Howls From Hell

by Grady Hendrix

  “Flowers? A bouquet?” I didn’t know what to say. “How long have you been here? I don’t think I’ve ever seen this place before.”

  “I don’t sell bouquets,” she sighed. “Only living plants.” She pulled a small bottle from a shelf and began spraying a fine mist on a few nearby leaves. “If you want a bouquet, you’ll need to go somewhere else.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

  “And I’ve always been here. Maybe you didn’t need anything before now.” She turned her back on me, walking away, picking leaves and petals to spray, seemingly at random. “So what do you need?”

  “I need you.” The words just came out. I smacked a hand over my mouth to keep any more from escaping.

  “I’m sorry?” She stopped, looking over her shoulder at me.

  I stuttered. I mumbled. Eventually, “I mean, I need your help. I want houseplants. Greenery. For my house. Like, plants.” You’re doing great, buddy.

  She walked me through the rows, explaining the best way to care for this ficus, or the optimal sunlight exposure for that succulent. She explained the perfect temperature variation for a prehistoric-looking fern, and I joked I would be better off getting some plants made from plastic or fabric.

  She didn’t laugh.

  When she led me to the cash register, my arms were full. Bags of soil and fertilizer, a tray of weeds she claimed would turn into something beautiful. A few strands of lemongrass, an odd mixture of jade and ivy, a small jalapeño plant. She walked ahead of me, an empty hanging planter slung over each shoulder, bouncing off of her hips rhythmically as she walked. Swayed. Glided.

  She only accepted cash and gave no change. “Exact payment only,” she said. “We will use anything left over for expansion or donation. Spread life and beauty.”

  I paid nearly double what I owed and started carrying the items to the bed of my truck. I felt a slight panic. A hitch in my breath and a sudden tightness in my chest. Fully awake, but feeling like I just sat up in bed, startled by a dream of falling.

  Foreign thoughts pushed into my mind. I needed more time with her. I hadn’t left, but I missed her already. I had to see her again. Know her. Have her. Possess her. I shook my head to clear the fog that had collected there. To rid my thoughts of this influence.

  I walked back inside. “Do you have pumpkins?”

  “Pumpkins?” She held the last of my purchases out to me—the hanging pots, wrapped delicately in yellowed newspaper and brown string.

  “Pumpkins,” I nodded. “You know, for jack-o’-lanterns? My girlfriend wants to carve—” Shit. “Shit. I mean—”

  “Girlfriend?” She raised an eyebrow. Not upset. Not caring. Aloof. Curious.

  “Ex-girlfriend. She wants to carve pumpkins. For the baby. Baby girl. Daughter.” Oh my god, stop talking.

  She smiled slightly at that. Relieved, maybe? I could not read her expression at all.

  “Giving life is a beautiful thing.” Her smile fell. Leaving her face as quickly as it came, as if it were an intruder. A party guest that realized it wasn’t welcome. That it never belonged there. “I don’t have pumpkins. Not for carving.” She held the planters out to me again as punctuation. Full stop. This conversation is over.

  “I didn’t mean to . . .” I trailed off, taking the wrapped package from her, and turning away to leave. A fresh wave of longing spilled over me, and I turned back to her. “Can I call you? Can I see you again?”

  She started walking back to the rows of plants, the spray bottle already in her hand. “I don’t have a phone,” she said, not turning to face me, and my heart nearly cracked. She glanced over her shoulder. “But you’ll see me again.”

  With those words, she walked away, turning a corner and disappearing from my view.

  I set the last of the supplies in the back of the truck and sat inside, an idea forming in my mind. A plan taking root. I lit a cigarette and slammed on the accelerator, taking a corner too quickly and hearing the terracotta pottery breaking as it rolled and shattered against the tailgate behind me.

  The thing most people don’t mention when they describe spinal injuries is the sudden sense of loss. The feeling that, between one moment and the next, some part of you has vanished. Disappeared. There is pain. There is fire. Then there is nothing at all. Just an echo, reflecting your shouts back at you from the distant canyon wall at the other side of your mind. Silence.

