Who is Addison Black?

Little is known of the man they call Addison Black.

 

No record of his birth exists. Yet for more than a century, whispers of his name have echoed through Blackmere Hollow.

 

Black was a writer and photographer, long rumoured to be the author behind The Blackmere Verses - a collection of rhyming verse said to expose the darkest secrets of the Hollow.

 

His subjects were far from ordinary. Without summons or invitation, he would appear wherever death touched the Hollow, or was about to. Sometimes to capture the recently departed.

Sometimes those who remained. Sometimes what lingered between. His lens saw what others did not.

 

Black's origins remain disputed. Some claim he was born near the mist-line, where our world thins and Blackmere bleeds through.

Others insist he was not a man at all but the Hollow itself, sent to mark the living and collect the dead. 

 

He vanished after his final commission, a group portrait never found. His camera was discovered in an empty parlour, plates still wet.

The developed images showed only chairs.

 

Over a century later, his photos have begun to surface. Unsigned yet unmistakable, and on their reverse, fragments of rhyme.

Some scrawled, some elegant. As if the photos themselves are desperate to reveal their secrets.

 

Many believe these fragments are pieces of the original Verses, scattered, hidden, waiting to be restored. That when the right pieces are assembled, the full works will reveal itself.

Some call them warnings. Others whisper they are maps. A growing number believe they are keys.

 

As for Black himself? Some say he never left the Hollow.

Some say it never let him go.

 

— ❖ —

 

Unverified Sightings

 

“A woman swore he sat at her table every full moon. ‘He never eats. Never speaks. Just writes in that damned book of his.’”  - Blackwood Gazette, 1953

 

“A figure was seen crossing the causeway at night. The watcher claimed he held no lantern, yet the light moved with him.”  - Journal entry, date smeared