Scream
They knew little Caleb was dying.
That fact was plain. He lay in the middle of a giant hospital bed, his tiny frame swallowed by the thick blankets and pillows, cables and tubing criss-crossing the surface, dwarfed by a menagerie of machines keeping him alive. The room was cold and dark. Still. Silent, with only the steady hum of IV pumps and beeping of the monitors constantly checking his failing vital signs. His pulse was slow, desperate, and each uneven beep was torture--almost as torturous as the horrifying pause between, because each time, they knew, could be his last. Each breath was a struggle, a painful susurrus, a terrifyingly ragged sound. Each breath an act of sheer defiance.
But the little boy’s strength was fading.
Jacob and Amelia Stone took turns staying with him, clutching his tiny, cool hand, hoping beyond hope he might awaken. It’d been several hours now, since they’d last seen his unfocused, agonized eyes, and part of them knew they’d never see them again. Amelia was out of tears, her voice hoarse and rough, her normally pretty, slim face haggard. Pinched with dread.
Jacob was stoic. His deep-set eyes grim, square jaw clenched. He needed to be strong...strong for Caleb, strong for Amelia, but he wanted to crawl into bed next to his boy, his son, and hold him close. He wanted to give the little boy all his strength. He could take it, he could take this pain for Caleb. God, why couldn’t he take on this pain for his family?
And the truly disturbing part was: they didn’t know what was wrong.
Three days ago, Caleb was a healthy nine year old kid, brimming with energy, excited for the world, happy to just be alive. He never walked anywhere he could run, never put on shoes unless he had to go to school or church. He loved God, loved his parents, loved the Ninja Turtles. He had a Batman poster on his wall. Not even a couple of strange disappearances in town could dampen his spirit.
He’d been playing outside that afternoon, in the backyard bordering the corn field, while Amelia worked on her romance novel on a laptop and Jacob tinkered with the hot rod in his shop. Lucky was a Border Collie mix, and even though you should never name a dog ‘Lucky’ (he was a rescue, they didn’t pick his name), he ended up being very lucky for them.
Whatever happened, Jacob was convinced Lucky shielded Caleb, because when he heard the sound--a gawdawful, high pitched noise somewhere between an air raid siren and a T-Rex roar from Jurassic Park--a sound that turned his blood to ice water, made his heart freeze up, made him want to vomit from terror, he came running and found Caleb face down in the grass, limp and unconscious, and Lucky dead, lying over Caleb’s body, the dog’s face fixed in a rictus snarl--a last act of defiance.
They’d piled in Jacob’s Chevy, driven the hour and a half to Indianapolis, to Riley Children’s Hospital, Jacob taking curves at a hundred miles per hour, his heart hammering in his chest, Amelia cradling the broken body of their son to her chest, holding him, sobbing uncontrollably the entire trip.
The doctors crowded him. Worked over him. Test after test came back negative. Something had nearly killed Caleb, and no one knew what it was. The nurses had sad, tired eyes. The techs stayed busy, gazes focused on their little screens and clipboards.
Jacob knew. Caleb Stone was going to die.
“Mr. and Mrs. Stone?” I asked, my voice as clipped and professional as I could make it.
They looked at me. Defeat was on their faces. They’d lost hope.
I smiled warmly, and I saw it flicker in their eyes. Uncertainty. Wariness. But, at the sound of my voice, something they could see in my face fanned a little spark of hope--maybe they hadn’t actually lost it all. They were good people. Farmers. They worked the land. They worshiped the Green in their own way, the way mankind had for twelve thousand years.
“Yes?” Jacob’s voice was scratchy from disuse. He’d spoken little since their arrival. Husky from emotion.
“I’m Dr. Isley. I’m here to help.”
***
They filled in the blanks for me. The Stones were from a little town called Sanctuary in Indiana, in the very heart of corn country. Jacob’s great grandfather had purchased the land. Their family had worked it for decades.
It was a small town, isolated, my first tip off. The Thing liked to strike at communities where help was far away, once easy to do in the old days--and this Thing was Old with a capital O--but increasingly harder in today’s connected society. Over the last few weeks, two other children had gone missing--vanished without a trace, seemingly--and so the Stones were already on alert, and their quick thinking, combined with the fact that they had put distance between Caleb and the Thing, was responsible for Caleb hanging on as long as he had.
The psychic connection it created with its victims wasn’t so easily defeated, but it definitely weakened with time and space, and it was far enough away I could actually help. I could take action, and I knew what to do.
