Whispers
A Horror Story
The kitchen garden was Beatrice Goode’s favorite place on the property. When she and Ben moved to Sundown Hills last year, they’d looked at all sorts of homes in town. Cute little craftsmans with deep porches and built-in bookshelves and breakfast nooks backed by stained glass windows; they’d seen a Victorian with a turret painted a hideous mauve with green trim that was within walking distance of the idyllic town square with its diner, its gazebo, its white steepled church. This house, the one they’d ultimately chosen, was outside town, down a secluded gravel road. It backed up to a canyon. It was simple, wood and stone, with diamond mullion windows and a sweet Dutch door painted red.
We can take hikes, Bea, Ben had said as the real estate agent showed them around the house. He had a sparkle in his eyes. It had been ages since she’d seen a sparkle like that. That was why they needed this. That was why it had to be perfect. He’d thrown open every door, turned knobs on the antique stove, slid his shoes off to step into the clawfoot tub and made her get inside to test that it was big enough for two. This had always been his way: dive in headfirst, ask questions never. Bea had been happy to let his imagination run wild, of course, but she wasn’t too keen on daydreams.
She was on the lookout for something more solid.
The kitchen garden had been the grounded thing where she could plant her hope. That first day, she’d rounded the corner on the moss-covered stone path and slammed her shin into the pointed side of a forgotten wooden planter box. Her nose pricked with the scent of wild onion, her eyes caught on the overflow of invasive mint. There were three boxes, one right next to the other with space in between for a body to crouch. And on a trellis behind them were untended rose bushes in desperate need of careful attention. Reds and pale pinks and bruised white petals told her they were still living, though they definitely were not thriving.
Purpose, the word had whispered over skin. She could remove the rot, she could make it beautiful, vital, once again.
Bea needed to feel vital again, too.
Let’s take it, she’d called, loud enough that Ben could hear her in the shed filled with vintage tools that had been left behind by the previous owners. He shot out through the door, ran to her arms wide open, and when he clutched her to his chest, she’d heard the speedy thumpthumpthump of his happy heartbeat, laid her ear against the rise of muscle and listened. Because Ben happy was the white whale she’d been chasing, it’s what had kept her sane, focused her mind, fueled her living.
Ben happy meant she could finally rest and recover.
Her fingernails scratched at the spot on her arm while she waited for the teakettle to heat. The wound wasn’t healing. Bea couldn’t be sure where she’d gotten it. When. It had been difficult lately to hold thoughts in her head, track the history of her day at the end of it. Ben would chalk it up to too much alone time, encourage her to venture into town, have tea at the bookshop, get out of her own way for once. Out of the garden. That’s what he always meant when he said that.
He’d quickly grown jealous of the time she devoted to resurrecting the garden from the brink of death. He complained when she expanded it to the patio where he wanted to set up his grill. He stood by while she moved heavy soil bags, hurting her back in the process. He critiqued the dirt beneath her nails and the new freckles on her nose and forehead from being outdoors so much.
But he hadn’t hated anything quite as much as he despised the roses.
The kettle whistled.
She shook out the mint leaves freshly rinsed, set them to steeping. Her eyes trailed out of the kitchen, down the hall where the bedroom door hung open. Ben would say she needed a break. Remind her of all they’d planned before they moved here, but all the things they’d planned were dashed, shattered in a million pieces and tossed in the garbage.
He’d wanted to keep trying no matter how long it took. He wouldn’t take no for an answer. But Bea knew barren soil when she felt it. She knew sometimes it could be amended, turned up and over, mineral added to make it possible for life to grow. She knew, even then, some soil was never meant to grow anything in it.
The roses. That was something she could grow.
She’d been right. They became her dearest friends. Her confidants. She whispered her pain to their open petals, and in her solitude she swore their hushed voices whispered back. They understood being forgotten, looked over, only wanted for beauty and ignored when root rot and sickness set in. They had been waiting for her to find them, revive them. Befriend them. From the first time she touched their petals, she was enchanted, determined to make them happy.
This was the sort of task Bea was good at: others’ pleasure, others’ joy.
Her own had always been far more elusive.
Her fingers scratched the wound absentmindedly. When she drew them back, the dirt beneath her nails mingled with dark blood. Her hand contracted, a twitch of muscle that had grown commonplace—now that she thought about it, she couldn’t place when it had started, but she knew she’d grown accustomed to it. She’d stopped noticing herself doing it. It didn’t hurt anymore, but still it was hot to the touch.
She lifted the cup to her lips, pressed them against the warm white ceramic, inhaled through her nostrils, tried hard to swallow. A tremor ran through her, tense and aching; she shored up against the counter.
