The Toadstool Visitor

In the sweltering summer of 1974, my mother, Eileen, was twenty years old, staying at her grandmother’s farmhouse in rural Vermont while my father was deployed overseas. The house was old, with a kitchen that opened onto a screened porch, and her bedroom was just off the kitchen. One night, with the window wide open to catch any breeze, she was awakened by a strange sound—a rustling, like dry leaves skittering across the floor. She sat up, listening. The sound came again, closer. She was about to get up and close the window when she saw a small figure crawling through the gap, no bigger than a child’s doll. It was dressed in tattered brown cloth, with a face wrinkled like a dried apple and eyes like black beads. It didn’t seem threatening, and strangely, Eileen felt no fear. The creature crawled to the foot of her bed, hauled itself up onto the mattress, and sat with its legs dangling over the edge. It fidgeted, adjusting its position as if trying to get comfortable. Eileen just stared, her breath shallow. Finally, the creature reached into a pouch at its belt and pulled out a handful of dried mushrooms, which it began to chew slowly, its eyes fixed on her. When it swallowed, it spoke in a voice like gravel crunching underfoot, ‘The toadstool seeds have taken root in your garden.’ Eileen blinked, unsure if she was dreaming. The creature continued, ‘You must pull them all out before the moon is full, or they will bloom into something that cannot be undone.’ It looked at her with an intensity that made her shiver, then hopped off the bed and crawled back out the window, disappearing into the night. Eileen lay there, her heart pounding. The next morning, she checked the garden. There, near the old oak tree, was a ring of pale, glowing mushrooms, perfectly circular, as if planted by hands unseen. She remembered the creature’s words and began to pull them up, one by one. But as she worked, she noticed the mushrooms seemed to squirm, and a faint whisper rose from them, ‘Too late, too late.’ She finished just as the sun set, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that something had been released. That night, she heard the rustling again, and when she looked out the window, she saw dozens of little figures gathering at the edge of the woods, all staring at the house. The toadstool visitor had come to warn her, but she feared she had only delayed the inevitable. The next morning, the mushrooms had regrown, larger and more numerous, and the little figures were gone. But in the garden, she found a single, perfect toadstool, with a cap like a tiny umbrella, and carved into its stem was a single word: ‘Listen.’