by S. T. Joshi
“Very nasty,” said Dave.
“Next we have the ‘Tiger Lily.’ Called that for the shape of its head.”
Bulbous, swollen, fanged, its snake-like head was speckled in bilious green. It drew a grunt of revulsion from Dave.
The adjoining box contained a plant whose fungoid leaves formed a hooded funnel.
“It’s very effective,” said Martha. “Insects are weakened by its narcotic nectar. They fall into the funnel and are consumed.”
“How charming,” said Dave.
She kept moving along the line. “Then we have this little rascal. Imported from China, and quite an efficient predator.”
It brandished sword-sharp leaves with lithe tendrils protruding from its central stem, and was notably larger than the other plants. Dave found it grotesque.
“I must admit this one’s a little creepy,” said Martha. “It can paralyze and swallow animals as large as a baby rat.”
“Ugh!” Dave shook his head. “You sure seem to be up on all this . . . plant stuff.”
“Botany, babe, botany! It was one of my best subjects.”
“Uh-huh,” said Dave. “Well, it sure ain’t mine!”
Martha glanced down at the silver watch on her left wrist. “Oops! Feeding time for the gang.” She took one of the odd-shaped bottles from her purse, handing it to Dave. “You do the honors.” Impish grin. “You need to bond with our leafy friends.”
Dave held the bottle of orange-pink fluid up to the light. “Christ! There are all kinds of bugs floating in this thing!”
“Perfectly normal,” said Martha. “It’s what they eat.”
“I’ll tell you what it perfectly is—it’s perfectly disgusting.” He handed the bottle back to her. “You feed ’em. I’m outta here.”
Stepping swiftly away, he exited the greenhouse.
* * *
Just after midnight. Dave was deep into a first edition of Oliver Twist when Martha entered the library. She kissed him on his cheek.
“Time for my début,” she said. “My leafy audience awaits.”
Dave scowled at her. “You don’t actually mean to sing to a bunch of plants?”
“It’s in our contract,” she reminded him. “Three songs after the midnight feeding. We agreed to it.”
“I can’t believe you’re doing this!”
“Believe it.” She smiled. “I have a rather good voice. Sang in the school choir. It’ll be fun.”
“You have a weird idea of fun.”
“Care to join me for my audition?”
“No thanks, I’ll pass. I’ll stick with Dickens.”
“Your choice,” she said, kissed him on the cheek again, and left.
As the night deepened, Dave heard his wife’s lilting contralto drifting to him from the dimly lit greenhouse. The song was “In the Sweet Bye and Bye.”
He put his book down and moved to the window where he could see the greenhouse, enjoying his wife’s singing.
“She’s not half-bad—gotta give it to her.”
With each rise and warble of her voice, he noticed that the orange-pink glow under the doorframe of the greenhouse intensified; when she stopped to take a breath, the glow lessened considerably. He observed that the seam around the door to the lab did the same, as though there were more moss inside it.
“Well, I’ll be. That’s plain weird. Gives me the damn creeps!”
* * *
Four months later, the phone rang.
Martha answered. “Oh, Ms. Fanning . . . what a nice surprise to hear from you . . . Yes, yes, all the plants are fine . . . I assure you we’ve been taking excellent care of them . . . They certainly are hungry little fellows . . .” A pause. “Of course we’ll be ready to leave . . . all right then . . .”
Martha put down the phone. “That was—”
“I heard,” nodded Dave. “She still in Europe?”
“So far as I know. Says she’ll be out of touch until her return. She’s in the woods somewhere hunting fungus.”
“What a nutty old dame.”
Martha sighed. “Been so lovely being here, the wonderful weather and all. I’ll miss it.” Another sigh. “I hate going home!”
“Sid called from the store. Things are looking up. Seems we made a smart move investing in vinyl. It’s making a big comeback. Hot with the younger set.”
“That’s nice,” said Martha. Her tone was strained.
