The factor could neither be in my genes nor my
upbringing. My parents were obscenely typical; my father David worked as an
accountant and spent his evenings watching sport. Sometimes he would work on
little wooden sculptures and this itself was considered a radical hobby. So
much so that over the years I noticed he began to only work on his sculptures
when no-one was around and then not at all by the time I was entering
adolescence.
My mother Eve was even more ordinary. She
worked at a call centre, knitted in her spare time, and invited the neighbours
around once a week on a Saturday for drinks and pleasant conversation.
Conversation so pleasant and inoffensive that if you listened for too long,
you'd soon forget there was anything more to life than dog walks and evening television.
I knew the danger of listening too closely and tuned the adults out to the best
of my ability; this was fine since they had no interest in what children
thought anyway, so I was not expected to pay them much mind unless they specifically called on me. Usually, I hid away in my
room, working out ways around the parental blocks on the internet so that I
could access sites I was not meant to see.
Once, when I was eight, it was raining heavily.
The rain developed into a storm, and I lost access to the internet. Boredom can
motivate us to do things we never imagined before, and so I left my room. I
slipped into the lounge without the adults noticing and settled into a dark
corner where they could ignore me.
To my surprise, they were for once discussing
something interesting; The Flower Men.
Henry Weaver was new to town and wanted to go
home. He had a Labrador that he know would be scared by the storm and he didn't
want her to make as mess of his house. But the older residents, including my
parents, warned him. “The Flower Man comes out on nights like these,” mother
said. “You best wait until it lets up. David can even drive you back.”
With a little laugh Henry said, “I saw the
plaque, but come on Eve, Belle is probably in a right panic.” Henry strode
towards his coat.
With an urgency I’d never heard from my mild
mother, she said, “Wait, Henry. If you wait ten minutes, you will see The
Flower Man yourself. Then you’ll know it’s not safe. Surely Belle can last that
long?”
“You’re saying I’ll see him? Your local ghost?”
I was as intrigued as Henry but the adults had still not noticed me and I dared
not ask anything in case they sent me back to my room. I’d heard of The Flower
Man too but I hadn't ever heard him spoken of like this before.
“He's not a ghost and yes. I promise you'll see
him in just ten minutes. Please, Henry.” As is typical for people who are
attracted to little Lekington, Henry was quite happy to suffer the ten minutes
if he could leave in peace later. My father pulled out a seat that faced the
open window and placed him there. I'd heard that lightning can strike a person
through windows and feared for Henry’s safety. No-one raised this concern. He
was far back so I let myself believe he would be fine.
Those ten minutes were long but each one was
filled with anticipation. Even if we saw nothing, I'd have been satisfied that
something interesting almost happened.
By the ninth minute, as Henry protested, “Okay,
well, thank you for having me but I really do need to be checking on Belle,” we
saw it. It was as if it was there the whole time and we only noticed it when it
moved; the light of the streetlamp outside had cast a silhouette of a tall body
against the glass. As I looked upwards, I noticed the head was not human-shaped;
rather it be made of many moving parts. I could see no details, but I knew it
was a bouquet of flowers, which bobbed in the rain and swayed in the wind. I
expected it to vanish now that we saw it. It remained facing us.
Poor Henry. He fell of his chair, screaming,
looking at the stony faces around him. Eventually my mother closed the window
although we could still see the outline of its body out there. Henry had
fainted by this point and so was taken to another room by my father, but this
unfortunately meant he passed by me. For a moment he stared at me, as if unable
to believe I was there. I had the good sense to wipe the smile off my face
before he saw it—who knows what he would have thought if his child was
delighted in something such as The Flower Man? He may have been a sculptor, but
he wasn't that open minded.
“How long have you been here?” he asked.
“Ten minutes,” I said. There was no sense in
lying.
“Well talk later.”
We did talk later, once the rain stopped and
Henry was cleared out. My father and mother sat next to me and told me about
The Flower Man, in particular how to avoid him and what would happen if I
didn't.
