The Butcher‘s Meat

In 1983, a pair of twins were born, Clarice and Carrie Cunningham. Born 1 minute apart, they were both 14 when everything changed. It happened in late summer, under a sky stained the colour of rust. Carrie had taken her bike into town, chasing the scent of woodsmoke and apple pie. She never made it back.

The butcher on the edge of Main Street claimed he never saw her. He was a plump middle–aged man with a freckled face “No girl came here,” he said, wiping his bloodied hands on his apron. “Maybe she turned up the road into the woods.”

They found her bike a week later, bent and broken at the edge of Hollows Bridge a long tunnel that leads to the woods. No footprints. No blood. Just the breeze and the silence. Clarice didn’t speak for days. And when she finally did, all she said was, “She’s still here.” No one believed her, no one wanted to.

But then came the sightings. People said they saw something or someone under Hollows Bridge at night. A pale shape. Hair matted and floating as if it’s underwater, even when the creek ran dry. No one got close. Animals refused to go near the place. Children whispered about her during recess, daring each other to go near the bridge.

“She doesn’t blink,” one boy said. “She sings a melody of sorrow for you if you stand there too long,” said another. They called her “The Hollow Girl.” But Clarice knew the truth. It wasn’t a ghost story. It was Carrie.

She would sit by the bridge in the evenings, just out of reach of the shadow underneath. She could feel her sister there, watching. Sometimes Clarice would hum their favorite song, the one they sang while brushing their hair in the mirror. The air would grow colder. Water beneath the bridge would ripple, even when there was no wind.

The town carried on like nothing had happened. The butcher still trimmed meat with his gleaming knives, now sharper than ever. People bought his cuts without a word. They needed to believe everything was fine. But when the streetlights flickered near Hollow Bridge, no one lingered.

At night, Clarice began dreaming of Carrie standing at the foot of her bed soaked, silent, staring. Her lips would move, slow and broken, mouthing the same words over and over: “He’s still out there.”

One day, Clarice woke up to find a trail of muddy footprints leading from her window back to the bridge. No one else saw them. Or maybe no one wanted to.

Because the town had learned to live with the lie. To look away. To pretend the bridge was just a bridge, and not the place where the truth waited in the shadows, whispering for justice.