The Static Garden

June 13, 2012

by Jannie

The first time I touched the planchette, I was twelve, and the board itself wasn’t from a toy store but from a dusty antique shop in the town of Millbrook, where my family had just moved. The shop smelled of mothballs and old paper, and the owner, a woman with a cataract in one eye, told me it was ‘a genuine piece, child, from the 1920s, with a story of its own.’ I was drawn to it, and my mother, ever indulgent of my morbid interests, bought it for my birthday. That night, in my new bedroom with its peeling wallpaper and a window that looked over a wild, overgrown garden, I set the board on my knees and placed my fingers on the heart-shaped pointer.

I asked if anyone was there. For a long moment, nothing. Then the planchette trembled, as if alive, and slid to ‘YES’. I nearly jumped out of my skin. Then it moved again, spelling out a name: ‘HAROLD’. I asked if Harold was a ghost. The reply: ‘NOT DEAD’. Confused, I asked for more. The planchette glided to ‘D’ then ‘A’ then ‘R’ then ‘E’ and stopped. I felt a chill, but I persisted. Over the following weeks, I spoke with Harold nightly. He told me he was a boy who had lived in this house in the 1930s. He said he was trapped in the garden, in a place where the flowers grew in patterns that spelled out words no one could read. He said he needed my help.

This is where the story takes a turn from innocent to something far worse. Harold began to insist that I go outside at night, into the garden, and touch the soil. He said it would ‘open the gate’. I was scared, but the fascination was stronger. On a night when the moon was hidden by clouds, I crept out in my bare feet. The garden was overgrown with thorny vines and weeds, but in the center, I found a patch of bare earth, perfectly round, as if something had been dug up. I knelt and pressed my palm to the cold ground. Immediately, the static of my mind, that background hum of thought, sharpened into a buzz. I heard a voice, dry as leaves, whispering my name. I yanked my hand away and ran back inside.

The next morning, I examined my palm. There was a pattern of red lines, like the veins of a leaf, but they spelled ‘HAROLD’. I tried to scrub them off, but they wouldn’t fade. That night, I didn’t mean to use the board, but it was on my desk, and as I looked at it, the planchette moved on its own. ‘YOU ARE PART OF THE GARDEN NOW’, it spelled. I realized that Harold wasn’t a ghost; he was something that had taken root in the garden, something that used the board as a lure, and I had watered it with my fear. The garden began to change. The weeds grew thicker, reaching toward the house. The thorny vines tapped on my window at night.

I tried to throw the board away, but it always reappeared. I tried to burn it, but the wood wouldn’t catch. The lines on my palm darkened into cracks, and soil started to gather under my fingernails, no matter how often I cleaned them. The last time I used the board, I asked what it truly was. The planchette flew across the board, spelling: ‘OLD. OLDER THAN YOU. GARDEN IS REAL. YOU ARE THE SEED.’ Then the board split in two, and the planchette crumbled to dust. I looked out at the garden, and for the first time, I saw the shapes in the overgrowth – not flowers, but figures, human-shaped, made of twisted branches and dead leaves, their faces frozen in silent screams. They were all looking at me.

The garden now begins at my bedroom door. I can’t leave the house without walking through it. Every step I take, I feel roots trying to curl around my ankles. I know one night I’ll go out there and not come back. And somewhere in the soil, I’ll join the others, waiting for another curious child to come to the antique shop and buy a board that should have been buried a long time ago.

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