“The Flower Man only comes out on summer nights
when the rain is very heavy,” my mother said. “On these nights you must stay
indoors no matter what.” I nodded along and almost asked why but she held up a
hand. How could I be so naive as to think I was being told this to satisfy my
curiosity? I was being told this because if I did not I would accidentally
break one of the rules.
My father told me the second rule. “If ever you
find yourself outside on a rainy night, The Flower Man will find you. You must
open your mouth when he approaches you and stick out your tongue. The Flower
Man will take a seed from the pouch on his hip and press it onto your tongue.”
“If you do not open your mouth, The Flower Man
will rip your lower jaw off,” my father said with indifference.
My mother continued. “You must leave the seed
there until he is out of sight.” My mother brought out a gumdrop and gave it to
me. She told me to keep it on my tongue for as long as I could. “It will be no
easier than this,” she said. “If you swallow it, it will take root inside you
and you will belong to The Flower Man.” I tried my best, but as soon as my
mother began to speak again, my concentration lapsed, and I swallowed the
gumdrop before I even noticed. “Once The Flower Man walks away, you must remove
the seed from your mouth and burn it until it is ash.”
“If you do not,” my father said, “I do not know
what will happen.”
2
My curiosity was insatiable, but it did not
rain again much in the evening that summer. If there was the slightest drizzle,
I would look out my window but I never saw The Flower Man. I instead took to
books; I would go to the school library at every chance I got and seek out
anything remotely relevant. I learnt about cryptids, and ghosts, myths and
local legends but all these things really were just myths to me because I had
not seen them. I was disappointed, to say the least, but I did accumulate
enough trivia to help my class win a general knowledge quiz.
I still take great pride in that
accomplishment.
As summer came to an end I became at first
desperate to learn more and asked my classmates. I was not very well liked even
before this but this consolidated their point of view that I was the weirdest
of the weird kids. To save what little social standing I had left, I dropped
the subject.
I still feel great regret in my weakness of
character.
Autumn came, then winter, and I forgot all
about The Flower Man, even for the next few summers. All avenues of inquiry had
closed for me and I did not have the patience to seek out new ones. I grew
curious about other things, expanded my general knowledge—somehow, I came to
subject of botany but never related it to my experience with The Flower Man
which was rapidly becoming distant. I had started to believe the whole thing
was a dream. This was partly because I could not integrate it with my
understand of my parents and my boring little town.
In those days, I think, I was close to being
assimilated. When asked what I wanted to be when I was older, my answers got
more mundane; they changed from dinosaur to treasure hunter to scientist to
doctor to “I don't know, an accountant maybe.” I think my parents were proud of
me for giving up. My dad took me to his work one day, told me what he did all
day. My mum bought me a calculator for my fifteenth birthday. But it was the
summer after that birthday that saved me.
Jackson Weaver was one of my few friends, also
a weird kid, and he invited me to his place. He happened to be Henry’s son. It
was no special occasion, only school had broken up for summer and he was bored.
Although we lived on opposite sides of the town, it was still only a
twenty-minute walk and I'd been plenty of times. I walked there in the
afternoon was invited to stay the night. I enthusiastically agreed.
On that night, we set up a tent in the garden
where we played camping. We ate oranges and told each other scary stories. I
didn't know many and was ‘uming’ and ‘erring’ as I tried to make something up.
Jackson yawned and suggested we go back inside and play a Power Ranges video
game instead. But I wanted to tell a scary story and my mind landed upon The
Flower Man. The humid night reminded me, subconsciously, of the night I had
seen him the first time. So, I told Jackson the legend, what my parents had
told me. Only I put my own spin on it; I told him that if you didn't burn the
seed, it would grow and grow and grow until it wrapped its thorny tendrils
around everyone you know and love. Then it would squeeze the life out of them
over days, maybe weeks.
Jackson was terrified and ran inside. I think
he didn't want me to see him cry.
I assumed he'd be back so I waited in the
garden feeling both sad that I'd made my only friend cry and also proud that I
could make my only friend cry. I fancied myself an author and got last in a
dream of book deals and interviews, of making people all over the world weep or
smile with my words.
