The Garden: Part Two (rough draft)

My parents never talked much about it, they barely acknowledged it. But I very specifically remember a boat when I was small. I must have been three or so, I can’t recall, but it was before we moved to my childhood home when I was four. I remember being on this boat, crammed really. I got separated from my parents easily and got lost in a sea of legs and ankles. I could hear my mother screaming in panic for me over the drone of people’s voices. The legs grew closer and closer to me, closing me in. I could see the land in front of us and I could see the green grass flowing into the ocean. My mother grabbed me and I was pulled through the legs again.

I know I wasn’t born where I grew up, my birth certificate said as much. But my parents never told me where that place was or why we moved. They never spoke of it. I just know that my parents always said that it didn’t matter. It was where we were that mattered. I never told them where my job was taking me, I sort of lied to them. They never liked me to travel, and I’m not sure why, I felt like telling them I was going to some island to work for a stranger might freak them out. I said I was visiting a friend and working with them to save up. 

Looking at this face, this flower, I think that perhaps I should have given them some idea of where I was going. In that instant she looked at me, the face, the flower, I felt I should run screaming. In an instant, it all played out in my head of me running and going to Mr. Barkridge, then leaving the island for good. But as soon as that fantasy was over, I felt no panic anymore.

I stare at her, the face, the flower, and she looks back at me. Her beauty was undeniable, almost familiar. Fat, sticky tears rolled down her cheeks and clung to the petals, looking almost like resin. Her lips held a sad pout, and her eyes pleaded with me.

My breaths come in long and slow. Her beauty and sadness intrigue me, I feel almost enamored by her. I kneel down so I am level with her and fat tears continue to move slow down her cheeks.

“Help me, please,” she whimpers.

“What can I do?” I ask softly.

“I’m so thirsty,” she gasps. “Please, water me.”

I take my water bottle and open it. She opens her mouth, letting her tongue thrust forward in a seductive, almost lewd way. I pour water on her tongue, down her throat. It spills down her chin, onto her petals and the ground. She moans in pleasure, making my heart race from the sound. 

She looks at me when the water is done, her eyes appear brighter, her petals even softer. She raises up slightly, mouth wide and tongue still thrust out. 

“That’s all I have,” I reply.

“More,” she whines.

I shake my head. “I don’t have any more. I’ll have to go back and fetch some more.” I look over my shoulder, I don’t see the gate and I have no clue what direction I came from. I turn back to her, seeing her mouth is still wide open.

“Wait here,” I tell her. “I’ll be back with some more water.”

Her eyes bug and she shakes the flower furiously. “Don’t let him see you! If he sees you, you’ll never come back!”

“Mr. Barkridge?” 

“He keeps me here,” the flower whimpers. “He keeps me here where he doesn’t have to look at me. He never comes to see me.”

“It’s alright,” I say reassuringly. “You’re safe. He won’t know a thing. I’ll be right back, I promise.” I try to head back from where I came. At some point, though, I must have gotten turned around. It was getting dark when I went beyond the gate, but I am losing more daylight by the second. I am lost, trapped somewhere in the garden with no direction where to go.

I then see the lighthouse, it’s great beam of light circles, cutting across me as it spins. I follow that light, knowing once I could see it, I could get my bearings straight. I hear something behind me, something breathing. It shifts and moves, skittering across the fallen leaves. I turn and look behind me, the light from the lighthouse cuts across the area and I see a figure dart across my vision. I lurch backwards, tripping over a stone. I land on my elbow, then as I try to get up, I hit my arm against a tree. I run, trying to hurry with only flashes of light from the lighthouse helping me find my way back.

Behind me, I can hear something chasing me. There is more than one of them. They’re getting close to me, following me. I can hear their hard, harsh breathing. I run into the iron gate, throwing my entire body against it. As I fling open the door, I slam it back behind me and I race into my home, locking the door behind me and hiding back in the bedroom.

