The Harvest of Hollow Hills

The story belongs to my grandmother, but she told it so often that I feel I was there. It happened in the autumn of 1937, in the town of Ash Hollow, nestled in the dusty folds of the Oklahoma panhandle. My grandmother, then a girl of sixteen, was named after her own grandmother, a woman of fierce prairie stock who had carved a life from the red earth. That grandmother, my great-great-grandmother, had fallen ill with a gnawing pain in her side. The local doctor, a man with shaky hands and a tired heart, called it ‘a growth.’ He gave her laudanum and advised rest. There was no talk of cutting it out, not in those days, not for a woman of her age.

Every afternoon, after the school bus rattled away, my grandmother would hurry down the two miles of gravel road to the small farmhouse where her grandmother lay in the front bedroom, the one with the window facing the endless wheat fields. The old woman had been moved there because it was cooler in the summer, and the light was softer. My grandmother would sit by the bed, smoothing the worn quilt, holding a glass of buttermilk to her grandmother’s cracked lips, and reading aloud from the tattered Bible or the farm almanac. The old woman would often drift in and out of sleep, muttering about ‘the whisper of the wheat’ and ‘the ones that walk the furrows.’ My grandmother thought it was the laudanum dreams.

As the weeks passed, the growth swelled, distorting the old woman’s belly like a secret pregnancy. The pain became a constant companion, and the laudanum did little. My grandmother would watch the rise and fall of that swollen mound, feeling a strange mix of pity and horror. One evening, as the sun bled orange and red across the fields, the old woman gripped my grandmother’s wrist with surprising strength and hissed, ‘They’re coming, child. When I’m gone, they’ll come for you. Don’t let them take the root.’ My grandmother did not understand, but she nodded, and her grandmother sank back, exhausted.

Three nights later, the old woman died. My grandmother was not there; she had been sent home for supper. When she returned with her mother, the body was already being washed and dressed in a plain cotton gown. The funeral was a small affair, neighbors bringing casseroles and hushed condolences. They buried her on a hill overlooking the fields, and my grandmother wept until her eyes were raw.

But the farmhouse was too quiet after the funeral. The bedroom seemed to hold a lingering chill, and the air smelled faintly of dust and decay. My grandmother’s parents insisted she take the room again, as it was the largest. The first few nights, she slept fitfully, dreaming of fields that stretched to the horizon, and of her grandmother’s voice calling her name from somewhere deep in the wheat. On the third morning, she woke to a sight that would haunt her for the rest of her life. In the gray half-light of dawn, she saw her grandmother floating above the foot of the bed, not shrouded in white, but wearing the same faded calico dress she had worn in life. The figure was translucent, a shimmering shape, but its eyes were not the milky eyes of the corpse. They were bright, fierce, and they fixed on my grandmother with an urgency that made her heart stutter. Before she could scream, the figure raised a finger to its lips, then pointed towards the window, towards the fields. Then it was gone, leaving a faint scent of lavender and dry earth.

My grandmother did not tell anyone, thinking she had imagined it. But the next night, she woke again to the same ghostly visitation. This time, the figure was closer, and it seemed to be mouthing something. My grandmother strained to hear, but there was only a sound like the rustling of dry corn in the wind. The figure pointed again, more insistently, then vanished. The following day, my grandmother forced herself to walk out into the wheat fields, which were now tall and golden, ready for harvest. The wind moved through them in waves, and she thought she heard a faint whispering, a sound that might have been tiny voices. She knelt down, and saw that the roots of the wheat were tangled with something dark, like black threads. She dug her fingers into the soil and pulled. A root came up, thick and gnarled, and it was shaped vaguely like a child, its limbs twisted, its head bowed. It was not a root. It was a mandrake, a plant that her grandmother had once told her about, a plant that screams when pulled, and that can drive a person mad.

My grandmother recoiled, but the whispers grew louder, more insistent. They seemed to be coming from all around, from the soil itself. She remembered her grandmother’s words: ‘They’ll come for you. Don’t let them take the root.’ This root was still in the ground, but it was the source of the whispers. She realized that her grandmother had been trying to warn her, to tell her to pull the root before the others, the ones that walked the furrows, could take it. That night, she dreamed of her grandmother again, but this time the ghost pointed to the field and then mimed digging and pulling. When she woke, she knew what she had to do.

The next morning, she took a shovel and went to the spot where she had seen the root. The whispers swelled like a rising storm. She plunged the shovel into the earth and began to dig. The root was deep, and the soil was hard, but she dug with a desperate strength. As she dug, the whispers became sharp, like the cries of angry insects. When she finally exposed the root, she saw that it was covered in tiny, writhing, worm-like creatures, pale and blind. She grabbed it with both hands and pulled, but it resisted, as if anchored to the center of the earth. The whispers became screams, pain and fury. She pulled harder, and the root came free with a sound like tearing flesh. For a moment, she held it in her hands, and it was warm and pulsing. Then it crumbled to dust, and the whispers died.

She stood there, breathing hard, the dust settling over her hands like grey pollen. When she looked back at the farmhouse, she saw her grandmother’s ghost standing at the window, and it smiled at her, a tender, relieved smile, before dissolving into the morning light. My grandmother never told anyone about the root, but she kept a small piece of it, wrapped in a cloth, hidden at the bottom of her jewelry box. She carried it with her through the years, through marriage and motherhood, and she told this story to my mother, who told it to me, always ending with the warning: ‘Never dig too deep into the soil, for there are things that grow there which should stay buried.’ And I have always believed her, for I have seen the mark on her hands, faint but visible, a pattern like tiny roots, and I have heard, in the wind across the fields, a whisper that is not quite the wind.