The hospital is quiet and even a little unsettling at night, in many ways, as are many places that are busy with human activity during the daylight hours. Other than cleaning staff methodically going about their duties and a few night nurses, sleepy and distracted, I was alone as I picked my way through the quiet halls, hearing the sharp clicks of my heels echoing back to me. I was wearing a purloined lab coat and carrying a clipboard and several manila folders--all props for my disguise and nothing more. I had a cloth satchel slung over my shoulder with my real tools, but that had to wait until I was in Caleb’s room.
With a doctor’s authority, very few people in a hospital will challenge you. Dr. Young, the resident I’d borrowed my accoutrements from, was in the on call room, sleeping off the sedative laden kiss I’d given him. He was cute, I had to say, though a bit cocky for my taste. Still, I wasn’t here to date him. I was here to save lives.
There was a single night nurse at the station, and she looked up with weary eyes as I walked into the ICU. Multiple monitors overhead had vitals displayed, a dozen steady feeds supplying beeps, and even as I walked past, at least one soft alarm.
It wasn’t difficult to retrace my steps to Caleb’s room. The doors were sliding glass, meant to open wide and allow ingress and egress for large medical equipment, such as the truly massive intensive care bed he was currently nested in. I knew the Stones were out in the ICU waiting room, not allowed to stay overnight, consigned to catch small cat naps and languish on the cusp of exhausted worry.
At any rate, the room’s curtains were pulled, and I slipped inside, brushing through them. The room was dark, lit only by the LCD screens of various medical machines, the trappings of man’s modern medicine. They didn’t know what was doing this to the boy, so they tried to cover everything--so much sound and fury with so little to show.
I sighed, pulling the nearest rolling desk near the bed, and lowered the side rails. The boy was cocooned in blankets in a desperate attempt to keep him warm. It was chilly in here, typical of a hospital and its ongoing struggles to combat infection, and even I found it on the uncomfortable side.
Gently, I extracted him from the covers. His body was thin and frail, arms bony, ribs showing. His breathing immediately became more tortuous and he began to involuntarily shiver. I sighed, disappointed I guess, still hopeful it wasn’t the Thing after all, but the gentle bruising under his paper-thin, ghastly pale skin, the black veins spider-webbing from his ears, his sunken eyes and hollow cheeks told me otherwise. He already looked like he was slipping away, which he was.
“Oh, Caleb, you are a very sick little boy,” I murmured out loud, running a critical eye over his vitals. I placed a hand on his thin chest, feeling his little heartbeat, his burning skin. It was like a bird’s--rapid and light--racing as his body desperately tried to react to an infection that existed in the spiritual, rather than physical, plane.
I was a scientist, originally, and before my transformation...before being chosen by the Green...I would have been as clueless as these doctors, but becoming one with every green, growing thing on Earth changed me, changed my perception, and changed my beliefs. Magic was real. Magic was a quantifiable force. Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. Still, the talents, the skills, and the habits that made me the finest research botanist on Earth made me uniquely suited to fighting back against this Thing, and I quickly opened up the satchel and produced my mortar and pestle--sanctified and purified to the Green but also sanitized as part of my lab gear--and several bags and bottles of the herbs I’d need.
I added precise amounts of cuttings and powder. Agrimony and Birch Bark for protection and healing, defense against psychic intrusions. Burdock root for warding. Vervain to rebuild Caleb’s strength, to heal him. I ground it together, quietly chanting, trying not to think about my science instructors staring in disbelief at this mysticism, but as I chanted, I also opened myself to the Green, feeling that energy around me, comforting and warm, the energy of life itself, and I channeled it into my little powder and then, as I added a squirt of distilled water, paste.
Some of it I added to his drip, the rest I massaged into his skin, feeling the fever break as I did, as the power of the Green enfolded him, protected him. It was an almost instantaneous reaction, his breathing settling down, his pulse growing strong. I smiled.
“You’re going to be just fine, Caleb. You’re a fighter.” I kissed his forehead and gathered my things.
Caleb would be waking up soon, and I needed to be gone before he did. I didn’t need questions. He was safe, for now, but I had work to do. Or rather, Dr. Isley’s part was through.
Now it was Poison Ivy’s turn.
I brooded as I left the hospital, lost in dark thoughts. I’m not used to feeling any anxiety or fear, but there was...disquiet...affecting me. What I faced, if my suspicions were correct, was terrifying.
I wasn’t necessarily surprised when I found him waiting for me at my dusty little car. John Constantine. Rumpled trench coat, unwashed hair, a couple days’ growth of beard on his face--just enough to make him look unkempt, disheveled, and dirty. I knew I was scowling when I stopped short. He was smoking--he was always smoking--and from the number of butts stubbed out on the ground, he’d been there for some time.
“What do you want?” I snapped, in no mood for his bullshit.
