The Appalachian mountains swallowed the end of the gravel road, thick curtains of pines and briars closing behind Stella Reed's cherry-red Honda Civic like a wound healing over. For three days she'd been driving—sleeping at rest areas, paying cash at backwoods gas stations, Murphy's watchful amber eyes scanning every stranger who approached. Now the Black Mouth Cur pressed his muzzle against the passenger window, a low rumble vibrating through his chest as the car listed violently in the red clay.
"Easy, boy," Stella whispered, her knuckles white on the steering wheel.
The mountain mud made a sound—the same sound Stella's ribs had made when Daniel's boot connected last winter. Murphy's ears flattened against his skull, as if he too recognized it from somewhere darker, somewhere they'd both escaped.
Through the rain-streaked windshield, the veterinary clinic emerged like a half-remembered dream. Cedar Hollow Animal Hospital, the sign proclaimed in faded letters, its rusted chains creaking in the mountain air. This was it—the furthest she could get from the prestigious Carter Veterinary Associates LLC and the man whose name graced its expensive letterhead. The last place Daniel would think to look.
The mud claimed another inch of her tires, the dealership plates—still registered under Daniel's business—disappearing beneath muck the color of week-old bruises. Stella's fingers instinctively traced the matching marks on her wrist, nearly healed now but still tender to the touch. Murphy nudged her elbow, breaking the trance with a soft whine.
"I know," she said. "Out of the frying pan."
Three days earlier, Earl Jenkins had wrestled his Italian loafers free of this same mud with that awful Velcro rip, the sound eerily similar to Daniel peeling off his dress shoes after those late-night emergency calls. Earl had rushed her through the clinic's tour, his practiced smile slipping each time they'd encountered another oddity.
The restraint marks on the exam table's padding spaced too wide for any animal Stella recognized.
The coral lipstick smudged on the WORLD'S BEST VET mug that didn't match Stella's own nude shades.
The attic door's splintered frame that had clearly been kicked open from the inside.
The realtor had fled so quickly his BMW had left grooves in the mud, still visible beneath the puddles forming in the afternoon rain. Stella hadn't cared. The price was right, and more importantly, it was forgotten. Invisible. Safe.
A movement on the clinic's sagging porch caught her attention. A small figure with pigtails methodically destroyed a floorboard with mud-caked boots. During Earl's rushed tour, the child had done the same thing until he'd hissed at her to scram, his necktie strangling him in the mountain humidity.
"City car for a city ghost," the girl singsonged, then froze as the clinic door groaned open—a sound like a dying animal that made Stella's veterinary instincts flare.
The man who emerged seemed carved from the holler itself—sawdust drifting from his Carhartt jacket, shoulders broad enough to eclipse the setting sun. In his gloved hands swung a rat the size of a barn cat, its greasy fur marked with injuries Stella's trained eye categorized automatically: bite wound at the neck showing the characteristic spread of a copperhead strike, advanced necrotizing tissue around the bite site, signs of sepsis in the yellowing exudate from its hindquarters.
Murphy stiffened, his body vibrating with protective energy as the man approached. The low growl building in the dog's chest was the same warning he'd given the night Daniel had cornered Stella in their walk-in pantry, his breath hot with single-malt fury as he'd asked why she'd canceled the Malibu reservations without telling him.
Stella's hand found the reassuring curve of Murphy's head. "This is home now," she whispered. "For better or worse."
The rat's remaining milky eye seemed to track her as the man tossed the carcass into a steel drum beside the steps. It landed with a hollow thud that echoed through the holler like a promise—or a warning.
"Copperhead got it," the man said, wiping his hands on jeans stained with substances that reminded Stella of the clinic's operating room after a difficult surgery.
His eyes—the exact slate-gray of storm clouds gathering over the ridge—locked onto her wrist before she could tug her sleeve over the fading yellow bruises. For a heartbeat, Stella swore she saw something like recognition flash across his weathered face. Then it was gone, replaced by the same neutral assessment she'd given an X-ray with a questionable shadow.
Murphy's hackles rose, but his growl softened to something inquisitive rather than threatening.
"You're the new vet," the man said. Not a question.
"I am." Stella's voice sounded foreign to her own ears—stronger than it had been in months. "Dr. Reed."
The man nodded once, a slight tilt of his head that acknowledged her title without granting it any particular significance. His gaze drifted to the listing Civic, then back to her face with silent assessment.
A pickup rattled into the clearing, its PRAY FOR MOONSHINE bumper sticker flaking like old paint. The elderly woman who emerged moved with the spry confidence of someone who'd navigated these mountains for decades, tobacco juice staining the corner of her thin mouth.
