Free Story Friday: The Hollow Mask
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| Free Story Friday: The Hollow Mask |
A new original tale every week—twisted, terrifying, and inspired by the darkest legends you thought you knew.
The mask was too perfect to be sitting in a thrift store.
Naomi found it tucked between cracked Halloween bowls and faded costumes at Calder's Thrift on Halloween afternoon, resting in a weathered cardboard box tied with black ribbon. The face was porcelain-pale with too-smooth cheeks and delicate features that looked more like fine art than costume-shop plastic. Its mouth hung slightly open, as if caught mid-breath, waiting.
"How much for this?" Naomi asked, holding the box toward Mr. Calder at the register.
The older man's expression shifted when he saw what she was holding. His weathered face went still, and he adjusted his glasses as if hoping the mask would look different through cleaner lenses.
"That came in yesterday," he said slowly. "Donation bin. No paperwork, no name." He reached for the box, flipping it over. A brittle piece of paper, yellowed at the edges, was tucked beneath the ribbon. The writing was done in fountain pen, each letter perfectly formed:
Don't wear it after midnight.
Don't look at your reflection while it's on.
Don't answer if it speaks.
Naomi laughed. "That's commitment to the aesthetic. Someone really went all-in on the creepy factor."
"Maybe." Mr. Calder set the box down carefully, as if it might break. "But I'll tell you something strange. When I sorted through that bin, I found a polaroid." He paused, seeming to debate whether to continue. "Girl about your age at a party, wearing that exact mask. Except... there was no face visible under the porcelain. Just empty space where her features should've been."
"Probably double-exposed or something," Naomi said, but her voice had lost some of its certainty.
"Probably." Mr. Calder rang her up for five dollars. As she turned to leave, he called out: "If the ribbon knots itself, bring it back."
Naomi glanced back, thinking it was a joke, but Mr. Calder's expression was dead serious. She pushed through the door, bell jingling overhead, and told herself she'd just found the perfect centerpiece for tonight's party.
Behind her, a coat rack swayed though the air was still.
Orange string lights cast a warm glow across Naomi's living room as guests filtered in through the front door. Fake cobwebs stretched across corners, and bowls of candy sat on every flat surface. Naomi had spent hours setting everything up, trying to ignore the anxious twist in her stomach. This was supposed to be her fresh start—new school year, new friends, a chance to be someone other than the girl whose parents had divorced last spring while half the school watched the drama unfold online.
June Park arrived first, as always, carrying a tray of homemade cookies shaped like ghosts. Her best friend took one look at the mask sitting on the coffee table and whistled low.
"That's actually incredible," June said, leaning closer. "Where'd you find it?"
"Calder's. Five bucks." Naomi picked up the mask, feeling the cool weight of it in her hands. The porcelain was smooth as river stones. "Came with a warning note and everything. Very extra."
"What kind of warning?"
Naomi showed her the paper. June read it twice, her dark eyes narrowing. "That's weirdly specific. Why would someone write actual rules?"
"Same reason people carve pumpkins and tell ghost stories," Naomi said, though she felt the ribbon's texture under her fingers—silk that seemed too old, too soft. "Because Halloween is for being dramatic."
More guests arrived, and the party found its rhythm. Music played from Naomi's speaker, conversation flowed, and by nine o'clock, Naomi felt herself relaxing into the role of host. But she kept circling back to the mask, drawn to it in ways she couldn't quite articulate.
At ten-thirty, standing in front of the hallway mirror with the mask in her hands, she hesitated. The polaroid flashed through her mind—that empty space where a face should have been. But surely that was just a photography accident. A double exposure, like she'd said.
She tied it on.
The sensation was immediate and strange—like cool hands cupping her cheeks, gentle but insistent. The world through the eye holes looked slightly softer, filtered through something other than glass. When she moved, she felt the mask move with her, settling into place as if it had been waiting for exactly the shape of her face.
She caught her reflection in the hallway mirror and stopped. The mask transformed her—made her elegant, mysterious, untouchable. Not the girl whose parents' screaming matches had become school gossip. Not the girl who ate lunch in the library to avoid pitying looks.
This is who I should be, she thought.
"Whoa," someone said behind her. "That fits you perfectly."
