The Hollow in the Hollow

We moved to the edge of the Chalke Valley that autumn, to a cottage that had stood empty for years. My mother had inherited it from a great-aunt we’d never met, and with her job gone, it seemed like the only option. My stepfather, Tom, was all for it—’fresh air, space to run wild’—but my younger sister, Mia, and I were less sure. The place was all damp stone and low ceilings, and the garden sloped down into a tangled wood that seemed to swallow the light. The village was a mile away, a huddle of houses around a pub, but we rarely went. There was something about the locals that made me think they knew we were outsiders, and they didn’t like it.

The first few weeks were fine. Tom busied himself chopping wood and fixing the roof, while my mother tried to make the cottage cosy. Mia and I explored the immediate area, sticking to the paths. But the wood was a constant presence, its depths dark even at midday. I’d see shapes moving between the trees out of the corner of my eye—nothing specific, just a flicker of darkness—but when I looked, there was nothing. Mia said she felt watched, but I put it down to the move, the stress. That was until the night of the storm.

It was late October, the night of the village bonfire. The rain had hammered all day, but by evening it had stopped, leaving a mist that hung low over the fields. The village had a proper bonfire in the square, but we decided to have our own small one in the garden, at the edge of the wood. Tom had made a fire pit, and we’d piled up old branches and broken furniture. As the light faded, we lit it, and the flames danced, casting long shadows that writhed like living things. Mia and I sat close to the warmth, while Tom and my mother drank mulled wine and laughed. It was pleasant, almost normal.

Then Mia said she needed to pee. She didn’t want to go inside, so she said she’d go behind the shed. I watched her walk into the darkness beyond the firelight, her torch beam cutting through the mist. She was gone a while. When she came back, her face was pale, and she was shaking, although she tried to hide it. She whispered to me, ‘There’s something in the wood. A big lump of black, like a man, but not. It was watching me.’ I told her she’d seen a deer, or a shadow from the fire, but she kept glancing toward the trees, her eyes wide. I felt a prickle of unease, but I didn’t want to alarm anyone.

Later, when Tom and my mother had gone inside, Mia and I stayed by the fire, letting it burn down. She refused to go in until it was completely out. I sat with her, my arm around her shoulders, feeling the cold seep through my jumper. Then I saw it. Just beyond the light’s reach, at the base of an old oak, there was a patch of black that wasn’t just shadow. It was denser, more solid, and it seemed to absorb the light around it. It was shaped like a man, but too thin, too tall. It stood perfectly still, and I knew it was looking at us. I couldn’t see eyes, but I felt the weight of its gaze. My heart hammered. I grabbed Mia’s hand, and we both stared at it. It didn’t move, didn’t flicker. Then, as if bored, it turned and walked into the deeper dark, and the undergrowth rustled, as if a body were pushing through it, even though there was no wind.

We ran inside, bolting the door. I didn’t sleep that night. I lay listening to the house creak, the wind in the eaves, and I tried to convince myself it was a trick of the light, a piece of cloth caught on a branch. But I knew what I’d seen. The next morning, I went back to the spot. There were no footprints, no broken twigs, but the ground was disturbed, as if something had been dragged. And there was a smell, like rotting leaves and old metal. I didn’t tell my mother or Tom. I didn’t want to sound mad.

For a few days, nothing. Then, one afternoon, I was alone in the cottage, reading by the window, when I heard a sound from the wood. It was a high, thin whistle, almost like a bird call, but it had a wrongness to it. I looked out, and there it was, the black shape again, standing at the tree line, but this time it was closer, just at the edge of the garden. It raised an arm—if you could call it that—and pointed directly at the cottage. At me. I felt a cold dread, like my blood had turned to ice. I closed the curtains, but I could still feel it, outside, waiting.

That night, Mia said she saw it from her bedroom window, standing in the middle of the lawn, and it was now wearing a hat—a wide-brimmed hat, like a farmer’s, but blacker than black. My mother noticed our agitation and asked what was wrong. We broke down and told her everything. She listened, her face growing serious. She didn’t laugh. She said she’d seen something similar as a girl, in the old country, in the hills where she grew up. She called it ‘the Hollow’—a thing that comes to the edge of your life, that watches, that waits. She said we must never approach it, never acknowledge it, never show fear. It feeds on fear.

That was easier said than done. Over the next week, the Hollow appeared more often. Sometimes it was just a flicker in the corner of my eye, sometimes it stood in the garden, or at the edge of the wood. It never attacked, never came closer than a few metres, but its presence was suffocating. I felt watched constantly. Mia started having nightmares, crying out. Tom didn’t believe us at first, but then he saw it too, one evening, and he went pale. He wanted to leave, but my mother refused, saying that running would only make it follow.

The final night, I woke to a sound like tapping at my window. My room was on the second floor, so it couldn’t be a branch. I pulled back the curtain, and the Hollow was there, perched on the sill like a grotesque bird. Its shape was even less distinct now, more like a roughly humanoid void, but I could see its face—or where a face should be—and there were no features, just a smooth blackness that seemed to dip inwards, as if it were a hole in the world. It was reaching for the window latch with fingers that were too long, too thin. I screamed, and it withdrew, and as it dropped away, it made a sound—a low, guttural hum that vibrated through the glass.

After that, my mother decided we should perform a ritual she remembered. She went to the wood with a bundle of dried herbs and old iron nails, and she buried them at the base of the oak tree where we first saw the Hollow. She chanted something under her breath, words I didn’t recognise. When she came back, she looked exhausted, but she said it would be okay. And it was. The Hollow didn’t appear again. We stayed until the lease ended, but we never felt truly safe. Even as we drove away, I looked back, and I thought I saw a dark figure standing among the trees, watching, but it could have been my imagination.

Now, I’m writing this because I need to know what it was and what to do if I see it again. I haven’t, not yet, but I feel it waiting, somewhere just beyond my sight. I’ve read about shadow people, ghouls, void entities, but nothing matches what I saw. The way it moved, the way it watched, the way it seemed to be testing us, like a hunter studying its prey. If you’ve seen the Hollow, or something like it, please tell me. But only if you know how to stop it for good. Because I have a feeling it’s not done with me.