The Bougainvillea

Harper woke, ears ringing, shivering in the cold pool of sweat that pasted the bedsheets to her limbs as she stretched. She’d had the dream again. That same dream she’d had a dozen nights before that left the burn of bile at the back of her throat. She could still see their faces. A beautiful family, lined up in front of a smooth, white plaster wall, hands bound, gagged, on their knees, tears streaming down their faces. One-by-one, like pinatas, their beautiful little heads burst from the back and splatter on the wall behind them as the shots sound off. She can see the rifle, long and black, with a lacquered oak fore-stock. She can feel its heft and the kick of its butt plowing into the soft meat of her shoulder as each shot is fired. The last one to take a bullet is the father of the family. He manages to get his gag loose enough to lip it down over his chin. He chants, deep, mouth full of blood and gravel, in what sounds like Spanish, but she can’t make out his words. Then, his head, too, paints the wall as the final deafening shot rings her ears.

Harper’s eyes adjusted to her surroundings, her bedroom, dimly illuminated by the glow of light escaping through the edges of the closed en suite door. She swiped her hand over the empty depression in the mattress beside her. Ice cold. She barrel rolled across Theo’s spot and snatched up his phone from his bedside table, the waking screen glistening off her sweaty face.

She knew it was wrong. She’d been resisting for weeks because she assumed Theo would come around eventually. But she couldn’t wait any longer. He was becoming more and more distant by the day. He was like a zombie now. Hell, at least a zombie would want to eat her brains. Theo had wanted nothing from her since the first evening they spent in their new home. Gone were the bedtime erection assaults that stabbed her in the back, Theo’s ‘give me the pussy and nobody gets hurt,’ stickup. She missed the desire. His incessant need for affection that she often turned down and always took for granted. She’d give anything for that familiar desire. But now, all she had to hold on to was this goddamn recurring nightmare.

She typed in the year he graduated high school, his usual password, and the lock screen disappeared, laying bare access to his home screen. As she opened the text message app, her eyes darted back and forth from the phone to the light beaming from the slit beneath the bathroom door, looking for any sign of movement. Harper scrolled and scrolled. Text messages, emails, photos. Nothing. He was clean. She cupped her hand over the tiny bump in her belly. She felt a rush of peace. Theo was a good man. She knew it, and this solidified it. But the rush quickly washed away in the all too familiar, creeping, black tide that she felt she’d been drowning in since they’d moved. It wasn’t anything she could put her finger on, really. Nothing that could be nailed down or described. Just a feeling, an aura of dread that seemed to weigh heavier as the days drug on and Theo slipped further away from her.

She set his phone back on his bedside table and scooted back into her spot. She stared down the mosaic of knockdown texture on the ceiling above her, trying to assimilate familiar shapes in the contours of the flat spots—there’s a bear, and that one’s a balloon, and over there, a little dancing devil with horns—as a child would when staring up at the clouds.

What happened to Theo? She thought. They’d moved into this big expensive home because finally, after years of undergrad and then graduate school, he’d landed the job of his dreams. He’d started his college education much later than most of his peers. He went through a rough patch after high school. Drugs and partying took over, and he clawed his way out of that life, enrolled in college and busted his ass to get his master’s degree in mechanical engineering.

Harper hadn’t been there for the toughest years. The years where he was in and out of rehab. They’d met in his second year of city college. That was when he was most alive. At least that’s how she remembers it, the way he made her feel. As the years pressed on, he got busier with more difficult studies, and now, after all the hell he put himself through to get his degree and land the dream job, he just seemed permanently, utterly fucking tired.

The day after they moved into their new home, a switch seemed to flip inside him. It was unclear whether something turned off or turned on, but something was different, different in his eyes and his soul. Harper thought this new home, for them, for their soon-to-be child, would breathe that vibrancy back into their life. He was so excited about the move, like nothing else in the world mattered, like this place would make all their problems fade away. God, were they wrong.

