Behemoth

Spec-fic serialised novelette

I wrote this story after finding datura plants growing wild on a deserted river bank. It’s a plant that’s indigenous to Mexico and the frontier states of the USA. It’s toxic and hallucinogenic, and looked totally out of place among the hulls of ancient boats and local wildflowers.

I’ve serialised short stories already, but before trying out a really long form, I’ve decided to try this 45 page story to see how it goes.

Photo ©Kenneth Allen

Part One: Gramen Albiflora

1.

Dev and Emer stepped out of the tree shadow of the riverbank into the bright sunlight of the field. Three venerable boats lay surrounded by a froth of cow parsley, the blue paint of the exposed hulls gently fading and flaking. When they first moved in together as students, they used to come here to get out of the cramped apartment and let Bozo, Dev’s dog run around. They were romantic then, as well as passionate, and thought the open sky, birdsong and the river were as necessary to love as the soft, hot darkness of tangled sheets and the moist skin scents and lingering perfume.

They had a slightly larger place now, with two proper rooms and a separate kitchen, town centre, and they owned it. Emer taught at a primary school in a residential suburb and Dev had dropped his plans of becoming a judge and had gone into social work, homeless teenagers, drug addicts, the kind of people Emer found she would rather not know about. They had changed since student days, but the quiet field next to the boat yard was the same, and they still brought Bozo there to run, to watch the river slide past and the water birds huddled on mud banks at low tide, waiting for something to happen.

Dev, dark and supple, sliced at the long grasses with a switch. Emer followed behind, solid and fair, cheeks pink with the sun, her arms full of wild pea flowers and a collection of bulrushes that Dev knew she would put down and forget about somewhere on the way home. A flock of finches swept through the alders calling shrilly. Dev followed their flight with his eyes as the birds flitted in tight formation from tree to tree, admiring the way the sun caught the bright red patches on their cheeks and the white bars on outspread wings. Emer watched where she put her feet. She never noticed the birds, Dev thought, or anything for that matter that she couldn’t appropriate.

She looked at her phone. Dev sighed. He knew what she was thinking. Time to be going, the roast called. They used to spend most of Sunday in bed, make toast or a sandwich when they were hungry. He couldn’t remember when the Sunday lunch ritual had begun. When Emer decided to take her mother as a role model probably. She was struggling to be as good a cook as she imagined her mother was, and if Dev had ever dared tell her he’d rather have a tuna salad and a beer than a slab of meat and a pile of roast potatoes on a hot Sunday afternoon, she’d have been mortified.

Emer caught up with him in the middle of the field, by the smallest of the boats, a blue and white rowboat with a hole punched in the hull below the water line. He knew what she was going to say, could predict it almost word for word.

“We ought to be getting back. The meat will need to go in soon if we want to eat at a reasonable time.”

He had been thinking about a case, a problematic one he needed to have sorted by Monday morning, a place in a hostel or an autonomous flat for a nice kid with big family problems. He picked at the peeling paint with his nail and smiled at Emer, dragged back to her idea of Sunday, wishing she hadn’t turned out to be such a single-minded homemaker, but unwilling to hurt her feelings.

“Sure. I’m famished already.”

She beamed, pleased to be pleasing him by doing what she wanted, and turned homeward. Her movements were brisk and purposeful. Thinking about oven temperatures and shelling beans, Dev thought with a hint of irritation. He whistled for Bozo.

“Hey, Red Rum, home time!”

The dog left off practicing steeple chasing over the disused railway tracks and trotted over obediently, tongue lolling. Emer strode on ahead with her temporary bouquet, on the path that wandered in and out of the alders of the bank, Dev followed, slower, the switch searching out dried flower heads. The dog hesitated by the upturned boats, sniffing around each one. By the third boat, in the damp shadows of the shady side, he stopped and thrust his nose into the greenery. With a yelp that made Dev start with surprise, he leapt backwards, growling softly, hackles bristling.

“Wait a sec, Em.”

Curious, Dev backtracked to the boat and put a hand on the dog’s head, murmuring reassurance. He parted the stalks of cow parsley and buttercups, crouched down, but could see nothing. Emer made her way back reluctantly, thinking of cooking times, beans, and stood behind him.

“What is it?”

She took Bozo by the collar and peered over Dev’s shoulder, not getting too close. He wasn’t entirely at his ease either. It could be anything in this quiet spot on the edge of town. A bundle of stolen goods, the rotting catch a fisherman couldn’t be bothered taking home, a dead body. He glanced over his shoulder. She gave a shudder.

“Leave it, Dev. It’s probably just a dead rat.”

