A Bad Stink

The old witch must have died in her garden. The smell of pungent decay was snaking out from behind her house and resting bodily in the southern heat. The humidity did nothing to attenuate the issue. The stench had come suddenly at dawn and reached everybody in town simultaneously. Nobody was enthusiastic about the prospect of collecting the corpse. Outsiders deemed the townsfolk superstitious. The townsfolk deemed themselves sensibly cautious. They traipsed around the issue for hours until the stench got so bad, the men putting up the telegraph poles refused to go on working. 

Behind the grates of the lone cell in the Sheriff’s office sat a man, licking his mustache. He did this deliberately and hopelessly like one might do when sealing an envelope containing their broken heart. The steel bars were cool and cumbersome in his flimsy grip. He let his hands go slack at his sides. Chinked out of the concrete wall there was a grated aperture that was supposed to be a window. It was set just above his eye-level so that he had to get on his toes to see through it. Outside, a bird sat on a crumbling well, just distinguishable through the suffocating mist. As soon as he looked at it, the bird twitched and vanished into oblivion. The mist was mousing its way into his cell. 

His once-bristly mustache had wilted into a caterpillar by the time the Sheriff returned. “There’s something you’ve gotta tend to before you’re shipped off to the pen,” the Sheriff buzzed, “Somebody’s died. You're gonna bury the corpse.”

“I didn’t realize I took up an apprenticeship with the undertaker,” the man retorted.

“Shut up Dalton. You know more’n your share ‘bout death, I might remind you.” 

“And don’t you forget it, old man. That bastard was asking for it. Now tell me why you want me to get my hands dirty.”

“Well it’s that old hag that’s died, way out in the swamp.”

“ ‘Course she did. Think I haven’t been smelling that rot all morning? That ain’t what a man ‘posed to smell before he’s executed. Ain’t a chance in hell I’m doing it. You can’t force a man to lose his soul to that rotten bitch before- before he-”

“They gone commute your sentence, boy. If you do it.”

“You saying I won’t fry?”

“That’s the deal been struck up.”

“By who?”

“City council. Ran it by the state too. All hunky dory.”

“Sounds like quite an imaginative deal. Mind if I get it in writing?”

“You sure are a crafty bastard.”

“A self preser-vating one.”

“Well, wasn’t time to draft anything up, but I assure you we’ll have something written by the time you get back.”

The witch’s old manor was sunk into a saturated hill guarded by beards of Spanish moss and mire. Down the bog from the house was the old cemetery where the inscription on every gravestone terminated in 1893. Another town had once thrived on the other side of the swamp until this marked year. This was the year everybody in that town had perished to some nebulous disease. This was the year their corpses were dragged out to the swamp for burial, one by one, to prevent contagion. This went on until everyone had dropped dead. The only woman from that town that lived to see the next year had settled down in that manor on the hill and had been plotting for decades. What she was plotting, no one knew, but she was plotting something. Everybody in the neighboring town knew she was culpable for the plague. She took everybody out in order to eke out her wretched existence peacefully in her contrived swamp-palace, growing mutant botany in her garden. Lord knows what sort of sorcery she invoked to bring forth their decline. Worse, she was proving to be just as odious in death as in life.

The algae aggregating on the swamp-water’s surface was sheared by beating paddles. Men with guns were gliding across the stagnant water. One of these men seemed to have swapped his gun for chains, and his uniform for tattered pajamas. Alligators pooled by the banks, watching the scene unfold with skepticism. 

Unchained, Dalton was prodded off a boat and onto not-so-dry land. The disintegrating palace, dressed in foliage, loomed overhead. Its whitewash was anything but; mainly yellow. The window panes were opaque with dust. The entire crumbling edifice was being consumed by the frenzied garden in the backyard. It seemed clear that the smell was coming from back there. It was impossible, though, to enter or even see through the thick sinewy vines that encompassed the backyard. He had to enter through the front. 

Tetanus in mind, Dalton made sure his hand was unscathed before jingling the rusted doorknob. It opened without so much as a creak. He froze with his jaw hanging - not from instant lockjaw, but rather due to the sight of the interior; it was immaculate. Its waxed floors reflected yellow coruscation from the lamps lining the walls. There was not a speck of dust on the antiques. The glass cover shielding the china cabinet wasn’t blemished by so much as a thumbprint. But the stink was worse than ever. He could have been sharing a coffin with a months-dead gorilla drenched in spoiled milk. 

