The Farmhouse on Hollow Creek Road

I’ve kept this to myself for over two decades. It’s the kind of thing that festers in the back of your mind, surfacing in quiet moments, a splinter you can’t dig out. I was seventeen that summer, the year the drought cracked the earth and the sun seemed to hang too low. My cousin, Dale, and his two friends, Marcus and Trey, had heard about a place off Hollow Creek Road—an abandoned farmhouse where, they claimed, a congregation of the insane had once performed unspeakable rituals. They were older, eighteen and nineteen, and I was along because Dale promised his folks he’d keep an eye on me. We drove out past the last gas station, past the faded billboards for a motel that had been closed for years, until the pavement gave way to gravel, and the gravel turned to dirt.

The land was flat and dry, dotted with skeletal trees. The farmhouse sat alone, a black shape against the bruised purple of the dying sky. Behind it, a ramshackle barn tilted dangerously, its roof sagging like a tired animal. In front, scattered headstones leaned at odd angles in a patch of hard, cracked earth. No lights flickered, no dogs barked. The entire place felt held its breath. Dale parked on the side of the road, killing the engine. ‘This is it,’ he said, grinning, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes.

We got out. The air was still and hot, smelling of dust and dead weeds. As we approached, I saw dark symbols painted on the farmhouse’s siding—thin, angular shapes that hurt to look at, like they were trying to spell something in a language that should never be spoken. The barn was worse. The door was chained shut, but the chains were loose, as if something had recently pulled at them from inside. A long, dark stain trailed from the threshold into the dry grass.

‘You coming?’ Dale asked, his hand on the barn door, rattling the chain.

I shook my head. ‘No way, man.’

He laughed, a short, nervous sound. ‘Chicken.’ He shoved the door open with a groan of rusted hinges and stepped into the darkness. Marcus and Trey stood next to me, shifting their weight, not looking at each other. The door swung partially shut, but we could see a pale sliver of light—his flashlight—moving inside. Then it stopped.

We waited. A minute. Two. The flashlight didn’t move. Marcus called out, ‘Dale? You okay?’ No answer. The light flickered, then went out.

A sound came from inside—a low, wet scraping, like something heavy being dragged over the dirt floor. Then a voice, but it wasn’t Dale’s. It was thin, reedy, like a child trying to speak through a mouthful of gravel. It said, ‘Come in. We’ve been waiting.’

The three of us exchanged looks, and without a word, we turned and sprinted for the car. I reached the driver’s side, but the keys—Dale had them. We were locked out. I fumbled through my pockets, found my Swiss Army knife, and tried to jimmy the lock, but my hands were shaking too much.

Then the barn door creaked open wider, and Dale stepped out. But it wasn’t Dale. His face was slack, his eyes rolled back in his head, showing only the whites. He walked stiffly, like a puppet jerking on invisible strings, and his mouth moved, but the voice that came out was that same thin, reedy one. ‘You can’t leave without him.’

We scrambled around the car, putting it between us and the thing that wore my cousin’s skin. Marcus pulled out his phone, but there was no signal. Trey started crying, a high, keening sound. I grabbed a tire iron from the trunk—I don’t know why I thought that would help—and we started backing up the road, not daring to turn our backs.

Dale’s body twitched, then collapsed, and for a second, I thought it was over. But then the body convulsed, and a black, oily smoke poured out of his mouth—so thick it seemed solid, coalescing into a shape that towered over us, a dark smear against the stars. It had too many limbs, and it moved with a wet, sucking sound, like something pulling its feet free from mud.

We ran. We ran until our lungs burned, past the headstones, past the fields that stretched on forever. I don’t know how long we ran, or how we found the highway, but at some point, a trucker stopped and gave us a ride to a gas station. Dale was never found. We told the police he wandered off, got lost. They searched for three days and found nothing.

But I know. I know that thing didn’t just take him—it took something else. It took the part of us that believed we’d ever be safe again. I never told anyone the full story, not even Marcus and Trey. We stopped talking after that. We moved away. I tried to forget.

But last night, I woke up at 3:33 AM, and my phone was glowing. A message from an unknown number, just a single line: ‘We’re still here, cousin.’

I’ve been driving ever since. The roads are dark, the radio only plays static, and every time I check my rearview mirror, I see the shape of a headless figure standing in the middle of the road, too far to be real, but it never gets closer, and it never goes away. I know where I’m heading, even though I’ve been fighting it for hours. Hollow Creek Road. The farmhouse. The barn. I don’t know what I’ll find when I get there, but I know one thing for certain: this time, I’m not running.