Read by Michael Flamel

Burt Freeman was positively potty about plants. He’d been a plantsman all his life, and now retired, he could spend his time following his favorite horticultural pursuits. Burt liked to run a tight ship in the garden. His lawns were always trimmed to perfection, his perennials never put a leaf out of place, and his vegetables never dared to step out of line. Burt was often found in his greenhouse in the center of his garden, propagating, potting up, and potting on.

Inside, Burt had erected a small shelf to display his trophies from the annual vegetable competition in the village where he lived. Over the years, Burt had won first place in almost every category, but one prize had always eluded him.

Next door to Burt lived Ronald Shufflebottom. Ronald also enjoyed gardening but had a very different approach than Burt. Ronald liked his plants to tangle, spread out, and mingle with other plants. Often Burt would be weeding in his garden and look up to see one of Ronald’s out-of-control hollyhocks leaning over the dividing hedge, judging him.

“Just you keep those wild seeds out of my garden,” Burt called out one sunny day, while tending to his vegetables.

“How’s the pumpkin, Burt?” Ronald fired back, and Burt instantly felt a pang of wounded pride. Truth be told, Burt wasn’t overly keen on pumpkins.

“You’ll never win anything like that,” Ronald pointed out, leaning over the hedge with his hollyhocks. “Pumpkins need to be free with room to romp about.”

“I do know a thing or two about vegetables,” Burt parried back, standing up and looking at his neighbor’s chaotic garden with all the vegetables and plants growing amongst one another. “Perhaps if you cleared out your beds once in a while, you might win a prize or two.”

“Oh, I have my eyes on one prize,” Ronald smiled, nodding towards a huge orange pumpkin gleaming in the sun. Burt sighed, looking down at his own small pumpkin with its neatly clipped tendrils. “Perhaps you can use yours for a small soup instead,” Ronald suggested with a grin.

Ignoring Ronald’s comments, Burt decided to take his mind off things by trying out one of his new gardening gadgets that had just been delivered that morning. Opening the box, Burt smiled as he took out his new state-of-the-art, metal-reinforced kink-proof hosepipe, designed to never kink or split again.

The sun hadn’t fully risen yet, but already you could feel its warmth, so Burt set to work, first by opening the vents in the greenhouse to let out the hot air and switching on the radio inside because Burt had read somewhere that talking to plants had proven to encourage them to grow.

The radio began to prattle on, but Burt took little notice and began banging in wooden pegs around the greenhouse so that his new hosepipe wouldn’t drag over his precious plants.

“…today we are looking at hidden messages encoded in songs…” the radio rattled on. “…first used by the Beatles in the 60s and popular in the 70s with rock bands often hiding messages of the occult…”

The bees hummed, the breeze whispered, and Burt hammered in his second set of pegs around the greenhouse, creating two overlapping inverted triangles with the hosepipe as he pulled it around.

“…let’s play one of these hidden messages and see if we can make any sense of it…”

Burt pulled the hose toward his veggie patch and squeezed the trigger.

“…listen carefully folks…”

Suddenly there was a mighty explosion somewhere nearby, but looking around, the garden was strangely still. The radio was silent, and even the birds had stopped chirping. The greenhouse, however, was full of black smoke, and putting down the hose, Burt assumed the radio must have overheated as he rushed over, stopping at the door. The smoke, he noticed, was not escaping through the open vents as expected; instead, it was receding back on itself and making a hissing sound.

As the smoke cleared, the radio came back on, and there appeared to be a man standing in the center of the greenhouse with his eyes closed and his hands behind his back. He wore a neat black suit with shiny black shoes, his hair was slicked back, and his mustache twisted to a point on both sides. He stood perfectly still, and for a moment, Burt thought he was hallucinating.

“Hello?” Burt called out in a quavering voice, peering around the door.

“I have transcended,” the man said in a deep croaky voice, keeping his eyes closed.

Burt blinked slowly. “Beg your pardon?”

“I have transcended,” the man repeated. “You spoke the sacred words.”

