The Hollow Postures

In the autumn of 2014, my partner Marcus and I began taking weekly riding lessons in the rural outskirts of a town called Millbrook, about a two-hour drive from our apartment in the city. Our instructor was a wiry woman in her late sixties named Edna, who had been in the equestrian world for decades. She was known for her sharp tongue and a reputation for breaking the spirit of any horse that dared to challenge her. Her property was a sprawling farm with paddocks, a large wooden stable, and an old farmhouse that seemed to lean slightly to one side, as if it were tired of standing.

Edna had a peculiar habit of talking to her horses in a low, guttural tone, as if she were chanting secrets to them. She never explained this, and when Marcus once asked, she simply said, ‘They understand more than you think.’ The horses under her care were all well-trained but had a strange, hollow look in their eyes, as if they had seen something that had drained the life from them. One horse in particular, a chestnut gelding named Duke, seemed to be her favorite. He had a perfect gait and a gentle disposition, but there was an unease that clung to him like a shadow, invisible yet palpable.

Our lessons were always at dusk, when the last light of day cast long, distorted shapes across the fields. Edna insisted on this timing, claiming it was the only time when the horses were most attentive, ‘when they are between worlds.’ We dismissed it as an old trainer’s superstition. But as the weeks passed, we began to notice odd things. The horses would sometimes stop in the middle of a canter, ears pricked forward, staring at a particular spot in the adjacent woods. Edna would then speak those same guttural chants, and the horses would reluctantly continue.

One evening, after a particularly challenging lesson, Marcus commented that he felt watched. Edna nodded slowly, her eyes fixed on the dark treeline. ‘They are always watching,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘They are the old ones. They were here before the fences, before the barns, before our ancestors decided to tame what cannot be tamed.’ We laughed nervously, but she didn’t join in. Instead, she led Duke back to the stable, and we saw her whisper something in his ear that made him tremble.

That night, we stayed late to help Edna clean tack as a thank you for the extra time she spent on our form. The sun had fully set, and the farm was plunged into an eerie darkness. The only light came from a single bulb swinging in the breeze above the stable door. As we worked, we heard a strange, rhythmic sound from the stable – a series of steps, as if a horse was pacing on its own, but with too much regularity. Edna froze, her face going pale. ‘Time for you to go home now,’ she said abruptly, almost pushing us out the door.

Driving home, we couldn’t shake the feeling that we had left something behind. I looked in the rearview mirror and saw Edna standing at the stable entrance, surrounded by faint, ghostly shapes that seemed to rise from the ground like mist. They moved with a slow, deliberate motion, as if performing an ancient dance. I blinked, and they were gone.

The next week, we arrived to find the farm quiet. Edna was nowhere to be seen. The stable door was open, and all the horses were gone. In the center of the yard stood Duke, alone, his head hung low. As we approached, he raised his head and looked at us with an expression that was almost human, and for a moment, I could swear I saw a flicker of Edna’s face in his eyes. Then he let out a low, mournful whinny that sounded like a word.

We found a note in the farmhouse, written in Edna’s neat handwriting, on the kitchen table. It read: ‘They have spoken. The horses are not ours; we are theirs. Do not seek me. Do not ride these paths at dusk. Remember the postures.’ The last line was underlined: ‘The hollow postures are not for the living.’

We never saw Edna again. The police searched for her but found nothing but the horses, all standing motionless in a perfect circle in the field, facing the woods. They were not tied or tethered, yet they did not move. When the officers approached, they saw that the horses’ eyes were open, but there was no life in them. They were hollow, just like the postures Edna had taught us – the ones that were supposed to be only for balance and grace.

Months later, we received a package in the mail with no return address. Inside was a single photograph of Edna, taken from behind, standing at the treeline with her arms raised in a grotesque pose, her body contorted into shapes no human could naturally make. And behind her, in the darkness, there were hundreds of eyes, watching. We burned the photograph, but sometimes, at dusk, when the light is just right, I see Edna in my peripheral vision, standing at the edge of the room, her arms raised in those hollow postures, and I hear Duke’s whinny, which now sounds like a song that has no end.