Shaking, she set the mug back down on the tile countertop. Closed her eyes.
What was she doing? What had she just been thinking about?
Oh, yes, the roses and Ben. They were entwined in her mind, two loves she never seemed able to please. She twisted around, pressed back against the edge of the counter. Her eyes again drifted to the bedroom door standing open. There was such a distance between them now, even if just a few feet down a hallway lit by late afternoon light. This home was supposed to bring them back together, but for Ben that had meant one very specific thing.
A baby. Trying again and again.
With every month that had passed, as the roses grew brighter, blooms exploded over dark green branches, thorns thick and vicious, the bloom of Ben’s love seemed to wither. He grew agitated with her, then he grew demanding. At least plant some herbs, veggies, anything we can both enjoy, he’d said. As if they couldn’t both enjoy the roses, with their wealth of bright blooms and the shade they provided.
He would stomp past on his way to the trail that ran behind the house and wound through the canyon. He would be gone for hours in town, come home smelling of beer and garlic bread, fall asleep in his dirty jeans on top of the covers. Until, eventually, he came home smelling of perfume. The hint of rose on his skin that she knew hadn’t come from her garden.
She took a step toward the bedroom, wincing as pain sliced through her left leg, twisted around her hip, shot up into the stiff line of her neck. Her vision blurred at the edges, hung on the odd curve of her shin. She reached out for the table. She wished desperately she could just open her mouth, just call out for him to come help her.
Then it came back, all at once, like the flush of a terrible fever.
That night, days, weeks, ago.
She told him she knew. Her voice quiet, even. She understood. Really, she did. If this made him happy, then it was what he should do. She wouldn’t stand in his way.
I don’t want this, he’d said with disgust. Her. I want the life we promised each other.
Her hands tightened around the old garden shears. The roses, she’d been taking cuttings of blooms. She’d been planning to make a bouquet as a goodbye gift for him. The floodlight was bright, cold as the slice of moon in the sky. The canyon receded behind her, he loomed in front backlit and monstrous. Shoulders broad, hair wild curls, hands open claws.
He could still have what he wanted.
And she could have this.
Bea fell against the doorframe, sweat crawling down her back like inch worms. Swimming and swaying, she stumbled toward the bedroom door. The air through her nose ragged, the clench of her jaw concrete.
Ben lunged for her, his body heavy, his tears thick, his mouth twisted with rage. The shears plunged into his belly, rusted blades dirty with soil and thorns. His blood spilled onto her hands, his mouth dropped open in anguish. What have you done? he’d said, as blood coated his lips.
Her mouth remembered the taste of his tongue, free of metal, hot with desire.
She fell back, stumbling, as she pulled the shears clear of his body.
Back back back until her arm hit the bushes, a thorn digging deep. Through skin, into muscle, she yanked, breaking the thorn from the bush.
Bea hovered in the bedroom doorway as her abdomen tightened. The muscled ridges hard as rock, her neck like marble, her jaw clamped shut. There was Ben. The smell of his body long gone now, weeks after his soul left the shell. The blood-soaked linens were concrete beneath him, the liquid of him now pooled in the hardened bowls made in the bedding.
She turned, determined to choose—if not how her life ended, then where.
Every step she took excruciating as the fight she had left faded fast, burned off like the morning fog.
There was the door to the kitchen garden, she thought. Her place where she’d planted everything left of herself.
She staggered to the grass, fell onto the plush green carpet.
Her body spasmed. Her throat closed, cutting the air from her lungs.
The wound had turned violent inside her. Soil, rust, and thorn mixed together, coursed through the lines of her veins to her brain and her heart and her womb.
She was dying, but then she hadn’t been living for years.
She had wasted away for the joy of another.
A husband who loved the daydream she’d never fulfill.
The roses who consumed her time, soaked in all her light, whispered to stay there beside them.
Now, finally, she shuddered and slipped into stillness.
Now, she could rest. Now, she could be of some use.
Let her body return to soil, be consumed by bugs, soak into the roots, give life to the roses—
Live on forever—
In the red, the pale pink, the white of their beautiful petals.
Until, one day, a new couple would come looking for answers and she would whisper to them softly.
Next Week:
Thank you for reading this spooky season’s horror short story~ You may remember that at the beginning of October I polled my substack subscribers about three different elements of story: setting, villain, romance. The results were my guidepost as I created this short story, a task that proved challenging! I thought it would be fun to share some behind the scenes of my writing process, how I came to write Whispers from the poll results, and a VIBE CHECK to close out spooky season.
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xo,
Rebekah