In the Realm of the Midnight Gardener

When Domingo Ladrón again opened his eyes, it was far into the coming of dusk.

He could see the last slips of orange sky of a dusky sun slipping behind the horizon. Thin wisps of autumn clouds stretched the sky, white rake lines in the darkening blue.

He had no idea how long he’d been unconscious. The rest of the night and all the next day at least, but that was the extent of what he knew. For all he knew, he’d been out for days, and the Tindalosi had long since come and gone. He could very well be stranded here, doomed to be trapped in this place or a lost wanderer on the infinite lines of the Garden Path. But surprisingly enough, he wasn’t dead, so he couldn’t bother with what had passed now.

Instinctively, he touched his aching neck. The salve, apparently, had worked well. Not only was he not bleeding, but the wound felt like it had healed considerably. He owed that trader who’d sold him the salve a debt. The grubby character had claimed the salve was the best, and here was the proof. Domingo’s neck was all but healed.

As for his back and shoulders, he couldn’t say. He’d lay with his wounds bleeding into the soil for who knew how long. He felt weak, drained, and definitely battered and bruised, but not snuffed out Oh, he ached something terrible, and the combined after-effects of the poppy dust, the sight-giving Faer Fire potion and the sleepless paste had his head banging cymbals against the back of his eyeballs. His scrapes, cuts and bruises were too numerous to count. Yet here he was, neither dead nor dying, a battered and bruised fool with the luck of the devil on his side. The salve to his neck, he was sure, had saved him. He’d have certainly bled out otherwise. He owed that trader a BIG debt.

He struggled and sat up. This was a mission, full of undignified grunts and groans, but he managed it. He surveyed the graveyard, but the growing darkness was surely playing tricks on his eyes. He fetched out the lantern and the two vials of lamp oil, filled and lit the lantern and let his eyes adjust to the warm light it gave. “Deus Mio,” he mumbled, looking about him.

The graveyard, no longer a dead field of wispy grasses, was arm-high in thick, lush, black-leaved plants. Thick stemmed, wrinkle-leaved plants, the mottled colour of blood and ink, were as far as the lantern’s light reached. The air was acrid with a poisoned redolence, a stink of toxin.

The plants seemed to have grown particularly thick in a clustered ring about him, densely packed like a Faer ring of toadstools. He held the lantern, and leaned in closer for a better look at one of the plants.

Leaning in, he brushed the soil aside at the base of one of the plants. Sure enough, where the stem ended, he could see the gooey, red flesh of a blood turnip. It’s dense skin glistened with a sanguine sweat. He stared at it, and was both fascinated and sickened to see the thing pulse like the slow, regular beat of a living heart.

Where they’d come from, Domingo had no answer, but it was short order for him to puzzle it out. It was no miracle or magick which had raised these plants from the soil, just as it was no coincidence that legend had them growing best on graveyards, battlefields and the lands of slaughter houses. He nodded. Yes, the blood. The bleeding of his wound into the soil, this had given these awful plants their urge to bloom. Many plants grew best in soils rich with blood and bone, but on this level, it was unheard-of.

He felt nauseous, half-starved, so he ate a bit from his stores and sipped from his canteen. More accurately, he gulped the water from the canteen thirstily, heedless of rationing or a lack of another water source to refill his supplies. In his desperate thirst, he accidentally splashed some of the water on the leaves of one of the turnip plants, and the reaction was remarkable. The plant immediately wilted, turning brown and drying up at the contact.

He frowned. What sort of plant abhors water? Curious, he leaned over and poured some of his water on the turnip of the self-same plant. Damnation if the turnip didn’t shrink, crumbling in on itself, and finally crack open like a long-dried bulb left in the summer sun. Water had killed the thing.

Where this ghoulish plant had come from was beyond Domingo’s reckoning, but it only further unnerved him that the Tindalosi wanted these things. They were clearly an unnatural thing, more the creation of splicer technology than the furtive effort of nature or duster. Something of the devil smelled in these things, gave them their awful life.

He chewed the last of his sparse meal, along with all that he had seen, and got to his feet. He’d need at least to try and get back to the meeting place with a few specimens. If luck was with him, it was only the next day, the Tindalosi would be waiting for him, and he’d be free of this place (not to mention the Tindalosi’s reeking company) for good.

