A Strange and Savage Garden Read online

  “No! I…we were always destined to be lovers, Lori. That’s why your grandmother made me…made me so much more real than the others, why she let you…participate in my development as the years went by. She wanted the two of us to be as close as any man and woman ever had been, closer even, since you were partially my creator. Everything was so perfect that day. We were here, beside the falls, and we began to make love. Truly make love for the first time. Not just kissing and fondling, rolling around on the grass, dry-humping with our clothes on. You were finally ready to give yourself to me, and I was ready to at last fulfill the purpose for which I had been brought into existence.”

  She frowned as she struggled to recall more details. “Yes…and it was good at first, better even than I’d imagined. But then something happened. I can’t…” Her eyes flew wide. “It came.”

  His breath was warm in her ear, and his body felt heavier atop her than she’d thought it would, his back muscles harder beneath her hand than she’d imagined. But the feeling of him sliding in and out between her legs was well beyond anything she’d fantasized. Oh, she’d masturbated before often enough and usually had little trouble achieving climax, but this… She felt as if she and Stephen were blending, their flesh merging so intimately, so completely, that they were becoming one body, one soul. She knew that she was probably just being swept away by the intensity of the moment, but she couldn’t help feeling that in a very real sense, this—this joining, this profound union—was her entire reason for being.

  He nibbled her lobe, then darted his tongue in and out of her ear, the sensation a delicious counterpoint to what his penis was doing farther down. She wasn’t sure what she should be doing besides lying back on the grass, looking up into the canopy of green leaves, listening to the rushing water and enjoying the hell out of herself, but she gave it a try, sometimes bringing her pelvis up to meet his thrusts, other times wiggling her hips from side to side while she dug her nails into his back (gently, gently) and drew slow, deliberate circles on his flesh. He must’ve liked what she was doing because his breath would catch in his throat and he would moan softly—so soft she almost couldn’t hear him above the falls and the huh-huh-huh of her own excited breathing.

  Before long, the tempo of Stephen’s thrusts increased, and she sensed he was building toward orgasm. She was getting close too, a warm tingling like smoldering embers deep in her sex, embers that were on the verge of bursting into flame.

  “Just a little more,” she said, the words more breathed than spoken. “Just a…little more…”

  She started to close her eyes to better focus her awareness on the physical sensations surging inside her, but instead she kept them open. She wanted to see Stephen’s face when he came, when together they crossed over from a lifetime of being friends into an unknown place where they would forever after be so much more.

  He gritted his teeth, his eyes closed though she didn’t hold that against him, and thrust hard and fast as if he were trying to batter down the last barrier that stood between their becoming one.

  She came first, her orgasm exploding unexpectedly, the muscles in her vagina spasming around his rock-hard penis. He came a split-second later, a high-pitched cry erupting from his throat as his semen flooded into her. She’d wondered if she’d be able to feel him ejaculate, and now she knew.

  Keep your eyes open, she told herself. Watch his face; memorize every grimace, every contortion of his features. There’ll never be another first time for either of you.

  His eyes snapped open then and Lauren gasped, but not because of the warm, juddery aftershocks of orgasm. Stephen’s eyes had become a blazing feral yellow.

  She’d seen eyes like that before, but she couldn’t quite… And then she remembered: that summer night with Grandma, when she’d been catching fireflies. The thing in the woods…the thing Grandma had made her forget about.

  She screamed and pushed Stephen off of her. She felt his dwindling member slide out of her, saw a last pearl of ejaculate glistening on the tip. She scuttled backward as he sat back on his heels, his organ grown soft but still red and swollen beneath a thin patch of pubic hair.

  “It’s all right, Lori. There’s nothing to be afraid of.” His voice was calm, almost serene, but she didn’t think it was because he was awash in after-sex contentment. “There’s only a little bit more to go, and then it’ll all be finished.”

  She heard the sound of something large and heavy coming toward them through the underbrush, and the sweet-rank scent of wild animal filled her nostrils.

