The Rope
The Hollow Hours Volume I
Some towns have long memories. Some never forget at all.
Ashridge Hollow isn’t on most maps. It’s the kind of place you find only when you’re looking for something you can’t name. Quiet. Timeless. Tucked between ridges and lost highways, where the fog settles thick and the roads curve back on themselves. People don’t come to Ashridge Hollow often. And once they do, they don’t leave.
Daniel wasn’t looking for trouble. He was looking for peace.
After the tragic death of one of his students, Daniel needed out. Out of the city. Out of the school. Out of the spotlight. Penny’s name still lingered in the halls, in the silence that followed every conversation. She had been bright. Fiery. Impossible to forget. And when she was gone, it felt like something inside him went with her.
So he found Ashridge Hollow. A small town with an old house, a warm smile from the local real estate agent, and the promise of stillness.
But nothing stays still for long.
It begins with a sound—soft and rhythmic. A creak, like a rope swinging from the ceiling beams. Then come the glimpses. A flash of red hair in the stairwell. The sharp scent of her favourite perfume. The hem of a school uniform skimming just a little too high as it disappears around a corner. He tells himself it’s memory. It’s grief. That it’ll pass.
But it doesn’t.
Because Penny never really left. And neither, it seems, has Daniel.
As his new home twists slowly into a waking nightmare, Daniel begins to wonder if Ashridge Hollow is really a fresh start—or something else entirely. Something older. Something watching. The town is quiet, yes. But it’s not empty. Everyone here has a past. Some wear it on their sleeve. Others bury it deep. But the Hollow remembers. And it never lets go.
The Rope is the haunting first entry in The Hollow Hours, a horror series rooted in dread, memory, and the darkness we try to leave behind. With atmospheric suspense and slow-burning terror, this story unravels the thin line between guilt and haunting—between what we fear and what we deserve.
Daniel thought he was leaving the past behind.
But in Ashridge Hollow…
The past moves in right beside you.
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