17 Sep Axe Murder Hollow

The rain began as a mist on the windshield, the kind that smudged the view rather than blocked it, and then, without much warning, it thickened into bands of water that wove through the beams of the headlights. Rachel Whitaker turned the wipers up another notch and leaned forward as if a few inches closer to the glass might improve visibility. The two-lane ribbon of county blacktop curved through pine and oak, shoulders scalloped by runoff, the drainage ditches already glossy and collecting.

“Next turn should be State 19,” Mark Ellison said, checking the dim glow of his phone’s map before it lost its signal again. “We cut across there and shave twenty minutes.”

“Or we miss the anniversary party entirely because we end up in a ravine,” Rachel said. She reached for the volume knob on the radio and dialed back the classic rock until the station dissolved into static. When she let go, the dial drifted slightly and settled on an AM voice, a local station churning through weather alerts and high school scores.

Mark smirked at the empty road ahead, the way he did when he thought he had read the situation better than she had. “It’s fine. We’re fine.”

She stared past the rhythmic slap of the wipers and measured the silence that followed. “I saw your neighbor at the gas station,” she said finally. “The woman with the red coat. She looked at me like she was trying to place my face.”

“She doesn’t know you,” Mark said, too quickly. “It’s a small town stare. Everyone does it.”

“Your ring is in the glove box,” Rachel said. “You could have left it at home.”

He flexed his bare left hand on the wheel and released a breath through his nose. “It’s not like she’s filing a report. And I told you—Kara and I are done. We’re just… sorting paperwork.”

“You said ‘just’ three months ago, too.”

The wipers thudded through another arc. He had no answer for that. A fan squeal rose under the hood and then evened out again. The rear tires hissed over wet grit.

From the radio, the AM announcer cleared his throat and read from a paper. “…County officials advise avoiding the Hollow stretch of Route K until the storm clears. Visibility low, runoff heavy. Folks, mind the posted markers. And for those writing in about the old story—no, there’s been no confirmed… well, you know how tales go around here.” He chuckled, but there wasn’t any humor in it. “The so-called Axe Murder Hollow, the jealous husband, the wife, the… look, it’s a night for staying home.”

Mark reached to switch it off; Rachel caught his wrist with two fingers. She didn’t know why she wanted to hear the rest, only that the cadence of the announcer’s voice felt like a warning placed exactly in their path.

“…If you’re new to the area,” the voice continued, “the story says the Hollow Man shows up where he was wronged. Folks say he hates a liar’s tongue worst of all. Couples up to no good, you know. That kind of thing. But stories breed in weather like this, and that’s all I’ll say.”

Static chewed the end of the sentence, and the station slid into a murmur. Mark drew his arm back and flicked the radio off with more force than necessary. “We’re not ‘up to no good.’ We’re two adults in a car in a storm, trying to make it to a party on time.”

Rachel looked down at the folded invitation in her lap, the one addressed to “Mr. and Mrs. Ellison” because Mark had told his cousin nothing had changed, because secrets moved more easily when paper kept pretending. The ink had blurred at the edges where her damp fingertips had held it.

“Did Kara call you today?” she asked.

“Twice,” he said. “I didn’t pick up.”

“Because you were with me.”

The road kinked right, and Mark took it a hair too fast. Gravel pinged the undercarriage. He corrected and slowed, jaw set.

“We should have taken the highway,” Rachel said. “Lights, traffic, actual shoulders.”

“Traffic’s a parking lot in weather like this.” He forced a laugh that didn’t land. “Relax. We’ll be telling this story with a drink in hand in an hour.”

Ahead, a reflective county marker flashed by, the number scratched and pitted, then the blacktop pitched slightly downward as if the land itself sighed under the weight of water. Pine boughs bowed at the edges of the beams. Somewhere off to the right, a culvert gulped.

“State 19,” Mark said, but the sign he pointed to had long since lost its numbers, the metal bent like a partially peeled can lid. He checked his phone again and found only a spinning icon that suggested it was trying to think. “Okay, maybe the next one.”

