They Wear Our Skins Now

 The first sign that something was wrong came when the radio died.  

Detective Daniel Harker had been driving through the backroads of Black Hollow for nearly an hour, chasing a lead on a missing persons case. The town wasn’t on most maps—just a cluster of rotting houses and a church with a crooked steeple, hidden deep in the Appalachian woods.  

Then, the static swallowed the last strains of the news broadcast. The engine sputtered. The headlights flickered.  

And then, silence.  

Daniel stepped out of the car, his breath fogging in the cold night air. The trees loomed like skeletal hands, clawing at the sky. The road behind him was empty. The road ahead vanished into shadow.  

That was when he saw them.  

The figures stood at the tree line—tall, too tall, their limbs stretched like pulled taffy. Their faces were smooth, blank, as if someone had forgotten to carve them features.  

And then, in perfect unison, they turned toward him.  

Daniel ran.  

Daniel didn’t remember how he got back to his car. One moment, he was sprinting through the underbrush, branches tearing at his skin. The next, he was behind the wheel, the engine roaring to life as if nothing had happened.  

The town of Black Hollow was just ahead.  

"Just a few questions," he told himself. "Then I’m gone."

But the streets were empty.  

Windows were boarded up. Doors hung open, swaying in the wind. The only sound was the creak of rusted hinges and the distant whisper of something moving in the dark.  

Then he saw the first body.  

It was slumped against the church steps—a man in a tattered sheriff’s uniform. His face was gone. Not torn off. Not decayed. Just… missing, as if it had never been there at all.  

Daniel’s hands shook as he pulled out his flashlight. The beam cut through the darkness, illuminating words scrawled in something dark and wet across the church doors:  

"THEY WEAR OUR SKINS NOW."

A sound behind him.  

A whisper.

"Daniel."

He turned.  

The thing that had been Sheriff Grady stood in the street, its face a hollow void. Its mouth stretched into a grin too wide for a human jaw.  

"You shouldn’t have come back."

Daniel took to his heels,

The streets twisted, houses melting into one another as if the town itself was alive. Shadows moved where they shouldn’t. Whispers slithered from the dark.  

He burst into an old diner, barricading the door behind him. The air smelled of rot and copper.  

Then he saw them.  

The townspeople sat in the booths, their heads lolling, their faces smooth and blank. Their fingers twitched in unison.  

One by one, they turned toward him.  

A woman in a waitress uniform stood, her neck cracking as she tilted her head.  

"You’re not one of us," she rasped.  

The others stood.  

Their mouths opened.  

And then they screamed —a sound like tearing metal and breaking bones.  

Daniel stumbled back, crashing through the kitchen doors.  

Something grabbed his ankle.  

He looked down.  

A child—or what had once been a child—clung to him, its face a featureless mask.  

"They’re coming," it giggled.  

The diner’s lights exploded.  

Darkness swallowed him whole.   

Daniel woke in the church.  

Candles flickered, casting long, writhing shadows. The pews were filled with figures—some human, some not.  

At the altar stood a man in a preacher’s robe, his face stretched into a grotesque smile.  

"You have been chosen," he hissed.  

Daniel’s hands were bound. His skin itched, as if something was moving beneath it. 

The preacher leaned in, his breath like rotting meat.  

"They hunger for faces."

A blade flashed.  

Pain erupted across Daniel’s cheeks.  

He screamed as his skin peeled away—not torn but unzipped as if it had never been his, to begin with.  

The last thing he saw was his own face, held in the preacher’s hands.  

And then the hollow ones began to chant.  

Three days later, a hiker found Daniel’s car abandoned on the road to Black Hollow.  

The town wasn’t on any map.  

But if you drive those backroads at night, you might see him.  

Taller than he should be.  

Smiling wider than a man can.  

And if you listen closely, you’ll hear the whispers:  

Join us.

AROWOLO ADEYEMI OLASUNKANMI