The Garden of Darkness

“I’m sort of old to be sharing a room,” said Clare. She was thinking of Jem. He wasn’t that much younger than she was. He wasn’t really a little boy.

“It’s like a forever sleepover,” said Sarai.

“Won’t Jem mind?”

“He understands about the dark. About being scared.”

So Clare moved her things into the bedroom, which was a cheerful mess of blankets and pillows. Jem’s things tended to be royal blue; Sarai had found over a dozen bright hand-made quilts; Mirri had accumulated an impressive amount of bedclothes decorated with unicorns and horses. Clare put down a heaped up blanket for Bear at the foot of her bed. Jem looked away as she got under the covers and arranged the bedclothes they had given her – a pink cotton sheet, a lavender blanket. A deep blue quilt that smelled like the outdoors and damp grass. From the color, that would have been Jem’s.

When they were finally in bed, they all said goodnight to each other.

“It’s like The Waltons,” said Clare sleepily.

“The who?” asked Mirri.

“Never mind,” said Clare. “Part of the old world.”





FIRST SHE HAD the old dream, the one that had kept coming back to her for years, in which someone she knew walked towards her in a garden. But this time the dream changed, and she was looking at three white vultures perched on the bedstead. Their wings were open as if they were drying them in the sun; except for their red wattled heads, the birds looked like white angels. The dream began to slip away, but not before one of the vultures tucked up its wings and lurched onto her chest.

“Sylver,” said the vulture. “That’s the true name.”

The vulture moved closer to Clare’s head and cocked its head to one side. Clare could see the word burning in front of her: SYLVER.

“Sylver,” the white vulture said again, and then it leaned forward and plucked out her eye.

Clare awoke and, for a moment, didn’t know where she was. Then she heard thunder and the sound of rain pelting against the window. She was in the farmhouse, and the room was a storm of blankets and comforters. Mirri and Sarai and Jem were deeply asleep and their measured breathing was in stark contrast to the cacophonous sounds of thunder and rain and the creaking house.

A flash of lightning lit up the room.

Clare got out of bed and made her way to the window. Below, the mounded rows in the vegetable garden looked like graves. The red and yellow tomatoes, large green zucchini, yellow squash and wrinkled red peppers had been swallowed by darkness. Lightning burst over the house, and she saw the figure of a woman in the center of the lawn. Clare waited for another flash, and, when it finally came, she half expected the garden to be empty; instead she saw the woman’s pale, rain streaked face staring up at her.

Clare felt a hand on her arm. She almost screamed, and then she saw it was Mirri, her eyes blurry and vague with sleep.

“She’s always there,” murmured Mirri. “It’s just the same.”

“Let’s get you to bed,” said Clare.

Mirri went with her; once she was tucked in, Clare went back to her own bed, but not before checking that the door was bolted. For a long time, she lay awake.

In the morning, Mirri said nothing about the incident, and Clare was sure she had been sleepwalking.

“It looks like it rained in the night,” said Jem when he woke up.

“Yes,” said Clare. She thought of the vultures in her dream; she thought of the woman’s face in the rain.

The real storm would come.





CHAPTER TEN





BIKES





SARAI HEALED QUICKLY and on one sunny day, while Bear slept in the sun, and Mirri drew unicorns in the dirt, Jem took out Sarai’s stitches. Clare watched as he pulled gently and the stitches came undone like a zipper.

“Wow,” said Clare.

“My mother the doctor.”

“Still wow.”

“She could put them in and take them out with one hand.”

Now Sarai only needed a little Tylenol to help her sleep, which Clare gave her from her own supply.

“For headaches?” Jem asked her.

“Cramps.”

Jem blushed.

Clare looked past Sarai and saw that the Cured-in-a-blue-dress was huddled next to the barn, gazing into the distance. From time to time Mirri, who was now drawing sad unicorns with sagging pockmarked faces, would turn and glance at her.

The birds were calling to each other. Pest had come, but nature went on. Fallon and the other towns and cities would slowly fail; rain and rot would bring down the buildings; creepers would cover the ruins. Nature would reassert itself until even the great highways were no more than paths through the wild. The era of the human race was over.

The Cured-in-a-blue-dress stood. Sarai and Mirri stopped playing and watched as she lurched around the side of the barn.

“What does she eat?” Sarai asked. “She comes and goes, but I never see her eat.”

“I don’t know,” said Jem. “And I’m not sure I want to.”