“What’s wrong?” Dave asked. “You look worried.”
“That’s because I am,” she confessed. “The plant food’s getting low. We’re almost out of bottles and I can’t reach Ms. Fanning.”
“Gonna be all right,” he told her. “We’ve probably got enough until she gets back.”
“I hope so,” said Martha. “I really hope so.”
* * *
The following weekend found Martha coughing violently, breaking loose chunks of orange, glowing phlegm; the accompanying stabbing headaches sent her reeling to bed.
Dave called a local doctor, a sallow-faced man named Sutter, radiating authority, who agreed to examine Martha at the house.
“Your wife is suffering from a severe bronchial infection of some sort,” Sutter declared. “Running a high fever. She needs to be hospitalized.”
“It’s that serious?”
“Yes, Mister Burns, it’s that serious.”
After Sutter left, Dave stood at the living-room window, staring numbly into the darkness. The soft glow of the moss coming from the greenhouse and lab put him on edge. His fists were clenched, his heart racing. What the hell’s wrong with her? Is that damn plant food radioactive or something? My God, what if something happens to Martha? It would be the end of his world.
The ambulance arrived for Martha Burns that same night. Dave gently stroked her fevered cheek as she was placed inside. “You’ll be just fine,” he told her. “I’m right here with you, and everything’s gonna be fine.”
Later, Doctor Sutter told Dave that, thanks to antibiotics and an antifungal to treat her infection, his wife was much improved but needed to remain in the hospital for another seven to ten days.
Dave was greatly relieved and made frequent visits. Each time she asked him about the plants. Are they okay? Is he feeding them on schedule? “Yeah, and it’s a bummer. Stinks in there. Hate feeding those damn things. And I sure don’t sing to them!”
“What about their bottled food? Is it holding up?”
“Not really. Been stretching it by feeding ’em smaller amounts, but we’re running out fast.”
She frowned, eyes clouded with concern. “There must be more food! Try the lab. She might be keeping some extra bottles there.”
“But she warned us not to—”
“I know, hon, but this is an emergency.”
“Okay then, I’ll pick the lock and have a look inside.”
“Can you do that?”
“No sweat. Used to practice magic when I was a kid. Locks are a cinch.”
Martha relaxed back into her pillow.
“Can I get you anything? Do you need anything?”
“Thanks, hon, but right now all I need is sleep.”
Her eyes closed.
It was the last time they were together.
* * *
At the lab, Dave had no trouble picking the ancient lock.
It was late afternoon, and the sun had dropped below the horizon. Dave’s long shadow preceded him as he scanned the area. The interior was jammed with filing cabinets, glass beakers, and the usual laboratory equipment. It was overrun with thick moss—but no bottled plant food.
A circular metal ring in the middle of the lab floor caught Dave’s attention. When he pulled back a trapdoor laced with cobwebs a gust of extremely cold air billowed up from the darkness below. Was this a storage area? Maybe the bottles were kept there.
Damp concrete steps led downward to a brick-walled, night-black cellar. Dave descended into the chilled darkness, using a small pocket flash he’d taken from the house to
illumine the moss-covered walls. It cast a thin beam of light ahead of him. No food bottles; all the shelves were empty.
Then he saw it—an orange glowing mass of choking moss huddled in a far corner. Dave centered the flash beam on the shape. To his horror, it appeared to be a man covered in rotted vines and thick, viscid leaves. Not entirely a man, but something that had once been a man—something that was no longer human.
Dave drew in a tight breath. So this was Viola Fanning’s infernal manifestation—the deformed end product of a twisted mind. Was this her dead husband? Some insane science project gone awry, now locked away in the lab? Dave found a wall switch by the stairs and snapped on the overheads. The dark figure stirred into life, awakened from its hibernation by the sudden burst of light. A long, furry tongue unfurled like a fiddlehead from a hole in what seemed to be a ruined face. Leafy creepers looped its body, and barbed, razored thorns thrust out from the torso, which appeared to be comprised of woody vines and bone that had fused together under a tight skin of smooth bark. A mass of throbbing feelers knit together to form the misshapen head; a reeking growth of gray fungus obscured half of its bulk.
