The Hollow Man

Mara had always dismissed her mother’s ghost stories as the fanciful ramblings of a woman who watched too many late-night horror films. She was a pragmatic sort, a nurse who dealt in blood and bone, not spectral visits.

But the morning of the thirteenth, something changed.

She woke with a start at 3:03 AM, the red numbers on her clock burning into her retinas. A figure stood at the foot of her bed, a dark silhouette against the pale glow of the streetlight filtering through her curtains. It was tall, impossibly so, with shoulders that seemed to brush the ceiling. Its face was a void, a hollow darkness where features should have been. And it smelled of old earth and wet ash.

Mara opened her mouth to scream, but only a strangled gasp escaped. The figure tilted its head, as if listening, and then it was gone, dissolving like smoke in a draft. She lay there, heart hammering, until the sun painted her room in shades of grey. She convinced herself it was a night terror, a product of her exhaustion. She hadn’t slept well in weeks, the night shifts taking their toll.

She never told her mother.

A month later, her Aunt Eleanor called. Her friend had asked her to house-sit again, the same sprawling Victorian manor on the edge of the moors. Eleanor was a nervous woman, prone to superstition, and she pleaded with Mara to stay with her for a few days. Mara, still shaken by her own experience, agreed.

The manor was as oppressive as she remembered, all dark wood and creaking floorboards. The wind howled through the eaves, and the radiators clanked like ghostly applause. But it was the nursery that unsettled her the most. The room was frozen in time, a child’s bed with a faded mobile of dancing bears, toys scattered as if a child had just left. On the wall, in faint crayon, was a drawing of a family: a mother, a father, and a stick-figure child. But the child’s face was a blank oval.

That night, Mara and her cousin, Lena, stayed up late, drinking wine and talking by the fire in the library. Lena’s boyfriend, Joel, had snuck in through the back door, and they were all laughing at some silly story when the temperature plummeted. The fire flickered, casting dancing shadows.

Then they heard it: a soft, wet padding sound coming from the hallway. Like bare feet on the hardwood. It stopped outside the library door. The brass handle began to turn, slowly, deliberately. Joel, with a false bravado, strode to the door and yanked it open. The hallway was empty.

But on the floor, just outside the door, was a small, muddy footprint. Too small to be an adult’s. And the air was thick with the smell of damp earth and something else, something sweet and cloying, like the perfume of decay.

‘It’s just the wind,’ Lena said, her voice wavering.

They returned to the fire, but the mood was shattered. Mara couldn’t shake the feeling that they were being watched. She glanced at the drawing she’d noticed earlier, now visible through the open door. The child’s face seemed even more indistinct, as if it were fading further.

The next day, while Lena and Joel went into town for supplies, Mara explored the manor. She found a locked door at the end of the east wing. The key was in a nearby drawer, almost as if it had been left for her. Inside, the room was bare, but the walls were covered in a frantic, looping script, the same phrase repeated over and over: ‘He takes the face, he leaves the shape.’ The words grew more desperate, the ink smeared with what looked like old blood. In the center of the room was a child’s rocking chair, gently rocking on its own.

Mara backed away, her skin crawling. She rushed downstairs to find Lena and Joel just returned. She tried to explain, but they dismissed it as ‘old house quirks.’ That night, she couldn’t sleep. She sat in the library, the fire reduced to embers, and she felt a presence. She turned, and the figure was there again, this time in the doorway, larger, more solid. It wasn’t just hollow; it was hungry.

‘What do you want?’ Mara whispered.

The figure reached out a hand, black and elongated. It pointed at the nursery.

Mara found herself walking toward the nursery, her legs moving against her will. The door was ajar. Inside, the mobile of dancing bears twirled slowly, though there was no breeze. The drawing on the wall was different now. The child’s face was no longer blank. It was a portrait of a boy, his features twisted in a silent scream. And in the corner of the room, a small, shadowy form was huddled, whispering, ‘Mama, he took my face.’

Mara screamed, and the world went white.

She woke on the floor, the cold seeping into her bones. Lena was shaking her, her face pale. ‘You were screaming,’ Lena said. ‘We heard you from upstairs.’

Mara told them everything, the figure, the room, the drawing, the whispering child. Joel, for once, was silent. Lena looked at him, her eyes wide.

‘This house,’ Lena said slowly. ‘Our aunt’s friend, she never had children. But she said the house was haunted. She bought it cheap because of it. She said a family died here in the 1800s. A mother, a father, and their son. The son drowned in the well out back. But they never found his face. The mother went mad, painted it on the walls.’

Mara felt a chill that had nothing to do with the cold. ‘The phrase,’ she said. ‘He takes the face, he leaves the shape.’

That night, they huddled in the library again, but the presence was stronger. The lights flickered, and the doors slammed shut on their own. Joel tried to call for help, but his phone was dead. They were trapped.

The figure appeared in the center of the room, no longer a silhouette but a grotesque imitation of a man, its skin like wet clay, its face a swirling void. It opened its mouth, and a sound like a thousand whispers emanated, ‘Give me the face.’

Mara knew with terrifying clarity what it meant. It wanted something from them, something vital. It wanted to take their identities, their faces, and leave them as hollow shells, just as it was.

In a desperate move, she grabbed the poker from the fireplace and swung at the figure. It passed through it harmlessly, but the figure recoiled, hissing. ‘The fire,’ Mara shouted. ‘It’s afraid of the fire.’

They each grabbed a torch from the mantelpiece, lit them, and waved them at the figure. It retreated, its wails echoing through the house. They moved toward the door, but the door wouldn’t budge. The figure was gone, but the room was filled with a suffocating dread.

‘The well,’ Lena said. ‘The boy. Maybe he wants his face back, or maybe he wants ours.’

They found the well in the backyard, a crumbling stone circle choked with vines. Mara peered into the dark, watery depths. She saw a reflection, but it wasn’t her face. It was a boy’s face, pale and bloated, his eyes open and pleading.

With a sudden resolve, she grabbed a shovel and began to dig around the well’s base. The others joined her, and after an hour, they unearthed a small, leather-bound book, waterlogged and decayed. Inside were entries from the mother, describing her son’s obsession with the well, his claims of a ‘shadow man’ who lived there. She wrote of her attempts to keep him away, but she couldn’t. The final entry was written in a frantic hand: ‘He’s coming. He wants John’s face. I won’t let him.’

The pages after were blank, but in the middle of the book, there was a charcoal drawing. It showed a figure, exactly like the one they encountered, and beneath it, the words: ‘The Hollow Man takes the face of those who see him. Only by giving him a face of his own can he be released.’

Mara looked at the well. ‘He wants a face,’ she said. ‘He can’t have ours. But we can give him a facsimile.’

She ran back to the manor, tore a page from her own sketchbook, and with charcoal, she drew a face. A face with features, eyes, nose, mouth, and a peaceful expression. She returned to the well, and as the others watched, she lowered the drawing into the water.

For a moment, nothing. Then the water rippled, and the drawing began to dissolve. A cold wind swept through the yard, and they heard a faint, contented sigh. The presence lifted, like a weight being removed. The moon broke through the clouds, and for the first time, the manor felt quiet.

They left the next morning. They never spoke of it again, but Mara knew she would never be the same. The incident was branded into her memory. She still tells herself it was a dream, but she knows better.

Sometimes, when she passes a mirror, she catches a flicker of a hollow shape behind her reflection. And she wonders if the Hollow Man found a new face, or if he’s still waiting, patient and eternal, for someone else to see him.