The Dormitory of Hollow Eyes

In the autumn of 1989, I was nineteen and stationed at Travis Air Force Base in California, a thousand miles from the small Texas town where I’d grown up. The base felt like a foreign country, with its rows of identical beige buildings and the constant hum of aircraft. For the first time in my life, I had no curfew, no parents, no Sunday school. I could drink, chase women, and sleep in on Sundays. I did all three with a zeal that surprised even me.

The dormitory complex was a maze of long hallways and identical doors, each opening into a small room with a bed, a desk, and a closet. On Friday nights, the hallways echoed with the bass of boomboxes and the laughter of airmen. I was never alone during those parties, but the loneliness that settled in my chest afterward was a constant companion. I pushed it away with more beer, more flirting, more noise.

It started on a three-day weekend in late October. The base was quieter than usual, many guys had gone home or to nearby cities. I stayed behind, determined to make the most of my freedom. I spent Saturday afternoon and evening at a party in the common room, drinking cheap domestic beer until the world tilted. Around midnight, I stumbled to my room, the hallway stretching long and dark ahead of me. My footsteps seemed to echo too loudly, but I was too numb to care.

I unlocked my door and stepped inside, fumbling for the light switch. But the light didn’t come on. The overhead bulb was dead, I guessed. I shut the door behind me, plunging the room into darkness. The only illumination came from a thin strip of moonlight slicing through the gap in the curtains. I stood there for a moment, my eyes adjusting, my head spinning. The room felt wrong. The air was cold, colder than it should be, and there was a heaviness to it, as if something were pressing down on the space itself. I shook my head, blaming the alcohol.

I stumbled toward the bed, but as I reached the edge, a sensation crawled up my spine—a prickling awareness that I was not alone. I froze, my heart beginning to pound. The darkness seemed to thicken, and the shadows in the corners deepened, growing solid. I whispered, ‘Hello?’ but the word died in my throat. Then I saw them: a pair of hollow eyes, just above the desk, black as voids, staring directly at me. They weren’t human. They were like holes in the fabric of reality, and as I stared, the air around them rippled.

My breath caught, and a low, rasping voice, not quite a whisper, not quite a growl, seeped from the darkness. It said my name: ‘Danny…’ The voice was layered, like many voices speaking at once, but underneath them all, I heard a child’s voice, a girl’s voice, with a demonic echo. ‘You’re going to burn, Danny. The devil is going to get you.’ The voice came from everywhere and nowhere, and the hollow eyes blinked—they closed and opened, but they were still just voids. I wanted to scream, but my throat was locked.

I stumbled backward, hitting the door, fumbling for the knob. The eyes followed me, and the voice grew more insistent, more mocking. ‘You’ve been a bad boy, Danny. No God, no prayers. Just sin.’ I yanked the door open and fled into the hallway, my boots slapping against the linoleum. I ran until I burst into the common room, where a couple of guys were still nursing half-empty beers. They looked up at me, and one of them, a big guy named Pete, said, ‘Whoa, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.’ I couldn’t speak. I just stood there, shaking, my mind replaying the eyes and the voice.

I didn’t go back to my room that night. I crashed on the common room couch, sleeping in fits, jerking awake at every sound. In the morning, I returned to my room with the daylight streaming through the windows. It looked normal. The bulb worked. There was nothing out of place. I chalked it up to a vivid hallucination, an alcohol-induced nightmare. But deep down, I knew what I’d seen and heard. I knew it wasn’t just the drink.

Over the next week, I tried to ignore it. I went back to parties, back to drinking, but every time I entered my room, I felt a lingering unease, like a cold spot following me. I started leaving the lights on, even when I slept. I told no one, because they’d think I was crazy, or worse, weak. But the loneliness that had always been there now had a companion: fear.

A month later, I was packing to go home for Thanksgiving. As I folded my civilian clothes into a duffel bag, I noticed something on the desk, tucked under a stack of papers. It was a small, yellowed photograph, one I’d never seen before. It showed a girl, maybe eight years old, with dark hair and eyes that were too large, too solemn. She was standing in front of a house that looked nothing like any place I’d ever lived. On the back, in faded pencil, was written: ‘For Danny, from the other side.’

My blood ran cold. I dropped the photo as if it were on fire, my heart hammering. The hollow eyes, the voice—it all came rushing back. I knew the photo had been placed there sometime after the party, but I had no memory of anyone entering my room. I had no memory of ever seeing that girl before. The only thing I could think was that the devil, or something like him, had found me, and he was patient. He was waiting. And I didn’t know when, or from where, he’d come for me again.

I never went back to that dormitory. I requested a transfer, and I stopped partying. I started going to the base chapel, even though I felt ridiculous. I never spoke of the eyes or the voice or the photograph, but I couldn’t shake the certainty that it wasn’t over. Some nights, I still wake up drenched in sweat, hearing that girl’s voice in the dark: ‘You’re going to burn, Danny.’ And I wonder if the devil, or whatever it was, is just biding its time, waiting for me to slip back into the darkness. The dormitory is gone now, demolished years ago, but the hollow eyes remain, burned into my mind, like a scar on my soul.