“Ivy, luv!” He put false friendliness in his tone, and I fixed him with a glare in return. He and I were not friends, or mates, and I didn’t consider myself his ‘luv.’ He was romantically linked to Zatanna, a woman who loathed me and whom I didn’t care much for either. We had a history.
“What do you want, Constantine?” I asked, feeling more general irritation than rage. He wasn’t a bad man, he meant well, he was just plagued by a laundry list of character defects and the personal demons of his past. His appearance here wasn’t particularly surprising, and I could see something I didn’t like in his eyes, in the cast of his features.
He was haunted. He was afraid. That sense of disquiet grew stronger. If he was here, I might very well be right.
I suppose he might’ve been handsome, and I could see what someone like Zatanna might see in him. The darkness under his eyes and sunken, sallow cheeks told a story, and in his case, it was a tragedy. A horror story. I unlocked my car, and against my better judgement, waited for him to open the passenger door as I cleared maps and books off the seat. He sat with a practiced flourish of his long coat, and he grinned wryly at me as I snapped “seat belt,” and pulled out. I turned for the parking garage exit, and he was uncharacteristically quiet as I flashed my stolen ID badge and pulled into traffic, heading west, heading for the little town.
I didn’t speak, and so, after a moment, he broke the tension.
“I ‘spose you know what yer up against?” He was fidgeting, the nervous habit of a smoker who can’t do something with his hands when he was nervous and couldn’t light, hold, gesture with, drag on, or put out a cigarette. Still, he was bright enough to know I wouldn’t tolerate it in my car.
“I have my suspicions.” I was quiet, brooding myself. It was hard to deny now, that this Thing was what I thought it was.
“The wee lad?” Sometimes I thought Constantine emphasized his sheer British-ness on purpose, and I could understand that. I didn’t judge him for it, it was an identity to cling to, and identity was so important to people.
“He’s recovering. The Green is healing and protecting him now. Assuming I can put this Thing down, he’ll grow up loving nature and with no memory of his brush with a fate worse than death.” John snorted.
“Ye did a good thing, then, Ivy.” I could tell he was trying to work out how to say something.
“John, just spit it out. Say what you came to say.”
He heaved a heavy sigh. “Ivy. You know what this Thing is.”
I nodded. Then I named it, for him, for myself, to make sure there was no doubt, no ambiguity.
“It’s a Banshee. A blight screamer. A wailing spirit.”
Constantline rubbed the bridge of his nose. The dark circles under his eyes looked like deepest pits, and from the corner of my eye, he looked like a very old, very tired man. His voice cracked when he replied. “And ye know what that means?”
“This Thing...it’s from…” I sighed, searching for words. “Another time. It’s primeval. It’s powerful. I know what I’m up against, John.”
“I don’t think ye do,” He turned in his seat, looking directly at me, serious about what he was saying. “The Blight Screamer feeds on life, on potential. It won’t just kill ye, luv.. It will kill everything that ye were, everything ye ever could be. It drains the spirit, attacks the soul. Back in the day, it would--”
“I know.” I interrupted. I glanced in his direction. “It starts with crops. Poisoning everything around a village. Fouling the water with its presence. Then it would start with the children.” I swallowed, the words in one of those musty old books in my back seat coming back to me. “It feeds on children, draining their lives, turning them into soulless husks. Fetches.”
He nodded grimly. “You won’t just be fighting this Thing. It’s had time to kill and transform all the children of that town into Fetches. Ye’re walking into a trap.”
“What should I do, then, John. Give up?”
He shook his head. “No. Lemme make some calls. We can call up the squad, Zee.”
“Do you really want Zatanna anywhere near this Thing, John?”
There was a long pause. “At least let me call Alec--”
I sighed. “You said yourself. This Thing doesn’t just kill, it strikes at your very spirit. It could legitimately hurt Alec. The Parliament would never risk him like this. Not for a village full of people, even if it’s killing crops as well.”
“But you--”
I cut him off, not kindly. “I’m expendable.”
“I don’t--”
I cut him off again, braking suddenly and pulling over to the side. “John, I appreciate the concern, but there is no argument here. I’m doing this.” He opened his mouth to retort, but I continued. “You didn’t see that little boy. I will not let this thing hurt anyone else.”
“I get that, luv, but it doesn't have to to be you.”
I met his gaze, and a smile pulled at the corners of my mouth. John wasn’t immune to my charms, he couldn’t pull his eyes away.
“I’m not Zatanna. Or Raven. Or even Alec. We don’t need a hero here, we need a monster, and I’m Poison Ivy. This thing just pissed off the real monster, John.” He didn’t look away. “I’m going to drop you here. I’ll call you an Uber, but I have a long drive ahead. I appreciate your concern, but this is goodbye.”