“Sacred words?” Burt queried with a frown. “Who are you?”

The man opened his eyes, and they were like two pools of black water. “I have many names, but today you may refer to me as Mr. Baker.”

Burt tried to think. “Would you mind telling me why you’re in my greenhouse?”

Mr. Baker gave Burt a long steady look as the radio continued to babble on. “You spoke the sacred words, and I…” Mr. Baker turned to the radio. “Do turn that thing off, it’s giving me a headache.”

Burt reached inside with his hand and flicked the power switch.

“Thank you,” Mr. Baker sighed. “You laid the iron pentacle upon the ground.” Mr. Baker pointed to the reinforced metal hosepipe that made a perfect pentacle shape around the greenhouse, and Burt’s mouth made a perfect round ‘O’ of despair.

“Cup of tea?” Burt’s wife called from the house.

“Yes, please,” Burt replied automatically, raising his hand, and Mr. Baker quirked an eyebrow. “Better make that two.”

“I’m here on business,” Mr. Baker began.

“You’ve got the wrong chap,” Burt told him. “I retired from business years ago.”

“Business comes under many headings, depending on what is required,” Mr. Baker went on. “Money?”

“I’ve paid off the mortgage.”

“Women?”

Burt glanced at his wife making tea through the kitchen window. “I’m happily married.”

“Fame?” Mr. Baker persisted, and Burt’s face lit up for a moment. He thought about the competition, the vegetables, and Ronald Shufflebottom’s pumpkin.

Mr. Baker smiled thinly.

“Tea up,” Burt’s wife announced, barging past Burt and laying the tea tray down on the table in the greenhouse. “It’s hot as hell in here; you’ll kill your plants like this, you duffer.” She stopped dead when she saw Mr. Baker. “Hello,” she stuttered, and the color drained from her face. “Do you take milk?”

“I take my tea as black as the darkest night,” Mr. Baker told her dramatically.

“I was only asking,” his wife tutted, regaining a little composure.

“Your husband was just telling me about his desire for fame.”

“No,” Burt cut in. “I mean yes, it would be nice to have the Freeman name remembered somehow.” Burt looked at his trophies displayed on his shelf for inspiration. “Perhaps a pumpkin, a giant, competition-winning pumpkin, full of vigor, that pops up in every garden once in a blue moon, and people think of good old Burt Freeman, the gardener.”

Mr. Baker sipped his tea quietly, while Burt’s wife stared at her husband in disbelief, “What on earth are you waffling on about?”

“I can help you,” Mr. Baker reached into his pocket, pulling out an old paper scroll which he dutifully unrolled. “It will just require your signature.”

“What’s the catch?” Burt asked doubtfully.

“No catch,” Mr. Baker assured him. “It just has to be signed of your own free will.”

“What am I giving you in return?”

Mr. Baker’s mouth widened, and in a deep rasping whisper, he answered, “Your soul!”

Burt looked shocked while his wife pulled a face and shook her head. “Never have I heard such nonsense in all my life,” she concluded, before shuffling back to the house.

Burt shrugged and picked up a pen, but Mr. Baker told him, “It has to be in blood.”

“Good heavens, blood?”

“Afraid so,” Mr. Baker pointed to a fresh scratch on Burt’s hand from one of his roses. Burt pricked it open, and a few drops of blood fell onto the unrolled paper. “It is done,” Mr. Baker snapped and returned the contract back into his pocket. “Until we meet again.” Smoke began to rise from the ground once more, covering Mr. Baker, and when it receded back down again, he was gone. In his place was a small blue seed on the ground.

Burt picked up the seed and examined it in the palm of his hand. The seed didn’t look particularly special, and not wanting to place a rogue seed amongst his other vegetables so close to the competition, he instead found a large pot filled with compost and prodded the seed inside. He placed the pot in the center of the greenhouse in full sun and gave it a sprinkling of water before returning to his gardening duties.

