It was a quiet night in the small town of Hollowmere, the kind where the wind barely whispered and the stars hid behind a shroud of gray clouds. Elias Crane, a man of thirty-four who lived alone in a creaky old house at the edge of town, went to bed as he always did—exhausted from his shift at the lumber mill, his body heavy with the weight of monotony. He didn’t dream much anymore, not since his wife had left years ago, taking the color from his life. That night, though, something felt off. The air in his room was colder, sharper, like a blade pressed against his skin. He shrugged it off, pulled the quilt tighter, and drifted into an uneasy sleep.
When Elias woke the next morning, the world seemed wrong. The light streaming through his cracked bedroom window was dimmer than usual, as though the sun itself had lost its nerve. He rubbed his eyes and swung his legs over the side of the bed, his bare feet brushing the cold wooden floor. That’s when he noticed it—or rather, didn’t notice it. His shadow was gone.
He stood still, staring at the patch of floor where it should have been. The sunlight slanted across the room, painting long, dark shapes from the chair, the dresser, the crooked lamp—but nothing stretched out from his own body. He waved his hand, stepped side to side, even jumped, but the space beneath him remained empty. His heart thudded in his chest, a dull, sick rhythm. Shadows didn’t just disappear. They were constants, tethered to you like a silent twin. Yet his was nowhere to be found.
Elias tried to shake it off. Maybe it was a trick of the light, or maybe he was still half-asleep. He dressed quickly, avoiding the mirror, and headed into town. The streets of Hollowmere were quiet as always, the few townsfolk shuffling about their business with the same tired expressions. But as Elias walked past the bakery, something caught his eye—a figure leaning against the lamppost across the street. It was a man he didn’t recognize, tall and thin, wrapped in a long, tattered coat that hung off him like shed skin. The man’s face was obscured by a wide-brimmed hat, but what stopped Elias cold was the shadow trailing behind him. It wasn’t the stranger’s shadow. It was his.
Elias knew it instantly—the faint hunch in the shoulders, the way it stretched just a little too long at the edges. It moved with the stranger, mimicking his slight sway, but it was unmistakably Elias’s own silhouette. His breath caught in his throat as the man tipped his hat slightly, revealing a glimpse of pale, hollow eyes that locked onto him for a moment before the figure turned and slipped down an alley.
Elias stumbled after him, his mind racing. The alley was narrow, choked with shadows that seemed to twist and writhe against the brick walls. He called out, his voice cracking, “Hey! Wait!” But the man was gone, leaving only the echo of footsteps and a faint, oily scent in the air—like burnt hair and wet earth. Elias stood there, trembling, staring at the ground where his shadow should have been. It wasn’t just missing—it had been taken.
That night, Elias couldn’t sleep. He sat in his kitchen, a single bulb flickering overhead, casting jagged shadows across the room. Every creak of the house made him jump, every flicker of light sent his eyes darting to the floor. Around midnight, he heard it—a soft tapping at the window. He froze, his coffee mug halfway to his lips. The tapping grew louder, insistent, like fingernails drumming on glass. Against his better judgment, he crept to the window and peered out.
There, in the yard, stood the stranger. The moonlight framed him, his coat billowing slightly in the breeze. And there, sprawled across the grass, was Elias’s shadow—darker now, sharper, as though it had been polished to a cruel edge. The man raised a gloved hand and beckoned, his head tilting in an unnatural way, like a puppet jerked by unseen strings. Elias stumbled back, his heart pounding so hard he thought it might burst. The tapping stopped, but when he looked again, the man was gone. The shadow, though, remained—stretching across the yard, reaching toward the house.
Days passed, and Elias became a ghost of himself. He stopped going to work, stopped answering the phone. The shadow followed him now, not attached to his feet but lurking just out of sight—sliding along walls, pooling in corners, watching him. He could feel it, a cold weight pressing against his mind, whispering things he couldn’t quite hear. And then there was the stranger. Elias saw him everywhere—standing at the edge of the woods, reflected in shop windows, even peering from the attic window of his own house when he came home one evening. Each time, the man wore Elias’s shadow like a trophy, flaunting it.
One night, driven mad by exhaustion and fear, Elias decided to confront him. He grabbed a flashlight and a kitchen knife and marched into the woods where he’d last seen the stranger. The trees loomed overhead, their branches clawing at the sky, and the air grew thick with that same oily stench. He found the man standing in a clearing, his back turned, Elias’s shadow splayed out before him like a rug.
“Who are you?” Elias shouted, his voice trembling. “What do you want?”
The stranger turned slowly, his hat lifting to reveal a face that wasn’t a face at all—just a hollow expanse of skin, smooth and featureless, except for those pale, unblinking eyes. When he spoke, his voice was a low, guttural rasp, like wind scraping through dead leaves. “I’m the Shadow Collector,” he said. “And yours is a fine one.”
Elias lunged, knife raised, but the man didn’t move. The blade passed through him as though he were smoke, and Elias stumbled forward, landing hard on the ground. The Collector loomed over him, his shadow—Elias’s shadow—curling upward like tendrils of ink. “It’s mine now,” the Collector hissed. “But don’t worry. I’ll leave you something in return.”
Before Elias could scream, the shadow surged forward, wrapping around him, seeping into his skin. It wasn’t his anymore—it was something else, something cold and alive and wrong. He clawed at his arms, his face, but it sank deeper, fusing with him. The Collector watched, his eyeless gaze gleaming, then turned and vanished into the trees.
When Elias stumbled back to town, no one recognized him. His face was his own, but something about him had shifted—his movements were jerky, his eyes too wide, too dark. And behind him trailed a shadow that wasn’t his—a twisted, jagged thing that twitched and writhed as though it had a mind of its own. The townsfolk whispered about the man who’d lost himself in the woods, about the thing that followed him now. Elias didn’t speak anymore. He just sat in his house, staring at the walls, feeling the shadow inside him grow heavier each day.
And somewhere, deep in the woods, the Shadow Collector smiled, his collection growing, one stolen piece at a time.