Shivers 7 (27 page)

Ed started down the stairs, thunder growling in the distance, barely audible above the relentless rain. “The garden,” he whispered to himself. “There’s something in the garden.”

Even as he moved through the house, stumbling a few times in the darkness and shaking with nervous energy, Ed felt ridiculous. But he was also gripped with fear the level of which he had never before experienced.

As he reached the sliders, he flipped the outside light on and leaned close to the glass. The light illuminated most of the deck while rain and darkness conspired to make visibility beyond it essentially nonexistent. Still, Ed strained his eyes and continued staring into the night, the sounds of the storm clamoring all around him, so close and violent on the other side of those doors.
Such a thin separation,
he thought,
such a flimsy barrier
. If someone or something wanted in, would it be so hard to smash through these doors or perhaps a window? Since many of the windows were open, a screen could simply be torn free and that which separated
out there
from
in here
would be no more.

And then he saw it.

Something separated from the darkness. It was too dark to make out, but Ed could’ve sworn he’d seen movement
within
the rain, a dark form slinking through the storm in the direction of the garden.

“What are you doing?”

“Jesus Christ!” he gasped. Hannah stood a few feet away. Behind her, halfway down the stairs, Corky watched through the balusters. “You scared the shit out of me.”

“Is something out there?” she asked, taking up position at the sliders.

“I don’t know.” Ed tried to calm down but couldn’t stop trembling. Was this a dream? Why did everything feel so
wrong?
“Am I asleep?”

“You’re awake,” she told him.

“Are you sure?”

She hugged herself against the gooseflesh rising along her skin. “Yes, I—of course—we’re both standing here talking. It’s storming outside and you—tell me what you saw out there, Ed.”

“I’m not sure. I thought I saw something move across the yard but—”

“I’m calling the police.” Hannah spun and headed for the phone.

Why was she moving with such a strange gait, as if drunk?

“Wait, I can’t be sure. I just…”

“You just
what?”
she snapped. “Ed, it’s the middle of the night. If there’s someone walking around in our yard we need to call the police.”

“I can’t be sure I saw anyone.”

“Are you sure you
didn’t?”

“No, but—”

“Then I’m calling the cops.”

“It was probably the storm playing tricks on me. I looked out through the sliders and I thought I saw something but…” He swallowed, cleared his throat. “I just don’t…Hannah, do you feel all right?”

“Do
you?”

“No, I don’t feel like myself.”

“Were you sleepwalking?”

“I’ve never sleepwalked in my life.” A chill gripped him. “Why?”

“Because you just asked me if you were asleep.” The troubled look on her face grew deeper with concern. “And you don’t remember going outside, do you?”

“I didn’t go outside. I just looked out the sliders.”

“Ed,” she said softly, “you’re drenched.”

“What are you talking about? I just got out of bed and…”

The rest of the sentence died in his throat as he looked down and saw a small puddle on the floor slowly forming a halo around his bare, mud-caked feet.

4.

Though it took a while, Hannah eventually convinced Ed he’d simply had a bad dream and sleepwalked. Once he changed into dry clothes, she got him to bed, but it was nearly four in the morning when he finally fell back to sleep. Hannah, on the other hand, was up for the night. She returned downstairs with Corky, made sure the back light was on then went and got their video camera from the front hall closet. They’d purchased it a couple years before but rarely used it. The battery would give six hours of continued use, so if she set it up just before they went to bed the following evening, it would record throughout the majority of the night.

As the sun came up, Hannah ventured out onto the deck. Corky ran off into the yard to do his business while she checked on the garden. The rain had stopped an hour or so before, but the ground was still soft and wet. A series of footprints led from just beyond the deck to the garden then back again. Further proof that Ed had sleepwalked out there in the storm, and yet…

More plants had been pulled up out of the ground and left trampled in the garden again. Even sleepwalking, why would Ed damage the garden? It made no sense.

