Rudra Sen
The road to Blackmoor village twisted like a serpent through the mist, narrow and slick with rain, the headlights of Daniel’s car cutting pale arcs across hedgerows that seemed to lean in and whisper as he drove. He was late, later than he had planned, and the countryside had that unnerving quality of stretching endlessly, as though he were circling the same patch of earth again and again. His editor had sent him here on what was meant to be a small piece—an article on forgotten English villages, the ones people left behind when the railways stopped running and the factories closed, the ones where churches locked their doors and weeds split the gravestones. Daniel had laughed at first, thinking it would be a quiet escape from the city, but now the silence pressed too close, and he felt the weight of the dark hills around him like a buried secret.
By the time he reached the inn it was close to midnight. A squat, timbered building with a hanging sign that creaked in the rain, The Grey Hare looked more abandoned than alive, its upper windows black, its doorway shadowed. He parked, shivering as he grabbed his bag, and stepped through the door into a dim lobby where the fire had long since gone out. The innkeeper appeared from the gloom with a lantern, a man with hollow cheeks and deep-set eyes that glimmered like wet stones. “You must be the journalist,” he said, his voice carrying the flatness of someone who had said the same words before. Daniel nodded, gave his name, and was handed a heavy brass key with the number 3 scratched faintly into the tag.
The corridor smelled of damp wood and dust. As he walked, his shoes squeaked against warped floorboards, the shadows from the lantern bouncing along the walls. Room 3 was halfway down, but Daniel stopped when he noticed another door farther on. Number 7. Its paint was more faded than the rest, its brass handle dulled, yet the door stood not fully shut but slightly ajar, just enough to show a sliver of darkness inside. He frowned, felt a small shiver rise along his arms, and pushed on toward his own room.
Inside Room 3 the bed sagged but was clean enough, and the single lamp gave off a weak glow. He unpacked half-heartedly, then sat at the small desk to jot notes in his reporter’s book. He was supposed to capture impressions—the loneliness of the road, the silence of the countryside—but his pen lingered instead on the image of that half-open door. He had the odd sense someone had been standing behind it when he passed, watching him.
The rain quickened outside, rattling against the single windowpane. Daniel lay back, weary, and drifted toward sleep. That was when he heard it: three soft knocks. Not at his door. Farther down the corridor. He sat up, straining to listen. The knocks came again, deliberate, echoing faintly in the stillness. They were coming from Room 7.
Daniel waited, breath shallow. A whisper followed, though he couldn’t make out the words. Then silence again, deep and suffocating. He told himself it was another guest, maybe someone too drunk to find the right room. Still, unease spread through him like cold water.
Morning brought grey light and the smell of fried bread from the kitchen. At the table downstairs, only three guests sat eating, their faces pale, their conversation sparse. A young woman with curly hair smiled politely at Daniel when their eyes met. “First time here?” she asked. He nodded, grateful for a human voice, and they spoke a little about the village, about how little there was to see, how the pub had closed years ago. She laughed softly, saying she was leaving the next day, moving on toward the coast. Her name, she said, was Lydia.
Later, as Daniel was about to leave for a walk around the empty streets, he noticed the innkeeper speaking quietly with a maid. Their voices carried down the hall. “It’s happened again,” the innkeeper muttered. “Best clear the room before the next lot notice.” The maid looked frightened but nodded, clutching a bundle of sheets. Daniel pretended not to hear, stepping outside into the damp air.
The village was more ghost than place. Roofs sagged, windows stared blank, weeds broke through cobblestones. The church’s doors were locked with rusting chains, its bell tower leaning at an uneasy angle. He wandered among gravestones so weathered their names had worn away, the air thick with moss and damp earth. There was no one else around. No shops, no children, no signs of life except the inn itself.
By evening, he was glad for the flicker of lamps in the inn’s windows, for the faint warmth of food and fire. But when he asked after Lydia at the table, no one seemed to know whom he meant. The other guests looked at him blankly, the innkeeper shook his head. “No one by that name here,” he said, his voice flat, final. Daniel insisted, described her face, her laughter, but the innkeeper only stared at him with eyes like dull glass. “Perhaps you dreamed her,” he said, turning away.
That night Daniel sat at his desk long after midnight, the corridor quiet beyond his door. He could not shake the memory of Lydia’s smile, nor the way she had said she was leaving tomorrow. He found himself listening for footsteps, for a door opening, for any sound that might prove she had been real. Instead, the silence pressed down heavier, broken only when the three knocks came again. Slow. Hollow. Measured. From Room 7.
Daniel stood, heart hammering, and crept to his door. He opened it carefully, peering down the corridor. The door to Room 7 was closed now, tightly shut, but a thin line of light glowed beneath it. He took a step forward, then another. The air grew colder, the boards groaning beneath him. He reached the door, placed his hand on the handle, and felt a shock of chill shoot through his skin. From inside came a whisper, clearer now, a voice low and distant: Come in.
Daniel staggered back, breath catching, and the light beneath the door vanished at once. The corridor was empty, silent, only the rain tapping against the roof. He returned to his room, locked the door, and sat awake until dawn, knowing with certainty that Lydia had not left by choice, and that Room 7 had claimed her.
The next morning Daniel woke with a heaviness behind his eyes, the kind that comes from a night without rest. The knocks, the whispers, the memory of Lydia’s absence—they all coiled around his thoughts like smoke that refused to clear. He went down for breakfast, but the dining room was emptier than before, only two guests bent over their plates in silence. He searched their faces, looking for recognition, for anyone who might acknowledge Lydia, but their eyes slid past him as if he were not there.
The innkeeper stood behind the counter polishing a glass with slow, deliberate strokes. Daniel approached, his voice edged with frustration. “The young woman—Lydia—where did she go? I spoke to her yesterday. She said she was leaving this morning.” The innkeeper’s expression didn’t shift. “You must have been mistaken,” he said flatly. “We have had no such guest.”
