The Last Light in Hollow Creek

When darkness falls, some secrets refuse to stay buried.”

No one went near Hollow Creek after sunset.

Locals spoke of strange sightings—dim lights flickering in abandoned houses, soft whispers in the trees, and the feeling of being watched from the shadows. Decades ago, the town had been lively. Now, it was a ghost on the map, swallowed by time and rot.

But for Daniel Ross, a young urban explorer and video blogger, Hollow Creek was perfect clickbait. A forgotten town with a creepy backstory? Gold. He packed his flashlight, camera, and drone, ignoring every warning sign along the way.

By dusk, he reached the outskirts. The road ended in weeds. Fog had already begun to rise, swirling around the cracked buildings like silent phantoms. Daniel set up his camera and walked down the main road, filming boarded windows, broken signs, and rusted cars lost to nature.

As darkness settled, something caught his eye—a warm, orange glow coming from a small wooden house near the center of town. The rest of the town was pitch black, but this house had a flickering lantern in the window.

He hesitated. No one was supposed to live here.

Still recording, Daniel approached slowly. The house looked centuries old—shingles missing, wood rotting. But the lantern inside burned steady, like it had been lit recently. He knocked.No answer.

He turned the handle. Unlocked.

Inside, the air was heavy with dust and mold. The wooden floor creaked beneath his feet. The lantern sat on a table in the middle of the room, next to a faded photograph of a family—mother, father, daughter. None of them smiling.

He panned his camera around. The walls were lined with children's drawings. All of them disturbing—figures with no eyes, stickmen hanging from trees, houses burning. One showed a little girl standing in front of the same house, surrounded by shadowy hands reaching from the dark.

A soft thud came from upstairs.

Daniel froze.

"Hello?" he called, heart pounding. No reply.

He climbed the narrow staircase. At the top, a hallway stretched into blackness. A door at the far end stood slightly open. Light flickered inside.

He walked toward it, camera shaking in his hand.

The room was a nursery. The wallpaper peeled in strips. A rocking chair moved gently on its own. A broken doll lay face down in the crib.

Suddenly, the lantern downstairs extinguished.

Total darkness.

His flashlight flickered… then died.

The house groaned.

Daniel turned to run—

But the hallway had changed. It no longer led to the stairs. It stretched on, endlessly, doors now lining both sides.

He ran through one. Then another. Each room was wrong—flickering scenes of twisted memories. One showed the family from the photo sitting at a table, skin rotting, eyes weeping black tar. In another, the little girl stood in a burning field, smiling as bodies fell around her.

The air grew colder. Voices whispered.

“Stay…”

“You’re one of us now…”

Daniel backed away, breath catching in his throat.

A new door appeared behind him. Wooden. Carved with a single word: LUCY.

He opened it.

Inside was a child’s room, untouched by time. Toys arranged neatly. A bed with pink covers. And in the center, a small girl facing the wall.

He stepped closer.

"Lucy?" he whispered.

She turned.

Her eyes were empty sockets. Her smile impossibly wide.

“You found my light,” she said.

Daniel screamed, but no sound came. Shadows erupted from the walls, swallowing the room, dragging him down, down, down.

---

The next morning, a group of hikers reported a strange light in Hollow Creek. By the time police arrived, there was nothing. No Daniel. No camera. Just a single lantern glowing faintly in the window of the old house.

They never went inside.

Weeks later, a new video appeared on Daniel’s YouTube channel.

It was shaky, silent footage of Hollow Creek at night. Then static. Then a flash of Lucy’s face.

The video ended with a message written in childlike scrawl:

“Thank you for bringing the light back.”