There are towns you pass by on long drives and forget the name of. Just a blur between trees and radio static. Blackridge isn't one of those towns.
You don't pass by Blackridge.
You end up there.
The kind of place that doesn't appear on GPS anymore. Buried in the Appalachian wilderness, surrounded by fog-slicked pine and jagged stone ridges. Most of its population? Either dead, missing, or pretending to be alive. People here don't ask questions. They watch, they wait, and they whisper behind cracked windows as if the walls are listening — because sometimes, they are.
Once a mining town in the early 1900s, Blackridge died decades ago when the last shaft collapsed, taking 39 men with it. The earth never gave back their bodies. Since then, something's festered beneath the soil — something old, something hungry. They call it folklore. Locals know better.
Every thirteen years, when the Harvest Moon turns red, The Slivers come back.
They aren't ghosts. They wear faces. Skin stitched like leather. Smiles carved too wide. Slivers of what they once were — miners, mothers, teenagers, even children — now hollowed out by the dark. They don't haunt. They hunt.
And this year? The blood moon is late.
It's hiding.
Waiting.
The old man in the rocking chair spoke like he was confessing to God, but there were no churches left in Blackridge. Just rusted bells and boarded doors.
"They said the last time it rose red, it rained teeth," he whispered, eyes cloudy and fixed on the treeline. "Not water. Teeth. Rattling on roofs like hail. And screams — not just from the victims. From the trees, from the earth, from underneath the goddamn floorboards."
He said this to no one. Or maybe to the girl tied up in the basement. The one with duct tape over her mouth and missing fingernails. She was still breathing. Barely.
"I told 'em we should've skipped the offering this time," he muttered. "But no. Sheriff said the rules are the rules. Gotta feed the ridge, or the ridge feeds on us."
The rocking chair creaked.
"Now the Ridge is starvin'. And it ain't picky no more."
Outside, the wind shifted. Trees bent as if bowing. Crows scattered. Somewhere distant, a church bell rang once.
No one had rung it in thirty years.
Welcome to Blackridge.
Population: Dying.
Tourism: None.
Survivors: We'll see.
The moon is almost full.
The countdown has begun.
And tonight, the soil is already thirsty.