The open house was when it all started. When they first arrived, Harper was considerably more eager than Theo. He had said the home was too expensive, she agreed, but said it would be fun to look anyway, just to dream a little, and maybe get some design ideas. Harper loved the house, the land. Everything about it was perfect. Theo seemed to like it just fine, yet made little fuss until they stepped into the backyard. As soon as Theo set foot back there, his demeanor changed.

Theo was in awe of the sights, the sounds, and smells. The exterior was staggeringly gorgeous, designed in the style of an old Spanish villa with whitewashed, baby smooth, plaster siding, and sweeping archways at the side of the house that led into a massive courtyard. Warm Terra-cotta tiles topped the house at a modest slope, waving along the rooftop, and seeming to spill from their hollows like a magenta waterfall was a wild, thorny bush that clung to the plaster in a primal embrace. The vines covered half of the backside of the home and were in glorious bloom. After admiring it, Harper walked on and looked at the pool, tiled in blue and green floral mosaics, and to the edge of the yard that dropped off over a shockingly steep cliff covered in ice plant, spotted in tiny red flowers, humming with the labor of a thousand honeybees.

At the bottom of the hill was a black, rusted, wrought iron fence that swept the perimeter of a monstrous orange grove, seeming to go on forever, disappearing into the horizon. Todd, the realtor, would later inform her that the orange grove was once a part of the estate, and the operation, in its heyday, was the biggest in all of Southern California, run by the Welsh family. Eventually, Mr. Welsh sold it off to Citrana, one of the country’s leading suppliers of citrus fruits. And now that little rusted fence is all that separated the home from a multi-million dollar annual harvest. When Harper looked out over the green of the grove, each bushel harnessing a bounty of tiny orange globes, she noticed the white blossoms that dotted each tree, and their sweet, honeyed perfume overcame her senses. Her eyes watered and she wondered if it was her allergies kicking up, or the sentiment of the familiar smell from the garden in her grandmother’s backyard, where she used to play as a young girl.

Harper loved the home and the property. She could see it now, their little bustling family sitting in the backyard, listening to the birds chirping and the bees buzzing, breathing in those wonderfully intoxicating smells and drinking in the gorgeous sights of their property. But she knew it was out of their price range, and mister rational, Theo, would never go for it. That’s when she realized he wasn’t by her side. He was still back there, on the other side of the pool, staring up at that big beautiful bush that climbed the back wall of the house. The bougainvillea, Todd had called it.

Harper approached Theo and asked him if he was ready to head home. He turned to her, eyes full of tears. “Let’s put an offer in,” he said.

Harper thought he was joking. They both knew it was out of their price range, but Theo’s face was stone, and fire replaced the tears in his eyes. He assured her he could afford it on the salary at his new job if they tightened up in other areas. It was unlike him, reckless, and frivolous. Harper knew it was a dangerous move. She blames it on the excitement of the moment, but also suspects she was drunk on the sweet perfume of the orange blossoms, nostalgia easing the needle of her rational compass. They approached Todd with the news, and they both cried on the drive home, making grand plans for their family’s future.

The couple waited on pins and needles after putting in their offer, then, after three days, the rejection came through. The property was hot and a bidding war ensued. Theo went all in, and ended up paying fifteen percent over asking, scaring the hell out of Harper. Yet, Theo continued to assure her he could make it work, and they were going to live the happily ever after they’d been dreaming of.

Three months now they’d been nesting in their beautiful dream home, and happily ever after seemed farther away than it ever had before.

The sound of a whisper caught Harper’s ear, and her head perked up from the pillow. She surveyed the glow from the bathroom door for the shadows of Theo’s feet, but saw nothing. She listened longer, and heard nothing, then looked over at Theo’s bedside table, the phone still where she’d left it. Who could he be talking to at this hour anyhow? She listened a little longer and decided she must have imagined it. Harper laid her head back on the pillow, and just as she did, the whispering returned.

