Let's Play in the Garden (15 page)

Simon just sat and said nothing as he filled up his plate.

Marion made up a separate plate for Merydith and carried it upstairs. She eased the door of Merydith’s room open without knocking. There stood Merydith in the dark, staring out her bedroom window.

“Merydith? Honey, are you all right? You should be in bed.”

“I’m all right now, Mother. I was just thinking.”

“With the lights off?”

“It helps me think.”

“Well, come now. I’ve brought you your dinner. Come sit down.”

Marion turned on her light and Merydith did as she asked, climbing back into bed and taking the tray of food from her mother.

“I’ll be back later for the dishes, then I’ll bring you back some more pills. Can you return to school tomorrow?”

“Yes, I feel so much better now.”

“That’s wonderful. I knew this wouldn’t last. It was probably just a virus.” Marion smiled as she left the room.

###

Merydith was again left to her thoughts. She looked at her dinner. It looked unappetizing. She looked back at her window and then up at the solar panel in her ceiling.

A feeling of utter gloom swept over her.

What’s going to happen next? Things just get worse all the time. What if they figure out what Tobey and I are doing? Then what? Oh God, those poor men…what’s in that garden? I have to know before it destroys everything!

Laying her head down, Merydith wept. Her once happy life was now a nightmare that she could see no end to.

Someone help me.

13. Holidays

The October weeks were a blur. One day was just a clone of the other. Nothing changed. The only thing to look forward to was Halloween, and it would be upon them in two days. Like anyone really cared, but in Merydith’s mind it at least marked the first of the holidays. It somehow helped her cope to know the holiday season was right around the corner.

Holidays would be different this year. A lot of things were going to be different this year. Tensions built, suspicions were raised, secrets kept and slowly uncovered. A silent war was raging, with three armies: the adults, the children, and the townspeople.

The night before Halloween, the house surrendered to sleep a few hours earlier. The house was still and quiet and the evening stretched toward twilight. The night sky was clear as the moon rose high, glowing bright, illuminating the garden with a pale milky light.  

There was movement in the garden again. Plants and trees stirred, heavy thumping resounded, growing louder and louder as it approached the gate.

A thud bounced off the gate. It vibrated as it rattled in the cold air. A low snarl rose behind the gate, followed by another thud. It tested the strength of its prison.

The gate shook now, more violently than before. The chains clapped against the wood. A moan escaped into the air, resentful…mournful…lost.

The gate simply would not break. That’s all it wanted. It wanted to bash the thing to smithereens and escape this infernal place. It could taste freedom, if only its keeper would stop strengthening the locks of its prison.

It grew angrier with every push against the gate. It looked up at the house and the inside remained still and silent. No one seemed to notice its attempts tonight.

It snarled some more, shaking the gate forcefully. It would pause and listen to the rattling of the chains and padlocks. The cruelty of its keeper knew no bounds. Pressure was building, fury was mounting. How long could it be contained?

Damn the gate, damn the garden, damn the people out there.

One last push against the gate and it turned its back, accepting defeat one more time…but it had overlooked something. A crack, unheard, shot down the front of the gate. A thin hairline fracture that spread from top to bottom. For now, it went unnoticed.

It returned to the deep of the garden, the only home it knew, a home it loved and hated at the same time. Love was dying, it hated its home, its prison, and it hated them…its keepers, those who would not let it passage into their world.

There would be hell to pay soon enough.

###

Halloween was here! October thirty-first had come to Willington. Not that it mattered, of course. The children raced home from school, and all the town’s children reveled in the excitement that was this night—all of them, except Merydith. Halloween meant nothing to her. Of course, she would play along with everyone else. She would dress up tonight in something she had to make herself and then Simon would take her and Tobey in town to a few of the shops. They did this every year, and to suddenly refuse to go would throw suspicion her way. She couldn’t allow that, she had too much to lose, and she was working very hard to stay under their radar.

