The Hell Flower

The HellFlower #8

The sudden darkness took her by surprise. She could still feel Helen trembling and crying behind her, thankfully, but couldn’t see anything ahead of them. It had all just gone completely dark. All she could hear were the wild, furious growls from ahead. It took her a couple of seconds to realize that she hadn't gone blind; the familiar dark shadows had suddenly appeared in front of her, bigger and thicker than ever before like a smoke screen. It wasn't menacing, though. In fact, it had never been, and Dahlia wasn't scared of the cloud of darkness surrounding them. She had a feeling it wouldn't harm them... Quite the opposite. Gradually, it moved away, thinning in front of her eyes and freeing her vision. Breathing heavily, Dahlia finally saw what was going on, stunned. The lion was still there, but it had been thrown back to the end of the garden and was busy fighting some creature as big as itself. Even as the dark cloud left her, she couldn't completely understand what was happening. From what she could see, a completely black creature, surrounded by the cloud of darkness, was growling as furiously as the lion, and fighting it violently. There were claws, fangs, flesh being ripped and some silver liquid spilled on the grass. Dahlia gasped, as, in a split second when the darkness moved away from it, she recognized the large dogs. The dogs from her dream! Except that those dogs were very real, and just like the lion, not the size of any normal dog. Both creatures were abnormally big, making the fight seem even more terrifying from where she stood. Not only that, but those dogs were shrouded in the darkness she was familiar with, like a moving mantle. She could barely spot them, but the heads would suddenly pop out of the darkness, violently bite, then disappear again. It was like the lion was fighting two entities at once; the dogs and the darkness were acting as one, pinning it to the ground and restlessly attacking that thing.

"Are you hurt?"

A hand suddenly caressed her cheek, and Dahlia jumped, shocked to see that man standing right next to her. He'd grabbed her hand and was facing her with a slightly worried expression. The man from her dreams! She was too stunned to answer. He was standing there, with his pale skin, tired eyes, and the silver beard and hair, stroking her face so tenderly, looking for injuries. Unable to utter a word, Dahlia glanced at Helen, to confirm her friend was seeing him too. And she did; a shaking Helen was staring at him with confused, fearful and teary eyes.

"W-who..." Dahlia managed to utter.

Just then, the dogs barked loudly, and they turned heads. The lion was losing the fight and being pinned into the grass, like it was crushed by the cloud of darkness. For a second, Dahlia thought she'd seen a human silhouette in that darkness, but it was too confusing to be sure. It was like watching a massive cloud of smoke, constantly changing, flickering like a black fire. One of the dogs suddenly jumped out of it, and placed itself between them and the lion, barking, clearly in a defensive stance. That's when she realized. There weren't three dogs. There was just one dog. With three heads.

"Get to Medusa," the man suddenly said, catching her attention again. "Stay with her."

"W-wha... Who's Medusa?"

There was another growl, and she saw the three-headed dog suddenly jump at the lion, two of its heads biting it and dragging it into the darkness. The lion struggled, desperately trying to claw into the grass, but that strange, mercurial cloud of darkness moved, and suddenly seemed to eat it. In the blink of an eye, that monster was gone, and Dahlia had no idea what she'd just witnessed. Then, the three-headed dog turned all its heads towards her, wagging its tail, before it jumped inside that dark cloud, vanishing too. Dahlia couldn't believe what she'd just seen, but the dark cloud remained, floating around, and slowly moved towards the man.

"Wait!" she gasped, sensing what was about to happen. "W-wait, please, I..."

But without a word, the man put a light kiss on her forehead, so tenderly her voice died in her throat. Then, the darkness snatched him, and he was gone. Dahlia was left, with her heart beating madly, to stare at that strange mass of darkness, lingering right in front of her. Then, it seemed to scatter towards the shadows, and disappeared. Complete silence followed in their now empty garden.

Next to her, Helen suddenly fell to her knees, bringing her back to reality. Dahlia turned to her.

"Oh my God, Helen... Are you okay?"

Helen was visibly not okay. She wouldn't even sign, her arms were lying to her sides as she stared at the garden, breathing erratically. Thanks to the destroyed bush, and the large patches of turned-over soil, they knew they definitely hadn't dreamt that. Strangely, that creature's silver blood was gone. The garden was wrecked, but there was nothing left of the strange creatures which had caused that. Dahlia put an arm around Helen, helping her up, and glanced around, frowning. She couldn't see it, but she could feel the shadows lurking. She knew that darkness wasn't gone, it was just hiding in the shadows, and watching them. It brought her back to her senses, and she reacted first, feeling a sense of clarity, which she rarely experienced.

"We need to go," she uttered.

