Silence

Some silences are warnings.

Mara Cole is a child welfare assessor - a woman trained to speak, to coax, to draw the truth out of frightened people. When she's assigned to evaluate a remote Appalachian family who communicates only by chalkboard and refuses to make a sound, she assumes trauma. She assumes a cult. She assumes she's seen worse.

She hasn't.

Deep in Briar Hollow, the woods don't just hear you. They remember. And in the dark at the treeline, something is learning the sound of her voice - practicing it, perfecting it, growing more like her with every word she speaks.

The Kincaid family knows what she doesn't. They've been keeping their vow of silence for generations, and they are desperate for her to understand: every syllable she speaks in this hollow is feeding something she cannot see. Something patient. Something almost ready.

SILENCE is literary folk horror for readers who like their dread slow, their twists devastating, and their endings impossible to forget.

The hollow listens.

From the author of the Darkwood Legacy Series.

R.D. Parrish is an American author whose work blends atmospheric horror, Southern Gothic melancholy, and deeply human storytelling. A Marine Corps veteran and longtime resident of the American South, Parrish draws inspiration from the quiet places-flooded fields, forgotten towns, and the heavy, humid stillness where memory clings to the earth.

His debut novel, Hollow Ground, is an intimate rural-horror tale set in the fictional Mississippi Delta community of Gethsemane Parish, where relentless rain awakens an ancient, listening intelligence beneath the soil. Parrish is known for crafting horror that is slow-burning, emotional, and rooted in character-stories where fear emerges not from monsters, but from misunderstanding, grief, and the fragile ways humans try to connect.

Parrish writes with a focus on atmosphere, psychological depth, and the strange beauty of the natural world. When he isn't writing, he enjoys time with his family, exploring small-town history, and working on the next haunting story set in the world just beneath our feet.

He lives in the United States with his wife, De.