The Hollow Leaps

The stillness of Lark’s Mill had a way of settling into your bones, a damp quiet that clung to the old mill town like the moss on its brick walls. For weeks, nothing had stirred, not even the usual gossip at the general store. Then, within the span of a single week, the quiet was shattered.

The first thing happened on a Tuesday evening. I was driving back from the county seat, the last light bleeding out of the sky over the Poconos, when I saw the deer. It wasn’t the deer itself that was strange—they were common enough—but the way it moved. It stood at the edge of the road, frozen in my headlights, its head cocked at an unnatural angle. Then it took two leaps, impossibly long and low, clearing the entire width of the road and vanishing into the pines on the other side. The sound of its landing—a heavy, wet thump that seemed to vibrate through the car—stayed with me long after.

I told my husband, Aaron, about it that night. He just shrugged, said it was probably a bear. But later, as we sat down to dinner, he mentioned that on his way home from the foundry, he’d seen a figure in a pale-colored dress walking down Hollow Road, a street that had been abandoned for years. When he’d slowed to look, there was no one there. We laughed it off, but the unease lingered, a cold draft in a room that should have been warm.

Three nights later, the incidents converged. We were coming back from a late movie in the next town, and as we passed the old Presbyterian church, Aaron slammed on the brakes. A shape had darted across the road—black, low, and impossibly fast, gone in the space between blinks. ‘Did you see that?’ I asked. Aaron’s face was pale. ‘That’s the third time this week,’ he whispered. ‘It was the same thing I saw on Hollow Road, but bigger, faster.’ I wanted to dismiss it, but a memory surfaced: that deer, those leaps, the way it had cleared the road as if gravity were merely a suggestion.

The next day, I decided to investigate. Hollow Road was a dead-end dirt track, overgrown and forgotten, bordered by hemlocks that swallowed the light. I walked to the end, where an old chapel stood, its windows shattered, its door hanging open. Inside, the air was heavy with the smell of wet rot and something else—a metallic tang, like old blood. On the floor, I found a trail of scuffed marks, as if something had been dragged repeatedly across the boards, and in the dust, a pattern of prints: not hooves, not paws, but something in between, leaving five long, jagged indentations.

And then I heard it: a low, guttural breathing from the shadows in the corner. I turned, but there was nothing. Yet the breathing continued, closer now, and I felt a pressure in the air, a weight pressing on my chest. I backed out slowly, my heart hammering, and as I stumbled into the daylight, the sound stopped. But on the chapel’s rotten sill, I saw a tuft of fur—black, slick, and cold to the touch.

That night, Aaron and I lay in bed, the window open to let in the cool air. I told him what I’d found, and he grew quiet. ‘I’ve been hearing something,’ he said finally. ‘At night, from the woods. Like a wet sound, almost a sucking, and then those leaps—like something huge taking two bounds and landing on my chest, except I’m awake.’ I felt a chill. ‘I’ve been having the same dream,’ I said. ‘But it’s not a dream. Last night, I woke up and saw a shape crouched at the foot of the bed, its eyes catching the moonlight, and then it was gone.’

We didn’t sleep that night. We sat in the living room until dawn, the lights on, the doors locked. But at sunrise, Aaron went to the window and froze. ‘Look,’ he whispered. On the lawn, in the dew, were tracks—those same long, jagged indentations, leading from the woods to the house, circling it twice, and then heading back, not in a straight line, but in a series of long leaps that looked like they were made by something clearing the ground in a single bound.

We moved out that week, leaving behind the mill, the chapel, and the town we’d called home for ten years. But last night, in our new apartment in Scranton, I woke to the sound of breathing beside the bed. I didn’t turn. I didn’t move. I just listened, praying it was Aaron. But Aaron was in the bathroom, and the breathing was too low, too wet, too close. The covers shifted, and I felt a cold pressure on my feet, as if something were crouching there, watching, waiting to take another leap.