A Strange and Savage Garden Read online

  Lauren looked the Beast directly in its eye and pictured it tearing into the approaching townsfolk, tossing them about like so many rag dolls.

  The Beast stopped and shook its shaggy head, grunting in confusion. It then looked at Lauren for a moment before releasing an ear-splitting roar. Then the creature whirled about and bounded for the nearest of Madelyn’s constructs, an Offertory.

  The Beast lowered its head and slammed into the black-robed figure. The Offertory made an inhuman screech as it was flung backward and struck several townsfolk—Mrs. Kauffman, Mrs. Haney and Pastor Albaugh—all of them collapsing in a heap.

  The Offertory’s hood fell back when it landed, and Lauren could see now why they sung so beautifully: its features were those of a bird—glossy black feathers, sharp beak, beady unseeing eyes…

  Now she did feel a certain satisfaction. “Didn’t think I’d be able to grab the Beast’s leash, did you?”

  Madelyn watched as the Beast clamped its teeth on the arm of Mr. Kendricks, the druggist, and yanked it from the socket. Mr. Kendricks shrieked as bright blood sprayed the dawn air.

  But there really isn’t any blood, is there? Lauren thought. That’s just another part of Madelyn’s illusion.

  She willed herself to see through Madelyn’s lies, and suddenly there were no more robed Offertories, no more men and women surrounding them, but rather crude human-shaped lumps of mud and wood. The Beast swatted the earthen thing that had been Mr. Kendricks with one of its huge paws, and the golem burst apart in a shower of crumbled dirt and splintered wood.

  And the Beast really isn’t an animal, is it?

  Lauren concentrated again, and the huge, furred monstrosity that had been Madelyn Carter’s first failed attempt at creating God became a moving mound of paper and ink, a living unfinished animal-shaped piñata made of papier mache.

  The paper construct continued to hammer away at the mud creatures, many of which now hung back as if confused or afraid. Or perhaps Lauren was interfering with Madelyn’s commands to them, scrambling her telepathic signal.

  “You told me that the Beast was the result of all the reading that you did, but I didn’t think you meant it literally. You made it out of those books, didn’t you? Tore out the pages and pasted them together like some sort of insane arts and crafts project.”

  Madelyn grinned, though she looked shaken. “It helps if I have something to base my illusions on, if they’re grounded in some sort of reality—especially if I want those illusions to retain any permanence.”

  The Beast continued tearing a swath through the earth and wood beings. Lauren couldn’t tell which ones were Mark and her mother. Maybe the Beast had already destroyed them—as if it mattered, since they’d never been real in the first place.

  The Beast’s exertions were taking a toll on its paper form. Its covering was ripped in several places, and one of its rear legs looked as if it might tear off any moment. Without Madelyn’s power to keep it strong, it really wasn’t anything more than paper and glue.

  Lauren couldn’t believe she’d ever been afraid of such a foolish, insubstantial thing. “How could something like that get me pregnant?” she wondered aloud.

  “Simple. When it attacked you, you believed in it. You made it real, Lauren, at least for a time. In a sense, you raped yourself. Ironic, eh?”

  Anger welled up inside Lauren. This woman had given birth to her solely to create a tool to help her achieve her mad dream. She’d never really loved Lauren, she’d only manipulated her, used her in the most profound and awful sense of the word.

  “You said your father was afraid you were a witch, Madelyn. Remember what they used to do to witches?”

  Lauren thought, and Madelyn was suddenly wreathed in flame.

  She shrieked, fell to the ground and rolled back and forth wildly in a desperate attempt to snuff out the fire that threatened to consume her.

  As Lauren watched, she felt no guilt, only regret that she didn’t have the imagination to conjure up an even worse punishment. Burning to death was too good for Madelyn Carter, but she supposed it would have to do.