Later that day, as the sun began to set, Burt examined the pot and even poked around the surface to see if there was any sign of a little green spear under the soil, but there was nothing. “You must be potty,” his wife commented from the greenhouse door. “He was winding you up; I wouldn’t be surprised if he belonged to the local amateur dramatics society.”

That night Burt did not sleep well. He had uneasy dreams of pumpkin creepers, reaching out like spindly green hands trying to grab him until, in the early hours, Burt and his wife were awoken by an almighty smash. “Burglars,” Burt wailed, jumping out of bed and grabbing a slipper as a weapon.

“Not burglars,” his wife stated, whooshing the curtains open. “Your greenhouse.”

“Even worse,” Burt exclaimed running downstairs and out into the garden still in his pajamas. For a moment, Burt just stared in horror; every single pane of glass of the greenhouse had broken, and thousands of pumpkin creepers had erupted in all directions, wrapping themselves around anything they could get hold of. In the cool blue light from the moon, Burt could see the tendrils moving across the lawn like blind serpents and ginormous great rustling leaves opening up at intervals, absorbing the moon’s rays.

Burt tried to get inside his greenhouse to grab his shears, but there was no way through the dense, writhing tangle of creepers. Burt did, however, manage to catch a glimpse of his trophies, which were now being wrapped up and rearranged.

“I’ll put the kettle on,” his wife suggested from the relative safety of the house. “Those creepers will be in your vegetable patch if you don’t act quick.”

There was only one real option. Burt paced around to his neighbor’s house and knocked on the door. Suddenly a light came on, and Ronald appeared in the upstairs window. “Burt,” Ronald called down, wiping the sleep from his eyes. “Nice to see you up bright and early.”

“I need help,” Burt grimaced. “In the garden.”

Ronald almost smiled. “Well, I never thought I’d see the day. What seems to be the problem, not that little pumpkin of yours?”

“It’s probably better if you look.”

From Ronald’s side, they both leaned over the dividing hedge with the hollyhocks. “What have you been feeding it, rocket fuel?”

“More like black magic,” Burt muttered to himself, watching the creepers wrapping around his prize-winning vegetables and pulling them out of the ground. “Perhaps some pruning is in order,” Burt proposed, and the pair returned armed with two sets of sharp shears glinting in the moonlight.

At once, the pumpkin creepers seemed to realize what was happening and reared up over the hedge like a great green wave, rubbing their rough leaves together and creating a hissing sound. Burt and Ronald snipped and clipped, but they simply could not keep up with the rapid growth, and before long, the creepers got hold of the shears and pulled them back within the plant and out of reach.

“I’ve got some weedkiller,” Ronald suggested, retreating back, but at that moment, the first rays of sunlight began to wink over the horizon, and the plant seemed to settle down of its own accord as the moon disappeared. It stopped reaching and grabbing, so Burt and Ronald decided to go and inspect the damage.

“Impressive,” Ronald commented, walking under the huge leaves. “Lots of growth, but hardly any flowers.” Ronald pointed to one small yellow flower, already being pollinated by a hum of bees. “Shame the competition’s tomorrow; you might have stood half a chance with this beast of a plant.”

Burt pushed through to his prize-winning vegetable patch and observed the devastation. “Hard luck,” Ronald said, giving his neighbor a friendly pat on the back. “There’s always next year.”

Ronald helped Burt clear away all the tendrils, except the one with the yellow flower, and stacked them on the compost heap to rot. Afterwards, Ronald went home, and Burt inspected the flower again, which was slowly forming into a small pumpkin shape. “Not exactly what I asked for,” Burt sighed, and feeling exhausted from fighting pumpkins all night, went to bed with a heavy heart.

Once again, Burt had uneasy dreams; he dreamt of the competition and everyone in the village laughing at him and his little pumpkin. Suddenly Burt woke up as if he had been startled. He had slept through most of the day, and now his wife was coming up to bed while he was fully awake. Opening the curtains, the sky was freckled with stars, and the moon was casting its pale blue glow over the garden.

