The Night the Flowers Sang

Six months ago, I inherited my great-aunt Elspeth’s cottage, nestled at the edge of the Blackwater Fen. The place was a relic, with crooked beams and a thatched roof that sagged like a tired spine. It smelled of damp earth and dried lavender. Elspeth had died alone, and her family had shunned the property, claiming it was cursed. I thought they were just superstitious. After settling in, I found the house wasn’t just old—it was steeped in a quiet, lingering presence. The attic held rusted birdcages and a gramophone with a cracked horn, while the pantry shelves were lined with jars of murky green liquid and dried roots. The garden was a wild tangle of night-blooming flowers—jasmine, moonflowers, and some I couldn’t name, their petals dark as bruises.

One night, about a month in, I lay in bed, the only sound the groan of timbers above. My parents were in the living room, watching a muted film. Then I heard it—a snatch of song, soft and high, like a lullaby sung by a child. It lasted two seconds, maybe three, and then vanished. I sat up, heart pounding. I told myself it was wind through the eaves, or the old house settling. But the tune lingered, familiar yet alien, as if it came from a distant world.

The next night, I heard it again, longer. This time, I followed it. It led me to the garden, where the flowers swayed despite the still air. Their petals were wet, though there had been no rain. I noticed a cluster of flowers I hadn’t seen before, their blossoms a deep crimson, shaped like trumpets. They seemed to pulse with a soft, internal light. I touched one, and it felt warm, almost skin-like. I recoiled, a sudden chill crawling up my spine.

Over the following weeks, the song grew more persistent. It was always the same melody, but the words varied—sometimes in a language I didn’t recognize, sometimes in English, but always about a lady lost in the water. I began to sleep in the living room, but the song found me there too. My parents heard nothing. They thought I was stressed from the move. But I knew what I was hearing.

I started investigating Elspeth’s past. I found old diaries in the attic, hidden under a loose floorboard. She wrote of a ‘gift’ that ran in the family, a way to speak with the dead through the flowers. She spoke of a bargain she made to bring back her late husband, only it went wrong. She wrote of a voice that sang to her, a voice that was not her husband, but something older, hungrier. The final entry, dated days before her death, read: ‘The flowers know. They are the gates. I have opened the wrong one.’

The night I read that, the song was louder, almost desperate. I went to the garden once more, drawn despite my fear. The crimson flowers were bloated, hemorrhaging a dark, viscous liquid that seeped into the soil. The song pealed from their open throats, and I saw something in their depths—a face, pressing against the petals from within, as if trying to escape. It was mine. I fell back, trembling.

I tried to destroy the flowers, but they grew back overnight, thicker than before. I tried to leave, but every road out of the fen looped back, and my car died within a mile of the cottage. My parents became distant, their eyes vacant, as if they were listening to something just out of my hearing.

Last night, the song reached its crescendo. I stood at the garden’s edge, watching the flowers bloom into monstrous shapes, their petals parting like lips. From their centers, I heard my mother’s voice, calling me closer. She was inside one of them, her face serene, her arms outstretched. She sang the lullaby, the one I heard as a child, but now it was wrong, twisted. I felt my feet move, compelled, my hands reaching out to touch the wet petals.

As my fingers grazed the surface, the flower closed around me, and I was pulled into a warm, suffocating darkness. When I opened my eyes, I was in a vast cavern, surrounded by roots and soil, and the song was all around me, pure and beautiful. I looked down and saw my body, translucent, floating. Ahead, a faint light. I heard Elspeth’s voice, soft and sorrowful: ‘You’re home now, dear. We’ve been waiting.’

Now, I wait with her, my spirit trapped in the bloom, watching the garden from within. Every night, the flowers sing, a choir of the dead, and I sing with them, hoping someone will come, someone who can break the cycle. But each day, the song grows stronger, and my hope fades. The flowers are eternal, and so are we.