When one farmer's dream of giant pumpkins goes wrong, an entire town learns how quickly hunger can grow teeth.

Richard Harrow only wanted to tinker. He was a farmer with a scientist's heart, mixing odd brews in jars and pouring them into his pumpkin patch in hopes of raising a harvest worth remembering. For a while, it worked; until the sweetest little pumpkin turned into something else. Something with a mouth. Something that learned faster than it should.

What began as whispers in the vines becomes a nightmare that eats its way into the marrow of a small community. Forced into the quarry for shelter, the townsfolk must survive nights filled with chewing in the dark, vines that never stop pressing against their barricades, and the unholy chorus of their own names sung back to them from the drains.

Led by a weary sheriff, a stubborn widow with a ledger full of rules, and an old man who taps wrong rhythms with his stick, the hollow learns survival is not in strength, but in crookedness: wrong songs, broken patterns, un-names spoken at dusk. And as the monster below grows more clever, one boy; called Daniel must learn how not to answer when the darkness itself calls his name.