The Hollow in the Pines

My earliest memory of that place is the smell of damp pine needles and the way the gravel drive crunched under my mother’s car. I must have been seven, maybe eight, because I remember the braces I wore for my overbite, and I remember that the party was for my cousin’s confirmation. The house, if you could call it that, was a sprawling timber-and-stone lodge, set deep in a forest that seemed to go on forever. It belonged to my uncle’s new wife, a woman with sharp cheekbones and a laugh that didn’t quite reach her eyes. There were a dozen children there, all strangers to me except my cousin Beth, and I spent the first hour trailing after her as she showed me the property.

Beth led me past the reflecting pool, where the surface was so still it looked like black glass, and into the treeline. ‘There’s a hollow,’ she said, ‘where the trees grow too close, and the ground dips down. Dad says it’s where the old owners buried their dog, but I think it’s deeper than that.’ She stopped at a gnarled pine, its roots grasping the earth like fingers. ‘Listen.’ I pressed my ear to the trunk, and at first I heard nothing. Then, faintly, a scratch. A rhythmic scrape, like something dragging itself across wood. I pulled back, a prickle running down my neck. Beth just shrugged. ‘It does that sometimes. I think it’s the wind.’ But the air was still.

At the party, I tried to forget it. The adults drank punch that smelled of cloves and rum, and the kids played hide-and-seek in the grand hall, with its antler chandeliers and fading oil paintings. I hid behind a velvet curtain, my heart pounding, and as I listened to the others’ footsteps, I heard another step. It was heavier, slower, and it stopped right in front of my hiding spot. I held my breath. The curtain bulged slightly, as if something pressed against it, and a low, wet breath puffed through the gap, smelling of earth and decay. Then the others found me, and when I peeked out, nothing was there.

Night fell like a dropped blanket. The children were herded into a long bedroom with cots, which we thought was a grand adventure. I lay awake, staring at the ceiling beams, while the others drifted off. That’s when I noticed the scratching again, but this time it was inside the wall, right behind my head. It moved across the plaster in slow, deliberate strokes, like a finger tracing a word. I pressed my hand to the wall, and the scratching stopped. A moment later, it started again, but lower, now at the floorboard. I slid down, flashlight in hand, and I saw a thin, dark crack along the baseboard. The scratching was coming from beneath it. I shone the light in, and for a split second, I saw a pale, gnarled finger, with a too-long nail, curl around the edge of the crack and withdraw.

I didn’t sleep that night. The next morning, I told my cousin, but she dismissed it as ‘the old house noises.’ Still, I noticed that the adults avoided the east wing, and that the housekeeper refused to go near the cellar door. At lunch, my uncle told a story about the previous owner, a miserly timber baron who went insane and wandered into the woods one winter, never to be found. ‘They say he still walks the property,’ my uncle chuckled, but the new wife’s smile tightened.

I decided to investigate the hollow again, this time with a friend—a shy boy named Marcus who wore glasses and was always reading. We crept into the pines, and the hollow was just as Beth had described: a bowl-shaped depression in the earth, about ten feet across, ringed by trees whose branches interlaced to form a canopy, blocking out most of the sun. The ground was soft and springy, covered with a thick layer of needles, but in the center, there was a bare patch of black soil. As we stepped closer, I felt a vibration through the soles of my shoes, like a faint hum. Marcus pointed to the soil. ‘Look.’ There were marks in the dirt, like someone had dragged a heavy object in a circle, leaving a groove. And in the center of the circle, a small, round hole, about the size of a fist. I knelt, and from the hole came a breath of cold air, and that scratchy sound echoed up, as if something far below was moving.

Marcus was terrified, and we ran back to the lodge. I didn’t tell anyone else. But that night, I dreamed of the hollow. I dreamed I was lying in that bare patch, and the earth sucked me down, and the trees grew roots through my body. I woke with a start to find the room pitch black, and my mattress felt damp. I reached down and my fingers brushed against wet, gritty soil. I fumbled for my flashlight, and the beam pooled on the sheets: there were clumps of dirt and pine needles strewn across my blanket, as if someone had just emptied a handful onto me.

I got up, my heart thundering, and I heard the scratching again, now loud and fast, coming from the hallway. I opened the door a crack. The corridor was empty, but the scratching was moving, like a thing skittering along the floor, and my flashlight caught the tail end of something disappearing around the corner—a shadow, low to the ground, with no clear form. I ran to the adults’ room, but the door was locked, and my knocking woke no one. I spent the rest of the night in the bathroom, sitting on the tiled floor, my back to the wall, listening to the scratches that seemed to come from the vent.

By morning, I was exhausted, but I was also determined. I told Beth everything, and this time she believed me, because she had found similar dirt outside her windowsill. Together, we convinced Marcus to come with us, and we gathered shovels from the shed. We went back to the hollow, and we began to dig. The ground was softer than it looked, and within minutes we had a hole three feet deep. That’s when the shovel hit something solid. We cleared away the dirt and found a rectangular stone, like a small coffin lid, but no markings. My hands trembled as we pried it up. Beneath it was a hollow space, filled with what looked like a bundle of roots, but as we stared, the roots moved. They undulated, like worms, and in the center was a pulsing, fleshy mass, covered in a thin, membrane. It breathed, I swear it did. And from within, a scratching sound, exactly like the one we’d been hearing, but now unmistakable and close.

Marcus screamed and dropped his shovel. The mass shuddered, as if awakened, and the roots began to snake out of the hole, reaching for us. We scrambled back, but one of the roots wrapped around my ankle, cold and wet, and tugged. I fell, and the earth seemed to shift, the hollow tilting, and I saw the trees closing in, their branches bending like fingers. Beth grabbed my hand and pulled, while Marcus bashed the root with his shovel until it released me. We fled, not stopping until we were back on the gravel drive, gasping, our legs covered in dirt.

We never spoke of it again. The next year, the lodge was sold, and my uncle’s new wife moved away. But I still feel it sometimes. I feel that cold breath from the hole, that whisper of root-like fingers on my back when I’m alone. And whenever I hear a scratching sound, faint but insistent, I know it’s not the wind. It’s still there, under the pines, waiting for someone to listen a little too long.