The door creaked again and Henry walked in. “I don’t think he does.”
“So you’re watching me now, too?” said Leon.
“Listening.” Henry put a white rectangle down on the table. It had a blunt antenna and several green lights on the front. “Baby monitor. Let’s me keep an ear on my stuff while I’m in the house.”
Leon scooted himself over until his back was propped against the shelves, then folded his arms over his chest. “The seed was given to me. It’s mine. You got no right to tell me what I can and can’t do with it.”
I said, “Unless you happen to be standing next to me with a bomb in your hand. Then I damn well do have a say. You know this thing is bad news.”
Henry chimed in. “Do you want to be responsible for another Belmont? Do you?”
Leon made a disgusted noise in his throat. “Listen to the two of you. You’ve seen exactly one of these things before, used by a man who was clearly insane. You have no idea what this package is for, so don’t pretend that you do. Let me ask you both a question. What if it does what it says. Heals people. What if I’m meant to grow more of these and bring these seeds to the world. Think about it. A hospital would be just a building with a box of seeds in it. No more sickness. No more crippling injuries.” He looked at me. “No more cancer.”
That was low. “So, what? You think you’re going to be the Johnny Appleseed of magic healing plants? Really?”
He shrugged. “Why not? Magic is back in the world. Who knows what’s possible now. But if this can help people, then we have no right to keep it locked up like this.”
“Leon ...” Henry started to say.
“No! We have to try!” He lowered his voice. “I have to try. I can’t. I can’t keep this up. I’m sorry Uncle Henry, but I’m done. I won’t live in that chair.”
The room went quiet.
Henry’s mouth worked, but he didn’t speak. I could see his eyes glisten as he heard the truth in Leon’s words. His nephew was his whole world, the closest thing to a son that he’d ever have, and the thought of losing him was more than he could bear. He looked at me, his gaze holding both a question and a plea.
I looked at Leon. “What if it goes bad?”
“Then you kill me.” He drew his pistol from behind his back and handed it to me. “If this doesn’t work, I’m dead anyway.”
I took the gun from him, but I didn’t hand over the seed. Not yet. I had to let Henry make the call. We’d known each other for longer than most people had been alive, and had been through every kind of fire you could think of together, both figuratively and literally. I’d give my life for Henry, and his hands prove that he’d do the same for me without hesitation. He stared at the gun and then met my eyes. He nodded.
I passed the seed to Leon. He took it from me with trembling fingers and closed his fist around it. A deep shuddering breath escaped him.
“Thank you.”
I stepped to one side and pointed the .45 at his head.
He gripped the seed between his thumb and index finger. The thorn was slick and shiny, as though wet, and the tip was barbed. He stared at it for a moment gathering his courage, and then stabbed it into the thigh of his unfeeling right leg.
He screamed.
10
I flicked off the safety and stepped back. Both of Leon’s hands were clutching his thigh around a tiny wound that he shouldn’t have been able to feel.
The shaft of the thorn was buried up to the translucent ball on the end, which was sitting on a bead of blood that was welling up around the puncture. As I watched, the ball grew, softening and sagging as it swelled. Leon cradled it with one hand to support it.
It quickly grew to the size of a golf ball. Then a baseball. It kept growing, filling with Leon’s blood, turning from amber to a dark ruby red. Thicker ridges began to show on its surface, causing the skin of the sphere to bulge out between them like the segments of an orange.
I was worried about how much blood the thing was taking. It was large enough now to contain two pints or more. Henry must have had the same thought.
“Leon ...”
“It’s fine, Uncle Henry,” he said between clenched teeth. “I think it’s slowing down.”
The three of us watched the swelling, pulsating mass with trepidation. When it was nearly half the size of a basketball, it came off in Leon’s hand. He gasped and swayed against the shelf. I took the sphere from him before he could drop it. It was hot.
“The sheet says to sow it in the earth. So now we need to bury it. Outside,” Leon said between gasps.
