The Hollow Pines

The first time I saw her was in the old church on Ridgeline Road, four years after we moved into the Ainsley farmhouse. I was seven, and my mother had dragged me to Wednesday night prayer meeting while my father worked the late shift at the mill. The church was a white clapboard building with a bell tower that leaned slightly east, as if it had been pushed by some long-ago storm. I sat in the second pew, tracing the grain of the oak with my finger, when I noticed a woman standing at the far end of the aisle near the altar. She wore a long dress, the color of dried blood, and her hair hung in wet strands across her face. She didn’t move, didn’t blink. I thought she was a statue until I saw her fingers twitch. I tugged my mother’s sleeve and pointed, but by the time she looked, the woman was gone. Mother said I was imagining things, but I knew better. That was the first time.

The farmhouse itself was a three-story colonial with a wraparound porch and a barn that had collapsed on one side. My father bought it at auction for a song, desperate for space after my grandmother moved in with us. She occupied the upstairs bedroom at the end of the hall, a room with a door that never quite latched. From my room, I could see its frame from my bed, and every night I watched it, waiting for the crack to widen. It never did, but I heard things: the shuffle of slippers on wood, the creak of a rocking chair, and once, a low humming that sounded like a lullaby I didn’t know.

My grandmother was a tiny woman with hands like claws and eyes that seemed to look through you. She never spoke much, but when she did, it was often nonsense. One evening, as she sipped her tea in the kitchen, she fixed her gaze on me and said, ‘She walks at dusk, the one who fell from the pine.’ I asked what she meant, but she just shook her head and returned to her tea. My mother dismissed it as one of her ‘episodes,’ but I couldn’t shake the image.

The premonition, the one that would change everything, came from my ex-husband, Daniel, years later when we were still married. We were living in a different house then, a split-level on Elm Street, but my past followed me. Daniel was a skeptic, a man who believed only in what he could measure. So when he woke up one night in a cold sweat, gasping, I knew something was wrong. ‘I saw the farmhouse,’ he said, his voice trembling. ‘I saw a woman in the attic, and she was looking at me through the floorboards. She had your grandmother’s face.’ At that moment, I felt the floor tilt. I knew, without a doubt, that those experiences had been real.

We drove back to the farmhouse the next weekend. It had been abandoned for years after my parents sold it, and it looked even more decayed than I remembered. The porch sagged, and the windows were boarded. The barn had fully collapsed. As we walked around the perimeter, I felt an old dread rising. Daniel was hesitant, but he held my hand. We found a way in through the back door, which had been left unlocked. The air inside was thick with dust, and the smell of rot was overwhelming. We climbed the stairs, avoiding the broken steps, until we reached the attic. The door was closed, but I knew what we would find.

We opened it and found a room filled with old furniture and boxes. In the corner was a rocking chair, moving gently as if someone had just left it. On the floorboards, near the center of the room, there was a dark stain that had soaked into the wood. Daniel knelt and touched it, then recoiled. ‘It’s fresh,’ he said. ‘It’s wet.’ I felt the air grow cold, and a whispery sound filled the room, like wind through dried leaves. I turned to leave, but the door slammed shut. When I looked back, the rocking chair was empty, but a shadow stood behind it, the shape of a woman. She raised a hand, and in her palm was a faded photograph—a picture of me as a child, standing in front of the farmhouse. I screamed, and the lights flickered.

Daniel managed to force the door open, and we fled down the stairs, past the kitchen, and out into the yard. We drove away without looking back. I never went to that farmhouse again, but I still dream of it. In my dreams, I see the woman’s face clearly, and it is mine—aged, withered, hollow-eyed. I wake up gasping, and I know that the hollow pines at the edge of the property are still whispering, waiting for me to return. I don’t know if this is the afterlife or something darker, but I believe now, with my whole heart, that we are never alone. That happens before I die.