It was only Mother and me in the house back then. I never realized how big our house was until it was empty. I suppose it’s not completely accurate to say the house was empty when there were still two people living there — father would have corrected me on that. But there was an empty bed in my room, and there was only Mother in the master bedroom upstairs. And so the house was half full, but it was only full of us, and we were empty.

I made my bed every morning before I went to school, even though I knew was unnecessary; Mother would just remake it during the day. How long she had been doing this, I was uncertain. She always tucked in the corners until it was uncomfortable, but I didn’t notice the difference until I came home to find the green blanket on my bed. The blue blanket, usually mine, had moved over to cover the empty bed, which was also perfectly made. This occurred after roughly a month of living in an empty house together and, at the time, I assumed it was an innocent mistake. She was grieving, after all. I said nothing then, nor a month later when the blankets returned to their original places.

It was not long, though, before the swapping began happening more often. There would be a week of blue, a few days of green, blue, green, blue, green… until it was my daily routine to come home and find my bed immaculately prepared with the opposite color blanket. The sheets too, I am certain, alternated with this frequency, though they were plain white and provided no evidence as such. I cannot explain the feeling but, somehow, I knew she was trying to get me to sleep in both beds. Months passed and I made no protest against her behavior except, perhaps, by refusing to chase my preferred color. I always slept in my original bed, and I always left it perfectly tidy in the morning.

While Mother’s bed-making habit concerned me, it was entirely consistent with her treatment of the rest of the house. She was increasingly devoting her time to restoring, maintaining, and (to her eye) improving the woodwork in our home. Carpentry was something she had shown no interest in previously but which, she explained, had been her grandfather’s craft. “It is in our blood,” she said. Whether she intended this statement to be a joke, I did not know. To me it seemed a grotesque turn of phrase, meant to remind me of a most unpleasant experience: the day I saw a ghost.

It was, as I recall, shortly after my blankets started moving around. There was a Saturday morning when I was awoken before sunrise by an alarm I had set for a fishing trip we had planned long in advance which now, of course, could not come to pass. Thoughts of lost plans frustrated me; a lost voice echoed through my dismally quiet room, preventing me from falling back asleep. So I abandoned sleep and adorned myself with the clothes and boots I would have worn on that trip. Not wanting to wake Mother (lest I remind her of another painful absence) I crept from my room, across creaking floorboards in the hall, through the French doors in the dining room, and out onto the garden patio. I hoped that watching the sunrise beside the small pond in our backyard might put my mind at rest. Instead, what I witnessed that day brought me only confusion and dread.

There was very little light so close to morning. The stars were hidden by the approaching dawn and morning fog. To get to the pond I had to walk between rows of raised garden beds. These were homemade things (a project left unfinished by my father) simply constructed from planks of wood, six feet long and three feet wide. They were empty, I knew, save for a first layer of fertilizer that had been poured but never sown. Thus I was taken aback when I spotted a solitary plant, some kind of leafy green, sprouting in the last bed. Moreover its texture was illusive in the near darkness with only the hint of a rising glow from the east. I stopped my prowling and bent down to feel the leaves, which were much too voluminous for a freshly planted specimen. My confusion grew when I felt the softness of the leaf — so delicate and silken — until I realized the substance was, in fact, silk.

I scolded myself for imagining foolish things in the dark, yet wondered how Mother’s green scarf had been left here during the night. On extracting it from the bed, I found lengths of it were half-buried in patches of densely-packed soil. There appeared to be a large depression in the soft dirt. A handful of earthworms came up with the cloth; it occurred to me I could use them for bait or feed them to the koi in our pond. Instead I returned them to the garden bed, devoid of plants once again, and continued walking with only the scarf in hand.

I must have been quite distracted by my investigation, for when I looked up the light of dawn illuminated the garden around me. Bright white mists rose up before my eyes, obscuring my path even worse than the darkness had. I started crossing the lawn that separated the garden from the pond, but with no path to guide me I quickly became disoriented. In a hurry to find a landmark, I made my way forward, navigating towards the source of the glare, trying to glimpse the morning sun to the east. It was then I realized the futility of my original plan: how could I possibly enjoy the sunrise through all of this fog? Still walking forward, I glanced over my shoulder at where I thought the house should be, and ran right into a ghost.

I cried out in surprise as my body made contact with a wispy figure that crumpled under the force of our collision. As I tried to find my balance I heard a splash (I had found my way to the pond after all) and then a scream that split my ears. The apparition had collapsed in the water at my feet. In an instant, my fright turned to pity and shame as I recognized the frail creature: it was Mother! She struggled to get her footing in the muddy old pond until I overcame my shock and managed to get a hold of her hand.

