The Mud Man of Hollow Creek

I was eight when my family moved into the old farmhouse on the edge of Hollow Creek, a place that smelled of wet soil and decay. The previous owners had left in a hurry, leaving behind a child’s drawing on the fridge: a stick figure with a sad face standing by a river. My parents thought it was quaint. I thought it was a warning.

From the first night, I felt eyes on me. My bedroom faced the creek, and I’d lie awake, listening to the water gurgle, imagining something crawling out of the mud, slick and patient. I refused to go to the basement alone, and I made my older brother, Danny, come with me even to get a glass of water after dark. He’d roll his eyes, but I saw the fear flicker in his own when the floorboards creaked.

One day, while playing near the creek, I found a submerged metal box. Inside was a journal, its pages swollen and stuck together. As I dried them, I read the entries of a woman named Ruth, who had lived here in the ’70s. She wrote about her husband, Carl, who had a temper. She wrote about her son, Samuel, who had ‘night terrors’ and would talk to ‘the mud man.’ She described how Samuel would go to the creek at night, claiming the mud man would protect him from his father. The last entry was abrupt: ‘He knows. The mud man told Samuel everything. I have to get us out.’ The rest of the pages were blank.

I hid the journal under my mattress, but strange things began to happen. The faucets would drip in rhythm, like footsteps. My sister’s crayon drawings started appearing on the walls—crude, staring faces with wide eyes. One night, I woke to see my brother standing at the foot of my bed, staring blankly, and when I called his name, he whispered, ‘He’s coming.’ The next day, he had no memory of it.

I finally confronted my parents, showing them the journal. My father laughed it off, saying it was a local legend, that a man had drowned in the creek years ago. But my mother’s face went pale. She told me that the people who sold the house had a son who died in that creeka drowning, they said. She didn’t look convinced.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I crept to the basement, where the old boiler hummed, and found a trapdoor hidden under a rug. I’d always known it was there. I pulled it open and descended into a dirt crawl space. In the corner, half-buried in the dirt, was a child’s shoe, and next to it, a tarnished locket. Inside the locket was a photo of a woman and a boy. The boy had my brother’s face.

I ran upstairs, heart pounding, and found my brother in the kitchen, drinking water. He turned to me, and his eyes were not his ownthey were dark and wet, like creek stones. ‘You found my room,’ he said, but his voice was low, gravelly, not my brother’s. ‘I’ve been waiting for you to understand.’ He stepped closer, and I saw mud dripping from his hair. ‘He locked me down there. He said I was bad. But the mud man kept me safe. Now, he wants you to come with us.’

I backed away, but the kitchen walls began to sweat, beading with moisture that ran in dark streaks. The lights flickered, and from every corner, that same whisper rose, like water rising, ‘Come, come, come.’ My brother smiled, and his teeth were black. ‘You don’t have to be afraid anymore,’ he said, reaching out a hand slick with sludge. ‘The mud man will hold you forever.’

I turned and ran, but the door was gone. The hallway stretched into darkness, and in the distance, I heard a child singing, a lullaby I didn’t know. I woke up in my bed, drenched in cold sweat, but something was wrong. My room was silent, but the walls were covered in muddy handprints, and the window faced not the creek, but a vast, glistening marsh under a blood-red moon. And at the foot of my bed stood a figure, tall and dripping, made entirely of mud, with my brother’s face staring out from it, pleading.

I’m writing this now, from a room that is not my room, in a house that is not my house. The creek is inside me now, and the mud man whispers, always, ‘You can stay here with us, forever, in the damp, in the dark.’ And I’m starting to believe that maybe I was always meant to be part of this story. I just didn’t know it. But now, I can’t leave. I can’t even feel the floor anymore. I’m sinking, slowly, into the soft, cold earth.