Chapter 2

“We meet fear. We greet the unexpected visitor and listen to what he has to tell us. When fear arrives, something is about to happen.”

—Leigh Bardugo, Crooked Kingdom

Of course when it happened, Bradley, was
not prepared for it. None of us would be. But Bradley Peterson had, throughout his life, avoided even slightly disturbing events, always carefully sidling along the periphery of his existence. But still, it happened.

On a Saturday morning following the thunderstorm, after breakfast, after reading the morning paper, after shaving and showering—for even though it was a weekend, he felt more comfortable sticking to his routine—Bradley went outside to begin his yard work.

The ground was still soaked from the storm. He slogged out to the shed to get his pruning shears, garden gloves, a shovel, and a lawn-and-leaf bag. The last two items he picked up in the event an animal had, as he feared, died in the flower bed, the reason for the strange whimpering noise coming from outside late the prior night. He walked to the far side of the house and made his way down the stone path. So far so good: his nose hadn’t picked up any malodorous scent. Then he saw it. The thing that occupied the spot where the beautiful rhododendron had once lived.

“What the hell is that?” he wondered.

It looked like a large cabbage, or one of those ornamental cabbage-like plants with large, frilly, deep-green-and-purple leaves and a bumpy, cream-colored, cabbage-like center. Bradley considered plants like these ugly and had never understood why people used them in flowerbeds or along sidewalks. This one was huge. Monstrous, even.

His first thought, that Calley had planted it, he quickly dismissed. He had never known her to weed, prune, or plant anything.

Bradley stared and then circled the plant. All that work, he thought, removing the rhododendron, to have it replaced by this ugly, this hideous. . .what?

And then the plant moved.

It rustled really, as if shaking itself awake.

And then it spoke. Not a lot. Just one word.

“Bradley.”

Bradley stopped moving and held his breath. Again, he heard it.

“Hey! Bradley!”

Bradley did not answer.

Instead, he dropped his tools and walked briskly into the house, not bothering to remove his muddy garden clogs. He locked the door behind him and leaned against it, trying to catch his breath, trying to be rational in this irrational situation. Logic had always served him well. It was not always kind, but it was dependable. He could not find the logic now, but he still had confidence that it must be there. He just needed a moment to think this through. Clearly, he had made a mistake.

“Think of some options.” he ordered himself.

“Okay,” he complied. “Let’s see. There might have been a gust of wind, or an injured animal under the plant, or. . .something. Yes, that’s it. Something.”

Bradley halfheartedly laughed at himself and unlocked the door. He walked back to the plant, taking the long way around the house, working to regulate his breathing as he went. He approached it, then got down on his knees and stared. Nothing. No movement, no sound. Just the motionless behemoth.

Good, he thought.

Then he extended his hand towards it, aiming to lift one of the large leaves to check if there was an animal beneath it. His hand poised above it for a mome