The Botanist by L. K. Hill Read Free Book Online

heading back. He knew the highway was in that direction, though it was at least a couple of miles from the mountain’s base. If there were other mountains in the way, he wouldn’t be able to see it anyway; he was just curious.
    He followed the bridge of land and found that it was a relatively easy route to the other side of the mountain. He scrambled over a few boulders and one fallen tree, but that was all.
    When he reached the other side, he found that he could see the highway. It stretched across the distant horizon, a glimmering silver ribbon in the midday sun. He did a three-sixty, and saw the first strange thing he’d observed all day. Thirty yards above where he stood, five wooden planks were set up against a hole in the rock.
    The hole looked like yet another cave-like gouge in the mountain’s face. The planks made it reminiscent of how old, unused mining shafts were boarded up. Picking his way up to it, Cody found that the hole was a shaft and it was small—tiny, in fact.
    Each plank was held in place by small stones around the base. The stones didn’t give way immediately when Cody pulled on them. He had to dig the dirt out from around them and push them aside to remove one of the planks.
    He ran his flashlight over the inside of the shaft. He doubted he’d even be able to sit up on his knees in there, much less stand. He’d have to pull himself along on his belly. He couldn’t see how deep the shaft was. It stretched for twenty feet before disappearing around a curve to the right, and sloping slightly downward.
    If, as the captain had half-heartedly theorized, this was the hideout of sexual predators, Cody supposed they might be willing to scoot along on their stomachs for a while if the shaft eventually opened into a larger chamber where they could go to do their twisted, masochistic rituals, but he doubted it.
    Other than the campers, who were probably looking for some serious alone time and found it in the secluded little valley between the rises, he didn’t think anyone had been out this way for years.
    The idea of crawling into the bowels of a mountain on his belly, especially without knowing if the shaft was structurally sound, made him claustrophobic. And even if he wanted to, he didn’t have the supplies for an adventure of that scope.
    Cody replaced the plank, scooting the rocks up around it as before, and turned. Something else caught his eye.
    Directly below him, a small pocket of land lay in the natural shadow of the mountain. He couldn’t have seen it from where he was before; in fact, he couldn’t have seen it from anywhere but the mouth of the unused shaft, which looked directly down on it.
    Perhaps it was because the small, almost eerily square pocket of earth was in shadow, but the soil itself didn’t look like desert. It was dark brown, almost black, as though it had a layer of the fertile topsoil on it. A line of tall, perfect tulips grew in two straight lines in the shadow of the mountain.
    These, Cody knew, were not desert flowers. For them to be here was just . . . unnatural.
    Though he wasn’t feeling lightheaded, he thought perhaps the sun was getting to him and he was hallucinating the flowers. Taking out his water bottle, Cody chugged the last of the warm, fetid water. It tasted gritty, like he’d backwashed dirt into it at some point, but he didn’t care.
    After drinking the water, the flowers were still there, not ten feet below him. Skidding his way down the rock, he let his body slide over a small precipice that overlooked the bizarre flower garden. He hung by his fingers so that his feet dangled only five feet above the flowers, then dropped the rest of the way.
    Falling into a crouch, he scooped up a handful of dirt. He was right; it was not parched dirt but soil, and it was wet, as though it had been recently watered. Cody looked around. Who was nurturing a garden this far out here? And with what? There was no hose, no irrigation system, not even a watering can, and