The Shape of a Missing Thing

My grandmother’s house sat on a plot of land that had been in our family for generations, but the house itself was modern, built by my great-uncle in the seventies. It had all the comforts of home, except for one thing: the root cellar. Unlike the clean, dry basements of the suburbs, this was a damp, stone-lined pit beneath the kitchen, accessible only by a rickety wooden stair. The door was heavy and always seemed to stick, and the single bare bulb at the top of the stairs cast long, dancing shadows that twisted with every draft. From a young age, I harbored a deep, inexplicable dread of that place. I would go down only when absolutely necessary, always with a flashlight even though there was a light, and I would leave as quickly as my legs could carry me, my heart pounding until I was safely back in the bright, cheery kitchen above.

One autumn afternoon, when I was eight, I found a curious object in the woods behind the house. It was a small, smooth stone, about the size of my palm, but it had an odd, almost organic warmth to it, even in the cool air. It seemed to shift in my hand, not in a physical way, but in a way that made me think of a liquid, but it was solid. I was fascinated, and I brought it home, intending to show my mother, but she was busy, so I slipped it into my pocket. That evening, I went down into the root cellar to fetch a jar of preserves for my mother, and I took the stone with me, feeling its comforting warmth in my pocket. As I reached for the jar, I felt the stone pulse, and then, in the blink of an eye, it was gone. I searched the dusty shelves, the floor, my pockets, but it had vanished without a trace. A cold sweat broke out on my forehead, and I scrambled up the stairs, not daring to look back.

For weeks afterward, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was watching me from the root cellar. I would lie in bed at night, staring at the ceiling, and I would hear soft, shuffling sounds coming from below, as if something were moving the jars and boxes around. My mother dismissed it as mice, but I knew better. The air in the house grew heavier, and the light in the kitchen seemed dimmer, as if a permanent shadow had settled over the place. On the night of the first frost, I woke to a sound like a low moan, and I found myself walking, as if in a trance, toward the cellar door. My hand touched the cold metal handle, and a voice, barely a whisper, seemed to seep through the wood: ‘I am what you brought.’ I yanked my hand away and fled back to my room, but the moaning continued until dawn.

I told my older brother, Jamie, about the stone’s disappearance and the strange sounds. He laughed and called me a scaredy-cat, but he agreed to come down with me the next day. We walked down the creaking stairs, the light bulb flickering overhead. The cellar looked the same as always, but there was a faint, sour smell, like rotting vegetables. We looked everywhere for the stone, but found nothing. Just as we were about to leave, Jamie pointed at a corner of the room where there was a small, dark hole in the stone wall, barely visible in the dim light. I had never noticed it before. It was just big enough for a child’s hand to fit inside. Jamie, being brave, stuck his hand in, and instantly his face went pale. He pulled out a handful of something dark and slimy, and he let out a choked scream. That something was a mass of writhing, black tendrils, and for a moment they seemed to form the shape of a hand, reaching for me. Jamie dropped it, and it squirmed back into the hole. We ran up the stairs, leaving the cellar door wide open, and we never went down again.

Months later, I began to notice that the stone would reappear in my room, always in a different place, and always just out of reach. It would be on my pillow, or on my desk, or at the foot of my bed. It would remain there for a day, then vanish again. I tried to tell my parents, but they said my imagination was running wild with the grief of our grandmother’s passing. But I knew it was the stone. It was toying with me. It wanted to be found, but on its own terms.

One night, I woke to find the stone sitting on my nightstand, but this time, it was not a stone at all. It was an apple, perfect and red, with a single bite missing. The bite mark was fresh, and there was a glistening of saliva. I recoiled in horror, realizing that the stone could change, just as the old story said I could bring home something that could change into an apple or something else. But this was not a trick of my imagination. It was real. And as I sat there, frozen, the apple began to rot before my eyes, the flesh blackening and crumbling to dust, leaving only the stone again. But the stone was now somehow different, darker, and I knew it was a warning.

The next day, my mother sent me down to the cellar to get a box of canned goods for the church bazaar. I protested, but she insisted. I took a deep breath and descended, the stairs groaning beneath my weight. I found the box and lifted it, but as I turned, I saw the hole in the wall. From it, a thin, gray mist seeped out, coalescing into a shape that was vaguely humanoid, but with eyes that were deep, black voids. It reached out a wispy arm, and from its palm, the stone appeared, floating in the air. ‘You took me from my home,’ it seemed to say, though its mouth did not move. ‘Now I will take you from yours.’ And then, the mist swirled around me, and I felt a coldness like I had never known. When the mist cleared, I was standing in the cellar, but the stairs were gone. The walls were covered in a strange, phosphorescent moss that cast a sickly green light. The air was still, and I knew I was not in my grandmother’s house anymore. I was somewhere else, somewhere the stone had brought me. And I have been there ever since, forever searching for a way out, but the shape of a missing thing, that stone, is always with me.