When Mara Ellison inherited the house on Bramble Lane, she did not inherit the orchard.
That was what the lawyer had said, peering over his glasses as if the distinction were both ordinary and necessary.
"The property deed includes the residence, the well, and the shed," he'd murmured. "The orchard stands on an older claim. Unregistered. Unresolved."
"Unresolved how?" Mara had asked.
He had closed the folder without answering.
On her first night in the house, Mara understood why.
The orchard began knocking after midnight.
Not at the door.
Not at the windows.
From beneath the floorboards.
She was asleep on a borrowed mattress in the living room, the air thick with the scent of dust and forgotten wood polish. The house had been empty for years, but her grandmother had refused to sell it. "The roots run deeper than you think," she used to say, staring out at the twisted apple trees beyond the back fence.
Mara had always assumed she meant family.
At exactly twelve-thirteen, something struck the underside of the floor.
A single, dull thud.
Mara's eyes flew open.
She lay still, listening to the old house settle. The refrigerator hummed faintly. Wind brushed the siding. Nothing else.
Then it came again.
Thud.
Directly beneath her.
She rolled onto her side and pressed her ear to the wooden planks. The boards were cool against her skin.
For a moment, there was silence.
Then:
Knock. Knock.
Two measured taps, as if someone had rapped politely against a door.
Mara scrambled to her feet, heart racing.
The crawlspace beneath the house had always been shallow—barely high enough to crouch in. As a child, she had dared her cousins to peer into it through the hatch in the kitchen. They had claimed to see nothing but dirt and old bricks.
Now, standing barefoot in the dark, Mara felt the memory shift. Had there been something else? A root, perhaps, thicker than the rest. Something that hadn't looked quite like wood.
The knocking stopped.
She waited another full minute before flicking on the lights.
The living room looked ordinary. Peeling wallpaper. Her grandmother's armchair by the window. The back door leading to the orchard, its glass pane reflecting her own pale face.
"It's just the house," she whispered.
Old houses made noises. Pipes expanded. Foundations shifted.
She forced herself to lie back down.
At twelve-thirty, the knocking returned.
Not from beneath her this time.
From the walls.
A faint tapping traveled along the perimeter of the room, as if something were tracing the inside of the house with curious fingers.
Knock.
Pause.
Knock-knock.
The pattern was deliberate.
Mara grabbed her phone and turned on the flashlight. The beam wavered as she swept it across the walls. The wallpaper trembled ever so slightly, as though a breeze stirred behind it.
"There's no breeze," she muttered.
The windows were shut. The night outside was still.
The tapping moved toward the kitchen.
Mara followed, every step cautious.
The kitchen was smaller than she remembered. The sink stared blankly at the yard beyond. Through the window, the orchard loomed—rows of gnarled apple trees, their branches twisted into arthritic shapes against the moonlit sky.
The tapping ceased.
Silence pooled in the corners of the room.
Then, from the direction of the back door, came a new sound.
Knock.
Mara froze.
The door shuddered slightly in its frame.
Another knock. Louder.
The glass pane rattled.
Someone was at the door.
Relief flickered through her fear. A neighbor, perhaps. A prank. Anything human.
She stepped forward and peered through the glass.
The orchard stared back.
No figure. No movement.
Only trees.
The branches swayed, though there was no wind.
Knock.
This time the sound came not from the door but from the glass itself, directly in front of her face.
Three sharp taps.
Mara stumbled backward.
On the other side of the glass, an apple hung from a low branch, suspended at eye level. It was close enough that she could see the faint mottling of its skin.
As she watched, the apple shifted.
Not falling.
Not swinging.
Shifting closer.
The branch bent inward, pressing the fruit against the glass.
Tap.
The apple struck the pane with gentle insistence.
Tap. Tap.
Mara's breath fogged the window.
The apple's skin split.
Not from impact, but from within.
A thin crack opened along its surface, and something pale pushed against the tear.
She screamed and staggered back, knocking over a chair.
The branch recoiled, snapping back into the orchard. The apple tore free and dropped out of sight.
Silence fell again.
Mara stood shaking in the kitchen, staring at the door.
After several long seconds, she forced herself to approach.
The glass was intact. No cracks. No fruit smeared across it.
Outside, the trees were motionless.
"You're tired," she whispered. "That's all."
She locked the back door, though she was certain it had already been locked.
