The Hollow Woman of Calle del Sauce

In the summer of 2008, I lived in a small coastal town named Puerto Escondido, not the famous one, but a forgotten fishing village where the sea breeze carried the smell of salt and decay. My family had always been sensitive to the supernatural, and I was the one who stood between them and the things that lurked in the shadows. It wasn’t a choice; it was a duty.

That night, I was jolted awake by a sound that was not quite human. It was a deep, guttural laugh, like rocks grinding in a cavern. I sat up, heart pounding, and peered through the window of my small room. The street outside was bathed in the sickly orange glow of a dying streetlamp. Then I saw it: a dark shape moving with impossible speed, fluid and seamless, as if it were a shadow thrown by a light that didn’t exist. It halted for a moment under the lamp, and I could see the silhouette of a woman, her hair short and messy, and her form strangely hollow, as if she were made of smoke with a void at her center. Then she was gone, leaving only the lingering echo of that laugh.

For days, I couldn’t shake the image. The laugh replayed in my mind like a broken record. I tried to rationalize it, but I knew better. The veil between worlds is thin in this town, and I’ve seen many things. On the following Sunday, I decided to walk to the local tienda to buy some supplies. The sun was high, and the streets were quiet, the heat oppressive. As I turned a corner, I nearly collided with a woman. She was middle-aged, with short black hair, and her eyes were fixed on me, unblinking. Her smile was wide, but it didn’t reach her eyes. There was a darkness in them, a hunger. She wore a faded floral dress that seemed too old for her, and as she passed, I felt an inexplicable chill.

I thought nothing of it until that night. The laugh returned, but this time it was closer, almost in my room. I turned on the light, but nothing was there. The air felt thick, and I could taste something metallic, like old blood. I heard a faint scratching at my window, and when I looked, I saw the woman from the tienda, her face pressed against the glass, her mouth open, revealing a dark void. She raised a hand and pressed it against the window, and I could see that her palm was flat, with no fingers, just a smooth, pale surface. She smiled, and then she dissipated into mist.

The next day, I searched the town for any record of a woman fitting her description. I found an old photograph in the local museum. It was from the 1920s. A woman named Doña Inés, known for her cruelty, who had drowned in the well behind her house. The legend said she had been cursed, and her spirit now fed on the warmth of the living, wearing their forms to lure victims. I felt a cold sweat on my back.

Days passed, and the encounters grew more frequent. The laugh became a constant companion, and I would see glimpses of her in reflections, in the corner of my eye. My family grew fearful, and I could feel their eyes on me, expecting me to protect them. I began to research, and I found that Doña Inés had a pattern. She would find a person with a strong connection to the spirit world, and she would try to possess them, to use them as a vessel to escape the confines of the well. I realized that I was her target.

One night, I decided to face her. I went to the old well behind the abandoned house, which stood on the outskirts of town, near the cliffs. The moon was high, and the wind howled, making the trees dance like mad specters. I called her name, and the laugh replied, echoing from all directions. She appeared before me, no longer wearing the mask of the middle-aged woman, but her true form: a horror of shifting shadows, with a gaping hole in her chest where her heart should have been.

She spoke, her voice like the sound of a coffin being dragged across concrete. She said that she had been waiting for someone like me, who could bridge the worlds, and that she would take my body to reach the land of the living. I could feel her cold tendrils reaching for my soul, but I was ready. I pulled out a locket that had belonged to my grandmother, a silver locket containing a strand of her hair, and I pressed it to my chest. My grandmother had been a powerful curandera, and her gift was a shield. The woman recoiled, hissing, and I recited a protection prayer that had been passed down through generations.

The wind died, and the shadows dissolved. The laugh faded into a whisper, and then into silence. I stood there, trembling, but I had won. For now. As I walked back to town, I could still feel her watching me, waiting for another opportunity. But I was my family’s barrier, and I would not fall.

Months later, I moved away from Puerto Escondido, hoping to leave the memory behind. But on quiet nights, when the moon is full, I still hear that laugh, distant but unrelenting. And I know that the hollow woman is not gone; she is patient. She is waiting for me to return, or for someone like me to take my place.