Hollow Traditions

         The waning moon lit the path just enough for Katie to find her way to the sacred space. She kept a death-like grip on the leather satchel that was slung over her shoulder with both hands as her eyes starred straight ahead, keeping alert for any change in the air that surrounded her. Katie’s body was rigidly straight and fully aware of the consequences of what she was going to do. The energies around her seemed to be alive with curiosity, watching her. A cloud passed over the moon, and the landscape before her darkened, seeming even more ominous than it did a moment before. Katie’s feet suddenly felt heavy and she froze in the middle of the overgrown path. A warm breeze lifted her hair from her face and in it she thought she heard someone gently calling her name… Katie… then it was gone. The cloud passed from the moon, lighting her way once again.

         It had been while since someone entered into the clearing, and all known entries were covered by severe overgrowth. The rambling rose bushes that lined the perimeter of the circle had taken over, with pale pink, softball size rose bursts with thorns the size of dragons’ claws dotting the growth… With every step that brought her closer, the more she was on edge. Afraid, that maybe she would be stopped at the very last moment before she entered the sacred space. Suddenly, the woods seemed to go silent. All she could hear was the pounding of her heart, and the pulsing blood through her veins. Something rustled behind her, and it set Katie off on a sprint putting her only a step outside the circle. Smiling triumphantly, she began to push back the dense roses to find an opening big enough for her to fit through. The thorns stabbed into her arms and legs, but she barely felt them, her mind totally focused on getting to the center of the circle. The light from the moon began to illuminate the center, beckoning her, welcoming her. Just as her hand passed through the roses into the clearing, Katie felt the hulking presence of something behind her. Her entire body froze; unable to do anything. All that she could hear was her name… very slow and deep… K A T I E…



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Chapter 1



         Casey stood on the back porch of her childhood home and watched as the last of the day’s light faded over the top of Bartlett Woods. When they were children, Casey and her older sister, Katie, would stay out on the porch until the very last bit of the light was gone before going inside. Katie had loved the woods; she even snuck out once their grandmother had gone to bed for the night to explore its nighttime inhabitants and their routines. Casey enjoyed spending some time in the woods, but nowhere near that of her sister. When they had been little, their grandmother, Iris, made them take the bi-monthly trek to the sacred space for meditation, and Casey always did look forward to that. But it had been Katie that was out there every day; by the time she was ten years old, she knew every nook and cranny of the surrounding twenty acres that was Bartlett Woods.

         Casey looked out into the woods themselves, and saw how dark they had suddenly become. She took a step back towards the door, feeling for the handle to get inside the house. The woods had lost all appeal to her the moment they found Katie’s lifeless body lying next to the stream, a few hundred yards from the sacred space. Casey slammed the door shut, locked it and drew the blinds quickly. Being back at Hollow house unnerved her to the core, but there was no other choice now. She had agreed to put the house up for sale, and finally after three years of being on the market, there was a buyer. Casey took a deep breath and tried to shake off the memories of her sister and all the anxiety associated with them. After considerable time spent in therapy sorting out her feelings about the death of her sister, she finally felt like she was in a good place with it. But being back at that house, where it all happened, was beginning to shake the already unstable foundation she had built.

         Making her way into the kitchen, Case yawned and decided to start a pot of coffee. Next to her was a list of everything that needed to be done before the process of selling the house could commence. There was over a hundred years of Hollow family heirlooms throughout the house that needed to be sorted through and dealt with; financial papers, about a dozen rooms to pack up, including a vast attic and basement. Casey picked up a pen and began to jot down some reminders and then she remembered… there was one other room she needed to add to the list.

