The Hollow Root

After Marcus left the service, we traded the dry heat of Fort Irwin for the damp grip of his hometown, a place called Pender’s Mill, tucked into a fold of the Appalachian foothills. I’d grown up on the flat, open prairies of Oklahoma, where the sky felt like a lid you could touch. Here, the trees closed in like a green wall, and the air was so thick with moisture that my lungs felt like they were trying to drink. The house we rented was an old farmhouse, two stories, with a wraparound porch that sagged in the middle, and a cellar door that always stuck no matter how hard you pulled. It had been in his family for generations, though Marcus had never lived there as a kid; his parents had moved to Ohio when he was six, and the house had sat empty for years until his uncle passed and left it to him. We moved in with the last of our savings and two cardboard boxes of things that couldn’t be sold, both of us pretending this was a fresh start.

But it wasn’t. Marcus didn’t sleep. He’d lie awake in the bed, staring at the water stain on the ceiling like it was a map he was trying to read, and when he did drift off, he’d wake up gasping, clawing at the sheets, shouting orders that no one could follow. The VA doctor said it was PTSD, gave him pills that made him hollow-eyed and listless, but he refused to take them. ‘They make me feel like a zombie,’ he’d say, and he’d wash down a whiskey instead. We had two kids, from his first marriage—Sam, seven, and Lily, four—and they were the only reason I hadn’t left when the utilities got shut off for the second time. I worked double shifts at the diner in town, and on weekends I waitressed at a banquet hall up the mountain, and still the bills piled up like dead leaves. Marcus drank. He’d start with a beer at ten in the morning, and by evening he’d be on the porch with a bottle of bourbon, staring into the woods as if he was waiting for someone to come out.

We fought. God, we fought. It was always about money, about his drinking, about the fact that he’d promise to take Sam fishing and then pass out before lunch. The arguments would escalate, his voice getting lower and lower until it was just a growl, and mine getting higher and shriller until I sounded like a siren. And it was during those fights that the first strange thing happened. Marcus took a step back from me, his hands up in a gesture of surrender, and he stumbled. He didn’t trip over the rug or a toy; there was nothing there. He just went down, hard, catching his shoulder on the edge of the coffee table. He cursed, got up, and then it happened again a minute later, this time he fell forward, as if someone had shoved him from behind. I stood there, my heart pounding, and I saw his face go pale. He looked at the floor, at his feet, and he said, ‘Something tripped me.’ We both laughed, nervously, and brushed it off, but that was only the beginning.

It escalated. Marcus would be walking through the living room, and a picture frame would leap off the shelf, hurling itself at the wall. The kitchen cabinets would bang open in the middle of the night, even when there was no draft. I’d be standing at the sink, washing dishes, and I’d feel a cold breath on the back of my neck, like when a door opens behind you. I turned around, and no one was there. But the worst was when it started affecting the kids. Sam woke up screaming one night, saying there was a man in his room, a man with no face. He pointed to the corner, and I saw nothing, but the hair on my arms stood up. Lily refused to go down to the basement, and when I asked why, she said, ‘There’s a lady down there. She’s crying.’

I started to believe that the house was haunted, but it was different from the stories I knew. It wasn’t a ghost that wanted revenge or restless spirits looking for peace. It seemed to feed on our anger. The more Marcus and I fought, the worse the manifestations became. One evening, after a particularly brutal argument—he’d stolen the rent money to buy a case of Schnapps—I went to the cellar to get a jar of canned tomatoes. The door gave way too easily, and I felt a push from behind. I tumbled down the wooden stairs, landing in a heap on the dirt floor. Above me, the door slammed shut, plunging me into blackness. I screamed for Marcus, but he didn’t come. I heard a woman’s voice, soft and cold, like the whisper of leaves in winter, right next to my ear. ‘Leave him,’ it said. ‘He’s mine.’ I scrambled up, fumbled with my phone light, and saw the root of an old oak tree that had been growing through the wall of the basement. It was twisted and knotted, and it looked almost human.

I spent that night on the couch, too frightened to sleep. The next morning, I confronted Marcus about the voice, and he laughed at me. He said I was losing it, that I was as crazy as he was. Then he poured himself a drink and went out to the porch. I watched him from the window. He was talking to someone, but there was no one there. He was having a one-sided conversation, his shoulders hunched, his head bobbing like he was listening to a reply. I grabbed the kids, put them in the car, and drove to a motel. I didn’t know where else to go.

We stayed at the motel for three days, and during that time, Marcus called my phone constantly, leaving messages that were alternately pleading and furious. ‘You can’t leave me,’ he’d say. ‘You’re all I have.’ But I refused to pick up. On the third night, I had a dream. In the dream, I was back at the farmhouse, but it was night, and the moon was full. I was walking through the woods behind the property, following a trail of torn clothes and beer cans to a clearing. In the center of the clearing was the old oak tree, the one whose root had invaded the basement. But in the dream, the tree had no leaves; it was blackened and dead, and its limbs were twisted into shapes that looked like arms reaching up to the sky. At the base of the tree, there was a hole, and inside the hole, I could see a figure lying curled up like a child. I woke up gasping, a scream caught in my throat. I knew that figure. It was Marcus, but he wasn’t asleep. His eyes were open, staring at nothing, and his lips were moving, whispering, ‘Leave him. He’s mine.’

In the morning, I drove back to the farmhouse. I had to see if Marcus was okay. The car was still in the driveway, but the house was eerily silent. I called his name, but there was no answer. I walked through the rooms—the kitchen, the living room, the upstairs bedrooms—and everything was spotless, as if someone had cleaned and put everything in its place. The bottles were gone. The ashtrays were emptied. The bed was made. In the bedroom, I found a note on the pillow. It was written in Marcus’s handwriting, but the words were neat and careful, unlike his usual scrawl. ‘I’m sorry for everything. I’m going where I belong. Don’t come looking for me.’

I ran to the cellar, the dread like a stone in my stomach. The door swung open as if it had been waiting. I descended the stairs, my flashlight shaking. The root that had been growing through the wall was gone, replaced by a smooth, clean break, as if it had been cut. But at the center of the cellar, where the root had twisted out of the earth, there was a hole in the ground. A perfect circle, about two feet wide, and it went down into darkness. I knelt beside it, and I heard a sound from below, like a man singing softly, a lullaby that I didn’t know. I leaned closer, and I saw at the bottom a glint of metal—Marcus’s dog tags, lying in the dirt. And I thought I saw a movement, a pale shape stirring. I jumped back, my heart hammering. I didn’t call down to him. I didn’t try to rescue him. I just got up, ran from the house, and drove to the sheriff’s office.

They searched for a week, but they never found him. They dredged the creek, they searched the woods, they even brought in a team with dogs, but there was no sign of him. The hole in the cellar was found, but it was just a shallow depression, nothing more. They marked the case as ‘missing person,’ and I left Pender’s Mill with my kids. I tried to start a new life, away from the mountains, away from the damp and the dark and the memories. But the Hollow Root, as I came to call it, that thing in the earth, it lingered. Sometimes, when I’m tucking Lily into bed, I’ll see her staring at a corner of the room, and I know she’s not looking at nothing. And at night, when everything is quiet, I think I can hear a faint, sweet singing, rising up from somewhere deep, and it calls Marcus’s name. I tell myself it’s the wind through the pines, or the water in the radiator. But I know the truth. I know that I married a man who was already claimed by something old and hungry, and that I brought him back to where it lived. And I know that, one day, that singing will find me too, and I’ll feel the earth pull at my feet, and I’ll have no choice but to follow.