FLOWERING EVIL: Something Was Killing Animals Near Her Hothouse | #MidnightInTheMacabre

Her nephew sent her exotic plants from every port of call across the solar system, but there was something about his latest gift from Venus that made the old captain uneasy.

EPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/FloweringEvil


SOURCES and RESOURCES: “Flowering Evil” by Margaret St. Clair (Planet Stories Summer 1950)

WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.

Midnight In The Macabre (MITM), originally aired: October 14, 2026

Speaker 1: Welcome, weirdos. I'm Darren Marlar. You've stepped into the horror

fiction side of Weird Darkness. And it happens to be midnight.

In the macabre. Captain Bjornsson shook a grizzled head. I

never saw a plant I liked the looks of less,

he said. I don't know how he got it through

the planetary plant quarantine. You take my advice, Amy, and

watch out for it. He took another of the little

gila nut cookies from the quaint old lucite platter and

bit into it appreciatively. Mrs. Dinsmore sniffed. I don't know

what you're driving at, she said coldly, or why you're

so prejudiced against my poor little rambler. You know perfectly

well that Robert would never send me anything the least

bit dangerous. Captain Bjornsson paused with another cookie halfway to

his lips and looked at her. Wouldn't send you anything dangerous,

he exclaimed. Why, Amy, have you forgotten how your face

was swelled up for two weeks from that tree cutting

he sent you? The doctor said it was contact poison

worse than sumac, and he tried to get you to

the hospital. What about that time that cactus from the

blue desert went to seed, and I spent 36 hours

picking spines out of you? What about... Mrs. Dinsmore gave

a warning sniff. Well, all right, Bjornsson said. I know

how fond you are, Bob, and I know you don't

like me to mention his mistakes. I'll grant you he

means well. So what? He's flighty, scatterbrained, and brash. To

use an expression that was current when I was a boy,

Bob is a twerp. Mrs. Dinsmore pulled the lucite platter

so far over to her own side of the table

that Bjornsson couldn't get another cookie from it without getting

up and stretching out along the tablecloth. I don't agree

with you, she said distantly. Robert is a splendid fellow,

so thoughtful and considerate. He takes a real interest in

my soap carvings, and how many young men with an

important position like his, third mate on a space freighter

with a regularly scheduled run, would remember to send back

plants from every port of call to an ant on Earth.

I shouldn't be surprised if I want a blue ribbon

at the flower show again this year. My golden rain

plant is about to bloom. Robert tells me it's a

lovely thing. The captain cast a wistful look at the

cookie plate. Well, don't say I didn't warn you, he replied.

When's Bob Dew in port? Mrs. Dinsmore's face relaxed. Around

the 25th, she said. He sent me a gram. Here,

have another cookie. I must think up some little thing

to cook for him as a surprise. The captain snaffled

a handful of cookies from the plate and stood up

to go.' Your ordinary cooking's good enough for me,' he declared.'

But if you mean something like those little shrimps fried

in batter you had the last time he was here,

go ahead and watch for that plant.' He stalked off

across the lawn.' He' s getting old,' thought Amy Dinsmore, watching

the gruff old codger limp around a flowerbed. Bjornsson had

his prosthetic surgery after he lost his foot, and though

it had been successful, grafts were never as flexible as

natural members.' positively old. You ought to see a geriatrician

right away. She'd tell him so the next time he

came to see her. Talking about Robert that way. She

set the dial on the robot gardener on the front

lawn to Weeding Dandelions and started along the path that

led to the little haunthouse where most of the plants

Robert had sent her were growing. Even in the deep tropics,

Terra was, with few exceptions, too cold and dry for them.

The Martian subjects, on the other hand, were in a

psychoplex lean-to, with hydroscopes and a battery of infrared lamps

to keep the temperature up during the day. The heavy

moist air of the hothouse made Amy Dinsmore pant a

little as she entered it. But how interesting it was.

