“I’ll miss this place. Our house is more than bricks and mortar. It’s us.”
I can’t stop thinking about that. Anna said it before she moved permanently into the hospital.
From the day of my wife’s passing in late 2019, our home bellyached persistently — and its belligerent groans were always more sinister than the sounds of settling foundations. They almost sounded like wails.
“I saw Mum blow me a kiss in the mirror last night,” Cassie, my daughter, recently told me.
I humoured my twelve-year-old to aid her grieving process, but I never really believed in ghosts. Not until the horrifying events of this past weekend.
My son, Jake, is a good kid, but he makes some terrible decisions. That’s his prerogative. He’s eighteen, after all. But the trouble with teenagers is that they have no foresight. That’s why Jake never expected the caller we received on Saturday evening. And it was up to me to protect him.
“Hello, Mr Grant,” The man at the door said.
He was a burly fellow with a leather jacket and an unkempt, grey-tinged beard. His hands were balled into fists, and I immediately knew that trouble had come knocking.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“Oh, how rude of me,” The man chuckled. “I’m Warren Jones, and your son owes me two grand.”
I froze in fear. I knew Jake had picked up some bad habits since Anna’s death, but I didn’t realise he’d been mingling with loan sharks. I’d seen the stoned, vacant look in his eyes when he got home in the early hours of the morning. I knew he’d been taking drugs. But every attempt to communicate with him had fallen on deaf ears.
“I have no idea why my son owes you so much money, but I… I can pay you whatever he owes,” I promised.
That was a mistake. I saw the greedy glint in the barbarian’s eyes as he realised he’d set his sights upon a cash cow. Warren could see that I was desperate to protect my family.
“Trouble is…” The tormenter began. “Interest. Cost of living crisis. You know how these things work. See, it was two grand. Now it’s three.”
“Fine,” I firmly said, barricading the doorway to my home. “Three grand. If you give me your bank details, Mr Jones-”
The man cackled manically, holding his split sides in faux amusement and wiping his eye for added effect.
“Oh, Mr Grant,” Warren chuckled. “In my line of business, we operate on a strict cash-only policy.”
“Okay,” I said, hand shakily clutching my front door. “If you let me grab my coat, I can drive to the bank and-”
“- See, the problem with me letting you drive into town is that you might feel inclined to stop at the police station on the way,” Warren said. “Course, I gave you a fake name, so they wouldn’t really have any information on me. Still, my employer isn’t a fan of external interference.”
I heard a door creak upstairs. I knew Jake was on the landing, listening to the conversation. The menacing grin on Warren’s face told me that he meant my son harm. I was fearfully racing for an answer, and then I realised I’d overlooked something.
The cash in Anna’s office.
I beckoned for Warren to follow me, and the lion hungrily slinked into our den. I hadn’t stepped foot in Anna’s office since she died, and it sickened me that I was finally being coerced into doing so by that thuggish lout. But what choice did I have? Warren kept his hand in the pocket of his jacket, and I was fairly certain that he had a weapon. I had to protect my family.
As I inched open the door to my wife’s study, I flicked the light switch. Nothing. The lightbulb had blown. Through the slanted slats of the blinds, however, the day’s dying rays of sunlight spilled into the room.
Dust-covered books and furnishings were what I had expected. What I had not expected was a spider plant that had taken on a life of its own — the desk plant had sprouted long leafy limbs, which were covering most of the floor and walls of the study. A distant memory returned to me.
“I’m going to be lost without you,” I cried to Anna in the hospital.
“Without me? You’re not getting rid of me this easily,” Anna teased. “I’ll still be keeping an eye on you. Make sure you water my spider plant.”
Looks like it didn’t need watering, I thought. How is it still alive?
“Fuck me,” Warren gasped. “This room’s a relic. Let’s hope you’ve got a treasure trove in here.”
I frantically rummaged through the drawers of my late wife’s desk, brushing spidery strands of greenery out of the way. And then I remembered that the money wasn’t there anymore. It was our emergency fund, and the emergency had been Anna’s experimental cancer treatment — a last-ditch effort.
I gulped. “I, erm, need to think…”
Warren growled. “No. You need to pay me, Mr Grant, or I’ll make little Jakey pay.”
“Fuck you,” I spat.
Warren’s eyes glistened, as if I’d finally given him the invitation he had desired since the moment he stepped foot on my porch. The invitation to do harm.
“What was that, Mr Grant?” Warren asked, taking a step towards the desk.
The floorboards strained beneath his weight, and his hand finally slid out of his jacket pocket. As I had feared, he was clutching a weapon. A large kitchen knife. The shadowy figure crept towards me, chortling cruelly.
“When I’ve finished you, I’ll take great pleasure in killing your boy as slowly and painfully as possible,” Warren promised.
He lunged at me, and I felt a primal, unyielding fear as I watched the steely blade plunge into the lower-left side of my abdomen. I screamed in agony, wrestling weakly with the hefty man as he shoved me into the desk, twisting the blade deeper and deeper into my torso.
He whispered. “I won’t kill your girl. I’m not a monster. I just have to make a point, okay?”
And then the door to the study slammed shut. Warren twisted around, but there was nobody else in the room with us. My eyesight was unfocused, and I could feel the life fading from my body, but I know what I saw. The spider plant limbs, coating most of the room, started to move.
“What the fuck?” Warren gasped, stepping back from me.
I clutched the knife in my abdomen, wanting to look down at the damage, but too transfixed by the inexplicable spectacle before me. The spider plant constricted Warren’s ankles, and he screeched in terror as the leafy appendages climbed up his body.
“What is this?” He screamed. “How are you…”
The man screeched in excruciating pain as the leaves of the spider plant tore holes in his flesh, creeping beneath his skin. I could only watch in horror as the green fingers of Anna’s seemingly-eternal plant protruded from Warren’s orifices — they poured from his eye sockets, bringing trickles of blood with them.
The man gagged as the plant burst from his mouth, having crept up his throat. His body spasmed for a few more seconds, then his movements slowed. A few tears spilled from his eyes, and, finally, he was still. He was dragged into the wall of greenery, concealed forever.
Moments before I passed out, I think I saw my wife standing in the doorway — her phantom form smiling at me. Simultaneously beautiful and terrifying.
When I woke, I was in the hospital. Jake and Cassie were in floods of tears, and my son asked what had happened to the loan shark. I told him we wouldn’t be hearing from him again. But Jake is worried that Warren’s employer will come sniffing.
I’m not scared for my family. I’m scared for any fool that steps foot into Anna’s house.