The Garden of Unfinished Things

I never thought much about my wife’s aunt, Mai. She was just a quiet, weathered woman who lived alone in a small house at the edge of our town, a place that always smelled of damp earth and old incense. She kept to herself, tending a rambling garden that seemed to swallow the property whole. My wife, Linh, and I visited her twice a year, on Tết and for her birthday. Each time, Mai would greet us with a slight nod, serve us bitter tea, and then retreat to her beloved plants. I assumed she was just a solitary old lady, a bit odd but harmless.

It wasn’t until last fall that I learned the truth. Linh and I had just had our first child, a boy we named Ethan. We were exhausted, and Linh suggested we spend a weekend at her aunt’s place to get some fresh air and let family help out. Mai didn’t seem thrilled, but she didn’t refuse. She set us up in the back room, which overlooked the garden. That night, after Ethan had finally fallen asleep, I couldn’t rest. A strange restlessness came over me, and I wandered to the window. The garden was bathed in moonlight, and there, among the overgrown ferns and blooming nightshade, was Mai. She was crouched on the ground, her hands brushing the soil. In front of her lay an old wooden plank, its surface etched with letters and numbers. She was speaking in a low, rhythmic voice, a language I didn’t recognize. I felt a chill crawl up my spine, but I dismissed it as an old woman’s eccentric ritual.

The next morning, I mentioned what I’d seen to Linh. She grew pale and whispered, ‘She’s talking to them again. The quiet ones.’ I asked what she meant, and Linh explained that Mai had always been able to ‘see’ ghosts, and that she used the board to communicate with them. But she added, ‘Ever since Grandpa died, she’s been trying to reach him through the garden. He’s buried there, you know.’ I hadn’t known. The grave was unmarked, just a small patch of darker soil.

Over the next few days, I began to notice things. The garden seemed to change at night. Plants would shift positions, their leaves pointing toward the house as if watching us. And I would hear a faint rustling, like whispers, just beyond the window. One night, I woke to a strange sound—a low, guttural scraping, like something being dragged across the ground. I looked out and saw Mai kneeling at the unmarked grave, her hands digging into the soil. I heard her cry out, her voice cracking with grief and anger. ‘He’s not there! He’s not there!’ she screamed. Then she turned and looked directly at my window. Her eyes were wide, and they seemed to pierce through me. She mouthed something, and I swear it was, ‘He’s in you.’

From that night on, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being watched. I started seeing a man in my peripheral vision—a tall, gaunt figure with hollow eyes, standing just at the edge of the garden. But when I turned, he was gone. My dreams were filled with images of roots growing through my body, of silent screams choked by soil. I told Linh, but she dismissed it as stress and fatigue from caring for the baby. Yet she herself seemed uneasy, and she began keeping Ethan close to her at all times.

The breaking point came on the third night. I woke to find Ethan’s crib empty. Panic seized me. I rushed into the garden and found Mai standing over the unmarked grave, holding my son in her arms. She was speaking in that same rhythmic incantation, and the ground around her was moving, as if something were trying to crawl out. I yelled at her, ‘What are you doing?!’ She turned, and her face was a mask of sorrow and rage. ‘He won’t rest,’ she said. ‘He wants a new body. He says our bloodline owes him.’ I lunged forward, but the ground beneath my feet gave way, swallowing me up to my knees. I felt cold fingers gripping my ankles, pulling me down. I screamed for help, and Linh came running out, her face ashen. She grabbed a garden hoe and struck the ground, yelling in Vietnamese. The grip loosened, and I scrambled free, grabbing Ethan from Mai’s arms. She didn’t resist. She just whispered, ‘He’ll come back. He always does.’

We left that place the next morning, and we haven’t spoken to Mai since. But sometimes, late at night, when Ethan is sleeping, I see him stir. And for just a moment, his eyes open, and they look like the eyes of that gaunt man in the garden. I try to convince myself it’s just a trick of the light. But last week, I found Ethan in his crib, his tiny hands clutching a clump of dark soil, and I swear I heard a faint, rhythmic scraping coming from the floorboards beneath us. It’s not over. It will never be over. The garden of unfinished things is calling, and I fear it may already have a hold on my son.