If I hadn't been lost in this fantasy, if Henry
hadn't assumed that I'd gone inside with Jackson, I would not have been caught
in the tent when it started to rain. Henry would have warned me, or I would
have noticed the first drips fall and bolt inside. But I did not notice until
the downpour was so angry that I could hear naught but its pelting on the
tent’s walls.
I would have seen The Flower Man anyway if I
had been inside but I would not have been allowed out. But in the tent, by
myself, no-one could stop me. I saw his silhouette outside of my tent and the
gunpowder of eight-year-old curiosity exploded; without really thinking about
it I stepped outside of the tent.
He was so tall, at least two feet taller than
my father, not counting his petals. Oh, and his petals! I could see them this
time and I was astonished that they were different than in my memory; his head
was composed only of purple five-petal’d flowers with a yellow bud in the
centre. This flower was a Bittersweet, I later learned. My Flower Man's petals were layered on each other like a rose. The discovery was astonishing! The
legend was always Flower Man but I knew then that there were actually many
Flower Men. I felt like Darwin discovering a new species. I was so elated I
almost didn't notice the Bittersweet Man putting his hand toward my jaw. I
remembered the lesson instilled in me years ago and at once opened my mouth and
stuck out my tongue.
The Bittersweet man retracted his left hand and
with his right pulled out a seed from a pouch on his hip. I thought, He is not
really a flower man at all. Indeed, the Bittersweet man had no genitals or
secondary sex characteristics. I supposed few people had been that close to a
Flower Person to learn this fact. I was still contemplating this when I felt
something small and hard being pressed onto my tongue. The Bittersweet Person
held it there for surprisingly long before it was satisfied and left.
I thought of nothing else but not swallowing
the seed until they were gone from my field of view. When they were I spat out
the seed and soon Henry opened the garden door and shouted for me to come
inside. I pocketed the seed and hesitated. I knew what would be asked of me
when I was inside; I would have to relinquish the seed and watch the only link
I had to something more than little Lekington, more than life, burn to a crisp
in front of me.
I couldn't stomach the thought, so I ran back
into the tent. There was yelling. It was angry and scared at once, although I
only acknowledged the anger at the time. I took from the tent an orange seed
and my phone which I had left behind. At this point Henry came out, screaming
at me, and dragged me into the house by my ear.
My ear hurt for a week after in equal parts due
to the volume it was exposed to as well as the physical strain. But my
explanation that I went back for my phone was accepted, and orange seed was
incinerated while my prize was safe in my pocket.
3
This time, my curiosity was unkillable, even if
I had to hide it. But that was relatively easy as Jackson never spoke to me
again, and so I had no friends who could pry into my secret wondering. Bukowski
said something like ‘solitude is the gift’ and I understood immediately what he
meant by that when I read it.
I kept the seed on me at all times. I'd often
spend evenings just staring at it wondering what it would grow into or wake up
in the middle of the night and confirm it was where I left it. Unfortunately, I
had no way to grow it; suppose I planted it in the garden, I could not protect
it. It might sprout, be considered a weed, and discarded. I wondered if I could
obtain some good soil and a plant pot, but Lekington was too suspicious of
anything floral. My parents would dump it in the trash if not burn it.
It was tempting to swallow the seed. Surely
something would happen then? I kept myself from doing this at least, partly
because it might in fact kill me, and then I would never know the truth about
The Flower People. The idea that in two years’ time I could go to uni and there
I could buy a pot and soil and grow the seed without interference was my only
hope.
With that hope in mind, I kept up my reading of
botany but there were only so many things one could discover from a little
seed. It looked to me like it really was a Bittersweet seed but the idea that
it would grow into nothing more than a common plant was too disappointing to
contemplate.
A breakthrough happened when it rained again a
few weeks later. It was late at night but thunder woke me. I knew this rain was
heavy enough and I knew I could not go out to see another Flower Person. My
parents would forbid it with all their power. But still I thought I might see
one from my window. Perhaps I could even sneak out and apply the orange seed
trick again to get another specimen.