Then he noticed his arm. Had he not lit the lantern, or not stopped for a brief meal, most likely he’d not have noticed. But he had, and now he saw, by the flickering of the lantern light, a black-red tendril poking from his shirtsleeve.

Worse still, the little black-red tendril was writhing, ever so slightly, reaching, growing as it came out from his sleeve. “What by the Seven Hells is this nonsense?” he cursed. He watched it, sickened but unable to look away, as the little tendril waved and weaved down his wrist. Oh so slowly it came, undulating side-to-side, until it reached a small cut on the top of his hand. Then, with the terrible speed of a scorpion’s tail, it lashed out and sank itself into the wound.

“GaaaaaaahhhhHH!” Domingo screamed, in pain and disgust. He grabbed the tendril and yanked at it to get it free. Oh, the terrible agony. He very nearly vomited at the wracking pain. It was as if every nerve and pain centre in his body had been stabbed at once, as if he’d torn out one of his own fingers or tendons. He let it go immediately, then looked in abysmal dread at his sleeved arm. It seemed to squirm beneath the cloth of his shirt. A terror of understanding washed over him.

Domingo rolled up the sleeve, and lo, his arm was covered in a network of intersecting black and red tendrils, each embedded in wounds and cuts the same way, crisscrossing each other like a lattice of roots burrowed in the soil, squirming and pulsing like a bucket of bait. He pulled the sleeve further back, seeing the density and quantity only increased as the mass worked further up his arm to his shoulder. There was nothing but the black trellis squirming on his upper arm. With his other arm, he reached back to the gash in his shoulder, and went cold. He could feel the bulbous growth of a blood turnip, no! Two blood turnips growing from the wounds in his back and shoulder. His hand touched the throbbing turnip, thrumming in time with his own unhappy heartbeat, and then up to a long stem and leaves protruding from his back.

These waved lightly in the night breeze.

Dread made itself a comfy home in his heart. Domingo was desperate to undo this awful scenario, to see himself free of these leeching things growing from him, feeding on him, He could feel their roots digging deeper, burrowing, drinking from his capillaries, his veins. The pulsing of those blasted roots was beating out the slow but inescapable moment of his impending death.

And if that wasn’t enough, that’s when he heard them. Faint scratchings and scrapings came from all around him. The sounds soon grew to the lethargic, clumsy shuffle of sleepwalkers. And by the light of his lantern, by the pale light of those three sliver moons, he saw them. They clawed their way from the soil, desiccated figures dressed in earth-covered rags. Dead, grey flesh, sunken eyes, hollowed cheeks and blackened teeth leered back from the shadows, unseeing things which hadn’t known life or sense or reason in an age. The grounds shambled with these dead things, their bodies overgrown with the sickening turnips. Tufts of black-red leaves sprouted from them at odd angles. The turnips, like misshapen hearts, thrummed in time to their dead steps.

The things stumbled about, mouths agape, eye sockets cavernous holes save for the sprouted black stem and leaves pushing from them. They moved without purpose, shouldering into one another or stumbling over freshly opened graves, and it was clear that only those terrible plants lent them a semblance of life, drove them on to some dismal purpose.

Domingo got up, ready to make a dash for it, and with his movement, the creatures turned as one. Maws opened in wordless cries, and the shamblers advanced, filthy nails extended. And to add to the awful cacophony of this moment, he watched in horror as these things came closer, and from rotting fingers, open mouths, torn wounds, those black-red tendrils of the blood turnips spewed forth, reaching for his tissue, his life, his blood. Long, ropey bands of tendrils shot out, tentacles of the blood turnips, shooting forth to embed themselves in his living flesh for a drink.

Domingo turned and ran, taking a moment at least to yank two of the turnips from the soil and stuff them into his satchel. This brief interlude to grab his prizes, these were the precious seconds he shouldn’t have wasted. The undead things closed in, slashing at him, sent their roots at him, desperate to get at his living flesh. His -- blood! That was what drove them. Those parched tubers all over those zombies were thirsty for a deeper drink of his life blood, and these corpses were their instruments to getting at it. He dodged nasty claws, snapping teeth and most of all those disgusting leeching rhizomes lashing out from mouths and eye sockets. He dodged left, under, side to side, then kicked a corpse aside with the flat of his boot.