Looking down, he could see his pumpkin had grown to about the size of a football and was glowing an iridescent blue in the cool light of the moon. It looked terrific, and by the time Burt reached the garden, it had already doubled in size. Burt watched in fascination as the moonlight seemed to gather into a narrow beam and shine directly onto the pumpkin, causing it to expand rapidly. Burt let out a low impressed whistle, and once again, tottered around to his trusty neighbor to get help.

“What now?” Ronald called down, bleary-eyed. “Trouble with your radishes?”

“I need your help quick,” Burt told him, hopping around as chirpy as a cricket. “Are you feeling strong?”

When they reached Burt’s garden, the pumpkin had already reached the size of a large beach ball. “It’s growing by the moonlight,” Burt explained, pointing at the moon. “Help me lift it.”

“Lift it?” Ronald barked back. “Whatever for?”

“The competition’s tomorrow; all vegetables have to be displayed in the tent on the green to be entered.”

Ronald and Burt tried to lift it, but they only managed a few steps before they had to put it down again. “I’ll get the wheelbarrow,” Burt suggested.

“Cut her loose. She’ll be easier to move.”

“Are you mad?” Burt howled, with his eyes already fixed on the prize. “This thing’s still growing. If we get it in the wheelbarrow and stretch out the tendril it’s on, we might just reach the village green up the road.”

“What are you two doing down there?” Burt’s wife called down to them from the upstairs window.

“Gardening,” Burt and Ronald chorused back.

“There’s obsession and then there’s obsessed,” his wife muttered, closing the window.

Between them, they managed to get the pumpkin into the barrow before it became unmanageable. Burt pushed it, while Ronald unraveled the long green tendril like a ball of wool, which mysteriously was exactly the right length to reach the tent on the green. They carefully offloaded it, and then, exhausted, returned home to get some rest.

In the morning, Burt quickly changed and made his way down to the green before the competition started with his pruning shears to cut his pumpkin loose. Luckily, the pumpkin had stopped growing, but it was now so enormous it was wearing the tent like a garment of clothing.

“How’s the pumpkin?” Burt’s wife asked on his swift return.

“All under control,” Burt told her, running back down the street with a ladder under his arm.

Later that morning the competition was in full swing, minus the tent which Burt managed to cut off his pumpkin and now lay flat on the grass. Luckily it was nice weather, although a little cloudier than the previous day. Burt, as expected, won first prize in the giant pumpkin category and even Ronald Shufflebottom, proving himself to be a good sport and neighbor, joined the round of applause. In fact, Burt’s pumpkin was such a success that the local press had come to cover the story.

“It’s been declared a new variety,” the presenter informed Burt, who was standing proudly next to his giant blue pumpkin with his arm around his wife. “Have you thought of a name?”

Burt thought for a moment. “Blue moon,” he announced, and the reporters nodded, writing it down while his wife gave him a nudge.

“Blue moon?” the reporter parroted back.

“Blue devil, more like,” Burt’s wife whispered out the side of her mouth.

“Blue devil?” the reporter parroted back.

Burt smiled, ignoring the question, and in that moment the clouds parted, revealing the moon still visible in the sky but fading fast with the rising sun. The moon shone its final rays onto the pumpkin, which groaned and creaked as if it were under immense pressure and had finally reached the limit of its expansion.

Everyone stepped back, including Burt and his wife, while the reporter continued to take notes. Suddenly there was a giant crack like a thunderbolt, and the pumpkin exploded, sending millions of blue seeds into the air and firing them into the ground all over the village. Burt smiled, his wife tutted, and even in the weak remaining moonlight, you could already feel the ground begin to shake.

About the Author: Gregory Ballinger is an enthusiast of many interests, including reading, doodling, time traveling, gardening, and writing. While he once harbored dreams of becoming an astronaut, Gregory’s pursuits led him down different paths, including his adventures in English country gardens as an ornamental hermit, where he contemplates the mysteries of life and the cosmos. He possesses a collection of rocks that he hopes will fetch a good price one day, serving as a fallback plan if his writing ventures don’t pan out. Gregory is also fond of cats, adding to the eclectic tapestry of his life.