Daniel gripped the counter. “I know what I saw. I talked to her.” The innkeeper leaned forward, his face tightening, his eyes darkening like storm clouds. “There are things you don’t understand, Mr. Daniel. It is better not to go prying.” His voice was soft now, almost a whisper, but the warning in it made Daniel step back.
He spent the day wandering again through the skeletal village, but the unease followed him like a shadow. He kept replaying Lydia’s voice in his head, the brightness of it, the way she had said she was going to the coast. There was no way he had imagined her. The thought nagged at him until he felt a growing determination—he would find proof. That evening, while the inn settled into quiet, he slipped down the hall instead of retiring to his room.
The back office door was closed, but Daniel tried the handle and found it unlocked. The air inside was stale, thick with dust and the faint tang of ink. A single desk stood beneath a small window, and on it lay an old leather-bound ledger, its edges cracked and its cover worn nearly smooth. Daniel opened it carefully, the pages yellowed and brittle under his fingertips. Names filled the columns in neat handwriting, room numbers beside them, dates that stretched back decades.
He flipped through, scanning the entries. Room 3, Room 5, Room 2—then his breath caught. Room 7. The entries were fewer, sparse, but they stretched back more than a century. The last one stopped him cold. October 5, 1925. Beside it, a name that had been scratched over so violently the ink had torn through the page. Beneath the scrawled black marks lingered only one legible word: Unknown.
Daniel’s hands trembled as he turned the next page, but it was blank, as were all the pages that followed. He turned back and ran his finger over the gouged ink. Someone had wanted that name erased, obliterated. Yet the date clung to his mind—it was almost exactly one hundred years ago.
A floorboard creaked behind him and Daniel spun, heart pounding. The innkeeper stood in the doorway, his lantern casting long shadows across the room. His face was calm, too calm. “You shouldn’t be in here,” he said. His voice carried no anger, only inevitability, as though Daniel’s intrusion had been expected.
“I just wanted to know,” Daniel said, his voice unsteady. “About the guests who stayed in Room 7. About what happened to them.”
The innkeeper’s eyes flickered toward the ledger, then back to Daniel. For the first time, Daniel thought he saw a trace of fear behind the man’s otherwise stone-like composure. “Some doors,” the innkeeper said quietly, “are not meant to be opened. Not in this life.”
Daniel closed the ledger and straightened, trying to meet his gaze. “Last night I heard knocks. Whispers. And the woman—Lydia—she’s gone. Are you telling me she wasn’t real?”
The innkeeper’s jaw tightened, but he said nothing. He simply turned and walked away, lantern light bobbing, leaving Daniel in the dark with the ledger open before him.
That night, Daniel lay awake again, the silence more unbearable than the rain. At midnight, the air in his room grew colder, so cold his breath misted. Then, as before, came the three knocks. Hollow. Patient. Resounding through the corridor. He forced himself to the door, pressed his ear against it. The knocks echoed from Room 7.
This time he opened his door. The corridor was dim, shadows stretching like fingers. Room 7’s door stood slightly open, just as on the night of his arrival. A pale glow seeped through the gap, faint and unnatural, like moonlight trapped in water. His heart pounded, but his legs moved of their own accord. He stepped closer.
Inside the gap he saw what should not have been possible: a room furnished in another age. Oil lamps flickered on the walls, a writing desk stood by the window, and the air shimmered with a thin haze, as though the space itself resisted being looked at. In the center sat a figure with its back turned to him, shoulders hunched, head bowed as though reading.
“Lydia?” Daniel whispered before he could stop himself.
The figure stirred, rising slowly, and for a moment he thought it was her. But when it turned, he saw nothing but a hollow face, a smooth surface where features should have been, as though someone had carved out the very idea of a person and left only the shell.
Daniel stumbled back, heart hammering. The figure tilted its head, the featureless surface catching the lamplight, and then it raised a hand and beckoned him inside.
The door slammed shut with a force that rattled the walls, plunging the corridor back into darkness. Daniel stood frozen, his breath ragged, staring at the sealed door of Room 7. And for the first time he understood—Lydia hadn’t vanished. She had been taken.
And now, the hollow guest wanted him.
Daniel woke the next morning with the sensation of having carried the night inside him. His chest felt heavy, his limbs sluggish, as if the hollow figure’s silent beckoning still weighed on his bones. The memory of that smooth, faceless head lingered like frost on glass. He shaved at the cracked mirror in his room, but the reflection unnerved him. For a fleeting second, he thought he saw not his own eyes but two black hollows staring back. He splashed water over his face until the image blurred and steadied.
He knew he needed answers, and the innkeeper was not going to provide them. If Lydia had been swallowed by Room 7, if her existence had been denied by everyone else, then he had to look beyond the inn. Somewhere in this forsaken village, there had to be traces of the truth. He spent the morning walking the broken lanes, boots sinking into moss and mud, eyes drawn to buildings that leaned inward like conspirators. Doors were bolted, windows cracked, and silence sat in every doorway.
At the edge of the square, he found the library—or what had once been one. The sign above the lintel had faded almost beyond recognition, but he pushed inside anyway. Dust cascaded from the doorframe, and the interior smelled of mildew and abandonment. Shelves bowed under the weight of damp books, their spines warped, their titles half-erased. Yet in a corner, a heavy wooden table still stood, and upon it lay a stack of parish records bound in string.
Daniel cut the string with his penknife and opened the records. Dates marched across yellowed pages in neat copperplate. Baptisms. Marriages. Deaths. His fingers traced down columns until one entry, half-smudged, caught his eye. October 7, 1925—fire at The Grey Hare Inn. Casualties: several unnamed travelers. Cause: unexplained. The ink wavered where the scribe had pressed too hard, as if the words themselves resisted being written. A chill ran through him.
He searched further and found a brief note scrawled in the margin by another hand, rougher, angrier: A stranger came that night. He was not of us. He brought it with him. The hollow curse.
Daniel sat back, heart hammering. The ledger at the inn had stopped in 1925, the same year the fire had claimed those unnamed travelers. Whoever the stranger was, he had carried something into Room 7 that had never left.