  When the twisting, tightening grip in the small of my back finally severed my spinal cord, I sighed. When all the pain below my belly button became a memory. When the agony of my ravaged lower half disappeared.

  I was relieved.

  And then every nerve ending in my upper body and torso screamed as the pain I could feel intensified tenfold.

  People really don’t pay enough attention to their surroundings. Even in a small midwestern town like Hawthorn, where some old folks still don’t lock their doors. As I was drawn, night after night, to Lilian’s greenhouse, I assumed she never saw me. Never knew I was there. Every day, I tried to stay away. Tried to resist the pull. Every night, I stood in the darkness, a mock fairy ring of my discarded cigarette butts around me. I was her thrall. As the power she held over me strengthened, I could no longer watch her from afar. She was drawing me closer.

  Most nights, after closing the greenhouse doors, Lilian would walk a meandering route through the outskirts of town. I was forced to follow her as she walked across lawns and smelled the rose bushes at a few of the wealthier homes. Her path took her from the eastern edge of town, where the air was heavy with the stench of the paper mill, to the western side, undeveloped and clean.

  The mill was five miles from town, and on a humid day, there was no escaping the smell. A cross between dried manure and wet cardboard. The ammonia stench of cat piss mixed with rotting cabbage. The smell of loss. That box of keepsakes you left in the basement a little too long that was destroyed when an old pipe burst and flooded everything. Your grandmother's photo album, falling apart. Your dad’s old army uniform, a patchwork of holes and mold. I hadn’t been to work there in so long, I’d probably been fired by now. They stopped calling me days ago. The ties that connected me to the rest of the world were falling away as the one Lilian placed around me grew stronger. Pulled tighter. There wouldn’t be anyone left to miss me.

  I always lost her trail after she entered a small copse of trees just outside of town. A few nights, I tried circling around to catch her on the other side but never did. It always took me longer than I expected. The grip she had on me wasn’t strong enough to drag me into those depths, yet every night it tightened more and more.

  The woods were a dark hole, like the bottom of a drain, my life spiraling inexorably downward into the void.

  After a week, it seemed Lilian was no longer content letting me see her from a distance. She needed me close. Intimate. She turned and smiled at me, beautiful and terrible, before disappearing into the trees.

  I followed her into the woods.

  I lost my way immediately. I’d never had a great sense of direction, but something about moving among the trees triggered a dislocation. There was a wrongness to my surroundings. The trees were taller. More densely packed. And covering much more land than the small grove where I’d followed Lilian. My initial attempts at stealth were abandoned, and I quickened my pace.

  There were no sounds coming from the trees. No birds. No insects. There were no dried leaves or fallen branches littering the ground to amplify my pounding footfalls, which seemed muffled in the still air. I held one hand in front of my face as I stumbled forward while the other nervously pulled my father’s knife from my pocket. I was a frightened child again, running up the basement steps, convinced there was a monster chasing me. I felt hot, hungry breath on my neck. Branches seemed to reach for me, slapping at my face. Thorns threatened to hold me back like cruel, sharp fingers pulling at my clothes.

  I tripped over an exposed root and nearly fell into a large clearing, grunting and cursing under my br
eath. I nearly dropped the knife as I caught myself. The glade sloped into a small moss-covered mound where, in a circle of bright moonlight, Lilian stood. Still as a statue. The soft ground seemed to pulse and vibrate beneath me as I stood to face her, pressing the blade flat against my inner arm as I hid my hands in my pockets.

  “I knew you would see me again.”

  I took a few steps closer and stopped. “I had to,” I said. “You forced me.”

  She spun in circles, her long dress fanning out, exposing more of her legs and casting an eclipse onto the forest floor. “Then come closer,” she said. “And see me.” Waves of her dark hair fell over her face as she stopped spinning, and her green eyes were sparkling emeralds behind them. Her dress stilled, the hem now even with the ground. She seemed to be a part of the clearing, a single entity growing to a focal point of intoxicating beauty. Reaching out with one slender arm, she waved me closer.