I was on the second floor so opened my curtains
and stared scanning for a Flower Person and sure enough I saw one before long.
It patrolled the streets without noticing me until I placed my seed against the
window. At this point it turned its petals towards me—I could tell already this
was neither Flower Person I'd seen before and scaled the side of the house
until it right in front of my window. My heartbeat was racing, I broke out in a
cold sweat. Euphoria flooded my veins but so too did anxiety.
The fear of getting caught was not baseless;
the thing had literally scaled the house after all. If my parents were on that
side of the house, they would have seen it go towards my room. I waited a long
moment staring at The Flower Persons numerous long pointed stems. I dreaded that
it might leave, I could not take my eyes off it. If only my phone were a foot
closer to me so that I could photograph it.
Finally, I decided to open my window. If I
could not go to The Flower Person, it could come to me. As soon as I did this
it extended its left hand as before. I opened my mouth, and we repeated the
ritual, only this time a thistle seed was placed in my mouth. Because of its
hairs this was much easier to avoid swallowing and as instructed. When it was
finally gone, I retreated into my room and spat the seed out onto my open palm.
I could not revel in my victory; my father was
standing at the door, wearing on his face the same disbelief from when I was
eight. He stepped toward me without a word. I knew he had not just seen the
Thistle Person place the seed on my tongue, but also that I willed it. He held
out his hand expecting me to hand over. Alas, I had no orange seed.
“It is not dangerous to keep the seed,” I
tried.
Somehow this confirmed something for him, and
he withdrew his hand. As he stood in my door frame I noticed his laboured
breathing, as if he were holding some beast behind his flesh. I did not wait; I
retreated out window. Slick with rain I could grab nothing and fell
disgracefully to the slopping roof that jutted out of the room below mine, and
then onto a bush. Ignoring my scratches and scrapes, I checked that both seeds
were in my pocket. They were and so I hurried down the street the way the
Thistle Person had left.
Fortunately, they walked slowly and I found
them around the corner. I checked behind me and saw no-one. With the wet of
rain in my eyes and roar of rain in my ear meant I couldn't be sure, but I saw
no angry parent behind me. I didn't know if it was because they feared the
Flower People too much or because they had lost interest in me. It didn't
matter at the time. What mattered was only where the Thistle Person was going.
If the Thistle Person had shown me anything but
indifference I might have retreated. They patrolled the streets as I had seen,
seemingly unaware of my presence. They stopped at windows where people stared
out, although most of these hid as soon as they saw the Thistle person. A few
blocks away, there was another Flower Person they kept their distance from us.
Could they be organised? Enemies? Rivals?
Eventually we reached a hill on the outskirts
of town. The Thistle person climbed to the top of it by digging their long
fingers into the soft earth. Using the holes they had made, I managed to follow
them. Since it was fast, it was out of view before long. When I finally reached
the top, I was in time to see it (and a few others) digging into the ground. It
seemed that many holes were premade. The Flower People settled themselves into
these holes one-by-one, covering all their bodies except their heads. As the
night went on a few more came by and claimed the remaining holes. I was in the
way of one of these and so the Rose Person gently moved me to the side before
lying in their bed.
Drenched in rain and feeling my adrenaline
fade, I could only manage to appreciate this discovery distantly. I had found
their nest. It was remarkable that it was so out in the open. Surely the other
residents would have seen it? In no other town would an allotment overrun with
flowers be strange, but this was Lekington, the town that despised beauty and
especially floral beauty. They must have known.
Nothing more would happen that night and I
needed shelter. I could have gone back to town, but I was covered in mud and
holding two seeds on a Flower Person night. It seemed risky. Luckily, there was
a shed nearby. It was damp and nearly rotting but I was thankful for it. I lay
down away from the sharp gardening tools.
My sleep was broken and not the least bit
restorative, but my enthusiasm for my discover was more than enough motivation
when the some came out. I laid my wet on wooden poles scattered around the top
of the hill which I then realised was an abandoned allotment and strode naked.