She pushed her damp hair behind one ear. “Tell me again how we’re not those people,” she said. “The ones who get found in a ditch in the morning.”

“We aren’t, because I’m paying attention,” he said. “See?”

A flash whitened the world beyond the hood, and thunder arrived close behind, a deep report that felt more like pressure than sound. For a moment the rain thickened into curtains the wipers couldn’t tackle. Mark eased his foot off the gas and then, a beat later, touched the brakes.

The back end fishtailed. Rachel kept her hands in her lap and her eyes on the right edge of the road, where the white line had become a suggestion. Mark steered into the slide, the way he had learned on winter roads as a teenager, and for a breath it worked—the tires found purchase—until the next sheet of runoff swept across the blacktop and lifted them a fraction sideways.

“Easy,” he said, not sure whether he meant the car or himself. He tapped the brakes again, more lightly this time.

The right wheels rolled off the shoulder with a muddy sigh. The car tilted, gathered a low, inevitable momentum, and slid down the embankment at an angle, the nose plowing a furrow through wet grass. Rachel braced one hand on the dash and one against the seat, not screaming, not speaking, watching the trees come closer in a slow, controlled slide. When the front end finally came to a stop, buried in soft earth, the movement halted with a soggy grunt that threw both of them forward against their belts.

For a moment, there was only the drumming on the roof and the high tick of cooling metal. Mark flexed his fingers on the wheel and then released it, exhaling as if he’d been holding a heavy box that he could finally set down. “We’re okay,” he said. “We’re okay.”

The headlights lit a clay lip and the lower trunks of trees slick as river stone. Steam lifted from the hood in a faint ribbon. Rachel scanned the rearview; the road above had vanished behind branches and rain.

He put the car in neutral and feathered the gas. The tires spun and failed to climb; the car rocked a few useless inches and settled deeper. He tried again with a gentle rhythm, coaxing rather than forcing. Mud fanned behind them and spattered the quarter panels.

“It’s not far to the turn,” he said, squinting up the slope as if a distance he couldn’t measure would submit under the right stare. “If we get a tow, we’ll still make it.”

“To get a tow,” she said, “someone has to find us first.”

He turned to her, his face lit by the dash glow, the lines in his face carved deeper by the night. “I’ll walk up and flag someone down. I saw a house with its porch lights on a mile back.”

Rachel gave a short, uncertain smile and watched the rain ricochet in the beams. It made little silver chains between the branches. “If your neighbor with the red coat drives by,” she said, “what story do you tell her?”

“The truth,” he said, and she didn’t know whether he meant the version he told her or the version that kept peace on his street. He reached across, put his palm on her knee, then pulled a dry jacket from the back seat and shrugged into it. “Lock the doors. Keep the lights low so we don’t drain the battery. Ten minutes, fifteen at most.”

She hesitated, then nodded. “Be careful.”

He pushed the door open into the rain and climbed out, shoulders hunched, head down against the weather. The dome light sketched him in brief silhouette before the door thumped shut and left her in the hum of the fan and the tapping of water across every surface. Through the smear of the windshield, she could make out his shape moving in front of the car, one hand up to shield his eyes from the glare, the other testing the ground. He angled toward the slope, found footing among the grasses, and began to climb.

Rachel reached for the lock and pressed it down until it clicked under her thumb. The radio button glowed faintly, though the unit itself was dark. She felt the faint vibration of thunder roll through the chassis and thought again of the announcer’s voice, the careful way he had said that kind of thing, as if naming it would invite it in.

Above the hood, Mark’s figure slipped between two pines and disappeared into the rain.

* * * * * * *

The first minute after Mark vanished into the rain stretched longer than it should have. Rachel kept expecting his outline to reappear at the crest of the slope with a thumbs-up or a sheepish grin. Instead, there was only the lattice of water in the headlights and the muted sway of branches.

She switched off the high beams to conserve the battery and left the low beams angling into the mud lip. In their weaker glow, the car’s interior felt smaller, the roof a few inches nearer. She cracked her window just enough to speak if he called back and immediately rolled it up again when the storm pushed a cold sheet across her knuckles.

