The Cinder Garden

In the autumn of 2004, I was living in a secluded farmhouse on the outskirts of a town called Wetmore, where the only neighbors were a family of deer and the occasional stray dog. My partner, Jenna, and I had moved there to escape the noise of the city, but the silence was a different kind of weight. One night, after a dinner of canned soup and bread, we lay in bed under a heavy quilt, the wind rattling the windowpanes. I was just slipping into that warm, dark place before sleep when three pulses of light flooded the room—so bright they bleached the walls white, then vanished. I blinked, and Jenna was sitting up, staring at me. She later told me my body had gone rigid, then bent backward until my head touched my heels, a contortion that should have cracked bones. I have no memory of that. The next thing I knew, I was on the floor, naked, clawing at my jeans as if they were made of oil. My fingers couldn’t grip the fabric. Jenna had to dress me, pulling the jeans up my legs like I was a doll, and then she grabbed my hand and led me out of the bedroom. I watched us leave—I saw Jenna, her face pale, and a man who looked like me, shambling behind her—but I remained on the bed, a detached observer. Jenna told me she made it halfway down the hallway before she turned and saw the empty space where I should have been. She thought I had ducked into the bathroom. But the bathroom door was ajar, and the light was off. She called my name, and her voice was swallowed by the house’s groans. Then, as if someone had flipped a switch in my brain, I was in the kitchen. I stood by the window, staring at the overgrown garden where the previous tenant had left a patch of dead sunflowers. My hand was on the counter, and I could see the veins in my arm pulsing, but I had no will of my own. Jenna came in, her breathing shallow. ‘What are you doing?’ she asked. I tried to answer, but my mouth moved on its own, forming words that were not mine. ‘We need to tend the garden,’ it said. The voice was mine, but pitched lower, as if filtered through deep water. Jenna’s face went slack. ‘It’s November,’ she whispered. The house seemed to hum, a low vibration rising from the floorboards. I felt my legs begin to walk, carrying me to the back door. Jenna cried out and grabbed my arm, but my body kept moving, dragging her along. We stepped into the cold, the frost biting our bare feet—I didn’t even have socks. The garden was a mess of blackened stalks and upturned soil. My hands reached down and started to dig, the dirt caking under my nails. Jenna begged me to stop, but I couldn’t. I dug a shallow trench, and then something in my mind snapped back. I was aware of my actions, but powerless to cease them. Over the next hour, I planted seeds—dry, wrinkled things that fell from my pockets, though I never remember putting them there. Jenna sat on the porch steps, her arms wrapped around herself, weeping. When I finished, my body straightened, and I turned to her. The world swam, and I found myself standing in the kitchen again, the clock reading 3:00 AM. Jenna was beside me, gripping my hand until her knuckles were white. We didn’t sleep that night. In the morning, I went outside. The garden was covered in frost, but the soil was freshly turned, and small green shoots were already pushing through—out of season, impossible. They grew as I watched, their leaves unfurling with unnerving speed. By noon, they had become tall stalks, and by dusk, they were sunflowers, their heads turning to follow the last light, despite the dying sun. Jenna refused to go near them. She packed a bag and left for her sister’s place, and I never saw her again. I stayed. I couldn’t leave. The sunflowers grew larger each day, their stems thick as wrists, their faces black as coal. At night, I heard them rustling against the windows, as if trying to get in. And sometimes, when the wind died, I could swear I heard a faint whispering from the garden—a voice that sounded like my own, saying, ‘We need to tend the garden.’ I don’t know what I planted that night. I don’t know what’s growing in the Cinder Garden. But I know I will never leave, because it won’t let me. And every autumn, I find myself out there, in the cold, digging and planting, while my hands work without my permission, and the sunflowers sway as if nodding in approval.