The Song of the Hollow

The village of Grimblewood was the kind of place that had more shadows than sunlight, even at noon. The sky always seemed a shade darker above it, the forest encircling it growing too close, as though trying to suffocate the narrow dirt lanes and the leaning, moss-covered cottages. Visitors rarely came, and when they did, they left quickly — if they could.

At the center of the village was Hollow House, an ancient, crumbling manor that looked as if the earth itself was trying to reclaim it. The windows were dark, the roof sagging like tired shoulders, and a permanent mist clung to its foundations. No one had lived there for nearly a hundred years — at least, no one living.

They said The Hollow was haunted, but the word haunted was too small, too ordinary. The Hollow was something more, something no one could properly describe. It had a presence, a weight, a voice. And every decade, it sang.

The Song of the Hollow came at night, just before the last ember of dusk faded into black. It was soft at first, a hum, a whisper threading through the village air. Then it would rise, layer upon layer, until it became a melody — mournful and sweet, like a lullaby sung by something that had no reason to love. Those who heard it felt it inside their bones. The old ones called it The Calling, and they knew it was not just a song. It was an invitation.

The villagers of Grimblewood had a tradition. Every decade, on the night of the Song, one person would enter Hollow House. A sacrifice, a gift, a bargain. No one knew exactly why or what, only that without this offering, the village would suffer. Crops withered. Children sickened. Cattle rotted in the fields. It was the price of peace.

This year, it was Lina Crowley's turn.

Lina was 19, with pale skin, hair like tangled autumn leaves, and eyes the color of bruised sky. She had known her fate since birth — the eldest Crowley child was always next. Her mother, and her grandmother before her, both entered the Hollow. Neither returned.

The village elders gathered in the square at sundown, candles flickering against the breeze. Lina stood before them in her thin white dress, hands clenched at her sides, lips bloodless. No one spoke. No one touched her. She was already part of the Hollow now.

The Song began as she crossed the village boundary.

It wasn’t a sound in the air. It was inside her. A vibration in her teeth, in her skull, threading through her veins like a second pulse. The melody was beautiful and ancient, notes curling in on themselves like a serpent devouring its tail. There were no words, only the music — and the meaning beneath it.

It told her to come home.

The door to Hollow House was already open, though no one had touched it for years. Lina stepped inside.

The house was not empty. It was full, but not with furniture or people. It was full of time. The air was thick with it, pressing against her skin, slowing her movements. Dust floated in the half-light, but the motes didn’t drift — they hung, suspended, as though the house was holding its breath.

The floorboards sighed under her bare feet. The door creaked shut behind her, though no wind touched it. Lina stood in the dim hallway, heart thudding so loudly she could barely hear the Song anymore.

But the house could hear her.

She could feel it watching, sensing her heartbeat, her breath, her fear. Something was awake, and it was waiting.

The walls seemed to shift when she wasn’t looking directly at them — patterns emerging from the peeling wallpaper, faces in the rot-darkened wood. Not ghosts exactly, not spirits. They were impressions, like handprints in clay, the residue of lives that had once passed through this place and never left.

As Lina walked deeper into the house, the Song changed. It sharpened, becoming something almost like speech. Fragments of words she couldn’t quite understand — but they understood her.

She passed a mirror, its surface blackened with age, and her reflection didn’t match her. It moved half a second slower, and her eyes — her eyes were wrong. Too wide, too dark, too aware. She turned away.

The house led her to the heart of it: the Drawing Room.

It was vast and empty, save for a single wooden chair at the center. On the walls were portraits, faces so ancient they were barely human anymore — stretched mouths, cavernous eyes, elongated skulls. And all of them were watching her.

Lina didn’t want to sit, but her legs folded beneath her, her body moving with the Song’s gentle command. She sat, her hands resting on her knees, staring at the floor where something dark had stained the wood in a perfect circle around her.

The Song stopped.

The silence was alive.

The door to the room creaked open, and someone — something — stepped inside.

It wore her face.

But it wasn’t her.

The figure was too tall, too thin, its limbs elongated like something born in darkness. Its skin was pale, almost translucent, veins dark beneath the surface. Its hair was wild, red and tangled, and its eyes — they were black holes, pits that had no end, only hunger.

Lina couldn’t move. The Song was inside her bones, pinning her there, and the figure — her shadow self — smiled. The smile was too wide, splitting her reflection’s face from ear to ear, showing teeth too sharp, too many.

“You belong,” it said, though its mouth didn’t move. The voice was inside her head, inside the house, part of the walls and the air and the rot.

Lina tried to scream, but no sound came out. Her mouth opened, and the Song came out instead — her voice weaving into it, becoming part of it. The shadow moved closer, until they were nose to nose, and then it stepped into her.

Lina felt her body split apart, like her skin was a doorway, and something walked through. Her mind tumbled into darkness, falling backwards, backwards into the house itself — her soul swallowed by the wood, the walls, the ancient time-rot of it.

And her body stood up.

The thing inside her stretched, cracking her neck, her shoulders, adjusting to the new shape. It turned to the door, where the village elders waited, and it smiled with Lina’s too-wide mouth.

The Song began again, louder now, richer, with Lina’s voice forever twined within it.

The thing that had been Lina walked back to the village, and no one knew the difference. The sacrifice had been made, the bargain upheld — for now.

But deep inside the Hollow, Lina’s soul was awake. And screaming.

She was not alone.

All the other sacrifices were there too — the mothers and daughters, the sons and fathers, all the generations who had stepped inside Hollow House and never left. Their voices were part of the Song now, layer upon layer of loss and hunger and madness.

They were the Hollow.

And in ten years, when the Song called again, Lina would sing the loudest.

Because once you hear the Song of the Hollow, you can never leave.