The Garden of Darkness

by Gillian Murray Kendall

  THE VISION GARDEN

  WHEN CLARE CAME to, they were still outside. Jem had his arm around her.“She’s back,” he said to the others. Mirri and Sarai clearly wanted a family hug, but Jem kept them at bay. “She looks kind of fragile.”

  The woman Cured was still alive, and they helped Ramah and Bird Boy tie her hands with duct tape. They couldn’t bring themselves to hurt her. Not in cold blood. Not when she was so injured and bewildered; it wasn’t her fault she was a Cured. Finally they managed to get her into the house. Clare came in leaning on Jem.

  They dragged the woman to the sofa, tied her feet, and covered her with a blanket so she wouldn’t get cold. Her scarred face was encrusted with blood. She lay there, helpless, unconscious, her thin hair spread out on the pillow.

  Clare gently pulled away from Jem. Leaning down, she put her ear to the woman’s mouth and, with her hand, tried to feel for a pulse.

  “She’s alive,” said Clare.

  “Did you think your dog would kill her?” asked Ramah.

  “Yes,” said Jem and Clare together.

  Ramah fetched some towels, warm water and disinfectant. She washed away the blood from the woman’s face and discovered puncture wounds on her neck, chest, and arms.

  “Your dog missed the jugular by an inch,” said Ramah.

  “What’s the juggler?” asked Mirri.

  “Jugular,” said Sarai. “It carries blood.”

  Mirri was impressed. “Your vocab list is working.”

  The Cured opened her eyes. One of them was half obscured by a flap of flesh, but they could see that the other was a deep brown. She moaned and moved into a corner of the sofa. As she did, her hair was pulled away from her neck, and they could all see the orange patch behind her ear.

  “Tell us your name,” said Jem.

  “I want to kill you,” said the Cured. “I could feed on you.”

  “She’s decompensating,” said Ramah.

  “What does that mean?” asked Mirri.

  “Even her craziness is breaking down.”

  “We need to look at the patch on her neck,” said Jem.

  Ramah brought some tweezers from the bathroom and a little plate from the kitchen. When she saw this, the Cured began to struggle, and Jem and Clare had to hold her down. Quickly, Ramah used the tweezers to peel off the patch. It was about the size of a quarter. She placed it on the plate.

  “I see that one dead,” said the Cured, pointing at Bird Boy.

  Ramah pulled Bird Boy away from the Cured, and then sent him to play with Bear. Ramah, Clare and Jem bent over the plate and examined the patch. The sticky side was face up, grey and featureless. Ramah turned the patch over, and tiny letters at the edge were clearly visible. SYLVER. The patch was much thicker than Clare had thought it would be, about the size of two quarters pressed together.

  “I wonder how it works,” said Clare.

  Mirri, Sarai and Bird Boy came over to look at the contents of the plate.

  “I wish we knew what ‘SYLVER’ actually means,” said Clare. “Before my family and I left the city, I saw ‘SYLVER’ spray painted on a notice about the Cure. I had thought the cure was an injection.”

  “I want to know why the patch isn’t skin-colored,” said Mirri.

  “Why should it be?” asked Jem irritably.

  “My father’s was skin-colored.”

  Ramah looked at Mirri thoughtfully. The others stared.

  “You said your father died of Pest,” said Jem.

  “He did,” said Mirri. “But patches are how my father stopped smoking. He put on the patches and then he needed them less and less and then he didn’t need them at all. He said the stuff on the patch was absorbed right through the skin. Right through the skin. I thought that was pretty amazing. He said I shouldn’t touch them.”

  “A nicotine patch,” said Jem.

  “I guess,” said Mirri. “Anyway, he hadn’t smoked in over a year when Pest came.”

  “So,” said Jem. “The Cure, the Cured, the nightmare, the insanity—they all come down to this little patch.”

  THE CURED, AFTER her lacerations had been treated, fell asleep on the sofa.

  “I’ll watch her,” Jem told Clare. “You take care of yourself.”

  “You have the starting of a black eye,” said Clare.

  “Go look in the mirror. You’re a bit disheveled yourself.”

