The Hollow Light

I never thought I’d write this down, but here it is. My name’s Daniel, and I used to think I had a handle on things. That was before that October night two years ago, when we drove out to the old Mercer place. It wasn’t a cult—not in the way the rumors said. It was worse.

We were five guys fresh out of high school, looking for a thrill. The Mercer farm had stood empty for decades, a crumbling house and a few outbuildings surrounded by dry, dead fields. People whispered about ‘the family’ that had lived there, said they practiced things best left alone. My buddy Tom, he’d heard from his cousin that they were still active, meeting in the barn on moonlit nights. So we decided to sneak in, TP the place, maybe get a glimpse of something freaky.

I wasn’t sure, but the others had been drinking, and I was the designated driver. We parked at a lumber yard down the road, pulled on dark clothes and masks, and hiked through the barbed wire fence. The moon was full, huge and pale, casting everything in a sickly glow. The air smelled of rot and damp earth. We made it to the barn’s side door, cracked it open, and peered in.

Inside, it was not what we expected. No pentagrams, no candles, no chanting. Just a single bare bulb hanging from a rafter, casting a harsh light over a dirt floor. In the center stood a tall, skinny figure in white robes, facing away from us. Around the walls, maybe a dozen other figures sat cross-legged, their faces obscured by hoods. They didn’t move. We froze.

The tall figure began to speak, but not in any language I recognized. It sounded like wet, guttural syllables. As it spoke, the hanging bulb began to flicker, and the air grew heavy. I felt a pressure in my ears, like being underwater. My friends were stock-still behind me, and I could hear Tom’s breathing quicken.

Then the figure turned. Its face was a hollow, as if something had scooped out all the features, leaving a smooth, pale void. In that emptiness, a light bloomed—a soft, silent glow that pulsed like a heartbeat. I couldn’t look away. It was all I could do to stand there, my mind screaming to run, but my body obeying some other command.

One by one, the seated figures rose and walked toward a hole in the floor—a dark opening I hadn’t noticed before. They descended, vanishing into the blackness without a sound. The hollow-faced one watched us, and even though it had no eyes, I felt its gaze pour over us like cold water. Its mouth, if it had one, formed the words: ‘You brought light.’ But I heard no voice.

That’s when the bulb exploded, and the barn plunged into darkness. We stumbled back, fell over each other, and scrambled through the door. We ran, not stopping until we were back in the car, engine roaring as we tore away. None of us said a word until we were miles down the road, and then Tom started laughing, a high, manic sound.

We thought it was over. But in the weeks that followed, things changed. Tom started acting strange—speaking in that same wet language at odd hours, staring at the full moon with a hunger in his eyes. My other friends, one by one, drifted away, refusing to talk about it. They would not meet my gaze.

Last week, I got a call from Tom’s mother. He’d been missing for days. I went to his apartment to see if he’d left anything. On his kitchen table, there was a single photograph: the five of us from that night, but our faces were blurred, except for Tom’s, which was perfectly clear. And beneath it, a single word scrawled in red ink: ‘Return.’

Now I sit here, writing this by the light of a single lamp, and I can feel it pulling at me—that hollow light. It lives behind my eyes when I blink. I know they’re waiting, and the hole is open. And I fear that come the next full moon, I’ll be the one walking down into that darkness, leaving nothing but a husk behind.