A rattle sounded from the front, emanating from the engine bay—just the fan housing, she told herself. Mark had said the car wasn’t totalled, only stuck. He had said it the way he said most things: confidently enough that the world often obliged.

Her phone lit her face with a pale square. No bars. She brought up a draft text anyway—Call me when you reach a house. Tell me which one. She stared at the unsent words and imagined the message hovering forever in a digital purgatory above the trees.

A smear on the passenger window drew her eye. When she leaned over and wiped it with her sleeve, she saw it was only her own reflection, faint and distorted. The diamond stud in her left ear flashed and went dull again. Mark had bought those in Madison on a work trip that had apparently turned into a shopping date. He had passed the small bag across the café table with a gentle smile that made her forget, for a few hours, that the story of them had no clean edges.

The announcer’s voice replayed in her mind, as clearly as if the radio were still murmuring: Folks say he hates a liar’s tongue worst of all. Couples up to no good… She had laughed then, lightly, to show she was above superstitions, but the words had stuck.

She pictured the party invitation again, the calligraphy that still recognized a marriage she had agreed to pretend didn’t exist. She pictured Kara’s red coat at the gas station, the way the woman’s gaze had snagged on her face. It would take so little for the latticework to collapse—one photo posted, one cousin’s comment, one late-night question asked in the wrong room.

Headlights bled faintly across the branches high above, then moved on. They were too far up to see her, even if she screamed. She wouldn’t scream. She couldn’t explain any of it if someone did stop.

Her father’s voice arrived, uninvited, from a kitchen three decades behind her: If you have to hide it, it owns you. He had been talking about cigarettes. The lesson had expanded on its own.

She adjusted her seat back a notch and tightened her coat around her ribs. On the dashboard, a single raindrop that had come in on Mark’s jacket sleeve crept toward the edge of the plastic, leaving a narrow trail. She watched it until it hung trembling from the lip and fell onto the console with a sound too small to hear.

She tried praying, an old reflex. The words broke apart quickly. She tried counting seconds—ten for him to reach the slope, thirty to pick his way, ninety to find gravel and the shoulder. If he reached a house, he’d knock, apologize, and ask to use a phone. He would invent a version of them that could be told to a stranger without making things awkward. He was good at that. He was good at a lot of things.

She wanted to believe he wouldn’t be good at leaving her behind.

The dome light control under her thumb felt like a talisman. She flicked it on and off to see if it still obeyed. On: the upholstery went flat and colorless; the raindrops on the driver’s window turned to glitter. Off: the car returned to its dim cave state. She pressed the lock button again and felt the mechanism respond with a dull thunk, as if to say, ”Already done.”

“Fifteen minutes,” she said aloud, choosing the number he’d picked for her. “Fifteen and then I decide what to do.”

Her voice sounded different in the car, steadier than she felt. She checked the clock. Only three minutes had passed.

She looked up the slope again, trying to see past her own reflection. Darkness folded over the roadside in layered curtains. Somewhere beyond that, Mark existed and was seeking out help. She held on to that picture. She had to.

In her lap, the invitation softened under her fingers. The inked names imprinted themselves onto her skin when she lifted her hand. She rubbed them away and sat as still as she could, listening to the rain and the low mechanical hum, counting out the next minute.

* * * * * * *

The minutes dragged on. Rachel sat rigid in the driver’s seat, her eyes sweeping from mirror to window, from the dash clock back to the slope. Rain had matted the glass into streaked opacity, the kind that let her see only shapes, shifting shadows more than figures. Mark had promised to return within fifteen minutes. When she checked again, twenty-two had passed.

Her phone remained blank, the signal icon a hollow outline. She set it face-down in the cupholder.

The storm muttered against the roof, each strike of thunder rolling down her spine. Somewhere in the woods, an old branch cracked. It should have blended into the noise of weather, but the sound stood out. She gripped the steering wheel, not because she planned to drive anywhere, but because it gave her body something to do besides tremble.

