Aug 13, 2026 · 31 min · 7 segments
**The Study of Quiet Things is a serialised gothic folk-horror mystery, written & narrated by Harriet Loveluck.** Sophie Hamilton's twin is missing, and the last trace of her leads to a crumbling…
The town is small and charmless, with as many shops boarded up as not.
Slabs of pale plywood block the windows of dilapidated stores covered in artless graffiti, both faded and fresh.
Other storefront windows are covered up by old local newspaper pages.
Sophie scans them as she passes, the dates, the headings, the barely visible images.
Nothing mentions the death of teens.
Sophie meanders through the town, the narrow streets and intersections reminding her of a childhood memory she would rather forget.
Lost within the claustrophobic and confusing constraints of a densely packed conifer maze, trying to find Jessica.
The memory floods back like a cruel tsunami.
Insidious and intoxicating, she remembers running breathless this way and that through cruel hedgerows, backtracking through never-ending loops and circles.
Perhaps if it were a summer's day, kindly parents of other children might have guided them back together, but it hadn't been a summer's day.
It was winter's evening, a southerly storm seeing even local birds fleeing.
Seven years old and utterly alone.
They should never have run away from their foster home to break into the maze, but mysteries had always pulled at their hearts.
For a while, Sophie had given up trying to find the center, trying to find her twin, until Jessica called out Sophie's name again and again.
"Sophie, follow my voice.
This way, find me." Sophie followed the sound of her sister's voice while darkness encroached and nocturnal animals scuttled beneath her feet, but the pursuit proved as fruitless as the thorn-laden brambles, her frantic search leaving her slumped against the solid wall of thorns, huddling her arms around her knees as she tried calming her panicked breath, her little hands bloodied from clawing and scratching at the impossible thicket.
Both sisters sobbed on opposite sides of the same maze wall, so close, yet impossibly out of reach.
This is how Sophie feels now every time she sees her reflection, her identical twin there and not there all at the same time.
She watches her shadowy likeness within a cracked window of an empty shop where masking tape spiders outward, attempting to contain a fracture.
Sophie places her palm against the dull image of her own hand, and for a fraction of a second, her reflection seems to alter.
A small curl to her lips, a smile that does not belong to her in the muted depths of the shop, but it mutates, her features morphing, and all Sophie can see is Jessica's bloated face before it turns into Rhian, a split-open smile where her throat would be.
Sophie flinches.
"It's shock, that's all," she thinks.
"Shock and grief a- and too much death." She turns, shoving her hands deep into her pockets where her crime awaits in a plastic snap bag.
Even without the glare of Sergeant Peters upon her, she dare not open the contents, not here in these lonely streets where she feels the smolder of unseen eyes burning into flesh.
The town is small and charmless, with as many shops boarded up as not.
Slabs of pale plywood block the windows of dilapidated stores covered in artless graffiti, both faded and fresh.
Other storefront windows are covered up by old local newspaper pages.
Sophie scans them as she passes, the dates, the headings, the barely visible images.
Nothing mentions the death of teens.
Sophie meanders through the town, the narrow streets and intersections reminding her of a childhood memory she would rather forget.
Lost within the claustrophobic and confusing constraints of a densely packed conifer maze, trying to find Jessica.
The memory floods back like a cruel tsunami.
Insidious and intoxicating, she remembers running breathless this way and that through cruel hedgerows, backtracking through never-ending loops and circles.
Perhaps if it were a summer's day, kindly parents of other children might have guided them back together, but it hadn't been a summer's day.
It was winter's evening, a southerly storm seeing even local birds fleeing.
Seven years old and utterly alone.
They should never have run away from their foster home to break into the maze, but mysteries had always pulled at their hearts.
For a while, Sophie had given up trying to find the center, trying to find her twin, until Jessica called out Sophie's name again and again.
"Sophie, follow my voice.
This way, find me." Sophie followed the sound of her sister's voice while darkness encroached and nocturnal animals scuttled beneath her feet, but the pursuit proved as fruitless as the thorn-laden brambles, her frantic search leaving her slumped against the solid wall of thorns, huddling her arms around her knees as she tried calming her panicked breath, her little hands bloodied from clawing and scratching at the impossible thicket.
Both sisters sobbed on opposite sides of the same maze wall, so close, yet impossibly out of reach.
This is how Sophie feels now every time she sees her reflection, her identical twin there and not there all at the same time.
She watches her shadowy likeness within a cracked window of an empty shop where masking tape spiders outward, attempting to contain a fracture.
Sophie places her palm against the dull image of her own hand, and for a fraction of a second, her reflection seems to alter.
A small curl to her lips, a smile that does not belong to her in the muted depths of the shop, but it mutates, her features morphing, and all Sophie can see is Jessica's bloated face before it turns into Rhian, a split-open smile where her throat would be.
Sophie flinches.
"It's shock, that's all," she thinks.
"Shock and grief a- and too much death." She turns, shoving her hands deep into her pockets where her crime awaits in a plastic snap bag.
Even without the glare of Sergeant Peters upon her, she dare not open the contents, not here in these lonely streets where she feels the smolder of unseen eyes burning into flesh.
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