The Shivering Lily of the Nabir River Basin

I am one of perhaps a handful of Westerners who can claim to bear witness to the terrible spectacle of the Shivering Lily.

My man Phuad and I were tracking rumors of an aquatic man – a prehistoric “Gill Man” – that the natives of the Nabir River Basin claim to haunt the most remote regions of their land. In addition to our regular gear we had enlisted the service of a pair of Whauffenhounds, descendents of the very same scent hounds who had served in the legendary hunts of Baron Fritz Von Vorstellen. As you well know, the tracking abilities of these distinguished canines are second to none.

We had primed the dogs to track the Gill Man by way of a scat sample that our native contact MikLuKik assured us had been left by the object of our hunt, and when on the ninth day of our expedition our lead dog Hans took off tearing into the bush we were elated. The Gill Man, captured at last! How wrong we were.

We quickly lost site of Hans, and our other dog, Fritz, was howling madly at the end of his leash. We followed Fritz deep into the muck of a nearby marsh and soon found ourselves gagging at an unbearable charnel odor – undoubtedly the same that had drawn Hans so quickly from our sides.

We broke through a maze of weed and mangrove trees just in time to see the dog approaching an enormous  flower of an unwholesome pallid color. The odor of rotting flesh hung heavily about the bloom, whose petals were the size of a grown man and laid flat upon the ground. Hans had scarcely brushed one of them before the bloom snapped shut like a clam, trapping him within like some sort of morbid cocoon.

Phuad and I pulled our machetes and began hacking at the flower, careful to strike at its base so as to avoid harming the dog we knew to be trapped within. Our efforts proved futile, and as we lowered our machetes we both witnessed how the legendary plant had earned its name: as Hans kicked and struggled against his captor, the lily appeared to shiver upon its stalk.

We could not leave the dog to be devoured alive by this devilish bloom: Phuad loosed his revolver and fired three shots into the plant. After that, the infernal bloom shivered no more.