Welcome to Ashford Row
PARLOR TRICKS # 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
SMOKE & MIRRORS # 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
Putting Down Roots
Arthur Mercer rapped his knuckles against the apartment door. A voice called from inside.
“It’s open.”
The faint smell of dust and old paper met him when he pushed the door open. It was the sort of smell which accumulated over years, an undisturbed veil that thickened the air. Arthur stepped inside.
He saw a television in the corner. Bookshelves lined one wall. A small kitchen was visible through an open archway, and in the center of it all sat a man in a recliner. This is where Arthur paused.
The roots had spread farther than he expected. Thick black tendrils emerged from beneath the chair and disappeared into the floorboards. Others climbed the walls and crossed the ceiling in twisting bundles thick as a person’s arm. A few had broken through the plaster entirely. One root wound across the coffee table before disappearing beneath a stack of old magazines.
The man sitting among them appeared entirely unconcerned. He looked to be somewhere in his sixties, with gray hair and reading glasses. Comfortable sweater. A blanket rested across his lap. He held an open book.
“You’ve been here a while,” said Arthur.
The man glanced up from his book, surprised by the question. “I suppose I have.”
Arthur tapped his cane against the floor. One of the nearby roots twitched. Arthur surveyed the room again. The roots were old. Ancient, almost. The sort of growth that required patience. “I think,” said Arthur carefully, “that it may be time we dealt with this.”
The man followed Arthur’s gaze. “Oh. Those.” The man closed his book and rested it upon the arm of the chair. “They’re not hurting anyone.” He said this as if the roots were merely outdated furniture that ought to be replaced.
“There have been complaints,” said Arthur.
The man frowned. “From who?”
Arthur reached into his coat and withdrew a folded sheet of paper. He unfolded it with modest flair. “Apartment Three reports recurring structural damage.” He paused for response.
The man said nothing.
“Apartment Six reports roots emerging through the bathtub,” Arthur continued. “Apartment Nine reports an entirely inaccessible hallway.”
The man winced slightly at this.
Arthur lowered the paper. “The building superintendent used the phrase existentially concerning.” He folded the paper again. The man stared back at him, but neither spoke. Finally Arthur said, “Your roots have consumed portions of three floors.”
The man shifted in his chair. A low creak sounded somewhere beneath the building. The roots along the walls flexed lazily. “Well,” he said, glancing toward the window. “I suppose that isn’t ideal.”
Arthur waited for more, but the man seemed content to leave the matter there. The silence stretched. Arthur looked at the ceiling, where a root thicker than a sewer pipe disappeared through cracked plaster overhead. Dust drifted gently from the fracture.
“No,” said Arthur. “It’s not ideal.”
Then Arthur reached into his coat. The man watched curiously as Arthur produced a small rectangle of cardstock. A train ticket, worn at the edges, yellowed with age. The man stared. The expression left his face. Arthur set the ticket upon the coffee table.
For a moment, the room remained still. Then somewhere deep within the walls came a low creaking groan. The roots tightened. The man’s eyes remained fixed upon the ticket. “I wondered where that went.”
The roots shifted again, more noticeably this time. The floorboards beneath the chair emitted a faint crack. The man swallowed. Outside the apartment, something heavy moved inside the walls. The roots were listening now.
The man looked away from the ticket. “I was supposed to take that trip after Ellen passed.”
Arthur regarded the room. The roots. The cracked ceiling. The swollen floor. The chair that had swallowed a man into itself and accepted his surrender. Arthur reached into his coat again and withdrew a key. It was small. Brass. Worn smooth along the teeth by years of use.
The man stared at it. The air around them took on a different pressure, as though the apartment had inhaled and tightened, choosing not to release its breath. Arthur placed the key beside the train ticket.
“Where did you get that?” said the man. His fingers curled against the arms of the recliner.
“You used to keep it under the rug in the hallway.”
The roots began to move. They crawled along the baseboards and writhed in crooked lines where they had burrowed into the walls, causing plaster to bulge and crumble. The man looked around nervously.
“The key to your workshop,” said Arthur.
The man’s mouth compressed into a thin line. “It was just a shed.”
A root slid down the wall behind Arthur with a quiet, muscular sound, like something dragging itself through damp soil. It stopped near his shoulder. Arthur tapped the floor firmly with his cane. The root recoiled.
