The Vendeleer Brothers Book 4: The Plagued Forest
Chapter 11: The Garden

Ian could hear the bullets impacted the surface of the water, but he was far away from them by now. Whatever had him by the ankle was pulling him with tremendous speed and force, way deeper than was supposed to be possible.

There is no way the mall is actually this deep… he found himself thinking. The light at the surface quickly disappeared as he went deeper and deeper. However, before he really had a chance to process what was going on, he felt himself… falling… out of the water. He fell in an empty space, finding himself in a large, cavernous room lit with blue crystals. He splashed into a pool of water and resurfaced, coughing and sputtering.

Feeling very confused and disoriented, he dragged himself to the side and then lay there panting and looking up at the stone ceiling above him. Brian did the same, and the two of them lay there, unsure of what had just happened. Ian sat up and looked around.

The cavern they were in was not swampy and grimy like everything else they had come across in the town. In fact, the pool of water they had just fallen into was completely crystal clear. Ian stood up and then held a hand out to Brian to help him up.

“What the heck just happened?” Brian asked. “Where are we?”

In response, Ian raised a brow.

“Is that a hypothetical question? Or do you actually expect me to know?”

Brian shrugged.

Slowly, the two of them started to walk around. On one side of the room, there was a waterfall that streamed into the pool through a cobblestoned canal with floating flowers on the water. Above the pool, was a thin sheet of water just floating there. Ian thought about how impossible it was, but then reminded himself that he had also fought a dragon before, which was pretty impossible.

“Did you… ever heard about anything like this during your… ghost show phase?” Ian asked. “Or online or anything?”

Brian shook his head, examining one of the glowing blue crystals in the rocky wall. He reached out to touch one, and as soon as he did, it turned green. Brian jumped back and threw his hands up into the air as several others started to turn green.

“Why the heck would you touch a strange glowing crystal?!” Ian yelled as something rumbled from behind the walls.

“I don’t know!!”

The two men held their breaths, waiting to see what would happen. The waterfall suddenly split in half, and light descended into the cavern as the stone parted like a giant door with steps leading up into greenery. Brian and Ian looked at each other, and then slowly started to make their way up the stairs. When they got to the top, they were both blinded by the light for a second, and then they looked around in wonder.

They were both standing in a large garden with plants they had never even seen before. It looked a little bit wild, like the gardner hadn’t been there in a while, but it was still evident that a lot of work had gone into everything.

“Does someone live here?” Brian asked, bending over to touch a large white and pink flower bigger than his face. Ian made his way across a few stepping stones with grass peeking their way out from under them towards a fountain with more clear water. He tilted his head, looking at a strange engraving on the base of the fountain. There was a circle with strange pictures surrounding some hieroglyphics and other strange writings in a language that looked completely foreign to him. It looked like something straight out of one of those fantasy novels he sometimes liked to read.

“Hey Brian-look at this.” he said, kneeling on the edge of the fountain to get a closer look. “Have you seen anything like this?”

Brian came over and squinted at the strange symbols.

“Nope. I don’t even know what language that is. Do you?”

“No.”

“Huh… I wonder what it means…”

The two of them stared at it for a little while longer. There seemed to be specifically five pictures around the circle with hieroglyphics in between them. They all seemed to be relatively humanoid, except for one, which looked more like a dog.

“This is all way weird.” Brian mentioned, straightening up and looking around. “I mean-it feels like the vines brought us here, you know?”

Ian’s eyebrows furrowed forward in thought.

“Yeah… It is weird. Especially since this garden looks like it has been so well kept.”

“You don’t think… you don’t think that… swamp monster lives here do you?” Brian asked. “Cause… that would mean…”

“That it’s a lot smarter than we thought.” Ian finished for him. “And if that’s the case, do you think that there’s a possibility we could reason with it?”

Brian shrugged.

The two of them made their way back down the stairs and out of the garden, which closed behind them.

“Do you think any of these other crystals open up to places?” Brian asked, poking another one without asking.

“Brian!!” Ian fussed as all the crystals turned purple. The waterfall opened again, and the two of them looked down into a dark place with purple mist.