She supported her friend to walk back inside the house. There, Dahlia locked the veranda's door, and just as they emerged in the hallway, Clara came down, right at the same moment that Sam was walking in, the house keys still in her hands.

"You guys alright?" Clara asked, her headphones around her neck. "I think I heard some ruckus..."

Sam was quicker to realize something bad had happened.

"Dahlia, what-" her eyes went to pale-looking Helen. "What happened?"

"A-a lion..." Dahlia uttered. "I know it's crazy, but a lion appeared in the garden."

"A lion?" Clara scoffed. "Did you fall asleep? Or did you have too much of Helen's tea?"

On the other end, Sam's reaction was completely different. With a serious expression, she ran to them, and grabbed Dahlia's arm, inspecting her.

"Are you hurt? Is Helen hurt?"

"N-no, we’re not. She's just in shock."

"How did it... Go away? The lion?" she asked, glancing over their shoulder as if expecting to see it.

"A-a large dog appeared, and there were shadows, and they attacked the lion together, and... and…" Dahlia stopped herself, realizing what she was spouting, and shook her head in disbelief. "Sam, it makes no sense! There was a gigantic lion in the garden, and the dog... The dog had..."

"It had three heads?" Sam finished.

Dahlia's expression sank.

"How did you...?"

"Go to the living room with Helen," Sam said, calmly. "I need to lock this place. Clara, text Victoria to come home. Right now."

"What? Why? Because Dahlia had another hallucination?" Clara scoffed, visibly amused. "Come on, no offense Dahlia but you realize it doesn't make sense, don’t you?"

"Do what I said!" Sam shouted.

Clara didn't dare protest anymore, visibly shocked by Sam's sudden anger. She glanced at Helen, and slowly walked back upstairs. Sam turned back to Dahlia, glancing at Helen.

"The living room," she simply said.

Dahlia nodded, more because she wanted to be sure Helen got to sit more than anything, but she wanted answers, right now. How in the world did Sam know? She'd already confirmed that the man was real. Everything was real, and Sam seemed to know about it, too. She couldn't process everything that had just happened. She felt like her body was on auto-pilot to help Helen and take care of her, while her mind was still in shock, and trying to absorb the madness of the situation. A monstrous lion had attacked, and the shadows and a three-headed, gigantic dog had defended her. Strangely, despite the insanity of the whole situation, Dahlia felt strangely relieved, in a way. That man was real, and she'd seen him up close. Helen had seen him, too. She wasn't crazy. Or if she was crazy, the world was going mad as well.

She sat with Helen on their couch, and as if the familiarity of their living room had suddenly gotten to her, Helen shook her arm.

"Are you OK?" she signed frantically.

"Yeah, I'm alright... You?"

"I don't know," Helen shook her head, still distraught. "What was that? A lion? A dog? And... that man? Is it the man you saw? This morning?"

She was signing so quickly and frantically that Dahlia had trouble following it all, and just nodded in the end.

"Yeah... That was the man."

"Did he help us?"

"I think so."

Sam finally came back into the living room, and Clara tried to walk in a second after her, but Sam pushed her back, a hand on the door.

"You go back upstairs and put your headphones on," she coldly said.

"Excuse me?" Clara said, looking offended. "But I-!"

"I'm not asking you," Sam retorted.

Then, she closed the living room door, turning to the other two. They heard Clara angrily stomping up the stairs and slamming her bedroom door.

"Why did you send Clara back?" Helen signed.

"She's young, and she's human, it's better if she doesn't know."

Helen and Dahlia exchanged confused glances.

"What the heck is going on? What do you mean, she's human?"

"I'd have spared you, too, Helen, but you've already seen too much," Sam said quickly.

Then she got closer to them, going down on her knees facing them, and took Dahlia's hands between hers, with a very serious expression.

"Tell me exactly what happened," she said. "Since this morning."

"What? Aren't you going to explain how you know about the dog first?" Dahlia exclaimed. "We just got attacked by a lion!"

"No. You explain first, and then I promise I'll tell you as much as I can."

Dahlia and Helen exchanged a glance. Helen, too, seemed to think that was odd, but they had no choice. Thus, Dahlia began telling her about what had happened that morning, how they'd gone out for a walk, and while she was in the flower shop, she saw the man from her dreams standing outside.

"I'm sure I'd seen him last night, too..."

"Wait, you saw him last night?" Sam gasped. "Not just in your dream? Why didn't you tell me?"

"I-I don't know! You came home late, and I wasn't sure what I'd seen, and I just... I don't know, I just didn't think about telling you that detail."

"It's not a detail!" Sam exclaimed. "If I'd known... Alright, fine. What next? You saw him again outside the flower shop?"