“You can run, but there is nowhere to go. You can swim, but eventually, you’re going to grow exhausted. You’ll sink into the water, and for a moment, you will feel warm. You will think you can manage, that perhaps everything will be okay, but you only keep sinking faster. You only have water above your head.” The radio turns to static and I wake up.

I sit up in bed, looking around my room as I breathe in slowly. I turn off the radio as I try to figure out if I was dreaming or not. I sit there in silence and shadow, contemplating the images in my mind. The flower with her mouth hung open, the fall down the bank. I hold my head in my hands and my fingers ache. I attribute the dream to my own frazzled nerves and the ache in my body to how much I worked yesterday. 

I make myself a cup of coffee for breakfast and I step outside to get a breath of fresh air. It is still early and dark out, I can see the glow of the lighthouse in the distance. I go to the shed to start getting my supplies for the day when I turn and see the iron gate is open.

I walk over to it and see the lock has been broken and the rock I had used in my dream is laying right beside it. I gaze off into the endless garden when I hear that same whimper and cry again from the flower. I promised her I would return, I should go back and explain myself.

I open the gate to walk inside but I am forcefully pulled back from behind. Mr. Barkridge throws me to the ground, standing over me as he slams the gate back shut. 

He picks up the broken lock from the ground, rolling it over in his hand before glaring down at me. “What do you think you’re doing?”

I shake my head. “I found it that way!” I exclaim. “I was curious, but I was also going to close the gate back. I swear!”

“You are hired to tend to this garden, not that one.” He points behind him. “There are others who look after it.”

The word ‘others’ reminds me of my questions the previous days. I had asked him if we were alone, and he never gave a straight answer. I was also chased, at least I think I was, by something last night. “I’m sorry, but I heard something.”

“It is none of your concern.” Mr. Barkridge snarls. “You are not to go beyond that gate. No matter what.”

I rise and dust myself off, seeing bruises on my arms and legs I hadn’t noticed before. They almost look green in color. “What is back there?”

Mr. Barkridge gives me a harsh look. His brows raise up and he turns so that his huge shoulders curl around me like wings. “It doesn’t matter, Mr. Brone. One more toe out of line and I will have to reconsider our arrangement. Do the job you were given and be glad it isn’t more than that.”

I glance back towards the iron gate, hearing the whimper grow further and further away. Mr. Barkridge goes back inside his home while I go back into my house. I sit down inside, inspecting my body where I saw a number of bruises I hadn’t noticed before. The bruises felt tender, and were exactly where I had dreamed them. If it was a dream. Maybe it was real.

I hear my radio back in the bedroom. I thought I had turned it off earlier, but I must be mistaken. As I go to turn it off before work, I hear voices from within the static. They become clearer over time and I can make out what they are saying.

“-and you cannot just go and take everything.” A man says. “You must be patient. You do not understand. This world I have given you, you have taken away, you have ran with it, you have done something to it that I can no longer repair. I cannot keep on giving to you. I have nothing left.” 

“I will keep growing,” says a woman. “I will keep growing! I will keep growing! I will keep growing!” Her voice becomes many, it becomes a chant, a rally. A whole civilization of voices echoes along with her, growing and growing into a roar that makes my head spin. The spinning turns into an ache as the chant continues, louder, and louder, and louder.

“I will keep growing! I will keep growing! I will keep growing!” On and on it goes until the radio signal squeals and turns to static.

I turn it off, escaping outside to lose myself in work. All the while, the chant remains in my head. “I will keep growing. I will keep growing.” It stays there like a song stuck in my head, replaying and replaying in the fizzy distance of my mind. 

“I will keep growing.” As I trim the hedges. 

“I will keep growing.” As I add fish emulsion to the watering can.

“I will keep growing.” As I see Mr. Barkridge come out for his lunch under the weeping cherry. 

“Come over, Mr. Brone. We need to discuss what happened this morning.”