  Ramah, Mirri and Sarai went with Clare into the bedroom. The mirror wasn’t reassuring: Clare had cuts and bruises on her forehead and cheek, and her face and arms were streaked with mud.

  “You should have told me how I looked,” she said to Sarai and Mirri.

  “We were busy discovering that the patch worked like a nicotine patch,” said Sarai.

  “That was really exciting,” said Mirri. “And I had the clue.”

  “You should wash off that mud,” said Sarai. “It’s getting into the cuts.”

  “You look a little beat up,” said Ramah.

  Clare considered. Her whole body ached. “Yeah. I feel pretty beat up. But don’t tell Jem. He worries about everything.”

  Ramah looked her up and down. “You must be cold. I’ll get you some dry clothes.”

  “Look at your neck,” said Sarai to Clare.

  Clare looked in the mirror and saw deep bruises on her throat. They were in the shape of a pair of hands.

  When Clare went back to the living room, Jem looked up at her anxiously. The tissue around his left eye was dark and swollen, and both eyes were deeply bloodshot. But when she smiled at him, relief lit up his eyes.

  Clare and Jem sat together while the Cured slept. Mirri and Sarai, meanwhile, convinced Ramah to shed the goatskins, and then they took her to the bedroom and proceeded to dress her up. When they returned to the living room, Ramah was dressed in an ancient pair of jeans and—retrieved from a box in the attic—an old-fashioned print shift.

  Ramah insisted on spreading the goatskins out to dry in the living room. At first the odor was simply appalling, but, as the skins dried, even Mirri stopped complaining. Clare didn’t want Ramah to feel awkward so she said:

  “Bear smells a little like that when he gets wet.”

  Meanwhile Mirri, seemingly intent on the makeover of Ramah, brushed her hair until it gleamed, long, light and wavy.

  Ramah would have been, thought Clare, a good subject for a portrait.

  Then the Cured woke up. She watched them intently as she chewed her nails.

  “I can get you some water, if you want,” Jem said to her.

  “You’re the dead one,” she said.

  Jem turned to Clare. Clare had tried to arrange a soft scarf around her throat to hide the bruises, but the material kept slipping down and revealing the marks.

  “That must hurt,” said Jem.

  “Yeah,” Clare admitted. “But it beats being pain-free and dead. Thanks, Jem.”

  He turned his head away. Ramah watched them, and Clare thought there was a bemused look in her eye.

  And all the time, the Cured stared at them from the sofa.

  “We’re going to have to do something with her,” said Clare. “Taking the patch off doesn’t seem to have made any difference.”

  “It’s only been a little while,” said Jem.

  “You want to eat me,” said the Cured.

  “I kind of think it’s the other way around,” said Jem. Ramah stood, watching.

  “What are you going to do now?” Mirri asked Ramah. “There’s still a Cured out there.”

  “I don’t know what I’ll do,” said Ramah. “The same thing as before, I suppose. Wait out the winter with Bird Boy.”

  “I don’t know how you’ve held on this long,” said Jem.

  “I didn’t have any brothers or sisters. My parents were—distant. Coping with things is what I do. And Bird Boy is a great help.”

  “He seems strange.”

  “Does he?” asked Ramah.

  Ramah’s eyes were deep green. She looked at Clare and Jem unt
il Clare began to feel uncomfortable.

  “Why don’t you come with us to the Master,” said Mirri suddenly. “Both of you.”

  Ramah looked up at her sharply.

  “That’s a great idea,” said Sarai.

  “Jem?” asked Ramah. Her face had, for the first time since Clare had seen her, tensed up. It was hard for Clare to imagine Ramah being afraid of anything, but it was as if she were catching a glimpse of fear in Ramah’s cool expression. “We wouldn’t,” Ramah said, “we wouldn’t try and change anything.”

  “It’s probably already written,” said Sarai wisely.

  “Whatever that means,” said Mirri.

  “Of course it’s written,” said Jem. He caught Clare’s hand. “Right, Clare?”

  “Right.”

  It was a moment that Clare was never to forget. She realized for the first time that maybe it was possible to form a new community as well as a new family.