"Yes. He was looking at me, and me at him, but I couldn't see his face. It was like I was trying to read in a dream, I couldn't register what his face looked like..."

She kept talking, both Sam and Helen deeply absorbed in her explanation. When she explained what had happened in the garden, Helen chimed in, insisting about the size of the lion, and how cold she'd felt.

"What? Cold?" Dahlia muttered, surprised.

Helen nodded, and tried to sign, although her fingers were still trembling.

"That dark cloud; it was terrifying. Scarier than the lion. Everything got dark and cold. I felt like I was about to die."

Dahlia suddenly realized it hadn’t been the lion or the three-headed dog that had scared Helen the most and made her shake like this. It was that large cloud of shadows. But how come? Dahlia had always seen the shadows before, as far as she could remember, but she had never found them that terrifying. She hadn't felt the cold, either, but Helen was visibly still very shaken up by this. Dahlia grabbed the blanket at the end of the couch to wrap it around her shoulders while Helen signed again.

"And then that man appeared, and it was even scarier. His face was so scary."

"His face?" Dahlia muttered, tapped her leg. "What do you mean? He looked like an old man to me..."

Helen glanced at her, visibly shocked. Then, she shook her head, and put two fingers towards her eyes.

"What about his eyes?" Dahlia asked, confused. "They were gray, no?"

Helen shook her head.

"No... He didn't have eyes. They were empty. He looked like a human S-K-U-L-L," she finger-spelled that last word.

Dahlia's heart sank. What did she mean, empty? A human skull? She clearly had seen that man's face, and he was skinny, but far from looking dead or eye-less. Helen had been right there; how come she hadn't seen the same thing? She turned to Sam, who didn't seem surprised at all.

"She saw his chthonic appearance," she said, as if that was a random detail.

"Chthonic? What does that even mean?" Dahlia asked as Sam was finger-spelling that word for Helen.

"That man doesn't belong to this realm," Sam said. "Humans like Helen can't see his real appearance up here."

"Sam, I don't get what you're saying. You keep talking about humans, and realms, and up here? What's that about?"

"Finish explaining first," said Sam. "That man appeared, and the three-headed dog jumped at the lion with the shadows, and then? What did the man say?"

Dahlia was aching to protest and ask that her friend explain first, but Sam had a serious expression that didn't leave room for any refusal. Moreover, she seemed so nervous and in urge to know everything that Dahlia didn't dare protest, no matter how much she wanted to know what her friend knew.

"He... He asked if I was hurt, and then, he told me to get to... to Medusa."

"And then?"

"The dog won the fight with that lion, and the dog... I mean, the dog with the three heads dragged it into the darkness, and the darkness absorbed the lion, and it was gone. After that, the dog jumped and disappeared into the darkness, too, and then, that man..."

Dahlia could still remember vividly his touch on her cheek, on her hand, and his thin, gentle lips on her forehead. She felt her body warm up at the mere memory of it, and blushed a bit.

"Dahlia?"

"He disappeared," she said. "Like the dog and the lion, in the darkness... In those shadows I always see. Except that there were a lot more shadows than usual. They appeared right in time to save us, with the dog."

"They didn't appear right in time, Dahlia. You summoned them," Sam suddenly said.

"What?"

Sam stood up, rubbing her forehead with her finger, visibly nervous and pacing in the living room.

"Sam! What do you mean I summoned them? And why... Why did he say to get to Medusa? Who... What is Medusa? Where do we need to go, and what do you know- No, how the hell do you know about all this?"

Sam glanced at her, and then closed her eyes for a second.

"There's... No need to go anywhere," she said. "At least not yet. You need to stay here, where it's safe. I need to figure out what's going on, it's too soon... But if he appeared, then..."

"Sam, I thought the garden was safe half an hour ago!" Dahlia stood up, furious. "If we were in danger, why didn't you tell us?! What's going on? And who the hell is Medusa?!"

"I am!"

Dahlia shut up, completely stunned. Sam took a deep breath.

"I am Medusa, Dahlia," she said a bit more calmly.

"What? But... isn't Medusa a monster from Greek mythology? I don't get that, is that an alias? Some code name?"

"I am that monster," Sam sighed. "Although technically, it's a curse, I am not a monster. At least I wasn't born one... And yes, I am that Medusa. Just like that dog, Dahlia. Doesn't a three-headed dog remind you of anything to you?"

"I-I think so, but..."

But it was so far-fetched that Dahlia didn't know where to start. No, none of it made sense. Just then, they heard the keys in the entrance, and a second later, Victoria barged in, out of breath.

"What's going on, is Helen okay? Sam? What are you doing here? Why did you guys close the door, and why- ...Why the hell is Helen signing about a lion in the garden?”