Compliments came in waves after that. You look amazing. Where'd you get it? Can I try it on? Naomi found herself standing straighter, talking louder. The anxious knot in her stomach had dissolved, replaced by something warm and confident. She was someone else tonight—someone who didn't carry the weight of whispers and pitying looks.
At eleven-forty, June's phone buzzed with a text chain about the mask's warning. Someone had screenshot the note and sent it to the group. Don't wear it after midnight 😂
Naomi rolled her eyes. "It's not going to turn me into a pumpkin."
"Still," June said quietly, "maybe take it off before twelve? Just to be safe?"
But midnight came and went while Naomi was mid-conversation, and by the time she glanced at her phone, it was 12:17 AM. The mask felt tighter now, the ribbon cinched against the back of her head. When she reached up to adjust it, the knot sat perfectly in place, as if fingers other than her own had tied it exactly where it needed to be.
"Your voice sounds different," June said, appearing at her elbow.
"What?"
"Just now. When you laughed. There was like... an echo, or something." June frowned. "Maybe I'm just tired."
Naomi tried to laugh it off, but heard it too—a slight doubling in her voice, as if two throats were speaking in near-perfect harmony. The sound made her skin prickle.
Around one AM, she headed to the bathroom, needing a moment alone. The hallway was darker than she remembered, lit only by a single overhead fixture. At the end of the hall hung an old mirror her grandmother had given them, oval-shaped with a tarnished brass frame.
Naomi caught herself moving toward it before she remembered. Don't look at your reflection while it's on.
She stopped three feet away, heart suddenly racing. The prohibition felt more real now, more urgent. But she could see herself at the very edge of the mirror, just a sliver of white porcelain and dark hair.
The mouth in the reflection was wider than it should be.
She jerked her gaze away and hurried into the bathroom, locking the door behind her. Her hands shook as she reached for the ribbon, trying to untie it, but the knot wouldn't budge. It sat flush against her scalp, ribbon ends woven into themselves in ways that shouldn't be possible.
That's when the mask whispered.
"Leave it on."
The voice came from inside the porcelain, intimate as a lover's murmur, warm breath against her skin. Naomi's hands froze on the ribbon.
A knock at the door. "Naomi? You okay in there?"
It was June's voice, worried and familiar. But before Naomi could answer, the mask whispered again, this time in perfect imitation of her own voice: "I'm fine." Then, softer, for only Naomi to hear: "Let me talk."
Naomi's throat locked up. Don't answer if it speaks. The third rule pulsed in her memory like a heartbeat.
"Naomi?" June knocked again, louder now.
"Scissors," Naomi managed to choke out. "Get scissors. Now."
June returned in under a minute with kitchen shears. Naomi unlocked the door, hands trembling as she tried to guide the blades under the ribbon. But the fabric had shifted somehow, worked itself deeper, the knot sitting impossibly close to her skin. Cutting it would mean cutting herself.
"We need to see what we're doing," June said, reaching for the light switch.
In the sudden brightness, Naomi caught her reflection in the mirror above the sink.
The mouth smiled wider than her real one. The eyes were hollowing, something dark and smoky shifting behind the porcelain lenses. And the reflection moved a heartbeat before she did, as if it knew what she was going to do before she did it.
Naomi stumbled backward, hitting the doorframe. "We need to take it back. Now."
The streets were nearly empty at two AM, jack-o'-lanterns guttering on dark porches, their grins collapsing into rot. June drove with both hands tight on the wheel while Naomi sat rigid in the passenger seat, the mask's weight pressing against her face like a second skull.
Mr. Calder's Thrift was dark except for a single light in the back room. June pounded on the door until the old man appeared, unlocking it with shaking hands.
"You kept it past midnight." It wasn't a question. His face had gone pale. "I knew I shouldn't have sold it. That polaroid—the empty space where the face should've been—I knew."
"How do I get it off?" Naomi's voice had that double-tone again, the second voice speaking just behind the first.
Calder ushered them inside and locked the door behind them. His hands shook as he moved behind the register. "I don't know what that thing is. But my grandmother used to tell stories about objects that steal. Not just objects—identities." He pulled out a spool of red thread. "She taught me this. Old charm for breaking bindings. Might work, might not."