The thing’s gelatinous eyes, seeping sticky resin, fastened on Dave Burns; its voice was hollow and rasping: “Need . . . feed friends . . . hungry . . . you not feed enough!”
This creature sensed the plants’ unabated hunger— perhaps linked to them by some unifying psychic force—plant to plant-thing.
The angry creature advanced, gnarled hands outstretched.
Dave knew he had to act. Scooping up a three-legged metal stool, he smashed it across the creature’s head. Pus-colored fluid spurted from the wound, as the thing surged forward to encircle Dave’s body in its spiny arms. As moss encircled his legs, trapping him, Dave’s ribs cracked audibly—and he cried out in sharp agony as his backbone snapped. Pain, like blazed lightning, engulfed him. Then it was over.
Dave Burns would never feel pain again.
* * *
A hedge trimmer had been placed, along with other garden tools, on a high shelf in the lab. Viola Fanning had used it to trim the box hedge. Now the creature grasped the metal saw awkwardly and switched it on, hovering over the broken body now glowing and oozing at its feet; Dave was already being ingested by the moss enveloping the lab, causing the weak orange glow to intensify as the plants fed on his body. It did not take long to reduce Dave Burns to small pieces with the trimmer. Very small pieces. His remains filled a canvas sack that the creature dragged into the greenhouse.
Time to feed itself—and its hungry friends.
* * *
Martha had phoned Dave to pick her up at the hospital, but had been unable to reach him. After Dr. Sutter had signed her medical discharge, she took a taxi back to the Fanning house.
Martha keyed open the front door, calling out to Dave: “Hon, I’m home!”
No reply. Silence.
Maybe he was out in the yard, she told herself. Hadn’t heard the phone ringing. Ought to be back inside by now. Maybe he’s in the library, deep into some first edition. She checked there. Empty. No Dave. The gazebo, then? Maybe taking a morning nap in the shade. No, not there either. Puzzled, she tried the greenhouse. Why would he be here considering his marked distaste for plants?
Martha never found her husband.
What she did find stunned and revolted her: pieces of a human-like creature straight out of her worst nightmares. Gummy plant nectar covered what remained of the slimed body parts, glistening wetly from a canvas sack in the shafted sunlight. The plants had also overgrown their containers, spilling out onto the sides of the table, commingling with the abundant overgrowth of glowing moss, which was now spreading away from the greenhouse so much that she could actually see the tendrils and vines slithering away from the building, through the yard, and up the trees at the neighbor’s place in a thick, ropy display.
Martha screamed.
* * *
“Thought I’d heard everything, but I just can’t figure this,” declared Sheriff Nelson Brock, taking her statement at the police station. He was a tall man, big in girth, eyes hidden behind mirrored glasses. “Don’t make no sense. Never heard nothing like it. Oh, I can figure your mister plain taking off somewhere on his own, for God knows what reason, but this . . .”
Martha Burns, still badly shaken, her eyes swollen from lack of sleep, stared at the big man.
“The plants,” she whispered. “They’re taking over—please do something before it’s too late!”
Outside, a hard rain began.
On a Dreamland’s Moon
ASHLEY DIOSES
Ashley Dioses is a writer of horror and fantasy poetry from Southern California. Her work has appeared in Weird Fiction Review, Spectral Realms, Weirdbook, Skelos, and elsewhere. Her debut collection of dark traditional poetry, Diary of a Sorceress, appeared in 2017 from Hippocampus Press. Her poem “Carathis” appeared in Ellen Datlow’s recommended list in Best Horror of the Year, Volume Seven. She has also appeared in the HWA’s Poetry Showcase 2016 for her poem “Ghoul Mistress.”