He looked like he wanted to argue but, after a moment, he nodded silently and got out. I pulled away, accelerating, and bringing up the ap to get him a ride.
***
For a long while, John Constantine stared at the rapidly fading tail lights of Poison Ivy’s car, a heavy weight in his gut. He knew what she was up against, and the thought of that beautiful, frustrating woman becoming a soulless, hopeless husk enslaved to the ancient Blight Screamer made him nauseous.
He methodically pulled out a cigarette, the practiced, ritual process of lighting it helping to center himself.
“Ye’re not a monster, luv.” He said it out loud, voice cracking. “And ye’re not expendable.”
***
The drive was quiet. As I traveled through the state, through miles and miles of waving corn, I listened to the excited plants in my head. They were happy and healthy, and thrilled to sense me so close by. Despite my uncharacteristic brooding, it made me smile. They were alive, they were healthy, and there was hope for this world.
There was hope, and that was the important thing.
The turnoff was unremarkable, the highway dwindling to a single two lane snaking its way through miles and miles of corn. There weren't any other cars on the road, and my sense of disquiet began to grow.
The corn grew quiet as I passed into areas populated by large-scale corporate farms and the strains being grown were genetically modified corn, each organism little more than a clone for those around it. These plants were silent and focused, barely sentient in the way I’d become accustomed to--as though there wasn’t an actual spirit within them, even though that thought made the scientist in me rebel.
The corn finally gave way to open fields. Small buildings. A gas station. An auto repair shop. Grain silos. Nothing was moving, no sign of life or traffic. I felt a chill crawl up my spine, and though I make a lot of noise about how much better off the planet would be without so many humans, as I braked at what passed for the center of that little town, a four way stop sign, the phrase
passed through my mind.
The little town’s name was Sanctuary, population 1215, but I suspected that wasn’t true anymore. It was quiet and dead, with only the cawing of distant crows and the whistling breeze to break the silence. I parked my little car and listened to the silence in my head. No plants were crying out to me, excited to see me, or even indifferent. When I reached out through the Green, I could sense...nothing.
Grimly, I wound my long, lush hair into a single braid, threading it with a twist of vine, and called the plants I brought with me to cover me, an armor of life itself, as I curled my fingers into a fist, the vines extended and hardened, making my sword. It was time to put Pam aside.
Poison Ivy was here.
Time to get to work.
There was a slight smell of rot in the air.
It wasn’t overpowering. Rather, it was a subtle thing--a sickly sweet odor just underneath the smell of corn. It was hot, very little wind, and sticky with humidity, and if I were human, I imagine I’d have started sweating the moment I stepped out of my little car. As it was, even I was uncomfortable with the heat, primarily because it should have still been relatively cool this early in Spring...and underneath it all I could smell the rot, as though something out of sight was just going bad and that smell was permeating the little town of Sanctuary.
I pulled up the hood of my cloak, an affectation I’d taken a liking to on these little adventures. My cloak was wholly made of living plant material, looking for all the world like a series of leaves--long, thin, overlapping strips like a fish’s scales, and in truth, that was basically what they were: armor. They were living biomass, plant tissue I could manipulate at will for offense or defense, and the whole thing was invaluable.
The boots I wore were made of the same material, only hardened even more and rising to just above my knees. I crunched gravel as I walked across an abandoned lot and scanned the town for any sign of motion, any sign of animal life. Other than a few menacing looking crows, angrily cawing at my disturbance of the stillness, I seemed to be alone. It was eerily quiet and I could hear my heels striking the pavement.
I angled toward the center of town, wondering if my sense that the scent of decay was growing stronger was all in my head. I gripped the hilt of my sword tighter. I wore long gloves, opera style, that covered me to the upper arms, and were made of the same material as the cloak and boots. It was tough and nearly impenetrable, and though more supple than my boots, still afforded me considerable protection. My sword was a living weapon, grown and composed of plant biomass. I can control living plant material down to the molecular level, and the blade of my weapon was sharper than a razor and nearly indestructible--and because it was alive, any damage it did take I could heal with a thought.
It was both comforting and concerning, because other than the plants on me and inside me, from the symbiotic flora in my digestive tract to the slim little vine wrapped around the thick braid of my fiery red hair, to the sword itself, I could sense no other living plants.
All those corn fields, corn in every direction for miles, were dead to my senses. I wasn’t sure what that meant. Either the corn was dead in the fields, or had been corrupted beyond my ability to sense, control, or even hear. I couldn’t even sense its distress. It was as silent in my head as it was conventionally. I didn’t like it, and honestly felt a little ill at the thought of all the plant life ripped away from the power of the Green, the collective spirit of all living, growing things on Earth.
