The Hollow Man of Route 9

The first time I saw him was on a rain-slicked night in October, three days after we buried my mother. My father and I had moved from our cramped apartment in the city to her childhood home in the town of Ashford, a place I’d only visited during summer vacations. The house was a sprawling Victorian with a wraparound porch, and it sat on a dead-end road that locals called Route 9. It had been in my mother’s family for generations, and when we inherited it, I thought it would be a fresh start for my father and me. He’d been drinking more, and I’d been cutting myself, not deep, but enough to feel something other than the numbness that had settled in after the funeral. The night we arrived, the rain came down in sheets, and the power flickered as we hauled boxes up the creaking stairs. I remember looking out the landing window and seeing a shape standing by the old oak tree at the edge of the property. It was tall, impossibly thin, and its head was tilted at an angle that made my stomach turn. I blinked, and it was gone.

I told my father, but he just waved a hand and said it was my imagination playing tricks. I wanted to believe him. But over the next few weeks, I saw it again—always at the periphery, always in the dark, and always when I was at my lowest. It was during the first week of school, when I had to introduce myself to a new class, that I saw it watching me from the hallway window. It was standing out on the lawn, and its body seemed to absorb the light, making it look like a cutout against the gray November sky. I had a panic attack in the bathroom stall, and when I came out, it was gone. I started to research shadow people online, scouring forums and websites, desperate for some explanation for the thing that haunted me. I learned that many people saw them in times of distress, and some believed they were entities that fed on negative emotion. The stories terrified me, but they also validated what I was experiencing. I was not crazy.

My father’s drinking got worse as winter set in. He’d sit in the dark living room, nursing a bottle of whiskey, staring at the wall where my mother’s portrait used to hang. I’d hear him talking to her sometimes, his voice breaking, and I’d hide in my room with my headphones on, trying to drown out the sound. It was on one such night, around three in the morning, that I woke up needing water. The hallway was dark, and I could see a faint gray light coming from the bathroom at the end. When I got there, I found the bathroom door ajar, and in the mirror I saw him standing behind me. He was close enough that I could feel a cold draft on my neck, and for the first time, I saw his face—or rather, the absence of one. Where features should have been, there was only a smooth, dark void, like a helmet made of shadow. He reached out a long-fingered hand, and I swear I heard a sound like dry leaves rustling as he spoke—not words, but a rasping that seemed to convey a simple message: ‘I am always here when you need me.’ I ran to my father’s room, but he was passed out in a chair, reeking of alcohol. I didn’t sleep the rest of the night.

The spring brought some relief. I made a friend named Maya, who was into the paranormal, and we started investigating local legends. She was fascinated by the history of Ashford, which had been a stop on the Underground Railroad, and she told me about a man called Silas Hayes, who had been a doctor in the late 1800s. He had been known for his experiments on the poor, and after his death, his spirit was said to linger in the area, sometimes appearing as a tall, dark figure. I felt a chill run down my spine as she described him, because it matched what I’d been seeing. Maya suggested we do a séance in the old Hayes house, which was now a decrepit mansion on the outskirts of town, abandoned after a fire in the 1950s. I was hesitant, but a part of me wanted to confront the thing that had been tormenting me.

On the night of the séance, the moon was full, and the air was thick with the smell of decay. Maya and I broke into the house, and we set up candles in the parlor, which was covered in soot and broken glass. As we began to call out for Silas, I felt a presence. The candles flickered wildly, and then one by one, they went out. In the darkness, I heard Maya gasp, and when the lights came back—there was no power, the only light was a dull glow from the moon—I saw that Maya was frozen, staring at the corner. A figure was there, taller than any man, with long arms that hung like a gorilla’s, and its head was tilted at a sickening angle. It took a step forward, and I felt its cold gaze on me. ‘You brought me here,’ I heard a voice whisper, dry and crackling. It wasn’t words, but I understood. ‘You opened the door.’ Maya screamed, and we scrambled out of the house, leaving the candles and my jacket behind. When we reached the car, we floored it, and I looked in the rearview mirror to see the figure standing in the window of the mansion, watching us go.

That encounter changed something in me. I became obsessed with Silas Hayes, spending hours in the library and online, digging up any records I could find. I learned that he had been a collector of souls, using his power to trap the spirits of the dying in a black mirror that he kept in his study. The mirror was never found after the fire, and it was rumored to still be hidden somewhere in the house. I decided I had to find it and destroy it, believing that it was the key to banishing the shadow man. Maya warned me against it, but I was desperate. I was failing my classes, my father was in a coma after a car accident, and the shadow man’s appearances were becoming more frequent. He would stand at the foot of my bed, or lurk in the corners of my vision, and I could feel his hunger.

One night, I went back to the Hayes house alone, armed with a flashlight and a crowbar. The mansion was even more decayed after the spring rains, and the floorboards groaned under my weight. I searched for hours, going through every room, feeling a growing dread. It wasn’t until I reached the basement that I found it—a hidden compartment behind a false wall, containing a small, black convex mirror, about the size of a dinner plate. The glass was dark and murky, and when I held it up, I saw my own reflection, but slightly distorted, and behind me, the shadow man was ethereal, barely visible.

I brought the mirror back to my house, planning to smash it with a sledgehammer. But as I held it, I heard a whisper from it, a voice that sounded like my mother’s. ‘Don’t,’ it said. ‘He’ll be freed.’ I hesitated, and in that moment, the shadow man materialized in front of me, more solid than ever. He reached for me, and I saw that his hand was not empty; it held a piece of my soul, a black, shimmering sphere. ‘You called me, Amy,’ he said, using my name, which I had never told him. ‘You opened the door when you let your grief consume you. I am a part of you now.’ I understood then that he was not a separate entity, but a manifestation of my own despair. And the mirror was the only way to banish him, not by smashing it, but by facing what it reflected.

I looked into the mirror again, and I saw myself—not as I had been, but as I was now: hollow, desperate, with shadows under my eyes and a darkness in my soul. I saw all the times I had pushed people away, all the times I had cut myself, all the times I had wished I could disappear. And I felt a surge of anger. I was not my grief. I was not this darkness. I screamed, ‘No!’ and I hurled the mirror against the wall with all my strength. It shattered into a thousand pieces, and in that instant, the shadow man let out a silent scream, his form unraveling like smoke in the wind. When the pieces hit the floor, I saw him last as a wisp, and then he was gone.

The days after were hard. My father eventually woke from his coma, and he started going to therapy. I did too, and I learned to cope with my loss in healthier ways. Sometimes, at the edge of my vision, I still think I see a tall, dark shape, but when I turn, it’s gone. And I know that the shadow man is not truly gone—he is a part of me, a scar on my soul, but one that I have accepted. I’ve learned that we all carry shadows, and the only way to find the light is to not be afraid of the dark. I’ve also learned that some doors, once opened, are impossible to close, but you can choose to walk away from them.

Now, years later, I live in a different town, and I have a small apartment. I’ve become a counselor, and I work with teens who are going through their own dark times. I see them, and I know what they’re going through. I have a painting in my office, a self-portrait I made during my recovery. It shows a young woman with a shadow behind her, and the shadow is not menacing, but simply a part of her. And the title is ‘He is still with me.’ It reminds me that I survived, and that even our deepest pains can become strengths. The mirror is gone, but the memory remains, and with it, a strange gratitude. For without the shadow man, I might have never found my way to the light.