The Hollow Grove Ritual

I was nine when my stepmother, Clara, dragged me to the Pinewood County Fair’s medieval encampment. My father, a history buff, had joined the Society for Creative Anachronism, and Clara, his new wife, was a devotee of the old ways. They spent weekends in canvas tents, drinking mead, and pretending to be knights and ladies. But this summer, the encampment was set in the deep woods of Maine, near a place called the Hollow Grove.

Rumors among the campers said the grove was an ancient burial ground for the Wabanaki people, and that bad things happened to those who disturbed it. Clara, however, dismissed it as superstition. She was a ‘practitioner’, as she called it, and she saw the grove as a source of power. On the last night of the event, she announced she was going to the grove to make an offering to the spirits of the land. She invited anyone who wanted to join, and, being a curious and lonely kid, I followed at a distance, despite my father’s warning to stay at camp.

I crept through the pines, following the flicker of their flashlights. The air grew cold, and the sounds of the camp faded into an eerie silence. The grove was a circle of ancient oaks, their branches twisted like arthritic fingers. In the center, a stone altar was half-buried in moss. Clara and the others, about a dozen of them, formed a circle around it. They lit a small fire in a bronze bowl, and each of them tossed in something: a piece of meat, a splash of whiskey, a lock of hair. They chanted in a language I didn’t understand, their voices low and guttural.

As they chanted, a chill ran down my spine, so intense it felt like ice water being poured over my head. I couldn’t breathe. My lungs seized, and I gasped for air. And then I saw them: figures moving between the trees, translucent and shimmering like heat mirages. There were men in buckskin, women in woven shawls, and children with hollow eyes. They crowded around the circle, watching, their mouths moving in silent speech. I heard laughter—a child’s giggle—and the murmur of adult conversation, but the group was deathly quiet. I wanted to scream, but no sound came out.

One of the figures, a tall man with a deer skull for a head, pointed at me. His finger was a bone, and his gaze was cold and ancient. I felt a pull, a force trying to drag me into the circle. I stumbled backward, my heart hammering, and tripped over a root. When I looked up, the figures were gone, and the group was extinguishing the fire, laughing as if nothing had happened. Clara saw me on the ground and helped me up, her face concerned. ‘You shouldn’t have come,’ she said. ‘But it’s over now. The spirits accepted our offering.’

I didn’t sleep that night. Every shadow in the tent seemed to move, and I could hear whispers in the wind. The next morning, we packed up to leave. The camp was a bustle of activity, but I felt a constant prickle on the back of my neck, as if I was being watched. As I helped load the car, I glanced back at the treeline. And there, standing between two pines, was a man in a black robe and hood. He was too far away to see his face, but I knew he was looking at me. He didn’t move. He just stood there, like a statue.

I tugged at my father’s sleeve and pointed. ‘Who is that?’ I asked. My father squinted, but by the time he looked, the man was gone. ‘Probably just a local,’ he said, dismissing it. But I knew what I saw. And as we drove away, I stared out the rear window, watching the forest until it disappeared. The chill never left me, and to this day, I still see him in my dreams, standing in the treeline, waiting. But I never told anyone the full story, because who would believe that a nine-year-old had made a pact with the dead without even speaking a word? The Hollow Grove had claimed a piece of me, and he was just the messenger.