I rounded a corner and found myself on what must’ve been Main Street. Cars lined the sides of the road, but they weren’t stalled in the middle, crashed, or otherwise abandoned like you might imagine in some sort of apocalyptic setting. Other than the lack of movement and the layers of dust, it might have been just another day in a sleepy small town America.
As I approached the square, where I could see a small park in front of what was probably a courthouse, I saw two small figures sitting in the middle of the road--children, judging by their size. They were sitting cross legged across from each other, playing with something--pushing it back and forth between them. I quickened my pace, surprisingly hopeful at the thought of seeing other living people.
Both had a mass of disheveled hair, as though it hadn’t been washed or brushed in weeks, and their clothes were dirty and stained. As I drew closer, I suspected the staining was blood. The way they were moving--listlessly--made me wonder if they were in shock.
“Hello?” I called out, sounding more uncertain than I meant to. Slowly, the two heads turned toward me.
It’s not easy to surprise me, even under normal circumstances. I knew what I was facing here in this small town, what creature was lurking nearby. It’s sense of wrongness, of alienness, was all around me. I couldn’t deny the Blight Screamer was here, somewhere, and yet, seeing those two little creatures for the first time filled me with shock and horror.
When a Blight Screamer settles on a victim, it saps their life force. Hearing the ‘wail’ sets up a psychic link, and each night the victim hears the Screamer, more and more of its essence is drained away, eventually leaving little more than a lifeless, soulless husk behind. Children and the elderly, with much less life force to lose, are especially vulnerable, and children, with their energy levels and endless potential, are delicious meals.
A person drained of all its life doesn’t just die, it becomes a horrifying mockery of a living thing, a Fetch, a slave to the Screamer with a taste for cannibalism and just enough cunning to imitate the person it once was to use in hunting its former loved ones.
The two Fetches stood slowly, their bodies uncoiling in a very inhuman way. Their eyes were coal black, like a doll’s eyes, and their teeth were like needles. They hissed, faces twisting into something demonic, and they began a shuffling run toward me, hatred and hunger written on their dirty little faces.
I forced the horror down, replacing it with a much more useful emotion: Rage.
These two things had once been children. I took a vine sprout out and filled it with Green, letting it grow to a ten foot length, and used it as a weapon. The first fetch I caught full in the face, sending it flying back with a dull, wet crunch, body going limp as I caved in its skull.
The second seemed almost surprised as it turned, stumbling, and I wrapped its ankles and sling shotted it across the street. It struck a brick wall with such force that it splatted almost comically before sliding wetly to the ground.
“So that’s how it’s going to be,” I muttered, letting my vine coil around my arms and shoulders. I had a finite amount of living weapons with me, and could sense no living plants nearby. The Green was with me, but it wouldn’t be as much help as I’d have liked.
I still felt a wave of nausea at their game. The Fetches were just cunning enough to imitate children, attempting to play and going through the motions. They’d been rolling a severed cat’s head back and forth like a ball when I approached. I don’t remember the last time I’d felt so alone.
So be it. I was used to working alone, to being a lone voice of outrage in a complacent world, of facing down monsters and villains and occasionally heroes with no help. This thing needed to die, and no one else would or even could do anything about it.
Resolutely I set off in the direction my sense of unease was pointing me, realizing it was that very sense of wrongness that was telling me where the Screamer was. It didn’t belong in this world, it was unclean, a thing that was evil and cruelty and madness made manifest.
I was being led out of town, and in the distance I could see what looked like a corral, possibly a fairground--the kind of thing found in small towns across the country. The blight was growing worse as I approached it, plants not only dead, but covered in rot, a smell somewhere between sour milk and rancid meat growing stronger with each step.
Along the way, I’d crossed paths with three more Fetches, all children. One was dressed like a cowboy, and had mimed shooting me with a toy gun before I sheared its head off. The other two had once been girls, dressed in what were probably Easter dresses, with ribbons in their matted hair. The smaller of the two had begun to rot, the left side of her face had a patch of dark green that grew lighter toward the edges. It was wet and virulent, and not for the first time I was thankful for my immunity to all poisons, toxins, and infections.
Layers of fungus covered the ground, and each step caused a cloud of spores--spores that didn’t respond to me at all, that I couldn’t sense--to puff up. I came across several bodies on the trip, some clearly having been mostly devoured by--and as clinical as I usually am I couldn’t help but shudder with revulsion--small mouths with needle teeth, and others that had simply wasted away, emaciated and helpless. I knew the Screamer had that effect on adults--they would grow too weak to move and lay where they fell, dying by inches as the Screamer fed at its leisure.
For just a moment, I pictured Harley or Selina succumbing to this thing, unable to move, their life force being sucked out as they lay helpless, in fear and pain. I buried that rage, banking it for later. There was going to be a reckoning.
