The Peg Mound

My grandfather, Elias, had a peculiar ritual: every evening, after folding the day’s laundry, he would gather the wooden clothespins and arrange them into a neat pyramid on the foot of the bed. The pyramid was always perfect, each peg overlapping the last with a precision that made it seem almost ceremonial. I remember as a child, I once knocked it over by accident, and he didn’t speak to me for a week. It was only after his death that I understood why.

Elias passed at the age of 82, after a long illness that left him bedridden and silent in his final months. The family was devastated, of course, but I was particularly shaken. I had grown up in his house, listening to his stories of the old country and watching him work his hands raw in the garden. When he died, I was 16, and the silence in our home felt like a physical weight.

His wake was held at my aunt’s place, because our house was too small and too steeped in memory. On the night of the wake, we all gathered around the casket, paying our respects, but I couldn’t stay for long. The air was thick with grief and incense, and the sight of his still face was more than I could bear. So I slipped out the back door and walked the three blocks to our old house. I don’t know why I went there; I just felt drawn.

The house was dark, as expected. The lights were off, the doors locked, but I had a key hidden under the loose brick by the back steps. I let myself in and stood in the kitchen, letting the familiar smells wash over me—dust, old wood, and a faint trace of his tobacco. I wandered to the bedroom, the one where he had spent his last days. The bed was stripped bare, the mattress bare. And there, on the nightstand, was a small pile of clothespins.

That was odd. We had cleared the house of all his belongings, or so I thought. But there they were, four wooden pegs, arranged in a small cross. I picked one up. It felt warm, almost alive. As I held it, I heard a faint whisper, like the rustle of laundry in a breeze. I dropped it and backed away.

I decided to sleep in my old room, thinking maybe I was just tired and emotional. But as I lay there in the dark, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I wasn’t alone. I heard soft footsteps in the hallway, the creak of the floorboards I knew so well. I called out, ‘Elias?’ but there was no answer. Then I heard the sound of clothespins clicking together, like the ones he used to snap as he hung the wash.

I got up and followed the sound to the hubroom, the one with the laundry chute. The door was slightly ajar. I pushed it open. Inside, the room was filled with clothespins. They were everywhere—on the floor, on the shelves, spilling out of the laundry basket. And in the center of the room, on the floor, was a perfect pyramid of them, standing about a foot high. As I watched, the pyramid began to grow. More pegs crawled out of the shadows, rising from the floorboards like sprouting seeds, and stacked themselves on the structure.

I tried to move, but my feet were rooted to the spot. The pyramid grew taller, reaching my waist, my chest. The clothespins were not just clicking now; they were humming, a low vibration that I felt in my bones. I finally managed to step back, but as I did, the pyramid toppled. The pegs scattered, and in their place lay a single, human finger. It was old, wrinkled, with a gold ring I recognized as my grandfather’s.

I screamed and ran out of the house, not stopping until I reached my aunt’s. But when I burst through the door, the wake was in chaos. The casket was overturned, the body gone. And on the floor where the casket had been, there was a perfect pyramid of clothespins. The family stood frozen, staring. My mother looked at me with wild eyes and whispered, ‘He’s back.’

But I knew it wasn’t him. It was the pegs. They had been collecting him all along, piece by piece, in every mound he ever made. And now they had taken him entire. I turned and ran again, but this time, I felt a click at my neck. I looked down. A clothespin had attached itself to my collar. Then another on my sleeve. They were crawling up my body, hundreds of them, drawn to me like iron filings to a magnet. I tried to brush them off, but they bit into my skin, pinching me all over.

I stumbled outside, and the night was full of them. The streets, the trees, the fences—all covered in clothespins, all moving toward me. I fell to my knees as they swarmed over me, and the last thing I saw was a pair of weathered hands reaching out from the swarm—Grandfather’s hands. He smiled, and his mouth was full of pegs.

I woke up the next morning in my own bed, my body covered in tiny red marks, just like the pinch of a clothespin. No one believed me. They thought I had a seizure at the wake and hallucinated. But I know the truth. And now, every time I see a clothespin, I feel them watching. They are patient. They collect. And when they have enough, they will make a mound of me too.