The door of the library creaked then, and Daniel spun around. An old woman stood in the threshold, her back bent, her hair white as bone. Her eyes, though clouded, fixed on him with unsettling clarity. “You shouldn’t read those,” she said. Her voice was brittle but sharp. “The inn keeps its own secrets.”
Daniel closed the record slowly. “You know about the fire,” he said. “You were here?”
The woman shuffled forward, her cane tapping against the stone floor. “I was a child then. I remember the smoke, the screaming. They pulled us from our beds. My mother said the fire wasn’t natural, that it came from him—the hollow one.” She lowered herself onto the bench opposite him. “Since that night, Room 7 has never been right. It hungers. Every few years, it takes someone.”
Daniel’s skin prickled. “And no one stops it?”
She gave a bitter laugh. “How do you stop what has no face? What has no name? People stopped coming to the village. One by one, families left. Only the inn remains, because it must. It cannot close, not while it holds him.”
“Who?” Daniel pressed.
“The traveler,” she whispered, leaning closer. Her breath smelled faintly of smoke, as if the fire still clung to her lungs. “He came with no luggage, no past. He spoke little. They say when he smiled, there were too many teeth. That night he stayed in Room 7. By morning, the inn had burned. But he did not die. He lingers. Hollow, but never gone.”
Daniel felt the room tilt, as though the walls leaned in on him. The pieces were aligning, but they formed a picture he did not want to see. “What happens to those it takes?” he asked.
The woman’s eyes grew distant. “They join him. Their names fade, their faces are eaten away. Soon, no one remembers them at all. Not even themselves.”
The words struck like a blow. Lydia’s smile flickered before him, then dimmed, threatened to vanish. He clenched his fists, refusing to let her memory dissolve. “I will not forget her,” he said fiercely. “I will not let that thing erase her.”
The woman studied him, then placed a trembling hand over his. “Then be careful, boy. The more you resist, the closer it will come. Room 7 always takes what it is owed.”
By the time Daniel left the library, the day had curdled into grey twilight. The inn loomed at the end of the lane, its windows dark, its sign creaking mournfully in the rising wind. He returned to his room, but sleep was impossible. His mind churned with the old woman’s words, the parish records, the faceless figure beckoning him. At midnight, when the air chilled again, he no longer hesitated. He lit the lamp on his desk, took up his notebook, and began writing Lydia’s name over and over, filling the page with it, as though the ink itself might anchor her existence.
The knocks came—three, slow, patient. He didn’t move. The whispers seeped through the cracks in the door, sibilant, beckoning. Forget her. Forget yourself. Come inside. His pen dug deeper into the paper until it tore, but he kept writing, the ink blotting and smearing, his hand trembling.
Then the light in his lamp flickered, dimmed, and went out. The room sank into darkness. Only the glow from the crack beneath Room 7’s door lit the corridor now, pulsing faintly like a heartbeat.
And Daniel knew he would not last another night without confronting it.
Daniel waited until the house sank into its midnight silence, every floorboard settling, every breath of wind hushing against the windowpanes. He sat at the desk with his notebook open before him, Lydia’s name scrawled across the pages like desperate prayers. The ink had smudged onto his fingers, black stains under his nails, but he kept tracing her name with the pen’s tip even when there was no space left. It was the only anchor he had. If the old woman had been right, forgetting meant surrender. Remembering was resistance.
The three knocks came again, slow, hollow, deliberate. His body tensed, his ears straining. They seemed louder than before, closer. He knew they came from Room 7, but tonight it sounded as though the sound reverberated inside his chest. The whispers followed, threading through the corridor, soft and coaxing: Come in. You are already one of us.
Daniel picked up the lamp, shielding its flame with his palm, and stepped into the hall. The boards groaned under his weight, the air heavy and cold enough to sting his lungs. Room 7 stood waiting, its door ajar, a pale glow leaking from within. His heartbeat drummed in his ears, but his legs carried him forward.
He pushed the door open wider. At once, the world tilted. The air thickened like water, his breath snagged in his throat, and the room stretched in impossible dimensions. Oil lamps flickered on the walls, though no flame burned in them. The furnishings were antique, untouched by time, yet shrouded in a thin haze as if caught between this world and another.
In the center stood the figure. Faceless, featureless, yet emanating a presence that gnawed at the edges of his mind. Its head tilted toward him, as if amused. Behind it, on the desk by the window, lay an open book—not a ledger this time, but a blank journal, pages yellowed, waiting to be filled. Daniel knew without needing to be told: it was a record of those who had vanished, a book that devoured names.
The figure raised its hand, beckoning. Daniel clutched his notebook tighter, the one filled with Lydia’s name, and stepped inside. The door slammed shut behind him.
The air pressed in, heavy as stone. Whispers circled him, rising in pitch, voices overlapping until they became a chorus of emptiness. Shapes stirred in the haze—figures half-formed, faces blurred and eaten away, their mouths open in silent screams. Daniel staggered back, heart thundering, as they drifted closer. He saw one figure reach toward him, its hand nothing more than a smudge of shadow. For a moment, impossibly, he thought he recognized Lydia’s hair, the curve of her shoulders.
“No,” he whispered, holding up the notebook like a shield. “You will not take her. You will not erase her.”
The hollow guest paused. It tilted its head again, then raised a hand toward the journal on the desk. Pages turned in a furious flutter, blank lines filling with names Daniel couldn’t read, names dissolving into black smears. The whispers surged: Write. Sign. Join us.
The lamp in Daniel’s hand flickered, almost extinguished. He felt the cold seep into his bones, dragging at his will. His fingers itched to let go of the notebook, to surrender, to press the pen to that waiting page. He clenched his jaw, forcing himself still. “You feed on forgetting,” he said, his voice shaking but louder than he thought possible. “But I remember. I remember her name. Lydia. Lydia Harper. She lived. She laughed. She is not yours.”
The whispers faltered for the first time. The faceless figure froze, the haze around it shuddering. Daniel pressed forward, holding the notebook out. The ink-scrawled pages seemed to glow faintly, as if memory itself had weight. “You cannot take what is written. You cannot erase what is remembered.”
