Lena had always been drawn to abandoned places. Something about them whispered to her, called to a part of her that she didn't fully understand. As a child, she spent hours wandering through forgotten ruins, her small fingers tracing the delicate patterns of faded wallpaper, peeling at the edges like paper-thin memories left to decay. She would stand in empty doorways, imagining the voices that once filled them - the laughter of children echoing through narrow halls, the muffled murmurs of late-night conversations, the hurried footsteps of lives once lived and long since forgotten.

She had explored every deserted building in town - the old schoolhouse with its shattered windows, the crumbling factory where rusted machines sat frozen in time, and even the boarded-up hotel, which smelled of damp wood and something sour beneath the floorboards.

But there was one place she had never dared enter - the Hollow House.

It alone and untouched stood on the outskirts, as if the world had simply decided to grow around it and leave it behind. No matter how much time passed, its wooden bones remained the same, its windows staring out like hollowed-out eyes. The stories about it were endless. Some claimed it had been built overnight, appearing without warning as if it had always been there. Others said no one had ever lived in it, that it was simply a house without history, a shell without a soul.

Yet, deep down, Lena knew that wasn't true.

There was something inside the Hollow House.

She had felt it watching.

Perched at the edge of town, the Hollow House stood like a forgotten sentinel, its skeletal frame etched against the horizon, a silent witness to the shifting seasons and passing years. Its windows yawned open, black and empty, like the hollow sockets of a skull. The house did not belong to the town, nor did it belong to time. It simply was - an uninvited guest that had outstayed its welcome.

No one knew who had built it. No official records existed, no faded photographs captured its construction. It had always been there - or at least, that was the way people spoke of it. Generations whispered about its origins, but their stories varied like fractured memories.

Some claimed it had once been home to a family - one that had vanished overnight, their belongings left untouched, as if they had simply walked out and never returned. Dinner plates sat undisturbed on the dining table, toys lay abandoned on the floor, a clock on the wall ticked until it, too, fell silent. Others swore no one had ever lived there at all - that it had simply appeared one morning, an unnatural addition to the landscape.

Children dared each other to touch its weathered door, but none ever lingered long enough to hear the whispers that followed them home. The town's elders spoke of strange lights flickering behind its windows at night, despite the house having no electricity. A few claimed to have seen movement inside - shadows shifting just beyond the glass, watching.

For years, Lena ignored the pull of the Hollow House. She passed it on her way to school as a child, then later on her way to work, always keeping her gaze averted. There were places one simply did not go, and the Hollow House was one of them.

But on her twenty-seventh birthday, something changed.

The Dream

That night, as Lena drifted into an uneasy sleep, the Hollow House followed her.

She did not remember opening its door. She did not recall stepping inside. And yet, she was there - standing within its walls, the air thick and stale, pressing against her like the weight of time itself. It smelled of dust and damp wood, of something old and forgotten, something that should not have lingered for so long.

The house breathed around her.

Before she stretched a long, dimly lit hallway, its narrow walls pressing in, lined with mirrors that reached from floor to ceiling. They gleamed in the flickering candlelight, their surfaces rippling like water disturbed by an unseen hand.

Lena stepped forward, drawn toward the mirrors despite the dread curling in her stomach.

Her reflection did not greet her.

None of them did.

The mirrors reflected the hallway, the flickering light, the space where she should have been - but she was not there. It was as though the glass had chosen to erase her, to pretend she did not exist.

But something else stood within the reflections.

At first, she thought it was a trick of the shifting light. Shapes formed in the glass, wavering and unclear, twisting like shadows caught beneath deep water. Then, they solidified.

Figures.

Dozens of them.

They stood in the depths of the mirrors, just beyond the surface, their forms pale and indistinct. They had no eyes - only hollow sockets that gaped like the empty windows of the house itself. Their mouths moved in silent murmurs, whispering words she could not hear, could not understand.

Her pulse pounded in her ears. The silence was unbearable, too heavy, pressing against her lungs.

Then, from the corners of the room, the shadows began to whisper.

"Lena."

The voice was soft, almost gentle. It caressed her name like a lover's sigh, threading through the air like silk. But there was something beneath it, something wrong. The whisper slithered through the silence, its edges curling like smoke, like fingers reaching.