I came upon a small barn, the doors covered in a thin dusting of greyish fungus, and a Fetch.
Once it had been a man, a large one, and he was still dressed in a cowboy hat, a flannel shirt, jeans, and cowboy boots. His skin had darkened to a sickly grey, and he turned to regard me with coal black eyes. He was mounted on what I’d taken to be a horse at first, but realized he was a bull, the hide slack and loose on its bones, eyes sunken in and doll-like. Where the man was sitting the two Fetches had rotted and merged together, making it into a nightmarish, horrid centaur like beast. As I’d approached, the bull had been stoically kicking the barn door, making it rattle, but not actually getting it open. I presumed it was bolted from the other side. The constant kicking had kept the door free of the dusting of fungus, at least, due to the motion.
The Fetch drew a pistol. Unlike the earlier child Fetch, his wasn’t plastic. He began to fire.
His gun didn’t frighten me, I can handle small arms fire if necessary, but the Fetch’s shots were going wild due to the motion of the bull part, and I realized the gestalt thing still acted as two separate entities.. I drew my sword.
It was an ancient thing, had been ancient when the Druids roamed the British Isles, had been ancient when Stonehenge was first mounted. It had no name, though I’d taken to calling it Mandragora, and while I thought of it as a sword, it was a living weapon, shapeable with my will, and practically crackling with the energy of the Green. The Fetches were too stupid to understand their danger, and I waited til the last minute before dodging to the side and letting the razor edge of Mandragora take the bull Fetch’s legs off.
They crashed together, their flesh melted and one so the man didn’t go flying, but his twisted fingers couldn’t hold onto his gun and it flew away. The bull fetch was only capable of a low hiss and it struggled to rise. Mandragora took its head.
“I sssseeeeee you…” the man Fetch spoke, a sibilant hiss, as though breathing was a forgotten and clumsy thing for it, and yet, I knew it wasn’t the Fetch--it was the Screamer.
“I’m not here to banter. I’m coming for you,” I replied, then I took its head as well.
Something was in that barn. The Fetches had wanted in for a reason. I went to the doors.
The bull Fetch had been at it for some time. I could see the wood was beginning to give way, the paint scoured off from incessant kicks. I sheathed Mandragora and let my vine snake under the door’s edge, feeling its way in the darkness up to the wooden bolt, lifting it and letting it drop, and then I pushed my way in.
The barn was free of the fungus, but old, dirty, and hot. Stacks of straw, farm tools, empty gasoline cans--all the things you might expect to find in an old country barn, but I knew what they were after as soon as I opened the door--I could feel the tiny flora that live in human bodies in symbiosis, microorganisms, bacteria. A living person was in here, and I saw her right away.
She was young, maybe ten, and filthy with grime, sweat, and dried blood. I took in the details almost as an afterthought: brown eyes in a dirty face, a pair of overalls, an Elsa from Frozen tee shirt.
“Hi there,” I said...
How had she survived the Screamer?
“Hi there. It’s ok. I’m not going to hurt you.” My voice sounded strange to my own ears in the cloying silence of the town. The girl didn’t reply, but she did continue to watch me warily.
I smiled at her, in what hoped was a reassuring way. “What’s your name? I’m Ivy.” Still no answer. She was thin, her lips cracked. I was cursing myself for not carrying so much as a water bottle with me.
“Are you thirsty? Hungry? I have some bottles of water in my car, and some snacks I…” The girl perked up when I said water, and then she signed.
American Sign Language.
She was deaf. I almost laughed. Of course. If you couldn’t hear the Blight Screamer, it held no power over you. Her disability was a strength. She’d been reading my lips, so I signed to her, dredging up memories of learning it years ago in college, but I never forget something once I learn it, I have a memory like an old oak, and if nothing else, the look of sheer relief on her face when she saw me signing back was worth every second I’d spent learning to sign.
Then she was hugging me, sobbing with relief after days of fear and uncertainty, trapped in this barn while the town fell apart, while its residents were transformed into inhuman monstrosities out of a nightmare. I held her thin, trembling body.
I was here to kill the Screamer, and I’d been operating under the assumption everyone was dead--I’d come to that conclusion when I’d first entered the town--but this girl changed the situation. I had to get her out.
“What’s your name?” I signed. She was wiping at her eyes, her tears had made streaks in the grime on her face.
“It’s April. April Charles.”
“Alright April, we’re getting out of here. We’ll get to my car and…” I stopped, because her eyes had grown large, and I could sense something...different. A change in the feel of things. It’s hard to put in words--Selina says it’s my use of the Force, referencing Star Wars, and I suppose that’s not far off. A could feel a disturbance in the fabric of reality. A ripple in the Green.
