The Fern-Choked Patio

The house sat at the end of a winding gravel drive in the pine barrens of southern Mississippi, a low-slung ranch with peeling white paint and a screened porch that sagged like a tired jaw. I moved in early September, fresh from a breakup, and the landlord’s ad had promised ‘secluded, quiet, perfect for a writer.’ It was all of those things—too much so. The nearest neighbor was a half-mile through trees that pressed close, their needles a constant whisper on the roof. I didn’t mind the isolation. I had my dog, a beagle named Biscuit, and a stack of blank notebooks to fill.

The first week, I was too busy hauling boxes and scrubbing decades of grime to notice the strangeness. But by the second week, with the place semi-livable, I started to feel it. A heaviness in the air, like the pressure before a storm. It was strongest on the screened porch, where a jungle of overgrown ferns had taken over the floor, their fronds brushing my ankles as I walked through. The previous owner, I learned from a neighbor, was a botanist who’d gone missing in the late ’80s. The house had been in probate ever since, rented out by a distant nephew who’d never once visited.

One afternoon, with the October sun slanting through the screens, I decided to sit on the porch with my coffee. Biscuit was napping at my feet. The day was warm, but I felt a chill. The ferns rustled, though there was no wind. I set my mug down and scanned the yard—a patch of dying grass, a rusted swing set, a garbage can tipped on its side. Nothing moved. Yet the feeling of being watched was so intense I turned around, half expecting to see someone standing in the doorway to the living room. The doorway was empty, but the darkness beyond seemed to breathe. I grabbed my keys and drove into town, my hands shaking on the wheel.

After that, the keys were my talisman. I slept with them under my pillow. I hung them on a hook by the door, and when I left the house, even for a minute to get the mail, I clutched them. The feeling never fully left. Lights flickered without cause. The floorboards creaked in the hall, always at the same spot, as if someone were pacing. Biscuit refused to go near the porch, whining at the threshold. I began to hear things at night—soft thuds from the crawlspace, the sound of fingernails on the screen. I convinced myself it was raccoons.

One evening, I was up late reading by the fireplace. The house was old and drafty, and the only heat came from a woodstove in the corner. I heard a rustling from the porch, louder than wind. I stood, keys in hand, and pushed open the door to the porch. The ferns were swaying violently, though the air was still. And in the corner, where the porch met the house, I saw a patch of bare earth that hadn’t been there before. It was a dark, wet-looking circle of soil, perfectly round, as if something had been dug up and replaced. My heart hammered. I backed away, locked the door, and didn’t sleep that night.

The next morning, I called the nephew, the landlord. He said the botanist was obsessed with rare plants, had been growing something in the crawlspace. ‘Some kind of root,’ he said. ‘I never knew what. He was paranoid, thought people were stealing it. That’s why he put in all the locks.’ I’d noticed the extra locks on the doors, but I didn’t care. All I wanted was out. I gave my notice and started packing the next day.

That final night, I was in the bedroom, shoving clothes into a duffel. Biscuit was under the bed, growling. I heard the front door open—the unmistakable squeal of the hinges, the thud of it closing. I froze. I had the keys in my back pocket, but they felt useless. Footsteps came down the hall, slow, deliberate. I reached for the bedroom door and slammed it shut, locked it. The footsteps stopped right outside. I could hear breathing, ragged, as if the person were exhausted. Then a whisper, so faint I almost missed it: ‘I need my root.’

The doorknob turned. I yelled, ‘I don’t have your root, you’re not real!’ But the knob kept turning, and the door started to buckle inward. I grabbed Biscuit, climbed out the window, and ran to my car. I didn’t look back. I drove to a motel, and the next day I called a moving company to retrieve my belongings. I never went back for them. I heard later that the house was demolished, the land sold. But I still dream of the porch, the ferns, and that circle of black earth. And sometimes, I wake to find my hand closed around my keys, my heart pounding, as if something were still watching, waiting for me to return.