Her mind wandered where she didn’t want it to. She remembered the first time Mark kissed her, at a conference in Milwaukee. They’d both had too much to drink, and she’d told herself she was flattered, surprised by his attention. He’d said his wife, Kara, didn’t love him anymore, that he was just… existing in the house they shared, like roommates, cold and without affection. Rachel had wanted to believe him. She still wanted to. But the guilt had grown legs, and it sat in the car with her now, shifting its weight in the passenger seat where he ought to be.

The announcer’s words echoed again: He hates a liar’s tongue worst of all.

Jus then, a shriek cut through the storm, sharp, human, and too close for comfort. Rachel flinched so hard she smacked her shoulder against the doorframe. Her breath clouded the glass. She waited, counting beats—one, two, three—before another sound followed: a heavy thump, followed by a gurgling wetness, like someone choking on water.

“No,” she whispered, eyes locked on the windshield. “No, no, no.”

She leaned forward, forehead close to the wheel, straining to see through the blur, but could make nothing out. All she could see was rain and branches weaving in the gale. The noises died as quickly as they had begun, swallowed in the constant hiss of the downpour.

Rachel slid down in the seat, clutching her coat tighter across her chest. She closed her eyes, but that made it worse. The sounds replayed, sharper in memory than they had been in life. She pictured Mark slipping and tumbling down an embankment into jagged rocks, and worse things still. She didn’t want to; her imagination obliged her anyway.

Her ears caught another rhythm: a soft sighing noise, as if something brushed along the side of the car. She opened her eyes and snapped upright. The noise came again, steady and measured, like that of fabric being dragged across metal. The hairs on her arms prickled.

She told herself it was branches, that the storm bent them close, scraping them along the fenders. She almost believed it until the sound stopped, perfectly, in sync with her thought, as though it knew she’d noticed.

Her chest grew tight. She turned the ignition key halfway, ready to bring the engine alive if she had to, though she knew the tires were still buried deep. She wanted the sound of the motor, any sound that wasn’t the storm or her pulse.

Then came light. Not lightning—this held, steady and white, pouring down the slope from above, diffusing into the curtain of rain. A voice followed, rough and commanding.

“Miss!” it called. “Step out of the vehicle!”

Her body sagged with relief, the words carrying the comforting air of authority. She unlocked the door with a trembling thumb. “Mark must’ve found someone,” she said under her breath. A trooper, maybe, or the county sheriff. She pushed the door open into the rain, heart rattling but buoyed by hope.

She stepped onto the mud-slick ground, shoes sinking half an inch. The air smelled sharp and iron-laced. The beam of light cut directly across her eyes, forcing her to squint. She raised one arm to shield herself, calling out, “Here! I’m here!”

As her vision adjusted, shapes swam into view. The slope above was dark, but the light carved a cruel circle just to her right.

Within it, dangling upside down from a heavy limb… was Mark.

His jacket sleeves flapped in the wind. His throat had been cut nearly to the spine, his head lolling at a sick angle, blood sluicing down his hair and dripping in fat plops into the mud. The wind rocked his body, swinging him gently against the trunk with dull, repetitive thumps.

Rachel’s scream tore her throat raw, and she staggered back toward the car, hands up as if she could shove the vision away.

But the voice came again, closer this time. “Step away. Come toward the light.”

And Rachel, half-blind with terror, did.

* * * * * * *

The rain pressed down in curtains, driving Rachel sideways across the mud as she tried to keep the light in sight. It seemed to beckon her, washing the trees in pallid silver, flattening their trunks into shadows. Her breath came quick and shallow, every sound amplified in the downpour: the hiss of water striking earth, the sucking noise of her shoes lifting free, the wet slap of her own coat against her thighs.

She couldn’t look at Mark, but her eyes betrayed her anyway. Each sway of his body forced her gaze back. His face was pale as candle wax, his mouth slack, the gash at his throat a dark ribbon. Each gust of wind swung him, bringing with it another thump against the trunk.

