Hollow Brook
The old oak tree in Hollowbrook Cemetery had a voice. At least, that’s what the locals said. It wasn’t the wind. The whispers came even when the air was still, even when frost froze the grass and the world seemed locked in glass. Some swore the voice was a mother calling her lost child. Others said it was the children calling back. But everyone agreed, you didn’t linger there after sunset.
Every October, the braver teenagers would test each other. They’d slip through the wrought-iron cemetery gate when the moon was fat and the fog low, weaving through crooked headstones until they stood before the oak. The dare was simple: touch its gnarled trunk, keep your hand there until you heard it whisper, and leave before it asked for more.
Most bolted after a few seconds. A few lasted a minute. None stayed to hear the truth. Mara Halloway didn’t believe in the stories. She was seventeen, stubborn, and tired of being called “the girl who wouldn’t.” She told herself it was just another town superstition, something parents used to keep their kids out of the cemetery. So, when her friends challenged her that fog-drenched evening, she accepted without hesitation.
They gathered at the cemetery fence just before midnight. The fog clung to the ground like smoke, curling around their legs. Flashlights cut narrow beams through the darkness, but the light seemed to bend away from the oak at the far edge of the graveyard. Mara led the way, the crunch of her boots on damp leaves the only sound. Her friends hung back, whispering to each other. Up close, the oak looked older than the cemetery itself. Its trunk was thick and twisted, bark grooved deep like wrinkled skin. The branches arched high overhead, skeletal in the moonlight.
“Go on,”
Someone urged. Mara stepped forward, heart thudding harder than she wanted to admit. She reached out and let her fingertips brush the bark. It was rough, ridged, and… warm. The moment she touched it, the world fell silent.No wind. No crickets. Even her friends’ whispers died behind her.
“Mara?”
One of them called softly. She didn’t answer. Her eyes stayed on the oak. A sound rose from below—not from the branches above, but from the roots. It was faint at first, like something stirring in deep soil. Then the notes formed—a lullaby, slow and strangely sweet, though the tune was warped, off-key. Mara’s breath caught. She knew this song. It was the one her mother used to hum before bed, back when she was little.
But her mother had been dead for seven years. She took a step back, but the melody shifted, souring mid-verse, unraveling into something raw and broken. The lullaby became weeping—thin, high cries like a dozen children crying in unison. Shadows pooled at the tree’s base, thicker than the fog, flowing toward her boots. They stretched upward, taking form—small, bony fingers, black as ash, clawing at her ankles. Mara screamed and stumbled back, but the hands clung like iron. Cold seeped through her jeans where they touched, a biting, marrow-deep cold that burned.
“Get them off!” she shouted, but her friends were already running.
The skeletal hands dragged her toward a hollow at the base of the oak. She hadn’t noticed it before—a jagged, gaping wound in the trunk, wide enough for a body. Inside, something moved. Faces pressed against the rotting wood, pushing from within as though the tree’s insides were glass. Dozens of faces—men, women, children—all pale, their eyes black pits. Their mouths opened and closed in perfect silence, lips stretched in endless screams.
Mara’s chest seized. She knew some of those faces—portraits from missing-person flyers that had papered Hollowbrook for years. The ones the town called runaways. The hands tugged harder. Her knees hit the ground, dirt damp beneath her palms. She clawed at the earth, trying to get traction, but the pull was relentless.
“No!”
She yelled, kicking wildly. Her boot connected with something solid, and the grip loosened just enough. She tore free, scrambling backward until she was on her feet. She didn’t stop running until the iron gate of the cemetery clanged shut behind her. Mara barely slept that night. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the hollow, the faces, the hands. She woke with scratches raked up her legs, thin and bleeding, though she didn’t remember feeling them in the dark.
By morning, the fear had twisted into something else—anger. She thought about those faces again, about the way the town whispered runaway instead of gone. About how the hollow had been full. She decided she wasn’t going to let it keep taking people. That afternoon, under a sky heavy with rain, she returned to Hollowbrook Cemetery with a shovel. The air felt thick, heavier than before, and the oak loomed larger in the distance. Her grip tightened around the wooden handle as she approached. But when she reached the tree, the hollow was gone.
The trunk was unbroken, bark flawless except for the natural twists and knots of age. No faces. No gap. No sign that anything had ever been there. Except near eye level, the bark bulged subtly, like something was pushing from inside. And in that bulge, she saw a shape. A human face. Her face. The lips were parted in a frozen scream, the same one she remembered making when the hands closed around her. Mara stumbled backward, shovel slipping from her grip. The fog swirled low, carrying with it the faintest hum—a lullaby, twisted and sharp, her name woven into the notes.
Years passed. People forgot about Mara Halloway, the same way they forgot about all the others. Some said she’d gone to the city. Others whispered about a boy, a fight, a bus ticket. But the teenagers still dared each other to touch the oak in Hollowbrook Cemetery. And sometimes, when the fog was heavy and the dusk deepened, a new lullaby joined the wind.
It always started sweet, just like a mother’s song. Then it broke into weeping. And if you stood too close, you could hear it hum her name. The hollow hungers again.
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