The Hollow Note

Mara transferred to Ridgemont University mid-year, a sprawling campus carved into a gray New England valley. She’d left behind a messy breakup and a string of failed classes, hoping the change of scenery would reset something. Her new dorm, Ashworth Hall, was a relic from the 1960s: cinderblock walls, steam radiators that clanked like skeletons, and a basement laundry room that smelled of mildew and regret. She lived on the third floor, and the communal bathroom at the end of the hall had a row of six shower stalls with heavy, clouded plastic curtains that never quite closed—there was always a slit of visibility at the edges.

Her roommate, Lena, was a cheerful, oblivious junior who collected succulents and rarely left their room except to attend her ‘Wellness and Mindfulness’ class. On her second night, Lena returned from a late shower, her hair dripping, and said, ‘Mara, you have to come. There’s someone singing in the showers—it’s the most beautiful voice I’ve ever heard.’ Mara, who had been scrolling through her phone and half-listening to the radiator’s hiss, shrugged. ‘I’ll check it out.’ She grabbed her towel and followed Lena, who led her to the bathroom’s doorway.

The bathroom was steamy, the air thick with the scent of cheap soap and hot water. The only light came from a flickering fluorescent tube above the sinks. From the far left stall, where the showerhead was running, came a voice—not a song she recognized, but something primal, a low melody that seemed to wrap around the tiles and vibrate in Mara’s chest. The singing was layered, as if two voices were interweaving perfectly. Mara could see the silhouette of a figure through the translucent curtain: tall, still, the water cascading down.

She stepped closer, and the singing stopped. The water ceased. The silence that followed was worse than any noise. A goosebump-laden pause hung in the air, and then the shower curtain twitched. Mara noticed the gap at the edge—the cheap plastic had a slit about an inch wide. Through it, she saw a sliver of what she thought was skin: pale, almost blue, but then the curtain shifted again, and she saw it wasn’t skin. It was a pattern, like veins over a gray canvas, and there was no face. The shape was wrong, too tall, too angular.

‘Hello?’ she called out, her voice cracked. The figure didn’t respond. Instead, the singing resumed, but now it was off-key, fragmented, a broken record of the earlier melody. The showerhead spat on, and the water ran red—deep crimson, pooling around the drain. Mara backed away, her heart thudding. She turned to leave, but the bathroom door had locked itself. The handle wouldn’t budge.

The singing grew louder, and the stall’s curtain slowly began to part. Mara gripped the door’s cold metal, her knuckles white. She heard a soft chuckle, a wet sound, and then a low, guttural whisper: ‘You shouldn’t have listened.’ She yanked the door with all her strength, and it flew open, slamming against the hallway’s cinderblock. She ran back to her room, her breath ragged, and found Lena asleep, as if nothing had happened.

The next day, Mara told the resident advisor, a weary senior named Roberto, about the incident. He sighed, rubbing his temples. ‘The showers are blocked off,’ he said. ‘Maintenance found a leak, but we can’t figure out where the water’s coming from. Some say the old pipes make sounds.’ He paused, then added, ‘But no one’s actually seen anyone in there. Are you sure you didn’t just hear the radiator?’ Mara knew what she heard and saw. That night, she couldn’t sleep. The melody echoed in her mind, a hollow note that seemed to pull her toward the bathroom.

By morning, Lena was missing. Her bed was made, but her phone was on the desk, uncharged. No one had seen her leave. The campus police treated it as a runaway case, but Mara knew better. That night, she returned to the bathroom. The water was running in the same stall, and the singing was there—now unmistakably Lena’s voice, mixed with the first one. The curtain was open an inch, and through the gap, Mara saw Lena’s face, but it was wrong: her eyes were empty, her mouth open in a silent scream, her skin as gray as the veins. The thing behind her wore her body like a mask.

Mara fled, but not before she heard a whisper from the drain: ‘Now you carry the note.’ She felt something crawl into her ear, a cold digit of sound that settled in her brain. From that night on, she heard the melody constantly, a low hum that followed her to class, to the dining hall, to her dreams. She realized she had three days to find another listener—otherwise, she would be the one in the shower, waiting for a new voice to enchant.

On the third day, she cornered a freshman from the floor below, a quiet girl named Priya, and dragged her to the bathroom. ‘You have to hear this,’ she said, her voice trembling. Priya listened, and Mara watched as Priya’s expression shifted from curiosity to horror. The singing stopped. The water ran, a deep red. Priya turned to run, but the door was locked. Mara felt the melody lift from her, like a leech releasing its hold, and she knew she had passed the curse. She didn’t wait to see what happened to Priya. She packed her bags and transferred to a college in Arizona, a dry land with no communal showers.

But the note never truly left. It lived in the overtones of her new voice, in the silences between her words. Tonight, she sits alone in her apartment, the humming starting again, deeper now, and she sees a shadow lengthen under the door—not a person’s, but something with too many angles. She knows the next time she hears a beautiful voice, she’ll have to follow it. Because the hollow note doesn’t just end; it echoes until it finds a new throat.