"The Hollowing" - horror

Case Notes from Dr. Elias Kerrigan, Anthropological Studies Department 

I first encountered the phenomenon that would come to be known as "The Hollowing" during my field research in the remote Taiga forests of northern Siberia. It began with a series of whispered stories passed between villages—tales of men and women who returned from the wilderness, their bodies intact but their souls seemingly consumed by an insatiable hunger.

The villagers called them the Bessovoyed, “the empty-eaten.”

Incident Report: Subject #1, Sergei Antonov

Sergei Antonov was a trapper who had gone missing for three weeks. When he reappeared, stumbling into the outskirts of the village, he was emaciated, his skin stretched taut over his bones like brittle parchment. Yet he had been well-fed when he left, carrying provisions enough for months.

When asked where he had been, Sergei muttered only one thing: "It’s always hungry."

The villagers initially thought he had been cursed. Despite the best efforts of local healers and priests, Sergei deteriorated further. His hunger was unrelenting. He consumed food in grotesque quantities, devouring raw meat, stale bread, and even dirt when nothing else was available. His belly swelled grotesquely, but his body remained skeletal, as though the food turned to ash inside him.

He grew violent when food was withheld, snarling like an animal, his voice hoarse from screaming. On the tenth night after his return, Sergei vanished again. His neighbors found his hut torn apart, the door broken inward. A trail of blood led into the forest.

Incident Report: Subject #2, Marta Petrova

Marta Petrova, a midwife, was the second case I witnessed personally. She was found kneeling in the snow near the riverbank, her hands submerged in the freezing water as though she had been searching for something. Her lips were blue, and her teeth chattered, but her fingers were raw and bloodied, her nails torn away.

When we brought her back to the village, she began to speak in a low, keening wail. "It eats. It eats, and it never stops."

Over the next three days, Marta's appetite became monstrous. She consumed entire meals meant for families, eating faster than seemed humanly possible. Like Sergei, her body did not gain weight. Instead, her skin grew sallow, her eyes sunken and glassy. She clawed at her own stomach, crying out, “It’s inside me. It’s eating me too!”

On the fourth night, she attacked a neighbor, tearing into their flesh with her teeth. She consumed a portion of the man’s shoulder before villagers restrained her. The next morning, Marta was gone.

Patterns and Observations

The Bessovoyed share several consistent traits:

Unnatural Hunger: An unending, ravenous appetite for anything consumable—food, soil, even living flesh.

Physical Emaciation: Despite their consumption, they waste away, their bodies unable to retain nourishment.

Violent Behavior: As the hunger grows, their actions become increasingly animalistic and aggressive.

One elder claimed the affliction began long ago with a man named Alexei, a hunter who broke an ancient taboo by taking the life of a starving bear cub. The mother, a spirit of the forest, cursed him: "As you have stolen its last meal, so too will you hunger for eternity."

The Forest Ritual

Desperate to understand the phenomenon, I sought out a reclusive shaman named Vasily. He explained that the Bessovoyed were more than cursed—they were consumed by a force he called the Glyad, the “Hollow God.”

Vasily described the Glyad as an ancient, unseen entity that preyed on the weak and desperate.

“It is not flesh that it eats,” he said, “but the soul, piece by piece, until there is nothing left but the hunger it leaves behind.”

He offered to take me to the forest where the Glyad was strongest.

The Encounter

We ventured deep into the Taiga, where the trees grew so dense that even the midday sun could not penetrate the canopy. The air was heavy with decay, and the snow underfoot was stained a sickly yellow.

At the heart of the forest, we found an unnatural clearing. The ground was barren, the trees surrounding it twisted and blackened as though scorched. In the center was a pit. It was not large, no wider than a man’s outstretched arms, but it exuded an unbearable heat. The air shimmered above it, carrying a faint, acrid smell like burnt meat.

Vasily muttered an incantation under his breath and sprinkled a circle of salt around us.

The ground trembled.

I saw movement at the edge of the clearing—shadows that did not belong to trees. Shapes hunched and skeletal, their forms indistinct but grotesque. They circled us, their hollow eyes glinting with a dull, malevolent light.

“It is them,” Vasily whispered. “The ones who gave in.”

The shadows began to whisper. The sound was unbearable, a thousand rasping voices speaking words I could not understand. My stomach churned, and an unnatural hunger clawed at my insides. I felt a desperate urge to step out of the salt circle, to follow the shadows into the pit.

Vasily grabbed my arm, his grip iron-tight. “Do not listen. It wants you too.”

Aftermath

We fled the forest before nightfall. Vasily refused to speak further of what we had seen, only warning me to never return.

I left the village shortly after, but the hunger followed me. It began as a faint gnawing sensation, easily ignored. Over time, it grew worse. No matter how much I eat, the hunger remains, a hollow ache that nothing satisfies.

I fear I have brought the Glyad with me.

This is my final entry. If anyone reads this, beware the forest. Beware the pit. And above all, beware the hunger. 

It never ends.