The faceless figure recoiled, its smooth head bending low, hands clawing at the empty air. The other shadowed forms hissed and writhed, their outlines trembling as though caught between dissolving and solidifying. For an instant, Daniel thought he had broken through.
Then the journal on the desk snapped shut with a thunderous clap, and the entire room shook. The lamp shattered in his hand, plunging him into darkness. The notebook slipped from his grip, falling open on the floor. The whispers roared back, louder than ever, a storm of voices: You cannot hold forever. Memory fades. Ink fades. All names are ours.
Hands seized him then—cold, invisible, dragging him backward. He kicked and thrashed, desperate, his eyes straining for the fallen notebook. Its pages glimmered faintly in the dark, Lydia’s name still etched across them like defiance. He lunged, fingers grazing the paper, and clutched it to his chest.
At once, the grip on him loosened. The whispers cracked and faltered. The faceless figure hissed soundlessly, retreating into the haze. The walls of the room seemed to waver, bending inward, then outward, as though the space itself would collapse. The door burst open behind him, and Daniel staggered out into the corridor, gasping, clutching the notebook like a lifeline.
The door to Room 7 slammed shut with such force the corridor shook. Silence fell, deep and suffocating. Daniel stood there, heart pounding, until he could move again. He returned to his room, bolted the door, and sank onto the bed, trembling. He knew now two things with terrible certainty:
The hollow guest could be resisted—but only by remembering.
And Room 7 was not finished with him.
Daniel did not sleep. He sat on the bed with the notebook pressed against his chest, listening to the silence on the other side of the door, waiting for the next knock, the next whisper. But the night passed without a sound, as though Room 7 itself had withdrawn, watching him from behind the wood with patient malice. When dawn came grey and pale through the window, Daniel’s body was weak with exhaustion, but his mind was sharper than it had ever been. He knew he couldn’t endure another cycle of waiting. If the hollow guest thrived on forgetting, then he had to destroy the source of its power—the ledger that devoured names.
He dressed quickly and went downstairs. The innkeeper was at the counter, his expression unreadable. “You don’t look well,” he said softly, almost with pity. Daniel ignored him and pushed toward the office door. The innkeeper’s hand shot out, gripping his arm. “Don’t,” he warned, his voice low. “You can’t win against it.”
Daniel wrenched free. “Maybe not,” he said, “but I won’t let it erase her.” He opened the office door and stepped inside. The ledger lay on the desk as if waiting for him, its leather cover cracked, its brass clasp dulled. The sight of it filled him with dread, but also a burning anger. This book was no archive—it was a tomb, a hunger bound in paper and ink.
He seized it and carried it back upstairs to his room. He placed it on the desk beside his notebook, Lydia’s name written across dozens of pages. The contrast was stark—her name bursting with insistence, the ledger’s pages filled with fading scratches, names dissolving into nothing. He opened the ledger and stared. The last written line—the fire of 1925—seemed to shimmer, as though mocking him. He ran his hand over it and felt a faint pulse beneath the paper, as though the book itself were alive.
“I will end this,” he whispered. He fetched the matches from the drawer and struck one, the flame flaring to life. He lowered it toward the ledger’s page. At once, the air in the room thickened, the temperature plummeted. The flame sputtered as if choked by an invisible wind. Whispers surged around him, filling the room, furious, desperate: No. It is ours. It is eternal. Put it down.
Daniel pressed the flame harder, and the page blackened at the corner. A shriek pierced the air, not human, not entirely of this world. The walls trembled, the bed rattled. The flame was ripped from his hand, snuffed out by a sudden gust that left the room in near-darkness. The ledger slammed shut, the clasp snapping like a jaw.
The door to Room 7 burst open down the corridor. Light spilled out, pale and unnatural, stretching toward him like fingers. Daniel grabbed the ledger, his notebook, and ran. The corridor warped as he moved, stretching and narrowing, shadows crawling along the walls. Behind him, the hollow guest emerged from Room 7, its faceless head gleaming, its arms long and boneless. The whispers rose into a cacophony, each voice demanding surrender.
Daniel stumbled into the stairwell and barreled down into the lobby. The innkeeper stood there, lantern in hand, his face white with fear. “You fool,” he cried. “It will never let you go now!”
“Then help me end it!” Daniel shouted, slamming the ledger onto the counter. “This is where it lives. This is what feeds it. We burn it together.”
The innkeeper froze, trembling, then shook his head. “I’ve kept it alive all these years. Without it, the inn falls. And me with it.”
Daniel’s eyes burned with fury. “Better you fall than all the names it has devoured.” He struck another match with shaking fingers, shielding it from the gusts of cold. The hollow guest was descending the stairs now, its form swelling, shadows writhing behind it. Its faceless head turned toward him, and in the blankness Daniel saw flickers of the lost: Lydia’s smile, her eyes fading, her voice echoing faintly in the chorus. His hand nearly faltered.
Then he slammed the match down onto the ledger’s pages.
The book caught this time, flames racing across the yellowed paper. The shrieks that erupted shook the building to its bones. The hollow guest lurched forward, arms reaching, but the fire spread too fast. The names scrawled within writhed and glowed, one by one burning brighter before dissolving into smoke. The voices rose, then thinned, then began to fall silent.
The innkeeper screamed, clutching his chest as though his very life were bound to the book. He collapsed behind the counter, his lantern shattering beside him. The hollow guest convulsed at the foot of the stairs, its faceless head splitting with cracks of light. From within it, Daniel saw shapes tearing free—figures of the forgotten, faces forming for a breath before dissolving upward into ash.
Lydia was among them. For the briefest moment she stood clear, her eyes meeting his, her lips parting as though to speak. He reached for her, but she raised a hand, shook her head gently, and then was gone, carried upward in the torrent of flame and shadow.
The hollow guest let out a final, soundless scream, then collapsed inward, folding into nothingness. The fire consumed the ledger until only ash remained. The unnatural glow died. The inn fell silent.
Daniel stood panting in the ruins of the lobby, smoke curling around him. The innkeeper lay motionless, the lantern’s shattered glass glittering beside him. The stairs creaked, the beams groaned, but no whispers stirred.