         Her mind briefly flashed to the day Katie showed her the room in the attic for the first and only time. It held everything that Iris and Katie found sacred; everything that Casey now feared. She wasn’t even sure how to gain access to the room, Katie had certainly made sure of that. Casey hadn’t been old enough to take her rite of passage and begin to learn the secrets of their families’ craft. She was only nine and Katie had been thirteen, only a few weeks removed from her own introduction of the room. Casey begged and pleaded with her older sister to know what was up there, know where Iris had always disappeared to when she said she was going up to the room. Casey was desperate to learn all she could about the room, but she still had four years until Iris thought her mature enough to learn those secrets. Finally, a few weeks before her tenth birthday, Katie relented and told Casey she’d take her. But, only on the condition that she be blind folded until she entered the room. Then, again, till she was back in the kitchen. Casey’s excitement at finally being granted access to the secret room halted her from paying attention to little details her other senses would have picked up on. If she tried, she could have really figured out how Katie accessed the room; but she didn’t. When Casey’s blindfold was removed, a small dark room was revealed. The fragrant air had an intriguing blend of jasmine and lavender. She wasn’t allowed to touch anything, only stand in the middle of the room taking it all in. Katie granted her five full minutes then returned the blindfold and led her back to the kitchen. Oh Katie… she thought… How you loved to torment me…

         Casey slumped down into the stool at the center island and rested her head in her hand. A feeling of sadness fell heavy on her heart and the smell of roses invaded her senses. Her eyes began to tear and she felt as though there was tightness around her throat. She could feel her fingers clenching around the pen that was next to her on the counter. Casey let out a whimper and she knew immediately that Katie had just been there with her… it lasted another moment, and then the entire sensation was gone. Her hand released the pen and when she looked down at the paper that had contained her list, she had written Katie in small, tight loops that were not her own, over and over down the margin of the page. Casey starred at the paper in alarm and pushed back from the counter so fast that the stool fell back into the wall.

         “Oh god!” Casey cried out, and slammed her small fists back against the wall. “I… I can’t do this! I can’t be here and do this!” She began to cry and slid down the wall until she hit the floor. She drew in her knees, hugged them tightly and laid her head back. “Not again,” she whispered to herself, “not again…”

         Casey’s mind frantically searched for all the exercises her therapist taught her to evade a pending panic attack and after a moment or two she began to feel a little calmer and her silent tears subsided. She took a deep breath, stood up and went back to the counter where the piece of paper still lay. She opened the drawer on the side of the island, threw the piece of paper in, and slammed it shut.

         “Ok,” she said aloud to the empty room, “I will make you a deal. I will stay here and close up this house, I will get everything packed and properly distributed according to gram’s will. But I will not be bothered by things past. I will not be haunted again!” Casey stood up straighter and looked around the room as if awaiting a response. When she got none, she fixed herself a cup of coffee, turned off all the kitchen lights and went out into the living room.

         The entire Hollow house and grounds had been built by Jasper Hollow sometime in the mid-1800s. His family owned the majority of Bartlett Woods and the cranberry bogs that were spread throughout. Over the years however, Jasper sold it off piece by piece and what Jasper had left by the time he married was just over nine acres. Jasper Hollow had been an infamously horrible gambler and lost nearly everything that he and his wife Sara had left. When the family was down to the house and immediate grounds, Sara demanded that he stop gambling or he could leave. Knowing that he’d never be able to change, Jasper left and no one ever heard from him again. Sara and her children went on to bring generation after generation into the Hollow house, and successfully tended to the last bogs left on the north end of the woods.

         Now, Casey was the only Hollow left. She looked at the line of ancestral pictures that lined the walls of the north parlor, knowing each one and their story. As a child, Casey loved when Iris would tell them the stories and tales of the Hollow family. Some of them were better than any fairytale book that Casey had ever read. As she passed over each photograph, she felt a twinge of guilt for was she had to do. Boxing up the photos that her grandmother had loved so much and putting them in storage was her only option; her small apartment in New York certainly couldn’t hold all of them.

         After Iris passed away several years before, there had been two people interested in some of the contents of the house. One, a professor at the local college and the other a librarian at the Ocean County Historical Society. At the time, however, Casey had no intention of sorting through anything in the house. It was far too painful to even step foot in there after the funeral. The grief of her grandmother’s passing was too fresh, and all the fears she still held inside from the events leading up to and after Katie’s death, were far too ingrained in her. The house that she loved so much as a child was now the centerpiece of her nightmares. Now, she had to face it; demons or no demons.