I handed the rubbery sphere to Henry, who cradled it in both hands as though the slightest jostling might burst it. Then I fetched Leon’s wheelchair and lifted him into it. After he was seated, I pointed at the patch of bloody denim on his leg.
“You mind?”
He shook his head. I pinched the fabric with the fingers of both of my hands and pulled, tearing open a large hole over his thigh. The swollen flesh around the wound was a bulge the size of an egg. The puncture was clearly visible, but the thorn was not. Likely it was somewhere deep down in the muscle. I wondered if we were going to have to cut it out later.
“It’s fine,” said Leon. “Let’s go.” He wheeled past me, nearly running over my toes in his haste to get outside. Henry and I followed him. I grabbed a shovel from the row of gardening tools hanging by the door as I passed.
The chill was turning bitter outside, made worse by the constant breeze. Overhead, thousands of stars glittered in the empty sky and shone their indifferent light down on us. We made our way to the edge of the grassy field that surrounded Henry’s house all the way out to the tree line.
I hacked out a good size hole in the frosty soil. Henry knelt and gently deposited the sphere, then pushed dirt over it with his hands. I had to help him up afterwards. The three of us surrounded the hole and watched it in silence.
“Well, we did it,” I said. “We’ll check on it in the morning. Come on, it’s cold.”
Leon shook his head, eyes still fixed on the little mound of dirt. “I’m gonna stay out here for a while.”
“C’mon, Leon. Are you really going to wait for something to sprout? You know how long it takes for a plant to grow from a seed?”
A broad grin broke out across his face. “About sixty seconds?”
Thin gray sprouts were slowly unwinding out of the ground. They grew taller and thicker as I watched, curling and wavering in the wind. At about a foot high, the stalk bent under its own weight and drooped to the ground. It was pointed towards Leon.
We watched as it snaked towards him, the tip always raised into the air, weaving back and forth as it moved. It touched Leon’s wheelchair, and then grew slowly up the side until it reached his lap. At that point it turned and headed for the wound on his leg.
I stepped forward, but Leon held up a hand. “Wait. This is supposed to happen. Just give it a chance.”
The tip of the vine dipped into the hole in Leon’s leg. His hands clamped down on the armrests of his chair and he drew a sharp breath. “It’s okay, it doesn’t hurt. Just feels weird is all.” Then he laughed. “Can you believe that? I can feel it!”
The vine began to darken, starting at Leon’s wound and traveling swiftly back down to the spot where we planted it. As it got darker, it also began to swell, growing thicker and more rigid.
The ground around the vine bulged and cracked. Loose soil shifted with every spasm from underground as the bulge grew.
When it was three feet across a hand burst from the ground.
The earth churned and another hand appeared, followed by arms and a head. The hands clawed and shoved against the ground and a torso appeared. As it dug itself free, I could make out the shape of a man. The vine growing out of Leon’s leg was connected to its stomach like a vegetative umbilical cord.
Every part of its body was made of overlapping and entwined vines of different lengths, exactly imitating the contours of a human body. Thicker vines bu
lged where large muscles like biceps and pectorals would be, while groups of tiny vines simulated smaller structures like fingers.
It stepped out of the deep hole that its birth had gouged into the earth and flexed its neck and shoulders, shedding dirt as it moved.
It had Leon’s face.
11
Leon stared at the bizarre replica of himself with a mixture of wonder and fear. And hope. He rubbed his hands across his thighs nervously and his throat worked as he swallowed.
I understood a little of what he was feeling as he considered trying to stand. In those last moments before you know something for certain, you’re still at a place in your life where hope lives untested. Where things haven’t yet failed and nothing has been lost. Once you know, and fail, you can never get that back. The best of us can find new hope elsewhere, but that doesn’t make the pain any less.
As I watched, Leon’s feet twitched and jerked on the wheelchair footrests. Then, ever so slowly, the soles of his shoes slid across the ribbed metal, one inch at a time, until they slid off the sides and thumped lightly onto the ground.