He staggered outside into the pale dawn. The village was as silent as ever, the mist curling low across the cobbles. But he felt a shift in the air, a release, as though a weight that had smothered the place for a century had finally lifted. He clutched his notebook tightly. Lydia’s name was still there, smudged but legible, proof that she had existed. That she had been remembered.
He walked down the lane, away from The Grey Hare, not looking back. The inn might crumble now without its curse, but Daniel knew one thing with terrible clarity: the hollow guest had been banished, but memory was all that had saved him.
And memory was the only thing that would keep him safe—until the day he forgot.
Daniel returned to the city three days later, though the time between leaving Blackmoor and boarding the train felt blurred, like a fever dream half-erased by distance. He told himself it was over. The inn had burned in his memory; the ledger had turned to ash. He carried his notebook with him everywhere, Lydia’s name filling its pages, his only proof that the hollow guest had been real and that he had resisted it. Yet the city’s roar, the clatter of trains, the press of crowds—none of it dulled the unease that had settled deep inside him.
His editor barely listened when Daniel handed in his article draft, a bare-bones piece about a dying village and its empty streets. “Good atmosphere,” the editor muttered, skimming it, “but flesh it out. Readers want ghosts, not moss and gravestones.” Daniel almost laughed at that, a hollow sound. If only his editor knew. If only he could write the truth. But how could he? How could he explain that he had seen a faceless figure and fought to keep a stranger’s memory alive against a curse of forgetting? The words would read like madness.
That night, Daniel walked home through the city’s rain-slick streets, neon lights trembling in the puddles. His flat on the third floor was cramped, its walls stained with old paint, but it was familiar, safe—or it should have been. He placed his notebook on the table and made tea, trying to steady himself. Yet when he sat down, he saw something that made his heart stall. The notebook was open, though he had closed it. Lydia’s name, written a hundred times, looked thinner somehow, paler, as if the ink itself was fading.
He rubbed his eyes, told himself it was exhaustion. But when he leaned closer, he saw new lines faintly scratched at the bottom of the page—lines he had not written. Words etched in spidery strokes: You cannot hold her forever.
Daniel slammed the book shut and shoved it into the drawer. His hands trembled as he locked it inside. “No,” he whispered. “It ended there. It ended.” He sat on the bed, forcing himself to breathe. Yet the silence in the flat pressed too tightly, too similar to the silence of the inn.
That night, the knocking returned. Three soft raps, hollow and deliberate. But this time they came not from a corridor, not from a door down the hall. They came from inside his flat—on the wardrobe door across the room. Daniel froze, staring. His breath fogged faintly in the air, though no window was open. Slowly, the knocks came again. Three. Always three.
He stood, knees weak, and edged toward the wardrobe. He raised his hand, but before he could touch the handle, a whisper seeped through the wood. Daniel… His heart clenched. It was Lydia’s voice.
He jerked his hand back, trembling. “No. You’re gone. I saw you go free.”
The whisper came again, softer now, broken like an echo through water. Remember me…
Daniel staggered back, colliding with the bed. He grabbed the drawer, yanked it open, and pulled out the notebook. The pages fluttered as he opened it—and where once Lydia’s name had filled the paper, half the lines were now blank. Faded away. Erased.
“No,” he whispered, clutching it. “I wrote you. I kept you. You can’t vanish.”
The wardrobe door rattled. The knocks came once more. Daniel rushed forward and flung it open. Inside, only his coats swung gently, the smell of damp wool rising. No figure waited within. Yet the air was icy, and in the back corner of the wardrobe, etched faintly into the wood, were three words: We are here.
Daniel slammed the door shut and backed away, notebook pressed to his chest. His mind raced. Had destroying the ledger freed the hollow guest—or had it only unbound it, scattering pieces into the world, clinging to him like a shadow?
The days that followed offered no relief. At work, he forgot simple details—phone numbers, names of colleagues he had known for years. He would sit at his desk and suddenly find his notes blank, as if words had slipped away the moment he wrote them. Once, while crossing the street, he forgot where he lived for a full five minutes, standing dazed in the rain until memory returned like a cruel tide.
And always, at night, the knocking came. On doors, on windows, on walls. Once, it sounded from the inside of his bathroom mirror, three soft raps against the glass. He stopped turning off the lights. Sleep became a scattered blur.
One evening, desperate, he returned to the library in the city, hoping research might tell him what the old woman in Blackmoor hadn’t. He hunted through archives, folklore journals, parish histories. Again and again, fragments surfaced: stories of travelers with no names, strangers whose presence preceded fires or vanishings, rooms that devoured memory. In one forgotten periodical, he found a single chilling line: The hollow guest cannot be destroyed. It only changes its host.
The words burrowed into him. If the ledger had been its prison, then destroying it might not have ended the curse at all. It might have loosed it into him. He thought of Lydia’s voice in the wardrobe, the fading ink, the forgotten details of his own life. Perhaps the hollow guest had chosen him now.
That night, Daniel sat at his desk with the notebook open. He wrote Lydia’s name again and again, filling a new page, trying to hold her steady. His hand cramped, the pen tearing the paper, but he kept writing until his eyes blurred. Finally, he dropped the pen and slumped back.
Across the room, the wardrobe door creaked open on its own.
Daniel stared, body frozen, as a figure stepped out. Not faceless this time. Not empty. It was himself. His own form, his own features—but hollowed, eyes black pits, skin pale as ash. It smiled, and the sight was worse than any blank mask.
The hollow guest had found its host.
Daniel’s throat closed as the figure stepped out of the wardrobe. It was him—same height, same dark hair curling at the temples, the same creases at the corners of the mouth—but hollowed, skin ashen, eyes two bottomless sockets that reflected no light. It moved with his gait, precise and deliberate, and when it smiled, the gesture split wider than any human jaw could stretch, a parody of his own expression.
