The Hollow Room

Within the calm town of Elmridge, settled between perpetual woodlands and overlooked streets, stood an ancient house known as the Ashford Domain. Individuals said it had been surrendered for over a century, even though the grass was continuously bafflingly trimmed and the windows by one means or another spotless. Children challenged each other to approach the door, but no one ever made it to the yard.

No one but Mara.

Mara Blake was a writer for a little supernatural web journal called *Apparition Prints*, continuously chasing the following frequented area for a story that would go viral. When she listened around Ashford Bequest and the rumors of “The Empty Room,” she stuffed her recorder, an electric lamp, and a week's worth of nerves.

She arrived fair after sunset, the setting sun casting long, gold-tipped shadows through the skeletal trees. The entryway moaned as she pushed it open. She ventured onto the property, and the temperature dropped a full ten degrees.

The front entryway was opened.

She ventured interior and called out. Nothing. Dust bits coasted within the cold discuss, and the wooden floor squeaked beneath her boots. The house was frightfully pristine—no cobwebs, no rot. It was like time had delayed interior.

She investigated room by room:

A sitting room with collectible furniture, a library with antiquated books whose pages crackled like dry takes off. Everything was untouched, but nothing felt… right. The dividers murmured faintly like they were breathing.

At that point she found it.

On the moment floor, behind an entryway with no handle, she found The Empty Room.

The entryway opened on its claim as she drew closer, uncovering a square, austere chamber. The floor was smooth and uncovered, the dividers unpainted, and the ceiling inconceivably tall. It was like somebody had built a room and after that overlooked to donate it for a reason.

As she ventured interior, the entryway hammered closed behind her.

She spun around, heart beating, and attempted the entryway. Bolted. No keyhole, no handle. Fair cold wood and quiet.

At that point, the whispering started.

Delicate to begin with, like wind through dry grass. At that point louder. Clearer.

“She's here.”

“Another one.”

“Feed it…”

Mara sponsored into the center of the room, holding up her spotlight. But the pillar flashed and passed on. She pulled out her phone. No flag. No light. Fair the unending, smashing dull.

 She hit record on her sound app, in case as it were to demonstrate afterward that she hadn't gone insane. “This is Mara Blake, the interior of the Ashford Estate… Something is happening. I'm caught in a room… the Empty Room. There are voices…”

A moo crash reverberated from one of the dividers. At that point another. Like something was thumping from the other side.

The divider before her bulged outward, as on the off chance that something was squeezing against it from the void past.

Mara supported absent, breath animating. “This isn't real,” she whispered.

The whispers returned, but this time, they were interior her head.

“Lie down.”

“Surrender.”

“You *called* us…”

The divider part is open. Not like a door—more like skin tearing open. A slice of unadulterated obscurity shaped within the divider, and something started to creep through. Long, boneless appendages. A featureless, trickling head. It dragged itself forward with unnatural gradualness, its developments went with by a sound like damp cloth tearing.

Mara shouted and pummeled herself against the inverse divider, but the room was shifting—reforming itself. The corners distorted, extending absent into incomprehensible points. Her possess shadow turned on the divider, isolating from her feet and crawling absent.

She closed her eyes. This couldn't be happening.

At that point a voice, right behind her ear:

“You opened the entryway, Mara. A bit like the others.”

She turned. Nothing there.

The creature had completely developed presently, towering over her, slouched and jerking. It had no confrontation, but in some way or another, she felt it *observing*. Its nearness was suffocating—thick, cold, *empty*.

She raised her recorder, hands shaking.

“If anybody listens to this,” she whispered, “The Empty Room is genuine. It's not a place—it's a *being*. It lives behind the dividers, underneath time. It nourishes memory, on personality. It—”

The recorder fell from her hands.

***

Two weeks afterward, a modern article showed up on *Ghost Prints*.

**“The Ashford Bequest:

Overhyped or Haunted?”**

Composed by Mara Blake.

In it, she rejected the legends as “small-town folklore,” claiming the domain was fair and a purge house with some creaky sheets and cold spots.

But perusers take note of something interesting.

Mara's composing fashion was off—disjointed, far off. Her regular warmth and mockery were lost.

Indeed stranger:

The connected photo of Mara standing in front of the Ashford Estate… didn't show her confront clearly. It was obscured. Nearly like it had been smudged out.

Comments poured in. Her devotees asked her to affirm she was affirming.

She never answered.

One client, @truthhuntr77, claimed to have upgraded the photo-utilizing program.

What they found chilled everybody:

Within the foundation of the photo, scarcely unmistakable through the upstairs window…

A tall, faceless figure stood observing.

***

A few say Mara never cleared out the Empty Room.

Anything came back… wasn't her.