The Haint of Hollow Hill

I never believed in ghosts until the summer of my thirteenth year, when I went to stay with my grandfather in the dusty folds of West Texas. My mother’s elder sister, Aunt Marta, had moved there after the war, living in a rusted trailer on the edge of our family’s land, a place called Hollow Hill. It was a dry, sun-bleached country, where the only sounds were the wind and the occasional buzz of a locust. My cousin Eli, Aunt Marta’s boy, was my age, and we spent our days exploring the scrub and the dry creek beds, looking for arrowheads and rattlesnake dens.

Aunt Marta was a strange woman, with an unsettling habit of knowing things before they happened. She’d call the weather to the hour, and she’d sometimes stare at a person with a faraway look, as if reading a script only she could see. My mother always said that Marta had ‘the sight,’ but we were told never to speak of it, out of respect for the mysteries. That summer, though, things took a turn that went beyond mere predictions.

One night, as we sat on the porch watching the sun bleed into the horizon, Eli asked his mother about her power. She was silent for a long time, her eyes fixed on a dark shape that moved along the fence line. Finally, she said, ‘There are things that walk this land that are older than the rocks, and they don’t like being seen.’ She told us that she’d seen a presence near the old well, a place we’d been warned to avoid. ‘It’s not a ghost,’ she said, ‘It’s something that feeds on the living, and it’s been waiting a long time.’

That night, a fever took hold of me. I dreamed of a vast, empty plain under a green sky, and a voice that whispered my name with a dry, cracking sound. I woke to find Eli standing by my bed, his face pale. ‘It’s in the walls,’ he said. I listened, and I could hear a faint noise, like the scuttling of insects, but deeper, more deliberate. We didn’t sleep again that night, and in the morning, we found the floor of the trailer covered in a fine, white dust, like ashes, and the doors were all unlocked, though we’d locked them.

Aunt Marta grew more withdrawn as the days wore on. She’d stopped eating, and she’d spend hours staring at the well, muttering to herself. Eli and I tried to ignore it, but the feeling of being watched was constant. Then, one afternoon, we saw it. A shape, black and dense, crouched in the shadow of the well, like a man made of smoke. It turned its head, and where its face should have been, there was a hollow, and from that hollow came a sound, not a word, but a low, guttural hum that vibrated in our bones.

We ran back to the trailer, screaming for Aunt Marta, but she was gone. The trailer was empty, except for a note on the table, weighted down by a piece of flint. The note was in Aunt Marta’s spidery handwriting: ‘It has taken your grandfather. He went to the well to make an offering. Do not follow. I must go to the old place.’ We were alone, and the sun was setting.

Eli wanted to leave, to walk the twelve miles to the nearest neighbor’s, but I knew that the thing outside would not let us go so easily. I felt a pull toward the well, a terrible curiosity. We took a lantern and went out into the dark. The ground was cold, and the only sound was our own breathing. When we reached the well, we saw that the stone border was covered in scratches, deep and fresh, as if something had clawed at it. And from the darkness below, a voice that sounded like Aunt Marta called up, ‘Help me, I’ve fallen.’

I was about to look down when Eli grabbed my arm. ‘That’s not her,’ he said, his voice shaking. ‘My mother never comes here at night. And she never asks for help.’ He was right. The voice was close, too close, and it had a strange echo, as if it was also coming from behind us, from the trailer, from the scrub, from everywhere. We backed away, and the voice grew angry, a hiss of static and gravel.

We ran, and we didn’t stop until we reached the main road, where a truck driver found us at dawn, shivering and covered in that same white dust. When the police came to Hollow Hill, they found the trailer empty, and the well filled with dirt, as if something had been buried there. They never found Aunt Marta or my grandfather, but they did find a piece of flint, identical to the one that had been on the table, with a symbol carved into it.

We moved away soon after, and I never spoke of it again. But sometimes, on the dryest days of summer, I hear a hum, low and steady, and I know that it is still there, waiting. And I know, with a certainty that chills me, that it has a name, and that name is mine.