The Hollow Bedroom Window

My name is Elias, and I’ve spent a good chunk of my life chasing the unexplained. But nothing prepared me for Rowan Falls, a decaying mill town where the fog clings to the streets like a second skin. I moved there to catalog the archives of the old mill, now converted into a museum. It was there I met Maren, a curator with a warm smile and an unnerving habit of glancing over her shoulder. We hit it off immediately, bonding over our shared interest in the strange.

Maren lived in a crumbling Victorian on the edge of town, its windows like hollow eyes. She told me about her sleepless nights. It began with a whisper of a touch, a phantom caress that made her skin prickle. Then came the dreams. She’d be trapped in a loop, dreaming she was waking up in her own bed, only to find the room darker than it should be, and a shape sitting in the corner chair, watching. She’d scream herself awake, drenched in sweat, the feeling of cold fingers tracing her spine lingering. It escalated to vivid, erotic nightmares that left her ashamed and exhausted, always culminating in her own screams tearing her from sleep. Her husband, a long-haul trucker, was home most nights, but the presence seemed to wait for his absence, as if it fed on her solitude.

One night, Maren called me, her voice trembling. It was a Tuesday, her husband on the road. She described a new terror: she’d felt a pressure on her chest, like something was sitting on her, and a cold breath on her neck. But then it changed. It wrapped around her midsection, and she felt a wave of pleasure so intense it made her gasp, followed by a sensation of being pulled, as if her very soul was being coaxed from her body. She said she saw a figure of a child, gray and translucent, standing by the window, and the ghostly voice whispered, ‘Come, see my boy.’ She resisted, her mind screaming, and finally wrenched herself awake. She was terrified, more than she’d ever been. She begged me for help.

I brought in a friend, a paranormal investigator named Ruth, who was skeptical but intrigued. We set up cameras and audio recorders in Maren’s bedroom. That night, as we watched from her living room, the monitors flickered. A low, guttural growl filled the audio. Ruth pointed at the screen— a distorted shape, like a smear of darkness, coalescing on the bed. It twisted, forming a vague humanoid but with too-long limbs. It moved over the spot where Maren lay, who was already asleep, her breathing shallow. We saw her body jerk, her face contort in a mix of fear and unwanted pleasure. Ruth whispered, ‘It’s a feeder. It uses your own fear and desire to break you down, then it takes something else.’

Ruth began to chant in a language I didn’t recognize, throwing salt across the threshold. The shape on the bed turned its featureless head toward the camera. For a moment, I felt a cold hand grip my throat, and I couldn’t breathe. Ruth shouted, ‘Now, Elias!’ I lunged forward, despite my terror, and slammed a heavy Bible onto the floor, shouting a prayer. The shape let out a sound like a scream mixed with static, and it dissipated, leaving the room cold. Maren woke with a gasp, crying. Ruth said it would be back, but we’d driven it off this time.

The next night, I stayed with Maren. Her husband was due back, but he was delayed. As she slept, I kept vigil. The air grew thick, and I heard a faint, childish giggle from the window. The curtains billowed though the window was closed. Then I saw it: a small, gray boy with hollow eyes, standing at the foot of the bed. He pointed at Maren and mouthed, ‘My turn.’ I grabbed the salt and threw it, but the boy vanished, leaving a whispering that seemed to come from all corners. I turned to check Maren, and her eyes were open, but they were milky white. She sat up slowly, her mouth open in a silent scream, and began to claw at her chest. I shook her, and she snapped back, gasping, ‘He’s in me, Elias. He’s waiting.’

We couldn’t let it take her. Ruth suggested we try to shift the entity’s attention, to offer it something else. I was terrified, but I agreed to be a decoy. We set up in the attic, where I would lie on an old cot, pretending to sleep. The presence came, cold and heavy, settling on my chest. I felt a probing, a searching, and then a sickening warmth spread through my gut. It was trying to pull me out, just as Maren described. But I fought, focusing on a memory of sunlight, a childhood lake, anything pleasant. It recoiled, and I opened my eyes to see a whirl of black and gray. In the swirling, I saw the boy again, but his face was contorted in anger. He screamed, a sound that rattled the old house, and then he was gone.

We never saw it again. Maren slept peacefully from that night on, and her husband came home to a changed wife. I left Rowan Falls a week later, but I often think of the hollow bedroom window at Maren’s house, and what might still be lurking there, waiting for another lonely soul to approach. I carry a small pouch of salt with me now, and I never sleep with the window open, even in the summer. There are things that don’t stay in the shadows; they wait in the light steps of a home, in the flicker of a lamp, in the quiet hum of a lonely night. And they remember those who defied them.