"Well, ain't you a welcomin' committee," she called, gold tooth glinting as she spat a stream of tobacco near the rat carcass. "Stella Reed, meet Gideon Holt. Only man in Cedar Hollow who bites back harder than the snakes."
Gideon studied Stella's sinking Civic with detached assessment, noting every detail, calculating odds, and determining whether intervention would be worth the effort. His eyes returned to her wrist, then moved to Murphy, acknowledging the dog's protective stance with a slight nod.
"Attic's got a cot and stovepipe," he said, voice rough like creek stones tumbling downstream. "Blankets still smell like lavender." His boot nudged the steel drum where the rat carcass lay. "Unlike this bastard."
Stella's veterinary instincts overrode her caution. "That's not just a copperhead bite," she said, eyes narrowing at the necrotic pattern. "The tissue degradation is too extensive, too rapid. Almost looks like—"
She stopped herself, unsure if sharing her observations would mark her as an outsider or establish her credibility.
"Almost looks like what, Doc?" The old woman leaned forward, eyes sharp beneath the brim of her weathered hat.
"Like something introduced a secondary infection." Stella chose her words carefully. "The spread pattern is all wrong for just venom."
Gideon's expression shifted almost imperceptibly—a flash of something that might have been respect, or perhaps wariness. "Previous doc thought the same," he said, each word measured. "Before she left."
Murphy's ears pricked forward at that, his body tense beside Stella's leg. The subtle shift in his posture—weight forward, head slightly lowered—was a signal Stella had learned to trust during those final months with Daniel.
"Left in a hurry, looks like," Stella ventured, testing the waters.
The old woman—Miss June, Gideon had called her—hawked and spat again. "Folks come and go in these hills, honey. Some by choice, some..." She let the sentence dangle like bait, her eyes crinkling at the corners.
For a heartbeat, Stella could've sworn she saw the rat's tail twitch—a slight, unnatural curling motion that defied both rigor mortis and gravity. Murphy saw it too, a low whine escaping him as he pressed against Stella's leg. But when she looked again, the carcass lay perfectly still.
Above them, the attic window creaked open—though Stella had sworn she'd latched it yesterday during Earl's rushed tour. The moth-eaten curtains fluttered despite the evening's stagnant air.
"Keys are on the nail behind reception," Gideon said, turning away. His boots left perfect impressions in the clay, each one filling slowly with rust-colored water that reflected the twilight like shattered stained glass. "Same as they were when the last vet left."
The holler mud gurgled again, louder now, the sound rising to meet the first notes of a distant banjo picking out "Shady Grove"—the same song that had been playing on the radio when Daniel had thrown her phone against the kitchen wall after finding texts from the women's shelter.
Murphy whined, ears flattening as he stared up at the attic window. Following his gaze, Stella glimpsed the curtains sway again, as if something had brushed past them. But there was no silhouette, no shape—just old fabric worn thin by time and something else she couldn't quite name.
"Might want to get your things inside 'fore dark," Miss June said, lighting a hand-rolled cigarette. The smoke curled up like ghostly fingers, blue-gray in the fading light. "Night comes quick in these hills."
She paused, studying Stella with eyes that had seen too much to be fooled by practiced smiles or careful words.
"And it ain't always kind to strangers."
Stella nodded, fishing her emergency bag from the back seat—the one she'd packed months ago and hidden in her clinic locker, adding to it piece by piece until the night Murphy's warning growl had given her the courage to finally leave. The revolver nestled inside crinkled against the veterinary journals she'd used to cushion it. The weight had become almost comforting.
"I can manage," she said, more to herself than to Miss June or Gideon. The words felt like a promise—or a prayer.
The clinic's door creaked open at her touch, as if it had been waiting for her. The smell hit her first—antiseptic layered over mildew, with something else beneath it all. Something earthy and animal and wrong.
The keys hung exactly where Gideon said they would, dangling from a rusted nail behind the reception desk. Their cold metal bit into Stella's palm as she gripped them, the chill lingering despite the oppressive humidity that clung to every surface of the abandoned clinic. A thin layer of dust coated everything except a well-worn path beneath the door and across the desk—tracks made by someone's regular footsteps not so long ago.
Murphy moved with military precision, his nose working the air in widening circles as he mapped the space—a habit he'd developed during those tense final months with Daniel, learning to anticipate danger before it erupted. His hackles rose as he approached the hallway leading to the exam rooms, a low rumble building in his chest.
