The cactus that haunts this greenhouse has wine corks on the ends of its thorns. It acquired these corks at the old mansion on this estate. The plant would spend its summers under the mansion's colonnade where the family that owns the property gathered in the evenings. The landlords would drink and watch the sun set, and with each bottle of wine they opened, they would push another cork onto one of the plant's long spines--a truly practical joke in that it made the cactus less dangerous to the tipsy. It wasn't long before the plant began to feel silly and vulnerable and started to look for comfort in delusion. It came to believe that it was living in the middle of an empty desert. Previously, it had sensed breezes moving through the fields around the mansion; now it only perceived heat and sand. All of the people drinking wine on the verandah disappeared too when the cactus focused on the blank horizon of its desert. There it found both relief and smugness in the idea that nothing was hiding. Nothing was waiting to break open its flesh and drink the precious water inside.

The cactus stopped going to the mansion in the 1950s when the landlords lost much of their fortune. The gardeners had to be let go, and while the cactus survived longer than the other plants in the greenhouse, it eventually died from neglect too. To this day, it still believes that it is in the desert, but no longer is it alone there. Other cacti have joined it, and they too are laughing. Their voices are as parched as the cactus was when it finally died. Together they sound like the crickets outside of this greenhouse. It is September, and the crickets are chirping loudly.

Daphne is listening to them from inside of the greenhouse. She is standing in front of an open door on the eastern side of the building. The structure was turned into two apartments after the landlords lost money and needed income. The conversions of the greenhouse and of other places on the estate such as the room in the barn where cows were once milked--it's now a studio apartment--these conversions were done haphazardly. Still buried around the greenhouse are pieces of glass from when the roof and walls were broken. The room where Daphne is standing could use some of the sun that once streamed through the roof. The area is sunken, its southern wall half in the earth. It is by far the coolest place in the apartment, and while it has lots of windows, it still craves the heat of the sun.

But Daphne is warm, as if she had a fever--or maybe the breezes coming through the door are warm. Tonight she must work in the nearby town of Tivoli, New York, and it should be busy at the restaurant where she waits tables. Good weather has been forecasted for the weekend, so a lot of people should be coming up from the City to their summer homes. It is four o' clock now, and time to get ready. She lingers by the door a moment longer to look at the sunlight on the field. To her, the light seems threadbare with darkness showing through its surface. As she focuses on the darkness, her thoughts move down to the crickets hidden in the grass. She imagines them scraping up against the light above. Just before closing the door with a slam, she imagines them scraping until there is nothing left but darkness, until late afternoon has become night and frost has silenced the crickets.

The cactus doesn't know that Daphne writes fiction in the apartment. In fact, it doesn't even know a human being can survive in its proximity. The desert where it lives is too hot for people. Considering how impervious the plant is to Daphne, it's interesting that when October comes around, it spends a lot of time talking about writers. Much of what it says is mumbled, but its references to Washington Irving are clear and also numerous. The cactus claims to have encountered Irving more than once while at the mansion. Whenever it mentions the writer, its voice grows loud and full of pride. One would think it knew Irving well, but it has never met him. The cactus's dishonesty has to do with how the plant came into this world--as the sawed-off limb of another cactus. The cut end of this limb was then buried in a pot of soil and sand where it took root. The cactus is genetically identical to the plant that it came from and can't distinguish its own memories from that of its parent. And it was this parent that was at the mansion when Washington Irving came to visit the estate in the 1800s.

What happened during this visit isn't clear because the cactus is muttering. It has no reason to speak clearly; the other cacti know all of its stories. At no point does it wonder why its audience is so familiar with what it has to say. It never thinks, "Am I repeating myself?" or "How am I connected to these other plants?" This desert is a pleasant mirage, and the cactus doesn't want to erode it through doubt and self-reflection. And so it goes on muttering, its words blurring the line between past and present. The cactus comes to suspect that it is a ghost, but at the same time it feels more alive than it has in years. It figures it must be a strong ghost, like the Headless Horseman. No longer does it perceive itself as ridiculous and passive. It is speaking with brilliance, not muttering in a blind rage.