  My body obeyed her as my mind resisted. It screamed in rapture and absolute terror. Some type of fight-or-flight reaction threatened to overwhelm me, but something much larger dragged it down and swallowed it whole. Lust. There’s always a bigger fish.

  “Come,” she repeated. Steadily, confidently, I walked to her. I moved with more certainty of purpose than I ever had with anything in my life. My eyes filled with tears, and my groin ached with longing. Grabbing her shoulder, I pulled her close to me, surprised by the odd chill of her skin. I held her there in the clearing of that impossibly large grove of trees. Her breath on my neck. Her arms wrapped around me.

  In a sudden burst of resistance, I thrust my right hand forward, burying the knife blade into her side. As soon as the warm fluid covered my hand, her power over me waned. Her grip loosened, and my willpower returned.

  Lilian let go of me slowly and stepped back. Her green eyes widened, but her expression remained indecipherable.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” her soft voice turning into a growl as she pressed her hands to her side, covering the wound. I could see a spreading shadow on the pale green fabric of her gown as blood flowed from beneath her clutching fingers. Dark and wet in the moonlight.

  “I had to!” I brandished the knife and began backing away.

  “No.” She stopped me with a word, the mental grip tightening again as her anger flared. Her voice grew hoarser. “You are a destroyer. A defiler.” She paced around me, and I pivoted to watch her. “You do not respect life,” she whispered. “You only take.”

  I reached for her, and she looked pointedly at my hand. At the knife that had pierced her skin, opened her side. Penetrated her flesh. That was covered in her blood.

  “I—” the words stopped in my throat as I looked down. Turned into a questioning grunt when the gore I expected to see was not there. An opalescent syrup ran down the blade and dripped from my fingertips. A golden and milky fluid that tingled on my skin as it reflected in the bright night.

  “Taste me,” she said, her voice easing into a sensual purr. She took a step closer. Her breathing was heavy, and her cheeks were flushed. “Taste me. Now.” There was a pang of longing in her voice. Pleading. Seductive.

  “Lilian, I—”

  She sprang forward, wrenching the knife from my hand and thrusting it into my open mouth, the very tip of the blade nicking my tongue and clicking between my teeth. The fluid tasted of honey, milk, and rotting fruit. I struggled against my gag reflex as the blood from my tongue curdled everything together. Yet I needed more.

  I licked my fingers desperately, trying to taste as much of her as possible. I was vaguely aware of Lilian smiling and stepping back to watch as I consumed her cursed blood. Tears ran from my eyes, blinding me as my fingernails scratched the back of my throat. I rubbed the flat of the blade against my tongue, gorging myself on her. My knees buckled as I ejaculated violently, and I collapsed, panting before her.

  “There,” she said with a quiet laugh, brushing my hair back from my forehead. “There, there.” Her laugh echoed from the surrounding trees. A chuckle from behind me, a series of giggles from the canopies. I hadn’t seen her disrobe, but the moonlight now swam along her dark, nude skin, casting subtle shadows along her curves and muscles. No blemishes marred her flawless flesh. There was no wound in her side.

  “How did you—” I couldn’t seem to catch my breath. I was shaking. Sweating. When had it gotten so warm?

  I craned my neck around to follow her as she walked a slow circle around me. She spiraled outward until she nearly reached the trees. “You shouldn’t have followed me here.” More laughter reverberated from the forest. “But you really couldn’t help yourself, could you? And now you have taken from us. Eaten from us.” She smiled. “And now you cannot leave.”

  Us? I tried to stand, and got one foot planted as shadows crept into my peripheral, lithe forms that seemed to slink from the treeline.

  “Come, sisters,” Lilian spread her arms wide. “See the offering I have provided. The seed I have given us. The servant we will prepare for Mother.”

  The shadowy forms around us took shape as the women walked into the clearing. Leapt down from branches. They were beautiful, every one of them. Their skin was the color of marble, quartz, slate. Granite, obsidian, and every shade between. Hair like golden wheat, freshly tilled soil, and falling cherry blossoms. The colors of tree bark and sunsets and sandy river beds surrounded me.

