The Gardener

by Michelle DePaepe

At least, he had come to relish the challenge of his kills. He enjoyed the creativity of his murders, experimenting with different methods of approaching victims without causing premature alarm. Sometimes, he lay in wait and feigned an injury until they proffered an arm in assistance. Other times, he snuck up behind a farmer, waiting until he bent over a tractor engine. Then, he pounced like a wild animal, devouring his essence before his wide eyes had a chance to identify his executioner. Sometimes, he even found himself taking a perverse delight in the stir that the discovery of the bodies caused in the small town.

  But, he had noticed a peculiar thing as he took more lives into his own—the ability to dissolve into a smoky effluvium seemed almost impossible lately. He lamented the loss of flight. But...but having his life back again...reborn with a second chance to follow his dreams...there was no comparison. So, he didn’t complain or feel any loss. To regain his humanness was more than any dead wandering soul could ask for.

  If only he could achieve the transfer of enough lives into his own and then be done with it. As time passed...it seemed that he needed more and more. Death after death! It was sometimes annoying to have to keep finding victims and even harder to remain discreet in such a small town.

  Was there a certain number of murders that he had to achieve as a sacrifice to atone for his past sins? A magic number? Would he then be permanently healed once and for all?

  He pondered the questions as he stomped through fields of dried prairie grasses and prickly weeds. He was so occupied with his thoughts that he didn’t see the black and white patrol car crawling along and keeping pace with him on the other side of the tracks.

  When he noticed it, he kept walking and didn’t let on that he had seen it. Was it following him? Was there something about his appearance that looked suspicious? He was dressed in mundane modern clothing stolen from his victims—a pair of worn jeans, a tweed cap to shield his eyes from the sun, and a blue flannel shirt tucked inside a brown leather belt.

  He glanced down and saw a few specks of blood on his collar and knew that it wouldn’t be a good time to be detained by a Copper.

  The deputy leaned out the car window with one hand on the steering wheel as he cruised along at the pace of a curious turtle.

  The man looked familiar. The spirit had seen him come to the house several times in the past including the morning that Virginia’s body was found. But, the last time at the door—talking to Georgia—he had detected a softer amorous tone in the man’s voice that he didn’t like.

  “Ceffo!” he muttered under his breath. Why is he following me?

  The spirit shoved his hands in his pockets and began to whistle and sing to himself, “Just out for an afternoon stroll, Policeman...nothing for you to be concerned about”. Then, he turned his head and looked directly at the deputy, giving him a friendly nod.

  The lawman slowed his car to a stop. He nodded back. Then, with a finger, he motioned for him to come over to the police car.

  The spirit smiled and faced the deputy for a moment as if he might obey. But, then he swiveled around in the opposite direction and with all of the newfound strength coursing through his body...he sprinted as fast as his legs would carry him.

  He ran through the grass and brush, hearing the screech of tires on pavement and glanced back to see the police car turning around and coming fast. There were no trees in this field—nowhere to hide.

  He ran like a hunted deer and followed the train tracks back past the dead hobo until he saw a farmhouse up in the distance. Surrounding it, there were several acres of ploughed fields. Most of them lay fallow except for one that was polka-dotted with orange globes.

  Darting across the pumpkin field, past a scarecrow with a plastic skull for a head and a tattered straw hat, he kept going until he reached the back door of the house.

  There were windows open and voices inside. With his hand poised on the screen door’s rusted metal handle, he paused and wondered if he was making a bad decision. With his nearly human body, could he be trapped or forced into taking hostages if the policeman cornered him? A surge of white-hot fear coursed through him as he wondered if his newfound humanness meant he was as vulnerable as a mortal. Would it be possible for him to die again?

  The spirit shuddered. He couldn’t worry about such things at the moment. There must be a way to escape from this situation.

  Peering around the back corner of the house, he saw the patrol car stop out front. The deputy emerged and withdrew his gun from his holster in one swift motion.

  The spirit steadied himself and tried to remain calm. I am AlphonsoGiovanni, he groused. This is my new life, and I will not let it end in the same manner as the first.

