The Sunday Vigil of the Hollow Moon

It was the tail end of February, and the thaw had begun in earnest, turning the dirt roads of our valley into a slick, reddish muck. My older sister, Marisol, had driven up from the coast with our mother to spend the weekend with me and my younger sister, Elena, in the old farmhouse we’d inherited from our grandmother. The house sat on a hundred acres of fallow land, bordered by a dense pine forest that swallowed sound and light. The nearest neighbor was a mile down the road, and the only thing that broke the silence at night was the creak of the barn’s rusted weather vane.

Marisol had been different since our brother, Tomás, had died the previous spring. He’d been her twin, and the loss had carved a hollow in her that never seemed to fill. She’d started having seizures a few months after the funeral, though the doctors said they were ‘non-epileptic’ and likely psychosomatic. They’d given her pills, but she hated how they made her feel, so she only took them when the aura set in—that strange, metallic taste in her mouth, the sudden sense of déjà vu.

On the afternoon of Sunday, February 20th, we were sitting in the living room, watching the rain streak the windows. The sky had turned a bruised purple, and the wind had picked up, rattling the loose panes. Marisol had been quiet all day, picking at her food, staring off into corners. At around 7:40 PM, she set down her mug of tea and said, ‘I’m not feeling well. I think I’m going to lie down on your bed, Ana. I feel like I’m going to have a seizure.’

I felt a cold spike of fear. ‘No, don’t lie down in there,’ I said, trying to keep my voice steady. ‘Lie down here on the couch, where we can see you.’ Elena looked up from her phone, her eyes wide. Marisol complied, easing herself onto the floral-print sofa, her fingers digging into the cushions. She lay down, her head on the armrest, and closed her eyes.

A minute later, her body stiffened. Her back arched, and her limbs began to jerk in violent, unnatural rhythms. I counted the seconds, my own heart pounding in my ears. The seizure lasted about a minute, and when it ended, Marisol lay still, her eyes open but unfocused, staring at the ceiling. She didn’t blink. She didn’t move. She was like a doll with the life pulled out of it.

‘Marisol?’ I whispered. No response. Elena grabbed my hand, her fingers cold. Then, just as we were about to call for help, Marisol’s body twitched again, and the seizure started anew. This pattern repeated: a seizure, then a vacant stare, then another seizure. In the first thirty minutes, she had seven. I finally called the ambulance at 9:15 PM, my hands shaking as I spoke to the dispatcher.

The paramedics arrived, their boots heavy on the porch. They worked on Marisol, gave her a sedative, and loaded her onto the stretcher. Elena and I followed in my truck, the headlights cutting through the dark, the rain turning to sleet. At the hospital, she had two more seizures in the ER, and the doctors looked grim. They ran tests, but everything came back normal. By 2 AM, they discharged her, saying she was stable and that the seizures had stopped. I drove her home, her head lolling against the passenger window.

We laid her on the same couch, wrapped in grandma’s quilt. Elena and I took turns watching her, but exhaustion claimed us. I fell asleep in the armchair, dreaming of a deep well in the forest, its water black and still. When I woke at dawn, Marisol was gone.

I found her in the barn, kneeling in the dirt, her palms flat on the cold ground. She was whispering in a language I didn’t recognize, her voice a low, guttural chant. The air was thick with the smell of wet hay and something else—something sweet, like rotting fruit. Elena came up behind me, her breath fogging in the chilly air. ‘What is she doing?’ she asked. I shook my head, not daring to move.

Marisol turned to us, her eyes no longer vacant but filled with a dark awareness. She smiled, a slow, unnatural stretch of her lips. ‘He’s been waiting,’ she said, her voice deeper than before. ‘Tomás didn’t die. He’s in the ground, but he’s still here. He wants to come back.’

A chill ran down my spine. Tomás was buried in the family plot, a quarter mile into the woods. The grave had been undisturbed, but the ground had settled oddly, like something had pushed up from below. I led my sisters to the site, my feet sinking into the soft earth. The headstone was intact, but the soil was mounded, as if freshly dug. And there, at the base, was a small hole, dark and moist.

‘He’s coming,’ Marisol said, her voice now a whisper that seemed to come from all around us. ‘On the night of the hollow moon, he’ll rise. He told me.’ She touched her chest. ‘He’s in here. He’s been here since February, waiting for the right time.’

The hollow moon. That was what our grandmother used to call the new moon in February, when the sky was completely dark, and the spirits were said to walk. That night, the moon would be new.

We tried to take Marisol away, to drive her back to the city, to a hospital. But she fought us, her strength superhuman, her teeth bared. She locked herself in her room, and we heard her speaking in that strange tongue, her voice sometimes layered, like two people talking at once. Through the door, she chanted, ‘He comes on the hollow moon. He comes in the dark. He will take my body, and we will be whole.’

Night fell, and the moon rose, a sliver of silver that quickly faded. The forest grew quiet, not even a cricket. At midnight, a deep rumble shook the house. The floorboards trembled. Marisol’s door swung open on its own. She stood in the doorway, her silhouette backlit by the pale glow of the TV, her face hidden. She walked past us, out into the yard, toward the woods. We followed, helpless, our flashlights casting weak beams.

At the grave, the mound had risen higher, split open like a rotten fruit. A hand, pale and thin, reached up from the earth. Marisol knelt and took it. A figure emerged, covered in dirt, but it wasn’t Tomás. It was a thing that wore his face, but stretched and wrong, its eyes like voids. It embraced Marisol, and she gasped, her body convulsing as the thing merged with her. When it was done, Marisol stood, but her eyes were black and empty, and a voice that was not hers boomed from her lips: ‘I have returned.’

Elena and I ran. We reached the truck, and I fumbled for the keys, but my hands were useless. I looked back at the figure advancing, and I saw Marisol’s face twist in a final, fleeting expression of terror and guilt. Then she was gone, replaced by the thing that wore her.

We drove, not knowing where, the headlights revealing endless trees. The radio crackled with static, and from the speakers came that same guttural murmur, growing louder until it drowned out the engine. And then, the truck died. We sat in the dark, in the middle of the forest, and I knew we were not alone. A whisper came from the backseat, in Tomás’s voice, but warped: ‘The hollow moon has risen. And I am hungry.’

To this day, I don’t know how we survived. We walked for hours, reached a farmhouse, and called for help. Marisol was found a week later, wandering the woods, catatonic. They said she had a severe seizure that left her brain damaged. She lives in a care facility now, staring at ceilings, never speaking, but sometimes, at night, she turns her head and looks at the door, as if waiting for someone.

I don’t believe the doctors. I know what I saw. And every February, when the moon is absent from the sky, I lock my doors and board my windows. But I still hear it—the low, rhythmic pounding beneath the floorboards, the sound of something clawing its way up from the earth, and Marisol’s whispering, in that ancient tongue, counting down the days until the next hollow moon.