Sleep did not return that night.
At dawn, Mara ventured into the orchard.
The grass was damp with dew. The air carried the faint sweetness of overripe fruit.
Up close, the trees looked worse than she remembered. Their bark was fissured and dark, almost black in places. The branches twisted in unnatural angles, some curving downward as if bowing under invisible weight.
At the base of the nearest tree lay an apple.
Its skin was split down the middle.
Mara crouched beside it.
The flesh inside was not white.
It was gray.
And hollow.
She picked up a fallen twig and nudged the fruit.
The two halves fell apart, revealing an empty cavity within. No seeds. No core. Just a thin shell of rotting flesh.
As she stared, a faint sound rose from the ground beneath her.
Knock.
She flinched.
The sound came again, muffled but distinct.
Knock-knock.
From under the soil.
Mara scrambled to her feet.
The knocking spread outward, rippling through the orchard floor like distant thunder.
Each tree seemed to answer.
Knock.
Knock-knock.
A chorus of buried fists pounding upward.
She ran back to the house, heart hammering.
Inside, she paced the kitchen, mind racing.
There had to be a logical explanation. Animals beneath the ground. Tree roots expanding against stones. Some kind of structural shift.
But animals did not knock in patterns.
And roots did not press apples against glass.
Her grandmother's words echoed in her memory: The roots run deeper than you think.
Mara grabbed the folder of old documents she'd found in the attic the previous afternoon. Yellowed papers, brittle and smelling of mildew.
She spread them across the kitchen table.
Most were mundane—utility bills, faded photographs. But at the bottom of the stack lay a handwritten journal bound in cracked leather.
Her grandmother's handwriting was unmistakable.
The first entry was dated fifty-three years ago.
"They planted the orchard before the house," it began. "Said the land was blessed. Said the trees would listen."
Mara's pulse quickened.
She turned the page.
"The first knocking came the year after the drought. We thought it was roots seeking water. We were wrong."
Another page.
"They do not seek water. They seek entry."
Mara swallowed.
Entry to where?
The next lines were written with heavier ink, as if pressed harder into the page.
"Do not answer the knocking."
Her eyes flicked toward the floor.
As if summoned by the thought, a faint thud echoed from beneath the kitchen tiles.
Knock.
Mara stood slowly.
The sound came again, directly under the table.
Knock-knock.
It was louder now. Closer.
She dropped to her knees and pressed her ear against the tile.
The knocking ceased.
In its place came a new sound.
Scraping.
A slow, dragging movement beneath the house.
Something shifting through the crawlspace.
She leapt up and backed away.
The kitchen hatch to the crawlspace sat near the pantry door, a square of wood with a small iron ring embedded in its center.
The scraping moved toward it.
"No," Mara whispered.
The iron ring trembled.
Knock.
From directly below the hatch.
The wood bowed upward slightly, as if something pressed against it from beneath.
Mara grabbed a chair and wedged it over the hatch, then dragged the heavy kitchen table on top of that.
The knocking grew more insistent.
Knock-knock-knock.
The floor vibrated.
Dust sifted from the ceiling.
Mara stumbled backward, clutching the journal.
"Do not answer the knocking," she murmured.
But what did answering mean?
Opening the hatch?
Speaking aloud?
Acknowledging it?
The house groaned.
A crack snaked along the kitchen wall, splitting the wallpaper.
From within the fissure, a thin root emerged.
It slid outward like a probing finger.
Mara screamed and lunged for the nearest knife.
The root extended further, pale and slick, writhing in the air.
Another crack split the opposite wall.
More roots pushed through, splintering plaster.
The knocking beneath the hatch reached a fever pitch.
Knockknockknockknock—
The hatch burst upward, splintering the chair.
The table overturned.
From the darkness below, something rose.
At first, Mara thought it was a bundle of tangled branches.
Then it unfolded.
It was shaped like a man, but wrong in every proportion.
Its limbs were twisted wood. Its torso a lattice of roots woven together. Where a face should have been, there was only a smooth knot of bark split by a vertical seam.
From that seam came the knocking.
The sound echoed from within its hollow body.
Knock.
The creature tilted its head toward her.
Mara backed into the counter, knife shaking in her grip.
"What do you want?" she gasped.
The seam in its face widened.
Inside was darkness.
And movement.
Apples rolled forward from within its chest cavity, spilling onto the kitchen floor. Each one split open as it fell, revealing empty hollows.