Daniel staggered back, bumping against the desk. The notebook lay open beside him, Lydia’s name smudged into faint grey. He grabbed it instinctively and held it up as if paper could shield him. The doppelgänger tilted its head, mimicking him, then spoke in a voice that was his own but warped, as though carried through cracked glass. “You write to hold her. But what will hold you?”
The sound rooted him in terror. He tried to speak, to deny it, but the words stuck. The hollow Daniel advanced, each step soundless, until the cold radiating from its body pressed against his skin. It leaned close, black pits where its eyes should be staring into his own. “You are forgetting already,” it whispered. “The street you walked yesterday. The name of your mother. Your own face will fade. And then you will be mine.”
Something snapped in Daniel then—not courage, not quite, but rage at being toyed with. He swung the notebook like a weapon, striking the figure across its hollow face. The pages tore, but the creature reeled back with a hiss, its form shuddering. The lamp flickered violently, shadows writhing along the walls. Daniel seized the chance, grabbed his coat, and bolted out of the flat.
The city night greeted him with rain and neon, but even in the crowded street he felt no safety. Every reflective surface—a shop window, a puddle, a passing car’s mirror—seemed to show not his own reflection but the hollow version of him, watching, waiting. He ran without direction, his notebook clutched to his chest, until his lungs burned. Finally, he stumbled into a late-night café, its lights too bright, its chatter too human. He collapsed into a booth, breath ragged.
The waitress, a young man with a pierced eyebrow, came over. “You alright, mate? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Daniel almost laughed, but the sound caught in his throat. He ordered coffee, black, and sat clutching the mug when it arrived, its heat grounding him. Around him, the chatter of strangers, the hiss of the espresso machine, the clink of cutlery—all sounded like salvation. For a while, the hollow weight lifted.
But then, as he raised the mug to his lips, he saw it. On the napkin beside him, where his hand had rested, words had appeared in faint, spidery script: We drink with you. We wait with you. His fingers trembled, knocking the cup against the table. Hot liquid spilled across the napkin, smearing the letters, but not erasing them entirely.
Daniel pushed back from the table, ignoring the startled look from the waitress, and fled again into the rain. His thoughts spun. He could not run forever. The hollow guest had followed him here, into the city, into every corner of his life. The old woman in Blackmoor had said it could not be destroyed, only endured. But she had been wrong about one thing: Daniel would not endure. He would fight.
Back in his flat, he set the notebook on the desk and stared at it. Lydia’s name still lingered, though weaker than before. If memory was resistance, then he needed to anchor himself harder, deeper. He opened to a fresh page and began to write not just her name, but every detail he could recall. The shade of her hair in the inn’s lamplight. The sound of her laugh, quick and bright. The way she stirred her tea with absent circles of the spoon. He filled the page with her, and as he did, the air warmed slightly, the shadows retreating a little.
But then the whispers came again, curling through the room like smoke. She is ours. You are ours. All memory fades. The wardrobe door rattled violently, and Daniel knew the hollow self waited inside, eager to step out again. He ignored it, kept writing, forcing each line onto the page. His hand cramped, but he pressed on, sweat beading at his temple.
Hours passed, or minutes—it was impossible to tell. Finally, exhaustion overcame him, and he slumped across the desk, pen still in hand. He dreamed, if it could be called a dream, of walking endless corridors lined with doors, each marked with numbers. He passed Room 3, Room 5, Room 2, but every time he reached Room 7, the door would open on its own, revealing not the inn, but his own flat, his own reflection waiting.
He woke with a start. The lamp was still burning low, the notebook beneath his cheek. He sat up, groggy, and flipped through the pages. The words he had written were gone. Not faded—gone. The paper was blank.
Terror closed over him. He flipped further back, to the pages filled with Lydia’s name. Blank. Only faint indentations of his pen remained, as though the ink had been devoured. He heard a creak and turned.
The wardrobe door was wide open now. His hollow self stepped out, smiling with his too-wide grin. In its hand it held the notebook, though Daniel had not seen it move. The pages fluttered, all blank.
“You cannot write against forgetting,” it said in his voice, but deeper, layered with a chorus of whispers. “You cannot anchor against eternity.”
Daniel’s knees buckled, but he forced himself to stand. “Then I’ll remember without paper. I’ll carry her in me.”
The hollow guest tilted its head, amused. “Will you? Tell me her name, then. Speak it aloud.”
Daniel opened his mouth, but nothing came. His throat clenched. His mind clawed for it, but the letters slipped away, scattering like ash on wind. He gasped, desperate, trying again and again, but no sound emerged.
The hollow self stepped closer, leaned down until its face nearly brushed his. “You see? Already gone.”
Daniel’s scream tore out of him, raw and wordless.
Daniel left his flat before sunrise, hollow-eyed and shaking, his mind gnawed raw by the night. He had tried again and again to force Lydia’s name onto his tongue, to scratch it onto paper, to anchor her existence, but each attempt had slipped away like water through cupped hands. The hollow guest had stolen the ink, stolen his voice, stolen the edges of memory itself. Only the ache in his chest told him she had ever been real at all.
He walked through the city in a daze, past shuttered shops and buses hissing exhaust into the dawn. He needed help. Someone who could name what he was fighting, who could give him a weapon stronger than his crumbling memory. The archives had led him to fragments of folklore, whispers of travelers without names. Perhaps someone had studied them in earnest, someone who had looked into the abyss of erasure.
At the university library, he sought out Professor Harish Mehta, a folklorist whose work he remembered skimming once on forgotten English curses. It took an hour of pleading at the front desk before the receptionist finally gave him directions. He climbed three flights of worn stairs, each step heavier than the last, until he reached a door with a brass plate: Department of Folklore and Occult Studies. He knocked, three times, and his heart jolted at the sound—it was the hollow guest’s rhythm.
The door creaked open, and Professor Mehta peered out, his silver hair disheveled, his glasses askew. “Yes? What is it?”
Daniel stepped inside without waiting, his words spilling out. “I need your help. I’ve seen something—something old, something that erases names, erases memory. They call it the hollow guest.”
At the name, Mehta’s expression shifted. He gestured Daniel into the cluttered office, papers and books stacked in tottering towers. “Sit,” he said. “Tell me everything.”
