A continuation of 'Flowers.'
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Moon
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"Alright," said Maddie, flipping through her notes, "alright. We have to figure out how to get the graveflower out of the portal, or-"
"Kaboom," said Jack, who was still fiddling with the simulation. "We need to keep them out of the ecto-filtrator lines at least." He paused. "Maybe we should shut it down."
"But then it could escape," said Maddie. "Or grow, or shrink, or start pulling things in. Like last time. Keeping our stabilizers on is the only way to control its characteristics."
"But it would be easier to deal with that than blowing up," said Jack. "We might not have much warning if those things damage something vital."
Maddie drummed her fingers on the table. "Maybe we should evacuate," she said. "Send the kids to sleep over with friends, call up Vlad, ask him to get people out of the blast radius."
"I don't think we're quite there, yet, Maddie," said Jack.
"No, but if we haven't solved this by the end of the day, I think we should look into it. I just don't understand how it could be growing there. It can't just be the ectoplasm!" They had almost perfectly replicated the atmosphere inside the portal in one of several small containment devices and put in graveflower seeds. They had yet to react. "This shouldn't have happened."
Except that it had. Could the portal function as a 'grave site' somehow? It was at the cusp between the world of the living and the world of the dead. But, no, that didn't make any sense. If the seeds solely grew on the residual interdimensional connection between a ghost and places associated with their death, then they should have more than enough of a connection out here, in the lab, where Jack and Maddie had made hundreds of temporary portals while testing the Fenton Bazooka. There had to be something else about graves and places of death that the portal had.
But she didn't have time to go looking for what it was, because she was trying to keep the blasted plant from blowing up the portal and leveling the entire city block. It was infuriating.
She half wanted to just wade in there with clippers, but she knew how vegetative propagation worked. If they missed anything, it might just start growing again, and, being a ghost plant, it might have other defenses. Even taking that one cutting had been something of a risk, though she hadn't quite realized it at the time.
It would have been one thing to study the graveflower in the lab, or out in a graveyard, but in the portal?
She ran her finger down her notes, the boiled-down and bullet-pointed version of the graveflower legends. That they only bloomed in moonlight, or in the presence of the ghost their growing place belonged to; that they made the ghost glow like the moon in their presence; that they grew faster in the presence of their ghost; that a fruit from them could bring a man back from death's door, for a time; that they made ghosts drowsy; that the ghost who spawned them could control them. None of it was particularly useful.
The door at the top of the stairs opened. "Hey, Mom? Dad?" Danny started walking down they stairs, footsteps feather light. Maddie didn't know how he did it. When anyone else walked on them, those stairs clanged. "You guys have been down here for a while, and I just wanted to check on you. Also, um, should we order out for dinner?"
"Er," said Jack, "have we been down here that long?"
"Yeah. All day, really." He scratched the back of his head, nervously.
"Sorry, sweetie," said Maddie. "Some problems came up that we have to take care of. Why don't you and Jazz order some pizza, okay?"
"Yeah," said Danny, looking over at her. His gaze wandered to her right, and he stepped closer. "Oh, you got one to bloom. Which one is that?"
Maddie followed his gaze. They hadn't-
But there they were. The cutting she had taken earlier now hung with open, bell-shaped blossoms. They glowed, like moonlight.
They hadn't been open before. They shouldn't be open now. There was no reason for them to bloom, except...
She turned back to Danny, slowly. The soft glow of the flowers was mirrored on his skin. He didn't appear to have noticed.
"Mom? Are you okay?" he asked, brows knitting together. "What went wrong, anyway? You were working on plants, right?"
He didn't know. He didn't-
In a daze, Maddie turned to the portal. It had to be the portal. The portal had killed Danny. They had thought he'd just gotten a little shock- They'd been so happy to see the portal working, they didn't ask questions. But that would explain everything. Even his falling grades! Of course, as a ghost he wouldn't be able to keep up, wouldn't be able to learn new things. Except- that didn't quite seem to be true, did it?
"Mom?" repeated Danny.
He was a ghost. A ghost, and he didn't know. He couldn't know. He was too peaceful. Too- Too Danny. The imprint Danny had left must be overriding the ghost's natural inclination to violence, keeping it repeating his daily routine.
What kind of a parent was she, that she hadn't even noticed that her own child had died?
She could see Jacke behind Danny- behind Danny's ghost. He, too, had realized. She could see it on his face.
Their son was dead.
The lab shook, all the beakers and tools rattling. A few screws worked their way out of a wall panel. Something out of sight broke with a tinkle.
Out of the portal inched a pale vine, snaking around the top of the portal, reaching towards the ceiling. The surface of the portal bubbled and roiled.
Almost as an afterthought, the alarms started going off.
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To be continued on day 10: Corruption.