Gone Before Goodbye: The Hollow
"The hollow is not lost ground.
It is owned ground.
And it remembers every name."
Eight friends. One night. A stretch of Appalachian wilderness so old it has no name on any county map, no trails, no rangers - nothing to protect the people who wander into it.
Nineteen-year-old Maren Carter knows her parents would never allow it. She goes anyway, sneaking out before dawn with her younger brother Caleb and six friends, leaving behind a fake itinerary and a guilt she tells herself she can ignore. The first day is everything she hoped for - a creek, cold water, sun, laughter, the particular freedom of being somewhere no one can reach you.
By the second morning, Caleb is gone. His sleeping bag is zipped shut from the outside. His boots are still beside it. And the cave they sheltered in has a second tunnel mouth that wasn't there the night before.
What follows is a hunt.
Blackthorn Hollow is not empty. It has never been empty. Hidden deep inside its boundaries is a village whose inhabitants have been living - and feeding - in this place for over a century. On the walls of a stone chamber beneath the hollow, names and dates carved by the hands of previous victims stretch back to 1887, proof that this has happened before. Proof that it will happen again.
When Maren's parents Robert and Diane lead a thirteen-person search party into the hollow after her, they find the three survivors - but they do not find a way out.
* * *
GONE BEFORE GOODBYE is a savage, relentless adult horror novel told across the rotating perspectives of the hunted teens and the desperate search party, building from warmth and friendship to visceral, unflinching terror. It is a story about what a single bad decision costs, about the people who love us enough to walk into the dark after us, and about the ancient places in this world that predate our laws, our maps, and our understanding of what it means to be prey.
Content warning: This novel contains graphic violence, gore, cannibalism, and scenes of an adult nature. Intended for mature readers only.
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