“Nothing grows in my back yard” (Original short horror story)
Nothing ever grows in my back yard. Every time I try to plant something, even though I care for it meticulously, it soon withers and dies. No matter what plant, flower, or tree, they all die. Even the grass dies, sickly yellow patches interspersed with thick weeds covering the entirety of the yard. The stress of it all was beginning to get to me after so long. I loved to garden. It was one of my favorite past times, and helped me deal with the horrendous anxiety of living alone. But my yard was starting to make me think I just did not have the green thumb necessary to do it. I considered giving up on it so many times, but something always brought me back and had me trying again.
Thats how I found myself yanking the weeds that had grown back for the umpteenth time every Sunday afternoon, instead of relaxing like everyone else. There was one weed in particular that bothered me to no end. It looked like a small tree, surrounded by tall crabgrass. The tree-like weed had a waxy, whiteish stem. The branches grew in strange, sharp angles, with small, red leaves sprouting from the ends.
It usually grew up to my shoulders before I had a chance to yank it out. But no matter how many times I pulled it, it always grew back. Finally, after many months of battle, it had grown too big for me to pull out. Its trunk thickened to a point I couldn’t fit my hands around it. The thin, angular branches stretched higher than my roof. After that I reluctantly gave up and let it be. The rest of the yard was more concerning anyway.
I thought perhaps my soil was bad, so I started doing research on how to restore it. For an entire summer, I worked to bring my yard back to life. And it seemed to be working; the new grass was growing in, the trees and rose bushes I planted were taking root. Even the tree weed looked to be finally dying, its tall branches now drooped down, and the stark white of the trunk had turned a sickly grey. I praised my lucky stars. Though of course, this wonderful luck lasted all of two months.
It was on a brisk, Fall afternoon. After coming home from a very long work day, I went to check the progress of my yard. As soon as I rounded the hall corner and the double sliding glass doors came into view, I froze. I was rooted to the spot, my mouth hanging agape as I stared with wide eyed horror at my yard. Everything was dead. My roses, shriveled and brown, littered the ground around the bush, along with all its leaves. Only dead sticks remained, reaching up to the sky in a desperate, yet futile attempt to live.
The grass had turned a sick yellow color, crinkled and dry, devoid of life. The young trees I had planted were completely uprooted, as if a hurricane had hit them and pulled them from the earth. Each one lay on their sides, roots flailing uselessly in the breeze next to small craters in the ground where they had once been standing. Shock and disbelief had my blood running cold, then hot. How had this happened in less than a day? It was impossible. Unless someone poisoned all of it, maybe. Just as my mind began racing over who the culprit could be, I spotted something stark white in my periphery.
I shot my gaze over to the tree weed. It had doubled, maybe tripled in size. It stood at least twenty feet high now. Its white trunk probably stretched the width of three people standing side by side. Long, shark branches shot out everywhere. Thick, dark maroon leaves hung off the tips. Along the tree ran thousands of small red and purple veins that looked eerily like a human circulatory system. I glanced down to see the roots had grown so large they breached the surface of the soil halfway across the yard.
Unable to comprehend what I was seeing, and not able to deal with the stress anymore, I went back inside, slamming the door shut behind me with a distressed growl. Later that night I searched online for any possible answer, finding none. I thought of calling a professional out. Even though it might be costly, maybe they could shed some light on the situation. I toyed with that idea for the rest of the night, but frankly, I was too tired to do anything about it. I was just done with my yard. I had been working so hard to fix it for so long, I just felt like giving up at that point.
The following day I cupped my hand over the side of my face, blocking the yard from view as I walked past the sliding glass doors to get breakfast. I was so upset that I couldn’t even handle seeing it in my periphery. In the middle of my delicious soggy cereal meal, a knock sounded at my door. The knock sounded two more times in quick succession on my way to get it. “I’m coming!” I shouted. Swinging the door open a little rougher than I intended, I glared at my neighbor, Leslie, standing there, fist raised for yet another knock.
She smiled wanly and lowered her hand. “Hi, sorry to bother you. I know its early...But do you know where Hunter is?” Her voice contained thinly veiled panic. Hunter was Leslie’s ten year old son. Her very annoying ten year old son. He, like any normal child, always played in their front yard with his friends. They always yelled so loudly I could hear them from my bedroom. One time the kid even put a hockey puck through my window. I constantly had to remind myself of the fact he was only a kid when my temper flared at him.
“No, I’m sorry, I haven’t seen him. Is everything alright?” Concern replaced my earlier irritation. Dark circles ringed her eyes. Her hair was sat in a tangled mat on her head. She looked like hell. Her kid was missing? I began mentally preparing to get ready to join a search. “He went out to play with his new baseball gear yesterday evening and didn’t come back. I called him in for dinner and he didn’t answer. I searched the whole neighborhood and I couldn’t find him. I don’t know what to d-do!” Tears began flowing down her face as she spoke, her arms gesturing wildly as her panic rose closer to the surface.
I glanced behind her to see her husband knocking on the doors of the other neighbor’s houses. “I came home from work at six yesterday and I didn’t see anything. Have you called the police?” She sniffled and wiped at her eyes. “Yes, they’re going around searching too. If in 24 hours we still can’t find him, they’ll put out a missing person’s report.” She broke out into sobs then. “Alright, give me ten minutes. I’ll help.” I said, placing my hands on her shoulders in a vain attempt to calm her. She thanked me through bleary eyes before I shut the door and quickly threw on my clothes.
The search went on all day and for part of the night. We recruited quite a few other concerned neighbors on the search as well. People were driving slowly down the streets, calling Hunter’s name out of their car windows. We canvased the nearby parks while the police searched inside the schools. Hunter was nowhere to be found.
Days, then months passed, and there was still no sign of the boy. Hunter’s photo haunted me from every street post. The police investigation was going nowhere. And after a while, the police stopped looking for a living child, and began searching for a body. I spent my days off consoling Leslie and helping in the search. I was exhausted, but if there was a chance to find Hunter alive, I wasn’t going to give up. He was just a child. Even though my own hope that they would find the kid alive had dwindled over the past month, I would still help. One morning, as I trudged to the kitchen in a daze, sleep deprivation causing me to drag my feet, a flash of white caught my eye through my sliding glass doors.
Through all that had happened, I had completely forgotten about my dead yard. I hesitated to look, fearing the sight might upset me again. I knew I couldn’t avoid it forever though, so I turned with a sigh to gaze upon my lifeless yard. It was the same as it had been months ago, everything shriveled and dead, brown, yellow and a stark white tree dominating the space. It did not upset me as much this time though.
Perhaps it was because I had bigger problems now, more upsetting problems. I studied my yard for a few long moments. I don’t know what drove me, but for some reason I felt compelled to go outside. I slipped my feet into my sandals and slid the door open. The deadened grass crunched beneath my feet. My blood turned to ice, dread pooling in my gut as I approached the sickly tree weed.
The silence of the yard was almost like a vacuum, sucking in sound as it was made. I came to a stop a few feet in front of the tree. The red and purple veins had thickened noticeably. They seemed to pulse and quiver up close. All the hair on my body stood on end as I looked up to study the branches that reached high into the sky. I don’t know how I missed it that first day. It stood out so clearly now. I gasped in panicked breaths as my eyes locked on something high up in the tree, surrounded by large, deep maroon leaves. My eyes burned, my chest tightened. Because there, tangled in the high branches, was a baseball.
