Stephen King - The Plant

Of course I knew what the siren in my head had been, even though I'd never been given an actual demonstration of Sandra's Rainy Day Friend, and I suppose I knew what was calling me, as well: our new mascot.

I caught a taxi with no trouble—thank God for Saturdays—and the run from my place to Zenith House was a quick one. Bill Gelb was standing out in front, pacing back and forth with one side of his shirt untucked and hanging down over his belt, running his hands back and forth through his hair, which was standing up in spikes and quills. He looked as nutty as the old lady in front of Smiler's, and

Funny thought to have. Because there was no lady in front of Smiler's, not really. We know that now.

I'm getting ahead of myself again, but it's hard to write scintillating prose when you can't stop looking at the phone, willing the damned thing to go off and put an end to the suspense, one way or the other. But I'll try. I think I must try.

Bill saw me and raced over to the cab. He started grabbing at my arm while I was still trying to pay the driver, pulling me onto the curb as if I'd fallen into a shark-infested pool. I dropped some coins and started to bend over.

“Leave em, for Christ sake, leave em!” he barked. “Have you got your office keys? I left mine on the bureau at home. I was out for a...” Out for a walk was what he meant to say, but instead of finishing he gave a kind of out-of-breath, screamy laugh. A woman passing us gave him a hard look and hurried on a little faster. “Oh shit, you know what I was doing.”

Indeed I did. He'd been shooting craps in Central Park, but he'd left the majority of his cash on his bureau (along with his office keyring) because he had other plans for it. I could have gotten the other plans, too, if I'd wanted to look, but I didn't. One thing was obvious: the telepathic range of the plant has gotten stronger. A lot.

We started for the door, and just then another cab pulled up. Herb Porter got out, redder in the face than I'd ever seen him. The man looked like a stroke waiting to happen. I'd never seen him in bluejeans, either, or with his shirt misbuttoned so it bloused out on one side. Also, it was sticking to his body and his hair (what little of it there is; he keeps it cropped short) was wet.

“I was in the goddam shower, okay?” he said. “Come on.”

We went to the door and I managed to get my key in the slot after three pokes. My hand was shaking so badly I had to grasp my wrist with the other one to hold it steady. At least there was no weekend security guy in the lobby to worry about. I suppose that particular paranoid virus will work its way down Park Avenue South eventually, but for the time being, building management still assumes that if you've got the right set of keys, you must be in the right place.

We got in through the door and then Herb stopped, holding my upper arm with one hand and Bill's with the other. A daffy, goony smile was surfacing on his face, where his complexion had begun to subside to a more normal pink.

“He's dead, you guys. He wasn't before, but he is now. Ding-dong, the General's dead!” And to my total amazement, Herb Porter, the Barry Goldwater of 490 Park Avenue South, actually raised his hands, began snapping his fingers, and did a little Mexican hat-dance step.

“You're sick, Herb,” Bill said.

“He's also right,” I said. “The General's dead and so's—”

There came a clattery, disorganized knocking on the street door. It made us all jump and clutch each other. We must have looked like Dorothy and her friends on the Yellow Brick Road, faced with some new danger.

“Let go of me, both of you,” Bill said. “It's just the boss.”

It was indeed Roger, hammering on the door and peering in at us, with the tip of his nose squished into a little white dime against the glass. Bill let him in. Roger joined us. He also looked as if someone had lit him on fire and then blown him out, but at least he was dressed, socks and all. Probably he was on his way out, anyway.

“Where's Sandra?” was the first thing he asked.

“She was going to Cony Island,” Herb said. His color was coming back, and I realized he was blushing. It was sort of cute, in a ponderous way. “She might well turn up, though.” He paused. “If it carried that far. The telepathy thing, I mean.” He looked almost timid, an expression I never expected to see on Herb's face. “What do you guys think?”

“I think it might have,” Roger said. “That was her gadget that went off in our heads, wasn't it? The Dark and Stormy Night whatsit.” I nodded. So did Bill and Herb.

Roger took a deep breath, held it, then let it out. “Come on, let's see what kind of a mess we're in.” He paused. “And whether or not we can get out of it.”

The elevator seemed to take forever. None of us said anything, not out loud, anyway, and when I discovered I could turn off the run of their thoughts, I did so. Hearing all those muttering voices twined together in the middle of your head is distressing. I suppose that now I know how schizophrenics must feel.

When the door opened on the fifth floor and the smell hit us, we all winced. Not in distaste, but in surprise. “Oh man,” Herb said. “All the way out here in the fucking hall. Do you suppose anyone else could smell it? I mean, anyone else but us?”

Roger shook his head and started toward the Zenith offices, walking with his hands rolled into fists. He stopped outside the office door. “Which of you has the key? Because I left mine at home.”

I was rummaging for them in my pocket when Bill stepped forward and tried the knob. It turned. He looked at us with his eyebrows raised, then went in.

I'd characterize what we'd smelled when the elevator door opened on Five as a scent. In the reception office it was much, much stronger—what you would have called a reek, if it had been unpleasant. It wasn't, so what does that leave? Pungent, I suppose; a pungent, earthy smell.

This is so hard. To this point I've been racing along, wanting to get to what we found (and what we didn't), but here I find myself moving much more slowly, searching for ways to describe what is, essentially, indescribable. And it occurs to me how infrequently we are called upon to write about smells and the powerful ways in which they affect us. The smell in the Central Falls House of Flowers was similar to this in its strength, but in other ways, important ways, entirely different. The greenhouse smell was threatening, sinister. This one was like...

Well, I might as well just say it. It was like coming home.

Roger looked around at Bill and me and gave us a forbidding District Attorney stare. “Toast and jam?” he asked. “Popcorn? Honeysuckle? New goddam car?”

We shook our heads. Zenith had put its various disguises aside, perhaps because it no longer needs them to entice us. I tuned into their thoughts again, just enough to know that Bill and Roger smelled what I did. There were variations, I'm sure, as no two sets of perception are alike (not to mention no two sets of olfactory receptors), but basically it was the same thing. Green... strong... friendly... home. I just hope and pray I'm not wrong about the friendly part.

“Come on,” Roger said.

Herb grabbed his arm. “What if somebody—”

“Nobody's here,” I said. “Carlos was and the General was, but they're... you know... gone.”

“Don't gild the lily,” Bill said. “They're dead.”

“Come on,” Roger repeated, and we followed him.

The reception area was clean as a whistle, the garlic still holding Zenith at bay, but the first green scouts had already gotten to within five feet of the pass-through to the editorial department (there's no door at the reception end of the hallway, only a square arch flanked by Macho Man posters). Fifteen or twenty feet down, where the door to Roger's office opens on the left, the growth has thickened considerably, covering most of the carpet and climbing up the walls. By the point where Herb's office and Sandra's face each other, it has covered the old gray carpet in a new carpet of fresh green, as well as most of the walls. It has gotten a start on the ceiling for good measure, hanging from the fluorescent lights in ropy swags. Beyond that, down toward Riddley's country, it has become a jungle. Yet I knew that if I walked down there, it would open to let me pass.