The Hollow Gathering

It’s been over a year since Hollow Creek, and I still can’t sleep without a light on. I tell myself it wasn’t real, that I imagined it, hallucinated it—but every time I close my eyes, I hear that whisper again. The one that came from nowhere, and yet felt like it was crawling directly into my skull.

It all started with a simple plan—six old friends, now scattered in different cities and jobs, meeting for a peaceful weekend. No phones, no noise. Just quiet woods, a campfire, and the kind of conversations that used to last until 3 a.m.

James had booked the cabin. It was old and isolated, about 15 miles off the main road. The kind of place you’d find in a horror movie trailer—but we laughed it off when we got there. Elise even joked, “All that’s missing is a cursed book and a dumb group chant.”

That joke didn’t age well.

We found the book the first night—behind the stone fireplace, hidden like someone didn’t want it found. It didn’t feel like leather. It felt… moist. Brittle. Like stretched-out skin cured by time. We tried to convince ourselves it was some antique prop, a Halloween leftover. But it smelled like old blood.

James read from it around the fire, thinking it was funny. Just a few lines. Strange words we didn’t understand. There was a short silence, and then the fire flared—just for a second. We all jumped, laughed nervously, and brushed it off.

We should have left right then.



That night, I heard whispering.

Not outside, not in the trees. Inside the walls.

I thought it was part of a dream—until I turned over and saw Elise standing in the hallway, her face pale, hands shaking. “They’re inside,” she whispered. “They’re already here.”

Around 3 a.m., she started screaming. When we ran to her room, she was clawing at the wall, bleeding from her nails, mumbling, “Don’t blink. That’s when they move.”

We thought she was having a breakdown. But then came the knocking—soft at first, like fingertips tapping drywall. Then louder. Slower. Deliberate. From the inside.

By morning, none of us were sleeping. We searched the cabin. Nothing. We tried to leave—but the cars wouldn’t start. Batteries dead. No signal. The dirt road behind us had caved in, washed away overnight. There was no way out.



That evening, Samantha vanished.

She’d gone to the outhouse with a flashlight. Ten minutes passed. Then twenty. We searched the area and found her flashlight at the edge of the woods—still on. Just lying there. Her shoe was ten feet away, soaked in a black, oily liquid that didn’t smell like anything natural. It burned my fingers to touch it.

That’s when the panic set in. James started shouting. Elise started crying. We all wanted to go—anywhere—but the forest around us felt wrong. I know how that sounds. But I swear, the trees weren’t in the same place. Paths we’d taken earlier were gone.

The forest had changed.



Then we saw one of them.

We didn’t see it clearly. That’s the worst part. It never let us.

It stood at the edge of the woods—tall, maybe seven feet. Human-shaped but blurred, like it was vibrating too fast to fully exist in our world. Its skin looked like it was made of mist and meat, covered in eyes that blinked in different directions. Its mouth—no, mouths—were vertical slits stretching across where its chest should’ve been. All of them opening. Slowly.

It didn’t chase us at first. It just watched.

That was somehow worse.

We ran back to the cabin. Boarded the windows. Locked every door. But it didn’t matter.

They didn’t need doors.

They came through the cracks, the shadows, the seams between blinking. They weren’t fast, but they moved when we looked away. And they whispered. Oh god, the whispers—like a dozen voices reading your thoughts out loud, but twisted.



That night, they took James.

He was sitting by the fire, holding a kitchen knife. He blinked—and when we looked again, he was gone. Just… gone. No sound. No scream.

Mark and Elise and I ran. We tried cutting through the forest. But no matter how far we ran, we always ended up back at the clearing.

They were playing with us.

At one point, I looked behind me—and Mark was gone, too. No noise. Nothing but the whispers, closer now, like breath on my neck. Elise and I kept running, but she tripped, and when I turned around, the creature was already over her.

It didn’t attack her. It just leaned in.

And she screamed until she couldn’t anymore.



I woke up on the roadside three days later, ten miles from the cabin. My clothes torn. My feet swollen. No idea how I got there.

They never found Elise. Or Samantha. Or James.

The only thing left in that cabin when the police arrived?

The book.

It was open.

Waiting.