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SUMMARY: Some things were just never meant to be here at all. But who is going to send it back? This is an excerpt from Betrayed By God

Something huge and ugly is growing in the garden of Sarah Donnelly's house. It is part weed, part animal. The roots of it twist in sinuous curls through the soil, making it hard to uproot, and she cut its stalk down several times, only to find that another had grown up to take its place by the next morning.

She stopped trying to weed it when she noticed the bones. First there were animal bones that might have been pets from the family that lived there before her, or raccoons who went to ground here and died of poison from the garbage. But then there were more bones, and each time they were near the new stalk of her ugly weed.

Some gnawing fear in the back of her head kept her out of the backyard for a day or so. Of course, it was silly to blame the plant. She knew the all species of carnivorous plants that survive in this climate, and this monstrosity was not one of them. Still, she had not found the repulsive thing under any category in any book.

She finally dared herself to go after noticing the stalk she left standing had had a particularly big growth spurt. It had been steadily claiming more and more of the backyard, choking out her tamer annuals and dulling the colourful spray of the flowering plants with its obnoxious, swollen, red and orange flesh.

It stood that morning at least five feet tall. Its stalk was now more a trunk, deep red, ribbed with folds and oozing a foul smelling sap from bright yellow pustules. Branches or perhaps aerial roots shot out irregularly in patches all around the bulging hulk of it. From each of these grew smaller, wet pods that waved heavily in any breeze, filling the yard with the smell of rot and sulpher.

Sarah timidly crept up to it, gingerly avoiding contact with the waving pods. She felt like gagging and was certain that if she had eaten breakfast that day, it would have been back up by now. It was more than the smell that slowed her. The ground all around the plant was squishy with slimy roots that were choking out the grass so that much it was brown and thinned. It made each step feel uncertain.

The closer she got, the more she believed she could hear a wheezy breathing coming from the plant. It sounded heavy, like apnea. The branches made their own rough sounds as they strained against the draft in their knotty ruptures along the trunk. Her imagination played tricks with her as she neared the base. She pictured the branches wrapping around behind her, trapping her in a filthy enclosure.

But she had to get close. It was so hard to tell the difference between the pale white roots that bulged up from the ground and the bones she thought she could see just behind the trunk. She had to know. Because if there were bones here, she was going to call every emergency official who would pick up a phone. Carnivorous plants were one thing, but plants that killed medium sized game in a suburb full of children were quite another.

She whimpered a little as she drew closer to the sticky, slick trunk. Her eyes were tearing up from fear. Her hands shook and she wobbled on her unsure legs.