The Last Hike Up Hollow Peak

The Last Hike Up Hollow Peak

By [Javid khan]

Genre: Horror | Friendship | Psychological

They hadn’t seen each other in almost seven years.

Eli had sent the group text two months ago: “What if we went hiking? One last trip. Like old times.”

No one said no.

And so, on a cold Thursday morning in late September, Eli, Marcy, and Jonah stood at the base of Hollow Peak, staring up into a mass of fog and craggy stone that seemed to lean slightly toward them.

“I’ve never heard of this place,” Jonah said, tightening the straps on his backpack.

“It’s not on most maps,” Eli said, as if that explained anything. “Found it while planning. No tourists. No traffic. Just us.”

Marcy frowned. “That’s... weird, right? I mean, we used to go to the Blue Ridge. Why this place?”

“Because it’s quiet,” Eli said, already walking ahead.

They followed.

By the first hour, the trail had already begun to twist unnaturally. Jonah joked that it felt like walking through a Möbius strip—no real turns, but somehow always shifting. Trees leaned in too close. The air was unusually still.

Around noon, Marcy stopped.

“Did you hear that?” she asked.

Eli and Jonah looked at her. “Hear what?” Eli said.

“It sounded like...” Her voice dropped. “Like someone whispering my name.”

No one laughed.

Instead, they kept walking.

They found the first carving just past mile three. It was etched crudely into the bark of a blackened tree: a jagged spiral, with five lines slashing through it.

Jonah touched it. “Looks like a kid made it.”

But when Eli stared at it, his face paled. “No. We’ve seen this before.”

“No, we haven’t,” Marcy said.

“Yes, we have,” Eli whispered. “Freshman year. Halloween. That notebook we found behind the chapel.”

Marcy blinked. “Oh my God... you’re right. Jonah, do you remember that?”

Jonah’s face was blank. “I don’t think I was there for that.”

“You were,” Eli said.

“No,” Jonah replied, more firmly. “I wasn’t.”

By nightfall, the temperature dropped sharply.

They pitched their tents near a narrow ledge with a view over a blanket of trees. The sky was too dark for stars.

As they sat by the small campfire, Marcy said softly, “Do you guys remember that night at the lake house? With Claire?”

Eli looked away.

Jonah’s face tightened. “We said we’d never talk about that.”

“She was drunk. We were all drunk,” Marcy went on, as if in a trance. “But I keep thinking about how she looked at me. Like she knew I wouldn’t stop her.”

“Marcy,” Eli warned.

“She walked into the water,” Marcy whispered, her voice trembling. “And I didn’t go after her.”

Jonah stood. “Stop.”

“No. You don’t understand,” Marcy said, suddenly animated. “I’ve seen her. Here. On the trail. In the trees. She’s been following us.”

Eli stared at her, something unreadable in his expression. “You’ve seen her too?”

That night, Jonah woke up screaming.

The others rushed out of their tents.

“I saw her,” Jonah gasped. “She was in my tent. Her eyes—God, her eyes—”

“There’s no one here,” Marcy whispered.

Jonah turned to Eli. “Why did you bring us here?”

Eli looked hollow. “Because I couldn’t take it anymore. Pretending none of it happened. I thought... maybe if we came here, the mountain would take it.”

“What do you mean, take it?” Marcy asked.

“This mountain isn’t empty,” Eli said. “It remembers. I don’t know how, but it knows things. It shows you what you won’t say out loud.”

The next day, Marcy was gone.

No sign of struggle. No note. Just her backpack sitting next to the cold ashes of the fire.

They searched the area, shouting her name for hours.

Jonah kept saying she just wandered off. Eli said nothing.

That night, as a storm rolled in and the wind howled like something alive, Jonah turned to Eli and said, “She didn’t wander. The mountain took her.”

Eli nodded slowly. “And it’s not finished.”

By morning, only Eli remained.

He sat at the edge of the trail, staring down at the dense fog curling along the forest floor.

In his journal, he wrote:

“Jonah’s gone now too. I saw him walking into the mist. He looked peaceful. Hollow Peak doesn’t punish. It just reveals. It scrapes the skin of memory until the blood seeps through. Maybe that’s what it wanted all along—truth, not punishment.”

He looked up at the trees. They seemed to sway in acknowledgment.

“If you find this, don’t follow us up.”

But by the time someone did, the journal was damp and unreadable.

All that remained was a tree.

And on it, a fresh spiral.