The Hollow Man at the Bedpost

It began six weeks after my brother and I moved into the old farmhouse on the edge of Larkspur Hollow. We’d inherited it from our grandmother, a woman who’d lived there alone for forty years and whose letters always carried the faint smell of mothballs and frost. My brother, Marcus, was a light sleeper; I was not. That’s why it was so strange that I was the one who saw it first.

It was a Thursday night, cold enough that the windows had frosted from our breath. Marcus had gone up to bed early, mumbling something about a headache, and I stayed in the kitchen, nursing a cup of cold coffee and reading a book on local history. At around 1 a.m., I heard a soft thud from upstairs—not loud, not alarming, but enough to make me set down the book. I waited, listening. Nothing. I called up, ‘Marcus, you okay?’ No answer. I went to the stairs and looked up. The hallway was dark, but the nightlight in the bathroom cast a pale amber glow through the open door. I called again, and this time I heard him mumble, ‘Yeah, fine. Go back to sleep.’ I shook my head and returned to the kitchen. But as I sat back down, I felt a draft, and the hairs on my neck stood up. I turned, and for a split second, I saw a silhouette in the hallway—tall, impossibly thin, with a head that seemed to tilt too far to the side. Then it was gone.

I convinced myself it was a shadow from a low-hanging branch, or my own reflection in the hall mirror. But the next morning, Marcus was pale, and he mentioned he’d had a bad dream. He said he’d dreamt that something was standing over him, breathing on his face, and when he woke, he couldn’t move. He tried to call out, but his voice was trapped. He said it felt real. He laughed it off, but I saw the fear in his eyes. That day, I found an old photograph in the attic—a sepia portrait of our grandmother’s younger brother, who’d died in the house in the 1940s. The caption on the back read, ‘Bartholomew, 1942.’ The eyes in the photo were dark, and I could swear they followed me as I moved across the attic.

Two nights later, I decided to switch bedrooms with Marcus. He protested, but I told him I’d had enough of the ground-floor draft. That night, I lay in his bed, listening to the house settle. At midnight, I felt a coldness seep into the room, like a slow leak of ice water through the floorboards. I kept my eyes clenched shut, but I knew something was there. I could hear it breathing—a wet, raspy sound, like it had been underwater. I forced my eyes open, and there it was: a figure, black as pitch, standing at the foot of the bed. It had no distinct features, just a hollow where its face should be, but I felt its gaze on me. It leaned forward, and a voice like scraping leaves whispered, ‘You’re not him.’ Then it vanished, but the cold stayed with me until dawn.

I told Marcus everything the next morning, and he looked at me with a mix of fear and embarrassment. He admitted he’d seen it too, every night, but he’d never told me because he thought he was losing his mind. We decided to dig into the history of the house, and that’s when we found the old journal in the basement. It belonged to a hired hand who’d worked on the farm in 1943. His entries described a strange obsession our great-uncle had with a well at the back of the property. He wrote that Bartholomew would spend hours staring into it, talking to something below. The last entry read: ‘He says he’s waiting for his bride, but she never comes. He’s hollowed out. Now he wants to wear me like a coat.’ The journal ended abruptly, and the well had been capped and boarded up decades ago.

That night, we did something foolish. We went to the well, removed the boards, and shone a flashlight down. The beam revealed nothing but blackness, but as we leaned over, we heard a faint, rhythmic sound, like a heartbeat. From below, a voice rose, crackling like dry leaves, saying, ‘The door is open. Come in.’ We stumbled back, terrified, and slammed the boards back on. But as we ran to the house, I caught a glimpse of something in the window of our grandmother’s old bedroom—a black shape, watching us. And in my mind, I heard the same voice, not from the well, but from inside my own head: ‘You opened it. Now I can leave the hollow.’

We haven’t slept in that house since. We’re staying at a motel on the highway, but it doesn’t help. Marcus started talking in his sleep again last night, but this time, it wasn’t his voice. It was low, ancient, and it said, ‘I wore him before. I’ll wear you now.’ I looked over at his bed, and he was sitting up, his eyes open but empty, a thin smile stretched across his face—a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. Then he lay back down and went to sleep. This morning, he doesn’t remember anything. But I saw it. I saw the hollow man in his eyes. And I know it’s only a matter of time before it takes over completely. I’m writing this now at the motel desk, but I know it doesn’t matter. The hollow man doesn’t need a house. He just needs a body. And he’s already chosen my brother. I just hope he forgets about me.