The Hollow Man

Prologue: The Arrival

The first thing anyone noticed about him was the silence.

No footsteps. No rustle of clothing. Just the slow, deliberate creak of the saloon doors swinging open as he stepped inside.

Elias Pike looked up from his whiskey and froze.

The stranger stood just inside the threshold, his wide-brimmed hat casting a shadow where his face should have been. Not covered. Not disfigured. Just...absent, like God had forgotten to carve one into him.

Then the man tipped his hat—polite as you please—and walked to the bar.

That was when the screaming started.

Chapter 1: The First Night

Sheriff Grayson found Old Tom Wilkins behind the saloon, his body curled into a fetal position. No wounds. No blood. Just two empty sockets where his eyes used to be, the skin around them smooth as porcelain.

"Like something licked 'em clean," the coroner muttered.

That night, the stranger took a room at the Blackwood Inn. Mrs. Langford swore she heard him moving around after midnight—except the bed was still made come morning, dust undisturbed on the floorboards.

And out by the old mining road, another body turned up.

Mouth gone.

Just...erased.

Chapter 2: The Reflection

I should've left town then.

But I was the only reporter the Blackwood Gazette had left, and damn if I wasn't curious. I camped outside the inn with my father's old Kodak, waiting for the stranger to emerge.

At exactly 3:17 AM, he did.

I raised the camera. The flash lit up the street—

—and in that split second, I saw it.

The stranger had a face in the reflection.

Not his own.

Tom Wilkins'.

Stretched tight across that blank expanse like a mask, lips stitched into a permanent scream.

I ran before he could turn around.

Chapter 3: The Hollowing

By week's end, seven more were dead.

The schoolteacher. The barber. The little Carmichael girl. Each corpse missing a different feature—ears, fingers, once an entire lower jaw—with skin left flawless where the parts had been taken.

And the stranger?

He was changing.

A nose appeared. Then one milky eye. A patch of stubble. Like he was stitching himself together from their pieces.

The sheriff gathered every armed man left and marched on the inn at dawn.

They found the building empty.

Except for a single playing card on the pillow:

The King of Hearts.

His face cut out.

Chapter 4: The Offering

I knew where he'd gone.

The old Silvergate Mine had been abandoned for decades, its tunnels rumored to run deeper than hell itself. That's where I found the sheriff's men—or what was left of them.

Their bodies hung from the rafters like cured meat, faces peeled away in perfect sheets.

And at the center of the chamber, the Hollow Man sat on a throne of bones, his stolen features now arranged into something almost human.

Almost.

"You're late," he said—with the sheriff's voice—and stood.

That's when I noticed the knife in his hand.

And the empty space where my face would look just right.

Epilogue: The Road

They say if you take the stagecoach west past midnight, sometimes you'll see him—a tall figure walking the dust-choked roads, his hat pulled low.

Get too close, and he'll tip his brim at you.

Polite as you please.

And if the moonlight hits just right, you'll see them—all those stolen faces swirling beneath his skin, screaming silently as he searches for the next piece.

Maybe yours.

Maybe mine.