The Hollow in the Wall

I have never been certain whether what I experienced were genuine paranormal intrusions or merely extraordinarily vivid nightmares. The line between the two has blurred so thoroughly that I can no longer say where one ends and the other begins.

The first incident occurred in the autumn of 2005. I was staying with my sister, Mira, in a cramped flat above a bakery in the old district of Thornfield, a town that seemed perpetually wrapped in fog. The building was ancient, with walls that creaked and settled like old bones. I slept on the floor of her spare room, on a thin mattress that smelled of dust and mothballs. I had been working night shifts at a local warehouse, and that night I stumbled home around 2 a.m., exhausted, and fell asleep face down on the mattress, fully clothed.

I awoke to a pressure on my back. It was not heavy, but it was definite, like a large hand pressing against my spine. My first groggy thought was that Mira’s cat, a plump tabby named Juniper, had curled up on me as she often did. I tried to drift back to sleep, but then I felt a scratching, slow and deliberate, as if something with long nails was tracing patterns on my shirt. The scratching grew more insistent, and I felt a sharp sting, as if it were piercing my skin. I tried to call out to Mira, but my voice was gone. I tried to open my eyes, to move my limbs, but I was frozen, a prisoner in my own body. Panic clawed at me as the scratching became deeper, and I could feel a warm wetness spreading across my back. I fought with every ounce of will, and finally, with a jolt, I snapped upright, gasping. The room was empty. The door was shut, the window closed, and Juniper was curled up on a chair across the room, looking at me with unblinking eyes. I checked my back, but there were no marks, no blood. The sensation had been so real, yet there was no evidence.

Four years later, I had moved to the coastal town of Marchwood, renting a small cottage that backed onto a marsh. I was working as a librarian, and the quiet suited me. The cottage was old, with low ceilings and a peculiar hollow space behind the living room wall, where the plaster bulged out slightly. The landlady had mentioned it was a ‘feature’ from an old stove, but it always felt off to me. I slept in the bedroom at the end of the hall, and for the first few weeks, all was calm.

Then, on a humid night in July, I woke to the sound of scratching. It was coming from inside the wall, right behind my headboard. It was a frantic, scrabbling sound, like claws on wood. I froze, my heart thumping. I thought of rats, but the sound was too large, too deliberate. It stopped, and then I heard a whisper, so faint I might have imagined it: ‘Let me out.’ I sat up, wide-eyed, and the scratching resumed, more violent this time. I flung myself out of bed and turned on the light. The wall was still. The hollow in the wall seemed to pulse, just for a second, as if something was breathing inside it. I pressed my ear to the plaster, and I could hear a faint, rhythmic thumping, like a heartbeat.

I tried to leave the room, but my legs were weak. I managed to stumble to the kitchen and stayed there until dawn, shivering under a blanket. The next day, I inspected the wall. There was no opening, no crack, nothing that could harbor any creature. I asked the landlady if there was anything in the walls, and she smiled oddly and said, ‘Nothing that I know of. But that wall was added in the 1700s to cover a doorway. They say a woman was walled up in there, but it’s just a tale.’ I laughed nervously, but that night, I heard the scratching again, right on cue. I did not sleep at all.

The scratching persisted every night. I began to leave the lights on, and I placed my mattress in the center of the room, away from the walls. But the sound seemed to follow me. I would hear it from the corner, from the ceiling, from the floorboards. I tried telling myself it was my imagination, but the whispers grew louder, and I could make out words: ‘Free… me… you… are… the key.’

One night, I woke to find myself standing in front of the hollow wall, my hand pressed against the cool plaster. I was sleepwalking, something I had never done before. I felt a pull, a deep urge to press harder, to push through. I snapped out of it and stumbled away, terrified.

The next day, I called a contractor to open the wall. I wanted to prove there was nothing there, to end the nightmare. He arrived, a burly man named Derek, and he chiseled into the plaster. As he pulled away a section, we both saw it: a small, dark cavity, about the size of a coffin, lined with old, crumbling bricks. But it was empty. Not a bone, not a scrap of cloth. Just dust. And yet, as Derek looked at me, his face had gone pale. He said, ‘Did you hear that?’ I listened, and from within the hollow, I heard a faint, high-pitched giggle, like a child’s. Derek dropped his tools and fled.

I moved out the next week. I left my furniture, everything, just to get away. But the scratching followed me. It comes at night, no matter where I sleep. It is never close, but it is always there, a constant reminder that something is waiting, and it knows my name. I have tried everything to ignore it, but as I lie in my new bed, in a different town, I feel a familiar pressure on my back, and I know that the hollow has found me again.

I am writing this now, in the middle of the night, because I do not know what else to do. The scratching is at my window, and I can feel a cold breath on my neck. Whether this is a ghost or a nightmare, I can no longer tell. Perhaps it is both. Perhaps the line between the world of the living and the dead is as thin as the plaster I broke through. And I fear that I have become the threshold.