ceiling were winches and pulleys designed to open
the roof.
The source of the dripping sound’ became evident:
a reptilian system of overhead irrigation operated
by old-fashioned dialed timers and suspended
from the crossbeam.
Maimon had been wrong about there being noth–ing
but dust behind the Swopes’ gates. The greenhouse
contained a plethora of growing th’rags. Not
flowers. Not trees. Things.
I’d thought of the Sephardic grower’s nursery as
an Eden. What I’ saw now was a vision from Hell.
Exquisite care had been taken to create a jungle
of botanic monstrosities.
There were hundreds of roses that would never
fill a bouquet. Their blossoms were shriveled,
stunted, colored a deathly gray. Each flower was
ragged-edged, irregulai’, and covered with a layer of
what looked like moist fur. Others boasted three
inch thorns that turned stem and stalk into deadly
weapons. I didn’t stoop to smell the flowers but the
stench reached me anyway, pungently warm, aggressively
rancid.
Next to the roses was a collection of carnivorous
plants. Venus’s-flytraps, pitcher plants, others I
couldn’t identify. All were larger and more robust
than any I’d seen. Green maws hung open. Sap
oozed from tendrils. On the table was a rusty kitchen
knife and a slab of beef cut into tiny pieces. Each
cube teemed with maggots, many of them dead.
One of the flesh-craving plants had managed to
lower its mouth to the table and snare some of the
white worms with i ts deadly-sweet exudate. Nearby
were more goodies for the carnivores–a coffee can
BLOOD TEST 273
heaped to the brim with dried beetles and flies.
The heap shuddered. Out crawled a live insect, a
wasp-like creature with a pincer mouth and swollen
abdomen. It stared at me and buzzed off. l followed
its trajectory. When it had flown out the door, I ran
over and slammed it shut..The glass panes vibrated.
And al/ the while the steady drip-drip from
the pipes overhead, keeping everything nice and
healthy …
Weak-kneed with nausea I walked on, There was
a collection of bonsa/oleanders, leaves gound to
powder and stored in canisters. The granulate had
apparently been tested on field mice for poison
content. All that remained of the rodents, were teeth
and bones enshrouded in flesh tanned bi rigor mot-tis.
They’d been left to their terminal agonies, paws
begging stiffly. The droppings, had been used to
fertilize trays of toadstools. Each tray was labeled:
Amanita muscaria. Boletus miniato-olivaceus. Helvetla
esculenta.
The plants in the next section were fresh and
pretty but equally deadly: hemlock. Foxglove, Black
henbane. Deadly nightshade. An ivylike beauty identified
quaintly as poisonwood.
There were fruit trees as welL. Acrid smelling
oranges and lemons, pruned and twisted to nothingness.
An apple tree laden with grotesquely mis,
shapen tumors masquerading as fruit. A pomegranate
bush slimy with mucoid jelly. Flesh-colored plums
harboring colonies of gyrating worms. Mounds of
fruit rotted on the ground.
On and on it went, a stinking, repulsive nightmare
factory, Then suddenly, something different:
Against the far wall of the greenhouse was a
single tree in a hand-painted clay pot. Well-shaped,
healthy, and obtrusively normal. A hill had been
formed from the dirt that ‘flooredhe greenhouse
and the potted tree rested on it, elevated; as if an
object of worship.
A lovely looking tree, with drooping elliptical
leaves and fruit resembling leathery green pine
cones.
Once outside I gulped fresh air greedily. Behind
the greenhouse was a stretch of barren land ending
at a black wall of forest. A good place for hiding.
Using the .flashlight beam for guidance I made my
way between the massive trunks of redwood and
fir. The forest floor was a spongy mattress of humus.
Small animals scampered in the wake of my
intrusion. Twenty minutes of searching and prodding
revealed no trace of human habitation.
I walked back to the house and switched off the
greenhouse lights. The padlock on the back door
was fastened to a cheap hasp that yielded to a
single twist of the crowbar.
I entered the dark house through a service porch
that connected to a’large cold kitchen.. Electricity
and water had been shut off. The greenhouse must
have run off a separate generator. I tsed the flashlight