Harper shot up in bed and listened. The house was dead silent. No sound from the bathroom, no creaks from the wind easing the old settling house into place. Then she heard it again, clearly a whisper, although she couldn’t make out what the voice was saying. She jumped to her feet and tiptoed to the bathroom entrance, gently planting her hands on either side of the door frame, and suctioned her ear to the cool, smooth surface of the door.

Nothing.

“Theo? Honey, are you okay?”

Silence.

She turned the knob and eased the door open. Nothing but bare subway tile and Turkish cotton textile. Again, she heard a faint whisper.

Harper walked to the open bedroom doorway and peeked her head out into the darkness of the second-floor hallway. “Theo? Are you down there?” The hollow stairwell walls reverberated and filled the house with the unease of her shaky voice.

She heard the whisper again, but not from downstairs. The voice was at her back. She turned around to face the empty bedroom. The whispers continued. She walked toward the French doors that led to the balcony and pulled back the lace window covering with her finger.

The whisper was definitely coming from outside, but all she could see were the shadows of two empty chairs and the stone railing of the balcony. She unlocked the door and cracked it open. A burst of cool night air rushed over her face. The whispering became louder.

Harper flipped the light switch on, threw the door open, and burst onto the balcony, letting the sudden hit of adrenaline take over before the fear did. She placed her hands on top of the balcony railing and looked out over the glassy moonlit pool, water still as rigor mortis, and over the endless orange grove beyond the wrought iron, its leaves black in the night, the intoxicating scent of their blossoms now replacing the fond memories of her childhood with the feelings of dread that had haunted her days and nights since she’d moved into this godforsaken house.

“Hello? Who’s out there?”

Again, she heard the voice just below her. No longer a whisper, but a muted conversational chatter. Two voices. One sounded like Theo, the other the deep voice of a Hispanic man. She knew that voice. She’d heard it many nights, just before the splatter, and the bang, and the soaking in her sheets. Her neck craned over the edge of the balcony, and below the moon’s gaze, she could see Theo standing at the base of the bougainvillea.

“Theo. What the hell are you doing? Who are you talking to?”

Theo kept talking, but not to her. He was facing the broad base of the plant, right up against it, talking to it, casually, about what, Harper couldn’t make out, but he kept on as if he hadn’t heard her, like she didn’t exist at all, just as he’d made her feel every day since they moved in.

Harper ran back into the bedroom, slamming the door behind her. She grabbed her flats from the closet and slapped them onto her feet, feeling the molten blood fill her face as if it might pour from her ears.

The bougainvillea. That fucking bougainvillea, she thought.

From the day they walked into the house, and she found Theo staring at the bush that swallowed the side of the home, she’d felt like a guest in his life. He was obsessed with the thing, talked about it constantly, spent hours every week, scouring it with clippers, searching for bits to prune. She frequently found him outside, looking up at it, slack jawed, all-consumed. He even bought a fancy patio set and placed it at its base and insisted they eat every meal they could out there. He spent little time during those meals talking to Harper about her day, and almost the entire time glancing over at that fucking bush.

She ran down the stairs, through the dining room, and into the kitchen, where she flipped the light switch beside the back door, illuminating the yard. She burst through the door and spotted Theo. He was still talking. His face, his arms, half of his body, buried in the magenta leaves of the plant, speaking directly into it.

“Theo, what the fuck!”

He resumed his conversation.

She ran over to him and shoved him away from the plant. He stumbled and spun around to face her. He was ghost-pale, and his pupils filled the entirety of his eyes, as black and hollow as the bottom of a thousand foot well. She stepped back, her anger replaced by fear. The fear that the man standing before her looked like Theo, smelled like Theo, it was her Theo. But it wasn’t. The man standing before her was the embodiment of the emptiness she’d felt since the day they moved into the house. He was cold and dry. A flaking, crunching, chrysalis of her husband, void of any trace of the soul that made Theo, Theo.

