The Hollow Cord

My grandmother’s farmhouse in the Arkansas delta had a way of holding on to things. Dust, heat, the scent of molasses and kerosene, and the memory of my cousin, Evie, who had drowned in the creek out back the summer before I turned five. My family didn’t talk about it much; they said she’d gone to be with the Lord, and we were to be thankful for the time we had. But I knew better. I’d seen the way my mother’s hands shook when she hung the wash, and how my father would stare at the muddy water for too long. We were a God-fearing family, attending the small white clapboard church every Sunday, singing hymns and praying for mercy. I was a good boy, a quiet boy, and I believed in angels. But I also believed in the quiet, hungry thing that lived in the deep places of the farm.

That summer, I slept in the room at the end of the upstairs hallway, a narrow space with a single window that looked out over the fields. The walls were papered with a faded pattern of roses, and on the floor lay a braided rug that smelled of mothballs. The room was stifling, even with the window cracked, so my mother would leave the door ajar to catch a draft. One night, deep in the heat, I woke to a sound that was not the rustle of cottonwood leaves or the drone of cicadas. It was a low, thick moan, rising and falling like a wounded animal. Then came a high, chattering laugh, the kind you hear from something that is not amused but is pretending to be.

I sat up, my heart thumping, and looked toward the window. The thin white curtains were motionless against the black pane, but on the ceiling, cast in the faint glow of the nightlight from the hallway, I saw them: a pair of eyes, large as dinner plates, swirling with a sickly green light. They weren’t in the curtains; they were etched onto the plaster, as if someone had drawn them with a thick brush of bile. They blinked, and the room grew cold.

I screamed—or tried to. My voice caught in my throat like a fish bone. I scrambled out of bed, my feet slapping the warm wooden floor, and ran for the door. I shoved the handle, but it wouldn’t budge. I heard a click, and then a hollow laugh from behind me, close, as if the thing were standing at the foot of my bed. I spun around, but the eyes were gone. The curtains hung limp, and the nightlight threw my own shadow, long and wavering, across the wall.

I dove under the bed, heart pounding so hard I could feel it in my ears. The dust bunnies tickled my nose, and I squeezed my eyes shut, praying to Jesus and Mary and all the saints I could remember. Then I heard the floorboards creak, and the bed skirt was lifted. A face peered under, but it wasn’t human. It was a mask of stretched skin, splotched with rot, and where a mouth should have been there was only a yawning black hole. Its eyes were the same sickly green, and they bore into mine. I screamed then, a raw, primal sound, and the thing withdrew. The door flew open, and my mother rushed in, turning on the overhead light. ‘What’s wrong, child?’ she asked, her voice tight. I tried to explain, but the words wouldn’t come. I just pointed at the ceiling, where the eyes had been, but there was nothing there.

For years, I told no one. I carried that image in my head like a splinter. I went to church, sang the songs, shook the preacher’s hand, but a part of me stayed in that room, trapped under the bed. It wasn’t until I was in my thirties, sitting in a rusted-out barn on the edge of a soybean field, that the story finally came out—to a drifter named Silas who had asked about the farm’s history.

‘You see them eyes too, huh?’ Silas said, spitting a stream of tobacco juice into a cobweb. ‘That ain’t no ghost, boy. That’s the Hollow Cord.’ He went on to tell me about the thing that latches onto family bloodlines, feeding on grief and secrets. It appears when the line is weakest, when a child is most afraid. It learns your name, and then it waits—waits until you have children of your own, and then it goes for them.

When I got home, I found my daughter, Sarah, standing in the hallway outside her bedroom, staring at the ceiling. Her face was pale, and her lips were moving, but no sound came out. I followed her gaze. There, in the plaster, were the eyes—the same eyes from my childhood, but now they looked older, hungrier. I grabbed Sarah, pulled her into my arms, and ran out of the house. We stood on the porch, gasping, and when I looked back through the window, the eyes were gone.

I sat on the porch swing, Sarah trembling against my chest. I realized then that the thing wasn’t after me anymore. It had been waiting, all those years, for me to give it what it truly wanted: a new soul to torment. I had brought my family to this farm, hoping to find peace, but the peace was a lie. The Hollow Cord was woven into the very foundation of the house, passed down like a tainted heirloom. And now, it knew Sarah’s name.

We left that night, driving down the dark dirt road, and I never looked back. But as I gripped the steering wheel, I caught a glimpse of something in the rearview mirror—two glints of green, watching from the edge of the property. I drove faster, but I knew it wasn’t over. The Hollow Cord is patient, and it knows where we live now. It’s embroidered in the soil, in the roots of the family tree, and it will find us again. One day, when Sarah is asleep, and the house is quiet, it will lift the curtain, and the eyes will blink, and the laughter will begin anew.

I haven’t told her what I saw, not yet. But sometimes, at night, I hear her bedroom door click shut by itself. And I pray to a God I’m not sure is listening, because I know—I’ve always known—that you can outrun a place, but you can’t outrun a curse that has your name written in its hollow eyes.