The Hollow Playmate

The summer I turned eight, my parents sent me to stay with my Aunt Remedios in the dusty town of San Cipriano. The house was a relic of another century, with wooden floors that groaned underfoot and a staircase that seemed to lean slightly to the left, as if tired of holding up the weight of years. Aunt Remedios was a small, wiry woman with eyes that missed nothing, and she had a habit of watching me from the kitchen window as I played in the yard.

My only playmate was the daughter of the neighboring farmer, a girl named Soledad. But Soledad was a year older and already had that cruel streak children develop when they realize they can wield power over others. She would often leave me alone in the middle of a game, saying she had chores, and I would find myself talking to the air, inventing a friend to fill the silence. I called her Lala, a name I didn’t consciously choose. It just slipped out one afternoon, and from then on, Lala was always there.

Aunt Remedios noticed. She would find me sitting under the old acacia tree, my lips moving in animated conversation, my hands gesturing as if to an invisible companion. At first, she dismissed it as a child’s fancy. But then she started asking questions. ‘Who is Lala?’ she’d ask, her voice thin and tight. I would shrug and say, ‘My friend.’ She’d press further, her fingers gripping my shoulder, ‘Where does she come from?’ I’d point vaguely toward the hills that ringed the valley, where the mist gathered in the afternoons like a slow, creeping tide.

One evening, as the sun bled orange into the horizon, Soledad came to fetch me for a game of hide-and-seek. But I was already engaged, sitting on the porch steps, whispering to Lala. Soledad listened, her face pale, and then she backed away, muttering, ‘You’re weird, you know that?’ She never came to play again. The other children in the village began to avoid me, crossing the street when I approached, their mothers pulling them close with whispered warnings. I didn’t mind. I had Lala.

Aunt Remedios grew more anxious. She took me to the town’s only doctor, a man with spectacles and a kindly face, who pronounced me ‘perfectly healthy’ and recommended fresh air and exercise. But Aunt Remedios knew better. She told me stories of other children in the family, cousins and second cousins, who had talked to invisible friends, and how they had all grown out of it by the time they reached puberty. ‘It’s in our blood,’ she’d say, her eyes distant. ‘A gift, or a curse, I’m not sure which.’

But Lala was different. She wasn’t just a voice in my head. She had a presence, a weight. When I sat in the swing that hung from the mango tree, I could feel the air beside me shift, as if someone had just taken a seat. Sometimes I’d catch a whiff of a scent, not perfume or soap, but something older, like dried herbs and dust. And at night, when I lay in bed, I would hear a soft humming, a lullaby I didn’t recognize, and I would fall asleep feeling safe and protected.

Then one day, I saw her. It was in the attic, where Aunt Remedios kept old trunks and forgotten photographs. A beam of light slanted through a cracked window, illuminating a column of dust motes, and there she was, a girl about my age, with a translucent face and hair that floated as if underwater. She wore a faded dress, the kind you see in sepia photographs, and her eyes were dark, like bottomless wells. She smiled at me, and I smiled back. ‘So you can see me,’ she said, her voice like a whisper in a shell. ‘I’ve been waiting.’

After that, Lala began to demand more. She wanted to know about my life, my family, my fears. She would ask me to tell her secrets, and I, eager to please, would spill everything. In return, she would tell me about the house, about the family that lived here before, about a girl named Esmeralda who had died in the well behind the house, a hundred years ago. She said Esmeralda was her sister, and that she was looking for her. She asked me to help.

I was terrified. I didn’t want to go near the well, which was choked with weeds and covered with a rotting wooden lid. But Lala pleaded, her voice growing more desperate, her form flickering like a faulty light. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘She’s cold and alone. You can bring her back.’ I shook my head, tears streaming down my face, and for the first time, Lala’s expression turned dark. Her features contorted, her voice deepened, and she said, ‘You promised you’d be my friend forever.’

That night, I woke to find my room bathed in an unnatural glow, and Lala standing at the foot of my bed, her eyes blazing. ‘You don’t get to leave,’ she hissed. ‘I’ve been alone for so long, and you’re the first one who could see me. You’re mine.’ I tried to scream, but no sound came out. She reached out a hand, and her fingers were cold, like the grave, and they closed around my wrist. The next morning, I had purple bruises in the shape of fingers on my arm.

Aunt Remedios saw them. She said nothing, but her face was tight with fear. That afternoon, she took me to the church, to Father Anselmo, a man with hands that smelled of incense and a voice that echoed in the empty nave. She told him about Lala, and he listened without interruption. Then he placed a hand on my head and prayed in Latin, and I felt a warmth spread through me, a warmth that made Lala’s cold recede. He gave me a small silver cross and told me to wear it at all times.

But Lala was not so easily banished. She appeared to me in dreams, her face pressed against a frosted window, her mouth moving in unheard pleas. She would leave gifts on my pillow: a dried flower, a smooth stone, a strand of hair not my own. I became paranoid, afraid to be alone, afraid of the dark. I stopped talking to her, but she kept talking to me, her voice a constant murmur in the back of my mind, telling me I had betrayed her, that I would be punished.

On the last day of my stay, I decided to confront her. I walked to the well, the lid creaking as I pried it off, and peered into the black depths. I called her name, ‘Lala! I’m sorry I couldn’t help you.’ There was a long silence, and then a sound like a child’s sob, rising from the well. And then I saw her, a pale face bobbing in the water, her eyes wide and wet. ‘It’s too late for that now,’ she whispered, and her hand shot out, grasping my ankle, pulling me with impossible strength. I screamed, but she yanked me over the edge, and I fell into the cold, choking darkness.

I woke in a hospital bed, Aunt Remedios weeping beside me, a doctor checking my pulse. They had found me at the bottom of the well, barely alive, tangled in roots. I had a broken leg and a fever that wouldn’t break for days. When I finally recovered enough to speak, I tried to tell them about Lala, but they dismissed it as a hallucination, a trauma response. Aunt Remedios took me away from San Cipriano, and I never returned.

But sometimes, when I am alone, in a quiet room, I hear a faint humming, and I feel a cold draft brush past me. And I know, with a certainty that chills me to the bone, that Lala is still looking for another friend, someone who will see her, someone who will listen. And I pray that no child ever answers that call, because once you have a hollow playmate, you are never truly alone again.