  The spirit knew that he had only a couple of seconds to make his move, or it would be too late.

  In a whim of brilliance, he sat down in a lawn chair, picked a stick up from the ground below, and pulled a knife out of his pocket.

  The deputy rounded the corner of the house with his gun drawn.

  The spirit looked up at him, forcing a dim-witted grin. “Howdy officer...”

  The deputy lowered his gun. “I saw you in the field back there. Why did you run?”

  The spirit jutted his lower lip out and looked back down as he began to whittle. “Just out for an afternoon jog, checking on the fields. What’re you followin’ me fer?”

  “You don’t live here,” the deputy said with a cocked eyebrow. “This is BillDirkson’s farm. What’s your name?”

  “Hunh?” the spirit said as he dropped the stick and the knife to his lap. “My name?” he asked as if offended.

  A young woman poked her head out the back door, “What’s going on?”

  The deputy turned towards her.

  In that instant, the spirit made his move. He rose from the chair, dropping his whittling and ran like a spit of hellfire across the field.

  Just yards behind, the deputy sprinted after him.

  The spirit passed the grinning skeletal scarecrow, and hopped over pumpkins as he fled. A mile in the distance, he saw the black claws of a grove of trees peeking over a short hill. If he could just get to the river…

  “Stop!” the deputy yelled as he kept pace behind him.

  But, the spirit kept going. A bullet whizzed past his right side, grazing his arm. The sound of the blast and the smart of the bee sting disrupted the rhythm of his gallop...and he tripped and fell.

  “Porca l’oca!” he cried out with a mouth full of grass and soil.

  As he scrambled to his feet, the deputy yelled again, “Stop!”

  The spirit turned with his hands raised next to his head. He scowled at his captor, muttering more curses in Italian.

  The two stood in a silent standoff.

  “You have no right to follow me, Copper.”

  “Well, there you’re wrong. I think you’re a suspicious enough fellow to take in for questioning. The body of a boy was found near here just a couple of days ago. Murdered. And I haven’t seen you around these parts before. I’m going to ask you one more time...what’s your name?”

  “You’ve got nothing on me.”

  “I don’t need anything but my own suspicion. I’m the law here in Calathia.”

  The spirit spat onto the earth and glared at him, causing the deputy to shake his head and tighten his grip on the gun.

  “I’ve handled enough drunken farm boys stoked up on moonshine to take you the hard way if need be.”

  If the spirit wasn’t already bursting at the seams with the energy taken from the bum by the railroad tracks, he might have ended it right there and then by filling his cup with some of the deputy’s raw energy. But, he didn’t want to risk taking a bullet in the process, and he wasn’t prepared to dispose of the rotting remains of this man’s tall muscular body.

  Instead, he looked deep inside himself and let his rage boil up into black bubbles of hatred. It simmered up through his body, turning his seething disgust for authority and lawmen into a viscous fluid that burst through the skin on
his face like pustules of oozing tar. Some of the energy burst out through his eyes, causing lightning forked streaks of red blood to crack across the whites like streams of lava.

  As the deputy saw his ghastly appearance, the gun in his hand began to vibrate. He blinked his eyes and rubbed them with his free hand as if trying to erase the horrible image before him. Then, his entire body began to shake, and the gun fell to the earth with a thud.

  A laugh burst out of the spirit—a deep guttural cackle of pure wickedness.

  The deputy stood mute.

  Raising his arms high above his head, the spirit took a deep breath and leapt towards the sky. To his relief, he found himself once again dissolving into a mist of ectoplasm as he soared above the field. He floated until he came to the stand of deep-rooted cottonwoods on the bank of the river and disappeared into their branches.

  He watched the deputy shake his head as if trying to understand the fantastical scene that had just unfolded before him. Then, he picked up the gun and began a frantic search for his missing captive. After a few fruitless minutes, he gave up and scrambled back towards the police car.

  Still perched upon a thin limb, the spirit laughed again as the deputy sped off, passing by the inhabitants of the farmhouse who were standing outside in complete bewilderment about what had just transpired.

