The Roots in the Hollow

My name is Emily, and I’ve lived in the town of Ashford Hollow my entire life. It’s a small, unremarkable place in the Pacific Northwest, where the constant drizzle keeps everything slick and the forest presses close, like it’s waiting for something. We moved into my grandmother’s house when I was twelve, after she passed. It was a tall, aged Victorian on the edge of the woods, and the only thing separating our backyard from the dense fir and cedar was a rotting wooden fence. The house had a peculiar feature: a stone staircase that descended from the back porch into a yard that sloped down to a creek. The yard was overgrown, with a few ancient apple trees and a massive oak that seemed to watch you. I remember my mother saying that the house had a ‘feeling’ to it, and she was right. It was the kind of house where the floorboards creaked in specific patterns, where the air inside was always a few degrees cooler than outside, and where you could hear the creek even on dry nights.

I spent most of my teenage years exploring that backyard, especially after my father left and it became just me, my mother, and the house. The creek ran clear, but the water was always cold, and there was a spot where the bank was undercut, forming a dark hollow that I could crawl into if I wanted to feel hidden. One summer, I found a strange growth of mushrooms at the base of the oak tree, unlike anything I’d seen before. They were pale, almost translucent, and they seemed to pulse with a faint, internal light. I might have ignored them, but I noticed that the grass around them had turned black and withered, as if their presence was a disease. I touched one, and it felt like cold, wet skin.

A few weeks later, I started noticing the roots. At first, it was just in the yard—thick, gnarled roots snaking across the lawn, breaking through the ground in new places. But then I saw them in the house. I’d be sitting in the living room, and a root would be curling out of the baseboard, dark and woody. My mother didn’t notice, or she didn’t want to see. The house began to feel like it was breathing, its foundations expanding and contracting with a slow pulse. I started having nightmares where I was buried alive, and I could feel roots growing through my body, drinking me.

The final thing happened on my eighteenth birthday, in October. I had a small party with a few friends, but they all left by midnight, and I was alone. I went out to the backyard, drawn to the oak tree, and I saw that the mushrooms had multiplied, forming a perfect circle around the trunk. The tree itself seemed to have grown, its branches reaching toward the house, its trunk bulging with a grotesque protrusion that looked vaguely human. As I approached, I heard a low, wet sound, and the ground beneath my feet began to shift. I looked down and saw a root rising from the soil, coiling around my ankle. I tried to pull away, but more roots emerged, threading around my legs, my arms, my waist. They pulled me toward the tree, and I screamed, but the sound was swallowed by the forest. I felt a pressure at my back, and the trunk split open, revealing a dark, wet cavity. The roots shoved me inside, and the bark closed over me like a mouth.

I don’t know how long I was in there. I could feel the roots piercing my skin, weaving through my veins, replacing my blood with sap. I became part of the tree, my consciousness spreading through its branches. I could see the house, and my mother, growing older, never noticing that I was gone. For years, I watched through the leaves, a silent observer. Then, one day, I felt a new presence. A young girl, perhaps ten years old, moved into the house with her parents. She explored the backyard, just as I had, and she found me. She touched the tree, and I could feel her warmth. I knew I had to protect her, but I also knew I was hungry. The tree was starved. So when she stood close, I let a trailing root brush her ankle, coaxing her closer. She hesitated, but curiosity won. As she pressed her ear to the bark, I whispered to her, a dry rustle of leaves, and she smiled. Soon, she too would be part of the tree. And I would have a new voice to whisper the secrets of the forest.