The Hollow Playground

Margo had spent every summer of her childhood in the dusty flats of her grandmother’s trailer park outside of Tusayan, Arizona. The park was a collection of rusted mobile homes clustered around a cracked asphalt lot, where a single swing set stood like a skeletal monument to better times. Across the two-lane highway, a shuttered elementary school with boarded windows loomed over a field of yellowed grass. It was called the Old Saguaro School, and every kid in the park knew not to go near it after dark.

It was the summer of Margo’s seventeenth year, and her best friend, Lena, had come to stay. Lena’s cousin rented one of the trailers at the end of the park, a cramped box with a sagging porch where they’d sit at night, sipping stolen sodas and watching the heat lightning dance on the horizon. When the adults passed out, the girls would slip out to the asphalt lot, pushing each other on the swing until the chains groaned.

One night, restless and bored, they decided to cross the highway. The school loomed before them, its windows dark and mouth-like. ‘My cousin says kids used to disappear here,’ Lena whispered, her voice too loud in the silence. Margo laughed, but she grabbed Lena’s wrist as they stepped over the crumbling curb and onto the school’s grounds.

The playground behind the school was a desolate hollow: a rusted slide, a merry-go-round with peeling paint, and a jungle gym that flashed with something that wasn’t moonlight. Margo felt a chill that had nothing to do with the cool desert air. ‘Let’s go back,’ she said, but Lena was already climbing onto the merry-go-round, her feet dragging through the dead grass.

Then Margo saw it: a figure standing at the edge of the field, watching them. It was tall and too thin, with arms that hung past its knees. It didn’t move, didn’t blink, and Margo felt her blood turn to ice. ‘Lena,’ she hissed. Lena turned, and the figure took a step forward. Its movement was jerky, like a film reel with missing frames.

They ran. The trailer park lights seemed impossibly far across the highway, and every step felt like wading through sand. Margo didn’t look back until they were inside, locking the door behind them. Lena was shaking, her face pale. ‘Did you see it?’ she breathed. Margo nodded, but when she peeked through the blinds, the figure was gone.

The next morning, they told Lena’s cousin, who went pale. ‘That’s the hollow man,’ she said. ‘He comes for kids who play too close to the old school.’ She told them that years ago, a teacher had gone mad and herded his students into the boiler room, then sealed it shut. They were never found. Now, at night, he walks the field, counting the living.

Margo tried to dismiss it as a tall tale, but that night, she couldn’t sleep. She lay in the dark, listening to the wind rattle the trailer’s tin siding. Then she heard it: a low, rhythmic creak, like a swing moving on its own. She crept to the window and saw, in the moonlight, the swing set in the lot swaying gently, though there was no breeze. And in the field beyond, the hollow man stood perfectly still, facing her window.

He raised one long arm and pointed directly at the trailer. Margo stumbled back, her heart hammering. She woke Lena, and they huddled in the bathroom until dawn, praying the door would hold. When the sun finally rose, they peeked outside. The field was empty, but on the swing set, hanging from the top bar, was a child’s shoe, crusted with dirt.

They left that day, and Margo never returned to Tusayan. But even years later, she couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched. Sometimes, in the quiet of her apartment, she’d hear the creak of a swing, and she’d look out the window to see nothing but the empty street. She knew the hollow man was still there, counting, and that one night, he would finish his count.