Joe R Lansdale - Bad Seeds Evil Progeny by Stephen King

Author:Stephen King [King, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

By the Mark

Gemma Files

All naming is already murder.

—Lacan

Hepzibah, she called herself, mouthing the syllables whenever she thought no one else was looking. Hep-zi-bah. A powerful name, with strength in every note of it; a witch’s name. She whispered it in each night’s darkness, dreaming of poisons.

Outside, across the great divide between schoolyard and backyard, she knew her garden lay empty, sere and withered, topsoil still bleak with frost. Snow festered, greying, on top of the trumpet-vine’s dead tangle. Behind that, the fence; further, a sloping away. Down past graffiti in full seasonal bloom, down into the mud at the base of the bridge, into the shadows under the pass, where the “normal” kids fought and kissed and loudly threatened suicide.

Into the Ravine.

One month more until spring. Then the nightshade bushes on either side of the property line would be green, each leaf bitter with possibilities. But here she sat in Wang’s homeroom class, textbooks laid open on the desktop in front of her: Fifth Grade English like an endless boring string of Happiness-Is-To-Me, When-I-Grow-Up-I, My-Favorite-Whatever Journal exercises, Fifth Grade math like hieroglyphics in Martian. Real reading matter poking out from underneath, just barely visible whenever she squinted hard enough—Perennials and Parasites, A City Garden Almanac; roots and shoots, pale green print on pale cream paper, a leftover swatch of glue from where she’d ripped the school library slip off the inside back cover still sticking its back pages together. She sat there scanning entries while Mr. Wang reeled off roll-call behind her, desperately searching for something, anything she could recognize from that all-too-familiar tangle of weeds along the winding path she usually took home, wasting as much time as possible until Ravine finally turned to driveway and the house—

—“her” house—

—that place where she lived, on Janice and Doug’s sufferance, reared itself up against the sky like a tumor, a purse-lipped mouth poised to pop open and swallow her whole.

“Diamond, Jennifer,” Wang droned, meanwhile, back in the world nine people out of ten seemed to agree was real. “Edgecomb, Caroline. Garza, Shelby. Gilford, Darien. Goshawk . . . ”

Daffodil (Narcissus pseudonarcissus); Looks like: Star-shaped bright yellow corona of petals around a bonnet-shaped bell, with long, tulip-like stem and leaves. Toxic part: Bulbs, which are often mistaken for onions. Symptoms: Nausea, gastroenteritis, vomiting, persistent emesis, diarrhoea, and convulsive trembling which may lead to fatality.

“Often mistaken for onions . . . ” like the kind Doug insisted on in his micro-organic salad, maybe. So no one’d be likely to question her having them, even away from the kitchen. Even hidden somewhere in her room . . .

She frowned, tapping the textbook’s covering page. “May lead,” though; not good enough. Not nearly good enough, for what she had in mind.

“Herod, Kevin. Hu, Darlanne. Isaak, Stephanie.”

Oleander (Nerium oleander); Looks like: Smallish, wide-spread pansy-like blooms on thin, tough stems with floppy leaves. Toxic part: Entire plant, green or dried—when a branch of an oleander plant is used to skewer meat at a barbecue, the poison is transferred to the meat.

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