The Vine of St. Iona

My first year away from home was supposed to be a fresh start, a canvas of independence painted with new friendships and late-night laughter. The hostel, an old converted manor house named Ashworth Hall, was nestled in the damp, mossy countryside of the north. Its corridors smelled of polish and old wood, and the radiators clanked like restless spirits. I found a kindred spirit in Elara, a girl from a village so small it wasn’t on any map. She had a quiet intensity about her, and we quickly became inseparable, sharing secrets in the dark of our room after lights out.

One evening, as I helped her choose a dress for her anniversary date with her boyfriend, a boy she’d loved for two years, I noticed the collection of bracelets on her wrist. They were thin, woven cords, dark with age and grime, each knotted with tiny, almost invisible symbols. They seemed out of place against her skin, like a rusted chain on a silver locket. Without thinking, I began to untie them, one by one, chattering about how they’d look better off. Elara was distracted, talking about her date, and only noticed when I had removed the last one. Her face went ashen.

‘Oh no,’ she breathed, her voice a hollow whisper. ‘Those were my prayers, my offerings to Saint Iona. She’s the patron saint of lost things. I’ve worn them since my mother died. They keep me tethered, keep me from slipping away. When they’re gone, I get sick, and sometimes… sometimes I see things.’ I laughed, thinking it was an old superstition, and told her to calm down. But as I handed her the tangle of cords, her fingers closed over them, and a shudder ran through her body.

Later that night, I woke to a strange sound, like wet paper tearing, coming from Elara’s bed. The moonlight cast pale stripes through the dusty blinds, and I saw her sitting upright, her head tilted at an unnatural angle. In the dim light, her skin seemed to shimmer, as if covered in a fine layer of something glossy. She turned her face toward me, and her eyes were not her own—they were milky, like the eyes of a dead fish. ‘She’s listening,’ Elara singsonged, her voice layered with a second, deeper tone. ‘She’s coming back through the floor.’

I tried to scream, but my voice was a dry rattle. Elara began to convulse, her limbs twisting into shapes that made my bones ache to witness. I fumbled for the light switch, but when the room flooded with harsh light, Elara was gone. In her place was a dark, wet thing, partially formed, like a figure made of black mud and rotten leaves. It seemed to be reaching up from the floorboards, melting out of the wood, spreading toward me with a sound like roots pulling through soil. I scrambled backward, my heart hammering, and the creature stopped as if confused. Then it slowly sank back into the floor, leaving a faint, greasy stain that smelled of earth and decay.

I spent the rest of the night in the hallway, huddled against a radiator, watching the crack under our door. When dawn broke, I crept back in. Elara was in bed, pale but normal, the braided cords back on her wrist, woven into a complex knot I hadn’t seen before. She blinked at me, asking why I looked so frightened. I tried to convince myself it was a nightmare, but later, when she took her shower, I noticed the pattern on her inner wrist—a faint, six-petaled flower, like a brand, just starting to fade. She saw me staring and pulled her sleeve down, her face a mask of dread.

After that, things became strange in the old hall. The heating pipes began to weep a dark, viscous liquid, and we found slender white roots pushing up through the cracks in the bathroom tiles. Elara grew quieter, her skin developing a sickly pallor, and she began speaking to someone unseen, her words a brittle, one-sided conversation. One night, she woke me, her eyes wide and desperate. ‘The Vine is in the floor,’ she said. ‘My mother didn’t die, she bloomed. She’s been calling me, and now with the ties cut, she can reach out. You have to burn them, the cords, burn them all, or I’ll be taken.’

I didn’t understand, but I saw the fear in her eyes. We gathered the braided bracelets, and in the iron stove in the common room, we set them alight. The flames burned green, and the air filled with a smell like scorched honey and old blood. As the last cord turned to ash, the whole building shuddered. A crack ran down the wall, and from it, a cascading mass of black tendrils burst forth, whipping through the room with a sound like a thousand hissing serpents. I threw myself behind a sofa, and Elara stood motionless, her arms outstretched, as the tendrils wrapped around her. She didn’t struggle; she seemed to welcome it.

When the tendrils recoiled, they left behind an empty husk, a thing that looked like Elara but hollow, its skin like dried paper. It turned its blank face to me, and from its mouth came the voice of the thing that had taken her: ‘The vine will spread. You will be the root.’ I did not wait to hear more. I ran from the hall, out into the cold countryside, and did not stop until I reached a village road, where an old farmer found me shivering in the ditch.

I am writing this now from a different place, a city far from that accursed manor. But I cannot rid myself of the image of that cracked floor, the tangled black growth spreading through the walls. Sometimes, when I walk on grass, I feel a faint pull in the earth, as if something deep below is sending out its roots, searching for a new anchor. And I wonder if, somewhere, a girl is untying a friend’s bracelets, thinking them mere trinkets, unaware of the sacred bargain they hold. I pray she never cuts the ties, because once broken, they can never truly be mended. The vine remembers. It always finds a way.