Turning, I wordlessly stepped out of the barn. The town was approaching, all fetches, several dozen at a rough guess, children in front, shuffling or even loping on all fours. The adults of the town followed, brandishing weapons like shovels, pitchforks, axes. One kid had a katana.
The Blight Screamer knew we were here. I assumed the fetches functioned as a hive mind, anything they perceived the Screamer knew, which meant it knew I was here and I was dangerous, and it knew April was here and was the last living thing in town, the last living soul it hadn’t fed on. There were too many to fight--I wasn’t necessarily worried for myself, but if even one got past me, got to April…
I turned to her. “On my signal, you have to run. As fast as you can, I want you to--” but she was shaking her head, and she frantically signed back.
“No, I can’t leave you. I won’t leave you. You have to come too! Please!” I sighed. I suppose I could’ve argued with her, but we didn’t have time. I could see the sheer terror in her eyes. An act of God couldn’t have convinced her to be on her own again.
So we ran.
I held her hand and trotted at a brisk pace. She was weak from lack of water and food, but the fetches were too clumsy and weak themselves to press us, or at least that was my first impression.
I angled us back toward my car, but a pack of fetch dogs--mangy, ragged, slavering blood-tinged drool--cut us off, and then I realized we were being herded...turned back toward the fairground, toward the big middle pasture.
There it was. Dug out of the earth was a hole, an entrance of mounded dirt that descended into inky depths. The quicker fetches were on our heels when I saw it, and April was shaking her head, terror writ on her features.
The Screamer was herding us, bringing us to it. It was eager to feed on April. It was an ancient intelligence, proud and arrogant in its superiority, and it knew it had won.
However, it hadn’t considered something. It didn’t know me.
April caught my attention. “We can’t go down there, that THING is down there. Please!” she signed, desperate and terrified.
I smiled at her, and then I signed back. “It’s going to be alright. Don’t be afraid. I am Poison Ivy. The Green is with us. I came here to kill it, and it just saved me the trouble of hunting it down. I won’t let it hurt you.”
I drew Mandragora, took April by the hand, and descended into the darkness.
***
April was a silent ghost picking her way through the tunnel just behind me. Though it was ostensibly dug out of soft earth, the floor and curved walls were strangely hard. No danger of collapsing then--a concern I’d had. It spiraled at an impressive grade, twisting in the darkness. As soon as we were away from the entrance, the light faded to near pitch black. I triggered lines of lichen on the ‘blade of Mandragora and they lit up in bioluminescent glory, causing my weapon to shed light--a soft, glowing, greenish light that cast everything in an eerie radiance. April stayed close, her eyes wide as she strained to peer through the gloom. I paused, crouched, fishing a few seedlings out of the pouches built inside my gloves, and scattered them across the floor of the tunnel.
There was an acrid smell, a bit like the smell of a cockroach nest, though multiplied by several orders of magnitude. It was foul and rank, and the stench only grew stronger as we pushed forward. Behind us, I could hear the clattering, gibbering, slavering horde of husks following at a distance. They shambled in pursuit.
We passed a few side tunnels--smaller ones that angled back up and another that angled steeply down, but I ignored them, my fingers tightening on the hilt of Mandragora. This close, I could sense the thing, sense its wrongness, and I didn’t need to guess or track. With my sword glowing softly, and April padding silently behind me, we descended into hell.
It was warm. Far warmer than it should’ve been that deep in the earth--warm and putrid, the smell of shit and rot surrounding me in a cloying stench, a sickly sweet miasma that made me want to shower, and it got worse when the tunnel suddenly widened into a central chamber, like a spider’s web, with smaller tunnels spiraling out in every direction. PIles of bones, picked clean for the most part, lay strewn about and devoid of any sign of flesh, yet the stench of rotting meat was strongest here.
A dozen husks, adults and children, were waiting on us, and they rose, slouching our general direction, baring sharpened, jagged, rotted teeth. April squeezed in, terrified, desperate for what comfort and security my physical presence could offer. It wasn’t the husks that drew my eye, however.
The Blight Screamer was a squat thing, vaguely the shape of a turnip, a good eight feet tall. It’s spindly arms were attached to narrow shoulders, but it had no neck or head. No discernible eyes, and I couldn’t be sure it used vision at all, or sound for that matter, I could see no sign of ears or even holes. It’s bloated torso was dominated by a central mouth, an eighteen inch long slit that was parted, showing jagged teeth and a long, profane tongue that was oozing a foul, acidic drool. Its legs were short and squat, and it knuckle-walked like a hairless ape. It was breathing, a slow pant that smelled more foul than a mountain of dead bodies and ruffled our hair with a hot, humid breeze.
