Root Work

Google this shit if you want to, but the park is a death trap—and no one seems to give a damn. Governor Healy proposed a “statewide resource” to improve coordination in missing persons cases. That’s it. A resource. Like we haven’t been losing people for decades in the same places, with the same unanswered questions. As if “coordination” was the problem - not the thing buried beneath our feet, cold and calculating, like a real-world ice monster patiently waiting to swallow us whole.

The government can coordinate a drone strike halfway across the world to find and take out Bin Laden but struggles to find a single person lost in their own backyard.

Unlike them, I gave a shit.

I tried everything—Tik Tok, Reddit, BlueSky, Instagram—feeding the beast information that should have been newsworthy. It was always the same: a flash of interest, then on to the next bright distraction. Where were your Joe Rogans, your MTGs, or those true crime pods warning people of the fucked-up shit happening around us? They were too busy filling the airways with noise about Biden’s clone and flat Earth conspiracies.

But they never talked of the danger in the Arboretum.

I’ve watched that place long enough and what I found would haunt you.

Don’t take my word, just pay attention, you will see it watches you. It listens and it remembers. And what it wants it takes.

I remember when I first met Rebekah. It was in room 402, freshman move-in day. The weather was one of those rare late Summer Boston days that made the air feel electric. I couldn’t wait to unpack and explore the campus, soaking in the buzz of a new city, new beginning—my new life away from home.

The elevator sign “Available for 5th Floor and above only” informed me move-in day was going to be hell.

Rebekah was already there — cross-legged on her neatly made bed, butterfly-print sheets stretched tight and a soft green mat at her feet. Lamp dimly lit over her bed—it must have been more for the vibe than the actual lighting. She had already created her own oasis. Her corner of the room looked like a catalog for cozy preparedness: TV, tea kettle, mini fridge, hot plate, even a string of warm fairy lights. She must have purchased the ultimate college survival kit, and I remember feeling unprepared - like I’d shown up for a party and didn’t know the dress code.

Her energy lit me, like melanin kissed by sunlight - warm, radiant, and impossible to ignore. She had a quiet, calm knowing about her, and a kind of beauty that didn’t demand approval.

She barely made eye contact at first, but when she did, and when she smiled, it was subtle but sincere—like a secret between friends.

Rebekah was a science major. Biology, with a focus on plant life, though she admitted she might switch to environmental studies.

“I’m fascinated with what we don’t know,” she said. “Especially about trees. They’ve been here longer than we have… and we still barely understand them.” She looked me square in the face and asked, “have you ever wondered if humans could communicate with trees like we do animals?”

There’s something to be theorized!

Rebekah could recite names of plants with the same ease most people use to talk about their favorite TV shows. I learned quickly it was her thing, her passion—her way of balancing out the stress of school, family, and the long-distance relationship that I hoped wouldn’t last. But even when she got intense, I was always happy to listen to where her mind took her next.

It always seemed to lead back to Arnold Arboretum, of all places. We used to walk there often—at first for the peace, the beauty—but over time, it felt our connection was slipping away. She seemed more connected to the trees, especially the Ghost Tree that stood like a gatekeeper, than to me. Everyone knew the Ghost Tree, but not the danger.

During our sophomore year, I noticed her shoes were perpetually covered in mud, her clothes always smelled like wet bark and crushed leaves, but she returned from her daily runs looking peaceful and centered. Rebekah was a model student who stayed disciplined with her studies, always up late studying, and up early for a run through the Arboretum.

Junior year broke something - my grip, my sense of normal, her.

Things started to unravel. She said the trees were louder after dark, so she went from her usual morning runs to late nights. “I hear them more clearly,” she said. I wanted to suggest counseling, talking to her parents—somebody, but I knew deep down it would not have mattered. Her grades were never affected; it was as though she was on a journey no one else could understand.

One night, early Spring of our senior year, we were sitting in our dorm room surrounded by piles of textbooks. I noticed she wasn’t studying. She was completing her biology major, now with a minor in environmental studies. I got up from my desk and walked over to her bed. She was scribbling in her notebook, sketching out diagrams of trees, roots, branches—and writing things like “symbiosis” and “plant communication network.”

She looked up at me, eyes wide with excitement. “Did you know that plants can communicate with each other?” she asked, as if it hadn’t been a part of our countless discussions.

I raised an eyebrow.

“Haven’t you seen The Last of Us?” And she lets out an exacerbated sound. “They use a mycorrhizal network. It’s an underground mycelial system—fungi called the Wood Wide Web. The trees send signals to each other to warn about pests, share resources, even heal each other. They exchange nutrients and information. It’s not always about survival. The relationship can be commensal or parasitic, but for the most part they support each other. I thought you knew.”

Her mind amazed me as always. I smirked. “You’re saying the trees are like... a giant secret society?”

“Exactly!” she said, rolling onto her back, arms folded under her head for support, legs crossed, her voice rising with passion. The fairy lights shook gently above her, lighting different parts of her body. “And it’s not just the trees. There’s this whole underground communication system that’s been around for over 450 million years. Plants have evolved to share and protect each other. There’s an intelligence there—one we’re only just beginning to understand.”

Her excitement was contagious, but there was something else behind her words. A kind of fascination that went beyond mere curiosity. She wasn’t just learning about nature. She was...

connecting with it. She was seeing things others couldn’t.

Not long after I started finding notes of incantations around the room—pages and pages of sentences I didn’t understand. Words repeated over and over: They live for you, they live for me, they are one, but we see many.

What came next happened so fast.

