The Gardener’s Fingers

My name is Elias, and I’ve always been a light sleeper, a gift from my years as a night watchman at the old Meridian Seed Vault. After I retired, I moved to a small cottage on the edge of a fen, where the mist rolls in like a slow tide and the only neighbors are the herons. The cottage had a neglected garden, overgrown with thistles and brambles, and I took to it with a fervor, digging and planting until my hands were calloused and my back ached. It was during that first spring that the disturbances began.

I would wake in the dead of night with a peculiar sensation, as if someone were pressing a finger to the small of my back, not hard, but with a firm insistence that made my body rock gently forward and back, like a metronome. It was a rhythmic, hypnotic motion that seemed to come from within my own flesh, and I was always half-caught in a dream, aware but powerless. I dismissed it as a muscle spasm or a trick of the mind, but one morning, while toweling off after a shower, I caught my reflection in the bathroom mirror. There, on my lower back, were three pale bruises, arranged in a neat row, like the imprints of a three-fingered hand. They faded by evening, but they returned the next week, and the week after that.

I started to dread the nights. I took to sleeping on my stomach, but the prodding found me anyway, always on my back, as if it knew. I tried sleeping pills, but they only deepened the paralysis. One night, I woke to find my arm hanging over the edge of the bed, and I felt a brush of fur against my fingers. My old cat, Jasper, had died the previous winter, but I still half-expected to see him. I didn’t. Instead, I felt a grip close around my hand, not furry, but strangely smooth and cold, and far too strong. It clamped down so hard that my knuckles popped, and I felt a surge of terror as I tried to pull away, but my body was frozen. The grip held for a long moment, then released, and I snapped awake with a gasp, my hand tingling as if the blood had been cut off.

I examined my hand in the lamplight, but there were no marks, only a faint memory of pressure. I began to notice other things. The garden, which I had tended so carefully, was being disturbed. Plants were uprooted, and deep, narrow holes appeared overnight, as if something had been probing the soil. The fen beyond my fence, with its dark, peaty water, seemed to be alive with whispers, just on the edge of hearing. I dismissed them as wind in the reeds, but they grew louder, forming words I couldn’t quite grasp.

I consulted an old book I’d inherited from my grandmother, a collection of local folklore. There, I found a passage about the ‘Fen Dwellers,’ ancient spirits of the marsh who would ‘seek the warmth of the living’ and ‘mark their territory’ with a gentle rocking and a firm grip. They were said to be gardeners of a sort, tending to the souls of the drowned. The book warned that once they took an interest in you, they would never let go.

Determined to prove the book wrong, I staked out the garden one night. I sat in the dark, wrapped in a blanket, my eyes straining against the gloom. The mist rolled in, and I saw a shape move among the brambles, low to the ground, like a large dog, but with an unnatural gait. It approached the spot where I had planted my prized roses, and I watched in horror as it paused, lifted its head, and looked directly at me. Its eyes were not animal, but dark, empty holes that seemed to drink the light. It raised a hand, and I saw that it had only three fingers, long and pale, and it beckoned me forward.

I fled inside and locked the door, my heart pounding. That night, the prodding was more insistent than ever, and the grip on my hand returned, this time pulling me toward the edge of the bed. I fought with every ounce of strength, but my body was not my own. I was dragged, inch by inch, until I hung half off the mattress, staring at the dark floorboards below.

Then, as suddenly as it began, everything stopped. The pressure vanished, and I was free. I scrambled back, shaking, and did not sleep again. In the morning, I went to the garden, and I found that the disturbed earth had formed a pattern, a spiral leading from the fen to my back door, and at its center, a single, perfect rose, blooming out of season. Its petals were the color of bruises.

I know now that the Fen Dwellers have chosen me. They are patient, and they will keep their grip on my waking hours, just as they do on my sleep. I have tried to leave, but every road out of the fen leads me back to my cottage, as if the land itself has wrapped its roots around my ankles. The proddings are subtle, like a reminder, and the grip on my hand is always there, just below the surface of consciousness, a constant pressure waiting to pull me into the dark peaty depths.

Last night, I woke to find myself standing at the edge of the fen, the cold water lapping at my bare feet. My hand was outstretched, and in the moonlight, I saw the reflection of a three-fingered hand reaching up to meet mine. I pulled back just in time, but I know my resistance is wearing thin. The garden grows wilder each day, and I find myself drawn to it, not with my old passion for tending, but with a strange, fearful obsession.

I write this now, at my kitchen table, the lamp flickering as the mist presses against the windows. The book lies open before me, and I have read the passage a hundred times. It says the Fen Dwellers only take what is theirs, and they have marked me with their touch. I have the bruises on my back, and the memory of their grip on my hand. I have no doubt that soon, they will come for the rest of me, and I will be pulled into the glassy darkness of the fen, to join the gardens they keep below.

If you read this, know that the proddings are not dreams, and the grip is not imagination. And if you ever feel a gentle rocking in the night, and a cold, insistent hand on yours, do not resist. It is already too late. They are the gardeners of the deep, and they are always patient.