“Ok. I’m not going in there.” Ian said, backing away. Brian touched another crystal, and they all turned yellow. The waterfall closed and opened again to reveal a cozy looking living room with ornate furniture.

“Why do I always find myself surprised with all of this paranormal crap?” Ian said to himself, touching one of the crystals himself. This time, they all turned aqua, and it opened up into a dark forest. By this time, they were having a little too much fun touching crystals, and Brian started to grow them. They all opened up into different places, except for one, which seemed to be broken. The last one they touched opened up to a familiar place.

“Hey-isn’t that the park with the boardwalk??” Brian asked. Ian looked up the stairs, the mist coming in a little.

“Yeah.”

The two of them made their way up the stairs and found themselves coming out of the marsh. As soon as they stepped onto dry ground, the opening they had walked through closed on itself. Brian and Ian looked at each other.

“So… do you want to go try… talking with this thing?” Brian asked. Ian grimaced at the thought of seeing his brother covered in mushrooms again, but he couldn’t think of anything else to do. He sighed.

“I guess let’s try it…”

The two of them carefully made their way through the unkempt grass towards the boardwalk. Ian halfway expected crazy plant people to rise up from the swamp to stop them, but then he remembered how nothing had tried to stop them before. He swallowed at the memory of how eerie and creepy it had all been.

Ian and Brian stepped off the boardwalk and onto the path that led to the clearing, feeling wary and unsure of what they were doing. When they reached the clearing, it was evident that the creature was not asleep this time. It raised its head to look at them, opening and closing its mouth. Ian and Brian stood there stiffly, waiting to see what it would do, but it didn’t do anything. It simply sat there staring at them.

“Um… Hello.” Brian squeaked. “Uh… I’m Brian. And this is Ian.”

“Hi.” Ian coughed. “And… uh… the mushroom guy you pinned to the tree is my brother Roderick… uh…”

The two of them stood there awkwardly, not knowing what to do now. The creature simply kept staring at them, opening and closing its mouth. Brian took a hesitant step forward.

“Brian!” Ian hissed. “Be careful!!”

“I’m being as careful as I can be!” he whispered back. Brian took a few more steps forward until he was only a couple of feet from the creature. When he got this close, the creatures elongated arms emerged from the sludge. Brian halted and looked up at the creature in fear, his hands shaking.

“Uh… so… we found a weird garden thing… Do you… live there?”

The creature opened and closed its mouth again, this time making a raspy sound. At this point, Ian started to take courage, and he went up to stand next to Brian, looking up at the creature. Sludge dripped from its face, and it rasped again, reaching out to them.

“H...h….e….e….l….p…” it rasped with difficulty. Ian and Brian were taken aback.

“Did… did it just speak?!” Brian whispered. Ian stared at the creature reaching out for them, its head tilted and dripping sludge. He reached out to it, his hand shaking, and touched the grimy hand. He winced, waiting for it to attack, but it did nothing. It simply rasped again. His mouth suddenly dropped open.

“Brian. Do you know how the human body works at all?” he asked.

“Uh… Why?”

Ian turned to him, his mind going at a million miles an hour.

“Ok, think about vaccines for a minute. They give you a lesser version of the disease so you can be immune to it right? Well, what if that’s what the comas were?? None of the coma patients are affected by the water or any of the other weird plant things around. What if that was meant to protect us?”

Brian’s mouth dropped open.

“Holy crap, you might be right.”

“And then listen to this-when your body gets sick, the white blood cells attack the foreign cells right? What if that’s what the whole monsters in the swamp thing are? What if this creature, or monster, or whatever it is, is sick, and all of this is just a outside reaction of its body trying to fight it off?”

The two of them looked at the creature, which almost seemed to nod a little.

“Well, if it’s sick, then… how do we make it get better?” Brian asked.

“Maybe clean it off for one thing. There’s no way it could get better when it’s covered in all that sludge.”

“But there’s no clean water-oh wait-there is! There’s that clean pool of water we could use.”

“So I guess the first question we need to answer…” Ian began, looking up at the sludge creature before them. “Is how do we get it there?”

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