The Hollow One

The night nurse’s station hummed with fluorescent light, casting a sterile pallor over the vinyl floor. I was dozing on a break room couch, my body angled into the cushions, when the dream began. I knew I was dreaming—the way the walls breathed, the way the vending machine’s glow flickered like a faulty heartbeat. I willed myself to float, and I did, my body curling into a fetal ball as I drifted out the door and down the corridor.

I turned a corner that shouldn’t have existed, leading into a wing of the hospital that had been condemned for years. The air grew cold, and the lights dimmed to a sickly yellow. There, in the center of the room, hovered a figure no taller than a child, cloaked in tattered black cloth that swirled without wind. Its face was hidden beneath a hood, but I sensed a long, sharp nose, almost skeletal, and a chin that tapered to a needle point. It had no legs; its robe simply dissipated into a mist that clung to the floor.

I tried to move, but my body locked in place, suspended mid-air like a puppet on a string. A pressure built in my chest, as if an invisible hand was closing around my throat. The creature tilted its head, and I could feel its gaze through the darkness of its hood—hungry, ancient, and patient. I struggled, but each breath became a battle, my lungs burning as if filled with sand. The room spun, and I saw my own face reflected in the tiles, pale and contorted.

Then I woke with a gasp, my hand clutching my neck. The nurse’s station was quiet, but my nose was clogged, and a metallic taste lingered in my mouth. I sat up, shaking, and noticed a faint smear of black dust on the couch cushion where I had been lying. I’ve never believed in the supernatural, dismissing such stories as the fancies of weak minds. But that encounter felt like a warning, a theft of something I couldn’t name. I’ve been avoiding that break room since, but sometimes, in my peripheral vision, I catch a whiff of decay, and I know the Hollow One is still watching, waiting for me to drift back into that liminal space where it hunts.