Clara was only ten years old at the time, and the fog had come in thick and nasty, engulfing the hamlet like a wet blanket. Her parents had gone to the southern woods late one night to find out what was going on with a scream and never came back. The village's discomfort became full-blown panic when they went missing, and no one spoke about them right away. There was no search party in the fog. There was never a search party. Clara, who was twenty and had grown tough from living in the city and being an orphan, had come back not because she wanted to, but because she had to.

She got the ancient, falling-down cottage at the edge of the forest when her grandma died. Clara had no money and no other relatives, so she had nowhere else to go. But there was more than that. In her heart, there was a quiet rebellion, a tenacious spark that sought answers to the questions she had been warned not to ask. She recalled how her grandma would tell her to stay quiet and how the other villagers would look at the woods with horror in their eyes. That night, as today, the fog was dense. Clara came with a single bag full of her things and her coat zipped up to her chin. The sky was a bruised gray.

The town looked almost the same, with its crooked roofs, uneven cobblestones, and ivy climbing up the sides of every building like nature taking back what it had given. She walked past the bakery, where the smell of flour and ancient bricks still filled the air, and the general store, where the windows seemed like they were stuck in time. Some people nodded softly, while others looked aside. Their welcomes were cold, and there was no warmth in them. They all knew she had come back, and the Hollow never let it go for long. The home at the edge of the woods looked much as she recalled, although it had seen better days. Its windows looked out over the moor with no expression, and its crooked chimney leaned like an old man with a crooked back.