“Bozo loves dead rats!”

“Live ones then. Come on, just leave it.”

He could understand why she should be apprehensive. The local news was always full of drownings, boating accidents. There’d been a dead homeless man pulled out of the river not far from the boat field, then a student who never made it home after a drunken party. People brought animals up here to abandon them: dogs, cats, rabbits, bags full of kittens and puppies. The alders whispered in the breeze, the flock of goldfinches fluttered past again, noisily, but the sudden eeriness did not dissipate. He stood up and wiped his hands on his jeans.

“Whatever it was, it’s just a nasty smell now.”

Bozo whined and pulled away. Emer let him drag her back to the path, probably counting the minutes of cooking time wasted, when she stopped, her attention drawn to a clump of flowers. Not in the tangle of cow parsley, kingcups and vetch, but apart, grouped, like an arrangement in a garden.

“Oh, look! How pretty. I wonder what they are.”

Dev shrugged and touched one of the white, bell-shaped flowers. “Don’t ask me. Looks like a garden plant to me. Sort of petunia or orchidy thing. Something exotic anyway.”

He groaned inwardly. Emer had put down her collection of riverbank flowers and was already scrabbling round the base of one of the stems, plastic bag at the ready, her eagerness to leave put on hold.

“I’ll just see if I can’t loosen one of them.”

He felt it even then, a repugnance, inversely proportionate to Emer’s attraction. He grimaced, made a move to stop her, but the root came away easily, offered no resistance, or perhaps the earth pushed it out like pus from a boil. Emer gave him a withering look.

“Don’t worry about me messing up your precious eco-systems. You said yourself, it probably isn’t a wild flower. It looks too exotic. I think you’re right, it’s got loose from a garden.”

“What if it’s poisonous?”

She looked at him as if he was mad. “With that gorgeous scent?”

Dev realised he was still staring at the plant with undisguised distaste. He had the impression the white bells had turned towards him in triumph, their trumpets pointing at his face, mocking. He shivered and rubbed his bare arms.

“Can we go now? I think the weather’s turning.”

He tossed away the switch, thoughts of a leisurely stroll home forgotten. He just wanted to get in, close the door and make a cup of coffee. Bozo raced ahead, tail and ears gradually pricking up as they left the boatyard behind.

The summer was long and hot that year, breaking high temperature records and plagued by forest fires across the northern hemisphere. Flooding and landslides devasted South Asia. Emer pronounced the weather glorious and took a beach towel most days down to the river to join the hundreds of city people getting a deep tan.

“One of the perks of being a teacher,” she said with a grin. “All the holidays we get.”

Dev sweated and worried, about things close to home and the bigger things he couldn’t do anything about. The heat intensified. The shops ran out of electric ventilators, but since electricity was rationed, it didn’t make much difference. There wasn’t enough water in the river for the nuclear power stations to function safely and the reactors had been shut down. Water was rationed too, and the plants on the balcony dried up and died. All but the plant Emer had brought back. It thrived, whether it was watered or not, and had colonised all the empty pots. Dev searched the brazen sky every morning. He wasn’t aware what was missing until much later, when the air had begun to cool and winter was on the way. There were pigeons, but not much else. The birds were missing.

Autumn light spilled onto the kitchen table. Emer had put on some music that she wasn’t really listening to, and Dev was trying to put the stuff away, in the corner that they called a kitchen, without breaking anything. Bozo was lying on the rug in front of the sofa, his head on his paws, apparently asleep. The window doors were open onto the balcony where warm, golden sunlight pooled around a mass of white bell-shaped flowers and luxuriant spiked foliage. A heady scent came from the exotic blooms, filling the small apartment. Emer had her laptop open, making for the sofa, and tripped over Bozo. She shrieked and swore loudly.

“I could have dropped this!”

“Well, you didn’t. Just watch where you’re going.”

“There isn’t room for that dog to hog all the floor space,” Emer said, fuming gently. “It’s nice and warm. Why can’t he lie on the balcony?”

Bozo had raised his head on hearing his name and looked at Dev, his ears raised in interrogation. Dev looked from the dog to the flower-filled balcony.

“He’s okay. Maybe he’s getting old. He used to love sunbathing.”

Bozo continued to stare at Dev, his nose twitching, a tension about his position that betrayed his unease. The summer sun had been unable to induce him to bask outside, and he seemed to prefer the muggy closeness of the small living room. Dev frowned. He wasn’t sentimental about animals, but he was close to his dog, and he was certain he saw fear in his eyes. But he couldn’t for the life of him think what Bozo had to be afraid of.

Read Part One Chapter Two here