#9: The Bloom

Sharon Halder had gotten very good at pretending.

Pretending she slept. Pretending she ate. Pretending she didn’t feel the house breathing under her slippers when she crossed the kitchen floor. She’d smile automatically at the cashier at the corner store, saying things like “I’m doing just fine, dear,” and the cashier believed her, mostly because Sharon sounded like someone who had spent her whole life reassuring others that everything was perfectly normal.

But her eyes gave her away. Hollow around the edges, like something had scraped sleep out of them with a spoon.

After she returned from her “missing” night, though she refused to call it that, Sharon tried to fall back into the old rhythms. Wake up. Boil water. Make her husband’s side of the bed. Feed the cat she no longer had. Water the plants. Pretend.

Most people assumed she was grieving Mark’s passing all over again, and she let them think that. It was easier than explaining the truth: her house felt occupied now, as if some unseen tenant had invited itself into the walls while she slept.

Still, she moved through her routine with a cheerfulness she wore like a borrowed coat, convincing from a distance, frayed up close. Except to the plants. She didn’t need to pretend for them. They loved her too much now.

The pothos over the mantel had expanded overnight from a tidy spill of leaves into a dense web that draped itself over picture frames. The ivy in the dining room had thickened into something muscular, its green cords looping around table legs until she had to tug sharply to free a chair. And Mark’s fern, which she’d been tenderly caring for the four years since he’s been gone, had grown so lush its fronds brushed her elbow when she walked past, as if greeting her.

“Too much sun,” she’d mutter, though the windows were frosted over and barely let in any light.

It wasn’t until one morning, as she rubbed sleep grit from her eyes and fumbled for the coffee tin, she noticed something odd near the wall outlet. The extension strip was half-hidden beneath a curtain of leaves, but something wasn’t sitting right. She crouched down.

The stems of the pothos had braided themselves into the plastic grooves of the outlet plug. Smooth green vines ran into the socket like veins feeding from the house’s own nervous system.

She touched one. It pulsed, soft and warm. Sharon reeled back, hand to mouth. She told herself she imagined it. She told herself she hadn’t been the same since Mark died. Fatigue overwhelmed her. She shut off the kitchen light and went to sit down.

She was tired. So tired. And sad. She missed Mark. Let the plants grow.

***

The first phone call came that night.

Sharon had dozed off in her armchair, quilt pulled to her chin, when the rotary phone on the wall jangled its ugly, metallic ring that snapped her awake. She squinted at the clock. 1:27 a.m.

No one called this late. Not anymore. Cal Redding’s voice echoed in her ear now, the ridiculous moody vocals he used when he’s pretending to be The Wireman on those broadcasts: “Don’t answer the phone after midnight.”

She went for the phone anyway, because that’s what you did when you pretended things were normal. Still, her hands shook as she lifted the receiver. “Hello?”

She was not answered by static. Instead, the soft sound of rain, steady and close, like someone holding the phone outside during a storm. She swallowed. “Who is this?”

The rain through the line thickened, the sound bubbling and hissing into something wetter, like runoff trickling through leaves, or water soaking into soil. Then she heard a voice inside it. A man’s voice. Dark. Soft. Familiar.

“Sharon…”

The syllables stretched, as though pulled through water, yet she recognized something in that distortion. She caught her breath. “Mark?”

The line crackled. Still not static, but like something alive scraping over ice.

Then the voice: “Keep watering.”

Her eyes stung. Her grip slipped on the receiver. “Mark, please… is this you?”

The rain faded. Silence swallowed the line. Then the phone clicked dead. Sharon stared at the phone, its receiver pressed against her ear, until her arm ached. She didn’t sleep the rest of the night. She sat at the table with the lights off, listening to the dark house breathe.

***

The second phone call came two nights later.

Sharon snapped awake, tangled in blankets. The room was cold enough that her breath plumed faintly in the dark. This time the phone rang twice, abruptly, like a warning. Before she could reach it, the ringing stopped. Then started again.

She lifted the receiver. “Hello?”

A low dripping sound filled her ear. Heavy drops hitting water. Slow. Rhythmic.

“Mark?” she whispered.

The dripping grew louder. Then the voice came through. Not far away this time, but as though Mark were speaking right beside her, breath brushing her cheek through the receiver.

“Keep watering, Sharon. Don’t let it dry out.”

She pressed her free hand to her chest. “I don’t understand.”

“You’re a beacon now,” said the voice, distant again. “You’re part of the network. Let it grow.”

Then the phone clicked. Dead line. Dead silence. But not for long. A faint rustling began behind her. Sharon whipped around. The ivy on the dining room wall was shifting, leaves trembling with no breeze, tendrils inching toward the corner where her watering can sat.

She stepped backward until her calves hit the sofa. The ivy stopped. Sharon stared at it for a long time, unable to decide whether to cry or scream. Instead, she whispered, “Mark, what are you doing to me?”

But the house answered only with the creak of expanding wood and the nearly inaudible tug of vines tightening around furniture legs.

***

The third call came at dawn.

Sharon had fallen asleep sitting upright at the kitchen table, head pillowed on her arms. The room had grown humid overnight, warm and wet, like the air inside a greenhouse. Her hair clung damply against her neck.

The phone rang.

Her eyes snapped open. She moved her feet and felt the cold slosh of midnight water soaked through her morning slippers. The floor was a slurry of loose water and lint, soggy in the carpet and slick on the linoleum. The watering can had been discarded on the coffee table, drips scattered everywhere as if a maniac had used it to pour water over every square inch of the place.

The phone rang again. Sharon scuttled through the shallow swamp. This time, when she lifted the receiver, she didn’t say hello. She only listened.

The sound was different now. Not rain, not dripping, but the soft, wild hiss of growth. Leaves unfurling. Roots pushing deeper. Something expanding its reach in the dark. Then Mark’s voice, closer, more solid, almost human.

“Open the door, Sharon.”

She pressed her fingers to her mouth. “What?”

“You did well,” he whispered, voice thick with gratitude. “It’s time to let us in. Open the door.”

Her knees trembled so violently she had to grip the wall to stay upright. Her eyes darted to the front door, dark and cold. “Where are you?”

But the voice didn’t answer. Instead, the line began buzzing, low and vibrating, like a swarm of insects inside the wires. And beneath that, fainter still, she heard something breathing. Slow. Deep. Hungry.

The phone clicked off. Sharon dropped the receiver. It clattered against the wall. Her heart hammered against her ribs as she backed toward the hallway. That’s when she saw the moss.

It had crept up overnight from the baseboards, lush and damp, rich as forest floor, and now blanketed the hallway wallpaper. She stepped closer, unable to help herself. The moss wasn’t random. It had grown in patterns. Lines. Arcs. Repeating humps and dips, waveforms scribbled across her wall in living green. She swallowed hard. “Oh, God.”

The moss pulsed faintly. Just once. Like something breathing beneath it. Sharon stumbled backward. Her heel hit the basement door. Something was different about it. Warmth radiated through the wood. A faint golden glow leaked through the seam around the doorframe, spreading a golden, pulsing glow of something alive buried in the dark below.

“Mark?” she whispered, voice cracking. No answer. Just the soft hum of growth behind the wallpaper.

Sharon reached for the doorknob, hand shaking so badly she could barely grasp it. The cold metal grazed her fingers, then met her palm, and the handle turned with a quiet click of the latch. She paused. She tried to breathe but the air had turned to frost in her lungs. “Mark…” she muttered, to the air, to the handle, to the moss on the wall.

Then she opened the door.

*** End Transmission ***