The Hollow Below

The house on Maple Street was a find, or so I told myself as I helped the kids unpack boxes in the late summer of 2005. It was a two-story Victorian with a wrap-around porch and a cellar that smelled faintly of earth and old apples. My three boys, ages eight, ten, and twelve, were thrilled with the space, but our two dogs, a golden retriever named Biscuit and a mutt we called Tater, were not. From the first night, they whined and scratched at the cellar door, refusing to go near it, and they began to pee in the hallway every night, despite being housebroken. I chalked it up to the stress of moving, but as the weeks passed, their anxiety grew. They would stare at the cellar door with hackles raised, growling low in their throats, and at night, they would huddle together in the corner of the living room, trembling.

The cellar itself was ordinary—concrete floor, dusty shelves, a fuse box—but something about it made my skin crawl. I had planned to store some boxes down there, but the dogs’ reaction made me postpone. The kids didn’t seem to notice, their laughter filling the empty rooms as they played hide-and-seek. I tried to shake off the unease, focusing on unpacking and settling in. But the dogs’ nightly accidents and their constant fear began to wear on me. I found myself lying awake at night, listening to the creaks of the old house, wondering if I’d made a terrible mistake.

That particular night in November, I couldn’t sleep at all. The wind howled outside, rattling the windows, and the house seemed to groan around me. My youngest, Lucas, had a fever, so I decided to sleep in the attic room with him, leaving the older boys in their own rooms. The attic was a cramped, sloping space with a single dormer window and a radio on a nightstand. I lay on the twin bed next to Lucas, trying to find a comfortable position on the thin mattress, but my mind refused to quiet. The dogs were whining downstairs, a sound that had become as familiar as the ticking of the old grandfather clock in the hallway.

At around two in the morning, I reached over to turn off the radio that had been playing static, the signal interrupted by some unknown interference. Just as I shut it off, a wave of exhaustion hit me, so sudden and overwhelming that I felt as if I had been drugged. My limbs went heavy, my eyelids drooped, and I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. But then, something woke me. Or I thought I woke. I was aware of the room around me, but I couldn’t move. My body was paralyzed, my chest felt tight, and I felt a presence in the darkness. At the foot of the bed, I saw a shape—a baby, but not human. Its skin was waxy, its eyes were black pits, and they bore into me with an ancient malevolence. I tried to scream, but my mouth was dry, my tongue felt swollen, and only a faint croak escaped.

The baby crawled across the mattress toward me, its tiny limbs moving with unnatural grace. It stopped beside my hip, and then I felt the sheet being pulled aside, a cool draft on my skin, and then a warm, wet pressure on my genitals. A wave of pleasure washed over me, intense and sickening, and I felt a phantom weight pressing down on me, though I could see nothing. My mind screamed ‘Wake up! Wake up!’ but I was trapped in my own body, a prisoner to this violation. The pleasure built, and I wanted to vomit at the same time, the two sensations clashing in a pornographic paradox. I tried to call out to Lucas, but my voice was gone. The baby’s eyes never left mine, and I saw in them a glint of satisfaction.

Then, as suddenly as it began, the pressure ceased, and I was released. I gasped, sitting upright in bed, my body drenched in sweat. The baby was gone. The attic was empty, save for Lucas, who slept peacefully, unaware. But I heard my own moan echo in the room, and I realized it was my own voice that had awoken me. I stumbled out of bed, my legs weak, and made my way to the bathroom, avoiding my reflection in the mirror. The next day, I told myself it was a nightmare, a result of stress and exhaustion. But the dogs knew better. They refused to come near me, and that night, they scratched at the front door, desperate to get out. The attacks continued, night after night, always in the attic, always with that baby. I tried sleeping in the living room, but the moment I closed my eyes, I would find myself back in that bed, the baby’s eyes burning into me.

I started to lose weight, and I avoided the attic altogether, but the baby began to appear in other rooms—sometimes a shadow in the corner, sometimes a faint cry from the cellar. The dogs were beside themselves, and I feared for their health, so I made the difficult decision to send them to my mother’s house. The night they left, the house felt even more oppressive. I began to research the previous owners, digging through public records, and I discovered that a family had lived here in the 1960s, and their infant daughter had died in the cellar under mysterious circumstances—the death was ruled accidental, but the mother later committed suicide. There was a note in the old newspaper: ‘The baby cried all night, and then there was silence.’

I knew then that the baby in my visions was that unfortunate child, but why was it attacking me? Was it feeding on my fear, or was it seeking something else? I tried to confront it, to speak to it, to tell it to go to the light, but it only laughed—a high-pitched, gurgling sound that I could feel in my bones. One night, I woke up in the attic bed, but this time, the baby was not alone. A woman stood at the foot of the bed, her face obscured in shadow, and she pointed a long, bony finger at the cellar door. ‘The hollow below,’ she whispered, my voice echoing in my ears. ‘It wants a mother.’

I understood then with a sickening clarity. The baby wanted me to be its mother, to take the place of the woman who had abandoned it. And I knew that if I gave in, I would be trapped there forever, a presence in the house for the next unwary family. The attacks grew more intense, my will weakening with each night, and I began to fear for my own sanity. I thought about leaving, but I had nowhere to go, and I was bound by the lease. So I made a decision. I would fight back.

I learned that the cellar was the source of the haunting, and the baby’s remains were buried in a small, forgotten plot beneath the floor. I knew I had to find them and give them a proper burial, to release the child’s spirit. I waited until the middle of the day, when the house was quiet, and I armed myself with a shovel and a flashlight. I opened the cellar door, and the cold air hit me like a slap. The dogs would have gone mad, but they were gone. I descended the stairs, each step creaking under my weight, and I began to dig in the spot where I felt a strange energy. The soil was hard, packed, but I dug anyway, sweat dripping down my back, expecting at any moment to feel a cold hand on my shoulder.

After an hour, my shovel hit something solid. I knelt down and brushed away the dirt to reveal a small, wooden box, rotted with age. I opened it, and inside were the tiny bones of an infant, wrapped in a yellowed cloth. I was trembling, but I didn’t stop. I lifted the box and carried it outside to the backyard, where I had already dug a grave beneath the old oak tree. I placed the box in the ground, said a prayer, and filled the hole. As I patted down the last of the dirt, the air seemed to lighten, and I felt a release, as if a pressure had been lifted from my shoulders.

That night, I slept peacefully for the first time in weeks. The baby did not appear. The wind was quiet, and the house felt still. I woke with the dawn, the sun streaming through the attic window, and I knew the nightmare was over. I sat on the bed, looking at the empty room, and I whispered, ‘You’re at peace now.’ But as I said the words, I felt a presence behind me, and a cold draft on my neck. I turned, but there was nothing there. And from the cellar, I thought I heard a soft, gurgling laugh. The hollow below, it seemed, was not so easily filled.