  She shrieked and scrambled to her feet, a gob of Stephen’s sperm falling from her vagina and landing without a sound in the grass. She saw the thing pounding toward them—tongue lolling, eyes the same awful yellow as Stephen’s, and she turned and ran, knowing even as she took the first step that she didn’t stand a chance of escaping.

  “It caught up with…knocked me down…and then it…it…” She couldn’t keep the tears from coming then, and she buried her face in her hands and wept.

  Stephen put an arm around her shoulders, and instead of pulling away, she leaned against him.

  “It had to be both of us,” he said. “It wouldn’t have worked otherwise.”

  She struggled to regain control of herself, tried to wipe away the tears, but all she managed to do was smear the wetness around. “What wouldn’t have worked?”

  Stephen ignored her question. “When you finally made your way home—naked and traumatized almost to the point of catatonia—it was dark. Your grandmother took you inside, bathed you and made the memories go away. Not forever, of course. She knew they would resurface as you became older and stronger, but she could repress them more than long enough for you to function while the child grew inside you.”

  “Child?” She wanted to deny the word, to tell him that she’d never been pregnant, let alone given birth to a baby. But the memories were there now, all of them. No longer hidden, no longer trickling through the barriers in her psyche in the form of nightmares and hallucinations. For the first time since she’d been seventeen, she knew.

  “When the labor pains first started, I didn’t tell Grandma. I was mad at her. I wasn’t sure why—I suppose on some subconscious level I remembered what had been done to me in the woods that day. I snuck off to the forest again, not caring what happened to me, not even caring what happened to the baby. I just wanted to make sure that Grandma didn’t get her hands on my child.”

  “So you had the baby alone.”

  She nodded. “I was so afraid. It hurt for such a long time and when it came, there was so much blood I thought I was going to die. I was…sitting on the grass with my legs up and my panties off. The baby came out onto the ground with a gush. I picked it up right away, out of instinct, I guess, because I didn’t love it yet. I still felt scared and numb. I looked at its little wrinkled face…its blue face, and I knew that my baby...” She paused. “...our baby, its baby, was dead.”

  It had been a boy, a perfectly normal-looking human boy, but it had come into the world without drawing so much as a single breath.

  “What did you do?” Stephen asked.

  Tears were trickling down her cheeks again, but this time she made no move to wipe them away. “I sat there holding him for a while. Eventually the afterbirth came out. I slept some, I don’t know how long. When I woke up, I realized the baby was still attached to the umbilical cord. I laid him down and hunted for something to cut him free. I broke off a dead tree branch and sharpened it on a rock. It wasn’t easy, but I got the job done. I left the afterbirth where it was, along with my panties which had been soaked when my water broke. I had on a dress, and even though I’d done my best to keep it clean, there were bloodstains on it, but I didn’t care. I just wanted to do what I had to do.” She fell silent then as she remembered.

  “You buried the baby, didn’t you?” Stephen prompted.

  She nodded. “I was stil
l determined that Grandma wouldn’t have my little boy, even if he was dead. I was his mother and I would protect him, even if I didn’t know exactly what from. I didn’t have any tools, so I picked a burial spot and dug the grave with my bare hands. It was hard work and I was weak and tired from giving birth, but I did it. I buried my baby.” She let out a long sigh. My poor little boy.

  “And then I went home. Grandma was furious with me. She tried to make me tell her where the baby was, but whatever powers she possesses, reading people’s minds or forcing them to act against their will must not be among them, because I refused. Days went by, and when she finally accepted that I wasn’t going to tell, she performed her bad-memories-go-away trick on me again, and I forgot all about giving birth and burying the baby.” She thought for a moment. “I wonder why Grandma bothered questioning me at all, why she didn’t just send her animal thing to sniff out the grave.”

