Whispers Beneath the Hollow

by Brinda Phokeerdass
Some voices never die. They only learn to hide.

When Orla Wren inherits a crumbling estate on the haunted coast of Mauritius, she expects dust, secrets, maybe even a ghost. She doesn't expect a ravine that breathes, a journal that bleeds, or a lullaby whispered through the mouth of a dead child.

Drawn into a world where memory is currency and the earth itself has teeth, Orla uncovers the truth her family buried: a legacy of blood offerings, colonial guilt, and a pact with an ancient spirit that sleeps beneath the banyan roots. But the Hollow is waking—and it remembers every name her ancestors tried to forget.

As drums echo from the cave and the extinct dodo stirs in dreams, Orla must decide whether to break the cycle—or become its next offering.

Visceral, poetic, and richly atmospheric, Whispers Beneath the Hollow is a tropical gothic tale of inheritance, extinction, and the voices we silence to survive.