Below is the second chapter of my new novel Creepers. I'll be posting the book one chapter at a time as an experiment in introducing my work to a new audience. My other novel The Souls of Dumah is available on Amazon, Barns & Nobel and most other book stores. All of my novels are Supernatural Thrillers.
All comments are welcome.
CHAPTER 2
THE BOTANICAL BEAUTY
Vanessa Fullbright, pursed her lips as she studied the wilted leaves of her Calonyction Aculeatum, a perennial night blooming herb of the family Convolvulaceae. Her mother called them Morning Glories but Vanessa preferred their Navaho name: Moon Flower, it sounded more romantic. Her Moon Flower was the climbing vine variety. If well-tended under proper conditions it would grow to six meters in height.
Her mother’s Moon Flowers had been planted back in 1975 (the year Vanessa was born planted along the east side of their porch, where they flourished until her Mom and Dad moved down to Key West after her father’s accident.
Always the scientist, Vanessa brushed a strand of strawberry blond hair from her cheek then scraped off a sample of a spongy mold growing on the plant’s stem. She popped the sample into a glass vile and slipped it into the hip pocket of her jeans with the intention of asking Dr. Prather if he had any idea how to kill it.
Although she’d recently graduated with a Masters in botany, the embarrassing truth was that her love and understanding of plants didn’t translate into a natural affinity for gardening. As she often confessed to friends and colleagues: “Mamma has the only Green Thumb in our family.”
Vanessa stirred the Miracle Grow in her copper watering can and doused the green water on the diseased plant. As she pruned dead tendrils from her Moon Flower she thought of her father. Have I subconsciously chosen botany over the stage to punish him for the abandonment I endured as a little girl?
Indelible memories of their time together were embedded like splinters in her mind, making her sad some times. Memories like her jovial father abandoning her and her mother over and over again, skipping off with a smile on his face to perform for strangers, for weeks or months at a time. She remembered throwing her arms around her Daddy’s neck and clinging to him. He’d gently pry her arms free, kiss her goodbye and say the same thing: “Come on Pumpkin, cheer up. We’ll paint the town vermilion when I come home!” As if shopping, the zoo and a theme park could make up for months of parenting by phone. She’d bravely choke back tears, run up to her room, slam the door and weep into her pillow, until one day when he left for a bus and truck tour of Rent and for the first time she didn’t feel sad, instead a cold indifference crept over her like snow storm. She took comfort in her chilled emotions. Perhaps her rejection of theater was a learned reaction, like withdrawing a hand from a hot stove. Maybe her scientific career sprung from a deeper well than a genuine love of things that germinated in darkness, grew in silence and never gave anything in return but boastful colors that faded too soon, fragrance that flirted with the wind.
When she’d finished she poured the unused water in the sand and left the can sitting by the garden gate.
It was Saturday and she was enjoying her solitary afternoon at home. She checked her watch: 4:30 Stephan was due to arrive at six. He’d probably show up early, he usually did. Reluctantly she’d promised him a home cooked dinner. Of course he’d be hoping for a little more than a hot meal. “After all,” he’d reminded her on the phone this morning, “tonight’s our one month anniversary!” But poor Stephan would be going home with a stiff refusal aching in his Dockers. Although popular with the coeds on campus, for his quick smile and crisp blue eyes, Stephan’s wit was rehearsed and rusted his personality had the depth of a bird bath. Stephan was about to be cut from her meager list of potential suitors.
Vanessa tidied up and went inside. Stephan’s promised meal would be the lasagna thawing on top of the stove. She set the oven to 350 and slid the partially frozen dish in. Her mother always made extra lasagna when she came to visit, Vanessa was a terrible cook. She kicked of her shoes and padded off to the bathroom.
The old clapboard house had been a real find at only $650.00 a month. The small blue and white bungalow sat on two sandy acres and was only a fifteen-minute drive to Florida’s new Preston Botanical Gardens, the largest indoor/outdoor botanical facility in the state, where Vanessa was the proud, new Assistant Curator of Acquisitions. Whenever she thought of her new job she remembered her father’s feigned excitement over the news. Michael Fullbright, her father was an ex-actor, best known for his numerous TV character roles twenty years ago and a few decent. runs on Broadway. Michael Fullbright had been loved and respected more within the tight-knit circle of theatrical actors and directors in New York than in Hollywood where he used to do occasional character work in films to supplement his sporadic, though substantial theatrical income.
Over the years, her father had made it no secret, that he dreamed of having Vanessa follow his lead onto the stage. Her flawless beauty - inherited from both parents, was a veneer that she was unable to fathom. She often caught complete strangers gazing at her like she was a rare painting.
Vanessa was personable and talented. Her classic looks reminded people of the beautiful contract actresses of the 1940s and 1950s, women like: Lucille Ball at twenty- nine or Lauren Bacall when she met Bogy at the tender age of nineteen. Vanessa not only had looks but brains and buckets of untapped talent. She could sing like Judy Garland and pick up choreography by casually watching it once. She’d performed in all of her high school productions, preferring roles with meat and bones (as her father put it) rather than playing the giddy ingénue. She still secretly loved the theater, but she had taken to the stage only to please Daddy, who rarely attended her performances. She’d fled the performing arts to punish him a fact that she refused to acknowledge.
Eventually Vanessa found other interests, biological and botanical ones. The diversity of nature astounded her. Recently she’d discovered Dr. Rupert Sheldrake’s theory of Morphic Resonance where experiments proved that plants, animals and humans could learn from others within their species who were thousands of miles away or had died hundreds of years before. Every living species was invisibly connected to every other member of its clan like it or not living or dead and information and knowledge was somehow being unconsciously stored and shared. Scientists still had no idea how it was done but the facts were indisputable. Plants learned what pheromones attracted specific predators that fed on the insects that were devouring it, and when attacked, they changed their scent, amazing enough but somehow this successful tactic was shared with other members of the same species who had never been attacked.
As Vanessa matured into a stunning, self assured young woman, she spent more time alone in the field or in her lab. Her Mother Rosa once theorized over dinner one night that Vanessa was such a well-rounded, confident young woman, that she didn’t need the adulation that actors craved. Her father sulked for a week after that comment: the truth stung. He remained perplexed by her choice of professions but supported her decision because in spite of his shortcomings as a father, Michael Fullbright adored his daughter.
After a serious car accident cost him his right leg from the knee down, Michael’s spotlight faded forever. After all dancing was his forte’ and though he could walk, even jog with his artificial leg, dancing was now beyond his abilities. Like a spurned suitor he turned his back on the stage and devoted the rest of his life to becoming a mystery writer. It took him five years to write, publish and sell his first novel but his persistence paid off and writing gave him a fulfillment he’d never known as an actor. He and Vanessa’s mother moved down to Key West and lived the life of wealthy retirees. In a way Vanessa’s choice of professions, so vary far from the footlights and fame made her father’s mid-life career transition easier for him to accept. Looking back, Michael often wondered what he’d have done if his daughter had taken the thespian path, rather then the garden one.
Vanessa’s mother, a wise and still beautiful woman of forty-seven, easily sensed the ebb and flow of those around her, as she did the plants that blossomed in her garden and the bounty of vegetables that miraculously thrived in the sandy soil behind her home. Rosa Fullbright’s knack with plants was the source of her daughter’s obsession with botany but no matter how hard Vanessa studied the physiology of plants, she never gleaned the insight that came naturally to her mother. Her Father had said to his wife on more than one occasion, “The girl just can’t make things grow! Why is she devoting her life to this? She should specialize in weeds, that way when they died she’d have accomplished something.”
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