Page 7 of Ravaging Red (Monsters of the Hollow Realm #1)

HOME

RED

T he silver moon was high in the sky by the time I returned to my mother’s house on the outskirts of town.

Headlights had already cut through the darkness outside the front yard.

At first, I thought the flashing lights were something I imagined, blurring my vision from exhaustion.

But as I got closer, the image got clearer.

Sure enough, there were headlights and flashing red and blue strobes.

Police vehicles and parked cars lined up in front of my mother’s yard.

The porch was crowded with people. Neighbors, officers, and even a medic.

That’s when I saw her. Sitting up on the porch, wrapped in a worn quilt and sipping water from a paper cup with trembling hands. There was my Nana, alive, whole, and smiling.

My legs froze beneath me, and suddenly the world tilted sideways. My heart slammed itself against my ribs, and the ache in my chest started to slowly subside. I stumbled forward, a breath of relief shuddering out of me and I swallowed a sob that tried to escape me.

My mother was standing off to the side. Her arms were crossed over her chest, and her lips were pressed into a line so tight they were bloodless.

Her face was pale, eyes rimmed red, and I could tell she’d been crying.

She looked at my grandmother as if she expected her to vanish if she dared blink. And then she saw me.

“ Red! ” My mother’s voice cracked like glass, raw with relief and panic. She ran toward me, hands reaching, grasping at my shoulders, my arms, my face. She looked like she needed to feel me to believe I was real.

“Where were you?” she gasped, voice shaking as her fingers pushed my matted hair from my eyes. “I’ve been out of my mind! You disappeared, your phone wasn’t working, and no one could find you. We thought…” Her voice cracked, and she pulled me in, hugging me tight.

“I’m okay, Mom,” I said quickly, too quickly. My voice was hoarse, raw from screaming. “I’m fine, I swear.”

She wasn’t convinced. Her gaze dropped, scanning my torn dress, the scratches across my thighs, the bruises that hadn’t had time to bloom yet. Her lips trembled.

“You’re covered in dirt.” Her eyes flicked down again. “Your dress, your legs, you’re all scraped up. Red, what happened?”

“I’m fine, Mom.” She searched my eyes knowingly and the silence between us twisted tight.

“Oh God, Red…” she whispered, one hand hovering over her mouth.

I didn’t answer her. I couldn’t. Not yet.

“Is she okay?” I asked, trying to pull my mother’s thoughts away from me.

“She’ll be fine. She’s been muttering nonsense as usual. But she wasn’t hurt, thank the Gods.”

I slipped past my mother and fell to my knees beside the porch where they’d set my grandmother up.

She looked even smaller than I remembered, but her hands were steady and her eyes clear as glass.

I lay my head in her lap and broke, the tears coming fast and hot, my fingers gripping the fabric of her skirt like I used to, when I was a little girl terrified of thunderstorms.

“I thought you were gone,” I choked out. “I thought the woods took you.”

She stroked my hair with slow, familiar movements. Her fingers smelled like wildflowers and lavender soap. Her touch was always gentle and always grounded me. “I was almost gone,” she said softly. “But I found what I needed.”

Her voice was stronger than I remembered. It didn’t shake with confusion or forgetfulness. There was no slurred edge, no faraway look. It was her . Fully her. And that scared me more than anything else.

I pulled back and looked up at her.

Her eyes… they saw me.

“Did you…” I swallowed, heart hammering. “Did you see him ?”

Her smile curled with something I couldn’t name, something between joy and warning, and then, she nodded.

“He wanted to meet you.”

The air turned still, and I could hear my heartbeat in my ears.

“Who, Nana?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer. Even though my skin was already prickling with the echo of his name.

Her smile faded, just a touch. “Rael.”

The sound of his name curled in my belly like a red-hot brand. It wasn’t just a name anymore. It meant ownership. It was what my body called out to. My monster .

From behind us, my mother’s voice cut in, tight and suspicious. “What are you two talking about?”

I glanced up at her, heart thudding. “Nothing,” I said too quickly. “Just… dreams. She’s just tired, Mom. She’s muttering nonsensical things again.

But I knew she wasn’t. My grandmother looked at me, dead in the eye, and I could tell that she was clear and finally lucid.

“He’s been watching you since the first time I wandered past the wall,” she said, her voice low, meant only for me. “He could have taken me. But he didn’t. He waited. For you.”

My blood ran cold.

My mother stepped closer, arms crossed. “Waited? What the hell are you two talking about?”

I stood up, brushing dirt from my legs, heart racing so fast I thought I might faint.

“She’s just confused,” I said quickly, glancing over my shoulder. “It’s nothing. She’s fine. We’re all fine.”

But my grandmother didn’t look confused. Not even a little. Her expression was calm. Knowing. And full of something far older than madness.

“Be careful of him, darling,” she said gently. “He is a needy monster.”

I froze.

For a moment, the entire world narrowed to those words. My mother’s voice blurred behind them, muffled, asking more questions, trying to piece together something she wasn’t ready to understand. But I understood it all too well, because that monster had left his mark on me.

“Ma’am?” a voice called from behind me, low and polite, but tight with authority.

I turned my head slowly, to find a uniformed officer standing a few feet away, hands clasped at his belt, another taller and younger one standing behind him, a notepad and pen in hand.

Their faces were hard to read but their eyes gave them away.

They looked at me as if they didn’t believe what they were seeing.

“Can we speak with you for a moment?” The older one asked.

I sat up, wiping my face quickly with the back of my hand. I didn’t look at my mother. I didn’t look at the neighbors. I didn’t look at the hollow space between the trees in the distance. I simply stared down at the ground as I followed them.

