Christopher Rice - The Vines

“Oh, Daddy.”

“Where’s he goin’?” he asks through tears. “Where’s Blake goin’?”

“There’s somebody else, I think.”

“Somebody else…” This is her father’s moment to come apart, she fears. She had hers earlier, but her father never got the chance. True, he hasn’t witnessed half of the nightmares she’s been forced to in the past few hours, but he’s seen enough. He’s heard enough. So she tries to steady her tone, hoping the sound of her voice will be her best tool for securing him to his own bones.

“Somebody else responsible for John’s murder. He was alone with one of those ba—” She wants to call them bastards, but that seems profane given their terrible fate. “Those men on the roof before the guy got took. And he must have… I don’t know. He must’ve said something to him about there being somebody else involved. Why else would Blake take the vines with him?”

“You think he’s gonna kill whoever it is?”

“He thinks he doesn’t have long to live. So he’s gonna do something he wouldn’t do otherwise. I don’t know… I don’t know what…”

“So which is it gonna be, baby?” Willie finally asks her. “We gonna run or we gonna burn this place?”

“These things don’t burn. We start a fire and we might just set ’em all free.”

“So we run?”

“I don’t know, Daddy.”

“Oh, Nova, I know you always hated this place—”

“Daddy, don’t. You don’t have to… Not right now. You don’t—”

“This is your house, Nova.”

She’s sure it’s just a figure of speech, or that some swell of emotion twisted his words at the last moment, so she keeps closing the distance between them. But he holds up both hands to stop her, his palms white as bone in the darkness: “Nova. It’s your house.”

“What?” she whispers.

He straightens, clears his throat, and appears to test his sure-footed stance, like he fears she’ll try to knock him off his feet when he explains further.

“I know I kept you here longer than you ever wanted to be. I know as soon as you started reading those books ’bout slave days that all you saw in this place was the blood of our brothers and sisters everywhere. And I hoped one day you could forgive this house and Miss Caitlin and people who don’t know no better ’bout their own history.”

“I don’t understand, Daddy. Why?”

“Because if Miss Caitlin’s really gone… then this place… it belongs to you… ’Cause when I tried to leave last year, when I was gonna start my own bidness wit yer uncle, she told me to name my price. And that was my price. Spring House. For you . I never in a million years thought she’d say yes, but she did. And then when I thought about it, it done made some sense ’cause Miss Caitlin, she didn’t want this place. Neither did Troy. She’s got her money and all kinds of things. This was her daddy’s dream. But you… I figured the land alone could set you up for life, if she said yes. So I told her she’d have to leave it to you.”

“And you never thought she would.”

“No. I thought I’d strike out on my own like you always wanted. Maybe finally earn your respect.”

“You always had my respect.”

“Maybe so, baby girl. Maybe so. But do I have it now?” His voice is quaking, and she can see his jaw quivering in the flashlight’s glow. “Do I have it now that you know what I’ve left you? Land with nothing but evil under it?”

She answers by embracing him, and when she feels his wet sobs against her shoulder, she tightens her hold. Mine, she thinks. This house, this land… it’s mine. And this knowledge seems to radiate up her legs from the earth itself, warming her belly and filling her with newfound energy. But that’s all. On an ordinary night, Nova would be ecstatic over this news. But tonight these ideas feel like vague abstractions, and what she feels is a sudden, quieting sense of responsibility.

Without meaning to, Nova has angled the Maglite’s beam at the ruined gazebo, where a large fresh tendril has emerged from the opening. There are four blossoms lining its thick stalk and they are opening now, the luminescence within intensifying as the white petals spread. Each blossom is about three times the size of the ones inside the house, the swollen mothers of those deceptively beautiful death markers in the front parlor and ruined study.

Nova pulls gently free of her father’s grip. When he sees the new growth in the gazebo, Willie grabs her shoulder. But instead of going still, she reaches up and takes his hand so that they can approach the gazebo together. By the time they’re standing at the edge of the swollen crater, the radiance from the opening blossoms is enough to see by, and Nova has lowered the Maglite to one side, its beam no longer necessary to guide them.

All sides of the crater are now draped with thick, blossom-lined vines, the petals on each opening with something that looks like leisurely anticipation. But what nails Nova in place is the sight waiting for them at the bottom of the pit, the swelling green protrusion that’s pushing its way gradually up from the bottom. A few seconds of staring at it, and Nova realizes it’s merely a semitranslucent skin over a dark, shadowy mass within.

“It’s a pod, isn’t it?” Nova asks.

“Yeah…”

Blake is right. It’s a process they’re paying witness to, and it was set in motion by Caitlin’s blood, and then by Blake’s blood, and since then its individual components have proven themselves impervious to fire, and possibly a dozen other forms of physical destruction.

“There’s something inside that thing,” Willie whispers.

“I know.”

“And it’s growing. Right now. In front of us.”

“I know, Daddy.”

“We can’t let it. Whatever’s inside that thing, we can’t jes let it—”

“I know. But we can’t burn it. Not when it’s… like this.”

“Let’s try.”

“And burn down the whole damn house?”

“Then, what? We jes run?”

“No.”

“I’m not gettin’ it, baby. What’s the plan here?”

“We wait for it to be born,” she answers. “ Then we burn it.”

The gazebo is quiet now, the blossoms open—eighteen in all, Nova’s counted—and her father’s astonished, frightened glare is raising hairs on the back of her neck.

“You sure?” he asks, when she finally looks him in the eye.

“About which part? The waiting or the burning?”

“Both.”

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

They hear it at the same time, a sound like flying chain saws, and the expression on Nova’s face is enough to make her father grab her by the wrist and take off running. The sound gets louder as they run straight into the empty, unplanted fields, and after a few minutes of not feeling a bug or anything like it on her skin, Nova risks a look over one shoulder.

They aren’t being pursued. The cloud of insects sweeping down out of the sky is headed straight for the gazebo, and the shadows they make as they flit through the security light above the kitchen door are the size of sparrows. These aren’t the insects that have been gathering inside the house, awaiting the call of whatever strange power pulses inside of the death blossoms. These are the terrible obsidian monsters that left only an hour before. And now they’re back.

Nova finally stops running. Her father pulls on her for a few tugs before he gives in and stops running too. Chests heaving, both bent over with hands braced on their knees so they can catch their breath, Nova and Willie watch as the insect cloud descends on the gazebo’s wreckage. The collective glow from the blossoms illuminates the great swirling cloud of monstrous bugs. Then the glow itself is extinguished as the bugs pile onto each large flower, coating it with a greater speed and ferocity than exhibited by any of their smaller forebears who have taken up residence inside the main house.