Darkness Blooms (2 page)

She stood and walked to the next mound, noticing that in the grassy space between each mound, a few single black blooms grew. Each of these singles again had its own perfect circle of soil between it and the surrounding grass.

Sylvia shook her head as she stood and walked to the greenhouse.

She’d never seen anything like it, but as she stepped up to the door of the greenhouse and reached her hand out to turn the handle, she realized that she had.

In fifth grade, she’d done a science project on the effect that different hand soaps had on bacteria. She’d gone to her pediatrician and asked for agar slides. Papere paid for them and when they got home, the fun started. She went through a whole day without washing her hands, then she touched one of the agar slides. She then washed her hands with one of the selected soaps and touched another slide.

They covered the slides and watched the bacteria grow on the surface. Perfect little circles of filth.

That’s what the patches of black flowers reminded her of.

When Sylvia turned around to look at them again, her stomach twisted.

“That’s stupid,” she said under her breath, irritated that for a second she thought that she’d seen one of the blooms turn to face her. “Now you’re scared of wind?”

Her eyes flicked across the 18 flower mounds, stomach still clenched even though she didn’t see any more movement. Letting out a sigh, she turned back to the greenhouse.

Hopefully Mamere had watered some of Papere’s orchids and she could take a living piece of him home with her.

Sylvia twisted the handle, pulled the door open, and screamed.

She tried to back up, but tripped on something. Then she was falling. Falling and staring at the hulking man in the black trench coat, black hat, and what looked like an antique plague doctor mask that was black with a long, curved white beak. His arms spread wide to grab her.

Sylvia kicked her feet, trying to get traction so she could run. Then she saw the man’s feet.

Or rather, the lack of feet.

It took her several shuddering breaths to calm down and quit trying to run.

The man had no feet because it wasn’t a man at all. It was a scarecrow. The wooden post plainly in sight. The scarecrow didn’t even have hands. The coat sleeves just stopped.

“First wind,” Sylvia said, shaking her head. “Now a scarecrow.
Nice.
”

Sylvia got to her feet, brushed the dirt from her shorts and legs, and walked into a different greenhouse than the one she’d grown up with.

The outside hadn’t changed a bit, but the contents inside had.

Mounted beside the door, just inside was an elaborate metal box. Painted onto the outside of the box with white paint was a large, thick circle. Inside the circle, at the bottom were two white X’s, that were beside each other. At the top of the circle, still inside it though, were four vertical white lines, side by side. A horizontal white line bisected all four vertical lines.

Sylvia thumbed open the catch at the top of the box and the front cover lowered itself on pneumatic hinges that hissed. Inside the box were all sorts of knobs and switches, all that same dull black color. Above each knob or switch was a symbol. There was a golden X with the upper right arm extending out farther than the others. Another symbol consisted of eight purple dots that formed a circle with a much larger purple dot at the center. Above another switch were two jade circles with solid black dots at the center.

The symbols went on and on. Sylvia almost switched one on, but after following a tube that extended up from the box and back across the ceiling of the greenhouse, she decided against it. What if one of the switches turned on water and she soaked herself?

Seemed like a bad idea to her.

Sylvia noticed that the main tube that ran down the center of the green house branched out into smaller tubes that curved down the ceiling and along the walls. Some snaked out along the tables and others seemed to go down the walls and into the concrete beneath her feet.

On the tables were something that Sylvia hadn’t ever seen in the greenhouse before.

Plants that weren’t orchids.

Growing up, Papere had only ever grown orchids. Sylvia brought a poinsettia home from school one day to put in the greenhouse to surprise Papere as a gift. When he went out to the greenhouse that night after dinner, his nightly ritual, he’d called her out as soon as he’d set foot inside.

She’d gone out the back door, skipping down the steps, smiling and happy that she’d done a good thing.

When she walked into the greenhouse, Papere was frowning.

“What is this?” He’d asked her.

“It’s a poinsettia,” she told him. “They were giving them away at school so I brought one home for you to go with the other plants.”

Papere snorted. “Plants? I don’t grow plants, I grow orchids. There’s a difference, child. Do you know what the difference is?”

Sylvia shook her head no, feeling tears prick at the corners of her eyes.

“These are orchids,” Papere said, gesturing all around the greenhouse with his hands except for the place where her poinsettia sat, then he pointed right at it. “This is a weed. Plants that aren’t orchids are either weeds or trees, and I have no interest in either.”

The pinpricks at the corners of her eyes turned to burning and then the tears began to drip down her face. Papere came close to her and bent down, lifting her chin with his thumb.

“There’s no need to cry for a weed, child,” Papere said. “They’ll die and grow again. An orchid though, needs love and care.”

Sylvia nodded, not really understanding though.

“I think you’re old enough,” Papere said with a smile. “I think it’s time.”

Oh how her heart had fluttered at that. She’d begged him for an orchid of her own since she’d first been allowed into the greenhouse.

“It has to be a good one though,” Papere said, turning away from her and walking around the greenhouse, pausing here and there, mumbling to himself before finally picking up a little clay pot with huge holes in the side. It was filled with bark and a little green sprig sat atop thin white roots with green tips that seemed to be reaching for anything they could find.

“This is a
Neofinetia Falcata,
can you say that?” He asked.

She repeated it back to him.

“Good,” he said. “This one is yours. We’ll mount it to a slab of bark tomorrow and it will be up to you to care for it.”

That had been one of the proudest moments of Sylvia’s young life.

What filled the greenhouse now though were pots and glass jars filled with plant species that Sylvia had never seen before. There was something that looked like a venus flytrap, only the tendrils that extended from each mouth were a bright blue that ended in a shiny black. In jars there were plants that had leaves covered in beads of bright white liquid that had a yellow tint, almost like pus.

