The Night Gardener by Jonathan Auxier
Kip sat up. “Do you hear that?”
Molly nodded, her ears prickling. Behind her, the trees had begun to rattle and creak. The grass at their feet rustled as it filled with life. Wind slid through the woods, moving over the lawn, converging on the house. The sky was already dark, but now it went three shades darker. Molly heard shutters clattering, walls groaning. She heard a low moan as the wind whiffled over the chimney tops. She reached out, holding Kip’s hand. “Not yet,” she said, her eyes fixed on the candle at her window—
The tiny flame flickered and then went out.
“He’s in there.” She slid down from the woodpile and lit the lantern, which Kip had removed from Galileo’s cart. The lantern was heavy, but it had flaps that dampened the glow, allowing them to see without being seen.
Molly and Kip rushed toward the house as quickly as the wind would allow. They reached the front door to find it still closed. Molly dimmed the lamp as low as she could without losing the flame. She removed her boots. The stone stoop was ice against her feet. Kip knelt beside her. His boots were off, and he was busy tying an old pillowcase around the foot of his crutch. “Are you sure we should do this?” he said.
“Not a bit.” Molly helped him stand. “Let’s go.”
She put her hand on the knob and opened the front door. Wind howled inside the foyer—and for a moment she was transported back to that first night with the top hat. She stepped across the threshold, Kip at her side. Leaves swirled around them, spinning and swooping in a gentle, almost beautiful dance. She heard the familiar sound from the back of the house—
THUMP!
THUMP!
THUMP!
Molly grabbed Kip and pulled him down the hall. She peeked around the corner to see the night man appear at the other end of the foyer. He was carrying the same watering can they had seen before, but from the way he held it, she could tell it was empty. She watched his feet leave muddy tracks as he slowly mounted the stairs to the upper rooms.
Molly waited until he was around the corner and then crept after him. She slowly climbed the staircase, her eyes trained on the small pool of lamplight at her feet. She tried her best not to make a sound; she didn’t even dare step on a loose board. Kip struggled behind her, keeping one hand on the banister. The cloth around the end of his crutch muffled the sound of his steps somewhat. Molly hoped it would be enough.
She reached the top of the stairs and waited for her brother to catch up. Kip was peering all around him, eyes wide, and she realized that he had never been in this part of the house before. “What’s that room there?” he whispered, pointing behind him at the green door, which was slightly ajar. “The one with the lock?”
“Just a broom closet.” Molly took his hand and pulled him farther down the passage.
Even with the moonlight and her lamp, it was still hard to see. She kept one hand along the wall to steady herself as she led Kip to the back hall, where the bedrooms were. Doors creaked and clattered as wind moved back and forth through the corridor. From every room, she could hear the voices of the Windsor family, each of them caught in his or her own nightmare.
Molly heard Penny inside her room. “Mummy! Mummy! Mummy!” the girl called out in the darkness.
Molly heard footsteps just ahead. She crouched behind a cabinet along the wall. Kip huddled beside her. A shadow darkened Alistair’s doorway, and the night man stepped into the hall. He still had the watering can, only now Molly could hear a light sloshing against the metal sides. He had been filling it. But with what?
The night man disappeared inside Master Windsor’s room. “Hold this,” Molly whispered, giving her lamp to Kip. She crouched low and crept toward the room. Kip stayed right behind her, matching her every step. The door was open, and as Molly approached, she could hear Master Windsor muttering and moaning in his sleep.
Molly peered into the room. Moonlight shone in through the window above Master Windsor’s bed. He was thrashing underneath his covers, eyes shut, skin wet with perspiration. “N-n-no!” he pleaded. “D-d-don’t hurt them!”
The night man stood over him, watching him toss and turn. He set down his watering can and reached a long hand into his cloak. He removed something gray and limp. A rag. The man pressed the rag against Bertrand’s face, gently mopping his brow, his neck, his hands. Molly watched, trying to understand what she was seeing.