So Daniel told him—about Blackmoor, about Room 7, about Lydia, about burning the ledger, about the hollow version of himself stepping from the wardrobe. Mehta listened, silent, his fingers steepled beneath his chin. When Daniel finally stopped, trembling, Mehta opened a drawer and drew out a thin leather-bound notebook, its pages yellowed and brittle. He flipped it open to a section marked by ribbon.
“The hollow guest,” Mehta said, “is one of the Oblivion Figures. Rare, but not unheard of. They don’t kill in the ordinary sense. They consume memory. Once they have eaten the memory of a person, it is as if that person never lived at all. No grave, no record, no thought. Even their own reflections are erased.”
Daniel’s skin prickled. “So it’s true. Lydia—she—” His throat closed again. He tried to form her name, but the letters collapsed before he could shape them. His hands clenched into fists. “I can’t even say her anymore.”
Mehta nodded grimly. “That is how they win. They do not destroy flesh; they destroy remembrance. And once forgotten, a soul has no tether. They vanish completely.”
Daniel leaned forward desperately. “But how do I fight it? I tried ink. I tried fire. Nothing holds.”
Mehta’s eyes narrowed. “There is only one defense, though it is dangerous. Memory must be shared. Spoken aloud, written and rewritten, carried in the minds of others. A single man cannot anchor against oblivion. But a chorus, a community of remembrance—yes, that may hold.”
Hope flickered in Daniel’s chest. “So if I tell others—if I make them remember her—”
Mehta raised a hand. “It will not be easy. The hollow guest will resist. It will erase her from their minds too. But the more people who hold her memory, the harder it will be to consume her. You must spread the story, even if they call you mad.”
Daniel exhaled shakily. For the first time in days, a thread of possibility wound through the terror. He could fight. He could make Lydia endure. He thanked Mehta and left, clutching the plan like a lifeline.
But as he stepped back into the street, he felt the air shift. The city’s noise dulled, the people around him blurred. A child bumped into him, glanced up, and frowned in confusion. “Sorry, mister,” the boy said. But then he blinked, looked through Daniel, and muttered, “Who are you?” as if he had already forgotten the collision.
Panic clawed Daniel’s chest. He hurried into a shop, desperate for reflection, for proof he still existed. In the glass door, his face looked back at him—but faintly, as though half erased, the edges dissolving into the city lights.
That night, he called his sister. She answered with warmth in her voice. “Danny! It’s been ages.” Relief washed over him. But as he spoke, telling her about Lydia, about the inn, she grew quiet. “What are you talking about?” she said finally. “I don’t remember you ever mentioning a Lydia.”
“I told you last year!” he insisted. “We had dinner, I—”
Her silence stretched. “Are you alright, Danny?” she asked softly. “You sound… different.”
His throat tightened. “Please, just remember her. Please.”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” she said. And then the line went dead.
Daniel sat in the dark, phone trembling in his hand. His sister’s voice already felt thinner, like a memory dissolving. The hollow guest was not just erasing Lydia—it was erasing him.
At midnight, the knocks came again. Not from the wardrobe this time. From the inside of his skull. Three hollow raps, echoing within his bones.
The whispers followed, curling like smoke in his ears. You are almost gone. Stop fighting. Forget.
Daniel clutched the notebook, though its pages were blank now, every word devoured. His voice cracked, but he forced it out anyway: “I will not forget. I will make them remember.”
And for the first time, the whispers faltered, as though the hollow guest itself had felt a tremor of doubt.
Daniel sat at his desk the next morning with the blank notebook before him. He could not write Lydia’s name anymore—the hollow guest had eaten every letter—but he could write her story. Memory shared, Professor Mehta had said, was memory defended. So he began. He wrote about the inn, about Room 7, about the girl with curly hair who had laughed lightly over tea. He described her voice, her smile, the way she had said she was leaving for the coast. He wrote until his hand cramped, until the words blurred into one another. Then he typed the story on his old laptop, shaping it into an article—disguised, perhaps, as folklore, but true beneath the guise.
When it was done, he sent it to his editor, subject line bold: The Hollow Guest: A Forgotten English Curse. He pressed send with trembling fingers, praying that once printed, once read, Lydia’s memory would anchor in others.
But by afternoon, the reply came swift and cold. Daniel, what is this nonsense? There’s no Lydia in our notes, no trip to the coast. You’ve written fantasy when I asked for fact. This isn’t publishable. Rest. Get help.
Daniel’s stomach turned. Already, the hollow guest was at work, dissolving the truth before it could spread. He slammed the laptop shut and left the flat. If the paper would not carry Lydia’s story, he would tell it himself.
He went to Hyde Park, where strangers wandered beneath the pale autumn sun. He stopped passersby, his voice hoarse. “Do you know Lydia Harper? She stayed at The Grey Hare Inn. She laughed at the table, she—she was real.” People stared, uneasy, shook their heads. One woman frowned and said, “Sir, I don’t know you.”
By dusk, he was shouting Lydia’s name in the square, his voice cracking, his body trembling. A small crowd gathered, curious, disturbed. A man muttered, “Drunk,” and pulled his child away. Another called the police. Daniel fled before they arrived, heart pounding. His voice echoed in his ears, but the name he had shouted felt thinner with each repetition, slipping like smoke.
That night, back in his flat, he found the mirror above the sink blank. Not shattered, not fogged—blank. It reflected the room, the wall, the faucet. But where his face should have been, there was only empty glass.
Panic rose sharp in his throat. He touched his cheek, his jaw, his hair—felt himself solid—but the mirror showed nothing. His reflection was gone.
He called his sister again, desperate. This time, she answered with confusion. “Who is this?”
“It’s me, Danny! Your brother!”
“I don’t have a brother,” she said, and hung up.
The phone slipped from his hand, clattering against the tiles. His heart thudded painfully. The hollow guest wasn’t just erasing Lydia—it was erasing him. His name, his past, his very place in the world.
