The Hollow Between Pines

The last time I saw my grandmother alive, she was kneading dough on a flour-dusted counter, humming a tune I didn’t recognize. That was back in March, before the azaleas bloomed and the air turned thick with pollen. By June, she and Grandpa had packed their bags for one of those bus tours through the Florida panhandle, leaving their little farmhouse in the care of my mother and my two younger brothers.

The house sat at the end of a gravel drive that curved through a stand of pines so dense the sun barely touched the ground. Across the road, the Wilkersons’ place stood dark and empty—they wintered in Arizona—and beyond that, the pavement stretched for two miles past swamp and scrub. Our nearest neighbor was old Mr. Haskell, who lived six houses down, but I only ever saw him when his hound dog got loose.

The house itself was a relic: a two-story Victorian with creaking floorboards and a wrap-around porch that sagged in the middle. The upstairs landing, right off the front door, was a cluttered nook with a moth-eaten couch and a rack of coats that smelled of cedar and dust. A few steps to the left led to a narrow hallway. On the left was Grandpa’s workshop, a chaos of tools and jars of screws. Across from that, a bathroom, and next to it, the room that had been my mother’s as a girl. At the end, behind a door that always stuck, was the guest room where my brothers slept.

The first night we were there, I couldn’t sleep. The house made noises—settling, I told myself. But around three in the morning, I heard a faint scrabbling from the attic directly above my head. It stopped when I held my breath, then started again, rhythmic, like something dragging itself across the floorboards. I got up and stood at the foot of the attic stairs, which were hidden behind a door in the hallway ceiling. I pressed my ear to the wood and heard a low, wet breathing. I decided I was hearing things.

By the second week, my brothers started complaining about the noises at night. ‘It’s just raccoons,’ Mom said, but her voice had an edge. She’d taken to sleeping with the kitchen light on, and she kept checking the locks. One afternoon, I found her in the pantry, staring at a jar of pickled beets. ‘I don’t remember putting these here,’ she said, holding it up. The lid was sealed, but the liquid inside was cloudy, with something dark swirling at the bottom. I told her it was just old, but she put it back and closed the door.

The first real incident happened on a Friday, the day I was supposed to visit. I arrived in the late afternoon, and my youngest brother, Timmy, was crying at the top of the stairs. ‘There’s a lady in my room,’ he sobbed. ‘She was standing by the window, but she didn’t have a face.’ Mom brushed it off as a nightmare, but I saw her glance toward the guest room with an unease she couldn’t hide.

That night, I slept on the couch in the upstairs nook. I woke to the sound of my own name being called, soft and sweet, from the direction of the hallway. ‘Sarah…’ It was my mother’s voice, but not at her pitch. I sat up, my heart hammering. The hallway was dark, but at the far end, near the guest room, I saw a pale figure, barely visible, swaying slightly. It had the shape of a woman in a long dress, but no features—just a smooth, skin-toned oval above the shoulders. I shouted, and it vanished. When I turned on the lights, the hallway was empty.

The next morning, I told Mom. She didn’t laugh. She sat me down and said, ‘When I was little, I used to see things here too. I thought it was my imagination. But a few years ago, I found out that a woman named Elsie Mayhew used to live in this house. She was a midwife. She died in the guest room in 1932—she had a stillbirth, and she bled out. The story goes she never left, that she’s waiting for her baby.’ My stomach dropped.

After that, the house seemed to wake up. Doors opened on their own. We’d find cold spots in the hall. One night, my brother Jason ran out of the bathroom screaming, saying the mirror had fogged up and written ‘MINE’ in the condensation. The next day, we found the attic door ajar, though we’d locked it. At the top, in the gloom, we saw a child’s rocking chair, rocking on its own. We slammed the door and didn’t go up again.

But the worst was when my grandmother called. She’d been back from Florida for a week, but she and Grandpa were staying with her sister in Tallahassee for a few days. She asked how we were doing. I told her about the strange occurrences. There was a long silence. Then she said, very quietly, ‘I was hoping you wouldn’t find out. There’s something in the attic. Has been since I was a girl. I thought if I just ignored it… but it’s been getting stronger. I’m coming home tomorrow.’ I heard a crackle, and the line went dead.

The next day, before she could arrive, I couldn’t stand it anymore. While Mom was in town fetching groceries, I took a flashlight and climbed to the attic. The air was stifling, heavy with dust and the smell of rot. In the corner, behind a stack of old trunks, I found a small door I’d never noticed, painted over, almost invisible. I pushed it open. Inside was a narrow crawlspace, just wide enough for a child. At the end, on a shelf, sat a glass jar. Inside the jar was something dark and shriveled, like a dried placenta. Next to it, a yellowed note in handwriting I recognized as my grandmother’s: ‘For the baby she never had. Do not open. It will wake.’

I don’t know why I opened it. Maybe I thought it would end things. But as I unscrewed the lid, a foul odor flooded the attic, and I heard a shriek, not human, from below. I stumbled down to find my grandmother standing at the foot of the attic stairs, her face ashen. ‘You opened it,’ she whispered. ‘Now it’s out.’ The house began to groan, walls bulging, as if something huge was pushing against them from inside. We ran outside, all of us, and stood on the lawn, watching the windows pulse like a heartbeat. Then, with a sound like a thousand breaking bones, the house collapsed into itself, leaving only a depression in the earth, as if it had been swallowed.

The police report said it was a sinkhole. But I know the truth. In the weeks that followed, we heard the woman’s voice at night, coming from the woods, calling for her child. And sometimes, when I walk near the spot where the house stood, I see a pale figure standing among the pines, reaching out. She’s still waiting. And she knows we freed her.