  “Because when you finished burying the child, you unconsciously cloaked the site in an illusion which even your grandmother and her creations—including the Great Beast—couldn’t penetrate. It’s a simple but powerful illusion: that the gravesite does not exist. It cannot be detected with any senses, human or animal. It’s an illusion which persists to this day.”

  “What does it matter? The poor thing’s probably nothing more than a tiny skeleton. If he’d lived, he’d be eleven now, almost twelve.” She wondered what he’d be like, look like, sound like. Would he take after his mother or favor his father? Which father? she thought, and shivered. Maybe it had been for the best that the baby hadn’t survived.

  “You can’t even visit the gravesite, can you? You can’t see through your own illusion.”

  “That’s not a problem. I remember where I buried him: beneath Hang—” She broke off and turned to glare at Stephen. “You tricked me.”

  “I’m sorry, I really am, but she needed to know.”

  Lauren knocked his hand off her shoulder and stood. “You really are just her puppet, aren’t you?”

  Stephen rose to his feet and faced her. “Despite all the psychic energy you poured into me while we were growing up, once you left, I became your grandmother’s completely.” He started toward her, but she held up her hands and he stayed back. “But now that you’re back, we can be together again—I can be yours again. As soon as she’s finished.”

  “We can never be together, Stephen. You’re not real.” Her voice was tight with barely suppressed rage.

  He looked hurt. “I was real enough for you once. Too bad, but I suppose I’ll just have to adjust and move on. After all, that’s the mature thing to do, right?”

  He smiled and his teeth looked too long, too sharp. And did his eyes suddenly contain a glint of yellow?

  “Besides, your grandmother and I have work to do. Right after I go do a little digging beneath Hangman’s Tree.”

  “No! I won’t let you!” She rushed forward and tried to shove him, but he didn’t budge, not even the merest fraction of an inch. It was like trying to shove a concrete pillar.

  “How are you going to stop me? Slap a mustache on me? Or maybe you’ll give me a beard this time. You’re powerful, but you’re inexperienced. While I am your grandmother’s greatest creation: sometimes two, sometimes one.” His eyes blazed with amber fire now and thick, coarse fur began to sprout from his skin.

  “We are the Great Beast…We are God.”

  He roared then and lifted a hand that became an animal’s paw, sharp talons jutting from stumpy toes.

  Lauren turned to run, but before she could take a step, she felt a blow on the back of her head, and as she fell into darkness, she thought, Please, let my baby rest! and then for a time she thought no more.

  “Wake up, sweetheart.”

  Grandma’s voice.

  Lauren felt wetness, and she realized she was lying on dew-covered grass. She opened her eyes and saw the sky was still black, though the eastern horizon was tinged a light blue. Dawn was coming but it was still a ways off. Literally and figuratively, she thought.

  She expected to find herself bound, but her arms and legs were free. She sat up—too fast—and regretted it as her head throbbed and a wave of dizziness hit her. She sat still and waited for the sensations to pass.

  Grandmother stood before her, still wearing the same dingy housedress she’d had on when Lauren had last seen her. Behind her several steps, on her left, stood Stephen. Behind her several feet farther to her right, hunkered the Great Beast, bellows-lungs breathing softly, the light in those yellow eyes dim, as if their inner fire was banked for the moment. She remembered what Stephen had said. Sometimes two, sometimes one. It seemed that, for the moment, they were two again.

  Now that she got a good look at the Beast, Lauren saw the thing resembled some sort of prehistoric mammal, though she doubted the species had ever existed outside of Madelyn Carter’s fevered imagination. Some of its features resembled a bear, some a lion, some were like those of a woolly rhino or mammoth. The eyes were like those of a big cat—a saber-tooth, perhaps?—but all the bits and pieces blended together in a primeval harmony that could only be called the Great Beast. It was the size of an SUV, maybe larger, and right now it lay on its belly, head resting on front paws, gaze fixed on her as if it were eager for her to make a move—any move at all—so it would have an excuse to attack.

  Is that any way to act toward the mother of your child? she thought, and was surprised to hear the Beast whine, almost as if in response.

