been ripped open, contents thrown in every direction to mingle together on the floor, and two bottles of liquid food had shattered against one wall, staining it in red and green.
The boy was here again last night. Something must be done about him.
“Why does he do things like this?” she cried out. “I have never done anything to hurt him.” She began to pick up the tools, hanging them on the wall again and wincing with pain from the bending and stretching. “I don’t want to talk to his parents about this. They really don’t care about anything he does.”
He must be punished. The thought seemed to come from every direction in the garden, but for the moment she dismissed it as a vengeful thought of her own, and did what she could to repair the damage. By evening the shed was clean again. She ate a bowl of soup and some crackers for dinner, and fell into bed exhausted. Her sleep was deep, and in the night she did not hear the crash of a picket fence splintering, or the deep, sucking sounds. Peaceful in a subconscious state of quiet dreams, she did not hear the screams.
* * * *
Mildred Hanson opened her eyes, startled by a shout in her mind. Mother, come quickly. We’re hurt! “Angela?” she called out, and then she was awake. Silly woman, she thought. Angela was a thousand miles away with her own husband and children. A dream, perhaps, but something was wrong and she had overslept. The sun was high in the sky. She pulled on a robe and wandered towards the kitchen, worried by the jumble of thoughts exploding in her mind. Outside, some of us are dying. Mother, please, help us. She opened the kitchen door, looked outside, and saw the roses.
“Oh, dear God—NO!”
She stumbled down the porch steps and along the dirt path to the rose plot, dropping to her knees in front of it and holding her face in her hands as the tears came. The rose bushes lay on their sides, pulled cleanly from the ground, blossoms wilting rapidly in the heat. Beyond, a section of the picket fence lay flat on the ground, splintered into pieces. And Mildred cried over her garden.
He came in the night, and we stuck him with our thorns, but he reached below the thorns and pulled us from the ground, and now we are dying.
“NO!” cried Mildred. She stood up too quickly, pain knifing through her knees, and hurried towards the tool shed. If she worked fast the roses would not die; she stumbled crazily along the dirt path, almost running, trying to suppress the terrible thoughts and feelings that suddenly surged upwards to her consciousness. The boy has gone too far. He must be dealt with severely. Her breathing was rapid, and then she was gasping for air and there was a tight feeling in her chest. We must make a plan to trap him, and punish him ourselves. She felt her knees sagging as she lurched ahead, seeing the shed surrounded by tall, flowering sentries.
If the roses die—the boy should be killed.
“Oh,” she cried. There was suddenly a terrible pain in her chest and arms. She dropped to both knees before the door of the shed, clutching at her chest and closing her eyes as she sucked in deep breaths of air. “Lord, don’t let me think like this,” she panted. “It’s evil to have such thoughts. Take them away from me. Please!”
You are ill? Do not hurry so much. There is time.
She leaned up against the shed door, breathing deeply, and forced herself to relax. The pain subsided, was gone, leaving only a dull ache in her chest. The dreadful thoughts were also gone. She grasped the edge of the door and pulled herself up, found tape, strings, watering can and a small shovel. The walk back to the rose bed was slow and deliberate. She filled the watering can with cool water, got down on her knees and began to work. Several roots were damaged. She bound them up with tape and string, dug new holes and reset the plants with gentle hands. The task consumed her; she thought of nothing but the work. She picked up a Peace rose bush lying forlornly on its side, half-opened buds beginning to wilt in the heat of the day. I’m hurt badly, she thought. I don’t think I can make flowers again. “But you live,” said Mildred, setting the plant carefully into its new home, “and that’s the important thing.”
When she finished her work, it was dusk. After putting her tools away, she urged her aching body slowly to the house, heated a can of soup as the sun disappeared, and ate slowly by the window overlooking her garden, wondering about the reasons behind the brutal acts of the boy, and what she could do to stop him. That night she went to sleep without any answers to her questions.
* * * *
Jerry Davidson waited impatiently for the lights to go out in the little white house across the street from the bushes he was hiding in. The old lady was staying up late tonight. Perhaps she was watching the garden, trying to set a trap for him. Probably not. She wouldn’t be expecting anything tonight—not three nights in a row. He would have to stop for a while; it was getting too dangerous. The business with the roses had even enraged his mother, and she’d questioned him suspiciously about it. He’d denied any involvement, of course, but he was certain she didn’t believe him. The ladies in the neighborhood wouldn’t speak to her anymore. That’s what really made her angry, he thought. And his father thought all the fuss about the old woman and her flowers was just plain silly. A crazy lady who talked to flowers, and walked around with a perpetual smile on her face belonged in a rest home, he said.
His parents were out again, so he could take his time getting home. But he wished the lights would go out soon so he could get it over with. The trick would not work once she was asleep. He pulled the tic-tac from his pocket: thread spool notched at the ends, wound with string and a large nail for the axle. When she was nearly asleep, he would press the spool on her bedroom window and pull the string hard. The racket would be terrifying in the dead of night. If he did it right, she would probably mess her pants.
The lights went out.
Jerry waited for a moment, heart pounding with excitement, then looked up and down the street before leaving his hiding place. Thin and fragile looking, he was quite small for an eleven-year-old boy, but more than made up for it with courage and fighting ability. The other boys at school had found that out the hard way. How many of them would have the guts to do what he was about to do? But now it was time to move. He poised for the attack, flexing slender muscles in his arms and legs, then slid out of the bushes, padded cat-like across the street and flattened himself in the tangled mass of flowering shrubs and vines near the tool shed. He lay there for a while, listening to his pounding heart, wondering if the old woman was watching from the darkened windows of the house. A light breeze was blowing, and he thought it strange here were no rustling sounds from the garden—no movement of the plants. He began to pull himself forward slowly on his stomach.
He had crawled only a few feet when he realized his choice of route had been a poor one. The place was a tangled mess of prickly shrubs and sticky vines that pulled and tore at his every move. Every place he put his hands seemed to be covered with sharp thorns that stuck his flesh and sent waves of pain up his arms. Some kind of nettle struck him, and he felt a numbing sensation move across a shoulder blade and up towards his neck. To turn around now would take too much time. He pressed his lips tightly together, and moved straight towards the shed, towards the giant plants silhouetted like sentries with flower-heads and skinny, outstretched arms ending in huge pod-fists. The vines were sticking to him, now, winding around his legs and chest and pulling at him. His breathing came hard, and he fought off sudden fear in the darkness as the garden seemed to move around him, without sound, encircling him with thorny vines and rope-like tendrils pulling him flat on his stomach.
He crashed down on his chin, vines crawling on him, pulling his arms to his sides. He kicked with both feet, and found his legs suddenly bound together. He reached to free them and the vines around his body tightened in a crushing embrace, and then he was thrashing around on the ground, worm-like, bound tightly from head to foot and suppressing an urge to
