Opening Frame

The collector accepts the lantern, its glow reflecting in their eyes. They cradle it gently, then look around the Hollow Circle, voice low and urgent. “I shouldn’t be telling you this, but stories like this one seem to want out. Someone I knew, a teacher, once got tangled up in a loop where looking too closely was the worst mistake you could make. Listen, if you dare.”

Chapter 1: The Farmhouse at the Edge

In the 1990s, when home computers sang their dial-up song and the world was half-hidden behind clunky screens, Ms. Ellis taught literature at the high school in a town where nothing ever changed. She did not believe in ghost stories, though her students whispered plenty – especially about the abandoned farmhouse crouched at the edge of the woods. They said lights flickered there in the dead of night, and sometimes you could hear voices if you pressed your ear to the cellar door.

Ms. Ellis had always watched more closely than most. She noticed a pattern: stray dogs, crows, even the neighbor’s cat, all facing the same direction on certain mornings, their bodies rigid and eyes fixed on the old farmhouse. She mentioned it to a fellow teacher, who shrugged and muttered about “the curse,” but Ellis couldn’t let it go.

One rainy Saturday, curiosity tugged her to the crumbling house. The porch groaned beneath her weight. Inside, the smell of rot and burnt wood pressed close. Wallpaper peeled in ribbons, the floor sticky with dust. In the cellar, she found a box sealed tight, glassy-cold to the touch, humming faintly like a distant engine. Even with her back to it, she could feel it vibrating in her bones.

She brought the box home. It filled her dreams with static and half-heard whispers. She should have left it there, she would later say – but stories, once started, do not end politely.

Chapter 2: The Light in the Tunnel

A week later, Ms. Ellis sat in her kitchen, grading essays beneath the yellow glare of a desk lamp. Her police scanner, a habit from lonelier years, spat out static – and then, clear as day, a dispatcher’s voice: “Light reported in Tunnel 9, out-of-service since ‘78.” The tunnel was near the farmhouse, long since blocked off, with its own pile of grim rumors.

Ms. Ellis left her tea cooling and drove out, guided by memory and the scanner’s voice. The tunnel’s mouth yawned open, black against the fog. She parked, heart thudding, and watched as pale yellow light flickered inside, fluttering like a moth against stone. The tunnel had never had electricity, not in her lifetime.

She stepped closer. The air felt charged, prickling her skin. Footsteps echoed, but she was alone. The light pulsed in time with a faint hum, the same note as the box back in her kitchen. Behind her, a sudden silence pressed down, thick and absolute. When she finally retreated, the light blinked out behind her, and the static followed her home.

That night, she set the sealed box at the edge of her desk. Its hum was louder, almost eager, as if it were waiting for someone to notice.

Chapter 3: Unison

Ms. Ellis returned to the farmhouse by daylight, hoping logic would make things clear. Instead, she found the animals again: a line of crows on the fence, heads all turned to face the front door, not one breaking rank. Even the neighbor’s dog, usually skittish, sat square and still, muzzle pointed at the house. She circled them, but nothing broke their focus.

Inside, the odd symbol—crescent inside a circle—was scratched into the banister. She ran her thumb over it, finding the groove deep and old. The house was colder than before. With each step, dust clung to her skin.

She heard a faint sound, like metal scraping on stone, and followed it to the cellar. The box’s twin – or perhaps its shadow – sat in the corner, but when she blinked, it was gone. Whispers fluttered in the corners of her mind. She forced herself to leave, but as she passed the crows, each one blinked in perfect time, as if marking her for something.

That night, she locked the box away, but the humming grew sharper. On her answering machine, a message played itself: static, then her own voice whispering, “Don’t look.” Her reflection in the dark window grinned when she did not.

Chapter 4: The Interview

Days blurred. Now, Ms. Ellis was sitting in a windowless room, recounting her story to a detective who watched her with the patient disinterest of someone who’d heard too much. His notebook was thick with redacted lines, and every few sentences, he’d pause, pretending to write but really just listening.

“I started seeing that mark, everywhere,” she told him. “Crescent inside the circle. My mailbox, the classroom blackboard, the inside of my eyelids when I tried to sleep.” The detective asked careful questions about the box. She showed him a drawing: a perfect crescent, tucked inside a ring, humming faintly when she stared too long.

She described the animals, the tunnel, the box that grew heavier every time she lifted it. He seemed unimpressed – until she slid a photograph across the table: a group of students, all unknowingly turned to face a window, eyes wide, unblinking.

“Everyone who looks too long gets sick,” she said. “Or stuck.” The detective’s hand trembled, just once, as he closed his notebook.

Chapter 5: The First Loop

Ms. Ellis woke from a fevered sleep to the sound of her own voice, muttering words she didn’t remember saying. The day felt wrong—her plants were wilted, her clock blinking twelve, twelve, twelve. When she left for school, the same neighbor’s dog and the same line of crows waited, facing the farmhouse.

She taught her lessons, but every time she glanced at the clock, only a minute had passed. The students’ faces blurred at the edges. She drove home, saw the tunnel light flicker on, and felt the box’s hum like a second heartbeat.

