The Plant

by Stephen King

  Gosh, what a time we're having!

  But good times wear a person out, especially an older person, especially an older bonkers person. Enough be enough, as Amos might have said to Andy. The General hauls up his pants, squares himself away, then sits down in Herb's office chair. He did not pee in this chair, mostly because it never occurred to him, so the seat is nice and dry.

  He swivels slowly around and looks out Herb's window. No view; just a few feet of empty space and then the windows of another office building. Most of those are covered with venetian blinds, and where the blinds aren't drawn, the offices are perfectly still. No doubt somewhere in that building, as in this, executives are squeezing in a little overtime, but not in sight of Herb Porter's window.

  The sun comes slanting in on General Hecksler's face, cruelly spotlighting his age-roughened skin and the burst veins at his temples; another vein, this one blue, pulses steadily in the middle of his deeply lined forehead. His eyelids are folded and wrinkled. More and more of them become visible as the General, who has dozed but not really slept in weeks, moves to the border which divides the land of wakefulness from that of Nod.

  They close all the way... remain so, looking smoother now... and then they open again, disclosing faded blue eyes which are wary and crazy and most of all tired unto death. He has reached the border crossing—temporary peace lies beyond—but does he dare use it? Does he dare cross? There are so many enemies still, a world filled with scheming Jews, violent Italians, craven homosexuals, and thefty dance-footed Negros; so many sworn enemies of both the General and the country he has sworn to uphold... and could they be here now? Even now?

  For a moment his lids take on their former wrinkled aspect as the eyes they guard open all the way, shifting in their sockets, but this only lasts a moment. The voice that warned him in the reception area has fallen silent, but he can still smell a lingering effluvia of gunsmoke, as soothing as memory.

  Safe, that odor whispers. It is, of course, the odor and the voice of Zenith, the common ivy. You're safe. Home is the hunter, home from the hill, and you're safe for the next forty hours and more. Sleep, General. Sleep.

  General Hecksler knows good advice when he hears it. Sitting in his enemy's chair, turned away from his enemy's desk (into which he has poured the piss of righteousness), General Hecksler sleeps.

  He cannot see the ivy which has already entered this room and grows invisibly around his shoes and up the walls. Smelling gunpowder and dreaming of ancient battles, General Hecksler begins to snore.

  April 4, 1981 490 Park Avenue South New York City Skies fair, winds light, temperature 55 F.

  10:37 A. M.

  When Frank DeFelice arrives at 490 Park Avenue South, stepping out of a Checker Cab and tipping a perfectly precise ten per cent, he's not in the same buoyant mood as George Patella the soft-drink fella, but he's every bit as preoccupied. DeFelice works at Tallyrand Office Supply on the 7th floor, and he has forgotten some paperwork he needs in order to be ready for the pre-inventory meeting at 9 A. M. on Monday morning. His intention is to simply dash up, grab the inventory summaries, and head back to Grand Central. DeFelice lives in Croton-on-Hudson, and plans to spend the afternoon doing yard work. This Saturday trip down to the city is your basic PITA: pain in the ass.

  He takes some vague notice of the man in the sand-colored business suit standing to the left of the door; the man is holding a large attache case and checking his watch. He is young for the suit, but good-looking and well-groomed: blond, blue-eyed. Certainly Carlos Detweiller, who has his mother's Nordic genes, doesn't look like anyone's idea of a spic, designated or otherwise.

  As DeFelice opens the lobby door with his key, the young man with the attache case sighs and murmurs, “Hold it a sec, would you?”

  Frank DeFelice obligingly holds the door and they cross the lobby together, heels clicking and echoing.

  “People shouldn't be allowed to be late on Saturdays,” the young man says, and DeFelice gives an agreeable, meaningless little smile. His mind is a million miles away... well, forty, at any rate, dwelling on various spring bulbs and fertilizers.

  Perhaps this run of thought is why he notices a certain odd smell about the young man as they step into the elevator together—a certain earthy smell, almost like peat. Can that be some new aftershave? Something called Spring Garden or April Delight?

  DeFelice pushes for seven.

