The Last Sunflower

It had been three weeks since Miriam had called me, her voice tight with a hope that felt like a fragile glass ornament. She said the disturbances in her farmhouse had softened to a murmur, like a radio dialed just below the station. She had taken to leaving a worn leather Bible open on the kitchen table, next to a jar of dried lavender, and she recited Psalm 91 each morning as she walked the perimeter of the property, her fingertips brushing the peeling paint. Her daughter, Elowen, had started sleeping through the night again, and the house, that old creaking beast, seemed to hold its breath.

I wanted to believe her. I had visited that house once, on a gray October afternoon, and I left with the feeling that the walls were listening. Not to us, but to something beneath the floorboards. Something patient. So when Miriam’s voice came through the phone, lighter than I’d heard in months, I let myself exhale. She chattered about Elowen’s new sunflower painting taped to the fridge, about the apple tree finally bearing fruit, about how the only strangeness left was the occasional clatter of a spoon on the counter or the scent of cut grass in the dead of winter. Innocuous. Almost charming.

But then, last Tuesday, she called again. Her voice was different, scraped raw. She said the Bible had been found in the chicken coop, its pages torn out and arranged in a spiral on the dirt floor. She laughed a little, a brittle sound, and said, ‘It’s probably just the wind.’ I didn’t laugh. The chicken coop was locked. She said Elowen had been drawing sunflowers on every scrap of paper she could find, covering her bedroom walls, the kitchen table, even the windows. ‘She says they keep the worms away,’ Miriam whispered. ‘What worms, I asked her. She just pointed at the floor.’

The line crackled, and I heard Elowen in the background, singing a nursery rhyme I didn’t recognize. The melody was simple, but the words were wrong. Instead of ‘Mary had a little lamb,’ she sang, ‘Underneath the floorboards, the roots go down. They find the bones and wear the crown.’ Miriam said, ‘It’s from a book I read her. Old fairy tales.’ But I could hear her breath quicken. She told me that Elowen had started leaving her shoes in a neat row by the back door every night, even though she never went outside. ‘She says the lady with the soil mouth likes to wear them to walk the fields.’ Miriam tried to laugh again, but it came out as a sob. ‘I’m sorry. I’m just tired. The wind has been howling for days.’

I offered to come stay. Miriam hesitated, then said, ‘Maybe that’s not a good idea. The house… it doesn’t like visitors. It told me.’ I asked her what she meant. She said, ‘Yesterday, I found a message scratched into the dust on the kitchen table. It said, ‘One soul is enough.’ I couldn’t tell if it was meant for me or for you. Please, don’t come. I think I need to finish this.’ Her voice had gone quiet, like she was already far away.

I didn’t go. I told myself it was her choice, that she was exhausted, that the wind was just wind. But tonight, I can’t sleep. I keep thinking about the last time I saw the farmhouse, how the sunflowers along the fence had all turned to face the house, not the sun. And I keep hearing Elowen’s song on a loop in my head, the words twisting: ‘Underneath the floorboards, the roots go down. They find the bones and wear the crown.’ I just called Miriam again. The phone rang and rang, and then a voice answered. It wasn’t Miriam. It wasn’t Elowen. It was a low, crumbly sound, like wet earth shifting. It said, ‘The roots are thirsty. But the sunflowers are keeping watch.’ Then the line went dead.

I’m writing this now, but I don’t know what to do. I’m not the hero of this story. I’m just the one who listened. And this winter, the sunflowers are still blooming along the fence, their heads heavy with something that isn’t seeds. When the wind blows, they rustle like dry bones. And sometimes, if you stand close enough, you can hear them whisper a name that isn’t mine.