The creature stepped fully into the room.
With each movement, more roots tore through the walls, widening the cracks.
The house shuddered.
Mara's gaze darted to the back door.
The orchard beyond seemed closer now, the trees leaning inward, their branches pressing against the windows.
The knocking resumed—not from the creature this time, but from every surface.
Walls.
Ceiling.
Floor.
An avalanche of fists demanding entry.
"Do not answer," she whispered again.
The creature took another step.
Knock.
It raised one wooden arm and extended it toward her.
The seam in its face opened wider.
From within came a whisper, dry as dead leaves.
"Let… us… in…"
Mara's grip tightened on the knife.
"You're already in," she choked.
The whisper rasped louder.
"Deeper."
The floor split beneath her feet.
Roots burst upward, wrapping around her ankles.
She slashed wildly, severing one tendril. Sap sprayed across her hands, thick and dark.
The creature recoiled slightly, as if wounded.
Mara seized the moment and bolted for the back door.
She flung it open.
The orchard surged forward.
Trees bent toward her, branches clawing the air. The ground churned, soil heaving as if something vast shifted beneath it.
The knocking was deafening now.
Not from the house.
From the earth.
From below the roots.
Mara stumbled onto the grass.
The ground felt hollow beneath her feet.
An apple dropped at her side.
Then another.
They fell in a steady rain, thudding against the soil.
Each one split open on impact.
Each one empty.
The creature emerged from the doorway behind her, framed by the collapsing kitchen.
"Deeper," it whispered again.
The ground cracked.
A fissure tore through the orchard, splitting the rows of trees.
From within the chasm came the true source of the knocking.
A massive, rhythmic pounding.
As if something enormous beat against the underside of the world.
Mara fell to her knees at the edge of the crack.
Below, she saw it.
Not soil.
Not stone.
A vast wooden surface, curved and ancient, like the inside of a colossal coffin buried beneath the land.
And from within it—
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Something trapped.
Something that had planted the orchard as a ladder.
A way to climb.
The creature of roots stood beside her now, its wooden hand hovering over her shoulder.
"Open," it whispered.
The knocking from below synchronized with the pounding of her heart.
She understood then.
The orchard was not trying to enter the house.
It was trying to escape the ground.
The trees were roots of something far larger, something buried long ago.
And the house—her house—had been built atop the thinnest place.
The creature's hand touched her back.
Cold.
Splintered.
Inviting.
"Open," it urged again.
The fissure widened.
The wooden surface below began to split.
Lightless air rushed upward, carrying the scent of rot older than memory.
Mara thought of her grandmother, living alone in this house for decades. Hearing the knocking every night. Never answering.
She raised the knife.
The creature leaned closer.
"Open," it crooned.
Instead, she plunged the blade into its chest.
The seam in its face shrieked.
A sound like tearing timber filled the orchard.
The roots around her legs loosened.
Sap poured from the wound, thick and black.
The creature staggered backward toward the chasm.
The ground convulsed.
The knocking from below intensified, frantic now.
Mara scrambled away from the fissure as the orchard began to collapse inward.
Trees toppled, their roots ripping free from the soil.
The chasm widened until it swallowed the creature whole.
Its wooden fingers clawed at the edge, then vanished into darkness.
The massive wooden surface below cracked down the center.
For a heartbeat, Mara saw an eye open in the darkness beneath.
Enormous.
Unblinking.
Then the earth folded in on itself.
The fissure snapped shut.
Silence fell.
The orchard was gone.
Where rows of trees had stood was now a barren stretch of churned soil.
The house behind her groaned but remained standing, its walls cracked, its kitchen half-destroyed.
Mara lay on her back in the dirt, staring at the pale morning sky.
No knocking.
No whispers.
Only the distant sound of birds.
Hours later, when the police arrived—summoned by a neighbor who had seen the ground heave—they found a shaken woman and a damaged house.
No orchard.
No chasm.
No sign that anything had ever stood behind the fence but empty land.
"The deed never mentioned trees," the officer said gently.
Mara did not argue.
That night, she slept in the living room again.
The house was quiet.
At twelve-thirteen, she woke.
Her heart pounded as she listened.
Silence.
She let out a slow breath.
Then, faintly—
From deep beneath the floorboards.
Knock.
Just once.
Patient.
Waiting.