The Root Cellar

I. The House That Birthed Him

Jeffrey Banks didn’t inherit the Harrow house.

He returned to it.

That’s the truth — though he didn’t understand it yet. The deed came in a letter that wasn’t mailed, simply found one morning on his kitchen table. It smelled like loam and old rain.

There was no envelope.

Just a single phrase scrawled on the back:

“The skin forgets. The blood never does.”

He drove to Vermont without packing. He wasn’t sure why. He didn’t remember planning the trip.

The GPS refused to mark the road. The woods pressed in like lungs. And when he arrived at the house, he was already crying, though he didn’t know why.

II. The Interior Doesn’t Match the Outside

The house on the outside was one story. Inside, it stretched. Ceilings too high. Hallways where none should be. Doors that opened into memories that weren’t his.

He passed a bathroom and saw a version of himself brushing his teeth — until the figure looked up and didn’t stop smiling.

Family portraits filled the walls. Generations of women with hollow faces and stitched lips.

In the center: his mother, Evelyn, holding a baby.

Not a smile. Not pride.

A warning.

“This is not a child,” the photo read beneath it.

“This is the sprout.”

III. The Basement Is Not a Place

He found the cellar door behind the fridge, nailed shut from the inside. The wood trembled with something beneath it — not movement, but remembering.

Each night, he heard it. Not whispers.

Root-thought.

Soil-memory.

The echo of something ancient and cold trying to fit itself into his shape.

His dreams grew infected.

He dug into his own belly with his fingernails and found seeds buried in his gut.

He vomited teeth.

He woke up covered in dirt and mother’s milk.

The door opened itself on the seventh night.

IV. The Thing That Grows in the Dark

He went down the stairs.

There were no walls. Just a void pulsing with vines.

A tree — massive, biomechanical, wet with black light — towered at the center. It had no leaves.

Its branches ended in human arms. Its bark wept. Its base was a nest of skulls, still chewing.

Jars floated in brine around it.

Each one had a face, mouth open, as if screaming underwater.

One jar hovered near his head.

It was his face. Still attached. Still thinking.

V. What His Mother Did

He found her journal fused into the wall upstairs — not written, but grown from flesh.

Pages turned themselves, oozing ink that smelled like menstrual blood and spoiled wine.

“I tried to kill him in the womb. Poured bleach into myself. Burned my belly with irons.”

“But he wouldn’t die. The root wouldn’t let him.”

“He is not my son. He is the Harrow heir. A man-shaped bloom, birthed for feeding.”

“He will walk down willingly when the time comes.”

The final page read:

“And if he resists — the house will remind him.”

VI. Dissolution

Jeffrey tried to leave.

Every road led back to the front porch. He slit his throat and woke up at the top of the stairs. He set fire to the house and stood unharmed in the basement again, watching it burn from beneath the foundation.

He screamed. The house screamed back, in his mother’s voice.

When he closed his eyes, he saw roots threading through his veins, wrapping around his spine.

He didn’t dream anymore. He remembered.

He remembered being planted.

VII. Blossom

On the 13th night, he opened his mouth and soil poured out.

His nails fell off. His teeth sprouted bark. His shadow twisted upward, growing leaves.

The house opened, and he went into the cellar, now pulsing like a womb.

He reached the tree.

And it reached back.

A root split open and whispered to him:

“The world above has forgotten the first garden. You are its return.”

“You will walk among them. And plant us everywhere.”

Epilogue: The World Forgets

There is no Harrow house now.

Only a patch of land where nothing grows — and yet everything beneath it breathes.

Travelers who pass through sometimes vanish. Sometimes they don’t — but they leave changed.

They don’t sleep anymore.

They dig holes in their yards.

And in the night, they stand motionless beneath the stars, with mouths full of soil, whispering:

“I am bloom.

I am root.

I am Jeffrey.”