Something crawled just beneath the surface of the sound.

Lena's breath hitched.

The candlelight flickered, the flames stretching unnaturally long, their glow pulsing like a heartbeat. The figures in the mirrors did not move, but their presence thickened, filling the space like an unseen crowd pressing in around her.

Then -

A shift.

A flicker of motion in the periphery of her vision.

She turned.

Something stood in the doorway at the end of the hall.

It did not move.

It did not speak.

But it watched.

She could not see its face.

She did not need to.

The weight of its gaze coiled around her, thick as the dark, seeping into her bones. It was familiar. It had always been there.

It had been waiting.

The candlelight wavered, and in the space of a breath, the thing in the doorway took a step forward.

The whisper came again, this time against her ear.

"Come back."

Lena woke with a scream.

The Call

Lena woke with a gasp, her heart hammering against her ribs, her breath coming in short, ragged bursts. The darkness of her bedroom felt thicker than before, pressing in on her like a living thing. Her blankets were twisted around her legs, tangled as if she had been fighting something in her sleep. She reached blindly for the lamp on her nightstand, her fingers fumbling against the switch.

Light flooded the room, but it did little to ease the sensation crawling beneath her skin.

The dream still clung to her, wrapping around her like a shroud.

The Hollow House.

The mirrors.

The thing waiting in the doorway.

Lena pressed a hand to her chest, willing her heartbeat to slow. But something was wrong. The air felt different - too still, too silent. The usual creaks and hums of her old apartment were absent, swallowed by an unnatural quiet.

And the shadows -

They were too deep.

She told herself she was imagining it. That the dream had unsettled her, nothing more. But as she sat there, her pulse thudding in her ears, the feeling did not fade.

It lingered.

The weight of it coiled around her chest like unseen hands, pressing until her breath came in shallow gulps. She could almost feel fingers trailing along her skin, light as whispers, unseen but unmistakable.

She turned her head sharply, her gaze darting to the corners of the room.

Nothing.

And yet -

Something was watching.

A shiver raced down her spine. She pulled the blankets tighter around her as if they could shield her from the presence that loomed just beyond sight. She squeezed her eyes shut, whispering to herself.

"It was just a dream. Just a dream."

But dreams weren't supposed to follow you when you woke.

Lena sat awake for hours, her body stiff with unease. She watched the door, the closet, the darkened window, waiting for something to move. The air felt thick, heavy, and expectant. She forced herself to breathe, to slow the wild thoughts spiraling through her mind.

It wasn't real.

It couldn't be real.

But even as the first light of morning bled through the curtains, the weight in her chest remained.

A pull.

A silent beckoning.

She told herself it was nothing. That it would pass.

But as the hours crept by, it did not.

She felt it in every shadow, in every reflection that caught the corner of her eye. A pressure in her bones, whispering for her to listen. To follow.

By midday, she was restless, unable to focus on anything but the growing certainty that she had been called.

By evening, the pull had turned to something more - an ache, a need.

By the time dusk fell, she had made her decision.

She was going back to the Hollow House.

The House

Armed with nothing but a flashlight and the gnawing unease in her gut, Lena approached the Hollow House. The air around it felt different - thick, charged, like the moments before a thunderstorm. The closer she stepped, the quieter the world became. The chirping insects, the rustling leaves - all of it faded into silence.

She hesitated at the threshold, her fingers brushing against the peeling wood of the front door.

It was warm.

The door creaked open beneath her touch, revealing a darkness that seemed to breathe. Her flashlight beam barely cut through it, swallowed by the black as soon as it reached the other side.

Inside, the silence was suffocating.

The air smelled of dust and something else - something sweet and rotten, like fruit left to decay in the heat. The wooden floor groaned beneath her weight as she stepped inside, each movement sounding too loud in the oppressive quiet.

And then -

A whisper.

Soft, barely there, like a breath against her ear.

"Welcome back."

Lena froze.

The words pressed into her as if spoken not aloud but directly into her bones. The flashlight flickered. The air grew thick, dense, watching.

She turned to leave.

The door was gone.

In its place stood a mirror.

And in the reflection -

Something moved.

Something wearing her face.

And it smiled.