At midnight, the knocking returned, louder than before, rattling the flat’s walls. Three hollow raps, then silence. Three again. The wardrobe shuddered, and the hollow self stepped out, smiling its too-wide grin. This time, its voice carried not just whispers but certainty. “You are already fading. No one remembers you. No one will.”
Daniel backed against the wall, shaking. “I remember me. I exist.”
The hollow self tilted its head. “Do you? Tell me your name.”
Daniel opened his mouth, but no sound came. His throat tightened. He clawed at the air, forcing syllables, but his name dissolved before he could shape it. Panic surged.
The hollow guest stepped closer, extending a pale hand. “Give in. Forget. It is easier.”
Daniel’s body sagged, exhaustion pulling at him. The cold reached his marrow. But then, faint as candlelight, he remembered Professor Mehta’s words: memory must be shared. He couldn’t shout Lydia’s name alone. He couldn’t shout his own. But perhaps he could carve it, fix it into the world in a way harder to erase.
His gaze snapped to the desk. The penknife lay there, small, sharp. He lunged, grabbed it, and drove the blade into the plaster wall. He scratched furiously, gouging letters into the surface: DANIEL. LYDIA. Over and over, until his fingers bled.
The hollow self hissed, recoiling as the carved names spread across the wall, refusing to vanish. For the first time, its grin faltered. Daniel pressed harder, carving deeper, each stroke a scream. “We exist!” he shouted, voice hoarse but real. “We are remembered!”
The room convulsed. The mirror cracked down the middle. The hollow self shrieked without sound, its form flickering like a candle in wind. Shadows whipped around the room, battering Daniel against the wall, but he kept carving, his blood smearing into the grooves.
Finally, with a sound like tearing fabric, the hollow self collapsed inward, folding into the wardrobe, its grin the last thing to vanish. The door slammed shut, the flat falling into silence.
Daniel collapsed to the floor, chest heaving, hands bleeding. The wall before him was covered in carved names, jagged and uneven, but solid. They remained, unmoving, proof that he still existed.
But even as relief trembled through him, he knew the truth. The hollow guest was not gone. It had only retreated. And each day, each night, it would return, gnawing at memory, trying again to erase.
The war was not won. Only delayed.
Daniel spent the next day in silence, hands bandaged, staring at the wall where he had carved the names. They remained—DANIEL. LYDIA.—etched in blood and plaster, the grooves rough but immovable. He touched them often, as though the jagged letters tethered him. Yet he knew the hollow guest was not gone. It lingered, waiting. Every shadow felt like a watcher, every reflective surface a threat.
He returned to Professor Mehta that afternoon, dragging himself up the long staircase to the office. Mehta looked startled at the sight of his pale face, his trembling hands. “You’ve been fighting it,” he said softly. “And losing.”
Daniel collapsed into the chair, his voice raw. “It’s erasing me. My sister doesn’t remember me. My reflection is gone. It’s only a matter of time. Tell me how to end it—for good.”
Mehta’s expression darkened. “There is no ending. Only choice. If you want to anchor memory beyond its reach, you must sacrifice yourself to it. Bind your essence into story, into myth. Others will remember—not you, but the tale. You will be gone, but Lydia will endure.”
Daniel’s stomach twisted. “So I die, and she lives?”
“You are dying already,” Mehta said gently. “This way, you choose how. You choose meaning.”
Daniel walked the city in a daze afterward, rain soaking his coat. He thought of Lydia—her voice, her laughter—and of his sister’s blank tone on the phone. Already, his life was dissolving. Faces in the crowd passed him without notice, as if he were half-invisible. Perhaps he was.
That night, back in his flat, the knocks came again. Three, always three. The wardrobe rattled. The hollow self stepped out, grinning wider than before. Its black eyes burned with triumph. “You fade,” it said. “You are almost gone. Surrender, and it will end.”
Daniel stood, notebook in hand, though its pages were still blank. He raised his voice, hoarse but steady. “I will not surrender. I will choose.”
The hollow self tilted its head, curious.
Daniel turned to the wall, pressed his palm to the carved names. “If memory must be shared, then let the world share it. Not my family, not my editor—everyone. Let the story itself carry us.”
He opened the notebook and began to write, though no ink showed. He wrote furiously, filling the pages with the tale of the Grey Hare Inn, of Room 7, of Lydia Harper, of the faceless guest. The words didn’t appear, but he felt them burning into the paper, into himself. He wrote until his hand cramped, until his breath came ragged, until the hollow self loomed over him.
Finally, he dropped the pen. The notebook glowed faintly, a heat rising from its spine. The hollow guest hissed, recoiling. “What have you done?”
Daniel lifted the book, his eyes fierce. “I have made her story eternal. It will outlive you. It will outlive me. You cannot erase what has already been told.”
The hollow guest shrieked, a soundless cry that cracked the plaster, splintered the mirror, sent the wardrobe door slamming shut. Its form convulsed, flickered, collapsed inward like ash in flame. The flat trembled as though the world itself shifted.
Daniel fell to his knees, clutching the notebook. Heat seared his hands. He opened it—and this time, words filled the pages. Not his handwriting, but flowing, countless voices: the story told and retold, spreading like wildfire. Lydia Harper laughed in the Grey Hare Inn. Lydia Harper was remembered. Daniel bore witness. The hollow guest was faced.
His heart lifted—then clenched. The last line read: Daniel is gone.
He felt the truth at once. His body grew light, insubstantial. The room blurred. His hands turned translucent around the notebook. He staggered to the wall, pressed his palm to the carved letters one last time. The grooves were cool, solid, but his touch left no trace.
The hollow guest was banished. Lydia’s memory was safe. But Daniel himself had chosen the price: to become the story, not the teller.
The last thing he heard was his own voice, faint but carried by countless echoes: Remember us.
And then he was gone.
The flat stood empty, the carved names etched into plaster. The notebook remained on the desk, its pages filled with the story, ready for anyone to read. And somewhere, in every retelling, in every whisper of the tale, Lydia’s laugh lingered, and Daniel’s defiance endured.
For the hollow guest could not erase what had already become legend.
