The Pale Visitor

I’m sixteen now, but what I’m about to tell you happened when I was nine, and I swear on my mother’s grave it’s the truth, even though I’ve never told anyone the whole story since it happened. We’d just moved into a sprawling old farmhouse on the edge of a dying town called Morrow’s Hollow. The place had been empty for years, and the previous owner, an old recluse named Elias Crane, had died under mysterious circumstances. The realtor said he’d passed of a heart attack, but old Mrs. Gable across the road told me he’d been found with his face frozen in a look of utter terror, his fingers digging into the floorboards as if he’d tried to claw his way out of something. I didn’t think much of it then; I was just excited about the big backyard and the creaky attic.

My older brother, Jake, and I shared a room on the second floor, a cold, drafty space with a bay window overlooking the overgrown garden. We had twin beds pushed against opposite walls, and between them, a faded rug with a pattern of spiraling vines. The first few weeks were fine. We explored the cornfields, played hide-and-seek in the barn, and tried to summon ghosts with a Ouija board we found in the attic (we got bored after ten minutes and blamed each other for moving the planchette).

But in October, as the leaves turned brown and the days grew short, an uneasy feeling settled over the house. I started waking up at odd hours, sensing something watching me from the corner of the room. I’d lie still, my heart thumping, and listen to the wind rattling the windows. Jake slept like the dead, so I never bothered him.

One night, I woke to a sound like dry leaves skittering across the floor. I froze, listening. The sound came from under my bed, a faint, slithering noise, like a snake dragging its belly over wood. I squeezed my eyes shut and counted to ten, hoping it would go away. But then the sound moved, closer to my pillow. I could feel a cold draft, and the air grew thick, like being underwater.

I forced myself to open my eyes. And there it was: a figure standing at the foot of my bed. It was tall and thin, with pale, almost translucent skin, stretched taut over bones that seemed too long. Its face was blank, no features, just a smooth void where eyes and mouth should be. It was completely naked, and I could see the faint network of dark veins beneath its skin, pulsing with a slow, deliberate rhythm. It didn’t move. It just stood there, its head tilted slightly, as if studying me.

I wanted to scream, but my throat closed up. I tried to shake Jake awake, but my arm felt like lead. The figure took a single, silent step closer. I could smell it now—an earthy, decaying odor, like wet soil and rotten leaves. Its head tilted the other way, and I swear I could hear a faint hum, a low vibration that made my teeth ache.

Finally, I found my voice. I shouted ‘JAKE!’ at the top of my lungs. Jake bolted upright, flicked on the lamp, and the light flooded the room. The figure vanished. I was shaking, crying, pointing at the space where it had been. Jake frowned, glanced around, and said, ‘You’re dreaming, Clara. Go back to sleep.’ But I knew I wasn’t dreaming. I lay awake all night, watching the ceiling, feeling its presence lingering in the shadows.

The next night, I made Jake leave the hall light on and the bedroom door ajar. But at 3:33 AM, I heard a scratching at my window. I turned and saw a pale hand with too-long fingers pressing against the glass from outside. I yelped and pulled my blanket over my head. When I peeked out, the hand was gone. I told Jake again, and he called it sleep paralysis. ‘You’re just stressed about the new school,’ he said. But the thing was, I hadn’t told him about the figure’s face, about the blank void that seemed to see right through me. I felt like it was waiting for me to be alone.

A week went by, and the occurrences worsened. I’d catch glimpses of it in mirrors, a pale blur at the edge of my vision. I’d wake up to find my belongings moved, my doll’s head turned to face the door. The smell of decay clung to my room, and no amount of air freshener could banish it. I stopped sleeping, afraid to close my eyes, knowing it would be there when I opened them.

One Saturday, my parents went to town for groceries, leaving Jake and me alone. It was a gray, drizzling afternoon. Jake was in the living room watching TV, and I was in the kitchen making a sandwich. I felt a chill run down my spine, and I turned around. It was standing in the doorway, its blank face tilted, and this time, it was closer than before, barely an arm’s length away. I dropped the knife, and it clattered on the floor. It reached out a long, pale arm, its fingers brushing the air just inches from my face. I stumbled backward, knocking over a chair, and screamed. Jake came running, and by the time he got there, it had vanished. But I had seen something new: its chest was open, a gaping, dark cavity, and inside, nestled amongst what looked like black corded roots, was a heart that beat with a sickly, rhythmic pulse.

Jake finally believed me when he found faint, hand-shaped bruises on my arm the next morning, in the exact spots where its fingers had almost touched me. He went pale and said, ‘We need to tell Mom and Dad.’ But I remembered the old stories Mrs. Gable had told me about Elias Crane and his experiments in the attic. She said he’d tried to capture something from ‘beyond the veil’ and that he’d succeeded, but it had driven him mad. ‘It’s that thing,’ I whispered. ‘It’s still here.’

That night, my parents were away on an overnight trip, and Jake and I decided to investigate the attic. We found an old journal in a hidden compartment beneath the floorboards. It was Elias Crane’s, and it described a creature he’d summoned—a ‘Hollow One’—that fed on fear and memory. The journal said it could only be banished by exposing it to pure, unadulterated sunlight at dawn, and even then, it might return. The final page had a sketch of the creature, and it matched exactly what I’d seen, right down to the hollow chest with its beating heart.

We set a trap. We called it the ‘Dawn Circle’—a ring of salt and iron filings around the bedroom, with a gap at the window. We waited through the night, the creature’s presence growing stronger as the hours crept by. It was almost 5 AM when it appeared in the corner, its head rotating unnaturally, tracking our movements. ‘Now!’ Jake shouted, and we pulled open the heavy curtains, letting the first rays of the sun stream in. The creature recoiled, its skin smoking and sizzling where the light touched it. It let out a sound—a high-pitched, wet scream that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere—and then it dissolved into a pool of black, viscous liquid that seeped through the floorboards.

We thought it was over. We cleaned up the mess, told our parents it was a leak, and tried to forget. But here’s the thing: every dawn, I feel a faint pulse in the floor, a thrum that syncs with my heartbeat. And last night, I woke to find a single, pale handprint on my bedroom window, from the outside. I’m sixteen now, and I haven’t told a soul the full truth until now. Because I know it’s not gone. It’s just waiting, biding its time until I’m alone again. And I’m terrified that next time, the sunlight won’t be enough.