The Hollow in the Hill

The road to our house in the highlands of Bukidnon, Philippines, is a winding ribbon of packed earth that climbs through coconut groves and past a few scattered wooden houses. You turn off the national highway at a faded sign for a mountain resort that never reopened, then follow a rutted track that curves around the base of a hill. The hill itself is odd—a perfect dome of dark volcanic soil, crowned with a thicket of gnarled acacia trees that look like grasping hands. Locals avoid it, and they say the pit at its summit has no bottom. That pit, and what it hides, is the heart of every strange thing that has happened to me and my wife, Maria, since we moved here.

Our house is a modest two-story concrete structure built on a slope, with a wide veranda that overlooks the valley. Maria’s family owns half the land on this side of the hill, and her cousin Tomas lives just down the path. The nearest neighbors are a good ten minutes’ walk away, and at night the only sound is the wind rustling the cogon grass and the occasional cry of a night bird. We moved here from Manila for a quieter life, but we soon learned that the quiet here is not the same as peace.

The first incident happened on the third night. A storm had knocked out the power, and the whole house was steeped in a blackness so total it felt physical. I was lying in bed, unable to sleep, when I heard a scratching at the window—a deliberate, rhythmic sound, like fingernails on glass. I assumed it was a branch, but the closest tree was several meters away. I lit a candle and saw that our dog, a big farm mongrel, was cowering in the corner, his eyes fixed on the window, his tail between his legs. He let out a low growl, but it was a tremulous sound, not a warning. The scratching continued for a full minute, then stopped. When I finally convinced myself it was a bird, the power returned, and the dog relaxed, but the unease lingered.

A few weeks later, I was out back, fixing a loose fence post, when I noticed that the soil near the base of the hill had a strange, musky odor—like damp earth mixed with something metallic. I mentioned it to Tomas, who often helped with repairs. He looked at me with a grave expression and said, ‘That’s the smell of the old ones. They sleep under the hill.’ He then told me a story his grandmother had passed down: decades ago, a group of loggers had come to clear the hill, planning to build a resort. They dug a pit to anchor a cable, but they hit something hard and black, like obsidian, that seemed to suck the light from the air. Within a month, each logger died in a different accident—one was crushed by a falling tree, another drowned in a shallow stream, a third simply disappeared. The pit was filled and left alone, but the hill has been hungry ever since.

Maria dismissed it as folklore, but she also warned me never to go up the hill after sunset. She said her grandmother had seen a creature there, a thing made of earth and shadow, that would steal your voice if you looked into its eyes. I laughed it off, but I heeded her warning, mostly out of respect for her beliefs. Still, curiosity gnawed at me.

One afternoon, I decided to explore the hill while the sun was still high. I took a flashlight and a machete, and I climbed the gentle slope, pushing through the tall grass and thorny bushes. The acacia trees at the summit were older than I expected, their trunks twisted and covered with moss. In the center of the clearing, I found the pit. It was indeed there, a wide opening in the earth, maybe three meters across, with edges that dropped into absolute blackness. I was lying on my stomach, peering down, when I heard a faint whisper—one that seemed to come from inside the pit, but also from all around me. It was a voice, high and thin, like a child’s, but distorted, as if it were being pulled through water. It said my name. ‘Ethan.’ I backed away, my heart pounding. And as I did, I felt a tug at my ankle, as if something had grabbed me. I yanked my leg free and fell backward, scrambling to my feet. I didn’t look back until I reached the bottom.

That night, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being watched not only from the hill but from inside the house. I checked every room, every closet, but found nothing. When I finally fell asleep, I dreamed of a vast cavern beneath the hill, filled with roots and skulls, and at its center a black pool that rippled without wind. In the dream, a figure rose from the pool—tall, gaunt, with skin like cracked mud and eyes that were empty sockets holding the faint glow of embers. It spoke in that same distorted whisper: ‘You came to me. Now you are mine.’

Maria woke me from the dream, shaking me. ‘Ethan, you were screaming,’ she said. I tried to tell her what I had seen, but my voice came out as a rasp, and then nothing. I was mute. I could open my mouth, but no sound would come. Panic set in. Maria rushed me to the nearest clinic in the provincial capital, but the doctor could find no physical cause. They said it was psychosomatic, maybe stress. But I knew it was the pit.

For days, I communicated in writing, and Maria grew more and more distraught. She finally confessed that her grandmother had placed a curse on the hill to protect us, but that the curse could only be lifted if someone who had ‘trespassed’ the hill offered a gift—something precious—to the pit. In the old stories, it was usually a rooster or a pig. But Maria said that for a trespass as deep as mine, the gift might need to be more significant. I wrote in my notepad: ‘Like what?’ She answered, ‘A memory, perhaps. Or a piece of your past.’

I thought about my life before, my childhood, the people I loved. I was an only child, and my parents were both gone. The most precious thing I had was a silver locket that had belonged to my mother, with a tiny photo of her and me inside. I had worn it for years. Without hesitation, I took it off and pressed it into Maria’s hand. ‘Take it to the pit,’ I wrote. ‘Ask for forgiveness.’

Maria did as I requested. She climbed the hill at dusk, her torch flickering in the growing darkness. I waited at the bottom, unable to speak, my heart heavy. She was gone for about an hour. When she returned, she was pale and trembling, but she had a slight smile. She held out her hand—the locket was gone. ‘I threw it in,’ she said. ‘And I whispered your name, and I felt a cold wind rush up, and then it stopped.’ As she spoke, my voice cracked and returned—’I love you,’ I rasped. We embraced, and I wept.

But the hill is not done. Since then, I have felt a strange connection to it. Sometimes, late at night, I hear that whisper again, but now it’s not calling my name—it’s speaking in my voice. And in my dreams, I see not the pit but the face of my mother, aged and hollow, looking up at me from the black water, asking me why I gave her away. I wake up screaming, but the sound is not mine—it’s the echo of a thousand voices rising from the earth. I know now that the hill takes more than a token. It takes the memory, and it gives you a haunting in return. I haven’t told Maria, but I will never leave this place. The hill has a piece of me now, and I can’t move on without it.