The Hollow Between the Pines

I’ve never told anyone about the summer I turned nine, the summer we moved to the edge of the Blackwood Forest in northern Maine. My father had inherited a hunting lodge from an uncle he barely remembered, and we went there to escape the city after my parents’ divorce. I was a practical kid, loved science and logic, and I had no patience for ghost stories. But what happened in that lodge changed everything I thought I knew about the world.

It started with the trees. The forest pressed against the back of the lodge like a dark green wall, and at night, the pines seemed to lean in closer, their branches scratching the roof. My room faced the woods, and I’d lie in bed, watching the shadows shift outside. One night, about a week after we arrived, I saw a light—a pale, greenish glow, bobbing between the trunks about twenty yards out. I figured it was a hiker with a headlamp, but it moved too smoothly, too steadily, and it never turned away. It just hovered there, watching. I blinked, and it was gone.

The next night, I saw it again. This time, it was closer, and I could make out a shape behind it—tall, thin, like a man made of smoke, with arms that hung too low. I told myself it was a trick of the moonlight, a branch, but the light pulsed, and the shape tilted its head as if noticing me. I pulled the curtains shut and didn’t sleep.

I tried to ignore it. I spent my days by the lake, skipping stones, pretending I wasn’t scared. But the lodge had a study full of old books, and one afternoon, while searching for a flashlight, I found a journal—my great-uncle’s, dated 1972. The writing was cramped and frantic, and the last entry stopped mid-sentence: ‘The pines hold something old, something that—’ and then a long, jagged line, as if the pen had been dragged.

My father laughed when I asked about the forest. ‘Just a legend, kid. The locals used to say the woods were haunted by a lost hunter. Don’t worry your head.’ But that night, the light returned, and this time it was in the yard. I crept to the window, and I saw it clearly: a tall figure, wearing a tattered coat, holding a lantern with a glowing green flame. It stood at the treeline, staring up at my window, and I felt a coldness in my chest, like the air had been sucked out of the room.

The figure raised its free hand and beckoned—slowly, deliberately. I stepped back, heart pounding. I thought about my father, asleep down the hall, and I almost screamed, but I couldn’t find my voice. I just watched until it lowered its arm and melted back into the pines.

The next day, I found a pile of small bones outside my window—bird bones, mostly, but arranged in a circle. I told myself a fox did it, but I knew foxes didn’t arrange bones in perfect rings. I buried them, and I didn’t tell my father.

For a week, nothing. The forest went quiet. I convinced myself it was over. Then, one afternoon, my father went into town for supplies and missed the turnoff. He didn’t come back for hours. When he finally returned, his face was pale, and he wouldn’t look me in the eye. He said he got lost, that the GPS ‘flickered’ on the old logging road, and he saw a man in a long coat standing in the middle of the road, pointing back the way he came. He said the man’s face was ‘wrong’—too smooth, no features, just a blank canvas. He laughed it off, but his hands were shaking.

Two nights later, the light appeared at my window again. This time, it was inches away, and the figure was pressed against the glass, its face a pale blur, its eyes glowing red—not green, but a burning red. It opened its mouth, and I heard a voice in my head, soft and dry like leaves: ‘The forest remembers, boy. You can’t leave what’s already yours.’

I screamed. My father burst in, but when he looked, there was nothing. He held me, told me it was just a nightmare. But I saw the fear in his eyes—he knew.

The next morning, I found a trail of grey feathers leading from our back door into the woods. I followed it, against every instinct, and it led to a clearing I’d never seen before, even though I’d hiked the area daily. In the center stood a small stone well, covered in moss, and on the rim were scratched names and dates. I leaned over the edge, but there was no water—just a dry, endless dark. And from the dark, a voice echoed up, asking, ‘Do you want to go home?’

I ran. I didn’t stop until I was back at the lodge, and I locked every door and window. My father came back an hour later, carrying a bundle of birch twigs. He said the locals told him to hang them over the entrances, to keep ‘the unlucky’ out. I didn’t ask what that meant. We hung them together, and for the first time in days, the forest felt silent—too silent.

That night, I woke to the sound of tapping. I opened my eyes, and the figure was in my room. It stood at the foot of my bed, its head tilted, its mouth moving, but no sound came out. Its hands were long, with too many fingers, and they were reaching toward me. I wanted to scream, but my body wouldn’t move. It leaned closer, and I saw its face—not blank, but shifting, like clay being shaped. It formed my mother’s features, then my father’s, then my own. And in its voice, it said, ‘You’ll stay here forever, with me.’

I closed my eyes, and when I opened them, it was gone. But there was a mark on my arm—a circle of small red burns, like a bracelet of thorns. I didn’t sleep again.

The next day, I found my father in the study, staring at a map. He had circled a spot deep in the forest, a place called ‘The Hollow.’ He said he’d dreamed of it, that someone had called him there. I begged him not to go, but his eyes were glassy, and he said, ‘I have to. It’s where she belongs.’

He left that afternoon. I waited by the door, watching the pines, but he didn’t come back. That night, I saw the light again, but this time, it was inside the house, in the hallway. It flickered, and I heard my father’s voice, pleading, ‘Don’t follow me. It’s too late.’

I ran to the car, but the engine wouldn’t start. The phone was dead. I was alone, with nothing but the birch twigs and the overwhelming sense that I was being watched from every direction.

I grabbed a flashlight and a kitchen knife, and I went out the back door, toward the clearing with the well. The forest was darker than I’d ever seen, the trees pressing in, the ground soft with pine needles that muffled my steps. I found the well, and I called out, ‘What do you want from us?’

From the depths, a voice answered—not the figure’s, but my mother’s, who had died when I was five. ‘I want to come home, sweetheart. I want to see you again.’

I almost wept. I leaned over the edge, and I saw a light at the bottom—a lambent glow, like a candle in a cave. And then, the figure stepped out from behind a tree, its red eyes fixed on me, and it said, ‘You’ll take her place, or you’ll stay here forever.’

I don’t remember what I did next. I only remember running, tripping over roots, the sound of its footsteps behind me, closer and closer. When I burst through the front door of the lodge, I slammed it shut and threw the lock. The birch twigs fell to the floor, and I felt a cold hand on my shoulder.

I turned, and it was my father—but his eyes were red, and his smile was too wide. He said, ‘Welcome home, son.’ And then the world went dark.

I awoke in my bed, the morning light streaming through the curtains. The lodge was empty, and there was no sign of my father. I found a notebook under my pillow, in my own handwriting, that I didn’t remember writing. It said, ‘The hollow between the pines is a door. I’m the keeper now. Don’t ever open it.’

I’m twenty years old now, and I’ve moved to a city, far from any forest. I’ve tried to forget, to embrace logic and reason. But sometimes, in the dead of night, I feel a cold hand on my shoulder, and I see a man with red eyes in the corner of my room. And I know—I’m not the one who left. I’m the one who was left behind, and the forest is still waiting for me to come back.