After the final bell, Merydith walked across the school parking lot to the old faithful pickup truck that waited to carry her back home again, a place she was now afraid of and almost at war with.

As she walked along, a group of kids that stood just to the side of her giggled and called to her!

“Happy Halloween, Merydith! Nice costume you’re wearing,” a girl said.

“Merydith doesn’t need a costume. She just goes as herself every year. She’s a real monster…the Santaneen freak!” a boy shouted.

“Santaneen freak! Santaneen freak!” the entire group chanted over and over.

Merydith ignored them entirely, having more things to worry about then to let some kids aggravate her to no end. She kept her gaze to the ground as she walked over and got into the pickup.

If Simon heard the kids, he never let on that he did, and if he did, he probably didn’t care anyways.

But someone had heard the kids.

In the doorway of the school stood Mrs. McCormick, hurt clearly in her eyes. She felt what Merydith must have been feeling. She could not understand why they treated Merydith so badly. Mrs. McCormick had taken a liking to Merydith from the very beginning and the cruel teasing was unnecessary.

###

The dying sun made way for night as the children prepared themselves to be taken into town. In the bathroom, Merydith applied makeup to her face, then wrapped a pink veil around herself. She finished her look with some pink slippers and a small crown atop her head. She had made the crown in art class and was rather pleased with her efforts. It was made of costume jewelry that she had hand painted silver.

She looked in the mirror and frowned. “I look stupid. I’m too old for this now.” She tried to look like a princess. She hoped she did.  

Tobey stepped out of his room and into the bathroom. He wore a red bandana on his head, an eye patch over his right eye, and carried a plastic sword in his hand. “Guess what I am, Merydith,” he said to her. She turned and smiled. At least someone had some happiness in his heart. It would take more than this to bring happiness back to Merydith. “You’re a pirate,” she answered.

“How did you know?” he asked with surprise.

“It’s the eye patch, silly. It’s a dead giveaway. Now what am I?”

Tobey stared and wondered, his eyes squinting and then opening. “Um, you’re a fairy.”

“No!”

“Then what are you?”

“I’m supposed to be a princess. Not a very good job, huh?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I’ve never seen a real princess. You’re the closest thing to it. I think you look very pretty.”

Her face blushed and she smiled again. Tobey had brought her a little joy. “Thank you very much, Tobey.”

“Children, c’mon, it’s time to go! Your grandfather is waiting,” Marion’s voice called up after them. They shut the light off and took up their paper bags to once again trick or treat, if it could be called that.

They were taken into town again as they did every year on Halloween, one of the few times besides school that they could see the town. They stopped in the center and Simon parked the truck and sat inside while the kids got out and went from store to store and shop to shop.

The first, of course, was Garreth Hickley’s Food Mart. They went up to him, said the traditional trick or treat, and he said nothing as he shoved some pieces of candy into their bags. From his store, they went to the small record store, the soda shop, the town barber, pizza parlor, the furniture store, and the local cinema. With each place it was the same cold welcoming—a disturbed look, followed by complete silence, followed by some type of candy shoved down into the bag as quick as possible. Everyone knew who the Santaneen children were.

After collecting about half a bag full, which was all that could be done in the center of town, they returned to the truck. Simon brought them back home again, where they emptied their bags onto the floor to check over the candy to make sure it was all safe to eat. They found quite a bit of candy that looked tampered with, holes, tears, some blatantly opened. Between them, they ended up throwing out twenty pieces of candy. It was obvious to Merydith that the town loved them so.

Another Halloween came and went and it seemed dumb luck that neither one of the children had been poisoned this year. Hostility grew in the town and talk of the experiments fed rumors of Simon Santaneen and his odd family. They were looked at as outcasts, freaks, violators of the natural order of things, for there was something just not natural about the family.