  The ground beneath her feet felt suddenly soft and moisture began to trickle into her shoes. She looked down and saw that the grass was wavering, rippling, almost as if it were becoming—

  The ground gave way beneath her and she found herself plunged into ice-cold water, coughing and struggling to keep afloat. She looked around. The mud-things and the Beast were gone, as were the dirt paths, the rock markers and the hand-painted signs that made up the true reality of Trinity Falls. All that Lauren could see in any direction was surging, turbulent water. A new sea had been born.

  Her first thought wasn’t to wonder how such a thing could happen. Rather, she thought of her child. The bench the baby was lying on was gone, washed away by the waves. What had happened—

  Stephen broke the surface less than a dozen yards away from her, still looking very much human, though his face was scraped and bruised from the fall he had taken when Lauren had used her powers to throw him off her. He stayed afloat by paddling with one hand, while in his other arm, he cradled the still form of her child. Their child.

  Lauren heard a gasp from behind her, and she turned to see Madelyn had also risen to the surface. The water had extinguished the flames, but they had taken their toll. Her hair was gone, her bare scalp a red, blistered ruin through which patches of blackened bone were visible. Her nose was nothing but a melted nub, and her ears were gone entirely. But her eyes appeared undamaged, and they shone with equal parts triumph and insanity.

  “I guess your old mother was wrong about herself, Lauren. She can create reality!” She scooped handfuls of water into the air and giggled like a child. “I just needed the proper motivation—like burning to death!”

  Madelyn giggled again, raised her right hand into the air, and Lauren hit wet grass. The sea was gone, presumably because Madelyn had wanted it that way.

  Lauren lay on her side. All around were piles of wet mud and scattered sheaves of paper—all that remained of the town’s citizens and Madelyn’s Great Beast. Standing a few yards off, clothes dripping wet and still holding the baby to his chest, was Stephen. Did he really have a look of sadness in his eyes, or did she just imagine it? At this point, was there even a difference?

  Madelyn was no longer burnt and blistered. In fact, she was no longer a woman in her seventies. She was a blonde girl of seventeen, wearing a white dress with a lace collar and shiny black shoes. Lauren guessed this was how she had looked the first night she had gone to see Thomas Carter preach.

  “It looks like I no longer need you, Lauren.” Her voice was young and strong. “I’ll be able to resurrect the child myself now. Oh, the things I’ll teach him, the things we’ll do together!” She sighed. “It’s a shame you won’t be here to see, honey, but there can only be one mother of God.”

  Madelyn came toward her across the wet grass, her shiny black shoes making soft moist sounds as she walked. Lauren rose to her feet as the woman who had given her life and not much else approached. She tried to imagine Madelyn’s bones disintegrating, leaving her a floppy mass of skin and organs puddled on the ground, tried to imagine her skin splitting open as she turned inside out, screaming all the while. But nothing happened.

  “You can’t defeat me that way, not now. We’re too evenly matched in power, and like I said before, I have a lifetime of experience using my abilities. The only question left now is how to get rid of you.” She stopped just in front of Lauren and considered.

  Lauren slipped her hand inside the pocket of her dress and left it there.

  “Fire, I think. Not very original, I’ll admit, but it’s only fair that you experience the same agony I did. The difference for you is that I’ll make sure you keep burning until the job is done. Goodbye, sweetie. If it’s any comfort, I’ll take care of your son. Good care.”

  Madelyn s
miled and sweat erupted on Lauren’s face as a wave of heat moved across her like the wind from an open blast furnace. She knew she had only seconds left.

  Lauren pulled the rock out of her pocket and swung it as hard as she could at Madelyn’s temple. Stone struck flesh and bone with an extremely satisfying crack! Madelyn’s eyes flew wide and her mouth dropped open. She looked at Lauren and struggled to speak, but then her eyes rolled back in her head and she fell to the ground.

  The sensation of heat vanished, and aside from a slight tingling on her skin, Lauren felt fine.

  “Thank you, Johnny.” Then, just to be sure, she knelt down and hit Madelyn a few more times. When Lauren was finished, the side of her mother’s head was caved in, and the rock was covered with blood and bits of gray pulp. Lauren dropped the rock in the grass and wiped her hands on the hem of Madelyn’s dingy housedress before turning to see if Stephen was still there.

