©®2005/06

The Dark Harvest
By: Adrian Grey Marsden
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The gardener grew all varieties, from the brightest squash to the darkest eggplant. He was renowned throughout the village for his luscious harvest. A garden so colorful many felt guilt at eating the earthly rainbow. But there were some who claimed he grew much more than simple fruits and delectable veggies.
One day the village children requested a mighty pumpkin for All Hallows Eve.
They got one.
It stood taller than any of them.
After the celebrations of fall fell into memory, the seeds of the great pumpkin remained. It was as if they refused to rot.
Some seeds found their way underground and sprouted in an un-earthly explosion, uprooting the very foundations of homes. The growth was so aggressive that entire fields had to be burned, tilled, and burned again. Yet despite all this commotion over the seedlings – the gardener was nowhere to be seen. A few of the village children claimed they had witnessed the gardener leave after the emergence of the great pumpkin, but no one knew where it was that he had ventured to. No one seemed to know much of anything about the gardener. Eventually the village eradicated every last seed, even those held in the smallest of hands, until at last none remained.
The next fall the gardener returned. He was met with hostility and hatred over the chaos his harvest had caused.
A council was called.
The village ostracized him, exiling him forever.
Months later amidst a harsh winter, the village children raced homemade sleds atop a steep snow-hill that sat a mile from the village border. After the sun began to fade, a patch of dark red snow captured their collective curiosity. Upon investigating the red snow, they found its source. It was the blood of the old village gardener, now wrinkled with ice and frozen in death. Despite the decay, the children knew it was the village gardener because of the emerald necklace he always wore around his now frost-rotted neck. A necklace that always seemed to cast a strange green glow - even when daylight was absent.
Despite his crimes, the villagers felt responsible for the gardeners demise. Filled with a gathered guilt, they carried him back to the village and buried his body under his garden at the very edge of the village - now overgrown with weeds and neglect. The gardeners estate was then fenced off and forgotten.
All Hallows Eve was banned soon afterwards, the recent tragedy too fresh in everyone's minds to have cause to celebrate. Instead October came and went. The adults believed themselves rid of all evils and the inconvenience of yet another holiday, but the children knew better.
As the years passed, rumors amongst the children grew. Stories began of an unnatural green glow from the forbidden garden. Older children retold the tale of the gardener again and again to the young, who listened with intense, unblinking eyes. They took joy in the tale; it seemed a taboo was breeched each time it was told.
Dares were soon to follow. To be in possession of a pumpkin seed was risky enough, but to trespass onto the gardener's grave was a rite of passage only the bravest would contemplate. But only the most daring would attempt to bury the seed in the light of a full moon, even worse would be to do so on All Hallows Eve. One young boy did just that, and then he went missing.
The children had found his body, but stayed silent. To admit the trespass into the forbidden garden was unthinkable. The disappearance of the boy only made the legend grow stronger.
Now secret visits happened during the day - hurried lunchtime adventures under the rusted fence and across the long dead pumpkin patch to see the boy's body, enclosed by vines and mud. Over time it seemed the boys body belonged to the garden. The vines had infiltrated his eye sockets and entangled the spine so completely that it was hard to tell where his remains stopped and where nature began.
Years passed and the children were now the adults of the village. The garden was now surrounded by a massive wall, keeping their children safe from what they knew to be real, and what their parents long ago thought myth. Odd things grew on the walls that surrounded the old garden. An unnatural climbing trellis encompassed everything. Here and there clung some sort of contaminated-looking fruit. Ashen trees refused to obey the seasons as they came and went. Oranges were red. Apples were blue. Hues not of nature, but of madness.
The stories continued to grow despite the adults warnings. Stories of a dark figure that danced inside an iridescent green glow. All agreed the figure was the long-dead village gardener, due to the matching emerald necklace the figure now wore. Villagers claimed to have seen the old gardener face to face, which proved so grotesque the facts of it varied from story to story. They all agreed its visage was scarred with incisions so deep it was hard to tell bone from earth.
The adults grew more concerned when the gardener would venture outside of its earthly prison, as if testing its strength, its boldness.
Every season it grew stronger.
Every season more children vanished.
Every season the gardeners dwelling grew, forcing the village to retreat its borders, until at last it could shrink no further.
Under a harvest moon a council was called together.
A plan was made.
The adults of the village had decided to do the unthinkable. They would enter the forbidden garden walls during the light of day, and await the rising of the horror that same night. Using their superior numbers, they would wrestle and bind the thing with rope and steel twine. They would take it to the village furnace and be done with it forever.