The cats of Ulthar steal across my dreams
On paws of softest fur and blur the seams
Of my subconscious with their purrs and eyes
Of molten gold that twinkle and that gleam
Like beacon lights toward where their kingdom lies.
I dream a dreamer’s dream of longing for
Entrance to Dreamland and the moon’s closed doors.
Nyarlathotep, the God of Chaos, soon
Awaits in dream; for him my heart outpours!
Why must He lurk afar, behind curs’d rune?
The ghouls repeat his words, “I am the last,
I am the Crawling Chaos. From long past
Centuries, I hear words not of this plane.
Renewing myths from times far gone, I cast
Chaos across the lands—Chaos will reign.”
The pixie parasols of royal blues
Bedecked the path to doors of vibrant hues.
I had to follow it and try to see
My emperor of dreams, for all rare views
Of him would scarcely answer my dark plea!
The hallways luminous began to dim,
And as I entered the next room, the grim
Expressions of distracted Lengish men
Upon me looked, as moonbeasts with wet limbs
And grayish skin gazed eyeless through the den.
The coiling lurkers in the serpent pools
Appeared to hint with their black socket-jewels
Of some excitement imminent, and held
The men of Leng back, for they would be fools
To spoil my hunt to find where my king dwelled.
A snicker echoed through my head, and I
Knew that my god was watching with keen eye.
O how I shivered for His very touch!
I offered up my mind—for me to die
Would lend a soul unworthy of His clutch.
Hot are the sands of time, yet on I tread,
For every step I take ignites my red
And pumping heart aflame with a desire
For Him, my god, to pull my heartstrings’ thread.
My trembling thighs grow moist from no sand’s fire.
Hail Nitokris, my patron, grant me skill
In amorous endeavors so the thrill
Of His enchantment will coil round my soul!
O queen of ghouls, O goddess of the kill,
Adorn me with the power of your whole
Being; instill in me the strength beyond
My mortal kin! My madness makes a bond
With you and, surely, Him . . . O please be so!
In swirls of yellow does my queen respond
And give to me her maddened blessing, though
Will it enough be for my lord, my king?
Nyarlathotep, he speaks—yet will He sing?—
Into my ears soft words that vanish like
The sand through
fingers; like the chill in spring.
He is aware of me yet will not strike.
My god has come to me in dreams with sweet
And feverous desires released in heat.
His hands upon me set my skin aflame,
And lingering, His taste is still a treat
Upon my lips; His tongue begins to claim
The contours of my torso, hips, and thighs.
He calls to me; I come beneath the skies
Of poison reds, and fiery greens, and stars
That ever bleed upon these Dreamland sties.
Chaotic wasteland welcomes me, and scars
My mind like verse engraved on graveyard stone.
Up marble stairs and over ashen bone,
I start to hasten through the labyrinth’s green
And yellow passages of star-dust, blown
Through the high windows, open wide, which glean
The stuff of star-winds in this land of dreams.
The walls with faceless souls pulse at the seams
Where they would claw their way through the gray walls.
They cry in direst warning, yet their screams
Are echoless, and I ignore their squalls.
The night-gaunts stalk me stealthily, unseen
In crevices above; with senses keen
They know my presence, swift reflections from
Their rubber wings betraying their black sheen.
They hunger for me, yet they will not come.
I enter the last chamber high inside
The palace where He waits for me beside
A window looking over Dreamland’s moon.
He slightly turns his head toward his bride
And fully faces me—O, how I swoon!
I stood before the pharaoh darkly masked,
And I was lost in pride as the quest tasked
Me finally our meeting did allow!
“O love, will you unmask for me?” I asked.
His laughter echoed as He clutched his brow. . ..
A sinister abyss awaited my
Awestruck and hungry gaze, yet I did cry
Aloud, for Beauty itself I beheld
Within my crimson-teared and flaming eyes!
My soul, now His, by His dire hand was felled.