the shower return
875 Words
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Chapter Nine: The Sower Returns
The train hissed as it came to a slow halt at the old Tolvan station, a small wooden platform that looked forgotten by time. Aric stepped down with his satchel slung over one shoulder and a cold knot in his stomach. The air in the valley was different—thick, charged, as though the atmosphere itself had learned how to hold its breath.
He expected to see a familiar village, humble and warm. But what greeted him was stillness.
The roads were empty.
Doors were closed.
Windows were dark.
Tolvan, his home, looked like a painting abandoned halfway through. And in the distance, he saw it—the field, rising like a living wall of green and black. The wheat was unnaturally tall now, some of it towering higher than the trees. It swayed not with the wind, but with rhythm, as if breathing together in unison.
Something was wrong.
Very wrong.
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Dharan was waiting for him.
He stood at the gate in front of the farmhouse, arms crossed, eyes sunken with exhaustion and burden. Behind him, smoke rose from the incense burners set in the ground—protection wards Halra had prepared. Ashes had been scattered along the front steps in strange spirals.
For a moment, neither man spoke.
Then Aric stepped forward. “I came back.”
Dharan’s face didn’t change, but his eyes softened. “I know.”
Aric looked toward the field. “What… what is happening?”
Dharan motioned him inside. “You sowed something, too. Not just me.”
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Inside, the farmhouse was dim, lit only by oil lamps and smoldering bundles of herbs. The walls were lined with charcoal markings—symbols Dharan had copied from the old family ledger.
The moment Aric entered, the house felt heavier. As if something unseen had followed him.
“You brought something back with you,” Dharan said, closing the door behind them.
Aric nodded, hesitating. “There was a wheat stalk in an envelope. I kept it… but it started to rot. And then… bleed.”
He pulled it from his satchel, wrapped in cloth. Dharan unfolded it and stared.
The stalk was now almost unrecognizable—twisted, blackened, and covered in a dark crimson crust. It pulsed faintly in Dharan’s palm.
“It’s feeding on you,” Dharan whispered. “Just like the field feeds on me.”
He dropped it into the fire. It screamed.
Not with sound, but in their minds. A wave of psychic anguish rippled through the room as the flames consumed it. Aric staggered back, clutching his head.
“Is this what Father planted all those years ago?” Aric asked, voice shaking.
Dharan nodded. “He buried it. Thought it had died. But it waited. And when I planted it again…”
Aric slumped into a chair. “I thought I was escaping this place. But I was just feeding it, wasn’t I? My anger, my bitterness. It followed me.”
“No,” Dharan said. “It listened to you. That’s what it does.”
They sat in silence as the wind picked up outside, rustling the wheat into a chorus of whispers.
Aric looked at his father. “Can we stop it?”
Dharan’s jaw clenched. “Maybe. But not alone.”
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That night, they returned to the field together.
Lanterns in hand. Incense burning at their waists. The path between the rows had grown narrow—overgrown and choked by thick stalks. The air smelled of iron and rot.
Aric stopped as they passed a line of wheat that bent toward him.
“Did it just move?” he whispered.
“They all do,” Dharan replied.
In the center of the field, they found the triangle of black stalks had grown again—now forming a circle, and in the middle, an open patch of earth. A sinkhole.
It wasn’t there yesterday.
They stood at the edge of the hole. The whispers were loud now, layered and churning, like dozens of voices speaking from below.
And in the center of the pit… something was rising.
A root. No—a figure, coiled in vines and mud, humanoid in shape but wrong. It looked like a man, tall and gaunt, with empty eyes and a mouth that moved without sound. Its skin was cracked like soil, and in its chest glowed a faint, pulsing red.
Aric stumbled back. “What is that?”
Dharan’s voice was low. “What was buried.”
The creature stepped out of the earth, silent and slow, its limbs jerking like a puppet. Its gaze locked on Dharan first, then on Aric. It raised one hand, palm outward, and they both heard it.
> “You sowed me.”
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The ground trembled.
Wheat bowed in a ring around the creature.
And from beyond the field, shadows began to slither through the stalks—others, following, awakened by the same seed, the same memory.
Aric turned to Dharan. “We have to stop it—burn the field, destroy the seed!”
But Dharan didn’t move.
He looked at the figure in the pit—at its hollow eyes—and whispered:
> “Father?”
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