Black Lung

A wrong turn in the Appalachian mountains. A town that doesn't exist on any map. And an ancient hunger that's been waiting in the dark.** Three college students-Gilly, Cricket, and Wendy-just wanted to see a waterfall before heading back to campus after fall break. One detour. One breakdown. One town they'll wish they'd never found. Hallow's Gap appears out of the fog like something from another time. The ash never stops falling. The residents are too welcoming. The sheriff watches them a little too closely. And no matter how hard they try, they can't leave. **Something is very wrong in Hallow's Gap.** Deep beneath the mountains, in flooded mine shafts and crumbling tunnels, something ancient lives in the coal seams. Something that breathes. Something that infects. And it's been feeding on this town for generations, turning its people into extensions of itself-hollow shells that walk and talk and follow orders they don't understand. **The infection starts with a cough.** As the students uncover the horrifying truth about what lives beneath Hallow's Gap, they realize they're not dealing with a disease. They're dealing with something far older than the mountains themselves. Something that remembers. Something that spreads through every breath of ash-filled air. **And it's already inside them.** Now, trapped in a nightmare of body horror and creeping paranoia, the three friends must fight not just for escape, but for their very humanity. Because in Hallow's Gap, the mine gives and the mine takes. And what it takes, it never gives back. **The Deep Breath has been waiting. And it needs new lungs.** *For fans of The Ruins, The Troop, and Annihilation comes a visceral folk horror tale steeped in Appalachian dread. If you love slow-burn atmospheric terror, parasitic nightmares that burrow under your skin, and stories that leave you gasping for clean air, BLACK LUNG will consume you from the inside out.*