The Hollow Cord

The first time I saw the thing, I was six years old, kneeling in the damp dirt behind our trailer in the Blackwood Flats, poking a dead crow with a stick. It came out from between the rusted ribs of an abandoned washing machine, a shape that wasn’t quite a man, but walked like one, all long limbs and dragged knuckles. I remember the way it tilted its head, as if it were listening to the hum of the power lines overhead. I didn’t tell anyone, because what do you say? I told my grandmother, who was the only one who ever listened, and she just spat on the ground and said, ‘That’s the Hollow Man, child. He comes for the ones who are already half-gone.’ She died that winter. I found her in her chair, her eyes open and empty, her mouth stretched into a smile I still see in my dreams.

I grew up in that trailer park, with its smell of burnt coffee and fried onions, and the constant hum of the highway a mile away. My father was a man of sudden rages and quiet apologies, and my mother was a ghost in her own house, always looking past me as if expecting someone else. When I was twelve, I started seeking out the occult, drawing symbols on my walls with magic marker and reading dog-eared paperbacks about astral travel and summoning. I thought if I understood the darkness, I could control it. One night, I woke to find the Hollow Man standing at the foot of my bed, its head brushing the ceiling, its face a smooth, featureless void. It reached out one long, gray hand and placed its palm against my forehead. The touch was cold, like a memory of ice, and in that instant I saw my father’s face, not as he was, but as he would become—hollow and lost, a husk of a man walking into the swamp behind the park. I screamed, and it was gone, but the symbol it left on my forehead—a series of concentric circles, like ripples in still water—stayed for a week.

As I grew older, I tried to shake it, but the bad luck followed me like a stray dog. I got fired from jobs for no reason, my relationships crumbled, and I was always on the edge of something terrible. I moved to the city, changed my name, tried to bury the past. But the Hollow Man appeared more often, sometimes in the corner of my eye on a crowded street, sometimes sitting on the edge of my bed at 3 AM. It never spoke, but I began to understand: it was waiting. Waiting for me to break completely, to become hollow enough for it to step inside.

Then, two weeks ago, I called my mother. It was the first time in months, and her voice sounded thin, like a wire pulled tight. She told me she’d been seeing something, a man who wasn’t quite there, standing at the foot of her bed at night. She described him perfectly—the long limbs, the featureless face. She was afraid, but in a detached way, as if she’d already surrendered. She told me she’d prayed to have a priest bless her house, but the figure remained. ‘It’s like it’s part of the walls now,’ she said. ‘It’s been here since before you were born.’ Then she paused, and I heard the hiss of static. ‘Ever since I did that Ouija board with your aunt when I was seventeen. I thought I sent it away, but I think I just passed it along. Passed it to you.’

I didn’t sleep that night. I sat in the dark of my one-room apartment, the city lights bleeding through the blinds, and tried to remember my first encounter. The dead crow, the washing machine, the tilted head. Was it always there, or did she give it to me? I felt a cold draft, and the hairs on my arms stood up. I turned, and there it was, standing in the corner, no longer a shadow but something with weight, pressing against the air. It stepped forward, and I saw its form solidify: a man, tall and gaunt, with skin like damp clay, and in the place where its face should be, there was a negative space, a vacuum that seemed to suck the light from the room. I saw my father’s eyes in that void, and I understood: it had been him all along. He hadn’t killed himself out of despair; he had been hollowed out, replaced, and the thing that wore his skin had walked into the swamp to wait for me.

I am not sure how long I stood there. It raised its hand, and I saw the same symbol on its palm, the concentric circles, and I realized they were like tree rings, counting the years of its existence. It was ancient, older than the trailer park, older than this city, and it had been feeding on my family for generations, passing from mother to child like an inheritance. My mother had seen it too, and her mother before her, and so on back to some nameless ancestor who had accidentally called it up from a well or a swamp or a midnight ritual. We were all hollow, each of us a little less than whole, and it just waited until the shell was thin enough to crack.

I heard my mother’s voice again in my head, as if she were in the room, whispering, ‘They’re attracted to broken people, those things. Like moths to a flame.’ And I was so broken, so full of holes, that the light was leaking out of me. I looked at the Hollow Man, and I felt a strange peace. Maybe I could give in. Let it take me, and finally be whole. But as I stepped toward it, I remembered my grandmother’s face, that smile frozen in death, and I knew that smile was not peace, but the last moment of horror before the void takes you.

I don’t know how I broke the connection. I slammed my eyes shut and squeezed my hands into fists, pressing my nails into my palms until they bled. I whispered the only prayer I knew, a half-remembered rhyme from my childhood: ‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, the hollow one shall turn to rust.’ It was silly, a children’s rhyme, but the pressure in the room lessened, and when I opened my eyes, the figure was gone. The corner was empty, but the air still hummed with a sourceless vibration.

Now I am packing. I’m going to my mother’s house, to face whatever is there. Maybe I can break the line. Maybe I can’t. But I know it’s not just bad luck; it’s an inheritance. And I’m done running. I’m done being hollow. The Hollow Man is waiting, but I’m going to be ready for it. I’ll find a way to stop it, or I’ll end it, one way or another. Because I’ve seen what it does to those who wait too long: it leaves nothing but a smile, stretched wide and empty, like the last ring on a dying tree.

I step out of the apartment, and the hallway light flickers. In the corner of my eye, I see a shape that’s almost a man, and I don’t turn to look. But I’m not afraid. I’m done being afraid. I’m done being hollow. Let it come. I have a name for it now.

I call it the Hollow Cord, because it links us, mother to child, like an umbilical cord made of shadow. And I’m going to cut it.