The Grain of the Wood

The beginning, for me, was the summer I turned nine. My older brother, Connor, came back from a youth group trip to a dusty mission town called Barrow Creek, carrying a bundle of hand-carved totems. He said they were souvenirs, nothing more—slabs of ironbark etched with spirals and faces that seemed to shift when you weren’t looking. Our mother, ever the collector of oddities, placed them on the mantelpiece like they were trophies. That night, the house began to breathe.

At first, it was subtle. Doors that had been closed would be found ajar, and the grandfather clock in the hall would chime at odd hours, its pendulum swinging when no one had wound it. Then the whispers started—low, sibilant sounds that slipped through the keyholes, like air escaping a punctured lung. My sister, Lena, six years old, began waking with scratches on her arms, thin lines like delicate tree branches. Connor grew pale, claiming he felt eyes on him whenever he walked past the mantel.

The first real attack happened on a Sunday. Lena had been reading her illustrated Bible on the living room floor, a gift from our grandmother. Suddenly, she screamed. I burst in to see her being dragged across the carpet, her ankle twisted in an invisible grip. Her mouth was open, but the voice that came out was not hers—it was a guttural rasp, growling, ‘Never read that filth again.’ Then she was released, scrambling to her feet and fleeing to our mother’s room. Mom, a devout woman, grabbed her own Bible and began reading aloud from Psalms. The moment she spoke, the air turned cold. Every door on the second floor slammed simultaneously, rattling the windowpane. A force—like a giant’s hand—swept me off my feet and hurled me against the wall. I hit the plaster hard, my head ringing. Mom kept reading, her voice trembling, until the house fell silent, but the weight of something hateful remained, coiled in the corners.

We tried to get rid of the totems. Connor threw them into the river, but they floated back to the doorstep, slick and dripping, as if they’d swum upstream. A priest came and blessed the house, but the next morning, the holy water in his flask had turned to mud. The entity, if that’s what it was, followed us. No matter where we moved—to my aunt’s, to a hotel, even across the state—it tagged along. It was with us at every meal, in every dream. I could write volumes on the things I’ve seen: doors that open into wrong rooms, shadows that lean over us at night, the sensation of fingers brushing my neck when I’m alone in the shower.

But the reason I’m writing this now is different. For the past few months, the old activity has returned—the scratches, the slamming, the whispered taunts. Only this time, I’ve been having the same dream every single night. In the dream, I’m standing in the basement of a house I’ve never seen, but I know it’s ours. The floor is packed earth, and the walls are lined with shelves of jars, each containing a knotted piece of wood that pulses like a heartbeat. In the center of the room sits a figure—a man made entirely of bark and root, his face a mask of twisted grain. He doesn’t move, but his voice fills my head, warm and seductive. ‘You are the last carving,’ he says. ‘When I finish, you’ll join me.’ Then I wake, gasping, my sheets soaked in sweat.

Last night, I decided to fight back. I’d read somewhere that certain banishing rituals required a personal object. I crept downstairs in the dark, the floorboards groaning under my weight, and took one of the totems—the one that resembled a coiled serpent. I carried it to my room, my heart racing. I placed it on my nightstand and lit a black candle, the kind you’re not supposed to buy at the supermarket. I began to intone the words I’d found online, words that tasted like ash on my tongue. The candle flame flickered, casting sparks that writhed like insects on the walls. Just as I reached the final phrase, a voice exploded from the wooden figure, not a whisper but a roar: ‘STOP.’ The candle snuffed out. The totem cracked down the middle, splitting into two wilting halves. I stood there, shaking, waiting for something terrible to happen.

Nothing did. No slams, no screams, no invisible hands. The silence was worse. I went to bed, expecting the dream to come—and it did. But this time, the man of wood spoke differently. He tilted his head, and the grain of his face shifted into a smile. ‘You broke the vessel,’ he said, his voice echoing like a wind through dry leaves. ‘But there are others. And they’re all inside you now.’ I tried to wake, but I couldn’t. I could only watch as he raised his hand, and I saw that his fingers were split, each tip ending in a tiny human face—my face, my brother’s, my sister’s, my mother’s. He reached toward me, and his touch was cold, like river stone. I finally jolted awake, screaming.

This morning, I checked the totem. It had crumbled to dust, but in its place on the nightstand was a small carving, fresh and raw, still smelling of sap. It was a miniature figure of a human, its features smooth and indistinct, but I knew with dread that it was meant to be me. I’m writing this as dawn breaks, and I’ve just noticed that the wood in my hands—the paperweight my grandmother gave me—has started to feel warm. I can feel it pulsing, faintly, like a heartbeat. And for the first time, I understand: the entity doesn’t haunt the wood. It creates it. And I’ve just become its next unfinished piece.