But they came on, grabbing at him, snatching at his arms, his torso, his legs and ankles. He did his best to batter them back, batting and shoving the corpses away, yet it was never going to be enough. There were too many of them, those thronging cadavers, those spraying, hungry strands.

Juan Polino was in stitches. “Ohohohohoho! You are really in for it now, you imbecile! They’ve got you where they want you, no doubt about it. You might as well lay down and die. Nothing else for it, really.” The old man’s mouth crawled with maggots and bugs; his eyes were sunken and rotten. Dead Juan Polino laughed from the cozy confines of his grave.

“Shut up, dead man!” Domingo screamed, suppressing a madman’s laugh. “I’m a little busy right now.” He slashed and stabbed with his knife, swinging his lantern with the other to keep sight of his next defense. He turned, and was face to face with a pair of the dead, half-fused together by the intertwine of those black-red roots, mouths gaping with the long stems and leaves protruding.

They were all around him, reaching for him to get a taste. He jostled and slashed with his knife, but there were so many. His time was running out.

“Are you spent, fool?” his dead old master chided. “Are you done for? I have a cozy grave ready for you. Plenty of room for the dead, you know.”

“Less comedy, and more advice,” Domingo snarled, ramming his knife in the blood turnip on one of them, and cutting it in half. The corpse shuddered, stumbled, then fell, but immediately more pushed it aside to take its place in the closing circle.

“Must I do everything for you, block head?” old Juan chided. “Fire, you simp. Give that lot a proper taste of fire!”

“Fire?!” Domingo asked incredulously. “Where am I supposed to get--?” He saw the lantern in his right hand, which he’d been swinging about as he slashed with the knife.

“Damnit!”

“How is it that you’re so bad at this?!” Old Juan laughed.

Pummeling with his head to drive one of the dead back, he swung the lantern in a high arc and brought it down full force. He hurled it at their feet, the glass of its oil flask shattered, and Domingo fell back. Flames erupted on their hair, their clothes, their brittle, withered flesh. The fire quickly spread to those nearby, turning the mob of corpses into a ring of blazing, smoking fire.

He charged head-down, coat over his head, through the slight opening created by the hullabaloo, He managed to get free of the circle and sprinted as fast as he could, running across the graveyard for the head of the trail which led back down through the gardens below.

Then he saw them. Coming up the trail, drawn there by who knew what, were a dozen of the pumpkin beasts. They were charging up the path, headed straight at him. Behind him, the dead were shambling closer, some engulfed in flame, some smouldering, and a few untouched by the flames of their burning companions.

Over the far side of the hill, Domingo could see the lazy roll of the river flowing. “Ah to the hells with this,” he cursed. The whole damned misadventure had gone on long enough. If he was going to quit it, it wouldn’t be clawed to death by animate pumpkins, nor sucked dry by these corpses and their blood turnips.

With a great heave, he hurled the satchel as far as he could. He watched it sail into space, then fall and land on this side of the river. Not ideal but it would have to do.

And just as the beasts and the burning dead overran him, he took a running start, then leapt. He dropped straight down, down, down towards the river below.

“Hope that river is deeper than it looks,” old Juan Polino yelled from his worm-ridden grave. “You’ll probably shatter yourself on some rocks. That’d be a stinging shame. Hahahahahahahhhahahahaa.”

But Domingo had no time for a curse or a nasty retort. He fell down, down through the dark, the open air hurtling past him, his stomach sick with the momentum, and smacked hard on the surface of the river’s water, a flat stone battering the surface with a loud thwack.

The agony of the blow was nothing. Only the searing pain of the dying blood turnips clinging to his flesh enveloped him. It devoured his every fibre. A strike of lightning shot through him, setting his teeth in a clench which very nearly cracked them clean through. His heart felt close to bursting, ended by the searing glare of white hot pain. Domingo saw nothing, not even the gurgling drown of the river as he was hurled up and down, tossed from water to stone to murky depths, then up again. Withering pain consumed him. It tore his flesh apart as he screamed soundlessly in the tossing, bubbling froth of the river.