The Compost Keeper

It was the autumn of 2019 when I first laid eyes on the property, a tangled mess of brambles and rusted farm equipment that my mother, newly retired and craving solitude, had fallen for. She called it ‘the sanctuary,’ but to me it was a crumbling memorial to someone else’s failed dreams. The main house, a dilapidated Victorian with a caved-in porch, stood sentinel behind a cluster of three weathered cottages. My mother had taken the one closest to the gravel drive, a squat structure with a crooked chimney. The second, slightly larger, was occupied by the owner’s mother, a frail woman named Elsie. The third, set back near the treeline, had been empty for years, its windows boarded up like eyes sewn shut.

I visited her for the first time in late November, after the leaves had turned to mush and the air carried the bite of coming frost. The place was eerily quiet, save for the creak of bare branches and the distant hum of a generator. The owner, a gruff man named Gregor, lived in the main house and tended to the greenhouses that dotted the eastern edge of the property. He grew herbs, he said, for tinctures and teas, but he was secretive about the exact varieties. My mother, ever the optimist, had already befriended him, and she spoke of him fondly, though she admitted he was ‘a little odd.’

It was during that first visit that I noticed the compost pile. It sat behind the workshop, a steaming mound of vegetable scraps and rotten fruit, but something about it made my stomach turn. The smell was not the earthy rot I expected, but a sweet, cloying odor, like overripe melons left to fester in a closed room. When I mentioned it to my mother, she shrugged and said, ‘Gregor’s got his own way of doing things. He says it’s the best compost in the county. I’ve seen his tomatoes – they’re monstrous.’

By January, I had returned home to the city, but my mother called me with increasing frequency, her voice growing thinner each time. She told me that Elsie had fallen ill, and that Cottage 3 was finally being cleaned out. ‘Gregor says the old man who lived there passed away last year. He’s going to fix it up for a new tenant.’ I didn’t think much of it, but my mother mentioned that the compost pile had grown, that it now reached nearly to the back door of the workshop, and that she’d seen Gregor out there at odd hours, even in the dead of night, with a flashlight and a shovel.

I drove down in early February, after a series of unsettling phone calls where my mother admitted she hadn’t slept well, that she heard scratching at her window, and that sometimes she saw a figure standing among the greenhouses, watching her. When I arrived, the sky was a bruised purple, and the air was thick with a strange, sweet-smelling mist. My mother looked pale, her hands trembling as she poured tea. ‘He’s not what he seems,’ she whispered. ‘I found a book in his workshop. It’s all in some old language, and there are drawings – of people, twisted, with roots growing out of them. And the compost, it’s not just plants.’

That night, I decided to investigate. I crept out of the cottage, the cold biting through my jacket, and made my way to the workshop. The door was unlocked, and inside, the air was heavy with the same sickly sweetness. There was a workbench covered in jars of murky liquid, and in the corner, a stack of notebooks. I opened one, and the pages were filled with a spidery script and diagrams of human anatomy, but stretched and altered, with vines replacing veins. The last entry was dated the previous week: ‘The soil is rich now. The first sprout will come soon.’ I looked up to see a shape outside the window – a tall, gaunt silhouette with a shovel in its hand.

I ran back to the cottage, my heart pounding. My mother was waiting at the door, her face ashen. ‘He knows,’ she said. ‘He always knows.’ We barricaded the door with furniture, but we heard footsteps circling the cottage, crunching on the gravel, then stopping. Then, a thud against the door, followed by a rhythmic scraping, as if someone was dragging something heavy across the ground. The sound went on for hours, until dawn broke and the mist cleared. When we peered out, the compost pile had been moved, and a fresh mound of earth stood in its place. On the doorstop lay a single, perfectly formed tomato – huge, red, and glistening, with a faintly pulsing vein running through its skin. I understood then that the compost was not just for plants, and that my mother was the first sprout. I haven’t slept since.