d never see again.

She gripped the steering wheel tighter, her knuckles white, pulse hammering against her ribs like a drum she couldn’t silence. Every mile she drove deeper into Hollow Creek felt like a step backward in time, like walking barefoot over old wounds that had barely scabbed. The sky was a dull grey, threatening rain, and somewhere in the distance, a crow screamed.

"You shouldn’t have come back."

The voice wasn’t real, but it was hers. The same words she’d repeated to herself a hundred times before pulling onto the highway this morning. But how could she stay away after the letter? After the inked words that smelled of dust and old grief?

She reached over to the passenger seat and picked up the worn envelope. Her name was written in delicate, shaky cursive — the kind only aging hands could produce.

Clara Sterling.

No return address. No sender.

Inside, a single sheet of yellowed paper.

"The case is being reopened; your mother deserves peace, And so do you; no signature. No explanation.

The words had clawed at her chest since the moment she read them.

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Her mother's Death, Twenty years now.

Murdered in cold blood in their family home while Clara, barely eight, cowered beneath the staircase, too terrified to scream.

And her father? Gone.

Vanished into the night, leaving behind bloodstained memories and unanswered questions.

She pressed the brakes as the Sterling Estate loomed ahead, half-swallowed by fog and ivy. The house looked like a ghost itself — its once pristine white walls weathered and cracked, its windows like vacant, watchful eyes. Every step toward the door made her stomach tighten.

Home, sweet cursed home.

The rusted gate groaned under her hand, and as she stepped onto the porch, her gaze flickered to the stained glass window above the door — a sunburst pattern, though time had dulled its color. A shadow moved inside, Clara froze, heart stumbling.

It wasn’t possible.

No one was supposed to be here.

She reached for the doorknob, pulse-pounding. The air felt colder now, the house exhaling secrets it never wanted to keep.

"Clara?"

The voice came from behind.

She turned sharply — and nearly dropped the keys in her hand. It was Tommy Hayes.

Or, at least, what remained of him.

Gone was the carefree boy she remembered, replaced now by a hardened man in a sheriff’s uniform, his hair shorter, his eyes wary. But she would’ve known those sea-green eyes anywhere. The only person who had ever held her hand at the funeral. The boy who taught her how to climb the oak tree by the creek, and who once swore he’d protect her from monsters.

Monsters in the dark.

Monsters with her mother’s blood on their hands.

"Tommy," she breathed.

A flicker of something passed between them. Relief? Sadness? Or the unbearable weight of old ghosts.

"I thought you weren’t coming back," he said.

"I wasn’t," Clara replied, voice low. "But I got this."

She handed him the letter.

His brow furrowed as he read it, lips pressing into a grim line.

"Where did you get this?"

"It showed up in my mailbox two nights ago. No return address."

"Jesus," Tommy muttered. He glanced at the house. "You shouldn’t be here, Clara. This place... it’s no good for you."

"I don’t have a choice."

"You always have a choice."

She almost laughed. If only he knew how little choice she'd had since the night her mother died. The town labeled her father a murderer and swept the whole thing under a dusty rug of rumors and lies.

"What do you know about the case being reopened?" she asked.

Tommy hesitated, looking down at the letter again. "I heard something… whispers. An old file is going missing, and someone is digging around. I didn’t know it was about you."

"It always is," she said bitterly.

He sighed. "Look, I’m on duty. But… listen, if you need anything, I mean it, you call me, okay?"

"I will."

She watched him retreat to his cruiser, the car’s headlights cutting briefly through the mist before fading down the road. Clara stood alone on the porch again, the old house towering over her like it always had. She took a deep breath, turned the key, and stepped inside.

The air was thick with dust, the faint scent of wood polish and something older, deeper. The house was quiet — not in the way empty houses usually were, but the kind of quiet that feels… watched.

The floorboards sighed under her weight. Every step was a memory — the corner where her mother’s favorite chair used to sit. The wall she’d measured her height against with pencil marks now faded. The living room was where blood once pooled like spilled wine.

She made her way to the study, fingers trembling as she pushed the door open.

It was all still there.

The old desk. The grandfather clock. The cold fireplace.

And on the mantel, the only surviving photograph of the three of them — her, her mother, and her father.

She picked it up, staring into the frozen smiles.

Her father’s arm was around her mother’s waist.

Clara, grinning with gap-toothed innocence.

James Sterling.

Handsome. Charismatic. Town hero turned into a monster overnight.

But something in those eyes… even in the photograph… made her stomach turn.

She set it back down, Then she saw it.

A fresh envelope, stark white against the dark wood of the desk.

Her name again.

But this time —

Clara Sterling,

By Hand.

Her throat tightened.

She tore it open, a single page inside. "Meet me at the old chapel.

Midnight.

Come alone."

No name.

But at the bottom — a symbol, a sunburst.

The same as the one in the stained-glass window.

Her blood ran cold.

The chapel.

The one by the cemetery.

Abandoned for decades.

The place where her mother’s body had been found.

Clara’s heart hammered, Every instinct screamed for her to leave — to turn around, drive back to the city, and pretend this never happened. But something deeper pulled at her.

A hunger for answers.

A voice that said: this is it.

She shoved the letter in her pocket, took one last look at the house that raised and ruined her, and stepped back into the misty night.

Some names are written in love.

Others in blood.

And Clara Sterling was about to learn which one she was.