The Grove of Hanging Moss

I’ve lived in the shadow of Harlow’s Mill all my life, but it wasn’t until my sixteenth summer that the place truly seeped into my bones. Our farmhouse is a drafty old thing, perched on a hill overlooking a valley that’s always seemed too quiet, as if the land itself is holding its breath. My room is on the ground floor, a converted parlor with windows that rattle when the wind picks up. That spring, my father had finally finished converting the attic into a proper bedroom, and I moved up there, leaving the ground floor to the dust and the spiders.

But my dogs—a wiry terrier named Pip, a fluffy mutt named Biscuit, and a wise old shepherd mix named Brutus—refused to follow. They would scratch at my new attic door, whining to be let down, and when I relented, they’d scramble down the stairs and crowd into my old room, huddling in the corner farthest from the window that faced the grove. The grove: a tangle of oaks and birches draped in hanging moss that swayed even when the air was still. I’d always felt a prickle when I passed it, but I told myself it was just the way the branches creaked.

Then, three nights after I’d moved upstairs, I woke to a sound I’d never heard from Brutus before. It was a low, rumbling growl, vibrating up from his chest, growing in pitch and fury until it was almost a bark. I padded down the stairs to find all three dogs pressed against the wall, their eyes fixed on the empty left side of my old bed. The mattress was bare, the sheets stripped, but Brutus’s growls were directed at the empty space as if something were sitting there. His lips peeled back, his hackles raised, and his growls became so guttural that I feared his throat would tear.

I tried to calm him, to coax him away, but he wouldn’t budge. Pip and Biscuit whimpered and buried their noses under a quilt, but Brutus stood his ground, his growl never ceasing. The next night, I tried sleeping in the old room to see if it would stop, but the moment I lay down, Brutus positioned himself beside the bed, his growl starting even before I turned off the lamp. By the third night, I was exhausted, but I noticed a pattern: the growling always began at exactly 2:33 AM, and it was always directed at that left side of the bed, where no one ever slept.

I decided to move my mattress to the floor on the opposite side, just to see if the behavior followed. It didn’t. Brutus stayed rooted to the spot, growling at the empty bed frame. So I moved the bed itself, shoving it against the opposite wall. But the moment I set it down in its new position, Brutus trotted over and resumed his vigil, growling at the same ghostly spot that now hovered in the middle of the room, as if the bed’s location had nothing to do with it. It was then I realized: the presence wasn’t attached to the bed; it was attached to a specific point in the room—and that point was exactly over the spot where a loose floorboard had been creaking for weeks.

I pried up the board, expecting to find nothing but dust and bones of a former pet. Instead, I found a small, tarnished locket, its chain snapped. Inside was a faded photograph of a girl with braids, a name scratched on the tin back: ‘ELSPETH.’ I also found a brittle piece of paper, folded into a tiny square, with a date and the words: ‘Forgive me, she sleeps.’ The next night, Brutus was silent. He slept at the foot of my bed, his tail thumping lazily. But I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking of the grove, and the moss that hung like a curtain, and the way the branches seemed to reach toward the house.

In the morning, I walked to the grove for the first time. The moss was thick and damp, and I pushed through it to a small clearing where a fallen tree lay, its roots exposed like clutching fingers. There, I found a grave marker—a simple wooden cross, nearly rotten—carved with ‘Elspeth Harlow, 1887–1904.’ Beneath it, a hollow in the soil held a child’s shoe. I knelt, and as I touched the little leather shoe, I heard the growl again, but this time it wasn’t from Brutus. It came from the ground itself, and it resonated in my chest, growing more guttural, more violent, until it seemed to rise up and wrap around the grove, shaking the moss and rattling the branches. I stumbled back, and for a moment, I saw a shadow in the shape of a girl standing beside the grave, staring not at me, but at the house, at the window of my old room.

I never slept in that room again. I boarded up the floorboard and sealed the locket in a box, but Brutus never again slept anywhere but in the attic, pressed against my side, his ears alert to the slightest sound. Yet some nights, when the wind is just right, I hear a growl from the direction of the grove, and I swear the moss on the trees hangs a little lower, a little closer to the ground, as if it’s waiting for something to return. And I wonder if Elspeth was the one in the bed that night, and if the growling was Brutus warning me not to take her place.