Hollow House

Edgar first saw the house in a dream.

It stood at the end of a road that didn’t exist, beneath a sky that pressed too close. Its timbers were pale, dry, hollow, as though the bones of some great, long-dead thing had been carved into a home. The windows gaped, wide and empty, watching him.

In the dream, he walked toward it.

He always walked toward it.

And just before he stepped onto the porch—just before the warped wood creaked beneath his weight—he woke up.

The dream came for seven nights.

Then, on the eighth, Edgar found the house in waking life.

It had been an accident, or so he told himself.

A wrong turn on an unfamiliar stretch of road. The thick, slumbering woods pressed close to the cracked asphalt, their skeletal branches clutching at the sky. The air smelled of damp earth and beneath it—something sweeter, something rotten.

At the end of the lane, it stood.

The Hollow House.

Edgar gripped the wheel, fingers white against the leather, breath shallow in his throat. It was impossible.

It was exactly the same.

The porch slanted at the same uneasy angle. The roof sagged in the middle, its warped shingles curling like the peeling bark of a dead tree.

The windows—God, the windows—stared at him, dark and depthless.

He should have left. Should have turned the car around, pressed the accelerator, never looked back.

Instead, he reached for the door handle.

Inside, the air waited.

Dust floated in thick motes, caught in the dim afternoon light that slanted across the warped wooden walls. The floor groaned beneath his step, boards brittle and dry. He moved carefully, ears straining.

There was no furniture.

No signs of life.

Only a long, empty hallway stretching forward, vanishing into shadows that shouldn’t have been so deep.

Edgar swallowed. His pulse ticked against his ribs, too fast, too light. He glanced back toward the door, half expecting it to have closed behind him—but it hadn’t.

Nothing was stopping him from leaving.

Nothing except curiosity.

And curiosity was a hungry thing.

He stepped further in.

At the end of the hallway, he found a mirror.

It stood tall, nearly as high as the ceiling, its glass clouded with dust. The frame was carved from something dark, twisted; the shape of it seemed to shift if he stared too long.

He lifted a hand and wiped the dust away.

And saw himself.

Only… not quite.

The reflection was off. Not a simple trick of the light, but something deeper. The longer he stared, the more the differences unravelled.

His eyes, too dark.

His shoulders… slouched at the wrong angle.

And his mouth—smiled.

Edgar wasn’t smiling.

His breath hitched. He stumbled back, boots scraping against brittle floorboards.

The other him didn’t move.

Didn’t blink.

Then the smile widened.

And the reflection stepped forward.

Edgar ran.

His boots cracked against the wooden floor, breath rasping in his throat. The hallway stretched longer than it should have, the walls pressing closer, tighter, the air turning thick and damp.

The door was just ahead.

But as he reached it—the walls folded in.

Wood creaked and groaned like the snapping of brittle bones, the entire house shifting, closing, trapping him inside its ribs.

And somewhere deep in the hallway, something laughed.

He woke in his car.

The Hollow House was gone.

The road stretched ahead, empty and wrong, as if nothing had ever been there. The sky had darkened, the trees pressed closer, their bare branches rustling with something that wasn’t quite wind.

His hands ached.

Looking down, he saw splinters embedded beneath his fingernails. His knuckles were raw, scraped, as if he’d clawed at something.

Something wooden.

Something like a door that wouldn’t open.

His pulse stuttered. A dull, creeping nausea curled in his gut, thick and sickly.

He glanced at the rearview mirror.

And his reflection smiled.

Edgar doesn’t dream anymore.

Not the way he used to.

Now, when he sleeps, he is inside the Hollow House.

He moves through its endless halls, brushing his fingers over its splintered walls, breathing its dust-heavy air.

He watches through its windows, staring out at the world that once belonged to him.

And someone else wakes up in his body.

They wear his face.

They speak in his voice.

But their smile never quite fades.

And when they look in the mirror,

They don’t see Edgar at all.