The Teeth of the Topsoil

Priscilla didn't buy the acres for the view.

She bought them because the earth hummed.

Not constantly.

Not loud enough for anyone else to notice.

Just a low vibration beneath the gravel road whenever she crossed the property line.

The first time she'd heard it, she thought it was a truck somewhere in the distance.

The second time, she stopped and listened.

The third time, she bought three hundred acres.

The locals at the gas station down the highway thought she'd lost her mind.

Three hundred acres of wild Midwest timber stretched across limestone ridges and deep pockets of black soil. Burr oaks twisted toward the sky like old arthritic giants, their roots gripping the earth as though they feared being pulled away.

Nobody wanted the property.

That should have been her first clue.

"Land's cursed," the cashier told her while counting change.

Priscilla took the receipt and smiled.

"So is mayonnaise if you leave it in the sun."

The cashier wasn't amused.

The stories came free with every cup of coffee.

Missing hunters.

Strange lights.

Broken equipment.

Owners who stayed one season and never came back.

Owners who left in the middle of the night without taking half their belongings.

One old timer swore the acreage used to swallow roads.

Priscilla signed the paperwork anyway.

She wasn't afraid of haunted dirt.

Most of the things that had hurt her in life knew how to text.

The first thing she did after moving in was hang the signs.

NO TRESPASSING on the left.

CROSS on the right.

LAND BACK painted underneath in white letters.

The locals asked about that one.

Some figured it was political.

Others assumed it was a joke.

Priscilla usually gave the same answer.

"My name's on the paperwork," she'd say.

Then she'd glance toward the timber stretching beyond the gate.

"That doesn't make it mine."

The forests, the ridges, the black soil beneath her boots, all of it had belonged to someone long before a county clerk stamped her deed.

If the descendants of the first people ever walked through her gate, she'd put on a pot of coffee, point them toward the timber, and ask what stories the land used to tell.

Most folks didn't know what to do with an answer like that.

Priscilla didn't particularly care.

The paint wasn't even dry before the humming started again.

She could feel it through the soles of her boots.

Not a sound.

A vibration.

Like a giant sleeping heart buried beneath the limestone.

The sensation followed her around the property.

Along the creek.

Through the timber.

Over the ridges.

Whenever she stopped long enough to listen, it was there.

Waiting.

Watching.

As if the acres were studying her right back.

Most people would've left.

Priscilla wasn't most people.

Twenty years of surviving had stripped away her need to be chosen by anyone.

People left.

People lied.

People promised forever and meant until it became inconvenient.

The land didn't promise anything.

The land simply existed.

Ancient.

Stubborn.

Unimpressed.

And somehow, she trusted that more.

By autumn, the locals stopped asking when she planned to move.

By winter, they stopped asking if the stories frightened her.

By spring, people started referring to the property differently.

Not the cursed acreage.

Not the old timberland.

Not the haunted ridge.

Just:

"Cross Land."

As though it had always belonged to her.

As though the acres had been waiting for her to come home.

One evening, standing beside the gate as fog rolled through the trees, Priscilla pressed her boot into the black soil and felt the humming rise stronger than ever before.

The vibration climbed through the ground, through her bones, and settled somewhere deep inside her chest.

For the first time, it didn't feel like a warning.

It felt like recognition.

Deep beneath her feet, something answered.

The limestone ridges caught the last amber light of sunset.

For just a moment, they looked less like stone.

And more like teeth.