The Hollow Man of Mire Lake

When Elias was eleven, his grandfather took him and his older brother, Marcus, into the Hightower Range, a stretch of tangled forest and sliding shale that locals called the Hungry Hills. The hills had a history—not the kind you find in tourist brochures, but the kind old-timers muttered about over cheap whiskey: disappearances, strange lights, and a lingering sense that the woods were not empty. Elias’s grandfather, a stoic man with a gray beard, believed in the old ways and insisted they hike to a remote hunting blind near Mire Lake, a small, stagnant body of water ringed by cattails and skeletal pines.

They set out at dawn, their boots crunching on frost-brittle leaves, rifles slung over their shoulders. By mid-morning, a low fog rolled in, muffling sound and turning the path into a series of ghostly corridors. Elias lagged behind, entranced by a cluster of pale mushrooms, and when he looked up, the trail was gone. The trees all looked the same—leaning, twisted, their bark like wrinkled skin. He called out, but his voice seemed to sink into the moss. His heart hammered, and he began to jog, then run, but every direction looked identical. The fog thickened until he could barely see five feet ahead.

Eventually, exhausted and near panic, Elias stumbled upon a clearing. In its center lay Mire Lake, a dark sheet of water the size of a classroom, its surface reflecting the gray sky like a polished stone. He paused at the edge, catching his breath, trying to orient himself. That’s when he noticed the figure on the opposite shore.

It was a man—or something like a man—but impossibly small, no taller than a toddler. He wore a tattered hunting jacket of faded olive, and a floppy brimmed hat that drooped over his face. His boots were muddy, and his hands hung at his sides. Elias squinted, expecting a trick of the light, but the figure did not move. Then the tiny man raised a hand and beckoned, his finger curling in a slow, deliberate motion.

Elias felt a chill crawl up his spine. He tried to step back, but his legs were frozen, as if rooted to the earth. The little man began to walk around the edge of the lake, his steps silent on the wet ground, and as he came closer, Elias saw his face: pale, almost translucent, with a sharp black goatee that seemed to absorb light. The man smiled, revealing teeth that were too large for his mouth, and his lips moved without sound. Then a voice, thin and reedy, wafted across the water like smoke: ‘Elias. Elias, come here.’

It was his own name, spoken in a tone that was almost kind, but with a wrongness that made Elias’s skin prickle. The little man kept beckoning, taking one step after another, and Elias felt a pull, an invisible tether, drawing him toward the water’s edge. His feet began to shuffle forward against his will. The lake’s surface rippled, though there was no wind. Desperate, Elias dug his fingers into the mud, but the force was stronger. He was close enough to see the man’s eyes—black, like wet stones—when a branch snapped somewhere in the woods. The sound broke the spell. Elias found he could move again, and he turned and ran, crashing through the undergrowth, not daring to look back.

He burst into a clearing where his grandfather and Marcus stood, their faces pale with worry. ‘Where the hell were you?’ Marcus shouted, but Elias could only point toward the lake. His grandfather’s expression grew grim. He grabbed Elias by the shoulders and pressed a leather pouch of dried sage into his hand. ‘You saw the Hollow Man,’ he said. ‘He calls the lost by name. You’re lucky you broke free.’ Elias tried to describe the tiny figure, but his grandfather shook his head. ‘We don’t speak his name here. He’s been in these hills since before the settlers. He preys on those who wander alone.’

They left the mountains that afternoon, and Elias never returned. But that night, as he lay in his bunk, he heard it—a faint tapping at the window, and a voice whispering, ‘Elias, come here.’ He kept the curtains drawn and slept with a lamp on. The whispering persisted for weeks, fading to a murmur, then to nothing. But even now, years later, when he finds himself in deep woods, or near still water, he feels the pull of that small, dark figure, and he knows it is still waiting.