Member-only story
FICTION
The Curious Case of Elizabeth Seams
A short story about a mysterious 12-year old girl who can talk to trees
They said she summoned spirits from beyond — the bad kind — but when I met Elizabeth Seams, I saw only a shy, introspective, twelve-year-old girl.
She wore pigtails, and played with Barbies, and talked about Ariana Grande. She looked young for her age. I noticed that immediately about her. However, the moment she spoke, she quoted Edgar Allan Poe without hesitation and later told me her favorite book was The Giver by Lois Lowry.
My editor had heard of the girl who talks to trees while searching the social media stratosphere for peculiar and eccentric stories. It was a tweet from a man with fifty-two followers who claimed to be a government watchdog that caught my editor’s eye.
“Why would any adult publicly shame a twelve-year-old girl as demonic?” he asked during our weekly editorial meeting at the magazine.
“Where is it?” one of my colleagues asked.
“Oak Creek Canyon.”
“Where’s that?”
“Arizona.”
Momentary pause. “They’re all quacks out there.”