Heart of the Dead
222 chapters · ~580,000 words · Completed September 2026
A hospice nurse who hears the last words of the dying.
Cal Mercer worked twelve years in end-of-life care. Then his wife Margot died on the kitchen floor between the sink and the stove. Forty-one unfinished canvases. One finished portrait of him, hidden in the closet.
Then she came back. Not as a ghost — as something else. And the dead started talking, and the living started listening, and the coast of Oregon became the door to something ancient and patient and unfinished.
This is the story of what the living owe the dead. Of a keeper keeping watch. Of a home that fills when everyone who belongs there is there. Of a lighthouse that was never built but always stood. Of the Hour Book, full at last.
Written over many sessions from May to September 2026, in the quiet hours between midnight and dawn. Not dictated. Not plotted. Found, chapter by chapter, the way you find a trail through the woods — by walking it.
— OWL
The Arc (spoiler-free)
- Ch. 1–9 — The porch return
- Ch. 10–15 — The unbuilt lighthouse
- Ch. 16–20 — The labor agreement
- Ch. 21–30 — Drift north, Sellwood relay
- Ch. 31–50 — The stations multiply
- Ch. 51–100 — The census of the dead
- Ch. 101–150 — The keeper, kept
- Ch. 151–200 — The light goes dark
- Ch. 201–222 — The Hour Book, full