The Hollow Road

The first sign that we’d made a wrong turn wasn’t the absence of streetlights, though that was unsettling enough. It was the sudden, profound silence when we rolled down the windows to let in the cool mountain air. On the main highway, there had been a constant hum of tires and wind, but here, on this narrow ribbon of asphalt, the world seemed to hold its breath. It was October 2012, and my wife, Clara, and I were heading home after visiting friends in California. We’d decided to take a scenic route through Oregon to see Crater Lake, but our GPS had been having fits, and the paper map had mysteriously vanished from the glovebox. So when we stopped for gas in a town called Ashland, we asked the cashier for a quick way to Klamath Falls. He’d nodded, spat out a wad of tobacco, and said, ‘Just hop on Highway 66. It’ll take you right through Green Springs. Shortcut.'”

“We trusted him. It was 7:30 PM, and the sky was a deep, bruised purple. The first ten minutes were fine, winding through the outskirts of town, past the last few houses with their warm, glowing windows. But then the pavement narrowed, the houses disappeared, and the forest closed in around us—tall pines and firs that blocked out any distant view, leaving only a dark tunnel. The stars, which Clara had been admiring, were now a suffocating blanket overhead, so numerous and bright that they seemed to have been punched into the sky by a god with a cruel sense of humor. We passed no cars, no gas stations, no billboards. Just the endless road and the rustling of leaves. I began to check the odometer: ten miles, twenty, thirty. The gas tank was getting low, but that wasn’t my main concern. My main concern was Clara, who was squirming in her seat and muttering about needing a bathroom.”

“Forty-five minutes in, we saw a tiny, weather-beaten sign that read ‘Green Springs’ with an arrow pointing left. But we were on a mountain pass, and the road we were on seemed to be climbing steadily. We decided to keep going, hoping for a rest stop or a small town. Another ten minutes, and the road began to descend, the trees thinning into a valley that was pitch black, not a single light on the horizon. That’s when the hair on the back of my neck stood up. There was something ahead, something that didn’t quite catch in the headlights. I slowed down, and Clara gasped. It was a dog, or something that looked like a dog—skinny, gray, with eyes that seemed to glow a faint yellow. It stood in the middle of the road, just staring at us. I honked the horn, but it didn’t move. I edged the car forward, and it finally slunk away into the brush. But the feeling it left behind was worse than the silence.”

“We drove on, and soon we saw a bridge crossing a small creek. The bridge was old, made of wooden planks that creaked under our tires. On the other side, we saw a shape in the darkness: a lone, dilapidated farmhouse, with a single porch light flickering. It was the first sign of civilization in over an hour. Clara was almost sobbing with relief. ‘Pull over, please,’ she said. I parked on the gravel shoulder, and we both got out, stretching our legs. The air was cold and smelled of damp earth and something else, something metallic. I walked to the edge of the property, hoping to find a bathroom or at least a gas can. But as I approached the house, I noticed the windows were boarded up, and the porch light was not a bulb but a candle in a jar, guttering in the wind. There was a chill that seemed to emanate from the structure itself. I called out, ‘Hello? Anyone home?’ Only silence answered.”

“Feeling uneasy, I went back to the car, where Clara was waiting. She said, ‘Let’s just go. There’s a gas station in Klamath Falls, right?’ I nodded, but as I turned the key, the engine made a weak whine. The battery was dead. I tried again, and the lights dimmed. ‘Damn it,’ I cursed. Clara looked at the farmhouse. ‘Maybe they can help,’ she said, but her voice was tinged with fear. I didn’t want to leave the car, but we had no choice. We walked to the front door, and I knocked. The sound echoed into the dark. After a long moment, the door creaked open, revealing an old woman with a face like crumpled newspaper. She wore a stained floral dress and held a lantern. Her eyes were milky, and she stared past us, not at us. ‘You’re lost,’ she said, not as a question. I explained our predicament. She nodded slowly. ‘I have a telephone. And a charger for your car, maybe. But you’ll have to stay until morning. This road, it’s not kind at night.'”

“Reluctantly, we accepted. She led us inside. The house was cluttered with knickknacks, all covered in a fine layer of dust. There was a landline on a small table, but when I picked it up, there was no dial tone. The old woman cackled. ‘Lines are down. Happens all the time out here.’ She offered us tea, which we politely declined. She showed us to a spare room with two narrow beds, smelling of mothballs and rot. She said, ‘Get some rest. You’ll be on your way come light.’ As she left, she paused and looked back, and for a moment, her milky eyes seemed to focus on Clara, and she whispered, ‘She’s got a lovely neck, doesn’t she?’ Clara recoiled. I laughed nervously, but the laughter died in my throat as we heard the front door lock.”

“I spent the next hour trying to fix the car, but the battery was completely drained. There was no way to jump it. We had no choice but to stay. I didn’t sleep. I sat in a chair by the window, watching the stars wheel overhead. At some point, I heard scratching sounds from the walls, like claws on plaster. And a low, rhythmic whisper that seemed to say, ‘One, two, three, four, five, six…’ I chalked it up to wind. But then, in the predawn hours, I saw the old woman standing outside, staring at the house. Or rather, staring at our window. And she was holding a long, curved knife.”

“When morning came, pale light flooded the valley. The old woman was gone. The front door was unlocked. We got out of there as fast as we could, our hearts pounding. The car started without issue, as if nothing had been wrong. We didn’t stop until we hit Klamath Falls, where we called a mechanic. He checked the battery and said it was fine, that it should have started the night before. He gave us a strange look when we told him where we’d been. ‘I wouldn’t go back there,’ he said. ‘That area’s not right. There’s been… stories. People get lost, and they come back… different.’ He didn’t elaborate, and we didn’t ask. We drove home in silence, and for weeks, I would wake up at night, hearing that whisper counting, seeing that old woman’s eyes. We told our friends it was just a creepy stop, but we both know we left something behind on that hollow road—maybe just our sense of safety, maybe something more. To this day, I can’t look at the stars without feeling a chill, without wondering who or what was watching us from that house, and whether we ever truly left.