The Night Gardener by Jonathan Auxier
olly jolted awake in the middle of the night. Her hands were shaking and she was cold with sweat. She swallowed her dry throat, calming herself. She had been having a bad dream, that was all. It was not a new dream; it was the same one she had been having every night since coming to the house. Her mother and father holding her, letting her down into the churning water; Molly screaming for them as they disappeared in the darkness. But every night, the dream got a little worse. Tonight, the swells were as steep as valleys, the lightning was black and gnarled like roots, and her parents’ faces were pale and ghastly.
Molly sat up, letting her eyes adjust to the moonlight. Kip tossed beside her, caught, it seemed, in a bad dream of his own. He let out a frail whimper, recoiling from some unseen horror. Molly thought of waking him, but she knew that bad rest was better than none at all. “Brave now, love,” she whispered to him, brushing the hair from his damp brow.
Molly heard a creaking sound and saw that her bedroom door had somehow come open in the night. She peeled back the covers and tiptoed across the cold floor. She gently shut the door and leaned back against it—steadying herself against the dark waves still churning inside her. She tucked a loose curl behind one ear. Her fingers found something dry caught in the tangles of her hair—
It was a dead leaf.
Molly held it up against the window, letting the moonlight shine through its brittle skin. Tiny twisted veins branched out from the center stem—a tree inside a tree. Molly noticed other leaves in her room, scattered across the floor. Blown in through the open door, perhaps?
She was about to return to bed when she felt something at her feet. This was not a leaf. It was wet and cold. Mud, she thought. She knelt down, looking at the mark. It was a heavy footprint, similar to the ones Molly had cleaned from the stairs earlier that day. She could tell at once that this print was too large to belong to her brother. She looked across the stone floor and saw more tracks. They went right to the side of her bed. Molly stood, a shiver passing through her body.
Someone else had been inside her room!
At that very moment, a prickling sensation filled her ears. She remained still, listening to the silent house. Somewhere above her she could hear a heavy sound—
THUMP!
THUMP!
THUMP!
Footsteps.
Hearing this sound, Molly wanted nothing more than to bury her head under the covers and plug her ears. But her parents had raised her differently: Ma and Da believed that if you suspected a monster was hiding under your bed, you should get down on your hands and knees and find out for certain. And if you were lucky enough to discover one down there—fangs dripping, eyes glowing red—you should be quick to offer him a blanket and a bowl of warm milk so he wouldn’t catch a chill. It was with this difference in mind that Molly put on a shawl and went upstairs in pursuit of the phantom footstepper.
The first thing she noticed was the wind in the halls. Large houses were often drafty, but this was something different altogether—more like a quiet storm. Molly thought she had latched all the doors and windows before bed, but perhaps she had forgotten. She held her hand over the lamp glass to protect its flame and continued up the narrow service stairs.
When she reached the main floor, Molly found the front door wide open, creaking back and forth in the wind. Dry leaves danced all around her. More swirled across the floorboards. She could see wet footprints glistening in the silver moonlight. “H-h-hullo?” she called into the shadows.
The shadows did not answer.
Molly cleared her throat to call again, but her words were cut off by the sound of more footsteps—
THUMP!
THUMP!
THUMP!
They were coming from upstairs.
Molly left the door as it was. She could not help but think of her brother’s story from earlier in the week about the man in the fog. Perhaps Kip really had seen someone. Perhaps it was a prowler, come to rob the Windsors. Molly wondered whether her lamp might draw attention. She set it on the sideboard and picked up the heaviest candlestick she could find, just to be safe.
She crept up the staircase, weapon clenched in both hands. Gusts of wind swept past her, pulling at her nightgown and hair. She reached the top of the stairs and heard a faint creaking sound. The little green door was open again, moving slightly in the wind. Molly felt a prickle of excitement. She walked toward the door, but then another sound stopped her—
Somewhere in the back of the house, she could hear voices.
