The Unraveling of the Holloway House

The Holloway house had always been a drafty, creaking old Victorian, but since my stepfather Martin passed from the lung cancer that had hollowed him out, the drafts had become whispers and the creaks had become footsteps. I’m Lena, and I inherited the house along with my mother, Greta, and my two kids, Milo and Penny. We thought the grief was the only thing haunting us, but six months after the funeral, something else moved in.

It started with the night sounds. I’d be drifting off, and I’d hear a man and a woman speaking in low, urgent tones, their words almost clear but not quite. At first, they were mundane, like commenting on how the house was quiet now. ‘They’re all asleep,’ the woman would say, and the man would grunt in agreement. But then they started scolding me. One night, I accidentally kicked the hallway runner while getting a glass of water, and I heard, sharp as a snapped twig, ‘You woke the little one.’ My blood ran cold because I hadn’t heard Penny, but sure enough, her door creaked open and she stood there, sleepy-eyed and trembling.

Over the weeks, their words grew darker, more intimate, as if they were studying us. They discussed our routines, our fears. I heard them one night as I tucked Milo in, his small hands clutching my sleeve. ‘The boy is easiest to wear,’ the woman said. ‘He’s so tender.’ I froze, and Milo looked up at me with those big eyes, and I could see he heard it too—his expression was a mirror of my horror. That’s when I started to suspect they were talking about wearing our skin.

The children began having nightmares. Milo would wake up screaming about ‘the eyes in the walls,’ and Penny would cry about ‘the woman with no face.’ My mother, Greta, tried to dismiss it as grief-related anxiety, but she’d taken to sleeping with the lights on, and I’d catch her staring at corners as if she saw something. The worst was when I saw the shadow shapes. They’d stand at the foot of my bed, tall and thin, but they never seemed to have distinct features. Just a dense blackness that moved like a living thing. I tried to convince myself they were mine eye’s playing tricks, but then I saw one reach out with a hand that was too long, too pale, and it pressed against my cheek like a cold, wet cloth.

One night, I was in the kitchen, pouring a glass of wine to steady my nerves. On the radio, a song from my childhood played, static crackling over the melody. And then, in the static, I heard them clearly. ‘Tonight we learn the seams,’ the man said. The woman laughed, a dry, rattling sound. ‘Yes, the little one first.’ I dropped the glass, and it shattered, but the sound didn’t seem to come from the floor—it came from everywhere, like the house itself was breaking. I ran to my kids’ room. Penny was asleep, but Milo was sitting up, his face pale, pointing at his closet. ‘She’s in there, Mommy. The woman with no face.’

I grabbed a flashlight and approached the closet. The door was slightly ajar, and I could see the darkness inside, thicker than it should have been. I swung the door open, and for a second, I saw it—a shape, vaguely female, but its skin hung loose, like a coat too big, and its face was a smooth, featureless mask. It tilted its head, and I heard the woman’s voice, directly inside my skull: ‘You’ll do, but he’s better.’ I slammed the door shut, but the shape was gone when I opened it again. Milo was crying, and I held him, rocking him, trying to calm my own heart.

The next morning, I called a friend who knew a priest, a kind, older man named Father Aldo. He came over, blessed the house, and told us it was probably just ‘negative energies.’ But as he was leaving, he paused at the threshold and looked back at me with concern. ‘Lena, there’s something about this house. It’s not just a haunting. It’s as if something is trying to take root.’ He gave me a small vial of holy water and said to sprinkle it around the kids’ beds. I did, but that night, when I checked on them, I found the vial uncorked and empty, placed neatly on the nightstand. And on the wall, in what looked like wet ash, was written: ‘Faith is a poor insulator.’

Days turned into weeks, and the atmosphere grew heavier. Greta started hearing things too, and she confessed she’d seen a shape in her mirror, and it had her face but not her eyes. The children refused to be alone, and I’d find them huddled together in one bed, even though I’d put them in separate rooms. Milo’s fear escalated to the point where he’d soil the bed, too scared to get up and go to the bathroom. I spent my nights on a mattress in their room, holding the flashlight like a weapon.

Then came the last night. I was trying to get Milo to sleep, singing an old lullaby, when the door to the room slowly swung open, and a cold draft swept in. I heard the man’s voice, very close, as if he were speaking from right behind me. ‘We’re not wearing you yet,’ he said. ‘You’re going to invite us.’ I turned, and there was nothing, but the room felt wrong, tight, as if the air itself was compressing. I knew I couldn’t stay in that house. I gathered the kids, my mother, and we fled in the middle of the night, not grabbing anything but the clothes on our backs.

We stayed at my sister’s place for a few months, but the dreams followed us. Milo would wake up screaming about the same woman, and Penny kept drawing pictures of a house with eyes at the windows. One afternoon, I found a letter slipped under the door, addressed to me, in handwriting that looked like a child’s but the words were adult: ‘Your skin is a warm blanket, but we’re patient. We still remember the way.’ I recognized the handwriting as Penny’s, and I felt the seams of my sanity starting to unravel.

We moved again, to a small apartment in another city, but the phone would ring, and when I answered, there would be silence, and then a faint, guttural breathing. My sister suggested I see a therapist. I did, but when the therapist asked about my dreams, I saw her reflection in the window, and for a split second, her eyes were pitch black. I ran out of the office and never went back.

Now, we live in a rented house near a quiet forest, and I’ve changed our names, hoping to sever whatever link exists. But every night, I lie in bed, listening, and I hear them. They never stopped. They’re always there, just outside the realm of audibility, lurking at the edge of my hearing. And the worst part is, I know they’re not done with us. They said they were going to wear us. And I believe them. I’ve started to feel an itch on my skin, a feeling like my body is not quite my own. I think, one day, I’ll wake up, and I won’t be me anymore. And I’ll be looking out of my own eyes, watching my children sleep, and they’ll sense that something is wrong, but they won’t know that the thing wearing their mother is not their mother at all.

But until that day, I’m going to fight. I’m going to research, I’m going to find a way to stop this. I’ve started writing down everything that’s happened, every word they’ve said, every shadow I’ve seen, because maybe if I understand the ties, I can cut them. The last thing they said to me, just before we fled the Holloway house, was, ‘We’ll give you a head start. It makes the hunt more interesting.’ And that’s when I knew they see this as a game. And in every game, the prey has a chance. I just hope my family ‘s souls are still mine to keep.