Chapter 7: A Blossom of Red

The screams from outside were not human.

They carried harmonics that scraped against the inner ear like fingernails on slate, rising and falling in patterns that suggested not random terror but orchestrated communication. Elias felt his newly awakened consciousness resonate with those alien frequencies, understanding them as a language older than human speech—the sound of the Rose's other servants announcing their presence.

Constable Morrison's pistol trembled in his white-knuckled grip as he backed toward the shattered doorway. "What in God's name is happening out there?"

"God has nothing to do with this," Samantha replied serenely, rising from her position by the window. The sounds outside seemed to energize her, bringing a flush of anticipation to her pale cheeks. "Those are our brothers and sisters, Constable. The other gardeners, answering the Rose's call."

Through the broken door, Elias could see shapes moving in the darkness beyond their cottage—forms that walked upright but moved with gaits too fluid for human anatomy. The townspeople who had fled their revelation were discovering that escape was no longer an option. The harvest had begun, and the Rose's servants were ensuring that none of the crop would be wasted.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

The sound came from the back of the cottage this time—not the desperate pounding of concerned neighbors, but the measured, patient knocking of something that knew it would eventually be invited inside. Morrison spun toward the noise, his face gray with the recognition that they were surrounded.

"Let them in, Father," Samantha said, her voice taking on that ethereal quality that meant she was receiving direct communication from their cosmic patron. "The Rose is so very hungry tonight, and we've kept it waiting far too long."

Gideon struggled to his feet, the Shear clutched in his bloodied hands. Despite his wounds, he moved with renewed purpose, as if the proximity of other servants had somehow revitalized him. "The back door has been sealed for decades," he said, addressing Morrison rather than his daughter. "Whatever is knocking has found ways through barriers that were never meant to be crossed by earthly means."

The constable's training warred with his growing terror. Twenty years of maintaining law and order in their quiet coastal town had not prepared him for cosmic horrors or alien geometries, but his sense of duty remained intact even as his understanding of reality crumbled around him.

"I don't care what's out there," he said, though his voice cracked with strain. "You're all under arrest for the murder of Harold and Martha McGovern. Now put down that... that thing and come with me quietly."

Elias almost pitied the man. Morrison was trying to impose human law on forces that predated human civilization, attempting to arrest servants of an entity that viewed legal systems as temporary curiosities in the grand span of cosmic time.

"Constable," he said gently, "you're thinking too small. The McGoverns weren't murdered—they were elevated. Transformed from base matter into something that serves a higher purpose. And now—"

The back door exploded inward.

The thing that flowed through the shattered opening defied immediate description. It had once been human—Elias could see fragments of familiar anatomy in its writhing mass—but it had been reshaped according to principles that existed outside earthly biology. Flesh had been rearranged into new configurations, bones had sprouted in impossible directions, and from its center grew appendages that looked disturbingly like the thorny stems of some massive rose bush.

Morrison screamed and pulled the trigger. The bullet struck the creature center mass, punching through what had once been a chest cavity, but the impact only caused it to pause momentarily before continuing its fluid advance into the cottage.

"Brother Harald," Samantha said with genuine affection, as if greeting an old friend. "You've grown so beautiful since your pruning. The Rose has been generous with its gifts."

The creature that had been Harald McGovern turned toward her voice, and where its face should have been, Elias saw a complex arrangement of thorns and petals that shifted into what might have been recognition. When it spoke, the words emerged from multiple points along its transformed anatomy, creating an effect like a chorus of voices singing in harmony.

"Sister... Samantha... the garden... calls..."

Morrison fired again, and again, emptying his cylinder into the creature's writhing mass. The bullets passed through flesh that reformed immediately around the wounds, and with each shot, the thing that had been Harald seemed to grow more solid, more present, as if violence was somehow nourishing to its alien physiology.

"You're feeding it," Gideon observed with the detached interest of a scholar studying a particularly fascinating specimen. "Your fear, your bullets, your desperate attempts to maintain order in a situation that transcends order—it all serves to strengthen the connection between our dimension and the Rose's garden."

The creature flowed closer to Morrison, its movements unnaturally graceful despite its grotesque transformation. From its thorny appendages, a sweet fragrance began to fill the cottage—the scent of roses blooming in soil made from crushed bone and fermented blood.

"Don't fight it," Samantha advised the constable, her voice gentle with what might have been compassion. "Brother Harald is here to help with your transition. The Rose has such wonderful plans for you, Constable. Such beautiful purposes to serve."