She clamped a hand over her mouth to strangle the sobs rising in her chest. He was alive twenty minutes ago. He told me to lock the doors.

The light brightened, pooling wider on the ground, and the voice called again: “This way!”

Something in its tone prickled at her. Official, yes, but practiced—too careful, like a mimic rehearsing lines. Still, she obeyed.

At the edge of the light, she faltered. The beam should have come from a flashlight, angled down, casting sharp shadows. Instead, it poured outward without source, as though the air itself glowed. The rain within it glittered like falling glass shards, and beyond, a figure resolved: tall, with broad shoulders, a calm posture, and an axe balanced casually across one hand.

Rachel froze. For a moment, her mind scrabbled for an explanation—hallucination, trick of light, exhaustion. But no fatigue could invent the detail of his smile, or the way his free hand stroked the axe blade with a lover’s intimacy.

“You’ve been waiting,” he said. His voice was low, but carried easily through the rain.

Her stomach churned. She staggered backward a step, then another, heels slipping in the muck. “Who—who are you?”

The figure tilted his head, as though her question amused him. The glow that wrapped him wasn’t uniform. It pulsed faintly, like embers flaring and cooling, throwing his features into a shifting mask. His eyes gleamed brighter than the rest of him.

“You know me,” he whispered. “They all do. They whisper my name on the radio, in the diners, in the schools where children dare each other to walk the Hollow at night. They know what I do. And you know why.”

Rachel shook her head violently. “No. I don’t. Please—I don’t.”

The smile widened. “The lies on your tongue taste the same as hers did. Sour with betrayal.”

Rachel’s breath hitched. She staggered again and nearly fell. “No. We—we didn’t—”

But she couldn’t finish. Her mind betrayed her with flashes of memory: hotel sheets, his wedding band hidden in a glove box, the hurried lies told to coworkers, the excuses for why she couldn’t stay the night. Every stolen kiss was a flare against her conscience, and in the figure’s gaze she saw that he knew them all.

“I take the unfaithful,” the Hollow Man said, “and I punish them. For what they’ve done. For what she did to me.” His voice grew taut with remembered rage. “You’re not the first. You won’t be the last.”

Rachel backed until her spine struck the cold metal of the car door. Her hand groped blindly for the handle, but she didn’t dare break eye contact. The axe gleamed, something dark dripping steadily down the shaft.

“You’ll join him,” the Hollow Man said, gesturing toward the tree with the blade. “And together, you’ll remind the next to keep their vows.”

Rachel whimpered, her fingers finding the handle at last. She yanked at it, but in her panic had forgotten to unlock the door. The car held fast, cold and unyielding.

The Hollow Man’s smile did not falter. He stepped closer, the glow of his body tightening around him like a halo of fireflies. The axe tilted, caught the light, and Rachel understood that there would be no pleading, no bargain. He was both judge and executioner, and she had already been tried.

She screamed once, high and thin, and the sound scattered into the storm.

* * * * * * *

The Hollow Man advanced with a patience that was worse than sudden violence. He seemed to savor the distance shrinking between them. The rain broke across his form as if it had struck glass, sliding down the contours of his shoulders, gleaming in the etchings of his axe blade.

Rachel flattened against the car, fumbling for the lock. She yanked it up, tore the handle open, and half-fell inside. She threw her weight across the seat, reaching for the passenger door, desperate to slam herself through to the opposite side.

The Hollow Man was there before she could. His glowing bulk eclipsed the window, and when he leaned close, she saw his smile hovering inches from her face, a rictus lit from within. He tapped the glass with one finger, a sound sharp as a pebble flicked against a jar.

“Locks won’t keep me out,” he murmured, the words vibrating in her ears though his lips scarcely moved.

Rachel’s chest hitched, but she forced her voice through trembling teeth. “You don’t have to do this.”

He laughed softly, a sound so cold it curdled the air in her lungs. “I don’t have to. I want to. You carry the same stench she did. Promises spoken, and then broken. Vows cast aside. My blade knows the taste of it.”

