The Rag-and-Bone Man of Redmire Hollow

I grew up on the edge of Redmire Hollow, a place where the map makers gave up and wrote ‘unexplored’ in curly script. The nearest town was a forty-minute drive on a road that turned to mud whenever it pleased, and the only neighbors were crows and the occasional lost deer. My family kept to ourselves, and I, a solitary child, found my playground in the forgotten acres behind our farmhouse.

At ten, I started to feel watched. It wasn’t the usual paranoia of a lonely kid; it was a prickling at the back of my neck, a sense that the woods themselves had eyes. I’d be building a fort from fallen branches, and I’d freeze, certain that something was just over my shoulder. I’d whirl around, but there was never anything there—just the sway of ferns and the creak of old pines.

One afternoon, I followed a strange sound—a rhythmic creak, like a rusty swing. It led me to a part of the woods I didn’t recognize, where the trees grew too close together and the air felt thick. I found a clearing, and in the center stood a scarecrow. But it wasn’t made of straw and burlap. It was a patchwork of animal hides—deer, fox, rabbit—stitched with sinew. Its head was a burlap sack with buttons for eyes, and it wore a tattered coat that fluttered in a wind that didn’t touch the leaves. A small wooden sign at its base read, in faded letters, ‘He gathers what is lost.’ I ran, and I never went near that spot again.

Years passed. I grew up, moved to the city, and tried to forget. But the memory of that scarecrow lingered like a splinter. Then, at twenty-nine, my mother fell ill, and I had to return to the hollow to settle her estate. The farmhouse was just as I’d left it, but the woods seemed darker, more tangled. The locals—the few that remained—spoke in hushed tones about a ‘rag-and-bone man’ who haunted the hollow, a figure who collected the remains of lost travelers and buried them in a garden of bones. I dismissed it as folklore, until I found an old journal in my mother’s attic.

The journal was my great-grandfather’s. He had been a trapper, and his entries described encounters with a creature that wore the skins of its victims—a thing that walked on two legs but wasn’t human. He wrote of a ‘harvest’ that happened every few decades, when the creature emerged to take what it needed. The last entry was dated seventy years ago, the same year he vanished.

One night, I heard a noise outside—a scraping, like something dragging across the porch. I peered through the window and saw a shape, tall and thin, moving toward the barn. It wore a coat that seemed to ripple, and its head was a burlap sack with button eyes. I felt a cold dread, but I grabbed a flashlight and my grandfather’s old hunting rifle, and I followed.

The barn door was ajar, and inside, the air reeked of decay. The beam of my flashlight swept across the walls, and I saw them—trophies. Dozens of glass jars, each containing a grayish mass. I realized with horror they were human brains, pickled in a murky fluid. On a workbench lay a half-sewn garment of skin, tattooed fragments that seemed to shift in the light.

Something moved behind me. I spun, and there it was, the rag-and-bone man. Its button eyes stared into mine, and it spoke in a voice like dry leaves rubbing together, ‘You have something of mine.’ I held up the rifle, but my hands trembled. ‘The journal,’ it said. ‘It belongs to me.’ I remembered my great-grandfather’s last entry, and I realized the creature had a collection of memories, of souls, and it wanted its property back.

I turned to run, but the door slammed shut. The creature lunged, and I fired. The bullet tore through its chest, but it only staggered. It reached out a hand made of bone and twine, and I felt a searing pain in my skull. My mind flooded with images—my childhood, the scarecrow, every lost thing I’d ever mourned. And then it was gone.

I woke up in the hospital, three days later. They told me I’d been found wandering on the highway, covered in scratches. I had no memory of the attack, only a lingering sense of wrongness. Back in the city, I tried to resume my life, but I was haunted by blurry visions of the hollow, and I felt an inexplicable pull to go back.

Months later, I received a package with no return address. Inside was a jar, like the ones I’d seen, containing a grayish mass. And a note, in handwritten scrawl: ‘You left this behind.’ I dropped it, and I knew—the creature had taken a piece of me, and it had given me a piece of itself. I don’t know what I am now, but I can hear the woods calling, and I know that some day, I will return to Redmire Hollow, to the garden of bones, and I will be complete.