The Cedar Knot

Evelyn had been harvesting cedar from the ridge behind her workshop for years. The wood was perfect for her handcrafted rocking chairs, and the solitude of the forest was a welcome escape from the noise of the town below. One afternoon, as she pulled her crosscut saw through a thick trunk, she heard something odd—a murmur, like distant conversation. She stopped, and the sound ceased. She laughed it off, thinking it was the wind. But when she resumed sawing, the voices returned, more distinct this time. She paused again. Silence. A third time, she sawed, and the voices came back—a jumble of words, too faint to understand.

Evelyn stood straight, wiping sweat from her brow, and scanned the treeline. There was no one. The nearest house was a mile down the gravel road, and she knew her neighbors were away. She felt a chill despite the warm afternoon. Determined to finish the job, she picked up the saw and started a steady rhythm. The voices grew clearer, as if they were standing right behind her. She heard a woman’s voice, high and desperate, calling ‘Josie, Josie, Josie…’ over and over. Evelyn’s heart pounded. She let go of the saw and the voice vanished.

She tried to ignore it, telling herself it was just an auditory illusion from the repetitive motion. But when she sawed again, the call returned, now mixed with other voices, pleading and panicked. She decided to mimic sawing without touching the blade, and the voices faded to silence. The moment she made actual cuts, they resurfaced. It was as if the sawing itself opened a doorway to something buried in the past.

That evening, Evelyn called her aunt Margaret, who was known for her ‘sensitivity to the other side.’ Margaret listened quietly, then asked, ‘Do you remember the old mill that used to stand by the creek at the bottom of the ridge?’ Evelyn recalled a tumbled-down stone foundation she had always wondered about. Margaret continued, ‘Our great-grandmother once told me a story. In the 1880s, a family named Hartley worked that mill. Their daughter, Josie, disappeared one autumn evening. They searched for days, but she was never found. Some said she fell into the saw pit, but they never recovered a body. They used to say that if you cut wood in that area, you could hear Josie calling for her mother.’

Evelyn felt a knot tighten in her stomach. She asked, ‘Why would I hear it now? I’ve cut there for years.’ Margaret’s voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Maybe because you’re cutting the exact tree that was part of the old mill’s support beam. Someone nailed a horseshoe to it for luck, but they took it down when they dismantled the mill. If you’re sawing through the wood that once held her, you might be releasing the trapped memory.’ Evelyn looked at the tree she had been cutting—it was massive, with a strange scar on its bark that she hadn’t noticed before.

Determined to resolve this, Evelyn returned to the ridge the next day. She brought a small recorder, hoping to capture the voices. She began sawing again, and the voices came, now all converging on Josie’s cry. She felt a sudden urge to follow the sound, to walk toward the creek. She set down the saw, but the voices continued, as if they were all around her. She followed them to the old mill foundation, now overgrown with moss. In a corner, half-buried in dirt, she saw a rusted metal bracelet with an engraving: ‘J.H.’ She picked it up, and the voices stopped abruptly.

That night, Evelyn dreamed of a girl named Josie, running through the woods, chased by a dark figure. She tripped near a rooted stump, and the ground gave way—a hidden pit. In the dream, Josie fell, crying out for her mother. Evelyn woke up drenched in sweat. She realized that the bracelet was a clue. She returned to the pit she remembered in her dream and dug. Beneath layers of soil, she found skeletal remains, small and delicate. She called the authorities, and they confirmed the remains belonged to a young girl. The case was reopened, and it was determined that Josie had died in a mining accident—her father had hidden it, afraid of being blamed.

Once the remains were properly laid to rest, Evelyn went back to her sawing. The voices were gone. She finished her chairs, but she could never forget the sound of that name, echoing through the wood. She decided to leave the remaining cedar trees untouched, letting the forest reclaim its old secrets. And every time she heard a cricket’s chirp or a branch scraping the roof, she would pause, half-expecting to hear Josie’s call again. But it never came. Yet, as she sat on her porch, she looked at the bracelet she had placed in a glass case, and she wondered if time could truly repeat itself, or if the past simply waited, like a knot in the grain, to be cut open again.