“Harper?” He said, his voice distant, as if he were speaking to her from the other side of the world. As if he couldn’t see her and was asking the heavens if she was really there.

“Theo, what’s wrong with you? What are you doing out here?”

Theo’s pupils shrank, revealing the thin outline and galactic swirl of his blue iris. The color seemed to rush back to the surface of his skin. His forehead, eyebrows, nose, lips, cheeks all twitched sporadically, as if the pistons beneath them began firing cold after a long dormancy. Then, his cheeks raised, the corners of his mouth widened, and his lips curled with the biggest, emptiest smile she’d ever seen. “Harper. What are you doing out here? You should be asleep, it’s…” his face dropped. “What time is it?”

“It’s…” Harper’s words clung to her dry throat and crackled into the crisp night air, her fright extrapolated by the sound of the fear in her own voice. “It’s the middle of the night, Theo. What are you doing out here? Who are you talking to? I heard someone else out here with you.” She looked over at the bougainvillea where he’d been planted, half expecting to see a tiny doorway to another world filled with Theo’s new friends, who had been taking up so much of his attention. But nothing was there, just the tangled vines and their sharp thorns and brilliantly colored, paper-thin bracts, surrounding erect, waxy blossoms.

Theo looked all around as if searching for someone. “Mr. Vargas,” he replied. “He—he’s around here somewhere. He was teaching me some new pruning techniques and told me some crazy stuff about the previous owner, Mr. Welsh. Sounds like he was a real bastard.”

“What?” Harper said, shaking her head. “Who’s Mr. Vargas?” She looked around the backyard.

Theo smiled again. That creepy, huge, hollow smile. “The groundskeeper, silly. Mr. Vargas. He’s worked the land for Mr. Welsh since the day this place was built.”

“Groundskeeper? Do you know how old this place is? That doesn’t make any sense.” Harper threw her hands up. “We don’t even have a groundskeeper.”

Theo laughed. “Oh, really? So, who do you think keeps this place looking so beautiful?” He said, arms out, motioning to the lush vegetation all around them.

“You, Theo. You’ve been digging, and watering, and pruning since we moved in. That’s all you’ve been doing. That’s why you lost your job last week. You’re obsessed with this place. It’s all you care about. Especially that stupid bougainvillea. I can’t do this anymore, Theo. Something is seriously wrong with you. We’re going to lose everything…” That’s when she heard the tick, tick, tick of something dripping on the ground, and the rest of the verbal ammunition she planned to fire turned to blanks.

Theo had gaping holes all over his arms, wrists, and hands, and long, snaking lacerations connecting the dots like a fleshy road map. Blood was trickling down his arms and dripped from each of his fingertips.

“Oh my God, Theo. You’re bleeding.”

His smile widened again, and his eyes turned wilder. “Did you know, in the Amazon, the bougainvillea is evergreen?” Theo turned to face the towering bush, looking up in awe, a smile still plastered across his face. “Can you imagine getting to enjoy this beauty all day, every day? That’s what lucky old Mr. Vargas had as a boy, growing up in Iquitos, Peru. It must have been disappointing, coming to California, working so hard, tending to this bush, and having to watch it shed these beautiful leaves every year, never keeping its beauty.” He looked back at Harper. “Don’t you think?”

Harper thought about running. Straight through the house and out the front door. She could be at her family’s home in Utah by this time tomorrow if she only stopped for bathroom breaks. She wished she could fly. Straight over the steep hill of ice plant, and the old wrought iron fence, soaring through the night, above the tippy tops of the black leaved orange trees. But she couldn’t do any of that. She couldn’t leave Theo alone here like this. Something was wrong with him. She was his wife, and he needed her now more than ever.

Harper put her hands out, urging Theo to take them with his bloody paws so she could lead him back into their home, get him cleaned up, and start searching for the nearest mental health clinic. “C’mon, hon. Let’s go inside.”

