The Echo at Red Hollow

Most people in Ashford avoided Red Hollow Road after dark. Even during the day, the stretch felt wrong—too quiet, too empty, too heavy with the sense that something waited just out of sight. But Lena Morris didn’t believe in that kind of thing. She believed in engines, spark plugs, and the very human stupidity of driving old cars too far from town.

So when her friend Luke’s beat-up sedan refused to start during their weekend hiking trip, Lena was the one who insisted she could get it running. She almost did, too—right up until the battery died completely.

No cell service. Fog rolling in fast. And the nearest house just visible through the trees: a tall, abandoned-looking thing with warped siding and a sunken porch. A single light flickered behind one window, like a candle struggling for breath.

Luke wanted to walk back toward town. Lena, stubborn as ever, said, “House first. Maybe they’ve got a charger or a landline.” Luke argued. Lena ignored him.

The path to the house wound like something alive, threading between twisted trees that swallowed sound the way water swallows a sinking stone. The front porch groaned under their weight as they stepped up to the door.

“Don’t like this,” Luke muttered.

“You don’t like anything,” Lena shot back, though her voice sounded thinner than she intended.

She knocked. No answer. Knocked again. Still nothing.

But the door drifted open.

Not a dramatic slam, not a haunted-house creak—just a slow, accidental slip, as though someone had forgotten to latch it. Luke stepped back.

“Nope. Lena, seriously—”

“Someone lit that candle,” she said. “There has to be someone here.”

Inside, the house smelled of cold ashes and damp wood. The floor was coated with fine dust, disturbed only by a few strange, narrow trails that looked almost like footprints—if footprints were made by someone walking on the very tips of their toes.

“Hello?” Lena called out. “Sorry for barging in. We just need to use a phone!”

Silence.

The candle sat on a small table in the living room. It was thick, handmade, and burning with an unusually bright flame. Too steady to be natural. Lena stared at it.

Luke tugged her sleeve. “Let’s go.”

“One second. I just want to check upstairs—”

A sound cut her off.

A thump. Above them.

Then another.

Slow. Rhythmic. Heavy.

Lena looked toward the staircase. Luke grabbed her arm. “We’re leaving.”

She didn’t argue this time.

They backed away from the stairs, reaching the doorway. Lena could feel something behind that sound—like the air itself leaned toward it. Another thump came, louder.

Then the candle went out.

Not a flicker. Not a sputter.

Snuffed.

Pitch darkness swallowed the room.

Luke cursed softly. “Go. Go now.”

They stumbled out the door, boots scraping against the porch, breath fogging in the cold night air. The path back to the car felt twice as long, and the fog had thickened into something like smoke. Lena’s chest tightened.

Behind them, the front door of the house slowly creaked shut.

Not slammed.

Not blown by wind.

Closed.

Deliberately.

They broke into a run.

By the time they reached the car, Lena’s lungs burned and Luke was shaking so badly he dropped the keys twice. Lena grabbed them, trying to steady her breathing.

She jammed the key in the ignition.

The car didn’t even click.

Luke hit the dashboard. “COME ON!”

Fog pressed against the windows. Something moved within it—not a shape, exactly, but a thickening of darkness, as though the fog itself was gathering with intent.

Then Lena heard it.

A soft tapping on her window.

She froze. Slowly, she turned her head.

Nothing. Just swirling grey.

Another tap—on Luke’s side this time. He flinched backward so violently the seatbelt locked.

A whisper drifted through the fog, muffled yet unmistakable, like someone speaking right beside the car.

“Help me.”

Lena’s skin crawled. The whisper came again—same pitch, same trembling desperation.

“Help me.”

Luke shook his head over and over. “It’s not real. It’s not real—”

The whisper shifted, stretching unnaturally into a voice neither male nor female, too close and too far at once.

“Come back.”

Lena’s blood turned to ice.

“No,” she whispered. “We’re not going back.”

The whisper stopped.

For a moment, the world was completely still.

Then something slammed onto the roof of the car.

Metal dented inward with a sickening crunch. Luke screamed. Lena instinctively hit the horn, though the car had no power.

Another blow struck the trunk. Another the hood. Something huge, something fast, something crawling across the metal with impossible strength.

The roof bulged again—this time accompanied by the screech of long nails dragging across steel.

“OUT!” Lena yelled, fumbling with her door.

“Are you insane?!” Luke shouted.

“It’s trying to get IN!”

Another deafening slam convinced him. They tumbled out opposite sides of the car. Lena hit the dirt running, Luke right behind her. They didn’t dare look back. The forest ahead seemed alive with shifting shadows, but anything was better than what hovered behind them.

They ran blindly through fog and branches, lungs burning, legs shaking. Something pursued them—she couldn’t hear it, couldn’t see it, but she felt it. Felt the air tighten around her. Felt the cold grow sharper.

Suddenly the trees broke apart, and the road appeared beneath their feet. Streetlights shimmered faintly in the distance. Safety. Civilization.

They didn’t stop running until they reached the nearest gas station, bursting through the door like hunted animals. The clerk stared as they collapsed, gasping, trembling, unable to speak.

Police drove them back to the trail the next morning.

The car was still there.

The dents on the roof were enormous—shaped almost like hands.

And the house?

Gone.

Not collapsed. Not burned. Not abandoned.

Gone.

No foundation. No wood. No trace a structure had ever existed. Only a patch of churned earth and a faint smell of cold ash.

Luke refused to talk about it afterward. Moved two towns away. Lena tried to rationalize what she’d seen—but late at night, when fog rolled past her apartment windows, she sometimes heard it again.

A soft voice.

Barely a whisper.

“Come back.”

And sometimes—on nights when the fog was thickest—she saw a small flicker of orange, like a candle burning just behind the glass.