  He was.

  She walked over to him, and he smiled.

  “You thought I’d go poof the instant she was dead, didn’t you? I told you I was as much your creation as hers. I’ll exist as long as you want me to.” He held out the baby to her.

  She hesitated only a second before taking the blanket-wrapped infant from him. Both baby and blanket were soaked, but a thought was all it took for them to become dry. The baby didn’t move, didn’t breathe. It was still dead. Or perhaps more precisely, not yet quite alive.

  She looked at Stephen and gave him a sad smile. “I wish…”

  “Yeah, Lori. Me too.” And then, as if he were nothing more than an old photograph aging at an accelerated pace, he faded and was gone.

  Maybe she should’ve kept him alive; she was certain she could’ve done so. But she knew that even if she had, she’d always know that he wasn’t truly real, not completely. She’d never be able to believe in him the way he would’ve wanted.

  Saddened, she looked down at the baby she held in her arms for the first time since she had given birth to him eleven years ago.

  “Live,” she whispered.

  Her son opened his eyes and looked up at her. At first, they appeared feral yellow, like the Great Beast’s, and then they were a shiny, pupil-less silver, like Johnny Divine’s. But then the little one blinked and his eyes were a normal, bright, beautiful blue.

  She smiled. “What do you think of the name ‘Stephen’?”

  She found her Escort right where she’d left it, parked next to Madelyn’s trailer (although it had appeared to be a house then). It seemed like a lifetime had passed since she’d returned home, but in truth it had been less than a day.

  “Well, kiddo,” she said to her baby, “my home may never have existed, but at least I still have my memories of it.” In the end, she thought, did anyone ever really have more?

  She opened the passenger side door, and pushed the seat forward. There was now an infant car seat in the back, along with a fully stocked diaper bag, just as she’d imagined them. She’d never strapped an infant into a car seat before, so she went slowly and carefully, but it wasn’t as hard as she feared, and soon little Stephen was buckled in and ready to go. Go where, she wasn’t sure. Maybe back to California, maybe somewhere else. Any place that wasn’t here would do. Someplace where she and her son could live in peace, and Lauren could raise him to become whatever it was he ultimately chose to be. But whatever that was, Lauren intended to do her best to make sure it wouldn’t be another version of Madelyn Carter.

  She got into the driver’s seat, closed the car door, buckled her seat belt and started the engine. She turned around to look at Stephen and smiled. “Ready to go, kiddo?”

  The baby’s mouth contracted into an unhappy pucker and he began to cry.

  “You’re probably hungry, huh? Eleven years is a long time to go without a meal.” Lauren knew she could feed him—all she had to do was imagine her breasts were full of milk and they would be, but she was eager to put Trinity Falls behind them. Could she…?

  Stephen quieted down.

  She grinned. She’d imagined he had a full belly, and now he did.

  With my powers, I’ll be the envy of new mothers the world over.

  She turned around and shifted the car into drive, but before she could press the gas pedal, Stephen started fussing again. She put the car in park and turned around once more.

  “What now? I know you’re not hungry. Maybe you just want something to keep you busy, huh? I’m sure there’s something in the diaper bag that’ll—” She started to reach for it, but then she thought of something and stopped.

  She turned around, opened the glove compartment and removed the black lacquered box with the pictures of cranes and bamboo on it that Johnny Divine had given her. She hadn’t been able to open it before, but she wondered…

  The box opened easily and inside, lying on a bed of black velvet, was a pacifier.

  Lauren laughed. “You’ve got to be kidding!”

  She lifted it out of the box and looked at it more closely. Within the clear rubber of the nipple, she saw a tiny swirling field of stars.

  She put the empty box down on the passenger seat, then leaned back and gently inserted the pacifier into Stephen’s mouth. As her son sucked happily—and noisily—on his new binky, Lauren put the car in drive and pressed down on the gas pedal. The car moved forward and she and her baby began their journey toward tomorrow.