Sweat is pouring down my neck and I use my shirt to mop it all up. “Just a moment, Mr. Barkridge. I have a few more things to do before I can stop.”

“That’s good to hear, an improvement.” He watches me as I refill the watering can. I can see him from the corner of my eye as I water a thicket of shrubs and the flowers beyond them. The garden is overgrown. I do not know how it doesn’t suffocate itself. Somehow it manages to thrive because of it. 

I see something within the vines at the base of the wall. It almost looks like feet, but it could just be stones lined up along the edge. I set the watering can down and remove my gloves as I go to sit with Mr. Barkridge at the table.

“I’m sorry about this morning. I really don’t know how the lock got that way. It surprised me as much as it did you.” I don’t know if I am lying or not, that’s not a good sign.

Mr. Barkridge nods his head. “I should not have thrown you, even if you did.” He pauses, as if waiting for something, perhaps a confession. “The point of the matter is, Mr. Brone, is that what is beyond that iron gate is not for you. I shut it off years ago, and I have left it to those who know best with what to do with it.”

“Who would that be?” I ask with a furrowed brow. “How far back does it go? The wall continues on, I assume.” I catch myself. “Is all of this yours or does your property end at the gate?”

“Let us call it that. I have my space and she has hers.”

“Your wife?” It is the first thing I can think of. Were they separated? Was one half of the property hers and the other his? I had yet to see anyone else on this entire island, at all, and I am growing weary with the question of ‘are we alone?’.

“It doesn’t matter for you,” Mr. Barkridge repeats. “Keep doing your job, and when it’s all over for you, it will have no consequence.”

I let my shoulders sag with that final thought. I suppose it doesn’t matter. It’s only a job, after all, and I am not paid enough to deal with anything more.

“Have you taken those vitamins at all?” He asks. “It’s important that you do.”

“Yes,” I lie. “I’ve been taking them, sir.”

“Good,” he says with a smile. “Glad to hear it.”

I awkwardly return the smile with a bob of my head, glancing back down at the table. I can still feel that chant at the back of my mind. “I will keep growing. I will keep growing.” I do not know how to remove it. 

I have convinced myself the face and the chase were all a dream. It is easier to believe that than the truth. I go about my work, trying to ignore everything here that is strange and unusual. It’s easier to believe things are normal than to accept what is uncomfortable.

I’ve begun reading the books out of sheer desperation. In the one with poetry, there is a handwritten note scrawled along the blank back page. There is a drawing of lavender beside the text. “I know what happens when my back is turned. I know they’re together, it's my lesson learned. I’m not enough and I never was. It’s a lesson for her she hasn’t learned. E.B.”

“E.B.,” I mumur to myself. Was this written by Mr. Barkridge’s wife? Or was it written to her? In any case, it’s the least off-putting poem in the entire book. The rest feels like a slow peeling of the skin; rather than getting under it, the poems simply remove everything so you’re raw to everything else.

I wake up in the morning and make coffee for breakfast. I don’t even think about the vitamins anymore. By this point, the bottle should be empty. I suspect I will be getting a refill with my next supply of groceries. 

In the garden, the schedule has all become second nature. I don’t need to look at it anymore. I know what to do each day and where to do it. I am supposed to take two days off a week, but I cannot stand my house anymore. On my days off, I go out into the garden and I do things on my own. It’s one of the few acts of leisure I have.

During one such ‘day off’, I am repotting some plants that were growing outside the bounds of the garden plots. Rather than pull them up, I potted them until they got bigger, and have been finding places elsewhere for them where they’re safer. 

I go back to get the watering can when I notice those rocks along the wall again, the ones that resemble toes. I go to swat them away, finding it a tad creepy. They don’t move but something like skin comes off on my hand. I dust it off, thinking now it must be some sort of mushroom and not stones. This calls for a different action.