The paintings hanging in the living room all decided upon flowers for their subject matter. The pillows on the sofa were neatly fluffed and he guessed that even the piano nestled in the corner was perfectly in tune, though he dared not touch it. A gleam of light suddenly swiped his eye. It came from a photograph hanging by the stairwell. Pictured were three rows of suited men with a lone woman hiding among their ranks. She was wearing a bashful smile. The entire group was wedged between two budding trees, the scene well lit by a beaming sun. A caption at their feet read “Graduation.” A date was scrawled beside it, though this was muddled to obscurity. 

Then he heard the creaks. They were almost imperceptible, whispering to him from the second story. He suddenly remembered the ubiquitous stench of pure rot and propelled himself away from the stairs and straight toward the backdoor. He braced and burst it open. 

His nostrils were plugged with melted rats but there was no corpse in sight outside. There was only a chaos of green and in the center of it all, a goliath flower of deep crimson. It was inundated with flies. He got the impression that somehow this was his culprit. Amazed, he stretched his arm to it when he heard a door click gently shut behind him. He turned. An ancient lady was scrutinizing him from two pearls hidden deep within the grottos of her eye sockets. Her puckered mouth smoothed itself into a smile. 

“Hello Gabriel. Come to see Eleanor?”, she squawked. 

“Pardon me?”, came the petrified response.

“Oh isn’t it beautiful, the monstrosity?” 

“I’m sorry?”

“The titan. Titan arum, isn’t it?”

“What is?”

“Say, what sort of a lousy botanist are you anyway? The daggum Titan arum you were just gawking at. That’s the daggum stink plant you and your wife sowed in my garden ages ago.”

“My wife?” 

“Oh, I’m sorry. Your fiance.”

“My fiance?”

“Oh, you’re such a kidder, teasing an old lady like me. It’s a shame Eleanor’s gone out. It was her daggum idea to plant it, now it’s blooming and she’s gone out. Bet she’s glad she don’t have to smell the damn thing, at least.” 

“Uh-huh.”

“Gee, when did you get so talkative? Well come inside, Gabriel, the smell is just unbearable. Oh but it is so beautiful, isn’t it?”, she said, pointing at the plant.

“Unbelievably so”, he rumbled.

Once inside the house, the old lady hurried into the kitchen to prepare some tea and biscuits. Dalton was instructed to make himself at home, so he began snooping the instant she was out of sight. He scanned the cabinets, drawers, until his shrewd eye landed on an oblong vase resting on the mantel. It was cool and heavy in his hands and whispered with powder when he carefully shook it. He turned it until he came upon an inscription, one that had been facing the wall before he had inspected it. Eleanor Crosby, April 13th, 1894- September 8, 1931. He replaced the urn, careful to conserve its position, and went to close the drawers. A letter caught his eye. “It is my professional opinion that your mother’s dementia should be ameliorated-” he heard her coming. Shutting the drawer, he rushed to his seat on the sofa.  Shortly after, the old lady came bustling out of the kitchen, refreshments in hand. 

He mulled over his cup of tea for a moment, then spoke,

“I’m sorry to bring this up, but are you from that town that had that sickness come through?”

“Don’t be sorry. Yes, I was.”

“Did you have to bury all those people?”

“Oh no. My husband, Nicky, was out there burying most everybody, till there wasn’t a soul left to bury. Then he died. He was the only one I had to bury.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“I’m sorry it happened, but that was all so long ago.”

“And you were the only one that did survive the plague?”

“Oh, I wasn’t the only one, dummy. I was already pregnant with Eleanor. Nicky would have loved her. Nicky loved plants too, so when she went to study them, I was just thrilled.”

He thought for a while longer, then asked in a broken voice if she had anybody to care for her.

“Eleanor’s always around, Gabriel, you know that. Though after the wedding, I suppose you’ll whisk her away. I’ll need to hire some help then.” 

He gazed out the window and thought some more before declaring, “No. I’ll stay here and look after you. You oughta be accounted for.”

“Oh Gabriel, you’re too sweet.”

“I mean it. There’s just one thing.”

“Oh?”

“I have a friend named Dalton. He ran off to California not too long ago. Now, there’s some fellers in town, think he’s missing. I been tellin’ ‘em he’s left town but they just won’t believe me. They’re down by the swamp right now looking for him, matter of fact. Perhaps you might go outside and tell ‘em, real simple, ‘Dalton’s gone, y’all go home now.” Say it just like that. Straighten things out. I’m sure it’ll send ‘em packin’.”