He pressed the axe blade against the glass. It should not have cut—tempered safety panes were designed to resist impact—but where the edge touched, spider cracks spread like frost. Rachel shoved herself into the opposite door, slamming her shoulder against it until it groaned open. She stumbled out into the rain, shoes skidding, and bolted for the slope.

The storm blurred her vision, reducing her world to streaks of silver and black. She clawed at tufts of grass, pulling herself upward. Behind her, the sound of shattering glass burst across the Hollow. She didn’t need to look to know he was free of the car, and closer now.

“Run!” he called after her. “They all try!”

Rachel scrabbled at the incline until her knees bled through her jeans, her nails cracked in the mud. She reached the shoulder of the road, panting, and risked a glance back. The Hollow Man stood at the bottom of the slope, his glow muted in the sheets of rain, yet undeniable. He lifted the axe in a slow, deliberate salute.

Her body screamed at her to flee, but she couldn’t stop staring. He did not bother climbing. The weight of his gaze rooted her in place, freezing her with the certainty that he had all the time in the world, and she had none.

Rachel turned and ran. Her shoes slapped the waterlogged asphalt, her lungs tearing at each breath. The night around her felt endless, a tunnel of storm and branches. Lightning fractured the sky, bleaching everything in a stark white flash. For a second, the road stretched empty ahead. A moment later, he was there.

The Hollow Man stood not twenty feet in front of her, axe resting against his shoulder, smile unwavering. Rachel screamed and veered sideways, crashing through a thicket of brush. Branches lashed her arms and face. She plunged into the woods, desperate for anything that would break his line of sight.

The forest swallowed her, but it did not protect. His glow seeped between trunks, a false lantern dogging her steps. She caught glimpses of him at impossible angles—beside her, then ahead, then to her left. He was not chasing; he was shepherding.

Her strength faltered. Mud dragged at her feet, and her soaked clothes weighed her down. When she tripped on a root and crashed to her knees, the world spun around her. She clawed for a branch to steady herself and rose just in time to see him standing a yard away.

“You’ve been very naughty,” the Hollow Man whispered, stroking the blade of the axe with his fingers.

Rachel staggered backward until her spine struck a tree trunk. She tried to form words, apologies, bargains, anything, but nothing but sobs escaped her throat.

The Hollow Man raised the axe. Rachel’s last thought, jagged and fleeting, was that she had known from the first kiss in Milwaukee that it would end like this.

The axe fell.

The Hollow swallowed her scream.

* * * * * * *

The storm slackened toward dawn, the thunder rolling itself into silence as though the night had exhausted even its rage. By the time the first faint light crept over the treetops, the Hollow was calm again. The roadside slope where Rachel and Mark’s car had skidded down was bare. There were no headlights, no tire ruts, no bodies. Only wet grass, dripping branches, and the hush of aftermath.

Beneath the trees, the Hollow Man moved with practiced efficiency. He dragged what was left of Rachel beside her lover, laying them both near the trunk where Mark had been executed. His glow dimmed as he worked, like a lantern guttering low, but it never went out. When the axe was cleaned against the sodden earth, the blade gleamed anew, hungry still.

By midmorning, the Hollow had reset itself. No gore, nor trace of struggle, remained. Travelers would pass by and see only a quiet stretch of country road, forgettable and unmarked. But the soil remembered. The soil always remembered.

A week later, a different pair of headlights cut through the dusk. A pickup rattled down the same curve, its bed loaded with camping gear, its cab holding a couple whose conversation had grown tense. The woman turned her face toward the window, silent, while the man gripped the wheel tighter than necessary, his jaw set. They didn’t notice the storm clouds building, or how the shadows in the pines deepened far quicker than twilight should allow.

As they passed the county marker, a sound drifted on the air—the faint, unmistakable clang of metal on wood, steady and deliberate, as if someone just out of sight were sharpening an axe.

Neither of them spoke. Neither admitted they’d heard it. But it wouldn’t make a difference.

The Hollow had already made up its mind.

The Hollow Man didn’t have to do this. He wanted to.

And he would enjoy every moment of it.