The Last Bus Stop on Mulberry Lane

My name is Ellie, and I’ve never been one to believe in premonitions. But when I was nine, I had a dream that our house on Juniper Street was sinking into the earth, and the next morning, the foundation cracked. We moved to a small town called Red Hollow, nestled in the Appalachian foothills, where the autumn leaves never seemed to fall completely, and the air always smelled of damp soil and burnt sugar.

I was the middle child, with an older brother, Jack, and a younger sister, Mia. Jack was wild, always off with his friends, and Mia was clingy, always following me. Our new house was an old Victorian with a wraparound porch and a cellar door that never quite latched. The previous owner had been a botanist who disappeared in the woods, leaving behind a greenhouse full of strange, twisted plants that seemed to watch you.

One October afternoon, when the sky was the color of bruised plums, I was playing in the backyard, skipping stones across the creek that ran behind the property. Jack had promised to teach me to skip stones properly, but he had gone off with his friends, as usual. I remember the exact moment: a cold wind blew, and the leaves on the maple tree shuddered as if a giant hand had grabbed them. A sound—like a low hum, or a far-off engine—filled the air, and I looked up to see a figure at the edge of the woods. It was tall, too tall, with arms that hung past its knees, and it wore a tattered coat that seemed to be made of moss and roots. It didn’t move, just stood there, and I felt a pull in my chest, as if something was calling me.

I dropped my stones and started walking toward it. I didn’t think; I just walked. The humming grew louder, and the world seemed to tilt. I stepped over the creek, my shoes soaked, and then I was in the woods, the trees closing in like a mouth. I could hear my own breathing, raspy and loud, and then nothing else. The next thing I remember, I was lying on my back, staring at the sky, with Jack kneeling beside me, his face pale and streaked with tears. He was shaking me, saying my name over and over. I couldn’t speak. My throat was raw, and my hands were scratched, and I had a memory of roots wrapping around my ankles, pulling me down, but I couldn’t be sure.

From that day on, I had what my family called ‘episodes.’ I would find myself in places with no memory of how I got there—on the roof of the greenhouse, in the middle of the highway, once at the town’s abandoned train station, two miles from home. The episodes always started with that hum, and I would see the figure, always at the edge of my vision, always waiting. Doctors said it was dissociation, a trauma response, but I knew it was something else. The figure was real. I could smell it—like wet bark and old rot—and it was getting closer each time.

When I was thirteen, we moved again, this time to the city, to a high-rise apartment with no windows that opened. For years, the episodes stopped. I convinced myself it was a child’s imagination. I went to college, studied engineering, and buried that part of my past. But then, at twenty-two, I got a job in a remote village in northern Maine, where the winter darkness lasts for months. The town was called Hollow Falls, and the only way in or out was a narrow road that hugged the cliffside. My rental was a cabin at the end of Mulberry Lane, a dead-end street that didn’t appear on any map. The cabin had a single room, a wood stove, and a window that faced the forest.

On my first night, I unpacked, and as I turned off the lamp, I heard it: the hum. It was faint, but unmistakable. I froze, my heart pounding, and I looked out the window. There, at the treeline, was the figure. It was closer than ever, its face now visible—or what passed for a face: a smooth, eyeless expanse, like a bark-covered mask. Its mouth was a thin line, and it was smiling. I stumbled backward, knocking over a chair, and the hum turned into a low, throaty song, a melody I almost recognized from a lullaby my mother used to sing. I clamped my hands over my ears, but it didn’t help. The song was inside my head, and I felt a pull, the same pull from that October day.

I didn’t sleep. I sat in the corner, staring at the door, waiting for it to come. But it didn’t. The next morning, I called my brother, Jack, who was now a park ranger in Colorado. I told him everything, and he went silent for a long time. Then he said, ‘Ellie, I saw it too. That day in the woods. I saw it standing over you, and I screamed, and it looked at me, and then it vanished. I never told anyone. I’ve been having episodes, too. Not as bad, but sometimes I’ll see it in my rearview mirror, or in the trees on a night hike. I think we have to go back.’

So we did. We returned to Red Hollow, to the old house on Juniper Street, which had been abandoned for years. The greenhouse was still there, the glass shattered, the plants overgrown and twisted into impossible shapes. As we stepped inside, the hum began, and the smell of rot was overwhelming. The figure stood in the center of the greenhouse, and this time, it spoke. Its voice was like the sound of loam shifting, and it said, ‘You came back. The roots need the children of the soil.’ And then it reached out, and the vines from the floor wrapped around our legs, pulling us down into the dirt, into the dark, and the last thing I remember is the sound of my own breathing, and my brother’s hand gripping mine, and then nothing.