Eyes closed, he pushed. Feet against the ground, hands rigid on the armrests of his chair, sweat in his hairline. He leaned forward, and in one sudden movement, surged to his feet.
Afraid to open his eyes or move, he just stood there swaying ever so slightly with his fists clenched. And then it was real.
He threw his head back and let out a cry of unbridled joy and savage victory at the heavens. His shouts echoed back at us from the surrounding woods and tear tracks shone on his cheeks in the starlight.
He pushed his wheelchair away with one foot, a little more forcefully than necessary, then said to me and Henry, “Thank you both. You saved my life tonight. And thank you,” he said to the wooden man standing ten feet away.
The wooden man inclined its head in acknowledgement, then gripped the vine growing out of its stomach and broke it off with a sharp twist. It tossed the end to the ground with a flick of its hand and then stood still facing Leon.
Imitating his wooden doppelganger, Leon gripped the vine growing out of his thigh and twisted it. He grunted in pain. Getting a firmer grip, he gave it another wrench. It tore free, leaving behind a bulge in his skin where the end was still lodged in his leg.
The wooden man swiveled its head to look at me, then Henry. It looked back at Leon and raised two fingers in the air. Then its face broke into a smile and it made a short bow with one hand over its heart. It was hard to tell, but the gesture appeared to convey both gratitude and sarcasm.
After the bow it strolled over to me, relaxed and in no hurry. I stood my ground and let it get within arm’s reach. It was amazingly detailed for something made entirely out of wooden vines. I could hear them squeaking and rubbing against each other with each quick, graceful movement.
It stopped in front of me and leaned close, as if examining me with its blank wooden eyes. Then it reached out and gave me one hard slap on the shoulder and then another on my thigh. I felt like a prize cow at a livestock auction. It gave an appreciative nod to Leon.
It took hold of my left arm. At first it was just creepy, but within moments it had tightened its grip. I tried to pull away.
It squeezed tighter. Black thorns sprouted from the tips of its fingers, long and razor sharp. Blood welled up around the punctures.
“That’s enough!” I grabbed its wrist and pulled, but the creature only bore down harder. Its fingers dug inwards and I felt the thorns scrape bone.
That was the end of my tolerance for Wooden Leon. I tugged harder, but it resisted. It was clearly stronger than a human being. Which was fine, it’s been a long time since I was human.
I quit trying to be gentle and yanked the hand free. The creature’s wrist broke at a ninety-degree angle with a crack of splintering wood.
Leon cried out. His hand was dangling at an unnatural angle from his arm and stark white bone was protruding from his wrist.
The creature jumped back. With a grimace stamped on Leon’s features, it used its other hand to straighten the broken wrist. Vines writhed against each other and within seconds it was good as new. The whole time it never looked away from my arm.
The thorns that the creature had driven into my biceps with its fingers were still there, each buried in the muscle with only the tops still visible. Unlike the large amber head that had been on the first thorn, these each had a smaller clear bead. They began to swell, just for a moment, turning pink as they filled with my blood. An instant later the beads turned a dull milky gray color and their smooth shiny surfaces began to wrinkle and shrivel. Within seconds they were nothing but tiny crumpled sacs.
The wooden man’s mouth fell open and it took a step away from me. Then it turned to Leon, who was rubbing his own wrist, now also fully healed.
It pointed at me and then raised its hands, palm upwards.
“I don’t know what you want,” said Leon, “but don’t do that again. No more thorns, understand?”
A look of incredulous anger appeared on its face. It pointed at me, then Henry. Then it slapped its chest with one hand. The message was clear. Mine.
Leon shook his head. “I said no.”
It spun and charged at Henry.
I lunged after it. Hunger leapt into my hand and I swung. Wooden fragments flew as the otherworldly weapon caught the heavy creature across the shoulder and gouged out a deep furrow. I looked at Hunger and was surprised to see that it had sprouted sharp metal teeth all down its length.
