The Seed: A Halloween Tale

I've made a few minor changes. Hope it works.


The Seed

Every day of Summer Vacation Marc and Dale had walked past Old Lady Croswell’s run-down house and every day she followed them with her “evil eye”, as Dale called it. Marc once had the audacity to wave timidly and say, “Hello Ms. Croswell,” only to see her jerk forward in her rocking chair, as if to jump up and chase after them. He was only slightly comforted when she sat down again, but was uneasy when he saw that she was still leaning forward, eying them critically, her hands clenched the arms of the rocker, her elbows hovered above the arm rests. She looked like a panther, prepared to spring at them if they so much as smiled in her direction. When they reached the end of the block they laughed at the old woman, though she scared Marc more than he liked to admit.

That night Dale arrived at Marc’s front door with a sleeping bag, snacks and comics under his arm. Marc had arranged with their parents to have Dale spend the night camping in Marc’s backyard. As the moon rose high in the sky, they snuck, armed with flashlights, a spade, and a rope, over to Ms. Croswell’s yard and stole a seed from her ‘prize-winning’ garden. It wasn’t until they got back to Marc’s house that they inspected it for the first time.
“Now I know she’s a witch.” Dale said, a look of repulsion on his face.
Marc grimaced. The seed was nearly the size of a walnut, and was a sickly green color with yellowish spots that looked like speckled viper’s eyes. Five knobby bumps stuck out at weird angles, and Marc swore that it throbbed, very slightly, as he held it.
Dale suggested they bury it, “to hide the evidence”. Marc chose a back corner of the yard below a gnarly sycamore tree as the spot. He could see the spot from his bedroom window. He knew he’d be able to keep an eye on it from his bedroom, and see if it grew.

After several days of watching they noticed that a single root-like protrusion stuck up from the ground. It looked dead and gray, instead of green and alive. Marc said it looked creepy, Dale agreed. But dead or not, it continued to get bigger, or at least thicker with thin wiry gray twigs sticking from it. Then the strangest thing of all happened; the ground below it began to bulge. Within days the bulge was nearly the size of a small man, and Marc swore that it was throbbing, ever so slightly, as if it were breathing.

Both boys noticed something odd about Ms. Croswell too. Ever since they’d stolen the seed; instead of glowering at them as they went past, she watched them with a strange satisfied expression on her face, as if she knew something they didn’t know. They crossed the street whenever they had to pass her house. They could have sworn that they heard her cackle carried on the breeze after they’d passed.

The night seemed to be becoming chillier, or maybe it was Marc’s conscience pricking him about the theft. It didn’t seem to bother Dale, but he told Marc that he wasn’t sleeping well lately. It was as if he was being watched at night while he was sleeping. Marc had had the same feeling; he shuddered as he reflected on the previous night.

As Marc climbed into bed he heard a tap, so faint, he hardly heard it at all in the still of the darkened room. Was it a mouse scurrying on the rug? Then again, so quiet, the sound barely audible. What was it? There, at the window? Then tap, tap tap, louder this time. Then Bang! Bang! The glass of his window shuddered under the blows. Marc snapped toward the window. A hideous creature its gray almost human face grimaced at him through the darkness. It was covered head to toe with short and long twigs and moss. It banged several more times, then long crooked fingers, wickedly sharp, scratched at the base of the window, trying to get under the window pane, to lift it; to get in, to get him.

Marc darted for the door, and stifled a scream as he banged his shin on the corner of his bed frame. He leapt up, and hobbled through the house trying vainly to locate his parents. At each window he passed the monster was already there, scratching and banging at the window, watching him, and madly attempting to get in. He ran into the living room where his mother and father sat looking stunned, a book in each of their laps. He spat out the whole story, even the details of the theft of Old Lady Croswell’s repulsive seed and the thing that had grown from it. Several attempts, by each of them, to see anything in the yard, bore no evidence of a ‘monster’, and they sat on the couch together.

His parents didn’t believe that Ms. Croswell was a witch, or that her seed had come to life; they did recommend a solution to Marc’s ‘agitation’. They told him that in the morning he could dig up the plant and take it back to Ms. Croswell, and apologize. In spite of his protests his parents insisted that both he and Dale would do exactly that.

Marc didn’t see the plant at the window anymore that night, but thought he heard the sound of branches scratch at the side of the house. Around 2 a.m. Marc finally fell asleep, but rested badly. His dreams shadowed by gnarly trees that tried to get through his window.

At 6 a.m. Marc called Dale. They discussed the night’s events with nearly the same tale to tell. Dale too had seen the thing in the window and confessed all to his parents. Within 20 minutes Dale was out in the yard with Marc looking at the mound and the dead looking stem. By all appearances, the creature wasn’t able to come out of the ground during daylight hours, but hibernated during the daylight hours. Hoping that their theory was accurate, they devised a plan. Reluctantly, Marc tied a rope securely to the topmost part of the plant, and at Marc’s signal, Dale pulled with all his strength on the rope. There was a loud crack and eight inches of the plant broke away, dangling from the length of rope. An unearthly muffled groan rumbled up from the mound. Marc dropped the rope he’d intended to tie the thing up with, and both boys screamed and scrambled backward simultaneously. The mound of earth moved just below the grass, as if something were crawling around beneath a rug. It raced toward the fence and burrowed below it in the direction of Ms. Croswell’s place.

It was nearly 7:30 before the boys got the nerve to start off in the direction of Ms. Croswell’s, and not without some encouragement from Marc’s dad. A broken fragment of branch from the creatures back dangled from between Marc’s index finger and thumb, dripping greenish ooze. As he approached Ms. Croswell’s front porch they noticed that Ms. Croswell herself was bent over a mound of grass in her yard, speaking softly and running her hands over it in long smooth strokes. She looked up at the boys, who froze mid-step; her steely gaze met their terrified ones. She stood up, which for all of her four feet, nine inches, might as well have been ten. As she strode ponderously over to the base of the stairs, she gave them a contemptuous glare. The boys took an involuntary step backward. Her gaze moved to the oozing limb in Marc’s hand. “I believe that belongs to me.”
“Yes,” Marc stammered, and extended the plant out to her. Ms. Croswell snatched the branch out of his grasp, and Marc pulled his hand back. Dale twitched.
“We’re sorry.” The boys said together. Then without another word, the boys ran all the way back to Marc’s house before pausing to catch their breath.

Dale was the first to see the package on the steps of Marc’s porch, he pointed at it wordlessly. It was small and wrapped in glistening purple paper, a black silk ribbon tied neatly into a perfect bow on top of it. A folded piece of parchment paper was tucked neatly under the ribbon.
Marc picked up the note and unfolded it, reading it aloud as Dale read over his shoulder. “A reward for your integrity. Use them wisely.” It was unsigned. Marc tugged at the ribbon and the lid slid off easily without unwrapping it. Inside the tiny box, resting in a bed of dark purple silk, were two almond-sized cream-colored seeds.


The Seed
by Ken Chandler
Copyright © 2008