Blake Hollow Barn Novels & Stories

The old lighthouse had been dark for years. Perched on the jagged edge of Widow’s Point, the Black Hollow Lighthouse had been abandoned since the night Keeper Alden Rowe vanished without a trace. No one had taken the position after that. Some said he’d fallen. Others whispered the sea had claimed him for a debt long unpaid. Mara didn’t believe in sea-debts. But she knew what she saw. Three flashes. Evenly spaced. Deliberate. The pattern repeated. Her little brother, Toby, burst into her room. “Did you see it?”

Each stroke of the pedal takes me farther from the cracked wall, the trees closing in as the servants’ quarters fade behind me. The night breeze is cold, kissing my face and blowing my hair back every now and then. The moon is just a thin crescent tonight, barely enough light for me. But I know where I’m going. A while later, the bushy path ends and opens up into a stretch of empty wheat fields. Finally. After riding past the fields, I arrive at the old barn sitting abandoned at the edge of the property. The poor structure has been falling apart for years, abandoned by the Hartville family after they relocated to another pack.

The booming echoes rolling back from distant forests turned the deer in flight and brought them galloping back toward us, the buck leaping right over our heads. Dropping into the dirt, we held our breath and listened, but heard only the wind flittering lightly through the trees, and mosquitoes buzzing around our ears. Seeing nothing, we advanced to the edge of the trees, then to the cars, and up a lane bordered by giant pecan trees. To our left we saw the silhouette of a sagging two-story farm house—dark, heavy with the sorrow of a century of tears, a porch stretching across its front. Straight ahead, there was a wide barn, easily forty feet high at its peak, its roof sloping nearly to the g

The air smells like horses and male sweat, sweetened by the heather that grows in the surrounding mountains. A little way ahead of them stands James with a large white horse. Its mane is the color of moonlight. He’s looking away from his men, up at the sky. Not far from him, I spot Blake. He’s dressed all in black, and stands still among the chaos. The wind ruffles his dark hair. His expression is unreadable. A flash of anger surges through me. I walk to him, and tilt my head. There is no smirk on his lips. He emanates darkness.

The kind of smell that stuck in your nose for days. "Shit," Robin muttered. The barn stood against the tree line, old wood gone gray with weather. Light spilled from the open doors. Two men stood guard, rifles casual in their hands. They straightened when they saw Cole. We passed the chicken coops first. Empty. Then the sheep pen—handful of bodies piled in the corner, covered in lime but that wasn’t even not enough to hide the bloat. Goats next. Same story. Even a few cows, though those they'd dragged further out, probably because of the size.

My second was the strange quiet—the clubhouse wasn’t silent, but the roar of engines and voices had dulled to a hum. I sat up, rubbed my face, and pulled myself to the window. The lot below was busy already—men moving around the bikes, checking engines, voices carrying in short bursts of laughter and command. The smell of oil drifted up faintly through the cracked glass. And Blake was there. He leaned against his bike, arms crossed, posture casual but not really. His eyes scanned the lot like he was counting shadows, like nothing escaped his notice. I couldn’t hear his voice from here, but I could see the way men adjusted when he spoke, the way they listened without argument.

Emma told Sarah she had a group project meeting—another lie that tasted like ash—and jogged to the far end of the student lot. Blake’s Rover was idling, windows fogged. She climbed in, soaked, hair plastered to her cheeks. He didn’t say anything at first. Just drove out of the lot and turned toward the old service road behind the football field, the one nobody used in bad weather. The car smelled like his cologne and wet fabric. When he finally parked under a cluster of trees, the rain hammered the roof like it wanted inside. Blake killed the engine. “I saw the post. Madison’s a cunt. I’m handling it.”

They each carried their flashlights with them as they made their way over there. A barn of the darkest brown, the sort that talked of home and hearth, rose merrily atop the verdant hill where free-ranging wild horses were a familiar sight. The barn sprouted on the hill among the grass and the meadow flowers as if one day it came up from some beautiful seed. This gave the appearance that the barn had sprung out of nowhere.

She had removed the small fur wrap I had gotten her so she wouldn’t freeze outside. It was nice and warm in the barn, and I understood why this place was highly sought after for events—the location was incredible, with rolling hills under the mountains offering a fairytale-like scenery. Lena and Chuck’s wedding pictures would be breathtaking. They had completely rebuilt the barn from the inside. It made me think of the tents in Harry Potter, which looked ordinary and boring from the outside, but when you walked in, they were big and comfortable with everything you could wish for and more.