  “We would like to come,” said Ramah. “It’s kind of you to open your family to us.”

  Bird Boy made a sound like a dove.

  And so then they were six.

  IN THE EVENING, Sarai and Mirri huddled with Jem and Clare, as if to reassure themselves that all was well. When their eyes started to close, Jem sent them to bed. Ramah and Bird Boy, meanwhile, had gone outside to stand guard over Sheba, in case the other Cured came back. Bird Boy had Jem’s hammer. Ramah had her bow and arrows and, much more practical at close range, an axe.

  “She doesn’t mess around,” said Jem when Ramah and Bird Boy strode out the door. There was admiration in his voice, and Clare looked over at him thoughtfully.

  A little while later, Clare checked on the Cured. And she discovered that sometime, while they had all been thinking and talking and planning, the Cured had quietly died. Perhaps the Cured had been more badly hurt than they had realized; perhaps she needed the patch to live; perhaps, simply, her time had come. That last thought scared Clare more than anything else.

  THEY HITCHED UP Sheba in the dawn frost. Sarai and Mirri were both yawning. Clare’s throat hurt, and she was still hoarse. Jem looked at her, concerned. Ramah and Bird Boy watched with great interest as they put the harness on Sheba.

  “That must be complicated,” said Bird Boy.

  “You make it look easy,” said Ramah.

  “You have no idea,” said Clare.

  “I wonder what would happen if we used the Cured’s patch on ourselves,” said Mirri.

  “Very bad things,” said Ramah.

  “There’s nothing worse than being a Cured,” announced Sarai.

  “There’s Pest,” said Mirri.

  “Pest is better than being a Cured,” said Jem. And Ramah nodded her head in agreement.

  “But then you’d be dead,” said Mirri.

  “Some things are worse than dead, Mirri,” said Jem.

  Ramah and Bird Boy went into the house to collect their bundles, leaving the four of them alone.

  Mirri and Sarai looked at Jem anxiously.

  “Now that you know Ramah,” asked Mirri, “am I still your favorite?”

  “That’s not nice, Mirri,” said Sarai. “What about me?”

  “You and Sarai are both my favorites,” said Jem. “And nothing’s going to change that.”

  “What about Clare?” asked Sarai. “Is she your favorite, too?”

  “Also,” said Jem.

  “It’s different with them,” said Mirri to Sarai. “You know.”

  They talked and waited for Ramah and Bird Boy. Finally Sarai and Mirri tired of the conversation, and went to the shed in the front yard.

  It wasn’t long before Jem and Clare heard a cry. Jem was in the yard in an instant, with Clare close behind him. Bear lolloped along by Clare’s side; his ears were pricked forward, but he showed no signs of aggression. They burst into the shed.

  Sarai and Mirri were squatting in front of an open trunk.

  “What is it?” asked Jem. “Are you all right?”

  “Board games!” said Sarai.

  “They even have Chutes and Ladders,” said Mirri happily. “I’ve been looking for Chutes and Ladders everywhere.”

  “Please don’t yell like that again,” said Jem. He left them setting up Chutes and Ladders and went back to the cart with Clare.

  “They wear me out,” said Jem.

  “You love them,” said Clare.

  That evening on the trail again, this time with Ramah and Bird Boy and the goat, Clare took out her tablet of paper and sat for a long time looking at a blank page. She couldn’t think of anything to write at all. Instead, she thought of sitting on the rock in the garden she had, half-awake, dreamt about. She hadn’t told Jem about the aching sadness of the vision—an ache so deep that even its echo made her want to weep. She thought of how someone had walked towards her and how the pain had lessened. Then Clare looked up at the sliver of moon, and the sliver of moon, sailing in and out of the clouds, seemed to look back at her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  WASTELAND

  THEY CAME TO the place where the dirt track converged with the old highway to the city, the road that had been neglected ever since the new highway had been built. The new highway was a wide four-lane ribbon of asphalt with elegant clover leaves that provided exits and entrances: a transport system dotted with service areas and rest stops. But now the old way seemed the safer way. Once the only wide road in the area, now this highway was obscure, a place marked by decaying motels and abandoned gas stations. A wasteland, thought Clare.