I don’t know if it could see me, but when it started toward me, I settled into a fighting stance with Mandragora pointing at it and it immediately flinched.
I smiled, grimly. It was afraid.
With barely a pause, it snatched the nearest husk, formerly a young woman, mid teens, wearing a stained Taylor Swift concert tee shirt, in one oversized hand, holding her like a toddler holding a doll.. The girl’s mouth opened and it spoke, raspy and gurgly from rot and disuse, and I knew instantly I wasn’t talking to the husk. I was talking to the screamer.
“Iiiiiivvvvveeeeeeeeeyyyyyy,” it hissed, and I got the impression it would have been grinning if it’d been capable. “Consuuuuuuuuuuuuuummmeeee, youuuuuuuuuuuu.” Behind me, the husks chasing us were beginning to file in, surrounding April and I in a rough semicircle.
The Green is with me, and I am not afraid.
“I am Poison Ivy. I am the Vanguard of the Green and I am here to end this.”
Laughter was my answer, from the husk the Screamer held and every other husk in the tunnel. It laughed at me. I relaxed, centering myself, just as Lady Shiva had taught me many years ago. My senses stretched out and I felt very few plants in the vicinity, other than the ones I’d come here with. The ones I’d planted.
I exhaled and channeled raw energy, the energy of the Green, of life itself, into the seedlings from earlier, and they erupted into a mass of writing vines. War vines, woody and tough on the outside but supple and strong underneath, and they exploded in, shredding the flesh of the dried up husks like paper. It happened in an instant, and the Screamer roared and lurched back, flinging the husk it was holding aside and sending the rest in a rush of rotted flesh.
I began to spin, my braid flying wide, Mandragora shifting from a sword to a whip of razors and thorns, and as April shrieked and crouched, I stood over her, a guardian angel of vengeance, and reaped a bloody harvest among the screamer’s minions. I continued to spin, my training and movements as much belly dance as Wing Chun, and the whipping length of my weapon took limbs and heads with abandon. Behind them, the Screamer began to puff up, and I understood what was about to happen.
It screamed.
That’s a simple statement, and as an action it was, on the surface, a simple thing it did, but it was so much more. The sound washed over us like a wave of horror, it felt like being blasted in the face with frigid air, a shock to my system that felt like a gut punch. I was taken off my feet, clutching at my ears with hands rapidly going numb. I felt stiff, my muscles dunked in ice water, and as the scream continued, a force whipped my hair behind me in an invisible, gale-force wind of sheer power, I knew I was succumbing. My very soul was being shredded. I was screaming with it, a shriek of fear and terror I didn’t even know I was capable of. My joints locked up, Mandragora fell from my nerveless fingers, I sat hard on my bottom, shivering and screaming and battling tears. The bloated, mutant thing was slowly deflating as the scream went on and on. For ten thousand years, no mortal being had withstood that wail. As it petered out, as the scream died down, I shivered. April had picked up my sword and was awkwardly brandishing it at the gathered husks. Deaf, she was entirely unaffected by the scream. I staggered to my feet.
“Noooooo….” the screamer gasped through it’s husk puppet.
I took Mandragora from April, and the husks began to back away in fear, the screamer itself was trembling, desperately trying to catch its breath.
“Just...shut up,” I managed, and then, in an even, powerful stroke, I sliced the ancient monster in half.
***
The next town over wasn’t far, a 45 minute drive. I left April at the police station, let her go in to tell the story, and I turned my little car around. The world was a little safer. I could feel plants waking up all around me as I left the dead town and the Screamer’s endless, pitiable victims. I was thinking about Harley, my hand hovering over the screen of my phone, a temptation to hit her number and hit send. I missed her. I even missed Selina…
I wasn’t surprised when I saw him, rumpled coat, lit cigarette, with his thumb out in the classic hitch-hiking stance. I was tempted to cruise right by, but against my better judgement, I braked and pulled over.
“‘Allo luv!,” He began, cheerfully. “Goin’ my way?”
“I doubt it. What do you want, Constantine?” Despite his shabby appearance, I was so relieved I didn’t even mind seeing him. I’d put an end to the Blight Screamer. The world was a slightly brighter place.
“Good job with that blighter, Ivy.” He paused, his words pregnant. I knew he wanted to continue.
“Oh, just spit it out, John.”
He had the decency to sigh. “There’s a little coastal town in Washington. A little ‘burb called Promise. Something is in the harbor. It’s hungry, luv.” His voice trailed off. With a sigh, I put the car in gear and pulled back out onto the highway, tapping the maps app on my phone.
“No smoking in my car, and whoever is driving gets to control the radio. Deal?”
He grinned and leaned back, buckling in. “I’ve got a good feelin’ about this, luv.”
I groaned.