Even the leaves of her Venusian plants were fascinating. Thick

and leather-like, thin and dry and hard like parchment, hanging

in heavy serpentine coils or bristling pointed and sharp as

so many spears. And their coloring ranged from cerise through

a silky taupe and indigo around to an angry bright

metallic blue. As for their flowers, oh my, Amy Dinsmore

had never seen anything like them. All you could do

was stand in front of them with your mouth open

and stare. When she wasn't looking at her Martian succulents,

they were her favorites of anything she grew. She halted

in front of the plant Robert had sent her last. Yes,

Almar Bjornsson was getting definitely senile. How could anybody think

that this poor little dried-up thing could be harmful? It

was a mere bundle of desiccated stems, with only a

tiny new leaf or two to indicate that it was alive.

It looked a little better than it had yesterday, though.

The Colchazine solution must have been good for it. Amy

brushed a few dead flies from the ledge behind it

into her hand and threw them into the composter. She

liked to have things neat. Now, what should she cook

as a surprise for Robert? He was fond of sweet things,

of course, but it always seemed to her that he

praised her meat dishes and entrees most. He liked her

cooking so much because her roast turkeys and grilled steaks

had a crust on them. Electronically cooked food was quick

to prepare, and it might be as good for you

as they said it was, but the outside looked like

the inside, and it all tasted flavorless and gray. What

was the use of saving time and cooking if you

ended up with food that wasn't any fun to eat?

You aren't looking well, Amy, Captain Bjornsson said three or

four weeks later. He looked at her with the critical

attention of an old friend. You've got on a lot

of cosmolec, but you still look peaked. What's the matter?

Worried about Bob? Chips don't get hurt in meteor swarms anymore.

He looked down at his grafted foot reminiscently. Not like

it was when I was a third mate. Amy Dinsmore

shook her head. She picked up one of the brightly

colored hexagons. They'd been playing a desultory game of marula

in the airy coolness of the side stoa, and fiddled

with it. I haven't been sleeping well, she confessed at last.

I've had such unpleasant dreams. Horrid things. What about? Bjornsson asked.

That blasted plant? Honestly, Amy, it looks like some kind

of spider to me. No, I don't know why you

can't leave my Venusian rambler alone. Robert told me it

was a very valuable plant, rare even in its own habitat.

It's doing nicely, too. Spider, I wish you'd stop trying

to spoil it for me. I'm sorry. Bjornsson apologized. Forget it.

Go on. Tell me about your dreams. Well, on Tuesday,

or was it Wednesday? No, it must have been Tuesday,

because that was the day after I flew over to Hartford.

I was down by the hothouse, and I found the

most unpleasant thing beside the path. She shuddered. I've been

dreaming about it ever since. What was it? Bjornsson urged. Oh, uh,

I guess it must have been a rabbit once, one

of the wild ones. Only it was nothing except some

fur and some bones. Not decayed, Halmar, you understand, just gone.

I can't imagine what had happened to it. Better see

a mental hygienist, the captain advised after a pause. Nightmares

can be very serious. I suppose so. I really dread

going to sleep. The next morning, very early, Amy turned

on the floor with unsteady fingers. What a horrid dream

it had been. She could hardly believe that it hadn't

been real and she was safe and sound in her

own bedroom after all. Outside, the noise that had wakened her,

the jagged, unearthly caterwauling of a couple of tomcats promenading

in the moonlight, came again. Ordinarily, it was a noise

Amy disliked very much. The poor things always sounded as

if they were in deadly agony, but now she was

glad to hear it. Heavens, if it hadn't been for

those cats crying and waking her up, she might still

be asleep and dreaming. Dreaming about... about blood. She turned

the ceiling selector to summer sky, lay back on her pillow,

and tried to relax. It was her favorite of all

the ceilings her bedroom had. So lovely and calm and blue,

and right now she needed something lovely and calm. One

thing was sure, she wasn't going to stand this much longer.