The creature was flung violently to one side. Leon howled in pain and clutched one bloody shoulder. I felt bad about that, but I couldn’t let it grab Henry. It would have shredded the old man in seconds.
Despite its weight, the wooden man was incredibly nimble. It turned in midair and rebounded off of the ground like a spring, darting straight back at Henry.
Two sharp cracks heralded Anne’s arrival. The wooden man staggered back, its head snapping to one side.
Henry flinched as blood sprayed across his face. Leon collapsed.
“No!” I slapped Anne’s gun down. She looked confused and horrified, staring at Leon’s still form. I’m sure I looked the same way.
By the time I managed to tear my eyes away from Leon, the wooden man had vanished.
12
I reached Leon in time to see his eyes flutter open. The right side of his face was misshapen and slick with blood.
As I watched, his cheekbone and jaw knitted themselves together under his torn skin, which became whole and smooth. It was both fascinating and disturbing at the same time. I wondered if other people felt that way when I recovered from what should have been fatal wounds.
Anne knelt down beside him. “Oh my God, Leon! I thought I killed you! Fuck!”
Leon just beamed at her. “Anne! I can walk!”
“Leon, look at me. Half your face was missing a second ago. You sure you’re okay?”
A wide grin split Leon’s face as he stood up, then flexed his knees a few times. “I can’t even explain it. I feel like I’m gonna laugh and cry all at the same time. I’m whole. You don’t know what that means to me.”
“You used the thorn.” Now that she was sure that Leon would live, her tone was a lot less friendly.
“It was a calculated risk,” I said.
She jabbed me in the chest with a finger. “You completed a ritual from one of those packages without the faintest idea of what would happen. That’s not calculated, that’s stupid. I’m standing out here in the freezing cold in the middle of the night, in my pajamas, because the stink of whatever you did out here woke me out of a sound sleep. It was that strong. The last time I smelled anything like that was when the sky opened up over Belmont.”
Everyone glanced upwards, just for a moment. The sky remained empty and placid.
“Like Belmont? You sure?” asked Henry.
“Yes.” Anne’s eyes narrowed just a bit. She was never much for having her judgment questioned. “It’s not as bad r
ight now, but it still reeks.” She leaned close to Leon and made a face. “So do you.”
He shrugged at her, completely unapologetic.
She turned back to me. “So you created a monster and it attacked you, which I’m sure was very surprising to everyone. What did it want?”
I flexed my arm. The thorns were still there, deeply embedded in the flesh. I was going to need something to dig them out with. “It seemed to think that Henry and I were some kind of offering from Leon.”
“Yes,” said Henry. “And it clearly felt betrayed when Leon didn’t cooperate. As if it were outraged more at the breach of protocol than anything else.”
“I don’t know what it was after, but judging from my arm, I think we can rule out anything pleasant. We’re going to have to hunt it down before it can try again on someone else.”
Leon peered into the dark tree line ahead. “I get that. But once we find it, how do we put it down without killing me?”
I pulled his .45 out of my waistband and handed it back to him. “We may not be able to.”
We went back into the house. Leon got Chuck out of bed, Anne got dressed, and Henry fetched his tackle box from the shed. When he returned, he grabbed a mason jar from under the sink and sat me down at the table.
He rooted around in the filthy tackle box, pulling out tangles of clear string still tied to red and white bobbers and a handful of deformed lead sinkers. Eventually he found a pair of needle-nose pliers at the bottom, the teeth stained with rust.
I put my elbow on the table and rolled up my sleeve. “You want to wash that off? It still smells like fish.”
“You haven’t been sick since 1943. I doubt a dirty pair of pliers is going to be the end of you.”
The pliers slipped off the end of the thorn several times as Henry tried to get a grip on it. He finally had to jam the pliers into the wound to get enough purchase to pull it out.
He dropped it into the jar where it landed with a tiny click. It was an inch long, slightly curved, and shiny and black as a piece of onyx. The shriveled bead on the tip was soft, almost flesh-like.
Liar's Harvest (The Emergent Earth) Page 4