By Anne Wilkins
Mum used to say, “Everybody’s gotta die sometime, Josh.”
But that’s a lie.
There’s people that don’t die. Something about planting them back in the soil seems to wake them up. I like to call them daffodils, because daffodils die every year, but then they come right back up the next year. Their pretty yellow heads saying, Tricked you. I wasn’t really dead.
We’ve got a couple of daffodils in our furnace room right now. They’re huddled up, next to the heat, trying to get warm while Dad calls the number. He’s called it so many times you’d think he’d have it memorised by now, but still he has to fish through his little address book, turning all the pages until he gets to the S words. That’s where he finds the name Stranger. It’s odd that we don’t have a name for the man that comes and collects the daffodils. It’s also odd that Dad doesn’t use his mobile, always choosing to use our landline, which can’t store numbers. But Dad says it’s better this way. The less we know the better.
“Hey, it’s… me. We have another… two to collect.”
There’s a pause as Dad listens to the Stranger talking on his end.
“Yes, a man, aged forty-six, and a woman aged sixty-two. Both healthy, medium weight—”
Dad looks at me, and I can tell the news isn’t good. The Stranger doesn’t like the old ones.
“Okay, see you soon.”
He hangs up the phone, his hand’s trembling.
“One, or both?” I ask.
He shakes his head slowly. “The woman.”
He didn’t call her by her name, but I remember it; I saw it engraved on her pretty gravestone alongside all the bouquets of flowers. She was only buried two days ago. “You mean, Rose.”
“Yes, Rose.”
“She seemed really nice.”
Rose had even hoarsely managed, “Thank you, young man,” when I helped pull her from her coffin. Some of them don’t bother doing that, but Rose had used her manners.
“I don’t pick or choose them, son.”
“No.”
“That’s up to the Stranger.”
“I know.”
“And remember, she was already dead.”
“Yes.”
Not all daffodils survive. Sometimes the bulb rots, insects nibble away at it, or sometimes the pretty yellow flower surfaces in a harsh, cold environment. Like Rose.
Dad takes out his handgun from our pantry, and attaches the silencer.
Rose is never going to get a chance to really flower.
* * *
There are times when I think back to the before times. Before Dad was a daffodil killer, or a Rose-killer, and before he took over the ownership of Westhaven Cemeteries.
The before-dad was a cop; the before-dad was happily married; the before-dad would kick a ball around with me in our back garden.
You can’t kick a ball around in a cemetery. Dad says that’s disrespectful to the dead.
You can’t swing a softball bat.
You can’t even laugh.
You can’t do much in a cemetery.
I’m fourteen now, and I’ve had two years growing up with gravestones as company. Sometimes, I wander over and talk to Mum. Her gravestone’s on the far end of the cemetery with the words Much Loved Wife and Mother engraved on it. Her plot’s also the tidiest in the whole lot. Dad and I keep it that way, and whenever I see flowers on it, I know he’s visited. I leave flowers, too, but mine are the wild ones, like daisies and dandelions and buttercups. I think Mum would’ve liked them just the same.
I’ve still got hope she might turn into a daffodil one of these days. Dad says it’s unlikely because it’s been so long. Mum was also filled with the special embalming fluid that Westhaven Cemeteries used before they went all-natural. There’s nothing wrong with hoping though, and every time I’m out there I’m putting my ear to the ground to see if I can hear Mum starting to wake.
My thoughts are interrupted by the sound of gravel flying. I pull back the curtains and see twin car headlights winding their way up our driveway like two glowing eyes. It’s 10pm, and we only get one visitor at this time, especially after the number’s been called.
“Come away from the window, Josh,” says Dad, wiping his hands on his jeans.
His eyes look glazed, red-rimmed, and I know he’s done the killing already. Small splatters of red, like rose petals, are dotted across his plaid top.
He always takes the ones that the Stranger doesn’t want into the back room, single bullet to the head. It’s the only way to properly kill the daffodils. He’ll return Rose to her grave later tonight. She was already dead, I try to remind myself.
There’s a loud knock at the door.
Dad looks at me. “Best behaviour, remember,” he warns, before opening the door to the Stranger.
It’s a cold night, but it feels even colder with the Stranger on our step. His face is thin and pale with blue veins that twist and turn around his temples like snakes dancing. He only ever wears black. I’ve seen him plenty enough times, but every time all the hairs on my arms stand to attention.
“Evening, Frank,” he rasps. He turns to me, with those black eyes, that are all-pupil. “And you, Josssh.” He draws out the ‘s’ for an unnaturally long time, and stares at me. There’s nothing there in those eyes, they’re bottomless pits of emptiness and despair. I look away quickly and hear him snort in laughter.
“Lead the way,” he says.
We take him to the furnace room.
The man, Brian, is there, waiting, crouched down as close as he can get to the blazing flames. He thinks that there’s been a terrible mistake and he was buried alive. We told him someone was coming to pick him up. He thinks it’s family. He’s not prepared for the Stranger.
“Whhoo the hell is thh… iis?” he stammers. He’s still cold; the daffodils always are when they wake, and his words are half-formed icicles. “Whhherre did… Rose go?”
The Stranger ignores Brian’s questions. “How did this one die?” he asks.
Dad’s sweating something fierce, and I can’t tell if it’s from the furnace or from being around the Stranger.
“The… the records say he choked to death… in a restaurant.”
“Interesting.”
“W..wait… I ch..choked?”