Together we pulled ourselves back onto the lawn, shivering and confused. I apologized profusely and wrapped the green scarf around her shoulders. As I did so, I noticed her hair was caked with dry dirt, not the wet mud from the pond. I thought of the garden bed, but said nothing of it. Instead, I explained that I had woken up early to watch the sunrise, and I guessed that she had done the same.

Mother made no response, gave no explanation, and asked no questions. Her expression was placid; only a faint smile let me know she was well enough to walk. Arm in arm, we began our journey back to the house. Rays of morning sunshine finally cut through the mist which was dissipating, as if to clear a path for us. By the time we reached the patio door Mother’s gown was almost completely dry, though she was still cold to the touch. In the light I could see her olive skin bore a sickly green hue. She still had said nothing, but before entering the house she stopped and turned to face the east. Eyes closed, she took a deep breath, basking in the warmth. Then she opened her eyes like she had just awoke from a refreshing slumber.

“My dear, it’s much too early for you to be awake, isn’t it?” she asked as if she had just noticed me for the first time. “It’s hours before you need to be at school.”

“Today is Saturday, Mother. But yes, it is quite early — for both of us.” I cleared my throat, but she appeared oblivious to my inquisition. “We… I was supposed to go fishing today.”

“Oh yes, that’s right. Well, maybe some other time.”

This last comment only added to my confusion and concern for her mental state. But she placed a comforting hand on my shoulder before turning and walking into the house.

I followed her with a cautious eye. There was a spring in her step as she crossed the dining room, and I was glad to see her energy restored. She rounded a corner, slipping into darkness. The dawn had not yet illuminated the other side of the house, and I lost sight of her briefly. I entered the foyer and, once my eyes adjusted, saw her mounting the master staircase, but she moved slowly now. Her shoulders hunched, she moved with great difficulty, relying on the railing for support. For a moment I just watched as Mother painstakingly climbed a single step, her arms clutching that railing. With both feet planted on the next rise, she slid her arms across the old wood. Then she stopped, cried out, and reeled back, nearly falling down the stairs. I rushed forward to help and saw her clutching her left wrist in pain. Getting closer, I saw a drop of blood spill down her arm, staining her white gown.

The source of the wound was a hideous splinter, stuck deep into a vein, protruding from her skin. Looking at her injury made my stomach turn, yet Mother was transfixed by it. After her initial surprise a deep calm came over her. She stared at the piece of wood, made no attempt to remove it, then wrapped her scarf tightly around her wrist. With a deep, relaxed sigh she turned and walked up the stairs without issue, as if her strength had returned as suddenly as it had disappeared.

“Will you be alright?” I called to her.

“Maybe some other time,” she said quietly. It didn’t sound like a reply, just a statement to no one. But with that she rounded the corner, her dirty white gown drooping behind her.

 

It was just a few days after this incident that the carpentry began. I came home one afternoon to find Mother dressed in overalls, hair tied back, sanding down that very bannister. Flakes of ancient varnish filled the air, resisting the pull of the industrial vacuum cleaner that had taken residence in the middle of the foyer. Mother had gone out and acquired the tools and materials needed to refinish the entire staircase. A job which, apparently, she was going to do all by herself.

I draped sheets of canvas over doors to separate the rest of the house from the mess. Mother said she would take care of the upstairs. I never saw her do so. She did not complain as her clothes and hair became inundated with sawdust, though she did develop a retching cough after stripping the white paint from the walls. After exposing the natural grain of the staircase she moved on to giving the same treatment to every other surface she encountered. With great determination she ground down and swept away paints, varnishes, lacquers — any and all artificial preservatives. One set of glass cabinets she just tore down, threw out, and replaced with simple shelves made from planks of leftover lumber.

At first I was glad to see Mother working again, even if it was an odd choice of project. But as her efforts expanded throughout the house I was left with almost no space that was not a subject of her obsession. Even the staircase was never finished. After polishing it with natural oils she decided it was too plain, so she began carving a floral design that meanders down the bannister, around the uprights, and even across the risers of the stairs themselves. Her work was beautiful and expansive, but gradual, like an actual plant trying to grow through the woodwork.

The growth did not stop with the staircase. The design appeared on the walls, decorated doors, and stretched down hallways. In one of the few conversations I had with my mother in those months I insisted that my room was off limits. You can make the rest of the house your workshop, I told her, but you must let me have my space. She nodded, letting a shower of dust rain down from her hair, then turned and continued to etch the image of a vine creeping up the frame of my bedroom door. I shut the door on her and returned to my studies, trying to ignore the sound of the dremel echoing through the walls.

