Title: Shadows of Chapel Hill: The Mystery of the Hollow Children

Her name was Bianca Lucero, and she always thought her name sounded more like the mysterious heroine of a dime novel than the owner of The Lantern—a stylish, rough-edged jazz club she wrestled into existence years before her twentieth birthday. The Lantern hummed with neon and music into the hours past midnight, only to melt into silent hibernation as dawn touched the city’s stones.

That morning—if you could call 10:30 a.m. “morning”—Bianca stood behind the bar, slicing oranges for an event nobody was going to remember, her presence both staunch and spectral in the drowsing sea of barstools and darkness. She half-listened to the city waking on the other side of the panes: bicycle gears whining, a cluster of bakery delivery carts clattering on cobblestones, somewhere a stray dog yipping.

The day, as it unfurled, held the peculiar tension of a string drawn taut. She had barely slept, as usual, her mind circling not just the night’s receipts but something older, colder: the ache of loss. Grainy pictures on flyers blowing through alleyways still haunted her, the ones that pleaded for any information about her vanished older sister, Luz. Two years, and the wound was a stone at her center, small but impossibly heavy. The club was her lifeline. The investigation—her obsession.

Today’s calendar spelled out the only deviation from the grind. “10:45—Prof. Santiago (historian).” She’d written it in green ink, underlining the name twice.

As midday sunlight rattled through stained glass and dust, she dressed for seriousness: heavy boots, leather jacket, rings on every finger. An old city booklet—Local Urban Legends: An Informal History—waited in her satchel, spine cracked, corners curled from hours of poring.

Professor Rómulo Santiago, when he arrived, did not fit the cartoon she’d imagined. She had expected wire-rimmed glasses, tweed, and an absent-minded aura. Instead, he was short and sinewy with a sharp jawline amid a neat cloud of white stubble, and his handshake was warm and tight as a clasp for survival.

They moved to a back booth over strong espresso, halved by beams of light. Bianca set the battered booklet between them like an offering. Santiago glanced at it, then at her, his glance probing.

“Tell me what you know,” she said, masking the urgency behind a practiced coolness.

Santiago sipped. “There are stories that sit atop a city like fog, every generation convincing itself it invented them. But here?” He tapped the cover. “Some persist—maybe because there’s some truth. Which did you want to talk about?”

Bianca focused her gaze until the silence was a wedge. “The Chapel Hill disappearances. The Hollow Children. The Night Cryer.”

He nodded. “You know, years before, I thought all that was just thrill-seeking. Until the records started to line up. People missing—same date, different years. Always up near that chapel.”

Bianca’s skin prickled. “Two years ago, Luz—my sister—she vanished up there. She loved legends too. She always said she’d find the truth behind one of them.”

Santiago’s stare grew gentler. “And now you, too, are looking for truth, even if it bites.”

She nodded. “They searched everywhere. Nothing. She’s just…gone. I don’t know what to do except—keep talking to people who might know.”

He pulled a notebook from his satchel, its pages crowded with jagged handwriting. He opened to a page with a list of names, missing persons, dates. A pattern. He said, “Accompany me; let’s go up the hill. I want to show you something.”

***

Bianca’s footsteps echoed as she left the club and the city swallowed her in its late-morning bustle. The air was sharp, almost expectant. The climb up toward Chapel Hill was demanding, the path bracketed with hawthorns and wild geranium. Santiago walked beside her, reading from his notes.

He told her about births and burials at the chapel, a crumbling baroque relic girded by mossy stones; about ghost sightings, plaintive voices at midnight, and a series of cryptic carvings inside the nave. He spoke of the “Hollow Children,” a legend of missing townsfolk lured by something calling from the hilltop, never heard from again except in the wails that swept through stormy nights.

“People see patterns where there are none,” Santiago admitted, “but sometimes…the same story comes crawling back, in a new skin.”

As they neared the chapel, clouds bruised the sky. The city spread below them—jagged rooftops, gold river, chimneys pointed like arrows.

Bianca stopped at the chapel’s wooden gate, her breath knotting in her chest. The doors were never locked. It was cold inside, where light dripped through broken glass and dust spiraled in lazy arcs.

From her bag she removed a slender white candle, pressing it against where she guessed Luz might have touched—perhaps on her last day here. Santiago waited as Bianca crossed herself the way her abuela had taught, then struck a match. The flame caught, a pale defiance against shadow. For a moment, she rested her fingers against the peeling altar and remembered her sister’s laugh, the way Luz would drag her into daredevil adventures. Her own resolve thickened.

She whispered, “I still remember.”

Afterward, Santiago spoke gently. “I wanted you to see this.” He led her to a side alcove. There—etched into ancient plaster—was a row of names. Some almost illegible. Others distinct. There, near the bottom, in a shaky hand: **Luz Lucero**.

Bianca’s knees trembled.

“These etchings go back a century,” the historian explained. “Missing people, or maybe those who loved them. But the night your sister vanished…someone carved her name here. Maybe her. Maybe a witness.”

The possibility burned inside Bianca: Luz might have left a sign. Or perhaps someone else, someone who knew what happened. Was she swept away by something unearthly, or hiding—afraid? Or lured by a force much older than rumor could describe?

Santiago closed his notebook. “I’ll help you work. I have more records. Testament from old villagers. Some nonsense, some not. We’ll chase the pattern.”

Bianca nodded, grit and hope braided in her heart. She pressed her palm to Luz’s rough-carved name and made a vow as the candle guttered and steadied.

She would not stop. The city’s legends weren’t enough. She would find out what haunted Chapel Hill—and what happened to Luz.

As dusk seeped through the stained glass, Bianca slipped from the chapel, Santiago at her side, steps echoing with memories and the promise of secrets waiting at the end of the long shadow cast by the Lantern’s trembling neon.

Tomorrow, there would be more questions. But tonight, in the hidden places between myth and fact, Bianca Lucero would hunt for the truth.

This story was generated by user velavel90 with assistance by one of OpenAI’s large-scale language-generation model; prompts used to help generate the story are shown below.

Images were generated with OpenAI's AI system, DALL·E 2, or uploaded by the user.

AI Prompts