Stephen King - The Plant

Pass, friend, come home. Yes, I could hear it whispering that to me.

“Ho... lee... shit,” Bill said.

“We've created a monster,” Herb said, and even in that moment of stress and wonder it occurred to me that he'd been reading too many Anthony LaScorbia novels for his own good.

Roger started down the hallway, moving slowly. We had all heard pass, friend, and we all felt that undeniable welcome, but we were all ready to run, just the same. It was just too new, too weird.

Although there's only one corridor in the office suite, it makes that little zigzag jog in the middle. We call the part running through the editorial offices “the front corridor.” Beyond the jog are the mailroom, the janitor's cubby, and a utility room to which only the building's personnel are supposed to have access (although I suspect Riddley has a key). This part is called “the back corridor.”

In the front corridor, there are three offices on the left: Roger's, Bill's, and Herb's. On the right there's a small office supply closet mostly taken up by our cranky Xerox machine, then my office, and finally Sandra's. The doors to Roger's office, Bill's, and the supply closet were all closed. My door, Herb's door, and Sandra's door were all open.

“Fuu-uck,” Herb said in a horrified whisper. “Look on the side of her door.”

“It's not Kool-Aid, I can tell you that much,” Bill said.

“More on the carpet, too,” Roger said. Herb used the f-word again, once more breaking it into two syllables.

There was no blood on the ivy-runners, I noticed, and although I didn't want to think about that too much, I suppose I know why not. Our buddy gets hungry, and doesn't that make perfect sense? There's so much more of it to support now, so many new outposts and colonies, and our psychic vibrations can probably offer it only so much in the way of nourishment. There's an old blues tune on the subject. “Grits ain't groceries,” the chorus goes. By the same token, friendly thoughts and supportive editors ain't...

Well, they ain't blood.

Are they?

Roger looked into Herb's office and I looked into mine. My place looked okay, but I knew damned well Carlos had been there, and not just because of the fancy-shmancy attache case sitting on top of the desk. I could almost smell him.

“Things are a trifle disarranged in your cubby, Herbert,” Bill said in a really terrible English butler voice. Maybe it was his way of trying to lighten the tension. “In fact, I believe someone may have urinated a bit in theah.”

Herb glanced in, saw the destruction, and grunted an oath that sounded almost absent-minded before turning to Sandra's office. By then, I was getting a pretty clear picture. Two crazy men, both with grudges against different Zenith House editors. I didn't care how they got in or which of them had arrived first, but I was curious about how far apart in time they'd been. If they'd met in the lobby and had their lunatic shootout there, they could have saved us a lot of trouble. Only that probably wasn't the way Zenith wanted it. Aside from the fact that Carlos may have owed a rather large debt to something (or Something) in the Great Beyond, there's the fact that grits ain't groceries. Telepathic plants get more than lonely, it seems. Pore little fellers get hungry, too.

It's certainly something to think about.

“Roger?” Herb asked. He was still standing by his door, and he sounded timid again. “She... she's not in there, is she?”

“No,” Roger said absently, “you know she's not. Sandra's on her way back from Cony Island. But our friend from Central Falls is finally present and accounted for.”

We gathered around the door and looked in.

Carlos Detweiller lay face-down in what Anthony LaScorbia would undoubtedly call “a gruesome pool of spreading blood.” The back of his suit-coat was pulled upward in a tent-shape, and the tip of a knife protruded through it. His hands were outstretched toward the desk. His feet, pointing toward the door, had already been partially covered by thin green bows of ivy. Zenith had actually pulled off one of his loafers and worked his way through the sock beneath. Maybe there was a hole in the sock to begin with, but somehow I don't think so. Because there were broken strands of ivy, you see. As if it had tried to pull him out, out and down toward the main mass of the growth, and had been unable. You could almost feel the hunger. The longing to have his carcass the way it had undoubtedly already had the General's.

“This is where they fought, of course,” Roger said, still in that absent tone of voice. He saw the Rainy Day Friend lying on the floor, picked it up, sniffed at the little hole on top, and winced. His eyes began to water at once.

“If you set off the siren in that thing again, I will be forced to kill you as dead as the asshole at your feet,” Bill said.

“I think the battery's fried,” Roger said, but he set the thing down on Sandra's desk very carefully, also being careful not to step on Detweiller's outstretched hand.

Carlos had been in my office, because I was the one against whom he'd built his grudge. Then he left for something.

“I think it was food,” Bill said. “He got hungry and went looking for food. The General jumped him. Carlos got to Sandra's gadget before Hecksler could give him the coup de grace, but it wasn't enough. Do you see that part, John?”

I shook my head. Maybe I just didn't want to see it.

“What's this?” Bill was out in the hall. He dropped to one knee, moved aside a clump of ivy, and showed us a guitar pick. Like the leaves of Zenith himself, the pick was as clean as a whistle. No blood, I mean.

“Something printed on it,” Bill said, and squinted. “JUST A CLOSER WALK WITH THEE, it says.”

Roger looked at me, finally startled out of his daze. “Good God, John,” he said, “that was him! He was her!”

“What are you talking about?” Bill asked, turning the pick over and over in his fingers. “What are you thinking about? Who's Crazy Guitar Gertie?”

“The General,” I said hollowly, and wondered if he'd had the knife when I gave him the two dollars. If Herb had been there that day, he'd be dead now. There was absolutely no question about that in my mind. And I myself was lucky to be alive.

“Well, I wasn't there, and you are alive,” Herb said. He spoke with his old don't-trouble-me-with-the-details irritability, but his face was still pale and shocked, the face of a man who is running entirely on instinct. “And congratulations, Gelb, you just left your dabs on that guitar pick. Better wipe em off.”

I could see other stuff scattered amid the thickening greenery back down the hall: shredded bits of clothing, a few pieces of what looked like a pamphlet of some kind, paper money, coins.

“Fingerprints aren't a problem because nobody's ever going to see any of the old coot's stuff,” Roger said. He took the pick from Bill, briefly examined the printing, then walked a little way down the corridor. The drifts and clumps of ivy drew back for him, just as I had known they would. Roger tossed the pick. A leaf folded over it and it was gone. Just like that.

Then, in my head, I heard Roger's voice. Zenith! As if calling a dog. Eat this crap up! Make it gone!

And for the first time I heard it speak a coherent reply. There isn't anything I can do about the coins. Or these damn things. Halfway up the wall, just beyond Herb's office door, a shiny green leaf almost the size of a dinner plate unrolled. Something bright dropped to the carpet with a clink. I walked down and picked up Iron-Guts's Army ID tags on a silver beaded chain. Feeling very weird about it—you must believe me when I say words cannot begin to tell—I slipped them into my pants pocket. Meanwhile, Bill and Herb were picking up the General's silver change. As this went on, there was a low rustling sound. The bits of clothing and shreds of paper were disappearing back into the jungle where the front corridor becomes the back one.