I record all of this here to try and explain why my relationship with my mother deteriorated over the past year. Was it my responsibility to diagnose her condition? To somehow understand her grief better than I understood my own? I believed I was doing the best that could be expected of a person my age: internalizing my emotions, devoting myself to my studies, and allowing Mother to go through her own process. I could not have imagined the dark end to which this process led; my mind is simply incapable of such a feat. Thus I have attempted to describe events exactly as I experienced them, without hypothesizing about the root cause. I leave it to the reader to uncover the reason behind her bizarre behavior, if any exists. And so I put to you to reconcile the account of my final night in that empty house.

 

For some time my loneliness had expressed itself as a deep feeling of exhaustion. Often I would fall into bed the moment after closing my textbooks, neglecting to undress, and sleep dreamlessly until my alarm screamed at me in the morning. However, on the night in question I found myself lying in bed, eyes closed but fully awake at an increasingly late hour. My mind raced, dwelling on the details of the biology lesson I had been reviewing earlier. Somehow, though, I knew this was a just a convenient distraction that kept me from examining some deeper anxiety. It helped me ignore the creaks and groans of the big empty house.

The lights in my room were off, I knew, yet I could swear a white light was shining on me, trying to creep into my eyes. Finally, I gave up. I opened my eyes and discovered the light was not my imagination; it was moonlight streaming in through an open window. I rolled over, sat up, and marveled at how the silver light filled the room with unexpected brightness. It occurred to me that I would have to close the curtains if I was to get any sleep, but as I walked towards them my eyes fell upon the empty bed.

Mother had made the beds that day, as always, and it happened that the blankets were in their rightful places that night. This meant I had been wrapped in blue, and the bed on the other side of the room was covered in green. But what an enchanting shade of green! Directly under the window, the cloth seemed to ripple in the moonlight like dew-streaked leaves. I approached and ran my hands across the surface. The feeling should have been familiar, but for some reason it was smoother, more inviting than these plain old blankets had ever been. I craved rest. I let myself fall into the soft folds with abandon.

The green material caught my weight not like a mattress, but like a net. Its embrace enveloped me, supported me. I gave myself over to it with just one thought: He misses me. It sounded obvious, like something I had always known, though it had been buried. Now that it was before me it muted all the other repetitive little noises in my head. In that comfortable place, I felt I could rest. But in that quiet, I heard rustling.

When Mother makes the bed, she tucks the corners in until they are uncomfortably tight. It was not possible for my weight to have loosened them, yet the cloth around me was folding, shifting. Somehow my legs were already tangled. I rolled onto my side clumsily, craning my neck to see what was happening. In doing so I must have thrown myself off the bed. There was a moment of weightlessness before something caught me and gently lowered my body to the floor.  The remaining sheets fell on top of me, forming a cocoon around my limbs. I tensed, tried to control my own movement, but I was scratched and poked by whatever substance now controlled me. The abrasions worsened until I stopped straining, and then the softness returned, coaxing me into submission.

Moonlight reflected off the closed door with that same green shine, highlighting the pattern of leaves carved into the wood — except the pattern should not have been on the inside of the room. Of course, the growth should not be expanding through the cracks in the door, nor should these bedsheets be creeping like vines across the floor. These facts were clear even to my addled mind, but they did not prevent me from being dragged, feet-first out of my room. The two impossible plants joined each other at the entryway. Under their combined influence the door fell apart like so many flakes of moss-eaten bark. Bits of mulch dropped into my open mouth — apparently I had been screaming — forcing me to choke and spit as I slid into the dark hallway.

Whatever force had taken hold of me had also transformed the rest of the house. My limp body was hauled through moist soil that had inexplicably come to replace the floorboards. Knotted roots churned beneath me like a natural conveyor belt. A canopy of branches hung down from the ceiling, gripping my body and passing me on to other creepers. All of this I could only perceive by touch, smell, and sound; no light penetrated that dank thicket. I was disoriented. I had no control. I was suffocating. I was going to be buried alive.

Then, a light. I emerged headlong into in an open space, lit with that same silver glow. The full moon peeked between leaves that covered a skylight in the high ceiling, and I knew I was at the foot of the master staircase. The clinging plants held me there, propping me up and affixing me to banister, which was no longer a carved piece of wood but a hefty, sprouting branch that climbed to the second floor like a resourceful tree growing towards sunlight. I took this in, glad to have a chance to breathe, though I was still at the mercy of this cruel phenomenon. Then there was a cracking sound and a gust of wind. With sudden force the branch was hoisting me up the stairs. I looked back down and watched the front door spit out bits of metal like cherry pits as the timber moved itself out of the entryway. All of the plants were reaching out, drawing something else inside the house. I was lifted over the top of the stairs before I could see what was coming.