  A moment later, the spirit heard a cracking sound and realized too late that his human form was rematerializing. The branch snapped, and he fell twenty feet to the ground, landing on the bank. Before he could right himself, he rolled down into the ice-cold river. He cursed out loud, “Porco mondo!” after swallowing some of the green sludgy water.

  As he trudged out of the river, his chest heaved with labored breaths. Water dripped from his heavy clothes and mud oozed from the soles of his shoes. He paused amongst the tall cattail reeds. Looking down at his hands, he saw that the chilly water had turned them a grayish blue. They throbbed as he rubbed them together, and the blood began to course again through his warming veins.

  Resting on the bank, he somehow knew this was the very last time he could make such a metamorphosis. Gravity had tossed him down to the earth as if he were as real and solid as a blacksmith’s anvil.

  In fact, he no longer felt himself to be a spirit. He was a man—reborn of human flesh and blood with all the accompanying emotions, pains, pleasures, and lusts of a mortal.

  As he shivered and sloshed back towards the Blake home—his home—he felt baptized as a new creature. He was no longer AlphonsoGiovanni—the Italian misfit who begged and stole his way through life. He thought about his new name, DanielMoreno. Yes...it suited him. It was the name of a man who was going to achieve great things in his reincarnation.

  From now on...he wouldn’t even think of himself as some ghastly apparition somewhere in between death and this world. My name is Daniel...and I’m going to achieve everything that I ever desired in my second life...

  He danced a jig as he whistled a new tune—one he made up himself—about a lovely maid named Margaret who liked to pick flowers in the rose garden. Though, as he sung the song... he found himself changing the name in every other verse to Georgia.

  Chapter 56

  The previous day, Wanda had made an abrupt excuse to her brother about why they were in the motel room and being so secretive. Opal knew that he didn’t buy their story about needing some private space for a personal matter. But, he didn’t question them further as he went about his business of checking the heater to see if it was working properly. Then, as if on cue from a dictum out of Murphy’s Law Book, Wanda was paged to go back to the front counter to help a disgruntled customer. She reluctantly told Opal that the box investigation would have to wait.

  It was the next morning before she was able to call Opal to come back.

  Now, they sat next to the bed, looking at the contents of the open box again with just as much surprise registering on Opal’s wrinkled forehead and in Wanda’s giggle.

  They stared down at the gun.

  “Wow! An old Smith & Wesson .38 with an ivory grip.” Wanda picked it up and turned it around, marveling at the detail. “Look at the vine scroll engraving on this beauty!”

  “Wanda!” Opal said as she watched her friend handle the weapon.

  “Oh...don’t worry. My father collected antique guns. I bet this was made in the late 1800’s. It’s pretty rare to find one in this condition nowadays with the real ivory intact.”

  “Put that thing down. What if it’s loaded?”

  Wanda flipped open the barrel. “It’s not...but it was once. It’s definitely been used. Looks like old Crawford didn’t bother to clean it before hiding it away. Look...there’s ammo.” She picked up a bullet and twirled it in her fingers, admiring it like a rare pearl.

  “I’m glad you like the gun, but it doesn’t help me with my problem. Let’s see what else we’ve got in here.” She reached into the wood box and carefully lifted out the first of six leather-bound books. The cover was cracked and brittle, and the pages inside were yellowed with age.

  “What’s that?” Wanda asked.

  “Looks like a ledger of some sort.” Careful not to tear any of the fragile pages, Opal paged through the book. Instead of finding columns of numbers, she saw copious amounts of notes. Many of the entries were details about the weather and wheat crops, amounting to little more than an almanac of natural events.

  But later in the ledger, she found pages and pages about WilliamCrawford’s attempts to crossbreed hybrid tea roses with Old Garden roses. She read pieces to Wanda.

