Chapter 3: Lot 8

Lot 8

Sleep didn't come. My mother's warning, laced with a familiar, deep-seated terror, played on a loop in my head. Some graves are best left undisturbed. It wasn't a warning to protect me; it was a plea born of fear. She knew. She knew what was out there in the woods, what we’d seen. And she knew what happened to Derrick.

My apartment had become hostile territory. Every creak of the building, every hum from the refrigerator, was a potential prelude to another knock. The feeling of being watched had solidified, pressing in on me from all sides, a constant, low-grade pressure behind my eyes. I couldn't stay here. I couldn't wait for it to come knocking again. Therapy and journaling were containment strategies. This required a forward assault. I needed to go back to the source.

The drive east from Austin was a descent. The manicured suburbs gave way to strip malls, then to cracked highways flanked by sun-scorched fields. The further I drove, the more the landscape seemed to sag under the weight of the Texas heat and its own forgotten history. An hour and a half later, I passed the faded, bullet-pocked sign: WELCOME TO HOGEYE. POP. 412. The number had been crossed out with black spray paint, and a sloppy ‘350?’ was scrawled underneath. It felt generous.

Hogeye was a town caught in its last gasp. The main street was a gallery of failure: a boarded-up diner with faded pictures of milkshakes in the window, a gas station whose pumps were shrouded in cobwebs, a hardware store with a collapsed roof. It was a place of ghosts long before I brought mine back with me.

I didn't need a map to find the trailer park. My hands remembered the turns. Past the water tower, left at the dead dogwood tree. The entrance was still there, marked by two crumbling brick pillars. The sign that had once read "Pine Ridge Estates" was long gone. Now, it was just a field of weeds interrupted by the occasional, sad-looking trailer.

My memory was of a place teeming with chaotic life—kids on bikes, barking dogs, the sound of arguing and laughter spilling from open doorways. Now, silence reigned. A profound, hollow silence that swallowed the buzz of the insects. Most of the lots were empty, marked only by concrete pads being slowly consumed by nature. The few trailers that remained looked like beached, rusting whales.

My truck’s engine rumbled, too loud in the stillness. I drove slowly down the crumbling asphalt lane, my eyes scanning the faded lot numbers painted on posts. 4… 6… 7… and there. Lot 8.

Derrick's old home.

I stopped the truck, my hands gripping the steering wheel. I expected to see another empty lot, or a derelict, collapsing shell like the Esther house. Instead, I saw a trailer that, while old, was stubbornly alive. The same model as all the others, but the rust spots had been painted over. There were potted plants on the cinder block steps, wilting slightly in the heat. A battered sedan was parked in the gravel beside it. Someone was living here. In Derrick's grave.

A knot of something—anger, dread, trespass—tightened in my chest. I killed the engine and got out. The truck door slammed with the force of a gunshot, and I instantly regretted the noise. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, the screen door of the trailer creaked open.

A woman stepped out onto the small porch. She was in her mid-twenties, with long dark hair pulled back in a messy ponytail and an intelligent, wary look in her eyes. She wore jeans and a plain grey t-shirt, and held a thick book with her finger marking her page. She wasn't what I expected, but then, I didn't know what I expected.

“Can I help you?” she asked. Her voice was steady, but her posture was tense. She was sizing me up, taking in my military bearing, the tight set of my jaw, the way my hands were clenched at my sides.

“I’m looking for the Hayes family,” I said, the name tasting like rust in my mouth.

Her brow furrowed slightly. “Don’t know them. No one by that name has lived here since I moved in, and that was three years ago.”

“They lived here before that. A long time ago,” I clarified, taking a step closer. “Their son was… a friend of mine. Derrick.”

Her gaze sharpened, a flicker of recognition, or maybe just curiosity. She shifted her weight, leaning against the doorframe. “You’re a long way from home, whoever you are. This place isn’t exactly a tourist destination.”

“Jordan Daniels. My family used to live on Lot 12,” I offered. “We moved away. I was just… in the area.” It was a weak lie and we both knew it.

She studied my face for a long moment, her eyes missing nothing. I could see her piecing things together—the out-of-place truck, my tense energy, the specific lot I’d come to. She seemed to come to a decision.

“Well, Jordan Daniels from Lot 12, the Hayes family is long gone. There’s just me. Chloe Pierce.” She didn’t offer a hand to shake. “What do you want here?”

The question was blunt, direct. I decided to match it. “This place… Lot 8. The Esther house at the end of the lane. Do you know the stories?”

Chloe’s expression didn't change, but a new tension entered her frame. She tapped the spine of her book against her thigh. “Everyone in Hogeye knows the stories. Ghost stories. A way to explain why a town is dying. It’s easier than blaming the economy.”

“Do you believe them?” I pressed, my voice lower.

She finally looked away from me, her gaze drifting towards the dark treeline that bordered the back of her lot. “I believe this is a strange place. I believe this trailer, specifically, has… quirks.”

The careful, academic word hung in the air between us. It was an invitation.

“Quirks?” I asked.

She sighed, a quick exhalation of breath, and finally met my eyes again. The guarded mask was gone, replaced by a flicker of exhaustion, of shared experience. “Look, I don’t know who you are, or what you’re really doing back here, but you look like you’ve seen a ghost. And since I moved into this trailer, I’ve been feeling like I’m living with one.”

My heart rate kicked up a notch. “What have you experienced?”

“Little things, at first,” she said, her voice dropping as if she were confessing a secret. “Taps on the windows at night, when there’s no one there. The feeling of being watched when I’m in the backyard. I’ll put a book down on the counter, turn around, and it’ll be on the floor.”

It was happening here, too. To her. I wasn't crazy. The relief was so profound it almost buckled my knees.

“And the smell,” she continued, her nose wrinkling. “Sometimes it’s so strong it wakes me up. Copper. Like a fresh nosebleed. And rot. Like something died under the floorboards a long time ago.”

The same metallic scent I remembered from the Esther house. The same location as the knocks. Under the floor.

“I’ve lived in old places my whole life,” Chloe said, wrapping her arms around herself despite the heat. “I know the sounds they make. This is different. It’s a presence. An energy. I’ve started calling it the ‘Hogeye hum.’ A baseline of wrongness you just get used to, until something turns up the volume.” She gave me a pointed look. “You feel like something that just turned up the volume.”