The Hollow Days

I was eleven that summer, the one my mother dragged us down to her hometown in the dusty fold of the Sierra Madre. We stayed with my abuela in a house that smelled of boiled corn and candle wax, where the walls were thick and the windows were small against the heat. On the second day, as I was chasing a stray cat around the side of the house, my abuela’s hand shot out and grabbed my arm. Her fingernails were yellow and hard. ‘Stay away from the white house with the peeling fence,’ she said. ‘The Torres family. The girl there has the hollow days.’ I didn’t ask what that meant. I just nodded and let go of the cat.

Across the dusty street, the Torres house sat like a squatting toad. Its paint was the color of old bone, and the fence around it leaned as if tired of holding up anything. The girl’s name was Rosalba. I saw her once from my bedroom window, standing at her front door, staring at nothing. She was thin, her hair a lank curtain, and her eyes had that far-away look you see in pictures of saints. That night, I heard a sound I couldn’t place—a low, wet whisper that seemed to come from inside the walls of our own house. I pressed my ear to the plaster and heard it again, like someone breathing on the other side of the world. My mother told me it was the wind. But the air outside was still as stone.

A week passed. The heat was a constant weight. I began to notice the footsteps. They’d start in the morning, a soft pad-pad on the tiles outside my door, even though I was the only one in that hallway. At first I thought it was the cat, but the cat was missing. Then I saw the scratches—three long lines on the inside of my forearm, like a claw had raked me in my sleep. I didn’t tell anyone. I was afraid they’d think I was like Rosalba. But I started watching her house more closely.

One afternoon, I saw Rosalba’s mother—a small woman in a black dress—frantically crossing herself as she came out the door. She carried a bundle of herbs and muttered words I couldn’t hear. Behind her, I heard a crash, then a laugh that was too sharp and too loud, like breaking glass. That laugh didn’t sound human. It sounded like something else mimicking a child. I saw Rosalba’s shadow move across the window, but the shape was wrong—too long, too thin, with fingers that curled like hooks.

My abuela told us more that evening, her voice low and her eyes on the door. ‘The priest came twice. He poured holy water on the floors, but it dried up black. He says she’s not possessed in the usual way. He says something is eating her from the inside, something that feeds on the attention.’ She looked at me then, hard. ‘You stay away. That thing knows when it’s being watched.’

That night, I couldn’t sleep. The footsteps were louder now, pacing outside my door. I heard a girl’s voice, thin and scared, calling my name. ‘Help me,’ it said. ‘Please, it hurts.’ I pulled the sheet over my head, but the voice went on, growing more desperate, until it started to laugh. I cried into my pillow, and when I woke up, there were new scratches on my ankles, and the smell of rot was in the room, like something had died in the wall.

I decided to do something stupid. On the last day of our visit, I snuck out at noon, when the sun was high and the shadows were short. I crossed the street and went up to the Torres’ door. The paint was peeling in curls, and I could see dark stains on the wood, like old blood. I knocked, but no one answered. I pushed, and the door swung open with a sigh. The inside was dark and cold, and the air was thick with the smell of burnt sage and something else—like iron and spoiled milk.

I saw Rosalba at the end of the hall, sitting on the floor, her back to me. She was rocking back and forth, humming a tune I didn’t know. The floorboards creaked under my feet, and she stopped. Slowly, she turned her head. Her face was thin, her eyes sunken, but her mouth was wide open, and I saw something move inside her throat. A black shape, like a hand made of smoke, reached out and pressed against her lips from the inside. Her voice came out, but it wasn’t hers. It was deep and old and full of gravel. ‘You shouldn’t have come,’ it said. ‘Now I see you. Now I follow.’

I ran. I didn’t stop until I was back in my abuela’s kitchen, gasping. The door to the Torres house slammed shut behind me, and I heard that laugh again—sharp, like a splinter. That night, as we packed to leave, I saw Rosalba’s mother in the window of their house, her face blank, holding a handful of ash. And in the car, as we drove away, I felt something tap on the glass of the rear window. I didn’t look back. I just stared at the road ahead, and I could feel eyes on the back of my neck for the entire drive out of town.

It’s been twenty years. I live in a city far from there, with traffic and lights and noise. But sometimes, in the quiet of my apartment, I’ll hear a soft pad-pad outside my door. And there are mornings when I find scratches on my skin, three thin lines, as if something is still keeping track of me. The house with the peeling fence is gone now, I’ve heard. Burned down. But the hollow days aren’t over. They’re just patient. And I know, some night, that voice will come to my door, and this time, I won’t be able to run.