The Hollow Sycamore

My brother and I had always been inseparable, but after our grandmother passed, we found ourselves drawn to the old Holloway estate on the edge of Ravenscroft. It was a sprawling, forgotten property, swallowed by the encroaching forest known ominously as the Hollow. The locals avoided it, muttering about a curse and a tree that stood at the center, a massive sycamore that had been dead for decades, its branches clawing at the sky like skeletal fingers.

We thought it would be a lark, a way to feel alive again. We brought our planchette and a worn-out Ouija board, the same one our grandmother used to scare us with as children. We hiked through the underbrush as dusk bled into night, the path lit only by a sliver of moon. The Hollow was silent, unnervingly so—no crickets, no owls, just the crunch of dead leaves underfoot and the distant hum of our own nervous energy.

We found the sycamore, its trunk as wide as a car, and we sat in its shadow, our backs against the rough bark. I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature. We placed the board between us, the polished wood cold to the touch. My brother rested his fingers on the planchette, and I did the same. We took a deep breath and asked if anyone was there.

The planchette didn’t move. I was about to joke that we were alone when it lurched violently, skidding to the letter ‘Y’ and then ‘E’, then ‘S’. A thrill and a dread raced through me. We asked a name. The planchette spelled ‘M-Y-R-A’. I’d never heard that name, but it felt familiar, like a half-remembered dream.

We started a conversation. Myra claimed she was a young woman who had lived on this land a century ago, before the house crumbled and the forest took over. She said she was lonely. I felt a cold presence pressing against my back, like a hand on my spine. I tried to ignore it, but my brother’s eyes widened. He wasn’t looking at me; he was looking over my shoulder.

I turned slowly, my heart hammering. A figure stood just beyond the tree line, tall and indistinct, darker than the night itself. It had no features, just a humanoid shape that seemed to absorb the remaining light. It was looking at me—not at my brother, but at me. And as I stared, it began to move, not walking, but flowing, gliding towards me with an unnatural grace.

I could feel its hunger, a cold, malevolent energy washing over me. My breath hitched. I tried to say the word ‘goodbye’ to close the session, but my voice was a rasp. The planchette flew across the board, spelling ‘S-T-A-Y’. The figure was inches away now, its head tilting as if examining me. My brother shouted, ‘Close it, close it!’ I managed to force out, ‘Goodbye, we leave, goodbye!’

The planchette jerked to ‘GOODBYE’. And just like that, the figure vanished. The pressure lifted, and the forest sounds returned—a distant owl, the rustle of leaves. I collapsed back against the tree, trembling.

At first, I convinced myself it was my imagination. Just a trick of the dark, stress, grief. I laughed nervously and said, ‘That was weird, right?’ My brother was quiet, his face pale. Then he said, ‘Did you see that?’ I asked, ‘See what?’ He replied, ‘The dark figure. It was standing over you, looking down at you. It leaned in, like it was about to touch your hair.’

My blood ran cold. We both saw it. We grabbed the board and fled, stumbling through the undergrowth, not stopping until we reached the car. We drove home in silence, but that night, I couldn’t sleep. I kept seeing that figure, that void, and I knew it wasn’t done with me.

The next morning, I found a scratch on my neck, a thin line that looked like a scar, but I hadn’t cut myself. And under my pillow, there was a single, dead leaf from the sycamore, even though we never brought one back. I threw it away, but my brother said he found the same leaf in his bed the following night.

Now, I don’t sleep with the lights off. And every time I close my eyes, I see the sycamore, and I hear a soft voice whispering, ‘You said yes. You said you’d stay.’ I don’t know how much longer I can hold out.