The Empty Suit

Marla and I shared a cramped attic bedroom in our grandmother’s old farmhouse on the edge of Parson’s Hollow, a town so small it didn’t even have a stoplight. For two years, we’d grown used to the house’s groans and the wind’s moans, but never anything like what my little brother described.

It started with Marla—she was fourteen, with a wild imagination and a habit of reading ghost stories before bed. One morning she asked me, her eyes wide and shadowed, if I’d seen anything odd in the night. I told her I’d slept like a log. She bit her lip and confessed she’d seen a man standing at the foot of our bed, just watching. I laughed it off, told her it was a dream. But her face stayed pale.

The next night, I stayed awake, staring into the dark. Around 3 AM, the air grew thick, and I heard a faint rustling, like cloth dragging on wooden floor. I sat up, heart pounding, but saw nothing. In the morning, Marla was trembling. She described him in excruciating detail: a towering figure, at least nine feet tall, with a black suit that seemed to drink the light, a white shirt, and a thin black tie. His head was smooth, featureless—no eyes, no nose, no mouth. His hair was slicked back, dark as oil, and from the top of his skull, two twisted horns grew, like those of a ram. But the worst were his hands: both were left hands, with long, curved fingers tipped in claws that gleamed like razors.

I told her she was letting her imagination run wild, but she insisted she’d felt an evil presence, a malevolence that made her blood run cold. She said when she snapped on the lamp, the figure was gone—vanished into the shadows as if he’d never been. But the cold lingered.

The third night, I decided to prove it was all in her head. I kept the lights off and my eyes open, but exhaustion got the better of me. I woke to a sound—a slow, deliberate scraping, like fingernails being dragged along the wall. I held my breath. The scraping stopped, and I heard a low hum, a sound that vibrated in my chest. The air turned icy, and I could see my breath misting. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw something move near the closet door. A tall, dark shape, barely distinguishable from the darkness, stood there. My heart seized. I wanted to scream, but my throat was paralyzed.

The shape took a step forward, and the floorboards creaked under a weight that seemed impossibly heavy. I finally managed to reach for the lamp and clicked it on. The light flooded the room, and the shape vanished. But I had seen it—the smooth, blank face, the horns, the slicked-back hair. And the hands, those clawed, left hands, reaching for me.

The next morning, I told Marla I believed her. We both decided to tell Grandma. She listened, her face growing serious, and then she took us into the kitchen. She told us the story of the house: a century ago, a man named Elias Thorne had lived here, a recluse who wore black suits and never showed his face. He was said to be a practitioner of dark arts, and his hands were deformed—he had two left hands, a mark of his pact with something foul. He died in the attic, but his soul never left. He was a collector of fear, feeding on the terror of the living.

We were horrified, but Grandma told us the only way to keep him at bay was to never show fear. ‘He feeds on it,’ she said, her voice low. ‘Stay calm. Ignore him. He cannot touch you if you do not fear him.’

That night, we tried. We lay in bed, reciting multiplication tables, humming songs, anything to keep our minds off the dark. But at 4 AM, the scratching returned. We clutched the covers, fighting the urge to look. The hum grew louder, and the temperature plummeted. I heard Marla’s breath catch, and despite myself, I turned my head.

He was there, standing between our beds, his blank face angled toward me. The claws on his left hands were stained dark, as if with dried blood. And then he spoke—not with a voice, but a vibration that said, ‘You see me.’

I wanted to scream, but I remembered Grandma’s words. I forced my voice steady and said, ‘Yes, I see you. You don’t scare me.’

A low, guttural sound emanated from the void where his mouth should have been. Then he raised both left hands, and from his fingertips, a black mist began to seep, curling toward us. I squeezed Marla’s hand, and we both chanted in whispers: ‘No fear. No fear. No fear.’

The mist touched my arm, and it felt like ice and rot. But I kept my mind blank. And as the first light of dawn crept through the window, the figure dissolved, and the warmth returned.

He never came back, not in that shape. But sometimes, at night, I feel a cold presence and hear the faint rustle of a suit jacket. And I know we escaped, but only just. The town told us the fear collector is still there, waiting for someone else who dares to look, to tremble, to give in. And I wonder if, in twenty years, another child will lie in that attic, and the empty suit will come to collect.