The Hollowing Begins
2:36 AM.
Elias sat on the cold linoleum floor of his kitchen, arms wrapped around his knees, eyes locked on the third drawing laid flat before him.
"The One Who Watched."
The crayon lines were simple, almost childlike. But there was nothing innocent about it. Two stick figures — one standing, one sitting in a corner — a pair of hollow eyes drawn like gaping black pits.
Every time Elias looked at it, a pulse of something foreign throbbed in his chest. Not memory exactly. Something more instinctual. Like a door being rattled from the other side — not gently, but violently, desperately. As though something was trapped inside him, screaming through locked walls.
He couldn't remember drawing it.
But his fingers were stained with waxy green.
He closed his eyes and tried to summon the moment. The feel of the crayon. The pressure of the strokes.
Nothing.
Just the echo of that whisper.
"The One Who Watched."
And with it, the terrible realization: that it might not have been him who drew the others either.
He rose slowly, the floor groaning beneath him, and shuffled into the hallway. The mirror by the door remained still. No fog. No messages. No distorted reflections.
But the silence had changed.
It wasn't passive anymore. It didn't feel like absence.
It felt like breath held.
It felt like watching.
---
By dawn, Elias was standing at his door, hands trembling as he reached down to pick up the letter that had been slipped under it. No postage. No name. Just a blank envelope.
Inside, a folded piece of paper. Handwritten.
"There are more of you than you realize."
"Check Room 217. Eastwing. Vale House."
"Before he does."
The handwriting was messy. Slanted. Rushed. But familiar. It matched the scrawled annotations in the St. Aurum file from Dr. Vale's office — the ones that looked less like professional notes and more like desperate warnings.
Something clenched inside Elias's stomach. A part of him — the sane, logical part — wanted to crumple the letter and forget it. Sleep. Drink. Pretend.
But the rest of him had already grabbed his coat.
---
Vale House.
Its shape loomed like a bad dream reborn in daylight. It hadn't grown any less twisted in the hours between. The building still sagged under the weight of memory. Still reeked of abandonment and mold. The same overgrown path. The same iron gate, hanging crooked.
But now the air felt heavier.
Like it knew he was coming back.
Inside, the halls remained cloaked in dust and decay. Wallpaper peeled like shedding skin. The air stank of wet plaster and rot. The shadows didn't just move — they seemed to remember.
He passed the corridor where the mirror had once stood. The one that had shown the barefoot boy.
But the mirror was gone.
Only the jagged imprint on the wall remained — and a faint smear of crayon.
He didn't stop to stare.
He kept walking until the stairs groaned under his weight, and the second floor unfolded before him like a forgotten chapter.
Room 217.
The door was slightly ajar.
---
Elias hesitated.
Behind the thin wood, something hummed. Not sound. Not light.
A presence.
He pushed the door open.
The room inside was surreal in contrast to the decay around it — preserved in unnatural stillness. A child's bedroom, frozen in time.
The wallpaper was a soft blue, faded and cracked, patterned with moons and stars. A rusted bed frame sat against the wall, its mattress sunken and torn. The smell was musty, but beneath it — something faintly sweet. Like old sugar. Or blood dried long ago.
And in the far corner, nestled beneath a dusty window:
A toy chest.
Padlocked shut.
Elias stepped inside, drawn like a magnet. Every board creaked a different warning. As he moved closer, he noticed the message scrawled on the wall above the chest.
"ELIAN SLEEPS HERE."
Scratched in with something sharp. Fingernails, maybe.
He knelt before the chest.
The lock clicked open without resistance — like it had been waiting.
---
Inside: scraps of a life torn apart.
Burnt photographs — their edges curled with heat, images blackened. But some showed hints of faces. Children. Staff in white coats. A woman with a locket.
A name tag. Plastic, cracked.
"ELIAN – SUBJECT #713"
Elias froze.
The name pulsed in his skull like thunder.
He pulled out a small, leather-bound journal. The pages inside were yellowed, corners torn. Each entry was in a child's handwriting. Stiff. Uneven. Desperate.
Page after page:
"I don't want to disappear."
"I don't want to disappear."
"I don't want to disappear."
Dozens of them.
Then, near the end — a shift. The handwriting grew shaky. Wild.
"He's coming. He's taking over again. I can't stop him."
"If I forget, will it hurt less? Will forgetting save me?"
"I'll go to sleep. Just like the doctor said. Just like he promised."
"But if you see this—"
"Please wake me up."
Elias's breath hitched.
His hand gripped the journal too tightly. It felt like he'd stolen it from himself.
He stood, staggering back a step.
Because it was real now.
Not metaphor. Not madness.
Elian was real.
And somehow, Elias had buried him.
---
Later that day, Elias sat across from Dr. Soren Vale in the dim light of the office. The blinds filtered the light into soft stripes, like the bars of a cage.
"You shouldn't be going back to that place," Vale said, folding his hands. "You don't know what it's doing to you."
"I think I do," Elias replied. His voice was cracked. Hollow. "It's showing me the truth."
Vale watched him quietly. Then, after a moment, he reached into a locked drawer and withdrew a folder — not the usual type.
A case file. Police issue. Yellowed at the edges. Elias's heart sank before Vale even opened it.
"Case File – Victims 1 through 6"
Photos slid across the desk.
Each one froze Elias in place.
Six victims. Male and female. Mid-thirties. All murdered with precision. Clean cuts. Eyes open. Smiles carved into their faces.
The sight twisted his stomach — but it was the familiarity that made him feel sick.
Because something in him recognized those faces.
Even if he didn't remember them.
"These six," Vale said softly, "all had one thing in common. They were employees. Former workers. Of Vale House."
Elias's mind reeled.
"No…" he whispered. "I don't know them. I've never—"
"I think you were made to forget," Vale said quietly.
Elias clenched his fists.
"Then who… who did this?"
There was a silence. Then Vale met his eyes with a look that could either be pity or fear.
"You did."
---
That night, Elias couldn't close his eyes.
He didn't dare.
Instead, he sat on the floor of his apartment, surrounded by the drawings, the journal, the photographs. Pieces of a life he'd left behind. Or maybe pieces of someone else — someone inside him, screaming through his skin.
The air felt thick.
And when he finally slept — or thought he did — the dreams came.
But not like before.
This time, Elias didn't float on the outside, watching like a ghost.
This time, he was the boy.
He stood barefoot in a corridor that pulsed like a wound. The walls were covered in floral wallpaper that bled red when touched. He walked slowly, passing door after door — and behind each one:
Another version of himself.
One huddled in a corner, whispering names he didn't recognize.
One screaming and clawing at invisible chains.
One laughing — wild-eyed — holding a shard of glass like a knife, carving symbols into the floor.
And at the end of the hallway:
A door without a name.
But Elias knew what was behind it.
He reached out. The handle was warm. Wet.
The door opened.
Inside: a room of mirrors.
Each mirror reflected something different. Different ages. Different wounds. Different versions.
And in the center stood a man — tall, draped in shadows, wearing Elias's face.
But the eyes were wrong.
Empty.
Cold.
He turned to Elias, opened his arms, and whispered:
"I kept the memories for you. I kept them all."
Then, with a voice that sounded like every one Elias had ever buried:
"But now it's your turn."
---
Elias jolted awake, chest heaving, shirt soaked.
He was back in his apartment. Alone.
Or so he thought.
The mirror across the room had fogged.
And on it:
"I remembers what you have forgoten."
---
To Be Continued in Chapter 5 – A Face in the Water