They led me away from the porch, past the medics and the hushed conversations that instantly cut off when I passed. The air felt too thin. The flashing lights had been switched off, but the echo of them still pulsed behind my eyes, and the weight of too many stares burned a hole at my back.

The Hollow Woods had done something to my senses, and I was highly sensitive to everything and everyone around me.

The uneven rhythm of my breathing, the heavy footfalls of the officers' boots on the gravel, the feel of dried blood on my ankle, the way my mother’s voice broke when she whispered my name as I walked past her.

They brought me to the back of a cruiser parked at an angle near the mailbox on the driveway.

One of them, the younger one, Officer Jackson, offered me a blanket.

I stared at it for a long moment, then shook my head.

I didn’t want warmth. I didn’t want comfort.

I needed the chill to remind me that I was still in this world, not his .

Jackson tucked the blanket under his arm.

His features looked wary, like he was trying not to let too much of what he was thinking slip through.

The other man, Sergeant DeWitt, looked wiser.

He was someone who’d stopped pretending this town was safe a long time ago.

His eyes stayed on me the entire time, barely blinking.

He didn’t look like he pitied me. He looked like he was waiting for me to tell him something new. Something he didn’t already suspect.

“Miss Grimm,” Jackson started. His voice was calm. Friendly, even. “Can you tell us how long you think you were gone?”

I blinked. The question sounded simple enough, but there was tension in the space between his words. My mouth was dry, and my throat scraped when I swallowed. “A few hours,” I said, slowly. “Maybe half a day.”

Jackson’s jaw tensed. He looked down at the small notebook in his hand but didn’t write anything. He hesitated for a moment before continuing.

“You’ve been missing for three days, Miss Grimm,” DeWitt said. “Search parties went out every morning. We had dogs, drones, half the goddamn town combing those woods. Your trail ended just off the Witch’s Trail.”

I stared at him. I could feel the confusion settle across my face as the panic settled in quietly.

“I didn’t know,” I said softly. “I didn’t realize...”

Jackson stepped in. “You don’t remember anything? Where were you? How did you get lost?”

I hesitated, suddenly feeling protective of the woods. Of him . “I was in the woods.”

“That much we know,” DeWitt said dryly. “But where ? Did you go off the trails? Did someone lead you somewhere?”

I shook my head, slower this time. “I-I don’t remember.”

“Your grandmother went missing, too,” Jackson said. “The same day you did, but she returned the next morning. And when she returned, there was also no explanation. Same condition as you. No serious injuries, somewhat dehydrated and confused. She hasn’t said much, either.”

I looked past them, toward the house. I could see the top of Nana’s head through the window. She’d been moved and was now seated in the old rocker by the fireplace, her hands folded in her lap, her expression unreadable. Just like mine.

“Miss Grimm,” DeWitt said, voice lower now, quieter. “You need to understand something. People go missing in the Hollow Woods. Most women, almost all of them, do not return.”

“Almost?” I asked.

Officer Jackson nodded. “Ninety-nine percent of them don’t. Not until now.”

DeWitt continued. “We’ve been logging disappearances in that area for decades. Locals don’t talk about it, but we’ve seen the patterns. The woods take people, and they don’t bring them back.”

The silence stretched. I could feel it tightening between us, and they were waiting for me to crack. Maybe they thought I would give them some sort of confession. But I had done nothing wrong, and I’d already cracked out there. Back here, I was still trying to piece myself together.

“Did you see anyone?” Jackson asked. “Did anyone lure you away?”

My eyes dropped to the ground. I rubbed my palms against the sides of my thighs, feeling the grit, the dirt. I could still smell the dew in my hair. I could still feel his breath on my neck.

“No,” I said. “It was just… dark. Foggy. I got turned around.”

“Do you remember how you got out?” DeWitt pressed. “How did you find your way back?”

I paused. “I followed the road.”

They didn’t believe me. I could see it in their eyes. They’d seen too many bodies dragged out of shallow graves, or never found at all, to believe in lucky escapes.

“You’re saying you were alone,” DeWitt said. “For nearly three days.”

I nodded. “It didn’t feel like days.”

“It felt like hours?” Jackson pushed, voice sharper now.

I lifted my chin. “Yeah.”

They both went quiet, sharing wary glances between them.

Then DeWitt spoke again. “You’re not the first one to say that, Miss Grimm. Time’s wrong in there, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, I guess.” I quietly replied.

“You know, there was a woman years back, came out with the same story. Said she’d been gone a few hours. We had been looking for her for five days.”

“What happened to her?” I asked.

“She vanished again a week later,” Jackson shrugged. “No sign of a body. No return.”

I didn’t react. I didn’t let anything show. Because deep down, I knew I was different. I wasn’t like her. I hadn’t been taken.

I’d been wanted.

And I had wanted it, too.

DeWitt leaned forward slightly. “Miss Grimm, are you sure there’s nothing you want to tell us? No one you saw. Nothing you heard.”

I met his eyes. I felt the answer rise in my throat like bile, and I buried it before it could crawl free.

“I’m just tired,” I said. “I don’t remember much.”

They didn’t push again. Jackson closed his notebook, not bothering to hide the frustration on his face.

“We’ll need you and your grandmother at the station tomorrow morning. Routine follow-up. Don’t go anywhere.”

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak again.

They started walking away, speaking in hushed tones.

I stayed behind for a moment longer, staring into the distance.

The trees had grown very still. Not one rustle of leaves could be heard.

The Hollow Woods just stood silently, always watching for their next prey.

And somewhere in that darkness… he was still there.

Waiting.

I wrapped my arms around myself and turned toward the house. And for the first time since I returned, I realized I didn’t feel free. Not how I had when I was with him.