  “Hit five while you're at it, would you?” the young man in the sand-colored suit asks, and DeFelice notices an interesting thing: there's a combination lock on the guy's attache case. That's sort of cool, he thinks, and that thought leads to another: Father's Day isn't that far off. Hints dropped in the right location (to the mother of his children rather than the children themselves, in other words) might not go amiss. In fact—

  “Five?” the young man in the sand-colored suit asks again, and DeFelice pushes five. He then points at the attache case.

  “Abercrombie?” he asks.

  “Kmart,” the young man replies, and offers a smile that makes DeFelice slightly nervous. It has an emptiness that goes beyond daffy. The two men journey silently after that, rising in the faint smell of peat.

  Carlos Detweiller steps out on five. He walks to the wall where there are arrows pointing the way to the various businesses: Barco Novel-Teaz, Crandall & Ovitz, Attorneys at Law, Zenith Publishing. He is examining these when the elevator doors slide shut. Frank DeFelice feels a momentary relief, then turns his mind to his own affairs.

  10:38 A. M.

  General Hecksler has sprung the lock instead of forcing it, and Carlos enters Zenith House without considering the unlocked main door suspicious—he's a gardener, a writer, and a Psykik Savant, after all, not a detective. Also, he's spent so many years getting what he wants that he's come to expect it.

  In the reception area he smells garlic and nods briskly, like a man whose suspicions have been confirmed. Although in truth, they are rather more than suspicions. He is in touch with certain Powers, after all, and they've kept him ahead of the curve (as mid-level executives such as Frank DeFelice and George Patella might say) in most respects. One of the respects in which they have been a trifle behind the curve has to do with Iron-Guts Hecksler's current presence in the Zenith offices. Drawing conclusions in matters supernatural is always a risky business, but we might assume from this that the Powers of Darkness enjoy a giggle as much as the rest of us.

  Yet does Carlos not smell something other than garlic out here? Certainly a frown clouds his blandly handsome face. Then it clears. He dismisses the faint whiff of the General's insanity which his trained nose has picked up as no more than a lingering trace of the receptionist's perfume. (What, one wonders, would such a perfume be called? Paranoia in Paris?)

  Carlos moves across the room and pauses. Here the smell of garlic is stronger. She told them how to keep it in its place, he thinks, meaning the late Tina Barfield. Did she also tell them that, given a taste of the right blood, such precautions would be useless? Perhaps. In any case, it doesn't matter. He could care less at this point. Zenith would likely take care of John Kenton given time, but “likely” isn't good enough for Carlos Detweiller, and he doesn't have time. There probably won't be time to make John Kenton his zombie slave, either, but there should be enough time on Monday morning to cut Kenton's lying, misleading, thieving heart out of his chest. Carlos has plenty of knives in his Sakred Case, not to mention a new brush-cutter from American Gardener. He hopes to use this to remove Mr. John “Poop-Shit” Kenton's scalp. He can wear it like a hat while he snacks on “Poop-Shit's” valves and ventricles.

  Carlos steps into the hall beyond the reception area and pauses again. He stands exactly where Hecksler stood when he proclaimed his presence to the empty offices. He notes (not without admiration) the framed book jackets: a giant ant poised over a screaming, half-nude woman; a mercenary shooting down a squad of charging Oriental soldiers while a city that appears to be Miami flames in the background; a woman in a slip
in the embrace of a bare-chested pirate who appears to have an erection the size of an industrial plumbing fixture inside his colorful pantaloons; a red-eyed lurker watching the approach of a young lady on a deserted street; two or three cookbooks, just for spice.

  Carlos thinks with some longing that in a better world, where people were honest, the jacket of his own book might be up there, as well. True Tales of Demon Infestations, with a photo of the one and only Carlos Detweiller on the cover. Smoking a pipe, perhaps, and looking Lovecrafty. That is not to be... but they will pay. Kenton, at least, will pay.

  The hall looks empty except for the framed covers and the doors to the editorial cubicles beyond them, but the newcomer knows better. “Carlos, you weren't born yesterday or even the day before,” as Mr. Keen might have said in happier times, times when people didn't forget who was supposed to win all the card games.

  Looks, however, can be deceiving.