  “It says, this rose was as fiery as a sunset, and this one was as delicate as a newborn baby’s pink cheeks. Then, it talks about things like height, bloom size, number of petals, and the leaves. Some roses were spicy like cloves or ginger and others had a fruity citrus or apple scent. Ooh, here’s one with a sultry damask-musk aroma. Here he says, ‘It’s a quest to achieve the most perfect, beautiful rose in the world that would be sought after by both ladies and kings.”

  Opal paused and chuckled.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “He named one perfect rose Obsession, but in later pages, there’s Obession 2 and later, Obession 17.”

  She looked at the crisp penmanship on every page and thought to herself what a cold meticulous man Crawford must have been, wondering if he had cared more for his precious roses than his family and friends.

  “Well...that’s just plain boring. What else?” Wanda asked as she grabbed the next ledger and flipped through the pages with rapid speed.

  “Careful! This might not mean anything to us, but it’s valuable history.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Whatever’s in this box has got to go back where we found it. We can’t let it out to the public. Ed would have a fit.”

  Opal groaned, hoping they’d find something of value that would change Wanda’s mind. But, as they glanced through the next four journals, they found more of the same horticultural information and little else. It seemed that there wasn’t anything that she could learn about her evil spirit from these ledgers.

  “I guess we’re out of luck,” Wanda said. “There’s nothing here but stuff about crops and dumb roses.”

  Opal picked up the last ledger. “Maybe not,” she said as she read the title. This last one might be more valuable than any records that she could find in a library.

  Wanda snatched the book. “1900: Journal and Diary of WilliamCrawford”.

  At the same time, both ladies nodded and said, “Jackpot!”

  “Let me see it.” Opal demanded with an outstretched hand.

  With a frown, Wanda handed it over. “Ohhh...read it out loud. How exciting!”

  “1900? Isn’t that the year that MargaretCrawford drowned in the river behind the house?”

  “Just read it...I’m going to pee my pants if you don’t!”

  Opal scanned through the first few pages of entries. Most were details about family life with his wife and two daughters, Elizabeth and Margaret.


  Wanda moaned as Opal cherry-picked the excerpts to read aloud. But, eventually, Opal shrieked when she reached an entry with a familiar name.

  “That’s him!”

  “Who?”

  “The spirit!” Opal shouted. “Listen here, ‘The day he almost killed me...he told me his name was AlphonsoGiovanni!’”

  “What else does it say? Come on…”

  Opal began to read with a rushed shaky voice. “Thursday, March 14th. It was late last autumn when I finally decided that I needed to hire some help for my farm. As luck would have it, a young man appeared at my door the very next day, looking for work. A charming fellow to be sure, he is very willing and eager. My wife, Susannah, seems quite smitten with him. I gave him the cottage out back behind the barn and agreed to put him up for the winter, figuring that he and the ladies would find enough chores for him around the house until my spring frenzy. It is good to have AlphonsoGiovanni around. His strong arms and enthusiasm for work will be an asset.”

  “So your ghost used to be a hired hand?”

  “Yes...that explains his ties to the house.”

  “Read some more,” Wanda said. “Maybe this’ll get juicy.”

  Opal looked through the next few months, but the entries were sparse. Then, she found one of interest. “Saturday, June 17th: Alas...but I have lost my sorely needed help for the summer. I fired Alphonso this morning. I caught him in the parlor with Margaret, holding her hand and making unmentionable advances. The louse! I trusted him into my home...and this is how he repays me! Margaret is quite angry with me. She thinks that she had feelings for this scoundrel. I know not how long things transpired between them without my knowledge. But, I would rather toil alone than have my daughter’s honor destroyed.”

  “Oooh...” Wanda said.

  Opal’s eyes scanned ahead to the next entry. She read it through in silence then read it out loud after Wanda poked her in the arm.

  “Monday, June 22nd: I did a terrible thing yesterday. Because, I am too cowardly to turn myself in to the police and ruin my family’s life any more than it already has been with the loss of dear Margaret...I will have to let this entry suffice as my confession to God. I can only pray that He can find it in his heart to forgive me. ‘Thou shalt not kill’ He commands, but what else could a father do when he finds a miscreant threatening the life of his precious daughter?”