The Lullaby of Hollow Creek

My earliest memories are of the man in the rain. Not a real man, but a shadow that dripped with water, standing at the foot of my bed. He would whisper things I couldn’t understand, and sometimes, I’d wake up with wet footprints leading from my window to his spot. My mother, a marine biologist, would laugh it off, saying the sea air was playing tricks on my mind. But she didn’t laugh when I showed her the small, porcelain doll I found under my pillow, its cracked face smiling up at us. She didn’t laugh when the doll’s hair turned from blonde to black overnight, or when it began to sing a lullaby in a voice that was not mine.

We lived in a coastal town, in a house that leaned over the edge of a cliff, its wooden bones creaking like a ship about to capsize. The Hollow Creek, a narrow strip of water, ran beneath our property, and on stormy nights, I could hear a child’s voice calling from its depths. My mother thought it was the wind, but I knew better. The voice was always singing, always the same tune, and it always seemed to be asking for something.

When I turned twelve, we moved inland. I hoped to leave the man and his doll behind, but the dreams followed. In them, I would be standing on the shore of Hollow Creek, and the water would recede, revealing a staircase leading down. At the bottom, a door, and behind it, a room bathed in a sickly green light, where a woman with hollow eyes would beckon me. She wore a dress made of seaweed, and her hair was a tangle of wet ropes. She would open her mouth, and a stream of black water would pour out, filling the room, and I would wake up gasping for air.

My mother started to fear for my sanity. She took me to doctors, to priests, to a woman who claimed she could see spirits. The woman gave me a charm made of salt and iron, but the dreams only grew more vivid. My little sister, Lila, began to have her own nightmares, of a woman calling her name from the basement, a woman who smelled of brine and rotting wood. We would find her sleepwalking, standing at the edge of the garden pond, her hands outstretched.

Years passed. I grew up, moved away, and tried to forget. I got married, had a son, and then a daughter. But when my daughter was born, the dreams returned with a vengeance. I would see the woman from the green room, but now she held a baby, wrapped in a shroud of kelp. She would offer the child to me, cooing, ‘Take her, and I will take the boy.’ And I would scream.

One night, my son, Oliver, woke up crying. He said a lady with wet hair was standing in his room, trying to take his baby sister. I rushed in, and there, on the windowsill, was the same porcelain doll from my childhood, its eyes now empty black holes, its mouth open in a silent scream. That’s when I knew I had to go back to the old house.

I drove through the night, and by dawn, I reached the cliffside. The house was still there, more dilapidated than I remembered. The porch sagged, and the windows were boarded up, but I could hear the lullaby coming from inside. I broke down the door and found my way to the basement. The stairs were flooded, the water thick with algae and smelling of decay. At the bottom, there was a door, ajar, and behind it, a room lit by a single, sputtering lantern.

There was the woman, just like in my dreams, but she was not a ghost. She was a pale, gaunt creature, her skin peeling from her bones, her eyes like two marbles. She was holding a bundle of rags, and she was singing my daughter’s name. ‘I’ve been waiting for you to return,’ she said, her voice like the scrape of shells on stone. ‘You were the only one who could hear me, who could see me from the other side. You were my anchor. But now I have your children, and they will be my little fish.’

I looked around the room. There were jars of murky water, each containing a tiny, malformed creature – a hand, an eye, a tuft of hair. I realized then that she was a spirit of the creek, a vengeful thing that had been trapped by the house’s foundation, and she had been feeding on the fear of my family for generations. And now, she wanted my daughter to be her new vessel.

But I had come prepared. I had brought the charm from the spiritualist, and I had filled a flask with water from a holy spring. I threw the water at her, and she hissed, recoiling. But it wasn’t enough. She lunged at me, and I stumbled back, grabbing a rusted anchor from the wall. I swung it, but she was fast, and she wrapped her long, wet fingers around my throat. I could feel her cold grip, and I knew I was dying.

Just then, Oliver ran into the room. He had followed me, and he held his own small mirror, the one I had given him for his birthday. He held it up, and the sunlight streamed through the cracks in the wooden walls, reflecting into the woman’s face. She screamed, a sound that tore through the air, and she dissolved into a puddle of black water, leaving behind the bundle. I picked it up. It was my daughter, unharmed but quiet, as if she were in a trance.

I took my children and fled, never looking back. But I knew the lullaby would follow us. Sometimes, in the quiet of the night, I would hear it again, coming from the baby monitor, and I would see a wet footprint on the floor. And my daughter, growing older, would sometimes stare out the window, her eyes distant, and hum that same tune. And I know now that the woman is not gone. She is just waiting, like the tide, to come back in.