Molly left the green door and went to investigate. She rounded the upstairs hall to find all the bedroom doors open, and from inside each room she could hear the family members tossing and moaning in their sleep—a gallery of bad dreams.
Mistress Windsor’s bedroom was at the end of the hall. Molly could hear the woman murmuring, caught in her own nightmare. She could hear the footsteps again—heavy and slow. Through the crack around the door, she saw a tall shadow move inside, a shadow the size of a man. “Master Windsor, is that you?” she said as bravely as she could.
The footsteps stopped.
The wind stopped.
Her heart stopped.
Molly wiped the perspiration from her palm and adjusted her grip on the candlestick. She took a deep breath and inched toward the door. A howl split the darkness, and she felt a great burst of wind. The gust knocked her to the floor and swept along the upstairs hall. She covered her face as dry leaves skittered over her like bats from a cavern.
She heard a loud slam behind her, and the next moment, everything was still and dark. Molly climbed to her feet, trembling with fright. She felt her way along the wall until she reached the main stairs. She could hear no footsteps. The wind and leaves were all gone. The bedrooms were silent, and the front door was safely shut. The house was completely still. By the time she reached the bottom of the stairs, it almost seemed as if she had dreamed the whole thing.
Molly was about to turn into the service hall when a shadow caught her eye. There, lying in the middle of the floor, was something that hadn’t been there before. It was an old top hat, tipped on its side. Molly remembered Kip’s words. “A tall black hat,” he had said. Molly knelt down and picked it up. It was as real as anything she’d ever touched, its brim damp with mildew and age. She slowly turned the hat over in her hand—dead leaves spilled from the crown, forming a pile at her feet.
Molly stared at the silent house, which only moments before had been filled with these leaves. It wasn’t a dream. Kip, Penny—they had both been telling the truth.
The night man was real.
he morning after Master Windsor’s arrival, Kip sat on the bridge, repairing a rotting plank. Molly had come out to visit and to tell him something of what had happened to her the night before. “And you’re sure you wasn’t dreamin’?” he said. “Sometimes folks have dreams where they think they wake up, but really, they’re still inside the dream.”
“It wasn’t no dream,” Molly answered. She tossed the contents of a porcelain chamber pot over the edge of the bridge into the river below. There were three more pots sitting in Galileo’s cart, all of them full to the brim with urine and night soil. Kip wrinkled his nose. The smell was enough to make a person wish for rotting fish again. “I didn’t see him, exactly,” she clarified. “But I heard him plain enough.”
Kip’s bad leg dangled carelessly over the edge of the bridge, braving the river below. He stared at the churning current, his own mind churning at the thought of a stranger being inside their room. “Ears are trickier’n eyes,” he said. “It coulda been anythin’ that made them sounds.”
“Maybe this’ll change your mind.” She went to the cart and returned with an old black top hat. “That’s his hat. He musta dropped it at the door.”
She held the hat out for Kip, but he did not touch it. He looked up at his sister, wondering whether this might be a trick. Molly sometimes teased him like that—bringing him a dragonfly wing and saying it came off a fairy, or plac
“Wind don’t leave footprints,” she said.
Kip gave a noncommittal nod. He had noticed some dry mud smeared across the floor when he had gotten up early in the morning to return to the stables. But it was hardly what he would have called a footprint. “What makes you so sure it ain’t the master’s old hat?”
Molly shook her head. “I checked. All his hats got round tops, and they’re bigger in the crown.” She knelt beside him, looking him sharp in the eye. “Kip, remember when you said you saw that man in the fog?” Kip nodded. At the time, his sister hadn’t believed him. It seemed that she had changed her mind. “You told me he was all in black. I need to know: Was he wearin’ a hat like this?”
