The Keeper of the Hollow

Grandpa Elias had a workshop at the edge of the woods, a place of rust and sawdust that smelled of old earth and machine oil. I spent every summer there, trailing behind him like a persistent, curious shadow. He never said much, but he taught me to whittle a branch into a proper staff, to mend a torn net, and how to tell a real storm from a false one by the way the leaves turned. My cousin Teddy called me his little apprentice, but I was more than that. I was the keeper of his quiet moments, the one who stayed when the others ran off to chase fireflies or swim in the lake.

That summer, the summer I turned twelve, the woods began to change. The birds stopped singing near a particular grove of oaks, and the air grew heavy with the smell of damp rot. Grandpa noticed too. He spent more time staring at the tree line, his jaw tight, and he started muttering about ‘the hollow.’ I asked him what was in the hollow, but he just shook his head and said, ‘Nothing that should be disturbed, girl. You mind me now.’ I didn’t mind him. I was too curious, too bold, thinking I knew the woods better than anyone.

One afternoon, I decided to investigate the hollow on my own. I grabbed my grandfather’s old compass, the one he said never lied, and a pocketknife, and I slipped into the trees. The path was overgrown, but I found a trail of broken branches and trampled ferns, as if something large had passed through recently. The deeper I went, the quieter it became, until even the rustle of leaves seemed to hold its breath. At the center of the hollow, I found a circle of stones, and in the middle, a mound of dark soil covered in pale, root-like tendrils. The tendrils moved, slowly, as if they were breathing. I reached out to touch one, and it wrapped around my wrist, cold and slick, and pulled me down.

I woke up on my grandfather’s porch, the setting sun painting the sky in shades of amber and bruise. My wrist was ringed with red marks, like a bracelet of pinpricks. Grandpa sat beside me, his face ashen, holding a small cloth bundle. ‘I told you to mind me,’ he said, his voice cracked. ‘Now you’ve gone and opened the door.’ He unwrapped the bundle to reveal a silver pendant, shaped like an eye, with a dark stone at its center. ‘This was your grandmother’s. She wore it to keep the hollow sealed. I’d hoped you’d never need it, but the hollow has tasted you now. It will come for you when the moon is full.’

I laughed, thinking he was playing a trick. But that night, as I lay in bed, I heard a sound from the woods—a low, wet call, like a throat clearing underwater. It was coming from the direction of the hollow. I pulled the pendant from my pocket—I’d taken it without asking—and clutched it. The sound stopped, but I felt a prickling at the back of my neck, as if something was watching from the dark window. The next morning, Grandpa was gone. His boots were by the door, and on the table was a note: ‘I’ve gone to finish what she started. Don’t follow. Wear the eye. And if I don’t come back, burn the hollow.’

I didn’t follow. I wore the pendant, and I waited. Days passed, then weeks. The hollow grew darker, the trees around it twisted and blackened. Teddy came to visit, and I told him what had happened. He laughed, called it all tall tales, but the next night he didn’t come back from his evening swim. That night, I heard the wet call again, and this time it was closer. I looked out my window and saw a shape standing at the edge of the yard—a man, tall and thin, with pale bark for skin and roots for hair, and his eyes were the color of the hollow’s soil. He pointed at me with a finger like a root, and I felt the pendant grow cold against my chest.

I ran to the workshop, grabbed a can of kerosene and a box of matches, and headed to the hollow. The air was thick, and the tendrils reached out as I approached, but I held the pendant up, and they recoiled. At the center, the mound was larger, pulsing like a heart. I poured the kerosene over it and struck a match. The flames caught, and the tendrils writhed, releasing a smell like burnt hair. But as the fire spread, the ground began to shake, and the shape from the yard stepped out of the trees, blocking my escape. It opened its mouth, and a sound came out—not the wet call, but Grandpa’s voice, saying, ‘You should have burned it sooner.’

The fire consumed the hollow, and the shape dissolved into ash. I fell to my knees, sobbing, praying for it to be over. But when I looked up, the hollow was gone, replaced by a patch of scorched earth. And in the distance, I heard Teddy’s voice calling my name. I ran toward it, but it led me deeper into the woods, to a tree that hadn’t been there before, with a trunk shaped like a man, and a face frozen in a scream. I don’t know how long I stood there. Days, maybe. I don’t remember leaving. I only remember the pendant growing warm, then burning, until my grandfather’s voice whispered in my ear, ‘You bear the eye now. You are the keeper of the hollow.’

I wear the pendant always, even now, years later. I live on the edge of the woods, in my grandfather’s house. I hear the wet call every full moon, and I go to stand at the edge of the scorched earth, watching. Sometimes, I see the shape among the trees, and it has Teddy’s face. I know what I must do. I must finish what my grandfather started. I must seal the door for good. But I am afraid. Afraid that the hollow has already taken root in me, and that when I finally face it, I will not be the keeper—I will become part of the hollow, and the next keeper will be my own blood, drawn by the same curious shadow I once was.