The reception area held the ghost of its former routine. A coffee mug with the cracked "World's Best Vet" decal held a quarter-inch of black sludge at the bottom, the surface rippling slightly as their footsteps disturbed the floor. Stella studied the coral lipstick smudge on the rim—a bright, defiant shade she would never have chosen, the kind Daniel had always said made women look "desperate."
Next to it, a stack of files waited with the top one open to reveal hastily scribbled notes about a German Shepherd's recurring mange, the handwriting deteriorating into jagged spikes halfway down the page. The pen had pressed so hard that the paper tore in places, the final words—"NOT MANGE. CHECK BASEMENT"—underlined three times with strokes that spoke of urgency or fear.
When Stella brushed against the mouse, the monitor flickered to life with a tired whine, displaying a password prompt and the last login date: October 18th, 2018—nearly seven years ago.
Murphy whined low in his throat as the front door groaned shut behind them with the slow, deliberate motion of something that had all the time in the world.
"Just old hinges," Stella murmured, more for her own benefit than Murphy's.
She'd said similar things to herself in the bathroom with the water running to mask her voice, explaining away the sounds of Daniel's anger downstairs. Just the TV. Just him blowing off steam. Just a bad day at work.
The exam room told a different story than Earl's carefully worded listing had suggested. The flickering fluorescent light played tricks on the steel table's restraints, making the deep gouges in the leather appear to pulse in time with Stella's quickening heartbeat. Her trained eye recognized that the spacing was wrong—too wide for dogs, too narrow for horses or cattle. The wear patterns suggested struggling, the leather worn thin where something had pulled repeatedly against the bindings.
Murphy approached slowly, nose working overtime. He sniffed at the table's base, then backed away with a soft whine, tail tucked between his legs.
The whiteboard still held its final day's appointments, the marker lines for "Banshee - aggression eval" and "Marlowe - rabies booster" neatly spaced above the frantic scrawl of "LURCHER - EUTH." that nearly tore through the thin plastic surface. Murphy approached the board cautiously, sniffing the word "Lurcher" before backing away.
Stella's veterinary training kicked in, her mind cataloging details with clinical precision. "Lurcher" wasn't a name—it was a type of dog, typically greyhound crosses bred for hunting. And "euth" was veterinary shorthand for euthanasia. But why the urgency? Why the damage to the board?
The supply cabinets stood half-open, revealing neat rows of medications and equipment. Everything properly labeled, everything in its place—except for the empty space where the pentobarbital sodium should have been. The controlled substance log on the counter showed the last entry: "10/18/18 - 100ml - EMERGENCY." No patient name, no initials authorizing the removal. Just "EMERGENCY" in the same frantic handwriting from the whiteboard.
"What happened here, Murphy?" she whispered.
The dog's ears twitched, head tilting as if he'd heard something Stella couldn't. His eyes fixed on the closed basement door across the hall, body going rigid with tension.
The stairs to the living quarters protested their weight with groans that echoed through the hollow walls, each creak sounding suspiciously like a footstep from above. Murphy led the way, body tense, pausing at each landing to ensure the path was clear—the same protective behavior he'd exhibited when helping her navigate their final escape from the house, Daniel passed out on the couch after emptying that bottle of bourbon he'd accused her of watering down.
At the landing, a smartphone lay screen-down in the dust, its cracked surface reflecting the dim light in jagged patterns. Stella's thumb came away black when she touched it—not from dirt, but from the battery's slow leak. She turned it over carefully, half-expecting to see Daniel's name on the screen, her mind still caught in that hypervigilant space where every unexpected object might be evidence of his pursuit.
The lock screen showed a woman with bright coral lipstick matching the mug downstairs, her arm thrown around a greyhound mix with intelligent eyes. The date stamp read October 17, 2018—one day before the last login on the computer, one day before the "EMERGENCY" in the controlled substance log.
The bedroom door stood ajar, revealing a scene frozen in mid-morning. A rumpled bed with sheets still holding the impression of a body, a suitcase vomiting clothes onto the floor as though packed in panic, and on the nightstand, a dog-eared copy of "Where the Red Fern Grows" with a boarding pass from October 2018 marking a page about death and burial.
Murphy's nose twitched at the faint scent of lavender fabric softener undercut by something muskier that made his lips curl back from his teeth in a silent snarl—a warning signal Stella had learned to heed. She scanned the room with the precision Daniel had always mocked ("Your attention to detail is exhausting, Stella"), noting the single earring on the dresser, the half-empty glass of water with a lipstick print matching the mug downstairs, the closet door standing open just enough to reveal hung scrubs.