While the equipment was rusted, rotted, and withered, the gardens themselves
were lush with flowers; of all varieties, growing next to and into each other. The
people of this town knew this place and I also understood why they did nothing
about it. The same reason they did nothing about the Flower People. They feared
what would happen.
I was safe. My parents would not get me, the
residents neither. No-one would dare disturb an unknown thing like myself. I
was free to admire the beauty as I saw fit. I spent the first part of that day
simply patrolling the gardens, working up the nerve to caress the petals. Some
had fallen off during the night, and I collected these, to go with the seeds.
As I was doing this, a hand rested itself on my shoulder. I thought at first it
was a Flower Person but then she spoke:
“Are you okay?”
The person behind me seemed much older at the
time, an adult.
“I’m okay,” I said, standing up. It was more or
less true my muscles were stiff and my thoughts were cloudy and if I were to
live like this for longer I knew my health would suffer more permanently. But
at that moment, I was fine.
Do you know where you are? Not many people come
out here.
“I’m outside of Lekington,” I said. “I live
there.” I tried to point in the direction of my house. Only, there was no house
in that direction, no anything. The hill slopped down into a dense forest where
the town had been. This sight bewildered me so much that I forget all about the
person near me until she spoke again.
“It’s okay, I’ll get you some water and you can
have a bath at my place. I’m Natalie, by the way.”
4
Natalie lived in a cottage in a clearing down
the other side of the hill. There was no electricity to her cottage although
there were plug sockets. She ran me a bath, which was heated by fire, and left
me to clean myself. She provided some of her pyjamas to change into, which were
far too large for me. After I was cleaned, I came into the lounge and sat on an
upholstered single seater opposite her. She gave me a cup of tea which I sipped
out of politeness.
“If you don't like it, it’s okay,” she said
when she noticed my distaste. I admitted I didn’t, and she put it to the side.
“I'm sure you have a few questions. I’ll just tell you about this place first,
if you don't mind.” I assented and she began. “You were right when you said
this place is outside of Lekington, but not in the way you meant. It really is
outside of it in all ways. Not many people come here because you can only pass
between this place and your world when it rains.” She sipped on her own tea.
She was smiling. I thought of my parents whose faces were blank and uncaring
when they told me about The Flower People. “If you want to go back, you'll have
to wait I'm afraid but you'll be alright here.”
If you want to go back. “What if I don't want to go back?” I
asked Natalie.
“Then you can stay as long as you want.” She
said this quickly and with unbridled enthusiasm. As if to balance it, she added
in a nonchalant voice, “The Flowers make good company but they're terrible at
conversation.”
“Do the Flowers come from here?”
“They do. Well, to be more accurate, they come
from me. I was the one who grew them.”
“So, you know about them? You know why they put
seeds on people’s tongues? Why they leave?” If Natalie had made them, then she
could answer the questions that had been plaguing me since I was much younger.
I had stood from my seat without meaning to by this point. Natalie was laughing
and motioned for me to sit back down. I did so.
“It’s not that I made them. I just found the
seeds and grew them. I don't know a lot about them. Is that why you came here?
To find out more about them?”
I nodded. Being brought so close to an answer
than yanked back was disorienting and relieving. If Natalie had told me all I
wanted to know there and then it would devalue the answers. I wanted to know
about The Flower People by myself. More or less. I just find them interesting.
“Not many people do, but I agree with you.”
Natalie looked out at a shelf lined little wooden sculptures of flowers on the
wall. I hadn't noticed them before and went up to look at them. It was not the
same as my father’s not exactly but there were similarities.
“Did you make these?”
“Yes,” she said. “Do you like them?”
I nodded. There were so many, each carved
beautifully my dads were much rougher, even if I did find the impressive once.
“I can teach you if you like. It may be a while
before the next rain.”
That evening in the middle of our lesson, there
was a knock at the door. We both went to answer it, and the Lavender Person on
the other side placed a seed on each of our tongues.
