The Sour Wine of August

In the autumn of 1962, I was sent to stay with my cousin in the small town of Ashfall, a place where the railway tracks still hummed with coal trains before they were torn up for good. My cousin’s family lived in a once-grand house that had seen better decades, its veranda sagging like a tired smile. There were six children, and the eldest daughter, Lena, was the one who drew my eye. She was seventeen, with a pale, drawn face and eyes that seemed to look through you to something beyond. She rarely spoke, and when she did, her voice was a whisper of dry leaves.

On my first evening, my aunt and uncle took me aside and gave me the rules. ‘Do not go near the root cellar behind the kitchen,’ my aunt said, her eyes darting toward the garden. ‘And do not climb the old apple trees, especially the gnarled one at the edge of the property. If you feel a sudden chill, or hear a woman humming, come inside at once. And you must be in the house by 5:45, no later.’ My uncle added, ‘Any sickness you get from those places, no doctor can cure. It’s the old curse from the vineyard that used to be here.’

That night, I lay in a narrow bed, listening to the wind rattle the windows. I couldn’t sleep. A strange restlessness pulled me out of bed around midnight. I crept to the window and saw Lena standing in the yard, barefoot, her thin nightgown fluttering. She was walking toward the root cellar. I watched as she knelt, lifted the wooden hatch, and disappeared below.

I didn’t tell anyone. But the next day, I decided to explore the garden in daylight, when the rules seemed silly. The apple tree was twisted, its bark black and weeping a sticky sap that smelled of vinegar. I touched a low-hanging fruit—it was pale green, not ripe, but it felt waxy, artificial. I pulled one off and bit into it. The juice was bitter and sour, coating my tongue like bile. I spat it out, but the taste lingered.

That evening, I began to feel a heaviness in my limbs, a dull ache in my joints. By the next morning, I had a fever, and my skin prickled with a cold sweat. My aunt took one look at me and sighed. ‘The fever of the laughing vine,’ she said. ‘We’ll have to get the old woman.’ She sent my cousin to fetch a crone who lived beyond the tracks. The crone came that afternoon, a wizened thing with a wild grey mane and fingers stained purple. She carried a clay jar of something viscous. She poured a dark, sweet-smelling liquid onto a cloth and pressed it to my forehead. ‘You ate from the tree,’ she said, not a question. ‘The vine remembers. It takes the sweetness out of you, leaves only sourness.’

I slept for two days. When I woke, the fever was gone, but I felt hollow, as if something inside me had been drained. I was told to stay indoors, but that night, I heard a humming from the garden—a low, feminine tune that curdled my blood. I looked out my window and saw Lena again, standing by the root cellar, her face tilted to the moon. She began to open the hatch, but then she paused and looked up at me. Her eyes were black, not their usual grey. She smiled, a slow, terrible smile, and her lips were stained with a dark red juice.

The next morning, I learned that Lena had been taken ill. Her parents called the doctor, but he could find nothing wrong. She lay in bed, growing thinner, her skin translucent, her eyes sunken. The crone was called again, but she only shook her head. ‘She’s been drinking from the well,’ she muttered. ‘The deep roots have claimed her.’

Days passed. The house grew quiet. The children spoke in hushed tones. One evening, my cousin told me that Lena had been seeing things—a woman in a white dress who moved among the vines, offering her fruit. ‘She says the lady is kind, that the fruit is sweet, but when she eats it, it’s always sour.’

I couldn’t sleep that night. I went to the window and saw Lena, no longer in bed but walking out. She was dressed in a white gown, her hair loose, her feet bare. She moved to the apple tree and plucked a fruit. She bit into it, and I saw her face contort in pain, but she forced herself to swallow. Then she turned and walked to the root cellar. She opened the hatch and descended. I waited, but she didn’t come back.

At dawn, they found her at the bottom of the stairs, her neck broken. There was a smile on her lips, and a half-eaten apple beside her, oozing a dark liquid. The crone came and pronounced that the curse had been fulfilled. The vineyard had taken its due. They buried Lena in the small cemetery at the edge of town, and I left Ashfall the next day.

I still taste that sourness in my mouth, thirty years later. And sometimes, when the wind is just right, I hear that humming, a woman’s voice, calling, and I know that the roots of that tree have not forgotten—they wait for the next child who bites into their fruit.