Set deep in the mountains of Western North Carolina during the sweltering summer of 1993, Hollow Folk is a lyrical, atmospheric horror romance by Southern Appalachian author Andrew K. Clark.
Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Hollow Folk by Andrew K. Clark, which releases on September 29th 2026.
The night shift at the Holloway was supposed to be quiet. When grad student Ethan Ray clocks in as night auditor at the aging Holloway mountain resort, he expects paperwork, silence, and a paycheck. Instead, reddish-brown lights bleed across the Appalachian sky. Hard winds whip through the trees without making a sound, and mysterious owl gargoyles come to life.
At 3 a.m., every clock stops. Trapped inside with his co-workers, Kal and Teresa, Ethan realizes the hotel isn’t just old. It’s a boundary. Something ancient has been waiting and is now awake. To escape, they must uncover the Holloway’s secrets, even as unexpected love blossoms between Ethan and Teresa. The problem is, the visions haunting each of them carry the same warning: someone in the hotel cannot be trusted. Gothic romance meets Appalachian folk horror, where the mountains are watching and the dark leaves marks.
EXCERPT
Chapter 1 – The Holloway
August, 1993
It all started with the wind. Wind so blunt I fought to light my cigarette, no matter which way I twisted my body and struck the Zippo. When finally I got one lit and took a drag, the cherry streaked bright from the force of it, all that wind. August was normally a time of stagnant hot air, even up on Crook Mountain, where I worked as a night auditor at the old Holloway Hotel. But that night, the wind seemed to think it March, whipping back my hair and slapping the hem of my uniform suit jacket against my thigh.
I pulled the side of the jacket up to shield my next drag. It had become a nightly ritual of mine, after I got the first round of daily reports printed off, to sit on the rusting iron bench nestled in the small flower garden just down the bank from the hotel entrance. The flowers sagged in the August heat, one yellow coneflower catching my eye, its drooping petals stippled with odd black dots. From the bench, I could watch the circular drive out front for arriving guest cars and spy through the high windows to the lobby. If a guest came down needing extra towels or a toothbrush, I could stamp out my cigarette and be back at the counter in under a minute.
The rising mountain ridges to the east were still as a painting. The copse of oak trees across the drive that sloped down to the first parking lot also sat perfectly still. Too still. Not a branch swayed, nor a leaf stirred. Come to think of it, I didn’t hear the nightly call of the whippoorwill above in the high branches. No birdsong, no sound made by all that wind. There was no slap of the halyard against the metal flagpole out front. The flag sat straight, as if caught in the same wind, but it did not move, as if held taut by some unseen hand.
I’m not the first night shift worker to have their eyes play tricks on them as the late hours stretch into morning. But the more I stared, even as the wind scoured my eyes, the more I was sure the entire world beyond me, and my flapping jacket, was still.
I fought against a wave of anxiety that wanted to rise in my chest. My grandma always called that feeling the nerves. “Are the nerves bothering you, Ethan? Sit down and listen to the birdsong whenever the nerves bother you, and it will calm you right off.”
I listened to her advice now but only heard the low hoot of a lone owl in the distance. Maybe the fucking owl ate the whippoorwill?
The sound of my flapping jacket made me want to pull out my hair, so I took it off and immediately calmed, the cool air biting the skin under my white Oxford. I hadn’t realized I’d been sweating.
I grabbed the walkie-talkie on my belt. “Kal,” I said. “Get your ass out here.” I needed Kal, the security guard, outside. Needed someone else to see this shit. Though I didn’t know what would ease my anxiety more, him seeing the same things or him not seeing them.
The walkie-talkie just hissed back at me.
I looked up at the hotel, which loomed over me like a dark cathedral.
The Holloway had seen better days, but the building itself was beautiful. Both the exterior and interior were designed to imitate the Gothic architecture the Victorians loved so much, with ornate buttresses and elaborate arches over the windows. There was a balcony wrapping the top floor, where the suites were located, and at each of the four corners, there perched a winged gargoyle. The Holloway would have fit in perfectly on a block in any southern city, but looked out of place on an isolated mountainside, overlooking a valley of country houses, with farms on one side and thick forests on the other.
I started up the hill toward the lobby when something struck me from behind.
I fell face-first in the grass, my head just missing the creek rocks lining the staircase. I couldn’t catch my breath for a second, the wind knocked out of me. I pushed up onto my elbows.
Feathers floated in the air. One stuck to my forehead and dangled in my eyes. There was a large mound of gray on the ground a few feet from me. I rolled away from it and stood, a drum circle rising in my chest.
I walked over, slowly, toward the mound of gray and brownish-red feathers. A bird. A huge fucking bird had struck me. I pushed it with the toe of my wingtip.
“What in the goddamned hell?” Kal said behind me.
I jerked so hard the world tilted. “This fucking thing just hit me.”
“It’s bloody,” he said. “You got blood on your shirt, right there on your shoulder.”
I felt the fabric, slick with it, sticky and tar-like.
Kal stepped to the bird and flipped it over, holding out its wings. It was massive, its wingspan at least five feet.
“It’s one of them Horned Owls,” he said. “Wait till we tell everybody about this. Ethan got hit by an owl when he was outside a-smokin’. You’re lucky this big bastard didn’t hit you square in the head. Might would be calling for an ambulance.” Kal felt the feathers around the breast and legs of the bird. “I don’t see a wound nowhere.”
Its eyes were frozen open, golden bronze in the moonlight. I put my hand to its breast. “Still warm.” At the top of one wing, I saw a long barb protruding. I didn’t know owls had those. As a matter of fact, I was pretty sure they didn’t. It looked bat-like. I rubbed my eyes, thinking they were playing tricks on me like with the wind before. If Kal saw it, he didn’t say anything.