  I struggled to my feet, and Lilian was upon me in an instant, her lips pressed against mine. Kissing me. Tasting me. Her sharp tongue forced my lips apart, and I felt her breathing into me. “Shh,” she whispered, pulling back. I could see her breath as a small cloud of dust escaped our parting lips. Not dust. Pollen. Spores—the words rose fully formed in my mind as her breath filled me. Spread into me. Infected me. She held me as my strength left, lowering me to the ground and straddling me as my lungs hardened in my chest.

  “Lilian,” I wheezed, “please don’t kill me.”

  She smiled at me. Warmly. With hatred and pride in her eyes. “Never.” I felt hands pulling off my clothes. So many hands. “This won’t kill you.” I felt her skin against mine as she slid her body down my own. “But this is really, really,” she let out a long sigh as she slowly filled herself with me, “going to hurt.”

  I couldn’t tell you how long it lasted, Lilian and her sisters clawing and thrashing against my broken flesh in the moonlight. My body was slick with the pungent scent of their assault and the coppery stench of my blood. My mind struggled vainly to distance itself from their attack. Receding into unconsciousness only to be thrust painfully back into wakefulness as the sisters grew more ferocious. Each moment my mind threatened to break, and each moment their terrible hunger stole away the relief of oblivion. Every inch of exposed flesh was a source of wretched pleasure to them and incredible pain to me.

  They fought over me. Bit me. Broke me. As every spasming, thrashing orgasm sent a sister into quivering ecstasy, a sharp dagger of pain drove through my body. The anguish dulled as each of them rolled away, only to be doubled as another took their place. After what seemed like hours, all that existed was the static of pins and needles. And still that stabbing pain everywhere at once. Torment pierced my body. A stigmata of my soul. A life sentence of dull pain punctuated by a jagged spike of agony.

  As the warm sun rose to fill the clearing, our fluids dried up. Some evaporated. Others hardened into a flaky crust, a blackening scab.

  Lilian and I were alone again. Her head was on my chest, no longer rising and falling with breath. She cuddled close to me and whispered, “I’ll come back to see you.”

  Then she was gone, and I was alone.

  And then the real pain started.

  I was wrong. I would not die here. No matter how often I wished I would.

  It started with a twitch. That weak little head bob from a member that was used too strenuously the night before. Flaccid, but with just enough strength left over to roll onto my thigh. I stared as the skin of my penis started distending. Stretching. Tearing. Unable
to look away as the first stalk of green slithered out of my urethra, rolling back the fleshy tip as it reached for sunlight. The limb thickened. The first branch sprouted just beneath the head.

  As it grew, the hardening bark smeared red. Bits of pink flesh clinging at irregular intervals. Small, black, curly hairs waved in the breeze.

  Little by little, my body changed. What began quickly that night in the clearing slowed to an excruciating crawl. Over the days, months, and years, the form that I had for most of my life withered, twisted, and decayed, becoming food for my new self. Every moment was torture. Every moment was a lifetime.

  I was an outside observer to my transformation, my vestigial consciousness still connected to my new form. Obsolete, but watching as, over the course of a decade, my ribcage burst open and the main trunk grew forth. The spores in my lungs spread and formed around the decayed muscle that had once been my heart. As it grew, that blackened knot was embedded in the bark.

  My brain and eyes slowly liquified, giving life to a third limb, growing out of my mouth. The first gift Lilian had given me. The first curse, the night of the fire. As the seed of obsession grew larger, it slowly pushed away the brittle remnants of my jaw and stretched outward to the sky.

  The sun and rain give me life. The soil, sustenance. The pain of my leftover body slowly fades away as I grow, while the pain of my current form remains constant. Every new limb is another excruciating appendage. Every ring in my trunk is another circle of hell.

  Lilian still visits me. Sometimes she whispers into my trunk, her delicate lips brushing against me. She tells me about Mother’s plans.

  Sometimes Lilian climbs. Higher and higher into the canopy every time. Mother’s children grow from my branches. Lilian picks the fruit. Nurses them. Teaches them.