Once again I was plunged into a dense thicket, which I expected to submerge me in suffocating darkness once again. Quickly, though, I was pushed through an opening and dropped into a room so bright I was blinded by its brilliance. The light was silver, and cold despite its radiance. Delirious as I was, for a moment I thought I may have landed on the moon. I rubbed my eyes, surprised to find my hands free, then realizing my whole body had been released. I had been deposited in a soft patch of mossy underbrush in what I realized must be the master bedroom, though it better resembled a forest hollow. Yet, unlike the rest of the house which was freshly burgeoning, this room looked established, lived-in. Winding branches formed ornate furniture: a desk, a chest, a rack of dust-covered overalls. All of it sprung forth from a central mound of soil where the bed should have been. And atop the mound sat the source of the enchanting light: Mother.

Her hair shone and rippled like mercury. Strands reached out of their own accord, casting rays of light from their tips. Leaves, fronds, and stalks angled themselves to bask in the cold fluorescence. Her skin had softened from an olive brown to an olive green, making naked body almost indistinguishable from the plants climbing up her legs and torso.

The weeds were possessing her, I thought. They wanted her light and they would consume her to get it. Desperate for some way to help, I crawled to bottom of the mound and started clawing at heaps of grass where Mother’s feet should have been. I was braced, ready to be yanked back into the darkness by the branches behind me. None came, so I pulled and twisted, clearing away growth until I found her leg, half buried in the soil. I tried to grab ahold and pull her free, but my hands only gripped thorns that skewered my fingers. I recoiled, bleeding from a thousand pinpricks. Her skin was perforated from the inside by the thorns which, before my eyes, transformed into roots. Some curled around and entrenched her deeper in the dirt, others stretched out to push me away.

I fell back, shielding myself with bloodstained arms. “Mother!” I screamed. She looked down upon me and her eyes gleamed with that cold light the plants craved, but which offered nothing to her child. Then she extended her arms. Her wrists split open as vines erupted from her veins. I caught only a quick glimpse of red flesh and white bone as her hands fell away like pruned boughs. Her new limbs sprouted with remarkable speed. I watched them expand across the room towards the entrance. They went taut as though supporting some weight, then retracted. With a slow, stilted motion, my father entered the room.

His limbs cracked at the joints like trees in the wind as he shambled forward. The supporting vines curled around his exposed ribs and spinal column, letting his skull loll from one side to the other with each lurching step. He was barely more animated than the model skeleton in my biology classroom. Still I knew it was Father, just as I recognized the shorter, drooping figure being dragged through the door behind him.

There was still flesh clinging to my brother’s face, though it was putrid, red, and peeling. Did I scream? Did I cry out as I cowered before his corpse? I do not know, but I must have drawn his attention away from his halting march towards Mother’s embrace, for he turned his limp neck to look at me. My brother’s skull dangled towards me and I saw his face was not covered in decaying flesh, but with layers of maroon flower petals that fluttered as his bones rattled. I looked into his eye sockets and they looked back. I watched two yellow tulips bud, then bloom, filling those vacant orbits with a warm glow. Once again I felt a deep comfort that made me relax despite my damned circumstances.

Suddenly, the flowers dropped from his eyes. The two corpses were pulled with great force into Mother’s clutches. Their limbs were torn apart, each gripped by a different branch or vine, all of which were wrapping around her like constricting snakes. The room exploded in frenzy — even boughs that made up the furniture started spiraling in closer to the disappearing light. After mere moments the force of the vacuum made the walls crack. Finally the ceiling split apart, the floor buckled, and everything around me collapsed towards a singular point: Mother.

 

The doctors said I was pulled from the wreckage of the house just in time. One of my lungs was collapsed, and if I spent any more time unconscious I could have suffered severe brain damage. I’m able to move my hands enough to write now, so physical therapy must be working.

The accepted explanation for what happened that night is that our house was struck by a powerful, but isolated tornado. It has been suggested that Mother’s unlicensed alterations to the house may have weakened essential structural supports. This doesn’t account for the twisted, compressed bundle of timber they had to pry apart to exhume her body, though — hence the tornado.

Of course, none of that explains the bones of the two other bodies that were found with her. I am told I should just be glad they are not my bones. Well, I believe I know where they came from and why they were so close to her that a few were actually found stabbing into her heart. I have told you what I think happened. So, perhaps you can understand why, in some small way, I wish my bones were there, too.