She didn't believe in pampering herself, but if she had

that dream once more, she was going to take Bjornsson's

advice and see a mental hygienist. She'd think about something pleasant.

Amy tried to fix her mind on her gardening, on

how well her plants were doing. But it wasn't a success,

when she tried to keep her thoughts on her Venusian Rambler.

Why did they call it a Rambler? It was turning

into a large, stocky, compact bush, more like an outsized

camellia than anything else Amy Dinsmore could think of. It

kept veering back to her dream, and all of that,

all of that. Well, then, she'd think about Robert. She

was a lucky woman to have a nephew like him.

She'd worked out several menus, all the things he liked best,

but she wished she could think of something a little different.

There were so few kinds of meat. When everything was

said and done, lamb and beef and musk ox and

bolo and pork, and she always thought bolo was stringy

and tough. Gradually, Amy's nerves began to quiet. The cats

had grown quiet too, except for an occasional outburst that

sounded like lightning made audible. Her thoughts drifted lazily from

Robert to her soap carving. After a while, she went

to sleep. The morning was sunny and bright, and she

felt almost ashamed of herself for having let a dream

affect her so seriously. She'd finished her matutinal inspection of

the hothouse and the succulent growing shed, and had started

back to the house when she came on a bundle

lying by the hothouse wall. At first, she didn't recognize

it for what it was, and stooped over it, poking

at it with a stick. After an instant, she straightened, nauseated,

remembering where she had last seen that ginger-colored fur. The

bundle was the not-very-bulky remains, bones and some patches of hide,

of a cat. Hadn't there been some pieces of white fur, too,

of two cats? She better call Halmar. It might be dangerous.

There must be some wild animal living near her hothouse,

a lynx or ferret or wildcat or stoat. Mrs. Dinsmore

wasn't strong on zoology, but she knew exactly what sort

of an animal she had in mind, something lithe and

dark and bloodthirsty. Goodness, it was quite frightening. On the

other hand, Robert would be in port in a couple

of days. If she asked Halmar to help her, he'd

either make an enormous masculine fuss over it she still

remembered the time she'd asked him to put up a

towel rack for her and he'd arrived with a set

of socket wrenches, a hand electric drill, four pairs of pliers,

and a portable arc welding outfit. or he'd poo-poo and

pish-tush her into silence. By the way, it wouldn't be satisfactory.

She'd wait for Robert. Robert was so comforting. If only

she didn't have more of those dreams. Despite her apprehensions,

her next night's slumber was profound and sweet. She hadn't

felt so rested and refreshed in weeks. She put the

somnus spray... Maybe if she'd thought to use it before,

she wouldn't have had those horrid nightmares, back in the

closet and decided that she'd do some soap carving after breakfast.

She felt in the mood for it, and Robert would

be disappointed if she didn't have something new to show

him that she had carved since he had last been

in port. Besides, she might be able to think of

the special dish she wanted to make for him while

she was working. She'd found from experience that some of

her best culinary ideas came to her while she was

making a statuette or a plaque out of soap. The

meal concluded. She got out her set of modeling knives

and a couple of cakes of soap. Soap was rather

hard to get, since most people used synthetic detergents nowadays,

but she knew a little store in Perth Amboy that

carried it. This last batch had a lovely texture. Amy

rotated the living room on its axis until the light

was exactly right, and then sat down in front of

her carving desk. What should she make? A statuette? A plaque?

A plaque in low relief? The plaque of a flower?

Somehow she didn't want to think about animals right now.

She had sketched in the conventionalized hermidactylus and was beginning

to pick it out carefully from the background when it

occurred to her that she hadn't been down to the

haunthouse this morning to see her plants. Why, that would

never do. She mustn't neglect them. It was terribly important. Important.

Her head hurt, how dizzy she felt. She'd better go

at once. She'd better... go. A cake of soap in

one hand, knife in the other, panting a little, Amy

set out toward her plants in a stumbling run. She

was halfway to the hothouse before it occurred to her

to question the impulse which had taken her incontinently from

her carving and set her in blind motion toward the hothouse.