  Sheba took a step forward and paused as though surveying the way ahead before she pulled the wagon down onto the road.

  “Not far to the city now,” said Jem. “After that all we can do is go by Rick’s map.”

  As they walked by the side of the cart, Bird Boy gave an occasional excited leap, which startled Sheba, though she soon enough grew used to it. The road—ill-maintained as it was, marked by pot holes and frost heaves and littered with empty, rotting cars—seemed full of promise.

  They soon fell into an easy, steady pace. Jem handed Clare a Slim Jim. Mirri slipped her small warm hand into Clare’s. Bird Boy sang a song about pretty little horses. And it occurred to Clare then that she might be perfectly content if they were never to reach the Master, if they were never to enter the city. She would be content to just walk—chewing a Slim Jim, talking with her friends—down the long road into forever.

  But she still couldn’t let go of the old world completely. Michael was part of the old world. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. She turned it over and over in her hands.

  “What’s that?” asked Jem.

  “I found this poem in my pocket the other day.”

  “It looks like it went through the wash.”

  “It did. I meant to give it to Michael, but I never got round to it. It doesn’t matter. He didn’t like poetry.”

  “I’m sure he would have liked it.” Jem was being his most polite. “Did you write it?”

  “No.”

  “Poetry’s a nice gift.”

  “Remember Robin?”

  “The Robin everyone wondered why you bothered with? The National Merit Scholarship Finalist Robin?”

  “Yes. Robin would say I tried too hard to please him.”

  “I wish I’d gotten to know Robin. We might’ve been friends.”

  “Oh, Jem.”

  “Why don’t you stop waving it around and waste a little poetry on me? I like poetry.” Jem took the piece of paper from her. “This isn’t easy to read. What with going through the wash and all.”

  “I know.”

  “‘I am half-sick of shadows.’ I like The Lady of Shalott: ‘she hath no loyal knight and true.’”

  “That’s not on there.”

  “No,” said Jem. “But I like that part. What an optimist you were—giving poetry to Michael.”

  Clare found she wasn’t angry. In fact, part of her wanted to laugh.

  Tennyson and
Michael. Perhaps not.

  The buildings that bordered the highway were broken and desolate. Gutters had pulled away from the side of one house; a tree had broken through the roof of another. They passed an old motel that had been left to rot long ago, after the road lost its traffic to the new highway. The walls in the front of the motel had fallen away, revealing old plumbing, some toilets, washed-out looking graffiti. The sign in front of it still stood: ‘Wayside Motel—No V ca cy.’

  When they found a small farm with a barn set back between two houses, Clare urged Sheba off the road.

  The farmhouse was small, but it had a large larder full of canned goods, as well as candles and matches and a stack of mousetraps. There were also mattresses and blankets and quilts and pillows in all the bedrooms. Curled up on one of the beds and partially under the covers was a small woman. Her eyes and mouth, or what was left of them, were frozen open.

  “I still can’t get used to it,” said Clare.

  “Come on,” said Jem. “We’ll seal off the room from the others. I love Mirri, but I don’t think I could stand another funeral.”

  Outside, in a small corral, they found a horse carcass. There wasn’t much horse left, just a sheeting of hide over bone.

  “It had nowhere to go,” said Jem.

  “Poor thing,” said Bird Boy. Bear went over and nuzzled Bird Boy before returning to Clare.

  The loft of the barn was filled with hay, and Clare found the granary still dry and stocked with useable grain. The rest stop became a work stop, as they took corn, oats, horse nuggets and hay back to the cart. Ramah tested the horse nuggets on the goat, who found them very satisfactory. And Clare found some extra large bags of dog food to supplement Bear’s hunting. On one trip, Bird Boy noticed a brood of chickens disappearing under the porch as he tried to approach.

  “Pets?” asked Bird Boy hopefully.

  “Sorry,” said Jem. “Probably dinner.”

  “Okay. Can I have the feathers?”

  “All yours. Once Clare catches them.”

  “Me?”

  “Sure,” said Jem. “I’m going to have fun watching you running down those chickens. And fun is hard to come by these days.”