The Hollow Pines Loop

It was the summer I took the night shift at the Meridian Data Center, buried in the industrial park off Route 9. The commute was a lonely one, a 40-minute ride through the pine barrens that stretched like a black sea between the town and the complex. I’d been doing it for three weeks, and the novelty of the empty roads had worn off, replaced by a creeping familiarity that was almost worse.

That night, I woke to my phone buzzing, a cab driver asking for directions. I fumbled with the map app, still half-asleep, and then told him to go on without me. I’d drive myself. It was 1:50 a.m. My shift started at 2:30. I had just enough time if I pushed it.

I pulled on my jeans and a hoodie, grabbed my helmet, and wheeled my motorcycle out of the sagging carport. The air was thick and warm, but there was a wrongness to it, a faint smell of decay that made me wrinkle my nose. I kicked the engine to life, and it echoed too loudly in the silent street. As I rolled out, I noticed the dogs. They were all over, slinking along the fences, sitting in the middle of the road. They didn’t bark. They just watched me pass with a stillness that made my skin prickle.

I accelerated, the wind whipping past, but the eerie quiet of the animals lingered. The normal sounds of the night—crickets, frogs—were absent. The only noise was the hum of my engine and the crunch of gravel as I turned onto the old county road that cut through the pines. The trees pressed close on either side, their branches forming a canopy that blocked out the moon. My headlight carved a narrow tunnel ahead, and I felt like I was driving into the throat of something vast and patient.

About ten miles in, I saw her. A woman in a pale dress standing at the edge of the road, her back to me. She didn’t move as I approached. I slowed, thinking she might be in trouble. But as I got closer, I saw that her dress was soaked, clinging to her skin, and her hair hung in wet strings over her face. I nearly stopped, but something cold trickled down my spine. I gunned the throttle and sped past, not daring to look back.

The road twisted, and I felt a jolt of wrongness. The trees were different now—the pines had given way to bare, skeletal birches, their white trunks glowing like bones in my headlight. I checked my speedometer. I was going 70, but I should have reached the main highway by now. The GPS on my phone was spinning, pointing in random directions, the screen flickering. Then the road forked. I didn’t remember a fork. I took the left branch, the one that seemed to lead toward the faint glow of the data center’s lights on the horizon.

But the glow never got closer. The road began to curve in on itself, looping back. I passed the same fallen tree three times, its roots like grasping claws. The fuel gauge dipped lower. Panic clawed at my chest. I pulled over, killed the engine. The silence was deafening. No insects. No wind. Just my own ragged breath.

In the distance, I heard a sound: a low, rhythmic thumping, like a heartbeat. I followed it on foot, my boots crunching on the gravel. The trees thinned, and I came to a clearing. In the center stood an old water tower, its metal legs rusted, its bulbous tank covered in a pattern of peeling paint that looked like skin. The thumping was coming from inside the tank.

I climbed the ladder, the metal cold and slick. The hatch was ajar. I pushed it open and peered in. The tank was empty, but the interior was covered in a thick, black residue that glistened in my flashlight. And there, in the center, was a small, withered object—a heart, desiccated and black, still beating with a dull, wet pulse.

I stumbled back, falling off the ladder, landing hard on the ground. When I looked up, the woman was there. She stood at the edge of the clearing, her face now visible—pale, with empty eye sockets, and a mouth sewn shut with black thread. She raised a hand, pointing at my bike. I turned. My bike was covered in the same black residue, dripping like tar.

She spoke, but her lips didn’t move. The words came from the water tower, a hollow whisper: ‘You shouldn’t have come this way.’

I ran. I didn’t know where, just away. The trees swallowed me, but I could hear the thumping growing louder, faster. I burst onto the highway, headlights blinding me. A truck horn blared. I dove to the side as a semi roared past, shaking the ground. I lay there, gasping, and when I looked up, the road was normal. No fork, no birches, just the familiar asphalt and the distant glow of the data center.

I never told anyone. I kept my job, but I never rode that road again. I take the long way now, the one that goes through the town, even if it adds an hour. But sometimes, in the dead of night, I hear that thumping. It’s faint, but it’s there, always in the rhythm of my own heart, reminding me that the hollow pines are waiting, and the water tower still holds its secret for the next lost soul who strays from the path.