The night man took the wet rag and held it over the open mouth of his watering can. He wrung the rag in his pale hands, and silver liquid trickled down, slowly filling the can. When the rag was dry, the man returned to Master Windsor and began again. He repeated this ritual over and over—each time filling his can a little bit more.
Molly tried swallowing, but her throat was too dry. She could feel Kip right beside her, his breath hot against her neck. She did not know what she was seeing, but she knew she did not want to see it. Even more, she did not want Kip to see it. She let go of the door frame and slowly inched backward—
Crisk. She heard a gentle crackling sound as her foot crushed a leaf.
All at once, everything stopped. The house grew silent. The wind ceased. Even the moonlight seemed to disappear. A wave of dread overtook Molly’s whole body as she felt something stir in the darkness. The night man stepped through the doorway, his features hidden in shadow.
He moved toward them.
“P-p-please, sir.” Molly backed away, bowing her head. “We’re sorry. We didn’t mean nothin’ …”
The man took another step toward them, into the light of Kip’s lamp. Molly saw his face, and her voice fell silent. The man’s beard was a tangle of black roots. His skin was as smooth as bone. His mouth was a crooked scar. His cheeks were hollow and long. And his eyes—
Molly stifled a shriek.
The man’s eyes were not eyes at all but two black pits burrowed deep into his skull. He tilted his head, pointing the pits straight at her, watching her with a look of cold curiosity.
Molly stumbled backward, pushing Kip toward the stairs. “Stay away from us!” She groped the top of the cabinet, feeling for something, anything, to ward him off. She took hold of a vase and threw it at his head.
The man, who had moved so slowly before, suddenly snapped to life. He snarled, and a gust of wind rattled down the corridor, knocking her hard against the floor.
“Molls! Get up!” She felt Kip at her arm, trying to pull her up.
She pushed him away. “Kip, run!” Molly rose to her feet, planting herself between her brother and the man. “I won’t let you hurt him,” she said, her voice trembling. “He ain’t done nothin’!”
The man’s mouth made the shape of a smile. He let go of his watering can, which fell to the floor with a heavy slosh. He reached a bony hand into his cloak and removed a fistful of dry leaves. Molly watched him crush the leaves into a fine dust and then raise his open hand to his lips.
He blew onto the dust, and it swirled through the air, all around her—
And then the world went dark.
ip was at the top of the stairs when his sister’s body fell. One moment she was standing in front of him; the next she was crumpled on the floor, facedown, not moving.
“Molly!” Kip dropped the lamp and scrambled to her side. He shook her body. “Molls, get up!” His voice sounded faint in his ears, and his stomach was churning. “We have to run!” He turned her over, and her head lolled to one side like a dead weight. He could see specks of leaves stuck to her hair and face. Her eyes were closed, and she looked very pale.
The night man took a step closer, a poisonous grin on his face.
“Molls, you gotta hear me!” Kip shouted, pulling her away from the man. He saw the green closet door was open—if he could just get her inside.
Molly took a sharp breath and clutched his coat. “N-n-no!” she moaned, throwing her head back. “You canna leave us! You canna …” She was not talking to Kip but to someone in a dream.
Kip could see her eyes rolling beneath closed lids. Already, tiny beads of
The night man raised a hand, and a gust of wind struck Kip, knocking him back from Molly’s body. Kip tumbled down the stairs, legs over arms, slamming his shoulders and face against the hard wooden steps. His hand caught hold of the banister rail and stopped his fall. He pulled himself to his knees, wincing. He thought he could taste blood in his mouth. He reached out for Courage but could not find it. His crutch lay at the bottom of the stairs—hopelessly out of reach.
Kip heard Molly moan. He looked up to see the night man kneeling beside her, his back to Kip, the watering can at his side. “You stay away from her!” he screamed.
