Christopher Rice - The Vines

Blake feels again the soft bed that was waiting for him at the bottom of the pit when he jumped into it to cut a segment of the vines free. A new growth, a new life, swelling up from the earth itself in response to the terrible events all around Spring House.

“We’re the tools you’re using to bring her back?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“Betrayal is my sin. I used Virginie Lacroix’s powers for gain and refused to keep my promises to her in exchange. Her revenge caused my death and took prisoner of my spirit. But I was given new direction and new power by the blood of Caitlin Chaisson and the betrayal that ran through it. Her rage. This is the justice of the earth.”

“Rage? That’s the essence of life itself? Only rage?”

“All life? Perhaps not. Perhaps only the life I am able to create while trapped in this prison. The life I am able to create for Virginie.”

“But you stopped,” Blake says. “You just stopped. Why haven’t you taken me?”

The spirit doesn’t answer. The low whine from the surrounding insects could be their usual song or Felix’s frustrated growl; there’s no telling which.

“Where’s Caitlin?”

“What remains of Caitlin has gathered up the lives she needs to aid me in the resurrection. She has returned to Spring House to play her role.”

“And now it’s my turn to play mine? Is that it? You’ve come for me and then I’ll… what?”

“You will devour more of the sin that fed your rage, the same rage with which you fed the vines. And then you too will play your role in Virginie’s resurrection…”

“And your freedom, right? Because when you bring Virginie back to life, you’ll be free? Is that how this all works?”

There is no response from the clicking, shifting apparition, but there is no clearly etched facial expression to interpret either, so Blake takes the silence of this ghost as hesitation, a gap in the all-seeing divine knowledge it touted only seconds before.

“Fine!” Blake shouts. “Then do it! Do it now!”

And yet, the spirit is silent. The swirl of insects, not a single one of which touches his skin, now seems stuck in a kind of repetitive paralysis.

“You can’t. Why not? Why can’t you take me the way you took Caitlin?”

The spirit’s form is too impressionistic for Blake to read any emotion or nuance from its vague expression.

Vernon has collapsed in the far corner, a few feet from the Eames chair he knocked over as he stumbled backward. Squinting, his chest heaving, he sweeps the curtains of winged, otherworldly creatures with a swaying, indecisive aim.

“It matters,” Blake whispers. “The choice I made. That I said no . It matters, doesn’t it? It’s stopped you.”

“It has done more than that, I’m afraid.”

“What? What… more has it done?” Blake is answered by the grinding buzz, but not words. “Caitlin screamed bloody murder, but she couldn’t stop you. How come I can? What happened when you took my blood, my rage , without my consent?”

“It placed me under your command.”

Vernon aims the gun at Blake. A piss stain crawls down the right leg of his jeans.

“I want you to stop,” Blake says. “If you’re under my command now, then stop !”

“There is no stopping Virginie’s desire for freedom, and there is no freeing me from it until she is made flesh again. No matter what you choose, I will be returned to the soil, forced to await another opportunity to gain her freedom and mine, but with the knowledge I have acquired during this long night of consumption and enlightenment.”

“Why don’t you have enough? Why haven’t you… enough to bring her back? You killed all those people at the motel, didn’t you? That was part of this.”

“Caitlin’s rage killed those people.”

“They were cheaters, like Troy. Is that it?”

“She consumed the sin she sought to avenge. She is but one of my arms. She fed but one of my vines. You fed the other.”

“No. You did. You stole my blood, and now you’re being punished for it!”

“I am the prisoner of the vines, not their architect.”

For the first time since this sickening dialogue has begun, Blake lowers his outstretched hand and decides to put his alleged power to the test a second time. Under his command, the countenance of Felix Delachaise collapses, and within seconds the mass of insects has formed a smooth, undulating blanket covering the living room ceiling. It looks like smoke from a well-fed fire, but the constant grinding song of its indistinguishable components belies the soft texture of the swarm’s new configuration. A configuration that resembles exactly what Blake envisioned for it only seconds before.

Staring up at the blanket of insects overhead, Vernon seems to realize his gun will be useless against Blake’s newfound power, and when he lowers it to one side, the placid expression on his face reminds Blake of a patient who realizes she is close enough to death to abandon all fight.

“Do it, Blake.”

“No…,” Blake says.

“Come on, kid,” Vernon answers. His smile makes him look delirious, and Blake wonders if this is the way Vernon used to talk to his son. He wonders if, in a part of his mind that’s already separated from the body he’s offering up now as sacrifice, Vernon really is talking to John. If that’s who he sees standing across the wrecked room from him now. “No need to pretend for my sake. I know you want to. And it makes sense, doesn’t it? It makes perfect sense to give me to the—”

“Shut up!”

“You were a hero once, Blake,” he says, shattering Blake’s cozy notion that Vernon no longer knows who he is. “You could have left him. You could have just started swimming, but you tried—you tried to get my son free before he drowned. You really loved him, didn’t you?”

“Stop… Please, just st—”

“Did you love him?”

“Yes!”

“I see… Well, I didn’t ,” he growls, but there are tears sprouting from his eyes and a childlike quiver to his lower jaw, and Blake can see it’s just a performance. “I wanted him to die. I wanted you both to die.”

“That’s not true. You’re just saying that to make me—”

“It is true. I thought you were sick, both of you. I thought you were both diseased.” But there is no rage behind these words, just tearful despair. “I wanted you both to die!”

Blake realizes he’s shaking his head madly only when his neck starts to burn from the effort. Vernon is simply parroting the script Blake just gave him, that’s all—making himself out to be the monster Blake wanted him to be when he knocked on the front door.

“You’re just saying that to make me—”

Vernon hits one knee and grabs his gun before Blake can finish the sentence. There is madness in Vernon’s eyes beyond calculation or reason.

Vernon fires.

Blake hits his knees, feels the bullet whiz past his shoulder. The insects overhead don’t react to the gunshot itself; they are attuned only to the gunfire within Blake’s soul, and Blake is trying with all his might not to will Vernon’s death, not to end things in this way, no matter how tempting, no matter how easy it seems.

Deafened by the gunshot, Blake doesn’t hear the gun hit the wood next to him, just sees it spinning away across the floor, and he doesn’t realize Vernon has lunged until the man’s weight comes crashing down on him.

They hit the floor together in a tangle of limbs, catching one side of the glass coffee table on their way down. Ashtrays and magazines tumble across Vernon’s back, and the next thing Blake knows, Vernon Fuller’s got him by both shoulders and is slamming the back of his head against the floor. The words rip from him in a torrent of furious growls. In the air behind Vernon’s head, the insects fly in mad circles like shocked witnesses, powerless to intervene without Blake’s command.