Lights Over Hollow Tree
What happens when the unexpected comes to a small Appalachian town?
This story is part of my 31 for 31 Halloween short story challenge. To read the rest of these stories, checkout Midnight at the Macabrery.
If there were smaller towns than Hollow Tree, you’d be hard-pressed to find them. Sitting on little more than a couple of square miles of a sparse ridgeline overlooking the Sauline River, Hollow tree was the kind of town that had a stoplight and little else. The main part of the township was just two streets, Main Street and Appleton Ave, both of which were mainly lined with shops long closed down, or slumping houses with equally old and slumped residents inside.
Hollow Tree had never seen what anyone would call a boom, but it had thrived in the years right after the war. Families seeking a better life away from the hustle of the city brought their children to Hollow Tree and built houses and shops. The schools weren’t far behind, a primary school and a secondary school, with just enough seats for the three or four dozen puils who took their studies there in the 1950s.
But things changed quickly in the sixties and Hollow Tree began to fade. The children raised there went off to college and, allured by the dawning age of plenty, felt themselves pulled back toward the cities their…
