Jack Holloway was a writer on the verge of his big break—or so he told himself. His latest novel, The Hollow Ones, was meant to be his masterpiece, a dark and twisting tale of isolation and madness. But as the deadline loomed, his inspiration waned.

Desperate for solitude, Jack rented an old cabin deep in the mountains, where he hoped the silence would coax the words from his mind. The place was cheap, almost suspiciously so, but he didn’t care. He packed his typewriter, notebooks, and a single suitcase, eager to escape the distractions of the world.

The Cabin

The cabin was older than he expected, with warped wooden floors and a faint, musty odor. The caretaker, an elderly man with sunken eyes, handed Jack the keys without a word.

“You’ll be alone up here,” the old man finally muttered, his voice like brittle paper. “No phone, no neighbors.”

“Perfect,” Jack replied.

But on the first night, something felt… wrong. As he unpacked, he found a dusty journal stuffed in a drawer. Its pages were filled with frantic handwriting.

“The words don’t belong to me.”
“I hear them at night, whispering through the walls.”
“It watches me as I write.”

Jack chuckled uneasily and tossed the journal aside. Probably just the ramblings of a past tenant losing their mind to solitude.

The Whispering

By the second night, Jack noticed it—the whispering. Faint, almost imperceptible at first, like wind through cracked wood. But soon, it grew clearer.

Write…

He spun around. No one was there. Just the empty room and his unfinished manuscript.

Shaking it off as exhaustion, he forced himself to work. Yet every time he dozed off at the typewriter, he awoke to find words on the page he didn’t remember writing. Dark, twisted passages about things lurking in the shadows.

He re-read his own words, heart pounding. It was brilliant. But it wasn’t his.

The Hollow Ones

Days blurred into nights. Jack lost track of time, his body weakening as he typed ceaselessly, unable to stop. The manuscript unfolded before him, a story he was no longer in control of.

Then, one evening, he heard it again—only this time, it wasn’t a whisper.

“Let us in.”

The voice came from the doorway.

Jack turned slowly.

The door was ajar. Beyond it, the darkness shifted. Shapes stood there, tall and hollow-eyed. Their mouths moved soundlessly, yet he could hear their words echo inside his skull.

“Finish the story.”

Jack tried to run, but his body refused to move. His hands twitched over the typewriter, compelled by an unseen force.

The Hollow Ones are real, he realized. And they’ve been waiting for someone to tell their story.

With a final, gasping breath, he typed the last words.

The cabin fell silent.

The Disappearance

Months later, when the caretaker returned, he found the cabin empty. No trace of Jack remained. Only a finished manuscript sat on the desk, titled The Hollow Ones.

The last line read:

“A writer lost to his own words, swallowed by the story he could not control.”

No one ever found Jack Holloway. But those who read his final book swear they sometimes hear whispering when they turn the pages.

And late at night, if you listen closely…

You might hear them too.

@omernaila910