Stories of the garden mounted. How was it created? What nourished it? What was in it? The town not only feared the Santaneens; they projected all of their blame upon them. Natural disasters, the strange occurrences in the woods, the disappearances, the horrible things found by innocent people—it was blamed on the Santaneens. If Merydith had heard any of this, it would only fuel her new distrust of her family, but the elders had taken care of that perfectly. She was never allowed in town alone.

###

Morning was crisp and a bit chilly, but Merydith and Tobey were dealing with it well, so far. They dressed as warm as they possibly could and would swelter in the heated schoolrooms.

Simon returned from dropping the kids at school. He shut off the humming pickup motor and stood in the yard, staring at the garden. The gate stood silent but looked braced as if it was holding back a huge tidal wave. Curiosity had finally overtaken Simon. He had to return to his garden and search it.
What was inside? Was everyone right? Was Aaron really in there, too?

He marched on over to the gate, determination in his steps, and reached deep into his pockets to find the keys to the padlocks. He unlocked them one by one and then unraveled the chains yard by yard. Lastly, the boards came off and were stacked neatly in a pile beside the gate.

He flung the gate open, a strange feeling washing over him. He felt something in the air. He hesitated. Was he afraid to enter his own garden?

A feeling of uneasiness swirled through him as he stared into the slumbering paradise.

He took a deep breath and entered. It had only remained unvisited for about a month, but it was different somehow. It all looked the same but somehow felt different. Simon pondered that as he looked around.

He had failed to notice the crack in the gate. His old eyes didn’t catch the subtle weakness that slithered down the entire surface of the gate.

Flowers had vanished until the spring. Shades of brown and green painted a canvas for him, but there was nothing unusual or out of place. It seemed rather empty, save for the few huge pumpkins that sprouted here and there.

Overgrown yew bushes and pine trees dominated the horizon. Most of the other trees were now totally bare, and the ground was soaked with piles of dead leaves.

Simon walked along the garden paths, listening to some of the birdcalls. Birds from the north had already made their way to the garden. He expected that. A rabbit scurried between two bushes. Simon noticed it out of the corner of his eye.

Hmm, now my baby sleeps. Wait until spring—how glorious you will be again.
That’s all it is
.
It’s just the gloom of the oncoming winter and cold.
In the spring all will
bloom bigger than ever and the garden will sprout its gifts to me once again. Everything will return to normal.

He continued to walk down the twisting paths, thinking, staring, and searching as the sunlight reflected off something shiny. The glimmering caught Simon’s eye. He walked to its spot, bent and picked it up. It was a police officer’s badge smeared with blood. He held it in his hands and rubbed his fingers over it, the blood coating them. He held back a chuckle. “They thought they were so smart and tough. Boy, did they get a surprise.”

They wanted to see the garden. Well, now they’re seen everything.” He laughed aloud, no longer able to contain himself. He should have been horrified by the discovery, but he was not. He was elated the cops had gotten what they deserved.

“Nobody screws with Simon Santaneen…nobody. The whole damn town deserves what these two cops got. Let them come around here. Let them come snooping in the garden. Wouldn’t that be a sight to see?”

Simon lost touch with his surroundings as the badge dropped from his hand and hit the ground without him noticing. He moved on, a bizarre smile upon his face, while satisfaction, pleasure, pride and revenge fantasies vied for control. He lost track of where he was going.

The garden grew deeper around him as the paths thinned, the trees grew thicker, and the sky above seemed to darken. He paid no attention to any of it and laughed even louder.

The thing did me a favor. It’s protecting me. It’s protecting the garden. Maybe it’s not really dangerous, after all. Maybe it has changed, maybe it can come out and…

A snap of twigs resounded, followed by the sounds of heavy footsteps.

I must be a fool. I saw how it reacted when it first came to be.
It wanted to kill everything
.
No, it must stay trapped forever or be killed. Those
cops were
alone with it.
They got trapped all alone with it, no way out. What fools, to think I just let them walk right into their deaths. Wait, I’m in here, and I’m alone…with it!