Whispers from the Hollow Church
On the crest of the hill, the Hollow Church keeps its pale vigil. The cedars gnaw at the shingles, and the nave sits in shadow like a midnight pool, while the graveyard leans toward the wind as if listening for a secret. They say the town stopped visiting when the building began to answer—not with words, but with a cold certainty that presses at your throat.
I returned not for courage but for a note I found in an old book, a grandmother’s handwriting scrawled across the margin: remember. The envelope smelled of rain and rust, and in the back there was a map to the church’s door, drawn with a child’s careful fear.
The Door That Knows Your Name
The door wasn’t locked. It breathed when I touched the brass handle, exhaling a chill that coated my skin. Inside, dust motes drifted like slow snow, and the floorboards sighed in a language I half remembered. The pews stretched toward me, as if they had waited for years to remind me of a name I had forgotten to say aloud.
Within the shadowed aisle, the air tasted of rain and old pennies. In the vestry, a ledger lay open on a table, yet the names were changing—one line would vanish and another would appear, ink gray as ash. A candle stood where the sun should not reach, burning not with flame but with a pale, impossible glow.
- A ledger that rearranges the names of the lost with every moonrise.
- A candle that burns without wax, casting a memory-light that never grows dull.
- A map drawn in ash on the altar stone, tracing routes I thought forgotten.
- A stain on the floor forming my own initials, though I never wrote them.
- The bell rope that trembles to life even when the church is supposed to sleep.
I stepped closer and a voice rose from the walls themselves, a tremor that did not belong to wind or storm.
Whispers do not come from the dead, they come back for someone who forgot to leave a door open.
The Hollow Choir
From the ceiling, a chorus rose—voices without lungs, harmonies without breath, a metallic hymn that echoed through the columns. The church offered a choice not of forgiveness, but of recognition: remember what you have hidden, admit what you have taken. The walls pulsed with a language of taps and sighs, and I finally understood that this place preserves memories by inviting them to sing.
Between the pews I found the grandmother’s last letter folded into a fold of fabric—her pledge to keep someone safe, a pledge I never intended to bear. Dawn pressed its pale edge against the glass, and the whispers shifted to a thinner note: you are here because you belong to this hill, and the hill belongs to you.
When the first light finally broke, the church stood silent as a held breath. I stepped outside with a map that no longer pointed outward but inward, toward a memory I never wanted to confront. The hollow church slept again, but its listening stones kept count of every heartbeat it invited to stay.