Daffodils can never remember their death or dying.
I pour Brian a drink of water. All flowers need water, and daffodils are especially thirsty when they wake.
“Thankk you,” he murmurs. Another one with manners.
The Stranger bends down so that his black eyes are level with Brian’s.
“I’m going to take you to a hospital. I’m going to help you get warm again. You’d like that wouldn’t you?”
“Myyy… wife. She’ll be worried.”
“She’ll meet you at the hospital.”
The lies fly off the stranger’s lips, so easily.
The man stands up, slowly. I drape a blanket over his shoulders as we lead him out to the Stranger’s car.
“His name’s Brian,” I remind the Stranger before he drives off.
Those black eyes turn once again on me.
“His name will be whatever I say it is. Brian’s dead.”
And he smiles a pure-white smile with crooked teeth.
* * *
Normally the daffodils only crop up once a month, sometimes we might get two. It was only when Dad decided to go eco-friendly and change to all-natural burials that the daffodils came. Prior to that blood was drained out and replaced with embalming fluid. Dad said he thinks the embalming fluid would’ve killed anyone that was a daffodil, same as weedkiller, but he’s not a hundred percent sure.
We both know that was what Mum got, the embalming fluid, but I know that some daffodils, and some weeds, can survive weedkiller. And Mum was tough, so there’s always hope.
Most of the daffodils also tend to crop up one or two days after they’re buried, and that’s the time that Dad and I are on high alert, going out to the graves listening for sounds or movement under the ground. It’s only about five percent that turn out to be daffodils, and you never can tell who’s going to raise their yellow head up. But there are some things we’re sure of. Anyone who’s been shot in the head is dead and gone, and anyone who’s a daffodil is only ever going to come out at night.
Tonight, Dad and me are checking on all the graves that’ve been buried in the last week. We go together, our torchlights bobbing along, both of us with stethoscopes round our necks like we’re doctors, and carrying spades like we’re grave robbers.
The first ever daffodil that Dad found was a man named Richard. That man had been screaming for so long that he was barely a whisper when Dad heard him in the morning. “Man Buried Alive” reported the press, which is when the Stranger took an interest in us and our cemetery.
I’ve always wondered where they end up when the Stranger takes them away. Dad says they’re doing good things for our country, being good soldiers, but he doesn’t really know. It’s just what he wants to believe.
“Hey Josh, shine your light over here, will you?”
It’s two weeks since the Stranger last visited, and we’re at the grave of Mary. She’s our last grave to check on for the night. I remember this one, because she was only fourteen like me. Her casket is also smaller than all the others. The smaller the casket, the sadder people are.
“You hear anything?” I ask.
Dad’s knee down in the dirt with his stethoscope out, but you don’t need any fancy equipment to hear a muffled voice, a small one coming from below.
“Got ourselves another daffodil, Josh. Let’s get digging.”
* * *
Mary’s shivering in front of our furnace. I’ve covered her in blankets, and I’m giving her plenty of water to drink.
“Whh..y am I soo cold?” she asks, her teeth chattering as the flames belt out heat.
“Everyone always is,” I tell her. “But it passes.”
She looks surprised. “You mean I..I’m not the f..first?”
“No. You’re… special. Like a bulb you know, that can come back year after year, like a daffodil.”
I feel weird telling her about my daffodil theory, and she’s looking at me strangely.
“I… I know you.”
“Unlikely. I’m home schooled.”
“No. I..I do. You’re… Josssshhh.” The way she says my name reminds me of how the Stranger says it, and I clench inside. “You… you used to go to my school.”
Her head tilts. “You… d…died… two years ago.”
I shake my head.
“No. You’re mistaken. I—”
“You… you’re J…Josh A..dams. I w..ent to your funeral.”
And I start to remember.
* * *
Dad’s upstairs, the phone beside him, flipping through the pages of his address book to the S words.
I shut it closed and grab it off him.
“No.”
“Son, I have to. It’s for the good of our country. I have—”
“No.”
“I’m required to—”
“Dad, I’m a daffodil.”
His face suddenly contorts, and he starts shaking his head. “No, no, that’s not true. Whatever you heard—”
“Stop lying.”
He looks at me, as if he’s looking for the first time. His eyes are dark pools of twisted misery and his words fall heavy from his mouth. Single spadefuls of dirt shovelled out: “You’re not meant to remember… She never came back, but you did Josh. You did. You have to understand I have to give the Stranger the ones that wake up. Otherwise he’ll take you, Josh. It’s our deal.”
A deal with a devil.
And before he can stop me I take that little book. I run to the furnace room and throw it on the hungry flames.
“What have you done, son?”
I look at Mary still shivering on the floor.
There’ll be no Stranger visiting today. Or ever again.
“Can I phone someone for you?” I ask. The room fills with warmth.
It’s time to let the daffodils bloom.
* * *
Anne Wilkins is a sleep-deprived New Zealand teacher who writes in her spare time. Her short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Apex Magazine, Cosmic Horror Monthly, The Dark, Small Wonders, Elegant Literature, and more. She has won the June 2024 Elegant Literature Prize, the 2023 Autumn Writers Battle, and the 2023 Cambridge Autumn Festival Short Story Competition, among others. Her love of writing is fuelled by copious amounts of coffee, reading and hope. Anne is supported in her writing journey by her ever-patient husband, two wonderful daughters, and two feline writing assistants. Learn more at www.annewilkinsauthor.com.