The Hollow Hour

Our room was on the second floor of the old farmhouse, a long, narrow space with two single beds shoved against opposite walls. The window faced the barn, and at night, when the light was off, the moon would cast a pale square on the floorboards. I was eight, my brother Marcus was nine. We thought we were too old for nightlights, but we left the door ajar, a sliver of hall light our only comfort.

The first night it happened, I woke from a dreamless sleep to find the room changed. The moonlight had a gray, syrupy quality, and the shadows were not where they should be. A dark figure stood between our beds, a woman in a hooded cloak, her face hidden. She was perfectly still, but the air around her shimmered, like heat rising from asphalt. I wanted to scream, but my throat closed. I could only lie there, my heart hammering, my fingers digging into the sheets. Sweat beaded on my forehead and rolled down my temples. Then, as if sensing my terror, she slowly turned her head toward me, and the hood fell back to reveal emptiness—no face, just a void. I squeezed my eyes shut and prayed until light crept under my eyelids.

In the morning, I asked Marcus if he saw it. He laughed, said I had a nightmare. He was always the braver one, the one who checked for monsters under the bed. I tried to shrug it off, but the image stayed burned in my mind.

The second night, I was determined to stay awake. I watched Marcus’s steady breathing, the rise and fall of his chest. But exhaustion claimed me. When I opened my eyes, she was there again, closer to my bed this time. Now her mouth was open, a black cavern in the void of her face. It was not a scream, but a silent, sucking void, like a doorway to somewhere else. I felt a pull, a cold draft that tugged at my blankets. I tried to cry out to Marcus, but my voice was a rasp. I reached over and shook his arm. He stirred, then stiffened. I saw his eyes grow wide in the dim light. He was seeing her too. I managed to whimper, ‘Marcus?’ He didn’t answer. He was frozen, his face ashen. Then, in a voice that was not his own, he whispered, ‘She’s hungry.’

That broke the spell. I scrambled out of bed, slammed the light switch, and the figure vanished. But the room felt empty, as if something had been taken from us. Marcus was shaking, and for the first time, he looked at me with the same terror I felt. ‘We need to tell Mom,’ he said. But what would we say? There was nothing to see in the light.

The third night, we took action. We dragged my bed next to his, so close we could hold hands in the gap. We placed a flashlight on the nightstand, but the batteries died. We tried to stay awake, but our eyelids were heavy. We made a pact: if either of us saw her, we’d scream as loud as we could and wake the whole house.

We must have dozed off. I woke to a strange sound—a low, wet hum, like a swarm of flies. The room was darker than before, the moon hidden behind clouds. I reached for Marcus’s hand, and he squeezed back. He was awake. ‘She’s behind the door,’ he whispered, his breath warm on my ear.

I didn’t want to look, but I did. The door was ajar, a sliver of blackness. And there, in the gap, was the edge of her dark cloak. Then the door began to creak open, inch by inch. The hum grew louder. I wanted to run, but I was pinned to the bed. Then the door flew wide, framing her silhouette. Her mouth was open wider now, and I could see a faint light inside her, like a sickly green glow. And I saw, swirling in that light, the faces of children—pale, silent, drifting. ‘Don’t look,’ Marcus said, but I couldn’t help it. My gaze was locked.

Then Marcus did something unexpected. He released my hand and jumped out of bed, picking up the heavy wooden chair from my desk. He swung it as hard as he could at the figure. The chair passed through her, but it struck the door, slamming it shut. The impact sent a shiver through the room. The hum stopped. I heard Marcus fall to the floor, panting. I flicked the light on. He was on his knees, the chair splintered in his hands, the door cracked. But she was gone.

We didn’t sleep that night. We sat on the floor, backs against the wall, waiting for dawn. When the sun rose, we told our mother we’d been playing and broke the door. She believed us because we look so guilty.

But I knew it wasn’t over. And indeed, as the days passed into weeks, I would still catch a flicker of something in moments of near-darkness—in the periphery of my vision. Marcus refused to talk about it. He became quiet, withdrawn. One night, weeks later, I heard him sobbing in his sleep. I woke him, and he had a fever. ‘She’s in my head,’ he said. ‘She’s always watching.’

And then it shifted. The horror was no longer outside; it lived within my brother. He would stare at the wall for hours, whispering to himself. One day, he looked at me and smiled, but his eyes were hollow, and I saw that the green light was in his pupils. ‘She can come through the light,’ he said, his voice flat. ‘She used to be a person, but she got stuck. She’s looking for a way out.’

I couldn’t take it anymore. I told my mother that Marcus needed help. She took him to doctors, but they found nothing. He kept saying ‘the hollow hour’—the time between sleep and waking, when the wall between worlds is thin. He said the woman was a gatekeeper, and she wanted us to open the gate.

Now, I lie awake every night, listening. Marcus sleeps in the room next to mine, but the wall between us is thin. I can hear him whispering the same phrase over and over: ‘Let her in, let her in, let her in.’ And tonight, I felt a cold breeze from his room, and the doorknob rattled. I whispered his name, and the rattling stopped. But then I heard his voice, but it wasn’t his. It was a woman’s voice, deep and ancient: ‘Soon.’

I have not slept in three days. I don’t know how long I can stay sane. But I know one thing: I will never speak of this again. I will carry the image of that woman in my mind, and I will always be afraid of the dark. And maybe, just maybe, I will close my eyes and see that green light again, and this time, I will follow it. But I won’t tell anyone. Because the hollow hour is coming, and she will be waiting.