The Hollow Man in the Red Room

The summer fieldwork trip to the Ashworth Complex was supposed to be a routine study of urban decay and local folklore. I was there with my research partner, Lena, and two other grad students, Marcus and Priya. We had spent the day mapping the abandoned psychiatric hospital’s outer grounds, and as dusk settled, we decided to explore the tunnel system that connected the main buildings, a network that had been sealed off for decades but was accessible through a broken grate.

We descended into the damp, musty dark, our flashlights casting erratic shadows on the graffiti-strewn concrete. I remember the four of us laughing, our voices echoing too loudly, and then, as we rounded a particular bend, I felt a sudden, profound stillness. I turned to make a joke about the silence, but I was alone. The corridor stretched empty in both directions, the air cold and unmoving. My heart hammered. I called out for Lena, Marcus, Priya, but my voice just bounced back, hollow and wrong.

I knew I had to keep moving. I took a tunnel that branched off to the left, and it led to a stairwell. At the top, a rusted door with a painted label read ‘Russell Ward’. I pushed it open and stepped into a long, dark corridor lined with rooms. The building was suffocatingly black, the kind of darkness that presses against your eyes. I walked slowly, my boots crunching on broken glass and fallen plaster. A strange calm settled over me, a deceptive peace that made my skin prickle with wrongness. Then, without warning, a tidal wave of fear crashed through me, so intense it felt like a physical blow. My vision swam, and my limbs went weak. I squeezed my eyes shut, forced a deep breath, and the feeling receded as suddenly as it had come.

About fifteen feet ahead, I spotted a doorway that seemed to glow with a faint, sickly red light. I froze. Two pairs of glowing red eyes stared back at me from the darkness within, not animal eyes, but ones with an eerie intelligence. I blinked, and there were four. They didn’t move, just watched, patient and hungry. I heard a faint scrape, like a leather glove dragging across a wall, and the air grew colder. I wanted to run, but my legs felt rooted. Then, a voice—soft, feminine, close to my ear—whispered, ‘Don’t move. They only see if you run.’ I recognized it as Priya’s. She materialized from the shadows beside me, her face pale, her hand clamped on my arm. Her eyes were fixed on the same spot, and she whispered, ‘I see them too.’

The red eyes blinked, and the glow behind them shifted, as if something large was moving in the room. I started asking rapid-fire questions, my voice too high. ‘Where are the others? What are they? How do we get out?’ Priya shook her head, her grip tightening. She pulled me backwards, step by step, our eyes never leaving the doorway. As we reached the end of the corridor, she shoved me through a fire exit, and the freezing night air hit my lungs. We stumbled into a moonlit courtyard, gasping. The building behind us was silent, its windows black.

We found Marcus and Lena huddled near the maintenance shed, both shaking. They told us they had gotten lost too, and had seen a man in a white coat standing at the end of a hallway, holding a silver tray filled with glinting tools. When they blinked, he was gone. We left the Ashworth Complex without looking back, driving in silence until dawn. But as we sat in a diner, nursing burnt coffee, I caught a reflection in the window. Just for a second, I saw the red eyes of the Hollow Man blinking back at me from the glass, and I knew the fear had not left me. It had merely found a place to stay.