The Last Light

 

It started with a flicker.

The old farmhouse on the edge of Hollow Creek had been empty for years—its windows boarded, roof sagging, and wild ivy swallowing the walls like a secret trying to stay buried. When Hannah and Mark bought it, everyone in the town said the same thing: "People don’t stay long at the Hollow Creek house."

But Hannah loved the quiet. Mark wanted a project. So they moved in, ignoring the warnings.

On the first night, the lightbulb in the hallway flickered. Mark changed it, brushing off Hannah’s unease. “Old wiring,” he said. But as the days passed, the flickering returned, spreading through the house like a sickness. Lights dimmed for seconds at a time, casting the rooms into sudden, suffocating darkness before flaring back to life.

Then came the whispering.

Soft at first—so soft Hannah thought it was just the wind curling through the broken chimney. But it grew louder. Always in the dark. Always just after the lights flickered out. The whispers didn’t speak in words, but in a dry rasp, like leaves dragging across a wooden floor.

Hannah started keeping candles. She stopped sleeping. She'd sit up, watching the hallway light, waiting for it to twitch.

Mark didn’t hear the voices. He didn’t see the figure.

The first time Hannah saw it, it stood at the end of the hallway. A man, she thought. Tall, thin. But there were no features on his face—just a pale stretch of skin where eyes, nose, and mouth should be. She screamed, and the light snapped back on. He vanished.

Mark told her she was imagining things. “You’re just stressed,” he said. But Hannah knew what she saw.

She started researching. The house had once belonged to a man named Elias Granger, a reclusive electrician obsessed with "capturing light." He believed light could hold souls, trap them like flies in a jar. After he died in 1953, no one lasted in the house more than a few months.

One night, during a storm, the power went out completely.

The house was pitch black.

Mark was in the basement, checking the fuse box. Hannah lit her last candle and turned toward the hallway. The whispers started again—closer now. And then, the candle went out.

She was swallowed by the dark.

She ran, bumping into walls, arms outstretched, breath ragged. The floorboards creaked behind her—slow, deliberate. Something was following.

Then a dim glow appeared ahead—a single bulb, hanging from the ceiling in the living room. Beneath it stood the figure. Closer now. She could see the stretched, featureless face… but this time, it smiled. Not with a mouth, but with the entire surface of its skin, rippling grotesquely.

The bulb began to flicker.

One last flash.

Then everything went dark.

By morning, Mark was gone. Hannah was gone.

All that remained was the hallway light, swaying gently… still flickering.