The Hollow at 2:10

The first time I heard it, I thought it was a fox. We lived on the edge of a dead ash grove, where the trees stood like charred toothpicks against the gray sky. My mother, Elara, had been gone for five years, but her presence lingered in the dust motes that danced in the afternoon light. I was going through a box of her old photographs when I found one of my father, Tomas, taken a year after his disappearance. His face was half-shadowed, but his eyes seemed to follow me. That night, I woke to a sound that didn’t come from the world of the living. It was a low, resonant hum, like a cello string stretched to breaking, and it vibrated in my chest. I checked the clock: 2:10. The hum faded, but the silence that followed felt heavier than before.

I told myself it was a dream, a trick of the mind. But the next night, the same hum returned, exactly at 2:10, and this time it was accompanied by a faint, rhythmic tapping, like fingernails on glass. I got up and walked to the window, but the grove was empty. The tapping stopped the moment I moved. The third night, I was prepared. I stayed up, coffee gone cold, watching the clock. At 2:10, the hum started, and I felt a pressure behind my eyes, as if something was pushing against my skull. I whispered my mother’s name, but the sound was swallowed by the hum. It lasted for minutes, and when it ended, I noticed a faint imprint on the window pane, like a palm pressed from the outside, but with fingers too long and joints bent at odd angles.

The nights became a routine. I would wake at 2:10, unable to move, as the hum filled the room and the pressure built. I started having dreams of my father, not as I remembered him, but as a shadow with a hollow where his face should be. In the dream, he would stand at the edge of the grove, raising a hand, and the earth would split open, revealing a black, swirling void. I would wake gasping, my chest burning as if seared from the inside. I began to scratch at my sternum, trying to dig out the heat. It left red marks that faded by morning.

After two months of this, I contacted a medium named Ilyana, who claimed she could cleanse the house. She was a thin woman with restless eyes, and she carried a suitcase full of sage and iron. She walked through the house, humming, but when she reached my bedroom, she froze. She looked at the wall where the palm print had been, and her face went pale. ‘There’s a door,’ she said. ‘Not a physical one, but a gateway. Something is coming through, wearing a cloak of shadow. It’s not human.’ She tried to banish it, chanting and sprinkling salt, but the hum rose to a crescendo, and she screamed, dropping her supplies. She fled without looking back, and I never saw her again.

After that, the sounds grew bolder. At 2:10, I heard my mother’s voice, but distorted, as if she were speaking from underwater. She called my name, but the syllables were stretched and wrong. The tapping became a scratching, coming from inside the walls. I tore open the plaster in my bedroom, hoping to find the source, but there was nothing but studs and insulation. The scratches grew louder, and I noticed the pattern: three quick scratches, followed by two slow ones, like a code. I tried to respond by tapping back, and the scratches stopped. For a moment, there was silence, then a voice, clear and close to my ear, said, ‘Let me in.’ I didn’t sleep for a week.

I started recording the sounds. The recordings were filled with white noise, but when I played them at slow speed, I could hear words, fragmented and twisted: ‘My son,’ ‘the grove,’ ‘the hollow.’ My father had disappeared in that grove, searching for something. I was driven to go there, to find the source. I walked through the dead trees, their branches like grasping fingers, and I found a depression in the earth, a circle of bare soil about five feet wide. It looked like a well, but filled with what appeared to be black, viscous tar. The air around it was cold, and I could feel a tug, as if something was pulling me forward. I stepped to the edge and looked down. There was no bottom, just an endless void that seemed to swim with shapes. I heard my father’s voice, calling from below, and I felt a burning in my chest, as if a hook had caught my sternum and was tugging me in.

I jerked back, my heart pounding. I knew what I had to do. That night, at 2:10, I stood in my bedroom, facing the wall where the palm print had been. The hum started, and the pressure built until I felt my ears pop. I spoke to the void, ‘I know you’re there. I’m ready to see you.’ The hum stopped. The silence was absolute. Then the wall began to ripple, like water, and something stepped through. It was a cloaked figure, tall and thin, with no visible face—just a black emptiness under the hood. It raised a hand, and the cloak fell back, revealing a limb that was withered and gray. The hand reached toward my chest, fingers extending, and I felt them touch my sternum. They were cold, and the burning intensified, but I didn’t flinch. I looked into the emptiness where a face should be, and I whispered, ‘Father?’ The figure paused. Then it spoke, its voice a chorus of whispers, ‘You are a door. I will pass through.’

I screamed then, not from fear, but from the understanding that my father wasn’t gone—he had become part of the hollow, a sentinel for something older. As the figure began to merge with my shadow, I remembered the words my mother used to say: ‘Don’t follow the sound into the dark.’ I reached into my pocket and pulled out a silver locket, a gift from my mother, and I pressed it against the figure’s face. It recoiled, shrieking, and the wall sealed shut, but the image burned into my memory. The last thing I saw was my father’s face, distorted and screaming, and the hollow behind him, endless and hungry.

Now, every night at 2:10, I wake to the hum, but it’s softer, as if it’s fading. The burning in my chest has subsided to a dull ache, and the palm print has vanished. But I can still hear the scratching, only now it comes from inside my own head, and sometimes when I catch my reflection, I see a shadow lurking behind my own eyes. I know the hollow is waiting, and it’s patient. It has my father, and now it wants me. The only question is how long I can resist the pull, or if I’ll eventually step into the grove, sink into the tar, and become part of the endless decay.