To Kill A Killer

Chapter 17: Trying To Grow

Nightmare's castle was five stories high and loomed ominously over the ruined landscape, with ornate gothic architecture and dark, crumbling towers that reached up like clawed fingers towards the grey sky. Gargoyles perched above the pointed arches, faces gnarled and leering; faded figures of stained glass watched from the darkened windows of the upper levels, the rooms they guarded long since abandoned for the more habitable spaces below. The black, thorny roses were practically a part of the stonework, climbing up the walls to make a permanent residence in the ancient rock and crumbling mortar, lording high over their siblings stuck sharing rotting trees with scrawny crows in the sprawling outer grounds that ringed the castle. Said grounds may as well have been a part of the forest; the rusted, wrought-iron fence was little more than a suggestion at this point, its elegant curls and wicked spikes swallowed by the wild, overgrown trees and brambles that had managed to survive in this desolate universe.

There was nobody to tend to the once-grand place, and even if there had been, it would have taken a small army of gardeners for the grounds to become even remotely useable again. Horror, who, when he arrived, had had nothing but an axe and a desperate need to ensure that he and his brother wouldn't go hungry again, certainly wasn't about to try.

Instead, he had cultivated a small garden in one of the inner courtyards. It was a hobby of sorts, something he did to enjoy the process and reap the rewards. He had begun the project as a sort of back-up, another source of food just in case, but over time, he'd discovered a certain satisfaction in growing things instead of just killing them, in feeling the damp soil between his fingers instead of dry, gritty dust.

It was the first time he'd been out here in... he couldn't remember, exactly, but it had been a while. Long enough that the black roses from the castle walls had snuck into the trellises again. Their thorns scratched at his hands as he carefully detangled them from his pole beans, hacking off the flowering vines with a well-worn dagger that Killer had given him for one of their collective birthdays. The damn things spread like weeds, and they weren't even useful weeds – they tasted horribly, cloyingly sweet, like rotting fruit, and he threw up every time he tried to eat one. He usually kept them cut back, but with everything going on lately, he just... hadn't. He'd been too busy, or too tired, or too worried about everything else to even really think about coming out here. Nobody else was going to keep things together, after all. His team came before some silly side project.

But then the new Killer had shown up to snatch the broom out of his hands, and despite his complaints, which were loud and numerous, he'd spent the intervening days actually working, popping up behind him to take over the dusting or getting halfway through the dishes before he even reached the kitchen. Suddenly, Horror had found himself with free time. Not as much as he'd had before, mind you, but certainly more than when he was taking care of four people and an entire castle by himself.

He'd felt oddly trepidatious when he stepped foot into his garden again, like something would fall apart if he wasn't there to hold it together, but the feeling passed once he'd started working on clearing the roses.

It was nice out here. Peaceful. It gave his mind the same sense of quietude as his walks. He didn't have to think, he didn't have to worry. Until he went back inside, he could just exist.

The courtyard's enclosed quiet was broken by the creak of the old wooden door that separated it from the castle, and there was a soft, irregular shuffle of slippers that moved from tile to cobblestone as it approached, bringing with it the bitter stench of alcohol and the fainter, musty tang of old dust.

"Roses back again?" asked a dull, hoarse voice over his shoulder. The words were enunciated carefully, like their speaker was having to make a conscious effort to keep them coherent.