  With the garlic-rubbed portal behind him, Carlos can easily smell the Tibetan kadath ivy he has sent John Kenton, and he smells its true aroma: not popcorn, chocolate, coffee, honeysuckle, or Shalimar perfume but a darker odor, strict and sharp. It isn't oil of clove, but perhaps that comes closest. It is a smell Carlos has detected emanating from his own armpits when he has been being strenuously psykik.

  He closes his eyes and murmurs, “Talla. Demeter. Abbalah. Great Opoponax.” He breathes deep and the smell intensifies, filling his head, making it swim with visions that are dark and full of gusty-cold flying. They are visions of the land to which he will soon be going, the place where he will make his transition from earthy mortal to tulpa, a creature of the invisible world fully capable of returning to this one and possessing the bodies of the still-living. Perhaps he will use this power; perhaps he will not. Right now, such things do not matter.

  He opens his eyes again and yes, there is the kadath. It is growing all over the walls and the carpet, thinning as it advances toward the reception area, thick and luxuriant further down the corridor. Somewhere down there, Carlos knows, is the place where the original pot still resides, buried in billowing drifts of green which would be invisible to all those who don't believe in the plant's power. The far end of the corridor looks as impenetrable as a rainforest jungle, buried in growth right up to the fluorescents, but Carlos knows people could walk blithely up and down that corridor with absolutely no idea of what they were walking through... unless, of course, Zenith wanted them to know. In which case it would be the last thing they'd ever know. Basically, Zenith House is now a large green bear trap, spring-loaded.

  Carlos walks down the corridor, Sakred Sakrifice Case held at chest level. He steps over the first trailing strand of Zenith, then an entire clot of entwined branches and rhizomes. One stirs and touches his ankle. Carlos stands patiently, and after a moment the strand drops away. Here, on the left, is the office of WADE EDITOR IN CHIEF. Carlos glances in without much interest, then passes on to the next door. Here the ivy-growth is much thicker, the strands covering the lower part of the door in zigzag patterns and twining around the knob in a loose lover's knot. One strand clings to the upper panel, which is glass, and streaks across the name like a stroke of green lightning.

  “Kenton,” Carlos says in a low voice. “You mocker.”

  10:44 A. M.

  In Herb Porter's office, General Anthony Hecksler opens his eyes. The thought that he may have dreamed the voice never so much as crosses his mind. What he has heard is this: Kenton, you mockie.

  Someone else is in the Zenith House offices.

  Someone else on a Saturday morning.

  Iron-Guts has a pretty good idea who the someone else must be.

  “Tick-tick,” he whispers, his lips barely moving. “Designated spic.”

  In his doze, Hecksler has slid down a bit in Porter's chair. Now he slides even farther, wanting to make absolutely sure that the top of his head won't show if the D. S. should wander a few yards farther down the hall. It's okay for “Carlos” to see the mess in here as long as he doesn't see the man in here.

  Silent as a sigh, Hecksler eases his hand into the pocket of his pants and pulls out another of his Army-Navy store purchases: a bone-handled hunting knife with a seven-inch tungsten blade.

  There is the faintest click as the General unfolds the blade and locks it into position. He holds it against his chest, the tip nearly touching the undershelf of his stringently shaved chin, and waits for whatever comes next.

  Central Park Skies fair, winds light, temperature 60 F.

  10:50 A. M.

  Bill Gelb is so excited about his planned excursion to Paramus that he hardly slept at all last night, and still he feels energized this Saturday morning, totally jazzed. He couldn't stay in the goddam apartment, just couldn't. The question was, where to go? Ordinarily he'd think movie, Bill loves the movies, but he couldn't sit still in one today. And then, in the shower, the answer came.

  On a Saturday morning in Central Park, especially on a pretty spring morning like this one, there'll be a veritable Olympic games going on, everything from skateboarding and pick-up softball to chess and checkers.

  There will also be a crap game going on at the edge of the Sheep Meadow; of this Bill is almost sure. It may have been closed down, but he can't imagine why the cops would bust such an innocuous game: low stakes, young white guys pretending to be cool dudes rolling the bones. Seven come eleven, baby needs a new pair of Adidas sneakers. A bottle or two of cheap wine will make the rounds, allowing the players to feel totally raffish, not to say decadent, shooting craps and drinking Night Train at eleven o'clock in the morning.