He cut a length and tied it over the black ribbon in a series of complicated knots, muttering under his breath. "Keep your eyes closed. Both of you."
Naomi squeezed her eyes shut as Calder held up a compact mirror, angling it to catch her reflection. She heard June's sharp intake of breath.
"What?" Naomi whispered.
"The reflection's moving," June said. "But you're not."
Naomi's eyes flew open. In the compact's small circle, she saw herself—but the reflection was leaning forward, pressing against the glass as if testing its strength. The mouth opened, and words came out that Naomi didn't speak: "Let me wear her."
The red thread snapped with a sound like a gunshot.
"The person the mask fits best," Calder said slowly, stepping back, "is the one who wants a new face."
The words hit Naomi like cold water. I did want that, she realized. She'd wanted to be someone else so badly that she'd given the mask permission without even knowing it. Every moment of confidence, every compliment she'd accepted—she'd been inviting it deeper, letting it settle into place.
"We can still take it off," June said desperately. "There has to be a way."
"I don't think it's on me anymore," Naomi heard herself say. The double-voice was louder now, the second one gaining strength.
Calder moved toward a wall of display mirrors along the back of the shop. "Look."
In the mirrors, Naomi saw herself doubled—one version tired and afraid, still wearing the mask. The other version stood behind her reflection, already bare-faced and smiling, the mask hanging from her fingers by its black ribbons. The reflection looked more real than the girl standing in the shop.
"Deprive it of reflections," Calder muttered, flipping the light switch.
Darkness flooded the shop, but emergency lights kicked on almost immediately, casting everything in sickly green. And in that dim illumination, every mirror in the store blazed back to life.
The Naomi in the mirrors lifted the mask away from her face with a smile of pure relief. The Naomi standing in the shop still felt porcelain pressed against her skin.
June grabbed her hand. "Say something only you would say. Something from before tonight."
Naomi opened her mouth, but the second voice spoke first: "It's already me."
Dawn came slowly to the shop, gray light filtering through dusty windows. June sat with Naomi on the floor behind the register while Mr. Calder made coffee in the back room. The mask was still on, but silent now. Waiting.
"What if we cover all the mirrors?" June asked. "If it needs reflections—"
"Then it'll wait until it finds one." Naomi's voice was mostly her own again, the second voice retreating like a tide. "Car windows. Phone screens. Puddles. It's patient."
June wrapped her arms around her knees. "There has to be something in the rules we missed. Something that shows us how to reverse it."
They read the note again in the growing light. Don't wear it after midnight. Don't look at your reflection while it's on. Don't answer if it speaks. Three rules, all broken.
"It's a contract," Naomi realized. "Every rule I broke was permission. I agreed to let it stay."
"Then un-agree," June said fiercely.
Naomi reached for the ribbon one more time. This time, her fingers found purchase, and the silk slid free with barely any resistance. The mask came away easily, no longer clinging.
She stared at the porcelain face in her hands, its slight smile, its hollow eyes. It looked like nothing more than a costume piece, cheap and harmless in the morning light.
"Is it over?" June whispered.
Naomi carried the mask to the nearest mirror and looked at her reflection. Her own face stared back—tired, pale, but her own. No doubling. No smoke behind her eyes.
"I think so."
But when they walked outside into the parking lot, June pulling out her phone to check messages, Naomi saw herself in the dark screen. The reflection moved a heartbeat too slow, not quite synchronized. And in the window of June's car, her reflection smiled while her real mouth stayed still.
Mr. Calder stood in the shop doorway, watching them go. "Some things you can take off," he said quietly. "But the face underneath isn't always the one you started with."
By evening, the mask was back on display in Calder's Thrift, sitting in its cardboard box with black ribbons neatly tied. And beside it, written in fresh ink on good paper, a new warning in handwriting that looked almost exactly like Naomi's:
Don't wear it after midnight.
Don't look at your reflection while it's on.
Don't answer if it speaks.
And remember: every face is borrowed. Something must wear the one you leave behind.
© 2025 Karen Cody. All rights reserved.
This original story was written exclusively for the Urban Legends, Mystery, and Myth blog.
Do not copy, repost, or reproduce without permission.
This tale may appear in a future special collection.
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