Hannah crouched down. Ed’s footprints appeared to stop about four feet from the garden. Had he jumped the rest of the way and come crashing down? It would certainly explain how two tomato plants had been ruined. A closer look around the smashed plants revealed no footprints—same as before—but the soil was so disrupted by the rain and mud and damage, it was impossible to know for sure if the storm had simply masked them.

Though the mystery had likely been solved, Hannah still wasn’t buying it, not completely anyway. She still felt there was something more to this than a sudden case of destructive sleepwalking. Besides, why was her husband suddenly sleepwalking in the first place? He’d never exhibited such behavior. And why was he ruining the garden? Had he developed a subconscious dislike for vegetables? The entire thing was so ridiculous it might’ve been humorous, had it not been so oddly terrifying.

With the video camera slung around her neck, Hannah began to pull the ruined plants from the garden. By the time she returned to the house, she’d again begun to feel frightened and uneasy, certain someone or something was watching her.

Later, she’d set the camera up to record from the edge of the deck, and she’d leave the back light on all night.

Then,
she thought,
we’ll know for sure what’s happening out here after dark
.

5.

“I think I should make an appointment with the doctor while I’m still on vacation,” Ed said. “If I’m sleepwalking there must be treatment for it.”

Hannah nodded, but she wasn’t really listening, she was too preoccupied with the camera, positioning it just right on the edge of the deck so it would be sure to record the garden once night had fallen. “What I don’t understand is how something could trample the plants like that and not leave a footprint. The rain left the ground soft, there should’ve been footprints—I mean—there’d almost
have
to be, right?”

“Did you hear what I said? Why are you preoccupied with filming the garden tonight? Obviously I’m the culprit and didn’t even realize it.”

“You would’ve left footprints,” she said, continuing to fiddle with the camcorder.

“Hannah, this is serious. I’m concerned about my health, not the garden.”

“In fact, you did leave footprints all around the garden and leading up to the garden, but not in the garden itself, where the plants were destroyed. It’s as if something dropped down from
above
the plants and did it without touching the ground.”

Ed sighed. “Do you hear yourself?”

“But that’s not possible, because there’s nothing there for something to hang from. No trees, nothing. Even if they could, it doesn’t explain the plants being trampled. Unless…could we be misinterpreting what we’ve seen somehow?” Apparently satisfied with her positioning of the camera, she stood up and put her hands on her hips. “Tonight we’ll know for sure what’s going on. The camera won’t lie.”

“It’s going to show me sleepwalking and trampling your garden.”

“Fine, if it does, we’ll get you to a doctor pronto. But I think there’s more to it. I can
feel
it. Can’t you?”

He could but didn’t want to admit it. “I don’t feel like myself. I haven’t since this began.”

“Same here,” she said. “Even Corky hasn’t been himself these last few days.”

Let her do her experiment,
he thought. The night would reveal the truth.

Ed gazed out across the yard. The heat was rising, blurring the landscape. Even their uneventful little neighborhood seemed ominous now, as if just behind the curtain they’d mistaken for reality, a predator was slowly crawling free, slinking closer…and closer still.

6.

Beneath dark and starless skies, Ed slept. Though he somehow knew he was asleep and dreaming, the fear exploding through him was real. He struggled to move, but unseen things held him tight, coiling, tightening around his limbs and torso, his throat, across his face and mouth and forehead, pulling, dragging and choking him with impossible strength. He tasted dirt and grit. It gagged him, but even as he attempted to thrash about, he knew these things were also entering him, piercing his flesh and slithering deep inside his body. He could feel them scurrying through him, beneath his skin. His eyes were wide with terror, but he could just barely see, and his attempted screams were little more than gurgling groans trapped in the base of his throat. And yet he knew he wasn’t dying. He was still alive. Alive…but not the same...

He’d become something new.

7.

In the morning, Ed found Hannah at the kitchen table sipping a cup of coffee, the recorder before her. For the first time in recent memory, she was smiling broadly and looked completely at ease. Corky lay at her feet sleeping. “Have a seat,” she said, patting the chair next to her. “You need to see this.”

He shuffled over to the table and plopped down next to her as she turned the viewer toward them and hit PLAY. “Watch,” she said, “and you’ll see we’ve solved the mystery of the garden.”