It was the night before Finals. A night that haunts me still. Rebekah scrambled to the end of bed and launched into a new theory about ‘her’ trees. Her once soft eyes were different. Brighter. Sharper. But distant like a faraway galaxy of information forming as she spoke. I was spellbound.

“They’ve known me all my life.” She said, “They’ve been waiting.”

Then she hugged me.

All these years later and it still brings tears to my eyes.

“I’m ready,” she said. I hugged back, maybe a little too tight, not knowing what it all meant. To her. To me.

That night, when she left, I followed her. I kept my distance. She never once broke stride or looked back as she jogged straight to Arnold Arboretum. Her pace was steady, almost...possessed.

She stopped in front of the Ghost Tree. A ghastly tree that looks like it should’ve fallen centuries ago. But it never does. It’s just there keeping watch with its massive branches reaching out waiting to take what it needs with no question or repercussion. Rebekah stood there for what seemed like an eternity, one hand on its bark. Resting or whispering, I could not tell.

Then she ran into the densely packed grove behind the Ghost Tree. On sunny days, it swallowed sunlight like it didn’t belong there. At night it wasn’t just dark, it was the kind of place that made you feel you were being watched.

I waited. But my surroundings began to feel eerie—like I was no longer welcomed-- so I jogged, maybe more like I ran back to campus, sticking only to the main streets.  Maybe Rebekah had come out somewhere and was already heading back to campus. There were many paths she could have taken. I didn’t want her getting there before me. Still, that eerie feeling never left.

I hit the bed, exhausted. My body gave in before my mind did. When she didn’t return the next morning, my whole world came to a halt.

My best friend was missing. The police? They did what they do best when it comes to girls like us - took their sweet time, like every minute didn't matter.

They questioned me for hours. I have never cried so much in my life or since. I was sure no one would have believed me if I had suggested the trees took her and she never made it out of the Arboretum. I could see them wanting to label her a runaway, or worse, a victim. And me, paranoid, or just another hysterical, overly stressed college student. And maybe I was all the above.

The police eventually turned their attention to Derrick—her long-distance boyfriend who still lived in Kutztown, Pennsylvania and would occasionally visit. They found drugs and some of her hair in his car and kept him for questioning. I didn’t even know he was in the area the night Rebekah went missing, but I knew it wasn’t him. The police needed their boxes checked, and Derrick fit - too well. Was he controlling? Yes.

But hurt Rebekah? He knew better.

I tried to explain the fungi network. The cops humored me but said it was more likely a psychotic break. Stressed from the upcoming exams. Maybe drugs. Maybe burnout. Maybe this, maybe that. Just all the maybes and no Rebekah.

No Rebekah.

I wanted to burn all 281 fucking acres of the park to the ground.

See, Rebekah and I were excited about finishing up our last semester at Northeastern. Dreaming of the future we wanted to build. And then she was gone. In my eyes, the rest of the world, including her crushed parents who faded into divorce, had given up. But not me.

After college, I began to channel her, reading everything about plant communication and underground root networks. The need for some kind of answer propelled me.

The more I searched, the more I became angry with the people who were studying and understood plant communications at the highest level but were unwilling to support the possibility that the trees could be involved in her disappearance, or the disappearance of dozens of others for that matter. They were all cowards, in my opinion.

That’s when I found Pando. A dying grove of quaking aspens in Utah, but it’s not a grove at all. It’s one freaking organism. How is that possible? One living, breathing entity spanning 106 acres, each “tree” a clone of the same ancient root system. It’s the oldest and heaviest living thing on Earth.

The Arboretum, with over 15,000 different plants, may not be exactly like Pando, but what if it’s not just a park? Maybe—like Pando—it was dying, and after having a millennium studying us, it found a way to survive.

I wanted the answer to be that the trees were predatory - luring those who heard their calling. The ones who cared enough to listen without fear? It was plausible Rebekah wasn’t taken out of malice, but out of need. A willing sacrifice. A merging—symbiosis.

It took nearly 10 years, but I eventually started to visit the Arboretum, even bringing my children at times. Maybe it was my way of showing Rebekah that I was doing okay. That I hadn’t forgotten her. I could never, not really. We were soulmates.

Still, parks have never truly been the same. There are too many stories of people disappearing in the woods. They stayed with me. Then there were those trees—old ones, twisted ones—ones that seemed to have faces. Faces that seemed to watch you.

It wasn’t paranoia. And it wasn’t just me. There have been studies about trees with human-like features. It’s a phenomenon commonly known in art and folklore—the “Green Man” myth. What if trees were mimicking us and these aren’t random botanical oddities?

For all the people who believe trees have magic, some kind of ancient power, or animism, maybe it's not as benign as they imagined.

I’m sure folks think I am out here chasing ghosts or fantasies. But the more I visit the Arboretum, the more I think I hear her voice coming from deep within the grove or I get a quick glance of her face on a Jinmenju tree and wonder if Rebekah is reaching out to me. But the closer I feel to Rebekah, the more that old eerie feeling creeps in.

The more I dig, the more I think I am understanding this ancient root work society, and the less I bring my children along. There are moments still when I am standing alone across from the Ghost Tree that I feel compelled to step into the grove, if just to see those beautiful soft eyes sparkling in the shade of the shadows.

Like the trees, I remember Rebekah once said their network can be “commensal or parasitic”. I am more than just a woman of science; I am also a wife and a mother with decades of life experiences - something that she never got. But in the night, when the stars are brightest, those whispers on the wind seem louder, stronger, and that’s when I remember my last moments with Rebekah.

I remember the darkness.

I feel the pull.

And I am afraid.