The Hollow Pines

I never thought I’d set foot in Morgantown again. After a decade in Chicago, where I learned to keep my head down and my heart cold, my aunt’s death brought me back to the dusty, sun-bleached town I’d sworn to forget. The house on Cedar Lane—the one with the peeling white paint and the porch that sagged like a tired horse—was the only thing she left me. And it was the last place I wanted to be.

But the house was just a building. The real haunt was the abandoned church at the end of the lane, its steeple crooked and its stained glass windows shattered like broken teeth. I’d played there as a kid, a feral little thing with too much imagination and not enough supervision. I called it the Hollow Pines, after the grove of pines that surrounded it, their branches always sighing like they knew secrets. I’d go there alone, talking to no one, chasing flickers of movement that I convinced myself were rabbits or wind.

Now, thirty years old and back in this husk of a town, I found myself standing at the rusted gate of that churchyard on a Sunday afternoon, the air thick with the smell of decay and dry rot. I told myself it was nostalgia, a final reckoning with a childhood I’d buried. But as I pushed the gate open, the hinges screaming like a banshee, I felt a cold that had nothing to do with the autumn chill. Something was waiting for me inside.

The nave was a skeleton of rotted pews and a collapsed altar, but the light filtering through the broken windows cast strange, elongated shadows across the dust. I saw them immediately—three figures standing in the corner, as still as statues. They were like black smoke given shape, their outlines shifting and unstable. The tallest was thin as a rake, with arms that hung past its knees. The second was broader, a lumbering mass of darkness. The third was small, barely waist-high, skittering at the others’ feet.

My breath caught. I hadn’t seen them since I was seven. But I remembered them with a clarity that made my skin crawl. I’d named them Grim, Shrek, and Sprite, because they wouldn’t tell me their own names. They’d never spoken in words, but I’d understood them perfectly—they wanted me to follow them to the cemetery behind the church, to the old mausoleum that had been sealed for decades. I never went. I was too scared, even as a child. But now, standing in that ruin, I felt their pull like a physical weight.

They didn’t have faces. Not anymore. Where their faces should have been were just empty voids, dark as the space between stars. But they tilted their heads at me, and I knew they recognized me. I took a step back, and the small one skittered forward, its form solidifying for a moment into something more defined—a child’s shape, but with limbs too long and a skull too bare. It pointed with a hand that had too many fingers, toward the back door that led to the cemetery.

I should have run. I had a car, a phone, a life in Chicago that didn’t involve this nightmare. But instead, I felt a compulsion, like a hook in my gut, dragging me forward. I crossed the nave, my footsteps echoing in the silence, and pushed open the back door. The cemetery stretched out before me, a field of tilted headstones and overgrown grass, and at its center stood the mausoleum—a squat stone building with a door that was slightly ajar, darkness bleeding from the crack.

The three figures materialized beside me, their shadows falling long and wrong. The tall one, Grim, raised an arm, pointing at the mausoleum. The thick one, Shrek, let out a low, rumbling sound that I felt in my bones. The small one, Sprite, made a chattering noise, like teeth clicking together. They all looked at me with their faceless heads, and I understood: they wanted me to go inside.

‘No,’ I whispered, but the word was swallowed by the wind that suddenly picked up, whipping through the pines with a sound like human voices. The trees seemed to lean in, their needles brushing my face like cold fingers. I stumbled back, but the small one darted in front of me, blocking my path. It grew taller as I watched, its form stretching until it was as tall as Grim, and then it opened a mouth that wasn’t there before—a black hole that yawned wide and hungry.

I ran. I didn’t look back at the cemetery or the church or the silhouettes that I could feel chasing me, their steps silent but their presence a pressure on my skull. I burst through the front gate, the rusted iron tearing my shirt, and sprinted down Cedar Lane until I reached my aunt’s house. I slammed the door, locked it, and leaned against it, gasping for breath. Outside, I heard nothing. No wind, no footsteps. Just silence, and the distant sound of a single crow cawing.

That was three days ago. I haven’t left the house since. I’ve boarded up the windows, but the shadows in the corners of my room don’t quite match the furniture. I keep seeing flashes of black in my peripheral vision, and at night, I hear a low scratching at the back door, like something trying to get in. But the worst part is the memory that keeps surfacing, unbidden: the day I was playing in the cemetery as a child, and I saw my own reflection in the mausoleum’s broken window. It wasn’t my face I saw. It was three black shapes, standing behind me, and they were smiling.

I know now that I never left that churchyard. I’ve been here all along, and what came back from Chicago is just another shape they’ve worn. But I don’t know how to fight that knowledge. I don’t know how to tell anyone, because they’d lock me away. All I can do is sit in this house, watching the pines sway beyond the boards, and wait for them to come for me. And I know they will. They’re patient, and they’ve been waiting for me to grow up, to be ready.

I’m ready. But I won’t give them the satisfaction of walking to my own death. I’ll wait for them to break down the door, and when they do, I’ll look into those empty faces and ask them one thing: why me? Though I think I already know the answer. It’s because I gave them names. And names have power. I gave them power over me, and now they won’t let me go. The Hollow Pines have claimed me, and they’ll never let me leave.