The light from the deck behind the camera gave off enough illumination to clearly see the garden and fence behind it. Ed watched awhile but saw nothing unusual.

“There,” Hannah said, pointing to a section of fence directly behind the garden.

After a few seconds, something moved. Atop a red stem growing along the fence, a white-petal flower with a purple center and outer edges slowly came into full bloom. “Is that the wild lilac bush?”

“We
thought
that’s what was growing along the fence.” She hit PAUSE. “But it’s not. I’ve been on the Internet checking it out. You’re not going to believe this, but it’s a nocturnal strain of a plant known as the
Devil’s Trumpet
. It’s a highly toxic plant. Every part of it is poisonous. Even smelling it can affect you. It’s a goddamn hallucinogen. Even indirect interaction with it can cause disorientation, blurred vision, dry mouth, severe hallucinations and paranoia. It has affects similar to LSD. That’s why we kept seeing strange things and having all those odd feelings. It’s why you were wandering around out in the storm the other night without any memory of having done so.”

Ed rubbed his eyes and tried to absorb everything she’d told him. “What’s something so toxic doing in our yard?”

“That’s what I wanted to know. A little more research revealed that its seeds are sometimes found in wild birdseed—like the kind we buy for the feeders—only it takes a long time to germinate, and oftentimes it never even blooms.”

He stared at the flower on the screen, so white and solitary in the surrounding darkness. It seemed hard to believe something so beautiful could’ve caused such havoc. “So all this time we’ve just been
drugged?”

“Higher than kites,” she giggled. “It’s all been a bad drug trip. We’re not crazy, we’re not sick, and there’s nothing coming into the yard at night pulling up our garden.”

“Are there any lasting effects? Should we still see a doctor?”

“Nope, the reactions wear off in a matter of hours. Problem was we kept poisoning ourselves every time we went anywhere near the damn thing so we never had a chance to recover unless we were asleep.”

That would explain the nightmares,
he thought. “We have to get rid of it.”

“Already took care of it. Put on a pair of gloves, covered my nose and mouth with a bandana, and cut the thing down. I walked it out into the woods and buried it.”

Ed glanced down at Corky. He’d come awake. His tail thumped the floor as if in joyful agreement. “So that’s it, huh, Cork?” he said before leaning over and planting a kiss on Hannah’s lips. “Good job, babe.”

As they hugged, Ed couldn’t help but look beyond her to the sliders and the deck and garden beyond. He shuddered.

“What’s wrong?” Hannah asked.

“The whole thing’s just so damn creepy.”

“But it’s over now,” she said through a wide smile. “It’s all over.”

8.

Ed sat on the deck, watching the birds fly about from feeder to feeder, while others hopped in the birdbath, or searched the ground for fallen seed. The sun was high in the sky and beating down on him mercilessly, but he remained where he was, sipping ice tea and listening to the birds sing. It wouldn’t be long before vacation was over and he’d return to work, so despite the heat, Ed intended to enjoy the weather as best he could. But his mind kept returning to the
Devil’s Trumpet
. He pulled his sunglasses down onto the bridge of his nose and looked out across the yard to the garden.
Damndest thing I’ve ever heard,
he thought, and although he now knew the reasons for their strange behavior, thoughts and nightmares, and the previous symptoms he’d suffered were no longer evident, there was still something about that garden that gave him the creeps. He rose from his chair and stepped down onto the lawn. Hannah and Corky were inside, and a part of him wished they were out there with him, as just then, he didn’t feel entirely comfortable being alone. Even though Hannah had said the effects didn’t last, maybe some were still lingering within him.

He felt it necessary to approach the garden, almost as if it were beckoning him, drawing him closer to something he could not quite comprehend. His chest tightened as pieces of the nightmare flashed in his head—
living things coursing through him, vines tangling and sliding around and within him, dragging him down beneath the dirt
—so he drew a deep breath and let it out slowly.
No
, he thought,
I will not let this get the better of me
.
The mystery is solved. What the hell are you afraid of?