More roots moved now. A black cord thick as rope slid from beneath the recliner and crossed over the man’s slippered foot. He did not pull away. Perhaps he no longer thought to. Perhaps, after enough years, he’d forgotten how.
“You used to build things there,” said Arthur.
The man looked at the key. “Birdhouses, mostly.” He paused there, his thoughts lingering somewhere in the past. “Maybe a few cabinets. Repairs for neighbors. Once a cradle.” His expression altered at that. A fractional shift. Then he swallowed. “Ellen wanted me to make furniture after I retired. Said people would pay good money for honest work.”
The apartment groaned. A long fracture opened across the ceiling. Dust fell in a soft line between Arthur and the chair.
“After she died,” said the man, “I couldn’t go out there.”
The roots tightened around the recliner. The man winced as the chair creaked. Arthur heard movement beyond the apartment now. A grinding in the walls. A muffled cry from somewhere above. The roots were awake throughout the building.
Arthur reached once more into his coat and pulled out the third object. A photograph. He held it out to the man. “Look,” he said.
The man did not.
“Look at me.”
Slowly, painfully, the man did.
The photograph was creased down the middle and soft at the corners. The colors had faded somewhat, but not enough to obscure the scene. A woman stood in sunlight near the building entrance. She had one hand raised to shade her eyes. Beside her stood the man from the recliner, younger and thinner, holding an overnight bag in one hand and laughing at something just beyond the frame. On the back, in a neat hand, someone had written: Next spring, then.
At sight of the photograph, the man went utterly still. The roots erupted all at once. The living room convulsed with roots bursting through the walls, the ceiling, the floor. The apartment became a churn of black movement. Arthur lifted his cane and drew a hard line through the air. For one moment, something like a circle shimmered around him and the chair, a boundary of sorts. A magician’s insistence that the stage had edges.
The roots struck the shimmering field. Again. And again. Each blow shuddered through Arthur’s arms. “She wanted to go back,” said Arthur, as though the assault were nothing of concern.
The man stared at the photograph. “You need to stop.”
“She wrote it down,”’said Arthur. “Right here. She expected to go back.” The roots wrapped around Arthur’s barrier circle and squeezed. The boundary flickered. Arthur’s jaw tightened.
“You don’t think I know that?” said the man. His face crumpled. “You don’t think I wish I’d done more with the time we had?”
Arthur looked at him then, and something in his expression quieted the room more effectively than any magic could have. For one instant, the roots hesitated. Arthur’s voice changed. Deepened. “I know what it is to mistake waiting for loyalty.”
The man looked up.
Arthur held the photograph between two fingers. “You don’t need to linger with your regret anymore.”
The roots began moving again, but less confidently now.
The man’s eyes filled. Arthur placed the photograph on the coffee table with the ticket and key. “You could have done more then, and you regret it. So do more now.”
At this, the roots surged. A bundle erupted from the floorboards between them, splitting wood into jagged splinters. It rose nearly to Arthur’s chest, black and wet-looking, bristling with smaller fibers that curled through the air like searching fingers.
Arthur lifted his cane and caught it across the shaft, but still the impact drove him back a step. The man shouted. Arthur twisted the cane, and something silver flashed along its length. The root recoiled with a harsh, tearing sound. It struck the wall instead, punching through plaster with such force that light beamed through in a ragged wound. The apartment beyond screamed. Arthur grimaced. “Apologies,” he called.
“Mr. Mercer?” someone shouted through the hole in the wall, sitting at their dinner table.
“Nearly finished,” Arthur replied. “Forgive the disturbance.”
The root withdrew from the wall and others descended. The ceiling sagged under their weight. The floor bucked and split. The old television tipped sideways and crashed from its stand. Books fell from the shelves in soft, papery avalanches. Pipes cracked within the walls and began to shriek.
Arthur’s circle broke. A root struck him across the chest and flung him into the bookshelf. He hit the floor hard enough to lose his hat. As he struggled to push himself up, a root slid around his ankle. Another looped over his cane.
The man shouted Arthur’s name as his recliner sank inward. The roots pulled it into themselves, drawing the chair and the man together, folding cushion into vine, fabric into bark, comfort into permanence.
The man clutched the arms of the chair. “No,” he called, but the word was small.
