the plant-thing, and let it have its way with him. He knew his resistance was giving way. He could not escape. It was only a matter of time.
But, miraculously, he was saved, and the instrument of his deliverance was a telegram, from my future mother. It said simply:
WHY HAVEN’T I HEARD FROM YOU stop ARE YOU GOING TO MARRY ME OR NOT stop.
Dad could only show this to his host, who may have been a plant, but was still a gentleman. He said, “You’ve given her your word, haven’t you?”
“Yes, I have.”
“Well you can’t go back on your word. You’ll have to leave.”
So he left. He returned to America and married my mother, and a few years later produced me, the humble teller of this tale. He never returned to England for the rest of his life, though he told me much about it. He even confided some of the really strange things that he’d heard toward the end, though once he was out of the immediate proximity of Lord Cheebleford he could no longer call to mind a single word of the alien languages, or very much of what had been revealed. Yes, he made inquiries, and passed certain warnings through proper channels, and I when I got older could tell that he was on edge much of the time, and frustrated, very likely because he was not believed, or else there was some kind of conspiracy to cover up the truth. Despite this, we used to get Christmas cards from England, from Lord Cheebleford, and I even got some addressed to me, from “Uncle Freddy,” but I was not allowed to answer them, and my parents never answered theirs. Shortly before he died, Dad told me what he could, and I think what haunted him most was that, just before he left the estate, he had seen the plant one last time, and the artichoke section had blackened and collapsed in on itself, while the outer stalks had all quite definitely gone to seed.”
* * * *
Somebody started to laugh while sipping his drink and snorted.
There were a few polite murmurs as I finished my tale, and then the Club Skeptic tore into me.
“Now wait a minute,” he said. “What happened?”
“Apparently very little.”
“You would have us believe that sometime in the 1950s England was invaded by intelligent plants from outer space and nobody noticed?”
“Well there are certain accounts,” said another member. “Wyndham and all.”
“But those are fiction,” someone said.
“Yes, definitely, they are,” I put in. “It wasn’t like that at all.”
“Well then,” said the Skeptic, “how do you explain the incongruities between your account and the condition of Great Britain today? How do you account for it?”
Maybe this was where I made my fatal mistake. I paused, then held up my empty glass. The waiter filled it with whiskey. I took, not a sip, but a good stiff gulp. Yes, I think the whiskey was at fault. It clouded my judgment. It caused me to overestimate the value of my wit.
“Maybe there was nothing to explain,” I said. “Maybe my father got himself all worked up over nothing. This Freddy Darblethwaite inherited the estate and went through all the conventional motions as lord of the manor and lived out the kind of life expected of a member of his class, and he took his father’s seat in Parliament, and maybe one more vegetable in the House of Lords didn’t make any difference.”
I sat back, waiting to relish applause, but there was dead silence in the room. You could have heard a cliché drop.
And that was when I understood that I had gone too far, crossing some line of propriety that no American can ever cross. That was when I understood that I had been right to protest at the beginning, because I had no business trying to tell an English club story.
The rest of the evening passed with stiff politeness. There were other stories told. One elderly gentleman with white whiskers began, “When I was in In-jah, I was shooting tigers, until one of them shot back. Now that was a story,” and he told it, but I cannot remember the details, any more than I can recall what followed when another older member with a slightly Irish accent, who had clearly been awaiting his moment, began, “Ghosts? It is not so much a matter of what I believe but what I have seen.”
All the while the vast chasm between the condition of being American and that of being British gaped before me.
The whiskey clouded my mind. I fell asleep in the cab on the way back to my hotel.
I have been in the U.K. several times since. I have even spoken at conferences there, in the course of my business and literary career, but I have never had an opportunity to tell—or even hear—another English club story, because, unsurprisingly, they never invited me back.
DANSE MACABRE, by Jeff Barnes
Every year they bloom in my garden,
rising from the graves of the dead.
Listen to the clicking of dancing bones
and see the smiling skeleton heads!
Every year when the pumpkins are sprouting
and the leaves turning orange and red,
I tend my garden faithfully,
preparing to welcome back the dead.
Don’t bury your loved ones in cemeteries.
Bring them to my garden instead,
and celebrate with them every year
from Halloween to the Day of the Dead!
IMPERVIOUS TO REASON, OBLIVIOUS TO FATE, by John R. Fultz
It was not Shango’s custom to meet with strangers in the dead of night.
Evil spirits of seventeen kinds were known to roam the Forest of Heavenly Streams, but a lone traveler was more likely to meet one of the three bandit tribes who called the forest home. Shango had walked the woodland path without company all day, but he was not alone. The blade of his great-grandfather kept him company, nestled in its scabbard of fine leather at his waist. Sometimes he spoke to the sword, as if to his great-grandfather. He asked it many questions, but so far it had never answered him.
Now the naked blade gleamed silver and orange across his knees as he sat before the campfire. A roasted squirrel simmered on a spit above the tiny flame, but Shango let it burn and blacken. A tree bole guarded his back while his eyes searched the darkness beyond the firelight. Whoever or whatever spied on him from that darkness would see the drawn sword. Perhaps the mere sight of it would frighten away any bandit or spirit who crept near. Shango did not want to kill anyone in this place. To spill blood in the forest was to invite the intervention of its spirits.
A soft wind made the dried leaves rattle as three men emerged from the dark. They wore the robes of swordsmen and masks of painted wood. The masks showed the grinning faces of red demons with golden tusks. Each man carried a sheathed blade similar to Shango’s, yet they were forged of newer steel by less expert hands.
Shango grinned to see that they were neither spirits nor bandits.
“Sangzara