  Bill has played in this game maybe half a dozen times over the last two years, always in warm weather. He likes to gamble, but shooting craps in Central Park when the temperature is below forty? No way. But today WINS radio says the mercury may shoot all the way up to an unseasonable seventy degrees, and besides... what better way to see if the force is still with him?

  Which is why—as Riddley's train approaches Manhattan, as Sandra and her niece continue their whirlwind tour of Cony Island's early-season amusements, as Carlos Detweiller begins inspecting “Poop-Shit” Kenton's files, and General Hecksler sits slouched in Herb Porter's office chair, knife gleaming in the sunlight—we find Bill Gelb down on his knees in a circle of yelling, laughing white guys who are happy to fade his heat. Lucky son of a bitch got in the game, bet two guys to crap out (and won), then took the dice himself. Since then he's rolled five straight sevens. Now he's promising them a sixth, and further promising them it'll be sixty-one. Dude is crazy, so of course they're happy to fade him. And Bill is happy, as well. As happy as he's ever been in his life, it seems to him. He showed up here on the Meadow with just fifteen dollars in his pocket, deliberately leaving the rest of his cash at home; he's already tripled that. And this, by God, is just the warmup! Tonight, in Paramus, he will sit down to the main course.

  “God bless that crazy houseplant,” he murmurs, and rolls the dice onto the painted hopscotch grid that serves as the pit. They bounce, they roll, they tumble—

  —and the Saturday morning yuppie crap-artists groan in mingled disbelief, despair, and amazement.

  It's six and one.

  Bill snatches up the wad of currency lying on the HOME slot of the hopscotch grid, smacks it, and holds it up to the bright blue sky, laughing.

  “You want to pass the dice, Mr. Lucky?” one of the other players asks.

  “When I'm on a roll like this?” Bill Gelb leans forward and snatches the dice. “No fuckin way.” The bones feel warm in his hand. Someone hands him a bottle of Boone's Farm and he takes a hit. “No fuckin way am I passing,” he repeats. “Gents, I'm going to roll these bones until the spots fall off.”

  11:05 A. M.

  The kadath has infiltrated Kenton's office right through the cracks at the edges of the door, growing exuberantly up the walls, but Carlos barely notices. The ivy is nothing to him, one way or the other. Not now. It might have been fun to sit back and watch it w
ork if not for Tina Barfield, but the bitch stole his owl's beak and time has grown short. Let Zenith take care of the rest if it wants to; Kenton is his.

  “You mocker,” he says again. “You thief.”

  As in Herb's office, there are pictures on the walls of Kenton with various authors. Carlos cares nothing for the authors (they look like wankers to him, too), but he looks fixedly at the repetitions of Kenton himself, memorizing the lean face with its shock of too-long black hair. What does he think he is? Carlos asks himself indignantly. A damned old rock star? A Beatle? A Rolling Stone? The name of a rock and roll group Kenton could belong to occurs to him: Johnny and the Poop-Shits.

  As always, Carlos is startled by his own wit. He is serious so much of the time that he's always shocked at what a good sense of humor he has. Now he barks laughter.

  Still chuckling, he tries Kenton's desk drawers, but, unlike Herb's, they are locked. There is an IN/OUT box on top of the desk, but, also unlike Herb's, it is almost completely empty. The one sheet of paper has several lines jotted on it that Carlos doesn't understand in the slightest:

  Leper hockey game: face off in the corner

  7: 6 to carry the coffin, 1 to carry the boombox

  Never mind the jam on your mouth, what's that peanut butter doing on your forehead?

  “Fuck the mailman, give him a dollar and a sweet roll.”

  Orange manhole cover in France=Howard Johnson's.

  What in the name of Demeter is all that crap about? Carlos doesn't know and decides he doesn't care, either.

  He goes to Kenton's file cabinets, expecting them to be locked as well, but he has a long weekend ahead of him, and if he gets bored, he can open both the desk and the files. He has plenty of tools in the Sakrifice Case that will do the job. But the drawers of the file cabinets turn out to be unlocked—go figure.