The man did not even look up. He removed the rag from his cloak and pressed it to Molly’s forehead. Kip knew he could not help Molly—his only chance would be to draw the night man away from her. He searched around him for some sort of weapon. The only thing nearby was his lamp, which he had dropped when Molly fell. He grabbed hold of it and threw it at the man, as hard as he could—
Pwhoof!
A blinding burst of light hit Kip’s eyes as flames erupted in the darkness. The night man roared as fire swept over his cloak. His arms swirled and thrashed, trying to snuff out the flames. The man staggered to the top of the stairs. He snarled at Kip, his face contorted with rage.
“I said, Stay away from her!” Kip let go of the banister and half ran, half slid down the steps. He hit the foyer floor with a hard crash. He could hear the night man descending the stairs behind him. The whole house shook with the force of his gales. Kip grabbed hold of his crutch and staggered out the open front door. He hobbled across the moonlit lawn, his bare feet sliding on the wet grass. He did not know where he was going; he only knew he had to get the man away from the house, away from Molly. The cloth was still around the end of his crutch, and he tripped several times. Somewhere in the darkness behind him, he could hear the night man stalking the lawn—searching for him.
An angry howl split the air and knocked Kip flat. Apparently the man had spotted him. Kip pulled himself up. He covered his face and staggered toward the woods.
The forest shook and shuddered as wind sliced through branches and bushes. Kip stumbled blindly over the rough ground, shielding his face with one arm. Branches clawed at his clothes and hair. He could hear the night man behind him, getting closer and closer …
Kip kept going as fast as he could until he thought his heart would explode. He fell to the ground, trying and failing to catch his breath. Every part of him ached. He looked up and saw that he was at the very edge of the grounds. He could hear the river flowing in the darkness. The ancient garden—whose pale flowers bloomed only at night—shone around him. The wind had stopped. Everything around him was still.
A sudden coldness crept over Kip, like a shadow sliding across his body. He turned around to see the night man standing behind him. The man didn’t look winded or angry. He was just a fact of the surroundings, like the moon and the soil and the trees. Smoke wafted gently from the edges of his cloak and hat. Kip saw that his hands and face were unmarked. The flames had slowed him down—but nothing more.
Kip knew what would happen next. The night man would use his crushed-up leaves to put him to sleep—just like he had done to Molly and the Windsors. And then he would kneel down and fill his watering can with … what? Sweat? Tears? No, something deeper. He would somehow steal the very quick of Kip’s being. All to feed the tree.
The man sprang toward him, hands outstretched. But before he could reach Kip, his body snapped backward, as if restrained by some invisible tether. The night man snarled, pacing at the edge of the flowers, his terrible, nothing eyes burning with fury.
Kip scrambled back, dragging himself deeper into the garden, where the man, for some reason, could not follow. A sharp gust of wind shook the forest, and then everything was silent.
Kip slowly turned around, blinking into the moonlight. He pulled himself to his feet, staring at the glowing forest floor. The woods were calm. Not a leaf stirred. The night man was gone.
Kip’s eyes fell on something dark sitting at the edge of the garden, something the man had left behind. He hobbled toward it and knelt down to study the object. He picked it up in his trembling hands. It was small and thin and woven from roots and twigs—
It was a gift.
olly awoke the following morning to find herself in her bedroom, warm sunlight shining in through the window. She was under the covers but still dressed. Her memories of the night before were cobwebby and incomplete. She recalled following the night man into the house but not much after that. She ran a hand through her hair, which was twined with bits of broken leaves. Why couldn’t she remember?
She washed and dressed and went upstairs to prepare breakfast, resolving to find Kip the first moment she could. Master Windsor was waiting for her in the kitchen, a small bag in his hands. “Th-th-this is for the market,” he said, not even looking her in the eye. “I’m sorry it’s not more.”
Molly took the bag of coins. She could tell without opening it that it would barely cover food for the week. “You’re providin’ for your family, sir,” she said firmly. “That’s never somethin’ to be ashamed of.”