Theo’s eyes softened. And he took a single step toward her. Then he stopped, and his ears perked up. “Do you hear that?”

Harper looked around, listening intently. “I don’t hear anything, Theo. C’mon.”

The smile returned to his face. “Mr. Vargas, he’s back. You have to meet him.”

Harper’s hands dropped to her side as Theo backed away from her, toward the bougainvillea. He leaned his ear toward the bush and his eyebrows raised.

“Mr. Vargas didn’t steal that money from Mr. Welsh,” Theo said. “But no matter how much Mr. Vargas pled for the safety of his family, Mr. Welsh wouldn’t let up. Killed them all. He was drunk off the land, and the money it bled into his filthy pockets, and the sick, sick, greed that consumed him.”

Theo leaned in close to the bush again. He nodded in agreement with the bougainvillea, and stuck up one finger toward Harper, suggesting he’d just be a moment. He pushed his arms into the bush and twirled them around the long ropey vines, then grasped firm onto them with his hands, digging his palms into clusters of thorns. As he yanked forward on the vines, the thorny ropes dug their talons and Theo’s head shot back and his jaw hung wide, as if he were chugging stardust from the heavens.

“Theo!” Harper said and reached out for him. But she held short when his face snapped toward her, neck bent further than naturally possible. His eyes again swallowed by the empty, black cavern of his pupils. His Adam’s apple, ripe, begging to rip through the flesh of his throat, bobbed as the deep raspy voice from her nightmares flooded her ears.

“Good evening, Mrs. Harper. I am Mr. Vargas. If you have the time, I’d like to tell you a little story.”

Harper backed away from her husband, never taking her eyes off him, until she stepped into the coiled garden hose and stumbled back on top of its spent hose reel. Her muscles were as tight as rawhide, and although she wanted to run, her brain wouldn’t tell her legs to move another inch as she breathed deep breaths of the blanketing sweet orange blossom laced darkness. “What the hell are you?” she asked, as her eyes, too, filled black with pupil.

Theo’s Adam’s apple bobbed once again, sharp as a razor, threatening to rip through his throat as it sliced up and down beneath his thin stubbled skin. “I am nothing, Mrs. Harper. Yet, I am everything. I am part of the earth you now walk on, and the air you now breathe. You see, these lands that you inhabit, they were once pure, rich with life-giving qualities, ready to thrive in harmony with any who may give them the respect they deserve. But bad things have happened here, Mrs. Harper. This soil has drank its fill of innocent blood. It is in the roots and the stalks and the leaves, and the greed that has been squeezed from the profit of its fruit has hurt this world far more than I care to know. This land, it is poisoned, Mrs. Harper. And while my family passed on, I vowed to stay behind to protect it.” His black eyes looked down at the bump in her belly. “Do you feel it, Mrs. Harper? The hold this land has on you, now that you’ve let the infection settle in? Now that the sweet smells and delicious juices from the fruits have worked on you? That little one growing inside of you, it will not differ from you, or Mr. Theo, or horrible, horrible Mr. Welsh. Humanity, Mrs. Harper, needs a little help, to remember what is important, and to return to the earth, away from greed, away from hostility, back to the land that birthed it. Humanity is the disease that plagues this earth, Mrs. Harper, and the sickness that poisoned the fruit of this land will ultimately be the cure. You will be docile and kind, and will care for the land. Your children will care for the land. Your children’s children, and theirs. All that blood will not have been spilled in vain, Mrs. Harper. Through the global distribution network of Citrana, the land will ease the human condition, one lovely little orange at a time.”

Harper held still, transfixed, rigid, not with fear, but utter, relentless obedience.

“Now, go rest, Mrs. Harper, for you and Mr. Theo have a big day tomorrow, and every day that shall follow. You see that grass, and those bushes, and those saplings far off there? They need your love and your care. Go rest, Mrs. Harper. Go rest and be well. Tomorrow, you return to the land.”