The cabin came with the smell of pine, a sagging porch, and a note taped to the mantle:
Please don’t disturb the Easter Garden.
No signature. Just that. Mara found it first, tucked into a sunlit corner of the living room. A shallow wooden box the size of a coffee table, filled with moss, twigs, tiny pebbled paths, and hand-painted figurines no taller than her thumb. A miniature world. At its center stood a chapel made of bark, surrounded by rabbits, lambs, and little people frozen in gentle poses—one reading, another kneeling, two holding hands beneath a twig arch.
“It’s… sweet,”
She said.
Jonah crouched beside her.
“Creepy sweet. Like a dollhouse for sickos.”
They laughed, but left it alone. That first night, rain drummed on the tin roof while old beams groaned like tired bones. The cabin felt too quiet once the generator cut out. They lay in bed, backs turned, the argument from the drive up still hanging between them—about Jonah’s job offer in the city, about Mara’s refusal to leave, about everything they hadn’t said in months.
In the morning, Mara went to make coffee and froze. The Easter Garden had changed. The chapel door now hung crooked. One of the tiny lambs lay on its side, red paint smeared along its flank. And the two figures that had been holding hands were no longer together. One knelt at the edge of the box, arms raised as if pleading. The other stood behind it, holding a needle-like shard of twig. Jonah joined her, silent.
“It wasn’t like that yesterday,”
Mara whispered.
“Maybe the heat warped it,”
he said, but his voice lacked conviction. They tried to ignore it. That day passed in forced normalcy. Unpacking, sweeping dust, walking the tree line. But unease followed them. At dinner, Jonah finally said,
“You can’t just pretend my career doesn’t matter.”
Mara’s fork clinked against her plate.
“And you can’t pretend this place, my grandmother’s place, means nothing.”
They went to bed angry again. The next morning, the garden had become a slaughter. The moss was torn apart. Tiny figures lay scattered, some missing heads, others posed as if running. The bark chapel had collapsed inward. And in the center, two figures stood face to face one with a crimson streak across its chest, the other holding a jagged splinter, its painted face twisted into something like fury. Mara felt sick.
“That’s us.”
Jonah swallowed.
“This is a joke. Someone’s messing with us.”
But no footprints marked the dust. The doors were still locked. And when Jonah tried to move one of the figures, his fingers hesitated inches away, as if crossing an invisible line. That night, neither of them slept. They began to watch their words. Avoided fights. Spoke carefully, like guests in a stranger’s home. But silence bred its own poison.
On the third morning, the garden showed something worse. One tiny figure lay curled near the chapel ruins, painted eyes dark, while another stood over it with both hands raised—not in attack, but in despair. Around them, the other figurines were gone, as if the world had emptied to leave only the two of them. Mara’s breath shook.
“It’s not just what we say. It’s what we don’t.”
Jonah stared. He hadn’t told her yet that he’d already accepted the job offer. That he planned to leave in two weeks, with or without her. That evening, he tried to confess. The words stuck. Mara talked about fixing the porch, about planting real flowers in spring, about how maybe this place could be a new start. He nodded. Lied with his silence. The cabin creaked all night.
In the morning, the Easter Garden was nearly bare. Only one figure remained, standing alone at the center of torn moss, its tiny chest painted with a dark, spreading red. The other was gone completely. No chapel. No animals. No path. Just emptiness and that single, broken person. Mara covered her mouth.
“Jonah… where’s the other one?”
A chill crawled up his spine.
“It’s just a model.”
But the air felt wrong. Too still, too heavy.
“Mara?”
He called, turning. She wasn’t behind him. He searched the cabin, panic rising. The bed was empty. The porch creaked in the wind. Outside, only trees and fog. Then he saw it.
At the edge of the Easter Garden, half hidden in the moss, lay a new figure. Smaller than the rest. Painted with the same jacket Mara had worn the day before. Its face, though crude, carried her familiar frown. Jonah screamed and knocked the box over. Wood cracked. Moss spilled. Tiny bodies scattered across the floor.
But when the garden shattered, something else did too. A scream came from beneath the cabin. He ran outside, heart pounding, and found a loose board near the foundation. Under it, in the crawl space, lay Mara. Alive, but pale and shaking, tangled in roots and dirt like she’d been pulled there. She looked up at him, eyes wide.
“I woke up down here. Something dragging me. I couldn’t move.”
He pulled her free and held her, sobbing. They left the cabin that morning, didn’t even pack. Later, miles away, Jonah finally told her about the job. About how he’d planned to go without her. Mara listened in silence. Then she said,
“Maybe it showed us what would’ve happened if you had.”
He nodded, haunted. They never went back. But sometimes, Jonah dreams of a small wooden box in a quiet room, slowly rebuilding itself. Twig by twig, figure by figure waiting for another couple to plant their secrets inside.
