The Stile Man

I have always been sensitive to the odd and the unseen, but my encounters were usually with the remnants of human sorrow—faint whispers in old walls, the chill of a lingering presence. That changed the autumn I started at the University of St. Aldhelm, tucked away in the misty folds of the Fens. My flatmate, Mara, and I had been cooped up for days while I shook off a brutal flu. When I finally felt human again, we decided to treat ourselves to a proper lunch in the nearby village of Woldhollow.

The bus was one of those rickety single-deckers that seemed to materialize out of the grey. We climbed aboard, and I slid into a window seat, as I always do. The landscape rolled past—flat fields, skeletal trees, and dykes glinting with water. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular, just letting my gaze drift. That’s when I saw him.

A figure stood by a stile at the edge of a field, arm extended as if hailing the bus. He was dressed in jeans and a black hoodie, the hood pulled up to cast his face in shadow. But there was a wrongness to him. The hood didn’t sit right; it fell too flat, as if there was nothing underneath to shape it. As we passed, I craned my neck, and the wind caught the fabric, pressing it back. There was no face—just a smooth, blank void where features should have been. I blinked, and the bus hurried on, leaving me with a cold knot in my stomach.

I didn’t mention it to Mara. I told myself it was a trick of the light, the residual fog of my illness. But the image clung to me, and when we caught the bus back that afternoon, I found myself scanning the fields. He was gone, of course. The stile stood empty, and I almost laughed at my own foolishness. Yet, as the days passed, I began to see him again—always at the periphery, always with that raised arm, always faceless. Once, he was at the water’s edge by the boathouse, another time framed by the gothic arch of the chapel.

Then the dreams started. In them, I was walking alone along a narrow path bordered by reeds. The sky was the colour of old parchment, and the air hummed with a low, guttural vibration. Ahead, I saw the figure, his arm not raised but reaching toward me, the palm up as if beckoning. My feet moved without my will, pulling me closer, and I felt a terrible thirst emanating from him—a longing not for water, but for something to fill his emptiness. I would wake gasping, the bunk above me creaking as Mara turned in her sleep.

I tried to rationalise. I told myself it was stress, the pressure of a new university, the lingering sickness. But the sightings became more frequent, and I started to notice a pattern. He always appeared near boundaries—stiles, gates, bridges, the verges of the fens. And he always wore the same clothes, his hoodie seeming to absorb the light around it. One evening, as the sun bled into the horizon, I saw him from the library window, standing on the far bank of the river that bordered the campus. He was closer now, his arm not raised but hanging at his side, and I could swear I saw the faint outline of a smile in the shadow under the hood.

I broke. I confided in Mara, who listened with a sceptical frown. ‘It’s the fenland,’ she said, her voice light but with an edge of unease. ‘The locals say the mist plays tricks. There’s a story about a traveller who lost his face in the marsh.’ I seized on that. ‘What story?’ She shrugged, but I pressed her, and she finally admitted she’d heard it from an old groundskeeper. He’d claimed that centuries ago, a man was murdered by the stile by the old road, his face cut away so he could never be identified. He was buried in an unmarked grave, and his spirit still wanders the boundary lines, seeking alms for his fleshless skull.

I should have felt relief—a ghost with a backstory, a human tragedy. But something about the tale felt off, too neat. That night, I couldn’t sleep. I lay in the dark, listening to the wind rattle the windowpane, when I heard a sound from outside: a soft tap, like a knuckle against glass. I pulled aside the curtain. He was there, pressed against the pane, his hood pushed back to reveal a void that seemed to swallow the moonlight. I stared, frozen, as his arm rose slowly and pressed a palm to the glass. The touch wasn’t cold; it was the opposite—a searing heat that radiated through the window, making the glass creak. And I understood, with a sudden clarity, that he was not a ghost. He was a hollow, a thing that had consumed its own humanity, and it was feeding on the fear it inspired. It wanted me to fill that void with my own substance.

I stumbled back, knocking over a chair. Mara stirred and woke, and the thing was gone. But I knew he would return. I couldn’t stay. The next morning, I packed a bag and boarded the first bus out of Woldhollow, leaving Mara with a mumbled excuse about a family emergency. As the bus pulled away, I saw him one last time, standing at the edge of the car park, his arm raised in that familiar gesture. But this time, he wasn’t hailing the bus. He was waving goodbye. And I felt a strange pull, an urge to reach out and touch that empty space, to offer him my face. I gripped the seat in front of me, fighting the urge until the bus rounded a corner and he was lost to sight.

I’ve never returned to St. Aldhelm. I transferred to a city university, where the crowds and the noise seem to keep the hollow at bay. But sometimes, in the reflection of a train window, or the mirror of a dimly lit lobby, I catch a glimpse of a hooded figure at the edge of my vision. And I wonder if I’m truly free, or if I’ve merely postponed an inevitable meeting. The stile man is out there, patient and hungry, and I know that one day, I will have to take his hand—or vanish into the void he offers.