  Lauren realized they were within the stone circle that marked the location of the church. If she squinted, she could almost see the sanctuary, the pulpit, the stained-glass windows and the ceiling beams. But the images were faint and ghostly, almost there, but not quite.

  Offertories ringed the outside of the circle, features (if indeed, they had any) hidden within their hoods, and behind them were the good folks of Trinity Falls—all looking human again for the occasion. Everyone was there, including Lauren’s mother and brother. They were looking at her sympathetically, as if to say, “We know this isn’t pleasant for you, but it’ll all be over soon enough.”

  She took no comfort from their concern. How could she when she knew it—and they—weren’t real?

  Well, well, Lauren thought. The gang’s all here. The only one missing is—

  Then she remembered what she and Stephen had been talking about at the “falls” before the Beast had appeared and attacked her.

  The baby.

  She looked right, left, then behind her. There, lying atop the wooden bench that served as the church’s single pew, wrapped in a clean powder-blue receiving blanket, was the tiny corpse of her son. The sight of his body (not his skeleton, not even a shrunken, wrinkled dead thing, but his body—smooth pink skin as if he’d been born only a short time ago and cleaned by the professionally loving hands of a nurse) filled her with a mixture of emotions as intense as it was confusing. Horror, disgust, sadness, anger, but most of all, love.

  She started to rise to her feet, intending to go to her lifeless child (and despite his appearance, he was lifeless, no movement of limbs, no eye flutter, no tiny chest rising and falling) but before she could, Stephen stepped forward and clamped a preternaturally strong hand on her shoulder and forced her back down to a kneeling position.

  She considered trying to fight him, but he was so strong and she was so tired, and her head still throbbed something awful.

  She glared at her grandmother. “Who are you really?” Her throat was dry and it hurt to talk, but she kept going. “You can’t be my grandma—not if my mother and father weren’t real.”

  Lauren’s eyes had adjusted enough to the pre-dawn darkness so she could make out her grandmother’s smile. “If they’re not real, what makes you think you are? Maybe you’re just another walking pile of mud and sticks who just thinks it’s real.”

  The thought had occurred to Lauren. “You’d neve
r had let me move to California if I were only another one of your mud-pie people. I doubt if your illusion of humanity would’ve followed me that far.”

  “How do you know you really moved? Maybe I just made you believe you did.”

  “Enough of this existential bullshit. Cogito ergo sum, and all that. Now who are you and who am I?”

  “I would’ve thought you’d have realized it by now. I’m your mother, Lauren.”

  Lauren should’ve been surprised, but she wasn’t. Not after everything that had happened, all that she’d learned and remembered, since coming home.

  “I was in my late forties when I had you. I considered raising you as my daughter, but I eventually decided it would work out better if you thought of me as your grandma, so I created a family for you. A mother, father and brother.”

  “You mean you created an illusion of a family. Nothing is real here, is it? Not the town, not the people. Not anything.”

  “You’re real. I’m real. As for the rest…” Grandmother (Lauren couldn’t bring herself to think of the old woman as her mother) shrugged. “Well, that all depends on how you define real, doesn’t it? I suppose that’s what we’re here for, you and I—and them—” she nodded to Stephen, then gestured to the Beast, “—to decide what is real. And, perhaps, to change it.”

  Lauren didn’t know what Grandmother—what Madelyn—was talking about, and she didn’t care. “What do you want with my baby?”

  Madelyn came over to stand next to Lauren. “It’s not your baby, Lauren. You gave it up as soon as you had it, buried it so you could forget all about it. No, it’s my baby. After all, that’s why I had you in the first place—so you, in turn, could give birth to him.” She gestured at the still, small form of Lauren’s son.

  As if the gesture were a cue (and perhaps it was) the Offertories began sing-chanting softly, their words a fluid, lyrical mish-mash of languages. The townsfolk—Lauren’s mother and brother included—joined in, humming along with the lilting, near-tuneless tones.