Arthur grasped for his cane from a root attempting to pull it farther away. “My good sir,” he said, his voice strained but steady. “It’s time to stand up.”
The man laughed once, terrified. “I can’t.” The recliner groaned. Springs snapped inside it. The man’s blanket slipped from his lap and was dragged beneath the chair by hungry tendrils. “I don’t remember how.”
“Put one foot on the floor.”
The man looked down. His feet rested inches above the buckling floorboards, caught in a cradle of roots. The building shook. The root around Arthur’s ankle tightened painfully. He did not break his gaze with the man. “The roots have been kind to you,” he said. He dragged himself forward an inch. “They’ve kept your chair soft. They’ve kept the world distant. They let you believe that doing nothing harms no one.” A root lashed across Arthur’s shoulder, pinning him flat. “Kindness is the easiest way to keep a man still,” he said, his voice struggling to find itself.
The man began to weep. The tears came all at once, as if he’d been saving them. “I miss her.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want to go where she isn’t.”
Arthur gave up on his struggle against the vines. His voice relaxed. “I understand this more than you know.”
The man looked down at the picture, which had slipped from Arthur’s fingers. It now lay on the ground, face up at him. Arthur saw him mouth the words. Next spring, then.
The roots surged. The coffee table shattered, but the ticket, the key, and the photograph remained, untouched amid the wreckage. Small things, perhaps. But small things held meaning very well.
The man gripped both arms on the recliner. For a moment nothing happened. Then he moved his right foot. The roots tightened at once and he cried out.
“Keep going,” said Arthur.
The man shook his head, sobbing now. The right foot slipped free. The roots writhed beneath it, frantic and recoiling, unable to decide whether to catch him or flee from him. The man lowered his foot until his slipper touched the floor. At that moment, the entire building stopped. For one breath, there was no movement at all. Then every root in the apartment contracted. The walls bowed inward. Windows burst. The ceiling split open, revealing a mass of black growth braided through beams and plaster and the bones of the building itself.
The second foot moved. Roots snapped around his ankle as he kicked and struggled, his face reddened with effort. The chair bucked beneath him, trying to reclaim his weight, trying to remind him how much easier it was to lie still.
The man shouted and broke himself free. His second foot came loose and planted itself beside the first. With both feet on the floor, he reached for that photograph.
Arthur smiled. “Now,” he said. “Stand.”
The man stood. He rose like a man climbing out of deep earth. His knees trembled. His shoulders hunched. His breath came in ragged pulls. He held the photograph against his chest with both hands. But he stood.
The roots died all at once. Black tendrils slackened and bundles sagged from the ceiling. Roots curled away from the walls, shriveling as though years had been taken from them in reverse. The floorboards released the recliner which suddenly appeared merely as old furniture, stained and broken down by too much use.
Throughout the building, the terrible pressure eased. Somewhere above, a child began crying. Somewhere below, someone laughed in disbelief. Dust floated through the ruined apartment in gentle curtains.
Arthur climbed to his feet and retrieved his cane, leaning heavily upon it. The man stood in the center of the room, staring at the place where the roots had been. For a long while neither man spoke. Then the man looked down at his feet. “I wasn’t sure I could do that.” His thumb passed over the photograph. “Ellen would have hated that chair.”
Arthur glanced at it. The recliner sat lopsided now, one arm burst open, stuffing exposed. It seemed embarrassed by itself. “She had excellent judgment.”
A weak laugh escaped the man. A root dropped from the ceiling and landed wetly on the carpet. He looked toward the apartment door, where the hallway beyond was visible through the cracked and warped frame. He took one step. Then another. At the threshold, he paused.
The apartment behind him had been his whole world for years. The impression of his body remained in the chair. The shelves were bowed. The floor was ruined. He looked once at Arthur. “What happens now?”
Arthur picked up his hat and brushed dust from the brim. “Now?” He placed it on his head. “Now you can complain about the stairs.”
Arthur followed him into the hall. Behind them, in the ruined apartment, the last of the roots curled inward and became nothing more than dark marks in the floorboards. Like stains left after furniture had been moved.
Like proof that something heavy had once been there.
Excellent story. I love how you made something so emotional, so physical.
“You could have done more then, and you regret it. So do more now.”
Fantastic how you give some hope to the story!