The Sunken Orchard

The house sat at the edge of the Frostmire Fen, its gray shingles peeling like sunburned skin. My parents had bought it cheap from a widow who’d moved south, and they spent two summers hammering it back together. I was three, maybe four, when my sister was still a squalling lump in the nursery, and I had the upstairs room with the sloping ceiling and a window that faced the orchard. The orchard had been dead for years. The trees stood in rows like crooked teeth, their branches bare and black, and the ground between them was a patchwork of mud and frost that never quite thawed, not even in July.

I remember the first time I saw the boy. He was standing at the edge of the orchard, just beyond the fence, wearing a yellow raincoat that seemed too bright for such a gray place. I pressed my nose to the cold glass, watching him. He didn’t move. He just stood there, staring at the house. I waved. He didn’t wave back. I called for my mother, but she was in the kitchen, singing along to the radio, and by the time she came up, he was gone.

After that, I saw him often. Always the same spot, always the same stillness. My parents said it was probably a neighbor’s kid, but we had no neighbors for miles. Sometimes he was closer, standing among the dead trees, his yellow coat a smear of mustard against the gray. Once, I saw him right below my window, looking up. His face was pale, and his eyes were dark, like holes punched in paper. I didn’t like that, so I pulled the curtain shut. When I peeked again, he was gone.

The dreams started a week later. In the dream, I was walking through the orchard, my bare feet sinking into the cold mud. The trees were heavy with fruit—apples, but wrong. They were the color of bruises, and when I touched one, it burst, and black juice ran down my arm. The boy was there, standing under a tree, and he said, ‘You shouldn’t have come.’ His voice was thin, like wind through a cracked window. Then the ground split, and I fell into a pit full of roots and old bones. I woke up screaming, but my mother said it was just a nightmare.

I started to see him in the house too. A glimpse of yellow around a corner, a shadow that didn’t quite match the light. I told my mother, and she said I had an active imagination. She gave me a nightlight, but it didn’t help. The boy didn’t like the light. He would stand in the corner of my room, just beyond the glow, watching me. I started sleeping with the covers over my head, my heart pounding.

One afternoon, I was in the orchard, because my mother had set me loose while she hung laundry. I was picking at the bark of a dead tree, peeling it off in strips, when I saw the boy standing at the edge of the trees. He beckoned with one pale finger. I remembered my parents’ warnings about strangers, but he was just a boy, and I was curious. I walked toward him, my feet sinking into the mud. When I got close, he turned and walked deeper into the orchard. I followed.

The trees pressed closer, their branches snagging at my hair. The light faded until it was like dusk, though it was only midafternoon. The boy stopped at a tree that was different from the others. It was living, but its leaves were the color of old blood, and its trunk was split open, a dark hollow inside. He pointed at the hollow. I leaned in, and I heard a sound—like a heartbeat, but slow and heavy, like something huge stirring underground. The boy said, ‘She’s hungry.’ Then he pushed me.

I fell into the hollow, tumbling into darkness. I landed on something soft and warm, and the air was thick with the smell of rot and wet earth. The opening above was a pale disc of light, and the boy’s face appeared, blocking it. He was smiling. I screamed, but no sound came out. The walls of the hollow seemed to pulse, closing in on me. I clawed at the sides, my fingers slipping on something slick. Then I felt hands—cold, many hands—grabbing my ankles, pulling me down.

I woke up in my bed, soaked in sweat, my mother shaking me. She said I’d been screaming for an hour. I tried to tell her about the boy, about the hollow, but she hushed me. ‘It’s just a dream, darling. You’re safe.’ But I knew it wasn’t. I looked at my hands, and under my fingernails there was black dirt.

After that, I refused to go near the orchard. My parents thought it was a phase. But the boy kept appearing. He would stand at the edge of the property, always watching. The dreams got worse. In them, I was underground, in a dark place full of roots, and the boy was there, sitting across from me. ‘You’re one of us now,’ he said. ‘You’ll stay forever.’ I would wake up crying, and my mother would hold me until I stopped shaking.

My sister was born a month later. My parents brought her home in a yellow blanket, and I hated her instantly. Not because she was a baby, but because I knew the boy would want her too. I was right. That night, I woke to find her crib empty. I ran to the window, and there was the boy, holding her in his arms, standing at the edge of the orchard. He looked up at me and smiled. Then he turned and walked into the trees, and the darkness swallowed them both.

I screamed for my parents. They found the crib empty, the window open. They ran outside, calling her name, but there was no answer. The police came, and they searched the fen and the orchard, but they found nothing. My mother never smiled again. We moved away the next month.

I’m in my twenties now, and I still see the boy sometimes. He appears in crowds, a flash of yellow. He waits at the end of my street, always watching. Last week, I went back to the house. It was abandoned, the windows boarded, the orchard worse than before. The trees had grown twisted, their branches forming a canopy that blocked the sun. I stood at the edge, and I felt it again—the pull, the hunger. The boy stepped out from behind a tree. He was older now, but still the same. He pointed at the ground, and I saw a patch of earth moving, as if something was beneath it. Then he said, ‘She’s still hungry.’ And I knew he wasn’t talking about the tree.

I ran. I drove all night, but I can’t escape it. The dreams are back, worse than ever. I hear her voice in my head, a low moaning from beneath the earth. And now, tonight, I woke up to find myself standing in my kitchen, holding a carving knife, my feet bare and cold. The back door was open. The yard was dark. And at the edge of the property, there was a small figure in a yellow raincoat, waiting for me.

I don’t know how much longer I can resist. The orchard is calling. The boy is waiting. And I’m afraid that soon, I’ll answer.