Kip picked up the hat and ran his fingers along the brim. It was ragged and torn and smelled like it had been buried underground for a long time. “Can’t say for certain.” He gave it back to her. “It was pretty dark.” It was, in fact, the exact same kind of hat Kip had seen, but he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to admit it. A part of him felt as if saying the words aloud would somehow make them true. He looked up at her. “If there really was a man, what do you think he was after?”
Molly shrugged. “I dunno. Money or jewels maybe? Only …” She hesitated. “There was somethin’ else. When I went upstairs, all the bedroom doors was open, and I could hear the family inside their rooms. They was all tossin’ about, caught in these terrible dreams.” She looked straight at him. “I heard you, too.”
Kip steadied a nail between his fingers and hammered it down into the new plank. He had in fact spent the entire night trapped inside a nightmare that refused to end. Usually in Kip’s dreams he was a hero—saving people from rushing rivers and burning houses. But since coming to Windsor Manor, his dreams had been different. “I was dreamin’ that some gang of older boys was kickin’ a lost dog,” he said. “I pushed ’em away, to save the dog, but when I came close, the dog attacked me—chomped down, right on my left leg.” He glanced at his bad leg, hanging like a dead weight over the water. “The dog wouldn’t let go. I screamed for help, but the boys around me just laughed and jeered, cheerin’ as it bit my whole limb clean off.” Even now, he could still hear their taunting voices, and it made him shiver.
He hammered down another nail, accidentally bending it. “What about you?” he said, pulling the nail out and starting over. “Did you have bad dreams?”
Molly’s eyes were on the river rushing below them. “Aye,” she said.
He watched her face, searching for clues. “About what?”
“About nothin’.” She said this in a way that let him know he should stop prying.
Kip looked past her to the house. There were so many things about this place that didn’t add up—none of them good: the silent forest, the pale faces, the mysterious prowler, that giant tree out front. If there really was somebody walking the halls at night, maybe he would be better off sleeping in the stables like the mistress wanted.
He took his crutch and pulled himself to his feet. “I know you’re doin’ your best to take care of us, Molls. But if there really is danger, shouldn’t we leave?”
“And go where? Back to town? We were homeless and halfway to starved.”
Kip looked at her and knew she was right. “Ma an’ Da would know what to do,” he said, collecting his tools. “I wish they was here.”
His sister tensed her jaw, still staring at the water. “Well, they’re not. And it’s no use wishin’ otherwise.”
“You think I dinna know that?” He picked up his toolbox and hobbled toward the wagon. He knew it hadn’t been fair to bring up their parents that way. Molly wanted to see them again just as much as he did. But they were gone for now, and there was nothing either of them could do about it. “Forget I said anythin’.”
“Don’t be sore,” Molly called out behind him.
“I ain’t sore,” he said, hefting his tools into the wagon bed.
He felt her hand on his shoulder. “You’re right to miss ’em, Kip.” Ma an’ Da aren’t here to tell us what to do … but maybe … maybe we could ask ’em?”
Kip turned around. He could tell from her face that she was being serious.
“Ask ’em how?” he said.
Molly looked down at the hat, which was still in her hands. She screwed up her mouth as if she didn’t want to say what she was about to say. “We could write ’em a message.” She smiled weakly. “Well, I’ll write it—your letters ain’t so good.”
Kip steadied himself against the back of the wagon. Again he had that feeling inside like he was being tricked. “But they’re at sea. And we dinna even know where.”
Molly shrugged. “We can send it to the navy postmaster. He’d be able to deliver it easy enough. Or we could put it in a bottle and toss it out in the river like that Robinson Crusoe fellow I told you about.” She moved toward him, taking his hands in hers. “Think of it, Kip. We could tell ’em everything in our hearts. We could tell ’em how we miss ’em.”
Kip did think of it, and just doing so made him feel less alone. A letter was not the same as being with them, of course, but it was something. “And that way they’d know where to look for us when they reach land,” he said.
Molly beamed. “Exactly!”
