The Hollow Root

After the unsettling quiet that followed our years in Pennsylvania, my family packed up and drove south to the red clay hills of North Carolina. We settled into a small rented house on the edge of a town called Cedar Hollow, a place where the air was thick with pine and the evenings hummed with cicadas. The neighborhood was friendly enough, with kids my age appearing like curious raccoons the moment our moving truck rumbled into the driveway. My sister and I were welcomed with a flurry of names and invitations to play in the cul-de-sac, but I felt a strange pull toward the woods that bordered our backyard, a tangle of oak and kudzu that sloped down to a shallow creek.

My father, Jack, had always been a man with a short fuse, but in those first weeks in North Carolina, his anger grew into something monstrous. He would scream at the mailman for a late delivery, curse the neighbor’s dog for barking, and throw his dinner plate across the room if the meat was overcooked. My mother, Susan, walked on eggshells, and my sister and I learned to become invisible. I would escape to the creek, where the water gurgled over mossy stones and the world felt less sharp.

Then the dreams began. I was always standing at the edge of the woods, looking for something I couldn’t name. The trees would lean in, their branches like grasping fingers, and the creek would whisper words I almost understood. In the dream, I would follow the water upstream until I reached an old sycamore whose roots were exposed, twisted into a hollow beneath the bank. Inside the hollow, something waited, pulsing like a second heartbeat. I always woke before I saw what it was.

The dreams grew more vivid, and I started walking the creek during the day, hoping to find the tree. I would scan the banks, but the sycamore wasn’t there. One afternoon, I was skipping stones when I felt a cold draft from a gap in the undergrowth. I pushed aside a curtain of kudzu and discovered a narrow path I’d never noticed, leading to a part of the woods that seemed older, darker. The air was still, and the ground was soft with decaying leaves. At the end of the path, I found it: the sycamore from my dreams, its roots arching over a black hole that breathed cold air. A foul odor like rotting meat and perfume drifted out.

I knelt and peered into the hollow. It was too dark to see anything, but I heard a faint, wet sound, like something shifting in the mud. Then I saw them: two pale eyes, blank and milky, staring back at me from the darkness. I scrambled backward, my heart hammering. I ran home, but when I got there, my father was waiting on the porch, his face twisted in a rage I had never seen before. He grabbed my arm with a grip like iron and screamed, ‘Where have you been? I’ve been looking everywhere!’ His eyes were bloodshot, and his breath stank of something sweet and rotten.

That night, the dreams were worse. The thing in the hollow was calling me, its voice a mixture of my father’s angry shouts and my mother’s pleading whispers. It told me to come closer, to bring it something, to let it out. I woke up screaming, and my mother came to my room, her face pale. She told me my father had been acting strange, that he had dug up the backyard and was talking to himself. I didn’t tell her about the hollow.

The next day, I followed the creek again, but the path was gone. I forced my way through the kudzu, but I couldn’t find the sycamore. Frustrated, I went back home and found my father in the basement, hunched over a pile of dirt he had shoveled from the floor. He was whispering in a language I didn’t recognize, and as I watched, he lifted his head, and his eyes were no longer his own. They were pale and milky, just like the thing in the hollow. He smiled, a horrible, wet smile, and said, ‘She wants you to come home.’

I fled to my room and locked the door. I knew then that the thing in the hollow had taken my father, or at least was wearing his skin. I had to find the sycamore again and do something, but what? I thought about my dream, about the hollow being a doorway. Maybe I could close it, or maybe I needed to offer it something else. I realized that I was the offering, and that my father’s rage had been fed by the thing’s influence, making him easier to control.

In the depths of the night, I slipped out of the house and made my way to the creek. The moon was full, and the water was lit silver. I pushed through the kudzu, and this time the path was there, as if waiting for me. I followed it to the sycamore, and the hollow was glowing faintly, a sickly green. The thing inside spoke to me, its voice like wet leaves scraping. ‘You came. Bring me the seed of your anger, and I will leave your father.’ I didn’t know what that meant, but I knew I had to try.

I stood at the edge of the hollow, and I thought of every time my father had been angry, every curse he had thrown, every plate he had broken. I felt a heat rising in my chest, a red haze of fury that was not my own. It was the anger the thing had planted in my father, and it was flowing into me. I gritted my teeth and let it out. I screamed, a raw, primal scream that tore my throat. The ground shook, and the roots of the sycamore writhed like snakes. The hollow snapped shut with a wet, crunching sound, and the green light vanished.

I stood there, breathing heavily. The woods were quiet, and the air was clean. I went back home, and in the kitchen, I found my father sitting at the table, staring at his hands. His eyes were clear, and he looked confused. ‘What happened?’ he asked. I didn’t answer. I just hugged him, and he hugged me back, trembling.

We moved away from Cedar Hollow a month later, my father having lost his job after a violent outburst. But he’s better now, gentler. Sometimes at night, I still dream of the creek, but the hollow is gone, replaced by a mound of fresh earth. And in my waking hours, I sometimes catch a whiff of that perfume, and I know the thing is not gone, only waiting for another crack in the world to seep through. I carry a piece of the sycamore’s root in my pocket, worn smooth, a reminder that the greatest monsters we face are often the ones we feed with our own rage.