I go back to the shed to get some fungus killer and a shovel. I would dig up the mushrooms then spray the fungus killer to make sure it doesn’t return. I kneel down by the mushrooms and see they are oozing from where I swiped them. I’d never seen anything like them before, but then again, fungus isn’t my specialty and I know they are a wide and strange variety.

I jab the spade into the ground to dig them up and I hear a crunch like bones breaking. As I pull the spade back up, it is covered in a dark, goopy liquid. I dig into the ground with my bare hands as more of the viscous fluid begins to pool and turn the dirt to mud. I dig in, pulling out something that looks like a rotted top of a foot. The toes are what I had swiped earlier and thought were mushrooms.

As I look closer, though, I see sinew, I see bone. It’s human flesh. I scream and drop the foot, throwing myself back and away from whatever I had just unearthed. I kick and scramble away, running towards the solarium when I stop dead in my tracks.

The sunlight pours down from the orange lily above me and all I can hear is my ragged, terrified breath bouncing off the impossible panes of glass. The warmth of the sun filters over me and I realize I cannot go to Mr. Barkridge. It’s his garden, he must know what’s in it. If I go to him claiming to have found a rotting human foot, I could be the next rotting fucking foot.

I go back outside, pacing back and forth when I hear something from the iron gate again. I see it is open and vines have grown around the hinges and lock. I hear her voice, the face, the flower. I step through the gate, finding myself at the ruins of brick, same as before.

I find her there waiting, blood red petals opening to reveal that beautiful face, same as before. She looks up at me and her lips part open.

“I didn’t come back, I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I thought I was dreaming! Like some sort of Alice in Wonderland.” I gasp in relief, grinning from ear to ear at her beautiful face. “But you’re here! You’re real.” 

The face beams and I am so breathless by her beauty. I am relieved to know I am not alone, I could almost cry. “As long as he didn’t catch you.” She whispers. “You are safe with me, and I am safe with you.”

“Can I touch you?” I whisper.

“Of course.”

I gently place my fingertips against her cheek. Her skin is soft and supple like flower petals. I press my palm to her and smooth it down. I then slip my thumb across her full lips. She sighs softly and her long lashes flutter. 

“You’re so warm,” she coos gently. She moves slightly, kissing my palm and then giggling. “It feels nice.”

“It does.” I hear something moving in the distance, something walking forward and shambling towards us.

I look up, seeing over the vine covered bricks to figures who are standing and watching us. Their bodies are covered in what looks like moss and rot, their limbs are wrapped up and bound in vines so their arms are tied behind their backs and their legs are forced to always bend. Their heads are down and shrouded, so I cannot make out if they are human or not. 

The flower, the face, moans softly, “kiss me. Please?” I smell something sweet on her breath and I taste it as I kiss her. The strange shambling figures all begin to scream and caterwaul. Her tongue is in my throat and my eyes roll to the back of my head.

“There will be sunshine this week,” the radio says. “It will shine over us and keep us warm. It will make us healthy, it will help us grow anew. The weather will always be there, but it will not always be with us. It doesn’t reach under the water, so keep your head above it.”

It goes to static and, as I wake, my head feels groggy. I sit up, turn off the radio and see that vines had started to grow inside my bedroom. They creep in through the window and grow around the shelves and my clothes. I touch my mouth, finding bright yellow pollen caked around my lips. 

I make coffee for my breakfast. I go outside for fresh air and, when I do, I see the wall across from me. The one where I had dug up the rotted foot, no, it was a mushroom. I walk across the way with coffee in hand, and I pull down the vines from the wall. I see a face, I see its eyes. Vines grow from their mouth, they curl from their ears. The eyes are open, and sprouts are growing from behind the eyeball that gazes at me. 

I stare at it, I wait for it to move. I drop my coffee cup on the ground and it shatters. 

I should have told my parents where I went. I should have told them how long I would be gone. I have a sinking feeling now I won’t be returning home at all.