The Green Lantern of Marrow Hollow

The town of Marrow Hollow sat inside a ring of hills so old the maps forgot to name them. Everyone who lived there knew one rule before they could tie their own shoes.

Never follow the humming past the orchard fence after dark.

The orchard belonged to no one anymore. It had belonged, once, to a family called Thorne, who vanished in a single night nearly ninety years ago. Only the trees remained, twisted like arthritic fingers reaching for a sky that never seemed to look back.

Locals said the ground beneath the orchard was hollow — not empty, but *hungry*. Every few years, without warning, it would hum. A low sound, felt more in the teeth than heard in the ears.

And a child would go missing.

Not run away. Not taken by any hand that left footprints. Simply gone, as if the world had folded shut around them like a page closing on a story mid-sentence.

Mira Calloway had grown up hearing this, the way other children heard fairy tales about wolves. She was eleven when her little brother Sam started sleepwalking.

It began small. Sam humming in his sleep, a tune nobody had taught him. Then he'd wake at the kitchen table with dirt under his nails and no memory of leaving his bed.