That night, she tried to throw the box away, but it was back on her desk by morning. Then she realized: she had already lived this day. Every detail—her mismatched socks, the coffee stain on her blouse, even the exact words the principal used in the hall—repeated, perfectly.

With each reset, her headache sharpened. Her nose bled. The world thinned around her, colors leaching out. She kept trying to change something—walk a different way, call a friend—but always she ended up back in the same loop, the box humming, the tunnel light blinking on.

Chapter 6: The Sickness Spreads

The repetition was wearing her down. By the third loop, she was coughing blood, her skin hot and mottled. She tried to keep her students at a distance, but some mirrored her illness. A boy in the second row fainted during class, eyes rolled back, muttering about shadows.

Ms. Ellis begged for help, but the school nurse only found her own pulse racing and a strange, dark crescent behind her left ear. The principal suggested stress leave. The detective called to say he couldn’t find her file – every page had been blacked out, even the date she’d started teaching.

Her hands shook as she dialed the collector—the one who gathered stories. He answered on the first ring, voice slow and somber: “You can’t break the loop by looking at it. That’s how it feeds.” He hung up before she could reply.

That night, Ms. Ellis watched the animals gather again, every living creature pointed toward the farmhouse, their attention locked. She pressed her face to the cold glass window and finally understood the collector’s warning. The more you tried to notice, the tighter the loop wound around you.

Chapter 7: The Collector’s Lesson

In the next loop, Ms. Ellis found herself in the collector’s shop, surrounded by shelves of old books, coins, and things that hummed when the lights flickered. He offered her tea, eyes never quite meeting hers.

“Stories like this feed off attention,” he said, sliding a worn notebook across the counter. “That’s why they stick. You notice, you get sick. You investigate, you loop.”

She told him about the box, the light, the animals. He nodded, then pointed at a corner where dust hung thick in the air. “See that?” he asked. “Don’t look too long, or you’ll see it looking back.”

Ms. Ellis realized every object in his shop faced the same direction: toward a faded symbol on the wall—a crescent inside a circle. She left, dizzy, and found the streets empty except for a stray cat, staring at the farmhouse.

The collector’s notebook, pressed between her hands, vibrated with the same hum as the box. When she tried to read it, the words shifted and blurred, always returning to the phrase: Don’t feed it. Don’t feed it. Don’t feed it.

Chapter 8: The Box Opens

Determined to end the cycle, Ms. Ellis forced herself to open the box. It took hours—the latch was sealed with something that left her fingertips numb and icy. The hum grew louder, filling her ears with waves of static.

Inside, she found a scrap of mirror, cold as ice, and a slip of paper marked with the crescent-in-circle. When she looked into the mirror, her own eyes stared back, but behind her stood row upon row of people, faces blank, all facing toward her, waiting.

The room grew colder. Her breath fogged. She tried to look away, but the mirror pulled her gaze. The paper in her hand began to vibrate, and the box itself shuddered, as if something inside wanted out.

A voice—her own? someone else’s?—whispered from the static: “If you want to break free, you must not see.” She slammed the box shut, but the humming only grew.

That night, every reflective surface in her house showed those blank faces, and the tunnel light flickered in time with her own heartbeat.

Chapter 9: The Confrontation

The next morning, Ms. Ellis staggered to the farmhouse, box under one arm, notebook in the other. The animals were waiting, perfectly still, eyes fixed on the house. The air smelled of iron and burnt candlewax. Each step inside felt heavier.

In the main hall, shadows flickered along the walls. The crescent-in-circle was carved into every doorframe, deeper and deeper until the wood splintered. The poltergeist’s presence pressed on her, invisible but undeniable. Objects rattled and flew. The box’s hum was deafening.

She remembered the collector’s words: Don’t feed it. So she closed her eyes, refusing to look. Instantly, the air stilled. The humming faded. She heard a rush of whispers, like wind through dead grass, and then silence.

But curiosity clawed at her. She peeked, just once, and the world snapped back—animals aligned, the light in the tunnel flickered, and the box was cold and sealed again.

She understood, finally: the story wanted to be seen, to be told, to be noticed. Attention was the fuel; every look, every question, every retelling gave it strength.

Chapter 10: The Fallout

Back in the detective’s office, Ms. Ellis tried to explain, but her words twisted. The detective’s notes were redacted before his eyes, lines vanishing into black. Her own memories of survival slipped and blurred. She could not say how she’d gotten out, only that she was here, marked by a crescent scar behind her ear.

The official reports vanished. The case files dissolved. No one else would remember except those who listened too closely.

Ms. Ellis left the station, feeling lighter but never alone. At home, she found the box locked in a drawer she did not remember closing, the key cold and humming against her palm. She knew now that the loop could begin again, if anyone else looked too long.

The animals still gathered outside the farmhouse, facing a door no one dared open. The tunnel light flickered every night at midnight. Ms. Ellis stopped watching, but sometimes, in the dark, she caught her reflection grinning when she didn’t.

Closing Frame

The storyteller’s voice grows quiet as the lantern’s glow dims. “Some stories,” they murmur, “don’t want to be solved. They want to be seen. And the more you look, the harder it is to look away.” They pass the lantern on, letting the silence linger in the Hollow Circle, as if even the stones hold their breath for what comes next.