The adults told the children of their plan, not wishing to keep secrets as their parents had done to them. Hugs and kisses were exchanged, as were tears.
The parents set off towards the dark garden, holding a variety of ladders, twine and axes. A morning so cold it crunched underfoot.
Once over the wall and inside, they surrounded the garden. Every adult was accounted for, and between them they covered almost every square yard.
Morning passed.
Weapons were lowered with the coming of the bright sun overhead. By afternoon small talk arose, and the mood seemed lighter. But all conversation died once the mist appeared.
A green mist seemed to materialize out of the very air they were breathing. It did not float. It was as if a shade was being pulled over their eyes. As nightfall approached, the vines underfoot began to move. At first quite slowly, then more aggressively, causing some to chop at them with their axes. Their accumulated fear swelled in anticipation.
At dusk they heard it. It was more a frequency than a sound. It was coming from under their feet - which, they realized in horror - were now completely held in place by vines. The adults scrambled, engulfed by feelings of fury and doom over letting their guard down. A few adults broke free and struggled to untie the others, hacking and slashing with axes, pulling with all their might to uproot the evil hands holding them to what could be their future grave. One cut free, then a dozen, until at last the vines seemed to shrink back from the very darkness that created them.
When they looked up, terror filled their souls.
The garden itself had tricked them.
During the struggle the vines had slowly enclosed above them, posing as nightfall. They created a net where the only illumination was the damning green mist.
They cried. The tears seemed to call to the vines. Tentacles crawled up legs, meeting little resistance now. Into noses they crept, cutting off air. From eyes they popped, spraying bloody nutrients to its genus below. Screams mixed with the mocking laughter and song of the gardener, now sitting atop the vines that imprisoned them. His laughter threatening to split the very gourd that sat atop his decomposing neck.
The children awoke, huddled in the council room from the previous night. The adults were nowhere to be seen. Worsening their fear was the site of the garden later that morning. It sat perfect and newly tilled. Flowers sprung from its border, fruit so bright in the morning sun it caused some children to squint. From behind the old oak tree at the edge of the colorful garden - a man appeared.
The children were frozen with fear, despite the warm sun on their young faces. The stranger calmed their fear quickly, his face one of perfect compassion and care. He told the children of their parents as they walked with him towards the garden.
The man assured them not to worry, promising of their parents return. A bargain of love and sacrifice had forced them away, but they would be back very soon. Older children pressed the issue, uneasy with its logic, but still wanting to believe. The stranger addressed their questions while the children ate what the garden provided. With each bite the story seemed more real. At last the children were full, both in spirit and hope. They returned to the village, anxious for their parents to return as the stranger had promised. The stranger watched them go. He kicked in annoyance at the muffled sounds beneath his boots. Inches below the blood-soaked soil, some still lived. Hearts fed roots as they burrowed into other corpses, swelling with purpose. Soon the plagued roots reached the village cemetery. There they twisted amongst the maggots and filth searching for those who had ostracized their master long ago. Each vine held a corrupted seed at its tip, gripped with an abnormal digit. Prying open coffins and jawbones, the seeds were implanted, as was a liquid as black as tar.
Many days passed, and the children grew anxious. The stranger was gone, and their parents were still missing.
A few nights later, huddled together in the council room for comfort, the children heard something. At first it sounded like wind, but it was too rich, too deep in tone to be airborne. They huddled together as the sounds grew more ominous, wishing them away. The sounds only grew louder, taking on a shape and form all their own. It was maddening, a horrible mixture of torture and loneliness. Unable to withstand anymore, the eldest amongst them screamed and rose, opening the door in one furious movement.
Time stopped. No one breathed.
Before them stood their parents, and their parent's parents. Soil clung to flesh, worms held tendons in a collaged figure that threatened to collapse at any moment, but did not. Instead they stood in an organized row, much like the varieties of a garden, waiting.

From behind a green light glowed, its source the necklace of the stranger from days before. He wore a smile of absolute satisfaction, as if a lifetime's strategy had finally paid off.
The children were petrified with fear.
Slowly, fathers feasted on sons.
Grandmothers smothered babies with muddy hands while pushing them into their fallow chests.
Mothers pushed on skulls with horrible strength, holding them aloft to bathe in the fresh blood.
The stranger watched, smiling.

In a voice that seemed to belong to a tree instead of a man he muttered, "Seed for seed."

The end.