The man gave a weak smile. “I pray you’re right,” he replied.
Molly felt certain she knew where the money had come from. It alarmed her to think that the tree’s provisions had lately become so paltry. Still, some money was better than none, and she set out for the village with Kip shortly after breakfast. Molly had asked her brother along because he was better with the horse and because she hoped they might be able to talk about what they had seen in the house the night before.
Kip, however, seemed to be in a more pensive mood and spoke very little as they rattled up the valley roads. After an hour of sparse conversation, they pulled onto the main road that ran through what counted as a “village” in Cellar Hollow. It was a small cluster of cramped buildings with thatch-roofed houses and white plaster walls. Smoke trailed up from one or two chimneys, filling the air with a pleasant fragrance that mingled with hot food from the rows of stalls and carts that lined either side of the road.
The good weather seemed to have drawn people from their farms, and the market was uncharacteristically busy that morning. People flowed between the buildings like a shambling brook. Kip parked the wagon alongside some other horses, and Molly climbed down with her basket and bag of coins.
While Molly did not begrudge Bertrand’s limited funds, it did make her task more difficult. The villagers knew that Molly worked for Master Windsor, whom they knew to be a wealthy man. Because of this, they seemed unwilling to haggle or bargain, and some of them even quoted higher prices to Molly as she wandered between the stalls. At the rate things were going, she would be lucky to buy enough to make soup, let alone meat.
Molly picked her way through the bustle, brushing against shoulders and pushcarts and locals. She saw a few girls her age who looked to be selling milk and needlepoint pictures. Stray livestock and the occasional small child skittered under her heels. Molly closed her eyes, savoring the smells and sounds. She found it comforting to be close to so many other people, to so much life.
Kip, for his part, did not seem to be enjoying the errand. He hobbled alongside her, eyes fixed on the ground. “You’re gonna have to talk sometime,” Molly said.
He nodded. “I know. I’m just findin’ the words.” Slowly, haltingly, he told her what had happened after her collapse. He told her how he had drawn the night man away from her body. How the man had chased him all the way to the moonlit garden at the edge of the sourwoods. And how, when Kip was utterly trapped, the night man had inexplicably disappeared.
“I keep askin’ myself why he didn’t hurt me,” Kip said, staring into the crowd. “He wanted to, I could tell. But when he came at me, somethin’ stopped him cold in his tracks. Like he couldn’t go no farther.” He sighed. ?
“We’re well past makin’ sense,” Molly said, feigning interest in some onions she couldn’t afford. For some reason, Kip had been spared by the night man. She was grateful, but she hated the way it placed a rift between them. She peered into a barrel, looking for rotting vegetables she might be able to salvage with a paring knife. “What’d you do after he let you go?”
Kip dipped his fingers into a bin of dried beans. “I came back to the house to help you. But when I got there, it was like none of it’d happened. There was no wind, no leaves—just a few muddy tracks and a broken vase. You were gone, too.” He looked up at her, and Molly realized for the first time just how frightened he must have been. “I searched the whole house before I found you, safe in your room, sleepin’ soundly under the covers.”
Molly shuddered. “Well, not too soundly.” Even as she said this, she could feel her parents floating up to the surface. She could hear them screaming over the storm. She could taste the salt water. Lately the only way she seemed to be able to keep the dream at bay was to read the letters—over and over again.
Kip cocked his head to one side. “You never told me what your nightmares was about.”
Molly gestured to the people around them. “This isn’t really the place for it …”
Kip took her arm and pulled her away from the stalls, into the mouth of a quiet alley. “Maybe it’s important,” he said. “Maybe the dreams are a clue of some kind.”
Molly clicked her tongue. “If you must know, my dreams are about mountains of dirty laundry and endless hallways to scrub and chamber pots as big as lakes.” She smiled. “Find a clue in that, if you’d like.”