Morrison's empty pistol clicked uselessly as he continued pulling the trigger, his rational mind unable to accept that his most trusted tool had become worthless. "This isn't real," he whispered. "This can't be real."

"Reality is so much larger than you imagined," Elias said, moving to stand beside the transformed McGovern. Up close, he could see that the creature's metamorphosis was not random but followed patterns that spoke of intelligent design. The thorns grew in precise spirals that matched the mathematical sequences found in nautilus shells, and the flesh had been rearranged to create optimal flow channels for whatever vital fluids now sustained its existence.

"Where is Martha?" he asked the creature with genuine curiosity.

Harald's multiple voices responded in unison: "Growing... in the garden... of flesh... feeding... the Rose's... hunger..."

Through the shattered front door, more shapes were becoming visible in the darkness beyond. The other townspeople who had fled the cottage were returning, but their screams had been replaced by harmonious humming that matched the frequency Samantha had been producing all evening. One by one, they were being welcomed into the Rose's embrace, transformed from crude human material into something more suited to cosmic purposes.

Gideon moved to his daughter's side, the Shear's oily surface reflecting the cottage's lamplight in hypnotic patterns. "The time for concealment is over," he said, his voice carrying the weight of three decades of carefully hoarded secrets. "The Rose has grown impatient with our gradual harvest. Tonight, we reap the entire crop."

Morrison backed against the wall, his useless weapon falling from nerveless fingers. "My God," he breathed. "My dear God, what are you people?"

"We are gardeners," all three Shearers replied in perfect unison, their voices harmonizing with the creature's alien chorus. "We are pruners. We are servants of growth beyond human comprehension."

The constable's eyes moved from face to face, seeing in each the same expression of terrible purpose. These were not madmen or cultists driven to violence by twisted beliefs. They were something far more frightening—rational actors serving causes that transcended human morality entirely.

As if summoned by his growing despair, Samantha turned her cosmic gaze fully upon him. For a moment, Morrison saw reflected in her too-human eyes the vast garden of flesh that existed parallel to their reality, the endless landscape where the Devouring Rose grew fat on harvested life-essence. He saw his own future—not death, but transformation into something that would serve purposes beyond his current ability to imagine.

"It won't hurt for long," she said softly, echoing her earlier promise. "And afterward, you'll understand everything. You'll see the beauty in what we do, the necessity of the harvest, the glory of serving something infinitely greater than any human institution."

Her hand moved to rest on the wound in her father's abdomen, and Morrison watched in horror as her fingers came away not with blood but with something that looked like rose petals made from crystallized starlight. The sight of it—the impossible beauty of cosmic matter existing in their mundane cottage—finally shattered the last of his rational defenses.

He began to laugh.

It started as a chuckle, then grew into the full-throated laughter of a man whose understanding of reality had been so thoroughly demolished that hysteria was the only possible response. Tears streamed down his face as he laughed, his body shaking with the force of emotions too complex for any human mind to process.

The creature that had been Harald McGovern moved closer, its thorny appendages reaching out with something that might have been tenderness. "Soon," it whispered in its multitude of voices. "Soon... you... will... bloom..."

Through the broken doorway, the sounds of systematic transformation continued. The Rose's other servants were working their way through the town with methodical efficiency, ensuring that no one would escape to carry word of the harvest to the outside world. By morning, their small coastal community would be empty of human life, its population absorbed into the cosmic garden that existed just beyond the boundaries of perceived reality.

Samantha tilted her head, listening to harmonies only she could hear. "The Rose is pleased," she announced. "It says the crop this season is particularly rich. So much fear, so much desperation, so much delicious terror to season the feast."

Her gaze fell upon Morrison's wound—not the physical injury from his encounter with Harald, but something deeper. The psychic trauma of witnessing truths that human consciousness was never meant to process. She looked at it with the same predatory hunger she had shown toward her father's bleeding abdomen, recognizing it as another form of nourishment for their cosmic patron.

"Yes," she murmured, her voice taking on that sing-song quality that meant direct communication with the Rose. "Yes, I understand. The wounded ones always taste the sweetest."

Morrison's laughter died in his throat as he saw something shift behind her too-human eyes—not madness, but a hunger so vast and patient that it made his soul recoil in absolute terror.

Outside, the systematic sounds of harvest continued, and somewhere in the growing darkness, something ancient and terrible began to sing.