The Constant Gardener

My name is Elias Thorne, and I am seventeen. I have seen things that would curdle the blood of grown men, things that have no place in the waking world. I have kept a journal of these events, and this is the first account I will share.

My earliest memory is of the winter I turned six, tucked in my parents’ bed during a fierce blizzard. The power had gone out, and the only light was the dying glow of the embers in the fireplace. I woke to a pressure on my chest, as if a great weight were pressing me into the mattress. I turned my head and saw a figure standing by the window, a silhouette against the snow-glare. It wore a long coat, black as coal, and its face was hidden in the shadow of a wide-brimmed hat. But I could see its eyes—two points of sickly yellow, like the eyes of a dying animal. They were fixed on me with a malevolent hunger. When I blinked, it was gone.

Years later, when I was nine, my family moved to a small apartment in the city. The windows faced a narrow alley where a gnarled old tree grew, its branches scraping the glass like skeletal fingers. One evening, while my parents argued in the kitchen, I crept to the window and pressed my face to the cold pane. There, in the crook of the tree, sat the same figure, but now it was a translucent green, like a photographic negative. Its mouth opened in a silent scream, and then it pulled a thread from its sleeve—a silver line that seemed to go up into the sky—and it vanished, leaving only the rustling leaves.

When I was twelve, we moved again, this time to a rural town where our nearest neighbor was a mile down a dirt road. The house was old, with a cellar that no one dared enter. My older sister, Lena, was nineteen and had a boyfriend named Marcus, a boy with a quick smile and kind eyes. One night, a blizzard struck, and Marcus drove home on the icy roads. He never made it. The car veered off a bridge and plunged into the frozen river. Lena was beside herself with grief, but it was worse for me. Because two nights after the funeral, I saw Marcus standing in my bedroom doorway, water dripping from his hair, his skin a pale blue. He did not speak, but his lips moved as if he were trying to tell me something.

I told my mother, but she dismissed it as a nightmare. Lena, however, began to see him too. She would wake up screaming, saying Marcus was hovering over her, his face pressed close to hers, his eyes pleading. We became prisoners in our own home, afraid of what we might see next. The figure from my childhood returned as well, now appearing in the reflection of the hallway mirror, or standing behind the apple tree in the field.

Then, one night, I decided to confront it. I had read that such entities might be repelled by iron or salt, but I had nothing. I only had my fear. I waited in the dark living room, my heart thudding. At the stroke of midnight, the temperature dropped, and a foul odor of rotting leaves filled the air. The door to the cellar creaked open, and from the darkness below, a voice, ancient and dry, whispered, ‘I am the gardener. I tend to the souls that stray from the path. Yours is not yet ripe, but it will be. When the last leaf falls from the tree, I will come for you.’

I ran to the window and saw the old apple tree in the yard. Every leaf had fallen, except one, which hung stubbornly, blackened and curled. I realized then that this entity had been following my family for generations, feeding on the grief and fear it cultivated within us. And I knew that when that last leaf finally fell, I would be the next fruit it would claim.

I haven’t stopped watching that tree since. And I have started writing this journal, not to document the past, but to warn any who might read it. If you see a figure with yellow eyes, or a green man in the trees, or the ghost of a loved one who died violently, do not run. Do not hide. They have already chosen you. And the gardener will wait until you are ripe.