It turns out that Daphne does have a fever. In a few days, it goes away but comes back worse than before in November. She feels lightheaded, standing in the kitchen one afternoon. Beside her is the table where she has been writing. The manuscript she is working on started out as stories before becoming a novel. She begins to doubt the value of her work while looking through the window. The writing is dead--as dead as the field out there. The trees along the edge have lost most of their leaves. The acres behind the trees resemble a snake. They are rough, their brown grasses moving every which way. The land bends and swells in the middle. The snake has eaten summer in one bite. The words "summer in one bite" repeat in her head before her legs weaken.

She falls. Reaching out for the kitchen table, she pulls down papers. The serpent on the other side of the window takes her in its mouth. Her body fills with a poisonous ache that turns sharp when she moves. She tries to remain still on her side. Tears from her higher left eye cut across the bridge of her nose on their way to the floor. She is twenty-nine but feels elderly when she tries to stand.

The cactus continues muttering. It repeats the instructions that the head gardener used to give about how to propagate cacti. The gardener would tell his staff to expose a cutting from the plant to the air until a callus formed over the cut. This callus, said the gardener, would protect the plant from infection after the cut end was buried. The cactus repeats this advice until it gains a sense of authority and control--a tenuous sense, it turns out. The plant realizes how little it knows when, a week after Daphne's fall, it senses her presence for the first time.

It is around eleven at night and the lights are off. Even so, Daphne appears to see the cactus from across the room. She is lying in bed when her eyes fall on the plant and grow vacant and wide. The cactus feels her cold stare and realizes it must not live in a desert, not with this person living here too, but it doesn't know where it could be. Slowly it recalls the glass that used to be everywhere in this building. It remembers the transparency of that glass as if it were a kind of innocence and not a practical quality that let in sunlight. Its nostalgia is both intense and short-lived. When it gives way, the plant is inundated with sharp, clear memories of this greenhouse: of the gardener and his thick gloves, of the sun in December--oblique and made of glass and always, it seemed to the cactus, about to break.

Daphne fears for her sanity, staring at the cactus. She would scream but is too exhausted. Ever since her fall in the kitchen, she has only been able to stay awake for a few hours here and there. She did manage to get tested for Lyme disease and should learn the results by Monday. The appearance of her body has changed. Across her stomach are spots with pink dots in the center. She hasn't seen these spots for a while because her neck has grown too stiff for her to look down. That stiffness is one more reason that she is staring at the cactus. She wants to turn her head but can't, not until she slips into a desert. Then she can look around without pain at the cacti all around her. There are hundreds of them. Like weekend customers at the restaurant, they are dropping names. Daphne hears "Washington Irving"--but doesn't know he has to do with this desert. And why do these plants remind her of customers? Why can't she get away from work? Her nerves stand on end. She looks down to see her body again, but it has changed even further. Long spines are growing from her cactus arms. "But you can't!" she shouts, the dream cut.

The following week, Daphne's life appears to return to normal. On Monday, she gets a diagnosis of Lyme disease and antibiotics. The medicine works remarkably fast. By Wednesday, she can get out of bed without pain, and by the weekend, she is back at the restaurant. She can do all of the tasks of her job and never has to take an order from a ghost, but she does have a feeling that her body is no longer hers. It has become a distant thing with two arms that move in front of her, pouring wine and carrying plates. She watches them, the nerves deadened, as if covered with corks.

When cold air comes into the greenhouse one night, she cannot feel it well. It is December, and she is standing in front of an open door, listening to coyote outside. She has been trying to work on her novel but only can grasp pieces of it now--a scene here, a metaphor there. These pieces are too small and sharp to hold in the mind for long. The coyotes' laughter grows as soon as she decides that it's hopeless; her novel is shattered, just as this greenhouse was once shattered. Like the cactus, she is confused and muttering to herself. "I am trapped...in a ghost story. About a woman." All around her, she sees her life--the sun itself--in pieces just as the cactus did when the greenhouse was smashed. "I am in a story about a woman possessed...by a plant." She slowly closes the door, while the coyotes laugh and laugh.

-Caroline Wilkinson