The Loam-Brown Visitor

The old farmhouse in Grey Hollow had always been a place of quiet unease, but I’d never seen anything like that. It was the summer of my twenty-eighth year, and I’d moved back to care for my ailing grandmother. The house was a two-story Victorian with a wrap-around porch, its paint peeling like dead skin. My bedroom was on the second floor, facing the vast cornfields that pressed against the property like a hungry tide. That night, the air was thick and still, the only sound the creak of the house settling and the distant hum of insects.

I was lying on my side, facing the wall, when I felt a prickle on the back of my neck. It was a familiar sensation, the kind that made my heart pick up its pace. I’d always been sensitive to the strange, to the flicker of something out of place, but this was different. It wasn’t the usual chill of an old house or the shift of a floorboard. It was a presence, heavy and deliberate, and it was watching me. I waited, breath held, listening. Nothing. But the weight of that gaze was unbearable.

Slowly, I turned my head just enough to glance up and behind me, toward the doorway that led to the hallway. And there it was—a shape that didn’t belong. It was standing right beside my bed, close enough that its bulk cast a deeper shadow over me. It was impossibly tall, its head grazing the ceiling’s water-stained plaster, easily seven or eight feet. Its body was broad, wider than any man, and it leaned over the bed, blocking out the weak light from the window. I couldn’t see its face clearly—it was just a dark, murky silhouette, like a figure made of loam and shadow, its edges indistinct, as if it were made of the very darkness that filled the room. Its arms hung at its sides, long and thin, ending in fingers that looked like brittle twigs.

I didn’t feel malice. I didn’t feel anger. I didn’t feel anything but a strange, hollow neutrality, as if I were looking at a natural event, like a storm front or a falling tree. That lack of emotion was more terrifying than any threat. I turned my head back to the wall, pretending I hadn’t seen it, my heart pounding so loudly I was sure it could hear. I lay there, frozen, waiting for the sound of movement, for the rustle of its approach. Minutes passed, and the presence seemed to linger, a cold weight pressing against the air. Then, without a sound, the pressure lifted. I waited a long time before daring to turn, and when I did, the room was empty.

I didn’t sleep that night. I told my grandmother the next morning, and she looked at me with a strange, knowing expression. ‘That old thing,’ she said, waving a hand. ‘It’s been here since my mother’s time. It just watches. It doesn’t do anything.’ Her casual dismissal unsettled me more. ‘You’ll see it again,’ she added, ‘but it never stays long.’

She was right, though I dreaded it. I saw it again, three nights later. This time, I was reading in bed, and I felt that same weight. I didn’t look. I just kept my eyes on my book, pretending to be absorbed. The air grew cold around me, and I felt a draft as if a door had opened. I could sense it standing just behind me, taller than the bed frame, its presence like a held breath. After a minute, it was gone, leaving only the creeping certainty that it was observing me, cataloging my existence.

Over the weeks, I glimpsed it more often, always at night, always in that same spot by the bed. Sometimes it would be just a shape in the corner of my eye; sometimes it would be fully visible, that loam-brown silhouette, featureless, still. The lack of emotion was the worst part. There was no hunger, no curiosity, no malevolence. Just a pure, dispassionate surveillance. I began to wonder if it was drawn to me, or if it had always been there, waiting for a new occupant to notice it.

One night, after a particularly vivid encounter, I decided to confront it. I lay in bed, the lights off, and when I felt that familiar prickle, I forced myself to turn slowly, to look directly at it. It was there, as tall as the doorway, leaning over me. I could see the faint texture of its skin, if it could be called skin—wrinkled like bark, mottled with patches of darker brown, almost like lichen. Its face, if it had one, was hidden in shadow, but I thought I saw two small, glinting points where eyes might be. I stared at it, trying to find some flicker of intent, but there was nothing. It simply stood, and after a long, silent moment, it straightened up, turned, and walked out of the room, its steps making no sound on the wooden floor.

I followed it. I don’t know why, but I did. It moved down the hallway, its long form folding to avoid the ceiling, and into my grandmother’s room. I hesitated at the threshold. The room was dark, but I could see the shape of my grandmother in her bed, and beside her, the figure stood, leaning over her as it had over me. It wasn’t threatening her; it was just… watching. Then, as if sensing me, it turned its head (if it had a head) and looked at me. And for the first time, I felt something: a faint, cold curiosity, not directed at me, but through me, as if I were a window to something else. Then it faded, dissolving into the dark, and my grandmother stirred, mumbling in her sleep.

She passed away three days later, peacefully, in her sleep. I didn’t see the loam-brown figure again after that. I think it had been waiting for her, and once she was gone, its purpose was fulfilled. I left Grey Hollow, but I carry the memory of that endless, patient gaze. It never showed malice, never made a sound, but I know it exists, and I know it watches. Sometimes, when I lie in bed in my new apartment, I feel that prickle, that weight of attention, and I wonder if it has found me again, waiting for the moment when I too will stop being an observer and become the observed.

I don’t look. I never look. But the feeling never goes away, and I know that one night, I won’t be able to resist. And when I turn my head, I’ll see it there again, standing by my bed, leaning over, its loam-brown form blocking out the light, and I will feel nothing at all.