By then, it was too late. She was no longer

a free agent in any sense of the term. The

mental grip which had taken the rabbit and the cats

to their death had tightened on her inescapably. Remote from

her body, In a glassy paralysis of fear and impotence,

Amy watched her feet moving briskly down the path. Oh,

if she could only cry out, call Helmar. She felt

the muscles of her throat straining, but no sound came.

And now she was standing before the hothouse, and her

hand had opened the door. The rambler was waiting for her.

Very slowly, like a man flexing his arm, it reached

out one of the stocky branches toward her. Amy saw

that at the end of the branch, well hidden under

the dark green glossy leaves, was a slender, translucent, hollow thorn.

It was about the size of a hypodermic needle the

doctor had used when, in her last year's physical examination,

he had taken a sample of blood. Amy knew exactly

what was going to happen. First, the hollow thorn. until

her veins were dry, and then the slowly opening maw,

gaping above the big, swollen, meter-wide base the thick leaves

of the Rambler had served to conceal. It would take

a long time, but Halmar would never miss her before

it was too late. The Rambler's branch moved delicately over

the surface of Amy's right wrist, the one with the

modeling knife. The other branches were drooping limply away from

the purple-pink of its swollen base, waiting while it hunted

the exact spot. It hesitated for an instant, and then,

Amy's mouth drew into a soundless oh of pain, struck home.

A dark fluid began to stain the hollow thorn. For

just a fraction of a second, the Rambler's mental grip

on Amy Dinsmore relaxed. She could feel its blind concentration

on its own black enjoyment. And in that fraction of

a second, Amy threw the cake of soap in her

left hand straight into the Rambler's fleshy maw. The Rambler

gripped at her mind again, but it was a disturbed

and feeble grip. Its branches began to move around the

fleshy bowl they had shielded, slowly, and then in a

furious heaving. The thorn which had entered her wrist was

jaggedly withdrawn. Amy, her wrist streaming blood, stared at the

rambler for a moment and then lunged at it with

the menacing knife. Sitting outside, on the ground beside the

hothouse afterward, her forehead on her hands, feeling sick and faint,

Amy had an idea. At first, she pushed it from her.

It was far-fetched, silly, even a little repulsive. But was

it so silly after all? And as to being unpleasant, well,

bolo meat commanded enormous prices in the market, and from

everything she'd ever heard, the bolo was the very reverse

of a fastidious feeder. Even pigs certainly weren't dainty in

their eating habits. If she parboiled it in several waters

and then braised it slowly... with a hint of ginger

in the sauce. Well, after all, why not? Amy, the

modeling knife in her hand, went into the hothouse again. Gee,

Aunt Amy, this meat's good, Robert said. He was talking

with his mouth full. I've eaten indigenous chow on three planets,

four if you call the stuff they serve you on

Uranus food, and it's my opinion there isn't a better

cook anywhere in the system than you. Fact. How do

you do it, anyhow? Amy Dinsmore lowered her eyes. She

could feel herself blushing through her cosmo-lac. Oh, thank you, Robert.

She sure is, Bob, Halmar Bjornsson said expansively. That gravy.

She's the best cook on Terra all the time, but

when you're in port, she gets sort of inspired. What

kind of meat is this, though, Amy? And can I

have some more? Of course, Amy said. She refilled Hamar's plate.

It's something new I found in the big auto market

in the city, she said vaguely. By the way, Aunt Amy,

Bob said, laying down his fork, after I sent you

that plant, I heard it was supposed to be carnivorous.

I forgot to mention that in my last gram. You

didn't get into any trouble with it, did you? No,

it died, Amy said smoothly. I had to throw it out.

Too bad, she brightened. Pass your plate, Robert dear, she said.

Thanks for joining me. Find more horror fiction at weirddarkness.com

slash midnight. I'm Darren Marlar, and I hope you'll join

me again soon at Midnight in the Macabre.