All signs of someone who intended to return.
The attic door at the end of the hall hung crooked on its hinges, the wood around the latch splintered in a way that suggested violence rather than time's slow erosion. It reminded Stella of the bathroom door in their first apartment, the one Daniel had broken down when she'd locked herself inside after finding messages from the nurse. He'd fixed it himself the next day, apologizing with tears in his eyes, promising it would never happen again. Three days later, he'd installed new locks on all the exterior doors—"for your safety, sweetheart."
A single long scratch ran down the attic door's paint, pale against the aged varnish. The gap between door and frame breathed out air that smelled of mothballs and dried herbs undercut with something less pleasant—the faint, sweetish rot of forgotten apples or maybe old insulation gone damp.
Murphy's reaction was immediate and unambiguous. The Black Mouth Cur planted himself firmly between Stella and the door, his body vibrating with tension. Not the aggressive stance he took with strangers or with Daniel in his darker moods, but something different—a rigid alertness that spoke of uncertainty rather than identified threat.
Stella's fingers hovered near the knob, close enough to feel the chill radiating from the metal despite the oppressive heat of the upper floor. The floorboards creaked beneath her weight, each sound sharp as a gunshot in the quiet house. From inside came the skittering scratch of tiny claws—squirrels or rats making nests in the eaves, nothing more.
But Murphy's low growl vibrated through her calves, his body rigid as he stared into the darkness beyond the doorway. The same alert posture he'd adopted the night he'd woken her with gentle teeth on her wrist, leading her to the window where Daniel's car had idled in the clinic parking lot long after visiting hours.
The stairs behind them let out a long, weary groan, the sound traveling up through the bones of the house like a sigh. Just old wood settling, Stella told herself, even as the hairs on her arms stood up. Murphy's ears swiveled toward the sound, then back to the attic door, caught between two points of concern.
She pushed the door open.
The attic yawned before her, shadows pooling in the corners where the weak afternoon light couldn't reach. A rusted cot stood against one wall, its thin mattress stained with shapes that could have been water damage or something else entirely. Above it, the stovepipe poked through the roof, a single shaft of sunlight catching dust motes that swirled in the still air—not in random patterns, but in deliberate, circular motions that defied the absence of any breeze.
Something glinted near the far wall—a mason jar half-full of murky liquid, the label peeling away to reveal handwritten letters: "Lavandula, 10/18." Gideon had been right about the lavender. The scent should have been comforting, but here it smelled medicinal, like the sachets they used to mask odors in the clinic's recovery ward after particularly difficult surgeries.
Next to it stood three more jars, each with its own careful label: "Aconitum, 10/12" contained something dark and viscous. "Digitalis, 10/15" held dried leaves. "Delphinium, 10/17" was nearly empty, just a film of oily residue coating the inside of the glass.
Stella recognized all four plants from her toxicology training—lavender for calming, and three of the most poisonous plants in Appalachia. The dates were sequential, leading up to the day before the emergency pentobarbital use, the day before the previous vet disappeared.
From downstairs, the bang of the screen door made them both jump. "Y'all gonna stare at that doorway all day?" Miss June called up, her voice slicing through the thick air. "Got your bags from that sinkin' car. Best come down 'fore night falls proper."
Stella exhaled, realizing she'd been holding her breath. She started to turn, but something caught her eye—deep gouges in the floorboards leading to the cot, spaced too evenly to be random damage. Like something had been dragged, over and over, along the same path. The marks were fresh, the exposed wood still pale against the aged planks around it.
Murphy whined and nudged her hand toward the stairs, his body vibrating with tension. But then he froze, eyes fixed on the cot, where the depression in the thin mattress deepened slightly—as if someone had just sat down on it.
"Yeah," Stella agreed, pulling the door shut behind them. The latch didn't catch. "We'll fix it tomorrow."
As they descended the stairs, Murphy pressed against her leg with each step, his body a solid, reassuring presence guiding her away from the attic. From outside came the sound of Miss June's rocking chair creaking on the porch, a counterpoint to the distant melody of "Shady Grove" still drifting through the holler.
Stella paused at the bottom of the stairs, her hand resting on the revolver in her bag. For the first time in months, the weight of it felt inadequate against whatever waited in the gathering dark of Cedar Hollow.
The mud outside gurgled again, a drowning sound that seemed to call her name.
Behind her, so faint she almost missed it, came the soft click of the attic door finally latching shut.
No one was up there to close it.