Sylvia walked down the center of the greenhouse, not wanting to reach out and touch any of the plants. She also didn’t want to touch the scarecrow and made sure to keep her distance as she walked around it.

Farther in the greenhouse were even stranger plants. There was a pot that had long, tubular black and white striped roots erupting from the center and jointed every two inches. Next to it was a massive jar filled with what appeared to be fuzzy, red confetti, but when Sylvia leaned closer, she saw that the little bits of confetti were actually little red blossoms.

Sylvia stood back up, shaking her head.

So much had changed.

Were these even Papere’s plants? Or were they Mamere’s?

Sylvia walked even deeper into the greenhouse and things only got stranger. Mounted to a large slab of bark was what looked like a moss covered rock. Right below that was a clay pot that had what looked like a two foot tall green spear planted at its center. The top of the stick was whittled into a wicked six inch point.

Sylvia also noticed that here and there, scattered between the strange plants were empty slabs of bark and empty pots still filled with soil or peat moss.

At the back of the greenhouse, Sylvia found a single
Neofinetia Falcata
mounted to a slab of bark. It wasn’t hers, but it made her think that Papere had kept her on his mind all these years. The
Neofinetia
had a single perfect bloom that was lavender.

Beside the orchid was a black pot with one of those dusky black looking flowers perched on top: the same flower that covered all the mounds in the backyard.

This was the only pot in the whole greenhouse that had a tag sticking up from the pot.

Sylvia leaned in to read what the tag read. As she got closer, the bloom spread its petals wide, the inside a red so bright that Sylvia’s mouth fell open. She leaned back as the blossom seemed to lean forward. The formation of the pistil was interesting. Whereas most pistils in flowers were bulbous at the tip, this flower had five pistils that ended in sharp looking barbs.

Sylvia let out her breath, and the greenhouse came to life.

At first, Sylvia thought that the pistils of the black and red flower were moving because she’d let out her breath on them, causing the airflow to change.

She realized that wasn’t the case when the pistil kept moving after she’d held her breath. Sylvia yelped and stepped back when one of the barbed pistils whipped out at her as if fired from a harpoon gun. The barbs came within a few centimeters of her eye before snapping back into the bloom as if attached by elastic.

For a moment, Sylvia was in shock, thinking that she couldn’t have just witnessed what she thought she had. There weren’t any plants that shot elastic barbs at people. There were plants that closed on insects and plants that trapped them with liquids, but none that actively hunted food.

When the plant shot another barb at her that fell short, she shook her head. What was this species? The plant quit firing barbs at her, its petals quivering in the still greenhouse.

Then it did something that made Sylvia bring both hands up to her mouth to cover it.

The black flower with the bright red center turned its blossom ninety degrees so that it was facing the little lavender
Neofinetia.

It shot all five of its barbs at the orchid. Four of them burst through the flower like it was nothing. The fifth wedged itself in the bark. Then the pistils slowly retracted toward the dusky black flower, the bark dragging against the table as the lavender flower was drawn ever closer to the red center of the black flower. When the lavender flower was mere inches away, the black flower lunged, its petals wrapping themselves around the
Neofinetia’s
bloom. The black flower contracted and twisted, wrenching the lavender bloom from its stem, before returning to its original upright position, bloom once again closed.

Sylvia wasn’t sure how long she stared at the half eaten
Neofinetia,
the target of the black flower’s vicious attack. She just stared, not wanting a sudden movement to bring the black flower back to life, but something else was pushing this thought from her mind: the empty pots and slabs of bark throughout the greenhouse. Also, how Papere had only ever grown a single thing in this greenhouse.

The knowledge dawned on Sylvia and she turned away from the carnivorous black plant to face a greenhouse full of what had to be other carnivorous plants.

The jar that had once looked like it contained red confetti now looked like a jar of violently boiling blood. The little red flowers spun and surged, hitting the side of the jar closest to Sylvia so hard that the jar would move toward her a millimeter at a time. If she stood where she was, the jar would make it to the edge of the table and fall to the ground where it would shatter, releasing the little red flowers spinning so violently inside.

Sylvia did not want to be around when that happened. Sylvia’s mouth went dry when she realized that the jointed, black and white striped plant beside the jar of churning red flowers was gone, but it’s pot was still there.

Sylvia yelped as something pinched her left arm hard, and then pinched again. When she looked down at the place, she saw green threads weaving in and out of her skin, right up her arm. The threads came from the pot that had originally held the sharpened green spear, only now it looked like the spear had been split into millions of threads with sharp points.

Sylvia jerked her arm away from the table the pot sat on and the threads connecting her to the pot snapped. Above the plant with the reaching threads, the mossy rock opened like a rocky hand, at the center of which was an orb filmed over with dark green veins. From the edges of the orb, little legs reached out and began flexing, like the orb was trying to pop itself out of its socket and scuttle towards her.

That didn’t happen though. Instead, the legs which were reaching out suddenly contracted towards the center of the orb and the air before the orb filled with dark green dust.

Pollen,
Sylvia thought.

Some of the pollen settled on the leaves of the reaching thread plant and the threads immediately started to disintegrate. Sylvia saw why immediately.

It wasn’t pollen at all.

That dark green orb was an egg and millions of tiny, scuttling creatures were eating the thread plant alive.

At the far end of the greenhouse, Sylvia saw that the inside of the front cover was the same symbol from the front, glowing in the shadows, only now that the cover was upside down, she saw that it was a rough drawing of a skull. The two X’s were eyes and the lines were a mouth and teeth.