The Hollow Lottery

In the autumn of 1991, my family moved into a newly built cul-de-sac on the outskirts of a small town in the Pacific Northwest, a place where the rain never really stopped and the fir trees pressed close against the fences. My parents, ever hopeful, had bought the house with a view of the valley below, where the town’s lights flickered at night like stars trapped in a bowl. We were a Catholic family, and true to tradition, we invited the parish priest to bless the house. He sprinkled holy water in every room, and we hung a crucifix above the front door. At first, the house felt like a fresh start. Sunlight streamed through the large picture windows, glinting off the polished hardwood floors, and the scent of pine from the surrounding forest mixed with the flowery odor of our plug-in air fresheners. My younger sister and I would race up the stairs to claim our rooms, the laughter echoing off the walls.

But as weeks passed, the air thickened. Arguments erupted over trivial things—who left the milk out, whose turn it was to do the dishes. My sister, who I’ll call Clara, and I began to clash with a bitterness that felt unnatural. Our voices would rise, and sometimes things got physical. I remember one night, my hands shaking with rage, I looked at Clara and said, ‘If you touch me again, I’ll make sure you never wake up.’ The words hung in the air like a bad smell, and for a second, I saw fear in her eyes—but also something else, a flicker of recognition, as if she too felt the rage was not entirely ours. Our parents, usually calm, would shout at us, their faces twisted with an anger I’d never seen before.

The turning point came when I found a small, weathered toy soldier in the backyard. It was old-fashioned, made of lead, with a tiny red uniform and a bayonet. It seemed out of place among the new sod and freshly planted shrubs. I picked it up, and it felt warm to the touch, even though the ground was cold and damp. I stuffed it in my pocket, intending to throw it away later, but I forgot. That night, I dreamt of a field of these soldiers, all facing a dark house on a hill. They were marching, their feet silent, their eyes hollow. I woke with a start, the toy soldier in my hand, my heart pounding.

The next day, I tried to throw it away, but it kept reappearing in my room—on my pillow, in my shoe, on my desk. I showed it to Clara, and she grew pale. ‘I saw that in my dream,’ she whispered. That’s when we realized the toy was not ordinary. It seemed to feed on our discord. The more we argued, the more it appeared, and the more it appeared, the more we argued. Our parents noticed the change in us; they tried to separate us, but the anger followed wherever we went. The house, once bright, now seemed to press in on us, the shadows in the corners darker, the creaks of the floorboards louder.

One evening, during a particularly violent argument, I threw the toy soldier against the wall. It shattered into pieces, but instead of lead shards, dark dust billowed out. The dust swirled, forming a shape—a hunched figure with long arms, its face a void. It whispered in a language I didn’t understand, but I felt the meaning: ‘You let me in.’ That night, neither of us slept. We sat in the living room, the windows fogged up, and for the first time in months, we talked—not as adversaries, but as siblings. We spoke of the dreams, the toy, the anger. Clara said she saw a keyhole in her dream, and I recalled a hidden door under the staircase that the builders had left sealed with a strange, red wax. We pried it open, and inside was a small, leather-bound ledger. The pages were filled with names and dates, each crossed out, and at the bottom, a scrawled inscription: ‘The Hollow Lottery: They who play with hate feed the house.’

We realized the house itself was the entity, feeding on our conflict, using the toy soldier as a conduit. The previous owners had died—a mother and father, both murdered in a fit of rage by their son, who then took his own life. The house had been built on the site of an old asylum where patients were subjected to cruel treatments that provoked rage and despair. The horror wasn’t the house; it was the legacy of hatred etched into the soil.

Armed with this knowledge, we decided to break the cycle. We took the ledger and the shattered soldier, and we performed a makeshift ritual—we burned the ledger in the backyard, and buried the soldier’s pieces in a patch of soil that had never been touched. We held hands, and we promised each other that we would always talk, never let anger fester. As we did, the house seemed to sigh, the air lightened, and the oppressive weight lifted. The arguments ceased, and the house felt like a home again—though sometimes, late at night, I’d catch a glimpse of a small, red-uniformed figure in the corner of my eye, and I’d shudder, knowing the game could start again if we ever forgot the cost of our anger. And so we did not forget. We kept our peace, and the house, with its hollow lottery, remained silent—for now.