The Hollow Call

It was the summer of 2021, and I had driven out to my aunt’s farmhouse to help her with a few chores. The sun was blazing, and the air was thick with the smell of hay and wildflowers. My aunt, a no-nonsense woman in her sixties, was busy preparing for a local fair, so she put me to work feeding her three goats and two cats. The goats were easy, but the cats, Miso and Soba, were nowhere to be found inside. I checked every room, under beds, behind curtains, but they were gone. Eventually, I found them lounging in the shade of the old oak tree near the barn, too lazy to move even for food. I brought their bowls out and they ate lazily, barely acknowledging me.

As I turned to head back inside, I heard a voice from behind the tree, a low, guttural whisper that seemed to wrap around the words: ‘BOO.’ It was so sudden and close that I felt the air move, but I didn’t startle. I assumed it was my cousin Kyle, who loved to prank me. I rolled my eyes, already forming a sarcastic remark, and spun around, expecting to see him grinning. But there was no one there. The tree stood alone, its branches still, and the only sound was the buzzing of bees in the clover. I called out, ‘Kyle? Not funny!’ but the only response was the creak of the barn door swinging in the breeze.

Puzzled, I walked around the tree, half-expecting to find him hiding behind the trunk. But the ground was flat, and the tree was too slender to hide anyone. A chill ran down my spine despite the heat, and I hurried back to the house. Inside, I asked my aunt if Kyle had come by. She looked up from her mixing bowl, her eyes narrowing. ‘Kyle’s in town today. He left early this morning. Why do you ask?’ I told her about the voice, and she shrugged it off, saying it was probably a bird or the wind playing tricks. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off.

The next day, while I was alone in the house, I heard the voice again, this time from the hallway. It said my name, softly, as if inviting me closer. My blood ran cold. I followed the sound to the attic door, which was slightly ajar. I had never been up there, and the darkness beyond seemed to pulse. I called out, ‘Who’s there?’ but the only answer was the creak of old wood. I decided to go up, my heart pounding, telling myself it was just the house settling. At the top of the stairs, I found an old phonograph, its horn covered in dust. On it was a record with no label. I blew off the dust and saw a inscription scratched into the surface: ‘For the listener who seeks the truth.’ Despite every instinct telling me not to, I wound the phonograph and placed the needle. The sound that emerged was not music, but a voice, the same voice, whispering, ‘You should not have come. Now you must stay.’

I tried to move, but my feet felt glued to the floor. The room grew colder, and the light from the small window dimmed as if a cloud had passed over the sun. The walls seemed to close in, and the floorboards beneath me began to creak and groan like living things. I managed to turn and stumble down the stairs, but the house seemed different. The hallway stretched longer, the doors were in the wrong places, and the windows showed not the sunlit farm but a dark, starless sky. I ran for the front door, but when I threw it open, I was not outside. I was in the attic again, facing the phonograph. I spun around, but the door was gone, replaced by a blank wall. The voice echoed, now all around me, ‘Welcome home.’

I don’t know how long I was trapped in that endless loop, running through rooms that reshaped themselves, while the voice whispered secrets and lies. I eventually found a small hatch hidden behind an old wardrobe, leading to a crawlspace. I squeezed through, scraping my skin, and emerged into a dusty basement that smelled of earth and decay. There, in the corner, sat three mirrors, each one reflecting a different version of the room. In one, I saw my aunt, but her eyes were black pits. In another, I saw myself, but my reflection was smiling. In the third, I saw a figure I didn’t recognize, a woman with long hair that moved as if underwater. She raised a hand and pointed to a door behind me. I turned, and the door was there, slightly open. I pushed it open and stepped into a dim corridor that led to a door that looked like the front door. I opened it, and this time, I stepped out into the blinding sunlight and the smell of hay.

I was standing in the yard, but the farmhouse looked aged, the paint peeling, the windows boarded. The goats were gone, and the oak tree was dead. I ran to the house, calling for my aunt, but the door was locked. When I looked through a crack in the boards, I saw my aunt standing inside, staring at nothing, and she whispered, ‘You shouldn’t have left.’ That’s when I realized the voice had been her all along, but a version of her from a different time, a version that had been trapped in the house decades ago, waiting for someone to take her place. I had been the fresh listener she needed. I backed away, but the house seemed to lurch, and I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned, and there was the woman from the mirror, her dark eyes boring into mine. ‘You’ll stay now,’ she said. ‘You’ll become the voice for the next one.’

I don’t remember how I finally escaped. All I know is that I woke up on a dirt road, miles from the farm, my clothes torn and my memory hazy. I never went back. To this day, I can’t hear the wind through the trees without thinking I hear the hollow call of that voice, and I know that somewhere, in that never-ending house, my aunt is still waiting, and I am only a visitor who got lucky. But some nights, when the light is just right, I see my own reflection flicker, and I wonder if a part of me never truly left.