The Hollow House

The Hollow House

Every town has a place people pretend doesn’t exist. In the tiny, rain-soaked village of Gravenmoor, it was 42 Bellamy Street.

They called it The Hollow House.

It stood on the edge of the woods like a carcass—half-rotted wood, shattered windows, a porch that groaned like it remembered pain. The kids dared each other to touch the front steps. Adults whispered stories about people who entered and never returned. Some said the house breathed. Others claimed it waited.

No one ever moved in.

Until Mara Langley did.

She arrived with a U-Haul and too many secrets. No one knew much about her, only that she was quiet, alone, and wore gloves even in summer. Some said she was running from something. Others said she was chasing it.

Mara didn’t believe in curses. She believed in darkness—the kind you could touch. The kind that followed you.

The Hollow House called to her the moment she saw it.

Its front door opened without a creak. The air inside was cold, like the exhale of something old and angry. Dust floated in golden beams of sunlight slashing through broken shutters. The wallpaper peeled in long strips like flayed skin. But Mara didn’t flinch. She smiled.

"This," she whispered, "will do."

The first night, she heard the whispers.

They started in the floorboards. Faint, like footsteps shuffling through a memory. Then in the walls—laughter that didn’t belong, sobs that had no source. Mara sat in the center of the parlor and listened.

“Tell me what you want,” she said.

And the house answered: a groan, a sigh, a single word whispered through the vents.

"Stay."

She unpacked the old mirror first.

It was tall, iron-framed, and too heavy for one person—but she carried it easily. She placed it in the hallway, across from the basement door. The mirror didn’t show reflections quite right. Sometimes it moved slower than real-time. Sometimes it blinked, even when she didn’t.

That night, she dreamed of hands under the floor. Pale fingers pressing against the boards. A mouth whispering her name from behind the walls. She awoke to find muddy footprints leading from the basement up to the mirror.

She followed them.

Down the stairs, past the cracked boiler, into a space that smelled of iron and mildew. There, in the farthest corner, was a door she hadn’t noticed.

It was nailed shut. Carved into the wood were symbols—runes of binding, the kind found in old grimoires. Mara smiled again. She removed the gloves and pressed her bare hand to the door.

It shuddered.

A scream rose from behind it, high and desperate—like someone waking from a century-long nightmare.

She whispered the unlocking phrase: "Let what was buried breathe."

The nails fell. The wood splintered.

The door opened.

Behind it was nothing. Not darkness—nothingness. A hollow space where sound died instantly. Where time forgot itself. And within it, something stirred.

A shape emerged.

Not a person. Not anymore.

Its limbs were too long. Its face, featureless except for a mouth stitched shut with wire. It didn’t walk—it slid. It stopped in front of her and tilted its head.

Mara reached out.

“I remember you,” she said.

It nodded.

That was when the mirror upstairs screamed.

It shattered from the inside out.

Every window in the house exploded, sending glass into the garden like falling stars. The walls bled. The pipes shrieked. And the thing from the hollow stepped into Mara’s shadow—and merged with it.

When the townspeople came the next morning, the house looked new. Clean. Fresh paint. Repaired glass. Even a swing on the porch. But no one answered the door. No one had seen Mara since she entered.

Some claimed they saw her face in the upper window, just behind the lace curtain. Others swore they heard the old mirror speaking in her voice at midnight.

But no one knocked. No one dared.

Gravenmoor fell silent again. The Hollow House, no longer decaying, now stood as something worse—inviting.

And every so often, someone new arrived in town. Someone who didn't know better.

Someone who felt drawn to the address no one listed—42 Bellamy Street.

They’d walk in.

And the house would sigh with pleasure.

Because the house was never haunted.

It was hungry.

And Mara?

She was just its latest meal… or mistress.

No one could tell anymore.

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