Molly’s smiles always had a way of catching, and before Kip knew it, he was smiling, too. “I’ve got just the thing to help.” He fished through his trousers pocket and removed a folded sheet of paper. It was an advert with a picture of a metal leg brace some doctor had invented. “We can use this paper I found in town. There’s words all on one side, but the back is plain enough.” He shrugged. “I’d been savin’ it to teach myself letters, but maybe this’d be a better use.”
Molly took the sheet from him and read it. “Kip, this …” She looked up at him, her eyes full of something he couldn’t quite understand. “This’ll never do for a letter.” Before Kip could react, she tore the paper in two and tossed it over the edge of the bridge. “I tell you what: meet me at the stables at sundown. I’ll bring us somethin’ hot to eat, and we’ll do it proper.”
Kip nodded, and Molly seized him in an enormous hug. “Get your chamber-pot hands off me!” he said, squirming.
Molly kissed him on the cheek and sprinted back to the house. Kip took Galileo’s bit and limped toward the stables, his heart swelling. They were going to talk to Ma and Da. And everything was going to be all right.
undown couldn’t come quickly enough for Kip. He spent the rest of the afternoon pulling weeds in the garden and imagining what he might say to his parents in the letter. He was so absorbed in his thoughts that he hardly noticed his work, and when he finally stood up, he was surprised to discover that he had completely weeded half the beds. He used Galileo’s cart to haul the weeds to the edge of the property, where they made a pile nearly as tall as himself. The stems were still wick, and so Kip had to bait the fire with a bit of lamp oil. The pile burned wet and smoky in the damp spring air, and the smell reminded Kip of peat fires back home. He imagined his parents somewhere on the other side of the world, making a fire of their own. (He wasn’t certain that ships had fireplaces aboard, but he figured the crew needed some way to keep warm.) Kip stood over the blaze, petting Galileo’s side, watching until the last bit had burned away, leaving only a black patch on the ground.
When Kip reached the stables, he found them empty. “Molls?” he called.
“Up here!” sounded a voice from above. He hobbled back outside to find his sister sitting atop the roof, legs dangling over the edge. She waved down at him. “There’s no better place for writing than a rooftop—the fresh air makes your words come out like songs.”
Kip hopped around to the back wall where the gutter connected to an old rain barre
“Tell me this isn’t better,” Molly said.
Kip had to agree. From up here, he felt like king of the forest. He stared out over the glowing treetops and then looked to his sister, lit golden against the red sky. He smiled. She always knew just the right thing to do to make him feel better.
Molly untied a cloth bag she had brought up with her. “I know you’ve already had supper, but I thought you could do with a snack.” Inside were warm biscuits with butter. She had also snuck a half jug of fresh cream, which was Kip’s favorite.
“Careful you dinna drown yourself,” she said as he drained the cream in just two breaths. Kip set the jug down and started on the biscuits. “I brought you more than just food—look what I found in the study.” She pulled a polished wooden box from the cloth. “It’s a stationery desk—for writin’ letters,” she said before he could ask.
Kip wiped the cream and crumbs from his face and opened the lid of the box. Inside he found a stack of ivory paper. He picked up the topmost sheet. It was thicker than normal paper and had a rough surface. “It feels expensive.” He resisted the urge to put the paper against his cheek.
“I think it belonged to Master Windsor’s father,” Molly said. “I saw it last week when I was cleanin’ the bureau. Mistress Windsor says nobody hardly goes in there, so I figure they won’t miss it.”
Kip put the paper down. “You took this without asking?”
She shrugged. “If the Windsors object, they can dock it from our pay.”
Kip knew that they were not being paid, and so he took his sister’s words to mean that they were somehow allowed to take things—but of course they weren’t. Kip looked at the paper. He imagined how impressed Ma and Da would be to see a letter so fine. And surely one sheet wouldn’t be missed, would it? “Maybe we could figure out some other ways to pay ’em back for what we take,” he said.