The House on Hollow Hill
Everyone in the village of Elmsworth knew about the house on Hollow Hill. It wasn’t just abandoned — it was avoided. Children were warned not to wander near it, and old-timers would cross themselves when its name was mentioned. People said the house had been cursed ever since the Wilkins family vanished one stormy night forty years ago.
But for seventeen-year-old Maya, curiosity always won over caution. She had heard the stories, yes, but stories were just stories. She didn’t believe in ghosts. Besides, she needed a subject for her final photography project, and the old Victorian house with its crumbling windows and overgrown yard was perfect.
One foggy afternoon, camera in hand, Maya climbed the steep path to Hollow Hill. The house stood like a forgotten relic of another time — paint peeled from its wooden frame, and the iron gate swung with a long, sorrowful creak in the wind. The silence was so heavy, it seemed to press against her ears.
She stepped inside.
The air was thick with dust and something else — something damp and sour, like decay. The floors groaned beneath her feet as she made her way through the entrance hall. Tattered wallpaper peeled in long strips. Cobwebs hung like curtains from the ceiling. But her camera captured everything beautifully: the eerie beauty of abandonment.
As she climbed the stairs, she heard a sound.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
She froze. It was coming from the end of the hallway. A door stood slightly ajar.
Maya swallowed her fear. Just the wind, she told herself. She pushed open the door.
Inside was a child’s bedroom. A small wooden rocking horse sat in one corner, and faded wallpaper with dancing bears covered the walls. In the center of the room, a little girl sat with her back to Maya. Her black hair was matted and tangled, and she wore a tattered white dress. She was gently tapping something against the wooden floor.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Maya’s breath caught. "Hello?" she whispered.
The girl stopped tapping.
Slowly, she turned around.
Her eyes were solid black.
Maya stumbled backward, tripping over the threshold. She scrambled to her feet and ran down the hall, down the stairs, through the entrance, and out into the fog. She didn’t stop until she reached the safety of the village.
No one believed her. Her photos showed only empty rooms.
But Maya couldn’t forget the girl’s face — pale as bone, with eyes that looked like deep wells into something ancient and wrong.
Maya didn’t sleep that night.
At 3:17 AM, she awoke to the sound of tapping.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
It came from her window. Slowly, she turned her head.
The girl was standing there, outside her second-floor window, her black eyes locked on Maya's.
The window shattered inward.
The girl vanished.
The next morning, Maya’s mother found her unconscious on the floor, a deep cut on her cheek. She said she must’ve fallen from bed and hit the nightstand. But Maya knew better.
Over the next week, things got worse. She saw glimpses of the girl in mirrors, in the corners of rooms, in shadows that didn’t belong. And always the tapping. It followed her — at school, on the bus, in the shower.
She returned to Hollow Hill.
She had to end this.
Armed with a flashlight and her camera, Maya made her way back to the cursed house. The air was even colder this time. She called out into the darkness, “What do you want?”
The tapping came again — this time from the walls around her. The sound moved, circling her like footsteps.
In the child’s bedroom, the girl stood waiting.
“I saw you,” Maya whispered. “Why are you following me?”
The girl blinked. And then, in a voice that sounded more like the rustling of dead leaves, she said, “Help me.”
Maya’s fear warred with something else — pity.
“What happened to you?” she asked.
The girl pointed to the closet.
Inside, Maya found a loose floorboard. She pried it up.
A small skeleton lay inside, curled up like a sleeping doll.
Tears stung Maya’s eyes. “Oh God… is this you?”
The girl nodded.
And then, around her, the house changed.
The walls bled shadow. Screams filled the air. For a moment, Maya saw them — the Wilkins family, terrified, trapped, as the house consumed them. A dark shape moved behind them, a shadow with glowing red eyes. It wasn’t just a haunted house — it was alive.
It had taken them.
The little girl looked at Maya and whispered, “He’s still here.”
A shadow fell over them both.
Maya turned and saw it — tall, thin, twisted, its eyes burning with ancient hate. It was the thing that fed on the house, on fear, on pain.
She ran.
This time, it chased her.
The walls stretched, the doors vanished, the house moved to trap her. But she held tight to the girl’s remains, bundled in her jacket.
She burst through the front door just as the shadow lunged.
Sunlight hit her face.
The creature shrieked and vanished.
Behind her, the house groaned. It shuddered like something alive and dying. Then, it was still.
Maya buried the girl in the village cemetery, under a tree that bloomed even in winter.
No one else ever saw the house again.
Some say it sank into the earth. Others say it still stands, hidden from view, waiting.
But Maya never forgot the little girl, or the thing that lived in the walls.
Sometimes, late at night, when the wind howls just right…
She still hears the tapping.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
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