  About the Author

  Shirley Jackson Award finalist Tim Waggoner has published over thirty novels and three short story collections of dark fiction. His most recent novel for Samhain was The Way of All Flesh. He teaches creative writing at Sinclair Community College and in Seton Hill University’s MFA in Writing Popular Fiction program. You can find him on the web at ww.timwaggoner.com.

  Look for these titles by Tim Waggoner

  Now Available:

  The Way of All Flesh

  In a world where zombies battle the living, which is more terrifying?

  The Way of All Flesh

  © 2014 Tim Waggoner

  David is trapped in a nightmarish version of his hometown, pursued by crimson-eyed demons and insane cannibals, with no idea how he got there. At every turn he’s taunted by a mysterious youth named Simon who knows far more than he lets on.

  David’s sister, Kate, fights for survival in a word decimated by flesh-eating zombies—and her brother’s one of them. She’s determined to put a bullet in David’s brain to set him free.

  Nicholas Kemp is a human monster, a born killer. But in a world ruled by the living dead, he’s no longer the most feared predator, and he’ll do whatever it takes to become that again. He plans to start by killing Kate.

  Enjoy the following excerpt for The Way of All Flesh:

  Kate watched as the round from her deer rifle—a Browning BAR Mark II Lightweight Stalker—found its target. The zombie jerked as she lost the top half of her head, then she fell limply to the ground, like a life-sized mechanical doll whose switch had just been flipped off.

  “Nice,” Nicholas said. “Best shot you’ve made all week.”

  She didn’t respond, nor did she turn around to look at him. She kept her rifle up and sighted on the second zombie’s head.

  “One chore says you can’t make it two for two.”

  Nicholas enjoyed his little games, thought they made the day go faster. Kate didn’t care one way or the other, but she usually indulged him. After all, it wasn’t as if they had anything better to do. On any other day, she would’ve taken him up on the bet. But not today…not when the zombie she had her gun trained on was her brother. Or rather, what was left of him.

  The two of them stood a hundred yards from the playset, next to a large oak tree on the southern edge of the park. It was early November, and most of the leaves had changed color and fallen from the trees. They’d had to be careful to avoid crunching any of the leaves while walking throu
gh the thigh-high grass. Most of the time zombies seemed unaware of their surroundings, and they usually moved slower than a glacier made of molasses. But when meat was nearby, their systems revved into high gear. Their senses became sharper, and their reflexes became quicker—almost as quick as a human’s. Even the smallest noise could catch their attention. And while Kate was by this point a practiced hunter and could pick off a charging zombie with relative ease, she preferred to kill them from a distance. When zombies got a whiff of meat, especially when it was still alive, they moaned, yowled and hissed in a way that reminded Kate of a pissed-off cat. Not only was it creepy as hell, the sound drew other zombies like sharks to blood in the water.

  “Something wrong?” Nicholas asked.

  Kate didn’t answer. She knew the question he was really asking: Why hadn’t she shot yet?

  Eight months ago the plague had hit. She didn’t know the scientific name for it, but the media had called it Blacktide because of how unbelievably fast it had spread. In less than a month, two-thirds of the human race was dead. Of the surviving third, three-quarters became zombies. The rest—whether through some kind of immunity or sheer dumb luck—survived and remained human. Kate had been one of the fortunate, although there were days when she didn’t count herself as such. She knew David and his family hadn’t shared her immunity. One day, before everything had really turned bad, she had gone over to their house to check on them. David, Sarah and the kids were gone, their front door left wide open, but their golden retriever Sasha—or at least her savaged, half-eaten corpse—had been left behind, along with a dozen or more bloody handprints on walls and doors. Some made by children, most by adults.

  That was the day Kate had become a Ranger.

  For the last six months—in addition to making supply runs—she had helped patrol Lockwood, killing zombies and disposing of their bodies in the fire pits outside town. And all that time, she had kept an eye out for her brother and his family, but she had never once caught sight of any of them. Until now.