The Hollow Eyes

It was the kind of house that looked haunted even in daylight. The kind of place where every creaking floorboard seemed to whisper secrets, and every shadow held something just beyond the edge of your vision. Ethan had never believed in ghosts, but there was something about this house, his new home, that made him uneasy. It wasn’t the peeling wallpaper or the drafty windows. It was something else, something he couldn’t quite name.

Ethan had moved into the house on a whim, thinking it would be a fresh start. After a messy breakup and months of uncertainty, he found an ad for the property—a small, Victorian-style house tucked away on the outskirts of town. The price was too good to resist. But the moment he stepped inside, something was off. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he wasn’t alone.

It started with the mirrors.

The first time Ethan noticed it, he was brushing his teeth in the bathroom. As he looked up into the mirror, he caught a flicker of movement from the corner of his eye. He turned sharply, but there was nothing there—just the empty bathroom and his own reflection. Shaking his head, he went about his routine, dismissing the moment as nothing more than his imagination.

But over the next few days, the feeling persisted. In every mirror he passed, he felt like something was watching him, waiting. Sometimes, when he looked into the glass, his reflection didn’t quite match his movements. He would raise his hand, and it would hesitate for a split second before following. His face—his eyes—seemed to linger longer than they should, as if they were trying to say something.

One night, as Ethan was heading to bed, he passed by the hallway mirror. It was large and framed with ornate, intricate carvings that had an unsettling elegance to them. He paused, feeling an inexplicable pull toward it. The reflection in the glass seemed darker than usual, as if it absorbed the light around it, leaving the room with an eerie gloom.

He stared at his own reflection, his heart beginning to race. The silence in the house pressed against him, the only sound his own breath and the faint creak of the house settling. His eyes locked with his reflection's, and for a moment, it felt like the mirror was pulling him in. Ethan’s reflection… it wasn’t exactly the same. The eyes—his eyes—looked different. Hollow, dark, almost lifeless. They seemed to stare back at him with an unsettling intensity.

He blinked, and the reflection blinked too, but there was a delay. Just a second longer than normal. Ethan froze.

Then came the whisper.

“Help me.”

The voice was faint at first, like a breath against his ear. Ethan’s stomach lurched. He took a step back, but his reflection didn’t move. It was still there, staring at him with those dark, hollow eyes. The whisper came again, louder this time.

“Help me… let me out…”

Ethan turned away quickly, his pulse pounding in his ears. He tried to shake it off, to convince himself that it was just stress, that he was imagining things. But when he lay in bed that night, sleep wouldn’t come. His mind replayed the image of those eyes—those eyes that didn’t belong to him.

The following day, Ethan avoided the mirrors. He didn’t want to confront whatever was happening in the house, but it was impossible to escape it. Every time he walked past a reflective surface, he felt the pull, like something was waiting for him, something trying to break through. By the third day, the whispers had grown louder, more insistent, as if they were right behind him, urging him to turn around, to look.

That evening, unable to ignore it any longer, Ethan stood in front of the hallway mirror again. His hands were shaking, but he couldn’t stop himself. Slowly, he raised his eyes to meet his reflection.

It was worse than before.

His reflection didn’t just look different—it looked wrong. His face was twisted, distorted, the eyes wide and empty, like black voids that sucked the light from the room. The reflection smiled at him, but it wasn’t his smile. It was a dark, mocking grin that made Ethan’s stomach twist in fear.

“You shouldn’t have come,” the reflection whispered, its voice now clearer, more chilling.

Ethan backed away, his heart hammering in his chest. He spun around, but when he turned back, the reflection was gone. The glass was just glass again—calm, empty, ordinary.

But the whispers remained, echoing in his mind, relentless. “Help me… help me escape… it’s too late for you…”

The house was silent, but Ethan could feel the weight of something pressing against him, something old, something alive. His reflection had never been his reflection—it had been something else, something trapped inside the glass, something that had been waiting for him, just like it had waited for everyone else who had lived here before him.

As the days passed, the whispers grew more persistent, and the shadows in the mirrors grew darker. Ethan could no longer tell where his reflection ended and the thing within the glass began. It followed him, no matter how far he ran, no matter how many mirrors he broke.

One night, in a moment of desperation, he stood before the mirror once more, hoping to confront whatever had been tormenting him. But when he looked into the glass, the reflection wasn’t his at all.

It was the hollow-eyed figure, staring at him, its lips curled into a twisted grin. The whisper echoed in his ears, louder than ever before.

“Welcome… you’re home now.”

And then, everything went black.

Thank you for reading The Hollow Eyes. If you felt the chill creep up your spine, don’t forget to hit the like button and share this tale with others who dare to face the darkness. Who knows? Maybe they’ll be the next to hear the whispers.